allaros drops elfroot joints and some tools for his tinkering. you try to make sense of them but can't for most of the time because he modified them. there's also a usual supply of lyrium potions. some knives. also there are some reports you can't make sense of because they're written in an elvhen shorthand and some thousand times folded notes from bull with some nonsensical "your ass is especially hot today boss" in qunlat (he teaches his boss well!).

for garrett, there are so. many. mabari snacks. you think he'd better use this space for something useful, poisons, traps? no. there's nothing more useful than mabari snacks (esp when you need to snap your dog out of eating some shit from the ground!). also trinkets from and for kirkwall crew like a wicked grace deck, some materials for anders, a herbarium from merrill, etc.

you know this gif where a character disassembles into pixels? this is surana. they have so much shit on them. in the circle, they were used to carrying everything on them and this is with robes specifically made without pockets so there is no suspicious mage activity. now they have pockets. many pockets. they use them all. you can live a month or three on supply just from their body.

courier 6 (because they're my bebe also) drops just. human parts. ghoul parts. then you find a note on how to cook them in their pockets. it also implies you can cook their body. you leave it as soon as possible as if it's radioactive (it is, to some extent). you can also loot heavy armor and a brotherhood's hammer but you can't pry a machete from their hands.

omg who are theeey. :3c

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the grandpa the grandchild dynamic.

fgxbgdt thanks for a question this interesting, i'm glad i'm able to get to it!

i think when i was younger it was the design that came first because i'd just start the game and figure out the personality later, and now that i'm older i think of the role i'd like to play and design a character accordingly.

so, this happened with hawke. garrett always was the biggest and the least struggle at the same time? i knew i didn't want fem!hawke (i never play cis fem characters because *gestures vaguely* dysphoria) and always play mages, so i created my basic ginger person for the very first playthrough, but it never felt right. hence, i turned back to the default look and focused on his story more. hawke is a somewhat fixed personality canonically, so it feels a bit off to think of his story, it's already there. i'd say he's work in progress, more than any other ocs.

allaros, my sweet baby, also being the oldest of my current ocs, was designed accordingly to my taste. hence, he's a ginger elvhen mage. like, it's my favourite coincidence that i got interested in bull and Then found out he was into redheads. because i just always created ginger playable characters!!

the design is totally affecting how i perceive a character. i do a little trick where i give them light eyes, because my monkey brain instantly starts liking a character more. this is just ridiculous. it works every time. when i created surana in dao for the first time, i couldn't move forward till i got them a hairstyle i pictured in my head, like, a single mod. it didn't feel like them.

i remember the earlier drawings of allaros where i just repeated how he looked in the game, and eventually some features started to show up. none of them is present right now, lol. i remember he was wearing a mask and was very much flamboyant ✨. he was a typical dragon age comedy genius character. also rather centrist, also a pacifist. the violence isn't an answer kind. sometime in between his key feature was being Really tired of everyone's bullshit. which makes sense. now that i revisited his character he got way more mature and well structured. still very tired. not a centrist. thank god.

surana and cousland came from me wanting to see the worst choices possible. one evolved out of another: first, i was influenced by bioware's bullshit with radical elves, esp velanna, so my choice for that playthrough was surana. then, years later, i was enlightened that it is, indeed, racist bullshit. i designed cousland for my the worst choices playthrough. a human noble who doesn't care about others kinda makes sense. then i designed their final looks from what i wanted to see, though i would say surana's appearance is work in progress, i want something that brings me serotonin and can't quite figure it out. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

thank you so much for asking, your ask sparked joy when i saw it in my inbox! :)

lazy mornings.

a redraw of an old sketch, plus something new. the original drawing is under the cut.

thank yoouuu!! 😭

i would say hawke changed the least, while the warden and the inquisitor... walked their certain paths.

i always kinda new that garrett needs to be the purple option. what changed is that i made his appearance default. my very first run was hawke that i modeled without much thought put into it. i would say over the years garrett became less of "a snarky protag" and more of "an insensitive asshole with no filter", but there's not much space between these 2 points. also he regained some family members, haha: i decided not to kill off carver, before i would prefer the whole family being narratively murdered. hawke became a more narratively structured character, just a simple formula "all i want is to have a big pack and keep it save VS they just won't stay together or alive," "i want to be a usual shithole citizen with a decent life VS i'm always in the centre of something happening."

