#what do the venatori have on them. absolutely fucking nothing.

[thedragonagelesbian]

time magic is right there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! do something horrific with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[baejax-the-great]

One of the things missing in Veilguard is any sort of meaningful power struggle. By keeping to the poorer parts of the city-settings, we don't really deal with corrupt or powerful nobles. By defanging the Crows, an organization who famously has lethal squabbles between factions, they turned them into some weird, benevolent family organization. Even the assassin trying to make "evil" power plays doesn't actually manage to kill any of his targets, and his ruthless relatives? Also don't kill him in revenge. In the end, the status quo is maintained. Nothing has changed.

In Tevinter, we have the Threads, an organized crime unit who we know runs "protection" rackets on the locals and is involved in some kind of smuggling (it's Tevinter--so presumably this would involve slavery and dangerous artifacts, but it's Veilguard, so I guess not). Instead of them beefing with the Shadow Dragons, who presumably ruin some of their deals with their pesky "freeing the slaves" thing, and instead of their main issue being with any sort of law enforcement, something which doesn't exist in Veilguard beyond one singular templar who does all of jack shit the entire game, their main power struggle is with the Venatori, who are evil just to be evil.

And instead of the Veilguard siding with law enforcement or the threads and enlisting their help to, idk, unseat the corrupt head of the templars or otherwise deal with the venatori shit, the threads are highly favored by the storyline, and in the end the only real choice is to make Neve a thread or to make her... idk, the same Neve? The game calls her an "inspiration", but it's not like she's part of any organization, so we can't call her a figurehead. It's just like, see that random citizen right there? She rules. And I don't really see how that increases the power of the rule of law, because even if one good person is working within rule of law to get things done, she's not part of the system, and everyone already know the system is corrupt in Minrathous. Random citizens in fucking Ferelden know the system is corrupt in Minrathous, or they would if they weren't all dead. Neve is now just playing on hard mode to appear righteous, which, good for her, but I'm sorry, won't inspire all that many people who are still paying "protection" money to the local mafia.

(Putting Neve in charge of the Threads is an absolutely whackadoodle decision by the devs that I don't even know how to respond to. She has a single Thread contact. Presumably the Threads have a hierarchy. She has never demonstrated interest in being a smuggler. Being a detective really has no overlap with being a crime boss. Telling a group of criminals that they are all detective's helpers now is sure to go over like a lead balloon. What the fuck was that. Why did that happen.)

Maevaris and Dorian arguing came out of nowhere and lasted a fairly long time, which was interesting, but after the most recent election in the states, Maevaris's position sounds unbearably naive and trite, and this hardly counts as a power struggle as they both say they will support the other depending on what some random outsider thinks should happen. (That is soooo not a basis for a system of government. Why would Maevaris OR Dorian cede their power to Rook, someone they don't know and who doesn't matter)

The power struggle within the Wardens is also very stupid and easily solved. The First Warden is a moron. He dies (kind of). For some reason the extremely hot and competent couple who we first encounter in the middle of nowhere are next in command, so, phew. Problem solved there. A question of what the Wardens will do now that the Blights are over would have been interesting. Do they keep recruiting lest the Blight somehow reoccur and nobody remembers the Warden secrets? Or do they disband? Do they set themselves to seeking a cure and nothing else?

The closest you get to that is deciding what the griffons will do, which, again, why the fuck is Rook deciding that, but also there are 13 of them, in two or three more generations they will be dead unless a lot of mages bone up on genetics real fast.

Who is left? We have Rivain, which is just pointless in this game. I played as a Lord of Fortune, but you could drop that faction and not a single thing changes in the game. Pirates who don't loot valuable artifacts because they are elvhen? Give me a fucking break.

Same for the Mourn Watch. There is pretty much nothing going on in that region. You could excise it from the game and nothing changes in the slightest. There is not a single excuse for them not using the Eluvians to help the Veilguard earlier in the game, given just how little they have going on.

The Veiljumpers are just missed opportunities all over the place. They could have had factions debating whether to join the god of vengeance in fucking up the human civilizations as payback for, you know, everything. They could have had people joining Cyrion in thinking that a Forgotten One might be the best way to face down the gods, given they'd done it before. There could have been a HUGE cultural impact on "what do we do now that we know our gods are evil fuckfaces--what do we keep and what do we throw away," but Veilguard ain't that deep. They could have had knowledge of a super-weapon or some elvhen bullshit that would help the Veilguard fight the gods... but nah.

In DAO, your decisions not only affected the political futures of the various regions, but they decided who would help you and how. Did the dwarves have golems? Did you have templars or mages? That whole wolf thing with the Dalish that I no longer remember that well? And the Dalish deciding to help changed how they were viewed in Ferelden. The mages helping you meant the monarch would treat them favorably. It fucking mattered.

In Veilguard, the only situation remotely close to that is the dragon decision at the beginning, which was one of the fucking dumbest plot points in a video game I have ever played. It was the first thing that made me set my controller down and go... what? What the fuck? The idea that Rook, a nobody, is the only person singularly capable of driving back a dragon in the entire north is laughable. What the fuck was Dorian up to that day? How is Rook more capable than every single Crow? How is it the two companions you sent to the other city were absolutely useless? If Lucanis/Neve + two companions were unable to drive a dragon away, what makes them think Rook would be the deciding factor? What makes them blame Rook when they themselves couldn't fucking do it? Neve in particular was a big part of fucking up that ritual and releasing the gods, so why is Rook taking all the fire for this?

AND WHY IS THEIR RESPONSE TO A BLIGHT TO FIND A SINGLE DRAGON HUNTER? HEY DIPSHITS, THE DRAGON IS HUNTING YOU. YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THAT PART. YOU NEED AN ARMY.

But Treviso or Minrathous being spared doesn't change the global political situation at all. It would have been really interesting if it did. Tevinter hobbled? How many kingdoms would be salivating to take a bite out of their territory? With the trade princes of Antiva being absolutely fucked over by the Blight, who is taking over that trade? Who is getting rich?

Nobody, I guess, because why would Rook know or care about that, because, as previously mentioned, they are a nobody who doesn't matter and honestly shouldn't be listened to.

The stakes in this game are nothing because the bad guys are all so obviously bad that you know, as a video game player, that you are going to defeat them. Oh, the Antaam are just mindless, faceless brutes fucking up Treviso? Okay, let's kill them. Venatori again? I'm pretty sure they aren't the heroes of this game. There's no power struggle, and in the end all we've done is revert to the status quo, (except i guess Treviso is no longer occupied).

Except for the south. The south is dead. but we didn't have anything to do with that for some reason. Couldn't even be bothered to house some refugees in our safehouse that was built specifically to house refugees. The Inquisitor, who has access to the eluvians, couldn't figure out how to get other people through them or something so... sorry, every single Orlesian, Fereldan, and Marcher.

[wildfairies]

things that are bothering me the most:

antaam stuff makes no sense, full stop. it's also explained poorly/insufficiently.

most of what we see of rivain is completely uninhabited. i also don't care about more warden shit there, i was looking forward to more lore on rivaini people and culture, especially the seers obviously, we've been dying to know more about them for three games.

every elf we've met is ok with the huge revelations that their gods aren't what they seemed and this process happened offscreen. i would think there would be many different reactions to the spread of info about the evanuris, and i would think it would be extremely important to make it clear that info had spread pre-game.

the venatori are the same nonsensical vague useless boring cult with the most nothing goals. as incredibly lame as they are, it's even stretching my suspension of disbelief that they'd serve elven gods for vague promises of 'power' given tevinter's extreme history with the elves. i would think this would come up at least one single time.

the past two points are part of an overarching issue. the contentious and complex political landscape of thedas that makes the setting interesting feels flat. i'm supposed to believe NO ONE in super-elf-racist tevinter would blame the elves for their gods terrorizing thedas? even inquisition acknowledged this, w solas/inky showing concern that revealing the orb was elven would lead to elf racism.

i'm supposed to believe NO elves who've been oppressed by humans for centuries would think 'fuck them' and join up? what happened to the elves who joined solas at the end of trespasser when they heard he was trying to bring back their empire? at least inquisition had wacky cults for every side.

walking down the street in minrathous as an elf or qunari with no difference is simply absurd, i would literally rather never visit tevinter if they were going to implement it so toothlessly. where is the immediate opinion hit for being a mage/elf the inky takes in orlais???

yes the tone is off and a little shallow. yes the companions communicate too healthily for my tastes. yes i was dreading 'evanuris are behind everything' lore reveals and that's what we got. but i honestly think i could overlook those things if the above problems were solved and it felt like the same immersive, problematic thedas.

i'm so completely infuriated by the worldstate choices i'm going to make a separate post about it. but yeah i was concerned but made no noise, i was willing to wait it out and see how the three choices played out in game. and it's absolutely ridiculous that so far two out of fucking three have basically no impact, and the last one idgaf about unless inky romanced solas. i'm so so so so mad and disappointed about this, especially after staying open-minded when it was initially revealed.

everyone loves companion quests, so i don't know why the game feels like it needs to sell you on their significance. why did we get two different scenes of varric spelling it out to rook: do the companion side quests, or else they won't be able to focus! it's such a weird and superfluous tie-in. i don't get why they went so out of their way to clarify this when it didn't need to be clarified, companion side quests are expected in rpgs and their relevance to the plot is very easily accepted/overlooked.

[wild-magic-oops]

I think the Minrathous vs Treviso choice is a very good choice where you don't have an obvious winner but it rather forces you to choose what kind of decision-maker your Rook is. The fact that one character locks their romance but another doesn't sadly ruins that to a huge degree but that's not the point here.

Both choices have good arguments to back them up, but people who chose Treviso AND then shout with their whole chest that the choice was super obvious either didn't pay attention, or didn't consider things thoroughly.

Let's look at the arguments:

"Minrathous has a magical laser beam!" yeah and someone needs to operate that. The country has a serious cult problem that has infiltrated all levels of society. What makes you think they wouldn't have already disabled the most obvious defence before the dragon even appeared?? Nothing, that's correct. So magic laser beam is useless actually.

"Minrathous is the most powerful city in Thedas, it should be able to defend itself" No, it's the capital of (one of) the most powerful country in Thedas. Tevinter's defenses would be concentrated in conflict zones like the borders, not in their capital where they're not expecting an attack to come out of the blue. Treviso meanwhile has already been occupied, escape channels and logistics have been established bc of that occupation. People there should be a little more prepared for a disaster and evacuation than Minrathous bc the pandemic should've taught you all that: "having the means" =/= "doing it right" or even "being prepared". Having less means but being prepared would get you better results than having more means and being absolutely not prepared for shit.

