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bornpariah-a · 4 years ago

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NECROMANCY is a topic minimally explored in the world of Dragon Age, and only became a true specialization with Inquisition. Notably, many of the spells in the necromancer tree existed in the games prior in the ENTROPY tree, as per Origins and II. What we know of necromancy is that it has a relatively negative reputation overall. It’s only Nevarra that views necromancy in a positive light, calling their necromancers the mortalitasi and giving them a good measure of power and high societal standing. It stands to reason, then, that it’s sensible for the Inquisitor to learn necromancy from one of these mortalitasi.

Never mind that Dorian is literally right there. ( no, i’m not bitter at all, what would have given you that idea? honestly !! )

Nonetheless, what we know of the necromancer specialization route in Inquisition is this : you find a specifically Nevarran skull, bind a recently dead necromancer spirit/soul to it, and it’ll teach you. Alright, not the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of by far, yet I couldn’t help but think that surely magic varies depending on the region. And, furthermore, specializations must carry a different weight. And even beyond that, that the path of specialization must differ between, for example, Nevarra and Tevinter. Thedas is a relatively large place, and though Nevarra and Tevinter are neighboring countries, I couldn’t help but think that there has to be a difference.

And thus : this monster.

Necromancy is, literally, death magic. In Dragon Age, it pertains specifically to the utilization of spirits and, furthermore, spirits drawn to death. That is one of the key points to necromancy as a whole, and heavily influences the following.

In the Imperium, magical specializations and the furthermore ability to specialize are seen, somewhat, as a status symbol. Being powerful enough in one subject to be able to master it, for all intents and purposes. The concept that specializations are almost like guilds, cohorts of mages who come together for a common purpose/reason/goal and henceforth have certain sets of skills that can be utilized in order to accomplish jobs and whatnot, isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. In a society as mage-heavy and magically inclined as Tevinter, that seems to be the only possibility, given that Circles are learning institutions and jobs requiring magic must exist.

But I digress, as that’s more a topic to delve into another time, but it’s essential to understand this : Dorian was marked by Death and chose to walk the path of the necromancer ( ha ) in part because of that. Specializing in necromancy is a difficult choice to undertake, and very few mages are able to truly complete such a path, and in fact must have a predilection for death on some metaphysical level. Furthermore, specializing in much of anything in Tevinter requires something like a benefactor, similar to what Alexius acted as for Dorian. That’s the first step. To be chosen, quite literally.

Dorian was chosen by a mage named Melinoe. A skilled necromancer in her own right, and the informal ( or perhaps formal ) head necromancer in Tevinter. The story of their relationship spans many years, beginning when they first crossed paths when Dorian was six years old and visiting Minrathous with his father for official business. They, quite literally, crossed paths on some random street between some random buildings and Melinoe sensed about him an incredible aura of Death. Something that drew her notice, and thus the notice of necromancers in Tevinter.

The process of a mage choosing their specialization or, I suppose, their specialization choosing the mage in a great deal of the cases is one frankly akin to courting. Mages attend Circles to gain their magical education as Dorian did ( running amok through every Circle in Tevinter, as well all know ) and there are a great deal of events surrounding mages coming into their magic. Some are strictly high society, the ones that Dorian partook in, naturally. Others are far more akin to parlours, public forums that allowed mages to find mentors, meet with others, and generally networking. Through these opportunities is the chance to prove your potential for a certain specialization, if a mage chooses to do so.

Now, Dorian’s only offer ( so to speak ) wasn’t just the necromancer specialization given the fact that he is a mage of prodigious skill, and therefore had generally vast potential. That being said, none of them particularly caught him at first. Not even necromancy.

Dorian didn’t choose his specialization until he was nineteen, in the care of the Alexius family, and had found Melinoe again. Or rather, she had found him.

