The Canticle of Fate

[AugustArria]

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Welcome to The Canticle of Fate's OOC page. We likely won't use this very much, as a majority of our chat is done on the titanpad. Think of it more as a visitor center.

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[Kilgannon]

This is the next one, isn't it?! Was I too late?! Oh well, if I can't join you at least I can read along again.:'(

[tuxedo fox]

Hey there, sorry if this is for active rpers only. Just wanted to say you guys have one of the neatest intro pages I've seen, did one of you actually make all that in one way or another? Either way, badass job!

[Kurokiku]

Hi tuxedo fox! Comments are always welcome in the OOC, and we're glad you like our stuff. Talisman is the primary visuals person in the group, so the lion's share of credit for the intro page layout goes to him.

And hey Shu. Yeah, this one is something we've been planning for just the five of us for a very long time, so we made an early decision not to open it up publicly. It's a project that's really dear to us, and the second part of something already three and a half years running, so we're a bit protective of it haha.

[tuxedo fox]

Dangit! Now I have to go and play a dragon age game...I hope your proud of yourselves!

Also, your guy's rp made me totally look up more Dragon Age rps totally thinking there'd be one to join-I cant believe how little I actually found, and I don't even mean active rps. I'm talkin in general, its like an untouched rp topic for the most part....its really wierd, just thought it'd be way more popular I guess? Or maybe I wasn't looking in the right spot/useing the right search.

And that's really cool to hear Kurokiku-Im a huge dragon age fan (like...huge) and I'd never seen anything like what you did Tempest-like it totally matches the style, it just all looked original (and if not, real rare images I'd not seen/cant recall). I dunno if that makes since, but Im seriously giving you mad props man. What do you use to work on that stuff, if you don't mind me asking? If you read this that is, lol.

[Talisman]

Basically hours spent sifting through the underbelly of deviantart for original/similar art, hours more of photoshop, and bunch of random ass practice, trial and error, and a tutorial every now and then warped to my purposes.

Maybe a sacrifice to a Dark Old one every now and then. Maybe.

But no, most of it's just a bunch of image effects in photoshop, time, and creative use of HTML code.

Thanks for the comment though! If my ego gets any bigger we'll have to build a house around it. Compliments makes me all warm and fuzzily inside.

[tuxedo fox]

Damn so it really is just photoshop, eh? I've dabbled in photoshop and made some things I thought looked good but damn....nothin that nice lol. Now I've a new goal to achieve...you mind If I shoot you a question now and then?

[Talisman]

Sure, feel free.

[Kilgannon]

And hey Shu. Yeah, this one is something we've been planning for just the five of us for a very long time, so we made an early decision not to open it up publicly. It's a project that's really dear to us, and the second part of something already three and a half years running, so we're a bit protective of it haha.

I'll write with ya'll one day yet, mark my words.

[AugustArria]

I'll write with ya'll one day yet, mark my words.

I'm sure we'll have side projects spring up eventually (some time after we finish our other endeavor, most likely). Those will probably be a bit more experimental, and probably open to a few more people joining if they're interested. We'll keep you on the list for when that happens. Might be a while, but it'll happen at some point.

[Kilgannon]

I'm sure we'll have side projects spring up eventually (some time after we finish our other endeavor, most likely). Those will probably be a bit more experimental, and probably open to a few more people joining if they're interested. We'll keep you on the list for when that happens. Might be a while, but it'll happen at some point.

I'll hold ye to it, then. Have fun with this one, guys. Hope it's as successful as the last!

[Morpheus]

*dusts off a seat in the visitor center*

Hi there!

So I know some of you from previous RPs, and some of you I don’t know at all, but I wanted to take a moment to use my words and say some stuff.

I’m not around the site a lot anymore; mostly because I have too many things to do elsewhere, but at some point before I left, I read all or most of City of Chains, and I checked back on the place a few days ago, only to find that not only did it have a sequel, it had a sequel that might prove to be even better than the first!

