This got fucking long. And it helped me think about some aspects of my characters that weren’t particularly well fleshed out, which I really enjoyed!
2. What would your Hawke generallythink of your warden and your Inquisitor?
Cait respects Milon, both because ofwhat she accomplished in ending the Blight and because she’s primarily heardabout Milon through Anders. Milon protected Anders when she didn’t have to, andtrusted him enough to give him actual responsibility within Vigil’s Keep, whichmeant almost as much to him. Back in the Circle, his obvious talent neveroutweighed the fact that he was junior to plenty of other healers andconsidered both flighty and a flight risk beyond that. At Vigil’s Keep, though,he ran their (admittedly small) clinic, & people in need of serioushealthcare from all around Amaranthine came to him for help. Milon didn’t thinkthat was a big deal—he was a healer, trained by one of her own companions, andthere was healing to be done—but it was a big deal for him, and the way hetalks about her to Cait reflects that.
Later on, Carver also speaks prettywell of her in passing in his infrequent letters home, and the fact that theWarden-Commander was able to get Carver to accept her authority without chafingunder it isn’t lost on Cait.
In contrast, Cait finds Gilead to bea little bit disappointing compared to the myth that grew up around her soquickly, and even the way Varric had described her. Gilead has a soft heart,and her inclination is that violence is only ever a last resort—after all, it’snot as if a Keeper can just go around busting heads when they want to solveissues within their Clan. She buys in very strongly to Josie’s “niceness beforeknives” ethos (part of what brings them together) and otherwise has a generallydiplomatic approach to running the Inquisition. Her judgements as Inquisitor,for instance, are never execution or anything else that’s irrevocable.
For Cait, who by that point has beenon the front lines of the Mage-Templar conflict for some time, this seemsdangerously naïve. Allying with the Redcliffe mages was a point in her favor,but since Cait’s aligned with a somewhat more aggressive group of mages thatdidn’t attend the Conclave, it’s not quite as big of a point as it could havebeen. They’re just very different people.
18. What is the biggest similaritybetween your protagonists?
This is kind of a facile answer, butthey all were thrust into much more prominent roles and had to take on a lotmore responsibility than they ever would have wanted themselves. Even Gil, whowas being trained for a leadership position, was expecting to have at least a decademore time to be someone else’s First and to assume authority gradually.
Beyond that, they’re all loyal andprotective people, but that manifests in each of them in different ways.
19. What is the biggest differencebetween your protagonists?
How much they accept the worldaround them versus how much they fight against it. Once Milon’s forced tobecome a Warden, she accepts it, and she works very hard as theWarden-Commander. But in that role, beyond the big decisions that she wasforced to make during the Blight, she stays focused on Warden business andrarely uses her status as the Hero of Ferelden to effect anyone outside herdirect sphere of influence.
Cait, on the other hand, uses everyadvantage and every bit of respect she gets to push back against the authorityof the Chantry, the Templars, and anyone else whose power she thinks needs tobe resisted. With time, she learns to modify the way she uses that power—earlyon, she’s kind of a Force mage through and through. She pushes back, hard, againstwhatever she considers to be her opposition. Later, she develops other skills.She has a mode of thinking/acting she calls “Becoming Lady Amell” for when shehas to deal with either nobility or people for whom nobility means something,which is basically a somewhat successful impersonation of her mother. And,after years around Varric, she learns to lie better and to obscure herintentions when she absolutely has to. But she’s always a person who sees howthe world is and how it should be, and pushes hard for the latter.
Gilead would prefer to let the worldoutside her immediate concerns deal with itself, but as Inquisitor that isn’tan option, so she does use the large amount of power she ends up being handedfor what she thinks is essentially the greater good (like supporting Leliana asDivine, or telling Cassandra to not try to reform the Seekers, or protectingthe mages as allies). But she’s immensely relieved to disband the Inquisition,and she never really took full advantage of what she could have done with therole.
20. Who handles responsibility thebest? And who handles it the worst?
Milonhandles it the best, because there’s always too much riding on her decisions tobehave any other way. And she has the most time of any of the three to growinto her leadership post-Blight. Cait handles it well when it’s in regards tosomething or someone she cares about, and somewhat less well when it’ssomething she’s been forced into. Gilead only handles it well when it’s withina realm she feels confident in and involves things or situations sheunderstands. Anything outside of that, she does her best to delegate to whoevershe thinks knows more. The big decisions she has to make as Inquisitor arefrequently overwhelming to her, and although it goes against canon, at momentslike Dorian’s confrontation with his father or Bull’s decision regarding theChargers, she lets them choose for themselves and supports them afterwards.
Aah thank you! I think this is just what I need to shake the cobwebs out of my mostly-empty skull cavity.
