Except you are not that anymore, are you?

she/they | nonbinary | 18

[chidorinnnnn]

thinking about sagani, i’m just in awe that someone like her exists in a video game. a woman who’s not in her teens or twenties, happily married and a mother to multiple children, at least one of whom is (almost?) fully grown. she’s someone who has shit to do, and has no illusions about the importance of her duty… but she also struggles internally with the fact that she’s not there with her family, that she’s been away from them so long that she’s missing out a lot on her kids’ lives.

and idk, but i have an aunt who’s very career-oriented and has two small children, and she told me once that one of her biggest regrets was that she missed so many of her eldest child’s milestones because she was working all the time. she made it a point to secure another job with more freedom to work remotely (pre-pandemic) so that she wouldn’t miss those milestones with her youngest. she was very fortunate because she was in a position of financial security that enabled her to do that.

–so in that context: sagani’s character arc feels very real to me, in a way that the other characters’ don’t. this isn’t to say that the other characters’ arcs are inferior for it, but i can see myself having to deal with something similar to what sagani goes through, in a decade or two.

[arnaerr]

Rymrgand, god of death and collapse: what are you doing in my realm again, are you tired of living?

me: yes, I’m so tired, please help me

5 sec later:

[arnaerr]

:))))))))

[babineni]

A brief, but barely comprehensible guide to the wars of the Dyrwood for first time players, based on what I vaguely remember

Bc that shit can get really confusing on a first playthrough.

If anyone is willing to add more details/clarify stuff/correct stuff pls do so, bc yeah.

1. Broken Stone War

Took place roughly 200 years before PoE 1

Anyway, it all started when Aedyran explorers landed on the Eastern Reach - namely in Eir Glanfath - and found a bunch of relatively untouched and well-mantained Engwithan ruins. They plundered the shit out of the ruins and brought the riches back to the Aedyran feyrcönyng (or however you spell it idfk... It's the king of Aedyr, I'll just call him king going forward).

The king sent more people to plunder more, which was obviously something the Glanfathans didn't like, given that Engwithan ruins and natural adra formations are sacred to them.

Glanfathans guarding the ruins ended up being killed or captured and sold as slaves.

The Glanfathans pushed back, but the more they resisted, the more people the Aedyrans sent. Before the Glanfathans knew it, there was already a colony: the Dyrwood.

Funnily enough not any of these things ended up launching a full scale war between the Glanfathans and Dyrwoodans. It was actually a pair of farmers accidentally knocking over an adra pillar. The Glanfathans responded by starting large-scale raids on the Dyrwood.

The king appoints Edrang Hadret, Bestest Strategy Man™ (his son will be important, you'll see) as gréf (basically the governor of the Dyrwood).

Under Edrang's leadership the Dyrwoodans managed to push back but eventually they and the Glanfathans only ended up at a stalemate. The end of the war was marked by a treaty that basically said that the Dyrwood can stay as long as they stay clear of the Engwithan ruins.

2. War of Black Trees aka Broken Stone War 2 Electric Boogaloo

Took place roughly 25-26-ish years or so after the Broken Stone War

Guess who liked the ending of Broken Stone War? Absolutely nobody. Especially not the king.

So anyway the king kept encouraging the plundering of ruins, Dyrwoodans, who were still pissed, were more than willing to oblige and the Glanfathans were happy to retaliate.

Edrang Hadret was pretty old at this point so he sent his son, Admeth, to lead the Dyrwoodan war effort.

Admeth realized pretty quickly that the Glanfathans are best at guerilla warfare and like to use the woods as cover. So he started setting forests on fire.

The scorched earth thing worked pretty well, and the war ended in less than a year with the Dyrwood winning. But a good chunk of the Dyrwood burned down too and the tactic was pretty damn expensive, and overall there were too many casualties on both sides. So the Dyrwoodans and Glanfathans were more or less inclined to coexist/cooperate after the war.

3. War of Defiance

Took place 10 years after the War of Black Trees.

For the 10th anniversary of relative peace and prosperity happening between the Dyrwood and Eir Glanfath, Admeth Hadret (now gréf) decided to just... abolish slavery. As a treat.

Previous slave-owners were compensated so they didn't really complain, the king tho??? Just about had enough.

So the king just kept sending scouts to plunder some ruins in the hopes that Glanfathans would just attack again in retaliation.

