#fuck a Venatori.

[fadewalking]

The only good Venatori is a dead one.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

Warden: You've never killed an innocent?

Zevran: Now there's an interesting word, "innocent." How many men do you know who can claim to be truly innocent?

Zevran: But if you're talking generalities, such as children and relatives and bystanders and such… never on purpose, but it happens.

Zevran: It's unfortunate, but death comes to us all. If not me, then some wasting disease. Or a fall down the stairs. Or at the hands of a darkspawn. It's all relative in the end.

Zevran: "Death happens," as we like to say. And when I get paid for it, death happens more often.

-

Zevran: In Antiva, being a Crow gets you respect. It gets you wealth. It gets you women… and men, or whatever it is you might fancy.

Zevran: But that does mean doing what is expected of you, always. And it means being expendable. It's a cage, if a gilded cage. Pretty. But confining.

-

Davrin: Lucanis, how do you decide when one of your targets deserves to die?

Lucanis: Usually when the client pays up front.

Davrin: I'm serious. Do you just kill anyone?

Lucanis: No. There has to be merit.

Davrin: "Merit?" Who decides that?

Lucanis: The Talon of the house.

Davrin: And then you just carry out the order?

Lucanis: It's my job.

Davrin: Must be tough to sleep at night.

-

Lucanis: You kill for a living, too, Davrin. How do you sleep at night?

Davrin: Like a baby. The things I hunt are pure evil. Monsters. There are no shades of grey with darkspawn. But you...

Lucanis: Provide a service.

Davrin: What if your target doesn't deserve to die?

Lucanis: Who does? Good, bad, everyone dies eventually. We just speed things up.

-

Emmrich: Do you have any say in your... targets?

Lucanis: You want to know if my victims deserved it.

Emmrich: Forgive me, I shouldn't have asked.

Lucanis: Everyone wonders.

Lucanis: I've never killed an innocent, by my count.

Lucanis: I cannot say if yours would agree.

-

Emmrich: Lucanis, do the implications of your work never trouble you?

Lucanis: Everyone on this team has killed before. I'm hardly unique.

Emmrich: Yes, of course. But in your case, it's a profession, rather than an act of necessity.

Lucanis: I'm not sure the Venatori or the Antaam see the distinction as you do.

-

Emmrich: I find it extremely interesting, Lucanis, that you consider the point of view of your enemies in battle.

Lucanis: I have to. It's much more difficult to find and kill them, otherwise.

Emmrich: Exactly! A utilitarian attitude towards death, and yet you extend empathy to your victims.

Lucanis: Not that much empathy.

Emmrich: Enough to wonder how the Venatori and Antaam view your actions.

Lucanis: Death comes to everyone, in time. I get paid to deliver it. Like a letter not everyone wants to read.

-

I think about this a lot. I'm always... surprised when I see the talk that they're supposedly trying to make Lucanis into the perfect "cinnamon roll" in Veilguard, because his sweet personality doesn't "match" his profession and background. Like, no? That's a very surface level of looking at it, I think.

Zevran is like this, too. He is an incredibly chill guy, and when you romance him, he is also very sweet and vulnerable, despite being an assassin. They're not that different in that department. They were both trained to be assassins since they were children. They're both traumatized in various ways. But neither of them acts like a bloodthirsty, evil freak. But they both also take pride in the job they do (or did), and how well they can do it, and have no intention of stopping. And yet they both express surprising empathy. (Zevran argues against annulling the Circle! Quite extensively!) And they make pretty much the exact same arguments about being killers for hire, as shown above.

Death is a natural part of life. Sometimes it just comes sooner, because we're there to deliver it. There's (almost) no such thing as an innocent person, so my victims aren't innocent people. Therefore, I've never killed an innocent in my entire life, as far as I know. (At least not intentionally.)

And that's interesting and fun about them! It's beautifully deranged. Lucanis completes an assassination mission, slitting somebody's throat or what have you, and then goes on his cosy coffee break, satisfied with a job well done.

