Okay dude i’ll bite, can i know more about your trio wardens au ? Like how did they meet ? Who did they romance ? What happens to them after dao ? In da2 ? Dai ? (Sorry im just a huge fan of ocs and i love the wardens)
Ahhh, first off - thank you for asking! I’m happy to gush about my trio of idiots wardens :D Secondly - don’t apologize for asking! I love talking about my OCs, I’m just bad about keeping up with posting and such lately (but hope to fix that soon, especially if I make this extra sideblog). ANYWHO, gonna jump in and apologize now if this gets long, lol.
SO I’ll hit romance first since that’s quicker and easier. Rylee and Ise (eventually) become a thing - they’re married by the time DAI rolls around. Typical grumpy asshole falls in love with ray of sunshine and doesn’t want to admit it at first. She tries to play it cool and ends up playing it too cool until she gets some help from the couple companions she befriends (mostly Zev, since Sten doesn’t care that much, but he offers his insight on what qunari do). But they don’t actually, like, really become a romance-y thing until after ghoul!Tamlen shows up and oof that one is painful.
Eleri I… don’t know yet, to be honest. She was a re-imagining of my old Cousland, who romanced Alistair, but with Eleri I’m actually leaning a bit more toward Zevran. But uh, still not sure yet, I’m mad indecisive on this one. tbh even Nate is in the running for her *shrug emoji*
They don’t all join the standard way, I guess, but they do all meet at Ostagar. Ducan officially recruits Rylee and Isethari, Eleri recruits herself, lol.
Rylee is recruited first. Standard Tabris origin there and it’s on the way to Ostagar that they plan to stop and see the Dalish elves and that’s when they find Isethari half-dead in the middle of the woods (it was sheer luck, really). Duncan sends Rylee, carrying the nearly-dead Ise, to the camp and goes to investigate the area. Other than Rylee wandering around the Dalish camp like an awestruck idiot, most of the Mahariel origin is the same. Rylee stays behind in the camp, though, when Ise and co. are sent back to the ruin where they run into Duncan. Once they leave, Rylee earns herself the duty of ensuring that Isethari doesn’t run on their trip to Ostagar, bc let me tell you Ise is not happy about leaving without finding Tamlen.
Now for Eleri, she escapes the castle with only her mabari after her parents sacrifice themselves to buy her time to get out. She manages to make it to the stables for her horse and rides as hard as she can to Ostagar, desperate to find her brother. When she basically gets told that he’s out scouting and she likely won’t see him before the battle, she asks about the wardens and is pointed toward Duncan. At that point, she goes up to him like: “I just slaughtered my way through an army of men trying to assassinate my family. I have nothing left but this dream, please.” He asks clarification, she provides, he eventually agrees and sends her off to gather the other recruits and report back with Alistair. It’s at that point she meets Rylee and Isethari, who are hanging around close together by the quartermaster (after Rylee nearly kills Daveth for hitting on that one woman, you know the one).
From there up until the start of the fight, it progresses as it normally would in canon. They all get their quest, go out into the wilds, etc. etc. And once they survive the Joining, they have a pre-meeting meeting thing. Alistair and Eleri join the meeting as per canon, and Duncan assigns Rylee and Ise to the remaining warden forces. So from there, canon-typical for Eleri. Go to the tower, light the beacon, get almost killed and then saved by Flemeth, etc.
Rylee and Ise, however, have a much more trying experience. Rylee takes a genlock to the face (claws? blade? idk lmao) for Ise to protect her - this being around the time they can see the battle is going south. Duncan’s already been killed at this point and Ise starts to panic (she hates fighting as it is) and manages to half convince, half drag Rylee from the fighting and they flee the battle to the nearest town (naturally, Lothering). They end up meeting up with Eleri and Alistair (and Morrigan) again and explain what happened from their perspective and then work with Eleri and Alistair to come up with a plan of action.
Eleri takes up the role of warden-commander (since Alistair and Ise don’t want to lead and everyone knows Rylee leading is a Very Bad Idea™).
Uhhh, key highlights of what they do I guess would be:
Irving saved, Uldred dead etc etc
sent Dagna off to study ofc
Sided with the Dalish against the werewolves
two elves with one being Dalish and the other violently racist made it a simple choice for Eleri to lessen a headache later (she had way too much else to worry about than argue with them)
Helped Redcliffe and saved Conner
demon killed w/Jowan’s help (he does the ritual and Morrigan is sent in to yeet the demon out)
side note: didn’t poison the Urn
Loghain alive & recruited as a warden (recruited post-final fight)
Alistair still performs the ritual with Morrigan
Not too much of note here. Rylee is the one that finds Nathaniel, though, and it does not go well for him. It’s only Ise that stays Rylee’s hand from killing him. When they bring him to Eleri, she immediately recruits him when she realizes it’s her old friend. He’s still pretty ticked, but softens about the whole thing a bit when he realizes Eleri is around.
With more wardens, they’re able to more easily protect the Keep and Amaranthine. And the Architect does live (much to Rylee’s great annoyance).
Sometime in here is when Rylee and Ise get married. They have two ceremonies - one in the Denerim alienage to honor Rylee’s culture and then again when they find Ise’s clan outside Kirkwall.
Hawke and co. do run into Ise and Rylee in the Deep Roads during the expedition (as they are canon with Ashley Hawke, there’s not a twin to save). BUT the two of them help Ash and crew gtfo and back safely to Kirkwall. Turns out they saw Bodahn on their way into the Deep Roads to investigate and got a tip to keep an eye out for some lost members of the expedition (the whole leaving suddenly without them thing didn’t sit right with him).
Later on, in that mission where you run into Nate? Eleri’s with him, though doesn’t actually advertise herself as the warden-commander while chatting with Ash. Ash isn’t dumb, though, (not always, at least) and gets a feeling Eleri might be kinda more in charge than she was told. So when wardens start disappearing, she takes a chance and makes contact. It ultimately pays off when Eleri sends Rylee and Ise to help the Inquisition.
During the events of Here Lies the Abyss in Inquisition, it’s Rylee that stays behind to buy everyone time to escape. And, much like when Ise was taken from her clan, she has to be dragged out - this time by the Inquisitor herself (Olivia, for the record) - kicking, screaming, and utterly sobbing that they’re leaving her wife behind.
BUT because fuck canon, Rylee survives and kinda wanders around the raw Fade until she finds another open rift. This ends up dumping her into the ass end of Orlais somewhere and it takes her a while to make her way back to Skyhold, but dammit! She and Ise do get a happy ending. It does take a while though, it really does. And for that duration, Ise doesn’t leave Skyhold for anything after they get her back there. Resigned, more than anything, she usually perches on an empty wall away from the hustle and bustle of the main areas near the stables. She also doesn’t eat much, only what small bits that Cole brings her.
As for Eleri, she - along with Nate, Velanna, and Sigrun - are searching for the cure. And I really haven’t thought much beyond that.
MAN this got long, I hope you don’t mind! I had a lot of fun thinking about this and gushing a bit about my girls and what they do :D So thank you, again, for asking! One day, I think I plan to write something detailing their journey from start to finish in DAO and maybe beyond, but it’d probably be a series of drabbles? I struggle with long fics and flowing from one chapter to the next, but maybe.
