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Solas - Blog Posts
Guardian
A step by step process of this will be available at my Patreon on december 1st 😊
if there was vallaslin dedicated to fen'harel - maybe as a form of punishment, or an act of rebellion, or a schism in the dalish religion - this is what i think it might look like.
(modelled by my lavellan, who in her very-not-canon-compliant backstory got the fen'harel vallaslin as a punishment for experimenting with blood magic in her teens)
heres some more badly formatted DAI doodles since the last ones did surprisingly well (ignoring the fact its been like a year since I last posted)
most of them are about iron bull bc I play dragon age games like theyre complicated dating sims
original sheet:
- Solaas! - Nooo! - Come back!
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.”
parody of a destiny (chaptered work)
it's rotten work (series)
atros shiral info (tumblr post)
complete | 21,116 words | E
Atros Shiral was a servant to a particularly cruel human in Denerim. When he was taken along to serve the man during the Divine Conclave, a strange kind of luck thrust him into the center of everything—and although he is pleased that his master was wiped out along with the rest of the attendants, he doesn’t feel like he should have survived.
Angry, bitter, and wary, he feels once more at the mercy of humanity, inappropriately raised up to be their savior. But he couldn’t even save himself, and he knows how ill-fit he is for the task ahead.
There’s another elf in the Inquisition, someone who helped guide him through bearing the mark upon his hand. Someone who doesn’t treat him like a leader or a divine figure. Someone who sees him for who he is, the entire flawed package.
It’s the first time he’s felt known.
Hiiii! For Atros x Solas! "come, before the band stops playing. dance with me." Happy writing!
oooh this was fun thank you! my chaos boy........ i love him sfm 😭 @dadrunkwriting 558 words cws: mentions of background character death as in canon
Solas looked right here. Which was ridiculous, or should have been ridiculous, but… he did. He looked right. In the uniform that Atros had scowled to see, refusing to look in a mirror, detesting the idea of having to dress up and be presentable for a bunch of shems, but Solas just slipped in like he was made for this place. Even in his stupid little hat. He should have looked ridiculous. Atros wanted him to look ridiculous, had been expecting to have a good laugh, a shared joke between them.
Instead, this. Solas wearing the uniform and the hat with a stunning grace and authority, and damn if that didn't do something to Atros. He had some thoughts about having Solas stay in that uniform tonight, but those would keep. For now they had to navigate all the complexity of the Winter Palace: and it was outrageously complex. When they got to the fighting—practically inevitable, really—it had come as something of a relief, although he had to choke down his rage at the servants' lives carelessly and cruelly spent. But at least he knew how to fight, knew the steps. This was honest, where the Game was all deception, saying what you don't mean, smiles like blades slipped between ribs except he only understood the second part.
But it was strange that Solas understood it all. Strange that he carried himself the way he did. Atros had been watching him all night; in front of other servants he moved naturally, smiled warmly, was sincere. In front of the shems he was coolly indifferent, unaffected, poised. Their gaze slipped across him as if he wasn't there, blending into the background despite standing tall in plain sight.
Even had he not been the Inquisitor, he knew he couldn't manage that. He was always going to be ill-fit here, always gangly and disproportionate, at odds with expectation. That was him.
So when they were done with bloodshed and politics (were they even separate things in Orlais?) and he stood on the balcony trying to get some fresh air, something far from the thick rush of perfumes that had given him a headache as soon as he'd entered the palace, he was not terribly surprised that Solas joined him. He must have known this was the right moment… he knew everything else about this.
What did surprise him was the other man asking him to dance. “Me? You're kidding.” His voice was deadpan but Solas' hand remained stretched out to him, bent in a slight bow. And he was smirking.
“Come,” he said, voice warm and with just the edge of teasing. “Before the band stops playing. Let's have this moment—dance with me.” A raised brow, a challenge. “Or does our brave Inquisitor fear dancing when it's not for political gain?” He scowled at the memory of dancing with Florianne.
“I was so scared I was going to step on her foot,” he muttered even as he placed his hand in Solas', inhaling sharply when that hand closed around his and drew him near. “I think now I should've.”
“She deserved as much,” Solas admitted as he led Atros in a far simpler dance, “but you conducted yourself admirably. And I am confident Josephine is relieved you danced well.”
“Can't let Josie down,” he shot back, lips quirking when Solas grinned. With teeth.
Guys, there may be a solas romance in my future....
He is actually smiling after their kiss 🥹💜