At long last, Conrad gets a bio!
Conrad is the co-host for the morning announcements at Saint Cassian’s (alongside @kingcho’s Enid Crossings) and the semi-host of a low-budget community radio station. His voice is literally inescapable, hence being designated the “loudest boy in town.” Despite his stereotypical “bully jock from an 80s teen movie” look and weird local celebrity status, Conrad is never mean on purpose, but he’s not exactly attuned to the feelings of others, and frequently runs his mouth and says the worst possible thing for a given situation. His concept is loosely inspired by a niche genre of campy 1950s and 60s novelty songs about lovable teens dying in horrendous car crashes. Practically joined at the hip with @kingcho’s finest loser, Enid Crossings. Bonus info: he has four brain cells on the best of days, seems to drive that terribly on purpose, he’s a massive ham, his sense of self crumbles without an “audience,” he has canonically violated the Geneva convention, and word around the school says that he and Enid are more than just friends.
(Psst! For more info, check out his Karnak-style intro spiel with stage directions below the cut. If you still need more, follow his tag here on my blog, or ask me directly if you want!)
“Conrad Curtis. Born August 5th. Leo…evidently. Favorite ride: the plate-breaking game.
Born into a long-running small-town-celebrity tradition, Conrad inherited a ‘poster boy’ spot on Uranium’s very own community radio station, 104.5. With a pair of enthusiastically supportive parents, a spot on what could charitably be called the Saint Cassian’s baseball team, and excessive peer adulation, Conrad has never known anything short of praise and smooth sailing…with the sole exception of the day he learned that he had only been raised Catholic so that he could eventually become ex-Catholic, as all his forefathers had been.”
[A random cardboard cutout of the Pope appears from behind part of a broken carnival game. CONRAD throws a fastball at it, knocking it down.]
“In perhaps his first introduction to a regular human with a regular life, he befriended Enid Crossings during their tenure in a school production of Bye Bye Birdie. Enid ran tech backstage. Conrad played…”
[CONRAD performs an abhorrent, Elvis-esque hip swivel.]
“…himself. Despite the fact that Enid had caused his father’s infertility due to grievous testicular trauma during Field Day games only a few years prior— don’t act that part out, please— the two quickly became inseparable, operating as the school’s morning announcers.
Hotshot. Golden boy. Voice of the North. Uranium’s radiant son.
Conrad Curtis. The loudest boy in town.”
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this post is under a cut in case anyone would consider it to be DA:D spoilers, as the things it mentions came from the leak a year ago (spoiler warning for link) that included screenshots and a gif of the game. (the things this post mentions are therefore not new information and this does not reference a new leak)
I'm just thinking again about Rook (which seems to be the PC's name or title) and the imagery conjured by the name. ◕‿◕ this post is just speculation and overanalyzing for fun. also this post is a now-finished draft from my draft section from a while back.
I think it would work as a surname (like "Hawke") or a codename (think Leliana's spies and contacts such as "Butler", "Farrier", "Butcher", "Charter", etc although these are all professions that end in "-er" or "or" iirc). it could also be a title (like Warden, Hero, Champion, Inquisitor, Herald) or a nickname - like maybe it's short for "Rookie", it's a Varric-assigned nickname and it references how the DA:D PC is the newest member of the team after he recruits them?
I think it sounds catchy, and cool - it's snappy and short, Hawke-like in this way. and it sounds like the kind of name a spy or secret agent might have in a fantasy, superhero or sci-fi-type setting.
a rook is a black bird, Corvus frugilegus, a member of the corvid family. rooks have been perceived as vermin and nuisances by people in the past, and persecuted due to this. they bear a resemblance to their crow and raven relatives, both birds which have a large cultural footprint and lots of symbolism in areas such as folklore and art. Hawke obviously also had a bird motif going on from their surname and associated art pieces. corvids also bring to mind the Antivan Crows (assassins, thieves, & spies), reminding of the stuff about how in this game the PC may be trying to operate under the radar, and the reporting on a previous iteration of DA:D which had the game concept as being focused on spies and heists. rook plumage is inky black, bringing to mind darkness and shadow.
from the bird angle, a "rook" sounds neat opposite a "wolf" imo. wolves are obviously another animal that have large footprints in culture, myth and folklore. in the natural world there is symbiosis sometimes between wolves and corvids when hunting/feeding. there are lots of photos of wolves and corvids together.
a colony of rooks is called a rookery. of course, the fortress of Skyhold has a rookery. it's from there that Inquisition Spymaster Leliana operates (operated) sending her black birds on missions with letters and messages to her many agents and spies throughout Thedas. what if Rook is one of Leliana's... "rooks"? a spy or agent of the remnants of the Inquisition.
