#dwarf pride

[dwarfnado247]

Just a look into my Big self!

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[oaken-dick]

Happy Durin's day my charming fellas, and remember you make this dwarven heart proud!

[kanechroniclesgraphicnovel]

Sometimes the scariest thing in the world is a dwarf god stripping into a speedo! Bes in action from the Throne of Fire Graphic Novel.

[shiftysmugglerlook]

“Sure you all can reach the top shelf, but guess who never has t’duck?” Olek points both thumbs at himself with a smug grin.

[davionstar]

A small group of Horde decided to cause a ruckus in Ironforge tonight. They didn't count on the Dwarven fuggin Vanguard. >:( Run you cowards run. AND STAY OUT OF OUR HALLS!

[the-kanechronicles]

Let's play "who's the sassiest-helpful-proudest-pure hearted egyptian god ever".

[andoralsreach]

Alright, so this is me getting one of my personal headcanon epilogues out into something vaguely coherent. Disclaimer: I don't usually write fanfiction (or anything, really). So apologies in advance as to the quality of this! Dwarf Noble origin, Warden/Alistair, Character Death.

Putting it under the cut :3

They had burned his body, as per the teachings of the Chantry.

A hero's death deserves a hero's funeral, Anora had said. It is only fitting. She had spoken with eloquence and grace at the ceremony, extolling the virtues of those willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of Ferelden. If she had been thinking of her disgraced father as she spoke, if she had had to suppress the memories of Loghain's lifeblood splattering across her face as he perished at the hand of the man she now praised, then she was too noble to let show. It seemed nobody had escaped the Fifth Blight unscathed.

They had all coped in their different ways. Zevran had stood solemn watch for trouble throughout, eyes trained on the shadows, before quietly slipping away as the crowds dispersed, disappearing from Denerim before the night was over. Sten had vanished even before the funeral, explaining that as far as he was concerned, the body was simply a shell deserving of no special reverence once the soul had left. Shale had stood awkwardly by, clearly torn between her desire to make a smart comment and her knowledge that there was grief here, even though she herself did not quite comprehend it. Oghren had been unusually respectful at the ceremony, although he had outdone himself with the drinking afterwards. Sodding prettyboy show-off, he'd grumbled affectionately. How's a warrior meant to compete with that kind of exit?

Wynne and Leliana had stood close. Leliana had cried without shame, her lips moving in silent prayer as she watched the smoke rise from the pyre into the overcast sky. He had a good heart, she had said afterwards in an attempt at comfort. He will be at the Maker's side now, I know it.

Sereda did not believe in the Maker.

Faith wasn't ever something she had spent much time thinking about. It was only with Alistair's passing that she realised how deeply rooted her beliefs were. Holding his broken body on the roof of Fort Drakon, numb to her own wounds and the sounds of running and shouting that surrounded her, her faith had suddenly surged from nothing into the only thing between her and the abyss. She had prayed to her Ancestors far less frequently than a daughter of noble birth rightly should have, but she had done so at that moment, trapped miles above the Stone, at the highest point in Denerim with a human man cradled in her arms. Let the Stone take him, she had pleaded. He was brave and noble, and the equal to any dwarf, any Paragon.

It was a fool notion, she told herself afterwards. If Alistair's path followed what he himself had believed, then he would be at the Maker's right hand. And the Shapers had always taught that only dwarves returned to the Stone. Still, it was a comforting idea, and sometimes she imagined she could almost feel it, echoes of him reverberating through the thick stone walls of Vigil's Keep. She thought he would have liked it there.

Sereda had been raised with the expectation of a future in leadership. Once upon a time she had even desired it. But rebuilding the Wardens was something she and Alistair had planned to do together. The position of Warden-Commander seemed hollow after that, like she was merely going through the motions. She knew little more of the Wardens than the new recruits did. It was Alistair, after all, who had carried the memories of the last Ferelden Wardens. It was as if the keep full of new blood was missing the heart that carried the bridge between the old Wardens and the new.

In the end, it was the new blood that kept Sereda going. Leading became a secondary concern; her new focus was on protecting those who fell into her care as best she could. In return, they protected her, in their own way. Oghren kept the insensitive remarks to a minimum on the evenings she chose to join him in the heavy drinking - at least as minimal as Sereda had ever grown to expect from Oghren. Nathaniel Howe, initially brimming with quiet, cold fury at her, eventually warmed and the two developed a mutual understanding; two children of privilege betrayed by their own upbringings, thrown into a confusing world with their expectations shaken and their hearts broken. Anders, the mage, turned out to be a good drinking partner with a wealth of good stories to tell, and if his easy, irreverent humour was a little too close to Alistair's sometimes then it was just as much a comfort as it was painful.

