Right, so I know the aravels we see in-game all have the same, plain appearance. And I get that it’s because they all use the same models and textures. But I like to imagine that no aravel is really the same.
In which I mean, I like to imagine that the Dalish decorate them. With paint, and carvings. And I bet they’re beautiful, you know? And we already do know the Dalish carve things. They carve their halla antlers. And statues, and tokens/items, and jewellery. It’s definitely an art they practice. I just feel like the aravels are such a big part of their lives, they’d probably decorate them, too. With fun things, and maybe spiritual/cultural things as well. Like painting stories along the sides.
After all, “Dalish craftsmanship is second to none.”
Tag: dalish
Differences in Dalish temperment based on region:
Many, many times it’s pointed out “The Dalish Clans are all unique and different to each other”, “they develop differently as they grow apart, inspired by the cultures around them”.
Well yes, they should. Aside from a shared base culture and a focus on the retrieval, protection and reconstruction of lore and a loyalty to each other and such the Dalish should be different. Proximity to other cultures and local environment should shape them differently.
Pity there’s basically no difference between any of the clans we’ve met in game.Admittedly we haven’t actually seen that much of Dalish culture in a day-to-day type of thing, but aside from a little difference in opinion on city elves and outsiders the clans have all been basically the same. They even dress the same! But still everybody says “they’re all different!”
So I started thinking about maybe it’s because the clans we’ve met have all roughly been in the same areas and environments as each other.
Antivan clans are violent. Why? Nevarran clans, despite that we know they exist, are apparently unknown to Nevarrans themselves. Why?
So I came up with headcanons about Dalish cultures based on region.
Please note that I may have fucked up or missed things regarding the biomes mentioned.
Guess what, it’s another long post!If anybody wants to read these but has difficulty reading them let me know and I’ll make separate posts.
I was wondering… is there any known year/ date for when the arlathvens take place? I know that one is held every 10 years and in Origins a Dalish warden can tell Zathrian that they remember seeing him at the last one… so I guess the last one took place sometime before 9:30 and the next one some time before the events of Inquisition if they’re really held that regularly.
I just wondered if maybe in WoT Vol. 2 a certain year is mentioned at some point. I checked Vol. 1 and the DA wiki, but I couldn’t find any specific years (for example in 9:25 and in 9:35, so the next would be in 9:45 or something like that).
Does anyone know or is it up to speculation?
So, halla produce milk (and dairy products) and the Dalish diet includes insects (specifically their larvae).
How does halla milk taste? What’s the cheese like in comparison to cow milk? For some reason I imagine it would either be sour or sweeter. Imagine Mahariel trying cow milk for the first time and gagging on it before looking at their companions in disgust (”you tried to poison me!”). Maybe they’d prefer goat milk? I imagine the cheese would be soft and sweet for some reason.
And then there’s the beetle larvae, and everybody except Morrigan, Shale and the dog are revolted when Mahariel eats them in front of them. Mahariel is baffled and amused at their squeamishness (”It’s just another animal! It’s the same as any other food!”) and Shale points out that everybody else eats birds, which is far more disgusting.
K, but, like, imagine there are two mage babies in a Dalish clan. An older brother and, like, five years younger sister.
The plan is that the keeper will train both of them until the next Arlathvenn, when the younger kid will go to another clan.
But, like, three weeks before the Arlathvenn, the keeper dies.
The older brother takes over as keeper, expecting his little sister to be his First.
But the little sister isn’t having any of it. She doesn’t want to be bossed around by her big brother, who’s now also her teacher too.
So the two get into a massive fight and and the girl’s brother yells, “If you don’t like my leadership, go see what the world is like outside our camps, Da’len.”
And the girl runs off angrily.
And when the giant Qunari she meets up with in a bar a few months later, she says sadly, “My keeper told me I should see the world.”
The Qunari, Iron Bull, she’d later find out his name is, just assumes that means the myths he’s heard about the Dalish getting rid of extra mages are true, and the girl, who starts going by Dalish, doesn’t bother to correct him.
Title of this post: Fixing Canon Without Breaking Canon One Step at a Time
awww
I can’t stop being bitter about “Dalish abandon mage babies because too much magic.”
I just can’t. I mean:
-There are TWO mages in Mahariel’s clan. Two. The Keeper and the First.
-Merrill was literally moved from her family to another clan because it is so important for every clan to have mages. Her FAMILY had to GIVE HER UP, knowing they wouldn’t see her for at least TEN YEARS because mages are so important to the Dalish.
-Avoiding Templars to keep their mages safe is one of the reasons Dalish move around. This is mentioned, by Dalish, in the games.