allaros lavellan changed significantly over time because he what, exists for 8-9 years? i remember in earlier concepts of lavellan his prominent feature was a permanent exhaustion, also he had enhanced senses and wore a fabric mask all the time due to it, yada yada yada. he had a, err, lingerie-stockings-super-expressive sort of demeanor. now my love for this type of masculinity is outsourced to another fandom completely, and allaros became tougher, sturdier and doesn't have a very expressive style that feels like an explosion. also, his background changed from massive angst for the sake of angst, now it makes more sense. he just gained serious responsibility issues and is irreversibly doomed by a narrative. :)

i'd say allaros became a more... mature character, and i'm proud of these changes.

surana did a sort of 180° turn on their heels. it was the only character i created with a purpose and a concept in mind. the concept was a shem-hating radical elf, and later ice would break for leliana with a kind of tsundere attitude. just terrible. years later i realized that making surana for a concept of someone who actively doesn't give a fuck about a human country is not very reasonable. the radicalization was outsourced to allaros, and the actively malicious personality was passed to cousland, which now makes more sense. surana now has a tough-sweet personality, they don't let humans see their mistakes and weaknesses – they now they're judged and it's a circle habit, but at the same time people around surana just can't not fall in love with them. although now i cannot stop thinking about them making alistair a king and sparing loghain, so they enter their divorce era. it's too much of a temptation for palpable tension between two key figures in fereldan history, the king and the hero of ferelden. this would be another 180° turn because surana wouldn't make any of these decisions. i'm still not quite satisfied with their story. i don't even know their gender yet! i just know i want a bi awakening for alistair, and this dynamic with the warden specifically is v important to me.

thanks for your question!!

lavellan, getting bull to let a smith measure him so they can craft the best dragon scale armor, making a commission for the dread helmet, studying what makes a blade perfect to give him an ultimate badass axe to chop down assholes: i'm treating my princess right, i dress her in finest clothes. :)

thanks to lovely @rock-teh-elf for tagging me to make my ocs in this picrew!

my beloveds, neria surana, garrett hawke, allaros lavellan and courier 6 (for shits and giggles). the default hawke continues to be completely unmakeable in picrews, but i was pleasantly surprised that this picrew has the exact vest i wanted to draw my quiz in, lol.

i'm tagging @ell-vellan and @knowimok and whoever wants to do that as well!

on the "i was born into this, but i was never supposed to belong here" train of thought, everytime i think allaros would make a pretty decent qunari while having him dating the iron bull, it irreversibly alters my brain chemistry.

bull had to leave because he tried to fit in so much to the best of his abilities, but even with his endless loyalty something was always off. bull sees allaros, and there's this devotion to the role and to people that goes before anything personal, the strict order of things and restraint in smallest details. it's about bas like him, and cassandra, and madame de fer, they've achieved that outside the qun even though the qun promised it's impossible.

bull says, hey, vivienne, hey, cassandra, you would make a pretty decent qunari, hey, are you sure you're not, maybe, just a little bit tamassran, ma'am? bull sees allaros and thinks, hey, maybe the south isn't going just straight to crap with that hole in the sky as fast as i thought. he thinks, maybe i can respect that, exactly because allaros can be judged by the qun's standards.

the iron bull sees allaros, and they're different.

allaros is the reminder of what bull let himself overlook in himself to create a convincing mask. bull starts to respect him, but this is why allaros is the reminder of that if bull doesn't clearly separate what his role is and who he actually is, it would show how far away he's strayed. so bull has to remember that pleasures he found in the south aren't his to enjoy, that he isn't the iron bull.

allaros is the reminder that he is hissrad.

and if bas could be like that without the qun, what does it say about the qun. and if bas could be like that without the qun, what did bull fail to do.

