Ran into this hilarious agent of Fen’Harel cosplayer at NYCC today. 

(please let me know if you are/know them so I can credit!)

Maena Trevelyan, outfitted with Lyrium-infused prosthetic arm. As if it wasn’t a bad enough idea to mess with her before. Thanks Dagna.

Biggest plot twist of DAI is that his name is actually Solas

why isn’t there a quick reaction option to grab Solas’s leg with the one arm you have left and refuse to unhook yourself so he’s forced to drag you through the eluvian?

“vhenan pls”

“DREAD WOLF TAKE ME”

“There will be no taking-”

“YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO MAGIC AWAY MY OTHER ARM.” 

someone just throw away my tablet please

IT GOT BETTER

DAI - DLC Trespasser

“Alright, today I’m going to–”

*wakes up to this*

“….cry, apparently”

Bitter Sweet Fool

Forgive me, guys! I know I’ve never posted pure ‘story-sans-pictures’ before, but I just wanted to get these words out. It’s nothing special, just a little Solavellan drabble. 

                                          -hides, don’t judge me-

(Based on the ending slide below): “Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance…”

“I’m going to rest,” Lavellan said. She sat slumped over the war table, one hand cradling her head and the other — well. There was only one hand these days. A wrinkle above her brow betrayed an unresolved bit of frustration.

Lace Harding was studying a map of Rivain carefully, but grunted in agreement. “Right, it’s been a long evening. We can pick things up after a good night’s sleep. I’ve got a message to send out first, though. Leliana?”

Cassandra and Leliana exchanged a brief look, and then the three ladies bid Lavellan a goodnight. All things considered, it had been an exhausting day for everyone.

Keep reading

a wash of powerful magic carries an impression of welcome; a pang of hope; a sensation of bitter fury; a sensation of determination;

Because I felt like being sad for a half hour.

“What do you mean she’s asleep? She was asleep four hours ago. You can’t let her sleep all day and night!”

“If you think you can do any better, get yourself back up here and take over.”

The crystal glowed a frosty blue as Dorian’s whisper filtered through, a little tinny. “Now, now, that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Magister, the healers say there’s nothing else to be done.” He’s seen men drink themselves to death with a stump propped on a tavern table. And the sickly sweet smell of a wound gone bad after amputation is someting he’ll never forget. It won’t happen to her, thanks to the magic the elf used, but he can’t stop thinking about it just the same. Not that she’s let him see under the bandages the healers tell him aren’t even necessary.

“Your southern healers are little more than maniacs reading tea leaves and feeding everyone tinctures of fennec piss and elfroot.”

Despite himself, he laughed. The motion of it jostled Evelyn against his chest and he froze a moment, waiting to see if she’d stir. But of course she didn’t. It was a strong potion that the Tranquil brewed, and she’d downed enough to put a druffalo under.

Dorian’s distant voice went tight with worry. “Is there anything, anything at all I can do?”

Thom brushed hair back from her forehead and settled her closer in the crook of his arm. In the last four years he’d gotten used to the way the Inquisitor slept. Fitful, restless. Evelyn frowned and sighed her way through dreams, she wriggled around looking for the most comfortable spot on his shoulder. In hot weather she pulled a fold of the sheet up between them so her cheek wouldn’t stick to his bare skin with sweat. This unnaturally deep, quiet sleep felt wrong.

“Like what? You said there’s no spell for growing it back.” A little bit of himself was angry that there wasn’t.  People made it sound like blood magic could conjure up damned near anything. “You’re sure, though? Nothing?”

There wasn’t even a pause. “You know that I would have tried. If I thought there was the slightest chance it would work I’d bleed your hairy arse dry, lummox. As soon as I am back in Minrathous I’ll start looking in earnest.”

“Good enough.”

A long silence then, the crystal on its fine chain went nearly dark. Thom traced the blue veins in the back of her right hand carefully. She’d broken her fingernails again. Three were smooth, curved and perfect. But the middle and thumb were jagged, red underneath and probably sore.

Thom stretched his free arm out for the tin of salve by the bed. It was dusty - didn’t look like it had been touched since the morning he left, back in the spring. He prised the lid off with a thumb and his teeth, not willing to let go of the gentle rise and fall of her ribs under his other palm.  

“When she’s awake, give her my love, will you?”

“Of course.”

Her thumb twitched as he swiped a little of the healing ointment along the cracked nail but she gave no other sign she’d felt it.  " I will. Once she’s good and awake.“

Dorian’s sigh came along with a brighter glow from the crystal on the bedside table by Thom’s head. It lit up the dark circles under Evelyn’s eyes that no amount of makeup could cover. Not that she’d so much as glanced in a mirror in two weeks.

"She’s still…still forgetting, then?”

“Most mornings, yeah.” Being shoved away wasn’t so bad. But the horror on her face as she went to rub her eyes or brush away her unruly hair with a hand that wasn’t there anymore? Always the same: Evelyn pushed him away and turned her back, bent double over what the elf hadn’t taken of her arm. She huddled in the wrinkled blankets, always apologizing,

It was the ‘Sorry, I’m sorry!’ that was a knife in the gut.

He never could get her to explain what she thought she needed to be sorry for.

