Rhen Surana

Rhen Surana was an elven mage from the Kinloch Hold Circle of Magi. After his rescue during Uldred's uprising, he joined Jocelyn Amell, the Hero of Ferelden, on her quest to end the Blight, becoming a Grey Warden in the process.

## Appearance and Personality

Rhen is rather short and skinny, with messy black hair, relatively tanned skin, and grey eyes. He usually wears the robes of a Circle mage. He was eighteen during the Fifth Blight, although he has a youthful appearance in general.

Rhen is rather shy and soft-spoken, and often unsure of himself. He prefers to follow rather than lead and often let Jocelyn make the decisions, although he sometimes disagreed with her choices. He later became more confident, especially after he became a Grey Warden.

While Rhen used to be okay with the Circle, and thought that it was for the best and protected them, the influence of Jocelyn and especially Morrigan and the cruelty that mages face in less comfortable Circles - Kirkwall in particular - have largely changed his mind about that. While he doesn't hold the vehement anti-Circle attitudes of Jocelyn and Anders, he does believe that the system need to be reformed and that mages who prove themselves responsible deserve to have more freedoms than they do.

### Talents and Skills

Rhen is a very skilled healer, and he knows several spells that are good at supporting his allies. He is also good at frost magic, and he can cast a rather powerful shield.

## History

Rhen was born in the Highever alienage. His mother died during childbirth, and his father turned to drink to cope with her death. After a long night of drinking in a tavern, he got into a confrontation with a pair of human guards and was killed. Rhen was only four at the time and doesn't have many memories of his parents.

After his father's death, Rhen was raised in an orphanage for the next three years until his magic manifested, after which he was sent to the Circle. While initially scared of his new surroundings, he quickly found he much preferred life in the tower to life in the alienage, and easily adjusted to his new life. He befriended Jocelyn Amell and Jowan, and much like the former, he became a personal apprentice of First Enchanter Irving.

As the three apprentices got older, Rhen and Jocelyn found themselves disagreeing on a lot of things. Rhen preferred healing magic, while Jocelyn preferred big, flashy offensive spells. Rhen was okay with the templars and enjoyed Circle life, while Jocelyn grew to hate the Templars and was resentful of the Circle. The pair's friendship turned into a something of a rivalry as the two's differences came to light.

## In-game

Shortly after Jocelyn's Harrowing, Jowan told she and Rhen that he was going to be made Tranquil. Jocelyn, who had always hated the Rite, immediately agreed to help him, but Rhen was more hesitant, especially since he'd been acting suspiciously for the past few weeks. He only agreed to help at Jocelyn's urging, but while Jocelyn was trying to get the rod of fire they needed, Rhen went to Irving to find out if the rumors about Jowan using blood magic were true. When he found out that they were, Rhen told Irving of Jowan's plan to escape, and as a result, Jowan, Lily, and Jocelyn were caught red-handed trying to leave the repository.

Jowan used blood magic to escape the Templars' justice, while Jocelyn was conscripted into the Wardens by Duncan. All three parted on bad terms; Jocelyn was furious at Jowan for lying to her and Rhen for ratting them out, while Rhen was equally angry at Jowan's recent turn to apostasy, and couldn't get Jocelyn to take his side on the matter.

A couple of weeks after Jocelyn left to join the Wardens, Rhen passed his own Harrowing. He settled into life as a full mage, joined the Aequetarian fraternity, and made plans to temporarily transfer to White Spire to further his studies in creation magic. The transfer never happened, as Uldred's uprising happened when he and Wynne returned from the disastrous battle at Ostagar. Rhen tried to fight back, but he was captured by the blood mages allied with Uldred. He was held captive in the Harrowing chamber, where he had to watch his fellow mages as they were tortured and turned into abominations at the possessed Uldred's behest.

Before Rhen himself could meet the same fate, he was rescued by Jocelyn and Wynne, along with two of Jocelyn's allies, Alistair and Leliana. They killed Uldred and rescued the remaining mages. When the uprising was over, Rhen asked if he could join Jocelyn on her quest to end the Blight. Irving gave him leave, and Jocelyn reluctantly let him come with her, saying that some time outside the tower would be good for him.

While on their quest, Rhen left most of the decision-making up to Jocelyn, since the rest of their companions obviously saw her as their leader. Surprisingly, he found himself attracted to Morrigan, and the two began a relationship they insisted was just sexual, although both quite obviously had deeper feelings for the other than they claimed they did.

After gathering the allies they needed, the group went to Denerim for the Landsmeet, where Jocelyn went to the Arl of Denerim's estate with Zevran to rescue Anora. Rhen stayed behind and tried to help Eamon make further plans.