"Treviso doesn't have an army" Neither does Minrathous most likely bc again - the actual active army would be in the conflight zones, not in the capital. Minrathous has a bunch of corrupt templars as police who would be useless against a dragon in the first place. And mages, some powerful ones yes, many of which probably Venatori, so that's actually counter-productive. And the others would be saving their own asses instead of helping. The few that would choose to fight would be scattered and disorganized, so not much help either. Minrathous's defenses don't mean shit, it turns out. And they definitely don't mean anything for Docktown.

And most importantly - what Neve tells the player. The dragon attack has the potential to lead to a coup which will be tremendously horrible for the whole of Thedas and significantly hinder the fight against the gods (at worst). The Venatori cult which is the gods' puppets getting unrestricted control over (one of) the most powerful country in Thedas would be catastrophic and the consequences and victims would be far greater than that of a dragon attacking a single city, which Treviso is. So the point of the choice is not which city seems more capable, bc both are ultimately not prepared.

The choice imo is about whether your Rook makes a more emotional decision (of sort) with the best of intentions of saving the city which seems to need it more bc they're already fucked up by an occupation and don't have defenses (Treviso, a good choice) OR Rook prioritizes considering the bigger picture and choosing to prevent what could be the worst case scenario while also recognizing that nobody is prepared for an attack like that no matter what, and that both cities would be fucked and many will die (Minrathous, a good choice)

Bioware finally gave us a good tough choice which also helps players shape their Rook's personality as a leader better and some of you all are out there shouting with your whole chests that you don't like to consider choices at all. Maybe they're right to baby-fy things after all...

[nessacousland]

can i ask what was ur problem with treviso? i actually found treviso and the crows to be the most interesting faction out of all of them so maybe im just biased LOL

Okay, full disclosure: I was on vacation and didn’t get to play Veilguard until the 8th of November. Couldn’t take the potential spoilers everywhere, so I've been cramming these past few days to finish the game asap (I still did every side quest, had all factions at max strength and got the “best” ending etc. but didn’t do every chests/stats puzzle). By the time the Treviso questline concluded, I'd been fully marinating in the sauce of all the other criminally stupid quests, is what I’m trying to say, and Treviso was emblematic of every problem I already had with this game. It was my breaking point.

To start with, the questline is offensively generic and an actual insult to the players’ intellect. Painfully linear, cartoon villains abound and nothing of any substance was ever said during its run.

The moment Caterina told us about Lucanis’ non-death, I called Illario being the traitor. There were no clever misdirects, there were no other leads, nope, they showed us his hand *immediately*. Grandma First Talon of the murder guild has a clear favorite and didn’t tell the ‘spare’ heir about her suspicions? Yeah, okay. Repeat FAMILY as often as you want, you piss-poor Godfather knockoff of a questline, I ain't buying.

So, from the start, all tension is gone, I'm just sitting there waiting for the rest of these “capable” assassins who “rule Antiva from the shadows” to catch on to this incredibly obvious plot twist. Meanwhile, the quests had absolutely nothing interesting to say - about the Crows or Treviso. The first bad guy was, predictably, an evil evil Venatori, super more evil than the evil evil Venatori you've seen before, guys, she literally BATHES IN BLOOD. Omg, right? 🙄 (I found Tevinter infinitely more compelling when their entire ruling class were power-hungry tyrants out of self-interest instead of being hit over the head with the mustache-twirling villain/crazed cultist stick).

Mr. “totally not the traitor” kills Zara before she can tell us anything of substance, she dies,clearly shocked, calling him “Amatus”...AND NO ONE CATCHES ON. You can have Neve on the team, Bellara regularly reads Tevinter serials (the whole team has a fucking book club in the middle of an apocalypse), you can play a freaking Shadow Dragon Rook, but nah, nothing. We don’t even get to ask “Uh, what was that?”. Instead, we get to sit through more pointless missives/quests while the ever capable Crows are totally investigating the traitor.

Now, you could argue that the “Amatus” was a reward to tip off those of us who’ve played the previous games and know what the term means. But with a plot this threadbare and obvious…did the writers think they’re Agatha Christie here? Did they really think I was at the edge of my seat, desperate to find out “whodunit” and grateful for any crumbs thrown my way?

Well, anyway, we are told a million times over that super charming (where?) Illario is just “like that” every time he acts super freaking suspicious. (The funeral thing with Caterina's ashes was especially funny.)

You'd think those instances would start to add up and prompt someone - anyone - to start using their brains (don't we have a goddamn detective on our team?!), but NOPE. We have to corpse-whisper to progress this questline. One of the biggest ass-pulls they've introduced via this game in general, in my opinion (is this Forbidden Realms and we just unlocked the Speak with the Dead spell?) - and it acts as the deus ex machina here to finally give us a clue. Wow, thanks.

The entire sequence of Lucanis confronting Illario in front of the assembled mafia felt like something out of an Antivan play. So goddamn goofy. I thought that vibe was charming in Josephine's romance quest - Antivans live for the drama - but they wanted us to take this moment seriously. This is Lucanis confronting his “all he has left” (don't get me started on the Fade sequence - apparently we the players can’t grasp anyone's motivations without having them spelled out for us over and over again) for putting him through hell and changing his entire being forever. Should I be laughing right now?

To make matters worse,we're told that the Crows are the perfect killers who never leave a contract unfinished - and then Lucanis spares Illario because the humiliation is the biggest punishment??? Like, I'm fine with him faltering here, that’s human. But this should have had consequences. This is the murder guild we're talking about here. Lucanis’ parents were literally killed in a different house’s coup attempt. He was just made the head mobster, immediately showed weakness in front of the entire mafia and everything is just dandy fine??? Because FAMILY?

Another personal gripe with this is that - as always - Rook had zero agency. No matter what you do, Lucanis will forgive or spare Illario. Imagine if we had the option to convince him to kill him instead. Imagine the resulting resentment tainting our bond with him and having us actively engage with fixing or breaking it. Imagine us going along with his mercy but hashing out the painful consequences for his house with him. But that’s not the game Veilguard is.

Anyway, the quest then becomes even more ridiculous. We've long learned that a human traitor helped the Antaam claim Treviso overnight. Someone with great knowledge of the city and the necessary power to make it happen. Gee, I'm sure the human GOVERNOR regularly hanging out in the Crow headquarters or the market bitching about the Crows’ interference 24/7 - the ONLY town official we get to see - had nothing to do with it. Five scarves fluttered in shock out of five, great job, guys.

The Butcher thing was just…weird. Like, we get to hear and build him up as this totally different antaam leader, cruel but cunning and calculating, someone who will be difficult to dethrone. Only for him to show up out of nowhere and serve no other purpose than to move the main plot forward asap and die. Lol, thanks for your service, I guess.

Then Ivenci, for no fucking reason, decides that they, like any good cartoon villain, should reveal themselves to us just in order to gloat. Um, why don’t they simply order the Antaam to murder us dead right then and there? If Rook and their plucky team of friends are too powerful for that, why haven’t we taken Treviso by force already? But nah, lol, our plot armor doesn’t have any cracks yet, so they literally tell us to go away and try to disturb the gods’ plans, because those guys will totally kill us for them.

Now, we wait again. Excuse me, isn’t this a questline about assassins? Why aren’t we trying to, y'know, assassinate Ivenci? Cut off the snakes's head, how often have we heard this phrase otherwise? Nah, let's wait till we get another letter that shit is going down that the Crows totally didn’t anticipate and THEN let's confront them. (Ofc, the Crows’ investigation of the qamek stalled forever. Cause they’re incompetent.)

But the thing that really broke me…we KNOW Ivenci stole a bunch of special qamek. We run at them THROUGH A GREEN POISON CLOUD. And my Rooks's just like “Huhhh? Is something possibly messing with my mind right now?”. YOU STUPID POS.

And then, ofc, we end the questline and Jacobus pops outta nowhere to spare Ivenci because a good pirate never steals and a good assassin never kills, I guess. Jacobus founds his new house to basically become a big mafia family for orphans like him which everyone is super proud of, because, if the previous installments of the game have taught us anything, it's that the Crows are deeply concerned with the well-being of orphans. Whoop dee doo, the end.

Okay, more notes. It’s been mentioned plenty already that this game has completely neutered the Crows and turned them into edgy found family freedom fighters. Personally, I'm not okay with the explanation that this is simply a different house than House Arainai. Because what the actual fuck, game. Why is Ivenci the bad guy when they're literally right about everything?! Where's my option to agree with them that a fucking murder mafia shouldn’t be the ruling force of a town, let alone the entire country? Why is the municipal government the enemy while my non-Crow Rook keeps shouting “Viva the Crows”??? Are you really telling me that the Crows are the good guy mafia and House Arainai was the bad outlier? Is that what this is?

Look, I'm fine with allying with the Crows if that’s what necessity dictates. We're trying to stop the SUPER BLIGHT here. But don’t sugarcoat that this is us joining forces with the mob. The way Veilguard presents them makes me cringe cause they're basically just leather-clad incompetent fools larping as birds. Show us the reality of this alliance. Get into the nitty-gritty. Make this world feel real. God.

I *wanted* to like this questline. Out of every country in Northern Thedas, I've always been most interested in Antiva. The whole medievalesque guilds system and merchant princes, the mediterranean romance and drama, pirates and Crows, the snazzy outfits and Spanish accents, god, normally, I'm eating that shit UP. I didn’t even think twice about which city to save. Partially because Minrathous was better fortified and Venatori seemed like the lesser evil vs. blighted water, of course, but mostly because Treviso is absolutely gorgeous and Zevran and Josephine instilled a lot of love for Antiva in me that I just don’t feel for Tevinter. I also thought that the setup was very interesting - professional assassins turned into freedom fighters of their occupied turf. And it *would* have been if they had let them remain, y'know, the actual murder mafia they always were.

But aside from my gripes about the Crows’ portrayal, the entire questline was just a total nothing burger. This is the first time ever that we're actually in Antiva, our introduction, so to speak, and what do we learn about the place? That there’s strife and betrayal among the Crows? Um, yeah, Zevran covered that fifteen years ago. There’s nothing new whatsoever. Imagine if our primary goal had actually been to help the Crows free Treviso. That we're working to loosen the Butcher's grasp on the town via strategic assassinations (i.e. actual Crow missions) that also introduce us to Treviso's people/Antivan culture (taking out someone during a theatre play, for example! The drama!), the internal politics of the Merchant princes and the municipal government's struggle to keep this occupied city from imploding. Imagine us getting caught up in this web of intrigue as we get closer and closer to the Butcher and then suddenly, we're being played. And only *then* do we start to suspect a traitor among the Crows’ ranks and the whole thing unravels. Spitballing even further, why repeat the Crow/Venatori romance in a random side quest with random people? Why not have Zara and Illario be actually in love, but he kills her for his ambition anyway? And instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he blames Lucanis for forcing his hand? Or maybe, they both thought they were playing the other and as another power hungry asshole, Zara almost respects Illario for the hussle as she dies? *Some* messiness and drama? (Cause Varric’s initial narration sequence made Zara seem like this blood-soaked femme fatale but the actual narrative gave zero fucks about that vibe. Discount Countess Bathory wannabe).

