Dragon Age

A normal bow. Saarbrak was posing as a Huntsman, the Antaam trackers.

The Ben-Hassrath consider Bas-taar's cruelty and recklessness a danger to the Qun.

Random points:

• The Common tongue is called "Trade" in this story, and Qunari are once again shown to not grasp nuance in it.
• Myrion is an example of Tevinter's classism: the elf keeps calling him a magister, but he's revealed to be an adopted ex-slave. Even as a mage, his job is to light the city lights every night.
• Apparently, the Ben-Hassrath are responsible for telling mages apart and deciding how much qamek needs to be administered to those requiring rehabilitation. But since the Antaam had no Ben-Hassrath with them, they administered a ridiculous amount of qamek to the captive mages in order to turn their brains into mush. It's compared to Tranquility.

The second story is more like a typical day in the life of a Mortalitasi. A lord's corpse attacks a guard at his funeral because the corpse was possessed prematurely by a Pride demon. The Mourn Watchers (the part of the Mortalitasi that oversee the Necropolis) take the guard to the Necropolis to go after the possessed corpse wreaking havoc. They stumble deeper than expected and it's revealed that the guard actually died at the funeral. The Mortalitasi is trying to ease his passing now that is possessed. They free the possessed lord and the guard becomes the Mourn Watchers' librarian.

• The Mortalitasi seem to have a symbiotic relationship with the possessed spirits. One of them keeps a skeleton as his assistant and they keep spirits that retain a sense of strong purpose around. Nevarra is still super Andrastian.
• The Grand Necropolis is a moving maze - rooms change places somehow. Also, uncatalogued creatures that the Mortalitasi study appear at the depths.
• I still have no idea what is going on with Nevarran names. The Mourn Watchers and the Van Markhams sound vaguely Dutch/Danish, while the Pentaghasts are Greek. Confusing mishmash.

Seems like the idea with the Nevarran royal family is just a gotta catch 'em all mentality toward marrying into other royal and aristocratic lineages. Kind of like how England ended up being ruled by a German dynasty. The cross-pollination between the British, German, Dutch, and pseudo-Scandinavian-maybe-kind-of-Danish-even? analogues in the setting does seem to be pretty substantial, going by the names of the cities of the Free Marches.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 13th 2020 at 10:00:23 AM

Does anybody have any tips for the Zevran fight? Because this is terra incognita to me.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 13th 2020 at 10:01:41 AM

Been a while, but as I recall, pick off the archers on top of the ridge as soon as possible and the rest should fall into place. There's a route up there a slight ways back from where the main ambush is. I think I remember having one of my melee guys escort Leliana or Morrigan up there while my main tank and whoever else I had held off the rest of them and/or kited them back up that ridge so I could bottleneck them a bit.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 14th 2020 at 9:30:29 AM

So. The Horror of Hormak is...disturbing.

The story is basically a short horror story about two Wardens seeking a contingent of missing Wardens in a Nevarran forest. They track the missing Wardens to an entrance to Hormak, which leads deep underground to an old elven ruin. Grotesque carvings of elven kings and witches mutating their subjects with plagues are carved into the walls, until the Wardens get to an underground chamber filled with mutated, chimeric darkspawn. Basically, a giant greenish-yellow lyrium crystal and some sort of silver liquid that smells like brine mutate the darkspawn into chimeras with scorpion tails, serpent heads and god knows what else.

Before the Wardens can escape, a gigantic centipede-like creature which has been fused with one of the missing Wardens corners them to spout some Madness Mantra exposition. He says they had to drink the liquid, which slowly changed them. "Two halves, two wholes. Trying to be two ones. She cannot have it. Not again. Locked for a reason." The ex-Warden then loses his mind completely and attacks them. One of the Wardens dies trying to bring the cavern down, and the senior Warden just manages to get out before he blows up the whole mountain. He then notes that the elven carvings down the cave depict aravels bringing sacrifices to 11 more mountains like this one, meaning there are 12 locations around Thedas with these shambling monstrosities.

We never learn who "she" is, but one of the carvings the Wardens find depicts an elven priestess/queen with a supplicant and a monster. In each picture, the man and the monster change slightly, but the priestess only gets a crueler smile. Interestingly, these carvings are apparently dwarven.

So...the elves were running underground lyrium mutation labs that resulted in chimeric monstrosities...and I guess their followers were used as test subjects? And now they are left to the darkspawn...though I wonder what the giant lyrium crystal is meant to be. And why it smells like brine and seawater.

The final story, Dread Wolf Take You, is actually really juicy.

