Just a BioWare Fan

Rallying the Troops

In many places Cullen found no Templars at all, though the slaughter was just as bad. Most of the corridors remained empty but Fade creatures had sprung up all through the tower. In some rooms he found mages who had fought against them and died for their pains. Relief at seeing how many of them had resisted this plot which had spun so quickly out of control cut through the grief of seeing the loyal mages sprawled, lifeless and bloodied, in their own quarters.

Every few rooms presented yet another tableau that fueled Cullen’s anger and determination. The appalling waste of life and the proof that the Chantry had been right all along pushed him through his desolation. He used his every reserve to keep moving. Once he’d investigated each room on the periphery he headed to the open central area, one used on each level for a different purpose. The one he hesitated outside held the storerooms, manned by Tranquil who could not be possessed because they had no connection to the Fade.

Cullen stood with one hand on the door, awkwardly holding his sword in his shield hand rather than sheathe the weapon. He reminded himself that any tactician would want to secure the potions and tools contained within so he should expect the worst.

I’ve been entertaining myself lately with songs that leap to mind during certain portions of Dragon Age: Inquisition even though they either contain too many anachronisms or just really don’t fit.  To that end, I thought I’d share a few of my head canon songs for entertainment purposes.

First, there’s Van Canto’s cover of Primo Victoria.  It has to be the cover because there are no electric guitars in Thedas.  There aren’t any Nazis, either, but at least we can get the music right if not the lyrics perfect.  If you can ignore the date of the D-Day invasion and hear “Nazi lines” and “Venatori” you might get a sense for why this one pops into my head.

Every time I’m getting ready to go to the Arbor Wilds and throw the weight of my epic army against the forces of evil (as in the Red Templars) I start hearing

Searching for Hope

Cullen took the time to investigate the novice barracks though he was sure he’d left all of the children in the atrium with Wynne and the apprentices.  There wasn’t much he could have done had he found a young mage cowering in the baths but he couldn’t chance some creature leaping up at his back.  

The bunk beds, lined up in ranks with trunks at their feet, gave him a clear view across the long room.   He found nothing more threatening than balls of dust and the occasional lost slipper or glove and a makeshift ragdoll that had fallen from some poor little girl’s pillow.  Cullen picked it up and tucked it into the bunk beside which he’d found it in the hope that its owner was one of the little ones safe behind Wynne’s barrier.  He prayed fervently to Andraste that they could be reunited soon.

When he felt satisfied nothing lurked in the shadows he left, closing the door behind him.  It went much the same on the rest of the lowest level.  Those who’d lived so close to the main doors had either fled before the doors had been shut or ascended to join the fighting.

Tenuous Survival

A lone woman moved among the slaughter near the far door. She looked about her dazedly, dark hair matted and hanging in her face. To all appearances she was having as much trouble believing she’d survived as Cullen was. The mages who had been fighting around her sprawled in untidy, unmoving heaps.

Cullen recognized the enchanter lying just at her feet. His heart sank at the sight of the healer’s body but he picked his way to her through the filth and blood. She lay unmoving, so pale he thought she must have fallen to one of the demons. As he reached her side, however, Wynne sat up, her shaking hand going to her head while she swayed. The other woman gasped, “I thought she’d been killed.”

“As did I.” Wynne’s calm voice sounded wry as ever, weak though it was. She took but a moment to gather herself. “We have to get the children somewhere safe.” She spoke serenely, as though she weren’t sitting among dead abominations and the bloody remains of her friends.

Nightmares Come True

Cullen’s mind wandered a bit with his aches and boredom. The mages had begun discussing the various fraternities and how best to keep the peace among those factions within the Circle. As the conflicts had amounted to little more than verbal tussles and the occasional thrown punch, they themselves held little interest for the Templars.

The views of the fraternities, however, did, at least the ones obvious about how they chafed at the Chantry’s control of the Circles. As the mages technically governed themselves the Templars could do little overtly but many of the Order found methods, subtle to varying degrees, to encourage those who supported the status quo. The little privileges the knights encouraged the First Enchanter to grant and the more aggressive treatment the others received made the Aequitarians a strong faction, even if they weren’t the strong Chantry supporters the Loyalists were.

The differences fed the restlessness of the Libertarians. They pointed to every perceived inequity, no matter the true source, as further proof of their oppression. Cullen wondered from time to time

Settling Down

The tower felt dank and empty after Kyla left with Duncan. Cullen dreamt of her often; the fleeting contacts and covert smiles haunted him. The other mages seemed dull in comparison and even overtures from friendly Templars could not tempt him. He focused on his training and renewed yet again his devotion to Andraste and the Maker.

