#is probably because Tevinter has its own Divine. the “Black Divine”. like they literally do not care. it does not matter.

[invinciblerodent]

Okay, I'm less annoyed about those posts now, and I feel like the reason why I'm so much less annoyed might bear saying, if only to get it out of my own head and have it written down for my own dang self.

I've already rambled on about my point that perception, deception, and unreliable narrators have been a core to the identity of the series from the very beginning of Origins, when you chose a paradigm through which to look at the whole world as the very first choice you made (which I'd argue is only reinforced further by the past choices of a previous protagonist down South not having much of an effect, if any, on the present up North), but now, I also have to occasionally remind myself of the very simple fact that... we are in the pre-release phase of a major AAA game.

One that is the fourth in a very popular, award-winning series, the last game of which came out a decade before now.

This milieu right now, with us, the people who are waiting anxiously to see it come out, and pulling apart every shred of information, getting excited or dismayed at the drop of a hat? It's not going to be reflective of what is coming in a month at all.

The most of us here blogging about Dragon Age on Tumblr in 2024 might be something of a "core" fanbase, but we are also a bespoke minority among the players who are going to pick up The Veilguard.

And the game, it will have been made with the intention to be playable by the majority, too.

I feel like we here posting about our plans cannot get so into our excitement that we forget that most people who are going to play the game are the people who are going to be returning to the series after a decade, barely remembering any of their choices, and people who plain did not play the other three games, simply because they were like all of a whopping 8 years old when Inquisition was at its height of popularity.

Like all the Dragon Age games that came before it, Veilguard will have a new protagonist. It, despite being a sequel, will center a new storyline, it will feature different characters, and it will need to be comprehensible, even if you have not thought about Thedas since you played Inquisition once in 2014, or if you have no idea who the fuck the characters (your own included) even are. It will need to make sense to both the 33 year old who played Origins at release, and 18 year old who was 3 years old then, and is picking up the series for the first time.

And you guys are going to need to be okay with the game being aware that it's both art, and a product trying to be sold to as many people as possible, and try not to let yourself get caught up in the interconnectedness (or the lack thereof) between the different entries in the series.

It would be nice if all past choices had an effect. It'd be nice if the game was tailor-made to honor everyone's perfect, shiny little headcanons.

It's not going to happen. That's fine.

Take a deep breath.

And... this is a bad example because that didn't even try to be part of a greater story and is following a 100 year timeskip, but maybe it'd be good for people to remind themselves that Baldur's Gate 2 came out in 2013, and how happily so many people are/were playing that particular kissing simulator while knowing (and giving) an absolute maggot-infested fuckall about its prequels.

People are going to be the same way about Veilguard, and we all just have to be normal about that.

Hitting the "not interested in this post" button over people's endless navel-gaze-y catastrophizing about how "discouraged" and "critical" they're feeling over Veilguard should be an Olympic sport, and brother, I'd bring home the gold

(thank you for the plethora of undodgeable, untagged spoilers btw, bunch of terminally pessimistic dicks)

[meggannn]

i'm curious from a writer perspective of DA, is the world set up similar to that of D&D (Humans, Elves, etc co-exist but who's king?). I've never played the game and was trying to figure out what the worldscope was like in terms of who's in charge, the history, etc but it's kind of complicated and hard to pin down. Would you mind giving a little insight into the premise of DA on a larger scale?

i’m sorry this took so long to get back to you! what a neat question – I haven’t played D&D or actually really read too many classic fantasies aside from some Tamora Pierce novels, so I can’t speak about what���s usual, but yeah Dragon Age is a pretty “standard” high fantasy I guess in the sense that it’s got dwarves and elves and magic and it’s set in a middle age analogue.

i also need to apologize in advance for how long this got. the short answer is, Thedas is a hot mess, everyone hates each other, and nobody knows what’s going on.

RACES

okay, so, there are four main races:

human – most populous and influential. known for causing a lot of wars.

elves – in most parts of the continent they’re second-class citizens. many are servants; in Tevinter elves are mostly enslaved. if they live in cities, they probably live in an alienage, which is akin to a ghetto. there are large groups of elves called the Dalish, which are nomadic groups that live in the forests and try to keep their ancient culture alive.

dwaves – mostly live underground, but there are several surface dwaves that, as the name implies, live aboveground. they’re the only race that cannot be mages due to their high resistance to magic, which is based on their history of mining lyrium (basically like a magic rock that helps mages and mage hunters focus their power). dwaves have a sort of resistance to it so they’re the only ones who can mine it safely and therefore built their economy and major cities underground.

qunari – technically a religion, not a race, but they’re known for their stringent religion and for having large horns on their head.

