After the Duel 🗡️

(nudity (?) cw)

finally played thru his little romance had the time of my little life

I luv some of Bull’s early design they look super badass but nothing-like-a-spy-ish

so badass actionfilm icon bull & rockstar mage dorian hahaha

i kept finding brushes that i didnt even know i had

Are you all right, amatus? Good. Then so am I.

listen. i'm not putting any weight to the possibility of da4 taking place 8 yrs into the future until i'm actually playing the actual game and the actual intro tells me i'm 8 yrs into the future

that being said. the concept of 40 yr old magister dorian pavus with his epilogue haircut in the early stages of becoming of silver fox is Peak

Tevinter babes <3

i'm testing out something, rb this with a character that is your brand. a character that is yours and yours alone

« All these ‘gifts’ to the Inquisition and the best they can do is the Malefica Imperio? Trite propaganda. But if you want twenty volumes on whether Divine Galatea took a shit on Sunday, this is evidently the place to find it. »

i’ve been missing Dorian lately

Character Headcanons: Personal Effects

These aren’t the things they carry for their utility. Yes: Cassandra has a favorite type of armor polish, Varric an especial preference for ink, Dorian a particular type of wool socks that he swears by (and, occasionally, at). But all of those–armor polish, ink, socks–are necessities.

No, the interesting thing is what each one carries that they absolutely do not need to. Many of them would deny it, or hide the item outright; perhaps that is wise, given how much you can discern from each one.

For Blackwall, it is a handkerchief, most inexpertly and lopsidedly embroidered with three daisies in one corner. He never uses it for handkerchief-like purposes–it’s far too small, too delicate, and too dainty to be much use like that–but he keeps it stuffed inside an inner pocket all the time, and even Sera knows better than to ask him about it. When mischance gets it dirty, he washes it by hand in clean water and hangs it up to dry, as if it was finest silk.

Cassandra keeps a little pot of kohl and a brush with her all the time, and applies it to her eyes nearly ever day, even though she wears no other makeup and keeps toilette with soap and cold water. But the kohl, that she can put on in the dark, now, with or without a mirror. When she was a young woman in Orlais, newly Right Hand, several of the sisters tried to take her under their wing, teach her how to present herself. Most of it failed utterly (Cassandra has little time and less patience for appearances, mostly; she will wear armor if she can and her least-battered gambeson if she cannot, and snarl about it if she must be cajoled even into a comparatively-restrained Orlesian silk dress uniform), but somehow, somehow, that mysterious slash of darkness across her eyes persisted. Now, it is how she sees herself; she feels off, unbalanced, without it.

Cole has the hat, of course. He wears it whenever he doesn’t actually acutely need a helmet, and he parts with it only for washing and only under duress. “It isn’t for seeing,” he says, “and it isn’t for being seen.” The washerwoman asks, tartly, if it’s maybe for smelling? He doesn’t get the joke, He says, “It’s for being.”

Mages may be born, Seekers chosen, but Templars are made–or make themselves. And though he has left the order, Cullen is acutely aware of that. He makes himself, remakes himself, every day and day by day. The amulet is a reminder; it might have been the Hero of Ferelden that freed him from torment, but it was Wynne who gave him the amulet. It has no magical purpose at all, and its symbol is incomplete, imperfect, a ribbon twisting on itself with no end. “We all must follow the path day by day,” Wynne said–Wynne, Maker bless her, buried now beneath an apple tree, and there ought to be a shrine there, there ought–“even though we know it has no end.” He wears it beneath his undermost shirt, close to his skin.

Dorian has a little knife–it’s not really even fair to call it a knife. The blade is only a bit more than an inch long and quite dull, far too dull to cut herbs or break skin, the hilt as long as the blade, made of shimmer-green mother-of-pearl. He uses it for opening letters and bottles, for cutting loose threads, for scraping dried mud off his boots, for cleaning his fingernails. The color catches the light, bright and peacock-brilliant as his name. “My mother gave it to me,” he says, in a way that ends the conversation right there, sure as a snapped thread.

