sᴀʙɪɴᴇ.

Name: Brooklyn
Age: Jawbone swings, falls off.
Contact: withpanache
Other Characters: Tony Stark
Interests: I'm (still) interested in portraying Sabine's struggle of loyalties, and lending her perspective to the internal politics of the game. Scenes where she can deploy her skillset such as fucking up Venatori camps before an attack, as well as anything to do with her recently developed shady criminal connections.


Name: Sabine
Canon/OC: Dragon Age OC
Journal: glandival
Race: Elf
Nationality: Orlesian
Occupation: Spy
Division: Scouting
Mage or Not: Not
Age: 31

History

Sabine was born in Halamshiral. Her mother was a maid to a noble summer's home, and suffered frequent abuses at the hands of her employers. When Sabine was seven, her mother was expelled for "causing trouble", and they lived with her mother's sister, a crafter of wooden jewelry.

Sabine was roped into an arranged marriage at age 17. Famously, during their vows, she headbutted him in the face on a dare when it came time for kisses. They became friends, after that. He was killed a year or two later during a drunken night out, beaten to death by human guardsmen.

When Sabine tried to go after the men responsible, agents of Briala caught her in their net. She was inducted into the quiet rebellion, trained in knifework, reporting, crafting arrows, illicit trade, and so on.

She was 26 when the rebellion of Halamshiral began. She fought alongside her people as the Empress had her neighborhoods burned to the ground.

Still an active agent, Sabine joined the Inquisition -- first undercover, posing as a refugee, and then more openly after the Civil War came to a formal close. During this time, she acquired an anchor-shard in her arm, bonding her to the Inquisition.

As war with Tevinter became an inevitability, she moved on to operate out of Orlais, still as an agent of the Inquisition as well as Briala's network of elven agents.

During this time, she fell in with a group of Orlesian scouts, and ran sabotage missions with them, disrupting supply lines, rescuing refugees, and so on. During this time, she honed her own skills, and developed new ones. Rumour has it they sometimes targeted certain Orlesian nobles as well, robbing them of their wealth in a benevolent manner.

During one messy fight, the group suffered significant casualties, and they agreed to disperse. Sabine took the opoortunity to head to Kirkwall and post herself there, before someone could tell her to do something else.

Note: I may need some percentage of mod guidance in and around Briala-related directives and what activities might have occurred over the last few years.

Personality

Meeting Sabine feels a lot like getting to know everything about Sabine immediately. She is expressive, and quick to talk without thinking, possessing a somewhat bawdy sense of humour, and an angry streak that seems to flare up around certain personalities, races, and subjects. Occasionally, all these traits overlap, and she can come across as a little coarse and overbearing. In a lot of ways, this is genuinely most of what she's about, and certainly was at least a decade ago.

Beneath it, there is also an undercurrent of thoughtfulness necessary for spywork. She naturally presents as one thing that contradicts another aspect of herself, thus removing suspicion, which I realise as I write it is a little Iron Bullish, so allow me to emphasise she is not half as good or self-aware. It's more of a case that she notices details and is a more calculating person than what is generally expected -- she is, in fact, not a very good liar, nor can she act out alien emotions or do much to curtail her own genuine ones. She has a lot of them.

She is someone who was a dreamer, as a child and a young woman. She grew up wanting to save princesses and fight dragons, and grew up with her dreams being continually crushed by the oppressive reality of being an elf in Orlais. She downsized her aspirations, she thought smaller, she made herself smaller, and was a useful, small tool for the spy operations in Halamshiral. Joining the Inquisition broadened her horizons, realising there are other ways to be. This did not take away from her fixation on city elf liberty -- in fact, it only fanned that flame -- but she also began to believe in a cause shared by more than just her own people.

She has a well-learned distrust of humans, having only really interacted with them as aggressors or sources of information for much of her life. #notallhumans isn't good enough, as she's witnessed the kindness of humans, and witnessed the limits thereof as well. Qunari will remain conceptually intimidating, but, like dwarves, exist as an unknown quality that she can only get to know by happening to them. The Dalish and humans both come with bias perspectives and will colour her interactions accordingly, although may variously play out differently depending on the situation and her commitment to being discreet.

Opinions & Affiliations

Sabine is a rebellious city elf with all the politics that entails. Of her strong feelings, she distrusts to outright loathes Orlesian nobility and she finds the Dalish disappointing and pretentious. The Mage and Templar war was not her problem, and she has a normal amount of hesitation and caution for mages, but likely identifies with their conflict.

She's been an agent to Briala's network for over a decade, although for much of her early years, she was more simply an informant on goings on in Halamshiral, and only threw herself into dangerous work over the past few year.

Adaptation Notes

n/a

Strengths & Weaknesses

SPYING: Sabine's capacity as a spy in the traditional/obvious sense of the word is... limited, being of a distinct kind of character. However, she is quiet on her feet, she is very adept at retaining and reporting information, she can pick locks and has the kind of surprising patience that is required when it comes to hiding in a tree and watching one building for however long it takes to confirm Lord So-and-so met with Lady Whatever.

COMBAT: She is skilled at archery, knife combat, and drag out street brawls.

CRAFTY: She has been making her own bows and arrows for the past decade, due to the fact that supplies are very easy to come by without attracting attention. She is generally good with her hands, and detail oriented crafting things. She shared in her aunt's trade as a jewellery maker (mostly working with wood). This serves as a secondary source of income as well as something to occupy her mind and creativity, and can make for a useful cover. Incidentally, she also uses a code via coloured beads on thread to communicate basic reports back to Orlais, or indicate more detailed reports and rendezvous are necessary.

ARTIFICER SPECIALIZATION: In her time away, Sabine has learned the Artificer specialization. Traps, elemental explosions, and so on. A lot of these skills are passive video game-y buffs and debuffs, such as "finding and pointing out enemy weakness" boosting critical hits, and I will interpret stuff like that as her being very good at pre-battle sabotage efforts, such as stealing weapons, loosening wagon wheels, laying down traps on roads, etc.

Inventory

Bow and arrows, small daggers, a few alchemical supplies, and jeweler's kit.

Motivation

She's got a sliver of weird magic in her hand she'd like Riftwatch to deal with, and is also here to keep an eye on Riftwatch on behalf of her elven connections.


Fighting and more fighting.