❀ application for polychromatic
[nick / name]: Debs
[personal LJ name]: sparkledyne
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: raisedbyharos[at]gmail[dot]com
[AIM / messenger]: [AIM] kyuupin
[series]: Dragon Age II
[character]: Merrill
[character history / background]:
❀; Because Dragon Age is based heavily on player decisions, the story can change a bit. Here are the important things to note about what happened:
❀ Hawke is a female rogue that is mage-sympathetic.
❀ Hawke romanced Merrill, and Merrill moved into the Hawke estate.
❀ The Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins was Mahariel, a Dalish elf that Merrill knew.
❀ Hawke sided with the mages in the final battle, and of course, Merrill followed her into battle and supported her 100%.
❀ She was given the Arulin'Holm by Hawke so that she could continue work on the eluvian mirror.
❀ Hawke also took the blame for Merrill's actions that resulted in Keeper Marethari's death.
❀ Bethany (the sibling Hawke gets if the rogue or warrior classes are chosen) was taken into the Deep Roads and made a Grey Warden.
[character abilities]:
Merrill was born with the ability to use magic-- however, because she is a Dalish elf, she was never sent to the Circle to hone her magical abilities. Instead, she was made a First - an apprentice of the Keeper, who is head of a Dalish clan. Because she is a First, she knows some old magic! All of it is based on nature for the most part. Her unique specialization is full of Keeper magic.
Aside from that, Merrill is a blood mage, and therefore uses her blood to power up her magic and do things that she would be unable to do with normal magic, like purge the Darkspawn taint from a shard of a broken mirror. Blood magic can do a lot, and not all of it is good, even if it's not inherently an evil form of magic. It's mostly just who uses it! The reason it's considered evil is because it requires making a deal with a demon. This is incredibly dangerous, though, because mages that aren't able to fight off demons can become abominations. Merrill hasn't had any problems with becoming anything like this because of her deals with demons and her being strong enough to withstand those, but her risk of becoming an abomination runs higher than it would normally because she is messing with some very dangerous magic. It still requires making a deal with a demon to learn the magic, after all.
[character personality]:
Merrill is very naive elf-- she doesn't know a lot about the world outside of her Dalish clan and it's very obvious. This is sort of dangerous, especially when she first gets to Kirkwall! She initially thought that mugging was simply how they said 'hello', and that because she hadn't been mugged yet, the people in the alienage must not have liked her all that much. She has a tendency to miss the point a lot, too-- a lot of the time, she doesn't realize something until someone points it out to her! Sometimes she realizes things when people go "Merrill...", too. A lot of the time, her head seems to be in the clouds.
She often wonders about things that normal people wouldn't bother thinking about, like how Qunari might scratch their head, or if Anders's cat was really a knight. She also has a tendency to take things very literally. The brothel? She didn't understand what it was because it didn't have anything to do with broth. As time went on and she spent more time in Kirkwall, Merrill slowly began to learn how to use sarcasm and how to properly tease thanks to the people that she spent a lot of her time with.
In a way, she can come off as kind of childish at times, too-- when romanced, there is evidence that Merrill has been swinging from the chandelier in the Hawke estate, running around barefoot (she dislikes shoes), picking flowers from gardens, cooing at the guard dogs of neighbors... things like that! She also frolics, although never in the forest. The trees get jealous because they can't frolic with the elves. She also gets lost easily and never really looks where she's going.
She is very kind and sweet for the most part, and she makes an effort to be kind to others unless they give her a reason to not be. She doesn't particulary like being angry or anything like that, and she prefers to try to be nice in an effort to get people to like her. She's very awkward socially, and has always had a lot of problems with fitting in (due to being the Keeper's apprentice). Because of this, she's spent a lot of time alone, studying what history and magic the Dalish have recovered of their past.
Merrill is very awkward, like I've mentioned before. She honestly does not know how to act around others socially, especially when confronted with situations she's never been in before (which happens a lot). She can babble for quite a bit, but she usually realizes what she's doing and stops before she can go on for too long. Merrill is prone to talking herself into a spot she can't easily get out of.
Unlike how Merrill may appear to others, she is actually very smart. She knows a lot about elven history, a lot of Keeper magic, and she knows that dealing with spirits is dangerous. Yes, she did make a bad decision when she made a deal with the demon, but she knows how to be careful. She refuses to let herself be swayed by the demon or any spirit, and she knows that it is very important to be careful. She also realizes how dangerous being a blood mage is, even if she insists that she will be okay. At the same time, though, blood magic isn't an evil thing to her despite what it can do. It's just magic to her, aside from the fact that a deal has to be made with a demon in order to learn how to use it. She doesn't use the manipulation or sacrifices that comes with being a blood mage at all.
