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her-gracious-lady-herald-bits1 · 13 days ago

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Going underground now for the dwarven origins, beginning with Dwarf Noble. Let's hit up Orzammar, one of the last two surviving dwarven thaigs in Thedas.

So, right from the get-go, we have the Dwarven Faith codex entry. Dwarves consider themselves "Children of the Stone", which we now know to be literally true. They were born of the Titans.

Dwarves believe that they return to "the Stone" upon death. They practice ancestor worship, believing that their ancestors guide them through the unfolding of events.

Orzammar's best known for its Caste system, by which people are grouped into particular professions by blood inheritance. Wanted to be a soldier? Can't. You were born into Merchant Caste. Learn commerce.

There's something truly ironic about dwarven culture, in that regard. The Divine Right is so thoroughly baked into every orifice of their society. Merit defined solely by blood inheritance governs all walks of life.

Except the monarchy. (XD)

The King of Orzammar is an elected position accountable to the Assembly. Orzammar isn't a true democracy; The deshyrs who sit in the Assembly are all representatives specifically for noble families who do pass down power by blood inheritance. But it's still kind of amazing, in this culture, that being the child of the king doesn't entitle you to jack fucking shit.

Orzammar is a self-defeating paradox of a place. This is no less true of the ruling House Aeducan than of anyone else.

The Dwarf Noble draws their lineage from House Aeducan. Their governance dates back to the First Blight in 7205.

The irony of the Aeducan clan is that, despite Orzammar leadership thinking the Caste system is neato, their millennium-long monarchy didn't come from a Noble Caste family at all. One of the many contradictions that Orzammar politely ignores.

Originally, the other surviving thaig Kal-Sharok was the capitol of Dwarven civilization. Orzammar belonged to the Miner and Smith Castes. This would have been the state of affairs for between 3,000-6,000 years. Could even be longer.

The Veilguard timeline is a little fuzzy on when, exactly, the Evanuris tranquilized the Titans and inadvertently created both Blight and Dwarf. But Kal-Sharok was the capitol of the burgeoning Dwarven civilization until the developed trade relationships with the Tevinter Imperium, which would only be established in 6405 and would reign unchecked for about 800 years before the First Blight.

Somewhere in that 800 year period, Orzammar became the capitol in place of Kal-Sharok. This was done by Paragon Garal to give the Assembly more oversight over their trade relations.

For context, Tevinter had a trade highway that ran from their capitol Minrathous through the Frostback Mountains and down to southern Ostagar. We'll see more of that later. Since Orzammar is right up on the edge of the surface and even has a passage that opens out into the Frostback Mountains, it's perfectly positioned for trade with Tevinter.

This was kind of a big deal. So, centuries before the Blight, Paragon Garal moved the capitol away from the thaig that had been their capitol for millennia. Trade became a cornerstone of dwarven society.

Too bad about those dwarven traders though.

The paradox of Dwarven politics at work has decreed that dwarves automatically become Casteless if they ever go up to the surface. This is despite Orzammar being a centuries-long trading hub that's even more dependent on trade now that the Darkspawn have eaten the rest of dwarven civilization.

This is a point of contention within Orzammar, as Lord Dace here is attempting to change dwarven law so that

House Aeducan rose to power following Paragon Aeducan, though Aeducan was no Noble Caste dwarf. The way Paragons work is basically Dwarven Sainthood. The dwarves recognize you as a shining example for all dwarves to follow.

With the knock-on effect that Paragon-hood uplifts your family into Noble Caste.

So we should all obey the Nobles because their blood-inheritance says they know better than us. But also, anyone who knows better than the Nobles is made nobility so that we can continue to believe that the Nobles know better than everyone else. Make sense?

Aeducan was a Warrior Caste soldier on that fateful day. You know the day.

The day the Evanuris tricked the Magisters Sidereal into breaching the Black City and unleashing the Blight.

The dwarves and the surfacers disagree on how that happened.

The human Chantry believes that the Darkspawn came from the Black City in the Fade. They were a plague unleashed upon humankind as punishment for the Magisters Sidereal's hubris.