That might just be what I would have wanted and nobody else, but I still maintain that anything would have been better than this cookie-cutter, baby’s first mafia story that is beat for beat exactly what you'd expect and have seen before.

Well, this was a long rant. I don’t intend to make a habit of shitting on things others enjoy on here, but my emotions are still running high after finishing the game yesterday and you did ask. Sorry.

[explodingchantry]

In hushed whispers is dead ass such a beacon of everything wrong with dai's writing. Because it should be a very, very terrifying quest. It literally shows you what will happen if you don't succeed. It should put so much pressure on you.

But it doesn't.

I think it's interesting especially because they nailed the looming ever-present threat so well in dao. The blight IS scary. You see first hand how it can absolutely decimate an entire army. You realize one day - even if it's long after you've finished dao - that Loghain... Was right. The flank wouldn't have mattered. They would've all died. He did save the men he pulled back from the front. And you feel the heaviness of that throughout the game. You watched more skilled, more numerous warriors die facing a terrifying amount of darkspawn. Saw the person meant to be your mentor die to darkspawn. You're alone, two new Grey wardens against a world ending catastrophe you know barely anything about, tasked to stop it.

And there's this sense of constant despair all throughout the game. I think, especially, what it does well is the random encounters that are so annoying, when you travel the map. Because at first you get a few straggling darkspawn. But then they grow in number, in power, in threat. As you advance through the main quest, the threat grows, so that it's always scarier than you. Even the last quest, what should be a triumphant conquest of the darkspawn, it's got this foreboding element. You're hyperaware of all the death they've wrought. Of your potential fate as you see a more senior warden so easily killed by the archdemon. But you try, because it's the only thing you can do. It's a masterful way to escalate a game-long threat

And inquisition... Tries... To do that. And fails every single time. Because you're always triumphant with very little losses. Even when you lose haven later, you end up gaining a beautiful imprenable ancient fortress. You literally never lose. And the very mission ABOUT losing, in hushed whispers... Doesn't get anywhere. Because you don't truly SEE the results of your loss.

You pick up your companions and sure they've got that spooky red lyrium effect on them and some may vaguely hint that things suck but... That's it. Most just spring back up and join to help. A year they spent, likely tortured, likely seeing hundreds die, maddened by the red lyrium around them, and.. Nothing. Not really. You get three lines of dialogue, maybe a couple quips from them as you move around. But that's it. The quest is meant to build up on the red lyrium threat, show it growing everywhere like a disease. And it supposedly does something. But... Does it?

Does it do anything? Aside from make your companions glow a little and have slightly spooky voices?

Dragon age 2 has a small shard of red lyrium alter varric's personality so suddenly it's genuinely worrying - but dai has him next to a giant pillar of red lyrium for a year and he just springs back up, jokes with you and just... Joins you with no other.... Consequence... ?

Sure redcliffe castle is fucked up looking, but you don't see what it used to look like in dai before the quest. You can imagine it didn't use to look like this but it still stands that its ruin won't hit you as hard as if you'd seen it lively and animated. "but you see it in Dao" you try to defend - and I'll come back to that. In a moment.

There's some ominous codex entries you can find around but let's be real, only a small portion of die hard fans actually read those. They don't get the point across and furthermore, it makes the narrative fall into telling us how bad things are rather than SHOWING us.

There's extra rifts in the castle. Okay? So? At this point you mightve closed a dozen rifts, and the little time magic circles around them barely do anything. The demons are exactly the same as everywhere else. Oh, and there's like 30 venatoris total you face. Cool. What else?

The one thing that DOES actually drive the attempted point across is Leliana. She looks dreadful. She's cold. She's bitter. She actually acts like someone whose been thoroughly tortured and lost everything. Too bad she's the only one. Too bad her main scene ends abruptly. Too bad she then only has a couple quips. Too bad no one else matches her tone.

We don't see outside redcliffe castle. We don't actually know how bad the world is. How far the red lyrium has spread. "the breach is everywhere now" and sure enough the sky is scary. But that's. It. Where are the large demons, the raw magic of the fade seeping through and making things float and distort, making time and space melt? Where are the victims? We do find ONE tortured chantry woman in the dungeons early on. The sounds coming from the room are scary. But the mage we kill inside is normal. The corpse isn't mangled. There's not even proper environmental story telling. Just the sound telling us "we swear something cool happened!! Its super scary!!" and begging us to believe it.

The magic side of things is also.. Silly, I'm sorry. They excuse the shockingly strong magic that literally can alter TIME by saying the magister (I already forgot his name even though I just replayed the quest, he's that remarkable.) used the raw magic pouring out of the rift but then this is never repeated or built on throughout the whole game. Just dropped there and then never spoken about again, it's implications just forgotten. What do you mean the fade holds magic so powerful it can alter TIME? why does no one make a bigger deal of it? Why wouldn't Solas use it, now, on trespasser, in veilguard, or at the time of elvhenan?

Not to mention that time travel itself will always break any canon it's introduced to, but anyway. I won't even dwell on that because the game sure doesn't.

This part of the game somewhat holds more weight to dragon age veterans because we do have attachment to ferelden and redcliffe and some of the characters present (varric if you take him along, and leliana) but dai markets itself as friendly to people who've never played dragon age. So imagine yourself playing a new game, you know nothing about it, and a few hours into it (and it can be very early depending on your priorities) you're thrown into this worst case scenario with characters you basically know nothing about. It's a great hook - the whole game is a great hook, its characters are great hooks, the game is full of fucking hooks. But just like every other hook in the game, there's no line, no sinker. It just falls flat as hell.

The last scene, of your two other companions sacrificing themselves, of leliana sacrificing herself - of a grand total of 5 demons and 10 venatoris attacking her... It falls flat. It just does. The only power it holds is if some of the faces attached are familiar because you're a sucker whose played all the games, as well as a single line from leliana (when she says this timeline, her present, isn't real for you, but she suffered it and as did everyone else and you preventing it won't change that). You're going back so their deaths don't have to be real to you but they're real to them. But this can only carry you so far.

Also that boss fight against mr time magister is shit, it's got no stakes and no panache. And then you come back to the present and he just gives up, as if he was aware of the future you defeated him in? Of the future in which Felix is still dying? Did he really not have anything else up his sleeve? No other spell? He's desperate enough to plunge the world in chaos but he can't even do some blood magic to escape you and keep trying to save his son? His son dying a preventable way by just idk making him a warden? (granted Felix could very well die in the joining and being a warden rly is more a way to slow one's taint progressing but it's better than nothing innit). Or trying some fancy blood magic ritual since it's in the blood?? No ?? Nothing?

And don't even get me started on the political talk from your advisors and everyone involved re: choosing the mages and then allowing them to join the inquisition as people rather than slaves prisoners. Jesus fucking Christ.

Idk this post is a mess of jumbled thoughts but my GOD I forgot how pointless dai's writing was. Because in hushed whispers tries to replicate what Dao did - make the threat you face feel hopeless and terrifying - but it falls so flat and every other main quest after it only gets worse from there. Because you never lose. You always just gain double what you ever do lose. It's just... Empty. Idk.

[arlathen]

anyway. i liked veilguard. solid game. beautiful world design. fun lore confirmations. VERY fun gameplay. wonderful companions. i like rook as a main character. like i really enjoyed playing this game and i will play it again and it is overall solid. that said. criticisms with spoilers:

i feel like that ten year development gap really hurt the game. i really disliked the cultural flattening of the world. i was a little ambivalent on them not having specific dalish vs city elf backgrounds -- like that's fine. i think there can and should be some crossover. is merrill a dalish elf or a city elf? kind of both. i think it's fine that rook can be both. i'm cool, even, with the veil jumpers being mostly elves but accepting anyone who wants to deal with the fade weirdness. but actual dalish clans had no presence in the game. "dalish settlements" had human mayors. and everyone was seemingly fine and ready to believe that the elven gods were 1) real and 2) evil -- like we saw no push back or questioning from any dalish character. that sucks.

and like. tevinter. it's so strange how absolution did more with slavery in, what, three hours? than veilguard did in 60. i played a shadow dragon -- the entire thing is fighting slavery in tevinter. but you don't encounter any slaves, really. i think there's one in the necropolis (WHO IS HUMAN). the whole thing about strengthening the shadow dragons seemed to be more about countering the venatori. but that made tevinter feel... i dunno, like it could've been denerim or val royeaux except those places had personality. there was nothing distinct. we were all excited to see tevinter so we could see how fucked up it was and outside of very generic "evil cult" stuff there wasn't much of it.

and solas. my love. i'm okay with the ending we got. i like that solavellan get to be together. but i hate that they made it about mythal. it was about spirits. he loves spirits and the fade and he loves freedom and i hate that he stepped away from bringing down the veil and is seemingly FINE with letting spirits continue to suffer and elves continue to die and he never even really makes a case to rook or anyone about why he should do it. like his motivation changed.

i would love to get a timeline of when a lot of things were decided. i thought they were flattening the culture of the world maybe because it was going to change so much with the veil coming down that they didn't want to try to onboard new players to all that culture just to have to throw it away. but i really think it was just that they were so far from inquisition and trespasser that they couldn't keep all the plates spinning or... i don't know.

i mourn the veilguard we could've had but i like what we got. 7.5/10 i guess.

[spainkitty]

Okay. I think it's time now to talk about how increasing uneasy and disgusted I am by how Bioware just dropped the ball on the Rebel mages being in Corypheus'/the Venatori's thrall rather than the red templars. I already hinted at why. Look again at that sentence.

The mages and the red templars.

The mages are not red. They are not stuffed full of poisonous lyrium that destroys the mind and will of the addicted users. They are not even being controlled by a singular blood mage like Erimond and the Warden mages.

And it's fucking INFURIATING.

The other night I had to murder Fiona in the game in cold friggin blood and I want to know why. I WANT TO KNOW WHY, BIOWARE. WHAT THE F--

Okay. Okay. Calm down. Lemme explain.