The path of specializing in necromancy in the Imperium is a well kept secret, as is most specialization in general, passed from necromancer to necromancer. It is very much a process and a ritual, and an arduous one at that. First you must be chosen, and then you must choose to walk the path. Dorian decided to out of curiosity and because of the draw that he felt towards it ——— and the challenged that laid within. Necromancy is death magic, something that seems unnatural and fearsome to the living, and difficult to master besides. Dorian, an arrogant young man at the best of times, wished to best it, in some ways.

Once a mage decides to walk the path of the necromancer, which is a very spirit heavy specialization ( akin to spirit healers, in some ways ) they must prove themselves further. Not to their peers nor their mentor, no. To death spirits, themselves. Spirits of death. Spirits drawn to death. And so on and so forth.

as a mild aside, spirits drawn to death naturally are as follows : spirits of death, spirits of fear, spirits of peace, spirits of faith, and, of course, terror demons.

This process is one underwent by inscribing glyphs onto a mage’s body, with variable locations. Dorian chose the back of his neck, but it tends to vary depending on the mage. This marking includes some ancient sigils, as well as the words non mortem timemus, nascentes morimur in Ancient Tevene. The words translate to we do not fear death, for from the moment we are born, we begin to die. Morbid, certainly, but it gets the point across.

The glyphs are drawn into the skin with ink and there is a potion ingested that is called e morte vita. From life, death. This potion is created from blood lotus, prophet’s laurel, and death root. The candidate has this glyph drawn into their skin and ingests the potion, which puts them in a state suspended between life and death ——— all in the hopes of drawing a death spirit to them. A spirit will choose them if they have enough potential, quite frankly, and if the mage succeeds the glyph becomes etched into their skin and they awaken with a faint connection to a spirit of death. Or a spirit drawn to death, perhaps.

Dorian underwent this process, and when he drank the potion he awoke very soon after. Far faster than most who go through this process, but the side effect was a state of dissociation where he was neither in the Fade nor on the proper side of the Veil, and he remained that way for a short period of time. The spirit who chose him was not Death ( as Death is not a spirit, per say, but that’s another subject for another time ) but was a very powerful spirit of death who had been drawn to him for a great deal of time.

Following attracting a spirit to your person, aka convincing it somehow that a mage may be worthy to learn death magic wholly, there is something of a quest that is underwent. This is a quest done only by the mage wishing to become a necromancer, and is led by the spirit who they have forged a connection with. Naturally, this means that the mage only gets directions in their sleep. You can see how frustrating that may be. Nonetheless !! This quest can take a mage anywhere, quite frankly. To any corner of Thedas, over any ocean, etc. It’s entirely directed by the spirit, and brings the mage to a grave, or a crypt, or a tomb, or something of that nature, wherein they will dig / generally defile the sight at the behest of the spirit, to obtain the bones of someone deceased.

It’s unknown if this corpse had been the spirit, while they were alive, or had any particular significance. This is a mystery to all necromancers, and something hotly debated in the Imperial school ( so to speak ) of necromancy. Nonetheless, this is a journey undertaken by all necromancers-to-be.

Dorian’s spirit took him to the far corner of Rivain, entirely over land, a long and winding journey that was incredibly frustrating to him. It culminated in him finding a long forgotten tomb that had been constructed, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere and was unmarked, for all that it seemed to radiate old magic. Not ancient magic, mind you, but magic that was several Ages old, at least. Upon unearthing and opening the stone entrance to the tomb, he found a singular corpse, nearly all bone by this point in time. The logistics behind which were, theoretically, impossible lest there was magic involved. And thus, he took these bones, and returned to Minrathous. By ship, this time, thank you.

The next step in this path is the creation of a necromancer’s staff. The lore that I have behind staffs and magic in the Dragon Age universe is something for another time, but this magic is meant to be a conduit for death magic specifically, and it’s created via an ancient ritual that involves the femur of the bones taken from the grave site chosen, carved to form the primary hand-grip of the staff. It also involves rune inscribed leather, with death runes specifically, fade touched cloth, phoenix scales, to symbolize and empower the cyclical and natural nature of death and the use thereof, and veil quartz, to act as the primary conduit of magic at the head of the staff.

