I should be writing my FIC but instead I’m drawing Jowan and Amell making fun of Surana for her embarrassing crush on the world’s most awkward Templar(pre horrible traumas of course)
They’re all roughly sixteen here, Amell was still dating Jowan at this point, and the biggest worry on Surana’s mind was surviving her idiot friends making fun of her forbidden crush.
This is for my “Those We Leave Behind” series that I plan to write, about what happened to the Origins who weren’t chosen as Warden; so this Amell and Surana were meant to be throw-away characters who die in the origin. Now that I’ve plotted out their entire lives though, I love them and I think I want to draw this squad a lot 🥺
Notes on Surana and Amell under cut
Surana:
• Born in the Denerim Alienage, came into her magic very young at age 2.
• Her parents willingly sent her with the Templars, sadly hoping that maybe she’d have a better life in the circle than they have the ability to give her. Her parents ask the Templar who picks her up to watch out for her.
• I haven’t named the Templar yet, but he ends up taking pity on the elves and forming an almost fatherly bond with Surana(I was originally going to use Greagoir for this but oh my god I just read his lore and he fucking SUCKS holy shit, he’s like, everything that sucks about Templars all in one. Wow), which causes some strain; I don’t think I’ll go too much into it in the fic, but I think before her Harrowing he’ll be transferred to another Circle, because Greagoir fears that he’ll be a problem if Surana fails her Harrowing.
• She meets Jowan when he first comes to the circle around age 5. We all know how horrible Jowan’s backstory is, so he’s obviously extremely shaken up when he’s brought to the Circle; Surana attempts to comfort him, but he’s angry because he notices she seems fairly happy, and he’s upset to have been brutally abandoned by his parents. He dislikes her initially, especially since she seems to be the perfect star pupil at all times, but eventually they have a heart to heart after Jowen lashes out at her about his parents. They sit together silently for a while before Surana admits that she has no memory of her real parents, and that the Templar(who I’ve yet to name) is the closest thing she has to a father figure, and she resents that he has to maintain a distance from her due to being a Templar. In a bid to have someone to call family, they decide to be brother and sister, and will not be talked out of it.
• The fic starts when she’s 13, and she sees Cullen, a new Templar Recruit, sitting in a corner completely overwhelmed and trying not to cry. She sits down with him and tries to comfort him, which starts their friendship. Their friendship and mutual crushing is toothachingly sweet; she secretly saves her desserts from meals to share with him, and he picks her flowers from outside of the tower.
• The older they get, the more obvious their feelings are, but neither are willing to act on them. Jowan and Amell(who Surana meets shortly after Cullen) tease her MERCILESSLY for it. Jowen rightfully calls her out on how the older they get the more she becomes “little miss perfect”, how much privilege she has with TWO Templars watching her back, and what a teacher’s pet she is. Surana accepts that, but also points out that she’s no more in a cage in the Circle than she would have been in the Alienage, and that at least in the Circle she is warm and fed. Amell calls her a lapdog, and openly resents her lack of desire for freedom; Surana gets angry and tells him that not everyone had a cushy life of Nobility to lose. Amell says that’s fair enough, but at least he pursues his own interests; lightheartedly calling her a coward for failing to tell Cullen how she feels.
• When she is 18, she tells Cullen how she feels. He rejects her, admitting that he does have feelings for her, but it just wouldn’t be right to pursue them, him being a Templar and her being a mage. She says she knows, she just couldn’t live with the secret anymore. They spend less time together after this, a mutual yet undiscussed understanding that it’s harder to resist eachother the older they get.
• When she’s 19, almost 20, her Templar Father Figure is sent away to a different Circle, in preparation for her Harrowing. She spends that time incredibly lonely, since Amell and Jowan’s breakup has made their friend group incredibly distant; along with the fact that Cullen is intentionally keeping his distance, especially since he doesn’t want to be transferred away like her Father Figure(lest he lose the ability to protect her from worse Templars, whom he has fought on her behalf before, though she is blissfully unaware). Not to mention, we know from In Game that a lot of other mages dislike F!Mage for being naturally talented.
• Greagoir intentionally rigs her Harrowing for her to fail, to teach Cullen a lesson about getting too close to the Mages, but a spirit of Valor took such offense to this that they manifested in the fade to level the playing field for her.
• Initially Surana is uncomfortable when Jowan gets her and Amell together to ask for help breaking him and Lily out of The Circle, especially when he reveals his relationship with Lily(which hits too close to home with her regarding her feelings for Cullen), but when he says that the circle plans to make him Tranquil, she agrees to help without hesitation. Internally, this is her realization that The Circle has only been good to her because she’s been incredibly lucky, talented, and soft-natured. She begins to see it for the prison it actually is.