The fact that they both say that they've never, in their opinion, assassinated "an innocent", so it's all good, doesn't automatically make it true and doesn't mean it's not complicated, however. Not every line of dialogue can be taken at face value. As video game players, we're rather desensitized to this, but hearing this should normally be at least a little alarming. For a regular person, at least. And it is for the people in the game! Like Emmrich and Davrin. Davrin has several banters with Lucanis about it. Like, who decides when somebody deserves to die and which contract's going to get carried out? Well, the "CEO" of "the company," of course! What could ever go wrong that way? Emmrich tries to coax Lucanis into saying that he does feel something about the whole thing, because he really wants it to be true. While Lucanis is very matter of fact about it. He knows what the Crows are, and that's it. He doesn't glamorize or demonize it.

So, it definitely isn't that "Veilguard says that Lucanis has never done anything wrong ever in his life," just like Origins doesn't do it with Zevran. Both the men's attitude towards killing is warped in an interesting way, completely in line with their background and upbringing. It shows when Lucanis argues with Davrin about them both being killers, because it completely escapes him (or maybe he ignores it for the sake of the argument) how the killing he does (contracts where the targets tend to be people) and the killing Davrin (a monster hunter, a darkspawn slayer) does is of different kind entirely. His logic is flawed at that point. But to him, it boils down to the fact that "it's just a job," and "killing is killing," and "death is death" regardless of form, and that rightfully baffles Davrin to no end. If anything, it shows how the Antivan Crows are taught to hand wave the issue, because the arguments Lucanis and Zevran both present are too similar to be anything else.

Of course, Lucanis, unlike Zevran, as the grandson of the First Talon and her favourite, might have had some extra privileges and wiggle space in comparison, which might have allowed him to bend the rules sometimes, give him space to show more compassion and act more heroically, because people are complex and there are many layers to what each person might consider right and wrong (e.g. killing is okay in various circumstances, and slavers in particular can get fucked - hell, we do it in video games all the time), but still. The fact that his grandmother wanted to tap a new market, so she made Lucanis specialize for hunting mages, which ultimately led to him killing a lot of Venatori and blood mages, makes it cleaner, which is nice, but then again, we hardly know the full extent of all his work. Moreover, when you ask Zevran to tell you stories about his jobs, you don't get much dirt out of him, either. He talks about some of the goofiest ones he's had. One of his targets that he (unsuccessfully) participated in taking out, a royal that got his position through plotting and murder, he also describes as somebody so immoral he basically deserved it. Also very clean. (Compare both these guys with somebody like Blackwall who truly committed a despicable act of murder for money that we do know of. And this single crime sounds so much more upsetting than anything either Lucanis or Zevran describe. None of the things Zevran says is as awful, besides the murder of his lover, which is framed like it wasn't really his fault, because he was misled.)

It's also worth noting that Zevran talks about how he was the best the Crows had before he left and how it brought him respect, wealth, women, men, or "whatever it is you might fancy." All in all, it comes with benefits. By his own admission, he was well off. But of course that came with a catch, as well. The "gilded cage" Zevran talks about. But that's not what made him leave. It was the plotting, backstabbing, and ever present distrust in the end, which led to the biggest mistake he'd ever made. Much like him, Lucanis also mentions that he had a comfortable life before getting captured, in the same quest where he also talks about how he didn't actually have full control of his life. ("Even before I was captured, my life was not really my own. So much had been determined for me.") The gilded cage comes up yet again. And it was plotting and backstabbing that made him lose a year of his life in the underwater prison.

My point is: Lucanis and Zevran are both assassins, because that's what they've always been, they were trained to be assassins since they were kids, they have a very pragmatic approach to death and killing, which they were most likely taught or perhaps were forced to develop, and they both take pride in how good they are at their job, and express no intention of ever stopping. And yet they both show that they have a good heart in various other ways, turn out to be friendly and incredibly loyal, and even very sweet as lovers. Because people can be complex, and so can be fictional characters. Yes, they're very different men, with different problems and personalities, yet also not that different.

