Rebuilding my FYP brick by brick
30, she/her, 🏳️🌈, wlw, neurospicy, autistic, original tumblrina, dragon age, baldur’s gate 3, epic the musical, arcane, caitvi, timebomb
Me: Fuck, the paper towels I want are on the top shelf.
The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--
(paper towel roll falls on my face)
Sir David Attenborough, pleasantly: Success.
Shout out @rookanisstuff for this idea! You had the idea of the servants discussing what to bring Rook for breakfast at the Dellamorte household literal months ago and I said I'd write a fic about it. So- here it is! It stars my beloved Rook Una Mercar, but anyone is welcome to imagine their Rook as well.
As always- no reposts, but reblogs are always welcome!
It was a warm morning. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the Dellamortes were never ones to dally in bed. The older servants remembered a small and straight-backed Lucanis dragging a bleary-eyed Ilario out of bed and down to training with Caterina. Grasping hands grabbed cups of coffee at 10 years old, taking quick sips as their near-silent feet padded down halls with walls that must have stretched higher than the sky to children. The oldest servant, Portia remembered when the cousins had been a new addition to house. At the time, Portia herself was a younger woman, having just gone through layer after layer of vetting and security to be admitted for an entry level maid position. Even back then, the Dellamorte name had meant something- something heady and dark and dangerous.
Decided to make my Creepy Crypt Baby Ingellvar a spirit of Liberty solely so I can have her and Solas play out the "help! help! I'm being repressed!" scene from Monty Python.
Solas: What makes you qualified to lead?
Rook: I'm not the leader. No one is.
Solas: What.
Rook: We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
Solas: Yes.
Rook: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
Solas: Yes, I see.
Rook: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,-
Solas: Be quiet!
Rook: -but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more-
Solas: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Rook: Order!? Who do you think you are?
Solas: I am the Dread Wolf!
Rook: Well, I didn't vote for you.
and then things devolve from there until we get to the point of Rook going "Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!" because I just feel Spirit of Liberty Rook poking holes in Solas' pride and image he has built for himself as a great liberator by being a very dedicated anarchist would be pretty funny.
Part 21 of my appreciation project.
@spinfins A fic based on their wonderful fanfic here. Thank you for feeding the fandom!
Art by @toonybrin here!
The water was warm, but Emmrich barely seemed to feel it.
"Bathe him," Dorian had said. "Just enough to soak his wounds. Don't fill the tub. Don't scrub. We don't know the extent of his injuries, and we don't need you peeling his skin like you would a salmon."
Rook winced at the image, and Dorian apologised.
Since that first lines tag game got me to actually look at what I've written lately and put it in some kind of order, I figured I'd use that to make a new pinned post.
Young Lucanis and Illario pre-Veilguard
Lucanis meets Varric pre-Veilguard
Rook, Bellara, and Davrin bonding in Arlathan
Viago catches Rookanis at home
Lucanis and Viago when Rook is in the Fade
Post-Veilguard Rookanis in Treviso
Viago and Lucanis discuss the future post-Veilguard
Discernment (Regency AU)
Muffin Tops (modern AU)
Never Better (ficlet collection)
If I Had My Way, I'd Tear the Building Down
With Thy Watchwords Honor, Duty (modern AU)
Beauty Walks Beside Him (blind Jaskier AU)
Just Between You and Me (ficlet collection)
I'm pretty sure anything pre-Inquisition has been banished to the depths of my Google Drive, but if you somehow have a burning need to see my takes on F!Tabris/Zevran, F!Hawke/Fenris, Isabela/Anders, F!Shepard/Garrus, F!Shepard/Jacob (yes, I was the one person who romanced Jacob Taylor), F!Revan/Canderous, or Carth/Bastila, drop me an ask and I'll see if I can hook you up.
I just love how if you're a Warden, you get addressed as "Warden Thorne". If you're a Mourn Watcher, you get addressed as "Watcher Ingellvar". And so on, and so forth.
Not if you're a Crow.
Not Daddy Viago.
You don't get a letter addressed to "de Riva". No, no.
You get
"Idiot".
That man is truly the most compassionate and loving father figure in the entire game. Pushing Rook to be better, criticising so they improve, analysing every move they make.
But will take down the Maker himself if they're threatened by anyone other than him.
Also I truly believe we were robbed of having Viago call us "Idiot" (affectionately and non affectionately) instead of "Rook" throughout the entire game, if you choose the Antivan Crow background.
I just have strong feelings for Antivan Crows, okay?
I thought I might have been done with the Baldur's Gate and Veilguard crossover drawings, especially since I was planning on doing follow-up smut version, but then I realised that I couldn't pair the boys up and not also ley Withers and Manfred meet.
Also collecting the other five pairings so they've in one place.
As soon as what is left of the team staggers back to the Lighthouse from Tearstone Island, Taash stalks away from the eluvian with long strides that far outpace anyone who would follow them. Bellara starts to anyway, but Emmrich stops her with a gentle hand on her arm. From the way they move, Taash has suffered no life-threatening injuries, and he has seen the outward ripples of death so many times, the exponentially expanding effect it has on the surrounding environment. He knows that the weight of Taash's compound grief is too heavy, is crushing them too completely for them to find the air to speak.