I read everything you guys have done here so far, and I just want to congratulate you on how well-done it is. The characters are unique and compelling, and each has a distinct voice and perspective that you really manage to bring out with the way you shift POVs between posts. It’s always clear to me whose post it is, and I really enjoy the variation and the coherence there. They’re good as protagonists; most of them are very obviously flawed or imperfect in at least one way, but their flaws are never so glaring that they become unsympathetic. Some of them have a sort of archetypal flavor to them, but I don’t find them predictable or boring because of this. (I confess to having favorites like anyone does, but I certainly could not say there's a single character here I don't like).

The plot, where you’ve changed it, still makes sense and flows together pretty seamlessly with the original material, and I don’t find myself missing any of the characters or plot elements you’ve replaced. I like the DA:I story, and I like your story, and while they’re obviously similar, they aren’t the same, so I don’t find even the aspects of the plot that remain unchanged to be a slog.

In short, the story’s a pleasure to read, and I’m glad you’re the ones doing it, because I have evidence (and confidence) that you’ll actually finish it, which is a rare accomplishment on its own. Lots of times, RPs are really only for their writers, and don’t get much attention outside of that. I get that; people come here to write more often than they come here to read. But, if anyone happens to come across this little review of mine, I encourage them to give this one a try. It reads more like a novel than what I typically think of as an RP, and the writers are to be commended for pulling that off so well. As someone who has tried to achieve this effect myself, I can say it’s tough to get that flow sometimes.

Anyway, I say this with no ulterior motives; I’m not looking to break into your group here or anything like that. Even if I had the time, I have to say I’d be a little afraid of altering what is clearly an exceptional formula. But I wanted you all to know that I read what’s here, really loved it, and look forward to future posts.

Best of luck.

-M

[AugustArria]

Hey Morpheus, thanks for stopping by.

It's always super encouraging to hear that people sometimes end up reading the stuff we write. Even more when we hear that they enjoy it. We're really happy the perspective thing is working out well, it's something we'd wanted to try since midway through CoC, but we didn't want to mess with the style format halfway through that. The semi-novel like effect is really what we've been going for, while still maintaining that roleplay aspect where we all still restrict ourselves to our own characters. It's sometimes difficult to decide which character is best suited to take perspective for a given post, but it's been a fun challenge, and we're pretty happy with the results.

We're currently at the end of one of our slowed-down periods, as we tend to take a month or so off around the end of the school year due to craziness in our lives. But, I think we'll start chugging along here soon enough again, and have new posts coming out. We're looking forward to getting into more personal plotlines now that they're all situated at Skyhold. Sort of the "Act 2" stage that we had for CoC, which proved to be the most fun part to write, in my opinion.

So thanks again for leaving that awesome note, it's always great to hear from those that read our work. We hope you'll continue to enjoy what's coming up.

[AugustArria]

Just making a bit of a celebratory post, to mark the roleplay just crossing the 500,000 word mark. Not even close to done, either.

Go team.

[Yonbibuns]

Character Playlists
Just so everyone knows where I'm hoarding them.

[AugustArria]

And around 6 months later, making another celebratory post, as the roleplay is now over 1 million words. The milestone happened to arrive on my birthday of all days, which is pretty sweet. We've had a lot of amazing stuff happen already in this RP, and we've got nothing but amazing stuff planned for the rest of it.

A sincere thanks to Kiku, Val, Tally, and Yonni for everything. This stuff we do really does mean the world to me.

[The Valkyrie]

For several days before they are formally introduced, he watches her.

Marcus knows that these matters have to be handled most delicately. His scheme is ambitious, and will require finding and shaping several pieces to his needs. He’s ensured that he’ll be assigned to the priesthood, cultivating a set of skills entirely unlike those he’d learned for his master. The Ben-Hassrath handle valuable information consistently; it is vital that he be placed among them rather than with the unthinking body of the army, and clerical positions are unavailable to him. It is this or nothing.

