#𝐖𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 . professor emmrich volkarin of the mourn watch. (manfred is a gentle spirit, ball of curiosity, and secondary muse.) influenced by the short stories "down among the dead men," "the flame eternal," episode seven of dragon age: vows and vengeance, and dragon age: the veilguard. 21+ audience. mutuals only. queue-heavy and plot-focused. 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡... @graveswalked / @atomdeuogdonion 🖤, @adventurers , @theodosiani , @kenostaph , @valorcorrupt , @craftsjoy. , @neongrime , @archaeval , @saintsdawn , @b4ttl3 , @fenanera , @lostinquisitor , and @extravagantliar .
𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐮𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬... restarted on june 11th.
𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥... #slvrthrd
𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬... carrd | portrayal notes | tags masterpost | permanent plotting call | shipping call
𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭... click to help | immigrant legal resource center | immigrant defense project | support ukraine
𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬… critrole, campaign 4 | modern fantasy | dragon age
𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒...
basics:
basic rp etiquette applies. iykyk. i shouldn't have to walk you through them.
respect my time:
i'm a grown man with a plate of responsibilities offline. the time and energy to indulge in hobbies are a precious commodity. slow replies aren't personal.
dni fandoms:
harry potter, stranger things, hazbin hotel, bridgerton (+ any "colourblind" universe), and star wars.
triggers and content warnings:
plain trigger and content warning tags are used.
critical posts:
i'm critical about every da character. i don't bite my tongue about my faves. i won't hold back about yours. i'm not critical about anyone or anything for the sake of it. i have legitimate frustrations, especially about fandom darlings (e.g. cullen, solas, etc).
bioware critical is a given. i will carry my grudge about gaider's ✨️ asians don't exist in thedas ✨️ bullshit to the grave.
unfollowing and blocking:
curate your space. i curate mine. remember to hardblock >>> softblock.
duplicates:
fellow emmrich friendly. you have excellent taste.
shipping:
multiverse. multiship. as of 04/17/26, i'm not accepting new ships for the time being. people don't know how to treat romanceable companion character writers with respect. i'm not here to be part of your doll collection :) i won't tolerate you reducing my emmrich into a dating simulator :) our sole purpose isn't to expand the fantasy :)
major divergences in the wakesleft cinematic universe:
MY EMMRICH IS MIXED RACE (ANDER-NEVARRAN) AND WHITE-PRESENTING. I WILL NOTICE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE REMARKS AND BEHAVIOUR INDICATIVE OF WISHING I KEPT EMMRICH 100% WHITE.
MY EMMRICH IS NONBINARY (HE/THEY/SHE). I WILL NOTICE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE REMARKS AND BEHAVIOUR INDICATIVE OF WISHING I KEPT EMMRICH A CIS MAN.
DO NOT ASSUME I SUBSCRIBE TO THE ORIENTALISM NIGHTMARE BIOWARE CALLS NEVARRA. (BIOWARE FUCKED NEVARRA FROM THE START. DAV CARRIED ON THE TRADITION.) I'VE REWRITTEN ALL THINGS NEVARRA/N FROM THE GROUND UP. IF YOU WANT TO PLAY IN A 1:1 NEVARRA, I'M NOT THE EMMRICH FOR YOU.
lore purism about a series as thoroughly problematic as dragon age is, in so many words, stupid. i don't care what a room of bigoted white canadians said. thedas is my sandbox now. you can have dArK fAnTaSy without relying on low-hanging fruit.
the booktok of it all:
i hate the popular daddy dom booktok hyper masculine depiction of emmrich in the fandom. keep it away from me. what happens in a03 stays in a03.
crossovers:
crossover friendly. i have a variety of verses available.
tokenism:
I AM NOT YOUR TOKEN ASIAN. ASIANS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. I AM LAO (SOUTHEAST ASIAN). GOOGLE EXISTS.
speaking over the voices of poc:
use your platform to amplify our voices, not drown us out.
reality vs pixels:
the dragon age fandom is infamous for :) getting weird about pixels :) the security and comfort of living and breathing minorities in our world shouldn't be secondary. i catch you prioritising pixels over reality, i will hardblock you so fast, your head spins.
mandatory reading:
LIKE MY PORTRAYAL NOTES (LINKED IN MY PINNED) POST OR I WON'T WRITE WITH YOU. IGNORE ANY REMINDER I GIVE ABOUT IT IS AN INSTA-HARDBLOCK. I TOOK THE TIME TO PARSE WHICH POSTS FROM MY WORLDBUILDING AND HC TAGS ARE OF IMMEDIATE IMPORTANCE.
"𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊" 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖗 river. emmrich reckoned eventide accentuated her natural beauty. she appeared as though cut from shadow and moonlight. rare were tourists whose gaze could abandon the sobering light of day. ryland hadn't been a tourist in some time.
"the ancient planasene called her "pnemoix." she was sacred to them. her water was thus utilised for various rituals; anointment, for example," said emmrich mildly. specific ceremonies and practices of mortalitasi and the mourn watch to present day beckoned her aid, "did you know "minanter" is tevene? just between you and i, oh, how i do loathe that dreadful name! it's positively gauche."
he may or may not disclose his reason for abandoning the gala. emmrich didn't plan to leave him either way. nevarra city changed in the two summers of ryland's absence. the dead stirred more easily than they should.
fucked that you can’t fix other people especially when you really care about them. Oh so im just supposed to be there for you while you suffer. like a useless cunt gargoyle
THE NECROMANCER WAVED A HAND. "EMMRICH WILL DO, PLEASE."
AUDRIC NODDED ABSENTLY, TOUCHING THE BANDAGE ON HIS NECK. "IT'S... SORRY, IT'S A BLUR OF SCREAMS, SIR."
"SOME OF YOUR OWN, I'D BET," THE NECROMANCER JOKED, BUT LOOKED SO SYMPATHETIC AUDRIC RELAXED BY A DEGREE.
#WAKESLEFT. PROFESSOR EMMRICH VOLKARIN OF THE MOURN WATCH FROM DRAGON AGE. FEAT. MULTIPLE VERSES. CROSSOVER FRIENDLY. +21 AUDIENCE. MUTUALS ONLY. QUEUE-HEAVY AND PLOT-FOCUSED.
VERSE: THERE IS NO WAY AROUND DEATH (ONLY THROUGH IT) .
vampire: the masquerade. sired by vorgoth, emmrich became a child of haqim ca. tremere blood curse. he and manfred, emmrich's only childe, departed from alamut alongside his sire. "the mourn watch" - a clan comprised largely of dispossessed scholars - was formed in secret. the watch stepped out of obscurity within the last two centuries. wherever the watch cried home was unknown. outsiders nicknamed associated vampires "watchers" and "children of the dark."
of german, dutch, and sinhala descent
claims agnosticism. leans heavily into his mother's animist beliefs
"sorcerer caste"
scholarly interest in occultism and innate sensitivity with the spirit realm was the cause of his embrace
complicated relationship with immortality
not a fan of violence but, push comes to shove, will show an aggressor the full scope of an elder's vampiric strength
‘Nothing,’ said the figure in the mirror. ‘I’m just waiting. I’m waiting for death.’ ‘Where is death, then?’ I asked. ‘It is coming,’ the other one said. And from the empty chambers in the interior of the theatre I heard some beautiful, terrible music ring out...
prompts… ❛ who do this to you? i need you to tell me who did this to you. ❜ @theodosiani
𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝖐𝖆𝖘𝖆𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖆 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖆𝖙 risk of pacing a hole clean through the rookery. emmrich touched their lower lip gingerly. he had been fortunate for ward and lucanis' intervention. disorientation was an optimal state to prey upon an enemy in. doubtless the antaam fellow would have landed his second punch. over an innocuous spell meant to entertain children, no less! the gall of them, honestly...
the standard vilification of necromancy seldom incited violence. people were oft too frightened of inviting a necromancer's wroth. the occupation emboldened antaam unto insufferable dimensions. a terrible part of themselves regretted their earlier restraint. they could have easily reminded that fool why the qun gave nevarra a wide berth. "i think not. ward and lucanis resolved it," said emmrich in a tone gentler than their thoughts, "you needn't fret."
[The] idea of temporal deformation is put to great use in Lake Mungo…Rather than living in a linear, temporal progression, one where past, present, and future are distinct and sequential, Alice senses an impending collapse of this sequential ordering or, more frightening, an intimation that such an order does not exist at all. If “something bad” has already taken place in the future and is trying to “reach” us in the present, what can our idea of past-present-future even mean?
