the shadow dragons couldāve been so good if they were good. instead they were so laughably bad in every possible way. largely a product of the complete sanitization of tevinter but good god what a mess of a faction. led by 3 wealthy human mages one of whom directly profits off of slavery as his day job another of whom is the āman on the insideā in the government but see the only people who do slavery in this game are evil venatori! so why do you even need a man on the inside in the government then, itās not like heās even accomplished anything in his 8 years of holding a seat, he almost punched a guy once but thatās all we hear of. and the third of whom is literally one of the richest people in tevinter and maybe thedas who has used her immense wealth and monopoly over tevinterās business ties to orzammar to apparently do absolutely fuckall. thereās also a human templar for some reason. there is one named character who is a former slave but you learn this from a codex entry and you cannot talk to her about it. and she operates the front end of the pawn shop: she is the first in the line of fire. she is expendable. if you save treviso you find her body in the street.
so what do the shadow dragons do? they assist in slave revolts, apparently. but when you work with them in one of the first missions in the game youāre tracking down a red lyrium ārelic.ā no explanation as to what this is or why itās important other than the venatori have it. so surely during the shadow dragon companionās quest you must do something dealing with slavery right, since thatās the shadow dragonsā whole thing? no? aelia is (checks notes) trying to unleash a demon sealed beneath minrathous, for evil reasons i guess? if i want more context i have to read tevinter nights? apparently sheās venatori but there is no connection between what sheās doing and what the other venatori are doing in the main plot of the game, and neveās plotline is about the threads, not the shadow dragons? the shadow dragons are just kind of fully irrelevant?
so what about rook mercar? as a rook who works with the anti-slavery faction, you must have some input on literally any of this, right? no, you donāt know your base of operations or the leaders of your organization or the fact that mae lost her seat which happened years ago and is the reason the shadow dragons even exist and it was a public smear campaign so rook not knowing this is literally insane. youāre explicitly raised by a wealthy military family from a city that isnāt this one, and thereās no explanation as to how you got to minrathous or why you started working with the shadow dragons. the only mercar-specific dialogues you really get are saying āshadows stick together :)ā a few times. you have broken chains in your bedroom from a slave rebellion you helped. why the fuck did you keep those? rook mercar is useless and toothless and stupid on purpose so that you donāt think too hard about the issues that supposedly drive your character but are barely present in the game. and at the same time, they were sent away from the shadow dragons for being too radical and not going along with the safe plan! š
and then for some reason you get to choose the next archonāthe ruler of a system that is built upon slavery. for some reason one of your queer liberal friends gets to be president even though itās an internal election process within the magisterium and dorian has probably fewer than a dozen allies and mae is believed by most of the imperium to have committed some sort of vaguely-alluded-to treason. we are not even going to confirm whether all the magisters blighted by elgarānan were killed or not. literally donāt worry about it kitten ā¤ļø. nothing about the system is going to change. dorian using spies and blackmail and assassins to accomplish his goals is framed as radical when he spent an entire game making snide jabs about how thatās the essence of tevinter politics. mae says you can get the people on your side and show them the truth as if tevinter being a complete farce and magisters doing blood magic and the nation running on slavery isnāt the stereotype everyone outside of the country knows and as if all of that isnāt known more deeply by the people who live there. as if āhaving the people on your sideā means anything in tevinter and can accomplish change without revolution and without any violence.
itās just all such a nonsensical disaster it hurts to think about. and of course weekes says that they didnāt want to write about revolution because they ādonāt have that sort of attitudeāāitās so painfully obvious how terrified they are of actual change and addressing the deep-seated issues of empire and colonialism (and they make it blatantly clear on a panel about writing about empire. lol). itās obvious that they just didnāt want to deal with the intricacies of a society built on slavery because they are perfectly fine with their status quo and not examining what the settler state they live in is built on. obviously weekes is not the only writer of this game but this mindset bleeds into its entirety and certainly does not come from only weekes. it shows so clearly in every part of tevinter and dock town and the shadow dragons, both in what they are and in what they arenāt
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
stormborns
2087