You can't think that Lucanis is "too good" without also thinking that Zevran is "too good." You can't have this problem with Veilguard unless you also have it with Origins, is what I'm saying. And I think this may also apply to some of the other Crows we meet in Veilguard.

[vaguely-concerned]

'my cousin is all stomach and no heart' is such a funny thing for illario to tell rook if he maybe is picking up on a little bit of a Vibe going on there. the 'LMAO. well good luck with that friend. better hotties than you have tried and failed and dashed themselves against the legendarily unamorous cliffs of my cousin's complete obliviousness and lack of interest to no avail. (optional 'may I suggest a more hah-hem *undoes another few buttons on his shirt that thing is open almost to his navel now it's borderline obscene* available dellamorte for your consideration. I mean if you're like in the market for one anyway' devious undertone as you see fit)' energy is off the charts.

(illario is above all a funny petty bitch and that's why I love him so indescribably. no no lucanis is right we need him around to drop shade like this he is in fact also an essential crow. we all contribute in our own ways)

[butchvamp]

i do think that for me personally. there is no version of taash's storyline that i can get down with except one where they reconnect with their qunari side. my main problem with their arc is that it perpetuates this idea that someone has to "choose" one culture, that they have to turn their back on parts of their identity in order to be the right kind of trans (the white western kind) and all of it just makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. and to be clear this is not me like... trying to make anyone feel bad, there are parts of taash's story that i personally connect with as well, like there is nothing wrong with the way taash does gender in general and there's nothing wrong with it resonating with people. it's when we put it all together in context within the game that it becomes a problem for me.

we know the qun does not have the same ideas around gender as the rest of thedas, we know that their identity, including gender, is connected to their duty. and so it doesn't make sense that taash's mother cares about them wearing dresses. why would she care about that. i'd ask if we've ever even seen any qunari in dresses but i'm pretty sure we've only seen three qunari women total and two of them are in veilguard and are scholars wearing what i personally consider a robe. the third is in trespasser and is ben-hassrath, and is definitely not wearing a dress. if anything, their mother should be concerned about the fact that they fight, since the whole point of leaving for rivain was to avoid taash being designated as a soldier. and to be fair, we get this a Little bit with the fire-breathing. but everything else about shathann's disapproval doesn't make sense in-universe.

and we also already know about the aqun athlok, which shathann even tries to bring up but the game shouts her down because....? i get that shathann is meant to be overbearing and kinda shitty, but this is not the way to do it. all this does is imply that aqun athlok is "wrong" and not as progressive as this other identity that rook has to teach taash about (and that also isnt even specific to rivain, or related to them connecting to their rivaini culture. it's the shadow dragons that teach them all of this along with rook. in general transness and the nonbinary identity are not integrated into the world in any meaningful way which makes it feel even worse). there are various cultures that have their own specific gender identities that do not adhere to the gender binary, and taash should have been given the chance to connect to their own culture in this way. and even if they really wanted to make it so taash just didn’t feel right with aqun athlok, that identity still should have been properly discussed as an option and handled with respect, rather than so carelessly thrown aside as “wrong” (though again not a depiction i would personally like but it would still be better than what we got).

and just. i really disagree with the idea that gender identity under the qun is More Rigid than elsewhere. it’s different, as we know from comments from iron bull and sten-- and we could argue in circles about inconsistencies with the things they say, obviously there have been retcons previously in an attempt to better develop the qunari beyond what we see in origins and da2, but i think this kind of development is a good thing, and is exactly why the regression with taash irritates me so much-- but when we look back at characters like warden tabris, dorian and his father and tevinter's obsession with bloodlines, the entire experience of playing f!hawke in da2 (and also da2 literally has a whole subplot about women being murdered for like 3 years and no one cares. these games just have a misogyny problem lol) and even tarquin in veilguard commenting about how his father forced him into being a soldier because he's a man(!!)-- there is a lot of rigidity, expectations, and violence around gender throughout thedas. but for some reason these rigid gender ideals and a lot of this gendered violence is held up as the status quo and not challenged at all by the writers in the way the qun repeatedly is. the exception being dorian (though you're still incentivized to forgive his father), but a lot of the characters in tevinter-- magisters, templars, the literal black divine-- are still allowed complexities and to be the good guys working with the shadow dragons, a grace not given to any qunari character besides iron bull (who ultimately still has to leave the qun or die later). i’m not trying argue that the qun is perfect and can never be criticized-- i like the flawed characters and societies within dragon age. but the qunari also deserve to be given the same depth, complexities, and engagement as everyone else, too. and it’s worth pointing out that it’s always the qun that’s depicted as backwards for the same harmful “rigidity” every other culture in the game reinforces.

