Tag Archives: Merrill

DA2: Please Stay Part 5

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Middle Ground has some ridiculously unrealistic dialogue, but this is my dumb fic so it says things that I want to hear. Also I had to keep toning down the fight, because Reid really could go off in dangerously intense ways.

When I played the game, I didn’t import a DAO save (for one thing I’m not sure where my Elizabeth save files are) and so I picked the Mahariel Warden pre-set to just jump in and get started, in which Alistair is king. And that was going to be useful, because as Reid gets into in this set of scenes, he’s starting to feel the pressure intensely enough to think about giving up. So Alistair was going to be very helpful in making Reid feel like he ought to stay to the end of the game. However, in Elizabeth’s game, Alistair is still a Warden. So I wrote two alternate scenes – one where Queen Anora asks Reid basically the same stuff as Alistair (which is my headcanon), but I also wrote one where Warden Alistair asks – and that one’s kind of more fun? So both of them are here for your entertainment.

I feel Merrill’s story arc really fumbles the landing. Hard to fix without going in a completely different direction.

Part 4

 

Anders

The sewer was as horrific as ever, and Reid was getting suspicious. “Anders, you’re really going to drink a shit potion? Really?”

“Would you balk at this if it were you?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Reid said. “You sure owe me, though.”

“I do,” Anders said. “Though I think I’m going to ruin it: I know it isn’t my place to criticize, but… Are you sure about Fenris?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 4

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Meeting Carver in the Deep Roads with Nathaniel was really unsatisfying.

References Elizabeth Cousland, my DAO Warden.

Yes, I did do Alone with just Reid and Fenris. Since it was on Easy mode, I could do it for the RP.

The Smile part was inspired by a joke one of my friends told me once.

Part 3

 

Bullying

“Your master must have been a terrible man, to make you hate mages so,” Merrill said.

“He is a terrible man, and he’s not dead,” Fenris said shortly.

“We’re not all like him,” she said, coaxingly.

Fenris didn’t even look at her. “How often I hear that, and yet, how often I find it’s not true.

“The Keepers are different. They exist to preserve the old ways, and to protect our people.”

His glower deepened. “And none of them would ever fall prey to a demon. Or perform blood magic.” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 1

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In the second half of Nanowrimo this year I realized I didn’t have the energy to hold down five gigs and finish writing my complicated final arc for Devil’s Due, but I still wanted to finish Nanowrimo so I could get that discount on Scrivener (I like it! I think it’s really useful). So I turned to fluff instead, and since I’d recently restarted playing DA2 with yet another rendition of Reid (now with an actual family!) I needed to write some FenReid friendmance. It’s interesting because Fenris and Murlesson share a character archetype – emo angry OP escaped slave bishounen – so in this story Reid is quite different from some of his other iterations in order to better contrast Fenris. Also because Sarcastic!Hawke is great fun to play with.

Going to take a second here to complain about how rushed DA2 is. I love the characters, but they’re shallow as puddles; I like the visual design, but that’s the most egregiously recycled part (especially the maps, obviously); I like the story, but I don’t like how all the time I spent in it feels like an appetizer for another game. (I did acquire Inquisition, but Frostbite makes it look like garbage so I need to mod it up before playing. MEA looks better than DAI. : P ) It seemed every five minutes I would notice something that wasn’t quite polished about this game. The only thing that is absolutely top-notch is the voice acting: the characters may only have one note each, but their voices play that note beautifully.

So this is all pretty messy writing by my standards, and I don’t care, it’s for the fluffy fluff and the feels. Some headcanons and character build: Reid’s autoattack spells in this story aren’t determined by his staff, but by what he learned to control personally (so he only ever uses lightning as an auto, not fire or force or whatever); he has some of the Primal tree, all of the Entropy tree, and a little Blood Mage and Force Mage specializations; I played on Easy so there’s no friendly fire. I downloaded a hair mod and a freckle mod, and the Vow of Pride robes mod (though I didn’t give those to him until Act 2; in Act 1 I wore the default gear for the RP). A screenshot and another screenshot.

The second little bit is inspired by a mod that removes the dead bodies out of Fenris’s mansion after you recruit him.

Spoilers: Isabela leaves (I didn’t have her approval high enough), Anders dies (sorry, Anders fans).

The dog is named Bo after Sorne’s dog in our DnD game.

This story is rated M for incessant swearing and mild sexiness. Continue reading →