The dwarves disagree. They believe that the Darkspawn came from the depths of the earth. This is a practical belief rooted in the demonstrable fact that they emerged from the Deep Roads and overran dwarven civilization long before the surface had even heard of them.

They're both right. It was the Magisters Sidereal who breached the Blight's containment and released it into the world. It then poured upwards from the depths, possibly from the Titans themselves. Under the guidance of Dirthamen and his Archdemon Dumat - colliding with the Titans' children in the population centers they had built.

In fact, Paragon Aeducan even laid eyes upon Dumat once, describing her (high dragons are female, the mythology of the Old Gods is wrong) in the codex entry "The Blights" as a Paragon of darkspawn.

Can you imagine? The dwarves had never in history laid eyes on a dragon before Dumat. Aeducan had no idea what he was looking at. Only that it was terrifying.

No one had ever heard of the Blight until the day it crashed into the dwarven thaigs on its way to the surface, under the command of whatever this fucking thing is. A crisis the likes of which dwarven culture was not equipped to handle.

The loss of thaig after thaig after thaig was a failure of leadership. The dwarves were powerless to defend themselves because their leaders were too busy bickering in the Assembly over who to defend. Every noble house demanded the army protect their holdings above all others, leaving their military divided, aimless, and unable to stop as the Blight swept through them all.

The selfishness of nobility destroyed dwarven civilization.

Orzammar survived only because Aeducan sidestepped the politics and took charge of the army. He rallied the various Castes to provide support to the Warrior Caste, betrayed the dwarves' sacred hierarchy by disregarding the noble Assembly, and saved Orzammar. The last of the thaigs. (Except the other one.)

A vote was held in the wake of Orzammar's survival to determine if Aeducan should be made a Paragon. History recalls it passing with no dissenting votes, only one absentia. History does not recall, though the historian mentions in conversation, how the "absentia" vote came about: It was a vote of dissension, but the other deshyrs beating the dissenting deshyr to death on the Assembly floor for dissenting.

Politics!

This is how it goes. On paper, Paragons are a patch built into the system to ensure that the best and brightest may lead the dwarven people. In practice, Paragons introduce a whole mess of complications, which meet you the instant you step out of the Dwarven Palace and into the Diamond Quarter.

This is Bruntin Vollney and Scholar Gertek. Right outside the palace, they're having a public argument because Bruntin wants public records of Paragon Vollney being kind of a shitweasel stricken from history.

Vollney became Paragon by the slimmest possible margin and their ascension was mired in scandals, with rumors abounding of bribes, corruption, and blackmail. All of which is recorded accurately by history, much to Bruntin's dismay. He wants the truth wiped from the slate.

Because that's how nobility under the Paragon system works. When the ruling class derives power solely by historical remembrance of past merits, it creates a perverse incentive to only remember history in ways that are convenient to the ruling class.

In practice, the system uses Paragonhood as a built-in defense against having to reflect on the failures of their politics. Aeducan betrayed what the dwarves stand for and saved Orzammar where dwarven politics left nearly all other thaigs annihilated. For his radical actions and insubordinate heroics, they elected him King. They raised him up to Paragon status. And they learned absolutely nothing.

Oh, and they killed an Assembly member for disagreeing. Dwarven nobles are cutthroat. Just. As a natural order of business. Everyone expects treachery and murder in the noble class. Remember Vollney? If you side with the scholar against him, Gorim asks you this as a matter of course.

"Yeah, fuck that guy. Want me to have him killed in broad... whatever passes for daylight in our society?"

Sure, Gorim. I want him slit from crotch to throat and hung from a light fixture as a warning to others 'cause that's how dwarf politics work. You're the best, sugar 'stache.

Up to this point, they remain on the throne. King Endrin Aeducan is the governing monarch as of the start of Origins. With three heirs to succeed him: The eldest Trian Aeducan, the Dwarf Noble, and the radical youngest Bhelen Aeducan who fraternizes with Casteless.

Hi, Rica! She's just called "Mistress" in the Dwarf Noble origin but she's a part of the Dwarf Commoner origin. Bhelen is quite taken with her, despite their relationship being considered pearl-clutchingly scandalous by Orzammar standards.