and ultimately with the way the game inserts this very modern, anachronistic, and condescending language in a poor attempt to be as "correct" as possible to "teach" the player, while simultaneously writing such a careless, racist arc about their culture kinda just , makes me feel like they were actually trying to imply that one identity is more correct and progressive than the other. or, if nothing else, it's a bias that got amplified due to their unwillingness or inability to engage with taash's character beyond using them as a mouthpiece for corporate "representation."

there absolutely are people out there that are like taash, who don't necessarily have or want a connection with certain parts of their culture, and maybe they do identify closer with one aspect of it over another. this is all fine! this happens in real life, everyone has different relationships with their identity and heritage, there is no universal experience, and people are allowed to write about their own. but the thing is. this is dragon age. and taash was written by weekes. and both dragon age as a whole and weekes specifically has a repeated pattern of racist writing when it comes to depicting the qunari. and taash's quest along with the way the antaam are portrayed-- faceless, voiceless, basically naked bodies for you to kill-- makes this a series of poor choices that i don't feel generous enough to excuse.

and it sucks. so bad. that this happened. i want to like taash so bad. but.... man.

anyways if you read this far you should read this article, which is far more eloquent than anything i could write and really dives into the whole "civilized versus savage" binary that we see in a lot of fantasy RPGs and is really epitomized in taash's quest-- in dragon age, it's always the qunari and dalish elves versus a (usually white and/or human) andrastian:

[mohntilyet]

the two most important voice lines in all of veilguard. to me.

[chronurgy]

Okay being cranky again. "Wanting power" is not enough to explain a villainous faction's actions. People and groups rarely want power for power's sake - they feel they need it for some reason, to feel safe, to reach some goal of theirs. So what is their goal? What is their reasoning? What are they trying to do with that power?

[fromtherift]

To say I’m heartbroken by what happened with BioWare and EA regarding dragon age would be an understatement- however, at the same time, I saw it coming a million miles away.

From the development hell DA was put through, to the final result not having DLCs, to the final result also being a shadow of the previous instalments in the series in terms of writing and gameplay- it was clear to me they wanted dragon age done and finished as fast as possible.

I’m sorry, but I really didn’t like Veilguard. I loved it at first play through, and my opinion sharply declined on my second. It felt like a shadow or a mockery of the games I love. It felt like the equivalent of giving your kid sibling an unattached game controller and letting them play just to shut them up.

The game spent so long trying to be cinematic that it forgot to be good- or rather, it never had a chance to be good. It just needed to be shiny and it needed to sell. That’s the shape of all things lately- and it makes me rage and it breaks my heart.

More importantly, the people fired are going to have an incredibly hard time getting employed again. I know Trick Weeks was talking about how difficult it was to afford raising a child in Canada, and now both they and their partner are unemployed.

What EA and BioWare did to dragon age was cruel on multiple levels. I hope one day we live in a world that allows these stories to be told by people who love to tell them, who get compensated well for telling them, and in a way that is authentic to the story itself and not to any speculative market.

[baejax-the-great]

The storytelling just doesn't care. It doesn't care! It doesn't care why the venatori would have fallen in line under Elvhen gods--something that must have involved a power struggle of some sort and a complete realignment of their beliefs. Or why the Antaam would be okay with this particular brand of magic, or how they would feel about allying with the venatori. For that, they'd have to show the antaam being people at all--which they don't in an overtly racist way.