That didn't happen tho, bc the Glanfathans reached out to AH and he figured out pretty quickly what was happening. Especially since the Glanfathans sent a bunch of ciphers to help (this ends up inspiring the formation of a certain organization of telepathic detecitves...)

Then AH went "you know what?? Fuck this, fuck you" and declared independence from Aedyr.

The war ended with Aedyr losing the Dyrwood and AH dying. And a bunch of other things like renaming New Dunryd to Defiance Bay and it becoming the new capital. Also with 2 erldoms being dissolved bc their erls sided with Aedyr (one of which is the Yenwood with Caed Nua at its center so no erldom for the Watcher, thanks a lot Gathbin, you POS )

4. The Saint's War

Took place 15 years before PoE

So some time after the War of Defiance, Aedyr experienced a bit of an economic collapse, which hurt the poorer, mostly farmer, mostly Eothasian population the most.

Aedyr fixed the issue by yeeting these people to a new colony north-east of the Dyrwood, and that's how Readceras came to be.

The plan was to capitalize on the niche market of purple dye, produced from vorlas plants. But then after a series of bad harvests, famine and a freaking pandemic, the settlers in Readceras were just as miserable if not more than they were back in Aedyr.

Then one day, Eothas, god of light, redemption and just all around the patron god of farmers and other downtrodden people, appeared to a farmer called Waidwen. Eothas appointed Waidwen as his saint, and with his consent, possessed Waidwen.

Waidwen, possessed by Eothas, then proceeded to first actually convince his fellow Eothasians that, yeah, he is Eothas' saint, then to cultivate a large enough following for a proper revolution.

After a short while pretty much all of Readceras was backing Waidwen and the imperial elite was eventually kicked out. Waidwen was crowned Divine King™ and thus Readceras became an independent theocracy.

After getting rid of the imperial leadership, Waidwen continued by getting rid of church corruption. This time, however, things escalated to the persecution of "heretics" (basically anyone who wasn't Eothasian). So the Dyrwood got a whole lot of refugees flocking to them.

This ofc gained Waidwen's attention and he started a crusade to "liberate the Dyrwood from false gods".

Cold Morn was the first village that the Readcerans reached. It was a settlement with like... no defense whatsoever and Waidwen offered to leave them alone in exchange of safe passage. The folks of Cold Morn took the deal and the Readceran army went unopposed until they reached Mercy Vale, another village with little to no defense. Waidwen made the same offer but they didn't take the deal and so the village was wiped out. But this set a precedent, and after the war Cold Morn was burned to the ground as punishment for their cowardice.

The Dyrwoodans won a couple of battles using what they've learned from their previous wars but it became pretty clear, pretty quickly that they couldn't resist an army lead by an actual god for long.

So a bunch of engineers and Magranite priests from Ashfall started building a big fucking bomb lovingly named "The Godhammer" (with the help of some Rauataian military engineers and a certain war goddess but shhh no one cares about them).

The Dyrwoodans lured Waidwen to the Evon Dewr bridge and sent a dozen soldiers to hold the Readceran army while a dozen priests dropped the bomb on Waidwen. Everyone died but a man who will not be named bc ugh I hate him.

[alongtidesoflight]

you're laughing. greg ellis is literally out here pretending to be cullen rutherford narrating greg ellis' life in third person, game ending his own career and you're laughing.

[valtsv]

10 ACCESSORIES EVERY WOMAN SHOULD HAVE

1. FLAMING SWORD

[skawly]

“I was born as I am, an outsider amongst my kind. Why? I do not know.”

[dead--sound]

My friends…and Durance.

[dr-j-bright]

d i s c u s s .

[ampleappleamble]

i’d switch edér and sagani; dorfmom loves me and would let me cheat off her but edér would make fun of me for asking him of all people

[springacres]

I would, too. Just because “bold of you to assume I did the homework” sounds like something Edér would say.

Also, Durance should be on his own line - because hell would have to freeze over before I would ever dream of asking him to help me with homework.

[dr-j-bright]

ah, good. i can see that you have d i s c u s s e d the Quality Meme i made.

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

Rewriting the Qunari

@missveils​ da dicho:

Hola! First of all, thanks a lot for all your meta posts! I am literally just writing a super small thing featuring some references to the Qun and still struggling a lot with Bioware’s portrayal. If you had the freedom to do so (yay, transformative works!) is there anything you would change from the current lore if you had the chance to modify the portrayal? (the breeding program, the constant state of invasion and the re-education are the first to come to mind). Gracias!

