Name: Rock Age: Old Contact: hackfraud @ plurk Other Characters: Dick Dickerson Interests: I miss RP and I love mess.
CHARACTER
Name: Vandren Verminius Canon/OC: Dragon Age OC Journal:verminius Race: Human Nationality: Tevene Occupation: War Mage Division: Forces Mage or Not: Mage Age: 57
History
Born to a Soporati merchant family in Minrathous that was elevated into Laetan status after he was confirmed to have magical talent.
Initially apprenticed to a distant, grandfatherly relation in Minrathous to learn the fundamentals of magic.
Finessed his way into the lowest rungs of Minrathous' Circle of Magi to further his studies.
Clever and charismatic, but lacked the study skills, discipline, and killer instinct required to make much of himself in the Circle on merit.
Relied heavily on being handsome, spent most of his Circle career engaged in a series of variously toxic on-again-off-again relationships with other mages wealthier and more powerful than him.
Worst (and most consistent) of all was another mage a few years his elder with Magisterium connections to whom he eventually became an sort of semi-official trophy paramour.
I, Rockefeller, don't personally understand exactly when or how the Venatori started, but his partner was either already entangled with them at this point or otherwise became a Venatori loyalist as soon as they could have.
Paramour status made "formal" in his early 20s when his partner married someone significantly older, wealthier, and more powerful than him.
Vandren consented to a private binding wherein he and his partner cut each other's ring fingers off and burned them together in a closed ceremony. Very dark and dangerous and blood-magicky and cool. Thrilled about his cushy future as a stay-at-home paramour, he had big feelings about it he was sure were mutual, great sex that night.
Morning after, partner informed Vandren he would need to leave town and join the military as an enlisted war mage for glory and Tevinter and also to keep them apprised of intelligence from the front.
Vandren balked, whereupon his partner revealed they'd swapped Vandren's finger out prior to the burn and incorporated it into a phylactery to use against him for blood magic purposes.
Upsetting but he was also a little bit into it.
So began his career as a war mage, wherein he spent many years in grueling, thankless conflict with the Qunari.
Middling rank eventually achieved by being capable Enough, supplemented by his partner back home pulling strings.
Regular trips home to Minrathous to kick it in luxury with his partner took a little bit of the sting out of it.
Deployments shifted south over the past decade. Requests to his partner to retire politely declined.
Instead, increasing pressure from his partner over that time to fall in with the Venatori cause, which Vandren successfully maneuvered out of, having, over time, become more self-confident and also suspicious of the boons being promised. Skepticism driven by his direct witness of horrors associated with Venatori magic, darkspawn, red lyrium, etc, in the field, particularly as inflicted upon their own Tevinter people.
Partner in Minrathous recently began to exert heavy pressure on him to return to Minrathous for a visit off-cycle, even levering abruptly to have him permanently re-stationed in Minrathous.
Vandren took leave to visit them unannounced and found letters in his partner's chamber outlining plans to sacrifice him to some inscrutable dark end, among other nightmare plans.
Personality
Vandren is clever and capable enough to have survived for decades on a warfront at the beck and call of a significantly more powerful mage safe in an ebony tower back home, but not clever or capable enough to have avoided getting into that situation in the first place, or to navigate his way out of it. He relies heavily upon his looks and (weathered) charm to get by, and anyone who has worked with him for any length of time knows it.
He wouldn't describe himself as a good person -- not heroic, or kind, or overly concerned with others at all. When he doesn't have a good reason to be nice, he will say whatever is on his mind, and bears scars to prove it. He's self-involved, cynical, and a bit lazy, especially about work he considers beneath him, but he does having some grudging empathy for others (mostly humans), and a less grudging sense of patriotism that has kept him going despite everything. Towards the end of his military career, he supplemented his income heavily with bribes from resistance forces shuttling supplies and refugees away from the Venatori.
More than anything he is tired, and aware that he is fast approaching the end of his life with nothing to show for it but the steady encroach of blight and black magic into Tevinter, and especially Minrathous.
Joining Riftwatch is a last shot at redemption and rebellion before he flames out entirely, whether that's via noble sacrifice, alcohol poisoning, or being hunted down like a dog and stamped out by his former lover. Who he does still have feelings about, albeit very bleak, spiteful, divorce-tinged feelings these days.
