#the dales

[huariqueje]

 View in the Dales  -    Peter Brook 

British,  1927–2009

Oil on canvas,  22 x 18 in.

[dalishious]

Reclaiming Independence of the Dales

Before anything else, I’d just like to clarify that that vast majority of this is made of my own ideas, based on interpretation from the little canonical information provided, and a little inspired by my own people’s history and governing structure. Additionally, what I am presenting here is an ideal situation, not necessarily what I think is an immediately realistic outcome in the world-state established. So, please keep that in mind.

The Dales were established as a homeland for elves—a small piece of a continent that was once called their home in its entirety, before the humans colonized it—by Maferath in -165 Ancient. This was in reward for the eleven people’s participation in the fight against Ancient Tevinter. But in 2:10 Glory, Divine Renata I broke this treaty and declared an Exalted March against the Dales, ending in its annexation by Orlais.

[Related Post: All You Need to Know about the Exalted March of the Dales]

If Solas has very low approval with Inquisitor Lavellan, and Lavellan accuses him of not doing enough to help their people, he will say the following: “You could order Halamshiral returned to the Dalish, if you wished. But ultimately, you know that would fail. That even you cannot solve this.” I hate this with a burning passion. The reason I can’t do that, Solas, is because it’s not an option in the game! Why are you as a character angry at me, the player, for not doing something that is not an option for me to do? Why was this written? Just to push the point that it’s not worth it to try and fight back against oppression? Because if I refuse to accept hopelessness in real life, why would I in accept it in a video game where the story is made-up, and therefore anything is possible if the developers so wish it.

Regardless, according to Solas, the Inquisition has enough power to support the reclamation of an independent Dales. I imagine this would require a lot of political maneuvering within the Orlesian governance, and therefore I think the best opportunity to do this would be with Briala ruling through Gaspard. This would then later open the door for Briala to be the leader of the newly independent Dales, too. I would like to see Briala as ruler of the Dales not just because she is a favourite of mine, but because I genuinely believe she is the best established character fit for the job. She was trained in everything Celene was trained in, has first-hand experience in court, has extensive connections, and has demonstrated her ability and desire to utilize these skills and assets for the benefit of elven kind.

Briala’s blackmail on Gaspard may help prevent Orlais from invading again while under his rule, but to last longer, the Dales would need to establish itself as a strong, independent Nation with allies. This is why I believe it would also be important to have Leliana as Divine Victoria in such a world-state where this could happen. Leliana re-canonizes the Canticle of Shartan, and in making it available for the common person to understand, would ideally help sway the minds of the average Andrastian into supporting the Dales’s independence. The nobility would of course be much trickier, because they and the Chantry are the ones who actually benefitted from its annexation—but there is little they would be able to actually accomplish if they did not have the power of the people behind them.

As far as allies go, Ferelden could only gain from Orlais losing control of the Dales, because it would mean cutting Orlais off from a lot of Ferelden’s border, therefore reducing the threat of another invasion. Additionally, a leader with just plain good morals like say, Alistair, would easily accept the elven kingdom’s return. But even Anora is willing to grant part of the Korcari Wilds to the Dalish if Mahariel requests it, and while this sadly doesn’t last, it does show a positive sign into her potentially being open to the idea of an independent Dales as well.

I sincerely doubt that all Dalish clans would return to the Dales and re-settle down. After all, they have developed differentiating cultures over the years of wandering in separated groups, with different ideals and different ways of life that they might not want to give up. But many would return, and that would likely create conflict between the elves coming from the Dalish clans and the elves coming from the cities. We know that some prejudice exists against “flat-ears” as some Dalish call those from the city, and we know that city elves have adopted a lot of misinformation from humans into their views of the Dalish. It would take time and positive leadership to reconnect the people, without risking falling into some sort of hierarchy based on origin. This is why I do not believe one group or the other should single-handedly rule alone. Rather, I think there should be a Grand Council of High Keepers made up of those voted into the position each to represent a single district of the Dales. (I like the idea of there being seven High Keepers, not just because there are seven traditional districts of Mi’kma’ki, but because it works out that there seven of the Creators. So it makes sense that there would be seven High Keepers.) The Grand Council would meet and make decisions together, with one appointed leader at the head to act as the Council’s chair.

