Calling App

[boundinblood]

[PLAYER]
Player Name: Cherry
Player Age: 28
Player Contact: CherryFlight, contact privately for other contact options please!
Characters Currently Played: N/A

[CHARACTER]
Character Name: Katherine Amell (Malleable protagonist - Dragon Age: Origins)
Character Age: About 25-26
References Pages: Worldstate plus characterization notes (most of which will also be covered in the backstory). How she feels about other major characters, mostly companions. A very long character interview, you don't really need to read that, I'll be touching on most of it in the backstory. And last, but not least, A storyline overview of Dragon Age: Origins for extra context, if necessary. I'll be going over it in more detail in the backstory, too. She went through a lot.

Powers/Abilities/Skills:

Skills:

As far as mundane things anyone of any world can learn by studying, Katherine is very skilled in survival, which generally sees use in picking out signs of something that wants to attack you or knowing how animals behave and how to react to them properly. She knows how to pay attention to cues in her environment, basically. As a companion skill to this, she's familiar with herbalism, and is good at identifying plants and discerning medicinal value - give her the resources and she can even make some healing potions for you!

Magic - General:
Katherine is a mage. In her world, this is accomplished by, more or less, drawing power from a place best described as the dream world. So magic is sort of explained as the physics-defying of dreams made reality! Fun, right? Like most mages, she carries a staff at all times. Hers is called Lamppost in Winter, and as you might guess, that makes it a cold/ice elemental weapon, and that's the sort of magic it fires. Now, this comes from the staff, and not herself, so she can fire bolts of cold energy from the staff all she likes, but when it comes to casting spells, that's a different story. Any one mage can only draw so much power at once, just like a runner can only sustain a sprint for so long. No one spell can be cast in immediate succession and the use of multiple spells back to back results in running this power - called mana, of course - dry. She must either refrain from casting until she recovers or drink a potion meant to restore this power before she can cast again. Hand gestures are very important in spellcasting, and unless channeled through a staff, spells are usually cast from the fingertips or palms. A mage cannot cast most spells with bound hands, though if their hands are bound carelessly they may be able to cast very simple spells behind them. Some spells are so complex the caster cannot even carry anything other than a mage's staff or something else specifically meant to channel magic while casting them.

In cutscenes, she is shown using lightning and fire magic, though she knows none of these in-game. Theoretically, any mage can use any base magical energy, but specific spells require study and training (which would also explain another mage's account of instinctively setting someone's hair on fire as a child but not knowing any combat fire spells). As both of these were used in large bursts to put down an overwhelmingly strong (expansion endboss) enemy who didn't seem as if it would die, it's safe to say this case was purely instinct. Indeed, Katherine doesn't like using fire and is unable to focus on its controlled use for long (this cost her her eyebrows at least twice).

For this reason, and because there is some lore that hints mages are taught more than combat spells, in addition to her specific combat spells, I will assume she also knows a wide array of purely cosmetic spells, such as creating spheres, streaks, or trails of light.


Shapeshifter:

Katherine learned this particular brand of magic from her friend Morrigan. As the name implies, she may change her shape. She is always studying more, but the only ones she has mastered so far are a bear, a giant spider, and a swarm of blood-sucking flies, the same as Morrigan's combat forms. There doesn't seem to be any reason she can't pick up additional forms, aside from the restriction of game coding, so she might learn a few more during her time in the game.

Spirit Healer:

Her primary specialization is, in fact, her second acquired. As she grew closer to her allies, in particular Alistair, and continued to see them fall in battle in her defense, she sought ways to help them, and found the Fade's (that is, the aforementioned dream world's) benevolent spirits. Because spirits are said to be largely uninterested in mortals, it makes sense that only a few answer the call of any one mage, and as it was primarily born of her love for Alistair, it was a spirit of compassion that became the most common spirit to come to her aid. The spells themselves will be detailed shortly, but as spirit healing involves summoning a spirit to cast the specified spell, any effects which nullify or hamper summoning will render these skills unavailable to her.

Spells:

And now, a listing of specific abilities! For everyone's convenience, this is in link form.

*Hostile and allied targets: Many spells described in the links to follow will specify "hostile targets" and "allies" - this is based not in objective fact but in the caster's perception. A seeming ally that fully intends to stab her in the back will be ignored by any spells directed at hostile targets until he himself takes action against her and she sees him as hostile.

Katherine is from the end of her game and all its expansions combined, and as such is a very accomplished combat mage by now. She knows the entirety of the Arcane category, which seems to be a sort of "general theory" school for all mages, and has completely mastered everything her game had to offer in the school of Entropy, which is her specialty. Because it shares so many effects with Entropy, she has also learned the glyphs in the school of Creation.

Outside of standard Circle magic schools, Katherine has also learned, of course, Shapeshifting and Spirit Healing. A period of time where she took up a dagger instead of a staff for personal reasons has seen to her also mastering the powers of a Battlemage.

Some of these spells only behave the way they do because of game mechanics. There is no reason the Horror effect, for example, must root its target to the spot. It may well be just as likely to cause the foe to flee, hide, or blindly lash out in fear instead. Also, the wiki fails to mention that Death Cloud does not require line of sight to the affected area and can be cast on the other side of a wall. Ask Katherine to tell the story of the opportune jammed door someday.

In addition, some of these spells can be combined - there are more than the two I will list available to her skill set, but they are the only ones she has discovered:

• Paralysis Explosion: Glyph of Paralysis + Glyph of Repulsion. Katherine had never been interested in the school of Creation during her formal studies, so this foray into the glyphs was entirely independent. She discovered this combination purely by accident when trying to trap a choke point. Paralysis and repulsion are, by design, mutually exclusive. A target cannot be both held still and knocked back. When the two glyphs overlap, their effects attempt to resolve on one another, resulting in an explosion of magical energy that paralyzes everyone in a range of seven and a half meters - including the caster and their allies. It is more powerful than Mass Paralysis, immobilizing even foes that shrug off most direct paralysis spells.
  
• Nightmare: Sleep + Horror. A sleeping mind cannot resist suggestion, and the suggestion of horror becomes a nightmare beyond imagining. When Horror is cast on a sleeping target, the magical energy does much more than it normally would, inflicting a massive amount of spirit damage as well as terrifying the target the way Horror would have alone.

Your Character's Backstory:

*Reading for the canonblind: Circle of Magi, templars, phylacteries, the Harrowing, the Tranquil. Mages are complicated, I'm sorry.


Pre-Origin

Or: The stuff Bioware left to us, mostly. All canon has on the Amell in the Fereldan Circle is that he or she, in this case "she", was the firstborn of five children, presumably born in Kirkwall up north in the Free Marches where the rest of the Amells live. The player may choose to tell another character that theirs was born in Denerim or Highever, without lying, and I have chosen to resolve this like so:

Katherine Amell was taken from her mother in the streets of Kirkwall at a very young age, so young the Circle could tell her later she was taken from Denerim and she would believe it. She spent an obscenely long time believing it, in fact, only learning by chance where her family really hailed from much later. Her origins don't really matter so much to her; she has no recollection of her life before the Circle, after all. All she knows is there was an incident with a boy trying to light a torch in winds that kept putting out the flames before they properly kindled. She wanted to help. That was that. She doesn't remember the struggle with the templars that came to take her away, or her mother sobbing in the streets in her wake, or what happened to her father in the chaos - she was left with the distinct impression most of her life that he is dead, though with her birthplace not what she thought it was, she doubts this, too. What if it was only a ploy to keep her from wanting to run away from the Circle, like being told she came from Denerim - what better way to know exactly where she might run if she escaped? The only thing she knows for certain anymore is there was a struggle; she has a (hidden) scar on her face to prove it, though whether deliberately inflicted or accidentally cut open as she struggled she doesn't know.

From the very beginning, Katherine has always had great difficulty with upheavals in her life, most of all at this young age, with none of her experience to help guide her or find stability. Separated from her parents for the first time, she screamed and cried for her mother for hours every day after being brought to the Circle. Nobody was able to console her. And then, one day, when she cried herself dry, there was someone waiting for her: a boy a year or two older than she was. He introduced himself as Jowan, and offered to be her friend in that innocently direct way young children do.

That's all it really took, for someone to offer support at the right time. That's all it ever takes.