"I wish you two could have met each other," Sereda had told him over drinks once. "You two could have been friends, I think."

Anders had snorted. "A runaway mage and a templar boy? I hope you were planning on bringing enough cold water to break it up when the catfighting started." He shrugged and took another mouthful of wine. "But then, you're not exactly the humourless battleaxe I pictured when people talked about the Hero of Ferelden, so who knows? Maybe you're onto something."

And then there was Sigrun. Sigrun with her bright eyes and her tattooed face and her indomitable smile. She was good at hiding the hurt deep buried beneath that smile, but Sereda saw it. She thought that all her new wards probably saw it too. They had all ended up as Wardens, after all. Sigrun simultaneously filled Sereda with immeasurable comfort and terrible guilt. It was a joy to have somebody around who shared both her fascination for the open skies of Ferelden and the unspoken ache for the feel of stone surrounding her. They had similar roots. But Sereda knew she could never truly understand Sigrun's life. Before her return to Orzammar during their desperate struggle to pull together an army to face the Blight, she had never even set foot in Dust Town. It was a different world to her, and in retrospect she was ashamed to think of the possibility that maybe she could have done something to alleviate the suffering in that dark place, back when her father was King and she still held influence. Maybe if she had paid attention, she could have done something to help Sigrun before she had even joined the Legion, and the thought ate away at her sometimes. She had admitted it to Sigrun once, a guilty rush of words spilling out of her as they sat together in the moonlight one night at Vigil's Keep. Sigrun had just smiled wistfully.

"It'll take more than one voice to change the way the caste system works, Commander. Even a noble's word can't change hundreds of years of tradition overnight, no matter how much you might want it to. Besides," she added with a wink, "What's done is done. There's no need to apologise to the dead."

Sereda had sighed. "Sometimes I feel like that's all I do these days."

And it seemed there were more dead all the time. As much as she wanted the slaughter to stop, the world kept turning and people kept dying on her watch. Amaranthine had burned while she stood by, and despite a desperate rush back to the Keep to save what little of the Order they had managed to build up she had lost friends and comrades both in that assault. By the time the Architect had made his offer to her, to end the Blights forever, she had just been so tired of loss. Anything to help stop the cycles of endless fighting and failed responsibility that she felt caught in.

And yet, when the crisis passed and relative calm returned to the restored walls of Vigil's Keep, Sereda found she missed the fighting. At least, she missed the sense of purpose the fighting had given her. Ever since Bhelen's treachery had driven her out into the Deep Roads, her life had been driven along relentlessly by crisis after crisis. What to do now, then, that the storm had calmed?

She knew that having Alistair at her side for this would not have solved her problems. But she felt like perhaps it would have helped.

It seemed Sigrun had felt the same disquiet. Both dual-wielders, Sereda and Sigrun had shared frequent training sessions and sparring matches during their time at Vigil's Keep, but while Sereda's inclination during peacetime was to throw herself into her training even harder, Sigrun became increasingly withdrawn and eventually stopped their practise sessions altogether.

The breaking point came one crisp autumn morning, when an apprentice had stumbled into the mess hall during breakfast and announced that Sigrun had apparently left during the night.

Sereda waited until nightfall to make her move. She had never felt so much a coward in her life, and yet it was something she knew she had to do. Crisis had forged the Hero of Ferelden, and yet peacetime left only Sereda. And Sereda was tired. She left her papers on the desk, delegating responsibility to those she felt suitable. She left her Warden tunic and armour on its stand and instead pulled on her old leathers. She planned to travel light.

Zevran had excelled at training her in the skills of an assassin, and Sereda had no trouble sneaking around the Keep unseen. It was only when she was on her way from the kitchen to the exit that she had bumped into Anders, evidently on his own way to raid the larder.

The mage hadn't said anything, just glanced at the pack on her back, at the weapon holsters slung over her shoulders. She put a finger to her lips and he had simply nodded and stepped aside. Of course Anders understood.

"Whatever it is you're looking for, I hope you find it," he had whispered after her. She nodded, suddenly swallowing back tears. She didn't really know what she was looking for. And then she had turned her back and walked into the night.

To go after Sigrun, then. Sereda didn't know whether she was seeking her out to join her last stand in the Deep Roads, to convince her to postpone her death or simply to say goodbye. Her death in the Deep Roads was already assured, after all. It was simply a matter of time. And there was still a whole world out there, full of things neither she nor Sigrun could possibly imagine. If the Hero of Ferelden was to be taken as any more than a myth, she thought, then that Hero's story was long concluded, created and ended within a single moment on the top of Fort Drakon. There was no future for that myth. Perhaps there would be one for Sereda, though.

If the Ancestors willed it.