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Firecracker — Description
Here, have a pic of my favorite Inquisitor, Niamh Lavellan. Also, have a fanfiction snippet of Varric telling someone about her.

The Inquisitor? Ah, of course you want to know what she was like – is like. Most people do.

I call her Firecracker, and not without reason. She is, hands-down, one of the most passionate women I know, and I know a few passionate women. Until I met Niamh Lavellan, I had never seen a person put so much of her heart into every action she took, and I’m not just talking about the big, world-altering decisions. No, she flings herself into even the smallest, everyday things. Watching her play a game of chess is no different from watching her battle a darkspawn magister. How the woman has such an emotional capacity is beyond me.

I don’t know much about her childhood. She is Dalish, the First to the Keeper of Clan Lavellan, and she speaks fondly of her people when she speaks of them, but she rarely does. I think it’s her way of coping with homesickness. Damn if I don’t understand that feeling.

Despite her heritage, she does not seem to let bias impinge upon her duties as Inquisitor. In fact, she makes it very clear that the elves working for the Inquisition and the elves we face as enemies are not to be given special treatment; however, that does not mean that she tolerates bullshit from anyone, toward herself, or her fellow elves. Ha! One time, after she had made a round at night when many of the soldiers were off-duty and blowing off some steam in the tavern, she was livid. Apparently she had been groped thirty-seven times and propositioned for sexual favors twelve times. The next day, she stormed into Curly’s office, fuming.

“CULLEN,” she scolded, “I swear to the Creators, the Forgotten Ones, and the FUCKING Dread Wolf, if ONE more of your men gets drunk and mistakes me for a prostitute, you’re getting a demotion.” I wasn’t there, but rumor has it the Commander was literally tripping over his own tongue trying to apologize for such blatant harassment.

Yeah, the little Firecracker has a temper. She has this awful habit of making wild assumptions off of small pieces of information and blowing up before she really knows the whole story. Poor Chuckles, he always got the brunt of it. It seemed like she was pissed off at him every five minutes. Not that he didn’t bring it on himself or anything. Shit, looking back now, the bastard probably deserved it.

Still, he knew what makes her tick more than any of us. If he wanted, he knew the exact wrong way to say something to her so that she would fly off the handle, but he was the only person who could talk her down in most situations. And to him, well, she was the only person who made him genuinely smile. Sure, I call him Chuckles, but that’s me passive-aggressively pointing out what a buzz kill he was.

Firecracker is hilarious, even when she does not intend to be. She’s got this razor sharp tongue and a wit that rivals even that of Hawke, and that’s saying something. She is completely, bluntly honest, even willing to admit the most embarrassing things about herself. I will never forget when we had our first real conversation at Haven. She approached me asking about “Tale of the Champion,” and she told me that I needed to introduce her to Fenris. When I asked her why, she didn’t really answer but she had this wistful look in her eyes as she let out a sigh. Apparently moody elves with commitment issues are her thing.

The Inquisitor wields humor as Blackwall holds his shield. It’s her greatest defense mechanism.

“’Distracting you from your duty,’ my left ass cheek,” she drunkenly ranted to me after Solas broke off their entanglement, “Solas is SO dramatic. He should win awards for that acting job.” She spoke dryly about him, and laughed everything off, but I know for a fact nothing hurt her more than when he left her. Cole sometimes mentioned how she cried herself to sleep and how he could not help her. Clearly there was a huge elephant in Skyhold, but none of us brought it up. We still don’t.

I’ve talked a lot about her bolder qualities: her passion, temper, and humor. But, I think I would be doing her a great injustice if I failed to mention her softer side. Firecracker isn’t always on the verge of immolating someone. In fact, a lot of the time she can be found reading in the garden. As a Dalish elf, she never had the chance to read literature from other cultures. She was like a kid at a candy merchant when she first saw the expansive library at Skyhold.

“The Keeper never let me read what I wanted. It was always some obscure elven text that spoke of ‘Andruil this’ or ‘Mythal that.’ It got to the point where I wanted to beg Fen’Harel to banish me to the Void just to avoid reading that shit. I really wanted to read things written by human scholars, by Qunari scribes, by Dwarven shapers. Now, I can.”

Her face just lit up. After that, she, Cassandra, and Dorian almost had a book club going. Of course, they all adored “Swords and Shields.” Okay, maybe Dorian didn’t, and he’s right to not have, because it is garbage. Still, at least my work has the admiration of Her Inquisitoralness and the Seeker.

Lavellan is also empathetic. She can put herself in the shoes of anyone she comes across whether they have been affected by tragedy or caused it. She always tries to be merciful in her judgements. Unfortunately, she’s not the best diplomat. She gets so emotionally attached, that she can’t make the harder calls. Not to mention, the woman knows zilch about politics and influence.

I thought Ruffles was going to pike the Inquisitor’s head after the ruling she made when the Avaar leader catapulted a goat into the exterior wall of Skyhold.

“Parade him around in a gibbet! Also…what even IS a gibbet?”

After that, Ruffles made it mandatory to school our fearless leader in etiquette and political correctness. She’s still working on it. It is not her strong suit.

That’s really all I can say about Inquisitor Lavellan, other than the fact I owe her, we ALL owe her more than we could ever afford to pay. But, let it be known that she is no goddess. She is not to be worshiped. She is a mortal, elven woman with her own personal desires and flaws. Remember that. Sometimes I even have to remind myself.

Oh, and, if you ever meet her, don’t tell her any of what I just said. I’d hate to have my chest hair singed off.

~Varric Tethras