At the same time, Merrill was tricked by the demon, as much as she tried to not be. Keeper Marethari, her mentor, took the demon into herself and had Merrill kill her so that the demon could be killed. If she had completed the deal with the demon, it would have used her to get into the world, and would have possessed her or killed her in the process.
The only thing that Merrill really uses blood magic for is helping out her friends and fighting enemies and purging the taint from her shard of the eluvian mirror. She asked for help from the demon in purging the shard of mirror because she is on a quest for knowledge. Elves have suffered a lot through the years, losing so much of their culture and history as time went on, and like all Dalish, Merrill has a fascination with the past and uncovering it. However, this wasn't exactly the best thing she could do. The eluvian did very bad things to a member of her clan, and the clan wants nothing to do with it. Her determination to find out the past led her to leaving her clan of her own will, and eventually, to being exiled because of the Keeper's death.
Like every other Dalish elf, Merrill will sometimes use various Elven words and phrases when she speaks-- it's in an effort to help reclaim a bit of the past the elves have lost throughout history.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post game-- the party is forced to flee from Kirkwall because a female rogue Hawke sided with the mages instead of the templars.
[journal post]:
[When the video starts, it's... quite out of focus and all that can be seen is a blurry face with pointy ears. She starts speaking, not realizing what it may look like to others because she doesn't know how to work this thing.]
I wonder what this is... I haven't seen anything like this before. It's different than what I'm used to. [It reminds her of a tiny eluvian mirror, in a way, although she doesn't understand what it can do just yet.] I know I didn't have anything like this before. I wonder if someone slipped it into my pocket at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I don't know why they'd do that, though-- usually they're taking something.
I'm starting to ramble. I should stop before I talk to myself too much. [And with that, the video shuts off.]
[third person / log sample]:
Merrill sat on the floor of her room - her old room, at least, since she lived with Hawke now - and stared up at eluvian mirror that sat in the corner. This mirror had caused so much to happen - before it was shattered, it had taken Tamlen and tainted Mahariel so much that the elf had no choice but to become a Grey Warden. Now that it had been shattered... it still caused a lot of problems. She had been forced to leave her clan because she had made a deal with a demon to learn blood magic and cleanse the darkspawn taint from the mirror.
She had been through so much to try to fix it. It was, potentially, a piece of lost elven history. Merrill wanted to recover it-- she was determined to recover it. It's part of what she had been forced to leave her clan. Everyone had been determined to keep her from working on making the mirror work. ... Everyone except Hawke, at least. Hawke gave her the tool that she needed to continue the work, and Merrill was thankful for it. She had been able to do a lot, although the mirror still remained incomplete.
The silence was broken as Merrill shifted a bit, sighing in the process. She disliked going through these memories, because this next bit was the most painful. Merrill had been about to go visit the demon that gave her the ability to cleanse the eluvian shard in the first place-- and she knew the danger. She knew how possible it was for her to become an abomination by dealing with the demon. That's why she had asked Hawke to kill her if something happened. Merrill wasn't about to let anything happen to anyone but her.
But... the Keeper hadn't trusted her, and that was what hurt. She loved the Keeper like a mother, but what she did-- she gave up her life, and that just felt stupid. She didn't have to do that. And now? The Keeper was dead. Hawke took the blame, so they were able to leave the Dalish camp safely, but she was never allowed to come back. If Merrill came back, she would be killed because of what Marethari had done. Everything she had worked for-- it ultimately got her exiled, and knowing that hurt. Her life would never be the same again.
She was nearly alone. Of course, she still had Hawke. Hawke stood beside her no matter what, and supported her, and... Merrill was glad for that. She didn't have many friends because of her awkwardness and her focus on the mirror, and she knew it. Her relationship with the other woman was one of the most important things in her life, and she wasn't going to give that up. It was the same for the few friends she had because of Hawke, like Isabela and Varric.
The creak of the door (it was creaky because it was in the elven alienage and nothing was ever really kept up well) snapped her out of her thoughts, though. It was Varric, trying to get her to come out for a bit. Before, when Merrill was focused on the mirror, she would have refused, but-- while she still wanted to find the connection to her past with the mirror, she wanted to spend time with the friends that she had.