She and Jowan became like sister and brother as they grew up learning magic together. Katherine loved learning about this "hidden" aspect of the world and threw herself into her studies eagerly, much to the delight of her instructors. But all was not well. She may have been broken out of her shock, but that was not the end. It's not that simple. An informal pecking order was established among the apprentices, as any enclosed environment of young people is wont to encourage, and it left her feeling...inadequate, among her peers. Not in magical ability, no, she always had faith in her own abilities there. But she felt less welcome among them, in part for her eagerness to study - the "teacher's pet" effect, made worse by First Enchanter Irving, leader of the Circle, taking part in her instruction as he noticed her efforts. But there was something more, too. Not all of that perceived scorn was actually there. A lot of it was born of self-feeding insecurities fueled by what did exist and the subtle emotional decline of a person in a cage. She didn't consciously know it was a cage. To her, it was her home. She didn't notice at the time how it got worse after the outdoor exercise sessions were revoked thanks to another's escape attempt, and even when she did look back and realize that detail, didn't know why. It wasn't as if she was particularly attached to them. But without them the spiral downward began in earnest. As her feelings of social inadequacy fed on themselves, she threw herself into her studies, often foregoing food, drink, and sleep. Her health suffered, and a new inadequacy surfaced. Ashen, brittle-haired and wiry, she considered herself ugly even if others were in ill health, too. No matter who they were, she thought they were more attractive than herself. Even when she took Jowan's suggestion to hide the scar on her cheek in the border of a facial tattoo, it did little to make her feel any more confident in her self-image. It was not out of prudishness that she avoided the sexual liberty the other mages in her Circle are known for enjoying (being raised in a society all its own is an effective way of dodging taboos, after all), but out of feeling undeserving, seeing herself as unlikable and undesirable. Even when someone showed obvious interest (such as Cullen, not a fellow mage but a templar watching them), she assumed they were misguided or faking out of either malice or some misplaced pity and turned a cold shoulder. If they were sincere then they would - and should - find someone better. She managed to be casual acquaintances with several apprentices, at least, through tutoring them, putting her obsessive studying to use. She was aloof, but not numb: if someone needed help, she would do what she could, within reason, to give it, though never at personal risk. It would take something incredible to change that.

Hers has always been a confidence divided in some way. Her mind was fraught with insecurities in relation to her peers and her own body, but of her own magical ability and her place in the order of the Circle, her place in her world, she was absolutely certain.

As a student of the arcane, Katherine Amell knew exactly where she was going.

Origin and Prologue

That's why she shot straight for the top, surpassing Jowan, who had been there longer, and being selected for Harrowing in relatively short order, which she accepted without hesitation. Within the Fade, she met someone claiming to be the spirit of a fellow apprentice who had been abandoned there, though he wore senior enchanter's robes instead. He had been hiding, he said, in the form of a mouse, because as the world of dreams, nearly anything is possible in the Fade. Katherine was sympathetic to the other mage's plight, but Mouse (he had forgotten his name, he said) urged her onwards lest she suffer the same fate, and as she continued she dueled a spirit of valor and matched wits with a sloth demon, arming herself and teaching Mouse how to turn into a bear to fight alongside her, respectively. Katherine had always been willing to take on a challenge, after all, and felt confident in her ability to protect herself. Together, she and Mouse defeated the rage demon that supposedly was her target here. After the battle, Katherine suggested wanting to help Mouse somehow, if there was a way, and Mouse said something unexpected: Let [him] in.

That was a red flag if she ever heard one. Mages were taught to resist demons from the start. Sympathy deserted, she asked if the rage demon was really her test, and Mouse showed himself as the real demon of this Harrowing - a pride demon, to match the robes well above his stated rank.

"Simple killing is a warrior's job. The real dangers of the Fade are preconceptions... careless trust... pride. Keep your wits about you, mage. True tests... never end."

Most of these dangers would manifest and harm her not in the Fade, but in the waking world - all of these were problems that Katherine carried with her through the rest of the game, always a stumbling block but never to a demon, always to another person or institution. She was properly vigilant about the Fade, but other people? Not always. This vigilance over the Fade would even prove terribly limiting later, itself.

But that would be much, much later. For now, there was waking from the Fade. Katherine, easily disoriented, at first wondered if she was still there, but Jowan, standing over her, assured her the Harrowing was over. She had apparently passed it in record time, a result of the hard work she'd put into studying. Irving gave her her mage's robes and the traditional lyrium-infused silver ring given to all mages who pass their Harrowing, and then introduced her to their guest, the current commander of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden, Duncan. She asked him about the outside world, curious, but with no interest in leaving the Circle and going to fight the war against darkspawn he spoke of. She didn't consider herself a citizen of Ferelden, and felt no need to protect it. Her only allegiance was to the Circle, and the niche there she was carving out for herself.

All of that was soon to fall apart. Jowan approached her as she left Duncan in the quarters she'd escorted him to, and asked her for her help. He wanted to escape. He had learned he was going to be made Tranquil instead of taking his Harrowing at all, and having fallen in love with a Chantry initiate named Lily, didn't want to lose that. (This relationship was forbidden due to the nature of Lily's vows and the Chantry's overall thoughts on mages, but Katherine saw and still sees love as something that cannot be controlled - why would anyone be attracted to her otherwise, for example? So she accepted it all the same.)

Katherine now faced a moral quandary the likes of which she'd never seen before, the first of many. Did she help her childhood friend, or did she defer to the wisdom of the First Enchanter? Both of them were like family to her in their own ways; Jowan like a brother and Irving like a grandfather. She told Jowan and Lily she needed to think about it, and wandered the halls of the tower, doing what she always did, and always would do, when faced with such an impossible choice: Stall. Try to learn more. Gather information. She spoke to the Tranquil in the tower, asked them what they could tell her about the ritual. The only one who gave any information about the circumstances of his ritual was Owain, the Tranquil in charge of the stockroom. He had volunteered, himself. It wasn't much to go on, and she mulled it over as long as she dared. But with so little knowledge - the rite was secret, after all - there was only one uneasy solution to come to: Katherine possessed a keen sense of justice, but was usually not selfless enough to act on it where it would bring harm to her unless posed as a challenge. Jowan was an exception. He was her friend, her brother mage. He had been there for her when she was hurting and guided her through her first steps as an apprentice. And he had not volunteered. All he wanted to do, he said, was find somewhere and settle down with Lily. He'd never use magic again.

She had to help him. So down they went into the tower's basement to find Jowan's phylactery, to keep the templars from finding him once he and Lily escaped. Once they found it, something in Jowan's demeanor changed, he spoke in a way that chilled her, and she would soon learn why, as they exited the basement and attempted to leave. Irving and the commander of the templars in the Circle, Greagoir, already knew and were waiting with Duncan to stop them.

And then Jowan realized the First Enchanter's fears and used blood magic to protect them. His intentions may have been good, but of these two important women in his life, neither one took the use of the Forbidden School well. Lily in particular refused to go with him, and he ran off, past their dazed opposition. In Katherine's mind, she had been betrayed. Jowan had lied to her, and she had fallen for it. She had never suspected her friend of harboring this knowledge, and her part in allowing him to escape - without his phylactery, at that! - hurt most of all. Already vulnerable to self-doubt, she was crushed. She was perfectly willing to accept death for her actions, but Duncan had other ideas. He invoked the Right of Conscription, forcing mage and templar alike to surrender their charge to the Wardens, and despite her protests, stole her away from the only home she knew, with a massive debt unpaid.

She hardly spoke as they traveled, but the allure of learning of this world she knew existed but couldn't recall ever living in kept her from withdrawing completely into herself, open wonder keeping her from falling apart, if only barely. By the time they reached Ostagar, she no longer wished to return to face punishment, but she was not the woman she was. To those in authority she was polite, if self-deprecating and glum whenever conversation turned to her ability. She kept everyone at arm's length, asking questions about them not out of genuine interest but to gauge the earnestness of their answers, both learning how much she had to watch them and learning of the world she had been denied for so long. She met the other two Warden recruits, and a relatively new Warden named Alistair - who was having an argument with one of the mages Duncan had recruited for the king's army. Here she encountered something else for the first time: to a man, the three of them were perplexed at the third recruit being a woman. Magic knows no boundaries but dwarves, so sexism struck her as very odd. There was never anything a male mage could do that she couldn't, after all. She didn't think she'd like any of them very much. She was, in fact, trying not to like any of them very much. The only time she clung to hope of making a new friend was at the chance of curing a mabari hound of poisoning from darkspawn blood. Animals, after all, were by nature innocent. They had such simple motives, and were not capable of deceit or malice on the order of people. Thinking it would be a suitable replacement for the sort of attachment she felt she could no longer risk, she agreed to help the animal in the excursion Duncan had planned for Alistair and the recruits in the Korcari Wilds, where darkspawn were gathering.

They needed darkspawn blood for this ritual they were going to perform. If Katherine had any misgivings about expressly gathering blood for a rite when blood magic had gotten her into this mess in the first place, she didn't say anything. She had nowhere else to go, after all, and the structure of the Wardens promised her the stability and sense of identity and accomplishment that had been destroyed when she had agreed to help Jowan. Just doing this basic sort of material-gathering was helping somewhat, giving her solid ground to stand on while she tried to rebuild what was left of who she thought she was and where she fit into the world. Of course, Alistair went along for a reason, as well - they needed some old treaties in the Wilds, too, treaties that bound certain governments and institutions to come to the aid of the Grey Wardens in a Blight. They found these treaties not where they had been left, but in the hands of an old witch, Flemeth, or so said her daughter Morrigan. Instantly, Morrigan had nothing but scorn for everyone, and when she showed the tiniest bit of leniency towards Katherine for the simple fact of - again - her sex, she seized on it and directly asked to be taken to her mother if she had the scrolls they were looking for. Flemeth claimed she had only taken them because the seal on the chest had eroded, and was willing to hand them over without any fuss.

