#arishok
Inktober day 30 - Hawke
Deryn Hawke
Dragon Age 2 and with it, the Champion of Kirkwall. She’s got a bunch of reasons to look so tired. Aaand my gray markers are running out.
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i can’t stop thinking about the arishok impaling hawke and just setting her aside when he needs a break during battle
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Another speed-portrait, this time of the Arishok. I do not agree with anything regarding the Qun, but his character (design and voice) blew my mind away!
Only a couple more weeks left till Dragon Age Inquisition!! o(^▽^)o
I can’t wait to play as a Qunari/Vashoth (mage) Inquisitor. Which race and class are you guys most looking forward to playing on your first playthrough of DA:I?
Cannot choose between elven mage and dwarven craftsImeanrogue. As for the qunari, I prefer to see them first. I do not like nor dislike them.
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Must confess I had a thing for the Arishok (qunari are hot get over it), too bad that wasn’t a romance option for Hawke
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Wasn’t actually going to post this neon arishok but now you have to see it. I love neons I love dragon age this was a natural progression.
Various tarot-style artwork I made a few months back that I never uploaded. Anxiety’s a bitch and now I’m using the bit of energy I’ve worked up to release these into the world.
I’ve intentionally left out which artwork references which card for personal reasons, but anyone with any knowledge of the arcana can probably figure it out.
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Look at me y’all. I finish another play through and I’m back to being absolutely batshit insane for the Qun. ✌
i think there’s plenty of other ways to read it, but based on how i interpret it, the relationship between sten and the warden is my favorite romance in the dragon age trilogy bar none. it is not textually explicit. there are no sten kisses; there is no sten sex (stenx?). but the way these characters grow alongside one another before their inevitable separation is so painfully gorgeous.
and i honestly think it’s stronger for the fact that the warden’s relationship with sten is dissimilar from the official romances of origins, because the way sten expresses love differs from how non-qunari characters might. it’s not as if he doesn’t experience it, or that the warden has to teach him what love is or anything silly like that; this isn’t the cliched narrative wherein a stoic, foreign-y alien has to be shown human feelings by a character with more western cultural coding. sten already has a sophisticated, if less familiar, conception of love and commitment - it’s just that the major way in which it differs, the lack of any linkage between romantic love and sexual intimacy, is also the only thing that separates a bioware “romance option” from a regular companion. all the other traditional signifiers of romantic love are there. he tells the warden she’s smart, competent, and valuable, both in her role as a warden and to him as a person. they share artwork and wax lyrical about turtles. he disobeys his orders for her. he tells her he trusts her with his life. despite any cultural gulf, the linguistic expression of love is the same in common, elvish, and qunlat: he calls her “my heart.”
the final conversation the warden has with him is one of the most beautiful and crushing parts of origins to me. in it, he tells her he’s leaving by ship for par vollen, and she can promise to meet him at the docks to go with him. both the warden and sten are fully aware that they’re lying to one another here. following him to par vollen is impossible: he’s expected to report back to his superiors, and especially if the warden is a(n unshackled) mage, the most likely outcome if she goes to par vollen is her immediate capture and execution. when sten eventually does return home, he’s subject to re-education, not because he’s abandoned the qun but because as strong as his politics and sense of patriotism still are, his feelings for the warden threaten to supersede them. to the qunari state, love for someone who also lives within the auspices of the qun is benign, but love for anyone who exists externally to it poses a political threat - and the warden can’t become viddathari to remedy that, even if she wants to.
there is no way for them to abandon their roles, and they cannot abide by them while remaining with one another, but they cling to the fantasy that a life together is possible until the very last moment. sten loves her, so he makes promises he knows he can’t fulfill, with the exception of one: that when they find themselves on opposite sides of a battle in an inevitable, cataclysmic global war, he will see her and turn away.
tl;dr sten and the warden have a gorgeous tragic romance and you can not change my mind