[personal LJ name]: sparkledyne
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: raisedbyharos[at]gmail[dot]com
[AIM / messenger]: [AIM] kyuupin
[series]: Dragon Age II
[character]: Merrill
[character history / background]:
❀; Because Dragon Age is based heavily on player decisions, the story can change a bit. Here are the important things to note about what happened:
❀ Hawke is a female rogue that is mage-sympathetic.
❀ Hawke romanced Merrill, and Merrill moved into the Hawke estate.
❀ The Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins was Mahariel, a Dalish elf that Merrill knew.
❀ Hawke sided with the mages in the final battle, and of course, Merrill followed her into battle and supported her 100%.
❀ She was given the Arulin'Holm by Hawke so that she could continue work on the eluvian mirror.
❀ Hawke also took the blame for Merrill's actions that resulted in Keeper Marethari's death.
❀ Bethany (the sibling Hawke gets if the rogue or warrior classes are chosen) was taken into the Deep Roads and made a Grey Warden.
[character abilities]:
Merrill was born with the ability to use magic-- however, because she is a Dalish elf, she was never sent to the Circle to hone her magical abilities. Instead, she was made a First - an apprentice of the Keeper, who is head of a Dalish clan. Because she is a First, she knows some old magic! All of it is based on nature for the most part. Her unique specialization is full of Keeper magic.
Aside from that, Merrill is a blood mage, and therefore uses her blood to power up her magic and do things that she would be unable to do with normal magic, like purge the Darkspawn taint from a shard of a broken mirror. Blood magic can do a lot, and not all of it is good, even if it's not inherently an evil form of magic. It's mostly just who uses it! The reason it's considered evil is because it requires making a deal with a demon. This is incredibly dangerous, though, because mages that aren't able to fight off demons can become abominations. Merrill hasn't had any problems with becoming anything like this because of her deals with demons and her being strong enough to withstand those, but her risk of becoming an abomination runs higher than it would normally because she is messing with some very dangerous magic. It still requires making a deal with a demon to learn the magic, after all.
[character personality]:
Merrill is very naive elf-- she doesn't know a lot about the world outside of her Dalish clan and it's very obvious. This is sort of dangerous, especially when she first gets to Kirkwall! She initially thought that mugging was simply how they said 'hello', and that because she hadn't been mugged yet, the people in the alienage must not have liked her all that much. She has a tendency to miss the point a lot, too-- a lot of the time, she doesn't realize something until someone points it out to her! Sometimes she realizes things when people go "Merrill...", too. A lot of the time, her head seems to be in the clouds.
She often wonders about things that normal people wouldn't bother thinking about, like how Qunari might scratch their head, or if Anders's cat was really a knight. She also has a tendency to take things very literally. The brothel? She didn't understand what it was because it didn't have anything to do with broth. As time went on and she spent more time in Kirkwall, Merrill slowly began to learn how to use sarcasm and how to properly tease thanks to the people that she spent a lot of her time with.
In a way, she can come off as kind of childish at times, too-- when romanced, there is evidence that Merrill has been swinging from the chandelier in the Hawke estate, running around barefoot (she dislikes shoes), picking flowers from gardens, cooing at the guard dogs of neighbors... things like that! She also frolics, although never in the forest. The trees get jealous because they can't frolic with the elves. She also gets lost easily and never really looks where she's going.
She is very kind and sweet for the most part, and she makes an effort to be kind to others unless they give her a reason to not be. She doesn't particulary like being angry or anything like that, and she prefers to try to be nice in an effort to get people to like her. She's very awkward socially, and has always had a lot of problems with fitting in (due to being the Keeper's apprentice). Because of this, she's spent a lot of time alone, studying what history and magic the Dalish have recovered of their past.
Merrill is very awkward, like I've mentioned before. She honestly does not know how to act around others socially, especially when confronted with situations she's never been in before (which happens a lot). She can babble for quite a bit, but she usually realizes what she's doing and stops before she can go on for too long. Merrill is prone to talking herself into a spot she can't easily get out of.
Unlike how Merrill may appear to others, she is actually very smart. She knows a lot about elven history, a lot of Keeper magic, and she knows that dealing with spirits is dangerous. Yes, she did make a bad decision when she made a deal with the demon, but she knows how to be careful. She refuses to let herself be swayed by the demon or any spirit, and she knows that it is very important to be careful. She also realizes how dangerous being a blood mage is, even if she insists that she will be okay. At the same time, though, blood magic isn't an evil thing to her despite what it can do. It's just magic to her, aside from the fact that a deal has to be made with a demon in order to learn how to use it. She doesn't use the manipulation or sacrifices that comes with being a blood mage at all.