4. What would they think about each other’s love interests (if they romanced someone of course)
My HoF, Milon Mahariel, would be somewhat bemused at Cait’s relationship with Anders. To Milon, Anders is something of a precocious younger brother that needs to be looked after, despite the fact that he’s 10 or so years older than her. And she never had a chance to meet Anders post-merger with Justice, so she doesn’t realize how much he’s changed. The fact that he merged with Justice at all would be a real shock to her. I think once she had time to get reacquainted with Anders, which I imagine happening post-DA2 at some point, she’d understand it more and approve.
Cait would be a little in awe of both Milon and Alistair at first–obviously, getting to know Alistair would temper that somewhat. But, they’re the Ferelden Wardens that defeated the Blight that killed her sister and destroyed her home, as well as the Wardens that took Carver more or less under their wing after his Joining. She feels a debt to them for that, especially the fact that they gave Carver a place in the Wardens where he could bloom outside her shadow. And Cait knows something about falling for a person who goes through hellfire with you.
Both of them would absolutely accept that Gilead Lavellan’s head over heels in love with Josie. There’s not a person in Thedas who wouldn’t understand someone being in love with Josie.
Gil would have complicated feelings towards Anders, but they have the bond of both being spirit healers (canon can fuck off in this regard), and I think that would get them over the initial hump of whatever misconceptions Gil has of Anders from being around everyone in the Inquisition. And she’s overall a much easier-going, live-and-let-live personality than either Milon or Cait. She’d get a kick out of the goofier side of Alistair, if she ever got to see it. And the letter she gets from Milon during Inquisition, regarding both Alistair’s importance to her & the bond they share from being Dalish women suddenly forced into roles of great significance in the shemlen world, had a very big impact on her.
12. Do your protagonists share the same opinions on blood magic?
All of them start out against it, and Gil never really encounters anything that would change her mind in that regard. Especially since one of the few things she’s ever specifically heard about someone attempting to do with blood magic is what Dorian’s father attempted to do to him. She strongly believes that no one should have that power. Her spirit contact for healing also views blood magic poorly, which affects her due to their long and close relationship.
The desperate nature of being a Warden and fighting the Blight made Milon a lot more practical in regards to things that are supposedly evil or forbidden but have a clear utility. She’s a rogue, not a mage, so it never has quite as direct a relevance to her life as it does for Cait. But she drinks Avernus’s experimental potion and leaves him alive to continue ethical research. And, post-Blight, if blood magic can cure Wardens of the Taint, she’ll pursue using it in that regard til she reaches its bitter end.
Cait ends up becoming a very reluctant blood mage, also for pretty utilitarian purposes. By Act 3, she knows the crisis that’s been building since before she moved to Kirkwall is imminent, and she’s determined that both she and the people she loves will survive it. And as Act 3 goes on she knows Anders is up to something, and he’s trying to protect her. In their case, it’s 100% that Anders doesn’t want her to have to bear the responsibility of what he’s going to do, and 0% that he’s worried she’ll stop him. So, since she can’t prevent his actions, she’s damned well going to be prepared to help him through whatever the fallout is. And that fallout is going to involve killing a lot of templars. So, she shows up at Merrill’s around 6 months before the Chantry boom and asks to be taught the basics–enough to use blood instead of mana to fight, as well as one or two nastier tricks to use against foes that really deserve it (like Meredith). But she doesn’t learn how to do of the more mind-control-y aspects of blood magic, or anything particularly nuanced or advanced. It’s just that source of power she wants, a trump card for when shit really hits the fan.
You know, I don't know much about your inquisitor - what are they like?
Thank you for the ask! My inquisitor is Gilead Lavellan, and she’s a vision-impaired mage with a close relationship with a spirit of Valor. She lost a lot of her functional sight when her magic manifested (very bright light, very close to her face), and has learned to use magic to enhance her other senses to compensate for what she lacks visually. She’s very much a spirit mage, including spirit healing, & Valor helps augment her senses in battle or in other stressful situations.
As her spirit bestie would suggest, she’s brave and idealistic. As a disabled mage, she wasn’t actually selected by Clan Lavellan to go to the Conclave; her rogue best friend Xan was chosen instead. But Gil felt strongly that Xan going alone to the Conclave was a mistake, and that since she both wasn’t a mage and hadn’t had the education of a First, there would be nuances to the Conclave that Xan would likely not pick up on. So, she waited until the night after Xan had left, and followed. Her late arrival on the scene is perhaps why she survived, but also meant that woke up in that cell with Leliana and Cassandra to learn the most important person in her life was dead.
She changes a lot during the course of Inquisition, but she would have changed far more, and for the worse, without Josie’s friendship and eventual love. Much of what Gilead learned to do in her training as First is quite similar to Josephine’s diplomatic skills, and so they found a lot of common ground in terms of how they felt the Inquisition should be run. With their influence, the Inquisition focuses primarily on diplomatic relationships, conflict mediation, and trade. Though Gil does decide to disband the Inquisition, the political and business relationships she made in that time remain, and help secure herself and Josephine’s status as a diplomatic power couple. They also help pay for a truly extravagant days’-long interfaith wedding.
