#maybe this is why i'm so resistant to Bellara

[invinciblerodent]

new beef unlocked: people writing posts for/about a "generic" Inquisitor, and not even bothering to mention until like 3-4 paragraphs in that that to them means specifically a Solas-romancing female mage Lavellan.

which i guess is generic, but not the way they think.

[plisuu]

Zara's experiments have nothing to do with forcing possession (or tranquility), for a few reasons:

The tranquil can be possessed - The book Asunder is about how the cure to Tranquility is cured by possession. The Divine sent Pharamond, a tranquil, to try and find a cure. Tl;dr, he goes to the western approach, summons a demon to posses him, and it works.

"Not immune! Undesirable!" Pharamond tells us in Asunder. "A demon looks to possess a man because it wishes to experience life. To them, a tranquil is no better than an inanimate object. Worse, since a tranquil will resist [...] it needs to be lured."

This would also imply that they can possess regular people, it's just unheard of or unusual. A non-mage is harder for a demon to find since they don't connect to the fade like mages do. Mages are easy dinner, why would a demon seek out a non-mage when mages are literally right there? Seekers are touched by spirits without being mages. Maybe there's blood magic involved, maybe its just something to do with the way the vigil works or where it's done that thins the Veil enough to draw a spirit to them. Lure one, if you will.

Anyone can be possessed. Inanimate objects like trees can be possessed. Lucanis points out that he's seen ashes and hair possessed. That's not the angle here. (Idk why Bellara and Neve get so hung up on this, to be honest with you).

So, what is Zara up to?

What Zara's doing isn't forcing possession, she is creating demons on this side of the Veil. The game tells us this over and over again. She is creating new kinds of demons. She is creating demons. The elite enemy in the middle of the Ossuary is called The Fabricator. Lucanis talks over and over about the "demons she created." Through the series, "creating demons" if often equated with summoning them and/or posession, but Zara is genuinely creating and growing new demons to use.

Lucanis is just a failed version that was probably possessed by the demon she was trying to grow in him, and was kept around more for the torture of it than anything. Being an abomination, being possessed, is a failure. They wanted the demon, not the rest of him.

To go back to the meat thing:

Lucius was feeding the Seekers something in DA:I, but what, and to what end, we're not really sure. The Seekers have already been touched by a spirit (and are abominations if you choose to believe Lucius and read it that way), so it's not possession he was after. Contrary to some of the wiki, the game (including codex entries) don't actually tell us what Lucius is doing, or what his goal was at all.

We don't actually know what he's doing to the Seekers or what he's feeding them - at the time I think we all assumed it was red lyrium since we had no other reference, and Cassandra mentions the Seeker's resistance to it in the scene before, but when you actually talk to Daniel:

Daniel: No, they… put a demon inside me. It’s tearing me up. Cassandra: What? You can’t be possessed—that’s impossible! Daniel: I’m not possessed. They… fed me things. I can feel it growing.

The Order of Firey Promises "attempted to seed demons into human flesh, to make them stable beyond the Veil," according to Zara's demonology codex entry. If it was red lyrium, I'm sure that's what Daniel would have told us. But he says "things." Even he doesn't know what it was. Lucanis talks about "being force fed rotting meat" and that it's "like a parasite," but that's all we really know.

How that grows a demon is a mystery, but apparently it does.

Hey so what the fuck is up with Zara feeding people demon’d meat to force possession