Once the staff is created, the spirit that has a tenuous connection with the soon-to-be necromancer trainee must be bound to it in a process that both parties are aware of, agree to, and utilizes the remaining ground bones of the body taken, and the mage’s blood. Not much, just a little bit of it, but this is a process that can occasionally go wrong and cause ABOMINATIONS to be formed. Dorian, at this age, saw no problem in minor blood magic, given the status of it in Tevinter and his spirit of rebellion, so to speak.

The binding ritual, for Dorian, was more complicated than he thought it would be, what with his youthful arrogance. The spirit had chosen him and agreed to it, but the stipulation was something along the lines of total equality to him, and while he had seen spirits be bound before, and had taken part during his times as a reckless and wild idiot, frankly, in the Circles, this was an entirely different process altogether. Gaining the notice and almost ( though not quite ) trust required for such a thing from a spirit is difficult ——— this is, in fact, where many people fail, if not at the first engraving to garner the notice of a spirit, to begin with. Dorian succeeded, in the end, and through that gained the understanding of the true will of spirits. Or the extent to their will, that is.

Nonetheless : the spirit is bound, and the creation of the staff is finished, and that mage walks the path of the necromancer from there on. The mentor, who often chooses the inductee, begins training the person properly, with heavy emphasis on the funerary and otherwise traditions that Imperial necromancers tend to take part in.

More on that in another headcanon, I think. This one is... far too long.

#( ∞ ┈┈ headcanon ) SOMEWHERE IN THE HISTORY BOOKS.#[ fuck it it's been a year i'm posting this ]#[ pls validate me i'm Begging ]#[ this is literally So Fucking Long it's FUCKING ABSURD ]#[ so the usual ]#[ i've been referencing parts of this for ages ]#[ so here it is in its full... ]#[ uhhhhh glory? stupidity? who knows lmao ]#[ just making up my own lore ]#[ once again because i haaaaate biowaaaaaaare ]

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samanthasroberts · 7 years ago

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I Teach At A For-Profit College: 5 Ridiculous Realities

For-profit colleges, aka colleges that operate for a profit, aka the only schools that buy pop-up ads, are a $30 billion industry, with millions of students nationwide. But much like that guy in high school with the bitchin’ mullet and radical IROC, just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they have the best reputation. We wanted to know how accurate that rep really is, so we sat down with “Stephen,” a former professor at one such college in Ohio. He told us …

There Is Zero Teaching Experience Required To Be A “Professor”

andresrimaging/iStock/Getty Images

Most teachers come equipped with a boxful of degrees, permits, certifications, and other fancy framed papers to confirm they’re trained educators and not, say, urine-soaked knife-wielding hobos. Not so with Steve’s school: “At my campus, I’d say that nine out of every ten professors don’t have an educational background.”

AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty Images “Hey Dave, drop what you’re doing. We need someone for Marketing 401.”

He was sure to point out that sometimes this led to great teachers, like the former hotel manager who became a professor of Hospitality Management: “He was honest about complaints, nipping lice infestations in the bud, and tons of other terrible things normal HM classes barely cover.” But that’s not a universal truth.

“Like, they may be an accountant during the day, but they moonlight teaching that at schools like mine … those teachers could be really good … But most had no idea how to teach. I sat in on a class going through economics, and … the ‘professor’s’ laptop gave the blue screen of death. He was a nice guy in his late 20s, and he immediately panicked.” Since the students were paying dearly for that professor’s time, they kept right on asking questions, like “What’s the difference between macro and micro economics?” Steve recalled, “He had a deer in the headlights look and he froze for 15 seconds. Finally, he said ‘Macro is big economies and Micro is individual economies. Like Bill Gates’ economy.’”

kasto80/iStock/Getty Images “Hold on, Wikipedia’s gone down.”

