Category Archives: Dragon Age

DA2: Please Stay Part 6

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Climax and then schmoopy epilogue stuff! If you like metal, I was listening to Unstoppable by Ad Infinitum when I wrote the final fight with Meredith. It doesn’t perfectly fit either Reid’s character or the situation, but it’s a badass, inspiring song, and I love it. : )

I actually at first did not kill Anders… and then halfway through Lowtown decided that was OoC for Reid. He is descended from my Sith Inquisitor character Murlesson, he does have a ruthless streak, even if virtually everything about his character has been softened and warmed by being in completely different circumstances. So I reloaded.

I actually still like Isabela, and next time I’ll get her approval up higher (with the console if I have to) so she’ll stick around for the ending. : ) Just giving Reid a little wish-fulfillment here.

 

Part 5

 

Kidnapped

“I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t have come here,” said a voice, and Reid looked around from Carver’s still body to see the friendly-ish Templar Thrask approaching him. “Though I can’t understand why you side with Meredith now. You showed me we can stand up to her. When I realized you had risked your life lying to protect these mages…” He gestured towards some vaguely familiar figures Reid dimly recalled from years ago. “Please, Champion. I have nothing but respect for you. It’s Meredith we must see gone.”

“Who the hell said I side with Meredith?” Reid demanded. “Isn’t it fairly common knowledge I’m an apostate? The only reason I’m here in any sort of hostile capacity is that you kidnapped my brother. Let him go, and we’ll talk.” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 5

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Middle Ground has some ridiculously unrealistic dialogue, but this is my dumb fic so it says things that I want to hear. Also I had to keep toning down the fight, because Reid really could go off in dangerously intense ways.

When I played the game, I didn’t import a DAO save (for one thing I’m not sure where my Elizabeth save files are) and so I picked the Mahariel Warden pre-set to just jump in and get started, in which Alistair is king. And that was going to be useful, because as Reid gets into in this set of scenes, he’s starting to feel the pressure intensely enough to think about giving up. So Alistair was going to be very helpful in making Reid feel like he ought to stay to the end of the game. However, in Elizabeth’s game, Alistair is still a Warden. So I wrote two alternate scenes – one where Queen Anora asks Reid basically the same stuff as Alistair (which is my headcanon), but I also wrote one where Warden Alistair asks – and that one’s kind of more fun? So both of them are here for your entertainment.

I feel Merrill’s story arc really fumbles the landing. Hard to fix without going in a completely different direction.

Part 4

 

Anders

The sewer was as horrific as ever, and Reid was getting suspicious. “Anders, you’re really going to drink a shit potion? Really?”

“Would you balk at this if it were you?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Reid said. “You sure owe me, though.”

“I do,” Anders said. “Though I think I’m going to ruin it: I know it isn’t my place to criticize, but… Are you sure about Fenris?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 4

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Meeting Carver in the Deep Roads with Nathaniel was really unsatisfying.

References Elizabeth Cousland, my DAO Warden.

Yes, I did do Alone with just Reid and Fenris. Since it was on Easy mode, I could do it for the RP.

The Smile part was inspired by a joke one of my friends told me once.

Part 3

 

Bullying

“Your master must have been a terrible man, to make you hate mages so,” Merrill said.

“He is a terrible man, and he’s not dead,” Fenris said shortly.

“We’re not all like him,” she said, coaxingly.

Fenris didn’t even look at her. “How often I hear that, and yet, how often I find it’s not true.

“The Keepers are different. They exist to preserve the old ways, and to protect our people.”

His glower deepened. “And none of them would ever fall prey to a demon. Or perform blood magic.” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 3

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All That Remains is the saddest quest in the game, made me cry so much ;_; Even though I was looking at spoilers to see how to deal with various NPCs, I somehow managed not to spoil myself about the major character death, so it was incredibly effective.

Needed to call the Arishok out on his BS, he makes no sense. And yes, I didn’t have enough approval with Isabela for her to stay. For every sarcastic line she enjoyed, I’d do something nice that would annoy her.

Part 2

 

All That Remains

Reid came out of his room, where he’d been working on some history research, to hear Uncle Gamlen shouting. “No, Lee-an-drah! Where is she?”

“Enchantment?” Sandal said.

Reid frowned as he descended the stairs. “Shouting won’t make him understand you better, you know. What’s up?”

“Your mother never showed up for our weekly get-together,” Gamlen said. “She never misses it. What’s happened to her?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 2

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Part 1

 

A Bitter Pill

Reid bent down in front of the elf girl. “What was your name?”

“Orana…”

“Okay, Orana, I’m going to help you, so listen carefully. Once you make it out of this cave, can you get to Kirkwall on your own?”

“Y-yes…”

“All right. My name is Reid Hawke. Go to Hightown and find the Amell estate; my mother, Leandra, will let you in. Tell her you’ve come to work for me. Do you understand?”

“Go to Hightown in Kirkwall and find the Amell estate. Tell your mother that I’m going to work for you, Master Hawke. Right?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 1

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In the second half of Nanowrimo this year I realized I didn’t have the energy to hold down five gigs and finish writing my complicated final arc for Devil’s Due, but I still wanted to finish Nanowrimo so I could get that discount on Scrivener (I like it! I think it’s really useful). So I turned to fluff instead, and since I’d recently restarted playing DA2 with yet another rendition of Reid (now with an actual family!) I needed to write some FenReid friendmance. It’s interesting because Fenris and Murlesson share a character archetype – emo angry OP escaped slave bishounen – so in this story Reid is quite different from some of his other iterations in order to better contrast Fenris. Also because Sarcastic!Hawke is great fun to play with.

