"praying Won't Save You, Cyrion."

i know bros had no money for a portrait but please let the tabris finally be happy,,,

Day 7: Free Day

Decided to spend the @cityelfweek free day sketching an idea I had forever ago. For context, this is about a year before Inquisition, juuust before the mage rebellion.

They all smell the smoke before they see it— an unassuming plume that rises from Jenna’s window, belying the danger within. Cries ring out through the Alienages, followed by orders, and soon a line forms through the streets and to the banks of the river. Buckets with water spilling out the sides lead a trail to the danger. The faces of their young are wet with a sheen of sweat and fierce with determination, knowing that if help will come at all, it will come too late.

The fire burns around the water heaped upon it, gathering smoke and rising higher within the walls of Jenna’s home. The work continues, quenching a patch of flame before another can alight. It eats at the roof, thatched straw collapsing to the horrified screams of onlookers.

Then, all at once, it is a memory.

Panicked cries turn to confusion, questions ringing out as harsh as commands while Jenna braves the ashes to salvage what she can of the ruins of her life.

Some swear their last bucketful of water had been the one to quench the flames. Others know what they had seen: it had not simply been put out, it had been suffocated. Erased. Only smoke remains, rising harmless into the midday sky.

It does not take long for rumours of magic to rampage through the Alienage, cooler than the fire, but no less deadly. In the commotion, no one sees the stranger slip from their midst.

No one but Nessa, at least.

She’s lived in the Amaranthine Alienage her whole life, and there are few places in it someone can hide from her like. She catches him in an alley, the smell of a storm clings to his tattered clothes despite the bright summer’s day blazing overhead. It had been decades since she’s last breathed that scent, but she’ll never forget how it raises the hairs in your nostrils. The stranger tenses at her approach, but tellingly doesn’t reach for a weapon.

At least, none wielded by traditional means.

“I have no coin,” he tells her in a weary voice, “and little else to my name but the clothes on my back.”

“I’d say you have more than that, ser. A gift I hear only the Maker can give you.” He flinches, ducking his head so his hood hides his face. She steps forward with her hands cupped around her elbows. “You stopped the fire, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

There it is again, she thinks: the sky, come to touch their little corner of the world.

“Neither do I, but I know some who would.” She smiles, despite the bitter taste that lies on her tongue just from speaking their memory. “You won’t be safe out here tonight, and I have a roof. Supper, too.”

The stranger regards her from a distance, as though trying to pry the truth from her words with a glance. Not an unfamiliar look. Those she’s helped before had been just as slow to trust. There are no words in the King’s tongue silver enough to undo that damage.

“You’ve been bit before. I understand, but we’re just two people, my husband and I. Out here, you put yourself in the whole city’s hand.” Nessa moves down the alley. One hand reaches out in welcome. “So come with me.”

The trip back home is less peaceful than usual. They take the back ways, skirting windows and doors before coming to Nessa’s. If she hadn’t lived her whole life, it’d be an easy place to miss. Little adorns the entrance save a potted plant and an awning painted faded yellow. “Here we are,” she says in a sing-song tone, like she were welcoming in any old neighbour.

She ushers him in first, the slide of the lock the sole indication that not all is as it seems.

Inside, the aroma of dinner rises first to meet them. Rosemary and onion overwhelm the senses, drowning out the dust and the dirt. “Looks like it’s pottage for tea,” she remarks. Looking to the stranger, she can’t help but smile at how stiffly he stands. “Well, go on then, make yourself at home. I’ll get you a little something to drink.”

“Bring home another stray?” her husband asks. He’s hunched over the pot like an old witch at her cauldron, flyaway grey hairs waving as if they had little minds of their own. They deflate when he looks over and sees who she came home with, cheeks fattening with a little puff of air as he tuts, “Oh, Nessa. We’ve talked about this!”

“What was I supposed to do, Tal? Edith’s probably got the Templars looking for him already.” It’s an argument that’s played out half a dozen times over the last half a decade. She can’t rightly say who had won the last one, though from the sigh that comes from the kitchen, she’ll say she can count this one hers. “Half the quarter’d be up in flames if it weren’t for him.”

Her tone softens for the stranger, rounding on him with a pleasant, “how do you take your tea?”

“Water would be preferable, please,”  he answers without a moment’s consideration.

“Coming right up, love.” Stepping into their little corner of a kitchen, she adds to her husband: “See? This one’s got manners, to boot!”

Tal’s response is reduced to a disgruntled huff, attention fixed upon the simmering pot. Like he’s watching the Queen’s dinner cook. Nessa grabs a mug from a peg and tilts it into the clean water, returning to find the stranger had taken her advice. Despite how he hunches in his seat, there is a proud set to his shoulders. His hood drapes around them, revealing a clean shaven head and a severe jaw. A man of some years, but still young to her old eyes.

“Sorry about Tal,” she says as she slides into the seat across from him. “He doesn’t mind, really, he has to protest only so he can be right if something ever goes wrong.”

“His concern is not unwarranted. They will not look kindly upon your aid, should they find me.” He palms the cup, a layer of frost forming under his fingertips.

