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Mar. 15th, 2015 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysMisc Lewen chatter.
• He likes to take an early morning run around Skyhold’s battlements when he can; partly to stay fit, partly to help his feeble low-lander lungs adjust to mountain life, and partly because he feels better about life in general when he can get above the shadow of the walls for a time.
• He’s genuinely afraid of wolves and not much better around dogs - the Ferelden habit of training enormous war-hounds gives him conniptions. While he’ll defend it as a perfectly rational fear based on past experience and pointy teeth, he can be coaxed into admitting that one of his childhood friends was a creative storyteller who was a little too fond of spinning the tales of Fen’Harel in nightmarish directions and this can maybe be said to have contributed. He would rather have seen spiders in the Fade.
• His father did not keep in touch with the clan, mostly because it’s difficult to keep touch with a nomadic group when you’re also on the move, and so he hasn’t seen Mahanon since he was about seven – he wasn’t even present at the last Arlathvhen. Authorial privilege can confirm the man isn’t dead, though.
• Varric and Dorian hide deeper feelings behind snark, but Lewen’s moments of glibness are instead a sign that he’s relaxed, or at the very least failing to filter his less dignified thoughts. This leads to the occasional awkward conversation where someone is like, “Ah, you make light of the situation to keep your spirits up” and he has to break it to them that no, their beloved Herald is being quite sincere and really is preoccupied with the fact he can’t get his rift mark to cast a steady enough glow to read by.
• When he is looking to hide negative feelings, he gets stiffer, colder, and more withdrawn. He prefers talking his problems out with someone over bottling them up, but he’s choosy about who he shares personal burdens with.
• In keeping with the Dalish leaning towards subtler, natural magics, he’s very much a storm mage. Throwing fistfuls of lightning around is certainly the most dramatic manifestation of his skills, but he can also read the weather uncannily well, gently shift wind direction for a time, and feel out conductive elements in the area – including other people, which can be handy when scouting. He enjoys the Storm Coast and similar such thundery environments because it allows him to work with the natural conditions, not against or in spite of them.
• In addition, he has a bad habit of subconsciously charging the air around him when emotional, making “he stormed into the room” less of a metaphor than usual. More than one argument around the war table has involved the others only realising he’s considerably crankier than he sounds because everyone’s hair is rising off their heads and Cullen keeps getting static shocks from his sword.
• He hates, hates, hates the throne, and it was the centre of the biggest verbal throw-down he ever had with his advisors. It represents everything he likes least about the Inquisition’s arrangement – about being one person sitting above all, casting judgement on strangers, separate and unquestionable. There’s no community in that. No heart. He may have caved at last to their combined insistence, but it’s never something he enjoys.
• Likewise, as spacious as his quarters are, they’re so empty and isolated that he has trouble concentrating if he tries to do any work in there so his assigned desk goes mostly unused. He prefers to approach the people he’s friendliest with to ask if they mind if he settles himself nearby – pulls up a chair while Solas is painting, shares a library table with Dorian, quietly leafs through paperwork while Cassandra is running through drills. It’s also fairly common for people to see their Lord Inquisitor going over missives in the courtyard gardens or a sheltered corner of the tavern.
• Frankly he’s still happier on the road than he is stuck at the fortress, but it’s at least a very sizeable fortress and he is definitely never short of things to do. Plus it’s his, in a way Haven wasn’t until the moment of its destruction, and that puts him in a place he’s familiar and comfortable with. The acceptance that his estrangement from his clan is no short-term thing comes slowly and a little painfully, but it does come, and it’s not as unwelcome as he’d thought it would be when it arrives.
• He likes to take an early morning run around Skyhold’s battlements when he can; partly to stay fit, partly to help his feeble low-lander lungs adjust to mountain life, and partly because he feels better about life in general when he can get above the shadow of the walls for a time.
• He’s genuinely afraid of wolves and not much better around dogs - the Ferelden habit of training enormous war-hounds gives him conniptions. While he’ll defend it as a perfectly rational fear based on past experience and pointy teeth, he can be coaxed into admitting that one of his childhood friends was a creative storyteller who was a little too fond of spinning the tales of Fen’Harel in nightmarish directions and this can maybe be said to have contributed. He would rather have seen spiders in the Fade.
• His father did not keep in touch with the clan, mostly because it’s difficult to keep touch with a nomadic group when you’re also on the move, and so he hasn’t seen Mahanon since he was about seven – he wasn’t even present at the last Arlathvhen. Authorial privilege can confirm the man isn’t dead, though.
• Varric and Dorian hide deeper feelings behind snark, but Lewen’s moments of glibness are instead a sign that he’s relaxed, or at the very least failing to filter his less dignified thoughts. This leads to the occasional awkward conversation where someone is like, “Ah, you make light of the situation to keep your spirits up” and he has to break it to them that no, their beloved Herald is being quite sincere and really is preoccupied with the fact he can’t get his rift mark to cast a steady enough glow to read by.
• When he is looking to hide negative feelings, he gets stiffer, colder, and more withdrawn. He prefers talking his problems out with someone over bottling them up, but he’s choosy about who he shares personal burdens with.
• In keeping with the Dalish leaning towards subtler, natural magics, he’s very much a storm mage. Throwing fistfuls of lightning around is certainly the most dramatic manifestation of his skills, but he can also read the weather uncannily well, gently shift wind direction for a time, and feel out conductive elements in the area – including other people, which can be handy when scouting. He enjoys the Storm Coast and similar such thundery environments because it allows him to work with the natural conditions, not against or in spite of them.
• In addition, he has a bad habit of subconsciously charging the air around him when emotional, making “he stormed into the room” less of a metaphor than usual. More than one argument around the war table has involved the others only realising he’s considerably crankier than he sounds because everyone’s hair is rising off their heads and Cullen keeps getting static shocks from his sword.
• He hates, hates, hates the throne, and it was the centre of the biggest verbal throw-down he ever had with his advisors. It represents everything he likes least about the Inquisition’s arrangement – about being one person sitting above all, casting judgement on strangers, separate and unquestionable. There’s no community in that. No heart. He may have caved at last to their combined insistence, but it’s never something he enjoys.
• Likewise, as spacious as his quarters are, they’re so empty and isolated that he has trouble concentrating if he tries to do any work in there so his assigned desk goes mostly unused. He prefers to approach the people he’s friendliest with to ask if they mind if he settles himself nearby – pulls up a chair while Solas is painting, shares a library table with Dorian, quietly leafs through paperwork while Cassandra is running through drills. It’s also fairly common for people to see their Lord Inquisitor going over missives in the courtyard gardens or a sheltered corner of the tavern.
• Frankly he’s still happier on the road than he is stuck at the fortress, but it’s at least a very sizeable fortress and he is definitely never short of things to do. Plus it’s his, in a way Haven wasn’t until the moment of its destruction, and that puts him in a place he’s familiar and comfortable with. The acceptance that his estrangement from his clan is no short-term thing comes slowly and a little painfully, but it does come, and it’s not as unwelcome as he’d thought it would be when it arrives.
