Kallian Tabris Part 1 - The Alienage
Kallian was... not enthused about her upcoming wedding but it she'd always been aware that one day she would grow up and marry. She trusted that her father would try his best to find her a good husband and that she would not be the one marrying out, so she tolerated the whole affair.
Nelaros was a pleasant surprise. They never truly got the chance to know each other, but in their brief acquaintance Kallian could see the seeds of something that could have worked. She grieved his death: for the injustice of it, for the person she had liked, had thought she might one day learn to love, and for the death of potential it represented.
Her love for her family and her community has always run deep. She wanted nothing more then to be like her mother as a child and holds her memory in high esteem. She loves her father and has never doubted his love for her, even when she feels stifled by him she understands his concern. Shianni she loves like a little sister, is proud of her and worries for her and is on occasion annoyed by her. Soris she loves like a brother, complains with him and fools around with him and trusts him to be there for her.
There is a keen awareness in Kallian of the position of elves in society. She knows that humans are people and as individuals can be as varied as elves but that does not change this fundamental fact of her existence: humans are a threat to individuals elves and to the Alienage as a whole. She keeps an eye out out for trouble, trying when she can to protecting her fellow elves, with her words, or if necessary, with force. But she does have a strong preference for trying to talk her way out of trouble - she knows that it is dangerous for elves to fight humans.
So Kallian chose her death with open eyes and open heart before she became a Grey Warden. She made that choice the moment Soris appeared with a sword. When she picked up that sword and cut the guards down she chose Soris and she chose Shianni and she chose to drawn a line in the sand and say 'you cannot do this without consequences.'
She knew there would be consequences for this choice. She hoped that she alone could suffer them - although she didn't truly believe that the Alienage wouldn't suffer them too. Still she makes her first kill and commits to it fully and utterly. She kills every guard she encounters as she searches for Lord Vaughn and the other stolen woman. This is the culmination of the rage boiling under her skin - they were all complicit in this - and a cold calculation - they cannot afford to encounter the guards on their way out so they must kill them all while they are in small unprepared groups - even if it slows them down.
Lord Vaughan makes his offer and she hates, hates, hates him, wants him dead with every ounce of her soul. Lord Vaughan makes his offer and she desperately doesn't want to kill him, doesn't want the consequences an elf killing a noble will bring. Lord Vaughan makes his offer, and if she thought he'd keep his word she might have accepted it.
She does not think he'd keep his word. She think's he'd send every guard he could muster after her and Soris the moment they left his estate. She thinks he'd kill every woman he'd taken but only after brutalizing them first and that Shianni would suffer worst for her defiance. She thinks he'd call loudly and gleefully for the purging of the Alienage and that as a noble people would listen to him.
She thinks that if she kills him there will be no witnesses that will dispute her when she claims sole responsibility for this slaughter. She thinks that if she kills him she can save Shianni and Soris. She thinks that there will be a retaliation for this, but that maybe if there's an arl's son dead by her blades, it might mean something; that just maybe in the future some human men will hesitate before they steal an elven woman from the Alienage to rape.
So she kills him and she comforts Shianni as Soris goes to fetch the other women. She takes back the weapons from Soris and cleans him up and asks him to check ahead of the group as they leave the quietened estate. So when they arrive back at the Alienage it is her alone who is blood splattered and armed, who is so obviously responsible. When the guards come she steps forward and tells them that she did it, and she doesn't look back at anyone else, because this was always how it was going to end.
Then she is yanked away from the yawning maw of her execution. Duncan conscripts her. She's going to be a Grey Warden.
She says her goodbyes, knowing she may never return. Grey Wardens are for life, just because she will not be killed for what she has done doesn't mean her life isn't over all the same. Then she follows a human man she met only this morning away from the only home she has ever known.
