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modnightmagic
“We have both seen terrible things.
We have watched death and destruction
render that which we love unrecognizable.”
PLAYER INFORMATION NAME: M ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yes CONTACT: CURRENT CHARACTERS: None CHARACTER INFORMATION NAME: Solas CANON: Dragon Age: Inquisition CANON POINT: After the Inquisitor returns from the Arbor Wilds CHARACTER AGE: Ostensibly in his early to mid 40s. Much older in reality. HISTORY: Dragon Age @ Wikipedia :: Draon Age Wiki :: Solas @ DA Wiki In Solas's Thedas, the Inquisitor was a power-hungry female Lavellan with whom he never saw eye to eye. She did everything she could to secure more power for herself at the expense of others. She allowed the Templar Order to join the Inquisition without requiring any changes made to their operation, essentially giving their blatant abuses of mages in Thedas a free pass. Solas found it a contemptible action but was largely willing to give the Inquisitor a second chance. Then she gave the Wardens permission to remain in Orlais after they had shown themselves weak to the possession of demons and fond of corrupting spirits. Solas couldn't comprehend showing the Wardens mercy, and he was even more disturbed when he found out she chose to leave Hawke in the Fade because Hawke threatened her power. Following her return to Skyhold, they fought. She hit him, slugged him in the jaw actually, and reminded him that he served her. Shortly after that, Cole left the Inquisition and took everyone's memory of him. Cole couldn't stand an Inquisitor who hurt people instead of helping them, but Solas had no such excuse. He needed to stay to retrieve the orb that granted the Inquisitor her powers. He wished he hadn't. Ellana Lavellan allowed Celene to be assassinated and appointed Gaspard as Emperor or Orlais in Celene's place. After slaughtering the elves guarding the Temple of Mythal, she drank from the Well of Sorrows, and she sealed Solas's enmity. It should be noted that Solas's claim about growing up in a small village to the north are probably true in spirit if not in letter. Solas is Fen'Harel, one of the so-called elven gods (should you question him about them, he supposes they could have been powerful mages or strong spirits; he doubts their godhood). It's possible that Fen'Harel was born in a village in the north, as Solas rarely outright lies. Little is known about Arlathan. The implications found throughout the game suggest that the supposed gods were constantly at war with each other. Finding a mural of him in the Temple of Fen'Harel will trigger a brief conversation between Morrigan and Solas, and Solas points out that Falon'din's appetite for adulation grew great and so he began wars to gain more followers, slaughtering those who would not bow to him. The other gods were rallied by Mythal to stop him. He also claims Andruil was a goddess of sacrifice, and there are curious runes found in the Exalted Plains that suggest she enjoyed hunting her own kind. The elves of Arlathan had a caste system of some rigidity, and the nobility marked their priests and slaves with the vallaslin, which the Dalish now tattoo on themselves to honor their gods. We know that Solas detests slavery and abhors the vallaslin, and so it's not unfair to suspect at least part of the reason he locked the gods away was for their mistreatment of the slaves. Solas, as Fen'Harel, likely came from a world of luxury - he tells stories of how Arlathan's palaces were made of crystal and floated among the clouds - but grew disillusioned with it over time. Any more details than that are conjecture. PERSONALITY: Solas is, by and large, a fairly sedate person. He is quiet, introverted, thoughtful, preferring the company of one or two to crowds. He isn't entirely used to people and readily admits that, prior to the Inquisition, he had no friends except for spirits. In spite of this, he's not awkward with people. When he wants to, Solas can exercise a rather mighty wit. Usually, he turns that wit to a wicked purpose, delivering backhanded compliments to keep a healthy interpersonal distance between him and everyone else. Other times, he's completely blunt. He uses Tevinter's slavery as a weapon against Dorian, throws Vivienne's beliefs back in her face, and sneers at Blackwall for his lies. The only person in the Inquisition who never finds himself on the sharp side of Solas's tongue is Cole, but Cole is a spirit and Solas is at his best when he's surrounded by spirits. Much of his time has been spent wandering. Since he woke, he has combed Thedas by himself, dreaming of times long gone to relearn the world. Contact with people is something he hasn't gone out of his way to achieve, especially since he doesn't care for modern elves very much, and they certainly don't care for him. His demeanor is often rough around the edges, unpolished except in the most startling ways. For someone who has ostensibly spent his life living rough, hiding from templars, Solas is oddly at home amidst the finery of noble society. But he lacks awareness of day to day social niceties, and he doesn't have any interest in wasting his time learning those things. Above all other things, Solas is a prideful man. He's aware of this: solas is the Elvish word for pride, and it is a name he likely chose. As he is one of precious few people who know the truth of the past, he is sure his ways are the right ways, that his understanding is correct at the expense of all other conclusions. He expects that people, when confronted with the truth he bears, will realize that it is The Truth and fall in line. When they don't, it doesn't go over well with him. His relationship with Sera codifies this. He tries, constantly, to teach her about the elves, and she rebuffs him at every turn. She infuriates and frustrates him, but he also has a grudging respect for her tenacity, that she will not deny the essence of herself. Solas tries to teach, but he has little respect for ways of thinking that don't align with his. He wants the elves to learn, to reclaim what they have lost, but he doesn't care for the culture and society they have built for themselves while he slept. He has no respect for what he sees as the foolishness of the modern age, and that disdain creeps into everything he says and does. He speaks of the Dalish with loathing, and the Inquisitor can