But that is not all that must go well. He observes her train, this human girl. Shaana, he has been informed. The Qunari word for the color of honey stands in for a name, perhaps because it is also the color of her hair. It isn't a sentimental thing, only a practical one. They need something to call her, something that will serve long enough for her to earn something else.

He decides she must have been born with a name. He can tell because of the way she watches some of the other humans in the settlement. Two in particular are always followed with curious eyes. And they are curious, the way one of them is red like that, and the other the same blue as Par Vollen’s sky. She knows who her parents are. And some part of her cares.

Marcus can use that. She’s susceptible to sentiment, still, and the Qunari have none. Not really. Not compared to what he can feign. He will light a fire inside her, and burn away everything she thinks she knows.

She’s almost pretty, he thinks. Perhaps when she is older, she will be, when the coltishness has faded and she has grown into her fledgling strength. It won't be hard to pretend.

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"Do you know what your name was, before this?" He tilts his head at her, black eyes studying her face with uncanny keenness. The sun streams in from the window at an angle, giving the inky fall of his hair a shine and warming her unsleeved, unscarred arms. She isn't sure anyone has ever looked at her that way before. Somehow it feels... different, from being one among many. It feels like he is looking, not at Shaana, not at Imekari-who-will-be-Ben-Hassrath, but at her. A person who no longer has a name. A person who no longer exists.

She swallows. That look is dangerous. She can feel it, next to her bones, in the hollow of her chest. "That doesn't matter."

"Marcus," he says, almost as though he hadn't heard her. "Was mine. Marcus Alesius. No one knows that, here. No one but you." His body shifts, something about the change making her aware of how much taller than her he is, how much older and more powerful. How strange the moment is. How fragile. Her mouth feels dry, like she's swallowed sand.

His expectation weighs heavily on her. His eyes do, too; she isn't sure what to make of the weight. No one has ever asked her about before—she barely knows herself. Her words are true. It doesn't matter, but...

"Natalia." She says the word softly, finding its taste strange in her mouth. She's only ever said it once before. To herself, in the dark and quiet, just after she'd learned it in the first place. "Natalia Aiza."

His mouth curls; her breath catches in her throat. At fifteen years old, she finds herself with a sudden concrete understanding of something that has only been abstract to her before. It hits her like a wall, skittering up her spine and settling low in her belly, alive and uncomfortably hot, like an ember. She resists the urge to take a half-step backwards, to flee. He is new, the Besrathari had said. It will be her responsibility to help him learn what it means to follow the Qun. But even several months later, she knows that isn't what is happening. He knows everything he needs to know. He knows this isn't a conversation they should be having.

And it seems deliberate. No accident, no mistake.

Perhaps he senses her unease; his focus seems to sharpen even further. She feels like she is standing on the edge of a knife, and with so much as one wrong breath, she'll be cut. But all he does is smile a little more. "Natalia." It rolls off his tongue much more smoothly than hers. "How lovely. A secret between us, perhaps? I won't tell if you don't."

Her breath leaves her unsteadily. Already she wonders if it hadn't somehow been a mistake to say. A secret, between them. Just them. She's never had something like that before. Against her instincts, against every piece of her training and education, she finds herself nodding, a tentative smile turning her lips just barely, at the edges where it's hard to see.

"Okay."

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They train together, outside of the ordinary practices.

He’s arranged for it to be so, and it was not difficult to convince her. She is driven by a need to prove that her smaller human body will not hinder her against even Qunari opponents, and a Ben-Hassrath must be capable of handling Qunari opponents. He gently floats the suggestion that they might be able to help one another, and she agrees readily. Once a day, under the cover of darkness, they train. So it has been for three years.

Shaana has grown tall and strong and swift. She has also bypassed pretty for an unusual kind of beautiful, skipping over it as though she knows instinctively that it is something she does not need. Such delicacy is not hers, will never be hers. This, too, is an advantage for Marcus; it is surpassingly unlikely that he will face competition for her attention. Even the Qunari acknowledge need and desire. Her humanity keeps her from most of it. His designs will keep her from the rest. She must depend on only him.

