APPLICATION

[circler]

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Jane
PERSONAL JOURNAL: milla
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yes
CONTACT: mourir ici [aim] | mourir [plurk] | divinify at gmail dot com
OTHER CHARACTERS: None


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Bethany Hawke
SERIES: Dragon Age II [x]
CANON POINT: During The Last Straw, as Hawke confronts Meredith and Orsino in the Gallows.
AGE: There are implications that she's 18 around the start of the game, making her around 25 during Act 3.
APPEARANCE: Here

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: None

PERSONALITY: Note: Due to the nature of Dragon Age, Bethany's fate can change very drastically. She and Carver also cannot survive at the same time. Bethany only survives fleeing Lothering if Hawke is a rogue or warrior. I will be assuming a history where:

1) Bethany survived fleeing Lothering with a male rogue Hawke
2) She was not taken to the Deep Roads expedition, resulting in her going to the Circle
3) She was taken to the Deep Roads during the Legacy DLC
4) She was taken to Orlais during the Mark of the Assassin DLC
5) Hawke has achieved 100% friendship with her

Bethany is a sweet girl, a kind girl, a girl who has spent her entire life in hiding and on the run from those who would rip her away from her family. As a mage, she was very close to her father Malcolm Hawke, an apostate (a free mage) who did not wish for his children to be cursed with his magic. Under his tutelage, she honed her powers and learned to control them. She was also made very aware to the dangers of magedom - the influence of demons, mostly. Because of this, Bethany grew up vigilant and tired. Bethany has always been on the run from Templars and has always been on the run from demons. She's so frightened of being caught that, as much as she likes the sound of Anders' freedom for all mages speeches and as much as she'd like to help fellow mages, she'd rather not draw attention toward herself and not get involved.

All she wants is normality. Like many mages, despite her freedoms, she wishes she'd never been born with the gift of magic. She is hyperaware of the dangers Templars present both to her and her family, and she regrets that aspect of magedom entirely. She thinks it's nice, of course, being able to command the elements, but if she could trade it all, she would. She lived in the what could have beens for a large portion of her life. She doesn't run from or fear her magic, but neither does she completely embrace it (as Hawke does if he or she is a mage). She focuses on "that which is best in me, not that which is most base," meaning she uses her magic as a vehicle for serving her goodwill and as a positive force not as a weapon to be used at her most desperate or for vileness. Her magic is her tool, not the other way around.

But as she grew older and was later arrested and sent to the Circle, Bethany finally came to total terms with her magic and even found a niche for herself in the very organization she'd feared her entire life. She even comes to support the Circle and the good it provides mages through instruction and education. She finds purpose - and best of all, she stops running. She flourishes within the Circle walls - becomes a senior member, even, and begins to teach the younger apprentices. It's not normalcy by no means, but it's a structured environment without the fear of capture, without the unpredictability that comes with being an apostate. Because of her position in the Circle, however, she does come to see how free she'd been outside of it. If Hawke should choose to side with the mages and attempt to free the Circle, she will come to understand the need to free her fellow mages as well. There is the idea of stability, and then there is imprisonment - the two are, fortunately, highly compatible. She understands freedom well and its necessity (besides, if there were no Circle, there'd be no need for anyone to run as she had, right?)

She is also a girl who won't hesitate to toss a few fireballs around and play rough with the boys if she needs to - she is Carver's twin sister, after all, and that means she's just as much of a Hawke as the rest of the family. She may be the 'good girl' in terms of her warm-heartedness, but she's got that Hawke fire in her and is just as willing to take down a storm of darkspawn or other enemies with a bit of a gleeful glimmer. Though Hawke's personality may be either diplomatic, sarcastic, or aggressive, it is said that Malcolm Hawke took "everything as a joke," and Bethany clearly inherited some of that humor from him. She's not quite as constantly sarcastic or humorous as a sarcastic Hawke may be, but she knows how to dish a joke and take them. Her humor is more tempered, a bit quiet and less deliberate -- but nonetheless worth a chuckle.

Though Carver is generally the louder of the two when it comes to feeling overshadowed by the eldest Hawke sibling, Bethany also feels somewhat jealous and slighted. She will greatly approve when asked for her opinion on a matter or asked for help. Hawke is, after all, the golden first child. Bethany will occasionally scold Hawke for his or her decisions - she's as much Leandra's daughter as she is Malcolm's - but in the end she does both admire and envy her older sibling.

Beyond her magic, she is a girl of dreams and fancies. Beyond her magic, Bethany is still a person with wishes and desires just like any other. She has fantasies of living in elegant estates and worries about her state of dress when participating in grand Orlesian parties. She's naturally curious about the romantic (and oh she blushes at the thought of the sexual!) and even seems to develop a bit of a crush on Sebastian Vael, prince of Starkhaven. She's a Ferelden, and as any good Ferelden does, she values her dogs. While her magic has defined her fate and shaped her into the person she is, Bethany has never allowed it to completely control her and take over her life.

In part because of her time with the Circle (and the Circle is governed by the Chantry, a religious institution), Bethany's faith in the Maker and other Andrastrian principles have also developed. She believes wholeheartedly in the Maker's goodwill and his kindness, and she intends to use the gift of magic that he bestowed upon her to free the people so wrongly imprisoned. She is not preaching or didactic, but she has a lot of faith in the Maker's mercy whereas before the Circle, she was questioning (this is the religious institution, after all, that sought her capture).

