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@soulbrand
thecityofdoors -> soulbrand
i am going to make a more fleshed out pinned at some point. probably. maybe
current fixation is dragon age. mostly just a lot of reblogs. unfortunately too tired to oc post most of the time. i do daydream about them constantly though. hopefully one day i will find a way to just beam them directly into all of your minds. then you’ll see
Matthieu smooths the map out onto the surface of the table and grins at Arden through a cloud of pipe smoke. “Well, then,” he says, “to work!”
Some new faces coming to Chapter 1 of Small Fires! Commissioned by the insanely talented @geezmarty
god it really is super embarrassing that fenris spends six years harping on merrill about how she chose forbidden blood magic over staying with her family and thinking about how if he had a mommy he would just be the bestest boy who did everything she said. and then he meets his sister and because she's a bit of a social climbing bitch capable of getting coerced into violence against others instead of some kind of sister-shaped saint, he's immediately ready to kill her over it, and if you stop him he immediately gets called out by said sister for choosing a bunch of magical brands over staying with his family. fenris truly an object lesson in how you can't die of shame because otherwise he should be dead twice over between that and the fog warriors.
i know we tack it on to her name for tagging convenience but you do all know “de fer” is not part of vivienne’s name right…?
important to me that you all know this 👇
👆not only bc it’s key to understanding what kind of Politics bioware is trying to allude to wrt vivienne but also bc to understand viv you have to put into perspective how much that image contrasts with the actual lived reality of vivienne who is (1) of immigrant (rivaini) origin (2) hardly in a comparable class position at all.
margaret thatcher leaned heavily on this idea of being a “shopkeeper’s daughter” to push back against the idea that conservatism was an Elite ideology while she was middle class at worst & used her political position to destroy working class communities.
whereas in the context of thedas vivienne cannot expect any real support from her own “shopkeeper parents” (merchants from dairsmuid, living in wycome) when she is ripped away from them as a child. they may or may not have had a surname. that we never LEARN of one indicates that in either case her parents could not protect from the consequences of being a mage.
her reputation and her titles are dependant on the relationships she has built with those who do have social privileges and means of defending her and her interests. she is a mistress. she is a socialite performing in a gilded cage for her life and the lives of those in her care.
“I owe you more than I can say, Hawke. I will offer my services to you here before I move on.”
where’s Hawke?
for a world where magic is drawn from the land of dreams and powered by imagination, belief, and willpower, dragon age’s use of magic seems... pretty standard, right? mages aren’t just wildly doing whatever they can imagine, they’re throwing around the same set of elemental spells as every other mage. spells often have the same names and similar effects throughout the series, used by different mages. so we can say this is a failure of imagination from the devs themselves, or we can have fun and work it into the worldbuilding. obviously i want to do the latter.
so what i’d like to establish is that a) mages are really in-world using these common spells and knowing them by their names i.e. they literally think “i’m going to cast winter’s grasp” and not just “i’m going to freeze that guy” and b) they have very good reasons for doing so. and the main three reasons for using established, known spells would be:
efficacy. spellcasting in dragon age is, as i mentioned, about imagination, belief, and willpower. isn’t it much easier to imagine an effect, and to force it into existence with your willpower, if you’ve seen it done? i think this is probably one reason why getting a teacher for magic is so important. you want to see a spell done a hundred times before you can replicate it with the kind of confident willpower that makes it enforce itself on the world and do decent damage. (incidentally, i think this is also why elemental damage is popular rather than more inventive obviously magical styles; the elements can be observed and replicated, we know what to expect and to imagine. i think baby mages spend a lot of time looking at candles and mages in icy regions are better at ice and so on.)
predictability. “friendly fire” exists as a mechanic in these games to demonstrate that once a spell is cast, it is no longer in the mage’s control, and can cause harm they didn’t intend. “free casting” instead of using a known spell could lead to even more unintended consequences.
resources. mages are reliant on their own reserves of magic (and occasionally lyrium or blood) to allow them access to the fade. they would know exactly how much a known spell will “cost”, whereas “free casting” could cost anything and immediately exhaust them or push them beyond their reserves.
of course, none of this means that mages can’t invent their own spells. after all, someone had to invent them in the first place. it’s likely something that mages often do once they’ve reached a certain level of skill, and i think it’s really fun to imagine. (a circle mage apprentice required to make a small, frivolous spell of their own as a project; a tevinter magister fashioning something new and flashy to impress their rivals; a dalish keeper regularly crafting fresh spells to suit their clan’s new needs.) loving the image of a mage excitedly making a new spell only to dig through the books and then grimace and groan as they realise some enchanter from the towers age already published a better version. i think there are lots of mages who try to branch out from the standard elements and so on, and find that it doesn’t “catch on” because what’s familiar becomes efficient becomes familiar and so on. i also think a mage who never invents their own spells could do perfectly fine
all this also doesn’t mean that one person’s winter’s grasp is necessarily the same as another’s. i think it would be sooo fun if something always slightly changes about a spell as a new mage adapts it for their own, and for spells to become unrecognisable over the centuries as they keep passing between hands. that would also be a neat way to explain differences between versions of spells between games.