The Joining was not what she expected. The darkspawn blood they had collected was to be ingested - they were to willingly drink poison. It killed one recruit outright, which spooked the other, forcing Duncan to kill him to keep him from running off with a Warden secret. Facing death either way, and thinking if nothing else it would replace the punishment the Circle had in mind if it failed, Katherine drank from the goblet of blood. She passed out from the poison, but lived, waking to a relieved Alistair and Duncan. The corpses of her fellow recruits had already been cleared away. How surreal it all was hit her as she got to her feet, and a little numb with shock, she walked the circumference of the too-clean platform before following the Wardens off to the war room. The darkspawn were massing for an attack on the fortress, and the two most junior Wardens here were to play a part - not on the front lines with the Wardens and the king's men, but to wait for the right time to signal Teryn Loghain's men to flank the darkspawn horde.

It ended horribly - not only was the path to the beacon obstructed by darkspawn who had managed to get inside the tower, when they finally lit the beacon, Loghain ordered his men to retreat instead of attack, leaving Duncan, King Cailan, and their soldiers to be slaughtered. Katherine and Alistair would have died, too, overwhelmed by the darkspawn coming up the tower behind them, if not for Flemeth, who rescued them from atop the tower by using shapeshifting magic to turn into a giant eagle and pluck them up from the jaws of certain death. Or so Morrigan told a stunned Katherine as she awoke in the hut the witch family shared.

She had only begun to find her feet again, and here the world had fallen apart beneath her all over again! Dazed, she thanked Morrigan for her help, and for a moment, she was caught off guard, herself, the subtle change bringing Katherine's mind awake. For a moment, Katherine thought she saw a lapse in something similar to the walls she was trying to build around herself in the wake of Jowan's betrayal and the loss of everything she's known. In this vulnerable state, it made her think of Morrigan's demeanor, how she seemed to hold everyone in disdain, and planted the thought: Could that be me?

That thought in her mind, reeling from loss upon loss, she stepped out of Morrigan's hut once again feeling about to come apart. And there was Alistair, caught up in his own shock and pain. His grief reflected her own so strongly she hardly thought about extending that sympathy she had shown others back in the Circle, back when her world made sense to her. Even when Flemeth cut in to send Morrigan with them, she lingered outside the hut to speak with her fellow Warden about what had happened. It was unspoken, but it was clear the two forgave each other for any transgressions before - Alistair's treatment of the mage and Katherine's constructed coldness.

Driven together by shared anguish and loss of control, two hurting people looking for support, a friendship formed before she was even consciously aware of it, only encouraged by Alistair being openly adoring of the dog she had rescued - he had come to her, knowing she had saved his life, and she gladly took him in as her own pet. A dog would never betray her. But Alistair spoke to him with such affection, it was hard not to trust someone who loved animals.

By the time she was aware of her growing attachment, they had already passed through Lothering to the north (and learned Loghain was smearing the Wardens' name, blaming them for Cailan's death and painting it to look as if he had withdrawn his troops just in time). In their time exploring the village and learning of the darkspawn attacks on it, she had begun to show signs of avoiding Alistair's disapproval. Hesitating on thoughts like she'd had when asked for help with minor things in Ostagar - no longer "If I trust they're genuine, will it hurt me?", but "Could I look at his face if I say no to them?" Their entire situation, her need for support when home is far away and nothing is familiar, it smacked of her and Jowan's first meeting. When she later took up Levi Dryden's request to search Warden's Keep to help restore his family name (hoping to also learn anything about the Wardens themselves that might help them), she didn't take him along, instead bringing Morrigan and a Chantry lay sister who had joined them in Lothering, Leliana, along with her dog, who she had named Thunder.

The distance did not help, though it did make for a humorous reveal of her skewed expectations of strength when she brought back a shield for Alistair that was simply too heavy to be of any use to him in combat. As a mage lucky enough to never see a templar fight, thus only exposed to combat ability as per other mages, she had no idea how to gauge a person's relative physical strength.

At least taking on the death sentence that is becoming a Grey Warden had some immediate health benefits. She was already getting more exercise, sunlight, and fresh air by nature of her situation, and the ravenous hunger following her Joining saw to much-needed nutrition she had been lacking for a long time. It was a subtle, unspoken, but nonetheless important step in the changes she was going through as she was forced to redefine herself once again. Alistair's explanations of what to expect as a new Warden were invaluable, warning her of this hunger, the nightmares, and ultimately, the knowledge that it was a death sentence at all. Leliana proved a patient ally, as well, and while she much preferred the support of Morrigan's staff in battle, knowing exactly what to expect with another mage in the group, Leliana's Chantry robes were a sight from home, and Katherine found her somehow comforting to speak to at camp.

The Crucible: The Arl, the Circle, and the Ashes

Without that simple step of proper nourishment, this whole chain of quests might not have had the dramatic results on her character that it did. Katherine went to Redcliffe first at Alistair's request. It was a direction to go when she had none, after all, and apparently it was his childhood home. (Oh and by the way did he ever mention he's the late king's half-brother? No? Well now he has!) In a twist that left Katherine wishing the biggest surprise here was Alistair's parentage, the town had been besieged by the undead pouring from the castle, with no word from anyone inside. Katherine helped the town gather its forces (to Alistair's approval and Morrigan's disdain; how could she possibly desert his hometown as he watched?), and led her small party into battle alongside them to fight off the raid for the night. It was dangerous, but it was one of those things she'd do for the sake of someone who was coming to be so important to her. This attachment's similarity to the way she'd latched onto Jowan still scared her when she paused to give it thought, but there was rarely enough time to pause, especially not when they got into the castle's dungeons via secret passage and discovered part of the problem...

Waiting in a cell in the dungeons was none other than Jowan himself. After a mutual "What are you doing here!?" that would have been funnier if they'd parted under better circumstances, Katherine's former friend explained the situation: The arl's son, Connor, had shown signs of magical talent. Loghain had used this as an excuse (the boy would need a tutor if he wasn't going to the Circle) to get someone inside the castle and poison Arl Eamon, who he knew he would never be able to convince. How could he convince Alistair's foster father, after all, that the boy he raised was a traitor? The only answer would be to kill him, and he did try. But something happened. Jowan insisted it wasn't his fault, and was feeling so obviously guilty for all he had done it was difficult for Katherine to stay angry with him. For all of her self-flagellation over his escape and his lie, he was echoing it for himself. She definitely couldn't kill him, but she couldn't let him go, either. Just leaving him didn't sound right to her, not after finding him again. And yet...what choice was there? Once again taking the path of stalling inaction when faced with two intolerable options, Katherine led her party on.

They found the real reason: A demon had possessed Connor, as part of a deal. As long as she had control of him, she would keep the arl alive. A chill from deep inside rendered Katherine numb. The only response to possession, she had learned, was to kill the possessed. But she could not agree to killing a child. "There must be some other way," she said. Jowan was brought out. He suggested sending a mage into the Fade. That might work, but they didn't have the lyrium to do it. Jowan had a spell, though. A blood magic sacrifice that could do the same thing, and Arlessa Isolde volunteered herself immediately.

This, too, was unacceptable. The suggestion washed against her stalled mind like a wave breaking against a cliff. "There must be another way," she said again, unable to think through the terror of what she might have to do.

Behind her, Alistair suggested the Circle. Her old home - the obvious solution her paralyzed mind couldn't come to. Everything fell into place. They had the lyrium! With their help, it could be done without bloodshed! (And she wouldn't easily forget who had helped her here. It seemed fate was determined not to allow her to even attempt to push herself away anymore.)

Except her home was not the peaceful place she had left. Knight-Commander Greagoir met her in a ruined entranceway, and explained the worst had happened: demons and abominations were running amok. There were blood mages at work here. He had called for the Right of Annulment, to kill all the mages in the tower, but had not received authorization for it yet. Katherine insisted there must be some survivors. She would not give up her home so easily, even if she had ruined everything she meant to be there. To her, it was still a home. Greagoir said he would only call off the Right if Irving himself stood before him and told him everything was under control. Irving was the one she was thinking of when she insisted on looking for survivors, so she readily agreed, certain that if anyone could survive such an ordeal it would be the strongest mage in the tower.