Riordan, having been freed from imprisonment by Jocelyn and her companions, arrived at the estate soon after, and quickly took a liking to Rhen. However, shortly after his arrival, Anora and Zevran burst in with the news that Jocelyn had been captured by Loghain's second-in-command. Anora told them that she would likely be imprisoned in Fort Drakon, and that rescuing her from there should be their first priority.

After putting together a plan, Morrigan and Leliana were sent to rescue Jocelyn from the fort. During their absence, Riordan approached Rhen and asked for his help. He told Rhen that they desperately needed Wardens, and that if Jocelyn had been killed or was otherwise unfit to fight, they needed another Grey Warden, just in case. Rhen was reluctant to join, saying that Jocelyn was probably fine and that they would get her out of there, but at the urging of Alistair, he agreed to take Riordan's offer and was made a Grey Warden, surviving the Joining.

Rhen woke up after the Joining to find that Jocelyn had returned, having been rescued from the fort. She was quite surprised to find that Rhen had become a Warden, but congratulated him on surviving the Joining.

The two mages turned their attention to the Landsmeet, where they decided to arrange a political marriage between Alistair and Anora to resolve the succession crisis. They had originally intended to execute Loghain, but after Riordan made his offer to conscript him instead, Jocelyn agreed to put him through the Joining. Alistair was furious over her decision, but he was outvoted by Jocelyn, who thought that they desperately needed another Warden, and Rhen, who thought that he deserved mercy and a chance to redeem himself. After Queen Anora was put on the throne, Alistair abandoned both the Wardens and Ferelden entirely.

Upon finding out that a Warden had to die to kill the Archdemon, Rhen volunteered to take the final blow himself despite Jocelyn's insistence that Loghain do it. However, he was approached by Morrigan, who offered her ritual to him instead. Rhen was very hesitant to go through with it, but he did so at Jocelyn's urging. Before the battle, he confessed his love for Morrigan and begged her not to leave, and while she seemed torn, she said that it was what needed to be done.

While Jocelyn fought through the city with Loghain, Morrigan, and Leliana, Rhen stayed and led the defense of the gate. After the battle had been won, Jocelyn, Loghain, and Leliana returned, injured but alive, but Morrigan, true to her word, was nowhere to be found.

Rhen celebrated the defeat of the Blight with his friends, but claimed that he didn't plan on staying for long. Instead, he was setting out to find Morrigan, saying that he would never give up searching for her, no matter how long it took.

### Post-Game

Rhen spent two years wandering Ferelden in his search for Morrigan and as a result, he was not involved in the darkspawn war in Amaranthine. His search led him to the Eluvian, where he finally found her. Once again, he confessed that he loved her and asked to stay with her, and this time, Morrigan agreed, allowing him to come through the Eluvian with her to meet their son Kieran.

Rhen briefly returned to the Wardens at Jocelyn's urging, but he only stayed for about a month before going back to his new family. While he loved both Morrigan and Kieran and treasured the time they were able to spend together, he worried about the Calling, which would take him away from his family eventually. He began working with Jocelyn to research possible ways to cure it. When he found a lead shortly before the explosion of the Conclave, he immediately told Jocelyn, who agreed to go west with him to investigate it. They were joined by Zevran, and later, Anders, who was sent with them by Astrid Hawke to protect him from whatever was affecting the Wardens.

## Relationships

### Jocelyn Amell

Rhen arrived at the Circle a year after Jocelyn did, and the pair quickly became friends. As the two most talented apprentices at Kinloch Hold, both became the personal apprentices of First Enchanter Irving when Jocelyn was twelve and Rhen was eleven.

As they got older, that friendship developed into more of a rivalry, albeit a friendly one. Most of their differences came from their differing opinions on the Circle, as while Rhen was pro-Circle and a devout Andrastian, Jocelyn grew rather cynical of the Chantry and hated the Circle for locking them up. Rhen was often concerned about her increasing talks with the Libertarian mages, as he saw them as troublemakers and didn't want Jocelyn taking on their extreme ideas, concerns that she ignored as her own views became more tilted towards mage freedom.

They parted on very bad terms after Rhen ratted out Jowan's escape plan to Irving, which led Rhen to immediately regret what he did - it had gotten both of his best friends into the worst trouble possible and separated him from both of them. However, after Jocelyn rescued him from Uldred, the two of them repaired their friendship and Joss was willing to forgive him for what he had done, giving him a second chance and saying that he would have given her one if their roles were reversed.

###

### Morrigan

The two of them began a romantic relationship despite Rhen's apprehension at Morrigan's apostate status. He wanted to give her a chance and not judge her just because she was an apostate, and she was drawn to the fact that he was always kind to her even when he had no reason to be.