NOTE: This is not how I play my Warden Surana, my Warden was born Dalish and kidnapped by Templars; her friendship with Cullen starts when he fights another Templar recruit who was stalking her, and she decides his little crush on her is Useful. She doesn’t even realize she’s come to care for him until he gets hurt on her behalf, and she’s calling him an idiot while she heals him, and he’s laughing while she demands that he never do anything like this again. She avoided any discussion of her actual feelings by overtly flirting with him, knowing he’d get flustered and assume she was joking. She has ZERO reservations about helping Jowan, and flips Greagoir off on her way out. I like to think she fucking decks him before she leaves after Broken Circle, and Alistair has to carry her out kicking and screaming(she romances Zevran, but without Mods she doesn’t meet him until AFTER Broken Circle. Plus, Zev probably would have let her kill Greagoir)
Amell:
• Born Noble, obviously, he comes into his powers around age 11, but manages to hide it for two years before his mother catches him playing around with his spells when he thinks he’s alone.
• His parents argue over what to do(much to his surprise, it’s his FATHER who is refusing to allow him to be taken away, going so far as to try to shoot down the messenger bird his mother sends out to the Chantry), meanwhile he cries with his sister in the next room, because he knows he’s going to be sent away. When the Templars come for him, his mother refuses to even look at him, and it breaks his heart because he had been a Mama’s Boy. He resents her for not having the decency to even say goodbye. (He never learns this, but his sister ran away from home and never came back after he was taken away; the loss of both of the children Destroyed their father. This is what caused this branch of the Amell family to collapse.)
• He is sent to the Fereldan Circle because too many of his cousins are Templars in the Kirkwall Circle.
• He’s angry and brooding when he arrives, and almost immediately befriends Anders(who is recently returned from his first escape), the two become an inseparable pair of trouble makers, both incredibly bright and skilled mages for their age, but absolutely resentful of The Circle. The two share what is Amell’s first kiss right before Anders asks him to escape with him. Amell chickens out, admitting that he’s never even seen Fereldan outside of his journey to the Circle, and he’s scared. Anders leaves without him, and Amell immediately regrets not going with him. He is so ashamed that he avoids Anders as much as possible when he is eventually brought back to the Circle. Anders has no idea that Amell is avoiding him out of personal shame.
• He meets Jowan and Surana shortly after Anders’ escape, and after the duo befriend him, he falls madly in love with Jowan. Ever one for timing, Amell confesses his feelings to Jowan in private, not realizing at first that Jowan was in the middle of practicing Blood Magic. Jowan breaks down in tears, admitting that he only started dabbling with Blood Magic because he feels like he’s so far behind Amell and Surana, like the two of them are soaring without him. Amell pulls him into his arms, and Jowan just sobs into his shoulder.
• Amell is extremely protective over Jowan, refusing to fail him like he feels he failed Anders, still carrying a lot of guilt from that. He’s so blinded by his love however, that he fails to see the resentment building in Jowan over Amell’s increasing skill; missing the extra bite to Jowan’s voice when he talks about how perfect he is.
• He resents Surana for how comfortable she seems in the Circle; and is sometimes pretty rude to her for it, but it’s mostly because he knows that he’s every bit as scared to leave The Circle as she is, despite his outwardly bold persona. Amell is a hypocrite, and struggles with both fear and oversight.
• He’s thrown completely off guard when Jowan dumps him, and is heartbroken. Jowan left him because he just couldn’t stand how easily everything came to him, and throws all of that into his face, a bit unfairly. Amell feels like it’s somehow his fault that his magical talent made Jowan feel inferior, and he becomes an absolute brooding menace in his classes; despite being a “Star Student”. A teacher confronts him about it in private one day, and Amell lashes out at him, saying that maybe if his mood is such a “problem” he ought to be made Tranquil. Luckily, this teacher actually gives a damn, and sits him down to talk it out.
• When Jowan calls him and Surana together to ask for their help in escaping, Amell jumps. He is still deeply in love with Jowan, and wants him to be happy even if it’s not with him. Also, he refuses to fail him the way he feels he failed Anders. He commits to escaping too this time, and part of him hopes that he’ll meet Anders again.
