Amara Hawke

[Warning : Prepare for "Livi Got Way Too Into It"- type drama and wordiness.]


NAME: Amara Hawke

CLASS: The apostatiest apostate Mage you ever saw. Specializing in booms, blasts, rock-fists to the face and impressing the lads and ladies with mystical feats both arcane and, heh, well, more intimately derived . . . That is, ah, she practices Primal and Spirit magics.

HOBBIES: Between drinking, gambling, and sleeping around, Amara is a loose woman with seemingly looser principles, and its a wonder she finds time to do anything of worth at all. When not wasting her hard-earned coin (or pocketing more) at the Hanged Man, Amara continues with smuggling jobs on the side so that she can support her family. As much as she wants to practice her magic, she can only attempt to do so in the relative safety of Gamlen's sad excuse for a shack, and that's not exactly fire/freeze/thunder/earthquake/or zombie proof (the testing of its zombie-proofing is, however, a continuing trial and error process).

PERSONALITY: Be you knave or nobleman, rake or royalty, you can expect one thing, and one thing only, upon meeting Amara Hawke : sarcasm. With a quick wit and a healthy love of good humor, Amara can turn almost any situation into a joke. But if you were to take that and jump right to the conclusion that she doesn’t take anything seriously, you’d find yourself knowing next to nothing about the real Amara. In fact, if one were to get to the truth of it, it is precisely because she takes almost everything seriously that she is so quick to respond with a laugh and a well-timed (or not so well-timed) joke - if she took everything as seriously as she felt, she’d have been driven mad by the weight of it long ago.

Living as an apostate mage instilled in Amara a heavy feeling of responsibility and accountability from an early age. She was the reason her family had to move all the time, she was why Carver had never had a girlfriend, she was the reason her family had to look around corners and live on the outskirts of too-small towns. And if all of that was her fault, then by the Maker, she was going to do her best to make it up to them. She studied hard, and learned how to control her powers, learned to read and learned how to take care of herself so that her mother and father, her brothers and sister, didn’t have to. The sooner she could take care of herself, the sooner she could take care of her family. Picking pockets and doing odd-jobs soon began to take over her study time as she worked to make money to buy those new daggers Carver wanted, or that silk cloth Mother had been eyeing. If she could do it for them, she did it, and she fell into the role of protector and provider with a natural ease - she loved her family more than anything. More than her magic. More than her own happiness. More than herself.

But she needed to find a way to cope. For all the love she had for her family, for all she didn’t care what it cost her, she knew she couldn’t keep physically going if she let it all get to her. So she started to build herself a mask, and at some point, the mask became as much a real, solid part of her as her love for her family was. She became a jokester, the quintessential class clown, anything to level the pressure release on her emotions. And she liked it, too - she liked running witty circles around more sluggishly-minded people, and she liked sharing a laugh with a newly-made friend at the local pub of the town she’d probably be moving away from in the next week.

As this joking personality began to develop, so too did her love of people. Her entire childhood had been spent with only her family, and she’d learned quickly to distrust anyone - and everyone - else. But as she grew older, she began to see that not everyone was so bad, and she found that she became very easily and very quickly attached to new people. She slept around occasionally, but even as fleeting as those relationships had been, she knew that she’d honestly loved each man and woman that crossed her romantic or friendly path. She was quick to offer a helping hand to anyone who needed it, and always seemed to have at least a little spare coin to offer. But as much as Amara liked people, she didn’t like everyone. She’d never been fond of Templars, because of the way she’d been raised, but as she got older, she liked them less and less, and she hated any person who took advantage of or exploited any lesser person. Carver used to call her the “Next Great Crusader of the Poor and Downtrodden,” and even though it had always been a joke, Amara liked to pretend that she could take care of everyone, just like she took care of her family. She couldn’t, not really, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

And so, Kirkwall was presented with the Amara of today, who’s lost half of her so-precious family, breaking something vital inside of her while making her even more protective of the half she had left; and the Lowtown nights now get Amara as she is: the too-serious, wise-cracking apostate mage who loves her magic, who’ll offer you her bed and her heart, whether you take them or not, who’s paranoid about the Chantry and hates Templars but loves everyone else, and who’d live and die for you, because she loved you and you asked.

Appearance :

[Setting : This takes place in Act II, after the events of The First Sacrifice Quest in Act I, and right before Prime Suspect, during the conversation where Aveline provides the quest-start dialogue. None of this dialogue was taken from the game - I made it up while keeping it appropriate to starting the events of the quest.]

[Party : Amara Hawke, Merrill, Varric, and Fenris.]

[Relationships : Full Friendship with Aveline, Full Friendship with Varric, Full Friendship with Merrill, Half Friendship with Fenris ; Friendship-Romance-based flirting with Merrill, but not important to overall character or plot]

[I don't know why any of the above information was necessary. I just decided to bore you with it because I felt like it. So there. I may edit this first post here and there.]


- - -

“He did not say that!” the startled voice interrupted, the Dalish vowels so innocently surprised that it only made her smile all the more as she continued speaking.