-The Dalish value magic because it links them to their history. It is one of the two things they talk the most about mourning the loss of: magic and immortality.
-Zathrian’s clan had more than one mage up for First and he didn’t throw any of them out. Lanaya talks about how they are all friends now.
-Zathrian might not be the best example of a good guy but you can’t deny that he was willing to do whatever he felt he had to do to protect his people, even if his anger did push him toward one direction over another.
-He tracked down and killed a GROUP of assholes who had been successfully operating for several years and so possessed at least a decent amount of skill and he did this BY HIMSELF to prevent any future danger to his people and to avenge the death of one of his people despite the fact that this put him in possibly needless danger.
-He took in an elf child–a city elf child–and gave her a place among his people and DID NOT THROW HER BACK out when they realized she possessed magic. If you want to say they do this, this would have been the time to do it because she’s “not really their people” right? She “makes more danger than she’s worth” right? So toss this mage baby out. No. She never mentioned that that was even an option, despite not really fitting in for a while, which she did make a point of mentioning. And she is accepted and loved because even if it takes work to break into the community as an outsider, the Dalish value elves, they value their people and their families more than anything.
-I’m going to say that again: the Dalish value community and family more than anything. Marethari says that finding Tamlen and keeping him and the HoF safe is more important than anything there is no way she would abandon a CHILD in the WOODS to DIE or be taken by SHEMLEN.
-Why would the Dalish send their children away in HOPES of them being found by villages/circles, knowing how elves are treated by humans when that is literally the REASON THEY ARE DALISH: TO AVOID SHEMLEN.
-The Sabrae clan values magic and family so much that they take in a human-blooded child born from a Dalish mother from another clan who has lived among humans, knowing that his magic has been said to pose significant danger to himself and everyone around him and that the templars are actively searching for him.
-Even though Feynriel says the other elves ostracize him a bit (which isn’t cool but makes total sense too), they still stand by him to the point of capture, torture, and death. Like the templars abduct a young hunter and torture them WITH FIRE to get them to give Feynriel up and not only does the hunter not give in, neither does the rest of the clan and they will fight these templars, risking death, to protect him and prevent further harm to their people.
-Marethari, who by Chantry definition is a Dalish apostate and thus illegal, will risk her life and freedom by going into Kirkwall to help Feynriel (and I hated that “you might have to make him tranquil bit” like that was very ooc and seriously only there to further Hawke’s potential for pro-templar behavior, like omfg I’m getting off track).
-Marethari is so desperate to protect Merrill (a grown woman) that she lets a demon posses her to prevent it from possibly possessing Merrill and, despite the issues this poses for merrill’s arc, you want me to think they just toss out defenseless kids knowing that they could be attacked by wild animals, by bandits, by shemlen, that they could be sold into slavery or servitude, that they could starve or die of exposure or sickness or injury, or even become so anxious/emotional/traumatized/afraid/etc that they actually ARE possessed or their magic gets out of control and hurts them? Are you serious? Are. you. serious?
-”Dalish says–” wtf the fuck Dalish says. Dalish has vallaslin. Magic manifests in young children. See the problem? Dalish did not get kicked out when her magic manifested. I like Dalish, I’m not saying I don’t. I’m saying what Bioware tried to write as “straight from the horses mouth” doesn’t fucking work mechanically. And there is no certainty that Dalish is even telling the truth. Which is a headcanon I’m not fond of but is a possibility given that, again, Dalish was not kicked out when her magic manifested.
-There was more than one mage in the clan on the Plains in DAI and THEY DIDN’T THROW ANYBODY OUT. They were even all very concerned about the mage that went missing, who it turns out was gone because he was trying to prove his importance by finding a piece of his people’s history, but let’s also take this as an opportunity to laugh at elves and mages and “stupid teenagers” because ha ha your brother is dead.
-Nobody knows shit about the Dalish. Everybody’s always hearing crazy stories and nobody can really say for sure what the Dalish are like. It’s all this big, scary, mystery and all of a sudden everyone can bloody confirm this one factoid.
-Each clan is different. They have different lifestyles and hunting habits and clothes and customs and dialects and ways of interacting with humans and all of a sudden they all have this one terrible thing in common that they all do, and of course that makes sense because again, mages in Dalish communities are so fucking common.
-Literally nothing previous has ever led us to believe the Dalish would do this; everything we know about them screams that this is nonsense. This is “we want to make everyone look equally sympathetic and equally unsympathetic” like no. No, you actually cannot accomplish that in some spaces and also you cannot do it by bullshitting your own stuff.
I’m calm. I am so calm. Look how calm I am!
Delicious Fish 