Overview[]
Physical Appearance[]
Clover’s most notable feature has always been her eyes–large and round, a striking ice blue, well known for stares that seem to pierce right through people. Her hair, jet black and pin-straight, going all the way down to her waist, is most often worn in a single, slightly messy braid. Her skin is a dark olive tone, with a few freckles across her face, and while she has no tattoos anywhere, she usually has heavy black eyeshadow around her eyes, almost like a mask. She prefers simple clothing, outfits that are easy to move around in, easy to sneak around in–darker colors are usually what she gravitates towards, when she has the option. She stands at roughly 5’3”, and is very petite.
During Origins, her face is mostly unblemished, aside from a faint scar on her upper lip. During the Battle of Denerim, she receives a wound that leaves her with a long, prominent scar through her right eye. Sometime between the end of Awakening and the start of Inquisition, there’s an event that leaves her with burn scars covering the right side of her face/parts of her back, chest, and right leg.
Personality[]
Clover isn’t an unpleasant person, not by a long shot. A little bit intimidating, maybe, and not usually concerned with traditional social graces, but not mean. It’s just, she has an unusually bold and direct manner of speaking can be off-putting to people, and a lot of the time it’s completely intentional. Her strategy for talking to people is less “act like a normal person so that people like me, and the two of us are on equal footing in this interaction”, and more “just say slightly unsettling/direct/outright weird shit to throw people off and give me the upper hand in this conversation”. It’s about as helpful for making friends as you might think. She’s not brutally honest with people because she values honesty, necessarily, it’s just that people don’t generally expect her to outright and casually tell them that she wants them to stop talking, or that she, say murdered an entire estate full of people once. She relies on the unexpected, maybe a little too much–if she’s not unsettlingly honest enough to chase people off, she feels defenseless around them. This is also one of her best qualities, though, her spontaneity, the fact that she’s such a wild card it’s pretty much impossible for her enemies to figure out what she’s going to do next. It’s also what makes her such an incredibly fun person to be around when someone takes the time to earn her trust and get to know her.
People who take the time to get to know Clover, who she’s comfortable enough around to be close to, will see an entirely different side of her. She smiles a lot more in private, when she’s with people she trusts, and there’s more to her sense of humor than just trying to catch people off guard by saying weird things. Sure, sometimes her humor is a little bit dark, but she never makes jokes at people’s expenses, she’s never cruel. She’s mischievous, prone to playing pranks and just absolutely fucking with people for the fun of it if she thinks they deserve it, and while she still does take great pleasure in confusing people, in saying shit that just does not make sense that you kind of just have to roll with, the people closest to her will usually be able to tell exactly what she’s saying under all the nonsense, if anything at all.
One issue that does come up the closer she gets to people, though, is that she has a blind spot for people she cares about. Clover’s trust is a hard thing to earn, but it’s a hard thing to lose, too–especially as years go on, she simply doesn’t want to lose people, so she’s almost too forgiving. When a situation comes down to the good of one person she cares for deeply, and the good of multiple people who she doesn’t even know, she’ll pick the one person every time. She doesn’t trust Anora, but makes her queen because she knows Alistair doesn’t want to rule. She forgives Anders, despite his wrongdoings, because before he started a war, he was her friend. You would have to really, really, really fuck up to get Clover to turn on you–otherwise, she’ll stand by almost anything.
But she doesn’t really befriend people who have the capacity for those kinds of fuck ups. Of course, nobody can tell that kind of thing for certain, especially not years in advance, but Clover is a pretty decent judge of character. She’s extremely observant, good at reading people, good at knowing when she’s being lied to–she can be fooled, like anyone, but you would have to be a damn good liar. And when she doesn’t trust people, she doesn’t usually hide it unless she has a specific reason for doing so, a reason to convince them that she’s on their side. She’s always civil, it’s not like she goes out of her way to just be like, “By the way, fuck you,” to people she doesn’t like, but if it’s brought up in some way, she really will just say “I don’t trust you, and I probably never will” to someone’s face. When it’s important, though, when the situation is dire, she does her best not to let her feelings towards people get in the way. She sees the bigger picture, always, and it bothers her when other people don’t–she’ll help people when she can, she has no problems with side-quests, as it were, as long as she has the time, but she has no patience for running people’s errands, navigating people’s politics, jumping through hoops just to get people to do what’s necessary. She had no problem helping the Dalish because the issue with the Werewolves was directly impacting their ability to help. If she didn’t handle the problem in some way, they literally were not going to be able to do anything for her. Orzammar was another story–the endless politics frustrated her, the refusal from both Bhelen and Harrowmont to do anything until they had their way. It was infuriating to her that they wouldn’t put aside what she saw as just a petty rivalry to fight against a literal fucking Blight. Clover takes the direct approach when she can, doesn’t like wasting her time on things that are not only unnecessary, but sometimes hurting people rather than helping them. When she can, she avoids politics all together. When people insist on pulling her into them, she tries to take control of the situation whether they like it or not, and fix it the way she wants to. And she’s almost always pragmatic about it, she’ll do what she thinks is best, even if it’s not always right.
