#what does that mean?? for Emmrich?? about blood magic and the fade??

[anew-flame]

Wait wait wait so if the devs said there’s a reason Rook doesn’t have the option to use blood magic… and in DAI Solas says that blood magic makes it difficult to enter the fade… but Emmrich dabbles in blood magic according to the podcast… yet the lighthouse is in the fade??

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Suicide Mission, Thedas Edition

...Because ... c'mon. It was. The dev team in charge of combat was not the only team taking cues from Mass Effect there - that was a combination of ME2's Suicide Mission and ME1's assault on Virmire.

I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it, in the end. I had all the spoilers. I knew what happened to the ones I picked. And in the end, I went for Harding for the distraction team, and Neve for the wards. And ... honestly, from a narrative perspective? I think it works way, way better than picking Davrin and Bellara in their respective roles. Not for the mission itself so much - though that too, thinking about it - but definitely after, in the Fade prison.

I mean, they come from the same root, in the end, the reasons they're so thematically appropriate as choices, in my view. That's ... the team you started with. That's Neve and Harding, who were at your side from more or less the very first, other than Varric. You charged the first ritual together; they've known what's on the line longer than anyone else in the group. Hell, they've known the power they're facing longer than anyone else in the group. It makes sense that the two who've been at your side longest would be trusted with their own teams. It also makes sense from the point of view of what they do. The distraction team really did need a scout for stealth ambush, and while Bellara knows magic from a resonance perspective, Neve identified those wards as, like, Blood Magic Squared, and she knows blood magic better than anyone else on the team. so between them basically having earned a sort of second-in-command role by dint of seniority and them having expertise in the fields involved? They seem like good choices.

I didn't realise how good until I got to the Fade prison. I mean ... there's Neve saying those things about, "Who's going to protect Dock Town now that I'm gone, Rook?" and "I told you the wards were dangerous and you chose me anyway!" and ... Neve having issues with you in terms of your decisions makes a lot of sense, especially if you picked Treviso over Minrathous out in Act 1. She came to trust slowly either way, I think, and you can really see her being devastated that someone she finally decided to actually trust got her killed. Bellara doesn't have the same kind of narrative hook, and very much not the personality for that kind of remonstrance. And while it probably would have been touching as hell to have Davrin playing the voice of the "angel", so to speak? It suited Harding's personality so well. Harding has always been the one for the pep talks. While there's definitely a difference in narrative voice (though not literal voice), Harding in Inquisition was always trying to find a way to turn a report about a new region into something funny, or interesting, or not "just a report". She always believed the Inquisitor could handle anything, and expressed that opinion all the time. She did the same for Rook, and just about anyone else in the group. Damn straight she'd be the one giving the pep talk. It sounds right coming from her.

Mostly, though ... while it all makes narrative sense ... it's the kind of metaphorical knife in the gut that I sometimes crave. That's all three of the ones you started out with - the two other than Rook that were Varric's personal recruits ... and Varric himself. With Harding and Neve being the ones who are waiting in the prison of Rook's regrets, it really does feel like letting go of the past and accepting the role of leader in a way Rook maybe didn't before. There's no Varric to give them advice now, and all the recruits left are Rook's own, inspired by Rook ... well, being Rook, without "well, Varric vouched for them" to lean on.

Entirely aside from that - while I understand exactly why it was Emmrich and Lucanis reaching into the Fade to help Rook get out, hearing a romanced Lucanis yell for Rook did give me the warm fuzzies. One day I will find out how a romanced Emmrich sounds in that one.

Speaking of, I know there's going to be a LI and Protagonist Romantic Moment a la "Shepard and LI before the final run to save the Citadel in ME1" coming up. But tomorrow's going to be another long day, and I figure I can spend the morning having "optional chats" to the team members and hopefully have enough spoons for romance and killing a god tomorrow. So a wind-down is required.