The red templars are fucking morons. It is totally their own damn fault for blindly following their commanders and chugging down red lyrium. I made a post about that already. The templars were stupid and let themselves be bamboozled for a myriad of reasons that don't excuse their actions. BUT, but they are in some ways just as much victims, or at least portrayed that way to an extent. They are taught to trust their officers, they did what they were told like they've done for most of their lives. Most of them had no idea about Corypheus or just what this red lyrium would do to them (though they DID know it was bad, they didn't know specifically HOW). They became mindless violent monsters, almost completely unrecognizable, and horribly, irrevocably addicted to this poison they were tricked into taking by commanders they've been taught to trust. It's shitty. It's horrible. And they have no way out if you don't do Champions of the Just. They are unsaveable. Even if you can get them out, even if they realize it's wrong later and try to leave, they'll just die slowly and agonizingly.

But the mages don't have that reason for staying with the Venatori!!! They are not being compelled or corrupted or forcibly addicted to the only thing keeping them alive even while it's killing them! Their minds are not being bent and rent and torn inside-out by this super-heroin-opium allegory. One person (Fiona) made a deal with one dude (Alexius). And a shit ton of people didn't like it!! They only agreed to go along with it because they thought they had no other recourse, that the templars were about to break down the doors and murder them all, and the Tevinter Imperium, for all its flaws, would accept them in a way most of Thedas would not.

But the moment, the FIRST MOMENT, they saw the Elder One-- Hell, the first moment Fiona realized the Venatori were a world-ending cult worshipping a FUCKING DARKSPAWN MAGISTER, she should've been outtie! There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, holding her to the contract! THEY HAVEN'T EVEN LEFT FERELDEN!! They outnumbered the Venatori when they were still in Redcliffe! Fiona was a Grey Warden! A Grand Enchanter! Why didn't she refuse to go? Why didn't she refuse to fight for them? Why did all those mages, so many of which didn't even like the contract and were not legally bound to it anyway since Fiona accepted it on their behalf without their approval, just not go?

'Oh, Corypheus had a fake archdemon.' Okay, but did he fly it to Redcliffe? Did he use it like a border collie herding the little sheepies? I think a whole lot of people would've noticed that!!! So no.

'Oh, there were so many Venatori!' Yes, and there were hundreds of mages in the Rebellion.

'Oh, the Rebels didn't want to fight!' No, they didn't want to fight the TEMPLARS. They didn't want to tear up the countryside and get innocent people killed. But how is that the same as not wanting to fight a cult of Tevinter supremists wanting to sacrifice them to their Elder God's war effort!? THAT'S A VERY DIFFERENT BALLGAME. They were at Redcliffe because they didn't want to fight in a war, so I'm pretty sure they would not want to fight Corypheus' war, either.

Okay, finally, let's say they managed to get tricked all the way to wherever Alexius shuffled them. Let's say they made it all the Corypheus and realized "oh shit, this is NOT what we signed up for", but it's too late because NOW they're outnumbered, NOW they're outgunned, NOW there's a fake archdemon. Sure. Okay. But then. The attack on Haven. THEY WERE UNDER NO COMPULSION TO KEEP FIGHTING. They could have easily given themselves up and surrendered to the Inquisition. They could've turned on their Venatori enslavers and betrayers because NOTHING WAS FORCING THEM TO FIGHT. There is no reason why Fiona, FIONA, MAKER-FORSAKEN FIONA, would fight to the death against the Inquisition/for Coprypheus!! She has no loyalty to the Venatori. She thought she was getting her people to TEVINTER, a legitimate if problematic empire to the north, using a legally binding contract with a magister, but the moment the jig was up, there's nothing legally binding her. It was all a sham. SO WHY THE FUCK DID I HAVE TO KILL HER? Hey, couldn't I at least STOP HER? TRY to reason with her??

I hate it. I hate it. I HATE IT. Bioware you're so fucking stupid. This doesn't make any sense, and I'm even madder about it because the Envy demon shit SLAPPED and the mission with Leliana (and Dagna) fucking rocks. HOW DARE YOU, BIOWARE.

[hetrosjistin]

No you know what, I thought I was done, but I'm not.

The problem with this shit is that it misses the point of having shit like the crows in Thedas at all.

You can't sanetize stuff and have it have the same impact, it's not just the hollowness, it literally reduces the conflict to a nothing burger.

You know why Dorian is, perhaps, one of my FAVORITE goddamn characters in the entire DA game series?

BECAUSE HE LITERALLY HAS TO GO THROUGH DEPROGRAMMING HIMSELF OF HIS RACIST SLAVER CULTURE! It's not enough that he wants to oppose the Venatori and all that nonsense. It's not enough that in inquistion, he literally went to the part of the world where he's taught they ENSLAVE people like him and burn out their brains if they're not good little obedient pet mages.

He goes there because it's right and that doesn't make him magically a perfect and good person. He's STILL flawed, he STILL has the baggage of his culture, and ADDRESSING IT is a constant fucking undercurrent of his dialogue and interactions throughout the game. How he is both proud of everything his civilization, the oldest extant civilization in the world, and horrified by the excesses of it's bad actors, and as time goes on his REALIZATION of how horrific each and every element of it is.

Like, when the Venatori take over minrathos. It's depicted as something ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE but frankly? That implies things were pretty okay before that!

What would ahve been SO MUCH MORE INSIDEOUS, would have been to show how LITTLE things had changed. Oh, have the burned out ruin of the hide out, have a few ventatori guards standing here and there, but now show how ABANDONED AND CALLOUS they all are. They don't -need- to set up a fucking police state, Tevinter already HAS IT IN PLACE. You don't NEED fucktons of venatori guards around docktown.

But by doing it the way they did they robbed so much of the substance of Tevinter from the game.

Like I'm actually on board with some of the changes. The Broodmother thing about the darkspawn was handled just about as well as it was ever going to be handled in Origins, so them all but abandoning them from the lore as time went on is a smart move IMO. Making significant changes to the dark spawn with the blight is a big deal, and a smart move.

But the draining of life from all the rest is unpardonable.

Have the Lord of Fortune -not give a shit- about other people's culture. It's pretty, it's bling, if it was so important why wasn't it better guarded? Why was it so stealable? Have that be a FLAW in their goddamn thing as FUCKING PIRATES.

Have the found family elements of the Crows, have them have a whole blood debt and true contract society thing. Have us confront the fact that if someone fails a contract their life is FUCKING FORFEIT. Play up the whole idea that found family can be JUST as toxic. Play up the idea that these orphans and street kids taken in by a fucking -assassin cult- effectively are molded to SERVE the interests of the nation as members of the 'family'.

I was -so- incredibly happy with inquisition where they CONTRASTED Blackwall so hard with the order at large. The Grey Wardens are a -death cult- created to fight the APOCALYPSE through wrote tradition and absolutely seething loyalty to the idea that they are the thin line against the darkness.

Play that up, show how god awful the anderfels are scoured of life by the blight and still infested with dark spawn. GIVE THE FIRST WARDEN A NAME AND WHY THE FUCK IS THIS GUY IN FUCKING MINRATHOS?! Play up the ENTIRE IDEA of what's wrong with them and contrast it with -our- experience of wardens from, basically, wardens who never actually underwent the indoctrination process.

Someone else on this hellsite said that the longer you think on veilgaurd instead of playing it, the worse it gets and goddamn is that the truth.

Problematic fiction is good because it coaches us through stories on how to fucking DEAL with actual bad things.

By sanitizing your fiction you rob it of it's ability to -teach- the audience any lessons beyond 'bad people bad'.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[mneiai]

Reading/re-reading a bunch of Dragon Age books and thought I'd give my quick thoughts for the ones I've gone through the last few days:

Asunder - 6/10. Always shocked Gaider wrote it, it does not feel like someone who knows the lore or games well, except insofar that a lot of the fight scenes are "this is how I envision it would play out in the game" as opposed to ones meant to be read. I can't remember if the printed version was this bad, but either there some horrific typos in the digital version or, again, it does not feel like someone that knows the lore wrote it ("Rite of Annulment" what the fuck). Creates some weird conflicts with established lore for no good reason. Last half better than the first half and Cole, Rhys, and Evangeline are genuinely likable once it gets going, at least.

Tevinter Nights - 3/10 to 10/10. Weirdly find the Talons story incredibly engaging and the characters very interesting (though that could be my OCD-based sympathy lol) and wish it were a book of its own and not just a short story that had to rush over a lot. In fact, I'd say most of the Crows-related stories are good, as well as the ones actually set in Tevinter. The Grey Wardens ones vary in quality and the Nevarra ones read like someone took passages from the World of Thedas and told a writer they had to come up with an excuse to infodump with poor mysteries shoved in. Most of the rest were just blah.

Magekiller - 2/10. This is so bad. The intro feels like some 12 year old writing about their OC and the addition of the relationship between Marius and that one DAI NPC that never goes anywhere again makes the protags honestly look way more at fault for some of the shit that goes down in DAI than Cole ever could. And this is true about all the comics, but the art is Not Great and relies very heavily on lazy shortcuts normally found in lower quality comics. Also a lot of lowkey ableism considering how Marius comes across. Never had strong feelings about Charter before, but now I dislike her.

Alistair comics - 5/10. The collection doesn't seem to have a good name to call all these lol Anyway, some interesting parts, getting to see one of my fav Tevinter characters and the way she's handled is always nice, but the whole thing is very C-quality-DLC-plot-thrown-out-during-development. Just all over the place. Hated the Isabella stuff, what even was that? We're not even going to get into the multiple international innocents that should have happened, but the whole thing was honestly ridiculous. Mae carries this shit.

Knight Errant - 8/10. Vaea and Ser Aaron are a trope, but it's a good one for comics and well-done in this, they're very cute. Varric feels way more natural here than in the Alistair ones, not sure what's going on with Sebastian but I think that has more to do with how wishywashy he has to be for Bioware canon than anything else. Literally nothing will make me care about the Magekiller romance, though, and it's honestly weird that's the conceit for the job.

Wraiths of Tevinter - 6/10. I think this was slightly better because it had to establish some of the characters, but it wasn't great (and what the hell did they do to my poor Fenris?!). The original stuff was better than when it started mixing into the overarching comics plotline, and the fact that 50% of these DA works fall back on "Qunari Ex Machina" got very old by this point. I cared absolutely zero amount about any of the villains and the Magekiller characters felt incredibly out of place in an already large cast. If it weren't for the endearing Knight Errant team and the mabari, I'd probably mark it down lower. Also lol why am I supposed to care about a slave owner Venatori apologist just because she had a bad childhood? Literally every one of the characters had a bad childhood. Fenris and Marius were literally slaves!

Also actually sitting down and reading the World of Thedas volumes instead of just looking stuff up in them and they're...fine. I still wish they were more encyclopedia like and I'm still confused at some of the assumptions people make based on things clearly not actually said in them, but that's fandom for you.

[melisusthewee]

WIP Wednesday - Let’s Talk Music

Thank you to @cleverblackcat @kittynomsdeplume @noire-pandora and @morganlefaye79 for tagging me!

