APPLICATION
Name: Nagia
Personal LJ: yesthatnagia
Contact Info: AIM - submergedcandle / email nagia_arc@yahoo.com
Other Characters Played: n/a
Preferred Housing: n/a
Character Name: The Arishok / Ari Shok, if he has to have a given name/surname
Character Series: Dragon Age II -- chronology wise, I'm taking him from near the end of Act 2 (just before he goes absolutely shittastic bonkers and decides to BURNINATE EVERYTHING)
Character Age: Never stated in canon. I'm going to assume 41
Background:
Before we begin, the fastest rundown ever:
1) the Arishok is one of the Triumvirate (specifically the war-leader) of the Qunari, a nation of people following a religion they call the Qun.
2) In fact, like all the other Qunari, the Arishok has no name -- 'Arishok' is the name of his role, which is enough of a name for him.
3) He isn't exactly forthcoming about his life story, since it's none of the player character's damn business. I've extrapolated, based on what we know of the Qunari, to fill in the gaps.
4) Dragon Age II is a game whose story is strongly affected by the player's choices. Where necessary, I'm incorporating those choices into the backstory, to hopefully result in the least grumpy Arishok possible.
According to what we know about the Qunari, from conversations with Sten and questions posed to the DA writer assigned the Qunari, the Arishok would have been bred for his role. The Tamassrans (clergy) of the Qun keep track of genealogical data, arrange parentage, and then raise the children themselves. Children are schooled in groups, then released into the adult Qunari world to take up their assigned roles whenever the Tamassran deems them fit.
In my headcanon, this Arishok started with the position of Sten (platoon leader) at the age of fifteen. He fulfilled the expectations of the Tamassrans, his preceding Arishok, and the rest of the Triumvirate. As such, he continued to rise through the ranks, becoming an Arishok's named successor at the age of twenty-five. By thirty, the previous Arishok had retired or been retired, and the Arishok took his intended place and his current name.
He spent seven years warring with Tevinter. And then, four years ago, everything went wrong.
The Arishok travelled south to retrieve an important religious text from the nation of Orlais, which had decided to return the text. This text would be the Tome of Koslun, a manuscript by the philosopher charged with creating the Qun.
Things went sideways. The exchange didn't even happen. In the clamor and hurry, some Rivaini pirate woman made off with the Tome.
The Arishok gave the order to pursue. They chased her for days on open water, and all the while, a storm built.
When the storm finally broke, rather than drop anchor and return what she stole, the Rivaini sailed into it to escape them. The Arishok is nothing if not duty-bound. He followed.
They both ended up wrecking on the rocks outside Kirkwall. The Tome vanished without a trace -- and so did she.
The Arishok and his contingent of massive, armed Qunari limped into Kirkwall. There were enough of them, and the Chantry --the religious authority in that part of the world -- hated them virulently enough, that the city's viscount immediately granted them a compound by the docks. There, they would spend the next four years ostensibly waiting for a ship to take them back to Seheron.
That was a lie. There was no ship coming. As the Arishok says, "There is no rescue from duty to the Qun." They spent those four years searching for the Rivaini pirate and the Tome of Koslun, to no avail. Meanwhile, things kept getting worse and worse: Chantry fanatics continuously tried to incite a war between the Qunari and everyone else in the city.
First, some crazy elf got the bright idea to steal Qunari gunpowder, cause a few explosions, and use the fall-out to lever the city into war. Due to prior dealings with a dwarf merchant, the Arishok expected the attempt, and allowed the theft to occur - replacing the gunpowder recipe with a recipe for poison gas, then delivering a "courtesy" regarding the matter to the one person in Kirkwall who seemed able to get anything done: Hawke, the player character.
Naturally, people died. Almost an entire street, in fact.
On the very heels of that fiasco, the Arishok sent a delegate to Kirkwall's viscount. He intended to use the events as a lesson on the costs of greed (which was based on an incorrect hypothesis, but don't tell him that). But the delegate and his entourage vanished from the inner courtyard of the Viscount's Keep - only to turn up in a fanatic's bolt hole. He had hung them from the rafters, tortured them, left them on display to incite fellow fanatics.
Hawke made no attempt to hide this from the Arishok. And now the Arishok was starting to get a little steamed.
Then the viscount's son converted to the Qun. Naturally, the viscount wanted him brought back, which the Arishok would never have permitted. It all wound up being a moot point: the boy was kidnapped and killed by yet more fanatics.