this is probably a pretty long-winded way to say "what if the things that mages do in front of us in the games are canon?" but i don't think it's said explicitly, and iirc mages don't use spells by their names in the novels. well, i think they should! and it would account for a lot of the combat mechanics here. and all of the spells could have origins and inventors and favoured practitioners and it would be beautiful. we could have newer spells and older spells... spells taught by some traditions and not others... spells with regional variations... my ideal is for a mage to cast walking bomb and for another mage to say “i do NOT know what that was but it WASN’T walking bomb”
the quality of a dragon age game directly correlates to how quickly the player can hypothetically have gay sex
origins: within the first ten minutes
da2: as soon as you finish the prologue and gain free will
dai: it depends on how long you spend in the hinterlands
dav: literally 95% of the game
I love DA2. The shitty graphics. The horrible gameplay. The story so unavoidably devastating and beautiful and horrible. Everyone hates each other. Everyone loves each other. You’re constantly filling the streets with bodies and there are no ramifications for this. There are ramifications for everything you say and do. Everyone’s bisexual. There’s a dragon in the mine. You lose everyone and everything you love and care about and it’s inevitable. Isabela gets an STI at one point. Merrill is a blood mage. You go from rags to riches to going on the run. You have a dog. You set your friend up on a date with the guy she likes. You hunt down a serial killer who takes the last member of your family away. Your doctor friend is possessed and loves cats and commits domestic terrorism. You have no control. You control everything.
Hawke, If you're still looking for ways to raise coin, there's a Rivaini ship captain staying at the Hanged Man. My sources say she's hiring people to help her with business here in Kirkwall. Better yet, she apparently came from Denerim, so she shouldn't have any problems working with Fereldans. I'd highly recommend meeting her, and not just because of this business of hers. From what I've heard, she's the fastest blade in Llomerryn. We might want to bring her along on the expedition, or at least get her out of the Hanged Man before she starts a brawl. Sincerely, Varric Tethras
So I guess Isabela's recruitment quest was initially supposed to be introduced via the letter desk?
dear hawke, this hot and dangerous woman is going to kill people in my favorite dive bar. please encourage her to kill people outside of my favorite dive bar. your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated. love, varric
Hawke, Isabela's back. She seems more peevish than I remember and kept making snide comments about "the Champion of Kirkwall." I thought you two had settled that argument over the Qunari relic, or was I wrong? Could you come over to the Hanged Man and have it out with her once and for all? She still owes me twenty silvers, and I don't want to bring up it up while she's in this mood. Varric
decided to check for more cut letters from Varric and this was the only other one! bitxh why do u keep slipping these letters into my mailbox while im out just be normal lmaoooooo 😭
mages in regions where it doesnt snow playing a really long telephone game over what ice spells are supposed to look like
Remember in MOTA when Isabela dropped one of the abusive and controlling things her husband did and Sebastian was like “omg yeah my parents did that to me too haha” and we’re supposed to just move on and not acknowledge how they’re both so casual about it like wtf?
in my beautiful thedosian vision the land between tevinter and the free marches is steppe. and dalish and human pastoral clans continue to roam there
this is mostly my central asians exist in thedas propaganda. however ☝️ my assertion here is actually consistent with lore. you see on the map this area is called the Green Dales (not to be confused by the Dales occupied by orlais)
this is a region we know very very little about. except!!!!!! that a certain breed of wild horse comes from this region. the green dales feral
this little guy. with his stocky body and little (but strong!!! legs) who looks to me quite a bit like these fellas:
it still gets to me how underplayed vivienne is in inquisition. from the fact that we dont go much deep into her backstory like how was she as a first enchanter, how did she do things at celene's courts, more insights into her relationship with bastien bc hey, im sure they loved each other but the power dynamics are wayy too big for it to not be adressed At All. and the fact they dont even give her much to do in wewh when i feel like. Sure vivienne might hold off on voicing her real opinions on who should get the throne, but Surely she should be able to be giving us some more insight into Everything. and again, vivienne is someone who got a position that was no better then a jester's and made it into a real power, but even if she had the empress' ear, she still knows it wont make nobles look at her as if they're equals. she knows she will always be an outsider and Honestly, she should be allowed to get more into that, especially with non-human/mage inquisitors. of all people to get a little side quest in this thing, it should have been vivienne...
blinks at you with my big brown eyes. please join me in pondering these places….
thedas that isn’t inexplicably 90% white is possible. but you gotta take my hand, venture into these spaces that have been constructed as Peripheral and start imagining the diversity within and beyond them
—— So you felt guilty?
Dragon Age Fight Club — Group #34 / Match 4 of 6
Illario Dellamorte
No propaganda submitted.
vs. Merrill
"her spell for dealing with people getting too close is to make the ground attack them. her spell for people staying farther away is to drag them back towards her. i do not think merrill cares where you wanted to stand"
"she uses her own life force as fuel. she brings the resource with her, nobody else has to be available, and hurting her doesn't necessarily stop her casting. it might just give her less reason to hold back."
Who would win in a fight?
Illario
Merrill