I don’t have any writing to really offer today.  I’ve been trying to work on that Haven fic but unfortunately Aloysius hasn’t been co-operating with me despite all my best efforts to make him speak.  I may take a break from writing and pivot towards completing some art memes, but Wednesday just sort of crept up on me and here we are.  So instead, I’m sharing something that both is but also isn’t a work in progress?

It’s “in progress” because while I’m happy with where it currently is, I’ve said that about playlists and soundtracks before and later changed them.  I’ve worked hard on this and talked several friends’ ears off about songs I’ve heard or artists that seemed to work and thanks to their feedback I think this is a really good one.  It’s gone through several edits as well, and may potentially even go through more down the road.  So I’m saying this counts for today.

If you give it a listen (and I hope you do because I’m very proud of it so far), I hope you enjoy it and maybe discover an artist you didn’t know before.  It clocks in at around 51 minutes and features 13 tracks which span Quinn Trevelyan’s story and important events of the main game through to Trespasser.

If you are interested, below the cut is a list of tracks and a brief blurb or description about who or what they’re meant to represent.  I was going to go into things in more depth and talk about how I built it, why I picked the songs I did, and the B-Sides that were left on the cutting room floor, but after realizing I had written nearly 4 pages about just as many songs, I realized it was too much for anyone to read.  So below is just a very brief summary and I think that most of the music would speak for itself, but I’m happy to expand more on anything that anyone finds either interesting… or confusing.  (There is also Solas content because I knew a few of you love that.)

You have to click on this sentence to go to the playlist because Tumblr’s coding for “Read More” seems to be conflicting with the HTML code to embed a functional playlist.  Because of course it is.

Quinn’s tarot card is the Wheel of Fortune as his story is a series of unpredictable highs and lows.  What the Maker giveth, He also taketh away.  The playlist follows that trend of highs and lows with upbeat songs followed by darker or more mellow ones.  Whenever I create a playlist, I try to think of a general tone or sound that I want to be carried through the soundtrack.  I want the overall genre or sound to tell the story as much as the individual songs.  Because of that, you’ll see artists repeat a couple of times, and when they do it’s always intentional.  You’ll also notice that most of the vocalists are male.  This was again intentional because this is Quinn’s story, and he’s a man.  They are his songs and I wanted the vocals to reflect that.

The Cult of Dionysus - pre-Conclave Quinn

Quinn at his most basic and stereotypical before any character development happens whatsoever - poppish, upbeat, and maybe just a little obnoxious.  He smokes, he drinks, he fucks, and nothing else matters.

The Sound of Silence - Aloysius’ Theme

I like Aloysius as a more practical view and examination of Quinn and the cult that grows around him.  He affords an opportunity to look at Quinn both as the Herald but also as just a person.  He is stoic and mild-mannered, a dutiful soldier, and an excellent foil for Quinn.  This is also absolutely a reference to an Arrested Development joke.

Isle of Dogs - Quinn’s true theme

Quinn is a walking disaster constantly falling victim to his own hubris.  There’s a morose sort of resentment to the lyrics, of someone who is constantly struggling against the tide.  In a lot of ways, this is basically a reaction or push back to all the crap I have put him through.

Providence - “In Hushed Whispers”

There are no Templars here.  The first few lines relate a lot to the dismissal the fledgling Inquisition receives from what remains of the Chantry, but the rest of the lyrics are very much about the mages and Fiona’s dealings with the Venatori.

Seven Devils - “In Your Heart Shall Burn

No male vocals in this one to symbolize the change in perspective.  This is both a bit of an easy and obvious choice for this story beat.  Female vocals for Corypheus might seem strange, but when I created my Warden’s soundtrack I tended to use powerful choruses and female vocals for anything related to Blight, Archdemons, or the darkspawn.  I carried that idea over to this as Corypheus is one of the seven Magisters.

Caesar - becoming the Inquisitor

This is a softer and quiet interlude in the wake of the loss of Haven and struggle through the snow.  If the previous song marks the end of the first act, this song marks the beginning of the second.

King - “Here Lies the Abyss”

In my written world state, Alistair is both the king and the Grey Warden contact (this goes back to that longform fic I am working on).  I suppose it’s a bit unfair because in the end that has a major impact on why Quinn makes the decision he does at Adamant (a rather threatening letter from the Warden helps too).  Think of this as a duet between Quinn and Hawke.

My Type - the love interest

“Here Lies the Abyss” was completed first, then a romance triggered, then “Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts”.  This is that sort of inbetween interlude and is very much inspired by how I may have flirted with multiple characters a little too much and basically triggered several romances at once.  I also went into Quinn’s playthrough having no idea who I was going to romance and just let him shop around.  And it came down to a coin flip in the end, so “you have a pulse and you are breathing” is pretty much the only standards he has.

Boheme Supreme - party at Halamshiral

All I have to say is that I love techno swing, every single lyric in this song is perfect, and I want you all to picture Quinn Trevelyan walking into the Winter Palace with his Inner Circle entourage around him, dressed up in that outfit I drew with that peacock feathered cap and having a drink in his hand throughout the entire night’s affair.

Hell’s Coming With Me - “Doom Upon All the World”

This is the climax of the main game, the rematch between Quinn and Corypheus which I have to imagine is more impressive in concept than it was in game.  I chose the dialogue option when Corypheus calls Quinn an imposter, “I am the Maker’s chosen” as his final challenge.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that this main is actually very Andrastian.  But he is, and the lyrics, “I am the righteous hand of God/And I am the Devil that you forgot/And I told you one day will see/I’ll be back I guarantee/And that Hell’s coming with me” are the perfect declaration.

Paradise - Jaws of Hakkon & The Descent

Another interlude song.  If the previous one is triumphant than this one is the beginning of a bad turn.  In the interim between the events of the main game and the Exalted Council, things begin to go wrong in little ways.  His relationship with Cassandra begins to break down, eventually ending in the two of them having frequent spats and going their separate ways after returning from the Frostback Basin.  This song is deceptively sarcastic about how good things are.

I Still Love You, Judas - Solas’ Betrayal

Solas… oh, Solas.  Does this song indicate a very complicated and layered relationship between Quinn and Solas?  Yes! Have I attempted to unpack any of this?  Nope!  Have fun with this one!

Tagging for this week: @kita-lavellan @silvanils @nivenor-krosis @drag-on-age @rosella-writes @inquisitoracorn

Battle Cries - Quinn and Cassandra

I saved this one for the very end because it is a story within a story.  It is sad and bittersweet, but also not.  This entire thing feels to me like a duet between Quinn and Cass on what was good, what could never last, and that it’s all over now but that’s okay.  Because “this isn’t a breakup, dear heart, it’s a season finale.”  Does this mean that Quinn sounds like Joey Batey when he sings?  Sure, why not.

[nochi-quinn]

there's something so pleasing about how Emmrich speaks

This version of Speak With Dead sucks

Venatori? The ones who put up those glowing red walls? The kind we've seen sixty times on the way down here? Y'dont say 

oh I just looked at emmrich's outfit in the companion screen for the first time. I. hm. 

definitely does better in the mausoleum lighting 

manfred!! 

I have had taash for fifteen minutes and if anything happened to her - 

taash understands Dragons and Nothing Else and I love that for her

Isabela! And her fancy hat!! 

(ngl Isabela was never my favorite but I'll take the cameos I can get) 

oh, she has to manage the firebreathing like a chronic illness! I'm counting this as disability rep

my roommate, as I fail to see Assan and run right past him: PET!! THE BABY!!! 

let Manfred have buttons!! it's what he deserves 

Manfred gets an allowance!!

he is very clearly buying spell components 

the trophy for jumping off the library balcony is called Nostalgia Trip

it's not my fault they made the easiest path into solas’ area a straight drop from the library okay 

assan's floppy ear is my favorite 

you can play rock paper scissors with manfred!! 

taash's little “that's messed up” when lucanis tells her how he got possessed is possibly my most favoritest line read in this game 

yeah you WOULD cheer on the Crows fucking up the Antaam, wouldn't you Isabela  

“in rivain, the water is always falling down. in antiva, it rises up out of the floorboards in your basement.”

 I like myrna's outfit, can I have that outfit? Even just as an appearance? 

cassandra mentioned 

“you can hear spite?” “yes” “I'm so sorry” 

Aw, we love a supportive dad

(this is about maevaris’ dad)

wait, is tarquin trans too?? 

rook backstory! adopted elf baby of mysterious origins! 

(I don't mind the PC having more defined backstory; it's easily ignorable if you don't want it as part of your Rook's personal canon) 

(or maybe I've just played too many Bethesda games) 

tarquin/viper canon? 

aaand I'm assuming the Legatus mentioned in this codex entry is rook's dad

“ugh, puzzles” taash gets me

personally I like the assan trap plan

lucanis isn't using the cup I got him anymore :(

they did WHAT to sten 

genuinely need the HOF to roll back up with a cure to the Calling in one hand and Starbucks in the other and immediately start beating the hell out of people 

“don't be a dick, that was for the little one” my partner handing out pieces of chicken to the cats 

taash is so fucking fascinating, I love her so much

“people who've only ever been one thing will never know how big the world is” legitimately made me smile but also top candidate to show up on aesthetic quote graphics on pinterest 

“maybe because she acts more like a man herself” boooo 

davrin and rook teasing taash about her mom is cute 

(how old is taash supposed to be) 

(old enough that romancing her wouldn't be Weird but young enough that her mom is still embarrassing) 

(do any of us ever grow out of being embarrassed by our parents) 

taash writing to the rivaini guard to tell them to shut the fuck up about Karash

“I wish I hadn't misplaced Merrill's flashcards” 🥺

 bellara my adhd anxiety queen

bellara and emmrich being magic nerds my beloveds

taash's prosthetic horn! (it should absolutely shoot lightning) 

“everyone who ever tried to kill me is dead” 

I absolutely photo moded memory!solas, I had to investigate whatever's going on here

How did Gilan'nain get her ears in that helmet

so solas’ MO has been “nuke it from orbit” the whole time, huh

okay, I was worried “Shiv” was a play on “knife-ear” but the actual explanation is much better 

emmrich really just lives in caduceus colors, huh

if I had a nickel for every pink-and-green themed fantasy gravetender...

davrin: I would like to read about the blood-soaked castle please 

“lucanis why were you frying things at 4 am” “because I've lost all control of my life” 

wait is taash's relationship status just "here”

“you're not a builder, you'd only get in the way" I'm gonna shove this noble lady in the harbor 

PERI

hmm I think my second attempt at her will go better, now that I'm more familiar with the cc

(her hair's supposed to be white, but ofc that's not possible here) (I'm just assuming dealing with solas aged her 40 years)

goddammit do you know how hard it was de-blighting ferelden the first time 

“acting vicountess aveline vallen” is going to kick Varric's ass the next time she sees him

okay the awkwardness trying to talk around solas being her jerkass demigod ex-boyfriend was actually pitch-perfect to my inq so the game is forgiven for that at least 

(I've had a scene/dabble brewing for days where she does show up to stop the ritual, I'm going to end up writing it just to exorcise it from my brain) 

the letter to rook

the letter from Varric to Dorian

the “old friends in orlais” is probably a reference to a novel or comic but I haven't read them so therefore I'm pretending it's Hawke (and maybe Anders)

these are just VIs from mass effect, you can't fool me

man I wanted to insult Avina, I was robbed

egg taash??? 

