Moonlight kisses 🌙 bsky

Its still a WIP but 🥹

oh isabela. they could never make me give you to the arishok.

Young, cocky, ancient Arlathan Solas inspired by the incredible These Hands, If Not Gods by @gefionne 🌙

My babes in love 🌝

Full under the cut Just in case - uncensored on Bsky 🫠💙

“Hope”

@veilguard-appreciation-week Day Three

Prompt: Hope

AN: VEILGUARD SPOILERS AHEAD. This is completely SFW, just a little departure from my usual style to celebrate my one of my favorite companions and my favorite faction. (500 words, just a treat)

Codex Entry: The Future of the Wardens

A humble, but widely published letter soliciting recruitment for the Grey Wardens.

Published in 9.53 Dragon, one year following the Fall of Weisshaupt.

It reads:

“I want to start by saying that I’m aware of what some in Thedas are saying — that the Grey Wardens are a dying breed, no longer worth mentioning or sparing a thought for after the destruction of Weisshaupt. Our numbers are fewer than ever I won’t lie. The last few decades have truly thinned our ranks as blights and darkspawn have cropped up across the world.

Our headquarters in the Anderfels may be gone, it’s true. And for many years to come, we will mourn those lost at Weisshaupt. But the Wardens are not and have never been the castle we called home.

Without Weisshaupt what are the Grey Wardens against this ever-evolving blight?

It’s simple.

The Grey Wardens are a hope for Thedas.

The hope that each of us — despite our pasts — are worth a second chance. The hope that across a wide war-torn world of varied religions, races, and beliefs — we might all be one under the same banner. Or that despite our many differences and event he bonds we have broken — we are each of us deserving of being saved.

The Hero of Ferelden stood against the fifth blight not long after her Joining with nothing but a handful on comrades and a hope. She’d never even been to the Anderfels before taking on and defeating an Archdemon. By now, I think most are aware of “Warden Blackwall” of the Inquisition — a man with little hope who never even undertook the Joining, he assumed the mantle as a false identity with and saved the whole damn world.

The Wardens are far from perfect — I won’t run from the truth — the ways we have failed.

Our duty can also be our downfall and we cannot claim to stand for the light without acknowledging that darkness with us. Politics and power struggles have tarnished our name, but still we cling to the very hope that founded this order in the most desperate hours of our ancestors.

We accept all takers, but I won’t disguise that the Warden life isn’t for everyone. The environment can be harsh, the days long, and this job is often thankless. But if you look up at the night sky for more than just stars, if you’re searching from meaning outside of your little corner of the world, or if you’ve ever wanted to be part of a greater — maybe the greatest— whole, it might be for you.

Join or not, but know the Grey Wardens stand ready — whether we’ve got 5 or 500 amongst our numbers. Against darkness, against the blight, we keep the faith and hold on to the hope for Thedas.

Signed First Warden Davrin, Supreme Commander of the Grey Warden HQ in the Hossberg Wetlands”

[Sealed in wax with the Grey Warden crest which seems to have been modified to reflect an adolescent as opposed to mature, griffon]

—

AN: Don’t @ me this is just how I think things go in my own head. Thanks for reading!!!

"It won't be terrible if you're with me"

Solas 14/??

do you think that dalish weddings ceremonies have rituals to “appease the dread wolf” as a blessing for the couple? like dressing up the fen’harel statue at the edge of camp with flowers and burning strong incense near it so he cant catch their scent. or symbolically “tricking” the wedding guests by baking a single pepper into the cake that ends up in someone’s slice for fen’harel’s enjoyment. basically doing things to make sure fen’harel doesn’t feel neglected so he won’t bring nightmares to your wedding night and misfortune to the marriage

and when lavellan marries the dread wolf she gets great amusement out of dressing him in flowers and giving him spicy cake

Was thinking about two cringe bros since the cringe hand statue jokes ❤️

Solas repeatedly explains that things are not so black and white and the fandom's response to the nature of his relationships with Mythal and Felassan etc are weirdly reminiscent of what he finds frustrating about modern Thedas.

He explains repeatedly that the distinction between spirit and demon is not that black and white, that there's always an element of choice involved. Likewise, he cannot be so easily defined as wisdom or pride. He is a mix of both and will lean into one or the other depending on how he is perceived. Over and over again he tries to make people see that it's our expectations that create the dynamics of our relationships and therefore how we perceive others. If we respect others in the way they would like to be respected, you can come closer to an authentic and equal partnership.

