ohsweetmaker reblogged
lsunnyc-deactivated20191124
can we take a moment to just think about how incredibly scary magical healing is in-context?
You get your insides ripped open but your friend waves his hands and your flesh just pulls back together, agony and evisceration pulling back to a ‘kinda hurts’ level of pain and you’re physically whole, with the 100% expectation that you’ll get back up and keep fighting whatever it was that struck you down the first time.
You break your arm after falling somewhere and after you’re healed instead of looking for ‘another way around’ everybody just looks at you and goes “okay try again”.
You’ve been fighting for hours, you’re hungry, thirsty, bleeding, crying from exhaustion, and a hand-wave happens and only two of those things go away. you’re still hungry, you’re still weak from thirst, but the handwave means you have ‘no excuse’ to stop.
You act out aggressively maybe punch a wall or gnash your teeth or hit your head on something and it’s hand-waved because it’s ‘such a small injury you probably can’t even feel it anymore’ but the point was that you felt it at all?
Your pain literally means nothing because as long as you’re not bleeding you’re not injured, right? Here drink this potion and who cares about the emotional exhaustion of that butchered village, why are you so reserved in camp don’t you think it’s fun retelling that time you fell through a burning building and with a hand-wave you got back up again and ran out with those two kids and their dog?
Older warriors who get a shiver around magic-users not because of the whole ‘fireball’ thing but the ‘I don’t know what a normal pain tolerance is anymore’ effect of too much healing. Permanent paralysis and loss of sensation in limbs is pretty much a given in the later years of any fighter’s life. Did I have a stroke or did the mage just heal too hard and now this side of my face doesn’t work? No i’m not dead from the dragon’s claws but I can’t even bend my torso anymore because of how the scar tissue grew out of me like a vine.
Magical healing is great and keeps casualties down.
But man.
That stuff is scary.
shit just got creepy
Or maybe magical healing doesn’t leave scars or damage. It is magical, after all.
So after years of fighting, your skin is still perfect. Unmarred. In fact, you’re actually in better shape than regular people who don’t get magical healing when they fall out of trees or walk into doors or cut themselves while cooking dinner. You’re in such good shape that it’s unnatural.
And the really good healing magic takes away more than just the obvious injuries. You first start noticing it after about ten years when you go home and haha, you look the same age as your younger sibling, that’s funny.
Not so funny ten years later when they look older. Or forty years later, when you bury them still looking like you did at twenty. When do you retire from this gig anyway? How much damage is too much damage?
How many times do you glimpse the afterlife, or worse, how many times don’t you? What do you live through, get used to, show no outward sign of except a perfectly healthy body, too perfect for any person living a real life.
How many times are you sitting in a tavern with your friends and you hear the whispers, because the people around you know. How can they not know? Your weapons shine with enchantments and your armour is better than the best money can buy and there is not a damn scar on you. You hardly seem human to them.
How long before you hardly seem human to yourself?
And you find yourself struggling to remember the places where the scars should have been, phantom pains that wake you screaming, touching all the old injuries and finding nothing there. It’s all in your head. Was it ever anywhere else?
How long before you’re fighting a lich or a vampire or some other undead monster and you wonder…
…what makes me so different?
lsunnyc
Here we go someone who GETS IT.
kuchenkat
tiefamat
Maybe I’m just bad at humaning but I don’t see the downside to option 2
This is such a deliciously dark twist on a concept that is almost always accepted as being completely beneficial.
ohsweetmaker reblogged
thedaslegend-deactivated2021112
Can y’all reblog this if you’re an active RPer in the Dragon Age RPC? I’m on a following spree but unfortunately many of the blogs in the tags are inactive.
Thanks!
ohsweetmaker reblogged
that one fucking concept art of the dragon age races that depicts dwarves like this:
you suck and i defy you
this makes me violent <3
Calling all dragon age artists! Let’s see your interpretation of what dwarven women should look like!
