I'm a relatively inexperienced fanfic writer, but I do write gaming adventures (for free online publication, unpaid) and once Green Ronin puts out the Dragon Age game maybe I'll see what I can put together. :) As such, this is one of those newbie kind of tales, where I'm rambling through much of my first play through, capturing my thoughts from the PC point of view. I'm surprising nervous about posting this, even though you're obviously all supportive of us newbs. ;)

This is about my elf mage, and I tried to think what the Tower was really like. Obviously, we have some stories that have captured some of the same feelings I've had. Mine are based partly on having attended a really rigorous engineering school, where we got five hours of sleep a night and wondered what to do with all that free time when we went into the workforce. We called it "Hell Sweet Home" and it's always been difficult to describe to people who didn't go through it. I figure that's nothing to what a mage in Dragon Age goes through.

I'm currently calling the story "Discipline", but I'm not wedded to the idea if people have better ones.

Obviously, this contains spoilers for the mage origin, and in general through Lothering for this chapter.

"No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline." - Seneca

Lothering

I was one of the lucky ones. I was found at the age of four. Why, you might wonder, does that make me lucky? I barely remember my parents. The ones who were older remember what it was to be loved before being brought to that cold, sterile place.

Given the nature of magic, how it's part of one's being, even at four I wasn't allowed to just play. I had long lessons on the evils of demons, on how to imagine building a wall. I was told bed time stories that gave me nightmares that woke me screaming in the middle of the night.

Not, I might add, as bad as the darkspawn nightmares, but I'm a grown woman now. It's quite another thing to have nightmares about having a demon reshape your flesh in its own image when you're at an age where most children are concerned with keeping out of the mud or tattling that Bobby hit them. More senior mages were usually stationed near the children and apprentice dorms, in case they needed to intervene for the nightmares. Or if the nightmares really were a demon latching onto a mage's sleeping mind in the Fade and taking them over.

It happened to another girl who was taken the same year I was brought to the tower. Apparently it wasn't even a powerful demon, just a rage demon. She broke the neck of a boy who had teased her for her freckles before the templars put her down like a rabid animal. I suppose that's what she was by then.

I'm rambling, and that's not good for me. When I think about this too much, I get depressed. I don't have much to cheer me up these days – the Blight is trying to kill us all, for one. Teryn Lohgain has declared all of us traitors to his usurped throne.

When I've looked in a mirror, I always seem to be frowning. I look tired. When we aren't fighting, we've been traveling as far as we can when it's light. I stay up late poring over my books, trying to learn stronger magics, so that I can keep my companions alive. Morrigan has offered a few pointers, but I can't bring myself to learn some of the magics she knows – the entropy effects make my skin crawl. The mind blast, though, that has been invaluable. I know a healing spell, and a cold blast. It was horrific the first time someone hit something I froze and it broke into thousands of pieces… even more horrible when it thawed. Very effective, though.

Having her in camp makes me nervous, obviously. Still, her mother is a very accomplished mage. The necessary discipline must have been drummed into her. On the other hand, she, well, she seems like just the type that a demon would be able to persuade. I am more than a little glad that she makes her camp away from the rest of us. It gives us time to prepare if something happens.

At least she isn't a blood mage. Not that I feel I could identify one anymore. Jowan… he was a little like an older brother. He came into the tower the same year I did, as well, but he was eight, I think. We shared classes, though, and I used to help him; he never quite caught on as fast as I did, which I suppose is why he turned to the blood magic. Or was he telling the truth, that he only turned to it because he wanted to get out of there with that girl?

I understand why they forbid romance between the magi and the templars. Who knows when you might have to cut off your lover's head when a demon takes him?

And I suppose that was how I originally thought of Alistair – within moments of meeting him, I knew he had trained as a templar, one of those figures of doom hanging over our heads if we failed to keep the demons out. Admittedly, he also clearly isn't the dour shadow that almost every templar I've ever met is.

Alistair makes me nervous for other reasons, actually. He makes me laugh, and that's dangerous to my carefully wrapped emotions. Mage apprentices who can't control their emotions have them controlled for them. The Tranquil. The thought makes me shudder. On the other hand, what's the difference between someone who can't feel emotions and someone who can't let herself feel them? Sometimes I wonder if he is trying to flirt with me. You don't see much of that in the tower either. Relationships weren't really forbidden, but again, it is difficult to really get far when you're receiving dire warnings about keeping control. And, well, apprentices all live in dorms anyway. I've heard tales of apprentices sneaking off to classrooms after hours for a quick liason on a stone floor, but I'm not sure how much I credit them. Again, the Templars keep pretty close tabs on us.

Real magi, ones who have passed their Harrowing, are another matter. Although I wouldn't describe most of what goes on as a "relationship". Attachments are dangerous, because they put another handle on you for demons to grasp at, to tempt you about. I suppose it's better than nothing. I suppose. Again, motions without substance.

It was very kind of him to tell me about the nightmares and why. He does have more in common with me than Morrigan, for all that she's a witch, or Leilani. I suppose he's even more unlucky; he was old enough to know those who raised him before going to the Chantry, even if the arl wasn't terribly close to him. I can just imagine him yelling into the quiet, but it's the kind of thing that would have gotten an apprentice strict observation. He makes me think of the tales I read in my sparse spare time, but I'm not sure yet if he reminds me of the heroic ones or the comic ones.

These people are looking to me for leadership, and I have no idea why. Before leaving with Duncan, I hadn't left the tower since I was brought there. I threw up the first time I blew up a darkspawn with my magic and his blood exploded all over everyone and… enough of that. Ugh. Today, we were attacked by peasants who wanted to collect Lohghain's bounty on us. Simple, starving peasants. At least some of them died for it, and some of them were at my hand. And then I argued for the release of a confessed murderer, because he might be able to help us. I almost threatened a priest to do it! Fortunately, Leilani was willing to follow my lead, Maker knows why, and convinced the revered mother.

She followed my lead despite meeting me earlier that day. Because she has dreams sent by the Maker. I have no words. But I let her come with us. Maybe if I keep adding people to our party, someone else will lead us… but I think that's probably just dreaming on my part, no more plausible than Leilani's are.

Here I am, freed from the tower, from the ever-present guardians, and there is nothing right in the world. Blood mage friends, crazy companions, or murderous ones, the Blight coming to kill us all, and people depending on my barely tested skills. It's a wonder I don't throw myself off a cliff.

After all that ramble… I'm keeping a journal because I think it's likely that I won't survive this war against the Blight and want someone to know what my thoughts were. If anyone cares.