Her knife clashes against his; he deflects. Her agility nearly surprises him; she flips backward, kicking out to catch him off guard. But he knows what no one else seems to understand. Knows she is exceptional. And so in the end, it isn't especially surprising at all. His hand lashes forward, catches her leg at the ankle, and when she twists to bring them both to the ground, he goes willingly.

Marcus, too, is exceptional. Though the grapple is contentious, he maneuvers her into a pin first, planting his arm at her sternum and holding her in place with his legs thrown over either side of her body. They still, breathing rapid from the energy of the exchange. His blood runs hot with adrenaline; she is tense beneath him. Her breaths are short, soft against his cheek where they land. In the scant light afforded by the night sky, he watches her pupils dilate until they are blown wide, her irises just thin rims of color around the black.

"Natalia."

It's only calculation. All part of the plan.

He kisses her.

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The ember in her becomes a flame—a warm, flickering candle in the dark and the cold.

It’s just bodies, she tells herself. Just animal instinct. The Qun does not outlaw that. And if normally such matters are taken care of in a much more regular, appointed way, well… she decides it’s probably the most convenient like this regardless. She’ll spend long periods of time away from Par Vollen, away from any Qun-controlled settlement. And he’ll surely be her partner, so—it’s just convenient. Logical. Sensible.

If it also burns like a thing alive… who’s to know but her?

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It’s just bodies—until it isn’t.

His aims require that he ensnare her mind as well as her senses. That is why, when first they succeed in a difficult mission for the Ariqun, he calls her kadan.

It’s why he’s angry when she does not use the word in return, a low, simmering seethe in his guts, and a twinge somewhere a little higher.

Never mind. She’ll come around.

He has time.

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Kadan is a strange word.

Most of those in Qunlat have rigidly-defined uses; a small subclass are a little looser for the necessity of social conversation. But kadan is a word that has many meanings, something that is otherwise anathema to Qunari mentality. To some, it is an indication of close camaraderie. Partnership. If that were all it meant, she could have called him so without a moment’s hesitation.

When Shaana learned the trade tongue, she came to understand that people classified their relationships in many ways. Some the Qun would allow, and many more that it would not. She suspects that some of her people use the word like the word friend is used elsewhere. Perhaps this explains her hesitance. Friend does not seem like the appropriate characterization of what they are to each other.

But it is there anyway, on the tip of her tongue or caught in the back of her throat. It seems close sometimes when it is his skin on hers, his breath in her lungs, the heat of his body surrounding her. But it seems closer still after, when his fingers are sifting through her hair, easing the knots from it, or when they rise early in the morning, still bleary from sleep, and their eyes meet across their campsite. When he asks her to tease the harp-strings for him, and lays back to close his eyes and listen.

She will say it when this is over, she thinks. When the viddathari are safely ensconced in Qunari territory, and the Imperium is far behind them. When they do not have to tread so carefully, lest they be caught by Tevinter agents. When they are home.

So caught up is she in these thoughts that she does not notice the ambush until it is far too late.

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His lips purse, thinning into a line.

“Kadan, please. All it will take is the list. I know she gave it to you.”

She is silent. He thinks distantly that she has seldom been more herself than she is in this moment, trapped under someone else’s power and still so very proud. Her eyes are hard like gemstones, a ruby and a sapphire, set into a stubborn face that wears its hostility well. A wounded tigress, she is, aware of her own peril but refusing to submit to it.

Marcus is almost moved by it. Perhaps he is, but not enough. There are things he must do, things he was born into this world to do, and right now, she is making herself an obstacle.

He runs the flat of his knife along the line of her jaw. Just a slight tilt, the barest angling, and it will bite into the skin of her face. He’s already carved marks upon her body, regular and precise, calculated for pain but not permanent damage. She anticipates another; he knows she does. Perhaps she anticipates that he’ll take her eyes, too. He has intimated more than once that he is fond of them.

