faderift application.

[interroga]

PLAYER

Name: Julie
Age: mumblemumble
Contact: quadrille & quadrille on discord
Other Characters: Stephen Strange, Astrid Runasdotten
Interests: Political intrigue, spycraft, thrillers, leaning into Tevinter Nights vibes, Shadow Dragons v Venatori conflict, getting to operate within plots as someone with a deft touch instead of my other two sledgehammer characters. Also there are no Andor S2 spoilers in this app, in case that’s a worry!

CHARACTER

Name: Cassian Jeron Andor
Canon/OC: Star Wars (native AU)
Journal: interroga
Race: Human (elf-blooded)
Nationality: Tevene
Occupation: Rebel, spy, Shadow Dragon
Division: Scouting
Mage or Not: Nah
Age: 32, b. 9:19

History

Canon. AU:

• 9:19: Cassian was born as “Kassa”, an elf-blooded boy in a Dalish settlement on the Tevinter-Antiva outskirts, with an elven mother and human father for the usual unsavoury reasons that happens. He never knew his father (good riddance) but initially grew up with his mother and younger half-sister Kerri.


• When he was a child, an Imperial lyrium excavation disaster nearby led to all the adults in the clan dying, but the clan children were old enough to survive by themselves in the woods. Eventually two Tevene scavengers came to loot the nearby dig site: Clem and Maarva Andor were two well-intentioned humans who found a near-feral Kassa attacking the digging machines; not knowing what else to do and thinking he’d die out here by himself, they took the boy in.


• So he was adopted, and raised in a human household. Life in Ferrix, a small Tevene mining town in the mountains, was hard but full of warm community and non-magical citizens doing everyday toil. There are more Soporati than magisters and they keep the wheels of the empire moving, and yet you only ever hear about the mages. Does that seem fair?


• As a valuable quarry, Ferrix was strip-mined and its non-magical citizens overworked, and experienced some of the brutality of the Tevinter Empire even before Corypheus came on the scene. When Cassian was fourteen, his father was hanged mostly for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.


• This led to the boy becoming loose and adrift, and Causing Problems On Purpose; he made petty trouble and did some jail time, and it was lucky he escaped death or Warden recruitment. This led to a few years as a thief, smuggler, and mostly a self-serving noncommittal fuckup.


• 9:41: When he was twenty-two years old, the Breach opened, and the Venatori started becoming an issue. Imperial conditions became worse, and over the next few years as Corypheus rose behind the scenes, keeping your head down became an impossibility. Cassian helped rob the Empire, was jailed again for a time, and managed to escape, only to miss his mother’s death and catch a civilian uprising in Ferrix which was violently quashed.


• 9:45: As the Archon was replaced with a Venatori puppet and the Lucerni started ramping up in earnest, they needed operatives. Hating what his country’s become, Cassian was recruited by them as an agent and intelligence operative. He spent the subsequent five years learning to care about something bigger than himself: spying, stealing, smuggling, sabotaging, escorting targets or assassinating them, truly anything that was asked of him.


• Since Corypheus took open control in spring 9:50, Tevene rebellion efforts have heightened further. When the Lucerni splintered off and became the Shadow Dragons, Cassian went into the shadows and continued his work with them over the next year.


• 9:51: He’s arrived at Riftwatch’s Minrathous safehouse, injured and tired, sent as an official envoy from the Shadow Dragons, vouched for by Riftwatch’s allies in the Lucerni, as an indication for the orgs to continue to work together.

Personality

Years of war and spywork have hardened Cassian into a pragmatically brutal operative. He’s dulled his morals until he’s able to kill an ally in a heartbeat if necessary; it’s not pleasant, he doesn’t relish it nor enjoy the role he’s been shoved into, but he’s willing to do it for the sake of the mission. He’s level-headed and practical to a fault, and has been steadily carving his entire life down until the only thing left is the fight.

It does weigh heavy on him and he’s constantly carrying the guilt of the awful things he’s done for the greater good, even as he pushes on. Was it worth it? That’ll be for the Maker to decide, if there even is a Maker.

Cassian was always a smooth-talker, a quick-thinking thief in his youth, and spywork has only crystallised these traits further: he’s slippery, adaptable, and good at getting into places and making himself unremarkable. The fact that he’s technically born-and-raised Empire makes him blend in well amongst enemy forces as well. He can be a pleasant, charming flirt when the job calls for it, tapping into what used to be his lighter side; he has a subtle, wry sense of humour, although it’s gotten flattened over time.