Talents and Skills[]
Clover is pretty much a master of stealth. She knows how to slip into the shadows, how to use her size to her advantage and make herself unnoticeable, to hide. She’s difficult to read, making it easy for her to bluff, and she’s extremely observant, quickly picking up details that other people might not. She’s good at acting on her feet and thinking up plans on the spot, and usually fares better when improvising than she does when trying to stick to a plan. She takes opportunities when she sees them, and she’s very good at seeing opportunities. She reads people well and finds it easy to determine when she’s being lied to and what’s being lied about, and she’s good at investigation and putting details together into one coherent story.
Her fighting is, obviously, one of her greatest skills, one that she has honed over years both training with her mother and without. But fighting isn’t the only thing she learned from her mother. There are the variety of other rogueish talents, the lockpicking, pickpocketing, the subtle, underhand sabotage. And then there is the determination, the endurance, the refusal to give up no matter how much it hurts to keep going, which is a skill all of its own. Clover will fight to her very last breath, no matter how hopeless things look.
Biography[]
History[]
Born in 9:10 Dragon, the only child of Adaia and Cyrion Tabris, Clover lived about as peaceful of a life as one can hope for in the Denerim Alienage.
Many people thought Cyrion and Adaia to be a strange pair. Cyrion was a man of few words, gentle and calm, even in his youth. Adaia was the opposite, spirited and rebellious, too bold for her own good and last in a long line of troublemakers. But the kind of love they found with each other was something rare, something genuine, and most figured it really wasn’t their place to question such things.
Clover was...a bit of a strange child. Adults in the Alienage would comment that she was a cute baby, but there was something unsettling about the way she would watch people. She learned to talk, they would say, but never seemed to bother learning when she shouldn’t–she asked too many questions, spoke out of turn, spoke with the kind of boldness that could only have been inherited from Adaia Tabris. That’s not to say she was cruel or careless with her words, just that she always spoke her mind, even in situations where many thought a child had no right to.
Though adults weren’t always sure what to think of her, the other children loved her. She was an easy person to talk to and befriend, and she thought of almost everyone she met as a friend unless given reason to think otherwise. She had a sense of adventure and mischief that made her the person to go to when looking for fun, even if it ran the risk of getting in trouble, and to put it simply, she was just a popular kid. One person who would be seen with her quite often was her cousin, Soris, who was a year younger than her and a bit timid. He lived fairly close, and he wasn’t nearly as good at talking to people as Clover was, but he admired her and tended to stick close when he could.
After the death of Cyrion’s oldest sister, when Clover was six years old, he brought her young daughter Shianni to live with them. Soris and his parents spent a lot more time at Clover’s house in the weeks that followed, the entire family brought together in mourning. Though Clover and Soris were too young to fully comprehend it all, it was clear that Shianni, who wasn’t much older than either of them, was facing a terrible loss, and they did everything they could to make her feel welcome. Shianni quickly came out of her shell and started to show who she truly was, loud and energetic with a spirit that rivalled Clover’s in intensity, and the the three of them became fast friends. From there, Clover, Shianni, and Soris were inseparable.
They were a tight-knit trio, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for anyone else to get involved in their fun. They were more than happy to rope any other interested parties into their adventures and games, to start huge snowball fights every winter, to convince everyone they could to come outside and dance in the rain. Clover, with her competitive and slightly domineering nature, most often took leadership of their little pack, which led to the occasional argument with Shianni, who was just as eager to take charge. Between Shianni’s quick temper and Clover’s refusal to admit defeat, the two of them got into a fair number of fights both verbal and sometimes physical as children, though it was rare that any conflict would last more than an hour before they made up and pretended the whole thing just never happened. Soris acted as the voice of reason, trying to lead them to compromise, or even on a few occasions declaring that both of them were being stupid and that he was going to make whatever decision they were fighting over. But Clover’s desire to be the leader of anything is something that she grew out of as she matured, and group dynamics shifted in response, changing for the better.
When Clover was eleven, the Alienage was purged.
The attacks came at night. It had been a late night for the trio, a night of discussion and jokes and staying up way later than they were supposed to. Her memories of the night are still hazy, they still come to her in pieces that she can’t entirely put together, but she can remember enough–she can remember the sounds of her community erupting into panic, the sounds of her cousins crying, the way that the flames looked as they swallowed up half of her entire world. She can remember running out of her house without knowing where she was running to, one hand clutching Shianni’s like a lifeline, the other gripping the back of Soris’s shirt.