ask what they did to him. Nothing truly harmful. They simply ignored him. Solas clings to the past, to how things were done in his own time, while attempting to distance himself from the modern. He's like that grumpy old man who tells the kids how easy they have it and how he used to walk thirty miles in the snow, uphill both ways, to school every morning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is more critical of the elven people than he is of any other race - and he is critical of them all. The dwarves are lesser because they have no connection to the Fade, and, really, with them he stops there. To Solas, for whom magic is nearly everything, that lack of connection to the Fade is a sort of soullessness he can't see past. The qunari, followers of the restrictive qun, are a mindless mass with no sense of individuality or true understanding of purpose; they cannot make decisions for themselves, are incapable of intelligent thought. Humans are thugs and brutes, a pale imitation and shallow echo of what the elves once were. He doesn't go out of his way to hide these feelings. He disdains the humans for what they've done to the elven people, for what the humans took from the elves after Arlathan fell. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is most critical of his own people. To him, the Dalish are fumbling children trying desperately to recreate their former glory, and the city elves have given up their identities entirely. His way, then, is the only right way, and those who don't adhere to it are fools and beneath him. Solas speaks little of himself, not out of any sense of humility (we've already established he doesn't have that at all) but rather because he knows that words will get him into trouble. He's prideful, not stupid, though the two sometimes join hands and lead him down terrible paths (see: giving Corypheus his orb). Solas is a master of doublespeak and backtracking. He doesn't lie so much as he bends the truth, preferring obfuscation to outright deception. He claims he grew up in a small town to the north. That's probably true. It was probably more true several thousand years ago. He claims, also, that he learned most of his skills on his own. Given that he's likely spent the last several thousand years dreaming in the Fade, cavorting with spirits, that's also not a lie in the strictest sense. Occasionally, more often then he'd like, he misspeaks. Some part of him really would like the world to know who he is, not necessarily because he wants recognition but because he's tired of being alone. So he'll make oblique references to his misspent, dissolute youth or he'll comment on how he misses events like the parties thrown by the Orlesians when no apostate elf would ever have a reason to rub elbows with empresses. His time with the Inquisition has been his happiest in many years. He builds an easy rapport with Blackwall - at least until Blackwall's lies come to light. They are a strange foil for each other, but Solas fails in owning up to who and what he is where Blackwall is honest. In spite of their conflicting points of view, he has a respect for Cassandra and for Varric. With the Inquisition, for the first time in ages, he's part of something larger himself. To be surrounded by people working together for a cause is invigorating for him - and it fills him with a curious sort of hope. He sees his world in terms of its conflicts, is keenly aware of the way power tips and changes, and with the Inquisition he sees disparate people from different sides of many conflicts coming together to fix a single, very scary, and very dangerous problem. It pleases him; the last conflict he likely saw was one fought between the People as their gods or, barring that, the elves and Tevinter. Solas values thoughtfulness above all other things. This is, perhaps, why he enjoys card games. Which you should never play with him. Blackwall taught him Diamondback and had to return to the stables with nothing but a bucket for his bits. Those who are deliberate in their choices, who consider all possibilities before forming a conclusion, gain his respect quickly - even when they make ruthless decisions. He also believes very firmly in freedom of self and personal thought, abhorring and form of enforced servitude or censorship. He disdains the qun because it limits and restricts so completely; if a person chooses to be limited, that is acceptable, but for limits to be forced on them? That will never do, and he will never abide someone who forces their will on others. He pokes almost constantly at Iron Bull for adhering the qun, for willing surrendering his free will. In fact, the quickest way to upset Solas is to defend those who control others. He loathes templars, seeing them as brutes who wield power like a club against those who cannot defend themselves. He has little love for the Wardens, especially since seeing them corrupt spirits and enslave those spirits as demons. Solas believes absolutely in freedom: personal, mental, emotional, it doesn't matter. To bind someone, anyone, is reprehensible to him. This is what draws him to Sera. She seeks to subvert the rule of the aristocracy, and he is happy to help her, but is baffled when she tells him she has no real plans beyond chaos. Violence, he says, is a means to an end and not the end itself. ABILITIES: Solas is a mage of considerable knowledge. His academic understanding of magic is almost as strong as Dorian's, if not stronger, but what power he may once have had as Fen'Harel has been scaled back considerably. He knows basic defensive spells in three of the four main branches of magic: Inferno, Spirit, and Winter. He can make barriers and bring up walls of ice and flame and cast protective barriers around himself and his allies. His offensive skills, however, are few. Even his specialization is fairly defensive. As a rift mage, Solas can pull on the Veil and manipulate the Fade to warp space around his enemies, slowing them down or increasing gravity for them. But with neither the Veil or the Fade in Eros, this ability is significantly less useful. He can barely manage any sort of gravitic manipulation here. As an elf, Solas is much more attuned to the natural rhythms of nature - he claims he can feel the magic of a place pulsing under his feet. He also sees in the dark better than humans, and his eyes glint like those of a cat. SINS & VIRTUES:
SAMPLES One && Two |