#Lucanis says (presumably about Spite & the Ossuary): We both did what we had to do to get out of there.

[bossuary]

If you are hoping the Dalish hold miracles, child, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Even if the demon is driven out, the soul is left scarred. It can never recover. Not truly. Like a wounded animal, it will fall prey to scavengers. The only cure is death.

-Keeper Marethari, Dragon Age II - A New Path (quest)

[thegeminisage]

i'm having a logistics fic problem. i don't normally Ask The Audience for fic help but this is making me crazy so if you have thoughts please weigh in. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING for lucanis's quests.

how does the vial of lucanis's blood work to control him and/or spite? the entirety of lucanis's explanation about it is "they have a vial of my blood, they can use it to control me" and then "it's for blood magic to control me and the demon, and until it's gone i can't touch calivan." but that doesn't make any god damn sense

for lucanis:

you don't need to use someone's blood specifically to control people with blood magic, do you? don't we see it happen in dragon age all the time? like templars use phylacteries - vials of a mage's blood - to track them down if they escape the circles, but they can't use the phylacteries CONTROL mages. and also, lucanis isn't a mage. so why does it require his blood specifically?

for spite:

you don't need blood to bind demons, either, do you? in inquisition, some mages fleeing from kirkwall bind the spirit of wisdom that solas was friends with and turn it into a demon because they force it to do things that go against its nature. and presumably it did not have blood at the time because it wasn't like. inside a person. spirits are just like. magical energy, right? even if the vial of blood is part of that binding ritual, if zara or whoever could bind a demon the way those mages did in da:i, why dosn't she just order spite to take lucanis over like she wants instead of having calivan unsuccessfully torture him for a year? furthermore, is spite not already bound in some way because he can't leave lucanis (and by extension, the ossuary itself) even if he wants to?

there is the implication in a note you can find in one of the...labs? that the reason that what zara does in the ossuary is special because it PRODUCES demons instead of SUMMONS them (hence getting the more "complex" emotions like spite, rapacity, passivity, misery, etc), and i thought maybe that difference had something to do with it, but in that same lab lucanis outright says "zara can SUMMON (not produce) all the demons she wants but they don't have to obey her." but...don't they?? is that not specifically what the vial is for? isn't that why lucanis can't attack calivan? why can't a tevinter magister do what a bunch of chucklefucks from kirkwall can?

and finally, there's illario, who managed to control spite (or at least get him to back off) with blood magic but WITHOUT a vial of lucanis's blood specifically. granted, he was not able to do this once lucanis and spite both resisted him (it only worked when both he and lucanis were trying to overpower spite), but STILL. if you can do that with your own blood why the FUCK do the venatori need a vial of lucanis's?

for both:

evidence suggests that the dead guards rook & co find upon their arrival to the ossuary are lucanis and spite's handiwork. if the vial of blood prevents the two of them from attacking calivan, why didn't it prevent them from killing all those Venatori? why doesn't it prevent lucanis and spite killing their way through the ossuary with you to get TO the vial?? is there not the minor implication that the existence of this vial is the ONLY reason lucanis, TRAINED ASSASSIN WHO SPECIALIZES IN KILLING MAGES, did not rip his way out of the ossuary on day one??

i would like to hear from everyone whose answer is not "the writing in datv is flawed and its lore is just too wildly inconsistent with the rest of the series." i know that and i definitely agree with that assessment, but it's not going to help me get my fanfic written 😭 if you want to reblog this that's fine too!! i really really don't want to have to go ask reddit lol