Hola! I’ve had this ask for a little now because it’s taken me some time to put some thoughts together, and those thoughts ended up much longer than I expected they would. I like this question because I absolutely love worldbuilding and rewriting and expanding current lore. I’m not the best with writing plots for stories, but I can spend hours and hours worldbuilding and analyzing things.

Preface

For those perhaps unfamiliar, the Qunari are highkey a racist mess. Being coded as Black and coded as Muslim and the game writing them as savage evil violent people with strange beliefs that are invading white christian Andrastian nations? Yikes. I’ve talked a lot about the Muslim coding and how upsetting it is, and I’m not alone I know, I’ve also seen posts by Black fans talking about their Black coding, though I’m not Black and so I don’t want to speak over people in that reguard. I recommend folks seek out information about this if they want, but please don’t go to Black and Muslim DA fans asking them to educate you. 

But with regards to rewriting the Qunari. Personally I don’t like writing racism of any sort. Period. I don’t want to write about racism or colonialism or slavery or genocide because those things are so incredibly serious and abhorrent and hit way too close to home for so many people, myself included. But racism is such a big part of the Dragon Age franchise. So erasing that is too big a rewrite honestly, so I’ll try to stay within the following parameters set out by Bioware:

The Qunari face discrimination in human societies

Qunari is a term both for the faith (followers of the Qun) and the race (tall, horned humanoids). 

While Qunari are largely comprised of the Qunari race, there are Qunari of any race.

Tal-Vashoth were Qunari but left the faith

So this isn’t like, my dream portrayal, or even perfect (I’m just one person, this is my thoughts, can’t speak for every PoC or Muslim, I’m just a Mexican-American Niqabi speaking for my own expeirences) I’m changing/modifying the portrayal and not completely scrapping everything, there’s still gonna be parts I’m not psyched about even though they are infinitely better than the current portrayal. And you know, this is spitballing, if I actually got a chance to rewrite Qunari lore I would work with people and refine and change stuff. That’s probably apparent, but as someone with anxiety I always have to hedge myself.

I’ll be separating this post into sections about the Qunari in general, and then another small section about the Tal-Vashoth. I’ll be going point by point (though in no particular order) of things I would change. For most of them I will try not to entirely change or throw away the concept.

Seguir leyendo

[vorpalfox]

Vatnir in succulent wreath

[fyeahobsidian]

Obsidian Entertainment is proud to present our next epic, first-person RPG set in the fantasy world of Eora.

Stay tuned for more updates and announcements: https://avowed.obsidian.net    

[archittect]

Made an oc blog so I can post more about them without filling this blog about them

https://breitheaman.tumblr.com

[arlathen]

[archittect]

(now i dont who zara is but the name sounds cool) Blood Moss Eitan and Marian? Admeth's Wyrt for Zara? ^^

Blood Moss: Did the experiences in game one lead to any major wounds (physical/mental or both)?

For Eitan, the experiences don’t result in either. He tries not to linger on anything long enough for it to affect his already poor mental health. Physically, he doesn’t go through anything that can result in major injuries, as he doesn’t fight enemies head on (letting others do that) or even remotely fairly, and doesn’t distract the Eyeless in the White March himself (he has one of the ogres Matron Beregan offered as an ally do it).

For Marian, most of the events of the game didn’t bother her mentally (especially living with her Awakened memories, which she would likely end up doing again in the same situation). After the end of the game, she feels she failed her goddess through killing Thaos and members of the Leaden Key, and feels as if she deserves death at the hands of Woedica for that. Physically, she endures several broken bones and concussions after fighting dragons, ogres, a kraken, and two statues head on, though she does recover them, either through healing magic (in the case of her broken bones), or time.

Admeth's Wyrt: How does your Watcher view their newfound abilities? Is it a blessing, a curse, or perhaps both?

Zara doesn’t see her abilities as a Watcher as either. She sees the ability to peer into others souls and sometimes cause irreversible damage to them as useful, but neither a curse nor blessing. She sees her Awakening as a curse, however. Not the specific memories, but the case of having to remember a previous life itself as a curse. She sees reincarnation itself as a curse, as a follower of Rymrgand, and sees remembering previous lives as an even greater curse.

[archittect]

Burned Lady for Lillith? Berath's Ball for Ithronel?

Burned Lady: What is your Watcher’s opinion on the Godhammer? Does it change any previous opinions about Magran?