and if bas like the inquisitor or madame de fer have ended up under the qun, he knows the simple truth about the invasion he learned years ago. that the qun is the good idea, but it would shed blood of so many he doesn't want to see that. they would be great qunari, but they would have to show it by taking stitches and serving their arvaad. there's no real place for them under the qun, and in this conclusion bull strayed so, so far away.

and then this very person gives an order a good qunari would disobey, and bull simply does not, and he's declared tal-vashoth. this very reminder in a form of an elf thinks it was a good decision, even though he has no reason to, because these men aren't even his to care about. his reminder puts a few before the duty and alliances, and so does bull.

his reminder of what the good qunari leader looks like is suddenly very bas. it's always been that way, lavellan has never stopped being bas in bas society.

bull is a qunari in the alien land of bas, and it's always has been that way. suddenly, it's much more lonely because in a similarity lies an understanding, but that bas would ever be able to understand him is just another illusion he let himself be amused by.

earlier that would serve to get him in line, now it gnaws on the empty space in his chest.

allaros now is a reminder of an unmeasurable gap between bull and home that understands him, but the one he will never be able to reach again.

then, bull finds out that allaros also always was doomed to not belong. neither to his clan, as much as they care for each other, there's nothing but damage and guilt, nor to his homeland because he loathes orlais. and he would never be a good qunari.

for both of them, their home had no place for them to fit in.

and then, there's understanding.

look, that's them.

i want this woman to be furious.🙏♥️

also, since dai doesn't give players a choice whether to be called the herald of andraste, it's funny when the inquisition calls it the most anti-chantry, pro-nonhuman, pro-mage person ever, because, logically, it's a nice fuck you from their own prophet. i imagine that with my lavellan, he would totally do 180° turn that way.

wanted to create a header to put in the beginning of posts about lavellan. something simple and distinct. maybe will do the same for surana and hawke later. anyways, here's your elf.

allaros lavellan and the last few years.

actually, it's post trespasser, since the inquisition stopped existing, but the little guy decided to go a bit off the rails even without solas.

there are different paths!!

the orlesian court. in any case, the inquisition wasn't disbanded. lavellan wanted to keep at least some power. the main concern was the easiness with which the nobility could write him off otherwise, at least legally. they would find loopholes anyway, and lavellan didn't want to give them more. he retained the title of the lord inquisitor and started his work as the left hand of the divine. allaros' personal goal of being the figure head of the religious organization (and the reason he didn't walk off the battlements) was to put and support as many elves and mages in a position of the authority. he kept close ties with fiona, charter, merrill and the halamshiral's alienage, put briala behind the throne of orlais and put steeled leliana in the position of the divine. he watched her letting the mages govern themselves. he watched his loyal childhood friend elgara building up an elvhen theater and making their culture seen, even through the backlash from humans.

corruption. despite his noble intentions, all the years lavellan held this position, the iron bull had to watch how his partner became more ruthless and at times cruel. allaros did things and spoke speeches impossible to imagine coming from him years ago, when there was the inquisition. bull had to listen to allaros saying the opportunity to kill any of his noble opponents with a snap of his fingers brought him peace. it became more and more apparent that lavellan was considering that with all seriousness.

fall out. despite understanding this was his kadan's coping mechanism, bull grew worried. sometimes less for allaros and more because of him. coming from the qunari background, the iron bull hated orlesian politics just as much. then he had to see his partner molding into the same being. not the frilly rich one, the stop at nothing one. although allaros haven't yet crossed the boundary of punching down, it became apparent that this role deteriorated him, and something had to be done.

no place to belong. allaros initially comes from the orlesian alienage. he loathes orlesian court. lavellan also took away the opportunity to come back as the keeper of his clan from himself (due to. layers of a conflict). basically, after the trespasser there is no path for him to walk and feel at peace. at the same time, fate didn't create any place that would fit him better.