Opinions & Affiliations
Tevinter: Best society, best people, best dining, best fashion, best architecture, best leathergoods, best mages, best circles, best religion, and so on. A genuine tragedy so many of them are blind with ambition and being eaten alive by hubris in such a world-ending kind of way.
Venatori: Interesting discourse compelling arguments until you see your third or fourth red lyrium-infected war-thing and the way it groans and oozes or clock how black and sticky things have a tendency to wind up after Venatori mages have been meddling. It all seems very evil and it's very obvious to him after some thirty plus years that he doesn't personally stand to gain anything from them.
Orlesian Chantry: Genuinely terrifying and befuddling how they've managed to establish such an iron grip over the south and its mages. If he was any younger/wasn't already resigned to dying imminently it might be enough of a dealbreaker to keep him in Tevinter.
The Inquisition: Closely coupled with the Chantry in his mind, whether or not that's still very true. He'll have come to Riftwatch specifically because it seems sufficiently splintered off.
Qunari: Grudging respect but unfortunately more in the way someone might respect a spider that is still coming after them after they've hit it with a heavy book ten or twelve times. Not actually people.
Elves: He understands you're expected to be polite to them in the south.
Templars: Should all be destroyed ha ha just kidding who has the time when everything is so terrible.
Strengths & Weaknesses
War Mage: Vandren is a war mage specializing primarily in primal/elemental magic (particularly ice magic), with some supplementary blood magic he picked up from other ne'er do wells back at the Circle. He prefers to disable at mid-range before moving in to finish combatants off with a spellblade, if he has to move in at all -- the dream is to have a grunt in heavy armor carrying a glaive sweep in once he's slapped a layer of ice over someone.
He's capable enough to survive a melee just by virtue of being old, war mage trained, and wily, but would Prefer Not To and there's bound to be flailing. He will not perform well 1 on 1 vs someone skilled at close range combat, especially if they are in significantly better shape and/or get the jump on him, preferring to retreat/defend/reset to give himself a better chance. Nullified by a Templar he'd have only rusty blade training to fall back on, pretty much certain death for him without help.
He was a poor study in anything to do with spirit or healing magic, flat out just not interested and no good at it. If you're grievously injured and he's the only help around good luck. You're supposed to put pressure on it, right?
I've concocted a rough "canon" spell list for him to give a sense of his arsenal. I'd like some room to flesh this out on my own time outside of copy-pasting from the DA wiki but if I need to get nitty gritty from the jump I will do this thing.
Fadestep Ice Armor Winter's Grasp Cone of Cold Chain lightning? Trivial fire stuff like lighting candles/suspicious letters/campfires
Re: blood magic, I have two interests here:
1. Standard blood to supplement exhausted mana + or to boost spell power type stuff, nothing buckwild just like a charged version of an attack that kills flat out where it might've otherwise disabled. 2. Utilizing it as a means to defer attention away from himself, like the opposite of drawing aggro. Useful in and out of combat to avoid undesired attention. I'm not talking invisibility, just like the blood-magic equivalent of walking past with a clipboard so nobody thinks too hard about it. Maybe they can't remember what he looked like very well later. Would help to get an illicit package through a harried checkpoint, but wouldn't magically get him past a dedicated guard looking for suspicious characters. If this is illegal cut it, I don't have strong feelings it was just a subtle application I thought could be neat.
He'd be most useful in Forces or Diplomacy. He can work as a Face, very capable of gladhanding/blowing smoke up asses even if his heart isn't really in it anymore. He lies easily and well and is a difficult read. He's good at talking his way out of trouble.
Good on horse/dracoliskback, savvy about Qun + Tevine forces in the wild.
Not a very good judge of people. Poor judgment in general really, if we're honest.
Old and busted, low endurance. Troublemaker + provocateur. Habitual follower.
Inventory
Please list any notable objects your character will be bringing with them. This doesn't have to be exhaustive, but weapons, magical objects, and items with plot importance must be listed if you plan to use them in the game.
Vint mage armor, maybe he can get it dyed in colors not considered universally evil in the south Spellblade Mage staff Bootknife/various other basic soldiery sundries Couple pairs of clothes A mountain dracolisk named Dennis
I don't recall if there are rules about coming in with a mount -- if they want to take it off him until they feel like they can trust him that's fine and I can buy it back with points later or however things work in 2025. Provided Marcus doesn't steal this one too.