The fires died out as the sun rose, and as the began to fade and the residents took a moment to collectively pull themselves together, the kids learned, along with Cyrion and Adaia that Soris’s house had been one of the first set aflame. Had he not been spending the night at Clover’s house, he likely would have been killed. Just as his parents were.
Clover was older now than she had been after Shianni arrived, and understood death more than she had then, but was no better equipped to deal with it. Soris was devastated, left with nothing, and it was decided without hesitation that he would remain in Cyrion and Adaia’s care. There had been great losses throughout the community, and the entire Alienage was in mourning. For once in her life, Clover felt as though the fight had been taken right out of her. She didn’t turn to anger like Shianni, or to despair like Soris, she was just confused. She was frightened, suddenly unsure of herself and her surroundings, feeling like at any moment the entire world was going to collapse underneath her. She didn’t really know what to do with that.
It was shortly after the purge that Adaia began to really train Clover. She had taught her things before, sure, things like how to pick locks, how to pick pockets, how to hide daggers on nearly every part of her body and which parts of other people’s bodies were the best places to hit. But training her was different. Training Clover was teaching her how to fight, how to wield her blades to defend herself and the people around her, how to kill. Cyrion didn’t approve of it at first, argued with Adaia that she was too young to learn these kinds of things. Adaia argued back that if she hadn’t learned to fight as a child, she would have been dead long before she met him. She wasn’t about to leave her daughter unprepared. Clover threw herself wholeheartedly into her lessons, and Soris frequently joined her, though he wasn’t quite as good with daggers as he was with a sword. Shianni was content just to watch and cheer them on–she wasn’t too fond of weapons, she was just fine with her fists. As the years passed, Clover trained harder and harder, and fighting became like a second nature to her. It was something to do, a way to maintain some feeling of control over her life. A feeling of security. Slowly, everything began to heal, to return to something normal, something like it was before.
And then, when Clover was fourteen, her mother was killed.
anyways Clover’s Got Depression maybe someday i’ll finish this section but not now lmfao!
In-game[]
The day Clover turned twenty, her father told her that he had started looking to find her a husband. Without saying anything in response, she left the house and didn’t return until the next morning, and it was only then that she told him, very calmly, that she really didn’t want to get married. But she knew it wasn’t really her choice, and Cyrion, at least having the decency to seem apologetic, told her as much. She didn’t really care, is the thing. Sure, it was annoying to have the choice taken away from her, annoying that she had to get married at all, because she was perfectly content as she was. But as much as she joked about escaping, about sneaking her way out of it, running off too join the Dalish, it really wasn’t something she rebelled against super intensely. It was just an annoying thing she was going to have to do, and her husband-to-be was just some random guy she was going to have to get used to having around. While she wasn’t actively looking for a way out of it, she also wasn’t pretending to be happy about the idea. Cyrion figured that annoyed resignation and cooperation was good enough, and the date was set.
→ A Day for Celebration:
Of course, the wedding didn't go as planned. We know this. The ceremony was interrupted by Vaughan Kendells, who kidnapped a number of women from the wedding party, including Clover and Shianni. After the rest of the women were either separated from her or killed, Clover was left with no choice but to fight her way to rescue Shianni and escape, with help from Soris. It was a huge turning point for her as a person, the first time she had actually killed anyone. It wasn’t something she thought about much, in the moment, she didn’t have time. The entire time that the two of them were running through the estate, it was like a part of her had shut off completely, her mind refusing to even linger on what she was doing. This was what she had trained for, after all. This was what she had trained to do.
After killing Vaughan, Clover accepted that she was going to be killed. She found that, strangely, she was okay with that. In that room, with corpses on the floor and the splattered blood of numerous men drying on her face, Clover gave her beloved brother and sister one last hug and told them to get out. She knew that Soris's involvement put him in danger, and she knew that, even though Shianni had done nothing wrong, simply the fact that there was blood on her dress would be enough to call for an execution. All she knew in that moment was that she couldn't let anything happen to them, whatever the cost may be for her. After making sure that the halls were clear of any guards, Soris escaped the estate with the still half-conscious Shianni, and Clover remained, preparing herself to face the music.
