To be quite honest, I think of myself as rather approachable and lenient regarding roleplays. Here are some guidelines, which can and will be updated as I see fit. Additionally, I would recommend that you read this for a brief introduction to the writer, and this for Abelas’ verses.
Basics;; Writer 21+, not selective or private. I don't want to exclude anyone on principle, so I am free to be approached by non-mutuals. multi-ship/multi-verse. standard rules apply, including remembering to trim posts and not reblogging asks. reply to asks as a new post for the thread. skype available to all (sunshinehalla)! open to all writing styles, from one-liners to para or novella.
Abelas is aromantic & asexual. what this means is while I’m open to multiple platonic ships with the same character, he is not open to romantic or sexual shipping.
On tagging;; I have no triggers, personally, but I’ll try to be as considerate as possible. The format will be -> trigger ///<- and -> nsfw /// <- and if I miss something, please don’t be afraid to approach me politely about it.
Regarding the story;; I will automatically assume that all interactions take place at any point after the Arbor Wilds/What Pride Had Wrought questline, unless otherwise specified. Accordingly, this is not a spoiler-free blog, and end-game plot points may be mentioned. This is a good reference for Abelas’ Inquisition verse.
Regarding characters;; Abelas will automatically interact with all companions as though they had been present at the Well of Sorrows and that he left in peace — again, unless otherwise specified. Every character will be treated as unique. There are no duplicates. Therefore, if you see me interacting with a like muse, don’t feel intimidated/threatened/disappointed, etc. Every player has a different perspective and approach, and they all bring something new to the table. Besides, each exists singularly for Abelas.
I’ll love you if;; you send me a meme, you strike up a conversation, you ask questions! Abelas might be super srs disagreeable, but I promise I try to be perfectly friendly. c:
Also, please note that I tend to use endearments -- sweetie, sweetheart -- because I am trying to show my affection. If these bother you in any way, let me know and I will accommodate accordingly!
Vita: : a brief biographical sketch; Latin ⊰∬ literally, L I F E
( spoilers to follow )
Malas amelin ne halam, Abelas
What once might have been known of Abelas’ life before the fall of Arlathan has been lost to the ocean of time. Indeed, it is likely that his very name, Abelas {Sorrow}, was given to him — or that it was a title which he, himself, took up years later.
He was a servant - slave ? - and guardian of Mythal’s temple in the Arbor Wilds for thousands of years, adrift in the long slumber of uthenera when not directly required to defend it. Each time he and his brethren awoke, a little more of the world they had known was lost forever, slipped from their grasp.
Their numbers dwindling and the treasures of the Elvhen nearly gone from this world, Abelas had little to defend by the time Morrigan and the Inquisitor reached his sacred charge — the Well of Sorrows. He was willing to destroy the Well to protect the Vir’Abelasan from the corrupting taint of unworthy shemlen and ignorant blunderers seeking to wrest away his life’s purpose.
His destiny upon him now, one way or another, Abelas relinquished his ancient duty at last…or fell into shadow and memory.
Mythal sulevin
{ If Abelas is dead in your world state, feel free to plot with me or otherwise assume that he clawed his way back into consciousness, and fled the Arbor Wilds after his singular purpose for staying there had been taken away. Otherwise, assume that he is quite alive. }
For the first time in millennia, he has no duty, no reason to exist or to linger in one place. He searches for any trace of the Elvhen; he searches for purpose…and for the Inquisition that dances on the knife’s edge, and which holds the power to change the very fate of the world.
—In time, he might seek out the Inquisitor,
his curiosity and his quest for purpose
providing him with few other options.
In the Inquisition, he might find a cause,
even if he could never bring himself to
pledge his services or his spirit fully to them.
He could never replace what he had lost — but
somewhere in his wanderings, it is not so
impossible a thing for his hope in the Elvhen
to be r e i g n i t e d.
