#dao mage tower

[dwarvenwarden]

THE CIRCLE OF MAGI // DRAGON AGE ORIGINS

Finally making some dao gifs :)

[elfsidian]

Spent too long on this, the dream would be to do a piece like this for all my DA OCs :,)

[wyllzel]

alistair has like 20 pixels put together and his hair makes him look like a doofus but why's he kinda... 😗✌️

[endawn]

crazy idea but i’ll change my name to percy for the time being. see how i feel about it idk

[sealeneee]

this might be silly but i like making suboptimal and bad choices in games for characterization and just to make my character less perfect. looking at you zielle

[elek-tavor]

the thing about dragon age is that it doesn't sound fun to try a playthrough doing the opposite of what i usually do / agree with because they barely let me actually do what i want to do. while playing bg3, i wanted to try every possible option in the book, all of them being equally interesting and none of them feeling like "the right thing" or like something the writers were actively pushing. trying the templars route never appealed to me, not because i am incapable of playing a character i disagree with, but because neither da2 nor dai truly allowed me to take the mages route in a way that's satisfying.

[vanmarkham]

damn ive never asked him for information twice in a row so ive never gotten this dialogue in lothering before?? wild

[apricoctopus]

My comic for the grand total of 5 people who remember how in DAO, if you chose Mage Origin, you could take a possibly cursed staff from the tower basement and then tell Irving that you didn't do it. While holding the staff. I'm replaying DAO now and it's still so much fun. Great game but I didn't remember combat being so annoying.

[libartz]

Zumbo Pumbo feels like new terminology in the vein of Blorbo.

Ok I’m calling it.

Zumbo Pumbo: A random background character with absolutely no backstory or lines, who is essentially an extra, that either ends up super popular in the fandom or is among someone’s faves

It’s different from a glup shitto, who is simply obscure- the zumbo pumbo is a completely blank character.

no contest best npc name in baldurs gate right here

[inquisitorismone]

ok so the point i was going to make re: the circle tower and ferelden geopolitics was that the fact that all of ferelden only having one single circle, is CRAZY. orlais, a country of similar size, has FOUR; each(!!) marcher city has their own. antiva and the anderfels also have 1 circle each and they are respectively #1 a nation the quarter of the size of ferelden and #2 a barren wasteland of a place. and this is pre-blight! and i can believe that ferelden has a lower population than orlais, but i struggle to accept that ferelden has a quarter the population that orlais does. even nevarra, by all accounts an old and dying state, has 2.

there are clearly templars stationed at many chantries throughout ferelden, but the idea that they could possibly find every single mage in the country and send them to the tower is preposterous. ferelden simply does not have the infrastructure for that, neither to spread out over the whole country to hunt apostates nor to contain them all in one place. (how many people can that tower handle???)

this suggests that ferelden is generally more lax about apostates than elsewhere, which is reinforced both in da2 and inquisition when we get word that alistair (in da2) offered refuge to escaped kirkwall mages in ferelden and that alistair and/or anora (in inquisition) allowed the mage rebellion quarter in redcliffe. you could argue that alistair's decision might have been influenced by the events of dao but anora is (i say this lovingly) a bit of a hardass! rather than being moved by mage assistance in dao i would suggest instead that she is reflecting a larger ferelden attitude towards mages, which is less harsh than orlesian or marcher attitudes

we know that mages in the circle can be called upon in times of war to assist their country's army (i think that was mentioned in dao but it's stated several times in the novels). something to consider, then, is that circles are not only for containing mages and protecting people from them; but they are also for the consolidation of magic as a military power. orlais and the marcher states are creating armies. ferelden, with its sort of implicit acknowledgement that the tower doesn't hold all the mages in the country, lacks that military resource. even in the stolen throne there's only one single mage working on the ferelden side in contrast to quite a few on the orlesian side

which is why it's #1 crazy that the fereldens successfully liberated themselves from orlais #2 crazy that they defeated the blight and, most importantly, it's why you should NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A DOG LORD!!!!!

