#the pitch for this character is What If Wizard Hubris Was A Rogue

[thedragonagelesbian]

Vidreu “Dru” Aeducan

If Trian and Bhelen can be said, respectively, to be the wisest and the cleverest children of King Edrin, there can be no doubt that the middle child has the most raw intelligence. Afforded the education and resources of her station, Vidreu Aeducan is a renowned alchemist, herbalist, chemist, and experimenter of any great number of natural and magical reagents, particularly of the explosive variety. It is this reckless penchant toward the dangerous, and general disregard for safety principles, which have foreclosed any possibilities for them to attain a stable position of employment, though they have put in numerous requests to work in Magi Circles across Thedas. The two missing fingers on the left hand do little to inspire confidence among reputable runesmiths, lyrium workers, and munitioners, while the disreputable are far too wary of entangling themselves with the princeps of Orzammar.

At the same time, Vidreu’s political career has been stifled by her solitary and eccentric nature and her tendency toward social impropriety. They have never mastered the social graces of their brothers, resulting in an endless string of offenses, faux pas, and misunderstandings with an equally endless list of dignitaries, nobles, merchants, artisans, scholars, and other figures of repute.

Should Dru leave her mark on Orzammar’s history, she will assuredly do it alone. Hopefully, at the very least, it won’t leave to much of the city razed to the ground.

[c-is-for-circinate]

EXU Calamity post-ep 1

Jesus, EXU Calamity is going to be so fucking good.

I think it says a lot, probably, that my two favorite characters so far are the ones with the least magic to their names -- paladin and rogue, well, we all know I love paladins and also Travis, I would, but also, they're not wizards. Of course they're the best characters here. In this glittering, towering sky castle, palace and cathedral to artifice and hubris and the belief that, with enough learning, you can encompass the entire universe, Zerxus and Cerrit learned to do things beyond just Arcane Magic, and I respect that deeply about them.

Which is not to say that I don't love everyone at the table! I definitely love everyone at the table! And I'm going to love this game.

I think tonight's takeaway -- the thing I'm going to be sitting with for a while, maybe this whole miniseries -- is this feeling of, 'oh huh some people might be starting some shit, we might have to deal with that.' The way that feeling maybe goes as far as, 'oh it's gonna suck to have to deal with that'. A rival city might be doing some major weapons testing in ways that speak of potential future war -- so we're going to have to keep up our arms race, our politics, this is high-level government decisionmaking but it's exactly the kind of decisionmaking that explains why high-level government even exists. There's a weird, sketchy crime scene -- ugh, got another copycat-wannabe trying to ascend to godhood, put it on the pile.

The sense is that, for this crew of people, even this latest creep might've succeeded in unlatching the cages of some betrayer god or another is more of that same! More of that, 'well this is going to suck to deal with', the kind that bypasses even asking the question of "um, can we deal with it?" Of course we can deal with it. That's why we built flying cities and magic that redirects flight and rivers and natural disasters at every turn, to deal with the vagaries of gods, to take control of our own destiny.

They sit at this party and they hear, Vespin Chloras may have unlatched the door on the Betrayer Gods' tomb, and that sounds like some shitty days somebody's gonna have, probably. That sounds like a problem we need to do something about for sure. That sounds like the pitch to an action movie.

It sounds like something they think they can do something about. They hear ancient, cataclysmic, soul-of-the-universe true deities, and they think, yeah ok sure, what's one more problem I have to solve before breakfast. They think gods are a thing that can be defeated. They think on a scale of mortals.

The thing is -- the thing that makes me so, so excited for this game -- is that Brennan Lee Mulligan understands the scale on which gods operate. He understands how much vaster and stranger and more overwhelming a god is than any mere mortal, however powerful. He's going to make sure the players learn it. Maybe by dying. Maybe by surviving, to see the change their wars will bring to the whole world they've known.

There's more to be said after I sleep, but I loved this. It was so so good. I can't wait for more.