Orphic Memories

This is kinda-sorta a prequel to my previous longshot, Born in the Wrong Century. Readers of that fic will be familiar with some of the events detailed herein, from Marian's perspective. If you're curious about the setting, check the footnotes to that piece and its appendix from Fr. Ferdinand Genitivi's From Blight to Blight - Readings in Thedosian History 5:24 Exalted - 9:30 Dragon (Denerim University Press, 9:34 Dragon). If you find any inconsistencies ... well. The author reserves the right to have a better idea.

Bit angstier than my other works, but do bear in mind that Bethany is 15 years old for most of it, in addition to her usual Issues (TM). She is a DA2 character, after all.

More ideas than I would like to give credit for were shamelessly ripped off from , particularly as far as concerns ice cream flavours. Also, many thanks to her for the awesome thumbnail image.

The start and end quotes are a fairly close translation of part of the aria "Qual honor di te fia degno" from Alessandro Striggio's libretto for Claudio Monteverdi's early opera Orfeo (1607). For those not familiar with the opera (and why not?), this is the part where Orpheus is tempted to break Pluto's decree not to look back at Eurydice as he leads her from the Underworld, losing her as he does so through "an excess of love".

Some minor notes -- the sun rises to the north of Thedas because it's on the southern hemisphere of its world. Why do the seasons in correspondence to the calendar still work like on our northern hemisphere? Because the calendar's new year is based around the seasons, not the other way around. I.e. the Thedosian new year is some time around our June / July.

I like the thought of Grey Wardens in power armour, so I kept it in. Imagine a mix of Mass Effect and Fallout. What Lady Cousland and Alistair are wearing in their cameo is not actually that much more advanced than current Earth tech -- the US Army has at one point played with the thought of introducing powered combat armour by 2030, and it looks absolutely fabulous. Here, development was given a bit more focus by the Wardens and the Dwarves, this AU's technological powerhouse, because the Darkspawn don't have the industrial base to equip the entire horde with firearms and melee combat is still very much a thing when you're fighting them. You can take cover against an opponent armed with a gun, but when your opinion is wielding a massive spiky club, a good suit of armour is rather more helpful.

I'm not actually British and haven't lived in the country for long, so if you're a Brit and find and messed-up Briticisms, just think of Ferelden as a completely fictional country that was in no way inspired by England. And no, Lothering is most certainly not deepest Essex, whatever gave you that idea?

If you've bothered to read this far, you may as well leave a review. Raving is optional.