Trian, by contrast, is a proper upstanding dwarven noble.

By which I mean he's a classist piece of shit. Trian is first in line for the throne (pending Assembly vote), which he knows quite well. And at any sign of disobedience from his sibling, he'll make sure the Dwarf Noble knows it too.

Trian also has opinions about Bhelen's dalliances with Rica. In his journal, he's noticed Rica milling about outside of Bhelen's room. So he accuses her of theft because her boobs are too big to be a "decent" woman's bust. And I quote.

"Must have been trying to steal something, or already had. Bosom seemed fuller than most decent ladies. Some jewels hidden in the bodice?"

What the actual fuck, Trian? He also suggests Bhelen should keep her confined to his room, like a pet.

Trian is a cruel, elitist, self-important piece of shit who would most certainly drive Orzammar to ruin if he became king.

[Pic]

The part where Bhelen frames the Dwarf Noble for committing the murder is a bit rude, however. Credit where it's due, though; Bhelen plans this assassination well.

He first tries to conspire with the Dwarf Noble by convincing them that Trian is plotting against them, and they need to get him first. Then he plants two of his men in the Deep Roads to accompany the Noble on their mission.

If you didn't buy into the idea that Trian was coming for you, Bhelen has Trian killed ahead of time and lets you find his body, just in time for you to be found with the body.

If you did, he plays you and Trian against each other, informing Trian that you were plotting to kill him and letting accusations and unreasonable tempers fly where they may.

If you still manage to be reasonable during that, one of his men has orders to open fire on Trian and his men, provoking a fight anyway. Bhelen's accounted for all possible scenarios here. It's very clever. Ruthless, pragmatic, and treacherous. But clever.

No matter which way you slice it, Bhelen cuts down both of his siblings and leaves himself and his radical politics as the (seeming) only potential heir to the throne of Orzammar. He planned his coup exceedingly well.

Though not so well that it escaped Lord Harrowmont's notice, but that is the plot for the Orzammar section of the main game proper.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #orzammar #dwarven society #dragon age meta

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her-gracious-lady-herald-bits1 · 15 days ago

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How I Would Fix the Qun - a Muslim Perspective

Let us first begin with a general statement: I will not have any DA fans try to claim that since the Qun and the Qunari take other inspirations from different philosophical and social frameworks, that the racist conception and utilizing of Islamic history should be disqualified since it is not "really" Islamic history.

Case in point, if I see any attempt such as this:

I will slap you.

It is perfectly fine that the Qunari can take inspirations from other historical and philosophical ideas (though, importantly, different people have different claims of what inspiration the Qunari come from, despite the fact that it is very clear through Thedasian dating that the Qunari are meant to be the Thedasian representation of the Islam and its history with Europe), it is not fine to utilize a millennia-old racist stereotype that claims that the culturally, religiously, and physically distinct people is hell-bent at spreading their philosophy across the world by force. There is no hand-waving away the clear connections - BioWare took their inspirations but did not have any real interest to actively study or examine any historical book that reexamined the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam (ironically, Hugh Kennedy's the Great Arab Conquests was out prior to DAO's development, so they could have easily read that if they wanted some idea).

So, yes. The Qunari and the Qun are both inspired by Islamic history, while bearing little of the actual theology or belief system that made Islam a potent force of liberation and oppression. Simply because it takes from different philopshical approaches (which I have heard a variety of from fascism and communism to Plato's ideal system of governance), the fact that BioWare, as a primarily white gaming developer, especially in the late 2000s, should have taken more care and been more critical with the terrible extent of fetishizing and otherization of the Qunari as a group compared to the other Thedasian populations - going beyond simply Andrastian Thedasians, but also the dwarves and elves, and even then some can argue their handling of those depictions could have been better.

Of course, I will be fare to BioWare. It takes a lot of energy and time to research on the complex history of any society or religious group - excluding their own perspectives on the events. However, it is not difficult to ask for an attempt of fairness when utilizing marginalized groups of people's history to be accurate and careful with such representation, which I would argue that they failed to achieve with the Qunari especially.

Let us first begin.