“We’ve had some close calls, but we’ve managed alright in the end.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Once or twice. More since the Mages’ Collective have caught wind of my sympathies.”

“Dangerous sympathies.” Ice begins to form in a thin film upon the water’s surface, moved by currents invisible to the eye. He drinks deep from the cup, voice lighter in the wake of it. “It is a wonder you would trouble yourself at all.”

Nessa smiles, a little pained. “I could say the same of you.”

“Perhaps I speak from a place of regret.” He’s looking at her again, like he’s trying to read a book. A stubborn line creases his brow, and she suspects he’s come away wanting.

“Well, it’s a shame if you do, though I can’t say I’d blame you either way.” Her fingers find the familiar grooves in the table’s surface, and work into them, thumb stroking the seam of the wood like an old cat. Pockmarks dot the table where a little hand had driven the prongs of a fork into the surface. Tal had always meant to fix them, but he couldn’t bring himself to anymore than she could bring herself to throw out the old toys gathering dust in the closet.

She supposes he’d be about the stranger’s age, now. Taller than her, with his father’s dark hair. If it hasn’t already started to go white.

Her hand fists on the table. A sigh carves through her chest.

“It’s the way the world is. Nothing the likes of us can do to change it, eh?”

“I would not discount your courage,” he says. “The world may yet change in our lifetimes.”

“A young man’s hope,” Nessa laughs, “but I’ll pray for it the same.”

Willem Trialmont, the honourable topsider.  A sort-of-cleaner version of the sketch I photographed a few days ago, with some very half-assed colours because I was bored.  Yes. 

The following text is my elaborate and lengthy headcanon for a character whose name is only mentioned once in a codex entry, constructed solely for the purpose of fic:

Willem is from the alienage in Val Royeaux.  (Reasoning behind this is that “Trialmont” sounds very Orlesian.)  Like Tabris from the city elf origin, he was secretly taught by a close family member how to wield the family longsword – the swordsmanship, the weapon, and the blade’s inscription traditions covertly passed on from generation to generation.  Weapons are discouraged in the Denerim alienage, so I assume they’re also frowned upon in Orlais.  The longsword is his most treasured possession, and the inscribed text defines his behaviour: “There must always be another to take up arms against the darkness. That is the core of true family beyond kin and the unifying link that will bring day to night and allow the fallen to rest.”

At some point in his youth, Willem no longer had a reason to remain in the alienage.  He probably sought out the Dalish as some city elves do.  He eventually finds a clan and they begrudgingly take him in.  There he hones his proficiency at fighting as well as learning the history of his people.  He spends many years with the Dalish until they accept him as their own.  (I kerfuffled with canon a bit and gave him vallaslin even though the Dalish don’t do the ritual on humans or city elves. However, the codex entry on vallaslin is unclear as to whether city elves who join the Dalish have the privilege of being tattooed or not, so I’m assuming the former for plot reasons.)

One day, Willem learns from the Keeper about the darkspawn and the Blights, as well as the Exalted March of the Dales.  He is appalled that the Dalish did not help defend Montsimmard and is unsatisfied with the reasons the elves provide.  He knows that the Dalish did not help the humans because they did not wish to interact with them in order to regain their lost heritage, but his Trialmont sensibilities found this behaviour selfish and unacceptable.  The conflicting opinions over this matter led to Willem leaving the clan.

Taking the words inscribed on his longsword to heart, Willem decides to go into the Deep Roads to find the darkspawn.  A Blight hasn’t occurred for around two Ages, and like in DA:O the common populace probably don’t really believe darkspawn are real.  Willem is determined to find out whether they still exist, so he travels to the Frostback Mountains to find an entrance underground.  He succeeds and enters the Deep Roads where he eventually runs into a group of Legionnaires trying to reclaim Bownammar.  And that’s when the codex entry happens.

(I did not make Willem a Grey Warden because part of the codex entry says, “Topsiders usually assume the end of a Blight erases the darkspawn from the world. Why does this one care that his victory just drives them back on our doorstep?”  It sounds like he’s a regular topsider, since Grey Wardens have reason to seek out darkspawn in the Deep Roads (e.g. for their Calling) and they aren’t unknown to the dwarves.)

By the Dread Wolf, that’s a lot of text.  Apparently tumblr doesn’t let me put things under cut for photo posts…

I have written a quick little thing for the City Elf Appreciation week! Astala is 13 and making dumb decisions, lol XD XD XD

"Come on, Astala!" Tehriel whispered. "You said you would do it!"

Astala Tabris peered over the edge of the roof the five of them were currently huddled on, straight into the vhenadahl's thick canopy. Her da had once told her that, because the roots of the vhenadahl were where the ashes of the dead were scattered, the vhenadahl was the collective soul of the Alienage. It was a huge tree; it held the ashes of countless people. Suddenly, even though she was one of the tallest girls in the Alienage, Astala felt very small, and not at all like she wanted to actually jump from this rooftop onto the vhenadahl. The feeling immediately clashed against the presence of Nessa, Tehriel, Doher and Elva, who crouched around her, and in front of whom she couldn't just back down. She'd been the one bragging!

