Gaylord Hawke

The Champion of Kirkwall

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Hawke in a combat situation

*"Fortune and fame, like anyone."* *—* **Gaylord Hawke**, asked what he seeks.

**Gaylord Maurevar Hawke** is a famed adventurer, mercenary, and public figure. He is best known as the Champion of Kirkwall for his defense against the Qunari invasion in Dragon 9:34 and for his role in putting down the mage uprising in the Kirkwall Rebellion three years later. After the rebellion, Hawke briefly served the city as Viscount before his sudden disappearance in the face of mounting opposition to a mage holding worldly power.

## Overview

### **Physical Appearance**

Hawke stands about six feet tall and by all accounts is quite physically fit. He also has a tattoo around the upper-half of his face. His hair is a dark, reddish-brown kept about chin-length and partly braided. He prefers lightweight robes rather than outfitted with a lot of armor plating, with the notable exception of his iconic Champion robe set.

### **Personality**

Gaylord Hawke was born with the great burden of magic and responded with levity and light-heartedness to keep his level head. His wit was sharp and he learned great patience which, in tandem, made him a frustrating target in everything from combat to insults.

### **Talents and Skills**

Hawke is a mage of great power and also very versatile. He is adept in elemental magic and force. Hawke's style is to take a tactical approach and move with the flow of the battle, often working his magic at a position behind his compatriots while casting spells that complement their abilities and best put the team in a position to win. Accordingly, Hawke employs some spells in Creation and Entropy to strengthen his teammates or weaken his adversaries respectively.

## Biography

Gaylord Hawke was a very prudent man. After his former boss, Meeran, tried to kill him for refusing to complete a contract hit, Hawke took control of the Red Irons mercenary company for himself. He also handed in Keldar to his magistrate father, despite his companions' disapproval, to avoid angering and to curry favor with a local official.

Though an apostate, Hawke never championed the mage libertarian cause, much to the dismay of Anders. He believed in careful regulation of magic, and often helped lend his magic to support the Templars, another group from which he would find much support in his rise to the top.

Hawke sided with the Templars to bring order to the crisis, and so they did. When Meredith tried to turn on Hawke in the end, she found that the majority of her Templars were in his corner. In many ways, he espoused the values of their 'Order better than she ever did. Meredith then lost what little support she had when unleashing the Lyrium sword. She was taken down, and Hawke rode the wave of support for once again saving the city by being named Viscount.

Hawke enjoyed the seat while it lasted, knowing that a mage would not be allowed to enjoy the position for long. Alas, he fled as the opposition became too great, but Kirkwall made measurable improvements under his leadership. An armed, anti-mage mob which some allege had support from Templars and other pro-Chantry groups had cornered Hawke in his office but were stopped by a magical barrier. Once the barrier came down, they busted in, only to find the room empty, save only for a strange mirror...

### Legacy

Hawke is widely popular and celebrated throughout much of Thedas, but deeply polarizing among mages. Some see him as a role model for what mages can achieve through cooperation and what they should aspire to be, yet many see him as a craven, self-hating bigot, and point out the hypocrisy of his support of the Templars while refusing to ever give up his own freedom. Tevinter mages often slam his views but nonetheless take pride in his triumph over the Qunari as a mage.

### **Relationships**

#### **Anders**

Despite his long association with the fellow apostate mage, Hawke and Anders never much liked each other, unable to respect each other's radically different views on magic.

Asked why he did not kill Anders sooner, Hawke has stated that while he often contemplated it, doing so was not so simple: Anders had many sympathizers for his charitable work as a healer well before Hawke came to prominence in the city. Additionally, he points out, Hawke often found himself indebted to him. Hawke still needed Anders's maps of the Deep Roads at the time his possession by Justice was revealed, so he resisted his instincts to slay the abomination. Anders's expertise was further required by Hawke to navigate the underground when the expedition was afoot; Anders agreed to help despite his great distaste for the Deep Roads. While the two mages explored the underground, Hawke's brother Carver contracted Blight sickness, yet with Anders's help, the team was able to save his life by locating nearby Grey Wardens (the only known group with a cure to the affliction).

Having personally profited greatly from the expedition, for which Anders played a key role, Hawke could not bring himself to rat out Anders or even slay him, instead electing to try to find a better solution. Anders's healing magic was also a valuable asset to the team in their travels. At one point, Anders was able to restore the sanity of Varric's brother Bartrand from red lyrium poisoning for a brief moment, allowing them to resolve the matter without having to end his life.

Anders would at one point inform Hawke of a potion that would separate himself from the spirit's possession, which Hawke enthusiastically supported, but this turned out to be a lie that led up to Anders's spell that destroyed the Chantry, killing Grand Cleric Elthina and commencing the Kirkwall Rebellion. This act was unforgivable and left Hawke with no choice but to execute him.

Some have accused Hawke of harboring the apostate knowing what this would entail. Hawke roundly denies this accusation, saying that he had absolutely no way of knowing what his association with Anders would lead to.

But more than anything, Hawke probably just enjoyed bullying the poor guy.

#### **Aveline**

Although Hawke's wily ways would occasionally annoy Aveline's sensibilities, Hawke made a point to stay on the Guard Captain's good side, and Aveline apparently was dumb enough to fall for it.

#### **Carver**

Hawke and his brother Carver were not close as children, as Hawke spent most of his time with his mage sister Bethany learning magic under their mage father. The easy-going, jovial Gaylord was also a very different personality from the surly Carver.