The Prophet Muhammad and Islam's Misunderstood Origins (First Part)

The historical role in which Islamic history, or the history reported by the later 'Abbasid historians is much inspiration for the Qunari - there is nothing to deny there. I had discuss it in this post regarding the similiarties of dates between Islamic history and the history of the Qun in relations to Thedas. Yet much of the history that was are ensured accuracy to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his early religious community is snared by religious, political, and social sectarianism. In short, much of what we know of Muhammad is not actually from Muhammad.

"Herald, what do you mean by this? The Islamic world has a vibrant and documented history on the Prophet Muhammad."

Yes, they attempted to do so. But let me try to make certain things cleared: Much of the traditional historical data on the Prophet Muhammad - founded in places such as the hadiths or sira were written well after Muhammad and his companions had died. Little is known during the Rashidun period (632-661), where Muhammad's companions were made leaders of the nascent Islamic community that would expand rapidly into a far-flung imperial state that included significant portions of Eastern Rome and nearly the entirety of Sasanian Iran, and much of what we know of the Umayyads, for written sources at least, date to the Umayyad-critical 'Abbasid period. The hadiths in particularly are points of contention - none of them truthfully dates back to the Prophet Muhammad, and some of the earliest hadith collections that have been discovered has only been found in the middle 700s CE, such as the famed Medinan Islamic scholar Malik b. Anas (711-795 CE) and his al-Muwatta (of whom, the transmissions by his students would see variations in text). And much of what is understood to be "Islamic" can be traced not to the Islamic holy text of the Qu'ran, but the hadiths themselves. It is the hadiths which decree the punishment of adultery would be stoning to death, which clearly goes against the literary tool of stoning in the Quran and the clear punishment of lashing for adultery found in it. In the Qu'ran, stoning is used as a means to display the oppression faced by Islam's prophets and other sincere monotheists by the accepted social customs of their time [Hud, 11:91; the Cave, 18:20; Mary, 19:46; the Poets, 26:116].

There is not much doubt that the man, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, existed and he was considered a prophet by the Arabs. There is much to doubt the historical transmissions founded in traditional Islamic histography. Most (western scholars that is) have a strange relationship with hadiths - some fully reject them, others are more critical but believe that you can find a kernel of truth in the hadiths themselves that connect back to the Prophet, and others accept them in relation to the Prophet Muhammad. The hadiths themselves, at least within contemporary Sunni Islam, have become near sacrosanct, and much of the varied developments of the Sha'ria comes from the hadith corpus (of which even the different sects and schools within those sects disagree on) rather than the Qur'an.

So what do we know? If we doubt the authenticity of the hadiths in relations to Prophet Muhammad, what do we have? How does this relate to the Qun?

In terms of primary sources in relation to early Islam and the Prophetic period of Islam (Muhammad's messengerhood), there is little of. The only real written source that most, if not a near consensus, historians agree that came more or less from Muhammad is the Qur'an itself. Beyond that, the earliest references of Islam on written sources comes not from the Arabs but from Christian writings, writing during the Arab conquests. For example, early Christian writer, known to modern day historians as Pseudo-Sebeos, wrote in 660CE:

At that time a certain man from along those same sons of Ismael, whose name was Mahmet [i.e., Muḥammad], a merchant, as if by God's command appeared to them as a preacher [and] the path of truth. He taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially because he was learnt and informed in the history of Moses. Now because the command was from on high, at a single order they all came together in unity of religion. Abandoning their vain cults, they turned to the living God who had appeared to their father Abraham. So, Mahmet legislated for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication. He said: 'With an oath God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him for ever. And he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved Ismael. But now you are the sons of Abraham and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed for you. Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father Abraham. No one will be able to resist you in battle, because God is with you.

Of course, there is much to be critical here. By the highlight portion is significant, for later Islamic historians would agree that Muhammad too was a merchant. So, we can generally make the safe assumption that Muhammad indeed was a merchant, though historians may or may not be critical with the assumed quote by Pseudo-Sebeos from the mouth of Muhammad.

Herald, you are rambling, why is this important?

