Fade Rift Application

[overharrowed]

PLAYER

Name: Ammmy
Age: 30+
Contact: prettiestwhistles/prettiestwhistles#5125 @ Discord/DM character journal
Other Characters: Cosima Niehaus
Interests: Now that I’ve been here long enough to have a slightly firmer grip on the setting, it seemed like it was time to lose friends and alienate people with a former Circle Mage. (Right? Right?) I think having someone with a stake in the Mage-Templar War and a Thedas native will open up some different and interesting plot/CR options not available with Cosima.

CHARACTER

Name: Julius
Canon/OC: Dragon Age OC
Journal: overharrowed
Race: Human
Nationality: Ferelden
Occupation: former Circle Mage, currently semi-reluctant Inquisition volunteer
Division: tentatively research, though he could also be put to decent use in forces
Mage or Not: mage
Age: 38

History

• Born in Dragon 9:3, Julius was taken from his family, petty Ferelden nobles, at age six and had no contact at all with them after that point.


• He was a keen student at the Circle Tower, curious and eager to please as a child. He was one of the apprentices eager for the Harrowing, not fearful of it. (His teachers kept a sharp eye on his tendency to pride, but he made it through.)


• From an early age, Julius was ambitious, though within the scope of the world he had been given. He never said as much, but those who knew him thought it obvious he was aiming to become not only a senior enchanter, but eventually First Enchanter.


• Julius, who was in his late 20s at the time of Uldred’s Rebellion, happened to be outside the tower when the events came to a head; he had been sent with a small party of mages (and their templar minders) to Denerim in the aftermath of Ostagar. He was later among the mages Irving sent to assist Cousland et al in the Battle of Denerim.


• After the Fifth Blight, Julius’ attention was not on global politics so much as rebuilding at Lake Calenhad after the massive loss of life, between Uldred and Denerim. He was promoted higher and faster than he might have been otherwise; there were a lot of empty positions to fill. (Note: I’m assuming he made the rank of enchanter, though if that’s a problem just let me know.)


• However, even Julius couldn’t miss what happened in Kirkwall in 9:37. While he continued to hope cooler heads would prevail and the status quo would reassert itself, he’s also not stupid. Other circles were getting annulled and general fear of mages was running high.


• So in 9:40, when the College of Enchanters voted to separate from the Chantry, Julius had deep reservations but kept them mostly to himself; when Lord Seeker Lambert dissolved the Circle outright, he became deeply unsure of his own identity. Instead of participating actively in the Mage-Templar War and embracing his new identity as a de facto apostate, at first he simply fled.


• After the Breach in Haven, he was wracked with guilt over the friends he’d lost and his decision to try to stay out of the fighting. Julius decided to approach the Inquisition to do what good he could.


• Unfortunately, he’d been fairly diligent in running away and had made it all the way to Antiva. Considering he was a sheltered Circle mage trying not to tip off being a mage to casual observers, it took him some time to get back. He made it to Skyhold and was pretty much immediately ordered to turn back around and go to Kirkwall. He is looking forward to not traveling for a while.

Personality

Julius is charismatic and warm, deliberately so. He’s observant of people and uses it to his advantage when he can. His confidence is largely studied to mask an intense need for external validation, especially from those he respects; that said, it can easily seem to edge toward arrogance, especially with people he doesn’t know well. He’s aware of this to some degree, but he’s better at purposely weaponizing it against people he dislikes than mitigating it with everyone else.

While he is not an academic by temperament, Julius does enjoy learning new things and boasts a healthy curiosity at the world around him. He’s long harnessed this curiosity to his ambition -- after all, knowing things is useful -- but that doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine. He’s drawn to people that are truly passionate about their given area of interest, even if it isn’t something with which he himself has much familiarity. Julius prefers people who give a shit, in others words; they may choose to cover it, but finding out someone is actually disaffected and apathetic usually marks the end of Julius’ interest in them.

Julius’ trust is hard to earn, but once he trusts someone, he trusts them very deeply; often, perhaps contrarily, he is less charming with those he considers himself close to because he feels they don’t need the full extent of his usual performative demeanor. He considers very few people “his people,” but those people can expect him to promote and defend them without hesitation. Betraying someone who he considers “his” is, if not quite unthinkable, something he is inclined to feel deeply and truly guilty about -- in large part this is what drives him to the Inquisition instead of trying to just wait out the Mage-Templar War in hiding.

While Julius isn’t a coward, he’d much rather negotiate than fight when given the option. He’s intensely pragmatic, and while he isn’t without ideology, he is skeptical of grand plans to Change The World. In his experience, real change is incremental, frustrating, and the product of countless fussy compromises; he’s willing to take that approach, but he suspects most people aren’t and tailors his expectations accordingly. While he can use his preference for the long game to his advantage, it can also make him overly conservative.