At the same time, Merrill was tricked by the demon, as much as she tried to not be. Keeper Marethari, her mentor, took the demon into herself and had Merrill kill her so that the demon could be killed. If she had completed the deal with the demon, it would have used her to get into the world, and would have possessed her or killed her in the process.
The only thing that Merrill really uses blood magic for is helping out her friends and fighting enemies and purging the taint from her shard of the eluvian mirror. She asked for help from the demon in purging the shard of mirror because she is on a quest for knowledge. Elves have suffered a lot through the years, losing so much of their culture and history as time went on, and like all Dalish, Merrill has a fascination with the past and uncovering it. However, this wasn't exactly the best thing she could do. The eluvian did very bad things to a member of her clan, and the clan wants nothing to do with it. Her determination to find out the past led her to leaving her clan of her own will, and eventually, to being exiled because of the Keeper's death.
Like every other Dalish elf, Merrill will sometimes use various Elven words and phrases when she speaks-- it's in an effort to help reclaim a bit of the past the elves have lost throughout history.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post game-- the party is forced to flee from Kirkwall because a female rogue Hawke sided with the mages instead of the templars.
[journal post]:
[When the video starts, it's... quite out of focus and all that can be seen is a blurry face with pointy ears. She starts speaking, not realizing what it may look like to others because she doesn't know how to work this thing.]
I wonder what this is... I haven't seen anything like this before. It's different than what I'm used to. [It reminds her of a tiny eluvian mirror, in a way, although she doesn't understand what it can do just yet.] I know I didn't have anything like this before. I wonder if someone slipped it into my pocket at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I don't know why they'd do that, though-- usually they're taking something.
I'm starting to ramble. I should stop before I talk to myself too much. [And with that, the video shuts off.]
[third person / log sample]:
Merrill sat on the floor of her room - her old room, at least, since she lived with Hawke now - and stared up at eluvian mirror that sat in the corner. This mirror had caused so much to happen - before it was shattered, it had taken Tamlen and tainted Mahariel so much that the elf had no choice but to become a Grey Warden. Now that it had been shattered... it still caused a lot of problems. She had been forced to leave her clan because she had made a deal with a demon to learn blood magic and cleanse the darkspawn taint from the mirror.
She had been through so much to try to fix it. It was, potentially, a piece of lost elven history. Merrill wanted to recover it-- she was determined to recover it. It's part of what she had been forced to leave her clan. Everyone had been determined to keep her from working on making the mirror work. ... Everyone except Hawke, at least. Hawke gave her the tool that she needed to continue the work, and Merrill was thankful for it. She had been able to do a lot, although the mirror still remained incomplete.
The silence was broken as Merrill shifted a bit, sighing in the process. She disliked going through these memories, because this next bit was the most painful. Merrill had been about to go visit the demon that gave her the ability to cleanse the eluvian shard in the first place-- and she knew the danger. She knew how possible it was for her to become an abomination by dealing with the demon. That's why she had asked Hawke to kill her if something happened. Merrill wasn't about to let anything happen to anyone but her.
But... the Keeper hadn't trusted her, and that was what hurt. She loved the Keeper like a mother, but what she did-- she gave up her life, and that just felt stupid. She didn't have to do that. And now? The Keeper was dead. Hawke took the blame, so they were able to leave the Dalish camp safely, but she was never allowed to come back. If Merrill came back, she would be killed because of what Marethari had done. Everything she had worked for-- it ultimately got her exiled, and knowing that hurt. Her life would never be the same again.
She was nearly alone. Of course, she still had Hawke. Hawke stood beside her no matter what, and supported her, and... Merrill was glad for that. She didn't have many friends because of her awkwardness and her focus on the mirror, and she knew it. Her relationship with the other woman was one of the most important things in her life, and she wasn't going to give that up. It was the same for the few friends she had because of Hawke, like Isabela and Varric.
The creak of the door (it was creaky because it was in the elven alienage and nothing was ever really kept up well) snapped her out of her thoughts, though. It was Varric, trying to get her to come out for a bit. Before, when Merrill was focused on the mirror, she would have refused, but-- while she still wanted to find the connection to her past with the mirror, she wanted to spend time with the friends that she had.