Inquisition agent Charter has called a meeting with the major spy factions of Thedas to exchange information on Solas. The Ben-Hassrath and the Tevinter Siracci refuse to attend, so she meets a Carta Assassin, a Mortalitasi, an Orlesian bard and an Executor in a tavern in Hunter Fell. Each one of them tells a story about Solas.

Essentially, the three stories tell us where the Red Lyrium Idol has been, which is what Solas has been after. The Carta Assassin dwarf recounts how a Dalish elf gave them a potion that allowed them to melt the outer layer of Meredith's statue and retrieve the reformed idol from within her. However, after he had sold the idol to Tevinters, his hideout was ambushed by templars and Solas then killed his entire party in their sleep.

The second story is that of the Mortalitasi. She recounts how someone from House Danarius came to the Mortalitasi to request their help with a ritual in the Grand Necropolis. 12 Mortalitasi partook, along with all the spirits in the corpses. The Tevinter brought forth the idol, retrieved some sort of blade from within it and slew a bunch of his servants in a blood magic ritual. This sent them all to the Fade, and as they were heading towards the Black City, Solas appeared in the form of a bestial wolf the size of a High Dragon with six eyes. He reprimanded them that they toy with forces they do not understand and that they must never use his idol or bind spirits again. Tons of Fade spirits attack the intruders to support Solas. The Mortalitasi woman is the only one who escapes alive, while one of the Tevinters runs away with the idol.

The third story, the Bard, recounts that the idol ended up in Llomeryn. He was in an auction house of magical artifacts to retrieve Celene's ring, where he met several familiar figures: an Avvar augur (I assume from Jaws of Hakkon), a Rivaini pirate-captain that tells dirty jokes (Isabella), a soberly clad noble from Starkhaven (Sebastian), an auburn-haired Ben-Hassrath (Tallis), Divine Victoria (we don't know which one) and a Warden-Commander (wonder who this is...). The bard ended up sneaking into the underground vaults, only to find that both Qunari and Tevinter spies had infiltrated the vault to retrieve the Lyrium Idol. Solas ends up walking through an Eluvian and sends them all fleeing in terror before he caresses the idol and takes it with him.

At this point, the Carta Assassin and the Mortalitasi end up calling bullshit on the bard's story and on each other's story, as they all lied to hide incriminating evidence such as killing their own comrades. Charter, having deduced that the bard is Solas because he hasn't touched his tea and had petrified the Executor while they were busy bickering, asks to be spared. Solas petrifies the other two but spares Charter. He says he wanted to know what they know of him so far and that he is an impulsive, hotheaded idiot that is doing what he must. Revealing his plan to the Inquisitor was a moment of weakness. He tells Charter to apologise to the Inquisitor on his behalf and walks away.

A whole lot of stuff happened. The story is kind of "Rashomon"-Style and everyone is lying, but some things stand out:

• Everyone sees the idol differently. The dwarf thinks it depicts two lovers, the Mortalitasi a god mourning her sacrifice but Solas says it's "a crowned figure that's comforting the other". What we do know for sure is that he calls it "his" idol.
• Unlike the benign Mourn Watchers from story 2 that seem to appreciate spirits, this Mortalitasi is an utter lying bitch. She uses a bound wisp to stir her coffee and essentially keeps spirits as slaves. Solas releases the wisp at the end.
• The Executor is...not exactly a person? It wears a black robe with patterns unknown to Charter, has the shape of a bipedal human, but its voice is neither female nor male and it does not seem to come from normal vocal chords? Everything it says is italicised and its cowl is meant to be pitch-black underneath. Solas does petrify it with a touch, though not its clothes. That would give him away. Solas says they shouldn't deal with those across the sea because they are dangerous.
• It's not entirely clear if the auction in Llomeryn really happened, given that it's meant to be hosted by Xenon in the Black Emporium, but the character descriptions imply Solas is aware of who the Warden is.

So the Antaam are doing all this invading on their own.

Is that like how in Treapasser they were also doing a bunch of stuff on their own?

There is more information in the stories that follow about the Qunari plot, but what I know from the first few stories is that they are moving towards Rivain. Which is the least Andrastian place in the world.

The next story, Callback is all about Sutherland! Sutherland and his gang have to return to the abandoned Skyhold because the caretakers no longer respond to their messages. They go through many familiar locations for us only to find everyone murdered. When they arrive at the chamber Solas used to be in, they realise that a demon has possessed the giant fresco. Solas left the final mural unfinished, and feeding on his regret, the demon turns into a half-wolf, half-dragon hybrid. It starts feeding on everyone else's regrets and paralyses them, but the timely intervention of Dagna, Cabot, Elan Va'mel, Morris and Harritt saves the day. We see a little of each character's greatest regret until they put the demon down. The story ends with a note by Sutherland, commemorating the Inquisition's great works.

