#embriel lavellan

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It was difficult to translate Final Fantasy Bunny Man into a realistic style, but Mimir turned out pretty well. (He's an elf, that hairstyle just hides his ears.)

AND HERE'S MY BOY

He turned out so well that I almost wanted to back out just to make him my Rook :')

That's all I have time for tonight, alas...

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faux-paragon replied to your photoset “I don’t believe in gods.” (ง •̀_•́)ง”

im gay for an elf

this is a very appropriate reaction to Embriel.

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Embriel being really pissed at Orlesians, by the fantastic rjestudio! Thanks dude!

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Dragon Age prompt for something more with your amazing Embriel Lavellan

The weariness in the man’s voice cuts through the lap of water at the shore and the unease murmured by the mages gathered in knots around the docks. Embriel, attention caught, turns to look at the man sighing to himself about his dead wife’s grave. Elven, which is a surprise - there aren’t many elves in Redcliffe that didn’t come with the mages - and at a guess, very old. It isn’t only the white hair, or the man’s face, which is mostly unlined, but the burden of years in his eyes as Embriel approaches and the stiffness with which he rises to greet Embriel when he asks what’s wrong.

The man explains that the danger on the roads prevents him from visiting his wife’s ashes, enshrined in the forest to the south and is surprised when Embriel suggests that he might help. A flicker of hope enters his eyes. “My Senna and I, we kept to the old ways as we could.” He drops his gaze as if suddenly ashamed. “Though I know we are as children to you.” 

Sudden upset shocks Embriel’s words right out of his head. It takes him a moment to find them again. “Just tell me where to go, and I’ll take the flowers to her.”

For a while the old man is speechless. “I… do not know what to say, except thank you.” He gives directions to the shine, his face almost pathetically grateful. It hurts to watch, and Embriel is away as quickly as he can without seeming rude.

As children to you. As children. Embriel has seen twenty-six autumns, had his vallaslin for ten, and been the First to the Keeper of the Ways for twelve. She’d reminded him during their many, many arguments that he was a young sprout still, but he’d never felt so young as now, when an old man was too ashamed to keep looking him in the eyes because he was Dalish and the man was not.

He seethes to himself as he and his companions climb the hill out of Redcliffe and walk south along the King’s Road. He scarcely notices the conversation of the others, even when it grows into a spirited argument behind him. It isn’t until Solas pushes forward to fall into step beside him that he pulls out of his thoughts at all.

“You are awfully quiet, Herald.” 

“Please don’t call me that.” Embriel gives Solas a sidelong look and purses his lips at the arch look on the other mage’s face. “Is it such a surprise?”

“You rarely pass up an opportunity to argue with Cassandra about magic.” He looks away thoughtfully. “Or to argue at all.”

Embriel huffs a laugh. “Mr. Pot, are you commenting on the darkness of my finish? From the sound of it you more than made up for my absence.”

Solas gives him a brief smirk. “True. But something does trouble you.”

“Yes.” Embriel looks away, frowns, pushes a lock of hair that’s escaped its tail out of his face, stalls for time. “The old man in Redcliffe, who can’t make the journey to his wife’s grave. He said—” His frown curdles. “He said he was as a child to me.”

There’s an edge to Solas’s voice as he says, “And that bothers you.”

Oh, here it is, Embriel thinks. He resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Of course it bothers me, Solas. Look at me!” He turns and spreads his arms. “I hardly look old enough to have vallaslin. The only people who are as children to me are actual children.”

Solas’s lips thin into a line. “You know that’s not what he meant.”

“Of course I know,” Embriel replies irritably. He turns in time to skip over a tree root arching free of the ground. “I’m highlighting the absurdity of a man old enough to be my grandfather - possibly my great-grandfather - saying he is as a child to me. For what? Because I have some tattoos on my face and lived in the woods all my life?”

“I’m surprised to hear such words out of a Dalish.”

“It’s practically heresy! The next thing you know, I’ll be saying non-Dalish elves are just as ‘true’ as Dalish are. Or that perhaps we need to look to the here and now instead of wallowing in the past.” Embriel laughs bitterly.

Solas seems to lean more heavily on his staff as a pinscratch line appears between his brows. “Are you willing to throw away tradition?”

“That’s what my Keeper often accused me of.” Embriel swats idly at an overgrown elfroot. “But no, I’m not. I’m not willing to throw away the future for tradition, either. The world has changed and we must change with it if tradition is to survive at all.”

For a long moment Solas is quiet, long enough that Embriel starts when he speaks again. “What if you didn’t have to?” His voice is intense, harried. “What if you could restore everything the traditions are an attempt to remember, whole and pure, untainted by time?”