I'M CRY??? 

I'M VERY CRY

genuinely having to take a moment. someone wrote down real words about the same thing I went through, the same feelings I felt, and they went through multiple multiple rounds of drafts and approvals and checks and probably fights with editors/corporate and made it into a AAA video game 

was it a little after-school special-y? Yeah, but sometimes talking to people about gender for the first time can be like that. It's a whole new topic, you gotta start with the small words. 

and taash is a whole adult!! the “I always knew” narrative is the default, you almost never have characters going through that journey as an adult. 

I'm very cry, is my point 

(also it was a little funny when Taash went “nobody LIKES being a woman” and Rook and Neve (and also me) just went “ah.”) 

“I did not ask for ‘a journey’” mood

I usually don't love irl gender/sexuality terms in fantasy but a. it's just in the codex so far 2. tevene is already basically latin, so whatever

(edit from the future: as of where I am in the game/taash's arc taash is still using she/her so that's what I used here; I'm leaving it for posterity's sake)

The sequel to TotK Thoughts From My Notes App, Dragon Age The Veilguard Thoughts From My Notes App

please do not respond or reblog with spoilers, even in the tags, assume whatever the last thing is is how far I've gotten bc it probably is

first off, meet Kalais:

(I've tweaked her design since this but I don't have access to the ps5 rn for a new screenshot) (really I just filled her face out a lil so she's not so Pointy)

[quest marker flashes] NO, I'm ‘SPLORIN

okay jumping over the wall in D'Meta's Crossing & going from Standard Spooky directly into Turbo Hell was very effective 

“this blight is WEIRD” harding you were there for corypheus’ whole deal, you can't say things like that, it's terrifying 

they really took the deep roads and set it to “worse”, huh

(my roommate kept going "BROODMOTHER" bc she hates me)

NO WONDER THEY CALL IT THE DRAGON AGE

I watched my roommate do this bit with her Warden; she sent him off to probably die from the Joining. I just. left him there.

Morrigan if you're gonna wear the headpiece get your hair out from behind it you're driving me crazy

Morrigan smiles so much, idk how I feel about it 

this is gonna be a weird sentence but I miss how her mouth was shaped in DAO, it just suited her for some reason idk

OH she looks like a Carja, that's what's bothering me

(a lot of this game gives me shades of HZD if I'm being honest) (it's not a complaint)

Titan Harding TITAN HARDING

been trying to figure out who Bellara makes me think of and I think it's “Merrill if she had a support network that wasn't Hawke” 

(“and less blood magic”) 

oh, little backstory tchotchkes!

while Rook just monologues to themselves 

(definitely interesting being a Not Culturally Dalish elf with a vallaslin)

“it is merely a suggestion” gonna suggest you off a cliff

I'm so glad Varric didn't die. I was so prepared for it

as a through-line through the series I prefer him over Morrigan tbh

“your old friend is kind of an asshole” “I know, isn't it great” 

WAIT solas’ knife is the fucking LYRIUM IDOL?? 

that thing just can't stop ruining Varric's life, huh 

the way Harding's bruises and stuff actually take time to heal is so cool 

me: talks to The Viper one (1) time me:...godDAMMIT, Mercer

room: offerings to andraste  me: offerings to me :) 

I. Don't care for Neve so far. 

which is unfortunate bc I picked the Shadow Dragons origin

me: spots what is clearly a fade tear me:

ATAB (All Templars Are Bastards) 

“the venatori rise” yeah yeah, hail hydra, fuck off

hey? hey Varric? I don't think I like your foreshadowing Varric 

[sinsbymanka]

Love Marks - 14 Days of DA Lover’s Prompts (Cadash/Varric NSFW)

I’ve seen so many good @14daysofdalovers smut entries for this prompt I couldn’t resist doing my own. It’s on AO3 too! NSFW under the cut. 

If they put her in one more silk dress, she’d start screaming, and Maker help them she’d never stop. As if finally sensing the roiling danger coming off her in waves, Josephine and Leliana finally retreated and Maria ripped the latest Orlesian frippery from her skin without a second thought. The delicate material tore, the sound soothing her frayed nerves, and she let it fall in triumph. 

Hah, she thought. At least they wouldn’t go with that one. She stood over it as victoriously as she stood over the dragon they felled in the plains. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears and she tried to tamp down the bloody rage in her veins before she damaged something she’d rather keep. She raised her cool gaze from the tangle of fine cloth on the floor and back up to scan her room. She still stood in front of the gaudy mirror, all gilt and gold paint, her reflection literally dwarfed by the gigantic expanse of glass. She could see the flush of her temper on her pale skin, from the tips of her ears the whole way to her breasts still trapped in the corset they laced her into. 

Suddenly, Maria spotted the problem. 

“Sodding ancestors.” She swore, fingers flying to the back of the thing to try and find the laces. “If it isn’t blighted demons and blood magic, it’s fucking finery and sneering nobles and corsets.” 

She’d rather storm right up to Corypheus and his dragon with nothing but her good looks. Her fingers tangled in the unfamiliar strings and she bit back a sob of frustration. 

Varric’s warm, dark chuckle cut through her searing anger and squirming embarrassment. “Problems, Princess?”

“Of fucking course!” She cursed, ceasing her useless struggles to pin him with her furious gaze. “You march your dwarven ass right back down those steps and tell Josie and Leliana to grow a set and come get me out of this damn thing.” 

Varric’s grin only grew more satisfied in the face of her impotent fury. He raised an eyebrow and lifted his hands. “What if I promised to heroically rescue you from the throes of this dastardly undergarment?” 

She dropped her hands from the laces immediately and turned to present her back to him with more relief than she cared to examine. “Get this off me Varric before I start hacking at it with my knife. I’m sure it’s bleedin’ expensive and I don’t want to listen to a lecture about why I can’t have nice things.” 

“Your wish is my command.” He said smoothly, his warm voice curling over her like fine whiskey. Within a moment, he was at her back, but instead of making for the laces immediately, like she’d ordered, both his hands trailed down her sides, following the stiff boning of the garment from her bust to the dip of waist the flare of her hips. 

She turned to fix him with an accusing stare over her bare, freckled shoulder. Varric instantly adopted an expression of wounded innocence, but she didn’t buy it for a second. “You like it.” She accused. 

Men, they were all the same. Varric grinned, not even slightly abashed, his fingers dancing back up over the front of the contraption. “A tiny, insignificant amount.” He admitted. 

“Traitor.” She bit out, even though she could feel her temper receding in the face of his sunny, carefree charm. “Why don’t you finish the job and just sell me right out to the Venatori?” 

Varric’s warm chuckle caused the skin at the back of her neck to prickle with excitement, his lips ghosting near her pulse as he whispered against her heated skin. “I prefer the idea of taking it off, to be honest.” 

“What are you waiting for then?” She demanded with a laugh of her own and a cheerful toss of her red hair. Varric’s deft fingers instantly retreated to tug rather more effectively at the laces. Someone, clearly, had practice undoing women’s fancy undergarments. It sent an uncomfortable pang through her, but she banished it resolutely. 

It wasn’t fair to begrudge him experience and take advantage of it at the same time, after all. The laces loosened and she finally felt like she could breathe for the first time in hours. At the same time, Varric’s lips pressed a searing kiss right behind her ear, one she felt the whole way in her knees. He followed the line of her neck, stubble scraping against her skin, sending delicious prickles of sensation through her entire body. By the time the corset fell away, his tongue was tracing the freckles on her shoulders. 

Finally free, she twisted to face him, pressing her bare breasts against the silk of his shirt, the rough hair decorating his chest. She captured his teasing, smirking mouth with her own demanding kiss. She didn’t break it off until she felt his fingers dig into her waist on instinct rather than artifice. She broke away with her own low, throaty laugh and caught his dancing amber eyes with her own. “You know they sent you up here to appease me, right?” 

“How do you know I was sent anywhere?” Varric asked, pulling back to examine her bare form greedily. 

She knew exactly what happened. Josephine went running to Varric saying the Inquisitor was having one of her moods. Varric, of course, made a great show of closing his journal, putting away his letters, and ambling up to her room to soothe her rattled temper before she started throwing things. The inner circle was always throwing Varric at her because...

Well, because he was very hard to be mad at, especially when his thumbs traveled up her soft skin, the roundness of her stomach, tracing the imprints of the boning the corset left with a teasing smirk. “These I don’t care for. I can think of much better marks we could leave.” 

And just like that, the last of her temper vanished. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed against him wantonly, tugging at the loose strands of his hair. “Is that a promise, Varric?” 

His mouth claimed hers again with a desperate, intense passion. His big hands settled on her waist, drew her flush against him so her pebbled nipples brushed against his shirt and she could feel the heat of him radiating into her. She dropped her hands immediately, keeping her eyes closed, first to that ridiculous sash, unknotting it with a smuggler’s efficiency. As soon as it was gone she made short work of the rest of the buttons on his tunic.

He let go of her just long enough to allow her to push it from his shoulders, then his mouth dropped back to her neck, teeth pinching her skin, tongue laving out to soothe the sting, drawing little whimpers from her mouth as she twisted one hand in his hair, the other digging into the hard, solid muscles of his arms. 

The woman could go choke on a nug for all she cared, but if that damn crossbow had resulted in his glorious physique, Maria really owed Bianca a thank you letter. Maybe she could have Josie write it. 

Her eyes opened blearily and fixed on the mirror. She could see the rippling muscles of Varric’s back, her hand gripping his golden hair, her flushed face over his shoulder, and the low dwarven bed directly behind them. 

“Varric.” She keened, tugging his hair gently. He pulled away, dark eyes sweeping up to her, then following where her gaze pointed. The laugh that rumbled out of him sounded absolutely sinful while he looked at the mirror. 

“Please tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.” She pleaded in an unsteady, husky voice. 

“Princess.” He crooned. “When am I not thinking what you’re thinking?” 

Truer words had never been said. She could nearly always see her own thoughts reflected back in wry twists of Varric’s smile, usually some shared amusement at their companion’s antics, shared disgruntlement with humans, or sheer joy at discovering unplundered loot. 

