Application (faderift)

[paperwing]

PLAYER

Name: Rems
Age: 23
Contact: radically
Other Characters: Apping Lace Harding(/lacere) as well.
Interests: I'm interested in just playing in the setting around the time of the Inquisition; there's so many variations and so many interesting types of AU'd OCs I can get to play with. I'd like to see how it all comes together and how the game will (eventually!) have its own world state, of sorts. I like characters talking and improving their relationship over action scenes, but dabbling in everything is good, as RP is a good outlet for improving my ability to write, I feel.

For Sabriel, in this universe, I'd really like to see her in a place that we don't in the books of her original universe so much - where she's allowed more time to change and grow from her experiences, rather than reacting to the immediate presence of a big bad (sure, there's still a big bad, but he's some time away, not days). I'd like to see her function in this world in the same way she had to learn how to function in hers, be it fighting or diplomacy.

CHARACTER

Name: Sabriel Abhorsen
Canon/OC: Old Kingdom series
Journal: paperwing
Race: Human
Nationality: Nevarran
Occupation: Grey Warden (nine months experience), former Circle Mage at Perendale
Age: 22

History

"Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens."

Sabriel is the daughter of Terciel, a Grey Warden mage and former Mortalitasi, and Eloise, a low-born circle mage. Whilst returning to the family estate from Ghislain (where a pregnant Eloise had travelled to greet her returning husband), her parents came upon a caravan of merchants who were under attack. Not only by bandits, but apostates, who called demons. Whilst Terciel leapt to aid them, Eloise fell into labour... and died during child-birth.

With the gratitude for their lives, the caravan leader offered their protector a place amongst them for both him and his newborn daughter, Sabriel. Terciel accepted.

For the next seven years, Sabriel travelled with the merchants across Marcher States, and occasionally Nevarra itself. Inevitably, she came to magic, and it was not long after the Wardens came seeking her father, whispers of Archdemons and Blights on their lips. Terciel's choice was made for him, and he took Sabriel to the Perendale circle, where she would be safe.

Sabriel's experience of the circle was mixed - wariness from her parentage, yet with respect for what skills she had - but comfortable. Her visits from her father in the following years were non-existent to most, but his letters were long and detailed, where he taught her about the world outside the tower, and the skills she would one day need.

At eighteen, Sabriel underwent her Harrowing. Though she succeeded in the ordeal, the peculiar demon of white-fire was not defeated as she suspected, but bound, forced into the cat form it had used to tempt her.

In 9:39 Dragon, after a year of silence, Terciel was declared dead by the Wardens. They arrived at Perendale to conscript Sabriel - invoking the rite from an old treaty where there must be an Abhorsen Warden at all times, for reasons only Weisshaupt knows (blood magic) - in order for her assistance in discovering what had truly happened to their wayward brother. Find him they did, riddled with the Calling, and possessed by a demon that had taken advantage of him in such a state. Unable to force him to destruction and unable to reach the Deep Roads, Terciel had stalked the roads where Eloise had died all those years before.

Using the knowledge he had given her from his lessons, Sabriel succeeded in banishing the demon back to the Fade in an attempt to save him, but it was a futile effort - her father's body was broken, and she was forced to kill him.

With her fellow Wardens, Sabriel left for Orlais around the time the conclave exploded. Clarel announced her plans for the order - openly against it, but knowing a fresh-faced warden could do little to convince them, Sabriel had only one option left to her. Slipping away during the march to Adamant Fortress, she ran after the declared traitors to Ferelden; and ultimately, the Inquisition.

(In-depth timeline found here.)

Personality

Sabriel comes off as a lot older than she actually is. She's sensible, practical; a wise, well-informed and equally well-read young woman, a woman who has dealt with a great many hardships and has only come out stronger because of it. She talks first, fights last, values the notion of being polite and stakes a great deal in diplomacy. The world may be unkind, but she doesn't have the time to grieve or self-implode - there are things to be done, people to save, dragons to slay, princes to... marry.

Sabriel is a romantic, in all senses of the word. Her belief in others does her credit, but it has its problems; Sabriel romanticises the people and groups she's learned about, those who she has placed sincere faith in, and believes them to be infallible to corruption. That's not to say she's naive enough to trust the unknown implicitly, but she believes the best in people, and gives the benefit of the doubt. Give her someone or something that, on the surface, looks, seems, and talks like someone who can be trusted, and she will be blindsided. Even with their betrayal to her, she still believes in the idea of the Wardens, that there is good within them. That's another thing about Sabriel - she's stubborn, and once her mind is made-up, very little can change it, not even what is seemingly the inevitable.