The qunari approach to personal things, belongings, is just as complicated as the qunari approach to names. In theory, under the qun, nobody has one: your name is your status and the things you have are the things you need, both decided by the Tamassrans. Iron Bull has always known that this wasn’t quite true: five laborers working together, all titled athlok, will find other things to call each other if only just to say “hey, buddy, watch it or that branch will fall on your head.” He has long justified to himself that his attachment to the first coin–literally, the first physical coin–he ever earned with the Chargers is the same thing, just a way of saying “hey, buddy,” in the here and now. Secretly, he dreads the time when he’ll have to figure out how much he’s lying to himself; Hissrad to the core.

The way she carries herself, spine erect and eyes bright and smile always at the ready, it would be easy to forget that Josephine has the weight not only of the Inquisition’s reputation but also of House Montilyet balanced always on her back. That is, of course, deliberate. There is no advantage to her, diplomatically or otherwise, for Josephine to be seen to fade or falter. But when she needs a moment, when the weight is too much, she goes to her room and locks the door and takes out her sachet, stuffed with dried lavender (harvested on the high Antivan hills in midsummer, fresh and spicy as the sun above Rialto) and embroidered with the Montilyet family insignia (and beneath that, in her own hand-stitching, figures to represent her mother and father, her sister, her brothers), crushes it beneath her hand to release the scent and breathes, breathes, breathes. (She knows her beloved truly knows her heart when she finds that they have replaced the lavender, without comment.)

Leliana’s secrets are many and varied, her lies at least as prodigious. She has cut herself off from her past lives so many times that her history is a litany of ridged scars (much like her back, though those not in the know might never suspect). So it would surprise many that the thing she carries, the thing she always has, is something as identifiable, as famous as a few petals of Andraste’s Grace, pressed and dried between the pages of her copy of the Chant. Perhaps it is Leliana being so clever, so sneaky that she has circled back upon herself, done the least expected thing by doing the most expected thing. Or perhaps it is simply the truth that those petals, faded and darkened to the color of parchment and scented now with only the ghost of a sweet aroma, are that important to her.

The people who say that things aren’t important haven’t ever really had to go without, or so Sera thinks–it’s easy to get your nose up in the air about all the really special things being intangible if you’ve never wanted for food or clothes or a bed or even just a warm fire. But all that said Sera’s not much for specific things; one bed’s good as another as long as it’s warm. And yet… yet, for all her life, long as she can remember, she’s dragged around this scarf. It’s red, and it’s kind of got holes in, but it’s warm… warm in a way that means that she wears it even when someone offers her something technically warmer. If she really likes you, she’ll loop it around your shoulders and hers at the same time when you huddle by the fire–so long as you aren’t so stupid as to start blah, blah, blah-ing over where did it come from and was it her parents that gave it to her and whatever. Boring.

The easy joke is that Solas doesn’t keep anything because all his things are in the Fade. But Solas knows perfectly well that there is value in the world of the physical, of here-and-now; if there wasn’t, spirits wouldn’t want so badly to cross over. Still: he carries only a few things. Among them is a freshwater pearl, kept in a carved wooden box no bigger than the first joint of his thumb. It is a gift, he will say, from a loved one from whom he has been long parted: and that is all he will ever say about it.

Varric has a piece of string, half a foot long, maybe. It’s fairly new; he got a few weeks after he arrived at Skyhold, which means that Leliana–who watches all the mail, or has people who do, at least–is aware of its provenance. It’s just a piece of string, old and worn, a little longer than his hand, and it’s got several ratty knots down its length. It came with a letter, chatty, referencing the string not at all, signed “Daisy.” He keeps it in his boot, tucked up high enough that it won’t give him a blister, low enough that it won’t fall out. Safest place to keep a thing: nobody goes poking around in a dwarf’s boots.