In terms of protection and order, the Emerald Knights should be reformed. This would include the Fade Hunters, to protect the people against demons and maleficarum, with there being no Circles or Templars.

Restoring the independence of the Dales would lead to a revival of elven culture in ways that could never happen before, because they would actually be free to pursue re-learning the language, re-discovering the history and culture, and sharing it all amongst each other. They would not have to fear arrest the crime of simply being an elf.  

But what of the other races presently living in the Dales? I see no reason why they would have to leave, so long as they would be willing to follow the Grand Council’s leadership. I imagine many nobility would flee to Orlais, simply because they would not stand for it. But for the average human or surface dwarf, their life wouldn’t really even change much; they’d still be managing their farms the same as always. Hell, it might even improve things for them, assuming the Grand Council gives fairer treatment than the nobility previously.

[thekingofwinterblog]

You know what the most annoying thing about the Twists regarding the Elves in Inquisition was?

That all the twists, if taken on their own, would make for a really good story.

The reveals about Solas backstory and how him and his fellow God Kings rose, became decadent, warred with each other and fell, setting the stage for their transformation into the Old Gods is frankly speaking, some of the best lore that Dragon Age ever had, and lines up really well with how the world is structured while explaining how the Old Gods came to be, how the elves fell, and so on.

That the tevinter imperium when it conquered the nation of Arlathan was not the great imperial state lead by mighty mages their descendants liked to think they were, but instead a bunch of weaklings that needed years and years to take on one, measly city-state that had utterly obliterated itself in civil war.

There is so much great stuff here.

So where did it all go wrong?

The answer, is of course execution.

Inquisition overall is a great game... But man did it drop the ball so hard with the Elves that it's pretty much hard to believe that they will be able to tell a nuanced story about them in Dread Wolf.

Everything from the companions, to the world itself as the game presents , to retcons regarding mages that's there, not to tell a story about the elves, but to try and make the Templar vs mage conflict grey.

Starting with the companions, we have a great example of coming so, so close to greatness... and then falling right on it's face.

The game has two Elf companions, solas and Sera... and the contrast between them really illustrates the big picture with how incapable Inquisition is with trying to tell a nuanced picture with the elves.

Solas as a character is perfect. Love him or hate him, he is a fully fleshed out character with very clear, defined, understandable motives that makes sense to him.

And most importantly of all, his way of viewing the world is WRONG. The game acknowledges that he is wrong.

The entire story of where dragon age 4 is heading, is all about how the Dread wolf, for all his knowledge and intelligence and genuine virtues, is at the end of the day, a monster, who is willing to see the world burn to restore the Elves magic and immortality.

He is a racist, he is bigoted, and ultimately misguided. Despite all his development with the inquisitor, he does not manage to grow enough as a person that he manages to abandon his genocidal goals. And the game does not pretend othervise.

That is what makes the story of Solas rise to become the big villain of the sequel great.

There is no disconnect between the story, the characters, or the way the game wants us to view solas.

Solas is far, far more bigoted and close-minded than any of the dalish he so despises, and the game ultimately does not pretend othervise.

Which brings us to the opposite end of the elf spectrum with Sera.

Sera is a very disliked character by a lot of people, but by dalish and elf players/fans more than most.

Just like Solas, she is bigoted, racist, and ultimately misguided in her hatred of her fellow elves, whether they be city elves, or Dalish, or ancient elves.

And that frankly, would not be a problem if the game acknowledged that fact. If her character arc was about it, and either how she could not overcome her own issues, or actually managed to grow beyond them, she could have been a great character.

The problem is the fact that the game is not willing to handle this fact head on. Its not willing to come out and portray Sera as just as bigoted against her own kind as Solas is, and to treat this as a flaw.