Along the way, she ran into Wynne, an elderly senior enchanter who had gone with the mages to Ostagar. Glad her fellow mage had survived, she told her about her conversation with Greagoir and Wynne agreed to accompany her. Katherine agreed and asked Morrigan to help guard the youngest apprentices in Wynne's stead before setting off with their new ally in tow. (Which Morrigan couldn't have been too happy about, but the doors behind them were barred from the outside; she couldn't exactly leave) (note: This conversation doesn't actually happen, but it's the only way I can think of for such a party shuffling to even work at all with the only way out being cut off)

The incident with Jowan would be raw for a long time to come, and with a fresh reminder not long ago, she was especially ruthless towards blood mages at this point. A blood mage begged to be spared, even offering to join the Chantry if it meant being allowed to live. Katherine hesitated, but could not walk away knowing she had let an admitted blood mage, who had tried to attack her and her allies, live. She told her she was unmoved by her pleas (though not entirely truthful) and finished her off.

That decision still haunted her when their progress was nearly halted forever by a sloth abomination that cast them all into a magical sleep, drawing their spirits into the Fade for its own consumption. Emotionally exhausted, desperately missing peace, Katherine was nearly taken in by the dream it conjured up for her; a vision of victory after the Blight and everlasting peace, complete with a surviving Duncan. But it failed to account for something very important: There was something missing from her dream. There was someone who would appreciate Duncan's survival a lot more than she would: Alistair had seen Duncan as a father, and without his input the dream felt wrong. This inconsistency broke her free of the dream's logic and her natural abilities as a mage kicked in, allowing her to recognize the Fade for what it was. She found Alistair, incidentally, not dreaming of Duncan but of a peaceful life with a sister she had never heard of. He was so content, and so eager to share that peace with her, earnestly begging the vision of his sister to allow her to stay for supper. A dreaming mind cannot deceive; the sight instantly endeared Alistair to her further, and erased any lingering doubts about their growing bond. From that point on, she had absolute trust in Alistair, and for the remainder of the Fifth Blight (and a good deal of time after) she would scarcely be seen without him.

They were indeed able to put an end to the leader of the blood mages and rescue Irving, who, once he had convinced Greagoir to stand down, agreed to come back to Redcliffe with them to help Connor. Of all the mages among them, Katherine decided she would enter the Fade, herself - Morrigan likely never wanted to help Connor in the first place, she still was reluctant to trust Jowan, Wynne had recently been unable to come to the realization she was in the Fade and so Katherine felt she would be vulnerable, and Irving had just been through a terrible experience. Granted, so had she, but there's that tendency of hers again to be ever certain in her own abilities. That much has never changed. She spoke with the demon and attempted to convince it to leave, but when it refused she was forced to deal with it the more direct way. She slew the demon without having to do the same for Connor.

That just left one more person in Alistair's childhood household to aid: the adoptive father himself, Eamon, now no longer protected from death by the demon's power. With the poison free to work its way through him, it was a race against time to find their one hope of saving him, the ashes of the prophetess who shaped their world so completely, Andraste.

One creepy village eerily reminiscent of The Wicker Man and a cave full of dragon-worshipping cultists later (Katherine dearly wished they would stop leaving death everywhere in their wake), they found themselves in a place guarded by spirits and puzzles, and immediately there was salt rubbed in the wound Jowan left behind as the guardian spirit divined her past and asked if she felt she had failed Jowan.

The spirit had the right idea, but the wrong angle. She was able to truthfully tell him no, she didn't feel as if she failed Jowan because of his blood magic, but it left the matter entirely unresolved. She had failed someone there, in her mind: Irving and the Circle itself. And she had been allowed to avoid confronting it, moving on to the tests of wits beyond. One of these puzzles was based on teamwork, where they had to stand on switches in the floor to form a bridge over a large chasm. All the shouting across the room that entailed and her party's patience through it all made it into a trust-building exercise of sorts, and brought her to see Leliana as a true friend, adding her to the small but steadily-growing list of people Katherine was letting in as her heart mended from the series of betrayals and upheavals that had wounded it.

It's All Coming Up Roses (Or: Origins has unmarked romance flags. Surprise!)

And then there was Alistair, who had managed to walk right in without realizing he wasn't supposed to be able to.

While they were looking for these ashes, you see, conversation turned to his heritage one night in camp. Alistair admitted he'd kept it a secret because he didn't want it coloring her perception of him. Thinking of the open friendliness he'd shown in the Fade, she replied, "I do like you, and not because of your blood." It was the least guarded she'd been in a long time, and it must have shown, because while she hadn't meant that she liked him romantically, at least not with that line or not entirely consciously, it certainly changed the way he saw them. (That is, in fact, the line that did it.)

At the last camp outside of Denerim, the location of their first solid lead to the ashes, he approached her and offered her a rose.

As a player, I cannot do justice to how surreal that scene was. If I didn't have the controller in my hands, I would have thought Alistair was the protagonist in a dating sim and his player had a guide. That's how spot-on everything he said was for her. From invoking the death and destruction that had so deeply hurt both of them to acknowledging the burden on her shoulders and wanting to do something nice for her for it, to calling her beautiful as her recovering body was slowly bolstering her confidence in her own appearance, he said everything she needed to hear in exactly the way she needed to hear it, and all at the time she needed to hear it most, with raw wounds and emotional exhaustion and visions of peace taunting her in demon's claws. She had no niche in the world to hide in anymore, not like her life at the Circle, and with their most recent exploits having been devoid of loss of innocent life, she was no longer so gripped with the self-loathing that had stymied her there, either. He'd said she was uncommon beauty and life in this world of death and destruction, as if to her he wasn't the same - as if her hastily-built walls hadn't practically crumbled for him in the Fade for how unexpectedly sincere and kind he was.

Katherine is a woman that defines her identity by the way she fits into the world around her. She decided in that moment, at the tipping point between pain of the past and hope for the future, that part of her place in the world would include Alistair. Even when he promptly put his foot in his mouth after doing so well, she forgave it. It wasn't as if she wasn't sometimes awkward, herself, after all, and she knew for a fact now he meant her no harm.

Speaking of the Fade, that vision of his sister that Katherine saw was foremost in his mind because he had recently found her. Her name was Goldanna, Alistair told her, and she was another child of the commoner woman King Maric had sired him with. She lived in Denerim, and since they were going there anyway Katherine agreed to stop by her house. That dream she'd seen was, again, too much like her own ("they are too much alike" would turn out to be a legitimate shortcoming much later), that longing for peace.

It turned out terribly. She heard talk of royal blood and all she wanted was money. A point could be made of this, an opportunity to develop Alistair's character, to tell him he's too idealistic. His fellow Warden could change his outlook on things, "harden" him as the fandom calls it.

And yet, Katherine's reasons for even doing this defeated this possibility. She'd done it because of that dream, hoping to give him just a piece, however small, of that happiness. Sympathizing with a plight and working to alleviate it was one thing. She'd been predisposed to it all along, showing it in tutoring other apprentices and in her Harrowing (part of why her walls were so flimsy, in all likelihood). But this going out of her way to do something that wasn't an immediate concern was new. And it was entirely because of him, and the effect he'd had on her. He'd inspired an active altruism in her, internalized that element of avoiding things he would disapprove of without ever trying. How could she harden him from his idealism when he had softened her from her skepticism first, especially with its traces obscured by the giddiness of new love?

For a while, things would seem all right.

Crucible's End: Insert Forging Metaphor Here

Even when a team of assassins hired by Loghain caught up with them and tried to kill them, it seemed the least of their worries. They had the ashes, and were making good time. What were a bunch of rogues to them?

A bit of a big deal, it turns out - Only Katherine and her dog remained standing at the end of the fight, and the near death of two people she cared about was almost grounds enough to kill the survivor without hearing his pleas for his life. But the elf Zevran, with help from Leliana vouching for his order's skill, managed to convince her he would be useful. This is more important than it sounds - you'll see. (As for immediate effects, it encouraged Katherine to take up spirit healing to better protect Alistair and her friends.)

The divine ashes they obtained from their ordeal worked, and with Arl Eamon restored to health, something had to be done about Jowan. Eamon would have had him executed, but Katherine knew she couldn't stomach that. Needing to find a resolution to her mistakes that was directly hers and not retribution for something that happened as a result, she intervened and persuaded him to hand him over to the Circle instead, something she felt she should have done a long time ago.

They'd done it: they'd saved Redcliffe and the Circle with minimal loss of innocent life, and she had atoned for her mistake in aiding Jowan. With her improved diet and activity, color was returning to her face and her body was starting to properly fill out her robes. She could keep up with the rest of the team; their travel times had grown shorter and shorter. She wasn't making a mess of everything she got involved in - she finally felt deserving of love, and she had that too. As she and Alistair celebrated their victory with a kiss by the campfire, she felt a sense of direction and clarity that had been missing, and the whole world was brighter for it.