For one, the oft-considered "real" Prophet Muhammad found within traditional Islamic sources only date a century or more after his death, a substantial period of time that saw Muhammad's religious community go from a quasi-polity in the western Hejaz to a wide-spread imperial caliphate, incorporating different cultural and social beliefs of those peoples as much as establishing a coherent Islamic identity. Perhaps a clear example of this can be found in the term Muslim as an identifier of Muhammad's followers, when the Quran utilizes the term as something different.

Now utilized as a term to identity those who follow the Prophet Muhammad's teachings - the usage of the term muslim in the Quran has a distinctiveness that relate to a general identifier of being someone who is a monotheist. In the Quran, it declares Jesus' Disciples as:

3:52: And when Jesus sense rebelliousness in them, he said, 'Who are my helpers from God?'' The apostles [the disciples] said, 'We are God's helpers. We believe in God; bear witness that we mus'limuna [are Submitters].

The Quran also refers to those who accept Muhammad's messages of truth as being "submitters even before it [the Quran]."

And indeed We have caused the Word to reach them, that haply they may reflect. Those unto whom We gave the Book before it, they are believers in it. And when it is recited unto them, they say, “We believe in it; verily it is the truth from our Lord. Truly we were submitters even before it.” It is they who will be given their reward twice over for their having been patient. And they repel evil with good, and spend from that which We have provided them." [28:52-54]

Alongside this, the chronologically late al-Ma'idah also refers to both the Gospels and the Torah as being "a guidance and a light":

"And how is it that they come to you for judgment, when they have the Torah, wherein is God's judgement? Yet even after that, they turn their backs, and they are not believers. Truly We sent down the Torah, wherein is a guidance and a light, by which the prophets who submitted judged those who are Jews, as did the sages and the rabbis, in accordance with such of God's Book as they were bidden to preserve and to which they were witnesses. So fear not mankind, but fear Me! And sell not My signs for a paltry price. Whosever judges not by that which God has sent down - it is they who are disbelievers. And therein We prescribed for them: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds, retribution. But whosever forgoes it out of charity, it shall be an expiation for him. Whosever judges not by that which God has sent down - it is they who are the wrongdoers.

And in their footsteps, We sent Jesus son of Mary, confirming the Torah that had come before him, and We gave him the Gospel, wherein is a guidance and a light, confirming the Torah that had come before him, as a guidance and an exhortation to the reverent. Let the people of the Gospel judge by what God has send down therein. Whosever judges by not that which God has sent down - it is they who are iniquitous. And We have send down unto you the Book in truth, confirming the Book that came before it, and as a protector over it. So judge them between in accordance with what God has sent down, and follow not their caprices away from the truth that has come unto you. For each among you We have appointed a law and a way. And had God willed, He would have made you one community, but [He willed otherwise], that He might try you in that which He has given you. So vie with one another in good deeds. Unto God shall be your return all together, and He will inform you of that wherein you differ." [The Table Spread, 5:43-48]

Why do I touch upon this? Well, if one asks any layman Muslim (and perhaps most modern day scholars), many would argue that the position of Jesus or Moses or Abraham as having "being" Muslim as a point in favor to Islam. That is not what the Quran is seeking to state, and any attempt to associate the thousand year accumulation of theological and scholarly interpretation of Islam as being the same message Muhammad argued for is historical anachronism. The Quran does argue that it is the pristine message from God to Muhammad that had been revealed to Jesus and Moses and Abraham, but no where in the Quran does that negate the Torah or the Gospel as being of divine origins. Indeed, often the Quran commands that those who doubt Muhammad's message to ask "the People of the Scripture" .

Of course, there are also the famous verses of 2:62 and 5:69:

"The Believers, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians—all those who believed in God and the Last Day and do good will have their rewards from their Lord, and there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve." - 2:62

Now you'll notice - it mentions the Jews and Christians, but who are the Believers? Well, that is Muhammad's followers! In the Quran, whenever it is referring directly to Muhammad's followers, it uses the phrases "believing men and believing women" or "O you who believe". The term in Arabic would be the mu'minun, of which the caliphal title - amir al-mu'minun - takes its origins from. That is is good enough title for Muhammad's followers and goes more onto my point: the term for Muhammad's followers as being muslim or that Muhammad considered the term islam as the term for his own distinct religion simply isn't true. All Believers in Muhammad's revelations are muslim, yet not all Muslims, quranically speaking, are Muhammad's followers. The Quran does and encourages pluralism as a sign of God, and although Muhammad was given the "clear way", devoid of the sectarian influences that it considers the Christians and Jews had fallen into, Christians and Jews are still apart of the primeval conception of islam.