Those of you who know a little bit about economics might recognize that as complete fucking gibberish. Eventually, Steve and another teacher listening in had to call him out on his bullshit and give the class some proper answers, but, “When we gave the right definitions and answers to everything, he defended his answers as being correct. He was fired the next day.”

Jonathan Ross/Hemera/Getty Images Those who teach, can’t.

Once he’d started telling shitty teacher stories, Steve couldn’t stop. He told us about an accounting teacher in his 70s who told students “any math you couldn’t do by hand wasn’t worth teaching.” Another particularly enterprising educator gave out a two-week assignment to ��have his students do his and his family’s taxes, giving bonus points to the ones who had found the way to have them owe the least.” Steve added, “He lasted three semesters.”

They Target Poor Minority Students And Con Them Into Taking Loans

Jacob Ammentorp Lund/iStock/Getty Images

For-profit colleges promise students who didn’t do well in high school a chance at a real college degree for far less than fancy university prices. And since everyone gets in, your past doesn’t matter. ITT Tech will take any breathing human being who applies. It’s like the Little League of higher education, minus the Capri Sun at the end of every session.

These colleges sell themselves as a “way out” of poverty and desperation to people who are poor and directionless. Ninety-six percent of ALL for-profit students take out loans, compared to 57 percent of those at normal public college. And while the average college student only has an 8 percent chance of defaulting on their loan in the first few years, for-profit students have a 25 percent chance.

It should come as no surprise that investigations have shown that many for-profits do in fact target low-income people who can’t pay. These people are often minorities. One investigation turned up the training manual for recruiters at the for-profit college Vatterott, including a list of ideal types of people to recruit:

Leadership Conference on Human Rights – Has To Use Library’s Internet To Fill Out Application – Thought They Saw A Ghost One Time – Can’t Find Phoenix On A Map

Steve noticed the same thing at his school: “Most of my students made minimum wage, and over half were black. Every one of my students had a loan, and it’s all they ever talked about. Some felt strong-armed into them, but some wanted them. They lived off of them. They wanted the loans as another source of income because they couldn’t make ends meet with their regular jobs. They took a few classes to keep up appearances, but I would always know why they were really there. Every college has these students, but at my college, I had several in every class I taught. I never knew what happened to them after the semester and they were 20 or 40 grand in debt. Many struggled to make ends meet, and the college offered an easy way to get loans. What did you think was going to happen?”

AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty Images “Thanks for the mortgage payment.”

For-profit universities vastly prefer loans — and the long-term, interest-bearing income they generate — to straight cash payments. So much so that they often don’t take cash: “One student in particular told me that she had $20,000 from an inheritance in cash, but ran into roadblocks everywhere. My college wouldn’t accept cash, so she tried a check. They told her they couldn’t, since they had too many issues with bounced checks. She then tried paying online in full, but she was told she shouldn’t because ‘What if you decide to drop a class? Would you still want to pay for it?’ She then tried monthly payments, but she was informed she was too late to sign up. She could only take a loan.”

Digital Vision./DigitalVision/Getty It’s usually a red flag when a business won’t let you purchase their one product.

Schools like the University of Phoenix depend on student loans to survive. In fact, the latter actively instructs their “Phoenixes” to borrow the max amount. And how could that possibly backfire? For-profit universities are one of the major causes of the current student loan debt crisis. So if you’re a New Yorker who had your daily commute fucked up by Occupy Wall Street, you can blame like half of that on the Participation Trophy of colleges.

They Cost More To Attend Than Conventional Universities

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For-profit colleges advertise themselves as much more affordable than traditional universities. According to the ads, a for-profit college is the Costco of higher education: great quality without any unnecessary frills, for the budget-conscious consumer.

“‘Scholarship?’ It’s just a discount.”

Why, you save so much money on these programs that it’d be almost insane to get your degree anywhere else.

“Our scam is cheaper than their scam!”