“Kaffas.” Dorian swore, and there was a bunch of muttering Thom couldn’t follow. “I have to stop talking now, but tell her-” The mage sighed. “Tell her I love her and to talk to me when she can.”

Thom swallowed around a tight lump in his throat. “She’s always spilled her guts to you, 'vint. If she talks to anybody it’ll be you.”

But the crystal was dull and colorless again. Evelyn’s steady breaths tickled the hair on his chest as Thom pulled her unresistant hand up and tucked it under his chin to wait with her for morning.

More Solas heartache

I have an idea rolling around in my head that I’m still fleshing out but…its pestering me and keeping me awake.

Solas tells Lavellan he needs time to think about a relationship with her, “there are…considerations,” he says. And after the balcony kiss he tells her that not continuing this would be kinder in the long run but that “losing you would…” And insert dramatic kiss. In Crestwood he quickly back peddles after having a personal revelation and tells her how in another world it could be different but that he simply can’t keep doing this!

Now, we all know why he can’t. He has a personal mission, responsibilities to others, etc.

But…what if there is an additional reason? In the dlc we learn that only he can bear the mark without dying unless it is removed.

What if his considerations, his reservations, his hindrances, and worry about losing her stems partly from the fact that he knows he is falling in love with a dying woman, though she does not yet realize it. It would be kinder in the long run for them both if they did not pursue this doomed relationship. But losing her is such an unbearable thought that he must hold her while he can!

To make matters worse, he can only save her by becoming stronger, which he accomplishes by absorbing the spirit of Mythal. Now stronger, he has removed the anchor. And now, with his resolution to his plan to fix his mistakes (a decision she encourages him to make post Temple of Mythal), she might die anyway as a result of his actions.

Is it no wonder he is so pained and distraught upon revealing the truth to her? He loves her and yet his anchor was the reason she was dying, and now that he has removed it, he is the reason she will live…only to put her in danger of dying again. The amount of hurt and tragedy just piles up with this ship.

Ugh. That’s an incredibly rough draft but it’s tearing me up and if I don’t get it out I won’t sleep! Damned elf!

this is a friendly reminder that solas called lavellan “vhenan” when he saw her again in trespasser and it means so much

because remember post-breakup, he referred to her as “inquisitor” and it broke all our hearts. but clearly he’s given up pretending not to be in love with her and im crying right now and someone stop me pls

This was so important to me

and not just once, too!  he calls her vhenan every chance he gets!!

Remember that Solas calls people by their titles.  “Seeker” for Cassandra, “Enchanter” for Vivienne, etc…

He calls people by what they are.

In that moment, you’re not only the Inquisitor to him.  You’re his vhenan.  That’s what he sees in you.  This is what you are and always will be.

<3

The negative responses Solas will say to the Inquisitor if he disapproves of them. There may be a line or two that’s new to you.

(I included the part about Iron Bull just because Solas sounds so wonderfully mean, and that’s beautiful). I didn’t include the ending differences because they’ve been covered so well on youtube.

“I’ll save the world, and I’ll save you. I promise, no matter what, I’ll save you.”

Thinking a lot today about how magic in the current age in Thedas is in a virtually post-apocalyptic state, it’s so severely crippled by the near-universality of the Chantry and Chantry attitudes towards magic.  Almost every bit of magic we experience in the entirety of the three games comes from this cultural background; almost everything we think we know about how magic works is circumscribed by this.  Mages are ruthlessly repressed, imprisoned, killed, prevented from reproducing (which we know would produce more mages) and kept as helpless as possible all throughout Chantry-controlled space.  Totally hamstrung, in other words.  Living outside Chantry-controlled space means either living as part of an extremely marginalized society, impoverished and even so at risk from the Templars, or living as part of the extremely toxic and self-limiting society Tevinter has created for its mages, where the most powerful mages do their damndest to kill each other off.  Even so, the only magisters we actually meet are sufficiently powerful that they’re boss battles.  Dorian’s not even a magister, virtually a punk kid by Tevinter standards, and yet he’s instrumental in creating magic that allows TIME TRAVEL.

But pre-Chantry?  Well.  Let’s just consider that fundamentally, what are Flemeth and Corypheus, these incredibly powerful beings?  Just mages.  They both started out as mortal as anyone, even, judging by what Solas says, if you include Mythal.  Just mages.

They’ll show you why mages are feared.

Absolutely. I mean, one mage created the bloody Veil.

My theory about the Evanuris is that they became “gods” because they were effectively immortal. Take a preternaturally gifted mage and give them thousands of years to develop their powers and study, rather than the simple, short lifespan humans get, easy access to the Fade, and no Chantry limitations. Eventually their magic will become so good it could almost seem… like divine power. Brings to mind that Arthur C. Clarke quote about how “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” except I suppose I’m saying, “sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from omnipotence.” Huh. By those standards, pre-Veil, someone like Dorian could quite easily have become a ”god”. Well, maybe if he had pointier ears.

Oh man, I wrote the OP months ago, before I played any of the DLCs, pretty much all of which strongly reinforced this notion.  I totally agree with trulycertain‘s addition here, too.

Solas: “I’m not a god.” *lives for thousands of years* *created the effing Veil* *can kill people in their dreams* *can walk to half of thedas in minutes* *can petrify powerful enemies without even looking at them*