She didn’t know exactly how they made it to the edge of the bed, but the logistics didn’t matter. What mattered was that she ended up facing the mirror, seated on Varric’s lap, her thighs spread wide over his legs, the only thing protecting her modesty the thin smalls she wore. His hands cupped both her breasts and she pressed back against his bare chest, arching into his touch while he teased her nipples to attention, sending jolts of white hot pleasure to her core. Underneath her ass, she felt his swollen cock within his breeches and she shifted teasingly until he growled and pressed his lips back to her shoulder, sucking perhaps a bit harder than he normally would. She cried out, but the pain faded to pleasure immediately as one of Varric’s hands slipped beneath her smalls. 

She could see his shit-eating grin in the mirror and she wanted to hate him for it, but she couldn’t summon up the appropriate venom. He kissed her jaw, up to her ear, watching as she squirmed against his too light, teasing caresses. 

“You’re awfully excited, Maria.” He whispered. She shuddered, couldn’t help the tiny frustrated moan that slipped from her lips as he said her name. She knew she was slick with want, could feel his fingers dancing over exactly where she needed him to touch. 

Underneath her ass, his cock pulsed with the same desire. She didn’t stop writhing in his lap, both in an attempt to get his fingers where she wanted and to punish him for his teasing with some retribution of her own. His breath, hot and heavy, against her skin showed he was fighting a losing battle with his own need. 

He slid one finger into her and she clenched down on him hard, riding his hand with single minded desperation. His other hand untied her smalls and nearly ripped them to the side, leaving her obscenely bare to his eyes. Maria couldn’t take her eyes away from her swollen, slick center spread open for his enjoyment, his first finger joined by a second as his thumb circled her clit. 

“Varric, please...” She half sobbed, hips rising as much as she could to get a better angle, to fuck herself on his fingers. He laughed, low and dark, against her kiss marked skin. 

“Are you close already sweetheart?” He teased, his other hand gently pinching her hard nipple. She was flushed the whole way down her torso, panting, a sheen of sweat covering her as Varric delayed what she wanted, giving her not quite enough, pushing her higher and higher without letting her shatter. 

She dropped her head back on his shoulder and gave into the feelings, the sensation, and he finally took pity on her. His touch directly on her clit was almost too much, a third finger slipping inside her and curling just right as he pushed her to brink.

She shattered with a cry that carried his name, wetness coating his fingers, the breeches he still wore. She went limp against him, muscles unable to support her. Varric swore, lifting her to tangle with his own laces. She felt him growl in frustration as desire made his deft fingers clumsy. Then she felt him, velvet steel against her drenched opening, teasing her sensitive clit. 

“Do you want to watch, Maria?” He asked, his hands digging into the soft flesh of her thighs as he bucked against her. “Do you want to watch me take you, sweetheart?” 

Maker, yes. She lifted her head from his shoulder and focused her bleary eyes on the thick, perfect cock between her legs. When he knew he had her attention, he sweetly kissed the side of her neck, lifting her until he had her just where he wanted.

With one sure thrust, his cock stretched her open, split her pussy in two. She watched him sink into her, greedy for the way he felt inside her, the fullness of him, the heat of him. He thrust several times, shallow to loosen her tight sheath. When he sank fully inside her, he pressed his forehead to the back of her head and huffed shakily. “Princess, this may not be my finest performance.” 

Let it never be said that Maria Cadash couldn’t come up with a zinger even when she was being thoroughly, properly fucked. “Can’t be worse than Swords and Shields, Varric.” 

He laughed, his grip tightening until she knew he’d leave bruises, but she didn’t care. She wanted them, wanted his marks on her skin, wanted to see them alongside the scars, proof she wasn’t just some holy icon of stone, but a woman. A flesh and blood woman who was desired by someone like Varric fuckin’ Tethras. 

Sod it all, she’d wear the damn dresses and let everyone see them. 

That was the last coherent thought in her head. Varric was in control this time and there wasn’t much she could do except writhe and buck against his iron grip as he lifted and lowered her spread form, his cock disappearing into her warm heat over and over. She couldn’t look away, not even when another orgasm shocked her, sent her muscles clenching around his hard shaft and his name ringing across the room. 

This tipped him over the edge and his rhythm suffered, jerky and imprecise, before he buried himself in her with a loud groan and a shudder, his arms leaving her thighs to wrap tightly around her waist instead as he filled her with his seed. She could see some of it spilling from where they were joined. 

Perfect. Perfect. He was always so damn perfect. 

She shifted, his softening cock slipping from her, and captured his lips desperately one last time with her own, hoping to convey all the things she couldn’t pour into words into that kiss. 

As if he understood her perfectly, like he always did, he laid back on the bed, tugging her with him. They lapsed into comfortable, calm silence for several long minutes, their breathing fighting to return to normal, heartbeats still thudding in their chests. 

“Well.” Varric drawled, exhausted and overly-pleased with himself, “I’d say you’re successfully appeased. Exalted March on your two best advisers successfully diverted.” 

She giggled in spite of herself. 

[abitscrewyvinn]

Welcome to Vinn Rants About Dragon Age Again.

Specifically Dorian Pavus from Inquisition. Spoilers.

Dorian of house Pavus is a mage from Tevinter; a place heavily scrutinized and/or str8 up hated by the rest of the world. A place where mages are respected, hold way more power, and circles are more like schools than anything else. Anywhere else in Thedas, circles are more akin to prisons where they lock up 'dangerous mages'. A lot of people seem to focus more on the fact that Dorian is gay more than anything else? I can kinda see why. Representation is important. There are lots of good representations of LGBTQ+ people in these games imo. But the part about him that fascinates me the most is his feelings on his country. He knows that a lot of what they do is Severely Fucked Up. The Magisters and other nobles there condemn things like blood magic (Which I've only seen done right like. Once. Merril does it right.) but then use it behind closed doors. There's a shit ton of slavery, which he didn't fully recognize as Not Great until he left Tevinter.

Slavery in Tevinter is pretty much "If your family is fucking dying of starvation or going homeless, sell yourself into slavery! You'll have a home and a job, at least!" Most of them are treated well, according to Dorian, but he also acknowledges that People Can Be Shit Sometimes.

Their Templars are more like guards or officers but have much less power than the mages who rule. Way Back When; Some old Tevinter magisters actually physically crossed into the fade, in some attempt to see what was in the Black City (Basically heaven). Apparently, there was nothing there, and they were trapped. The Fade's way of punishing everyone was creating the Blight. The Blight sucks and kills a lot of people. Zombies.

A part of the story in Inquisition is that one of the magisters that was trapped in the fade /came back./ He saw that the Imperium had lost a lot of its land, followers, and power and pulled a "It's free real estate." on that shit. So he trying to take over the world, plain and simple. Some Tevinters were like "Oh shit yeah we're mad we have less power, too!" and joined him. These are the Venatori and you fight them a LOT. Even Dorian fights them. There's a quest to get his approval by killing a fuck ton of them with him in your party.Dorian really fucking hates the Venatori. Why?

Because he wants his country to be better. He wants it to be a good place where mages are free and where the politicians aren't so corrupt. He hates what his country has become, but not in the same way many of his fellow countrymen do. He's a patriot.

This is exactly how I feel about living in America. Our history is powerful but people took the wrong lessons out of it, I feel. The politicians cover up the bad parts of our history, a shit ton of them are corrupt, and those who aren't are shunned or somehow pushed out of power. Our education system is shit. Low-income jobs are /basically slavery./ Sometimes you're treated well, sometimes you get absolutely fucked. Our healthcare is a mess. We're run by capitalism in the worst way. I loathe the state of this country and I want it to be better. I don't hate America. I hate the state of it.

/endrant

[heartslogos]

send the morning [103]

“Are you actually fucking with me right now?” Evelyn asks. Her voice feels very quiet. And very far away.

Maybe it’s because of the wind that always howls through the jagged cliffs of the Storm Coast. Maybe it’s because her ears are hyper focused on trying to pick up the sounds of the Chargers and the Venatori across the beaches. Maybe it’s because of the constant crash of heavy, heavy waves on the furious shore and the thunder that always goes with it. Maybe it’s all of those things.

Maybe it’s the pounding of her heart in her palms, hot and light and dangerous. Maybe it’s the sound of her own breath in her lungs crackling and drying as heat swells from inside of her bones.

Maybe it’s all of these things and the absolute white-hot ringing silence between her ears, magnified and amplified thousands of times over with every sliver of time that falls forward as the Iron Bull stands and does nothing.

“Are you literally fucking with me right now? This - this where you lose your goddamn composure?” Evelyn’s hands slowly close as the world squeezes into a single frame of the Iron Bull, Gatt, and herself standing in ankle-deep sea-wet grass with salt on her lips and the threat of fire in her palms. “Bull. Call them back. They’re going to be killed.”

“That’s the point,” Gatt says.

Evelyn’s cuts him out of her focus. Otherwise she’ll do something stupid.

Like turn him into a charred wreck of coal. Like the bodies at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Truly ash, now.

“They’re mercs,” Bull says. He doesn’t even sound like he believes himself. Maker’s fucking balls. “They know what they’ve signed up for. It’s part of the job.”

“No,” Evelyn says, “It isn’t. It isn’t part of this specific job, because I never said I’d exchange my Chargers for your Qun.”

“Your Chargers?” Bull asks, turning to her, baffled.

“My Chargers,” Evelyn snarls. “Mine. I employ them. I bought them. They’re mine. Not the Qun’s. And if you aren’t going to do the right and sensible and true thing, then you don’t deserve them. I don’t care if it’s your name in front of the rest, they’re still the rest.”

Evelyn tastes smoke and heat and the metallic spark of magic at the back of her teeth.

“If I had been informed that the Chargers and the Qun would be mutually exclusive I wouldn’t have agreed to this,” Evelyn says. “Blow the retreat.”

There is no ultimatum to give, because Evelyn doesn’t have one.

Or what?

Evelyn feels the Anchor like a mouth, like a biting snarling promise, in the heat of her hand.

Or that, maybe.

It wouldn’t even be a bluff.

“You don’t want an enemy in the Qun,” Bull tells her, but his hand has gone to the horn at his waist.

“Don’t do it Hissrad,” Gatt urges.

Evelyn’s eyes flick to him and she snarls, “You don’t talk to my man.”

Evelyn is not a spy or some sort of saboteur or anything as insidious or dangerous as that. But she is the Inquisitor of Thedas. She has judged men and women alike and she has commanded people to die and she has commanded people to live and she has commanded suffering and forgiveness in equal measure.

So when Evelyn tells Gatt not to speak to the Iron Bull, she dares him not to listen to her. She dares him to find out what will happen.