The Arishok had the fanatic responsible killed, but the damage has been done. He's more than just steamed. He's now actively provoked. He's literally had it to here, and the next straw will be the last. He's got gunpowder stashed throughout the city, a platoon of armed Qunari, and a Plan.
Personality:
The Arishok's personality has been heavily influenced by a thorough knowledge of the Qun. As the Arishok, he is one of the Qunari's three leaders, which means he's required to have a thorough knowlege of the religion's day-to-day tenets. As the leader of the Qun's armies, he must be a paragon of Qunari honor.
Therefore, in order for the Arishok to make any sense at all, you have to have at least a small understanding of the Qun. The Qun is a philosophy and way of life more than a religion. It is a set of beliefs that influences everything you do.
It has no deity; in fact, the very idea of deities is laughable to true Qunari. They seem to believe that there is no point in desiring things, for wanting things is selfish and leads only to disappointment. The society does have assigned gender roles and the understanding that men are better at one thing, while women are better at another. Every child born to the Qunari has a place determined almost before the child is born, and set in stone during childhood, while the Tamassrans determine the child's suitability. It should also be mentioned that all Qunari essentially work their roles for the betterment of the Qunari as a collective - sort of like the Borg.
Individual Qunari are essentially nameless cogs in a machine that is constantly grinding. Your role is who you are; you even take your name from it. To leave, change, or fail to fulfill your role is the closest thing they have to heresy. It is to reject the Qun. To usurp someone else's role is to compound your heresy. You do your job for the betterment of the Qunari. You let everyone else do theirs.
As such, the Arishok has an exceedingly strong sense of duty. What should be doing is what drives him. You see it time and again: he'll tell you to leave because he "has no time for distractions," he'll tell the viscount is that something is "not [his] role," he'll tell the player character that it is not his role to question the the conversion of viddathari (new converts). May your gods have mercy on you if you interfere with his duties; he's certainly going to come down on you with the maximum force permitted by the Qun -- as Kirkwall will find out when he lights the city on fire and takes the nobility hostage.
Although he may not seem to, the Arishok has a serious temper. He is slow to express anger, but no slower than any human to experience it. Understanding that he is in a city of unenlightened corruption can only stave off simmering fury for so long. And when he finally does blow his stack, he ends up basically blowing up a city.
The minor sides of his temper start to show if you waste his time. He's got plenty on his plate just taking care of his platoon; he doesn't want or need distractions, and will tell you so. He doesn't suffer fools or people he sees reason to dislike for long - as seen in his apparent habit of telling the viscount to "begone."
For the most part, the Arishok is a stoic. This fits in with the idea that he has to exemplify Qunari honor and dedication. If you've got a role to fill, you don't have time for distractions like happiness or sorrow. You don't even really have time for anger, since it can lead to error. The Arishok rarely shows any emotion at all, and he shows anger perhaps three times in two entire 'acts' of the game.
The Qunari do not believe in waste. They do not waste time. They do not waste effort. And it would be a waste of time and effort, and an affront to the Arishok's role, if his men questioned his orders. This leaves him unused to being questioned. It's very unlikely that he's been called out on anything (by anybody but the other two members of the Triumvirate) since he was in his early to mid twenties. This leaves him prone to over-confidence and occasionally expecting more of his men than they can provide.
The Qun also does not waste resources -- and that includes lives. The Arishok spends most of his time in the game believing this, only permitting violence as a lesson once (the case of the poison gas -- and had the viscount and the city learned anything, those lives would have been well spent) and then using it again in his endgame. Even then, he refrained from killing anyone he didn't strictly have to-- he went so far as ordering his Stens to drag people into the Keep, rather than simply kill them.
Abilities:
The Arishok is a seven-foot tall, extremely well-muscled dude with horns. He carries two weapons (a huge-ass sword, Sataareth, and an axe) and uses them with all the expertise a man born and bred to fight could muster.
Scarily enough, for all that size and weight, he's light on his feet. He's had thirty or so years to learn to turn He has a damage-heavy charging attack that can be hard to avoid, and an attack that impales people on Satareeth that can be almost impossible to step away from.
In general, going up against him one-on-one's not your best idea. But he has his weaknesses: he's absolutely balls when it gets cold (his old bones are from a tropical nation), he can be made to smack into things via clever dodging, and he has pretty much no magic resistance.
Sample Entry: His dear_mun post; a thread with the reserved Isabela, and a thread with a random Hawke.