Instead the game treats her as if her biggest flaw is that she's annoying, and not the fact that in a game that is in many ways about setting up the rise of the dread wolf, she is just as bad as Solas, just from a different origin point.

Sera should have been a mirror to Solas, both from a story point, as well as a thematic one, but unfortunately she is not.

Hell, she doesn't really overcome her racism either. The closest she comes to doing so, is basically burning out on hating the dalish and other elves in trespasser, not admitting she was actually wrong to hate them so much in the first place.

The game does not treat Sera's disdain for other elves and their culture as a problem, and it does not give a dalish inquisitor the option to tell her to go fuck herself on the topic that you are given with Solas if you really desire to do so.

You are given the option of kicking her out of the inquisition, but not actually stand up for the dalish or even city elves the way the player could against Morrigan's flemeth raised cruelty in origins, anders and Fenris obsessions with, and hatred for templars/mages in da2, or solas ideals in inquisition.

And thats a problem that really illustrates the bigger issue with the way Inquisition took what could have been a great story about the Elves and the reveals about their anceators, and frankly ruined it.

The dalish and city elvea were very thouroughly fleshed in both Origins, Awakening and DA2.

However, city elves largely managed to avoid being utterly destroyed by the narrative the way the Dalish were, for the simple reason that outside briala, we don't get much if any interaction with them at all, making them essentially a non show foe the game for the most part. They don't get a city elf inquisitor, and so we have no point of view to look at them from a pc perspective.

They got off much better than the dalish though.

Starting off with the arguably single worst thing in all of DAI is the retcon that Dalish clans, if there is more than two mages in a clan, sends off the third one alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves. This goes against absolutely everything that has ever been established about the Dalish, and worst of all, wasn't even an addition meant to demonize the dalish, instead being an addition to handwave away the obvious fact that the Dalish had a much better system than the human circles when it came to magic... Which in turn was made irrelevant by the fact the Avvar was later shown to have a much better and more effective solution to the possession question anyway.

It was, in essence, a pointless retcon, that overall only made the dalish look bad, and has now opened the door for the idea that most dalish clans acts like this, and will be portrayed so in future games.

Its bad, but unfortunately it was only the start.

The game goes out of its way to portray absolutely every single person who critices the dalish as having a point, that they brought on their own downfalls, even as they are being the most imperialistic, racist assholes imaginable, while the dalish inquisitor can only offer a token of defence for his people, a far cry from way origins allowed you to handle the same situation wheter your main ethnicity was ferelden, mage, city elf, dalish, casteless or dwarven noble.

But nowhere is it worse than the way the game handles the fall of the dales.

Now the actual lore you learn about it, is not bad. At all. I know some complain that the reveals that ameridan(and presumably other elves) worshipped both the creators and the maker, as well as the fact that the dalish unfortunately did have a bad relationahip with the rest of the world, in particular orlais, is bad storytelling, but i firmly disagree.

No the problem is the execution.

Ameridan is not wrong when he says that The Dales should not have distanced itself from the rest of the world, especially not in the face of a blight... But the Dales of his era were in turn not wrong when they argued that the Orlesians were little better than the imperium, and they would be completely right.

This is not a grey issue, its a grey and black issue.

Orlais was, and still is an evil, expansionist empire with 99% of its population living as serfs, that can be raped and beaten at will, little better than slaves.

The dales were the morally right side of the exalted march on the dales. No amount of new lore we learned in inquisition has changed that fact. We simply get the details fleshed out a bit more to add context.

Orlais was going to invade and enslave the elves anyway, as they proved through their actions against all their other, very much fellow Adrastian neighbors.

The problem is that you are not allowed to express this kind of point of view and stick to it like steel.

The characters you meet having the bigoted opinion that the dales ultimately brought on their own fate is NOT a bad thing in and out of itself... the problem is that you are not allowed to challenge that opinion the way you could challenge Lelliana's view of the dalish in origins, or the way you could tell both Anders and fenris to go fuck themselves on their extremist opinions all through da2, and ending that fuck you by killing them in the endgame.