But before that, for the first time since her mother's death, Clover broke down. On her hands and knees in a pool of Vaughan Kendells' blood, Clover broke, shaking and sobbing and praying to the Maker she barely believed in that her death wouldn't be for nothing, that her family would be able to live long, unrealistically peaceful lives. And after a few rather cathartic minutes of her emotional outburst, Clover took a deep breath, pulled herself together, and made a show of leaving the estate without even trying to hide. She passed guards along the way, she made sure of it, and their reactions almost made her laugh - the way that they moved towards her like they were going to try to stop her, only to see the sheer amount of blood she was drenched in and the daggers she held in both her hands. The way that they parted, watched in horror as she passed. Part of her loved it. She was ready to die, knowing she had successful struck fear into so many wicked hearts.
She didn’t die, though. We know this too.
Clover didn't want to be a Grey Warden. She stayed silent as Duncan conscripted her, said her goodbyes and followed him out of the Alienage, but she was furious. Without her execution, she feared, the blame would inevitably fall on someone else in the Alienage, or worse, the entire Alienage as a whole, which is exactly what she had been trying to avoid. She knew, of course, that he thought he was doing something good, and she couldn’t hold that against him forever–she didn’t say a single word to him until they were halfway to Ostagar, when finally she thanked him for what he had tried to do and refused to say anything more than that. She made a decision, then, because whether she liked it or not, she was alive, and she wasn’t just going to waste the chance she’d been given. But at the same time, she considered herself to be living on borrowed time, a second chance that she didn’t necessarily want or feel that she deserved. She felt as though she’d cheated death, and any second he was going to come to collect. So she decided, then, to shut herself off, to let him come. She decided that eventually, she was going to have to sacrifice herself, and she wasn’t going to complain. She was just going to do it.
→ Joining the Grey Wardens/Tainted Blood
Arriving at Ostagar, Clover just did her best to keep her head down and not draw any attention to herself, an attempt which failed immediately when upon meeting King Cailan one of the first things she said to him was that she killed an arl’s son. Nice one, Clover. She met Alistair, and kind of intimidated him, but thought he was a decent guy. She spent most of her time before preparations for the Joining started petting all of the mabari and comforting the ones who were injured. The Joining preparations went smoothly, though Clover wasn’t particularly sociable. She lingered behind the group slightly, separated herself from them and just fired arrows from a distance when she needed to. She found the flower for the injured mabari and shut down most attempts at Alistair and the other recruits’ attempts at starting conversation with her. The Joining itself was a change in tone–even after the things he had seen in Denerim, it was hard to keep it together watching Daveth die, and before she could even fully process that, Jory was dead too. With Alistair and Duncan both watching her expectantly, and fresh blood now splattered on her face, she remembered the decision she had made upon arriving and drank without thinking twice.
→ Tower of Ishal
Though Alistair seemed irritated by their task, Clover was just glad to be doing something. Still in disbelief at the fact that she survived the Joining at all, she had the suspicion that she wouldn’t be so fortunate again, and fully expected to die during the battle. Calmly resigned to that, and determined to be of as much use as possible before it happened, she set off.
When again, she didn’t die, she was almost annoyed. All this dramatic internal preparation for death, and she was getting nothing? If Shianni and Soris had been around, the three of them would have had a good laugh about it. Instead, Clover woke up after being overrun by darkspawn to see the mysterious witch she had met in the woods standing by her bedside. She did her best to remain calm even as the information given to her by Morrigan got worse and worse, and was more grateful for Alistair’s life being saved than she was for her own–he was the Grey Warden after all, not her, he was the one who would know what to do. As much as she hated admitting that she didn’t know something, she didn’t have much choice. She knew no more about the Grey Wardens than what Duncan had told her, which is to say, not much. Alistair would be useful to have around as she tried to fix this mess, which she already knew she was going to have to do.
She was also glad to welcome Morrigan along, yet another useful asset to the team that was forming, regardless of Alistair’s reluctance. She had the feeling that the conflict quickly building up between them might be a problem later, but all she was really worried about then was the fact that the fate of the world was more or less on her shoulders, and that wasn’t really what she’d signed up for when she decided to put a sword through Vaughan Kendell’s heart. But here she was. As much as she was internally reeling from the events of the past day, she put on a mask of indifference and didn’t let it show that anything had affected her, going with the flow.
→ Lothering and the Imperial Highway
When she saw the mabari approaching her from down the road, Clover smiled, really smiled, for the first time since leaving Denerim. The dog, who she named Felix, was pretty much her instant best friend.
Clover caught on quickly to the fact that she and Alistair would be wise to keep their heads down and not advertise the fact that they were Grey Wardens. She did her best to avoid even slight interactions with people in Lothering when she could, but still did take the time to help a few people, much to Morrigan’s annoyance–she chased off the bandits on the highway, allowing the elven refugees to retrieve their stolen things, she gave money to the boy standing alone and returned the unfortunate news about his mother, she convinced the merchants to lower their prices. She had a brief conversation with the woman who would one day become the Champion of Kirkwall, though neither of them would remember meeting each other in a few years time.