Personal LJ: yesthatnagia
Contact Info: AIM - submergedcandle / email nagia_arc@yahoo.com
Other Characters Played: n/a
Preferred Housing: n/a
Character Name: The Arishok / Ari Shok, if he has to have a given name/surname
Character Series: Dragon Age II -- chronology wise, I'm taking him from near the end of Act 2 (just before he goes absolutely shittastic bonkers and decides to BURNINATE EVERYTHING)
Character Age: Never stated in canon. I'm going to assume 41
Background:
Before we begin, the fastest rundown ever:
1) the Arishok is one of the Triumvirate (specifically the war-leader) of the Qunari, a nation of people following a religion they call the Qun.
2) In fact, like all the other Qunari, the Arishok has no name -- 'Arishok' is the name of his role, which is enough of a name for him.
3) He isn't exactly forthcoming about his life story, since it's none of the player character's damn business. I've extrapolated, based on what we know of the Qunari, to fill in the gaps.
4) Dragon Age II is a game whose story is strongly affected by the player's choices. Where necessary, I'm incorporating those choices into the backstory, to hopefully result in the least grumpy Arishok possible.
According to what we know about the Qunari, from conversations with Sten and questions posed to the DA writer assigned the Qunari, the Arishok would have been bred for his role. The Tamassrans (clergy) of the Qun keep track of genealogical data, arrange parentage, and then raise the children themselves. Children are schooled in groups, then released into the adult Qunari world to take up their assigned roles whenever the Tamassran deems them fit.
In my headcanon, this Arishok started with the position of Sten (platoon leader) at the age of fifteen. He fulfilled the expectations of the Tamassrans, his preceding Arishok, and the rest of the Triumvirate. As such, he continued to rise through the ranks, becoming an Arishok's named successor at the age of twenty-five. By thirty, the previous Arishok had retired or been retired, and the Arishok took his intended place and his current name.
He spent seven years warring with Tevinter. And then, four years ago, everything went wrong.
The Arishok travelled south to retrieve an important religious text from the nation of Orlais, which had decided to return the text. This text would be the Tome of Koslun, a manuscript by the philosopher charged with creating the Qun.
Things went sideways. The exchange didn't even happen. In the clamor and hurry, some Rivaini pirate woman made off with the Tome.
The Arishok gave the order to pursue. They chased her for days on open water, and all the while, a storm built.
When the storm finally broke, rather than drop anchor and return what she stole, the Rivaini sailed into it to escape them. The Arishok is nothing if not duty-bound. He followed.
They both ended up wrecking on the rocks outside Kirkwall. The Tome vanished without a trace -- and so did she.
The Arishok and his contingent of massive, armed Qunari limped into Kirkwall. There were enough of them, and the Chantry --the religious authority in that part of the world -- hated them virulently enough, that the city's viscount immediately granted them a compound by the docks. There, they would spend the next four years ostensibly waiting for a ship to take them back to Seheron.
That was a lie. There was no ship coming. As the Arishok says, "There is no rescue from duty to the Qun." They spent those four years searching for the Rivaini pirate and the Tome of Koslun, to no avail. Meanwhile, things kept getting worse and worse: Chantry fanatics continuously tried to incite a war between the Qunari and everyone else in the city.
First, some crazy elf got the bright idea to steal Qunari gunpowder, cause a few explosions, and use the fall-out to lever the city into war. Due to prior dealings with a dwarf merchant, the Arishok expected the attempt, and allowed the theft to occur - replacing the gunpowder recipe with a recipe for poison gas, then delivering a "courtesy" regarding the matter to the one person in Kirkwall who seemed able to get anything done: Hawke, the player character.
Naturally, people died. Almost an entire street, in fact.
On the very heels of that fiasco, the Arishok sent a delegate to Kirkwall's viscount. He intended to use the events as a lesson on the costs of greed (which was based on an incorrect hypothesis, but don't tell him that). But the delegate and his entourage vanished from the inner courtyard of the Viscount's Keep - only to turn up in a fanatic's bolt hole. He had hung them from the rafters, tortured them, left them on display to incite fellow fanatics.
Hawke made no attempt to hide this from the Arishok. And now the Arishok was starting to get a little steamed.
Then the viscount's son converted to the Qun. Naturally, the viscount wanted him brought back, which the Arishok would never have permitted. It all wound up being a moot point: the boy was kidnapped and killed by yet more fanatics.