“He did! He did! He goes,” she grinned wickedly, turning to walk backwards as she addressed her audience of one. Her arms lifted to her sides in a grandiose gesture, like a polished orator preparing to speak, and she went on, her voice lowering for added effect. “‘No shit, there was the dragon, standing tall enough to call an ogre puny, and then it reared up and -’”

“It wasn’t that big,” protested the elf, but the words were laced with such a happy amusement, like a secret joke between old friends, that she let it pass without comment.

“‘And then it reared up and opens its gaping maw, emitting such a roar as to make a hardened man run crying for his momma -’”

“‘- and the handsome, roguish dwarf reached for his trusty crossbow without hesitating a moment, and in a second flat, that dragon-belly was so full of arrows that -’”

“Hey!” she whined, looking from her “audience” to the dwarven interloper with a pouty glare. “That is not what you said! You were totally signing my praises! I couldn’t have gotten you to shut it if I’d tried.”

The dwarf smirked, and his shoulders rose and fell in a noncommittal shrug. “Hey, someone’s gotta be advertising you to the public, or where would you find all of these great job offers?”

“The point is,” she huffed, casting the dwarf one more warning pout before looked back to the elf, “is that all of the men were so caught up in the story that Isabela was able to pick each of their pockets without even trying to-”

“Hawke,” a thinly disapproving voice cut in.

“Oh. My. Maker. Will everyone please stop interrupting my - oh,” Amara said, her voice switching from put-out to amicable in the time it took for her to face forward once more, smiling at the frowning red-head standing in front of her with her arms crossed. “Hey Aveline,” she sing-songed, and her entourage came to a stop a few paces behind her, the Dalish elf still wrapping her mind around the story, the amused dwarf watching her do so, and the escaped slave trying valiantly to pretend he wasn’t listening at all. It gave Amara a moment of faux-privacy with the guardswoman.

“So, Aveline, how is my very favorite authority-figure doing today?”

“Hawke, would it be so hard for you to be serious for a moment?”

“I might manage it,” she answered dryly, putting her hands on her hips. She knew Aveline didn’t really mean it - Aveline always got testy with her when she was worried, so she was less concerned with the warrior’s reprimand, and more concerned with finding out what was bothering her dear friend so much.

Aveline sighed, and put her head in her hand as she tried to calm herself down. It was something Amara had seen her do often, and so she knew very well not to interrupt. A moment later, Aveline’s direct eyes were on her again, and Amara gave her her full attention.

“Templar Emeric. You know him, yes?”

Amara raised an eyebrow as she crossed her arms (unconsciously mirroring Aveline’s posture). Well, that was certainly getting right to the point. “Yes, I know him. The older man, who’s rear I’ve saved several times in the past. What about him?”

As usual, her more snide remarks were ignored as Aveline cut to the chase. Well, Amara was used to Aveline ignoring her side-comments - it was part of the reason why they worked so well together.

“To put it plainly, he’s become a burden to the guard,” she began bluntly. “We tried to give him the benefit of the doubt in his ‘all the missing women are a conspiracy’ theory, but now he’s only getting in the Guards’ way, distracting us with wild goose-chases. I don’t want to ignore a lead where one might exist, but I don’t know Hawke - I think, this once, the man’s just . . . deluded.”

“Imagine that - a deluded Templar,” came a hushed comment from behind. Amara glanced back at Varric with an arched brow, and he made a point to look off to the side and whistled innocently, and she turned back to Aveline.

“I know he seems, er, enthusastic, Aveline,” she started to explain. She hated Templars, but the old man had seemed to earnest that she hadn’t been able to help sympathizing with him and his fears. “But we did find evidence that he was right. I-if the guard is to busy, maybe I can try to take him off your hands?” She didn’t to inconvenience Aveline with it if other Guard duties called to her, but she couldn’t just throw Emeric to the wayside when she’d promised to offer her help.

“That’s just what I was hoping you’d say, Hawke. I need you to go to the Gallows,” Amara made a face, “and I know you hate it there, but if you’re going to deal with it, you need to get at it at the source. You’re good with blending in.”

“Actually,” came a deep, vaguely bored voice from behind. “She’s absolutely awful at blending in.”

“Er . . . what Fenris said,” Merrill chimed in with quick, nervous word, and when Amara looked back to stare at both of them, she blushed and smiled a little, waving innocently. “I-in a good way, of course. I mean, you certainly stand out from the crowd, Hawke.”

“Easy Daisy. Hawke’s not gonna’ eat you for speaking up.”

Amara smiled and made a quick biting motion with her mouth at Merrill, her grin widening as Merrill made a small ‘eep’ sound, and then turned back to Aveline, who was looking expectant in a “I’m busy, can you just say you’ll do it and let me get back to my work” kind of way.

“I’ll do it,” she finally said with a nod. “I’m not afraid of the Gallows, and this needs to be handled quickly before it becomes more of a problem.” See? She could be serious!

Aveline nodded, looking suitably relieved, and finally offered Amara a small smile. “Thank you, Hawke. I knew I could count on you for this.”

“You can count on me for anything, Aveline.”

“I know. That’s what worries me sometimes.”