In the tavern, Clover met Leliana, and though she doubted the credibility of her supposed “vision from the Maker”, she accepted her help and invited her to come along. Following the fight, however, she thought it best to leave Lothering before anyone else got any ideas about starting something, and started on the path to Redcliffe.
→ The Arl of Redcliffe
Really, Clover wasn’t very surprised by Alistair’s revelation about his background and status. It seemed fitting for him–one of the last surviving Grey Wardens, the bastard son of the king. She took it in stride, even joking around with him a bit, and continued into the village.
When she heard what was happening to Redcliffe, she knew that she had to help. It wasn’t so much out of the goodness of her heart, though that’s not to say she would have felt great about leaving them all to die, it was more that she knew there was absolutely no way she would be able to get any help from Arl Eamon if the town was ruined. So, she helped to defend the people of Redcliffe, rallying the people to fight together and helping them emerge victorious. She convinced Owen to help with armor repairs, promising to find his daughter in the castle, and tried to persuade Dwyn to help fight. When persuasion failed, she tossed in a casual threat. It wasn’t the way she would have liked to go about it, but whatever worked, right? She also convinced Lloyd to fight with the militia, and after he died fighting, Bella took ownership of the tavern. She gave fake “holy” amulets to the knights to raise their morale for the upcoming battle, and found Bevin hiding in his home, sending him back to his sister in the Chantry and borrowing his grandfather’s sword for the battle. Following the battle, she returned it, as promised.
In Redcliffe Castle, Clover found Jowan, the mage responsible for Eamon’s poisoning, and left him in his cell. Regardless of what he said, she thought he was too dangerous to release, but didn’t see any point in killing him when he would face the consequences of his actions soon enough, so she left him. When the time came to deal with Connor’s possession, this worked in their favor–Bann Teagan retrieved Jowan and he presented them with a solution. Practical and direct as she thought herself to be, Clover really wasn’t sure she felt comfortable with killing a child. Even a possessed child. So it would have to be blood magic. Not great, but better.
And so, Clover allowed Isolde to sacrifice herself to the blood ritual and asked Morrigan to venture into the Fade to save the child. Allowing Isolde to die was a source of guilt for Clover for a long time, and caused a brief rift between her and Alistair–when he confronted her about it back at the party camp, she was quick to be defensive, sharply demanding to know whether he would have preferred she kill Connor, or leave the village defenseless while they took their chances with the Circle. But in the moment, she didn’t have much time to think about it, and made the call.
There wasn’t much time to think about it right after, either. Arl Eamon was still in grave condition, and the Urn of Sacred Ashes seemed to be his only hope. Before that, though, there were a few more things to get to.
→ Broken Circle
On their way to Lake Calenhad, the party encountered Zevran. The fact that assassination attempts were being made against her was unsettling, yet almost flattering–considering how easily they had fought it off, Clover maintained a relatively calm disposition. Pretty much the entire party was against Zevran’s offer of help, but Clover wasn’t so quick to dismiss him. She didn’t trust him, that was for sure, but she didn’t think he was going to try and kill her again. She figured that the worst he would do was take off in the middle of the night, maybe steal some of their supplies, and he seemed like he would be useful to have around, if not entertaining. So, despite literally everyone telling her that she shouldn’t, Clover extended an olive branch to Zevran, and he joined them on the way to the Circle of Magi.
Clover was unnerved to find herself out of her element in the Circle, faced with a problem that she had little understanding of and was genuinely unsure of how to fix. Though she knew little of the situation, she was determined to save the remaining mages, upset by the thought of all of them being punished for the actions of a few. She gratefully accepted Wynne’s help, and the group fought their way through the tower, all the way up to the fourth floor, where they encountered a sloth demon.
(honestly, the weisshaupt dream would not have fooled clover for a second, and it’s not even really what she would have wanted to see. i like to just pretend her dream was a little better tailored to her character.)
The dream she was put in at first sent her back to the Alienage, back to the home she shared with her father and cousins for her entire life, sharing a moment of peace with her family. It didn’t take her long to realize that something was wrong, and hesitant as she was to fight the images of the people she loved, even knowing they weren’t real, she snapped herself out of the dream and started looking for a way out.
The Fade was terrifying. It felt like she was trapped for an eternity, alone, never sure what she was supposed to do next. Slowly, she made her way through, freeing her companions along the way. Alistair’s dream she felt almost guilty about interrupting, Zevran’s and Wynne’s, not so much. Eventually, they all made it to the sloth demon and killed it, freeing themselves from the Fade and retrieving the Litany of Adralla.
