#Dalish Life

[lelianasbong]

if davrin has a million fans, then i am one of them. if davrin has ten fans, then i am one of them. if davrin has only one fan then that is me. if davrin has no fans, then that means i am no longer on earth. if the world is against davrin, then i am against the world-

[corseque]

it’s very difficult to be 85% attracted to voices and nothing else because I can say to myself that I’m going to romance the old man necromancer, but then he’s going to open his mouth and have the most unattractive muppetish clownish voice/cadence/way of speaking in the world and it will be all over. I literally HAVE to hear them.

incidentally that’s how Solas got me. Like I was trying to romance Iron Bull and he is physically perfect, but just his voice didn’t do it for me, just as Solas was talking in that very perfect voice and intriguing cadence…

anyway what I’m saying is I need to hear these people talk. Appearances mean nothing to me, it’s voice and personality

[mythalism]

from @/elfbotanist on twitter who is posting from trick's bluesky; they elaborated a bit on exactly what the intention of the solavellan ending is

[weaveandwood]

In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice.

My Grey Warden from DAO, Ellaria Mahariel. A Dalish dual wielding rogue, she was plucked from her clan and joined the Grey Wardens, defeating the Archdemon and ending the Blight.

[nessacousland]

Ariane/Finn - run away with me

" Fresh air and sunlight is good for you."

[detectiveneve]

alright with 30+ hours. I'm gonna yap about my personal itching beef, since I'm having a ton of fun. but.

I think by far one of my biggest issues with the game is how much they flattened out thedas' social & political landscape. maybe for ease, maybe out of fear of tackling their topics "badly," but the way that they both want to address tevinter's slavery, but have also extremely downplayed elven subjugation & oppression as a longstanding lore, is sooo... frustrating.

I think the story so far is pretty solid, I'm having a GREAT time, I enjoy all the cast, but it does feel like it could've been a lot deeper if they'd fully accounted for the breadth of these longstanding lore realities that come with magic & class & whether one is human or elven or dwarven. I've gotten NONE of that, AS an elf shadow dragon. davrin going "that'll endear us to the world..." about the gods being elven is insane -- elves are already oppressed under the structures of thedas! tevinter is where all of this STARTED. similarly, the lack of interaction between magic & class is like... craaazy to me.

these structures are present throughout the entirety of each game, it should feel different in each location. it just feels clumsy to both want to address the social issues of slavery, etc. present in thedas, and ALSO flatten out the differences between city elves & dalish, not emphasize it more especially with an elven origin... like wdym. wdym. that one of the biggest mentions of it with an elven rook is the scroll lore where rook goes "it's about time someone acknowledged what my people did..." about some guy who praised the elves. a shadow dragon elf rook will have been living with a very specific systemic structure of oppression for their entire life. WHY isn't that here. the story structure I'm having a good time with, the characters I'm having a good time with, but goddd it could have been so much deeper if it had actually incorporated some of the complexity & nuance of these social structures in thedas. you look silly trying to both include these themes of shadow dragons breaking slavery and ALSO pussyfooting around The Origins Of How We Got Here. that's not even getting into MAGIC, and how being a MAGE should mean something different in different places. like. whahrhrrhrhrhrr.

[thechantrydeservedit]

The HoF is gonna go through 5 different crisis once they learn about Davrin's companion

[vigilskeep]

Have u ever taken a look at the inquisition multiplayer characters on the wiki? Theres some super interesting stuff there! One of them is the last surviving disciple of andraste cultist and shes a reaver. Theres an arcane warrior and a legionnaire and also Isabela is there. Some of them shed some interesting light on the inquisition too, like the reaver

briefly looking at their descriptions in world of thedas made a black hole of despair gnaw at my guts, yes

[mohntilyet]

speaking of veilguard kind of going nowhere. i am so mad over there being no in depth epilogue. at least tell me what happens to the factions that are being led/guided by people rook influenced !!!!!! all these companions have obvious obligations outside of the veilguard, and they're all dedicated to the lives they lived before they joined this team, so of course they would go back. what effect did bellara deciding to keep the archive have on the elves? neve decides to protect dock town by any means necessary, so what does that mean for a blighted minrathous? everything to do with harding and the titans ????!!!! and solas just accepts being trapped because he's been 'outplayed' DO NOT MAKE ME LAUGH!!!! somebody has got to tell me what happens after the world gets 'saved' because the south in chaos, minrathous almost destroyed and the last of the elven gods being dead is like. crazy. and the companions just commenting things i already know is really not cutting it for me

[suppenzeit]

i wouldnt bet my car on it... but i can see bioware resolving solas' story with him having to accept that he cant keep chasing his past, and having to sacrifice his godhood to live a normal life for once

[trickerys-domain]

So I just got a chance to listen to the Dev Q&A (thank you Ghil Dirthalen!).

