in the hawk(e)s shadow
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@morallygreywarden
in the hawk(e)s shadow
Sorry Alistair
i love that Neve canonically throws hands. like she’s a literal mage there’s no reason for her to be doing all that but she will get right up close and physically fight enemies in this game. woman of the year
why are "your icon would" games so fucking boring tell me how you'd feel if you met your icon and they punched you
gamlen is great because he sucks so hard that it's very easy to forget that he didn't actually gamble your fortune away and is as much a victim of kirkwall as anyone else
like once again it comes down to the viscount and the circles and the fear of magic........obsessed with the cycles happening
do varric’s opinions on mages v templars change depending on da2 or what’s the deal
is this even anything.
dr in darktown
Reunion.
whats up with that insane bone pit act 2 quest where they just non optionally bring some guy to beat up and interrogate in YOUR HOUSE like that’s normal
sorry but it’s SO so funny that a romanced anders and merrill do their whole ‘i know no-one could forgive me my love but thank you for being the only bright light in kirkwall’ or ‘you’re the best person ever ma vhenan how could anyone help but love you. nobody else but you would stand by someone like me’ spiels to what is essentially their crime boss s/o who beats up and interrogates people in their shared house. anders is finishing up a few notes on his social justice manifesto and saying ‘goodbye love i’ll be home soon i just have to go to the sewers and risk my life to heal refugees for free like i do every day’ and merrill is finishing chattering with their servant helping her adjust to live as a freed slave and saying ‘goodbye ma vhenan i’ll be home soon i just have to go to the poorest part of the city to make whatever personal sacrifice it takes to do my part for my people and culture’. and hawke, straight up a killer for hire, there is no way to complete this game without just killing people for money like it’s nothing, pauses tying someone to a chair in the next room to tell them to remember to pack lunch. in canon this happens. you dont even have to make weird choices at all.
finished DATV... and finally harding is a romance option
Assan missed you while you were gone
Davrin is just taking a little break from chopping wood 🤗
Zevran: I am hardly the person to lecture on the worthier points of human nature, but surely this is a fine time to display the oft-lauded virtue known as mercy?
Zevran: I deserved to die, and you spared me. Why are you so quick to condemn these mages?
Warden: You’re a lot better-looking than most of the mages.
Zevran: Why, thank you. Flattery would normally distract me, but not today. Inconvenient, no?
Warden: You’re saying I made a mistake sparing you?
Zevran: (Nervous laughter) Perhaps. But you did it nevertheless, no?
Warden: Magic and knives are different.
Zevran: Magic can kill. Knives can kill. Even small children launched at great speed could kill.
Zevran: Why single out the wielders of one and not the others?
Warden: Mages can do more damage with one spell than you ever could.
Zevran: Mm. Touché.
Zevran: I’ve taken the lives of many throughout my career, but this is no measured act. There is no chase, no hunt, no dignity in this… there is only slaughter.
Warden: What about the people they might slaughter?
Zevran: Might, not will. Committing genocide just because something might happen is more than the mark of a weak mind. It is insanity.
Warden: Zevran, you’re a hypocrite.
Zevran: Perhaps I am at that, and a thief and a murderer as well. But I looked my victims in the face.
going off your arcane bolt post and how it becomes spirit bolt in 2, what do you think is the distinction between the arcane and spirit schools? it's interesting that spells which were spirit in dao were moved to arcane to fill it out for da2 (mind blast, crushing prison) and the sort of overlap where both include various shielding methods 🤔
OUGH good question
so for reference for those less familiar, the arcane tree in dao is the very basic single tree with arcane bolt and arcane shield, and spirit is an entire school with two anti-magic trees, the walking bomb/necromancy tree, and the excellent and delightful telekinetic tree. in da2, arcane is a full tree featuring arcane shield, but also elemental weapons which it stole from the elemental/primal schools, and the telekinesis tree (mind blast, barrier, and crushing prison) which it’s stealing from spirit. the spirit tree has spirit bolt (the stolen version of arcane bolt), and then the spells it’s always had like dispel magic, death syphon, and walking bomb.