"Tabris," Doher said, mocking concern in his voice, "don't tell me you are getting cold feet."

"I am not," Astala hissed back with all the decisiveness acquired over her thirteen years of life. "It just doesn't seem right, is all."

"You are getting cold feet," Elva said and followed the words with a low whistle.

Astala ground her teeth. Elva was good at making fun of you, she had to give her that.

"I am not," she insisted. "My auntie and uncle are buried down there, okay?"

"And?" Elva shrugged. "So is my da."

Astala tugged her sleeves over her hands. "What if I break one of the branches?"

"In the place where my ma grew up in they chopped it down," Nessa said. "Because the winter was so cold."

"See?" Tehriel gave her a nudge. "It will be fine! It's not like you're stepping on the ashes or anything."

"The coast is clear right now," Nessa added, stretching her head out as far as she could over the edge of the rooftop.

"It's now or never, Tabris," Doher declared.

And that was an ultimatum.

Astala pushed herself up into a crouch and scooted a few steps backwards. Then a few more. The old rooftiles under her feet groaned quietly. It was quite a way down—several stories. But all of them had jumped over narrow alleyways so often, this shouldn't be different at all.

Right?

Auntie and uncle might be mad.

But her friends were waiting, staring, eyes wide open in excitement, anticipation... and fear. Astala felt like her skin was turning to stone, her nerves to steel, like the bright, bright blades of her mother. She could do what nobody could. She could do what her friends were too afraid to do.

"Maybe-" Nessa began.

Astala moved into position.

Her muscles tightened when she launched herself into a run on the old, decrepit roof, avoiding the darker tiles and gathering momentum for her jump. The vhenadahl's leaves shivered in the wind. Her foot hit the tiles and she soared; the wind ran through her hair, pulled at her clothes. She sailed through the air like a seagull, feeling the rush through her body, sailing past the branches of the old tree that almost opened up as if to receive her.

A shout, some adult, and Astala crashed against the thick tree trunk, hands scrabbling to find purchase. One hand found a thick branch and held on, the bark bit into her skin and the impact had made her cough. The sunlight cast dizzying shadows through the leaves. Beetles flew up into the air around her, alarmed. Her friends cheered.

"What in the Maker's name are you kids doing???"

Her hand slipped. Astala fell. With a scream, she tried to find another hold as the bark ripped against her clothes and skin. A branch smacked into her stomach, she fell onto another with her arm, there was a loud crash and then she landed on the floor. A thick cloud of ash and dirt enveloped her. Astala coughed.

"Sorry," she gasped.

Then the pain in her side, in her head, and especially in her arm hit her and she started to cry.

She later figured that it served her right for disrespecting the vhenadahl and everyone buried underneath it like this.

@cityelfweek my contribution to day 1: vhenadahl ^^

Vhenadahl

The World of Thedas Vol. 1 (2013)

you ever think about a tabris that does the ultimate sacrifice

how their family and fellow elves fighting so fiercely to defend their home (just as they did when they passed through only mere hours before) see the retreating darkspawn and cheer so loudly surely their elven savior could hear them all the way at the top of fort drakkon

how shianni soris and cyrion all break away from the celebrations and shouts go retrieve tabris because there's no possible way a shem party could even come close to the one they'll have in the alienage (they can bring their friends too if they want, they did help tabris after all)

how joy so quickly turns to despair when they see those doors slowly creak open at the bottom with an unmoving tabris held in the arms of another, perhaps a friend, or a lover, with unrestrained tears flowing down their face (maybe with one witch absent, long gone before this even took place)

how shianni and soris cannot begin to believe that the savior, their savior, their cousin, is no longer with them, they were so alive before, and now they are not (their hero is something they will make the shems remember, they are gone so they could live)

how this is now the last time their father has to hold a funeral for his child, and only this time does he have a body to weep over (it's not any better than the first one)

do you ever just think

Two orlesian elven kids having some happy time.

So I drew my ocs Almael (white haired kid) and Tamril (brown haired one) during their childhood. They were best friends and grew up together. After Almael’s magic manifested at age of 9, he was sent to the circle of Montsimmard. After long time not seeing each other’s, they meet again (mostly by chance) in adulthood. At this time, Almael became a Mage working for the Inquisition (which allied with Mages), while Tamril became a secret Agent of Fen’harel.

City Elf Appreciation Week

~ 5th of August - 11th of August ~

Here are some optional prompts for next week! Please feel free to do whatever you like with them. Remember to tag @cityelfweek or use the tag #cityelfweek24!

Day 1 - Vhenadahl - A pillar of many alienage communities. Firewood in others.

Day 2 - Folklore - Show the folklore that city elves have created over time. Superstitions, stories, heroes, villains... anything!

Day 3 - Community - Close-knit family, or claustrophobic little box?

Day 4 - Customs and Tradition - Andrastian? Dalish? Somewhere in between, or something all new?

Day 5 - Alienage - The only home many city elves ever know.

Day 6 - OC - A day to celebrate original city elf characters!

Day 7 - Free Day - All things city elf!

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