And thats a real shame, because just looking at characters like cassandra's character development through Inquisition, you could easily have made a really compelling narrative put of a dalish inquisitor who stuck by his or her principles, and actually challenged the people they met's racist views on the dalish the way you could in origins, just with a more fleshed out and(unfortunately something way too many people just cannot emote to a character withouth) an actual voice to raise those arguments with.

I do genuinely like Inquisition, and i think it's overall a much better game than DA2... but man did they drop the ball with the elves so hard.

I feel so sorry for anyone who really got invested in the elves as their favorites factions, and i honestly don't think the elves will be handled particularly well in Dread wolf, especially as the only Dalish we are likely to see fleshed out will be the villains fighting for Solas.

[exhausted-archivist]

Evolution of DAI

I was going back through some news posts made by BioWare back during the marketing and launch of DAI and found some interesting things. In post of Exploring the Dales,

Emprise du Lion, the Exalted Plains, and the Emerald Graves used to ve one continuous map that they broke up to allow for more variation ad drastic environmental differences like what we ended up with. Dean Roskell, a senior level designer, explains that it wouldn't have felt natural to transition from a lush forest to frozen highlands, and that they needed more separation. Additionally, due to the three separate story arcs they had to consider, they split them up to allow you to play them in any order or even skip one. It aided in bringing balance to the levels in the game.

At one point, Emprise du Lion had a version where the villagers had more freedom. Meaning they had farms up and running, merchants trading; but this was changed because it didn't communicate that they were a group of people near the point of accepting death at the hands of the red templars. Making it a frozen landscape improved the narrative that it was an area on the brink of death, combining the red templar threat with the freak blizzard.

Ser Michel and Imshael being added to the area of Emprise du Lion was a decision made by the level design team as they wanted to bring in links from The Masked Empire novel that Patrick Weekes wrote.

The original starting point of the level of Emprise du Lion was actually where the three high dragons roost. When they moved the village down by the lake they had a large area they wanted to do something with and landed on three high dragons. Reportedly, it was three dragons instead of one really difficult one due to someone saying they couldn't do it.

Andrew Farrell was the level artist for all three Dales levels and came up with the idea of old coliseums surrounded by hot springs.

[niofo]

funny thing about that collector editions map is orlais is like covered by a herd of aravels. i hope that means something, like dales coming back. anyway, fuck orlais and briala was right.

[anneapocalypse]

Dragon Age: You won't BELIEVE all the ancient elvhen lore we're gonna drop on you! Me, holding out my empty bowl: please may I have some lore about the Dalish state

[scurvgirl]

Thinking about how little we know about the Dales when it was under elven rule. Like, we know practically nothing about it. I feel we know more ancient Elvhenan now than about the Dales, which is WILD. The Dales were under elven rule for nearly 300 years - this is significant! I wish we knew more than about Emerald Knights and why Orlais went after them.

[homiest88]

Ho boy haven’t posted anything in Tumblr for two weeks mostly due to College. So here is a a Dragon Age fact for you did you know if you choose the Dalish Elf Origin you’re actually a descendant of an Emerald Knight. The name Mahariel is actually the name of the Emerald Knight who founded Clan Sabrae as Dalish Clans are named after noble houses from the Dales and Emerald Knights would found these clans with their descendants keeping their last name.

[maleficarlife]

Heraldy of Thedas, Red Schism AU.

Kingdom of Ferelden: The ascension of Prince-Consort Evar Cousland and the confirmation of Queen Anora Mac Tir meant the end of the Theirin and the start of a new dinasty. To avoid inheritance issues with the Teyrnir of Highever, the royal family took the name of Mac Cousland for the new dinasty. The flag of Ferelden changed with them, including a combination of the laurel of the Couslands and the wyvern of the Mac Tir in their families -now united- colors. The Kingdom of Ferelden lived trought a new of aggressive foreign policies, declaring a chantry of Ferelden and annexing land from Orlais in a reversal of fortunes during the 9:39-9:41 Dragon period. Before the birth of the Fereldean Chantry, the kingdom declared token loyalty to Justinia V as Divine, but claimed neutrality in the mage-templar war.

