#or you know... make all the pieces of Mythal pay the fucking price

[yarpharp]

He was a spirit. He was an entity that was pressured into participating in essentially breaking the balance of Thedas by acting like a Lyrium parasite and making off with the raw material (in the shape and functionality of a body). He was a general. He was an inventor. He was a teacher. He was one of many creatures that dared to be more but failed. He was a lapdog for Mythal. He was the equivalent of Oppenheimer who built a world-changing weapon that lobotomized primordial earth entities that literally balanced the ecosystem. He was a fool. He was a victim of manipulation that was living in denial of the betrayal until he couldn't. He was a rebel. He was an abolitionist. He burned away his loyalty off his face. He was a killer. He was a ruthless leader of scared and angry people who needed something and someone to believe in. He was a God. He was a grieving man who watched his former friend-master-equal-abuser (trauma does fucked up things to how you feel about the people who hurt you) assassinated by their peers. He was The Dread Wolf. He was the First Warden and his first act was to imprison those who used the Blight as a weapon using their own power to do it. He was a hero. He was the one who damned his people. He was asleep for centuries. He was a scared, weak little man who found out that his actions doomed generations of his own people to genocides and slavery and cruelty no different from those he imprisoned. He was rash and grieving and unable to cope with the reality of his actions.

So he used people. He helped people. He nearly realized that there was still LIFE even in the present day, but he couldn't cope with the possibility he'd be the Last Ancient Elf to live; the last Ancient Elf left who couldn't die with the passing of time. He drowned himself in his regrets and stewed in his traumas and decided to continue walking The Path of Death hoping he could somehow fix it all. He clung to a Duty he shouldn't have ever had to carry because the one who gave it to him never anticipated that he would ever try to be Something Else.

And the irony of all ironies... He couldn't make himself be something else in the end. He tried so many times and yet... He still tried to keep fucking doing it. Down to the last second, he kept trying to do it.

Talk about the ultimate tragic villain.