Okay, here u go
this feels like a good time to give a shoutout to Sophie Campbell’s dwarves [1] [2] [3]
ohsweetmaker reblogged
dorian being from fuckin disco light fantasy cyberpunk tevinter meeting the inquisitor in the south:
ohsweetmaker reblogged
“You drive a hard bargain, partner, though as to the ownership of the coffee, I rather doubt a magistrate would agree it was solely yours. Topic: politically-motivated demonic possession. Relevance: a cold case you were made to give up on five years ago. Make sure you pick one out with lots of cherries. And I’ll take a flat white. With caramel. And cocoa on top.”
“That I was made — ”
He was AWAKE. He was far more awake than he had any wish to be. Had it truly been five whole years...?
The silence of the next thirty seconds was punctuated only by the micro-expressions of a man who’d long since replaced hope with resignation — and didn’t quite know what to do with his face now.
After the Tantervale debacle, he’d sworn he’d never permit political pressure to stand in the way of justice, but without evidence...
The scene had haunted him, day and night, for almost a year afterwards. The incense-heavy smell of the elevator in the Nevarran embassy; the doors closing slowly as he half-watched the previous occupant walk away into the lobby, dressed in formal robes of state Cullen wouldn’t find out were stolen for another twenty two minutes.
And casually held against their hip: the slim, lyrium-lined suitcase that contained the only evidence ever identified. The same suitcase the Antivan coast guard would find empty and abandoned on a Kirkwall-flagged cargo ship, found powerless and drifting in the Rialto Bay two months later.
“That — ” Cullen said, momentarily derailed, “ — isn’t coffee, it’s a dessert course; and those files were sealed by the Knight-Commander herself.”
What his rational brain meant to say next was ‘What have you done now?’
What his mouth said was, “Knight-Lieutenant Bryant!”
As a rule, Cullen treated his subordinates like the competent, highly-trained officers of magical (and non-magical) law enforcement that they were, but there were benefits to holding rank, and occasionally circumstances that justified using them.
Bryant’s surprised head appeared in the doorway in short order, and Cullen only belatedly remembered to add a large black Americano to the end of Dorian’s reckless interpretation of breakfast.
Cullen waited until the door clicked closed, and not a second longer.
“Tell me you found something?”
symbol meme (accepting!) || send one for my muse’s reaction to your muse — ❂ = wiping blood off their face .
Was he conscious?
The throbbing pain in his EVERYTHING made that likely. Garrett groaned, batting the Templar’s hand away – though he missed by about a mile.
“Can’t you just do what you people do and Spell Purge my head off my body? It’d be a kindness.”
Cullen tried not to stare at his own hand, wedging it under Hawke’s shoulder to help him up. It was smoother and paler than he remembered; a ghost of 10 years ago attached to his armoured arm.
Hawke’s face, too, was bloodied but unmistakably different to the man who’d stuck the end of his staff straight through a fade rift, said “ WHAT IF I--- ” and promptly sucked them both off the face of Thedas. But until Hawke groaned and opened his eyes, what form the Fade chose to give them hadn’t seemed particularly important while floating mountains cracked above them, and demons clawed their way out of tears in the distance.
Hawke was alive and as conscious as he ever was. Neither one of them had ended up spliced between realms. Despite the gravity of their mission, and the insanity that led them here, Cullen felt the knot in his chest ease for just a moment.
“And live with whatever nightmare replaced it? Not even if I could. We’ve made it this far. I’m not fighting through the fade with a GURGUT stuck on your shoulders.
“Can you walk?”
Iron Bull: Sera, How did you get an entire beehive into Cullen's training dummy? Sera: I don't know, Can't remember.
the year 2020 & i’m still salty af that bioware animated four shirtless Cullen scenes w/o one (1 ! ) being his pasty ass screaming across the battlements covered in bees
ohsweetmaker reblogged
I would trust him to defend my life
Warrior, barbarian, battlemage
ohsweetmaker reblogged
Send a 👫and I’ll write four headcanons I have about our muse’s relationship
ohsweetmaker reblogged
one femnop to flag them all
@banalvhen
one femnop to blind dem
moustache to reanimate a h0
@magisterivm
and curlies to fite them
@ohsweetmaker
a trashumvirate promoz production (u r welc)
anyway this is what happens when friend and spouse drag you into their post-dai doom hc
"And when were you planning on telling me?"