While Clover felt sympathetic towards Cullen, seeing him trapped and tortured, she refused to kill the mages, and ultimately recruited the mages assistance with the Blight.
→ Nature of the Beast
Just prior to arriving at the Brecilian Outskirts, Clover and Alistair’s relationship took a turn. They’d grown close over the weeks, and Clover had begun to truly let her guard down around him, considering him a good friend. Except, it was a little bit more than that, and they both knew it. A few nights before reaching the Dalish clan, Alistair gave Clover a rose.
She was caught off guard in a way that she...wasn’t used to being. Usually it was her surprising people, not the other way around, and it flustered her. She was at a complete loss for words, and it was difficult for her to sort through her feelings. It wasn’t until halfway through the next day that she was able to thank him properly, after taking the time and space to collect herself. It left her unsure of where they stood–she’d never been in a romantic relationship before, hadn’t ever really given it much thought, and this was quite possibly the strangest circumstances to find one under. For once, she had second thoughts about her direct way of addressing problems, and decided to prioritize: first they would deal with the Dalish, and then with whatever was happening between them. That, of course, didn’t stop them from their usual playful banter throughout the entire quest, with the addition of slightly awkward flirting peppered in.
Despite the circumstances, meeting the Dalish clan was something that Clover was excited about. As much as she would argue against Soris’s skepticism, she was never completely sure they were real, and she had no idea what to expect. She was more talkative than usual, full of questions for Lanaya and the other members of the clan that she met while preparing to deal with Witherfang, but eventually continued on with the quest.
As soon as the group encountered Swiftrunner, Clover knew that things were going to be a lot more complicated than she’d hoped. The fact that the Werewolves were talking, not just mindlessly killing them, and seemed to have something against the Dalish specifically did not bode well, but they pressed on. Upon reaching the Werewolves’ lair, Clover agreed to parlay with the mysterious Lady of the Forest, and after hearing what she had to say agreed to get Zathrian to talk things through. In the end, she managed to help them find peace and convinced Zathrian to break the curse, curing the Werewolves of their affliction and gaining the support of the Dalish elves.
The night that they left, Clover asked Alistair outright about their relationship and what it was at that point. Alistair confessed his feelings for her, and the two of them kissed. Hell yeah.
→ A Paragon of Her Kind
By the time she reached Orzammar, Clover was just about done dealing with everyone’s shit.
She was in no mood to deal with politics, and had absolutely no interest in solving what she saw to be a petty family dispute when there was clearly a much more pressing issue at hand. After accepting the fact that the only way anything was going to get done was by picking a side, she chose to support Bhelen solely because he was the first to contact her. She basically spent the whole time in Orzammar annoyed at everyone, especially after seeing the way that the casteless dwarves were treated, but she still made time to help those who needed it–she promised to help Dagna get to the Circle of Magi to study, she convinced Zerlinda’s father to accept her and her son back into the family, she lied to Filda and told her that Ruck had died a hero in the Deep Roads.
Going into the Deep Roads wasn’t something she was looking forward to, knowing what little she knew about it, but she at least preferred fighting through hoards of darkspawn to navigating Dwarven politics. She let Oghren come along as a guide, and began the search for Branka, doubtful of if she would even be alive. Naturally, she was wrong–after a series of grueling fights against everything from spiders to the horrifyingly grotesque Broodmother that would haunt her dreams for pretty much the rest of her life, Clover found Branka.
In the end, she decided that though there were a lot of morally ambiguous things that might need to be done in order to stop the Blight, she wasn’t going to let forcing people to become golems become one of them, and fought Branka to destroy the Anvil of The Void. With Bhelen crowned and the dwarves recruited, Clover wasted no time leaving Orzammar, relieved to be done with the place and blissfully unaware of the further political discourse that was awaiting her in Denerim.
→ The Urn of Sacred Ashes
But before that, there was still an arl to heal. Finally, the party set off for Denerim seeking Brother Genitivi, and Clover was hardly surprised to find a mysterious individual impersonating the assistant, who he had killed. Really, those kinds of ominous obstacles were becoming the norm. She commented that it could have been worse, the house could have simply exploded as soon as they opened the door.
Before leaving Denerim, there were a few stops that needed to be made–she helped Alistair find Goldanna, but we all know how that went. She and Leliana tracked down Marjolaine, and recognizing the danger that Marjolaine presented to her friend, Clover could not let her live. And then, though she knew they were pressed for time, Clover could not resist the urge to visit the Alienage and check on her family, to at the very least let them know that she was alive and assure herself that they were as well. When she was stopped at the gates, however, and told that the Alienage had been purged, she assumed the worst and nearly blew their cover. Had Alistair and Leliana not been able to pull her away from the gates, she likely would have killed the guard just to get through.
