Name: Ronen
Age: late 20s
Contact: RoRodiculous
Other Characters: Cole (Dragon Age)
Interests: Rogue stuff!  Spy stuff! Alchemy stuff!  Sherlock will be coming to the Inquisition with the aim of joining Leliana's spy corps, which may mean returning to the North and keeping an eye on things up there. Or it could mean going on fact-finding or espionage missions. Or hanging around Skyhold and cooking up potions for the other spies to use. Any of these sound like great fun to me.


Name: Sherlock Holmes
Canon/OC: Sherlock
Journal: seesobserves
Race: Human
Nationality: Ferelden
Occupation: Alchemist, Essayist, Consultant
Age: early 30s

History

Canon History (See Biography section.)

AU History

• 9:9 Dragon Born the second child of the Holmeses, a family in Amaranthine. His mother is a scholar and former Chantry Sister who abandoned her position to marry his father, who is a glassware craftsman.
• 9:14 Dragon As a mark of Ferelden pride and tradition, the Holmeses acquire a mabari. The hound imprints on young Sherlock, who names it Redbeard.
• 9:18 Dragon Mycroft, Sherlock's elder brother, departs to study at the University of Orlais, sponsored by a noble friend of the Holmeses.
• 9:20-23 Dragon Sherlock becomes known as a nuisance to the City Guard, having spent the past two years attempting to insert himself in their business. His parents do their best to keep him busy in ways that satisfy his precociousness while keeping him out of the Guard's hair. Sherlock's study of herbalism and alchemy begins here.
• 9:24-28 Dragon Mycroft returns from Orlais, takes up a lower administrative position in the arling, and begins working his way up the ladder. Sherlock earns the trust of one particular guardsman who sees his utility despite his abrasiveness. The rest of the Guard grants him grudging respect after he successfully assists in solving the disappearance of a noble's sister.
• 9:29 Dragon While Sherlock and Redbeard are out on one of their adventures, they run across a stray pack of darkspawn. Sherlock is unscathed, but Redbeard is infected. Sherlock does what he can to save his friend, but the mabari is too far gone and has to be put down.
• 9:30-31 Dragon The Fifth Blight begins and ends, and Rendon Howe is executed. Mycroft departs for Vigil's Keep to re-position himself within the arling's new power structure, while Sherlock stays behind with his parents. The Darkspawn Rebellion comes to Amaranthine, and Sherlock and his parents evacuate with the rest of the citizens. Unable to travel due to the darkspawn on the Pilgrim's Path, Sherlock is forced to wait out the events. His regular habit of ingesting Deathroot recreationally begins around this time.
• 9:32-36 Dragon As Amaranthine is rebuilt under the Wardens' watch, the tenuous alliance between Sherlock and the City Guard is reestablished. They have their hands more than full with trying to wrangle what's left of the city, and so are reluctantly accepting of the help.
• 9:37-40 Dragon The mage rebellion begins. Sherlock does his best to ignore it: Circle and Chantry business don't interest him in the least, and being forced to deal with the blowback like everybody else irritates him... but at least in Amaranthine, aside from a few fleeing apostates and some heightened tension, things are more or less business as usual.
• 9:41 Dragon and onwards And then, the Conclave explodes. Then the Inquisition begins spreading its influence. News of Inquisition agents in the Storm Coast reaches the arling. Sherlock makes the decision to leave home at last and travel to the Storm Coast to offer the Inquisition his services... shortly before the attack on Haven.

Personality

With only a few rare exceptions, Sherlock has had a lifetime of being the smartest one in the room. This has given him a prejudice of most people as being morons and idiots, as he’s had to watch people catch up to points that had become obvious to him ages ago, as well as listen to them calling him things like “freak” or telling him to piss off just because he displayed his natural talents. Somewhere along the line, he decided that if people were just going to think of him as a weirdo anyway, he needn’t make any efforts at being friendly or fitting in. Although he does not deliberately antagonize everyone he comes across, he makes no effort to reign in his cleverness or try to accommodate anyone for the sake of politeness. And he’s a terrible smartarse. And a showoff. Put all that together, and he’s not one to leave a good first impression.