- - -
The Sentinel;;
Born during the height of Arlathan and promised to the service of Mythal as a youth, his notions of freedom and slavery have a very different meaning to him than to just about every culture extant today. Freedom was never something he sought nor desired. He respects Mythal greatly, and was proud of the purpose he had while following her dictates.
His world crumbled as Arlathan buckled beneath its own bloated power, the treachery and warring raging throughout Elvhenan. { The Dalish and their infantile need to blame it all upon the humans brings but a curled sneer to his lips— }
Even when Mythal had been struck down, he knew that she endured in some form, and so he compelled his fellows to tend to their duties still, drawing them to the place that had once been her sanctum sanctorum. Only now, her temple was still and empty, barred from within to keep out a world that had gone mad.
His years spent awake passed much the same as those deep in the slumber of uthenera — only when he returned to consciousness, his rest stirred by something troubling the Vir’Abelasan, did he see how the world had changed that much more from what he knew. The death of Elvhenan didn’t end with Arlathan, although it had been its gem. The death continues, and a little more of some fundamental part of Abelas dies with it each time he wakes.
By the time the Well of Sorrows falls to the hands of the Inquisition, what had once been a force worthy of representing the Will of Mythal was reduced to a beleaguered handful. Those few that survived Corypheus’ assault scattered to the winds, each seeking to discover or preserve one last remnant of the People. It made sense, at the time, but while Abelas regrets it now, it is far too late to call them back.
Time and tradition are the factors which molded a young elven devotee into a cynical and wearied keeper. Mythal the Protector demanded justice delivered with clear minds and open hearts, and these are precisely the qualities that Abelas has lost. It is too great a blow for him to accept, and so he continues to dig himself deeper, channeling his disgust outward, disdainful of all the races infesting Thedas and repulsed by the Dalish in particular.
But it is not that simple. He sees the Dalish as orphaned children, shambling and ignorant, but what pity he might feel is tempered by how alien they are to one another — they have so little in common that the sting of it hurts him most of all.
—And while he might disdain of them, of the
vallaslin worn without comprehension, they
are all that was left to him of his kin.
Art credit to swevenfox, qissus and artemorte.
I love video games and leatherbound novels and mint. I’m 30% enthusiasm, 60% water and 10% everything else. I’m petite sized in real life but people tend to forget that I’m short until we’re all standing up.
I love science and know a little bit about a lot of things, although sometimes I wish my knowledge base was more precisely detailed. I think that the ocean and space are basically the coolest things ever and in an alternate universe I might have become a physicist.
I have a terrible memory, so sorry in advance.
Regarding Roleplays:
My skype is available to everyone, even non-mutuals. sunshinehalla !
I personally have zero triggers but if something I write or do makes you uncomfortable, come to me privately and we can talk about how to fix it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can roleplay with you?- Absolutely anyone, so long as I'm somewhat familiar with the universe and the character has both about and rules pages.
Even crossovers or like characters?- Sure, although having a DA or fantasy verse increases the chance of us interacting. Still, I do have a crossover verse page here.
Can I send an ask even if we've never talked?- Absolutely. I'm very friendly (more so than Abelas). You can send any questions to me or to my muse.
But what if I'm a Personal blog?- As long as it doesn't require me to create an entire thread, I have no problems interacting with Personals. I will answer asks (even in character) but I will not roleplay with them.
Do you still take drabble requests?- I do! Keep in mind that I have the right to refuse and that I may be slow, but I will write drabbles. Don't be afraid to send me some, although please note I will not accept romantic or sexual themes with this character!
He is young, but Arlathan is already in its prime. The vallaslin are fresh upon his face, and the towers stand gold and strong. He is Vallasvhen, and his are the hands fated to inscribe the runes upon the holiest of holies.