“I don’t care about the Qun. You don’t want to make an enemy of me,” Evelyn replies. “Do it. Now.”

The Iron Bull has watched her grow in power and in skill. And he knows the people at her side. Even if she weren’t Inquisitor. She commands the respect and loyalty of very dangerous, powerful, and challenging people.

He raises the hollow instrument to his lips, and chooses correctly.

-

“For once,” Ellana says, voice rough and torn and ragged, “Just once. Please. Focus on your life instead of mine.”

Mahanon stares at her, dumbfounded as Ellana curls up - still covered in the dirt and filth that was on her when she was still a bear.

“I can’t do this to you,” Ellana rasps out, “You can’t keep letting me do this to you.”

“I let no one do anything to me. You came back.”

“No. I was forced back,” Ellana glares at him through the her thick, matted hair. “And what about next time? And the time after that? You cannot bet on miracles.”

“But you did. You came back,” Mahanon says, slowly going towards her, lowering himself onto his knees in front of her, “You are my sister in ever way that matters. I cannot leave you.”

“You are my brother. How do you think it feels on this side?” Ellana snarls. “I could have killed you.”

“And you did not.”

“How lucky.”

Mahanon closes his hand around her ankle. What a gift, to have her person-shaped again.

“He brought you back.”

Ellana pulls at her own hair and snarls, shaking her head.

“They all helped, but it was him who brought you back,” Mahanon says.

“Don’t shift the burden of me onto someone else,” Ellana says, “Just leave me. Next time, just leave me.”

“Never,” Mahanon spits, “We did not choose this but I will choose you. I will not leave you.”

“You are a fool, there are other people who need you,” Ellana snaps. “There are people you must be with.”

“And I would not be the man they need if I were to abandon my own sister,” Mahanon replies. “You have hurt me. You will continue to hurt me. As I have hurt you, and continue to hurt you. But I love you, nonetheless. I miss you. I mourn you. And I dream for you. I stay for you.”

Ellana shakes her head but she holds out her hand and Mahanon takes it, closing his eyes and grounding himself in the feeling of her palm against his.

Let the world call him a fool for staying, but what would he be if he abandoned his family?

[trulycertain]

Antivan Brandy

“I’d make an excellent spy. Charming, handsome, perfect teeth and hair…”

 AU, 1.6k.

He remembers Josephine’s words. You must be careful, Galahad. We know the lord is Venatori, and his asking to meet with you is surely a trap.

He’d shrugged. I ought to go. It worked out well last time I walked into one.

He remembers that twisted Redcliffe. The song all around him and the sky torn open. Red lyrium tang on the tongue. Leliana dying with the Chant half-said. Being certain he’d be next. And then the strange rift that pulled him into the present, left him gasping and bloody on a stone floor but alive enough to defeat Alexius.

He’s shown into a study. A fire and a few candles cast low light, and shadows flicker on the walls. Past the couches, a desk is littered with papers - he sees strange symbols and equations, and one looks like it’s… something about reversing temporal flow? But that’s impossible. He squints at it. Looks again. It almost seems like…

“That one took me three days to solve. Impressive, isn’t it?”

He tries not to show his surprise, and probably fails. He glances behind him and can’t stop himself from saying, “You’re manipulating rifts.”

“In a minor way, yes. Nothing compared to what you can do, but then I have less to work with. My pathway to the Fade isn’t nearly so direct.” The Tevinter sits on one of the couches, gestures to the other. “Please, rest your legs. Marching here to kill me must have been exhausting.”

Fuck.

Gal makes his way to the couch and lowers himself onto it, looking around. The servants have gone, and it looks like they’re alone, though if he believes that then he really is the Herald of Andraste. He looks at the man who’s called him here, and he admits, he’s surprised. He’d expected some grey, withered magister with spiked robes and armed guards. Instead he’s sitting opposite a man who can’t be older than him by much, if anything, who’s wearing simple battlemage leathers. Who… any other situation, might be handsome. Not that it matters.

He tries to find the words. “Why would I be here to kill you?”

The Tevinter - Pavus, that was it - smiles. “Because I’m Venatori, of course.” He lifts a decanter. “Brandy?”

Gal wants to turn over the table and get out his sword. It’s always more games, more pretence. Instead he shakes his head.

Pavus pours himself a glass of the brandy and takes a mouthful before he says, “Only, you may have been misinformed. There’s a reason I joined the Venatori, and that’s to make absolutely certain their plans fail.” He waves a hand. “Most of them are self-absorbed bunglers, but a few have brains, such as…” A shadow crosses his face, almost sadness. “Well. You’ve already met my mentor.”

Gal stares at him. “Alexius?”

Pavus nods. “Alexius. His plan nearly worked out too well. If Felix hadn’t gotten word to me…”

Gal knows. Knows it in his bones.“You got me out of that future.”

“Yes.” He nods in a half-bow, and it’d probably be a full one if he were standing. “Dorian of House Pavus, at your service.”

“Someone tipped us off about Redcliffe and said the mages were slaves.”

Pavus takes a drink, pretends to be uninterested. “What an odd coincidence.”

“You’ve already come here. You could have joined the Inquisition, we’d have offered you protection…”

“I can look after myself. What this needed was a spy. And they offered themselves up on a platter. They were begging me to join them, we were at the same parties, I would have felt cruel turning them down. So” - he carefully puts down the glass - “I have a proposal.”

“Why should I trust you?”

Pavus gives him an assessing look. “Because there really are no guards in this room, and I’m much more than decent, but I think you could take me on. Oh, and I saved your life rather than simply leading you into a trap and letting Alexius kill you. That helps. There’s also the fact that I let you imprison one of my oldest and best friends, because it was the right thing to do.”

Gal just watches him. “What’s your proposal?”

“You mentioned joining the Inquisition.”

“...I did.”

“The Venatori have been trying to get me to do it for a while now. They think I’d make a decent double agent.” He snorts. “They’re not wrong. So how about this: I join the Inquisition and pretend to spy on you, while telling you lots of interesting things about where the Venatori are pitching their tents and harvesting their lyrium, and about who their Elder One is. I can explain that to you, by the way, if you’d like. He’s a charming fellow.”

“I don’t like games.”

Pavus leans forwards on the couch. “Neither do I. But I don’t have much choice. And neither do you.” Moving back, he adds, “Besides, you already have a Qunari spy on the roster. I almost feel left out.”

“How did you - ?”

“The Venatori are slow, not blind.”

Gal decides to leave that where it stands. Too many questions, and probably limited time. “And what would you give them?”

Pavus looks towards the ceiling, considering. “You’d lose the odd supply cache. I’d do my best to minimise casualties, obviously. My idiot comrades could also end up stumbling onto several leads that somehow turn out to be ambushes. Or they could just do a lot of wandering round aimlessly due to useless directions.” He looks back to Gal, and smiles roguishly. “Up to you, I suppose. Or your spymaster.”

“You said you were decent in a fight?”

“I’m quite well-regarded. I can also bring some of that interestingly flashy time magic to the table, seeing as I developed a good portion of it when I was working with Alexius. And it says a lot that I’m not dead yet.”

True. Gal considers it all, and can’t help himself. “…You saved my life. Why?”

Pavus sighs. “Because you have a magic hand that might yet save us all. And because Felix liked you.”

Gal frowns at that.

“He said you had a sharp tongue somewhere under all…” He waves a hand. “…that. And that you were a good man.” He rubs at his forehead. “Which brings me back to a rather pressing matter. You do seem a decent fellow. I have no desire to be your enemy.”

Gal considers his words. Tries not to fall into any traps. “I don’t want you to be either.”

Pavus gives him a wan half-smile. “See. I grow on you. Look at it this way: there have to be at least some decent mages from Tevinter. Statistical probability. There are a few of us, after all.” He narrows his eyes. “You’re smiling. I can see it.”

Gal realises he is. “Muscle spasm. From the Mark.” An obvious lie.

Pavus snorts. “Felix wasn’t wrong.”

“I’m just a soldier. I’d have to speak to the others.”

Pavus is watching him with surprised interest. “Is that really what you think?”

“What?” Gal says, realising he’s missing something, halfway there but not yet -

“That you’re ‘just a soldier.’” Pavus tilts his head, amused. “You have no idea what they’re saying about you, do you? Did you think you could just get away with having that on your hand and no-one would notice?”

Yes. “I...”

With a laugh, Pavus says, “Kaffas, you did. Oh, that’s marvellous.”

Gal sighs. “Thought you didn’t want me killing you.”

Pavus’ smile doesn’t fall; if anything, it gets wider. “Yes, I can see why Felix understood you.”

Gal thinks it over, looks at the fire. Tries to work out how badly this could go. He says, “I can understand why you saved me. I’m less sure why you want to join us. Or why you joined the Venatori.”

Now the amusement’s gone. Pavus looks aside to the fire too, and picks up his drink to take a bigger swig. Then he says, “I can understand your confusion. Maker knows I’m not their biggest fan.” He holds the glass in his palm and looks into it, like talking to the brandy’s easier. “If you must know… They killed my father. I think they assumed they were doing me a favour.” A half-smile that’s the bleakest thing Gal’s seen since Redcliffe. “They were wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Gal says, on reflex.

“Why? Not as if it’s your fault.” Pavus looks up, meets his eyes. “But I would like to tear the bastards to shreds, if that’s all right with you.”

Gal’s words are quiet, and he picks them carefully. “That can be arranged.”

Pavus grins, dark-eyed and vicious and with that bleakness in it, and then it’s gone. “Good. Then I take it we have an understanding?”

Gal nods, and starts to stand. “I’ll talk to the Inquisition.”

He pauses at the sound of robes, and looks up to see Pavus standing and offering him a hand.

Gal’s surprised; he thought handshakes were Marcher, but maybe they’re a Tevinter thing, too. It might be naive, but Pavus doesn’t seem like the hidden-blade type, so Gal takes the hand. It’s calloused, probably from staff-fighting, and warm. More like a fighter’s than a nobleman’s.

He shakes it, and the smile Pavus gives him is quieter and genuine, without the sharp edges. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

“Same,” Gal says, and it’s… not all politeness. Josephine would kill him.

Gal ends up walking down the hallway with a quiet Tevinter shadow, and when he leaves, he looks back to see Pavus leaning in the doorway, watching him go.

Next time - if there’s a next time - he might take the brandy.

Yes, I really do overthink throwaway lines that much. I had the idea, but also wondered how a man who eschewed deception and politics could end up in that kind of position, and whether I could write it without making his characterisation completely AU. The answer, it seemed to me? Anger, desperation and pragmatism, and a few darker events. Dorian already plays with people’s perception of him in canon; I thought it’d be interesting to see him taking that a little further.