Despite Inara's protests, the Inquisitor has sent her to Denerim, to the palace. She is to investigate the rumors of Venatori infiltration, a threat to the Court.
She did not want to be here, to do this. But what is she to do? Tell the Inquisitor, Sorry, saving the world is noble and all, but I don't want to see my ex?
So there she stands in Denerim's kitchens, dressed as a commoner who has gotten lucky enough - through Arl Teagan Guerrin's help - to land a job working in the kitchens. The imposing woman in charge of those kitchens has dispelled any fantasy Inara had that she might be recognized as the Hero of Ferelden with a speed that is quite frankly shocking, commanding the woman to kneel and clean the walls leading to and from the kitchen with a bucket and a brush.
But it's not all bad -- from the halls, she can hear many conversations as people pass by, none of them minding her as she scrubs. And, so far, there is no sign of Eamon or Alistair lowering themselves to come mill around outside the kitchen begging for scraps. Small mercies, she supposes.
It is only a matter of hours before she hears something curious -- a quick mention of blood, a murmur of a whisper of the new god. Two shadowed fingers pass through the hall, and after just a moment of silence, waiting, Inara begins to creep after them.
@inevitableking asked ❰❰ WALL ❱❱ sender pushes the receiver against a wall (for Jalon, what a meeting!)
Indulgent Prompts
There was a quick blip of panic that filled her when someone abruptly shoved her against the wall. Enough that she and Hope let out a burst of psychic energy to throw them off of her. There was a battle raging, and it could have been one of the Templars; it didn't matter, so long as they got off of her.
She tried to skirt away from them, only to realize she'd just attacked the king, and there was an arrow on the ground. She turned quickly to see the assailant and Jalon raised a hand and blasted them with a ball of fire. She watched as they screamed and writhed on the ground before going still. Another Red Templar down.
Jalon quickly turned back to the king and scurried to him to check him over. No injuries, thankfully.
"I'm so sorry! I thought you were one of them and...Maker..." She helped him back up to his feet and offered a weak smile.
Boredom was dangerous. Not that the youth needed an excuse to cause a little bit of chaos. His favorite trouble making, prankster partner was out in the field, and he was... Well. Currently unsupervised. A dangerous thing, truly, not that Sera could be considered 'supervision' by any means.
Thus, he found himself lurking one of his favorite places, the rooftops overlooking the gardens. It was colder than usual, and he was happy for his oil slicked coat, keeping his ass dry from the snow on the rooftops. There were few people below, the dear Revered Mother opting for warmer places to lurk. A shame really.
And then, a lone figure made the fated mistake of cutting through. Violet eyes gleamed with mischief, and he quickly formed a snowball. The figure was well dressed- clearly someone of importance- but it did nothing to deter Talon. If anything it painted a bigger target. He took aim, and the snowball sailed through the air, aimed well at the man's shoulder. Immediately vanishing from view, all the victim would hear was a disembodied laugh of glee from the rooftops above.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Cullen assures, cloth bunched up and pressed to the side of his head, a somewhat sheepish grin on his face as he stands before Alistair. "I must admit, I don't know how it looks- but I've heard head injuries always bleed more."
He'd strayed 'too far' into the training grounds, although he maintains he would have been perfectly safe had the newest recruit been facing the right way. He wouldn't have described the arrow as errant, given the young man would have needed his back to the targets to hit him. A word will be had, later, about not turning to chat with an arrow nocked and drawn, but for now-
"I was hoping you might help me get to my rooms without smearing blood everywhere, and maybe with a scrap of my dignity left," he admits, "I don't want to bother the infirmary tents. They've enough to deal with as it is."
Who was your first muse? / (@aetherianxarchive / @valorcorrupt / @quiisquiliae)
i'm pretty sure i've answered a similar question at...some...point, but it was auron from ffx, and my baby ass had no business trying to write a grown ass man (this is what squeenix thought was "old" at thirty-five, y'all). this was back in the ye olden days of livejournal and greatestjournal rp, and how and why i got approached by the final fantasy house cult (if you don't know, you don't want to know, i promise) which was a ride, let me tell you.
