it’s neat to think of ways that the Old Gods’ spheres might be perverted during Blights
Dumat’s dominion over Silence might have caused sound to play a major part in the First Blight; you already have the shrieks and their paralysing screams, but what about Warden dreams where nothing can be heard but oppressive silence that grows and grows until the weight is so crushing that the Warden feels like they’re suffocating
Andoral’s influence could have wreaked havoc with the themes of subservience and a lack of will in the Fourth Blight. how many Wardens had to fight off the pressure of mental shackles in order to summon the self-possession to hunt Andoral down? and so on
(Urthemiel is easy in my canon. beauty came in the form of the dragon-born Grey Warden who purged its corruption and stopped the Blights~)
I keep saying I don’t want Cullen in my Inquisition, and I keep not doing anything about it, but now that I’ve solved my Anders Problem I think I should work on the Cullen one.
I don’t want Cullen in Kirkwall either, actually. I’m thinking about how being the last surviving templar during a demonic invasion of a Circle, being trapped inside a magical prison and being driven to delusions by the senior enchanter that put him there, severely compromises a templar’s ability to serve the Order justly.
(I’m thinking about how the Order, in canon, doesn’t seem to care if templars can serve justly, instead encouraging them to be ruthless and reactionary. But that leads to me thinking about how the Order is rotten from the start, which is something I can’t fix without losing complete control of this already-precarious Jenga puzzle.)
I’m thinking about how I conclude “I don’t like Cullen” when it’s actually 90% “I don’t like the fact that they let this traumatised young templar immediately continue to serve the Order in very high-stress situations, sending him to the most blood-magicky swiss-cheese-Veil city in Thedosian history”. (The remaining 10% is “I really just don’t like his face or his dialogue options.”)
I’m thinking about Irving and Greagoir seeing the potential of cruelty in Cullen after his ordeals, cruelty that he’ll always justify to himself with the conviction of terrible experience, and making an executive decision to keep him in their Circle -- where they know him and what he’s experienced, and can perhaps ease him through the healing process as much as possible.
Maybe he remains a templar, and serves relatively well. Maybe he doesn’t. That’s not a story I’m particularly invested in telling at this point.
I’m thinking that maybe there’s another Knight-Captain in Kirkwall instead, because I have just the OC for that.
And that there would be how I solve my Cullen Problem.
a while ago, I made the executive decision to have Chantry-boom be the fault of a radical group of rebel mages who were incited by Anders’ rhetoric and decided to act upon it. which made Anders’ responsibility more nebulous and... ultimately didn’t serve the story I was trying to tell with Anders.
(long post ahoy)
the thing about caring about Anders (or any similarly divisive character) is that it’s really easy to get worn down by fandom debate and fall back into the instinct of just wanting to protect your faves. but despite how horribly fans tend to treat each other in said debates, there is real shit being addressed in them -- for example, how one’s personal pain and need for justice can be warped to the point of causing widespread harm to others, despite the fact that what one really desires is for less people to be harmed overall. that is central to Anders’ story and the only point from which a fulfilling redemption arc can proceed. removing Anders from the scene of the crime and making his influence purely indirect ruins that opportunity, and completely weakens Anders’ story.
it also weakens Elijah Hawk-child’s story. Elijah is driven by both his compassion and his anger -- that internal conflict is visible behind almost everything he does. but it’s most visible with Anders, because his first instinct is to be angry with Anders for being the way that he is, but his second instinct is to want to give Anders everything he’s been deprived of, to be a shelter for him. for ten years, Eli loves and supports Anders to the best of his ability, struggling to address the feelings and needs behind Anders’ rash words and actions, refusing to turn Anders away, putting his own reputation on the line in order to protect Anders, and so on.
and then Anders goes and blows up a Chantry.