It tempts him, the thought that he could be the last thing she was ever allowed to see. But though this exercise has become as much pleasure as utility, he cannot turn the knife. Her eyes would hold no appeal without her spirit burning behind them. Though the rest of her will forever bear his marks, he finds that he prefers her face just as it is.

The knife falls away, and he reaches up with his free hand, instead, pressing his fingertips gently to her cheek. “This would be so much easier if you would cooperate, Natalia.”

Her lip curls. She turns her face away, shifting as far from his hand as she is able. His methods of persuasion have proven ineffective. She is not as much his as he believed, and this is proving to be his fatal error.

Clenching his teeth, Marcus shifts his hand, gripping her jaw and wrenching her head back towards him. He closes the distance until they are breathing the same air, finding that it ignites him just the same as it always has. He tilts forward the last few inches; when their mouths meet, it is neither tender nor soft. He bites her lip until it bleeds, pulling back with a shuddering recoil. Perhaps if—

He stops short, the taste of copper on his tongue.

Her eyes are cold. Distant. As though she is no longer present in the room at all. He sought to pull her, and has pushed instead. He does not want her like this.

Marcus releases her, and storms from the room.

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Methodically, he strips everything from her.

Trust.

Hope.

Faith.

Something like what other languages call love.

In the end, all that is left is the Qun. The breath in her lungs, the words in her mind.

The flame is extinguished.

She endures.

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She dies beneath his hands.

Her breath is still. Her warmth is gone. And for a moment, his world whites out to nothing.

He commands his men to bury her.

They do not find the courage to tell him that the grave is empty for weeks after. When they do, he does not know what he feels. Only that a fire still burns in him, and that when he dreams, it is of the fire in her.

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Her name, says the Ariqun, is Amalia.

The ashes are cold, now.

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Over time, she takes back the things he stole.

Her music is first. She decides that she likes playing it for the children in this place. They are not, perhaps, quite as good at listening, but she finds that this does not bother her. They are innocent, and have no designs in their attention, and she needs that perhaps more than she realized.

Her smile returns eventually as well. Infrequently, but that has always been so. She is not a lighthearted person, and the burden of her history will always weigh her down. She tries not to feel imprisoned by it, and occasionally, she succeeds. Hope returns on the heels of this revelation, and it gathers the ashes close at her feet again. They are not so desolate as she supposed.

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Faith is a slower, harder battle.

She finds it, of course, in the place she least expects.

“Perhaps, when we are done, we will have more to show for it than our scars.”

Perhaps.

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Trust is an unbearable lightness.

It’s weightless, like she might float into the sky, unmoored from all her burdens. Though that proves to be temporary, and eventually her feet find the ground once more, what remains is solid under her, a foundation she can stand on. It shifts the landscape of her entire life, when she finally understands what kadan means, sweeping away everything she stood on before.

It is terrifying, and sublime.

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She has not reclaimed everything that he took. Amalia knows that well, because she feels what is still missing like an emptiness, a hollow place and an ache that does not abate.

Sometimes it feels literal. It does this night, when she and kadan are camped beneath an overhang. Rain pours from above, but their shelter is just enough to keep them dry. Kadan sleeps, and Amalia watches. It is always thus—Marcus cannot be trusted not to find and destroy them in their sleep. She believes he would want them to know their demise was at his hands, but she has believed many things about him that turned out to be false. She refuses to take the risk.

Her eyes fall to Ithilian; it’s technically his turn to watch now, but she elects to let him sleep a while longer. The constant travel has been hard on them both, but this is for her, and she is conscious of all he has given up to help. It humbles her, that someone cares for her so much, because Amalia knows with iron certainty that no one else ever has.

It is for him most of all that she wishes to be free.

Something tightens in her throat, and she turns her eyes out towards the rain again, watching it fall from the stone shelf over their heads to the forest floor. It smells like new things, like spring and fresh greenery.

It occurs to her that some of the most beautiful things in the world only grow in soil that has been enriched by ashes.

One day. One day there will be something new in the empty places. As soon as she is brave enough to allow it to bloom.