NOTE: My Canon Warden is Freyr Amell, and shares this backstory. He falls in Love At First Sight with Morrigan, because she’s the first mage he’s ever seen who’s spent their entire life free of The Circle. Even he can tell though that she’s carrying some pretty deep trauma from being raised isolated by Flemeth. He does all he can to give her a happy life moving forward. When he meets Jowan again in the Cells at Redcliffe, he is relieved to find that he is no longer IN love with him(still loves him, but the romance is gone); he tells him to get the hell out of Fereldan, because he knows any Fereldan Templar might recognize his face, and they WILL kill him on sight(especially after Broken Circle). When Morrigan says she is going to disappear with their baby, he promises her that there is nowhere in this world where he won’t find her, and that he’ll love her forever. She laughs mirthlessly, knowing she will not be hiding in This world. When he meets Anders for the first time since they were 13-14 in Awakening, they start over fresh as friends; getting to know each other as adults; they joke about their first kiss, but the rest of the party has no idea it was actually true, or the way Amell carried that guilt until finally being able to stand up and save him from the Templars. The “Mysterious Business” Amell disappears on was tracking down Morrigan, absolutely desperate to protect his new family. He refuses to fail them. I like to think he runs into his sister again someday too(I might make an AU where she had joined the Orelsian Wardens under an assumed name, and she goes through the Awakening DLC, Freyr having disappeared beforehand to track Morrigan)
Dao mage origin analysis or why circle is an injustice - Part 1 ll Part 2 ll Part 3
Chantry propaganda
Second minute of the mage origin and you already get this wonderful manipulative speech from an armed man in power about "magic should serve men", Tevinter (as if you and all mages are to blame) and about how you're all cursed.
Imagine how often mages hear this shit.
They hear about it day and night as Anders said. They hear about it from a young age. These words are seared into their minds. Chantry propaganda make mages feel guilty, ashamed, afraid of themselves. It's not done to protect anyone. It's done to make mages convenient and submissive.
"It is remarkable, how easily we are made to fear our own minds. The templars need not know; they need not lift a finger. We punish ourselves for questioning with shame and with fear"
– From the locked diary of Senior Enchanter Uldred, retrieved from his quarters after his death
Just look at Keili, npc that you can meet in the tower. She is a perfect example of what chantry propaganda does to mages.
She feels guilt just for existing. This mage (like many others) doesn't see herself as a person but as a monster to protect the world from. So she wants to dedicate her life to the Chantry in a wish to redeem herself for being born, but they don't accept mages. And now she's in this position of feeling cursed and rejected by everything and everyone, she feels like she has an impossible-to-repay-debt to the Chantry, to the whole world.
"The people fear what we can do, but to use that fear to bludgeon us into submission is wrong! And they do it with our blessing!" – Anders
And we continue! Also, the best way to see the first four posts about this is to search the tag ‘journal’ on my account. It will pull up every post of Stellan’s journal.
It’s been a while since my last journal update but here it is! And it’s been a bit cause I haven’t actually written in it in a while, but it is what it is.
I’ve been having trouble linking to the previous post of this for a bit though, so if anyone has any advice on how to make this easier for people who want to see the earlier pages please let me know.
Dao mage origin analysis or why circle is an injustice – Part 1 ll Part 2 ll Part 3
The Harrowing and mages' options
The Harrowing. Absolutely unnecessary and sadistic shit. It probably exists just to kill more mages, u know. Instead of teaching mages how to protect themselves from dangerous spirits they do THIS. It makes no sense, and they gain nothing except traumatized or dead mages by it. Like yeah, wonderful idea: don't tell mages about a deadly test you created (even right before the Harrowing, when Irving tries to give you an advice, Gregor immediately interrupts him), don't prepare them for the challenges they'll face, and expect them to pass it. Sadly, the truth is that the system doesn't even expect them to pass the Harrowing. Nobody cares. That's it. That's why templars strike mages down during their Harrowing if they just "take too long". When templars see an opportunity to kill a mage, they use it.
In the fade you meet a random spirit that basically tells you "this test of you mortals sucks". Even spirits are done with chantry's bullshit.
When this nightmare is over you find out that your Harrowing took place at night so nobody could know anything or see how you left. Yeah, it's totally a healthy attitude, nothing wrong with that.
Then Jowan tells us even more interesting stories. I already stated that Harrowing has nothing to do with actually testing or teaching but it turns out that even the formal purpose of it is ignored. If templars think you're "too weak" or you "might be too dangerous as a mage" they'll make you tranquil.
If they want an apprentice tranquil than nothing will stop them. So even the formal reason for the existence of the Harrowing is a lie (what a surprise).
"You do the Harrowing, the right of Tranquility... or you die"
So in fact templars and the chantry want mages' options to be like "you die, you die or you die". What a choice! Truly, why did they rebel? We'll never guess.
"The Circle is a prison. You have choices... between joining and suffering various deaths of body or spirit. Remember that".
And the apprentices. Some of them are so terrified of what the Harrowing might be, they volunteer for the right of Tranquility! Imagine how strong one's fear must be that they are willing to become tranquil.
– "I just know I'll be terrified when my time comes. Like Wendell was. He threw up every day for the next week just thinking about it...".
How can anyone not end up hating circles after seeing all this? How?