Going to take a second here to complain about how rushed DA2 is. I love the characters, but they’re shallow as puddles; I like the visual design, but that’s the most egregiously recycled part (especially the maps, obviously); I like the story, but I don’t like how all the time I spent in it feels like an appetizer for another game. (I did acquire Inquisition, but Frostbite makes it look like garbage so I need to mod it up before playing. MEA looks better than DAI. : P ) It seemed every five minutes I would notice something that wasn’t quite polished about this game. The only thing that is absolutely top-notch is the voice acting: the characters may only have one note each, but their voices play that note beautifully.

So this is all pretty messy writing by my standards, and I don’t care, it’s for the fluffy fluff and the feels. Some headcanons and character build: Reid’s autoattack spells in this story aren’t determined by his staff, but by what he learned to control personally (so he only ever uses lightning as an auto, not fire or force or whatever); he has some of the Primal tree, all of the Entropy tree, and a little Blood Mage and Force Mage specializations; I played on Easy so there’s no friendly fire. I downloaded a hair mod and a freckle mod, and the Vow of Pride robes mod (though I didn’t give those to him until Act 2; in Act 1 I wore the default gear for the RP). A screenshot and another screenshot.

The second little bit is inspired by a mod that removes the dead bodies out of Fenris’s mansion after you recruit him.

Spoilers: Isabela leaves (I didn’t have her approval high enough), Anders dies (sorry, Anders fans).

The dog is named Bo after Sorne’s dog in our DnD game.

This story is rated M for incessant swearing and mild sexiness. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 9

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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh I’m done all the Dragon Age fanficccccc and now I don’t have to write anymorrrrrrre- Since I don’t have any urge to write DA2 fic, and I may not even play Inquisition, I’m all good : )

But omg how did this last chapter take so long

The last third of this chapter brought to you by Super Eurobeat!

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

 

Dawn broke on a discouraging sight. Under a grey, overcast sky, Vigil’s Keep was encircled by darkspawn, though they couldn’t climb the cliffs of the mountain behind. Still, there was no way we were getting in to reinforce the defenders. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 8

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Oh man, I’ve been looking forward to attacking Amaranthine for so long you don’t even know. Soundtracks include Doa and E.M.A., but not Counterattack Mankind because that’s for the next chapter. I went and watched more bits of walkthrough for dialogue and found that the logistics of this section of the game don’t make a whole lot of sense (I saved the Keep on my (so-far-only) playthrough so I hadn’t even seen what happens when you save the city, but I decided it made more sense for her to do this for this story). And a lot of things are made dramatic that I wonder would have been quite so dire to actual medieval people (LIKE SIEGES. Worrisome certainly but safer than open ground combat). >.>

I didn’t finish the entire story by midnight, but I will certainly be done tomorrow. It’s been a productive NaNoWriMo, even if I’d like to collapse for two or three days now. Final approximate wordcount of absolute fiction: 76,055

Chapter 7, Chapter 9

 

Chapter 8

 

She stood in the gateway, waiting impatiently for the tiny figures down the road to come closer. It seemed to take a very long time, and meanwhile, the chill late winter wind was nibbling at her fingers, her nose, her ears, even through the woolen gloves and hat she was wearing. Not fashionable for an acting-arlessa to be wearing a peasant’s hat and gloves, but she actually didn’t care, though she would have cared even less if they’d actually worked completely against the cold. She did not pace, though she was tempted to, instead maintaining a poise of motionless dignity. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 7

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Taking advantage of my last exhausted writing momentum to plow through the rest of this story this month. Then I will be done all the Dragon Age fanfic and I won’t have to write any more! I hope! This chapter is not the greatest in particular but I just need to move on. I watched a walkthrough for some of the Kal’Hirol dialogue, but I cut down on The Lost’s monologue.

Chapter 6, Chapter 8

 

Chapter 7

 

As the year drew on towards midwinter, construction on the castle slowed. The walls were nearly finished, but there were still some towers that were definitely not. We were vulnerable while they remained so, but fortunately the darkspawn seemed less inclined to move about in the bitter cold, and then only attacking outlying farms and skirmishing with the army. Continue reading →

Perfect Time: Part 3

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This is the chapter with all of the feels, and you know how I can tell? I made myself cry multiple times writing this chapter. I just have a thing for heartwrenching innocent kids, I think. It was like when I wrote the Canas/Nancy/Hugh thing back in Anima’s Seal, but worse because LizZev is much closer to my heart than Canas. D: (sorry, Canas, you’re still cool) And yes, it’s extremely self indulgent, but hey, I hardly ever kill off my characters, even though I should probably. Unfortunately, my own feels only work on me once. If I read it in a year I’ll probably cry again. Also also I seem to have inadvertently set up a parallel to Dishonoured 2 here in a way.

Also for those of you wondering when I’ll ever finish WWADH a.k.a. the Awakening fic, since it takes place before this one… Soon? I’ve been trying, I’m still stuck on writing Kal’Hirol. I’d like to do that one next and finish it with November, and then I can start on Akuliina with December and finish all that by the New Year? Maybe? Tbh guys I’m flagging; this week has also been extremely busy (emergency last-minute Messiah performances tonight and Saturday! Whoo! also I took my car in to get the brakes repaired/replaced and found out there are more things wrong with it. Typical.) and I would like a break; I’m quite tired, not just of creating, but in general. Maybe clear some of those games out of my to-do list (and try not to write fanfics about any of them).

Part 2

 

Part 3

He woke to the change in Liz’s breathing beside him. The room was still pitch black, in the depths of the lengthening fall night. It was raining gently outside. Though he listened, he couldn’t hear if Armida had stirred in her room beside, so it wasn’t that which had awakened her. Continue reading →