when you read the codex entries about the schools of magic in origins there are very distinctly four schools: primal, creation, spirit, entropy. the first thing i’d like to establish about my understanding is that these are artificially created distinctions and are not “real”, in the sense that mages trying to understand magic have created classifications to argue about as people love to do. by the way, i absolutely believe these arguments take place in-world, and i as the person who sticks their hand up in the back of the lecture and says “well school distinctions aren’t even REAL so—” am the annoying student that all senior enchanters hate to see coming
the second point i’d like to make is that even by the people who treat these classifications as fact, the school of spirit has the least clear boundaries of the four. it is described as an “esoteric” field of study and “the school of mystery, the ephemeral school”. translation: we don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about here. the school of spirit is said to draw its power from the fade itself, but of course that’s how all typical magic works, so theoretically all spells belong to the school of spirit. (now i sound like a spirit magic student who has beef with evokers who think they’re better than me.) but broadly spells that get categorised into the school of spirit tend to be ones where you’re not interfering with or creating anything “real”, you’re working directly with “magic itself”. so in origins it’s the spells that work directly with combating or destroying or stealing another mage’s magic reserves, it’s the necromancy tree which as we’ve seen with a lot of detail in later games uses spirits, and it’s the telekinesis tree which throws, crushes or protects with invisible force.
(with regard to the telekinesis tree and also the force magic specialisation: i have a pet theory that many centuries later when thedas discovers modern physics, we’d see a split between the school of spirit and some kind of school of forces now that we acknowledge the force crushing prison applies as something “real” rather than “just magic”. i don’t know enough about physics to develop that line of thought and i also wonder if the study of magic would have thrown away the entire system of schools by then but it’s just funny to me to imagine.)
another point to be made is that there’s also a lot of crossover between the school of spirit and the school of creation, the latter for example inexplicably containing the spell to have a wisp buddy in dao. and those two schools actually get fully put in the blender together for the diabolical dai approach to it all. but that’s a whole other can of worms.
to return to the arcane vs spirit question, you’ll have noticed that arcane is not any of the four basic schools, it doesn’t count as a school. you’ll also have noticed that arcane bolt and arcane shield, working purely with fadestuff and protective force, are absolutely spirit magic on the same grounds as the telekinesis tree. a tree which is so similar to arcane it gets recategorised as arcane in da2! i actually do not think there is any academic difference between arcane & spirit and i think arcane spells all get folded into spirit by anyone who is writing essays in-world (and it constantly pleases me that people are definitely writing essays in-world). so what is the difference, you ask? why are they separated in my skill trees? for practical application and training!
the real difference between arcane and spirit to Me is that arcane contains the fundamentals every single mage should know, and spirit is for eccentric researchers who crawl out of their libraries with a finished book once a decade, and who definitely aren’t even slightly possessed, they promise. arcane has the basic attack, the basic defense, and in da2 also contains the basic support. these are technical fundamentals. they’re going to be the first lessons you sat through as a kid even if you specialise in something else and never touch them again. and they are spirit spells because drawing on the power of the fade is the most basic definition of magic, even if the spells that requiring deeper understanding of the fade are also the most complicated field of study. when i’m assigning spells with character in mind (and i always have character in mind) i tend to put points in arcane for quite rigid/technical casters who would rely on those fundamentals and then points in spirit for those who truly study the fade. most mages would never have points in spirit but the type of mages who are in a protagonist’s party are not representational
so that’s what i think. in the normal number of paragraphs. and to get slightly meta my favourite hc about the da2 skill trees less exactly matching the academic rigour of dao skill trees is that you and your mage companions are all apostates and the way you think about magic is different and more fluid even if it draws on the same principles. ok thats my stance cutting myself off byeee
one thing u have to understand abt me is that im a worldbuilding person not a lore person. and there IS a difference. if you want someone to chatter about social structure or magic systems or the noble hierarchy in any given nation of thedas for 3 hours i am your guy. do not ask me what an archdemon is i still don’t know and i don’t care to know
quick sketch bcs I'm lazy
Gosh I love taking the companions who don’t fit well for the quest
This party just keeps giving