so of course, Elijah is immediately furious. but that’s the thing -- sometimes you pour everything you have into a person because you care about them, but you can’t necessarily fix their pain and solve their conflicts just by doing that. they have to do the work, too. Anders is still in agony, Anders still cannot look past his own agony in order to make less rash and violent decisions, and Anders still blows up the Chantry. and Elijah has a choice. in that moment, he chooses to exile Anders -- he doesn’t add to the violence, but he does give a consequence. Elijah and Anders both learn something that day.
here’s where I choose to play god instead -- with a little deus ex machina OC called Daniel. Daniel is also magic-sensitive. Daniel knows what Anders intends to do. Daniel sacrifices emself to erect a magical shield to protect everyone in the Chantry from the blast.
so you have -- a mage, who tries to kill everyone in an explosion. and you have -- a mage, who dies in order to save everyone from being killed in an explosion. you have “magic is destructive” versus “magic can save lives” (”but no lives would have needed saving if magic wasn’t trying to kill them in the first place!” and so on.) therein lies the conflict that leads to the war.
obviously, I’m loath to kill people for the sake of telling a story about someone else, if I can tell it another way. (even with Daniel, I’m like “well, do ey have to die doing it, necessarily?” but, like, I think ey kind of do in this case.) I’m also loath to villainise people for no good reason (so that whole Harvester!Orsino bullshit? yeah, that’s fake and never going to happen in my canon). but sometimes people have to do fucked-up shit in stories in order for them to realise how bad things have gotten, for them and for everyone. and I think Chantry-boom can serve that purpose.
Anders and Orsino encounter each other in Ferelden, months after Anders’ exile. Anansi Surana is First Enchanter of the Fereldan Circle, and when his beloved colleague brings this familiar-looking hermit with haunted eyes and set jaw to his doorstep, Anansi opens the door and lets him in.
Anansi knows what he did. but Anders knows what he did, too. it is time for the work to begin.
I realised the other day that... my qunari have a low birth rate because of their whole reproductive situation
which could possibly explain why conquest is such a driving force. if a successive generation isn’t a given, then to whom does the legacy fall? onto the people of other races who’ve been assimilated into their culture, and their children
I just realised... if Elijah is the viscount of Kirkwall and therefore right there, there’s no reason for Cass to be interrogating Varric as to his whereabouts, which means there’s no need for her to have dragged him into the Inquisition, which means... well, 1) they don’t have any reason to snark and gripe at each other for half the lifespan of the Inquisition, and also 2) Varric joins the Inquisition after it’s established for his own reasons, one of those reasons being “ok, listen. I love Eli but the job of seneschal is for the birds. if I sneak away to join the Inquisition he’ll just have to give that blowhard Bran his job back”
Eli is insulted as hell and refuses to reply to any of Varric’s letters for like a year lmfao
everything about Qunari life is bound up in their language -- they are who they are because of the words First Ashkaari brought back down to them from the mountaintop (sounds like a Moses allegory when I say it real quick like that but it’s actually more Odinic than anything); words adapted from draconic tongue, words suited to draconic understanding, but expanded to include them. Qunlat developed around the text that First Ashkaari transcribed: a tongue fraught with societal nuance and woven with ancient magic
and then they met the rest of the world
and although their voracious curiosity quickly curdled into a voracious desire to subjugate (that’s probably a hereditary trait, unfortunately; dragons don’t share very well), it did start out as curiosity -- and the difference in language was a big part of that curiosity
it’s very obvious still, in individual Qunari. Sten marvels at human and elven poetry, at the delicate dance or warlike march of words, at the many different ways there are to be stirred by a turn of phrase. Arishok wonders at the meaning of a name, when ey meet Elijah Hawk-child who becomes Elijah Wolf; when ey return to Par Vollen empty-handed and find themselves nameless [purposeless], and must form an identity for emself from dust (hence, Issala). Iron Bull’s wicked tongue curls easily around Tevene phrases and elven endearments alike, until ey find that eir own language feels heavy and smothering in eir mouth, until ey watch a dreadnought sink at the Storm Coast and find that the customary Qunlat prayers for the dead just aren’t enough for what ey’re feeling.