He’s self-possessed enough that he doesn’t often seem angry, but there’s a deep well of rage humming beneath his surface against the corrupt Magisterium, against injustice, against the horrors of their daily lives. He’s often kind and attentive to servants and slaves (perhaps aware of how close he came to being one of them but for an accident of birth). Once you do make it into his inner circle, he’s warm and affectionate and physically demonstrative; he loves fiercely and never wants to leave a friend behind, but the grim reality is that he’s grown accustomed to choosing the fight over them.

He’s more serious than he used to be, his shoulders heavy with the weight of an unwinnable war that he’s been fighting for too many years and where he’s forgotten what the end even looks like.


Opinions & Affiliations

Tevinter: He hates the embodiment of empire and the people at the top of it with every fiber of his being; but he loves the everyday common people of his country, the ones who deserve better. He’s spent years fighting for their liberation from their corrupt leadership.

Shadow Dragons: Cassian has given them his blood, sweat, and tears for the past year, and as the Lucerni before that. He’s loyal to an extent which borders on zealotry, and they promoted him to captaincy within the organisation and trust him with sensitive operations. It doesn’t conflict with Riftwatch, considering how their goals are in alignment.

Mages: Mistrustful and wary of them as a whole. Experiences with magisters back home haven’t been great.

The Qun: Thanks to growing up in Tevinter with its backdrop of endless war with the Qun, he has a kneejerk distaste of the Qunari, even if it’s unfair.

The Dalish: Complicated. He’s distantly aware that he was technically one of them once, but he’s been so effectively severed from his culture and history and elven identity that he’s lost most of it except for a few childhood scraps.

City elves: Complicated. As above, he also feels guilty that he managed to escape being perceived as an elf, and grew up in a human family with the rest of the world being none the wiser.


Adaptation Notes

Ever since we found out about the Shadow Dragons, I’ve wanted to smash Cassian Andor into this canon. A determined, adaptable spy working for a rebellion trying everything to take down a sinister empire from the inside?? HELLO. I also want to dig a little more into representing the Tevinter struggle from an everyday non-mage perspective, which could be fun to bounce off our in-game Vints.

Canon Cassian was also adopted into a human family from an indigenous people living in the forest, so that felt like a good parallel to Dalish elves and making him elfblooded: someone who’s been effectively cut off from a native culture that he never knew and barely remembers, and filled with a lifetime’s worth of rage towards the empire whose shadow he grew up in.

Also, for posterity: over time I’ll probably incorporate elements & anecdotal experience from Andor S2 into his Lucerni/Shadow Dragons backstory, but haven’t covered it in the history section in order to avoid spoilers in his app. And because I ran out of space. Mostly it’s just more of The Horrors.


Strengths & Weaknesses

+ Trained and experienced spy. He’s quick-thinking, adaptable, and well-versed in theft, smuggling, surveillance, assassinations, etc, and all the tedious paranoid caution that comes with it. Might’ve made a good bard if he were raised in Orlais.

+ Comfortable combatant and quick killer with whatever’s at hand: swords, daggers, beat them to death with hammers, whatever.

+ Connections in Tevinter; if you’re in the country, Cassian often knows safe houses and places to lay up, sympathetic storefronts where you can pick up supplies or get a discount, etc.

+ Good at languages. Speaks Trade, Tevene, Antivan, a smattering of children’s Dalish; understands a little Orlesian although can’t speak it.

— Terrible in the wilderness. Nevermind that he was born Dalish, he’s now a city boy through-and-through and prefers cobblestoned streets over the muddy outdoors.

— Mistrustful. This can be a good thing professionally, but is a terrible thing socially; with the way he slips in and out of his various cover identities as needed, it’s hard to know if you’re getting the genuine Cassian.

— Accent. Try as he might, he hasn’t been able to shake his accent in any language; he always sounds like he’s from the border of Tevinter and Antiva, which he is.

— No magic. Honestly a huge weakness when your main opponents are scary blood mages.

Inventory

The clothes on his back. A trusty sword. Some enchanted ink which only appears under veilfire. A few poison capsules, mostly for self-administering if need be. An encrypted letter of introduction from the Lucerni.


Motivation

Riftwatch has been Corypheus’ main opponent for so many years. The Shadow Dragons are also very invested in toppling Corypheus and his Venatori and false Archon and installing better politicians at the head of their country. Ergo, their goals align. Cassian’s been sent as a liaison and ally, to get the lay of the land and collaborate with Riftwatch. He cares about the rebellion above all else, so he’s just as invested in this as they are.

Happy to enable any potential Shadow Dragon-affiliated plot, but otherwise he’s just here to help out.

SAMPLES

1, 2 (Fade Rift-specific)