A rook is also defined as "A cheat or swindler; someone who betrays" [noun], "mist, fog" [noun] and "to cheat or swindle" [verb]. it's also a type of trick-taking card game. these sorts of things bring to mind a rogueish, stealthy aspect, and the shady, shadowy dealings and card-game played in Minrathous Shadows.
a rook is also a chess piece. they're castle-like (since "rook" can also mean a castle or fortification) and usually have their top in the shape of a battlement. they can move in any direction along a rank or file on a chessboard on which they stand (horizontal/vertical, not diagonal). they can also do the "castling" move. in history, rooks have also been called towers, castles, rectors and marquesses. in chess, each player starts the game with two rooks at opposite ends of the first rank. chess itself is a game of strategy and tactics. "the chessmaster" as a trope is a character type who manipulates events, tugging on strings and moving 'pieces' into place on a metaphorical chessboard. [Solas' DA:I dialogue about his past, like the one he has with Sera about cells of spies/agents, hark to this]
in the castling move,
"Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over. Castling is permitted only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved; the squares between the king and the rook are vacant; and the king does not leave, cross over, or finish on a square attacked by an enemy piece. Castling is the only move in chess in which two pieces are moved at once."
castling rules often cause confusion, even occasionally among high-level players. historically the move has its roots in the "king's leap", of which there were two forms and which arose in part it seems due to increasing importance of king safety as other pieces were given increased powers through time as the game developed. "the king would move once like a knight, or the king would move two squares on its first move. The knight move might be used early in the game to get the king to safety or later in the game to escape a threat." basically it moves the king away to safety and the rook to a more active position. there is also kingside castling and queenside castling. I wonder, symbolically.. is Rook more the king's rook, or the queen's rook? (reminds me of the Left Hand and Right Hands of the Divine hh). who or what is the king in this hypothetical analogy? the World of Thedas itself? as a castle or fortress.. Rook is the bulwark against what's to come? [over-thinking ik ik, tis just for fun hh].
by now we're all familiar with the chess game Solas plays in banter dialogue with Iron Bull during DA:I. in the in-world chess game, rooks are called towers. Solas moves his right-hand tower once. at a later point in the game, Iron Bull's "Arishok" piece takes Solas' left-hand tower, getting a check and leaving him feeling triumphant. Bull asks Solas wth he is doing as Bull takes Solas' remaining tower. "Your last tower, by the way". Bull, a spy and liar himself, bears down on Solas' pieces "with his full army", thinking a win is in sight. Undeterred, Solas executes a few moves in a sneaky plan and entraps Bull in a checkmate, winning the game after sacrificing various pieces to enact his plan.
rook also brings to mind the Tower tarot card and its meanings. it's associated with sudden, disruptive revelation and potentially destructive change. it connotes danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction, higher learning, and liberation, as well as adversity, calamity, deception, ruin and unforeseen catastrophe. reversed, it connotes things such as negligence, carelessness, apathy and vanity (vanity.. pride). in this depiction of the Tower tarot, lightning strikes from the sky, striking a crown (hubris) off the top of a tower and setting it alight as people fall from the tower to their doom. this imagery and the upright meanings of the card bring to mind the sudden massive change Solas seeks to bring about (destroying the Veil), the revelations and liberation for some that it might bring, his identity as Fen'Harel Lord of Tricksters (deception) as well as the destruction he seems to think the Veil destroying action will cause ("as the world burns in the raw chaos"...). the 'Tower scene' has also already played out once before in Thedosian history, when Solas created the Veil and sealed the Evanuris away, leading to the fall of Arlathan and its wonders. in modern Thedas, Morrigan and Flemeth (as well as possibly some side 'prophecy' type things) both allude to a big change coming to the world.
