thegames app

[unlikelyherald]

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Varis
Other characters: nope

IN CHARACTER
Name: Adella Trevelyan
Alias: Herald of Andraste, Inquisitor, Lady Trevelyan…
Fandom: Dragon Age
Canon point/AU: 3/4th of the way through the game. After Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, before What Pride Had Wrought.
Journal: unlikelyhearald
PB: game images!
Age: Based on how I’ve made her look and headcanon, I’ve decided Adella to be 27, though she can be somewhat immature, mostly because she’s very jokey.
History: All my tl;dr is here as far as choices are concerned. this is a list of ALL THE QUESTS in the game so every piddly nonsense crap she can do is listed there, aaand this is the Inquisitor’s page.

Presentation: Cassandra says at a certain point when she’s contemplating what history will make of the Inquisition “They will say the Inquisitor was hilarious.” The way she says it, dry and deadpan, after the Inquisitor cracks an awful joke, is exactly how Adella presents herself. She deflects the pain and frustration of her situation with humor. Whether facing down demons and the first darkspawn or talking candidly with friends, she’s usually witty and sarcastic. She keeps laughing, because otherwise everything will come crashing down around her and become far too real. It was something she learned early, after her parents abandoned her to the Circle.

She does show genuine compassion where it’s needed, of course, and knows when not to crack a joke, to supplement her humor with a natural desire to reach out and connect with people. She tries to project a confidence and security in who she is and the choices she makes, because that’s what she thinks people expect of the Herald of Andraste. Making hard choices in a split second is something that she’s gotten very used to, and she works with what she has.

Being unashamed of her abilities is a mage is another thing that is very much part of her outward presentation, although it might be a little less present when she doesn’t have access to her abilities. Mages are one of the most persecuted and feared people of Thedas, and considering the Dalish, that’s saying something. She embraces her magic, is proud of who it’s made her, and encourages that ‘strangeness’ in other people.

If she’s genuinely upset her humor can falter, and she can get angry, especially when things she perceives as wrongs are happening around her. She can mask her anger up to a point under the façade of humor, but the angrier she gets the more sarcastic her responses can be. If she happens to break under that pressure she can be aggressive, snappy and is quick to shut down whatever has pissed her off or removes herself from the situation.

Motivations: Adella’s driving force is the people she’s surrounded herself with. She cares deeply for her friends, because they are the only family she feels she truly has, and she’d do anything to keep them safe. She tends to play it off that she’s fighting for her own survival, but so much of her strength comes from the bonds she forges and the people she chooses to let see more than just the casual flirting and joking nature. She’s scared, a lot of the time, but she’s fighting through the fear.
She also genuinely believes that she can help make things better for others, by leading from example. It’s terrifying to think of herself as a leader some days when she was a troublemaker in the Circle, but she’s pushing herself through with the strength she has, and making it up as she goes along.

Setting: The idea of throwing a bunch of people together and watching them rip each other apart is repugnant to her, to say the least. She won’t be happy about being a participant in the games, but she also did surprisingly well in the Orlesian court, despite having very little formal training on how to address herself in the company of powdered nobles. She understood the Game, and how to play, because she herself is very good at lying and putting her best face forward while keeping her real thoughts under lock and key. She’ll treat the Capitol in much the same manner, with a carefully public-friendly face while fighting with others to change the problem behind their backs.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread: [Adella awakes with a gasp, lurching upright and grasping at her chest, where a hole should be. When she realizes it’s absent, she’s in a cold white room instead of a dirty forest, she freezes, trying to make sense of the situation. She’d never died, before. Had a few close calls, sure, but she was very certain she’d died. Her fingers curl slowly into a loose fist pressed to her chest when she hears the disembodied voice.]

"Please use the device to the right to record your current feeling on your loss. Once you are finished, someone will be along to take you back to the Capitol."

[She frowns at the little device chirping next to her. For a moment she considers smashing it, picking it up and dashing it against the wall and showing these monsters exactly what she thinks of their Game. The feeling is pushed down, and after a moment she picks it up.]

Well, that was new. I suppose death should be painful for a reason, considering how rather permanent it generally is. [She gives the device a thin smile, one that anyone who knew her would know was saved strictly for people she was about to string up by their toes.] I’m very grateful that that doesn’t seem to be the case, here. That being said, I don’t think I’m in any hurry for that to happen again. I guess I’ll have to start working out, or something.

…Now how do I turn this damned thing off?

Prose:

If she had access to her magic, this room would be a smoking ruin. Though if she’d had access to her magic, they wouldn’t have made it to the room, she would have started fighting the second they’d told her that they expected her to go kill other people in the same situation as her. She doesn’t kill for no reason, but expecting others to kill for no reason is a hell of a reason. She’s frustrated as she walks the room, looking at weapons on their racks. She barely knows how to hold a sword, let alone use one properly, she knows she wouldn’t even be able to lift some of the impressive weaponry on display. For a moment she’d worried, wondering who exactly they have who could heft such a weapon.

She spots a spear, and walks over to pick it up, testing the weight of it. It was similar to a mage staff, but without her magic, she only had so much to do. Still, she is supposed to impress these people, isn’t she?

“I’m sorry, this would be more impressive if you weren’t suppressing my magic,” she says loudly, looking up to the balcony with a wide smile that doesn’t touch her eyes. “Must be quite a Templar you have, I’ve never felt this disconnected from my magic before.” She spins the spear in her hand, snapping it out and cutting the pointed end through the air, going through the fluid motions that would cast fire, ice, lighting. Except she can’t feel her connection to the Fade at all, it was unnerving.

She walks towards the training dummies on display, holding the spear the way she would hold a staff, with the bladed end pointing up behind her and the blunt end angled down. When she gets close enough she spins the staff, bringing the blade down and then up, cutting a diagonal line across the dummy, before spinning it and bringing the blade across the dummy’s throat. It’s rare that she gets close enough to use the bladed side of her staff, but without her magic she’s a little surprised herself at how much force she can put behind it. It also helps she’s more than a little pissed off by the situation, so she slams the blunt end of the spear into the dummy, before spinning it around and driving the point into the dummy’s “heart.”

Backing away she turns to look up at her audience, giving them another smile. “Just imagine what that would have looked like with fire.”

What is your character scored: 7 without magic. Adella is a proficient mage, and most of her strengths and talents lie in that magic. However, mages are trained to use their staves as blunt weapons when in close quarters, and while the blades that adorn them are mostly for their magical properties, they can also be used offensively. She’s also spent half a year running around the countryside and has built up a great deal of physical endurance, where she doesn’t have brute strength. She’s also clever and capable of thinking on her feet, as demonstrated when she first faced off against Corypheus, she was able to distract him until she was close enough to the trebuchet trigger, and she was lucky enough to escape the avalanche.
With magic allowed, she’d likely be a 10. She’s been trained for years in the use of her magic, and has put it to a great amount of practical use over her time with the Inquisition. She’s a finely tuned magical killing machine, although she would rather make friends than enemies.

Token: this coin. It’s a good luck charm, a gift from Cullen.
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