OTP for your muse? (@intothewildsea)
outside of strife? (i'd give my eyeteeth for a strife to write with.) canon-wise, probably neve or davrin, actually. with a side of zevran, but that was based on jokes and a vibe and while it counts to me, i'm not sure it does to anyone else. neve is very much the pragmatist to his idealist, and davrin is...i mean you've seen davrin, right. you've seen him. also the single dad meetcute has a vibe, you understand. in either case, it's generally people who live exciting lives (whether they intend to or not), and by extension pull him into that chaos. so i guess when you boil it down like that, my otp for emmrich is having a life outside of his weird culty bubble.
What’s one random headcanon about your muse that people mightn’t know? (@aetherianxarchive / @archaeval)
emmrich's been snatching cuttings of native plants everywhere he's been in thedas and water propagating them in empty ink bottles. part of it is pure curiosity and they serve as a souvenir of the places he's been and the things he's seen, but partly it's academic curiosity, because the herbariums he's seen have been woefully under sourced and has toyed idly with creating his own in more depth once, you know, the whole stop the blighted gods business is taken care of.
Who is an author that inspires you? (@knifesharps)
generally, the answer is tolkien, no one's ever gonna world build quite the way he did, tho i'm forever salty we only got bits and pieces of khuzdul, could have thrown me a frickin' bone-
no, seriously, he's an influence, for sure, but my tone and the way i write changes so drastically between both my characters, what has inspired me for those tones and structure are things that are kind of...subconsciously pulled from very different places, i guess? like, for tony i lean on more...conversational, informal prose, for the most part, and i promise you that definitely comes directly from all that stephen king baby me read like it was going out of style. there's also some...philip k. dick and carl sagan in there, too.
for emmrich, it's more...purplely. you know what i mean? so things like...we have always lived in the castle, carmilla, the castle of oronto, etc etc, but also faulkner (as i lay dying in particular), welty - i do like a little touch of southern in my gothic, don't @ me - and right into cosmic horror like ambrose bierce and chambers. it's the vibe for me.
What do you look for in a rp partner? / (@valorcorrupt / @inevitableking)
my biggest green flag for other rpers are those that, yes, take their characterization seriously, but aren't pretentious about it. like, we're playing paper dolls on the internet, you have to be able to be silly (because i will not stop the dilly dallying or shenanigans and if that ain't for you we aren't going to vibe) i fully understand digging into something to build something, but at the same time, i'm not gonna be super serious about 90% of anything i say, so people who get that and can bat the ball back are my favorite. if you can't joke about your blorbo, it ain't it. i will bust this man's balls until the heat death of the universe. i'm going to invest time into the minutia of things, yeah, but i don't expect anyone else to take that shit as seriously as i do. we're here to have fun, right, so people who are having fun, i'm gonna go sit at their lunch table.
Favourite trope? (@intothewildsea / @valorcorrupt)
slams the buzzer mutual pining. with a side of mutual obsession. honestly, this is probably because i've been writing tony stark for way too goddamn long, and his and steve's mutual obsession / pining has permanently warped my brain, but there's honestly something 🤌about the it's requited, they're just idiots concept to me. or the idea of chances to say something being passing ships in the night. bonus points if the pining and navelgazing continues even after they get together.
Least favourite trope? (@intothewildsea / @valorcorrupt)
god i have so many (ask me how i feel about angst for no other purpose than the angst - bzzt wrong answer i hate it i need an emotional payoff), but for the sake of brevity and to keep it strictly emmrich-related here, i really, really am squicked by the teacher/student thing. like...by a lot. it is not for me. i also don't think it's for emmrich, which i've...talked about at some point, but i think it's a no-no for his ethical standards. he gets uncomfortable at the idea of what i literally cannot envision even being that big of an age gap (am i the only one who - unless stated otherwise - sees rook in their thirties? no?), can you imagine? how he would not handle the student thing? even a little? also the power imbalance kind of makes me uncomfortable just...overall.
Are there any AU’s you’d like to explore but haven’t had the chance to yet? (@mastcrmarksman / @inevitableking)
warden emmrich. warden emmrich. and listen, i do mean au in the loosest of senses, there's no synopsis for it or any real details, just vibes and a need, one day i'll sit down and actually flesh it out, but the bare bones (heh) of it is like...if emmrich had been an option for getting snatched (i mean, he is a mage) and got blighted. joining happens, blah blah blah, yeah he might not have to be a warden (and honestly i think he would think he's not warden material, but this ain't about what he thinks), but you know...it being a case of going from being afraid of death, to knowing you have about x amount of time left before death comes for you in the form of the calling. and what he would do about that. accept it gracefully? or start thinking doing what johanna did (and not fucking it up) looks real good.