Lilith doesn’t have a strong opinion of the Godhammer, and doesn’t have it change their non-existent opinions of Magran. They saw the Godhammer as an end to a war, one which they believe would’ve ended much later if not for the Godhammer, and doesn’t know enough about the reasons leading up to its creation to personally judge Magran on it.

Berath’s Bell: How does your Watcher cope with loss? Did past experiences affect how they interact in game one?

Ithronel tries to cope with it through helping other people. She always finds that makes her feel better, regardless of how she feels, so she sees coping with loss as best served by making sure others don’t go through the same.

[archittect]

Skaenbone and River Reed for all of your watchers :)?

Ithronel

River Reed: What is your Watcher’s biggest fear?

Letting someone down. The sole reason she leaves the Living Lands and heads to the Dyrwood is because she failed to identify how someone died, and she believed that visiting somewhere else and seeing new sights would help her get over that.

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God’s of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Galawain, for the sole reason of her being a Nature Godlike. She doesn’t have strong feelings on any of the gods, neither positive or negative, so that was her sole motivation.

(putting the rest under a read more)

Eitan

River Reed: What is your Watcher’s biggest fear?

He has a lot of fears, but his biggest fear is definitely slavery. It’s something he’s gone through before, and he’d do nearly anything to avoid it. And if it ever happened again, he’d likely offer himself to his god in hopes of serving as the Effigy.

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God’s of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Rymrgand, despite not following him. He did it primarily because convincing a group of pale elves to not enter the White Void seemed more straightforward to him than the other quests. Especially when compared to killing a dragon, like Hylea wanted.

Lilith

River Reed: What is your Watcher’s biggest fear?

The water. Growing up in the White that Wends, most of what they saw was frozen, so to discover that there are vast quantities of it that you can fall into and drown that’s filled with dangerous creatures freaked her out, to say the least.

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God’s of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Hylea. Despite being told to kill a dragon (which they convinced to leave), they believed Hylea had the best intentions for the souls meant for the Hollowborn in mind.

Marian

River Reed: What is your Watcher’s biggest fear?

Failing Woedica, whether accidental or not. She doesn’t fear it out of fearing Woedica’s retribution, but for the act of failing her goddess itself. She prides herself on being a devout follower of Woedica, and to her, failing Woedica would be like betraying herself.

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God’s of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Berath. She has no strong feelings for any of the gods other than Woedica, and sided with Berath solely because killing people seemed far more interesting than any of the other options available.

Zara

River Reed: What is your Watcher’s biggest fear?

She doesn’t. Even though she does have some fears, they don’t really bother her; as she sees death as inevitable and worthy of celebration, she doesn’t see fears as something that should be lingered on or even thought of.

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God’s of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Rymrgand, for obvious enough reasons. As a follower of him, she had no reason not to do as he requested, and did so eagerly.

[pillarsheadcanons]

Flora of Eora Questions 🍄🌼🌾 (centered around game one):

Admeth's Wyrt: How does your Watcher view their newfound abilities? Is it a blessing, a curse, or perhaps both?

Berath's Bell: How does your Watcher cope with loss? Did past experiences affect how they interact in game one?

Blood Moss: Did the experiences in game one lead to any major wounds (physical/mental or both)?

Burned Lady: What is your Watcher's opinion on the Godhammer? Does it change any previous opinions about Magran?

Cave Coral: Does your Watcher conform to the culture of the Dyrwood, or do they stick to their roots? (This could mean appearance wise/morally/how they speak etc.)

Dyrcap: The Dozens, House Doemenel, or the Crucible Knights?

Golden Celery: Which of the game one companions were in your Watcher's main party? Are there any members in the party that you ship your Watcher with?

Orlan's Cradle: What did your Watcher do with Vela?

Pilgrim's Crown: Where did your Watcher come from? What brought them to the Dyrwood?

River Reed: What is your Watcher's biggest fear?

Settler's Arrow: What's your Watcher's opinion on Waidwen's Legacy (the Hollowborn Crisis)? Did it affect their opinions and decisions with Lord Raedric?

Skaenbone: Ultimately, which of the God's of Eora did your Watcher side with in the Council of Stars quest?

Springberry: How has your Watcher changed during the events in game? How different are they from where they began as part of the caravan?

St. Gyran's Horn: How did your Watcher take to the responsibilities at Caed Nua? Did they return endgame?

Tag @pillarsheadcanons so I can see your answers!