Another Curse Foiled Again

This brightness was one that she found herself inadvertently spreading as they followed their treaties to the Dalish elves, bringing lovers together, for example, and ultimately yet again finding a way to minimize losses, curing the curse of the werewolves and allowing the elves to live on uninterrupted and free of the old grudge that had come back to haunt a generation that largely had nothing to do with it. Having given and received romantic tokens of her own by now, her appreciation for their value had grown, and whenever offered these tokens meant for another as gifts of gratitude, she made a point of refusing them. She even seemed to develop a sharper eye for things the people around her would appreciate, finding gloves of Dalish make that resembled a pair Zevran once mentioned having as a keepsake from his mother, finding the act of giving reward enough in this glowing state of mind, even towards someone she didn't trust.

Darkspawn and Golems and Kings, Oh My!

As refusing to slaughter the werewolves once they'd made their case showed, Katherine had gained a sense of selflessness that enabled her to act on injustices she might have once stewed silently at. While the politics of Orzammar annoyed her, a technicality standing between her and this last treaty that left the decision of who to put on the throne to a total outsider who had never set foot in Orzammar until now, there was much to do for someone inclined to do good deeds, and plenty of injustices to be appalled at. Between Branka deliberately allowing her friends - and even her lover! - to become grotesque broodmothers for endless darkspawn to throw into traps until they were all disarmed, and the creation of golems, Katherine was very, very unnerved, angry, and knew exactly which direction to go when it came time to make a decision. Katherine saw the unwilling creation of golems much like a mage becoming an abomination, loss of self and all, and as for broodmothers...that chilled her deeper than she ever admitted to. If a broodmother was a possible end result of a female ghoul, and all Wardens were infected with a very slow taint... No wonder Alistair and the others had been so surprised Duncan recruited a woman. It was here the thought of attempting to avoid the Calling entirely took root - before she had simply been trying to avoid thinking of it at all since she learned of it.

The new knowledge of golems made a chance encounter with a suspiciously free control rod something to be worried about, and the worst this encounter had to offer was the first step downhill after the peak she had reached in finding the sacred ashes: not the golem the control rod belonged to (a wisecracking golem named Shale who turned out to be dependable in her relatively short time in the party), but to the family of her previous owner. An apostate mage's daughter had wandered off, and Katherine and her allies found her chatting contentedly with a demon trapped in the form of a cat. When warning the child away didn't work, Katherine threatened the demon - remembering that negotiation had been so futile with Connor's demon, she didn't even try, thinking she was fast enough to slay the thing. But the demon was too close to the girl, and Katherine could only watch in horror as it twisted her tiny form into the slender, sinisterly seductive form of a desire demon. In this state, there was no time to bide, no way to gather help to separate them within the Fade. Katherine had to kill her, unable to forget that the demon she aimed her staff at was really a young child who had only been looking for a friend.

After so many successes, it hit her hard. Her pride in her own ability had killed a little girl. She was still demoralized when cold weather drove the darkspawn from the ruins of Ostagar, giving them a chance to recover important correspondence from Cailan, unsent before his death, and, perhaps more importantly to them, to recover the equipment belonging to those who perished, and to see any bodies to respectful pyres. They found and cremated King Cailan's body, and recovered his armor (which Alistair wore for the remainder of the Blight). Of more importance to the two Wardens was the discovery of Duncan's sword and dagger. Without hesitation, Katherine gave Alistair his mentor's blade. The dagger, she resolved, she would learn how to use. She still did not feel the attachment to Duncan the other did. But she was very attached to Alistair, and felt respecting Duncan this way did justice to their love. After the incident with the possessed girl, she was looking for ways to do good somehow.

Whoever Heard of a Mage with a Dagger?

With the four armies promised them by the treaties, all that was left was to deal with the issue of Loghain's influence on the throne. Arl Eamon planned to call a Landsmeet and put forth Alistair as an heir to the throne. There were a few problems with his plan:

Firstly, Alistair did not want to be king, and Katherine had no intention of pressuring him into it. In fact, he was so averse to leading that he had ceded any command to her, despite her being the junior Warden between them. Katherine may not have had any experience in political leadership (yet), but she knew that attempting to do something when your heart isn't in it can be disastrous. Alistair may not be able to lose his eyebrows due to attempts to rule backfiring, but the principle was the same.

Second, Katherine may have seen a great deal of the country by this point, but she was raised from a young age in the Circle, cut off from the outside world. In the Circle, the leadership among the mages was determined by skill and experience. Blood had nothing to do with it, and Katherine placed very little value on birthright as a result.

So when Loghain met them as they arrived in Denerim, there was exactly one thing she agreed with him on: Cailan's widow (and Loghain's daughter), Anora, was already a capable leader of Ferelden, and well loved by the people. Her problem was not with the lack of Theirin blood on the throne, but with Loghain's influence on it.

And when it came to light that Anora did not agree with Loghain, that she suspected or perhaps even knew he had been the one, not the Wardens, to abandon her husband, and her father had her locked up as a result, Katherine did not hesitate to promise her support for the throne on freeing her. Giving the crown to a man with no experience and no desire to rule spelled disaster, to her.

It was not a straight path to the Landsmeet. From the outset, they were plagued by hardship. She had never really trusted Zevran, and that mistrust was validated as he turned against her when a friend from home arrived to collect him. She ended up taking the gloves she had given him as a gift off his corpse, carrying them with her as a reminder that "useful" was not enough.

To make matters worse, in the process of freeing Anora, they found the other people Loghain had tried to silence. Two of them, a soldier, survivor of Ostagar who had heard Loghain give the order to retreat; and a fellow Grey Warden, Riordan, were hard enough to find, both the victims of torture at the hands of Loghain's ally, the sadistic Arl Howe. But among them was also the templar who had captured Jowan, locked away and suffering from lyrium withdrawal, barely coherent. His only crime was the possibility he could tell people Loghain had taken Jowan away instead of allowing him to be turned over. Which was, again, her fault in the first place. A man had been held captive and tortured because of her decision. The old wound was reopened, and it was one more blow against her ability to make sound judgment, all of which would soon open some very real wounds to go with the metaphorical ones.

With these prisoners and Anora freed, and some slavers broken up in the elven alienage (and proof that Loghain was letting it happen), there was evidence of Loghain's scheming ways. Enough for Katherine and Alistair to smear his name more effectively than he had done theirs - after all, for all the poisonous words he spoke, their deeds were right before everyone's eyes, and with Alistair's influence on her, Katherine had turned into an active force of good. Enraged at the nobles all siding with the Wardens, Loghain sparked a brawl in the Landsmeet, until the Chantry called it to order. It would be resolved in the traditional way, with a duel.

And here is where Katherine, not entirely in her right mind after all that had happened, made a mistake. Instead of allowing Alistair to duel in his own name, she challenged Loghain, herself, as his champion. Some part of her must have thought it was a show of solidarity for Alistair; his battles were her battles. But it nearly killed her. She drew Duncan's recovered dagger, which she had barely learned how to use, and relied on only the most basic spells to augment her own strength or sap his to show a mage could fight "honorably". It was only through healing, defensive, and debilitating magic that she survived the duel in tattered robes and bloodied skin, unsteady on her feet. The feeling of sinking a blade into a man's flesh for the first time would never leave her. She was not trained for it, had never been raised to expect it.

But even in her state, when Riordan interrupted to ask Loghain be put through the Joining instead of being killed, because he could be useful, she did not forget the lesson Zevran had taught her. "Useful" was not good enough. She looked up, gave Alistair a nod, and summoned her strength to finish off Loghain for good. She regretted it only for what losing her father would do to Anora, but not enough to refrain from killing him. When Anora later told her (magically healed as much as possible, bandaged where not, and in a set of Wynne's spare senior enchanter's robes) that "it could have been different", Katherine didn't reply, but knew full well it could not have. Loghain could not be allowed to remain alive as long as he would try to influence or win the throne. But true to her word, she insisted the crown go to Anora, and Alistair gladly agreed to give up any claim to the throne, sealing Ferelden away from Theirin rule.

With that settled, they could now focus on ending the Blight. The darkspawn were after Redcliffe, so that was where Katherine led her team, except Riordan had picked up something disturbing: it was a ploy - the Wardens were now almost on the other side of the map, and the darkspawn were on their way - with the Archdemon - to Denerim. They would have to march nonstop back to Denerim to have any hope of saving anyone.

But first, Riordan had one last bombshell to drop: Only a Warden could kill an Archdemon, and it would kill the Warden too. Its departed soul would seek a tainted body to twist into a new one for itself, for the darkspawn have no souls. But a Warden's body is not a vacant shell - the two souls would destroy one another. Riordan said as the senior Warden there, he would try to strike it down, himself. But one of the three of them would have to die.