Instead Emmrich guides Bellara's attention back to Davrin with a look and a nod. She is at the Warden's side in an instant, though despite his limp, she resists the urge to drape his arm over her shoulder. After many close calls, Davrin has impressed on all of them the importance of keeping their distance when his armor is thick with blight, and he is covered after putting himself between the team and Ghilan'nain again and again. Her hands stubbornly still hover near him, as faithful to her friend as Assan herding him forward from his other side.
He manages to reach the infirmary under his own power, and Bellara hurries to fill the tub in the corner with steaming-hot water. She hasn't had time to study its magical properties yet, but it somehow manages to fill and drain in a continuous cycle, washing away blood and blight as easily as dirt and leaves. If it were anyone but Davrin, she would wait just outside, but they are both Dalish and casual nudity is nothing to anyone raised in a clan. When he is out of his armor, blight only stains his face and hair, so she is finally able to take his arm and help him into the tub.
My ideal vision for the Lighthouse post-VG is as the premier magical academy and research center in Thedas. Anyone is welcome, though its main patrons and student body are Veil Jumpers and the Mourn Watch.
It begins while Rook is trapped in the Fade. Emmrich and Bellara are working around the clock, searching for lost lore and experimenting with new arcane techniques. Myrna and Vorgoth assist whenever they can be spared from the Necropolis. Irelin and Strife are frequent visitors as well, both to offer ideas and resources and to (lovingly) bully Bellara and Emmrich into resting and eating. (Bellara x Irelin reunion perhaps? Emmrich being coaxed to bed by Strife, who holds him and reassures him that his brilliant mind will unravel this puzzle.)
And the intense search for ancient knowledge awakens something in the Lighthouse. The library acquires more seats and a larger table to serve as a workspace. The bookcases expand, and volumes unseen in millennia suddenly reappear. New resources begin appearing in the Necropolis and the ruins of Arlathan as well, as the efforts of the mortals prompt a strange resonance among the quasi-sentient loci of mana.
The resonance remains even once the gods are defeated. Bellara and Emmrich continue to meet regularly at the Lighthouse to discuss new theories. They invite their colleagues to join them and then open some sessions to younger acolytes. Informal discussions become formal classes. An exchange program is devised that sends Mourn Watchers to Arlathan to study ancient elvhen funerary rites and appease the spirits and sends Veil Jumpers to the Necropolis to explore areas previously thought inaccessible. The Caretaker ferries scholars to the spirit marketplace and trains alchemists and runemakers in techniques long lost to time. (Dagna is often on hand to explain the spirit’s more esoteric instructions.)
The Lighthouse expands and expands again, forming dormitories and classrooms and training facilities. Its lights brighten, its furniture acquires cozy cushions and blankets, and its broken statues and staircases reform. And whenever the fire in the dining hall starts to burn low, Bellara and Emmrich call back the surviving members of the Veilguard, and they share a meal and catch up on gossip and laugh and drink late into the night. And by morning, the fire is roaring merrily without receiving a single bit of tinder.
brightbreezeblog asked:
Hey, I really love your thoughts and writing... how about "Boys Night" from the Wholesome Prompts? 🙂 Anything come to mind?
kabsey answered:
Thank you so much! <3 I had so many different thoughts for this prompt, but this is the one that stuck. Not quite a boys’ night per se, but it is a boys’ chat and it is at night 😊
——-
When the knock came, Viago glared at the door over the top of his reading glasses. The runner wasn’t due for another hour, and he could not imagine who else Marta would allow to approach his study when she knew exactly how tall the stack of his correspondence had grown (she was the one who brought him the post, after all). Rook or Teia wouldn’t have even bothered to knock.
Which left Viago no choice but to pause in his writing with a stifled sigh and a curt “Yes?”
The door opened, and the figure who entered explained all: the First Talon went where he liked. If it had been Caterina, Viago would have set his letter aside and risen to greet her.
Instead Viago resumed writing, though he paid Lucanis the courtesy of asking, “Is this urgent business, or can it wait a moment?”
“It can wait.”
saviinika
From the very first moment of falling into the Dragon Age fandom, I have had Dreadrook brain rot. My first game-related Google search was ‘can you romance Solas in Veilguard’ because that banter… damn. Many, many runs through all 4 games later, that obsession hasn’t gone away.
In celebration of @thelighthouse-server’s #SolasAppreciationWeek, I started a sequel to my original Dreadrook fic, Prayers for the Dread Wolf. Yes, it’s another Rook in DAI time travel fic, I will not be taking questions at this time.
Prompts I will end up hitting by the time the week is over: Fade; Apostate; Skyhold; Lighthouse; Atonement; Wisdom; and of course, Ship Day.
One of my favourite bits so far under the cut - please enjoy. :)