Motivation
Burnt out and disillusioned with the state of Tevinter/the out-in-the-open rise of the Venatori to power there. Dreads the chantry as much as he does the Venatori, looking for a place to be useful and feel like he's done anything to help the world before he dies. Also trying to get as far away as possible from his ex.
He will come in hands-up as an open book on everything with the exception of the phylactory in his ex's possession, which I'd expect him to reveal eventually once he's made connections with people in Riftwatch. He will debrief Scouting to the best of his ability when he comes in as a demonstration of faith, presumably offcam. I don't know that he'd actually know anything very useful long-term -- mainly just short-term/recent Vint troop movements and maybe some intel on the state of some of the bad shit in Minrathous like the encroach of blight into the city.
Bolding a couple of notes here: IF this character having an active phylactory in the possession of the Venatori is too problematic to make sense for the game, I'm happy with shifting to him having managed to klep it before he hit the bricks, we can just add it to the inventory list.
I left details about his ex intentionally vague in the off chance anyone is itching to play a nightmare character who has history with Vandren and flips to RW for some reason, or if fleshing them out becomes useful for player plot purposes.
Vandren Verminius | Native OC
Name: Rock
Age: Old
Contact: hackfraud @ plurk
Other Characters: Dick Dickerson
Interests: I miss RP and I love mess.
Name: Vandren Verminius
Canon/OC: Dragon Age OC
Journal:
Race: Human
Nationality: Tevene
Occupation: War Mage
Division: Forces
Mage or Not: Mage
Age: 57
History
Personality
Vandren is clever and capable enough to have survived for decades on a warfront at the beck and call of a significantly more powerful mage safe in an ebony tower back home, but not clever or capable enough to have avoided getting into that situation in the first place, or to navigate his way out of it. He relies heavily upon his looks and (weathered) charm to get by, and anyone who has worked with him for any length of time knows it.
He wouldn't describe himself as a good person -- not heroic, or kind, or overly concerned with others at all. When he doesn't have a good reason to be nice, he will say whatever is on his mind, and bears scars to prove it. He's self-involved, cynical, and a bit lazy, especially about work he considers beneath him, but he does having some grudging empathy for others (mostly humans), and a less grudging sense of patriotism that has kept him going despite everything. Towards the end of his military career, he supplemented his income heavily with bribes from resistance forces shuttling supplies and refugees away from the Venatori.
More than anything he is tired, and aware that he is fast approaching the end of his life with nothing to show for it but the steady encroach of blight and black magic into Tevinter, and especially Minrathous.
Joining Riftwatch is a last shot at redemption and rebellion before he flames out entirely, whether that's via noble sacrifice, alcohol poisoning, or being hunted down like a dog and stamped out by his former lover. Who he does still have feelings about, albeit very bleak, spiteful, divorce-tinged feelings these days.
Opinions & Affiliations
Tevinter: Best society, best people, best dining, best fashion, best architecture, best leathergoods, best mages, best circles, best religion, and so on. A genuine tragedy so many of them are blind with ambition and being eaten alive by hubris in such a world-ending kind of way.
Venatori: Interesting discourse compelling arguments until you see your third or fourth red lyrium-infected war-thing and the way it groans and oozes or clock how black and sticky things have a tendency to wind up after Venatori mages have been meddling. It all seems very evil and it's very obvious to him after some thirty plus years that he doesn't personally stand to gain anything from them.
Orlesian Chantry: Genuinely terrifying and befuddling how they've managed to establish such an iron grip over the south and its mages. If he was any younger/wasn't already resigned to dying imminently it might be enough of a dealbreaker to keep him in Tevinter.
The Inquisition: Closely coupled with the Chantry in his mind, whether or not that's still very true. He'll have come to Riftwatch specifically because it seems sufficiently splintered off.
Qunari: Grudging respect but unfortunately more in the way someone might respect a spider that is still coming after them after they've hit it with a heavy book ten or twelve times. Not actually people.
Elves: He understands you're expected to be polite to them in the south.
Templars: Should all be destroyed ha ha just kidding who has the time when everything is so terrible.