Conception Does Not Happen the Same Night, Morrigan - The Old God Baby Dilemma

Which is why when Katherine found Morrigan waiting in her room that night with a solution, however sketchy, she gave it a lot more weight than she might have before. Through the ritual she proposed, if she were to conceive a child with a Warden who had not borne the taint for too long, the Archdemon's soul would be drawn to the unborn child instead (even though biology doesn't allow for conception within only hours; maybe it's somehow drawn to the potential of an unborn child?), and with no shape yet to twist and no life yet to extinguish, no death would occur.

This was the entire reason Morrigan came along. The resistance she put up at being told to go with them was only an act. Flemeth had shown her this spell and told her to perform it. It might have been cause enough to turn her down outright, if Flemeth still lived. Except Katherine had found a tome of Flemeth's, locked away in the Circle after being confiscated by templars. She'd turned it over to Morrigan, and soon after, she informed her of a terrifying discovery: Flemeth enjoyed a sort of immortality - by taking over the bodies of her daughters in succession. To Katherine, at the time just out of the Fade from aiding Connor, more possession was especially heinous. She would not let it stand. When Morrigan asked her to kill Flemeth to avoid possession, she did not hesitate (are Mouse's parting words starting to sound a little under-appreciated yet?), slaying the witch.

Whatever Flemeth wanted the child for, she could not have it, and Katherine had come to trust Morrigan would be better - her moral center was in the opposite direction of her ideal, but she saw in it no evil, only brutal practicality. A protective selfishness like the kind she had tried (and largely thanks to Alistair, utterly failed) to build up in the wake of Jowan's lie.

Therefore, the only problem was the only eligible father was Alistair, who not only despised Morrigan, but had also told Katherine he never wanted to sleep with any other woman. Asking him to do this would mean asking him to renege on that sentiment of complete devotion, and their love was one of the most important things in the world to her. But she'd also said she wanted to stay with him, no matter what, and he had agreed to that, too. Somehow, these two ideas had become mutually exclusive. Either Alistair slept with another woman and they remained together, or he remained absolutely faithful but one of them could die very soon. (And if they didn't, then Riordan's reward for enduring Howe's torture would be death.)

Ultimately, the driving force of the solution came down to a statement Katherine perhaps took much more idealistically than intended: Morrigan said the soul would not be the demon, but the dragon god's soul underneath the corruption - and that was another point in its favor, in Katherine's mind. In case it didn't stick in the million prior examples of it, Katherine tends heavily towards projection. As a mage, a class at high risk for corruption of their own, the idea of saving a victim she'd never even stopped to consider (is this how templars feel, she wondered) rang very true with her. No one - no one - had to die.

All the same, just for the very act of coaxing Alistair into going along with it, she spent a sleepless night feeling like the scum of Thedas, hoping he would forgive her.

This is one of the key examples of their similarities being a flaw in their relationship. They get along very well, and certainly have the chemistry to keep it going. However, their flaws are very similar in nature, so they don't drive one another to improve them. They both avoid uncomfortable subjects, such as Katherine avoiding thought of the Calling until the sight of a broodmother spurred her mind to activity. So, they both simply never discussed it with one another afterwards. If Alistair held any lingering discomfort, he never showed it. She couldn't bring herself to ask him. The only person she talked to about it was Morrigan - it helped ease her mind somewhat, surprisingly enough, for there was something genuine in the way she responded, something that hinted at Morrigan getting something out of it that brought her some peace of mind of her own. More comfortable with the idea (though she never felt completely at ease with it), and thinking that if she had injured Alistair in any way he'd have made that apparent, she was at ease enough to thank her for everything - with the same results as the first time about a year ago: surprise, and a lapse in Morrigan's defenses. (Yes, that's how long this adventure has been.)

Riordan didn't make it through the ensuing battle anyway, but she plunged a sword a darkspawn dropped into the Archdemon's neck and survived, so Morrigan's ritual held. Satisfied with this ending, another victory in the vein of Redcliffe, the Circle, and the werewolves, where survival had emerged above all else, she allowed life to drift around herself and Alistair as it pleased, living with him in Denerim for a few months. It couldn't have been terribly easy at first, given all they'd been through, but it gave them both a chance to rest. After everything, they'd earned it.

Awakening: Why Does Everyone Think Good Fighters Make Good Leaders?

Throughout the Blight, Katherine had been a woman in a state of resolving who she was and what that meant to her. She clung to the presence of her dog Thunder, her lover Alistair, her friend Leliana, and mentor mage Wynne like emotional crutches. In the half-year of calm after, she settled. Recovered, as well as a denizen of a world without professional therapy can recover. Wynne suggested she return to the Circle to teach (and she was even supplied with senior enchanter's robes of her own, as a token to show she was welcome to return). But she couldn't go back. She still loved the place as one loves their childhood home, but she had grown out of it - the thought of going back to stay made her feel stifled, perhaps even claustrophobic. She still had trouble adjusting to sleeping in a bed again, and never quite did. The bigger draw was always Alistair's presence beside her rather than the mattress, and it only sort of trained her into sleeping in bed even without him - one could never be certain on any given night whether she would be properly in bed or curled up with her sheets and pillows on the floor.

But time marches on, and these companions she relied on drifted away. Wynne left Denerim to return to the Circle for some business. Leliana sought out a former lover who betrayed her in Orlais. Denerim's kennels asked to hold Thunder for breeding for a while, to replace the mabari lost in the Blight. Alistair was called away to Weisshaupt, and though Katherine questioned the logic in taking one of the last two Wardens in the country back to headquarters, she didn't try to stop him from going, giving him her treasured staff, Winter's Breath, to keep as a memento of her while they were apart. Queen Anora had granted Howe's arling, Amaranthine, to the Wardens as reward for their actions, and she would soon have business to attend to there - as the sole remaining Fereldan Grey Warden in Alistair's absence, she was now the country's Warden-Commander, and she would be responsible for acclimating and directing the Wardens coming in from Orlais to help rebuild their ranks. She packed up supplies, took up Duncan's dagger rather than another staff as a reminder she had his old station now, and set off.

She tells the story in her own words here, though there's much to comment on. Much of her established characterization is still present. She's still got that dual-confidence going - certain of herself, but not her ability to provide for others in a leadership capacity. She forges on, though, more willing to attempt for what it might mean. She's more interested now in the bigger picture - the public view of mages - than she has been. She wants to rule no more than Alistair did, but neither does she want to not seem up to the task. If she can prove a mage can, it would go a long way towards alleviating the paranoia surrounding them. She felt she wasn't a very good leader however, and believed what good was there came of judgment calls from her advisors and her heart being in the right place. Being inexperienced and untrained for rule, she had no idea how to manage resources, spreading her guard too thin as the most prominent example.

It should be noted her letter to Leliana regarding the templars who came for Anders contains a lie of omission - said attempt was made by following the lure of securing his phylactery. Anders's companion quest provided a minor push in characterization here; where she was content to idle in casual Andrastianism, the actions of the templars have pushed her away from the Chantry somewhat, and she is warier than ever now of the tension between the priesthood and mages. It is much more difficult for her to take comfort in blessings.

Not mentioned in those letters or her feelings on her allies is what a pair of new skills have done for her. Awakening added two new skill lines: Clarity and Vigor. She only took one rank in each, but by the description of those two, she has begun regular exercise and meditation practices, strengthening her mind and body and becoming more aware of her own emotions than she has been in the past. Without this, she might not have found her new signature weapon - or it would have become her signature for much less compelling reasons.

The responsibility of rank did something to her during her time in Amaranthine - she grew into a person fiercely protective of those under her command, taking into account not only their physical health and combat ability, but their mental well-being and emotional needs. She graduated from holding up Duncan as an example and did what she thought best for her Wardens (and that is how she refers to them, her Wardens, not in the sense of a commander referring to "[their] men", but a wolf standing at the head of its pack). Her first divergence from Duncan, or what she knew of him, was to be forthright about the Joining's potential fatality, without details, and each one agreed anyway. She was as loyal to them for it as their rank called upon them to be to her.

Her decision during the assault on Amaranthine was the culmination of all her effort. Deciding to protect the city instead of the castle was the ultimate show of what leadership meant to her - her trust in the allies she'd left behind and the fortress she'd spent time and money to maintain, her friendship with the allies she had with her, and the people of Amaranthine, who she never felt qualified to lead but would protect with all her power even if it meant losing her own personal friends. Though she compared it to the Circle incident, it was very different - the Circle had personal meaning to her. It was where she had grown up, and the Right of Annulment inherently was biased against her point of view. Even with Alistair's influence nudging her towards selflessness, it had not really changed that. He'd helped her on that path, shown her a direction out of her socially-stunted, myopic worldview limited by the tower's walls and Jowan's betrayal, but she had to make these final steps, and mature in this way on her own. Leaving the welfare of friends, of her Wardens to their own means and protecting the people she could not otherwise provide for: it was a big step, and thanks to her meditations, she had the sense to become aware of it in a single moment.

