5,6,13,20,21,23,26 all your inquisitors
this. turned out so long. my god so long.
anyone who reads through this rambling has my undying love and respect. (didn’t include Doreen because that would have been kinda redundant, Harwen already gives the Dalish perspective.)
5.what are their religious beliefs, if they have any?
Ray’s whole story is basically centered around his crisis of faith that starts around the time of the destruction of Haven and ends with the Temple of Mythal. He starts off as deeply religious, like deeply religious, but his faith is shaken at its foundations when he has to sit back and watch people, those who swore to fight for what is right and just, get slaughtered by an ancient evil he couldn’t quite even comprehend. For a while he even thought it might be divine punishment for taking Andraste’s name in vain and raising someone like him as the Herald- Mother Giselle managed to talk him down, but the thought got stuck in the back of his mind and wouldn’t let him go. He basically realized the only reason the Chantry has been as accepting towards him as it has was because he fit their narrow idea of what an ideal person is to a tee. (Rich, noble, ignorant. Easily controlled.) And that thought infuriated him.
After Adamant, he all but loses faith altogether, and it takes him a lot of long talks with Cassandra and the seed Leliana’s inspiration planted in his heart. He thought… if someone like Leliana were the Divine, maybe it all could get better.
Harwen is very elfy. He’s so elfy that the second Solas made the first derogatory comment about the Dalish being like children, he got in Harwen’s shit list. He wears the vallaslin with pride, he evokes Andruil and Falon’Din before each battle- to give him strength and to watch over him, were he to fall.
It gives him a source of comfort. Stability, in a world that’s as unstable as it is. To hold on to the old ways, the ways of his childhood, it may just be the one thing reminding him who he is. Been toying with the idea of having him make a rudimentary little shrine in his quarters, because while he doesn’t believe the whole story about Andraste being holy, it would feel wrong to sit in her chapel, even just to meditate.
Adela is the closest thing to an atheistic character that I have in this universe. She’s too old for tales. She’s a smuggler, clean and simple, and that means as long as you pay her well, she’ll sing you the Chant as much as you want her to. But she doesn’t believe any of it. No, if the Maker truly loved all his children, he wouldn’t have let Andraste die. He wouldn’t have let all those people, men and women and elves and dwarves, suffer. She has seen an alienage from the inside, she has seen the poorest of the poor fall to a life of crime, that’s what happened to her anyhow. She saw people throw themselves into the harbor when they thought nobody was looking.
The world is a fucked up place, and Adela Cadash is just way too old to find any sort of comfort in fanciful little tales about an all-loving, all-wise sugar daddy.
Hissa is… mostly confused. She was raised Andrastian, but she’s vashoth, so she never really saw herself in the Chant, nor was she ever welcome in the Chantry. She wants to believe, she really does, but it’s hard to even educate yourself if you’re turned away by everyone you turn to. Sure, Leliana and Mother Giselle and Cassandra would have agreed to talk to her about this sort of thing, but with all these doubts, she didn’t want to risk the negative opinion of either of them.
By the end, I think I’ll have her decide that no, this is not worth it. All of this scrambling around like a headless chicken and arguing about semantics while real people suffer and die over what it means that magic “serves man”… No, she wants to part of that. If others find comfort in it, it’s their prerogative, but no, neither the Qun, nor Andraste is for her.
6.what is their opinion on the mage/templar war?
Ray is born idealist. He grew up listening to tales of the heroic Grey Wardens, how the Hero of Ferelden saved the whole of Thedas by rallying the peoples of Thedas and uniting their banners in a holy revolution, then about how a single mage lit the fuse that sparked the mage rebellion and set the mages of Thedas free from the Chantry’s clutches… He’s a Marcher to the bone, nothing is more important to him than freedom. Which is to say, he believes in mage freedom a lot more firmly than someone of his position should. So to him, the mage rebellion is beyond justified, and he’s ready to lend his sword arm to the mages of Thedas.
It’s one of the things in which his views clash with the Chantry’s, and part of the reason he ultimately rejects the Chantry in favor of his own version of Andrastianism. Initially he has his qualms, his prejudices, but as he gets to know more mages, as he grows familiar with their plight, he realizes just how fucked up it all was.
Harwen would like to support the mages- he’s Dalish, of course the oppression of other peoples struck a chord with him, but he’s too cautious to think that letting mages run free is a good decision. He doesn’t know much about the Templar order, only the things that have been told him by the others in the Inquisition, and from that, he decided that yeah, nah, I won’t even poke that festering pothole with a fifty foot pole.
All in all, he thinks it’s not his business, and hates it that they made it his business.
13.how do they feel about the chantry?