in DA:I, the Tower tarot card is ofc none other than Solas' ending card, if he is not romanced. in the DA:I version of the card, we see Solas, cloaked in a dark robe and holding a mage staff under a half-moon or eclipse. darkness seeps from his shadow, stark against the orange sky, and blends with the giant black Dread Wolf, looming ominously and open-mouthed above him with its many eyes. (the Tower tarot card Solas scene is later referenced in DA:D promotional art and DA:D-era in-world murals). it makes sense to have assigned this to Solas given the above discussed meanings of the Tower tarot card, but it's a verrry inchresting choice imo to then give "Rook" as a name/title for the DA:D PC.
and most inchrestingly, there's the symbol from the front of Mark Darrah's mysterious Red Book. this mysterious red book shows "a flaming rook" on the cover. the book was an internal guide for developer and publisher eyes only that summarized the vision for DA:D, in its Joplin iteration. we know that the Joplin project has since been revised to an extent that it was the newly codenamed Morrison instead, but the red book is known to still contain plenty of ideas likely to appear in DA:D. most pages of the book remain highly classified. it's the symbol on the front that's of most interest to us though for the purposes of this post. there is a castle, tower, or rook, like a fortress or the chess piece. above the tower, a fire burns, reminding us of the burning tower from the Tower tarot card imagery and what that symbolizes, as well as Solas' "world burning in the raw chaos" line from Trespasser. inside the fire is a wolf, the Dread Wolf, in a now very-familiar and repeated motif in DA:D art, merch, murals, teasers etc. whatever else "rook" may connote, it feels like it's not an accident at all that the PC's name is apparently "Rook", given this depiction of a fiery rook and the Dread Wolf together.
what do you think? ^^
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I cant take this anymore. Take him. I don’t have a name for him nor for the others but I love them all. I’ve explained a bit for Age’s dad’s personality and his story. I’m gonna talk about a certain battle from AOC so spoiler warning for that. It’s not connected to the story at all but just in case
There’s this battle called “a Knight’s nightmare” or something like that, and you basically have to go rescue Link who is trapped in a small area completely surrounded by guardians. It’s actually a quite challenging battle if you’re unaware of what’s happening cuz Link’s health goes down VERY quickly. It’s a sad battle really cuz it’s implied that Link is terrified of guardians and being surrounded by them, and in botw, that’s essentially how he died. Anyways I miiiight have this battle happen with his dad involved, but it gets so bad that his dad ends up losing his arm. This is after the calamity, but he loses his ranking and is pushed to retire, living in Hateno with his wife and daughter again. He doesn’t have that much time to be with Link unfortunately since Link is doing heroic work, but at least he can see his daughter more often.
His dad is a very positive man, a guy who tried to be positive even when things are bad. He’s a glass half full kinda guy, but losing his arm was very hard on him since he is an active person and gets stir crazy really easily. Out of stubbornness he does learn how to do most of his activities with just one arm. He shield surfs at mount Hylia a lot, learned how to use his sword with one arm, and a whole lot other things. It helped with him being forced to stay home, but he does miss the traveling and the action. Tho he’s just happy to spend time with his family, he only wishes that Link could be there more often.
He was also close with the other bodyguard of the king. There were two in AOC who were with Rhoam all the time tho I don’t remember what they look like lol, but I think he grew close with his partner. I’m sure he misses the talks they used to have. Rhoam is a very strict and serious man so I doubt he was super close with the king, but he was close enough to have some pleasant conversations. But the looming calamity stifled a lot of friendly conversations
Also when I was designing him, I always had Leon’s facial hair in my mind, so you know that Linebeck is gonna confuse the two of them SO much. The biggest difference tho is that they’re almost a foot apart in height (Leon is almost 6’ while this guy is around 5’-5’2) I guess the missing arm and chipped ear are good differences as well lol
Sorry for the rambling it is late and I can’t stand not rambling at times so take this dbsksbksb
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