[vigilskeep]

was looking thru ur old romance polls bc im planning on playing a new surana and im trying to decide whod be the most interesting romance, and i looked at the zevran sweep like huh i guess ppl really have an opinion. completely forgot u used to be zevsurana 😭😭 i know its bc of ur oc but do u have any general surana and zevran thoughts abt whatd make them good together?

i may no longer be tumblr user zevsurana but i am still zevran/surana truther number one

an elf is separated from all family & community & their own kind, and raised and trained in a place where they’re never safe, by people who never had their best interests at heart and who pressure them to betray the ones they love the most. and there’s someone else just like them in this, born worlds apart. but by chance and mishap and devastation they find their way to each other!!! and see a mirror!!! and fall in love!!! gets me every time

surana might never see this, but zevran is the one who most fiercely argues against a warden who tries to annul the circle. he’s got your back. the warden being dangerous is one of the things he admires in them, and no fear of magic or threat of templars could ever make him turn away. not to mention that zev literally approves of you considering making a deal with a demon... the dragon age gold standard of boyfriends for blood mages right here. get u a man who would absolutely steal ur phylactery for u in an instant

i just think it’s crazy to open the story of dao with a mage warden in the fade during their harrowing, the black city looming above with the weight of mages’ guilt, the blights always punishment for their sins, and to have zevran say at the end: for the chance to be by your side i would storm the black city itself. i’d damn the world all over again if you led me there. it would be worth it. wtf. wtf!!!

umm what else... i mean its literally a dashing rogue and tower princess (gender neutral) pairing... what more could u want

[hyperions-light]

Good riddance to that mess: Thank the Dread Wolf we’re done with the Mage-Templar conflict

(because magic in Thedas is more interesting this way)

Okay the people who love conflict have won and I am going to talk about this now lol

I've decided to stick within the framework of the world/story for this particular post, because I think you could talk about the issues with the mages/templars in connection with how they relate to real-life groups for an entire essay AT LEAST, and I want to focus on magic here, so I don't think it's that germane to the discussion. If you all want to talk about that later, I can put it on the pile.

It turns out that Jenny Nicholson was 100% right about the efficacy of numbered lists on the internet, so this essay will be hybridized into a list. Here are the reasons I'm glad the mage-templar conflict is gone and hope it never returns:

It limits storytelling avenues I understand how they arrived at this dichotomy as the logical extrapolation of a minority of people in Thedas being born with magic BUT it's very boring and it doesn't facilitate interesting stories. If you have this strict system and hierarchy that means that every mage has to live in the tower or they're a) a criminal or b) Dalish, that seriously limits the kind of characters you can make who are mages, which is dull as both a player and a writer.

Trying to make it nuanced is difficult Attempting to show that everyone has a point in a situation is difficult when one group has absolute power over the other and can kill them whenever they feel like it. Also, with the abuses the Templars regularly perpetuate against the mages established in DAO and DA2 any attempted justification reads as the story sanctioning an oppressive force. If they try to demonstrate the danger of magic, they end up with the 10,000 blood mage problem from DA2. It's a hard thing to do within the framework they set up, but they also haven't been particularly successful with it, imo, so abandoning it is a better choice.

It's the most reductive version of the conflict Reducing the entire discussion to whether magic is good or evil, whether mages should be free or confined is really boring. It's a false dichotomy that promotes extremism in characters on either side of the conflict who never interact with one another. "Is magic bad?" is a useless and uninteresting question. Who cares? What does it do?; Where did it come from?; What different ways can you use it? are all better questions.

Makes it difficult for the audience to learn more about magic If the only characters the audience ever meets are people who come from the Circle, Dalish mages, and apostates, the amount they're going to learn about different perspectives on magic and its various uses is limited. Part of the reason Jaws of Hakkon was such an interesting DLC for DAI is because the Avvar have a completely different philosophy about magic and spirits. It was refreshing after several games of having the same ideas about magic shoved down our throats to hear someone give a different perspective and ACTUALLY NEW information. Everything I needed to know about the mage-templar conflict, I already knew by the end of DAO, but I had to sit through two more entire games while people discussed it at length.