She can be selfless and she can be passionate - but her world is somewhat narrow in that most of her passion is focused on her family. They were all she had, after all, being an apostate afraid of making the wrong friends. Her character-specific quest involves attempting to recover a lost estate for her woeful mother. She worries deeply for her mother, cares deeply for her siblings and her deceased father. Even if Hawke sides with the Templars, Bethany will fight for his or her cause despite fighting against her own people. And when asked if there were one thing she could change - of all the things that have happened including civil war within Kirkwall - she wishes she could have saved Carver, throw that show-off on his ass. In the end, despite her severed family, she still thinks of them.

And though she is not on the Grey Warden path, if she is taken along the Deep Roads Expedition and contracts the taint, Bethany becomes forever bitter about becoming a Grey Warden (you in fact gain disapproval from her for saving her life). While she understands that Hawke saved her life and is grateful for that, she also sees her fate as just a much slower death. Rather than running, she has become the chaser- a chaser of darkspawn. That has become her fate, now, her duty until her death. This reveals an interesting aspect about Bethany - she does not find purpose as Carver does, despite her magic finally finding a use and despite the fact that she no longer has to fear Templars and being taken to the Circle.

Between the three fates (dying, the Circle, and the Grey Wardens), Bethany is happiest in the Circle. She is not a fighter or a hunter - Bethany is merely a young woman trying to find her place in society, trying to find her community, trying so very hard to better herself.

Not being cursed with the taint helps, too.

ABILITIES: Bethany is a fully-trained mage with a Force Mage specialization. Becoming a Force Mage is no small deal - it takes a mastery of energy, of the raw forces of magic. As a result of this acute and precise control of magic, Force mages are somewhat immune to antagonistic magic also dealing in energy and raw magic.

During her time in the Circle, Bethany has become quite the powerful mage. Not only does she possess the discipline to become a Force mage, her stats are impressive as well. Her health and mana pools and magic are all equal, making her not quite as devastating in power but resilient. Her strength and fortitude, too, is higher than usual for a mage, meaning she's less likely to be knocked back from forceful attacks.

A majority of her spells will deal under the Force Mage and Elemental trees. She can also heal allies and paralyze enemies. A more detailed account of her spells may be provided if necessary.

POSSESSIONS: The Bloodline staff, her Circle mage robes, and the Miniature Family Portrait amulet.


samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: "Well, the Maker has a sense of humor."

THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: Bethany didn't cried when she first received the letter, scrawled in Gamlen's writing that was as greasy and despicable as he was. If she remembered correctly, she'd bowed her head in respect toward the straight-backed, stone-faced, and steely Templar who grunted at her thanks. She'd folded the letter and slipped it into her pouch for later before returning to the library and pulling down a few tomes on energy and its relation to raw magic. A good mage is a well-learned mage (or an imprisoned one, if the surlier Templars could be trusted with delicate things like opinions).

The stone of the Gallows stood unforgiving and unsympathetic in its foreboding gray and rough texture. Fellow mages, both the studious and the miserable, shuffled around her table or stopped briefly to say hello (she would look up and smile, of course, and send them on their way when they looked at her with so much concern and understanding - are you all right was too potent a knife for her to bear, and she didn't exactly like to lie, not really).

It was later - while with the senior enchanters, hand flourished and staff extended in preparation to master a new spell - that she dropped to her knees, ignored the alarmed instructors who crowded her. She wept, hands brought to her face as she truly, for the first time in years, wept with cheeks splotched an ugly red and shoulders heaving. The letter hadn't mentioned the details, only that her brother had found their mother dead. As one of the senior enchanters brought her to her feet, hand braced against her back to lead her to the dormitories, she prayed silently to the Maker.

Please, she begged because she could not escape these walls, could not find her brother and ask if her mother had died peacefully or at least painlessly, please watch over her, guide her soul and may she rest with Carver and father.

A heavy guilt settled as encompassing as her comforters and blankets, almost choking in its weight. She'd found something of a home here, something of a family in this community of mismatched and patchwork mages torn from their own blood and kin. She wondered if she'd been smiling as her mother, defenseless and hurting, passed away - much too kind of a word, but mother deserved nothing less than kindness. Bethany knew her mother well - Leandra must have surely thought of her children before herself despite whatever wounds plagued her. Despite Garrett's sheer thunderous talent, Leandra loved all her children equally.

It was the second time death robbed Bethany of the right to say goodbye.

Really, it was hardly a surprise - the life of the mage was a lonely and unloving one. They had little right to the pleasures everyone else enjoyed - that she herself had once had and overlooked. Running, plagued with paranoia and a tempering fear, colored life in Lothering a stark uneasy, but it was at least a free one. Perhaps she could have been there to help, perhaps she could have watched over their mother as Garrett ran off being the Champion as he so often did. Perhaps she couldn't have made a difference at all, but at least she'd have been able to say farewell.

"My magic will serve that which is best in me," she whispered, clutching at the soothing words of her father's fading memory (his voice was only a resonating echo, now, and the low timbre of it was lost in time along with the warm, broad touch of his hand). The fear of an emotionally weak mage already had the senior enchanters huddled outside her door in pressing whispers. But in the streets of Kirkwall stood her brother, strong and invulnerable. In him rested her faith, the power of the Hawke blood. For him she would remain firm and stable and worthy, as he and the rest of her family watching over her would want of her. "Not that which is most base."