This kind of ties into the previous question- Ray starts out supporting the Chantry and reaching out for their help, but as soon as he saw just how petty and plain wrong the Chantry was, how useless they were in a crisis situation and how they needed a third, outside party to settle the mess that they themselves stepped into… his support wavered considerably. He still thinks it’s worth saving and he pushes Leliana to the Sunburst Throne in an attempt to make the Chantry into the institution he himself remembers. He just wants to restore the loving, accepting, warm refuge that helped him and Leliana both in their times of need.
In short, he doesn’t hate the Chantry, he hates what it has become.
Harwen has an outsider’s perspective, and as such, he doesn’t quite understand why exactly everyone is so ardent on clinging onto an organization for their religion. Why they need priests and sisters and a Divine to interpret their own feelings for them. He sees that it is important, sure, and as such he would like to preserve it just out of respect for a culture he doesn’t quite understand, but he wishes for pragmatism to take the lead. For a strong hand to unite this fractured, bumbling force that’s too stupid to control its own power.
Pushes for Vivienne, anyhow.
Adela would rather not think about it, to be honest. She wouldn’t shed any tears for it, were it to just go away- so far all it has done for her was binding her hands and stopping her from fixing their mess, just so it can be fixed in the way they come out on the very top.
Honestly, she feels the Chantry is about as corrupt as the Carta. At least in the Carta, you get a bigger cut of the profits.
Hissa would like to be part of it all- as I said, she was raised mostly Andrastian, but she has always found the Chantry hostile, and as it is with so many other things, she feels unqualified to draw a conclusion. Whenever she wanted to turn to them, all they saw was the horns on her head, and that’s it. At this point, she just supports whatever Cassandra wants to do with it.
20.what was their court approval like at the winter palace? did they have any fun at all?
Ray himself was somewhat frightened by the amount of fun he had at the Winter Palace, initially, but it wore down his nerves pretty quickly. At the beginning, when it was just pleasant smiles and coy words, he was fine- he hit maximum approval really quickly actually, and it wasn’t hard either. I mean, as far as they knew, he was but a handsome, young, powerful bachelor, and he was preening in the attention just a little bit.
But as soon as the pressure started rising… when Briala got involved, when he caught wind of the awful things people have been saying to his friends (”knife-ear” and “rabbit” are just a start and Sera didn’t seem to mind too much, but “prissy, perfumed pet peacock”…?), when the whole thing in the servants’ quarters started and he was forced to watch the hands behind his so far pleasant evening get brutally slaughtered, his feelings about the whole thing started veering towards disgust real quickly. The one heartwarming part of it all was helping the Empress and Briala reconcile- it was a sweet, sentimental moment, and he likes the idea that love that transcends politics can exist even in the midst of war.
In the end, he was just… ungodly tired. Like Blessed Andraste’s Holy Asshole, tired. The dance with Dorian was barely even a dance, it was more just a hug and a rhythmless sway from one foot to the other. Easily the one highlight of the while damn night.
Harwen just hated the whole thing from beginning to end. He hates scheming and unnecessary lies anyway, and even just playing at pleasantries with Gaspard in the beginning got his skin crawling. Not to mention watching his fellow elves get paraded around like exotic pets… had it not been for Vivienne’s and Josephine’s placating presence and praising words, he would have hightailed out of there the second they found the first dead cook. Or killed the next person who snapped at him for a drink or called him a rabbit. Tho he found it pretty entertaining that they sent an elven assassin to catch an elven assassin.
His court approval was rather high (”for an elf”), like in the 90s, but he, beign the pragmatic person he is, chose not to take his chances and put the outcome in the court’s hands, he fought Florianne and forced all three forces into a public truce because I swear to all the fucking Creators, if you three can’t sit the fuck down I will personally stab all three of you on this very carpet, and I won’t even apologize for the stains.
But seeing the pride and happiness on Josephine’s face in the end, when he pushed through his fatigue and asked her for the last dance was all worth it.
Adela gave exactly zero shits about all of it. She looked at it all with the eyes her years in the Carta gave her- she actually conducted business with quite a lot of people there, so it was actually kind of funny to watch the nobles squirm when their past came back to bite them in the ass with even more force than before.
She’s not very diplomatic, so she struggled a bit with approval- she mostly got it out of the dirt she had or found on people. Honestly, she didn’t much care about it either- they wanted their empress, they fucking got their empress, let’s get the fuck out of here, the outfit clashes with my hair anyway. Pretty sure hers was the playthrough the most people died in- Gaspard executed, Florianne stabbed, Briala incriminated, it was pretty damn bloody.
Hissa isn’t there yet, but I’m thinking she’ll put Gaspard on the throne. She’ll feel really awkward and out of place, which will force her into being incessantly and unnecessarily polite to everyone. She’ll do that silly Despair Demon walk of hers, with the bowed head and hunched back…. and the one reason she’ll end up with Gaspard will be because she’ll miss her window to act and Celene will die purely on accident. She’ll eat herself up over it for months on end.