Opinions & Affiliations

Julius’ experience with the Circle, while not uniformly positive, led him to think it was a better idea than anything else he’d heard, at least until things blew up (literally) at Kirkwall. While he sympathizes with apostates who were fleeing actual abuse, he generally has little patience for the point of view that the Circles were by default abusive, especially without acknowledgment that things can actually go really wrong without some sort of safety net in place. (Heyo, Uldred.) He was open to the idea of self-governance when it was discussed, as long as there were actually rules and consequences for breaking them. He thinks the Mage-Templar War was terrible for everyone and a tragic waste of life.

That said, while he has liked individual templars in his life, templars abusing their power is his top least forgivable offense, for probably obvious reasons. His feelings about the Chantry remain … complicated.

Beyond mages’ positions in the world, Julius has very few opinions about politics, largely because he’s had so little contact with the rest of the world that wasn’t highly regimented. Before going on the run, he’d taken elven equality as a given, as the only elves he knew well were other mages; Dagna was the only dwarf he’d spoken to at length, and he’d never met a Qunari. While he’s from Ferelden, he’s not especially patriotic. His opinion of the Wardens is generally an absent: “Not dying in a Blight is great, go Wardens.”

Strengths & Weaknesses

Julius is a mage with battle experience. Though he’s something of a generalist, he is very handy with glyphs and better at purely arcane spells than primal magic -- dispels yes, fireballs not so much. He can do some basic healing, but he’s not a spirit healer. He is not a blood mage, and feels pretty strongly about it. (Given the differences between the way playable mages work in different games, let me know if you want more specifics.) Like most mages, if he gets into melee range, he’s in trouble.

Julius finds it useful to have a large network of people who like or respect him, and cultivates such a network actively. The Mage-Templar War left it largely depleted, since a lot of the people he knew were mages and templars, but he has built some new contacts while on the road. He’s a decently good diplomat when he needs to be, and has mastered several languages. (If you need me to specify in advance, let me know.) He’s got a lot of book learning, but isn’t terribly street smart.

Inventory

Julius has little on him when he arrives:

• A well-made but common mage’s staff


• One book on glyph theory and another on potion-making that he grabbed at random on his way out the door


• A general protective amulet of middling value


• A few common potions (healing and lyrium)


• Enough coin to last him a month or two if the Inquisition tells him to go away

Motivation

He felt guilty for opting out of the Mage-Templar War by fleeing, especially after the Breach. Given that his only two options as a de facto apostate were “continue to stay on the run” or “join the Inquisition,” he suspects the latter is a way he could actually help.

SAMPLES

SAMPLE ONE

Julius had faced down many things in his life. Condescending teachers, demons, abominations, darkspawn. Perhaps not in that order of dauntingness, but still; he considered himself generally more than equal to the time of day. He was a survivor; more than that, he was a charming and intelligent mage with a wide array of talents.

Which was why it was deeply embarrassing that he could not figure out how to order in a tavern without getting stared at by the locals.

The problem was that there were too many variables at once. There was money, first, which he wasn’t used to and didn’t find at all intuitive. Then there was the fact that he was deeply unsure what it was reasonable to assume a given tavern served and did not serve. Ale and wine were fairly constant, and most places you could get a hunk of brown bread or some salted meat, but not every place had a kitchen and it wasn’t always obvious.

Where to stand to wait to be served? Sit at a table or go to the bar? Flirt with the employees or strictly business? He was halfway through the Free Marches before someone took pity on him and explained the concept of tipping.

Still, with the undaunted optimism of a man who has no other choice, he approached the bar in this newest town. The barkeeper eyed his staff warily -- there was no help for that -- but did say, “What’ll it be” without too much open hostility, even if he did make it more rote statement than question. Julius smiled, warm without being over-familiar … and prepared to try again.

SAMPLE TWO

“Very well,” Julius said, annoyed he’d allowed himself to become irritated more than anything. “Go on then, tell me what it is.”

The apprentice was clearly nervous. She was an older one, approaching her harrowing, and he suspected she’d make it. He dearly hoped that after she did, she would finally relax. As it was, he tried to avoid the fact she kept idly cracking the joint of her left thumb.

“I was working on some copying for Enchanter Cera and I noticed something odd,” she said, quiet and even, almost apologetic. “I thought someone should see. The notes are ... “ She trailed. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“No,” Julius sighed, and let his irritation go. “No, you did just right, I was only in the middle of something else.” And, for good measure, he reached for a charming smile. Not too charming; he didn’t want to fluster her or suggest anything more than he should. But if he couldn’t actually be patient, he could do her the service of acting as if he were patient for her sake.

The apprentice didn’t totally relax, but at least she stopped popping her knuckle. “I’m sorry I interrupted you, but I think you might be interested. I’ve never seen someone write about runes quite this way before. But I thought you could tell me if it’s something that’s actually unusual.”

“Right.” Who knows? he told himself. She might have unearthed something interesting after all. “Let’s go see what we have.”