CONTINENT

DA is set in a world called Thedas (which literally stands for The Dragon Age Setting, don’t ever let anyone tell you your ideas are stupid). here’s the map, so, pretty big (click here for a bigger version):

unfortunately bioware is lazy and they never gave us firm borders, so we have to make due with whatever this is

POLITICAL NATIONS (skip if you don’t care)

I’m not an expert and don’t have the energy right now to go super in depth about each of these nations’ conflicts with each other. there are roughly 9 countries in the above map (bottom - up): Ferelden, Orlais, Free Marches, Nevarra, Tevinter, Antiva, Rivain, Anderfels, Seheron/Par Vollen. not pictured: Orzammar/the Dwarven Kingdom

Ferelden and Orlais are the countries we know the most about because two games take place there (Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age Inquisition). They both have monarchies. Ferelden has a king/queen, and Orlais has an emperor/empress. Orlais is also where the Divine lives, and the Divine (always a she) is the leader of the Chantry, the major religion (p much like magic Catholicism).

The Free Marches are a bunch of city-states, each of them ruled by a Viscount that’s elected by the nobles. Dragon Age 2 takes place in one of these cities, Kirkwall. one of the endings involves the playable character, Hawke, become the Viscount/Viscountess if they make certain choices. Post-Inquisition, one of the game’s companions ends up becoming Viscount.

Nevarra we don’t know much about. I believe they have royal dynasties. most monarchs are related/entwined with the military. one companion, Cassandra Pentaghast, is distantly in line for the throne.

The Anderfels are a bit of a wasteland. it’s called a kingdom but I gotta be honest, we know like a total of five characters from there so not much else info is available. It used to be part of the Tenvinter Imperium before the rebellion, but now it’s mostly known as being home to the Grey Wardens (see below).

Antiva is a plutocracy, so it’s ruled by the wealthy. there is technically a monarchy that’s been around for a couple thousand years, but it’s weak. the country is mostly ruled by “merchant princes” (not literal princes, just like bank owners and heads of trading companies, each have their own army, etc). they mostly resolve political disputes with bribes and assassins.

Rivain – tbh I don’t think I know enough about Rivain’s government. we know certain characters from Rivain, but according to the wiki they emphasize community welfare and I know they treat their mages better than the rest of the continent, where (apart from Tevinter) mages are largely locked up in towers for their entire lives.

the Tevinter Imperium is the only nation in the continent that’s a magocracy, or ruled by mages, and its economy is largely based off of slave labor (the majority of whom are elves, though I think they enslave some humans if I’m not mistaken). Tevinter’s leaders are called Magisters, and they are all part of the Magisterium. they are led by the Imperial Archon, which is usually inherited; otherwise known as the Black Divine, who is always male (more on that below).

Seheron belonged to the Tevinter Imperium for a long time, but it’s land that I think is still being fought over by a group called the Qunari. they currently maintain it, though it’s mostly native rebels that live there.

Par Vollen is the land of the Qunari. they’re really a religion, not a race, but most Qunari that you’ll see are horned giants. we know a lot about their culture from certain characters, but we’ve never seen it in person. in broad sense, the Qunari believe that every person has a certain role (you call people by their titles, eg “Sten”). they’re led by an Arishok which is like their highest ranking general and de facto spiritual leader.

(not pictured) Orzammar – underground, located in the Frostback Mountains (bottom of the pic, left of Ferelden. the last standing dwarven city. it’s like an underground metropolis based on a caste system.

HISTORY

so I don’t know if you’re asking for a long and detailed history, because if so I could be here all day, but in very broad strokes, here’s what’s going down

Elves: long ago they were the dominant race aboveground. they had their own empire in modern-day south Orlais (west of Ferelden), but now they’re treated like second-class citizens after their biggest city fell and they were plundered by Tevinter. then the Chantry came along and that took over.