The enemies are faceless and they are bad simply because they are bad. It's easy to do that with demons or the new "mechs" that now exist for no reason. But then every "bad" person just falls in line and says, sure, yeah, I'll align myself with the blight, a monstrosity that everyone in Thedas has been brought up to fear and revile.

Even Isseya, whose (terrible) storyline is that she became corrupted by her obsessive need to "protect" the griffons has a random line about how Ghilanain is good actually. This one could have made sense! She was an elf. She cares about creatures. She could have been manipulated into believing that Ghilannain would bring back the griffons. But they didn't develop it that far. They didn't do anything. Her story was just "evil woman bad" stab stab. Isseya and those wardens being alive brought up a million questions about the calling and the blight, and not a single person thought to ask them. Just, whelp, glad that's over with.

A compelling villain makes a compelling story. It's not the only way to make a compelling story, but it is one of the dozens of strategies they didn't use in this game because it would have required in engaging with their own setting in a way they absolutely refused to do.

[saanphoenix]

Okay, didn't realize Illario was going to fucking COME FOR ME in this fight.

Lucanis is over here like, "Rook, leave Illario to me," and it's like, "He ain't gonna let me. Man ain't tried to stop taking my head the entire time."

Which is good. This is how things should be. Your cousin is mine now, Illario. I will beat you into submission.

[inquisimer]

wip wednesday

been a HOT minute since I did one of these, but my brain is spinning with [redacted] number of Veilguard fics, so I'm back with a vengeance, and a snippet from my beefed up Ossuary reunion for Arlow & Lucanis >:] I just think he should have been a little more fucked up about it all, tbh

tagging forward to @crabs-with-sticks | @shivunin | @dreadfutures | @queenaeducan | and @rosella-writes!

He was thinner and gaunter, cheeks sunken around the unkempt beard. Grime and sweat clung to his skin and she did not need to see beneath his ragged robes to know that he had as many new scars as he did split ends. A flash of anger briefly interrupted her relief, but underneath the toll this last year had taken were the familiar dips and planes of her best friend. “It’s really you,” she said, slipping into Antivan as she ran her hands up and down his arms. The moment was tenuous and she feared that if she stopped touching him, he would disappear back into grief-stricken memory. “You’re here, you’re here, and you’re alive.” For all the joy rushing through her, that edge of wariness hadn’t left his face. It clung to his furrowed brow and the longer it did, the faster Arlow’s smile faded into trepidation. “Arlow,” he murmured again, then closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “I want to believe you are real, and if you are, I’m sorry, but I cannot be sure unless—“ A splitting pain burst through Arlow’s head as Lucanis smashed his brow into hers. She released him and stumbled back, hand catching at her temple. Stars danced across her vision and she swallowed bile that rose in her throat—it had not been that long since Solas’ ritual, and her head did not take so well to another impact so soon. The blow reverberated through her skull; dimly, she registered the crackle of the Fade at her back as the blurred shadow of Lucanis stalked forward. “Hey!” A wall of ice sprayed between the two Crows, stopping Lucanis in his tracks. He stared at Neve over Arlow’s shoulder. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You’re about to, if you don’t back off.” A featherlight touch brushed the back of Arlow’s neck and a surge of healing rolled through her. “You good, Rook?” “Fine,” she ground out, pushing back to her feet with a glare. “What the fuck, Lucanis?” He was still staring at Neve, mouth slightly parted. The wariness had vanished, replaced by confusion. If she didn’t know the exact move he’d used, Arlow might have thought he dazed himself in his attack. “I don’t know you,” he repeated, “which means that she could not have plucked out out of my memories, which means that you—“ His eyes flicked to Arlow, and she recognized them immediately. They looked exactly the way hers had since they left the Diamond. Hopeful, and utterly afraid of that hope. “You’re real,” he whispered. “You’re really here. Arlow—“ He staggered forward and Neve raised her staff, but Arlow held up a hand. “Let him through, Neve.” “Rook—“ “Dispel it, or I’ll do it for you.” “Fine, but if you die I’m taking you to Nevarra, because I will not be the one explaining it to Lace.”