The last of the Mother's generals in the city carried a staff. Amid the cheering of the survivors, Katherine went to take it as a trophy. It was cold as a mountain's cap in her hands, just like her favored weapon before. And engraved into the volcanic aurum was a name: Lamppost in Winter. Anders, Nathaniel, and Sigrun were probably surprised to hear her bark a short laugh at the sheer coincidence - you see, when she was considering inviting Alistair to sleep with her for the first time, she had asked him what sort of experience he'd had, but had been too awkward about the subject in her own inexperience to ask him bluntly. It gave him the opening to joke his way out of it (being too awkward about it to be blunt, himself - there's that inconvenient avoidance similarity again!), and eventually he ended up using licking freezing cold lampposts in winter as innuendo. (It's kind of infamous. That's why there's a staff named after it. No seriously if you haven't seen it go look it up, it's great. His voice actor hits it out of the park.)

It reminded her of her dearly-missed lover in all this crisis, yes, but strangely enough, that wasn't what stood out about it most, to her. When she retired Duncan's dagger once more to backup against the cold-resistant, and slung Lamppost on her back, it wasn't because it happened to invoke a joke Alistair made, or because it reminded her of Winter's Breath. It was because it triggered a moment of clarity. She realized in that moment just how far she had come from who she was before. It became a symbol, as she lifted it off the last of the city's attackers, of having cast off inexperience despite uncertainty. Of forging ahead in spite of insecurities. She mourned the loss of the people who died at Vigil's Keep for her absence, but did not regret protecting Amaranthine. This was a sign to her, however unconventional a sign it was, that she had done the right thing. If any of this can be linked back to Alistair aside from the name, it would be what he did for her in the early months of their journey, that recalibration of her moral compass when nothing was familiar to her anymore. Like a light marking the road when nights are long and dark, if you will. (How this turned into major symbolism for her I'm not even sure of, myself. Like a certain in-universe author says a game later, sometimes things just happen with characters.)

Even though she'd grown into leadership, and had found dear friends in Nathaniel and Anders, the call to continue exploring and adventuring was too great. Stationary life never suited her again after the Circle, so the moment the arling could stand on its own and she and Alistair could meet again they took off together, only stopping by Amaranthine now and then when help was needed or when they were near. Occasionally they would split again as the Wardens sent them on different missions, but they would always find their way back to one another.

Witch Hunt: My Game Never Created a Final Autosave so Morrigan Waits Forever

One thing bothered her, though. She wanted to know more about the ritual Morrigan had performed, and by now, her child surely would have been born. Being away from the Circle had not dulled her enthusiasm for magical theory, and having a cause behind it didn't help. Aside from ensuring the baby was born healthy and reasonably non-demonic, the ritual could be used to end every Blight without sacrifice, she hoped. Morrigan had called it "like blood magic", but, again, had any blood been drawn, Alistair surely would have told her, she thought. It might only be called such because of the taint in the Warden parent's blood, which acted as the lure. When word reached her that someone had been seen entering Flemeth's hut, she retrieved Thunder from the kennels and took him to see her old ally. (It should be noted that once reunited with her hound, she slipped right back into relying on him for calls of trust - if her dog growled in warning, she would be wary too, but was certainly nowhere near as dependent on his presence for base trust as she was when she first rescued him.)

It was a little more complicated than just going to the hut, including a downright surreal return to the Circle tower's basement where she and Jowan had first attempted to break free of the status quo. It felt like a lifetime ago, to her, as if she was returning to a place she only had memories of as a child, even though it hadn't been anywhere near so long as that. She had grown since then. Seen more of the world, made more difficult choices, experienced new things. The Entropy section in the library was the most like "returning home" to her, the weight of the books in her hands like comfortable old blankets. And yet, there were things she saw through new eyes. A child's doodle in a book she had seen before but never thought of, for example, she suddenly realized had been drawn by Anders. And it meant something more to her, not only for knowing Anders, but for understanding what it was to be free and what the drawing (venting anger against templars) meant to him, rather than the misguided frustration she could just barely recall thinking it was before.

Eventually her path led to a magic mirror-portal called an Eluvian, one that Morrigan intended to vanish through to raise her child elsewhere. But she stayed and waited for Katherine to catch up to her. She didn't get what she initially wanted at all, aside from ascertaining the child was born healthy, but in the end she walked away with something important to her anyway: the knowledge that Morrigan saw her as a friend, and the idea that Flemeth could cheat death (in fact at this point she likely already had). Not knowing how to follow up on that, all she could do was take Morrigan's parting gift (which is undefined; I don't dare define it, myself, in case canon has future plans for it) and return to Alistair, and hope they could prepare for whatever was to come, whatever that meant.

Heroic/Villainous/Neutral: If she hadn't been so receptive to certain sources of influence, it might have been different, but I definitely consider Katherine to be heroic. She fits the bill, especially here post-everything Origins where I'm taking her from. She takes stands against injustices where she sees them, she has always gone above and beyond for her friends when she makes friends, and now goes above and beyond wherever she sees the opportunity and obligation to. When faced with a situation she is neutral on, tries to honor the wishes of the parties that are directly involved. Orzammar was the key example of this; her choice of Harrowmont was almost entirely based on a letter written by the late king claiming he wished him to take up the crown. I would call this a basically heroic decision, putting the wants of someone who can't, for any reason, speak or act for themselves above her own. Even if it basically messed up Orzammar and was definitely the wrong choice from a non-dwarven perspective, it was done with heroic intent. A less ambiguous example from the same part of the campaign would be the decision to destroy the Anvil of the Void and end the production of golems forever. Volunteers were one thing, but there could be no guarantee it would stay that way. Furthermore, her decision to agree with Morrigan's ritual included an element I don't believe was intended to be considered: the potential "cure" of the Archdemon's corruption. I don't think that fits with anything beyond the Heroic/Neutral border, honestly.

And just look at her longer-term goals: To at least lengthen the Warden lifespan - remaining with Alistair longer and avoiding the danger of becoming a broodmother are parts of it, yes, she's not so selfless she never thinks of herself, after all. But she's also driven by the fact that it will lessen the inherent problem of having to maintain ranks between Blights, when there's less incentive to volunteer. As a ranking officer of the order now, she's not content with simply letting it be. Within the city, she's likely to try to find an unorthodox cure, outside the confines of her world and even outside the confines of the rules she knows. What better place to look than outside the box? But learning time doesn't pass at home while she's away, even if she will have trouble wrapping her mind around being fictional, because it's all real to her of course, will encourage her to explore and simply enjoy being exposed to new things, solving problems as she finds them (heroes gotta sidequest), and possibly accidentally confusing the hell out of anything in the Fade that snoops in her brain because she'll be coming back with some really weird memories and ideas that don't fit with those of any other mortal in Thedas. Overall, she always seems to be reaching for higher and farther-flung goals for some greater benefit of many. A far cry from the apprentice who was only interested in becoming the best mage she could be within the Circle, for sure.

Speaking of Thedas, even they largely agree she's a hero. It comes with the territory - every Warden, no matter how cruel or abrasive, is the Hero of Ferelden, in the end. Even if they take entirely the opposite direction from Katherine, they are someone's hero. If not a hero to Redcliffe itself, a hero to Arl Eamon, because curing him is mandatory. If not a hero to the mages, to the templars and others who think mages are inherently dangerous. If not to Harrowmont's supporters, Bhelen's. If not to the elves and werewolves both, one or the other. If not to the citizens of Amaranthine, to those living in Vigil's Keep. And they always, one way or another, bring about the end of the Blight. The victors write history, and history will call Katherine and others in her role heroes without exception because of this. Amaranthine may call them tyrants, at least, earning them villainy potentially by the measure of the Seven-Fold City. But not to the codices of installments to follow.

Again, it seems the answer across the board is heroism, and Katherine wouldn't have it any other way. Having gone through a ton of development just to get to the level of heroism she's at, she isn't likely to slide back towards neutrality after all she's been through. It would either take a really underhanded trick, a lack of any other way out of a sticky situation, or perhaps some other unforeseen circumstances - I have no plans for her place on this scale, but half the fun of RP is seeing what happens. She's no saint, look at poor Jowan, who never seemed to really want to hurt anyone, for example. So maybe, just maybe, there's a way to force her back. I won't go looking, but I won't say no if it comes my way. (if there is a more noticeable chink in that armor, she takes a sort of mildly sadistic pride in debilitating an enemy with her magic - though to do that said enemy would already have to be actively trying to kill her beyond all negotiation attempts.)


Mentor/Rookie: This is a much tougher one, because Katherine's character arc seems to point directly to Mentor. She's gone from not having any definition of herself outside of a very small worldview, much less any heroic inclinations, to shouldering the obligations of leadership in spite of feeling underqualified for them, and wanting to provide for the people she leads and coming up with far-reaching goals in an effort to better life for herself and everyone else in that situation (e.g. mages, Grey Wardens). However, she still struggles with overconfidence in her own capabilities, and sometimes oversteps her bounds or sets her goals too far away, leading to major events forcing her to shift priorities in a hurry.

