show your sharp-tipped teeth

Name: MJ
Age: 29
Contact: keelahselai
Other Characters: Alistair, Clarke Griffin
Interests: Picking fights, waving pom poms for Templars.


Name: Dax
Canon/OC: OC
Journal: scuzzy
Race: Elf
Nationality: Free Marcher (Kirkwall)
Occupation: Thief/gang member/etc.
Age: 29, but he'd have to stop and think about it to be able to tell anyone that

History

Kirkwall happened.

More specifically, Dax is a born-and-bred alienage elf. His mother worked in a kitchen in Hightown; his father, estranged, was a smuggler who perished in the line of duty when Dax was a small child who didn't entirely understand who the man was or why he should care. He wound up the second-oldest of five siblings and half-siblings, including an elf-blooded human, the youngest and his favorite, who grew up to be massive enough to sling him over one shoulder and carry him around.

Their mother worked long hours, so Dax & Siblings grew up in a pack of barely-supervised alienage children that pipelined directly into Kirkwall's many street gangs. Dax started young and cute and never stopped. He got caught by the Guard exactly once, earning himself a beating but no further punishment because they had bigger things to worry about, and never let it happen again.

He was 17 when the Blight (supposedly) happened and Kirkwall was flooded with refugees. His mother died that same year—sickness, something Dax attributed to the Fereldans for no reason but coincidence—and left him jointly responsible for his younger siblings, alongside his older sister. But then she joined the Qun and left with them following the attack on Kirkwall. His oldest-younger brother died a year later participating in the same failed mugging attempt that lost Dax half of his left ear. The youngest—Dax's enormous baby—was caught in the crossfire of blood mages and Templars after the Chantry explosion; he lived, but he lost a leg and half his mind.

Afterwards, Dax hung around the alienage for a while with his two remaining siblings, and he came to admire Merrill (from a distance) for Not Being Like Other Dalish and actually helping elves. His brother and sister are still in Kirkwall, looking after one another, but Dax is one of the several alienage elves who followed Merrill to the Inquisition. To Help. Because he's Helpful.

Personality

Dax is a sharp-smiled, vicious little bastard who makes enemies much easier than friends, but he isn't an angry person. He's an intense person, for sure: quick-talking, fidgety, impatient, energetic, gleefully excitable. In the rare event he holds still, he's more taut than resting, always on the precipice of Doing Something. Sometimes it's an aggressive energy and that Something is violent. Other times it's not and that Something is flipping over to walk on his hands because he's bored of feet.

Anger, though, isn't really an issue. He's mean, spewing a steady stream of cheerful cruelty, but it's high-spirited hatred, all spikes and no fire. He's usually grinning. He doesn't lose his temper. If he goes after someone with his fists, it's because he's given the matter some consideration and decided they deserve it. It only happens so often because so many people suck so, so much. To wit,

• Humans suck, universally.
  
• Mages set his city on fire.
  
• Qunari also once set his city on fire.
  
• Dwarves are all Carta bastards, probably.
  
• The Dalish can talk to him when the Old Ways are edible.

But all of those impersonal generalizations are, for the most part, genuinely impersonal. He bickers in a dismissive, disinterested way that's more about picking on people than changing hearts and minds. He makes exceptions to his blanket resentment rarely but flippantly, perfectly content to label someone not like the other Xs rather than examine whether he's wrong. Meanwhile, he's protective of His People (city elves, and maybe the poorest dregs of other races if they're nice to him) only in a casual way. If he happens to be around to see them being mistreated he'll wrap his hands and dive in, as much because he likes a fight as to be helpful. But it isn't what he wakes up in the morning planning to do with his day. He's not a crusader. He's a petty criminal with only slightly less petty criminal ambitions. When the sky stops shitting out Fade garbage, he thinks he might like his own gang.

On a more positive note: he can be a good time if you aren't sensitive, he can take what he dishes out, he's a hard worker who won't let anyone in his vicinity slack off, and he's resilient as all hell. He's been hurt, he's lost nearly everyone, he has a couple of people he'd die for, all that jazz, but 99% of the people he meets will never be given even the smallest hint that he didn't spring into existence fully formed and looking for blood. His heart is a knot of scar tissue, not an open wound. There is no soft hidden underbelly. He's just an asshole.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Pros: Dax is very good at what he does, which historically has been: beating people up and taking their stuff, breaking into people's homes and taking their stuff, and avoiding the Kirkwall City Guard while carrying stuff he has taken from people. He's a formidable fighter when fighting with fists and teeth and improvised bludgeons is enough; he's barely competent with weapons beyond knowing which end of a dagger goes in, but he can do a lot of damage very quickly and quietly against anyone who's unarmed and unarmored. He knows his way around urban environments. He has a defiant anti-intellectual streak and a shortsightedness that makes him measure the worth of knowledge by how easily it can be converted into food, but beneath that he's very clever and catches onto things quickly when he can be bothered to try.

Cons: Tooooootal dick.

Inventory

Spiked brass knuckles.

A couple cheap knives.

Exactly one set of clothes and boots.

Recently acquired lighter-than-your-average-rogue Inquisition armor.

A pocketable piece of rubble, because he loves his city even if it is a shithole.

Motivation

He followed Merrill, and he's joining up to save the world or something. The Chantry gave him more meals as a child than the Dalish pantheon ever did, so as long as her followers are killing demons instead of Exalted Marching, he and Andraste are cool.