Jowan’s display had shocked him out of the complacency into which he had so quickly settled. Between the proof that the mages needed closer watching and the removal of Kyla’s insidious, if delicious, influence he found himself more sure of his duty than ever. Events over the following weeks tested that new dedication.

The Warden’s sudden departure left all of Kinloch Hold on edge. The Templars who’d believed Duncan had been ready to recruit them groused about a blood mage and a slip of a girl, an apprentice mere months past her Harrowing, forcing him to leave before he could decide which of them to take.

A Heart Conscripted

A young man in worn novice robes emerged. He’d clearly outgrown them—his thin ankles and wrists showed where the size intended for young people hadn’t kept up with his adult size. His head was turned as he spoke to someone behind him and for a moment he remained unaware of the threat facing him.

When Jowan faced the room he stopped cold, his greasy black hair tumbled across eyes widened in fear and anger. In a fraction of a second he'd pulled a little blade from its sheath at his belt and drawn it across his wrist.

The room erupted into bedlam. The Templars reacted with their abilities made to suppress blood magic, their training overtaking their shock at being confronted so boldly. Irving flung a spell of paralysis at the younger man. The homely woman in yellow Chantry robes behind him screamed and flung herself away, burying her face in her hands.

A Warden and a Worry

On an early-spring day of the sort that made Cullen wish the Circle tower had windows below the Harrowing chamber, a man arrived that threw the complacent residents into turmoil. The weathered little boat rowed across Lake Callenhad unannounced and a Grey Warden stepped onto the dock.

His dark beard jutted to a perfect point before him and his distinctive plate threw sparks of sunlight as he strode up to the doors with a dagger and sword gleaming prominently on his back, at least according to the men guarding the entry that day. Everyone in Thedas knew of the fabled order and their ages-old charge to protect their world from a threat unseen for four hundred years, no one at Kinloch Hold had ever seen a Warden nor expected to.

Even in the isolation of the Hold reports had come ever more frequently of skirmishes with Darkspawn, the tainted creatures that teemed in the Deep Roads the dwarves had tunneled beneath all the known world thousands of years before. The king himself, Cailan the Glorious, had called for a contingent of the Circle’s strongest mages to travel far south to Ostagar.

Routine Disruptions

There were accusations and even proven incidents of Templars stepping over the boundary between guarding and abusing. The Order was no different than any other group: bad apples found their way into it. What was deemed a healthy fear of mages had been ingrained in each of them and some chose to prove their dedication by dominating their charges instead of monitoring them.

The long quiet that Cullen found in the Ferelden Circle tower fostered a sense of protection rather than oppression. It led to boredom more than violence but that lack of excitement posed its own dangers. Whispers circulated and he heard stories of beatings or more-subtle punishments for infractions real, imagined, or even invented for entertainment.

Half of those whispers in Cullen’s first days at Kinloch Hold concerned a young man brought to the tower by force at the unusually advanced age of twelve. From the very beginning the boy had tried to escape the Circle’s confines. He had taken advantage of the beach excursions novice mages had once enjoyed to swim away one afternoon.

Everyday Temptations

In the days that followed Cullen learned the routines of his new home.  He found his way around the unfamiliar halls and came to understand that mages did not cook with fireballs or play catch with bolts of lightning.  What he’d been taught to fear was more a myth than a reality.

He saw children as young as five or six who had been brought in from all over Ferelden, taken from their families or turned over to a Chantry somewhere.  Few of them displayed the power do to much more than hurt themselves or break the dishes.  Most simply settled into the dormitory with the other novices.  The apprentices that watched and guided the little ones had long experience dealing with homesickness and tiny rebellions, from their own adjustments to life in the tower as much as from having seen them with each new child.

The newest Templars were usually assigned to the most senior enchanters, those who had been with the Circle for decades and whose stability was most proven.  Cullen was the youngest of the Order at the Tower and the first new recruit to have come for several years.  As a result he did little more for his first few weeks than walk the upper corridors with an older man.

A Fitting Introduction

With gratitude toward his parents and his devotion to Andraste strengthening his dedication, Cullen had applied himself to his training and absorbed the lessons of his elders. Eight years of assignments in increasingly larger villages had brought him full circle back to the Chantry in Denerim where he was evaluated by the same people that had begun his training.

Along the way he had had occasion to help Templar Hunters find escaped mages. He had guarded children turned in by their families until representatives of the Circle could retrieve them. He’d seen fear paralyze the hunted and felt it pierce his own heart. But mostly he had waited.

He had stood in needless plate to stare across fields and contemplate dun-colored hills. He had guarded wooden chests in which naught but a few coins rattled, all the local farmers could spare to help those with even less. He had listened to the muddled, rambling stories of Templars who could barely raise their swords.