Magic in the North is fascinating Now that we're finally rid of that conflict, look how many different kinds of magic we get to see in DATV! We get to meet a Rivaini Seer, a Mortalitasi (who can use magic to TALK TO REAL DEAD PEOPLE!!!), a non-Altus mage from the Tevinter Imperium; we get to see magic as it was utilized by the ancient elves and how it interfaces with technology. We got DWARF MAGIC!! Finally, an answer to what Sandal was doing! We found out you can use it to turn yourself into a LICH!!! All of that stuff is so cool, and we had never encountered it before this game! It brings up so many new questions about the nature of the Fade, the source of magic itself, the strength of magic in Thedas relative to other places in the world. And NONE of it could be discussed in the South because they are too busy arguing about fucking towers!!!

tl;dr: The mage-templar conflict was a boring and reductive lens through which to view magic in the DA universe, I'm glad it's gone, I hope they continue what they started in DATV and explore different ways magic can be used in the future.

[appleebees]

Like. You grow up in a mostly human environment*. But you're not a human. You go and visit the elves. But you're not elven enough for the Dalish (even though you had no choice) (it's how you were raised). The elves in Denerim's alienage could maybe understand but you haven't lived like they do. There's no place for you there either. And because you're a mage, everywhere you go, no matter if you're an elf or human you are always different from everyone else.

[grinding my teeth] playing as an elven mage in the Circle in dragon age origins captures the feeling of being queer and mixed. And I'm not joking.

[crows-of-buckets]

Arcane warrior being a specialization in dao is so funny considering the mage origin. Guy who has never stepped foot outside a tower left to join the wardens and is now regularly decapitating men. 10/10 no notes

[endawn]

so, the replacement for vampires in his da verse would be hunger abominations. so, what led to his undeath was him and his men walking into a trap set by what remained of the mythic dawn cultists. who willingly allowed themselves to become possessed by demons in order to have a change to fight the detachment of legion soldiers pax brought with him. keep in mind, one abomination is a massive problem for multiple templars. in this case, the bulk of what they fought were abominations. the mythic dawn no longer had the numbers, so they turned to other means. pax and his men walked to their slaughter.

[apostacism]

If your concept of wardens is not informed by the brutal reduction to their life expectancy (both from the Calling AND from the fact that they are fighting darkspawn on the regular), then what is the point?? DA pointedly made all their military groups have glaring issues for all their members in one way or another, people think that's on accident, I suppose?

idk, maybe my Mahariel run in DAO told me about loss of freedom in a different way from Amell/Surana, where you are trading one prison for another, but it really feels like if you know Anders and Bethany, you should know the wardens aren't a fix-all for mages either. It's a guaranteed life sentence with a lot of turmoil before the end.

Not only that but the isolation, both physical (wardens strongholds, as we've seen, are often in shit places) and in terms of alienation from non-wardens (whose reception to wardens may range from admiration to disdain, depending on how recently wardens have been useful for anything and how much wardens are viewed as stateless leeches in that particular place and time). The loss of the opportunity for reproduction and family life (obviously different for mages, but the loss of being able to fantasize about something can still be a genuine loss). The fact that you are now permanently part of a military force and will spend the rest of your short, painful life in conflict when there's a very good likelihood that combat was never something you wanted at all.

People have a tendency to play their Amells/Suranas as rebels and freedom-seekers - and no shade for that, my Surana CERTAINLY fits that description - who prize being out of the tower/outside of Templar purview above all else. And sure, if an individual warden feels that way about the wardens - whatever. I'm not saying that no individuals ever prefer the wardens to the other life they might have had. I'm saying that as an analytical framework and a holistic view of the wardens, that lens is missing the point.

It's just as easy (maybe even more so!) to play an Amell/Surana who was happy in the tower. That backstory casts you as a prodigy and shining pupil, an example of success among apprentice mages. That is easily the kind of circumstance which could shelter a young mage from the worst of the tower and lead to them growing up with the mindset "yeah there's downsides but this is the best and safest option for everyone. I'm fed I'm cared for I have no material worries I'm in community with people who understand me and are like me etc etc" and for becoming a warden to be a PROFOUND violation.

With Mahariel especially the loss of agency and freedom are a striking theme but there's no particular reason that Surana/Amell should regard their conscription with YIPPEE except that players are coming in with meta knowledge and rightful anger towards the chantry and the circles versus softness towards the wardens informed by biased viewpoints from characters they favor (despite, again, those characters being DISAPPOINTED by the ultimate reality of the wardens).