Prior to Veilguard being released, Ao3 announced a change in how they would tag video game protagonists. They would no longer support the layered canonical tags that we are used to for the Warden, Hawke, and the Inquisitor; instead, all varieties of Rook would simply be "Rook (Dragon Age)". Different tags to denote lineage, background, and gender would go under additional tags.
Because of this change, fanworks with Rook are not generally tagged with enough detail for us to assess each Rook ship individually. Instead, we have had to make some generalizations based on trends for past PC/LI ships and what the mods and some helpers were able to discover about the most popular Rook ships.
For 2026, here are the rules that will apply to Rook ships. There are no changes to the rules for Wardens, Hawkes, and Inquisitors; if you have questions about those ships, refer to the walkthrough and FAQ.
PART ONE -- ELIGIBILITY
- Any Rook relationship that has more than 5,000 completed works is ineligible for this exchange in its entirety.
- Any Rook relationship that has more than 600 but less than 5,000 completed works is partially eligible for the exchange. Most commonly, female and male human and elf relationships will be considered ineligible once an individual Rook ship has passed 600 completed works. However, if there is a clear preference for male or female Rooks based on the individual ship categories, we will consider the other to still be eligible. All nonbinary Rook relationships will be considered eligible.
- Human and elf are, still, the most common protagonist options when looking at Origins and Inquisition. Since Veilguard's tagging data is limited, we are forced to use general trends.
- A "clear preference" is at least 66% of completed works being for either male or female Rook. We look at both overall works as well as using the otp:true filter to make sure this trend is truly consistent for that particular ship.
- For 2026, the partially eligible ships are Rook/Emmrich, Rook/Lucanis, Rook/Lucanis/Spite, Rook/Davrin, and Rook/Neve. These grids show which gender and lineage combinations are still eligible:
- tl;dr: If you're interested in nominating Rook/Emmrich, Rook/Lucanis, Rook/Lucanis/Spite, Rook/Davrin, and Rook/Neve, you don't need to, because we've already added all the eligible possibilities to the tagset. If the gender/lineage/faction Rook you want is not already in the tagset, it is ineligible. If your Rook ship is with another LI or character, or involves more than two characters, you'll need to nominate it as normal. All Rook ships with Bellara, Taash, and Harding are still fully eligible, as are all multi ships apart from Rook/Lucanis/Spite, which means that any combination of gender, lineage, and faction can be nominated.
- We are allowing same-faction Rooks for these ships because this makes the eligibility rules more concise and easier to follow while still preserving the spirit of rarity. This is a change from last year! As long as it meets the other eligibility rules, de Riva/Lucanis, de Riva/Lucanis/Spite, and Ingellvar/Emmrich will be allowed!
PART TWO -- NOMINATING
- All Rook nominations must contain Gender, Lineage, and Faction, in that order. Any nominations that do not contain those three pieces of information will be queried and/or rejected. Do not include "Rook" at the end; it's not needed! For nonbinary Rooks, please use "NB" to save space.
- Rook always comes first in their ship, regardless of alphabetical order. For ships of 3+ people, other characters must still be in alphabetical order.
Examples:
- NB Human Thorne/Antoine/Evka Ivo
- Male Qunari Ingellvar & Myrna & Vorgoth
PART THREE -- REQUESTING
Because there are so many different options for Rook, we are allowing participants to opt-in to a wider range via the Optional Details box. If you've participated before and used our Treat template, this is a similar idea!
To use this option, you must have at least one Rook ship in the relationship field. Then, in your optional details box, you may say:
Opting in to:
- Any [Gender] Rook
- Any [Lineage] Rook
- Any [Faction] Rook
And filling in your preferences accordingly.
You may combine these options, e.g., "Any Female Qunari Rook" or "Any NB Laidir". You may list as many combinations as you like. You may NOT use this to request an ineligible Rook relationship (e.g., an ineligible variant of Rook/Lucanis, Rook/Lucanis/Spite, or Rook/Emmrich).
This information will NOT be taken into account during matching. It will simply give your creators (assigned or treaters) more options for filling your prompt. Since we will not be using it during matching, there is no need to put information about what Rooks you will or won't create for in your offers.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[sticky entry]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