[ozziyo]

Dove Ingellvar posting because look how precious she is actually. resting :c face

[invinciblerodent]

me studying history (reading everything in World of Thedas about the Tevinter Imperium) the night before the exam (two months before the release of Veilguard)

[vaguely-concerned]

just for fun this time during 'sea of blood' I counted out all the venatori corpses I think we can be pretty sure were lucanis' handiwork before we show up (not including the ones he kills in his initial cutscene, and with an assumption that he's been at work mainly up and down in the areas we move through until we find him, not behind the locked door -- I think that's mostly the work of rampaging undead and other venatori-hoisted-by-their-own-petard suchlikes). can thus happily inform you lucanis has killed at least 32 venatori before rook and company get there. at least one of them he's impaled on their own weird crystal spike things the venatori mages cast as an AOE attack and that they're trying to keep him contained with when we find him. so he's clearly been keeping busy lol. that's my boy dispensing poetic justice and claiming some enrichment in his enclosure while he's at it good for him!

[butchvamp]

there are a lot of really goofy dialogues with the crows but this line in particular pisses me off soooooo bad. genuinely i think it is one of the worst lines in the game. "we're patriots" what. what. nevermind that the merchant princes do have their own personal armies, which they pay specifically to keep control of their cities & assets along with the hired aid from the crows.

i think the game tries to justify it by saying in some codex entry that they all fled at the start of the invasion but i think that is Stupid and a half-ass attempt to just wave it all away. who is ivenci? what role do these governors we've never even heard of actually play? does ivenci specifically work for the merchant prince in treviso? why doesn't that ever come up (and no, single line mentions from viago and teia don't count)? and now what happens when the occupation ends, are all the merchant princes going to start killing each other to try and retake their banks/vineyards/ports/etc? this is a country that thrives through backstabbing assassinations and 4D level political chess, i can't just accept that everyone is magically holding hands and getting along during this when there are huge power vacuums up for grabs.

and when have crows ever been "patriots" they kill people to consolidate their power (and the power of their employers) and for personal political gain, not because they personally Love Their Country. they love it because they hold power and are completely unchallenged. like there is a difference between viewing treviso as their home, like Lucanis does, and Teia calling all crows "patriots." everything about the crows in this game is just so GOOFY, truly one of the worst and Lamest changes they made to the world. god forbid there be any compelling, cutthroat politics in my fantasy game

[mohntilyet]

Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating

NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around

[corvus-frugilegus]

Man it really just hit me that if the Shadow Dragons existed in a modern our world city just how fast the magisterium and mass media would be out there propagandizing and pushing the narrative that the Shadows are dangerous terrorists who want to overthrow the state (and probably speculate that they intend to implement all kinds of terrible reforms that threaten only the powerful should they succeed). The plight of the resistance.

No doubt the Magisterium on the whole and the Venatori ARE pushing a narrative like that across Tevinter. Probably what your Average Antivan or Nevarran knows about the Shadows IS the propaganda. (Dangerous, Looking to impose their own views on the People of Tevinter by force).

Part of the struggle for Resistance Fighters IS how consolidated and interconnected systems of power are and what that means for how people understand them. Even the Shadows Allies like Dorian or Legatus Mercar aren't doing so openly. The Shadows are dangerous to be affiliated with. The heat Rook takes on the Nesus job probably got them branded the lore appropriate equivalent of domestic terrorist. There is undoubtedly a price on Rook's head in Minrathous. The stakes for any Shadow in getting identified are Very High.

I think if we really saw much of Minrathous outside Dock Town the reaction to the Shadow Dragons would be very different. Rook would probably be very on edge about being recognized.

Rook is infact probably very politically inconvenient for the Mercar family, even if the Mercar's agree with them entirely because of how much resisting oppression from within a system of power is a game of optics.