#da elves

[greetingsfromantiva]

A Meditation on Grief- Dragon Age The Veilguard (Codexes: The Elven People)

They say grief is a knife. Sharp. Painful. Immediate.

But grief isn't a knife.

It's a stone. Choked down. and kept down.

It erodes. Time makes it smaller, lesser.

You forget about it. It passes into memory. Where you used to feel its pain, now you feel nothing.

But sometimes it turns. A note. A flower. A smell.

The smoothly worn edges retreat. Twist away.

What comes now is as sharp and jagged as ever.

It cuts anew. It's worn anew.

Then it happens again.

And unlike a stone, there is always another jagged edge.

[knife-eared-jan]

Ok, as much as I have been hyping and playing 12 hours a day since it got out (still in Act 1 though, bc I'm a slowass player and completionist), I feel like I have to say something that is getting hard to ignore at this point... and I wanna preface this by saying that I am loving a lot of aspects of the game and I adore the writing when it comes to the companions, who I am obsessed with.

And maybe this will get better yet, as I generally heard the writing picks up once the story progresses beyond picking up all companions..

But I'm starting to get quite upset at the way the writing just does NOT care about the established lore and the politics of Thedas like at all, when to me - and many others - that richness, nuance and depth of the world is what makes the games so special.

(Spoilers below)

I looked past the way the elves in Arlathan just seemed to know that their gods are evil and Solas is "kind of a dick" but was right about that. When, you know, that made him basically the Satan of their pantheon up to now.. It was after all the tutorial stage of the game and I understand that you wanna ease newcomers into the lore. I could also handwave it in-universe with Morrigan being there - she could have filled the Veiljumpers in on the discoveries of the Inquisition or even what the Well told her.

It felt a bit weird that our contacts in every other faction just accepted this huge revelation without a blink, but again it was the early stages and I also get that having a discussion about it 6 times with different faction leaders would have been incredibly tedious. So I ignored that. And yeah, at least the First Warden found it hard to swallow.

The fact that they brushed aside the gods finding elven subjects - many of whom after all still worship them - with one sentence from Solas was disappointing though. Instead they chose to ally them with the Venatori and the Antaam who are the pure evil factions with no nuance or motive to side with them besides a comic book level of hunger for power. They didn't even throw in a sentence about the gods maybe speaking to the Venatori through the Archdemons to get them on their side or how it's very ironic that the Venatori, who want to make Tevinter great again, stoop to working with the pantheon of the people they oppress because they see them as lesser and other. No political exploration of the massive lore implications at all.

It really hit me when I picked up Davrin and he commented how Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain blighting the world would really endear us (elves) to the rest of Thedas - this was the first time anyone actually mentioned the political impact of the elven gods being real, freed, evil and blighted on modern day elves at all, when this should be HUGE. It should be ugly. It should be complex. It should be explored in as many examples as bloodmagic and the oppression of mages was in DA2. It should be a central point of Act 1. (This btw made me love Davrin so much in that moment because this was the first time in the game for me when I actually felt like talking to a Dragon Age elf and even just that one line felt like home.)

And now I just did Taash's first companion quest and it seems Qunari lore is also being ignored (except for the gender aspect of it, which I look forward to). Taash's mum was a scholar and had a baby and the only problem about that was that it could breathe fire and was special but otherwise all would have been dandy? Like she would have just been allowed to keep Taash long enough to find that out about her baby if she was living under the Qun? That directly contradicts everything we know about how the Qunari's culture around reproduction and childcare works.

Sorry to be negative and talking myself into a rage - I know it's not something people want to see rn. But like, I realise you have to brush over some lore intricacies for brevity and to make it digestible for new players. But this is a world initially inspired by Wheel of Time and ASOIAF, both of which are interesting because of the depth of ficitional cultures, lore and politics, and hence it's also what gives Dragon Age its appeal. And now they take us to the most politcally interesting areas on the world map and just get rid of all of political depth?

That's really disappointing. Imagine if Winds of Winter dropped all political themes just because there's several previous books and it's been some a lot of years.

Also, I managed to play DA2 before I ever played Origins and they could introduce me to a vast established background of lore just fine back then.

Sorry. Rant over. But I had to get that out of my system.

[katsitsiyo]

The main thing that first really hooked me into the DA universe is how much I relate to the way the Dragon Age elves were done.

People, indigenous to the land, who have experienced the effects of colonization through land theft, language and cultural genocide, actual genocide; who have a massive distrust of the colonized people because of their historically insidious interactions with them; who still hold onto and practice their culture in remote, rural areas away from said colonizers; members of the group that that live in cities who grow up with only an inkling of that culture, who then can be properly immersed in and rediscover their culture when going to said remote, rural cultural epicenters. Etc, etc.

So many things in the politics and the character interactions just feel so like my people’s and my own experience with my culture. So hats off to DA devs for creating this which resonates so deeply for me, even despite all the subsequent missteps and poor handling.

Anyway, due to all of that above, I created an Haudenosaunee/DA elf mash-up outfit (complete with sky domes, raised beadwork, finger woven sash, and calico fabric 🫡), and comm’d the amazing @polaeart to bring it to life for me. (tysm!! 💗)

[lovestruckthedasbard]

Me in DAO, DAI, BG3 and probably in DAV too..