Additionally, on the other end of the scale (because, again, for every point of overconfidence in her there seems to be an equal feeling of inadequacy somewhere else), there is still a definite vulnerability to her that one wouldn't expect of a mentor. Her heroism isn't fearlessness, it's a veneer of fearlessness while she acts in spite of it. She was practically on the verge of falling apart when she accepted Morrigan's ritual, for example, and has a tendency to get herself wrapped up in regret over the smallest reminders of actions that turned out to have ill effects, adding to this air of vulnerability. She's an odd one: less dauntless than she sometimes seems, but neither as fragile as she sometimes feels. Certainly not as larger-than-life as the Fereldans whose lives she saved want you to believe, at least.

I would like to app her somewhere in between, if I can. She still has a lot to learn, especially when measuring up to older hand heroes from other canons, so I would like her to be a Journeyman hero. If that is not possible, I would rather err on the side of Mentor for how far she's come overall.


Which Area(s) Of The City Interest You For Your Character?

Which areas don't interest me? Overall, Katherine dealing with tropes firsthand and crossing genres without knowing what's going on at first - and then the deliberate shenanigans when she does - sounds like a blast. I would not be surprised in the slightest if she attempted to change her canon's entire genre somehow to make the rules work the way she wants them to. It wouldn't work, of course, she's just one character - a major one, but only one - in a big world her own narrative only sees part of, after all. But she will try. She has become a person who will try to shirk fate rather than accept it, after all.

The City of Tomorrow would absolutely fascinate Katherine, containing wonders beyond her world's wildest dreams. In the absence of magic and also the absence of the taboos on certain studies things have happened that defy logic as she knows it. She would especially get a kick out of going into space and learning how to function up there, simply for how utterly alien it all is.

The City of Shadows and the City of Nightmare would be the locations of most of her traditional hero-ing, with sidequests issues galore to stumble on and fix, but also darker and more unsettling than normal to bring out that vulnerable side I just talked about. Basically between the two of them they might get the full range of her character by themselves and that's awesome.

The City of Sorcery would be a taste of home away from home, and she would be as thrilled to trade magical theory notes with a different system of magic as she would learning the entirely new rules of functioning in space. Maybe she'll stumble on something she could make work in her own system, after all! Also she's totally not going to try to raise a baby griffon.

The City of Laughter would provide some meta-amusement of its own. Many times more lighthearted than anything Katherine has experienced in the world of humor and utilizing tropes that make no sense at all to her - imagine the absolute bafflement on her face when she catches her first glimpse of a non-fatal steamroller collision, or watches someone run off a cliff and not fall until they look down. Not even the Fade makes that little sense - at least not most of the time. It's possible, probably, and for all we know these little quirks will find their way into her dreams (thus the Fade) for some bizarre effect.

The City of Adventure is absolutely her style now. Like a big old character development slingshot, once free of the tower she was never allowed to leave (not even for exercise after a certain point, thanks a lot, Anders), actually being out in the open world and not being confined by walls was a thrill all its own. It's one of the biggest reasons she never acclimated to sleeping in a bed again, and chances are she'll disappear into this section for weeks on end just to see what's there - liveblogging, of course, when she discovers that concept.

And The City of Romance...talk about poster children, look at the single biggest spur towards heroism in her life! Once she learns the rules of this city, she'll be likely to try to find a way to apply them to home, because those sound like the best chances of attaining her goal that she has. ...If nothing else, she may wind up accidentally falling into the role of mentor to various UCs by virtue of being in the romance genre while very much spoken for. And all of this doesn't count possible attempts by the city's narrative rules to count her as "single" for not being in the same world as her lover! Imagine her rebelling against romance tropes the whole way because she's taken!

And once, just once, I would love to send her to the Island of Harmony and see what happens because you can't tell me she didn't go halfway into a Prince Charming narrative before the whole thing went in another direction. Or use her daemon on the appropriate island to practice shapeshifting! Or others' daemons! And other islands that pop up in the future? Sign her up to explore them! This lady wants to see the world.

Basically I want to play everywhere, I love the hell out of this premise.

Samples:

Sample 1: Log, City of Romance

There is something of a strange sight here: a redheaded woman with a tattooed face, conspicuously alone in a sea of couples, trios, and various other romantic arrangements that are nonetheless more than one. She weaves through the crowd with a paper bag from the cafe in her hands, deftly avoiding any number of "accidental" collisions with UCs going about their business but oh-so-conveniently in her path, and also, tellingly, alone. Those she does bump into, she offers a short "sorry!" and moves on quickly, before the city can make anything happen.

It had been perfectly content for a few days, after all, to simply let her explore like any other city. She had browsed its stores, spoken to its citizens, and enjoyed its sights like it was perfectly normal and didn't have some overarching agenda. They had been eager to hear about her love life, and she had been willing to tell an abridged tale of lovers brought together in crisis. That had been a little odd, in its sheer frequency, how so many people seemed fixated on love, and especially true love, what she apparently had, or so they said. She was flattered, at first. Happy, to hear her relationship with Alistair praised so.

And then the city seemed to, all at once, forget. People started encouraging her to have some fun. He's not here and time won't pass, it will be like it never happened at all, they said. And then out came the tropes. The collisions and dropped belongings at her feet they called "Meet Cute". The ones who approached her at a table and asked if the seat opposite her was taken, when there were plenty more empty tables. She was getting paranoid. Were there any people who were only looking for a friendly chat anymore, or did they all want her to have a fling, to "add some drama" to that relationship of hers? Luckily there was one barista she knew wasn't interested in women, and she was kind enough to speculate - she'd seen someone with a bag from Laughter and heard snatches of conversation about a "drama bomb" prank, apparently.

Could she counteract this "drama bomb" thing, she wondered, make it better? She couldn't be the only one suffering.

Oh, but silly her, lost in thought. The buzz of a fellow NC in the back of her mind isn't warning enough, and before she knows better she's walked right into them, or tripped over their foot if they've stepped aside, dropping her bag at their feet.

"Excuse me-..." recognizing the buzz now, she looks up on instinct, meets their eyes, and damn it all, why did she do that? That was so classic it existed in her world! Blushing, she tears her gaze away. "I won't play this game, I'm spoken for!" she snaps at nobody in particular. Not daring to look at the fellow NC again, she says, "I'm sorry, someone...used a 'drama bomb' here, I think? I don't know what that is, but I want to get rid of its effects. Do you have any idea how to do that?"


Sample 2: Network (CALL), Land of Brass

un: wardenka

[The camera pans over the brilliant metal foliage, a clearing in a completely artificial forest, gleaming greens and browns with the occasional flower of red or violet, the metallic sheen almost blinding at the right angles.]

Have any of you ever been here? [Katherine's voice is full of wonder, in awe at how strange and beautiful it all is.] Look at all of this, it's amazing! How do they forge it all...? And its denizens...

[Something chirps from below the frame, and Katherine makes a startled step back, responding to whatever it is with a little gasp of delight.] Oh, hello there, little thing! What are you supposed to be?

[She tilts the CALL device down, showing a gorgeous clockwork velociraptor, glittering gold and blue "feathers" of metal trailing from its gear joints and forming its tail.] What a lovely creature you are. Are you some kind of bird?

[It chirps again, ducking its head in a nod. Katherine laughs and reaches down to let it smell her hand, not that it has any need of it. It gives her fingers a playful nudge and goes hopping off into the bushes again, Katherine training the video on it to share its retreat.]

Incredible, simply incredible. They all seem so...happy.


Sample 3: Multiple prompt types, City of Romance/Homeworld

A: Action

[Those in the City of Romance this evening might see an interesting sight - again. Things seem to have returned to normal after the drama bomb incident, and now the strange thing is what Katherine is doing. Namely, appearing and disappearing every five or so minutes, transporting back and forth between her world and the City. Each time, her free hand is in an awkward position, as if she was holding on to something that didn't come with her.

Each transport comes with increasing frustration, voiced in an assortment of ways - "What? Why not!", "Oh, come on!", "Lovely...", "This is not working..."

Care to ask what she's up to?]

B: [CALL] un: wardenka (plus some bonus guests)

[Finally, after showing up apparently having had both arms wrapped around that something (obvious now that it's someone, given the height) that refuses to follow, she gives up with a growled, "Oh, forget it!" and disappears one last time. A little later, she appears on the network from her homeworld, by a campfire, the flames' light revealing shadows of a man and her dog somewhere behind her on the edges of the illumination, playing fetch.]

I just don't understand it! I can bring whatever possession I please to the city, I can bring my dog if I want to, but for all its insistence that love makes anything possible I cannot bring my lover to share a lovely night in the City of Romance. Does this make no sense at all to anyone else?

Anything Else?: So this app was really long! Thank you for taking the time to read it.