The next story is...kind of unusual. It's written in first-person perspective, and it's the story of one of the "Lords of Fortune" recounting their adventure in Minrathous. The Lords of Fortune appears to be a guild of spies and thieves of sorts, and our hero ends up running into Dorian and Mae. They task our hero with finding someone who has been hacking people's heads off, and our hero finds out it's a giant, slimy, tentacled monstrosity called Cekorax. We don't know if it's a demon (it doesn't try to possess anyone) or a magic experiment gone wrong, but it's been hanging in Dorian's gardens and moving through the sewers and the docks, cleaving heads and swallowing them or something. The hero electrocutes the monster and gets the reward from Dorian and all is well.

Dorian has stopped using slaves (he has paid servants) and he works with Mae to sway more of Tevinter's elites towards their cause. Meanwhile, the main character spends the whole story in disguises (some male, some female) and their descriptions are entirely open to imagination. Some people speculate this to be our future protagonist.

You ever start up a new playthrough with the thought "I'm gonna romance somebody differently this time. Experience something totally new!" and then you just romance the same character you constantly do?

my GF is giving me one of her old Xbox 360's and I'm gonna try to start some new runs of DAO and DA 2 and I'm already thinking I'll probably just end up romancing Leliana and Merrill again.

I love Zevran and out of 3 Origins runs, I romanced Leliana in 2 of them so Zev needs a shot. But...I dunno, I can't resist her.

I can at least do a different Origin, though. So far I've done Mage, City Elf and Dwarf Noble. I did a bit of Dalish Origin just to see Merrill but she sucked and it was boring so I never did anything with that run. Maybe I'll try Dwarf Commoner and see why everyone loves Bhelen so much.

You won't actually meet Bhelen in the dwarf commoner prologue. Unless you mean finding out why people love him by showing how much it sucks to be a dwarf commoner. To learn more about Bhelen you need to talk to all the random NPCs a lot so you can learn that commoner dwarves have basically no way of having any kind of legal or productive employment or ability to change their status^note Apart from being a "noble hunter" which is basically just prostituting yourself. For free. And with no guarantee it'll even work.. Not even the military will accept them. Harrowmont likes it this way, Bhelen sees this as unfair and, probably more importantly to him cause he's a bastard, a huge waste of potential resources and source of internal instability.

I think I romance all of the Origins options about equally apart from Zevran. Nothing against him, just not what I consider an attractive personality. But I do always end up playing the same way with the same major decisions and dialogue options for the most part. I can't make myself play a jerk or kill people I don't actually have to.

Edited by Arha on May 11th 2020 at 4:24:23 AM

As a bastard, was his name just Alistair? He isn't technically part of the noble line so he wouldn't get the Theirin surname?

I don't know shit about Western aristocrat practices. This is just something that came to mind because of the Stormlight Archive and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 19th 2020 at 9:05:10 AM

In England, sons were usually prefixed by the name "Fitz" - so, "Fitzwilliam". This tended to be more used by illegitimate offspring of Royalty, to show a "Link" (Fitzroy, son of Henry, for example)

Similar practices across Europe, most names were essentially a variation of "Son of" or "Of the line of" - so, "de Warenne", or "Von Clausewitz", as well.

Bastards often had their status denoted in their coat of arms too.

For Thedas, where "sir" is replaced by "ser" and they have a twist on Chivalry and feudalism (And the King is an elected post) lineage seems mostly to be tied to the Banns (Barons) - so there'd probably be SOMETHING. I liked Game of Thrones method where the Bastards adopted a generic last name related to their region or the "trope" of their House.

Snow, for example.

For Alistair, a variation of Fitzmaric or "Of Therin" in a way that denotes descent but not direct lineage, would be apt. With a Dragon Age twist.

I think Alistair's last name if he had one wouldn't have made it too obvious that he was Maric's son. Remember, Arl Eamon's wife Isolde resented Alistair because she thought he was Eamon's son.

Fereldan is the nicest kingdom to live in but they have some truly shit nobles, ones who wouldn't hesitate to kill a king's illegitimate son.

Nah, they'd be more likely to try to exploit him by propping him up as a puppet candidate for the throne.

Unless they figured out he's a half-elf. Then Alistair never would have been allowed to live.

Technically there's no such thing as a half-elf. Every child born to a human and an elf couple is a human. The same thing happens with dwarf and elf couples — their children will always be dwarves.

For those wondering, children born to humans and dwarves are either very tall dwarves or very short humans.