The intensity of Solas’s stare brings Embriel to a halt. He stares back, disquieted, and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t. We aren’t the same people who lived in those times. We’ve been shaped that everything that has come after and we can only move on if we accept that.”

“But there’s been so much harm done—”

“That we can’t make better if we keep trying to run away into the past!”

A complicated expression shifts Solas’s face. Surprise is there, and puzzlement, and other things Embriel can’t unravel before Solas looks away and starts forward again. Embriel stares at his back for a moment before he hurries forward. Solas remains silent, his brow creased. Embriel prepares himself for another argument, but when Solas finally looks at him it’s as if the other mage is seeing him clearly for the first time. 

“You have a point I had not considered before. Thank you, Embriel.”

Embriel’s cheeks warm. “You’re welcome, I suppose,” he says, baffled.

Solas chuckles. “Do you always take thanks so poorly?

“I’m not used to to my arguments being listened to,” he says ruefully. “So thank you for considering them, Solas.” Solas chuckles again and the temperature in Embriel’s cheeks goes up another few degrees.

—

It’s some time before Embriel is able to return to the old man at Redcliffe, who asks sadly, hopelessly, if he was able to deliver the flowers. His face lights up as Embriel recites the verse on Senna’s shrine, and tells him that he cleaned it and placed the flowers as asked.

“You do a foolish old man too much kindness,” he tells Embriel.

Embriel protests, “It’s the least I could do for one of my kind.” He pretends not to notice the tears in the old man’s eyes.

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Embriel is looking particularly himself today.

Usually I end up getting kind of boring screenshots if I don’t just botch them entirely, but sometimes I hit print screen at just the right moment.

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Embriel Mk. II.

With so many more mods available now than during his first playthrough, I can make his look evolve over the course of the game. Hair pulled back is a good look for someone who was posing as a mercenary, and now has quite a lot of shit to get done. He'll let his hair down - literally - once the Breach is sealed.

I also took the opportunity to give him the correct opacity of vallaslin this time around. >_>;

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Embriel - Hair, Beautiful - Autumn

Embriel - Hair

It’s thick and inky black, and the bottom few inches curl into loose corkscrews. (If he wore it short, it’d be bouncy corkscrew curls all over - which is why he wears it long.) He keeps the sides and back shaved to keep it more manageable, and sometimes - usually when he’s out in the field - he wears it pulled back and out of his face.

Beautiful - Autumn

Beautiful had a running argument with the other members of his company whether autumn or winter was the worse season. Beautiful votes autumn: while all the civilians are thinking of harvests and turning leaves and crisp weather, he’s thinking of the sudden rainstorms and churning mud that always inevitably happen when he’s out on campaign. Every single time, it doesn’t matter where they’re going - no more than day in, the weather will turn to rain, and they’ll spend the rest of the campaign soggy, chilled to the bone, and praying to the Maker rot doesn’t set in and nobody catches fever.

You might freeze to death during winter, but at least everything is solid.

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Embriel- Vengance, and Iolis- Best Friend.

Embriel - Vengance

He’s all smiles and snark and cutting words and never, ever forgets an insult, much less an injury. Sometimes he lashes out in the moment, too angry and impulsive to stop himself, but he prefers poetic justice or, failing that, taking their life apart piece by piece until they do something that makes it all fall down around them, and they think they did it to themselves.

The prime example is how he blackmailed Celene, Briala, and Gaspard all to work together because they deserved each other, murderers and traitors and the faces of a country full of people who would call him ‘rabbit’ without blinking. He doesn’t care if they burn Orlais to the ground in their infighting, not anymore - he’ll come back to laugh at the ashes, and they will have done it to themselves.

Iolis - Best Friend

It was Jowan at first, of course. He was a slightly older child who took the tiny, pale elven boy with a ragged cut across his cheek under his wing. For quite some time they were close as brothers, Jowan protecting Iolis from the human kids who would pick on him, Iolis helping Jowan with their schoolwork.

As they got into adolescence, it became more one-sided. Jowan spent most of his time daydreaming, thinking about girls, and looking for excuses and shortcuts, leaving Iolis to cover for him. He did, though, uncomplainingly, because Jowan was like a brother to him. 

When Jowan got involved with Lily, he gave Jowan increasingly desperate hints that this was veering into territory he couldn’t help him with. Jowan refused to hear them, and kept going to Iolis for help. When Jowan asked for help escaping, Iolis turned in desperation to the First Enchanter, who was only interested in his politics.

It made him sick to betray his stupid, foolish brother, but it made him even sicker still when Jowan betrayed him. Worst of all, though, was how Iolis wasn’t even particularly surprised that it turned out that way.