Cole gets sent home (back to whatever corner of the Fade he spawned out of); he keeps in contact with Solas and of course he runs into Kasaanda every once in a while but the Inquisition can’t waste time giving the Spirits 101 lesson to every single person (and then arguing about it for an entire trip across Orlais) or managing the constant confusion from stuff happening that no one can remember and all that shit, it’s just messy and you’re not helping, go home, lad
spirits of Compassion -- even ones more well-adjusted than Cole -- don’t do well around the Inquisitors and their people anyway. the Inquisition is a trickster juggernaut and it’s full of fed-up world-breakers who are too impatient and furious to be empathetic
Thedas as a whole hasn’t been this viciously divided in Ages and the Inquisition is just widening the cracks on purpose, honestly, because once the whole thing breaks, that’s when the real work starts -- this fake diplomacy shit is dead -- hey, Chantry, we never liked you anyway, let’s fight about it
Solas is kinda late to the party with his “I want to sunder the Veil” business, like, we’ve been sundering shit since Anansi Surana became the Hero of Ferelden, cured himself of the Taint, and learned he was set to take First Enchanter Irving’s place -- since Jethro the Liberator killed his magister master and unleashed his Serpentine brethren on Tevinter -- since Elijah Hawk-child flew into Gwaren on a dragon named Flemeth (named Asha’bellanar, named Mythal). your Veil? yeah, sure, let’s bring that down too, but I bet you ain’t gonna expect what happens afterward
we have spirits of Clarity, of Justice, of the unforgiving light of the Sun, of the unavenged dead. that’s what we have. and we have Talan, the illumination of the Vashoth; we have Old Gods awakening and finding that corruption is not necessarily a death sentence; we have new gods upending hierarchies of mundane power and reminding groggy petulant tricksters of their duties. that’s what we have.
Anansi Surana was fortunate. He doesn’t know why he was fortunate, why when Clarity came to him during his Harrowing he didn’t let his intensive Chantry training corrupt him and ruin the union. He never thought himself particularly clever, aside from his wicked adolescent trickery and his disarming charm. --Maybe that was the first mark of true cunning, if it isn’t beaten or shamed out of you before it can evolve.
But he doesn’t know, regardless. He only knows that the first thing he thinks when he returns from the Fade, the astral landscape being replaced by the forbidding Harrowing Chamber with its forbidding armour-clad sentinels, hands on the hilts of their swords, is They break us on purpose.
He was very fortunate. Shortly after his Harrowing -- by all accounts a success no matter where you were standing -- his associations led him into a situation that could have turned out very badly but instead earned him a strange kind of freedom. And his strange kind of freedom granted him knowledge that the Chantry had denied him, and he knew it was true. They break us on purpose.
He knew it was true, because Morrigan communed with spirits to understand the forms she took, and her resultant mastery of wildness both internal and external was beyond measure. Because Alistair told him stories of the Avvar augurs, whose spirits were companions and guides, whose spirits forged deep and lasting bonds. After death, in the Fade, those former augurs would become spirits for new augurs, driven by a love for their people. Because Urthemiel the Old God was in agony, and the only way Anansi understood that agony was through Clarity.
Because when was a demon not a demon? --oh, when you loved it.
Divide et impera. They break us on purpose. They take away cultural identity. They take away ancestral love and guidance. They take away the relationship with the Fade that makes life fuller and death less frightening. The Veil was not their creation, but they harden the Veil in the minds and hearts of children, and they wield the Veil like a guillotine in the minds and hearts of those they condemn, and the mortal world suffers for it.
Anansi was fortunate. Something made him unbreakable. Maybe it was Clarity, watching from his birth. Maybe Clarity saw what Anansi would become, and preserved him so that he would indeed become -- Raven, Liberator, World-Breaker, one of several, whose life work seemed futile but who put crucial cracks in the foundation of Thedas’ institutions.
By the time Solas awakened, the Sundering was already underway.