The Arishok had the fanatic responsible killed, but the damage has been done. He's more than just steamed. He's now actively provoked. He's literally had it to here, and the next straw will be the last. He's got gunpowder stashed throughout the city, a platoon of armed Qunari, and a Plan.
Personality:
The Arishok's personality has been heavily influenced by a thorough knowledge of the Qun. As the Arishok, he is one of the Qunari's three leaders, which means he's required to have a thorough knowlege of the religion's day-to-day tenets. As the leader of the Qun's armies, he must be a paragon of Qunari honor.
Therefore, in order for the Arishok to make any sense at all, you have to have at least a small understanding of the Qun. The Qun is a philosophy and way of life more than a religion. It is a set of beliefs that influences everything you do.
It has no deity; in fact, the very idea of deities is laughable to true Qunari. They seem to believe that there is no point in desiring things, for wanting things is selfish and leads only to disappointment. The society does have assigned gender roles and the understanding that men are better at one thing, while women are better at another. Every child born to the Qunari has a place determined almost before the child is born, and set in stone during childhood, while the Tamassrans determine the child's suitability. It should also be mentioned that all Qunari essentially work their roles for the betterment of the Qunari as a collective - sort of like the Borg.
Individual Qunari are essentially nameless cogs in a machine that is constantly grinding. Your role is who you are; you even take your name from it. To leave, change, or fail to fulfill your role is the closest thing they have to heresy. It is to reject the Qun. To usurp someone else's role is to compound your heresy. You do your job for the betterment of the Qunari. You let everyone else do theirs.
As such, the Arishok has an exceedingly strong sense of duty. What should be doing is what drives him. You see it time and again: he'll tell you to leave because he "has no time for distractions," he'll tell the viscount is that something is "not [his] role," he'll tell the player character that it is not his role to question the the conversion of viddathari (new converts). May your gods have mercy on you if you interfere with his duties; he's certainly going to come down on you with the maximum force permitted by the Qun -- as Kirkwall will find out when he lights the city on fire and takes the nobility hostage.
Although he may not seem to, the Arishok has a serious temper. He is slow to express anger, but no slower than any human to experience it. Understanding that he is in a city of unenlightened corruption can only stave off simmering fury for so long. And when he finally does blow his stack, he ends up basically blowing up a city.
The minor sides of his temper start to show if you waste his time. He's got plenty on his plate just taking care of his platoon; he doesn't want or need distractions, and will tell you so. He doesn't suffer fools or people he sees reason to dislike for long - as seen in his apparent habit of telling the viscount to "begone."
For the most part, the Arishok is a stoic. This fits in with the idea that he has to exemplify Qunari honor and dedication. If you've got a role to fill, you don't have time for distractions like happiness or sorrow. You don't even really have time for anger, since it can lead to error. The Arishok rarely shows any emotion at all, and he shows anger perhaps three times in two entire 'acts' of the game.
The Qunari do not believe in waste. They do not waste time. They do not waste effort. And it would be a waste of time and effort, and an affront to the Arishok's role, if his men questioned his orders. This leaves him unused to being questioned. It's very unlikely that he's been called out on anything (by anybody but the other two members of the Triumvirate) since he was in his early to mid twenties. This leaves him prone to over-confidence and occasionally expecting more of his men than they can provide.
The Qun also does not waste resources -- and that includes lives. The Arishok spends most of his time in the game believing this, only permitting violence as a lesson once (the case of the poison gas -- and had the viscount and the city learned anything, those lives would have been well spent) and then using it again in his endgame. Even then, he refrained from killing anyone he didn't strictly have to-- he went so far as ordering his Stens to drag people into the Keep, rather than simply kill them.
Abilities:
The Arishok is a seven-foot tall, extremely well-muscled dude with horns. He carries two weapons (a huge-ass sword, Sataareth, and an axe) and uses them with all the expertise a man born and bred to fight could muster.
Scarily enough, for all that size and weight, he's light on his feet. He's had thirty or so years to learn to turn He has a damage-heavy charging attack that can be hard to avoid, and an attack that impales people on Satareeth that can be almost impossible to step away from.
In general, going up against him one-on-one's not your best idea. But he has his weaknesses: he's absolutely balls when it gets cold (his old bones are from a tropical nation), he can be made to smack into things via clever dodging, and he has pretty much no magic resistance.
Sample Entry: His dear_mun post; a thread with the reserved Isabela, and a thread with a random Hawke.