He thinks of himself as a person without emotions, but although much of his behavior could be called antisocial, the truth is more complex. He does, in fact, lack empathy for the vast majority of people and sentimental instincts in most cases. He also claims that being sympathetic would slow him down when it comes to his work. These expressions are genuine, but they are the result of something Sherlock has nurtured and encouraged in himself, on purpose. On a perverse level Sherlock wants to divorce himself from emotions entirely, because logical reasoning is hindered when sentiment gets in the way.

But he hasn’t been entirely successful. Underneath the antisocial shell is an extremely lonely person who only got used to being solitary because he was so far ahead of the pack. If someone can prove themselves loyal beyond all doubt, if they can prove they won’t abandon him or turn on him, he will cling to them and defend them with everything he has - his considerably brilliant mind, or, if it comes to it, his life. At the same time, he doesn't tend to discuss his past or his feelings, even with those he trusts. He's just not used to friendship, and he still believes that distance lends him protection.

Sherlock is an addict. This is shown in the absolute obsessiveness with which he approaches his work. In the absence of their drug of choice and to avoid falling off the wagon, an addict has to find something else to occupy their life, and it will often consume them in the same way the drug once had. For Sherlock, his work is that something else. When he finds himself with no problems to solve, he turns quickly to destructive and erratic behavior.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

• Alchemy: Sherlock is adept at mixing up potions, everything from health tonics to various types of grenades and the elixirs used by Tempests. He has some experience working with lyrium, but that experience is limited, as lyrium is not only dangerous to work with, but hard to come by without Circle or Carta connections.
• Detection and Deduction: He has a natural ability to pick out details that others would miss. This ability is limited, as it is an entirely mundane ability and has no connection to magic. Every so often he'll reach a conclusion, or go on an assumption, that's flat-out wrong. It is also of course limited to things that Sherlock himself is knowledgeable/aware of, though it is still an impressive knowledge set. In alliance with his canon abilities, this knowledge set includes:
  
  • Herbalism (Botany)
  • Anatomy
  • Geology
  • Alchemy (Chemistry)
  • True Crime History
  • Body Language
  • Law
• Fighting: He is skilled at hand-to-hand combat and capable with a dagger or bow and arrow when necessary.

Weaknesses

• Fighting: While he is a capable enough fighter, Sherlock is far from the most skilled at combat, and so would not be the best choice to stand on the front lines of any battle. He's pretty much a rogue.  Don't throw him at anyone with high Guard or a heavy weapon.
• Magic: He has no working knowledge of magic or the Fade, preferring to deal with the practical rather than the ephemeral.
• People Skills: As described in the Personality section, he's not exactly a people person. His abrasiveness could make him a liability at times.

Inventory

Sherlock would be traveling with his weapons, which include a single dagger and a bow, as well as potions and potion-making supplies: flasks, mixing tools, and various herbs.

Motivation

Sherlock is fond of a certain type of chaos: namely, the type caused by murderers, kidnappers, and smugglers. The type of chaos caused by rebelling mages, not to mention literal holes in the sky, tends to overshadow the more ordinary kind in a way that's not at all amusing. Sherlock is interested in aiding the Inquisition not only so that he can feel he has some utility at this time, but also so that he can help things get back to normal.


Network-style sample: a ciphered report delivered to the Lady Nightingale, Seneschal of the Inquisition.

Code of the dancing men deciphered. Final message read: ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY MAKER. Original culprit a former fiancé of the Comtesse. Lured him in with a reply message. Her Ladyship was pleased to strike the killing blow herself.

Looking forward to leaving Val Royaeux as soon as possible. If we stay much longer, these nobles will have us playing the Game for them.

[A post-script, added slightly later:] I'd say I've no idea what my brother saw in this place, but it's all too obvious. Wasps do love their nests.

---

Log-style sample with Alfsigr on the Fade Rift TDM