There was a pause.By Cullen’s count, there had been four such pauses since the Inquisitor’ssudden arrival, which had allowed him two opportunities to breathe (a goodreminder: Cullen inhaled, quietly); one hasty exit by a servant swifter and moreintelligent than he; and one fateful attempt to conjured words whichwould, which could, possibly hope toexplain the past year in a way which might come close to being satisfactory.
If that wereeven possible.
“I ― ”
The long musclesalong either side of his spine were aching with a rigidity he had thought longbehind him, and yet attention was theonly posture that seemed remotely appropriate. Lavellan’s voice echoed in thesilence he’d become used to hearing inside his skull. …Dear Mia… it began, accusingly, before he drowned it out.
They had beenhere before. He hadn’t learnt. But words had always escaped Cullen when it cameto explaining himself. What could he say?
I didn’t expect Scout Harding would killme?
You had problems enough?
I should have anticipated someone would kill me…
It seemed a good idea at the time…?
“Dorian,”he began again; it had been some time since he’d used the common tongue, and hesounded far too much like himself for any semblance of comfort; Cullen paled, agreyish pallor under the thin layer of sunburn, “is an… accomplished necromancer. Granted, I wasgone for less than a day, but there was no guarantee that I would return. Or whetherwhat did would bear any resemblance ― ”
(In allfairness, he hadn’t borne much resemblance to himself in the months before he’d ceased to exist.)
Somewhereoutside stretched miles of glittering black sand, a sun high in the sky, andthe scent of incense and sea spray. It couldn’t be more divorced from the darknews they’d convened in Qarinus to discuss, though admittedly there was littlereason to suppose “they” would include himself.
Cullen’sgrip on the armet he still held eased into a more self-conscious position, awarethat mere minutes stood between this conversation and another day of silence tantamountto deception. Was he relieved? Should he feel worse now than he had before? Hewasn’t so sure. Things had certainly been simpler, and less taxing, for a time.But he was not so addled that he did not grasp how selfish that thought ― and thereality left behind it ― was.
He saw the lasttwo years in the small, taut changes in Lavallan since they’d spoken last, andknew he’d seen the same in Dorian, in Cassandra, in Leliana ― even if they hadnot suspected him of being alive to notice.
Cullen had neversought to suggest that he would become, intentionally or otherwise, a betterman than Kirkwall would have it ― he knew who he was. Only that he was resolvedto take what actions were necessary to rectify the mistakes he had made, and hehad tried to do so. His death was his business. …but his living?
The truth, then.
“When Ihad to, Inquisitor.” He would not say if ― at least, not now. Cullen’s gaze slid away, towards the emptyrooms beyond where he was want to stand vigil, and he had force it back with somedifficulty. “Remaining dead seemed …advantageous, given how easily wewere infiltrated; without cause for suspicion, a helmet is simple enough tohide behind.“
What hadSera called him, back at Haven? A jackboot? Much like any other, in many ways.Now one which wore House Pavus colours, and with little but his penchant forshadowing his so-called liege to differentiate him from any other. Certainly, agood enough disguise when those who’d known him expected furs, curls, and darkrings beneath a harried expression. In plain burnished plate, Cullen lost presenceand gained discipline; remembered what it was to bear no distinguishing flourish.There was much to recommend it, but it also left him powerless in the Imperiumwithout orders or sanction.
The feeling of normalcy, of an impossible task and little means to achieve it, was returning faster than he would have wished.
#banalvhen#me: is dorian getting starbucks rn or is he in jail#we just don't know#also me: gratuitous im commentary refining this whole post down to 1 song and an opossum#the first thing i write after a hiatus is always cullen forgot his own face#i realise??#probably because it aptly reflects my own how to word pattern squiggle poem#i wrote one thing today i'm sry
ohsweetmaker reblogged
𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐃 / 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒.
𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠.
- ❛ What happened? ❜
- ❛ How are your injuries? ❜
- ❛ Just promise me you’ll stay here. ❜
- ❛ You can’t blame yourself. ❜
- ❛ You know I’m here for you, right? ❜
- ❛ I’ve never seen you like this before. ❜
- ❛ When I wake up, you won’t be there. ❜
- ❛ Okay. You get to leave now. ❜
- ❛ No. I don’t believe you. ❜
- ❛ Just.. put down the very sharp knife… ❜
- ❛ It wasn’t your fault. It hurts. ❜
- ❛ This isn’t you. ❜
- ❛ Stop it. ❜
- ❛ You should be resting. ❜
- ❛ Are you okay? Did they hurt you? ❜
- ❛ How can you act like that? ❜
- ❛ Then why are you still here? ❜
- ❛ Are you okay? ❜
- ❛ You can’t live in the past. You gotta move on. Let it go. ❜
- ❛ And when were you planning on telling me? ❜
- ❛ What are you, trying to give me a heart attack? ❜
- ❛ What’s wrong? What happened? ❜
- ❛ I thought we agreed that secrets are bad! ❜
- ❛ Sorry. Didn’t want to push any sore spots. ❜
- ❛ Everything okay? ❜
- ❛ Do you even know where you’re headed? ❜
- ❛ I can’t help you unless you talk to me. ❜
- ❛ Promise me you’re not gonna over-react. ❜
- ❛ It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay. ❜
- ❛ Whoa, what are you doing? ❜
- ❛ Why do you run from me? ❜
- ❛ You’re changing the subject. ❜
- ❛ It’s four o'clock in the morning, what are you doing? ❜
- ❛ You’re bleeding. ❜
- ❛ You gotta be more careful. ❜
- ❛ I meant… How are you holding up? ❜
- ❛ You’re avoiding my question. ❜
- ❛ I think the worst of it’s over now. ❜
- ❛ Don’t let fear keep you quiet. You have a voice so use it. ❜
first snowfall starters - { cont! }
🏂 for our muses to go out to snowboard/ski/sledding
“This is a very real danger to life and limb,” Dorian protested as Cullen attached a small, ancient-looking sled to his far-too-excited Mabari. “Plus, I’m fairly certain this is animal cruelty. He looks abused. Cormac, bark once if you’re suffering, twice if you’d like me to phone the police.”
The dog wagged violently. The entirety of the dog. Not just its stumpy tail, which appeared to vibrate.
“I hate you both,” Dorian sighed, pulling out his phone and perching unhappily on the sled. “A moment. I’m going to update my will to ensure neither of you gets anything for this act of manslaughter.”
The lake below was a sparkle or three of deep winter green beneath the snow. Fresh tracks pattered over the morning flurries, nestled in a ring of firs and crowned with one giant white mushroom where a willow tree normally stood by the jetty.
It was home -- the same hills and crisp forest air, but blanketed with a thick layer of snow and memories. It didn’t remind him of the last spring, full of excitement and somehow homesick already; not the last days of summer, when the darkspawn reached the valley and the village churned to rubble.
Cullen tipped his chin, searching the treeline for the faint tips of warm smoke curling up from the same direction they’d come. A few more plumes every year.
Cormac’s tail was whipping so fast the snow was starting to form a snow-globe around this haunches.
“You heard him,” he told the mabari, fending the wet nose away from his ear as he ducked down to buckle the chest straps. “No more sparkling ham; no more fancy nugs half your age.”
Dorian had an arm in the air, craning the phone towards the eternal hope of a second bar, and Cullen tried not to look too smug. “Or... you could stay the richest dog in Tevinter. That’s definitely his GPRS face.”
ohsweetmaker reblogged
i don’t care what rewards you get from Lelianna or Josephine, i will forever choose Cullen for the quest. it makes me smile and laugh.
magisterivm
@ohsweetmaker what’s good
@magisterivm not her poetry.