Another Aria Lavellan portrait- this time after re-uniting with the Dalish (and the remnants of her clan)
Now tranquil, she quickly fell into her role as apprentice to the Master craftsman, applying the skills she learned as a Formari of the Circle to create enchantments for the weapons she crafts.
She is given the choice to adopt the vallaslin, and she decides to do so. She understands the value of the practice to the Dalish as a market of adulthood in a sort of abstract, academic way, and she recognizes the value of social cohesion. She chooses June, befitting her role as a crafter.
Just some self indulgent art of my Inky, Nora Trevelyan, and her “very good friend” Aria Lavellan. Indulgent Aria lore below jump.
I’m obsessed with Aria lately. Aria was taken from her clan at 5 and brought to the Circle. She is made tranquil and is taken in by Clan Lavellan after the Ostwick circle falls. She trains as a crafter and later as a rouge as tensions with the nearby human settlements mount during the events of Inquisition.
Nora and her were childhood best friends and, while they never acted on it before Aria’s tranquility, eventually fall in love. Eventually, Aria’s connection to the Fade is restored.
This is the chapter that first introduces Aria (formerly Bea) as an adult. I've shared a bit of this chapter here, but these are the parts around it that ive written so far 😊
(This ended up being a much longer "snippet" than expected 😅)
(For context, Aria is Tranquil here. She was Dalish by birth and found her way back to the Dalish after the Circle fell.)
-♡-♡-♡-
As Aria strung the bow she was crafting, she recalled a game - string strung between fingers, making shapes to create new shapes until no shape could be made. A flash of Nora's face. Laughter - high in pitch, the laughter of a child.
The memory was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It simply was.
Once complete, she brought the finished bow to Master Tulin. She held it out to him.
"I have completed another bow. You may wish to examine it."
"Aneth ara, falon. Let me see."
Master Tulin took the bow from her hand, examining it.
"You've improved, da'len." He clapped a hand on Aria's back. She felt neither pleased nor displeased. There was something like satisfaction to a job completed. But nothing more.
He whistled, calling over one of the clans hunters.
"Hanina-" he said, passing over the bow, "I'd like for you to go and test this bow. Think it might be Aria's best yet!"
Hanina's eyes flicked to Aria's forehead, as people's often did, before she nodded and took the bow from Master. She left without a word.
Master Tulin huffed and shook his head.
"Don't let it trouble you, Ma Atisha Sa. They will accept you in time."
"Nothing troubles me, Master Tulin, and I have been here for some time."
Tulin looked uncomfortable, as people often did when she drew attention to the reality of her tranquility. They seemed to suffer with it, though she didn't.
"Well... it troubles me some." He placed his arm on her shoulder. He does not draw her into a hug, for which Aria is grateful. Contact is often uncomfortable for Aria.
Tulin, Aria had learned, was from her clan - Clan Ariavas. Tulin had told her that much of the clan was killed in the conflict that saw her taken to the Circle, including Aria's mother - the Keeper. Their clan had always been isular - choosing to prioritize the safety of their mages over contact with outsiders. They had more mages than most clans, because they never sent them away or turned away a mage without a clan.
When Aria was taken, they had ventured close to Kirkwall on their way to Arlathvhen. The templars had seized the opportunity to apprehend the mage children. Much of the clan had died in the ensuing conflict. Those that remained had joined Clan Lavellan, including Tulin.
When Aria learned this, she had felt no grief. She had felt neither troubled nor untroubled by the news. There was a certain satisfaction to knowing the truth. But nothing more.
"When we found you, I felt your name had been fitting. To see you returned - I had hoped -" Tulin cleared his throat, "I would love to see you embraced, is all. I am so glad to see you home with your People."
Aria did not speak. She had nothing to say. She remembered the discussion about her name. She did not much care what her name was. It was important to them that her Dalish name be used, so she used it.
Embrace with love.
In lieu of an response, Aria nodded.
She did not much care whether she was embraced, just as she did not much care if she was rejected. But she knew that here, she did not feel pain. They didn't seek to hurt or, or to use her in a way that hurt her. That was enough.
It was strange to her that Tulin should suffer for her, when she did not herself suffer.
Tulin offered her a tight smile.
"Anyways, off you go. I imagine it is time to check on your little one."
He was not hers, she thought, but she said "Yes, Master Tulin."
-♡-♡-♡-
[The next bit is already in the post linked above, but I will share the section that follows it below.]