And any of the spicy aus you haven't even mentioned ever on the dash or havent quite worked out the gory details :) come on theres gotta be some niche in there for emmrich :) (related bonus from @mastcrmarksman)
i...may have considered a starfield verse for him. nothing concrete, nothing set in stone, but i was leaning toward him being part of a group within house va'ruun. really thought heavily about some technomancy on his part (manfred being a robot, etc). but i haven't put any meat on it at all, just rotated it slowly a little.
Do you listen to music whilst writing? If so, what kind of music? (@aetherianxarchive)
yes? and no? depends on how overstimulated i am; most of the time it's, you know, fine, but there are times where if there is even the slightest noise out of place in an otherwise quiet room i feel murder enter my heart. as for what, it really depends on who i'm writing? like, if it's tony's turn to have the x-box controller, tony's workshop playlist (built from songs mentioned specifically by him in iron man comics from 1963 - present day, with some extrapolation to round it out) is my first most-reached for, since it gets me in a good headspace for him, since he's that kind of guy, that'd have an internal backtrack to his life. emmrich's a little harder, because i still haven't made a playlist for him i'm particularly pleased with entirely (i'm working on it), but i have been known to put this on repeat and just go.
Are there certain characters that you gravitate towards? (@nekrotisch / @quiisquiliae)
characters who understandably could have turned their backs on the world and gone back to their special interests and nothing but their special interest with a not my problem attitude but don't. that...seems to be the trend, because even hector barbossa falls in that range. true, in his case it was more about saving his own ass, but that man has never been asked to do something he didn't say fuck you to, just saying.
What about your muse are you most proud of? (@aetherianxarchive / @inevitableking)
i'd like to think - i don't know if i'm ultimately managing to do so, but we've got the spirit - i've done a good job fleshing both of them out a little more in things canon hints to in both cases, or that i find a grounding in canon to build that headcanon, some...throw away line that maybe didn't mean much but given what i know about them actually leads down a rabbit hole (tony having similar distichiasis as elizabeth taylor, for example, because there's a whole issue where people do nothing but talk about how beautiful his eyes are, or knowing what kind of nib emmrich probably prefers on his pens - semi-flex fine). and while i'm not proud of it, actually, my disturbing ability to name comic issue by nothing more than a crop of iron man's ass.
Gimme another AU you'd like for 18. And the pride is severely underasked for 24. For the Munday Meme please!
Munday Meme @inevitableking
Are there any AU’s you’d like to explore but haven’t had the chance to yet?
Hmm. Arranged Marriage AUs are fun for ships either for angst of "the person I love is married/getting married to someone else" or "i will totally not fall in love with this person I'm being forced to marry (which inevitably fails)".
Pokemon trainer AU could be fun as well considering I've been a pokemon fan for most of my life and it gives me an excuse to build teams for my kids.
What about your muse are you most proud of?
Cop out is that I'm proud of a lot of them.
I'm proud of Jasper because of the unexpected character growth that he's gotten especially thanks to @nekrotisch. Man was supposed to be just a slut but turned out way deeper than that to my surprise.
I'm proud of Cullen because despite my terror of being yelled at for doing canons "wrong", I was brave and decided to play him.
Serra I'm proud of because she's the oldest of my DA characters from my first playthrough of DAO back in 2012. Girl has stuck herself in my brain despite multiple replays and different HoFs since.
Cornelia I'm proud of because she is the first of my DA protags I went "fuck the canon backstory" and decided to go with my own ideas for.
She felt nervous. It wasn't their first time seeing each other since he became king, but it would be the first time they'd met intentionally. The first time she'd sought Alistair out. It felt stupid, to show up in Denerim like this, but she had information and a gift. He deserve these things, no matter where they stood with each other.
Yes, this was a good thing. This had to happen. This had to be done in person.
The Inquisitor, the warden--- did she deserve to be called that anymore?-- Whatever she was, she steeled herself as the doors opened and she was announced. Was this something to be done with professionalism or familiarity? Her feet moved without much thought, graceful and practiced nonetheless. That was something Helena had years of being focused on to thank.
"King Therein," Professionalism it was, for now. "I'd like to speak with you alone, if you have the time. The topics I wish to speak on are... sensitive."