You might expect Vivienne to be circumspect about it, but when you see her fingering the small grey stone she is all forthrighness. “It’s the first thing I ever deliberately cast an illusion on, back when I was a child. Sentimentality, perhaps, but I have kept it. Would you like to see?” The pebble on her palm shivers and becomes a small pebble-colored kitten, stretching and shaking its head, pacing the border of her hand. “At the Circle, you know, we don’t always practice these martial magics, freezing and burning and setting barriers. Sometimes there’s time for subtler things.” The not-cat settles down, loafing its legs under itself. “Of course when I was a child, the illusion was barely better than a pebble with feet! But I have refined myself with time.” She closes her palm, opens it again to nothing but a pebble. “As should we all.”

I feel like Dorian is the kind of guy that gets snarkier and more sarcastic the more pissed off he gets especially when he’s in physical pain. Also, he somehow manages to remind you how good looking he is no matter how close he is to death.

This comic is the combination of both.

I was supposed to just practice anatomy today but this works too..

I’m spending eight hours per week in the bus. My newest hobby consist of listening to the audiobooks done by Ramon Tikaram, picking the best parts and imagining Dorian x Inquisitor scenarios. It’s fun.

Dorian Pavus came to my house and told me he loves trans men.

so this is it, the big secret! one card per companion, based off their focus abilities ♥ mages got priority, egg will be done soon.

Books

Taremis often found books in his quarters at Skyhold. Each time he returned from a mission there was a surprise waiting for him.

The elegant tomes of poetry and plays, fresh from the printing press were from Josephine. Most were in Antivan, a language he ached to learn. Equally elegant note was inside of each, recommending good poems or acts of the play.

The steamy romances, printed on cheap paper, with men and women in various stages of undress and entirely too much hair on their heads, were left hastily on his desk. Cassandra might have denied her reading preferences, but Taremis knew. He shared them. They often traded back and forth, wordlessly, save for a few underlined quotes in the books themselves.

The ever-growing collection of Hard in Hightown was, of course, from Varric. Taremis did not enjoy the serial as much as the dwarf would have liked. But having the Inquisitor show himself with the books bolstered the sales. And Taremis was nothing if not a good friend.

The seemingly random books, often without a title, were the most dangerous. They were from Sera. Taremis learned to open them from a distance, outside, using his magic. He did not want another swarm of angry bees in his chambers. When the books were not filled with insects, they proved to be interesting, yet confusing, reading. Just as much as the little notes and doodles scribbled in the margins.

The stacks of ancient tomes and scrolls, thick with dust and age, were from Solas. They touched upon rift magic, the fade and spirits. They were to be the fuel in the intellectual debates both of them enjoyed so much.

But the biggest number of books was from Dorian. Each one carefully picked, a note penned on the inside cover in his messy, cursive hand. The tradition began shortly after moving into Skyhold. Taremis arrived at his quarters from Crestwood, soaked to the bone and exhausted. He found a small red book on his nightstand. As per our last conversation, here is something to sweeten your night, Dorian had written inside. It was an atlas of medicinal herbs of the North. Beautifully illustrated, the plants that came up in their conversations marked.

After a year, Taremis filled an entire shelf with these books, each picked by Dorian, each about a topic they discussed. History of the Nevarran Mortalitasi. The culture of pre-Andastrian Orlesians. A catalogue of early Tevinter art. A study on the nature of the schools of Entropy and Creation. And so on. Each book had a humorous note inside and marked pages. They were a diary of their conversations. The last book was about astronomy. Dorian pressed it into Taremis’s hands as he boarded a ship to Tevinter, hiding the tears glistening in his eyes. It was a beautiful book. Black cover, embossed with constellations, silver leaf in the title. He scarcely touched it, afraid the smell of his lover would fade if he did. But on lonely nights the book was a comfort. Taremis wept as he read the note inside. For my brightest star in the sky, a little something to ensure you keep studying Tevene even when I’m not there. Remember we look upon the same stars, Amatus. Yours forever and ever, Dorian.