Likewise, he says that he is not defined by his body, a point Trick said came from their own thoughts around their gender and figuring out that they were nonbinary. Solas chose a male body, seemingly because he had to choose one, not necessarily because he felt like a man. In fact he repeatedly explains that he sees himself as a spirit i.e. genderless

The romance or friendship with the Inquisitor is special because it is the first time that he's branching out of his comfort zone of bonding like a spirit bonds (reflecting) and trying to bond like a person does instead (meeting them on their level, sharing his heart with them and being vulnerable). This is why one of my favourite lines from him is 'You are unique. In all Thedas I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. You have become important to me.' This is the first time he has fallen in love, the first time he has actually relished being a person and not a spirit, because he's able to be with Lavellan this way. He can't fall in love as a spirit as spirits don't bond that way, as is repeatedly stated throughout his story. I personally think the relationships he forged before Inquisition were all done using the attachment style of spirits, which is apparently quite abstract, and not as a man, which is more understandable to mortals and us, the player.

What's especially pertinent about this is that says this line right before he's about to abandon his plan to tear down the Veil by telling the Inquisitor the truth, a plan that symbolises his attachment to his spirit-self and the world he inadvertently destroyed. Once he does that, there's no coming back; likewise, once you take a body, you cannot go back. When you fall in love in a way that makes all the parts of you line up perfectly for the first time, you can't go back.

What is so beautiful to me about Solas's love story with Lavellan is that we witness Solas in a chrysalis state between spirithood and personhood, past and present (and future), on the precipice of metamorphosis. At the very moment he's about to take that final leap like The Fool his romance card is based on, he backs out, because of guilt, trauma, grief, duty and the rest.

Even with a befriended Inquisitor, he bonds with them on their level. He doesn't try to elevate them to his level; he comes to theirs. He is the opposite of Pride in their friendship, which is why he respects them. They allow him to be himself.

It's because of this change in nature that I think Solas and Lavellan's love story is so compelling--Solas's world quite literally changes when he falls in love, as he states multiple times, in various ways. I mean, look at the way he needs time to think about a potential relationship with Lavellan. He probably knows that it's a bad idea, but at this point he has no idea how much of a bad idea it is with respect to his plans because he has no idea that it will make him want to give it up. If he had, he never would've entertained the idea of a relationship. His romance card in Veilguard explains that he didn't know what it would mean to fall in love, because he's never actually been in love. He has loved countless friends and companions, like Mythal and Felassan, but he has not fallen for someone like he falls for a romanced Lavellan; Lavellan, who is deified like he was deified, who sees him for who he is (as much as they can) and doesn't shun him or punish him for not doing as he was told like a good lapdog.

Once again there's more of the irony that pervades Solas's story at every turn. It's in falling for a mortal that Solas becomes a more complete person, more of the man he says he is and not the god others have revered him as. That is the deepest change of all and the one that reflects his earlier statements on the delineation between spirit and demon not being so black and white, and involving a level of choice. Solas chooses to be more of a man in a similar way to how Cole chooses to become more human. He knows deep down that he's already in too deep to stop, and this is why, despite knowing he has a job to do and a duty to fulfil, he leaves clues for the Inquisition to follow him. Because he's already gone too far, and now he can't go back, and deep down he wants to be stopped, like Varric said. Solas, as a former spirit, doesn't simply feel love, he embodies it, and so he is helpless to that emotion. Of course he left clues.

Because that is what falling in love meant for Solas. It meant going into that chrysalis state and emerging as a totally new being with an experience that is quite far removed from his spirit self and all the limitations that come with that. Mythal and Felassan etc predate this experience, they're intrinsically tied to his nature as a spirit and then as a manifested spirit. While he loved them, that love was tangled up with a simpler nature, and the love he shares with Lavellan is coming from a totally new place. For that reason, the two can't really be compared.

Hey guys my friend here found a box cutter and won't give it back.

Every time I try to take it they get agitated and start muttering things like "Death to all tyrants" and "Wheres Elgar'nan"

If anyone has advice lmk, I lost my wisdom spirit care guide and I dont want them to corrupt :(

haaard times

baby come back

im sure nothing bad will ever happen to her👍