He is given purpose, finding a place in the Inquisitor's Inner Circle. More than completing the ancient rituals, the Inquisitor saw fit to spare his life and see the Well's Legacy continued. For better or worse, he has become a member of their companions. In time, their cause might give him purpose — whether for a new principle in which to believe, or a foul heresy he cannot allow to continue.✮☆ ( Abelas as companion. )
He has forged his own purpose, for although Elvhenan is dead, the People yet remain. ( May or may not follow the 'Wanderer Without Purpose' or 'Shadow of Tarasyl'an Te'las' trees ) — He has come to terms, as best he can, with this time and its peoples. He seeks to aid what remains of the elves and their true heritage, and they see him as one of their own. He is not so angry as he once was. He is not so sorrowful. He has taken a new name, Suledin, and for the first time, he is Second speculation. Your thoughts of after the Well is "destroyed" how you would envasion Flemeth/Myhtal personal meeting with her loyal sentinel a bit later time (ignoring the cut scene of the game with Solas now). How would such situation go by?
You know what? I’m just going to make a very short drabble and combine pinkymorty’s request because I had already been thinking of this. Otherwise, I would have been describing the exact same scene!
Abelas' reaction to 'I should never have loved you.'
There was a term, in the old tongue, for what he was now. A lost and bygone soul, a forgotten and broken remnant of the ancient glory that lived on only in dreams and memory. Like all that had passed into shadow, this word, too, was lost, and the once-Sentinel of Mythal had not even the comfort of a title nor an explanation to shape his being.
He wandered this new world, a world which he scarcely recognized, and his spirits faded with each new ruin he discovered. Old Elvhenan was dead, its spires jutting like bleached bones into the sky, and the first time he saw for himself what had truly become its legacy, he wanted to weep.
He could not say what pressed him forward, what drove him through the corpse of the Empire-That-Was and beyond the hovels of the shemlen, their stunted cities belching acrid smoke in the sky. These he gave a wide berth, and found little difficulty in doing so. Not only was he some knife-ear — { the word foreign upon his tongue } but also an apostate, as though the natural order of magic were a crime to possess. He was a man out of time; this he knew, and thus his dogged determination to carry on could not be explained, not even by himself.
{ Part of him wondered if it would feel like one last failure, were he to abandon hope— }
He found himself, drawn more than s e e k i n g, to an emanation of power not unlike that which he had once served. Time was meaningless to him now, and how long he had sought this font of energy he could not even guess. What mattered only was that he had come upon it, desperate to glimpse, if he may, whether his kin cried out to him. Who could summon him hence, but an agent of Mythal herself?
The moon was high. The waxing and gravid orb sat heavy in the deep velvet crush of night, a wan and pallid cast contouring the broken courtyards in stark relief against the ruined towers of the Elvhen stronghold. Whether it had fallen to warfare or to the ravages of time, none yet living could say. It was a lost and forgotten place, and few animals tarried long beneath its shadow. No browsing mammals rooted about in the long, tangled grasses, and no birds nestled into the multitudinous skeleton of crumbling towers, sensing the power that was woven into its very stones.
{ and yet there She was, a tall figure in the overgrown courtyard, as resplendent and proud as she had ever been, even in a place that had long since been claimed by the d e a d— }
Abelas’ heart leapt to his seizing throat, his breath catching, his lungs failing — surely he had fallen into eternal darkness, and now he walked the Beyond without so much as Falon’Din to guide him — the Friend of the Dead had abandoned his charges to the Void long ago.
But the sight of Her stilled his heart, and brought clarity to his broken spirit. Time and tradition once molded a young elven devotee into a cynical and wearied keeper. Mythal the Protector demanded justice delivered with clear minds and open hearts, and these were precisely the qualities that Abelas has lost. He had strayed so far from himself, embroiled in millennia of entropy, subsumed by the slow death of Elvhenan that time itself had decreed necessary to rip from him. He had failed Mythal thrice over — when she had fallen, when he had lost himself to sorrows and bitterness, and when her final gift to the People had been taken from him.
