The Vaea Thread

A sneak peak at a few pages from Issue 3 of Dragon Age: Deception. link

I absolutely love Vaea's reaction to the things set off by the end of Issue 2. Also interesting to see that Aaron is teaching her to fight, so my hope of her being a companion went up a little more.

I must admit that I like what I've seen too. Of all the people that have been introduced in the comics, she is the one that most appeals to me.



Yes, this is what I like about her. Plus the way she helps out the alienage elves wherever she goes just because she can. I loved the way she put Calix in his place and how hard she tries to help Ser Aeron with his drink problem. I dare say we'll have a better idea of where they are taking her character soon.

Agreed. If only one character in these recent comics could become a companion, I'd choose Vaea immediately because of how much her character appeals to me. 

And yeah, I loved the way she put Calix in his place, first by giving him some sass ("Old people, huh? What can you do?" "Well, sleep with them, clearly." had me laughing) and then just straight up shoving him away hard and putting him in his place when he tries to put the moves on her. I can only imagine what she would have said next if Dorian interrupted. As for Aaron, I felt bad for her due to his reaction. Here she is trying to help him like he helped her, and he just goes on and says that "Perhaps you aren't inspiration enough". Considering the inspiration he was to her, that has to hurt. Even more when he tries to not let others down and keep his word, only to do break both of those things with her. I'm curious what this will do to their relationship, like how will they patch things up. 

I don’t really see that. We knew the qunari were attacking Tevinter from the end of Trespasser and nothing has really transpired (yet) that has to be addressed in a game.

nunziodefilippis Thanks for agreeing to answer questions about Vaea.
To start with a fun one, since she is working with the Inquisition now what would she think and how would she get along with the main cast in Dragon Age: Inquisition if they met?

Thank you for answering that. I'm very tempted to make a Vaea Inquisitor now. 

You may have already answered this somewhere else, but what was the inspiration you and Christina had when creating the Vaea the way you did?

Also if you would describe the character in a few sentences or so, how would you describe her? 

Vaea came from a campaign Christina and I were part of in a pen and paper RPG.  The system was Seventh Sea, and the characters of Aaron and Vaea were bit characters - NPCs that moved through the world and complicated the lives of the PCs.

Aaron was a wandering drunk Knight, who seemed incompetent and foolish, showing up in town to tell obviously false tales of his own greatness - a drunken Nathan Fillion from Castle.  Those who payed close attention discovered that Vaea was the real brains of the operation.  But the truth about them was that even that was a con, and Aaron was faking his stupidity and drunkenness and the duo was working for a higher power and held many of the secrets of the campaign.

So when we got the chance to write for Dark Horse and Bioware, we pitched a bunch of ideas.  One of them repurposed the duo with Ser Aaron as a real drunk who never got over Ostagar (which aged him up a bit), and Vaea being repurposed to be a city elf and a master thief.  The folks at Dark Horse liked the idea of Ser Aaron's drunkenness being a sort of self-medication due to PTSD.  The Bioware folks ran with that and made big character suggestions to pull that to the forefront, and we adjusted Vaea's backstory to make them connect to each other more.

And thus this version of the duo was born, partially based on our RPG, partially on our own adjustments, and a lot based on feedback from Dark Horse and Bioware.

A couple of sentences to describe Vaea...?

She's clever, but perhaps not as clever as she thinks she is.  She projects a cynical world view due to a truly tragic past, but deep in her core she is a believer in fairness and decency.  She has never worked an honest day in her life, but has never worked a dishonorable one.  She cares only about what is right, and never about what is required or what is legal.  She has lost so much family, that she is both wary of getting too close to people and secretly desperate for it.

nunziodefilippis

Ah, that's a really interesting genesis of the idea for their characters as well as seeing how it went from that to the culmination of their creation. Thank you for sharing. Also thank you for giving me the brief synopsis of her character. I put it into the original post for the thread.

And yay, I'm glad that you think she would get along with Leliana, Merrill, and Josephine. My four favorite Dragon Age characters could all be friends.

We must know how she feels about all the companions!

I’m not. I already got the answers for the ones I was most curious about.
Hmm, I wonder why you’re asking about those.