-♡-♡-♡-
When news of the conclave came, there was much discussion about whether to send someone to attend.
Clan Lavellan was an oddity even among the less insular Dalish. They had trading ties with both elvhen and human communities in cities and towns throughout Fereldan and the Free Marches. This had always come at a risk, given that the clan had four mages in their midst, but Keeper Deshanna had insisted that these connections would keep the community vital.
Particularly with regards to the alienages, she stressed. "We cannot hope to grow our community or restore our culture without extending a hand to our People in the cities"
For Aria, it was a simple calculation - as their community grew, so did their visibility. City elves were typically untrained and often unable to defend themselves. If they joined the clan, there would be more people to defend, and less to defend them.
When Aria raised this risk to the Keeper, she had clasped her shoulder, caught her eye, and said, "We are the last of the Elvhen. All of us."
It was Deshanna's belief - shared by much of the clan - that what happened at the Conclave would impact the whole of the South, so it made sense to have someone report back to the Clan on the outcome.
Aria suggested she should go. She was an apprentice craftsman. She had some knowledge in herbalism which did, of course, benefit the clan. But she could not fight. She had no magic. And her ties to the people in the clan were limited and shallow. The impact of her loss, should it happen, would be minimal. Other than Tulin, her few, if any, would grieve her, and clan would not have the burden if caring for her.
In addition, she argued, she would blend in. It is likely there would be tranquil in attendance with the Templars, if not the mages. A lone tranquil would likely go unnoticed, since tranquil are rarely noticed to begin with.
However, as she explained this entirely pragmatic and sensible reasoning, Tulin had grabbed her by the elbow and looked at Keeper Deshanna with pleading eyes.
In the end, they sent Mahanon - the Keeper's son and First to the clan.
He did not return.
-
It was not long after that that the rifts began appearing- sickly green tears in the Fade, demons pouring out into the waking world.
On the Keeper's suggestion, Aria was training with the clan's hunters. The Keeper hadn't commanded her train- she seemed very careful not to do so with Aria - but her logic for the training had been sound.
Demons from the nearby rift were encroaching closer on their settlement, and hostility from the nearby human village - searching, as they so often did, for someone to blame - had become an ever present problem.
Aria was helpless - untrained and without her magic - and would be a burden to the clan if they were attacked.
They also despretely needed scouts to sound the alarm of impending danger or, if necessary, stop harm from coming to the clan. The stoicism inherent to her tranquility lent itself to the role. She remained calm under pressure - she was capable of little else.
Aria understood, in the detached way she understood all things, that she did not wish to be a burden to the clan, so she agreed.
"Not to mention - " Tulin had added, voice undercut with a false cheer and punctuated with a wink, "you'll be a might better at crafting a bow if you know how to use one."
---
Her training brought her out of the camp most afternoons, as she accompanied Hanina on her rounds. Hanina had become friendlier to Aria, though Aria thought perhaps she simply valued the opportunity to talk to someone who would keep her secrets, refrain from judgement, and say little in return. She always had some relationship issue to air, which made sense, since she had so many relationships.
She remembered Nora in these moments. She could see in her minds eye - firelight catching the golden thread of her hair. They were talking about boys, which seemed to hold an outsized importance to their teenaged selves. She tries to remember the feeling it sparked in her, but her landscape in remembering was as barren as it was in experiencing.
It was on one of these patrols she first encountered a rift.
She had felt it before she saw it. A tremor in her chest, her stomach. A dizzy queasy feeling. But when they crested the hill and the rift came into view, it was like being hit by a wall of screaming sound.
Anxiety, fear, panic, dread, loss, grief, anger flooded her - a cacophony of indecipherable noise in the empty cavern of her heart. She had buckled to the ground, screaming and clutching her head between her hands.
When Hanina had tried to drag her away, Aria had clawed back towards it, fighting the larger woman with all of her strength -
It hurts, it hurts, please dont take it away again
- until she had fell unconcious with a blow to the head.
She later learned the blow had been Hanina, who had suffered severe electrical burns to her arms and torso trying keep her away from the rift - inflicted by Aris in that chaotic and brief moment of restored magic.
She did not venture close to a rift again, and it was no longer Hanina who trained her.
Since people seemed to enjoy the Aria art, I thought I would drop the first peice of the fic im working on with Aria and her here again. Its Nora focused, but it will shift perspectives between her and Aria. I have a bunch written but not yet polished enough to post 😅
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