Overcome with fear and anger, Clover demanded to know why it was fine to put the mission on hold to help everyone else who asked, but she wasn’t allowed to charge in and save her family. Alistair told her that it was unfair, but that there wasn’t anything they could do without potentially putting the residents of the Alienage at risk along with themselves, and that once Arl Eamon had recovered, he may be able to use his connections to find out what was going on. Though frustrated, Clover agreed, and set her sole focus on finding the Urn.
Arriving at Haven, Clover, as well as pretty much everyone with her, immediately realized that something was very wrong. For once, Clover kept such thoughts to herself, choosing her words carefully when speaking to the few residents she found as she explored the village. After clearing the place out, killing Eirik in the Chantry, and finding Brother Genitivi, the party headed to the temple and made their way to Kolgrim with ease. Clover immediately wrote the cultists off as crazy and refused Kolgrim’s offer to defile the ashes without thinking twice, not out of any care for religion, but because she saw no point in doing so.
The Gauntlet was kind of an emotional ride for everyone. Still fueled primarily by anger and fear at the thought of what might have become of her family, Clover damn near broke down seeing the image of Shianni. She confessed things out loud that she hadn’t even let herself think about, much less told any of the party, about how she blamed herself for what happened to Shianni, and for whatever may happened to her family while she was gone. As she reached the Urn, there was no basking in its glory to be done. She just wanted to take some of the ashes and go. She was adamant that Genitivi not tell people about the Urn, but knew that she couldn’t stop him. And finally, the party returned to Redcliffe, and were named champions by the recovered Arl Eamon before heading for Denerim.
→ Rescue the Queen
Back in Denerim, there were more politics to maneuver, much to Clover’s annoyance. There was a queen who needed rescuing, and while Clover already had a couple of unpleasant thoughts about Anora, it seemed like the rescue was going to be her responsibility. Really, she wasn’t surprised to be ambushed at the end, wasn’t surprised that Anora totally threw them all under the bus and let her and Alistair get captured. Fucking typical, right?
It’s not like Fort Drakon could hold Clover and Alistair anyways–they made it back to Arl Eamon’s estate before the rest of the party had even finished their plans to break them out. Clover was just about ready to put a blade between Anora’s eyes when she walked in and saw her, but then Anora started talking about the Alienage, and Clover forgot everything else that was going on. There was something going on, something bad, but she was going to be able to get in now and help. That was all she needed to hear.
→ Unrest in the Alienage
It was a strange homecoming. She kept her hood up as she walked in, tried to keep herself at least somewhat hidden, but the moment she saw Shianni she just couldn’t keep it together. She damn near cried right there in the middle of the Alienage, sweeping her cousin up into a hug before they started attracting a bit too much attention and hid out in Alarith’s store to talk in private. There wasn’t much time for catching up–Shianni quickly filled Clover in on what had happened since she left, everything about the supposed plague and the disappearing elves, and from there it was straight to business, especially once she heard that her father was in danger. She stopped by her old house to greet Soris, see if he had any additional information to share, and mostly just inform him that she wasn’t, like, dead, and then she set off. She feigned her way into the hospice by playing up the assumption that she was sick, and wasted no time taking out the guards once inside. It didn’t take long for her to realize what was going on, that her friends, her family were being taken from their homes and enslaved. More than it infuriated her, it terrified her–she tried to cover it up, but there was really no way to the longer that the investigation went on, and by the end she was frantic, only hoping that there was still a chance to save her father. She didn’t stop to hear Caladrius’s offer. She killed him without a second thought, and honestly? She was happy to.
Even with the situation in the Alienage resolved, there wasn’t much time to catch up, but she stayed behind while Alistair, Morrigan, and Zevran returned to Arl Eamon and Anora to let them know what happened. There wasn’t much time to spare, but she was going to spend what little time she could with her family, at least trying to pretend things were normal. And for just a few hours that night, that’s exactly what she did, sitting down to a dinner with her family, not talking about the people who had been taken, or the Blight, or the political unrest. For a few hours, they just sat together, peacefully, and enjoyed being in each other’s company. Finally feeling as though she had gotten some measure of closure, and reinvigorated with a determination to put a stop to the Blight, Clover left the Alienage as night fell and returned to Arl Eamon’s estate to rest for the upcoming day.
But before she was able to get any rest, she was visited by Anora, who asked her to form an alliance against Loghain in exchange for her support for the throne. Now, here’s the thing: Clover was still pretty pissed at Anora. Like, really pissed. She didn’t trust her in the slightest, and had absolutely no intention of putting her on the throne...but, while she didn’t often see reason in lying to people, this time she did. She knew that without Anora’s support at the Landsmeet, it would likely be difficult to gain the trust of anyone there, and if she refused the alliance then Anora was likely to make a move against her. So, for the sake of having Anora on her side until it was no longer necessary, and, yeah, maybe kind of looking forward to giving her a taste of her own medicine by betraying her at the last minute, Clover promised Anora her support in seeking the throne, fully intending to give it to Alistair instead.