Surprise! That’s all crap. These schools are filled with more hidden fees than a bank run by ninjas. Here’s Steve: “A close family member was deciding on a cheap starter college. She was looking at my college and Cincinnati State. Honestly, I just started at my school and I didn’t know what the full cost was. I asked and got a quote for $9,000 a semester … When I gave her the written quote, she looked right back up and said, ‘I could get a degree from Cincinnati State for that much.’ I was floored.”

Two years at a community college costs, on average, $8,300. Four years at a state college? $52,000. But at a for-profit, that Associate’s Degree is now $35,000. The Bachelors? $63,000. It’s like deciding to eat out at Olive Garden instead of that fancy French restaurant, only to discover that the bread sticks are the price of a used Toyota.

bhofack2/iStock/Getty Images “Considering they are unlimited, you can’t afford not to.”

Steve explained: “All normal colleges show how much a semester is, or give a price by class. At ours, they made it look cheap by giving price for each credit hour. [Note: They still do.] So many of my students were suckered in this way. They saw the $550 cost per hour … and they assumed that meant $550 per credit.”

Oops! Silly desperate students seeking to better their lives. You assumed “for-profit college” meant something besides “a shell game in which you gamble your paycheck for decades to come.”

Michael Blann/DigitalVision/Getty As least Vegas gives you drink and food comps when you do it.

A Degree All But Guarantees You WON’T Get A Job

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All for-profit colleges essentially promise you your dream job, falling just short of issuing IOUs for personal oral sex bots upon graduation. The word of the day, kids, is “bullshit.” It was revealed last year that the $75,000 three-year criminal justice degree offered by Westwood College comes with a 3.8 percent job placement rate. And most of those “jobs” are as some sort of security guard, aka the job literally any breathing human can get.

A school like the recently shut down Heald College, or DeVry, can famously claim 90-percent-plus job placement rates, which sounds super impressive … if you don’t know that the FTC is currently suing them for classifying a business major getting hired as a waiter to be an “in-field” placement. Or counting a job at Taco Bell as successful placement. Steve gave a shit about his students and did his best to prepare them for careers as accountants, “but most didn’t become accountants. We had to go off of curriculum, and while many of us got through that as fast as we could with our students to tell them what they really needed to know, we often didn’t have time.”

Rawpixel Ltd/iStock/Getty Images “Welcome to Money Management 101. Lesson 1: You shouldn’t have taken this class.”

Steve explained how his college practically went out of its way to make their courses useless: “Normal colleges give you a mix of course work, field work, and other assignments, slowly making it more and more real world. Once you get the basics, you learn the programs, you see what employers want, and you expand your knowledge. For-profits are like standardized tests. You get the basics, but almost none of it can be applied once in the real world.”

Pinkypills/iStock/Getty Images “And that about covers the basics of being a barista.”

The evidence shows that graduates from for-profits make less and are less happy about their prospects than those from larger colleges. This jives with Steve’s experiences: “I’ve met several graduates, and nearly all didn’t get the jobs they wanted. A few thought they were going to be teachers in a few years, and I found them working as subs. One student who said he wanted to run a hotel I met by chance at a hotel in Columbus, where he was only a part-time assistant manager at a Microtel [and] taking classes for ANOTHER degree at the University of Phoenix at night.”

BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images “Unfortunately, two fake degrees cannot combine like Megazord into one real degree.”

So uh … clearly, that guy doesn’t learn lessons easily.

The conventional logic is that any degree is better than no degree. But that may not be true with for-profit colleges. A Harvard study found that such students are 22 percent less likely to get a callback from a job than an otherwise-identical resume that named a public university. And it’s even worse with an online degree. Even if these students do find work, high school dropouts tend to earn more than for-profit degreers in the same field.

For-Profit Colleges Are In Big Trouble

Albert Herring/Wiki Commons

Over the last year or so, the hammer has started coming down on for-profit schools. Steve explained: “Obama had been threatening for years to do something about for-profit colleges, but no one believed he would go through with it. In early 2015, it was apparent he was trying to do something, and we got emails everyday. Most were telling us not to worry, but we also had emails that said ‘We’re as strong as ever!’ I worked there for three years, and the only emails they had sent me was pay stub receipts, password expiration reminders, and the odd departmental email … these emails really showed how worried they were.”

