Junior Adventurer's Guild - November: Dragon Age: Origins

[ThulsaDoomer]

Speaking of, there's no way in hell the Tevinter Grey Wardens haven't cracked a new and improved version of the Joining that doesn't curse you with a 30 year time limit and infertility, considering that one nerd stuck in a Fereldan tower for a few centuries managed to cobble something together. And they had hundreds of years AND hundreds of thousands of slaves to waste in blood magic rituals to figure this **** out.

why would they want that doebeit

Why would they want to live longer and be able to have kids? Are you serious?

I imagine it would be desirable for the Grey Warden elite, but not for its lower ranking members. Historically, the advent of professional soldiers was quite a powerful tool in the ancient world, and we only need to look to the Christian Military Orders to learn the disdain the European monarchs had for them. The Grey Wardens are quite similar in that they are an unchained Crusader army who become corrupt and bored when the Darkspawn go back underground. I imagine during these lull periods it would be better to keep the Grey Wardens thinly manned and irrelevant, otherwise you risk someone rousing them up just as they did in Ferelden before the events of Origins.

Granted, I assume the Chantry and Monarches are the ones funding the Grey Wardens, so they would have a vested interest in preventing them from reproducing and forming power-bases separated from their own states. By keeping Grey Wardens solely within their own populations, there is never a wholly unique "Grey Warden" culture, only a profession/career. There probably were attempts made and swiftly culled, or maybe only allowed for the higher echelons. Who knows, Grey Warden lore was barebones even in Origins and barely expanded throughout the games. Origins was the first and only moment the series tried to respect history, after that it became typical fantasy zogslop.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd have to go dig up my old posts but there was a reason they were banished from ferelden+ there was a good reason to keep them out

[logincrash]

why would they want that doebeit

Why would they want to live longer and be able to have kids? Are you serious?

I imagine it would be desirable for the Grey Warden elite, but not for its lower ranking members. Historically, the advent of professional soldiers was quite a powerful tool in the ancient world, and we only need to look to the Christian Military Orders to learn the disdain the European monarchs had for them. The Grey Wardens are quite similar in that they are an unchained Crusader army who become corrupt and bored when the Darkspawn go back underground. I imagine during these lull periods it would be better to keep the Grey Wardens thinly manned and irrelevant, otherwise you risk someone rousing them up just as they did in Ferelden before the events of Origins.

Granted, I assume the Chantry and Monarches are the ones funding the Grey Wardens, so they would have a vested interest in preventing them from reproducing and forming power-bases separated from their own states. By keeping Grey Wardens solely within their own populations, there is never a wholly unique "Grey Warden" culture, only a profession/career. There probably were attempts made and swiftly culled, or maybe only allowed for the higher echelons. Who knows, Grey Warden lore was barebones even in Origins and barely expanded throughout the games. Origins was the first and only moment the series tried to respect history, after that it became typical fantasy zogslop.

Yeah, the upper echelon of the Grey Wardens are definitely keeping the hypothetical improved Joining potion to themselves, as a reward for loyalty. And there is kind of a separate Grey Warden culture because of the Joining and its effects.
The thing about the Grey Wardens is that they can't really make new Grey Wardens quickly enough to build up their numbers to become dangerous enough to challenge the ruler of a country. They need Archdemon blood and lyrium and Maker knows what else for their ritual, and there's no way they're wasting it on some petty criminal made to join as a punishment for his crimes, at least during peacetime.

I'd have to go dig up my old posts but there was a reason they were banished from ferelden+ there was a good reason to keep them out

A Fereldan king made his sister (or cousin or something) Join the Grey Wardens to disinherit her. She rebelled and was almost successful because he'd been a tyrant and tormenting not only the commoners, but the nobles too. The rebellion got put down and the Wardens were expelled from Ferelden.
And every time they tried to come back to Ferelden, there was always something fucky going on that they were involved in.

[ThulsaDoomer]

Yeah, the upper echelon of the Grey Wardens are definitely keeping the hypothetical improved Joining potion to themselves, as a reward for loyalty. And there is kind of a separate Grey Warden culture because of the Joining and its effects.
The thing about the Grey Wardens is that they can't really make new Grey Wardens quickly enough to build up their numbers to become dangerous enough to challenge the ruler of a country. They need Archdemon blood and lyrium and Maker knows what else for their ritual, and there's no way they're wasting it on some petty criminal made to join as a punishment for his crimes, at least during peacetime.