While ghosts usually come from the past to haunt the present and keep past traumas or wrongs alive, Alice’s ghost proceeds from the future, serves as a kind of warning or omen of something bad to come…This specter appears in a time in which it does “not belong” and forces together that which should be kept apart: past and future come together and inhabit the same temporality as two different versions of Alice’s body—one alive, one drowned—confront each other in a way that collapses meaning in Alice’s life and precipitates her “untimely” death. After her passing, Alice reverts to the more typical ghostly behavior of refusing to go away and of perpetually haunting her parents’ home and the lake where she drowned. While both dead and alive, Alice seems to have no future.
unprompted… ❛ could/would emmrich continue to love a rook who encourages them to sacrifice manfred just the same as one who wants to save him, or will that forever drive a tiny sliver/irritation into the affection? ❜ @valorcorrupt
yes. you can't turn love on and off via command. emotions don't work like that. compartmentalisation has boundaries. emmlich loves rook, but..... without an honest-to-god conversation about wtf happened wrt manfred, i can't picture their relationship unaffected by it. grief is complicated, let alone unpacked grief. (i assume everyone is familiar wuth the "doctors make the worst patients" expression. it's applicable to people in the death industry. whenever yourself and-or loved ones are involved, "professionalism" amounts to shit.) lichdom doesn't change emmrich's inability to (no pun intended) hold stuff in. "even as i am, the mind is a victim of the heart."
prompts… ❛ tell me what you need. anything. ❜ @neongrime
𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝖔𝖋 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖆𝖗𝖙 was a point of pride. he seldom lost control. mages unable to command their magic were unfit for the order. orphans of commoner blood couldn't afford an error so grievous. the discipline pursued him unto the autumn of his life. fear was a private matter. no one else need witness its consequences.
privacy atop the diamond was difficult to locate in a sound state of mind. plumage hissed and whispered; blades carved from starlight flashed. fledglings were everywhere. sanctuary would have at last been revealed within four paces. the gloved hand manifesting upon emmrich's elbow stopped him short. blood pounded in his ears a funeral march. "not now—"
"how cruel you are, prof—" illario's dark eyes leapt from their trembling hand to quarter profile — "tell me what you need. anything."
they were not naive. illario dellamorte spoke gently with any lover or contract surely. naught about the man was reserved for them. the raw, strangling fear that coiled around their heart choked emmrich of inhibitions. everyone was going to die; whether the great leveller descended upon them now or later, at the end of enemy steel or foolish mistep off a rooftop, death remained inevitable. so what did it matter? live with grace and fervour, whilst you may. illario's subsequent breath was a gauzy ribbon of frost. emmrich squeezed their eyes shut.
"emmrich."
"i need to sit," underneath the starched collar, their pulse galloped, "i don't... i don't feel well."
the discourse around "dark academia ruined the mw" has 0 substance.
everyone was fine with the mw until dav. it was introduced in "down among the dead men" short story re: tevinter nights. was the change of heart due to emmrich and johanna having the complexion of casper the friendly ghost? emmjo are two (2) people in a structure (grand necropolis) that canonically spans the breadth of a city. there are countless npcs you can see in the grand necropolis. did everyone suddenly forget nevarra isn't a canonically isolated kingdom or about the canonical orlesian and tevinter 40 year long occupations of nevarra city and hunter fell? (i'm repeating canonical for a reason.) immigrant families and mixed people exist. if you want to argue about it, be careful of your talking points. i WILL point out suspicious ones.
a tevinter mage (caspar the first's adviser) founded the mortalitasi. (hence emmrich's "sister in magecraft" ambient dialogue exclusive to a mercar.) watchers were former mortalitasi. elite mortalitasi are promoted to the mw wherein their primary objective becomes safeguarding the grand necropolis / honoured dead. the mortalitasi and the mw function separately from each other. whatever the fuck the mortalitasi are up to has 0 to do with the mw. idky people have a hard time wrapping their minds around this.
there's a LONG history throughout multiple western and eastern cultures of our world (which needs to be taken into consideration whenever discussing thedas cultures etc. bioware should learn the difference between inspiration and copy&pasting) in regards to priests, monks, and academia. some of the most studied people in the world are priests and monks.
in addition, considering eurocentric colonialism is centered in traditional depictions of ~ dark academia, there's smth........ tone deaf about shoehorning the essence of a temple based on a kingdom whose core cultural inspo was southwest asia, north africa, etc into that narrative frame work. white cultures don't have the corner marketed on a desire to learn. religion / faith are not inherently bad. the mw slots perfectly fine into the da universe structure.
Concept: one of those standard plots where a magic user and a tech expert are arguing over whose purview the weird thing of the week falls under, but it's the magic user who's insisting this has to be a science thing and the tech expert who's insisting it has to be a magic thing, because they're not arguing over worldview, they're arguing over jurisdiction and neither of them wants to be the one who has to deal with it
"Look, it's a circuitboard. That makes this tech - your territory"
"That 'circuitboard' sure looks like a runic circle to me. Your territory"