→ The Landsmeet
Clover talked her way out of the fight with Cauthrien easily, not wanting to waste her time nor energy on it when she was so close to putting a stop to this once and for all. In the Landsmeet, Clover was backed up by numerous nobles who she had helped or convinced through her debate with Loghain, as well as Anora, who held up her end of the bargain and spoke in favor of her. She chose to duel Loghain herself, and won.
As much as she wanted to execute Loghain, Riordan’s idea made her pause. It made sense, strategically, to have as many Grey Wardens as possible for the upcoming battle, and it was highly likely that Loghain would die anyways if he fought with them. She probably would have agreed to go along with it, if not for Alistair’s unwavering disapproval of the idea. She left the decision in his hands–he had, after all, lost far more to Loghain’s treachery than she had. When the time came to execute Loghain, she allowed Alistair to do that as well.
And then it was time to decide who would rule Ferelden. Up until the question was asked, Clover thought she was certain in her decision–she would back Alistair, no matter what, because she truly did not trust Anora or think she would be good for Ferelden in the long run. But she hesitated. She looked at Alistair as she considered the decision, saw in his face that he could tell what she was thinking and he was dreading it–and she just couldn’t. She couldn’t force him to shoulder a responsibility that he had absolutely no desire to hold, she couldn’t make that decision for him. She had always had a blind spot for the people she loved, and her love for Alistair and value for his happiness made the decision for her. She would not force him into that position. Even though she knew it was definitely going to bite her in the ass eventually, she gave Anora the crown.
→ The Battle of Denerim
Riordan’s reveal about how the Archdemon is killed probably shouldn’t have surprised Clover. Not after everything that she had been through. It surprised her anyways.
There were only three Grey Wardens in Ferelden, only three chances to kill the Archdemon, and only one person who she was going to let be sacrificed to do it. She had made the promise to herself months ago, after all. If this was what she was finally, finally going to give her life for, so be it. Better her than Alistair, anyways. There was no way she was going to let it be him.
Morrigan’s offer opened up a new possibility, however. The possibility of survival for all of them, if they could manage to kill the Archdemon at all. She trusted Morrigan, see–by that point, the two of them were close, in spite of their differences, she trusted Morrigan to be honest with her. She believed that everything Morrigan was saying was true, and nothing of grave importance was being withheld: it was dark magic, it would produce a child, that child would possess certain qualities. She was going to raise that child alone. She would not use the child for any malicious purposes.
What Clover realized, as she discussed the ritual with Morrigan, as she thought it over after leaving her room, was that she did not want to die. She thought she had accepted it, maybe at one point she really did, but things were different now. She had her family back home, waiting for her, having begun the process of recovering after the fresh wave of bullshit that had hit them. She had more people who she cared about now, who cared about her, Leliana, Zevran, Wynne, Oghren, Morrigan herself. She had Alistair. She loved Alistair, deeply and truly. She had a purpose, now, something more than picking pockets in Denerim, and she had power that was only going to grow. Power that she could use to do something good. She didn’t want to accept death, to be eager and willing to throw away the chances she had been given at life. She wanted to fight through this, and to survive it, and keep fighting past it. And she was going to.
Convincing Alistair to perform the ritual with Morrigan was one of the hardest things she had ever done, but she did it. It took a lot of convincing, but in the end what it boiled down to was this: he trusted her. Clover trusted Morrigan, and Alistair trusted her, and Clover told Alistair that she would never force him to do anything, but she truly, genuinely believed that this would be good for both of them. And so on the eve of battle, the ritual was done.
Then it was time to fight.
Clover fought through the city gates, the market district, the Alienage, alongside the allies she had gathered. In the Alienage, she fought beside her cousins as they stayed back to defend their home, and the three of them emerged victorious and alive despite all odds. And atop Fort Drakon, it was Clover Tabris, the wildcard, the killer, the champion, who slayed the Archdemon and lived, earning and cementing her status as the Hero of Ferelden.
Post-game[]
BIG oof
Relationships[]
Here's what happened with the companions, yo.
Miscellaneous[]
What else happened, or what else can you tell us about Your OC, bruh? Think of things like likes, dislikes, fears, strengths and weaknesses, etc. This is as close as you'll get to being able to word-vomit about your OC while keeping the article organized and will probably be the longest section. Feel free to add sub-headings as necessary with sub-heading 2:
