It's such a struggle to find Starkhaven, and even sometimes Sebastian or Rylen etc, posts. It's sad because there's so much potential there! Anyway, I would like to ask if you had any ideas revolving around the Starkhaven Circle Tower burning down? As mentioned in DA2 I believe (I don't have accurate info like dates and stuff with me at the moment) For example, what did the City do? What do you think happened to the Templars and the rest of the Mages? Things like that? Sorry if I'm unclear!!
I agree with that!Hence, why I made this blog, to give people a way of gathering all that the fandom has to offer on Starkhaven quickly and effectively. =)
Regarding Starkhaven’s circle, there is actually a very interesting part of information to this cut from the canon content. But I don’t think, I have the related post available right now. So I will have to recall this from memory. Please bear with me!
If anyone, knows which post I mean and has the link to it, please send it my way. So I can put it up on the blog!
Someone, has found cut dialogue-content in the game files for Sebastian’s DLC, where Hawke addresses the whole Starkhaven Circle issue.
Hawke was supposed to ask Sebastian something along the lines of: “Starkhaven? Wasn’t that, where that circle burned down?” To which Sebastian was supposed to answer, that it is indeed the same town and that he believes the incident was part of the conspiracy against his parents. By burning down the circle, his parents were basically stripped of any available source of additional protection, through mages or templars. Leaving them with nothing but their own guards and whomever, could be called last-minute from the cities militia to the castle, to protect themselves against the well-organized attack through the Flint Company.
So, based on that it is reasonable to assume, that the writer’s originally intended for the DLC’s story to be related to the Circle tower incident.
If we consider this at least potentially canon, we can also likely assume, that the fire was also a very organized act of destruction, likely meant to kill everyone within and make it impossible for locals to prevent the incident, or at least help saving people.
We know that the mages, who got transferred to Kirkwall, are the sole survivors of this incident. There’s probably some templars, who survived too, because we know that the mages had to stage an escape stunt, to get rid of the templars, that were accompanying them from Starkhaven to Kirkwall.
We also know that in more reasonably led towers it was normal to “loan out” mages to do work in public. They would get a written permit to leave the tower and do their work in town, usually accompanied by a templar, but sometimes, if they were considered especially well-behaved, alone.
Furthermore, we know that the Starkhaven mages being transferred to Kirkwall, were terrified of the Kirkwall circle. Which leads to the reasonable assumption, that Starkhaven Circle was more reasonably led than Kirkwall and Starkhaven mages are used to more freedoms, than the mages in the Gallows.
All these tiny tidbits together result in the awful picture of the whole tower being ablaze within minutes, trapping and inevitably killing everyone, who was currently present in the tower. The mages and templars on the way to Kirkwall are likely the lone survivors, who only truly survived, because they weren’t in the tower, at the time of the fire.
As all mage towers are usually built detached from the actual town, to protect the citizens from dangerous magical incidents, it’s unlikely the local militia could do anything to help dousing the fire, simply because by the time, they reached the tower, everything was already engulfed in flames.
I hope this answered your questions, at least a bit. This however is only my personal theory based on what little information can be gathered about the incident. If anyone, has something to add to that, they are welcomed to send me their theory to share it with the rest of the community! =)
- Mod Seb