So, why mention this? It is to demonstrate that the early community founded by Muhammad was not the same community that grew out of the massive expansion born from the Arab conquests. The later imperial caliphates of the Umayyads (alongside its rivals the Kharijites and Zubayrids during the Second Muslim Civil War) began a slow process that began to remove the Christians and Jews from being a part of the primeval faith of islam. Importantly, the faith of Muhammad played little reason on why the Arabs expanded - so the idea that the Arabs came to the global scene to "spread Islam by the sword" is purely fictional. As Amira K. Bennison wrote in her the Great Caliphs (2011):

"These conquests [the Arab conquests] were often quite superficial, combing the capture of key settlements or the establishment of garrison towns which deals struck with local rulers - Visigothic nobles, Persian kings, and Turkic warlords - which gave them autonomy in return for recognition and tribute." (Bennison, pg. 20)

And:

"Contrary to popular myth that Islam was spread by the sword, many Muslim Arabs believed that it was their mission to conquer the world, not change the faith of its inhabitants, and saw Islam as theirs, the religion of the ruling elite, not of their subjects. Although they wanted to convert all Arabs, they showed little desire or compunction to convert the peoples of the other lands they had conquered..." (Bennison, pg. 21).

Hugh Kennedy wrote in his the Great Arab Conquests (2005):

"In general, however, conversion to Islam, or offering the opportunity to conversion to Islam, is not widely cited as a reason for fighting. More common is pride in Arabness and pride in tribe." (Kennedy, pg. 63)

Yet, what does the Quran states about fighting? According to the Quran, Muhammad's followers were permitted to fight against their polytheistic oppressors due to:

Permission is granted to those who are fought, because they have been wronged—and truly God is able to help them—who were expelled from their homes without right, only for saying, “Our Lord is God.” Were it not for God’s repelling people, some by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, wherein God’s Name is mentioned much, would have been destroyed. And God will surely help those who help Him—truly God is Strong, Mighty—who, were We to establish them upon the earth, would perform the prayer, give the alms, and enjoin right and forbid wrong. And unto God is the end of all affairs. [the Pilgrimage, 22:39-41]

So, this differs much of what is touched up - by both Muslims and non-Muslims. That the Arabs came at the direction of the Prophet to conquer and spread his religion (it is entirely unknown if Muhammad had any real hand in directing his followers to attack their northern neighbors, since all mentioned battles hint toward a more southern-focused direction), that they viewed other religious traditions false, and forcefully converted or slaughtered en masse many who refused this new religious is entirely fictitious. Later Muslims writing in the imperial caliphal period [Umayyad, onward] may have adopted such militant thinking to justify and explain their state expanded so rapidly. But that is just it! They were explaining why it happened rather than how it happened; and much of the historical documentation is filled with the narrative historicity born from the traditions of much of the Near East - the historians of the 'Abbasid period were ill-interested in army sizes, logistics, etc., but instead on individual leaders, valor, and moral lessons in which these stories can teach those living in the present. This is a tradition likely adopted from the pre-existing historical culture (what little documentation of the Sasanian sources bare similar results), and these sources themselves are not "primary" in their relation to Muhammad or his companions. They were written by their descendants, who often had a religious or political interest to paint certain areas a certain way (such on what Muhammad did or did not say or do at the time of his death to name a successor).

The relations with the other religious groups within Arabia (and possible Levant if Muhammad was a merchant who did preach northward to Roman Christians and Jews) is multifaceted and complex, with an underlying influence of political considerations tied with disagreements with religious doctrines of Islam's sister religions (such as Jesus as God or God's son). Much criticism toward these groups should always be read as these groups among the Christians and Jews, rather than a wholesale brush that condemns them to hell.

Now, onto the Qunari, in part 2.

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