Trve, but it's not the same as say, the Teutonic Order going on personal crusades against pagan states and forming their own state outside the purview of their original purpose. The Grey Wardens don't really operate a homeland, at best they have a fortress that still falls within the jurasdiction of an existing nation. That is an interesting point though, how much of the Grey Wardens during these long "peace" times were never even subjected to the Joining properly? After all, Origins states there is no set period between Darkspawn incursions, it could be a few hundred years or a thousand.

It's likely why Weisshaupt is their defacto Headquarters, it's remote enough to the greater politics of Thedas, with minimal capabilities of expansion due to its limited agriculture and resource potential. So even if they do allow Wardens to create families there, there simply isn't the infrastructure to support a large population that would worry the other nations.

[J1M]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

[logincrash]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

Dragon Age to fantasy is what Mass Effect was to sci-fi. All of the stuff in the setting has been lovingly pilfered from all the other cool fantasy properties.
People care about Thedas for the same reason people care about the Mass Effect galaxy.

[J1M]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

Dragon Age to fantasy is what Mass Effect was to sci-fi. All of the stuff in the setting has been lovingly pilfered from all the other cool fantasy properties.
People care about Thedas for the same reason people care about the Mass Effect galaxy.

Yeah, but people care a lot less after some bad sequels, which Dragon Age had. Similar situation for StarCraft. Mass Effect's sequel crimes are limited to a trilogy ending and a side story.

[logincrash]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

Dragon Age to fantasy is what Mass Effect was to sci-fi. All of the stuff in the setting has been lovingly pilfered from all the other cool fantasy properties.
People care about Thedas for the same reason people care about the Mass Effect galaxy.

Yeah, but people care a lot less after some bad sequels, which Dragon Age had. Similar situation for StarCraft. Mass Effect's sequel crimes are limited to a trilogy ending and a side story.

Who do you mean by "people" when you say that? Because what you're seeing here is a handful of jaded racist nerds (affectionately) who like to shoot the **** about fictional worlds. I'd argue the majority of people who played Dragon Age don't really give a **** about the lore.
Also, I, personally, consider the Mass Effect sequels just as bad as the Dragon Age sequels.

[ThulsaDoomer]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

The tragedy is that Dragon Age Origins was, albeit, a rather lazy but first attempt to build a fantasy world/new IP by Bioware. The sequels were supposed to heavily fill in the gaps and solidify the setting into something more coherent. Sadly, David Gayder is a supreme ******, and only became more unhinged after Origins dropped, destroying any possibility of the dark fantasy we were promised.

The Chantry was a fairly good allegory for the Christian Church, you can tell a lot of effort was made to make it tangible and intertwined with the setting and its peoples. These were, in my opinion, the games strongest points, where it deviated from the normal in fantasy back into what we see in many classical fantasy settings, with various degrees of real world elements muddled up into semi-alien components. If you notice, the Tevinters represented the decadent and decaying Rome, while Ferelden and the other nations were the resurgent kingdoms of former barbarians and slaves. The real world history of this period is already quite grim, so when Dragon Age teased a fantasy variation of this I was hooked man. It's so ******* disappointing.

[Fitz]

I'm a little surprised that people care this much about the Dragon Age setting. When I played it I just felt like they had copied the Mass Effect Specters into a generic Lord of the Rings.

Dragon Age to fantasy is what Mass Effect was to sci-fi. All of the stuff in the setting has been lovingly pilfered from all the other cool fantasy properties.
People care about Thedas for the same reason people care about the Mass Effect galaxy.

Yeah, but people care a lot less after some bad sequels, which Dragon Age had. Similar situation for StarCraft. Mass Effect's sequel crimes are limited to a trilogy ending and a side story.

I can't recall DA:O having any sequels. It's just an "old" game that didn't get a sequel that's why people care less about it.

[logincrash]

A bit of a warning, the mod does add modded textures for eyes and facial hair and ****. So, if your character suddenly looks yassified (as the brainrotted normalfags say), know that this is the cause.