She lacks in neither courage nor the self-confidence in order to do what is right - Sabriel is the type to get waylaid by the fact she wants to help people in need, and she will go out of her way to do so. If it's something as dramatic as saving the world, she won't shy away from it. This, in its way, makes her the perfect (if not romanticised) Warden, the one willing to die for others without any selfish inclination, just that she should, and that she will, scared or no.

In a lot of ways, Sabriel is entirely self-sufficient. She's taught herself much, but she's also very dependent on what she does know. When she left the Circle and became a Warden, she thought she knew enough - now, she's not so sure. No Circle experience could prepare for the horrors of a battlefield. But as with much else in her life, she doesn't dwell.

At least, not on the surface. Sabriel deeply feels everything, and it's her emotions that guide her. She may seem independent, but she needs people, needs to know her value and that she is allowed to be vulnerable. The loss of her father still burdens her, as well as her desires to do good, to be strong despite her fears. Even with having her future presented to her, a future she accepted and planned for accordingly, there's still a woman under all that authority and responsibility, a woman with thoughts and ideas alongside her desire to protect the world.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Grey Warden: Sabriel comes with all the trappings involved with the position - she's immune to Blight corruption, she will eventually succumb to the Calling, she can sense nearby darkspawn, and her suicide can potentially destroy an Archdemon should one arise. The False Calling is not something she is immune to nor can she can escape from - it's dull, an echo of a headache, but it's there. She could also potentially become a liability due to Corypheus' control over the Wardens, particularly mages.

Mage: Sabriel's skill in magic lies in the schools of spirit and creation, though she does have a few select spells outside of them to complete her arsenal. She isn't an offensive attacker, but more of a defensive one, prioritising healing and defense for her allies, and restrictive spells for her enemies (to paralyse, to burn, to delay, etcetera). If a situation arises where she does have to use offensive magic, she will typically choose fire magic, unless that's just going to make everything worse - she has little to no talent with ice or lightning magic, stunning aside.

Sabriel has to understand the innerworkings of the magic she wants to cast, how it feels, before she can use it - this makes her casting (relatively) safe as she accounts for all variables and outcomes. She'll sometimes whistle as a mental trick to help her focus. Generally, if it's a spell she can envision (the outcome she desires in particular, such as a closed wound, paralysis, a flame that will burn a particular thing but naught else), she does well.

She's also been in the Circle since she was eight, with very little time outside of it until the past year, which speaks for herself in being used to a warm bed, regular meals, a surplus of books, and very distant (read: hardly any) awareness of Thedas' day to day workings.

Swordsmanship: Like other mages, Sabriel doesn't need a staff to cast. Unlike a lot of mages, who choose to focus their craft through a staff or a book, Sabriel instead chooses to do so with a sword. Her sword is unique, designed to banish what is unwanted and protect that which is. It has been set and re-set with a great many enchantments for such a practice, and has been passed down through her line; it was last used by her father.

Sabriel is a decent enough swordswoman, but she lacks strength, and her fighting style is almost entirely self-taught, a mixture of learned techniques from watching her father, watching the Templars at her circle, and the quick and dirty fighting style of the merchants she traveled with as a child (from what she can remember, at least).

Death sensitivity: Some may say it's a Mortalitasi thing, but it's more of an Abhorsen thing to be particularly sensitive to death. Sabriel has an uncanny ability to know of death before she sees it - be it that, yes, there are many corpses atop the next hill - or even in cases of not being able to physically see it at all; that someone has died in the very spot she stands recently, or that this field was once the sight of a great battle several ages ago. Usually this doesn't involuntarily effect her beyond the mental capacity of bearing that knowledge - in the case of a great many deaths, she may begin to feel nauseous or overwhelmed. Rather than the death itself, it's likely she's reacting to the thinning of/tears in the Veil, not that she would phrase or describe it as such - and likely wouldn't, unless someone pointed it out to her.

Mortalitasi: Though not a Mortalitasi herself, her father gave her lessons on the art - theoretically, she could bind a spirit to a corpse, but this is something she is unlikely to do due to her belief system. She believes in the Nevarran concept of a soul passing through the Fade, but not the specificity of a spirit's displacement, as the Mortalitasi deliberately call non-sentient wisps to inhabit the recently deceased, and that if spirits are drawn across the Veil, they should, if at all possible, be sent back to where they belong. This is primarily what Terciel taught her of his work - how to bind and banish a spirit, and how to prevent them from entering the realm of Thedas' existence in the first place.

