#anyway i'm learning red mage it's suffering

[fooltofancy]

red mage lessons be like

alisaie: do you know how to use that thing?

ilya: the uh. the pointy end goes into the other man.

[deusexlachina]

Stemquisition Part 3 (In Hushed Whispers) - I violated the principle of causality and all I got was this lousy necklace

In which we have to go back...to the present!

Dorian, a much nicer mage from Tevinter, holds a secret meeting with me away from prying eyes, but right next to a small army of demons. He starts spouting magical technobabble about time travel that, frankly, does not sound scientific.

But he reassures me that he helped to develop this time magic, so he would know, and it makes as much sense as anything else at this point. To impress Alexius, I gather 25 Power doing the adventuring equivalent of filing paperwork, so he finally deigns to meet me. He tries to negotiate the terms under which he might loan out his army of disposable slaves future Tevinter citizens. I'm really more interested in the time travel. How did you do that.

He tries to have me executed, but Leliana remembers her adventures in Redcliffe, and she has her assassins go through a secret tunnel, which must have been a lot of fun. But it's not fun for Alexius' guards, and Alexius decides to erase me from time in a sickass green swirly portal.

He accidentally sends me into the future instead, but an entire year in my absence renders the world totally dominated by Corypheus. So, really, he's largely succeeded, entirely by accident. We scientists call that serendipity, which in Thedas is also the name of a transgender sex worker. She's a barrel of laughs and, despite living in the single deadliest city in Thedas, has not suffered violence like more than half of transgender sex workers. My point is that we should decriminalize sex work immediately, and also that Serendipity is not a good character.

Fortunately there's a much better trans character in my own army - Krem, along with his boss, The Iron Bull. Hey, how are those lovable rogues doing? My gang? My squad? My goons? My buddies? My pals? My sweet boyos? My chuckling chums?

...okay, I'm getting some "not so good"s.

Iron Bull is infected with red lyrium, as is Varric. That's especially bad because Varric hates red lyrium. Go on. Ask him why he hates red lyrium. Or not, he'll tell you anyway. There was this adventure in the Deep Roads...

We have to get back in time before Leliana kills Varric. With her thighs. I just learned she could do that, in a scene that would be pretty hot if it didn't immediately follow a year of grisly torture.

Despite being an accomplished spymaster who has every intention of sending me back in time, Leliana doesn't want to talk about what happened, but I've seen enough clues in my investigation of the future. She's been...experimented on...oh no.

They've used science...for EVIL! Which is admittedly pretty par for the course in Thedas. There aren't a whole lot of experiments whose subjects aren't "terrified prisoners" and whose methodology is more robust than "I WILL HAVE YOUR PATHETIC BLOOD!" What a shameful attitude. No wonder we're living in a medieval world despite it being common knowledge that there's a formula for gunpowder and that it is possible to make explosives that can level a city. I need to fix this, but first I need to get back...to the present!

Varric and The Iron Bull help Leliana hold off Corypheus' army while Dorian reverses the time magic and I...what am I doing to help? I'm not a mage, so...I guess I'm just there? Honestly I feel a bit bad about mostly standing around while my fabulous friendarinos give their lives to give me as much time as they have arrows.

Before I can determine the arrow-time conversion rate, Leliana dies as she lived: not having a good time. But me and Dorian escape just in time. And through time. It's time magic. Alexius surrenders, having played all two of his cards (easily-defeated guards and faulty time magic).

Later, I coerce Alexius into sharing the secrets of time magic. The ramifications could be world-changing! A mere glimpse into this field could revolutionize everything we think we know about reality! Against my allies' warnings, I authorize Alexius to continue this line of research.

The result is an amulet which makes my skills recharge a few seconds faster.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Rawr, I liked the visuals of what we ve seen of Kaer Morhen so far, but something about the Death Tree bothers me. I understand the concept if wanting to remember fallen Witchers but what about the trainees that died during the Trials or training ? That s a large part of Witcher trauma.

Non, I apologise in advance for the incoming reflection. You unleashed a beast. Before I decided to enter the... uh, rewarding career of teaching, I had written a master's thesis on the construction of the hero and how it changed between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a follow up to my dissertation (I never got to do it, because I'm working class af and couldn't reasonably afford it). But, anyway, why is this relevant, you might ask? Well, it's to do with who this tree memorialises and some of the interesting parallels I've been mulling over recently.

For me, the Witchers are an allegory for many things, but thinking about Sapkowski's background, it struck me that he could be drawing influences from soldiers lost during the conflicts of the twentieth century. Young men snatched from all walks of life, turned into weapons, equipped with the shittiest guns and defences (I'll never forget learning that French soldiers in WW1 initially wore red hats with blue jackets...) and then thrown out to die. And the people that took the heaviest hit? The poor. It's always the poor.

Who are the Witchers before they're mutated? They're orphans, urchins, the unwanted. Geralt and Ciri? They're one in a million. Most Witchers would be like Eskel or Lambert; impoverished kids taken from their villages. You don't see lords and kings sending their children to become witchers. It's too dangerous. But the poor? Well, they don't matter. Send them in droves. Send them to suffer and die.

The poor only become worth something through sacrifice. Time, their health, their finances, their lives. They become heroes--worthy of memorialisation and praise--when they have made that sacrifice.

But surely the Witchers--poor themselves--would remember the children? No. They might recall their faces, perhaps, but after a while they blur into one. So many die, it's easier on the soul to let them slip away. If you get hung up on that then nothing will ever get done. Perhaps that's why they tell themselves they don't feel. It's the only way they can put the trauma behind them (or think they have), and they don't want the reminder.

On top of that, you have the indoctrination of the mages--members of the ruling classes through birth, luck and/or education--telling them that the strong survive, that only the weak perish (like how the government turn their citizens against those that require benefits, aid, support, anyone?) They have made themselves worthy by sacrificing their humanity. Transformed from something less than dirt to a Witcher. (Not quite a hero in their own context, but the parallels with a heroic soldier and how they are used and thrown away? It's there).

But what happens when they go out into the world? They're reviled and shunned. They're only useful when they're fighting--dying--and beyond that, no one's interested. No one will remember them after they're gone. Not even their names.

Throw that all together and you get the Witchers memorialising their fallen themselves. Like fellow soldiers memorialise each other with their dog tags. They don't have a family to speak of, just the brotherhood, so that's where their dogs tags go. The rest of the world forgets about them. But the Witchers don't.

This is very much 'death of the author' here. My private reflections when trying to rationalise an odd design choice. Did LH consider anything like this? Probably not. She didn't even consider the logic of a brotherhood of practical, diehard survivalists leaving a damn hole in their roof. Subzero temperatures in a mountainous biome? Constantly having to restock fuel in blizzards because we're burning through it to stay warm? Nah.

It should have been placed elsewhere too. I bet that damn thing has more piss, vomit and beer stains on it than anything else in the castle...