REVISIONS

Before we can approve your application, we need to request a few changes. Sorry this is so long! We wanted to make sure we gave you enough information to make revisions as easy as possible, and they’re kind of complex issues, so it took a lot of words. But please don’t take the length of this as a bad sign!

↠ Your history stops a little too soon. It's 9:45 in Fade Rift (which we do know can be a little hard to follow, since the game has been going on for a while and our timeline is out of date, so if you have questions about more recent developments please feel free to ask), and that means the Circles fell and the Mage/Templar War began around five years ago. So from the age of 14 or 15, she would no longer have been in the Circle. We need to know what she was up to during the war, if she joined the Inquisition when it first recruited the other mages (about 3-4 years ago) or if she's just now coming to Kirkwall to join on her own, etc.

↠ Even if Ruth doesn't know the truth about what happened with her brother's death, we do need to know as mods so that we can evaluate whether it makes sense given canon. (Also, if he died at Kinloch Hold, other PCs in the game are likely to know something about it as well since we have a few who were at that Circle during the same time.) If Ruth was in any way responsible for it (from the biased perspective of his fellow Templars), it's unlikely she would have avoided serious repercussions, especially since Harrowings typically have large audiences so the ability of a friendly Templar to sweep things under the rug is basically nil. Even if she wasn't necessarily at fault, some sort of cover-up to preserve her brother's reputation and that of the Order at her expense would also have been very likely.

As a note: one possibility that incorporating the Mage/Templar War would open up, and which seems to track her canon history pretty closely as well, would be to have her and her brother assigned to different Circles but cross paths out in the world during the Mage/Templar War. It could even have been because he'd been caught alive by mages and was going to be executed. That would give you more freedom to determine the circumstances of his death and line them up with her canon without having to account for all of the problematic details and potential repercussions of having it happen during her Harrowing.

↠ For her abilities, we're unfortunately going to have to ask for some major changes, because several of the things you describe just aren't things that canon mages can do. Given that mages are already overpowered compared to non-mages, and what one mage can do theoretically any mage can do, we always try to avoid stretching the outer boundaries of what they're capable of any further. Unfortunately that means some of the things that Ruth can do in her canon iteration just wouldn't be possible in an AU.

↠ Like you suggest, the Somniari specialization seems like a good AU of some of Ruth's canon abilities, with caveats. First, Thedosian magic doesn't include waking mind-reading. Somniari are able to mentally enter the Fade at will (as long as they're asleep, or in a deep meditative state) and navigate it better than most, but they only encounter what is in the Fade—sleeping consciousnesses, spirits, etc.—and can't directly read the minds of those beings in the Fade or of anyone in the physical world. So it would be fine for Ruth to gain some insight into people whose sleeping consciousnesses she encounters by witnessing their dreams or asking them questions while they're asleep, but it will be as haphazard and unreliable as real life dreams are, more along the lines of "this guy really hates spiders" or "this person seems to be having anxiety dreams about their family," at best, and unintelligible nonsense at worst. Also, her astral projection ability will work along these same lines: Somniari can enter dreams and try to converse with people that way, but whether that person understands or is capable of realizing it's real will vary, and there's no astral projection in the traditional sense of projecting a visible form elsewhere in the real world.

↠ Second, Ruth's powers of precognition will be limited to what we've seen in Thedas canon: vague prophecies of the non-immediate future, which we ask that you only make after first consulting with us so that we can help make sure they work without giving away too much. Concrete facts and glimpses of the immediate future (things like "in one second you're going to trip on your own shoelaces so I'm already laughing," "in five minutes that rock will fall and kill you," or "the army will attack at dawn on Tuesday") will not be possible, and the "sense of impending doom" you describe should not be more specific than the sort of "I've got a bad feeling about this" sense anyone could have. It's OK if that sense is slightly more accurate than average because Ruth is accustomed to perceiving dishonesty or ill-intent because of her life experiences, but it shouldn't be magical or 100% accurate.

↠ Third, it's perfectly fine for Ruth to have learned to handle routine tasks and fend for herself using her other senses, the same way many blind people do in the real world. But the psychic "sight" you describe isn't possible in Thedas. Mages don't have any extrasensory ability to see or feel their surroundings that non-mages don't, unless something in their surroundings is strongly magical enough for them to feel it. Ruth's stronger connection to the Fade as a Somniari can't supply a "second sight," because even if she could use Dreamer abilities while awake, what the world looks like in real ("real") life is not necessarily what it looks like in the Fade—there isn't a "Fade spoon" being lifted at the same time someone uses a physical spoon to eat, and the physical layout of the Fade is shifting and malleable rather than corresponding to physical landmarks or walls, so lucid dreaming can't be used to learn the layout of a place.

↠ Lastly, Ruth having telekinetic abilities is fine, but please make sure they fit within the bounds of the canon telekinetic spells, and let us know if you intend her to have the Force Mage specialization. If you'd like her abilities to be different from the type of telekinesis described in canon—namely, if you'd like her to have finer control than throwing things around in straight lines—please let us know, because it may need to count as a custom specialization.

↠ When you're revising, please also explain which of the abilities you describe Ruth can use now vs. which she has repressed but might re-gain in the future. If you want to wait and make the decision about what powers she has repressed later when it's time for her to get them back, that's OK, but it means that you will likely need to purchase one or more custom specializations at that time in order to gain those additional abilities.

Please respond within 48 hours to let us know your application has been updated. (If you need an extension, just let us know.) If you have any questions, let us know.