Milon Mahariel: Milon’s a quiet person who spent a lot of time out in the forest alone (equal to the amount of time she spent with Tamlen and Merrill, really), and she’s also serious about her religion even after joining the Wardens and living among the shemlen. So her favorite hobby/leisure activity is meditating, and when she’s able to turn off the concerns of her body and the world around her she feels closer to the gods and to the Beyond, and it gives her perspective on her own life and grants her some calmness and clarity she might not have otherwise. If yoga’s a thing in the Dalish communities of Thedas, she’s into it (but wouldn’t adopt it if it originated outside her culture). She also likes singing, although Leliana’s singing made her feel self-conscious about her voice for awhile.
Cait Hawke: Cait needs something to do with her hands basically all the time, and having something to focus intensely on helps her relax, so she loves to carve miniatures. A sure sign she likes you is if one day she hands over a detailed Mabari carving (generally based on Summer, her own mabari), though if pressed she’d just say she has too many of them lying around and needed to get rid of that one. The wooden halla carving you can give Merrill, she made herself, and she has made more than one carving based on Anders’ enthusiastic descriptions of Pounce and Mister Wiggums. Anders usually carries at least one of them in his pocket at all times.
Gilead Lavellan: Gilead is a huge nerd, which was part of what made her a good First. She absolutely tears through the Skyhold library books on every sort of history and on magical theory, and she is prone to getting into long talks about magic and Tevinter and the Circle and all sorts of things she didn’t have access to with her mage companions. She likes hearing stories from just about anyone who’s willing to indulge her, and she has an excellent memory. The cobwebbed little library in Skyhold is her place to get away to when she feels like too many people want to track her down in her quarters, and she leaves it dusty in the hopes that no one will know she goes there. Josie figures it out immediately, of course, as does Leliana, but they respect it as “her” quiet place and never bother her there except during true emergencies.
1) Was there a place your Inquisitor considered their safe haven? If so, what was it like there? Did he/she let others in?
At Skyhold, Gilead made the tiny cobweb-strewn library her sanctuary. She spent her time there reading every book on history, law, culture, and politics she could get her hands on. She’d been trained as a First, and so her memory is sharp and she knows the importance of history. And in delivering judgments on the Inquisition’s prisoners, or dealing with nobles, or exploring a new region of Thedas, Gilead believes that forewarned is forearmed.
In Haven, her coping mechanism was to run out into the forest and scream at the sky. It wasn’t a great time for her.
2) If your Inquisitor could change one thing about their people, what would it be? Ex- As an elf, Ella wishes the elvhen were more accepting of their kind.
Gilead vaguely had the idea that when she was Keeper, her clan would try to form more relationships with the Alienages of the Free Marches (trade, goodwill, maybe hiding people from shem law and shem vigilantism). Since Clan Lavellan is already more interested in the doings of the world than the average Dalish clan, she likely would’ve been successful, though there probably would’ve been a long series of fights with the clan’s elders at every step of the way.
3) Did your Inquisitor have any special keepsakes? Items they could not live without? And if so, what is the meaning behind them?
Since Gilead didn’t know she wouldn’t be returning to her clan from the Conclave, she didn’t have anything of particular significance with her in Haven or Skyhold. And as a Dalish elf, she’s used to not having particular attachments to material things. She still wears her sylvanwood ring, however, and as their relationship progresses she cherishes the many gifts from Josie due to what they represent more than for the things themselves.
@subjectz3r0‘s Questions:
1. How does your Inquisitor pass judgment on those that have wronged them and Thedas?
Carefully, with a lot of preparation beforehand and sometimes agonizing afterwards. it’s a Keeper’s duty to mediate between individuals and keep the peace, but they rarely do anything as deliberate as render judgment. So Gilead tends toward judgments that are compromises, and judgments that could be reversed if necessary. No executions and no one made Tranquil.
2. After returning from The Fade how does the Inquisitor handle the experience and everything they have learned?
In the short term, she doesn’t really have any time to deal with it. Her reaction is a more subdued version of Bull’s; hit me with this stick (or something else distracting) until I’ve “dealt” with this issue. Later, she spent a great deal of time trying to process her experience from within the context of her faith, which proved dissatisfying.
3. What class specialization do they choose and why?
Rift Mage! Because come on, what would use the power of the Mark to its utmost? And it bears a lot of similarity to DA2′s Primal magic skill tree, which seems to be more closely related with Dalish magic.
I can’t tag anyone right now because I’ve been drinking and am distracted, but I had a lot of fun with this!
What I spoiled myself on was just the mage/circle stuff (which FUCK THAT obvs), but I’m seeing a lot of references that make me glad my canon Lavellan romanced Josie and no Solas. Give me my sweet romance please!