He saw Her now, and he knew Her, even though the form was different. She turned, head swiveling towards him, and captured his gaze with her own. She radiated power - and danger - as easily as she dispensed justice, her eyes bright with forgotten magics. He came to himself again only when he was at her side, as though summoned in a trance. Whether it was her mystical power or his own disbelief, Abelas himself could not say.
M y t h a l looked at him, looked beyond his Vallaslin, ever regal and beyond the ken of Elvhen such as he. Such was the nature of those with the power to become as gods.
Something played in her eyes, twin whirlpools of molten gold. He fell to his knees, his mind blank, disbelieving, unworthy of her. That glint in her eyes sharpened into amusement, but also to something distinctly regretful.
“Abelas.” She intoned, and how she knew the name he had taken for himself after her death, he could not even guess. She was…different. It was as though he was looking at the Protector’s reflection in a clear, deep pool, and reached one hand to disturb the water’s surface. Whatever, whomever She was, he knew this was the ripple of that reflection. This was, in some way, truly Mythal.
Words were beyond him. Thought was beyond him. He felt only pain, a great, stabbing pain, clutch his heart. Tears spilled from his eyes like diamonds, until her level stare stood even with him. That Mythal should crouch for elvhen’alas, for one promised to her service — was madness to him.
“You are a lost one, Abelas.” Her even gaze penetrated his withered soul, seeing in him everything that he could not bear to face himself. “You have served for so long I do not think you know how to be anything else.” Cutting words, but not said unkindly. It was an expression of the truth of his being, plucked from his mind as easily as the strings of a lyre. The gravity of her interest in him was immense, a dark wave of emotion and disbelief washing over him.
She sensed that too, of course, and she threw back her head and laughed, lunar hair white as the moon. Her mirth was hollow. Mythal cupped his cheek, as one would their beloved and dying dog. “I should never have loved you.” She said, and the contrition was real. It was no genuine affection, he knew. It was not of Abelas she spoke, not entirely, but of the dreams she had. He once helped fight for those dreams, for a shining empire, a Golden City, an ordered world without the petty infighting and squabbles of vain beings that thought themselves deities. She loved these things and more, and Mythal had lost all that she had sought to protect.
Mythal rose to her feet with deliberate slowness, and she comported herself with all of the dignity and grace he remembered. She pulled back his cowl, eyes sad and sharp all at once —- and leaned in to kiss his brow. “I release you, Abelas. Find a new name, a new purpose, one of your making that is your own path to tread. Until such a day, you are Suledin, and I hope you walk in light. Ar lasa mala revas. Dareth Shiral. We shall not meet again."
And like that, she was gone, leaving Suledin in the courtyard alone, wondering, hopeful. It might have been a dream…
but for the memory of cool lips upon his brow.
♥, ☾, ♪, ☁ and if you wanna; ♬ ;D .... i'm always harassing you am i not *lies down*
♥:One thing you love about your Muse.
His devotion. Although I may not agree with his cause or how it upheld it, I can at least respect that he dedicated his entire life in the service of something he truly believes in.
☾:Favorite moment from your Muse's canon, and why.
Ooh…I would have to say the end of his duty. In a sense, he is forced to abandon all he’s ever known and love. This is where my exploration of his character comes in, where I get to think about how he’s seeking to redefine himself and reconcile his beliefs with…everything.
♪:Favorite song.
Here’s my all-time favorite!
☁:Favorite part of RPing
Getting involved with the community and with roleplaying partners. There’s nothing like a shared passion, after all, and I feel like my world has expanded because of it. I’ve made true friends thanks to roleplaying, and I cannot count the times that people on tumblr (IC or OOC) have made me squeal and laugh.
♬:Sing or say something!
(weeps) This is as good as it gets! I spent way too long on this…
Abelas' reaction to "I love this song!"
“I love this song.”