Devonyu/iStock/Getty Images They were a step away from emails asking their employees, “Are you a cop? If we ask, you have to tell us if you are.”

This finally prompted Steve to make a career change of his own. He found another job and gave his resignation to his department head, who “begged me to stay. He didn’t try to flatter me or say how much they needed me or anything you would expect to hear. It was, ‘I know you’re worried about this Obama law (I wasn’t), and we’re worried too, but it will all be OK.’ Everyone was acting like the apocalypse was coming.”

And what terrifying new law change had everybody soiling their chinos? To quote CNN:

“The new set of rules, called the gainful employment regulations, require colleges to track their graduates’ debt and employment to prove that their programs don’t fall short of federal guidelines. Institutions now have to provide information on program costs, how much students earn after they graduate and how much debt they could accumulate.”

Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images “We’re moving forward on a new controversial anti-lying law.”

The new law also set limits on how much the schools could charge for loan payments (no more than 20 percent of a student’s income). Despite how reasonable those restrictions sound, it was essentially the apocalypse for educational conmen. Roughly 1,400 programs serving 840,000 students were estimated to fall below those minimal standards. The University of Phoenix lost half its students. DeVry is currently being sued by the FTC for false advertising.

Steve was not bummed out at all by this. He still feels some guilt for being involved in the whole thing to start with: “One student I had told me that he knew he was being had. I started to say he wasn’t, but he told me to shut up. He told me he went $25,000 into debt for a degree no one took seriously. He had a family, and I got the sense he was doing this for them … He told me to go fuck myself and proceeded to tell a few other professors too. We never saw him again after that. I’m hoping, really hoping, that the new laws will make degrees for people like him from for-profits actually worth it.”

Kondor83/iStock/Getty Images “Congrats on getting hired! Here’s your desk.”

We hope so too, for the students’ sake, but we can’t imagine a future in which a prospective employer looks at your resume and says, “Whoa, University of Phoenix, huh? Don’t you think you might be overqualified?” Well, not with a straight face, anyway.

If you were misled by a for-profit college, please protect other students by letting the authorities know. If you decided to attend a school because of a misleading ad or deceptive recruiting, contact the Federal Trade Commission.

If you took out a private loan (not including federal student loans) to finance your education, you can also complain to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

If you are a veteran or service member who was deceived by a college, and you used the GI Bill or other VA programs to fund your education, please report it to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ new complaint system. The folks at Veterans Education Success would also like to hear from you, and can connect you with pro-bono attorneys, state and federal law enforcement agencies, and generally advocate on your behalf to the VA.

Evan V. Symon is an interviewer, writer, and interview-finder guy for the personal experience team at Cracked. Have an awesome experience/job you would like to share? Hit us up at [email protected] today!

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/i-teach-at-a-for-profit-college-5-ridiculous-realities/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/i-teach-at-a-for-profit-college-5-ridiculous-realities/

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adambstingus · 7 years ago

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I Teach At A For-Profit College: 5 Ridiculous Realities

There Is Zero Teaching Experience Required To Be A “Professor”

andresrimaging/iStock/Getty Images

AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty Images “Hey Dave, drop what you’re doing. We need someone for Marketing 401.”

kasto80/iStock/Getty Images “Hold on, Wikipedia’s gone down.”

Jonathan Ross/Hemera/Getty Images Those who teach, can’t.

Once he’d started telling shitty teacher stories, Steve couldn’t stop. He told us about an accounting teacher in his 70s who told students “any math you couldn’t do by hand wasn’t worth teaching.” Another particularly enterprising educator gave out a two-week assignment to “have his students do his and his family’s taxes, giving bonus points to the ones who had found the way to have them owe the least.” Steve added, “He lasted three semesters.”