Dwaves: they also had a massive kingdom underground that spanned most of the continent. these tunnels are known as the Deep Roads, and they still exist today, but they’re mostly collapsing and very dangerous.

Humans: Are kind of running the show now across all major nations. (they apparently aren’t even native to Thedas but arrived millennia ago on boats or something then took over. typical.)

THE BLIGHTS

the driving force of a major recurring conflict in this land is called a Blight, and the first Blight was responsible for the collapse of the dwarven empire. there’s a lot we don’t know about what exactly happened in the first Blight, we only have the Chantry version, and a lot of ppl in the world disagree about how they really got started, or what they even are. but here’s what “the story” behind them roughly is:

the Chantry says that Blights are punishments that the Maker (God) sends because the old Tevinter Magisters, once upon a time, used magic to enter the Golden City (Heaven, sort of). mages can enter a place called the Fade, which is like the magical space between fiction and reality that most people only access through dreaming. the old Magisters basically wanted to enter the Golden City and claim the Maker’s throne and become all-powerful gods and whatnot.

however! this was a bad idea, and so for punishment (or maybe just as a consequence of contaminating the sacred heart of the fade with their dirty human germs), the Maker turned all of those Magisters into monstrous things known as “darkspawn.”

darkspawn are like mindless zombies, sort of, except their primary objective is killing, not eating. what makes them darkspawn is the infection and spread of their tainted blood.

so after those magisters became darkspawn, they spread anything they came into contact with. any species can become tainted I think.

darkspawn are scattered and disorganized for the most part but you still see them here and then. most of the time, darkspawn stay underground in the Deep Roads wrecking mayhem (this is what caused the fall of the dwarven empire).

what a Blight is, though, is a massive swarm of darkspawn arriving to the surface and basically doing what they do, amped up to level 11. what causes a blight is when darkspawn find an Old God underground. the “Old Gods” are really just sleeping high dragons. (Tevinter used to worship these dragons.) there are seven old gods, so when the darkspawn find another of them underground, they infect it, it awakens and turns nasty and evil, and becomes an Archdemon, which leads the call for darkspawn to attack the surface. Archdemons are the sort of Big Boss that needs to be defeated to end each Blight, after which the darkspawn simmer down for a while until they find the next one.

the plot of Dragon Age Origins is the story of the Fifth Blight, which takes place in 9:30 Dragon (read that exactly like you would without colons, so “Year 930″)

TIMEKEEPING

timelines are currently measured by Chantry ages. the years before 1:1 are called “Ancient,” count backwards, and are basically like our BC. there’s no Year 0. the Ancient Age had the arrival of humans, the fall of the elves and the dwarven empire, and the first blight.

according to the wiki: “In the 99th year of each Age, the Divine looks for an event or portent in order to determine the name of the new Age. the last portent was a dragon awakening and going on a rampage, which suggested an age full of violence and destruction”

so dragons are a Big Deal because until this century, people thought they were extinct. except no…. there’s a blight, and an archdemon showed up. and oh look, dragons are appearing in Kirkwall too, and around Orlais. dragons are a symbol of chaos, basically, so the fact that this era is known as the Dragon Age signifies a lot of fighting/turmoil basically.

THE GAMES

Dragon Age Origins – the story of the Fifth Blight. you gather a bunch of companions and join the Grey Wardens (soldiers from all races who dedicate their lives specifically to fighting darkspawn) and become Big Damn Heroes.

Dragon Age II – the story of origin of the Mage Rebellion. you play as Hawke, a refugee who escaped the Blight looking for safe haven in a city in the Free Marches. you befriend several misfits and influence the political landscape that ultimately leads to mages across Southern Thedas rebelling against their captors.

Dragon Age Inquisition – the Mage Rebellions are wrecking havoc, Grey Wardens are disappearing, and at a would-be peace summit between the mages and their captors, the Divine gets blown up and now there’s a giant hole in the sky with demons falling out. you play as a random joe who wakes up one day with the power to seal up that hole, and together with a bunch of other well-meaning randos, you form the Inquisition to bring peace (I hope) back to the continent.

Dragon Age 4 – fuck it, but I hope we go to Tevinter. I’m tired of looking at Ferelden for two games. it’s far past time for an elven slave uprising, an old elven god is now trying to commit mass genocide and Thedas is still on fire, but no, Bioware’s focusing on fucking Anthem. we are suffering.