However, the destruction of their hometown and subsequent relocation to a new city forced the brothers to work together and rely on each other for survival. These events brought them much closer together, and from it, a very supportive friendship emerged. As comrades with the Red Irons, Carver found his brother's magic to come in handy during a fight, and Hawke appreciated his brother's frontline style of combat that allowed him to cast spells from a safe distance behind. The two also often on combat tactics. And aside from their work as literal brothers-in-arms for Meeran, Hawke himself made a conscious effort to strengthen their long-neglected relationship. Over their first few years together in Kirkwall, Carver came to see that he was not so different from his mage brother after all.

Because they worked so well together and trusted each other very much in combat, Hawke refused his mother's request not to take Carver into the Deep Roads with him. Hawke also understood that helping with this trip meant a lot to Carver and did not want to deny him that. Their mother's fears were realized as Carver did contract the blight, but with the help of Anders, they were able to relocate nearby Grey Wardens who agreed to take him in. Their mother was devastated by the loss, even though it soon turned out that Carver would survive, but Hawke noted that Carver seemed – from their mail correspondences with each other – happy to be part of the 'Wardens. Not only were the brothers finally friends, but Carver was finally content with his place in the world.

Carver headed to Kirkwall when he heard about rising tensions between the mages and Tempars expecting that his brother must have been a target of the Templar's wrath. He returned just as the Kirkwall Rebellion had begun, only to find, to his dismay, that his brother was on the side of the Templars in their mission to annul the Circle. Ironically, Carver's time with the Wardens alongside some mage companions offered him a different idea of coexisting with the mages than the one he had been accustomed to while living in Kirkwall, in a way that living with mage family had never seemed to (perhaps because his father and mage siblings had made the mistake of excluding him too often, whereas his Warden mage brethren were at his side all the time). Carver may have had kinder views towards mages now than his mage brother, but he nonetheless chose family and fought at Gaylord's side in the rebellion.

Carver continues to serve the Grey Wardens, where he has made a name for himself, while Hawke continues to involve himself in political affairs across Thedas. Nonetheless, they are still close.

#### **Fenris**

Understandably, Fenris initially had deep reservations with the openly-ambitious mage, but quickly found the two of them to be ideologically on the same page and their shared enjoyment of bullying "*Anders Shmanders Danders Panders*" was the start of a wonderful friendship.

Apart from that, Hawke was supportive of Fenris's struggle for freedom, and Hawke's great patience allowed him to help the angry little elf work through his trauma without getting offended at his bitter diatribes against mages.

Fenris's combat style also made for a seamless replacement for Carver's after the team lost his arm, making him a frequent companion in Hawke's travels.

#### **Isabela**

Hawke enabled all of Isabela's worst traits. Also, they had a fling. Oh, and yes, she got her ship. The end.

#### **Merrill**

Unsurprisingly, Hawke and Merrill never got along. In truth, after Merrill was revealed to be a blood mage at the time they met, Hawke was loath to bring her to Kirkwall as he had just agreed. Nonetheless, Hawke kept his word and brought her to the city's elven alienage.

Hawke opposed Merrill's Eluvian mirror project from the outset. He also often slammed her use of blood magic but turned a blind eye to it during skirmishes when Merrill was in the party and even directed her to cast some blood spells from time to time. Hawke refused to give Merrill the carving knife that she required. As she struggled to recreate the mirror without it, Merrill attempted to use the help of her patron spirit again; Hawke agreed to supervise in the event of a disaster (which he was expecting). The Keeper of Merrill's clan then intervened, revealing that she let Merrill's patron demon possess her and that Merrill and Hawke now had to kill her.

In a brief moment where Keeper Marethari had seemed to break free of the possession, Hawke congratulated Merrill, knowing that this was a mere trick by the demon to prey on Merrill's pride. Merrill fell for it and took a hit before the fight continued again and the demon was finally slain. When emerging from the cave to a group of angry Dalish elves from Merrill's clan, Hawke made sure to offer one of the worst explanations possible for what had happened between Merrill and their Keeper, leading to the whole clan attacking Merrill. Hawke and his team slaughtered Merrill's entire clan in self-defense.

Merrill was devastated by the loss of her clan and finally agreed to end her project, destroying the Eluvian mirror by her own accord. Asked what she should do next, Hawke obnoxiously suggested that she work to study and restore elven history. Oddly, Merrill did not lose her shit over this suggestion but took it in good faith.

As the events of the Kirkwall Rebellion commenced, Merrill turned on Hawke to help defend the mages. Hawke made no effort to talk her out of it, and the two then faced each other as enemies on the battlefield. During this confrontation, Hawke used blood magic for the first (and last) time of his life by taking control of Isabela and slaying Merrill vicariously by employing Isabela's most lethal move: twin fangs.

Upon emerging out of the gallows victorious, and having slain Merrill, Hawke then walked over to Merrill's house and seized he Eluvian mirror for himself, completing it with the knife that he had withheld from Merrill and keeping it the Viscount's office as a trophy.

#### **Sebastian**

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Hawke was mostly a corrupting influence on Sebastian, reinforcing nothing of the Chantry into him other than its orthodox views on magic and encouraging him to renew his claim to the throne. What Hawke would get out of this was obvious: another friend in a high place. During Hawke's brief run as Viscount, the new Prince of Starkhaven worked very closely with him.

#### **Varric**

Hawke and Varric were like two peas in a pod; both were jokesters who were too shrewd for their own good. Needless to say, this was a natural friendship.

##### **Other Notes**

Umm... yeah, so anyway, this Hawke is kind of a bastard (lmao). Honestly, I need to ship him with a nice man or woman (he bi) who will soften him up. Sadly, I can't think of anyone who fits. Cassandra, in theory, would have been a good match, but she's a big Hawke fangirl and he needs someone who he needs to prove himself to. He and Tallis were oddly good together but I dunno.

'FanFic'

There is no fanfic for this Hawke but feel free to use him as a prompt/whatnot.

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