It also turns every companion into an ugly mess because this
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mod ... escription
mod is baked into the DAZIP package. On this basis alone I do not recommend this mod.
I'll still check out the questline, but I don't think I'm gonna keep it for the rest of the game.

Okay, I finally got around to it. The writing is poor and the voice acting is AI. I don't really care about the AI part, but more about the fact that it's terrible.
I cannot recommend this mod.

► 3 screenshots

zedd.jpg

moria.jpg

ugly mofo.jpg

[TKVNC]

Isn't Alistair the last of the Theirins? Or are you talking about stuff like cousins descended from the Theirin line but under other noble names?
And what do you mean by "an exception?" An exception to what? An exception to the fact that Grey Wardens are barred from holding noble titles?
I do agree that Cousland would have enough political power to tell the Grey Wardens that he's done his duty after killing the Archdemon and that he doesn't have to do anything for them anymore. But BioWare didn't put that much thought into it, sadly.

He is, but in the case we're talking about here, he doesn't want to be king, so keeping him out of the line shouldn't be a problem. Finding some mythical offshoot of the Theirin line is one hope, but there's the other of a new, voluntary conclave as well (where the Cousland would pledge to abide by the results)... say, twenty years in the future. Again, the predicate here would be the stabilizing of Ferelden in the wake of the disastrous aftermath of the twin shockwaves of the Blight and the loss of their brand-new dynastic heir.

If I were the Cousland, I wouldn't spin the Grey Warden titleship question that way. Rather I'd spin it as, "I have a more pressing duty in Ferelden now that the Archdemon is defeated, I'll come back to being a Grey Warden once Ferelden is secure", or something along those lines. Give a lifeline—even if it's a fig leaf—of compromise rather than bare fiat. In my mind, the prohibition against Grey Warden titles is much more firmly established everywhere and has mythological overtones, so you'd want to play it a little more delicately than, "**** off I'm done with you."

EDIT: I have to learn to stop repeating myself in the same sentence.

Realistically, the Cousland son is the obvious choice for the throne of Ferelden. Alistair is technically under the thumb of the Chantry, not to mention, without the deus ex machina of the players counsel, never becomes capable of kingship.

Anora is an actual peasant, who despite evidently receiving a court education, has absolutely no claim to the throne - she has no actual noble blood, and also has no children to shore up her claim. It's bad writing to even have anyone take her seriously, though an attempt would not be poor writing from her perspective.

Loghain's claim as a war hero is no stronger than that of the Cousland, and given that the Archdemon was more recent, and far more disastrous if the Blight hadn't been stopped, arguably weaker - but he is also not a royal, it could never be a legitimate rule, very much just a coup, and would almost certainly spell inevitable disaster for any dynasty he were to found.

As for being a Warden, it doesn't matter. The Divine Right would allow the Cousland to do as he would, no different than Napoleon. He has ultra-loyal, and powerful allies who would realistically support his claim, and he is a noble.

As for a queen, rarely if ever are queens directly royal except in marriages of convenience, and outside of Orlais, which isn't viable in Ferelden there's no obvious neighbouring state. There's no good reason why the Cousland couldn't marry Morrigan as his queen, who is an actual native of Ferelden. The Archdemon soul of their Son is never actually confirmed in Origins, so can be safely ignored, but it also indicates that at least at the time of the Battle of Denerim, neither are infertile, whereas Alistair who has been a Warden far longer may well be. This is more logical than him marrying Anora who we know to be barren, but also machiavellian and untrustworthy, especially after she betrays you at the Landsmeet, if you refuse to side with her (even if it's just a lie).

Those are my thoughts, anyway.

[logincrash]

There's no good reason why the Cousland couldn't marry Morrigan as his queen, who is an actual native of Ferelden.
This is more logical than him marrying Anora who we know to be barren, but also machiavellian and untrustworthy, especially after she betrays you and the Landsmeet, if you refuse to side with her (even if it's just a lie).