Was anyone else extremely annoyed and disappointed by the answer regarding City vs Dalish Elf Rook?

Like that 'things are different in Northern Thedas when it comes to elves' comes across as such a lazy lore excuse for 'we didn't want backlash for restricting races to factions' considering from every other peice DA media released, we know that's not true. The dalish and city elves are very much seperate cultures and factions on their own.

It would be like saying orzammar and surface dwarves are 'basically the same' in northern thedas

[barkspawnsblog]

The unwilling Inquisitor, the last of her clan, the Star

done by Sol Salinas :)

[nokdunal]

Elves that float around in my head lately,,,

[chibichibisha]

Opps I think I never posted my Warden Commander Mahariel and her crew of adopted kids misfits . Anyway here she is!

[v-arbellanaris]

I have no idea why but I absolutely hate how Ameridan' story was handled, they basically dumbed it down to him worshipping both the creators and andraste/chant of light, which kind of proved Cassandra's dumb (and incredibly disrespectful) point of an inquisitor having "room for another god". It's also so unfair how they made the evanuris to just be power hungry slavers and tyrants, my only hope is that if the creators were disproving then I hope it would be the same for the chant of light and maker (seeing asnit was solas who made the veil and not the creator) I really hate how centrist the game has gotten, like flat out, whenever I hear the words grey morality and nuance I can't help burn cringe, that's how much dragon age has ruined it for me.

It's also so incredibly funny how the devs are genuinely surprised that most of the players are pro mage, like of course we are?

i think it's particularly extremely aggravating, the way bioware writers write about a pantheon as if polytheistic religions are simply a thing of the past and dead and some kind of mystery/mythology. according to bioware, this kind of writing for polytheistic religions is fine because no real religion these days would everrrrrrr worship multiple gods /sarcasm. (note that the links are just some examples and not comprehensive in the least)

there's a lot of writing choices i quite simply disagree with in dai, and there's some that are just... i don't even disagree with them because that implies it's something to argue about. some of their writing choices are just wrong. after borrowing so heavily from ethnic groups to shape their fictional histories, the disrespect of writing their fictional oppressed minorities as being responsible for their own oppression because they were not "open" enough to include/absorb expy christianity into their religious beliefs and fought back against violent colonialism. the resulting clumsy collation between isr*el and the indigenous people of the americas wanting to reclaim their lands stolen from them by white colonisers makes my blood boil.

ameridan is just another piece of the puzzle that makes me seethe. we have a man who apparently ~existed before hostilities between the elves and the humans~ which is now the fault of drakon's son who invaded the dales after ameridan was long gone. that's already absolute bullshit because ameridan lived in the fucking dales. elves only started living in the dales AFTER ANDRASTE'S REBELLION. after the fall of arlathan, and hundreds of years of enslavement at the hands of tevinter humans???

additionally, the battle of red crossing happened in 2:9 glory, but tensions between the elves and humans had been building up since the second blight. drakon the first died in 1:45 but the elves apparently did "nothing" to help montsimmard when it was overrun by darkspawn in 1:25 divine - twenty years before his death, there was already simmering resentment. additionally, it was drakon the first that expanded the orlesian empire and the orlesian chantry - wotv2 notes his battles against the darkspawn did more to spread the chant of light (specifically, the orlesian chant of light which he, yknow, fucking made up) than any of his other attempts. by the time the exalted march on the dales happens, over three quarters of thedas is under orlesian rule. maferath himself handed the dales to the surviving elves from andraste's campaign in -165 ancient and the elves lived in the dales peacefully until the orlesian chantry was salivating at its borders. and the orlesian chantry has a history of wiping out "cults" - i.e. other sects of their own religion that differ from belief, no matter how minor, to their own. including, notably, the wholesale genocide of a non-violent sect centered around fertility rituals and, later, the dragon worshipping sect in haven off their own land. (and i'm willing to BET MONEY that they were originally alamarri themselves, considering that andraste was brought there to rest, and considering how cultural variance in religion usually occurs [i.e. through the blending/adoption of folk beliefs or the cultural/religious practices from Before]. so the andrastians slaughtered the cult AND THEN TOOK THEIR FUCKING LAND.)

the entire way andrastianism is treated in inquisition makes me violent. and unfortunately, it does not look like it's going to change - there's been multiple statements about how the maker's existence will continue to remain "a mystery" out of a reluctance to confirm or deny the existence of a One True God which, coupled with how they've shat on every other religion in the game - the tevinter chantry, the qun, the stone, the elven pantheon, every other sect worshipping the maker/andraste - gives me absolutely no hope that the writing team is going to get their heads out of their asses about it.

[skullmoss]

wonder if romancing harding as a dwarf is what s*lasmancers felt like in inquisition, where you feel Catered To

except the catch is harding is actually a genuinely wonderful and sweet person who cares about others and isn't racist