Anders

PLAYER
NAME: Jackie
CONTACT: Nadat on Plurk/Nadat#4647 on Discord
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER: Yes

CHARACTER
NAME: Anders
CANON: Dragon Age
AGE: Late 30s
CANON POINT: Between DA2 and DAI: he's been on the run and the vote has been taken to dissolve the Circles.
HISTORY: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Anders - Most of it is pretty important, and it's about 2.7k words.
PERSONALITY: Anders is a very complicated man, desperate and passionate, driven and needy, determined and tormented. His past is a long and troubled one, full of crushed hopes and dreams nearly gone. But that’s not all there is to him. He’s still got a softer side, as well as a flirty one.

When one first meets Anders in game his determination and passion are both evident. He’s a runaway mage, someone who can legally be taken in at any moment for escaping, and he puts himself in the player character’s way while declaring that he’s made the clinic a place of healing and salvation, demanding to know why they threaten it. This is where he’s poured himself into, a free clinic for those who can’t afford anything at all. Other evidence of his determination is that he’s escaped from the Circle, where mages are held and controlled, dozens of times. The punishments have gotten progressively worse when he was recaptured, up to and including a year spent in solitary in a cell, but he doesn’t stop escaping.

Anders is tormented. The year in solitary, being woken up by being kicked in the head by Templars (the people who oversee the mages), failed escapes, having his cat taken from him because it was ‘making him too soft,’ they all contribute. But there are a few things that overshadow those issues. The first is that he is possessed. After befriending the Spirit of Justice, they both realized Justice needed a better host body then the corpse he had, since the corpse was falling apart. As they had many interests in common, especially equal rights for mages, Anders offered his own body. At first this was an acceptable arrangement, though it took a lot of getting used to. But Anders’ anger at what’s been done to mages has caused Justice to sometimes become Vengeance, and they lose control. At one point in the story, if Hawke does not have a strong enough friendship with Anders, Vengeance/Justice/Anders will kill an innocent mage girl. Anders is aware that his control is slipping and that he may be losing himself. It’s a hard realization. The second overshadowing torment is the death of Karl. Karl was another mage, Anders’ first lover. After devising a plot to get Karl free of the Circle, Anders and the story’s protagonist, Hawke, go to the rescue. They arrive to discover Karl has been made Tranquil, which is essentially a lobotomy procedure that only works on mages. Karl is no longer himself. When Justice emerges, enraged, Karl regains himself for a few short moments, long enough to ask Anders to kill him. Anders does. Both of these examples also demonstrate how Anders’ hopes are fading and provide reasons as to why he grows more determined to make a lasting change in the world for the betterment of mages.

But Anders isn’t all doom and gloom, no matter how much time he spends writing a manifesto on how Mages should have rights. (Which he leaves everywhere in Hawke’s library, and all over Hawke’s entire mansion if the player romances him.) Anders is also a flirt and a tease, more than happy to find a good one-night tumble. On his first escape to Denerim from the Circle Anders went straight to The Pearl, one of the fanciest brothels there. Having him and the pirate Isabela in the party together results in them recognizing each other from a one-night stand, leading to the comment about his ‘electricity thing.’ He’s also the only companion in the game who pursues the protagonist without needing the protagonist to hit on him first.

His softest side is demonstrated in his love for cats. In the poorest area of the city, where even he admits that residents are probably eating cats because they’re hungry, Anders sets out milk for them. When another companion reveals that there’s a batch of kittens in the marketplace, he expresses a desire to find them, especially an orange tabby. Previous to the events of Dragon Age 2, Anders had an orange tabby that he named Ser Pounce-a-lot, a gift from the Hero of Ferelden. This was the cat that was taken from him. When he was much younger he’d left illustrations in his class notes and books of a tiger taking out Templars and saving him, also named Ser Pounce-a-lot. Should the protagonist have a dog, Anders tells it to be a real pet, ignoring him until it wants something and sits on his head.

Anders spends a good bit of time joking around before things start to get grim in the third part of the game, especially with the Dwarf, Varric. They crack ‘walk into a bar’ jokes, make Templar jokes, and talk about what they’ll do to one character who’d betrayed them when they find him again:

Anders: Boiling in oil.
Varric: Too prosaic. Trapped in a cave with hungry bears, right at spring thaw.
Anders: That lets him off too easy. Dipped in molten gold and left as a statue in the Viscount’s Keep.
Varric: Ooh! That’s poetic.
Hawke: What are you two talking about?
Varric: What to do to Bartrand when I find him.
Anders: Any suggestions?

He uses this humor as a defensive mechanism, keeping people at arm’s length while he figures them out. Anders has been hurt enough times in the past that he has trouble trusting, and he knows that humor makes things lighter. He refers to his past with jokes: “Most people enjoy being kicked in the head to be woken each morning. Me, I’m just so picky.” Danger even gets a comment: “We’re going down into that? Figures. Ooh it’s an unstable crumbling chasm! Let’s go and play in it!”