His eyes open, heavy lidded and guarded, and the melody falters, tumbling off his lips like the last faint echo, the ghost of a tune carrying on for an instant more, even after the song, itself, had died. He did not even have a sigh in him – not a dry, rattling rasp of breath left to spare. He pushed aside the weariness that seemed to overlay him like a shroud. It was not so easy a task, sloughing away the somewhat protective desire to distance himself from this alien world, to slip into Uthenera and walk his own walking dreams. { But he knows he cannot afford to – not again. The long slumber might take him, and this time … he might never wish to leave it }
“Sit, da'len.”
{ He feels that change is coming. It reverberates in his very bones } He watches her sing, her cowl loose upon her shoulders, her vallaslin like bright poison upon her brow. She is the youngest of them all, what little that means to them now, and he has never stopped thinking of her as a child. She is special only in that she was the last to be anointed with the blood writing of Mythal, the last to enter into Her service. Abelas’ second had been her mentor, once, but then the temple was assaulted, and she was among but many to fall. So much immortal flesh – wasted, corpses eaten by the same flames that had lapped so hungrily at these walls.
But that was eons ago, and the youngest acolyte had survived, even when her mentor had not. Abelas had collected her, drew her to him. And why not? Their numbers had been reaped by the scythe’s cuts of intrigue and revolt. Even when Arlathan fell, he kept this temple standing. As did they all. { He used to wonder if it was devotion to him that kept them thus bound. None of their number had been worthy of the Vir'Abelasan. None of them had been compelled to stay… but he dismissed that as heresy. Of course it was love for Mythal which inspired them to remain at his side. It was devotion to their shared duty, and Abelas punished himself for a moment’s egotistical indulgence }
not for the leader who remained steadfast, who guided them and gave them purpose, who fought at their sides, who kept the old ways and meted justice with a fairness that would have pleased Mythal, who sang the dirges when their numbers dwindled further, who knew their hearts as well as he knew himself
“Sing with me.” He bids her, leading her in the old hymns of worship. Her voice intermingles with his, as much a chanted psalm as it was an expression of music. Her eyes close, as his had been, caught up in the sweeping notes of praise. Elvhenan might well have died everywhere but in this place, and she would never know of it The eluvian was not hers to use. It was not his.
Yes, he feels change coming. It was why they had all awoken, and now he fears it will be their last. He shares his concerns with no one. He must shepherd them, these last living faithful. He must give them hope, even at the expense of truth. He has fallen far from Mythal’s dictates, for Abelas cannot even remember when last he thought with a clear mind and open heart. The cloud of ennui, the crush of bitterness against his heart – these were what he carried with him. This is his burden. Malas suldein madas. Now I must endure.
He rises slowly, and he glances to the west. A new song has intermingled with their own. It is a song he knows just as well. It is the interwoven harmony of dueling magics, the choral shouts of the dying, the staccato thrusts of swords and daggers and the arrow whose aim is true.
Abelas looks at his ward – his sister – one last time, and he is consumed by the knowledge that this is their last battle. Their last song.
Ma ghilana mir din'an, halam'shivanas.
Oh nevermind for some reason the menu wasn't working right for me, but now I found a page full of headcanons good gracious I feel dumb now ;D Ehh I wanna annoy you in some way so uhh if you take prompts from non-rp bloggers, I'd love to see how Abelas would react to "I shouldn’t be in love with you!" and "I love this song!" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
no worries! c:
I will take prompts from anyone, but especially you. I cannot express how delighted I am that you asked!
harharharhar I finally went through your blog and gosh how you write, your Abelas is spot on and lovely grumpy old elf he is! There's precious little to work on so it must be kinda difficult to write such character? Actually I'd love to hear about your headcanons if you have any :)
//falls down// oh thank you, this means everything to hear. I was immediately struck by the characterization of Abelas — his motivations, his history, and all of the knowledge [that could end] with him. it is actually very easy for me to write for Abelas; I think a good deal of it is due to the fact that his life has been so static for so long. It is not unlike writing for Solas, in regards to the grief for what has been lost. all headcanons will be tagged headcanon; , or found on Abelas’ vita page.