I am so predictable it's not even funny.

[proffbon]

Uuuuuuh...

Okay. A lot to unpack here.

First of all, I don't know if the dialogue changes if you're from a different faction (which I doubt), but if it doesn't, kind of a weird decision to make every Rook not Dalish by birth.

Like it works for Ruquantriviel because he joined his clan when he was a young adult so he didn't 'grow up Dalish' but... Well, sucks to suck if you want to make a full Dalish Rook I guess.

Second, vallaslin are not just some cool elven tatts you can get at the local tattoo artist. There's a whole ass ritual associated with getting one, they use special ink and your own blood (!) to make it and you can even be denied your vallaslin if you're not ready to receive it or can't bear the process.

So being like "Oh the vallaslin are very sacred to the elves" and then in the same breath "But Dalish don't have a monopoly on being elven so fuck their sacred rituals I guess" is... Strange.

Third, vallaslin aren't sacred to elves. They're sacred to Dalish specifically. Because city elves don't wear vallaslin and it doesn't mean they're somehow less elven. It just means they practice different elven traditions. But this phrasing... kinda implies the former.

This one just seems like another victim of lumping all the elves, Dalish and city, Andrastian and Creators worshipers, brought up among elves and non-elves, into one category of 'elves' as if that makes it better.

Or at least the victim of awkward wording.

[bearofohu]

we talk about solas being a girl dad but we’re sleeping on solas being a girl dad to two sisters that fight over dumb shit constantly

esp in the context of post-datv solavellan, cause like, growing up where the only other kid around is your sister puts them in the perfect conditions for Cain and Abel behavior

but even then i think solas who spent hundreds of years being the unloved stepdad to all of his FWB’s fucking terrible constantly warring daughters now feels nothing but relief to have “she BITED me” to be the most pressing issue in the fade jail household

[wesslesprout]

Idk if this is controversial but I rlly liked the elf design changes in DA2, their noses and their big eyes idk its so good

[grapecaseschoices]

have a question about elf rooks ...

so. are all elf rooks former tevinter ally slaves? or is that just lords of fortune elf rooks?

bc i just did the bird feeding quest with taash. and i admit i was NOT expecting that. i didnt think they would acknowledge elves and their treatment in tevinter -- or elves and their treatment at all, outside of 'the world hates us and this blighted mage situation is gonna make it worse'. [at least where i am in game thus far]

[flamehande]

Elvhenan's Haven.

[propenseverbosity]

Might fuck around and make up new elven words for asexuality (because my Rook is ace and so am I!)

So far I've only got one but I think I like it.

"Isalath'nas" - To desire one's soul/heart, (rather than desiring them sexually)

[amoaliquis]

Ongoing themes I have noticed within the ruins of Elvhenan (or the Fade):

Triangles. I get the significance via the occult, the magical, the religious, the alchemic and so forth. The Ancient Elves seemed to use them decoratively as well as for practical purposes such as crates.

Gold. Opulent and "used to impress" per the conversation between Blackwall and Solas in DAI. It is ostentatious.

Mirrors.

Then there are the hands... all the fuckin' hands. Even golden hands ffs. JUST. SO. MANY. HANDS.

You get the point.

I'm like did one of Devs watch Jim Henson's Labyrinth recently? I mean some of the DAV demons even remind me of Henson's "Helping Hands".

While I could easily connect the Inquisitor to the hand theme, the ancient elves didn't know shit about an Inquisitor.

Maybe it's just a fetish.

[elvhenomenon]

idk what kind of sorcery i did in the character creator but his facial features are exquisite. he is literally ethereal. omg those cheekbones! how?!?

lucanis is going to be so incredibly lucky.

[knife-eared-jan]

Wait what?!

It is 2024 and this is the very first time I have heard this information about WHY she has all that banter about magic.

Are you saying all those tinfoil theories about her having a second arc about magic in DA4 and even that she is somehow a tranquil Andruil for a DECADE now are all because of them not cleaning up properly after changing her subclass flavour and not any hints or themes or something intended at all???

I guess that's also what that dialogue about her just knowing how to do archery without any training are about...

This is insane!

[wolfwhisperertf]

Is no one gonna talk about the fact that Solas said he “does not wish to live as a human” when Mythal asked him to form a body? Not an elf, not a dwarf, a human! So elves got the idea to become people from humans? Right! Right?

[greetingsfromantiva]

Letter from Irelin to Bellara- Dragon Age The Veilguard (Codexes: The Elven People )

Bellara,

It was good to see you. Felt a little bit like old times, you know? Just going out there and doing the work instead of worrying about everything else that's happening right now.

I know things are a little weird. And I know that some of this isn't really my business to say, even when we were together. But I'm going to say it.

You have to stop beating yourself up over what happened to Cyrian. I know you think you're the person who can fix anything, but you can't. No one can.

You're a friend, Bellara. And I still care about you. So give yourself a break.

-Irelin

[proffbon]

The game keeps trying to make me apologize to Harding on behalf of all elves or something as my only race-specific dialogue option, but no! That's not what I or my Rook would say. The Evanuris screwed both of our people over! We're gonna kicked their asses for both of our people!