the bull's chargers, for instance. although he would've been a welcome member, lavellan maintained a somewhat stationary position since politics demanded his constant attention. that was contrary to the iron bull's opinion: for him, it was rather his partner's constant anxiety that if he let go of the reigns, all the progress would be reversed. this fear was reinforced by the ameridan's story. however, the iron bull continued getting contracts from orlesian nobles, and allaros, being the left hand, was sent here and there on leliana's orders. this let them keep up with each other and have excursions together. the possibility to live a boisterous life of a mercenary was tempting, but nonexistent.

the dalish clan. after all that was established, i imagine the cruelest thing that might be done to allaros is to give him the opportunity to lead a clan. to let him meet a clan struggling without their keeper, otherwise a content community with strong bonds. for instance, on one of the charger's missions. they're on their way of getting a mage from another clan. but isn't he a mage from another clan? two pieces of the puzzle put together. it is the cruel fate, to make lavellan remember: dalish are family, and he is meant to be here. accepting that the best you can do for your family is to leave wasn't easy, now all feelings were rekindled. allaros would instantly fall into helping and organizing. he would witness meals together around the campfire and their skillful preparations, rangers with reports, hunters with prey, children studying diligently, young mage apprentices lost without a guiding hand that will teach them how to cast a spell. lavellan knows how to help them. his help is welcome. it doesn't take the soul out of him. allaros remembers, he loves helping a community while being its part. bull is finally relaxed because the tal-vashoth and captain of the chargers knows full well what happiness that brings. because he sees his kadan content.

coming back. facing the opportunity to feel at home and at peace, allaros has to reject it. it's sensible. he has to come back to making the world a better place for elves and mages. because he would have to give up on seeing bull. because to work for his people of the whole country, he has to give up on his desire to help a smaller community. because leaving the court feels like a betrayal. because if he won't, who will?

the uprising. these further events are less achievable, but. there should be an uprising of the elves led by briala's movement, as well as her and allaros personally behind the curtain. the unrest that the divine might not be able support openly, but wouldn't interfere as well.

the return of the dales. the great game of orlais will never cease to exist. its base is blackmail, gossips, and compromising evidence. the climax of the uprising is a final move in the great game played from the shadows by allaros, as dangerous for him and everyone around as the double-edged sword. one day the court of orlais would be nothing but chaos. the amount of evidence damaging enough for the nobility to give up the dales as the territory that must be returned to elves. because briala taught him how much the elves can see because they're never seen. i want the elves to win the great game with the nobility's very own weapon.

ripples on water. before that, lavellan gathers the chargers, bull and elgara, and hopes that whoever he couldn't gather would get the memo anyway. he says, they're all leverage, plain and simple. that he can't say anything, but it's possible that they have to leave orlais, never to come back. allaros knows the chargers aren't loyal to him, they're loyal to their captain who is in love with allaros. many of them have people they care about in orlais, friends, flings and loves. half of their contracts come from this place. eventually, they have to leave and forget their lives in orlais. soon after the blackmail outbreak, allaros goes missing. it should've been him so it's not someone else. neither bull nor elgara know when they will see lavellan again. always ready to go through fire and water for him, now they have to move on without lavellan. it's easier for some of the chargers to rebuild parts of their lives, they're mercenaries, after all. for some, it is not. in any case, it was lavellan's responsibility.

the end without permanence. then, elves must move to the dales and rebuild their lives as well. there is a long process of figuring out what their lives should look like now, and the tension between them and orlais is palpable. still, there is life ahead of them as well. orlesian forces search for the one responsible for what happened, but even though every suspicion falls on the lord inquisitor, they can't capture him. consequently, allaros cannot watch the new life of his people he was fighting for. but his work there is done, he isn't entitled for anything else. there's briala and others for that. allaros leaves traces here and there so they won't lose track of him and turn to the dales. these are very exhausting years for him. despite lavellan's best efforts, they, of course, try to search through the dales nevertheless. this is time to act. this is also time when bull catches news here and there of someone captured and accused. when he understands it's not allaros but someone who's been framed, bull bitterly realizes he was right about his kadan becoming the orlesian nobility. still, he sets his sights on a meeting. it might happen soon.

as a tradition, picrew neria surana, picrew-unmakable garrett hawke, allaros lavellan, + courier 6 and sera (because she fits too well) as a bonus.