sha-lyuzar

[sha-lyuzar]

like i just. i just need to lay this out. becuz i need to go to bed but i will not be able to stop thinking about this otherwise. okay. so

the tranquil we see in inquisition

Avexis. who was a major player in the events of dawn of the seeker. helped save the day alongside cassandra. was honored by the divine. she's tranquil now. she's minaeve's assistant and we see her around haven but we can't speak to her

overheard dialogue between her and giselle reveals that she has been so horribly abused while tranquil that she wouldn't chose to be cured becuz she doesn't think she could handle dealing with her trauma with all her emotions intact

cassandra, who knew avexis, who tells you the story of saving the divine and mourns how she is celebrated while the mages were forgotton, has absolutely fuck all to say about any of this. if she even knows avexis is in haven

you don't know avexis's significance if you haven't watched dawn of the seeker. we don't see avexis again following in your heart shall burn

Helisma Derrington. becomes your lead of creature research upon your arrival to skyhold. presumably one of minaeve's assistants prior as she is given the position by minaeve if minaeve lives

(minaeve is the only character afaik that you can talk to about the tranquil at any kind of length and who appears to give any kind of shit about them)

you can have conversation with helisma, which i think is great, and she even gives you war table missions if you talk with her enough. it's been too long since i've played and i couldn't find a full video, but you can get SOME of her perspective on being tranquil. it isn't much. her memory doesn't appear to be very good

Clemence. you have one (1) conversation with him which is his recruitment, and that's only if you check out the mages in redcliffe and then bother to talk to ppl after your convo with alexius. his conversation is interesting but brief. i don't know if anyone has taken a fly cam for close ups on everyone wearing robes in redcliffe, but for the average player, he's the only tranquil we know to be there. we do not see him again

Maddox. a tranquil from kirkwall. he was made tranquil for passing love letters. samson was kicked out of the templars for passing them for him. the only thing cullen has to say about it is that meredith made mages tranquil for even lesser "offenses"; he doesn't appear overly bothered by this

you only get to see maddox if you side with the mages. he dies. he kills himself ostensibly to aid samson. he remains loyal to samson to the end. this is arguably the best evidence we have of a tranquil exercising autonomy

(EDIT: forgot to mention Pharamond. you only learn about him by finding an obscure note in a certain cave in the western approach. it doesn't really tell you what he was doing there and you have to intuit that he's an ex-tranquil. you don't know the significance of this unless you've read asunder)

~

the tranquil are all killed. not all of them obviously, but a lot. the majority. so many are killed that their murderers have trouble finding more to kill. they are killed by the venatori. their skulls are used to make the ocularum that allow you to find the shards. tranquil skulls specifically are needed to make them. we don't know how they find this out

a tranquil must be killed within proximity to shards for the oculara to work. no one knows where that proximity is until the tranquil is killed and the oculara is able to be made. if the oculara doesn't work, they move to a different location and try again. the tranquil must be killed exactly as a demon possesses them. if their death is off even by mere minutes, it won't work. they have to do it again

(take into account how many ocularum there are. take into account that tranquil were among the largest populations in the circles and that the majority of them were killed. remember how many ocularum there are. take into account the failures during discovery and the failures during attempts to make them. estimate a number. remember that so many tranquil were killed, the venatori struggled to find more to kill. double the number)

you only find out what happened to the tranquil, this knowledge about the ocularum, if you enter the shack near the docks in redcliffe. it requires the deft hands fine tools perk. nothing is said about them otherwise

your companions have various dialogue about this. cassandra says she'd wondered what happened to them and that she should have looked harder to find them. solas says he'd wondered what happened, he says their deaths are a waste. vivienne says she'd assumed they were with the rebels and that she shouldn't have. cole says they couldn't call for help, that if he'd heard them he'd have saved them, that he'll avenge them

once you leave, no one says anything more. you can't say anything more. you don't even get a war table mission about it. if this happens prior to promise of destruction you can't bring it up in your post-quest convo with cass. you can't bring it up when you later discuss releasing the truth of the cure with her

the ocularum stay up. you can continue to use them. nothing is mentioned about whether they are ever taken down

people didn't care about the tranquil, if they even noticed they were gone. the people who cared about them didn't look hard enough for them, or they decided someone else must have. no one mentions them to you when you're herald, when you're inquisitor; you aren't given the option to look for them

the loyal templars didn't protect them. the seekers didn't protect them. the rebel mages didn't protect them. no other mage group protected them. minaeve is the only person we know of that makes an effort to protect as many as she can

we never get to talk to any tranquil character about this. we can't tell them about the ocularum. we can't tell them about the cure

the tranquil suffer the worst cruelties the circles have to offer. and then they die. they are killed en masse. off-screen. and they are never mentioned again

no one cares about them. you aren't allowed to care about them. the bioware writers sure as fuck don't care about them

[sha-lyuzar]

Project Joplin save me.

Project Joplin.

Save me Project Joplin.

[sha-lyuzar]

NO WAY NO WAY HE CAME TO SEE US OFF AAAAAHDJJSJSKS

[sha-lyuzar]

Tarquin dragon age the man you are

[sha-lyuzar]

I'm so confused because i just to the Divine's Manor and Strife is just... there? Like, i saw him being stabbed repeatedly and now He's standing here unscathed??

