#I am always on my Neve/Lucanis agenda

[wardensantoineandevka]

Lucanis constantly yawning and asking for a cup of strong coffee in the middle of his jobs in Vows & Vengeance 🤝 Neve thinking about fried fish and the hours of sleep she's missing out on in the middle of her investigation in The Streets of Minrathous

[butterflydm]

magic in thedas (more DAV posting)

There's a... idk, if you would call it a joke or a meme or a serious meta. Maybe depends on the person talking about it. But there's a... a trend, let's say, about how there's always an "apostate mage" in your dragon age party who has their own agenda that is not moved by yours, sometimes termed a betrayal, though I think that's more a matter of perspective. Morrigan, Anders, and Solas all have their own potentially world-changing plans that are (mostly) unchanged by what the protagonist chooses to do -- the methods and attitude are the largest effect that your protagonist has on them.

I don't get the sense that any of our mages in DAV are like that, not where I am in the story, and maybe that's partly because in a game that isn't shaped around the southern chantry, the phrase "apostate mage" lacks the bite that it has in the south. There isn't that separation.

Progress continues as I work on my companion's quests.

I got some more Taash & Harding flirting, which I always enjoy:

I did Bellara's personal quest next. I was afraid her brother would die, and he did, but at least we didn't have to kill him. He realized what a mistake he'd made and did what he could to fix it. Small victories. The funeral that Bellara created for him out of the knowledge she got out of the archive spirit was also really nice.

There is a lot of sadness and loss in the companion quests so far. Harding facing the grief and anger of the Titans (and herself); Taash losing their mom; Emmrich needing to let Manfred go if he wanted to pursue lichdom; and now Bellara losing her brother.

But it also really highlights not only how Rook is there for each of them, but how they're there for each other too. I really feel the love between all of them.

After Emmich did his lich ritual, when he told everyone about it afterwards... it was sweet, and charming, how they took it in stride. I mean, this is the team that literally lives in the Fade! So they're pretty used to weird. But it also really speaks to how much I believe that they care about each other. There have been a lot of little side conversations that have shown growing connections between lots of different pairs of people -- not just the romance between Harding and Taash, but Neve and Lucanis talk a lot, and Darvin and Taash are doing exercises together, and they just... they hang out with each other. They have a cooking rotation!

It really is a contrast to some of the past teams, though, which were sometimes more marked by their venomous barbs than by empathy and compassion. DA2 was particularly pointed in this regard at times, with it sometimes feeling like Hawke was the only thing holding the friend group together (that said, Isabela mentioned to us recently that Kirkwall taught her what love & family is, so that's sweet).

There was also a really nice wrap-up outing for Harding, where we went back to see Stalgard and met his sister Durra, and Harding shared her connection with the Titans with them. Very emotional. Harding really got a chance to process her feelings about the Titans, and about the future for the dwarves as separate from the Titans.

After that, I went to Treviso to knock out things there -- first I had to get the location of the ritual site (turns out that our lead was the Butcher - the leader of the Antaam, who had realized he was acting as a pawn of the gods and he gave into the whispers of the gods and lost himself in order to give us the location. And that really did fit for me with some stuff we've gotten from Qunari in positions like that before -- I'm thinking of the Arishok who was in Kirkwall. There's a rigid sense of honor that sometimes ends up being helpful for their enemies).

Then we finished up Lucanis's Hero of the Veilguard quest, which ended up being very heartwarming and kinda a nice contrast after some of the heartbreaking ones I've done recently. I don't know if it would have gone differently if I'd had Spite & Lucanis decide to focus on revenge against Illario as opposed to saving Caterina, but it was the least bittersweet of the personal quests so far -- we were able to save Caterina, and the confrontation with Illario ended up with Lucanis getting affirmed as the First Talon in front of the Crows.

(this whole sequence also reminded me that Lucanis is, like, really really wealthy! Like, damn, Rook has a rich boyfriend)

I really do like how much more sympathetic DAV is towards demons & spirits -- this definitely started earlier, in DAI, but even in DAI, there were a lot of hardcore Chantry NPCs who disliked the idea of sympathy towards spirits.

I think Varric being the person brought forward as the point-man (who recruited Rook) really is the spine of a lot of that, because Varric has gone through it with spirits and demons and explored all kinds of emotions. Varric's sympathy towards Cole feels like that's the sort of approach that the game as a whole has brought to spirits in general in DAV. A different sort of sympathy than Solas felt -- Varric explicitly very much did not understand all the magical underpinnings of what Cole was, and cared deeply about him anyway.

Which, I really do feel, and I've felt this more as I've gone through the game -- being a person that Varric would recruit felt like it really defined the edges and angles of who Rook can be as a person. You have to be the sort of person that Varric is willing to trust to be their second-in-command -- the Varric who experienced DAI, who genuinely believed in the Inquisitor and who had long conversations with Solas and Cole. That's not the same person as the Varric who recruited Hawke for the Deep Roads expedition. He was looking for a different kind of person in Rook than he was looking for in Hawke, back in the day.

Of course, I've also really focused on the possibility of redemption as a character, because it felt really fitting for a Gray Warden (and that was really kickstarted early, with the ability to send the Mayor of the blighted town to the Gray Wardens). So every time one of those big choices has come up, that's the side that this Rook has been on -- including things like encouraging Lucanis & Spite to focus on saving Caterina instead of avenging themselves against Illario. So I do wonder if that ending would have been darker if my Rook were darker. I also wonder if this storyline would have been darker if I'd chosen to save Minrathous instead of Treviso -- I definitely want to do a replay of the game as a Shadow Dragon so that I'll pick Minrathous (any other Rook makes it harder to justify, because Treviso just comes across as more vulnerable due to Minrathous having such a high concentration of powerful mages) and see what potential changes might be there. I'm guessing it has a 'ruined' map that needs to be rediscovered the same way that I needed to do for Minrathous in this run-through.

Also, this moment made me yearn for the ability to romance both Lucanis and Davrin at the same time:

(Davrin is the only person who could have wooed my Rook away from Lucanis)

But I've reached the point in the game where I'm almost putting off playing more than I could because I like the world so much and don't want it to end, which is very silly and contradictory of me, but something I've definitely been known to do in the past, lol. It's especially silly and contradictory because I would love to read other people's thoughts on the game but don't want to be spoiled about the events of the endgame.

I've cleared out the crossroads and fully explored the Lighthouse, and now I only have two companions left to take to Hero status (Neve and Davrin). I took care of the blighted dragon in the crossroads and was able to max out the Caretaker's workshop, and I'm getting pretty close to maxing out all the factions (only the Dragons left).

Next step is to take care of everything in the Wetlands and finish up Davrin's personal quest (and hopefully save Assan's family!). Then I meet with the Inquisitor again, and take care of any outstanding issues in Minrathous (including Neve's personal quest).

If we get a DA5, I'm guessing it'll be about the Devouring Storm that the Qunari ran away from (when they crossed the sea to reach Par Vollen) - Ghilia'nan recently mentioned bad dreams about masked eyes across the sea.