Strengths & Weaknesses
War Mage: Vandren is a war mage specializing primarily in primal/elemental magic (particularly ice magic), with some supplementary blood magic he picked up from other ne'er do wells back at the Circle. He prefers to disable at mid-range before moving in to finish combatants off with a spellblade, if he has to move in at all -- the dream is to have a grunt in heavy armor carrying a glaive sweep in once he's slapped a layer of ice over someone.
He's capable enough to survive a melee just by virtue of being old, war mage trained, and wily, but would Prefer Not To and there's bound to be flailing. He will not perform well 1 on 1 vs someone skilled at close range combat, especially if they are in significantly better shape and/or get the jump on him, preferring to retreat/defend/reset to give himself a better chance. Nullified by a Templar he'd have only rusty blade training to fall back on, pretty much certain death for him without help.
He was a poor study in anything to do with spirit or healing magic, flat out just not interested and no good at it. If you're grievously injured and he's the only help around good luck. You're supposed to put pressure on it, right?
I've concocted a rough "canon" spell list for him to give a sense of his arsenal. I'd like some room to flesh this out on my own time outside of copy-pasting from the DA wiki but if I need to get nitty gritty from the jump I will do this thing.
Fadestep
Ice Armor
Winter's Grasp
Cone of Cold
Chain lightning?
Trivial fire stuff like lighting candles/suspicious letters/campfires
Re: blood magic, I have two interests here:
1. Standard blood to supplement exhausted mana + or to boost spell power type stuff, nothing buckwild just like a charged version of an attack that kills flat out where it might've otherwise disabled.
2. Utilizing it as a means to defer attention away from himself, like the opposite of drawing aggro. Useful in and out of combat to avoid undesired attention. I'm not talking invisibility, just like the blood-magic equivalent of walking past with a clipboard so nobody thinks too hard about it. Maybe they can't remember what he looked like very well later. Would help to get an illicit package through a harried checkpoint, but wouldn't magically get him past a dedicated guard looking for suspicious characters. If this is illegal cut it, I don't have strong feelings it was just a subtle application I thought could be neat.
He'd be most useful in Forces or Diplomacy. He can work as a Face, very capable of gladhanding/blowing smoke up asses even if his heart isn't really in it anymore. He lies easily and well and is a difficult read. He's good at talking his way out of trouble.
Good on horse/dracoliskback, savvy about Qun + Tevine forces in the wild.
Not a very good judge of people. Poor judgment in general really, if we're honest.
Old and busted, low endurance. Troublemaker + provocateur. Habitual follower.
Inventory
Please list any notable objects your character will be bringing with them. This doesn't have to be exhaustive, but weapons, magical objects, and items with plot importance must be listed if you plan to use them in the game.
Vint mage armor, maybe he can get it dyed in colors not considered universally evil in the south
Spellblade
Mage staff
Bootknife/various other basic soldiery sundries
Couple pairs of clothes
A mountain dracolisk named Dennis
I don't recall if there are rules about coming in with a mount -- if they want to take it off him until they feel like they can trust him that's fine and I can buy it back with points later or however things work in 2025. Provided Marcus doesn't steal this one too.
Motivation
Burnt out and disillusioned with the state of Tevinter/the out-in-the-open rise of the Venatori to power there. Dreads the chantry as much as he does the Venatori, looking for a place to be useful and feel like he's done anything to help the world before he dies. Also trying to get as far away as possible from his ex.
He will come in hands-up as an open book on everything with the exception of the phylactory in his ex's possession, which I'd expect him to reveal eventually once he's made connections with people in Riftwatch. He will debrief Scouting to the best of his ability when he comes in as a demonstration of faith, presumably offcam. I don't know that he'd actually know anything very useful long-term -- mainly just short-term/recent Vint troop movements and maybe some intel on the state of some of the bad shit in Minrathous like the encroach of blight into the city.
Bolding a couple of notes here: IF this character having an active phylactory in the possession of the Venatori is too problematic to make sense for the game, I'm happy with shifting to him having managed to klep it before he hit the bricks, we can just add it to the inventory list.
I left details about his ex intentionally vague in the off chance anyone is itching to play a nightmare character who has history with Vandren and flips to RW for some reason, or if fleshing them out becomes useful for player plot purposes.
HERE!