The Free Republic of Orlais: In brown and white to rapresent the peasants of Orlais, who took their "mud" origins as a sign of pride and to show the people loyalty to the teachings of the white Chantry, the Free Republic of Orlais was born from the destruction of the Orlesian Empire and the teachings of The Iconoclaust, elevating the people and destroying the nobility but bringing with them a strong current of religious zealotry. As of today, Orlais remains the worst country for a mage to live in, even with the end of the Templar Order and the chantry sun in both gold and black -a reminder of humanity sin and the teachings of the Iconoclaust- proves it.

The Dales: With the fall of the Orlesian Empire, crushed by civil war, lack of leadership and the dissolution of much of it's armies -bogged down by enemies or recalled in the attempt to stop the spreading of the Iconclaust teachings- the elves of "Ambassador" Briala repeated the exodus of their ancestors, reclaiming the Dales for themselves. If not for the extraordinary circomstances of the conflicts that were ripping down the status quo of Thedas, such a move wouldn't have been possible, but it was. While the symbolism of the colors and the bow is obvious to who knows elven history, the addition of the stars over it represents the merging of dalish and city elves, for the dalish quickly discovered they had to live with their lost people in order to claim the land that the city elves had succeedee in taking back.

The Grand Duchy of Serault: The Marquis of Serault had already taken prisoner his rival and neighboor, the Marquis of Aloyns, before the fall of the Empire. When the teachings of the Iconoclaust -a native of Serault- started to spread the and nobles started to be viciously ripped apart by mods, The Glass Rose of Serault marched on as much territory as possible and closed the borders, declaring indipenndeance from Orlais and trying to avoid to share the father of many other nobles trought her wealth. The Grand Duchy of Serault is the smallest nation in Thedas, but also incredibly rich thanks to their glasswork. Originally bearing the emerald stag of her family, The Marquis turned Grand Duchess and ruler of Serault added a golden circle and purple colors to show her wealth and status, comparable to that of royalty.

UMA: The United Marcher Alliance was born at the end of the mage-templar war, when Divine Justinia V's Exalted March ended with the victory of the schism of the Red Chantry and all of the free marches either allied to or occupied by Kirkwall rebel forces. Viscountess Selby of Kirkwall decided to invest in the rebuilding of the overthrown and defeated enemy and the monetary sacrifice was repaid by political capital and the prospect for unification in a Federal Republic, giving strenght and unity to the divided marcher states without breaking their oath to have no crown above them. The UMA was born by the blood of a revolution who affected all Thedas and such truth is painted in the red of their flag. But more importantly is their magical identity, for while maged are now free in all the continent (bar Par Vollen) only the Free Marches new Arcane University, an institution created by Ignis Hawke, teaches every possible branch of magic, included blood magic and how to safely bind demons. Such identity is rapresented by the University presence on the nation flag.

[ploinkplonk]

[frankwoodheadart]

1989 Frank Woodhead - Farmstead in the Dales, October

[simplyjustagirlsblog]

i love laura palmer

[doctorspaceman]

Rene Magritte, Memoirs of a Saint, 1970 /// Twin Peaks, 1991

Rene Magritte, La Belle de Nuit, 1940 /// Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, 1992

Rene Magritte, The Pleasure Principle, 1937 /// Twin Peaks: The Return, 2017

Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1929 /// Twin Peaks, 1990

Rene Magritte, Image Not to Be Reproduced, 1937 /// Twin Peaks, 1991

[communist-hatsunemiku]

Miku Worldwide

[fadeintoyou1993]

happy laura palmer asparagus for dinner again does this mean i'll never grow up february 23rd to all those who celebrate

[rika-mortis]

Some drawings of future Timmy (based from old Nick Magazine)