Anders also has a temper, and this is where Justice starts to bleed through. All of the above is definitely who Anders is, but he has been host to Justice for around seven years now and he is starting to lose track of where he ends and where Justice begins. Anders’ rage at injustices, at abuses, at waste, are both him and Justice. Even though Anders’ anger has begun to turn Justice into Vengeance, Justice still epitomizes, well, Justice, and seeks it at every opportunity. Justice sometimes lashes out in a rather blind fashion, striking down any in his path while being fixated on his goal. This is how the mage girl Ella almost died in my game, and did die in the games of anyone who didn’t have a strong enough friendship with Anders to pull him back from that brink. In other words, if Anders is furious at something that can be seen as an injustice, he can lose control and lash out as Justice/Vengeance.

Justice, as he resides within Anders, deserves some attention of his own. As a spirit that doesn’t know much of the living world, Justice is often naive and sometimes confused. He has access to Anders’ memories, as well as the memories of his first corpse host, which helps him understand some things, but his view of the world is extremely young. His general attitude is that if something is wrong, it must be set right, and there must be a way to set it right. All injustices should be addressed. That’s not idly playing around with the word justice, as the spirit is Justice. He is the concept and seeks the fulfillment of that concept. Justice is determined and driven to fix all injustices he sees, which sometimes means he causes more conflict rather than solving anything.

For the most part Justice is in the background in Anders’ mind, influencing and attempting to guide, but he’s not in control. At the times he is in control, though, Anders has little to no influence, and it is Justice alone. These times are visibly marked by Anders’ eyes glowing blue and his skin appearing to tear in many places, showing the same electric blue. This is because Justice, on his own, appears as a blue energy being. There is no change in Justice!Anders’ appearance when Justice lashes out as Vengeance. The only change is that instead of reacting with a focus on what is right, Vengeance!Justice!Anders reacts with a focus on brutally ending what is wrong at any cost. It’s the difference between righteous anger and unguided rage.

The relationships that have been most important to him are ones he feels, at his pull point, have come to an end. There’s the relationship between himself and Hawke, where Anders has not just fallen in love with Hawke, but betrayed and used him to help destroy a large building and kill people within it. There’s his friendship with Varric - earlier in the game Anders tried to give the dwarf the one possession he had from his mother, a pillow, and Varric turned it down - now the dwarf has said he doesn’t care whether Hawke kills Anders or not, he’s just tired. Isabela still cares as a friend, calls his plan bold, but she’s the only one. The others he’s been rude to all along: Fenris, for hating mages, Merrill, for being a blood mage, and Aveline, for being Aveline. Anders feels very alone on the crate, despite the support of Isabela. He’s ready for everything to be over.

POWERS: Anders is a mage. Tapping on the power of the Fade through himself, Anders can manipulate elements, heal, fling stuff around, and summon a whole lot of grease.

There are four schools of magic in Dragon Age lore: Creation, Entropy, Primal, and Spirit. Creation and Entropy are diametrically opposed, so Anders is a Spirit Healer and naturally very strong in the Creation school he cannot use Entropy at all. Therefore I'll explain the other three.

Creation Magic - this is generally the school of healing and protection. Spells in this school are the healing spell itself, glyphs that stop enemies or keep them away (paralysis, repulsion, warding, etc,) and I would also call Revival a Creation spell as it brings fallen allies back to life. This school also includes the 'boon' type spells, Haste and a few auras that enhance defensive abilities. Anders is particularly gifted in this school, and has an advantage over most Spirit Healers (the strongest sort of healers) in that while they need to find benevolent spirits to aid them, he has one living inside of him.

Primal Magic - Most attacking spells fall under this. Fire, ice, earth, lightning, it's fairly straightforward and almost entirely offensive. This school contains everything from blizzard to earthquake to chain lightning to firestorm. There are a couple of more defensive spells here, rock armor included among them, but they're nothing particularly powerful. This school is about flashy devastation.

Spirit Magic - spells in this area deal directly with the Fade, the source of all magic in the Dragon Age universe. They're more tenuous and tricky, and sometimes this school also seems to serve as the "other" category. Here you find dispel magic, mind blast, barrier, and a calming aura that makes you less likely to be attacked. Crushing Prison falls under this too, a spell that traps and crushes its prisoner, as does spirit bolt, which is less powerful than lightning but can be cast more often.

SAMPLES
1ST PERSON:
Network
3rd PERSON:
Log Link

MISC
PLANS: He (and Justice) are overwhelmed right now in the fight for mages in Thedas. There's no clear way forward, and while there's progress to be seen, it's slow and murky. Clear leadership and direction in fighting injustice would go a long way for both of them.

ITEM: A small embroidered pillow, made by his mother. There's no magic to it.

CHARACTER @ID SUGGESTIONS:
@Blondie (his nickname from Varric, likely used in Varric's book)
@Abomination (he's possessed, it's what he is)
@Snarkyhealer (eh, why not)

HOW DID YOUR CHARACTER JOIN COST? When he was on the run, Anders was approached by a representative who explained what was going on. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain in joining this fight - the mages he'd been with after Kirkwall had pushed him out, he's a wanted man, and he feels a great deal of guilt about what he's done to the point that a change in scenery would be a massive relief.