Made it to the final quest at 3:00am, and am forcing myself to go to sleep, even though i wanted to be in bed 3 hours ago. For some reason, despite having all factions maxed out, all companions as heroes of the veilguard and assigning Emmrich to the wards, Strife still got hit, and i'm not sure what i did wrong.

[sha-lyuzar]

Neve Gallus the woman you are

[sha-lyuzar]

I know it would have been a nightmare for the devs to juggle two different player characters but I still wish these two could have been recruited at the same time tbh. I needed to see what kind of headaches they would have brought to the Ferelden nobility and to each other :/

[sha-lyuzar]

A lot of the pro-veilguard arguments I see include a very specific way of viewing what “dark fantasy” is which misses the entire point as to why there are criticisms about the overall tone of the game.

Dark fantasy is not just “how much murder rape bigotry and overall suffering can we put in a story for the sake of doing so”.

It’s about having events and themes based off of the darker parts of reality and then, as the player, being able to do something about it. The general appeal is the catharsis. It’s about seeing these stories reflected through an interactive story in a meaningful, respectful, purposeful way.

Is dragon age the poster child for handling its complicated, real-life-inspired politics well? No. But veilguard was somehow worse. The bar was in hell and it still tripped flat on its face.

Veilguard’s lackadaisical, chronically ironic “well THAT just happened”, neutered writing and theme is not a good argument as to why this is a good dragon age game, and you can’t blame the dark fantasy genre for it.

[sha-lyuzar]

I forgot I drew these ages ago! Reposting them because I can: The Three Divines.

[sha-lyuzar]

my contribution to the "neve in suits" agenda

[sha-lyuzar]

Made it to the final quest at 3:00am, and am forcing myself to go to sleep, even though i wanted to be in bed 3 hours ago. For some reason, despite having all factions maxed out, all companions as heroes of the veilguard and assigning Emmrich to the wards, Strife still got hit, and i'm not sure what i did wrong.

[sha-lyuzar]

Anderfels in the lore: an arid steppe nearly devoid of life. This is not arable land due to having weathered multiple Blights. The only livable areas are coasts and the banksmof the Lattenfluss. The dust storms are frequent and brutal, and summers scorch what ever humidity is present. There's a giant statue of Andraste in the Anderfels, so giant it makes the Minrathous spires look merely ok.

Roaring and roiling dust storms on the horizon. Endless plains that put the fear of the unfathomable in anybody who didn't grow up there. Nothing beautiful grows there, only the dullest, hardiest grasses.

And where do we go? Swamp. At night. Filled with pretty, blue flowers and gators. And high rock formations so most of the time as the game guides you to the map, you're staring at rocks anyway.

I get that 'rocks make it more interesting visually' but listen. You have no fucking idea how much time i spent dicking around in the Steppe in both Pathologic games just so I could take in the existential dread of isolation, just the gently rolling steppe disappearing into the mist. The liminal space of it all. Friendly and incredibly hostile at the same time, inviting and subtly terrifying. Meant only for people who were adapted to it, and yet calling you to join it... in the most fucked up 'come die here and let me grow healing herbs from your corpse' kind of way.

Now add a looming dust storm to that if you think you're unable to blow the player's mind with the promise of the dread and dead endless.

Swamps. Really.

[sha-lyuzar]

I would love to be a Grey Warden

I love time myself but I do love the occasional team assignment

I would do so good crawling through like the underground with two swords hunting Darkspawn

These people have bottles of alcohol that they constantly just top off with whatever they can find and it makes an eternity grog that’s so me coded

Find me at an old keep abandoned in some mountains surviving and the local village thinks I’m a monster because they just see me slinking about and shit yelling into the mountains

Catch me spiking my shit with darkspawn blood to “top off” the immunity and go insane

WDYM there’s an infinite supply of monsters to stab stab and slash slash underground like an animal and there’s tons of ancient rare treasure because of how long it’s been since someone’s cleared their lairs

[sha-lyuzar]

Veilguard: Shows one of the Forgotten Ones for the first time ever Me: Oh boy I can't wait to see what the Forgotten Ones actually are like, since all their lore stems from pro-Evanuris propaganda. Since the Evanuris are shown to be tyrants who suppress and destroy all who oppose them, surely the Forgotten Ones were actually much more nuanced and deep and- Anaris: Is literally Satan

[sha-lyuzar]

Low key very tired of people responding to veilguard criticism with something along the lines of “lol these people have no media literacy, didn’t you understand what the game was telling you??” Yes, yes I understand what the game was trying to tell me. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or the way the writers went about it.

Also the whole argument of “well, the dragon age fandom proved they couldn’t handle xyz controversial character/element of the story so that’s why veilguard had very little references to those things” kinda grinds my gears a bit. I don’t think it can be proven with 100% certainty what writing decisions were made based on past fandom reactions to the other games, but I do think it would be an incredibly shitty move to simplify or remove complexity from a story just because there might be a portion of the audience who doesn’t get it. “The fandom couldn’t even handle Vivienne” Yeah a good amount of people dismissed her as a selfish snooty bitch, but I didn’t and a lot of other people didn’t and to remove complex and interesting characters like her on the basis that enough people “won’t get it” just feels like a disservice to all of us.

[sha-lyuzar]

That said, i absolutely hate the reveal of the Gloom Howler, and her... bizarre and nonsensical renovation project.

[sha-lyuzar]

Davrin's personal quests got so much better in Act II, he's rapidly becoming one of my new favorites