Noblewoman and head of her house, sort of: Sabriel has a lot of practical, theoretical knowledge of Thedas but she has very limited working knowledge of the history she's learned. She knows how to do a great many things - not only history, but how to perform in The Game, how to manage sums and accounts, how to speak plainly - but never have they seen any real use outside Circle walls. Thedas is a lot different to practicing with the same person you see every day and will continue to see every day for arguably the rest of your life. The real world can be more devious and dangerous on a day-to-day level than she can ever be aware - she might be well-versed in the concept of death and what can come after, but what seems like logic and common sense to her may not be as straightforward. She has plenty to learn about life that isn't under an Enchanter or at the side of the fabled Grey Wardens.

Inventory

1 set of Grey Warden armour, fit for a mage
1 longsword, set with enchantments, that bears the Abhorsen insignia (silver keys) on the hilt
A lot of empty pockets

Motivation

Sabriel's life has been on something of a down. She left the circle (and everything she knew), dealt with the actualities of becoming a Grey Warden (the Joining, general horribleness) and had to kill her father with her own hands (hurrah for demonic possession), only to then arrive in Orlais to find out her new Order wants to leash an army of demons, use blood magic to sacrifice most of their warriors to call said demons, bind their mages to said demons and only then descend into the Deep Roads to combat the false Calling... if anything is going to make you run from an esteemed order and the apparent madness they seem to be cultivating, this would be it.

Well, sort of. She doesn't know the ins and outs of what Clarel is planning to do, only that demons and blood magic is involved - rumours travel fast through the lower ranks, there's only so much that binding involves (demons, which she knows the ins and outs of, thanks dad), and fear drives you to do terrible things, particularly with a Calling in your head that can only be worse for those who have been Wardens longer. Anyway, Sabriel knew enough for her instincts to tell her to get out, and with what little she has in way of information and experience, she's limited on options of who bring this to - she's of low rank, and with the dissolution of the Circles thanks to the vote, she can't return to Perendale (and nor would she, if the Wardens decided to pursue). But she has heard of the fledgling Inquisition in her travels, and though she has no real care for their opposition to the Chantry or the supposed existence of a Herald sent by Andraste, what she does know is how much they have done for the people affected by the mage versus templar war.

And, so she figures, they might be able to help her - the Grey Wardens themselves, or to give her sanctuary, or to actually let her do what she thought she signed up for (like, y'know, finding a solution for the hole in the sky, when she finds out more about that), it doesn't matter. At this point, it's better than any other alternative.

SAMPLES

One, network style over at the test drive.

It was raining again.

It wasn't as though Sabriel had never known rain. On the contrary, the sound of it was soothing, bringing distant, hazy memories of hiding in the back of a caravan as it rumbled through the countryside, a rocking rhythm that put her to sleep, a silver-bearded dwarven man not much taller than herself counting silver and copper into leather bags, and her father's smile as he looked up from the letter he was penning-

The thought of his smile brought her back to the present, and the unwanted sensation of her boot sinking into mud. She'd never see that smile again, and her armour would never be clean enough, and scraping mud from her boots seemed somewhat moot, at this point. For a passing moment, she missed the Circle she had known; missed the warm room she could retreat to, where she wouldn't have to march in the rain, because they had to make it to Orlais, and they had to make it soon.

It didn't make it any more pleasant to walk through, though.

"Sabriel."

Her name caught her attention. It was Horyse, the one who Joined her, turning back from the rest of the entourage... and here she was again, lamenting her girlhood, slowing them down. What good could she honestly do if she got stuck in a marsh?

"Give me a moment." She wrestled with her foot again, near simultaneously raising her hand to stop her companion from helping her. "I got myself into this, I can get myself out."

"I don't doubt that you could. But that sounds more like stubborness," he voiced, folding his arms, and not moving away. She was talented, driven, but had proved herself to be very, very independent.

Sabriel almost argued she wasn't her being stubborn, but she knew that it was. Stubborness had its time and place; being soaked wasn't one of them. She sighed. "Help me, Horyse. What can I do?"

He seemed bemused by that statement, and she didn't know why. Her puzzlement must have made it onto her face, as he shook his head. "Taking my hand would do it."

Sabriel did, and, with a grunt and some effort, broke free of the clay, side-stepping onto the relative safety of soggy grass instead. She nodded, in gratitude, and fell back into step alongside him.