21.someone is encroaching on their love interest. how do they respond?
Ray would like to say he isn’t, but he’s in fact a very jealous person. He has never had to feel jealous over anyone before (he’s only had casual partners and one childhood sweetheart, but that’s it), so this whole possessive feeling is new, and he finds it disgusting. He hates that he feels this way, even though he has put 100% of his trust in Dorian- not to mention his main way of relating to the world is by flirting with everything that moves, it’s hardly fair of him to feel jealous when Dorian does the same.
If someone were to seriously come onto Dorian in his presence, I think he would try to play it as cool as possible, leave it to Dorian to dismiss or accept the advances, but it would be pretty easy to tell from the tightness of his smile that something is wrong. When Bull makes the few comments he does when Dorian is romanced, I think he would be more hurt than he might let on. (Might bark out an “By all means, continue, I can leave”. Turn in early that night. Pretend to be asleep when Dorian comes in. Basically think himself into a panic. Might prompt the much-needed “okay but what does being ‘more’ mean” conversation.)
With Harwen, well, we know what happens when he’s jealous- he tells nobles to meet him in the pit, and willingly goes up against an actual duelist with a weapon it’s his first time holding.
But in reality… he’s way too aware of the differences between the two of them, and he often worries that as a Dalish elf, he won’t be able to give her the life she deserves. I think the main reason he went up against Lord Otranto was because he fully expected to lose the fight as well as Josephine, and deep down, he was alright with that. Right until she showed up and ran to him without a second thought, that is. Dense elf.
Other than that, he doesn’t know how much flattery is appropriate, he’s not familiar with Orlesian custom, so every time someone calls the ambassador lovely or compliments her, he can feel himself flinch on the inside.
Adela took a long, long time to actually fall in love with Bull. I mean, sure, she had a certain affection for him, but it wasn’t until that scene about the watchwords when she realized that welp, I’m in love. Until then, she didn’t really mind any “encroaching”- it wasn’t like they were a thing, right? Just fun? And this fluttering feeling every time a serving girl bat her eyelashes wasn’t because of jealousy, it was probably just something she ate.
Either way, she’s relieved AF when he says they’re exclusive.
For Hissa, I answered it already- she’d get insecure af, rethink her whole schtick, and it would be up to Sera to drape herself over her Buckles and make sure everyone who wants a piece of that elven butt knows who it belongs to.
23.are there any creatures in the wild that they refuse to/are reluctant to kill? why?
Ray’s heart bleeds every time a pack of wolves or a battle mabari crosses their path. He’s an utter dog person, and that little whine they give always breaks his heart.
Harwen would never attack a halla. In fact, when a requisition asked for halla leather, he gave the poor officer a glare so shocked and offended that she immediately pulled the helmet over her eyes and marched away. He’s too Dalish for that crap.
Adela isn’t so sentimental, but killing bears has always left a bad taste in her mouth. Grew up in the city, associating bears with stuffed toys- it’s a little like fighting her first best friend, if he suddenly grew ten feet tall and vicious.
For Hissa, it’s nugs and fennecs. They’re too tiny and adorable and defenseless. It’s just unfair.
26.did they feel suspicious of dorian upon first meeting him, because of his tevinter heritage?
Ray absolutely did not. I mean, shit, the guy was beating demons to death with his staff. No mage does that, unless they’re either crazy, or serious. And Dorian seemed a little bit of both.
Then they dragged each other through a living nightmare, and ended up being the only two people to remember it ever happened. If that’s not a reason to bond, nothing is. Especially if there’s a natural affinity between them (pyromancer-reaver, destruction is a common denominator) and the sexual tension is crackling in the air.
Harwen did, somewhat. But he’s wary of any human at first, especially one that could immolate his face with but a thought. It didn’t take long however for him to warm up to the mage- it was probably halfway through their Great Slavery Talk when Harwen realized that this guy is genuinely good, he is a good man, he’s just too grossly overprivileged to realize what he’s saying is utter horseshit.
Adela adopted Dorian as her newest little son the second he fell through the gate at Haven. Seriously, anyone willing to actually race across that frozen wasteland with an army on his heels is worth trusting, Tevinter or no. She has learned not to worry about nationalities while still in the smuggling business anyway.
Hissa has yet to meet him… I’m thinking maybe she will, but genuine admiration for his intellect will soon make way for conversation, and after the talk with his father, she too will go mama bear over him. Nope, nobody is touching my small son. He’s older than me and could most likely kick my ass without moving a muscle, but you’re gonna get through my blade to get to him.
(honestly what else did you expect from me as a player)