As for Qunari (as in the horned giants who make up the majority of their followers)...it's not even confirmed yet if they can even conceive viable offspring with other races.

That said, while genetically there's no such thing as a half-elf, there is a social stigma associated with having an elf parent. That's why Michel de Chevin went to awful lengths to keep his parentage hidden.

Edited by M84 on May 20th 2020 at 7:34:07 PM

...Still gonna call them kossith.

Half elves do have slightly pointed ears, but yes, they're basically just humans since what makes elves elves is more magic than genetic.

Even Kossith might not be accurate since it could have just been a reference to the belief system that predated the Qun.

I'm not even sure the horned giants are a separate race — they could just be the descendants of Reavers.

Edited by M84 on May 20th 2020 at 10:46:02 PM

I actually suspect that kossith are a race we have never seen and would not recognize. Qunari, in turn, would be a mutated form descended from people who infused too much dragonblood into themselves somehow. Or maybe the original kossith are even just humans from a different continent. But lacking a better word, I choose kossith. After all, Talis is a Qunari and so is much of the population of Rivain despite the lack of horned giants. And the playable Vashoth in Inq is not a Qunari.

Though Inquisition refers to them as Qunari most of the time.

...I gotta admit, I always found this whole naming thing for the Qunari unnecessarily complicated.

Edited by M84 on May 21st 2020 at 1:41:17 AM

I think that's the point, to make them seem more alien and other. Plus it's not really that different from how we use the word "human" for a lot more than just our species.

Also I had the impression from Bull that most Qunari would object to being called kossith — that the latter is a term that refers to something else, something specific, whatever it is.

Edited by Unsung on May 20th 2020 at 11:49:09 AM

I think it's meant to be Dramatic Irony as well as Black Comedy that the Qunari not identifying themselves by racism/tribalism but JUST their religion with everyone being equal is so alien that most Thedans flat out cannot comprehend it.

Zevran: I understand that there are elves in the Qunari lands, Sten.

Sten: There are elves everywhere.

Zevran: Hm. Yes. Well, I've heard that the Qunari actually put the elves in charge? Over the humans? Is that true?

Sten: Some of them.

Zevran: Only some? Which ones are they?

Sten: The ones who belong in charge. That is the way of the Qun.

Zevran: How does this Qun determine who belongs in charge?

Sten: The tamassrans evaluate everyone and place them where their talents merit.

Zevran: But elves, in general, merit higher places than humans in Qunari society?

Sten: Some of them.

Zevran: Back where we began. It's like talking to a water wheel.

I do like that one. Unlike a lot of what Sten says it makes total sense from our perspective, but the characters still can't wrap their minds around it.

So: did you know that modern-day England doesn't really have much in the way of naming laws? You can be somewhat-arbitarily denied a name by the register office, usually by reason of obscenity, but otherwise anything goes (in principle).

US states tend to be similar: if you share your father's surname, or your mother's surname, you didn't get that because people in the US inherit surnames. You most likely got that because it's a widely-held tradition to give your child one, and most people don't think about it. If they had wished, they didn't have to give you a surname at all. There's, after all, no obligation to have one.

How does this relate to Dragon Age? So, we know that, in story, nobles tend to give their children surnames. We also know that, by Thedas standards, Ferelden is considered pretty anarchic, and its laws and governing style are pretty hands-off. The "Arms of Mac Tir" codex states:

So: no surnames required. But we do meet many commoners who act like they have a surname; one fun example is that there's a guy called, apparently, Lomo Kettlemaker. Officially, Alistair clearly takes the name Theirin after being crowned; you can find letters signed as such, if I recall. At that point, the world and any Ferelden nobles recognise him as Theirin, and officially so does he, regardless of whether he's a bastard or not. Prior to that, it's hard to imagine anyone would've recognised him as one and his history was secret, so he probably would've just gone by Alistair. He probably didn't go by Alistair Eamon, as that would've been a pretty big presumption on his part. Maybe he used another name at some point, but if so, we're never given any indication of what it would've been.

A reality is that names, both in the real world and in fiction, aren't as fixed as we treat them. Some governments treat them as a bigger issue, but from what we hear of Ferelden, it's more likely not to be one of them. In modern day society you're more bound by legal paperwork, passports, etc. But if you, tomorrow, decided to solely answer to the name Jack Daniels, signed all your papers as Daniels, gave your child the surname Daniels — well, for most intents and purposes, that's your name. If you were in England, all it'd take is you being 18, £36, and two witnesses willing to sign a piece of paper saying you won't use the old name — and the courts would be willing to take the effort to update the public record and alter any future passports, etc.

Edited by Lavaeolus on May 20th 2020 at 2:33:22 PM