First-Day Jitters

Cullen’s first day at the Ferelden Circle of Magi in Kinloch Hold was nothing like what his Templar training had led him to expect. Instead of slavering fiends waiting for a moment’s inattention to burst into full demonic flower he found children carrying books, elderly women who looked more like his grandmother than dangerous maniacs, and young people studying and engaging in lively debates.

He had first joined the Order as a recruit at the age of fourteen, fresh from the farm, filled with self-assurance and love for Andraste. The good Sisters had cropped his red-gold curls short, fit him for long skirts and his first shiny breastplate, and given him a sword. He and a dozen others had sworn to loyalty and devotion to the Maker and his bride. It was, in short, as thrilling as he’d expected…for about a week.

Then he discovered that most of his time would be spent studying and learning Chantry history and scripture. Lessons began with reading. None but the wealthiest young people recently accepted could make out so much as their own names much less the ornate and dusty tomes containing the Chant of Light. Rote memorization and long lectures filled the hours between chores and meals.

Struggles and Striving

By the afternoon Sebastian and I talked through our discontent we’d spent hours together in one parlor or another, chatting politely with yet another noble family that simply had to host the Champion one time more than their neighbors. We’d danced a hundred stately rounds when I couldn’t face another boorish rich boy who’d never done anything more exciting than walk through Lowtown once on a dare.

His presence at these balls and dinner parties gave him unprecedented access to the nobles of Kirkwall. I often tried to deflect attention to his cause. Talk of betrayal and murder in Starkhaven meant a welcome relief from scrutiny, short-lived though it might have been, and genteel Sebastian made quite the impression on the ladies of Hightown.

The prince’s genuine sorrow and piety won their hearts but no breath of scandal ever touched him. Their husbands found him honorable and masculine enough to be likable, as well. In fact some of them told him how much they enjoyed his company much more aggressively than their wives. He told me of their advances in hushed tones and oblique language.

After the Storm

It had been a year since I’d staggered out of the keep that no longer had a Viscount. In the power vacuum his death left Meredith expanded at an alarming rate and every inch of her bristled with unreasoning fear. Even mages who never left the Gallows, who had, until recently, supported the Templars, stood accused of plotting and nefarious deeds.

Things had gotten so bad that even Cullen, her second in command, had begun to question her judgment. Though he never admitted it in so many words he’d begun to shade the truth and then outright lie to her to keep her placated as best he could.

The haunted look he’d had when we’d first met, an artifact of some horrific experience in the Ferelden Circle, had faded in the first few years I had known him. Over the months after I was named Champion the deep circles beneath his eyes returned again. As Knight-Lieutenant he retained enough authority to do much without involving Meredith but he couldn’t have been more than ten years my senior and a good number of those he tried to command were much older.

A Stolen Sister and a Princely Request

When finally I arrived at my uncle’s grotty little apartment it was to find Knight-Commander Cullen at the door and my mother screaming. It seemed Bethany had been forced during my absence to be more open in completing jobs and had come to the notice of the Chantry. Cullen could no longer pretend not to see her.

Our previous help was not for naught, however. He promised as much leniency for her as he could manage and tried to ease the sting by vowing that our family would not be punished for hiding her. He offered as courtly a bow as the circumstances allowed before he and his men took my resigned sister and headed back to the Gallows.

Naturally, mother blamed me for this development as well, particularly since I’d given most of our coin to Bartrand for the expedition and taken the two most helpful friends we’d had with me. I tried to deflect some of the blame on Gamlen, the lazy lout who had put us in this position in the first place, and asked if she would rather Bethany had gone to work at the Blooming Rose. Mother was having none of it.

While my family struggled to maintain even our humble place in Lowtown Aveline had joined the city guard and moved into the barracks in the viscount’s palace at the very top of Kirkwall. Her skills and integrity had quickly brought her up the ranks but I avoided visiting her much for fear of dirtying her reputation.

She threw jobs our way when she could, however, and had remained a fast friend that joined us for evenings of cards and carousing at The Hanged Man from time to time. She acted more as a babysitter on evenings when we got snockered on cheap whiskey; losing control and looking like an idiot in public held no interest for my straight-laced friend. But she clearly enjoyed seeing us act like fools and seemed at ease fostering our banter and restraining us from joining the not-infrequent fights that erupted there.

The city swarmed with corruption, dock officials and city guards taking bribes and involving themselves in even the nastiest business in Darktown much less the more affluent sections of the city. Aveline was shocked every time we uncovered another scandal, unable to believe that everyone who served the city did not do so with her commitment to the public good. I found her naiveté adorable and teased her mercilessly every time she hired me to recover goods from a sleazy dockmaster’s assistant or to corral criminals that had bribed a guard to look the other way while they looted someone’s home. She kept her ear to the ground and had paid me to thwart many a criminal enterprise but there was always another brewing.