Morrigan is a mage. She does not hide her magic and only gets away with it because she's under the protection of Grey Wardens during a Blight. She would never be accepted as the wife of a king, not by nobles, not by the commoners, and especially not by the Chantry. Some things are just too far over the line. That's also why making a ****** mage into the Pope was ******* ridiculous in Inquisition.
As for Anora's infertility, that's conjecture. Maric was a philanderer and only sired a single ******* despite all of his indiscretions. Cailan also had some side flings and yet not a single *******. The Theirin line might just have low fertility. Did Maric have any brothers?
But, yeah, your other points about Anora are correct.

[rusty_shackleford]

Reminder that Alistair is half elf

[logincrash]

Reminder that Alistair is half elf

They made it a point in the lore that elfishness is a recessive gene and a human-elf union results in a human baby. It's sorta-kinda implied to be the reason why elves lost their immortality.

[rusty_shackleford]

Reminder that Alistair is half elf

They made it a point in the lore that elfishness is a recessive gene and a human-elf union results in a human baby. It's sorta-kinda implied to be the reason why elves lost their immortality.

It's also cope for the fact that the books and the game have almost zero overlap

[TKVNC]

Morrigan is a mage. She does not hide her magic and only gets away with it because she's under the protection of Grey Wardens during a Blight. She would never be accepted as the wife of a king, not by nobles, not by the commoners, and especially not by the Chantry. Some things are just too far over the line.

Well, that's true enough, but this isn't necessarily a case of amnesty for Mages as a whole. It's also within the purview of the Ferelden royalty to make decisions that the Chantry does not like, in fact you can ask as much of King Alistair, who as we've discussed before hardly has the political clout of the Cousland son. I suppose it's not hugely different to Henry VIII forcibly making England a Protestant nation.

Nevertheless, the options presented in the base game are lacking in scope, and often illogical when contrasted against the games own (limited) lore, and real world comparison.

[rusty_shackleford]

Seems everyone is forgetting that Veilguard revealed everyone has been mindcontrolled by reapers all along and none of the major decisions were done willingly!

[logincrash]

Seems everyone is forgetting that Veilguard revealed everyone has been mindcontrolled by reapers all along and none of the major decisions were done willingly!

Veilwhat? No idea what you're talking about.

[TKVNC]

Seems everyone is forgetting that Veilguard revealed everyone has been mindcontrolled by reapers all along and none of the major decisions were done willingly!

Veilwhat? No idea what you're talking about.

Poor grandpa Rusty is hallucinating games that don't exist again.

[logincrash]

A bit of a warning, the mod does add modded textures for eyes and facial hair and ****. So, if your character suddenly looks yassified (as the brainrotted normalfags say), know that this is the cause.

It also turns every companion into an ugly mess because this
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mod ... escription
mod is baked into the DAZIP package. On this basis alone I do not recommend this mod.
I'll still check out the questline, but I don't think I'm gonna keep it for the rest of the game.

The guy deleted my comment about the poor writing after responding with something like "I'm an ESL but people would be happier experiencing my story with broken English rather than not experiencing it at all."

[J1M]

"I couldn't figure out how to paste text into copilot."

[logincrash]

"I couldn't figure out how to paste text into copilot."

This **** is baffling to me, especially now.
Years ago you still could've pasted your script into Microsoft Word and it would highlight mistakes and even offer you different solutions.
Now with free AI models that excel at grammar and punctuation because they're language models, it's unforgivable.

[logincrash]

Origins was pretty fun.

lmao.jpg

[ThulsaDoomer]

Okay, I finally got around to it. The writing is poor and the voice acting is AI. I don't really care about the AI part, but more about the fact that it's terrible.
I cannot recommend this mod.

I'm gray warden.

[rusty_shackleford]

Authentic low intelligence dialogue experience

[logincrash]

The ******'s being sassy after supposedly "fixing" the issue and "polishing the dialogue."
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mod ... =167360653
The polished dialogue is identical to the 1st release version.

[J1M]

The ******'s being sassy after supposedly "fixing" the issue and "polishing the dialogue."
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mod ... =167360653
The polished dialogue is identical to the 1st release version.

Copy his mod, run it through Copilot, and republish it?

[Tangerine]

The ******'s being sassy after supposedly "fixing" the issue and "polishing the dialogue."
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mod ... =167360653
The polished dialogue is identical to the 1st release version.

Copy his mod, run it through Copilot, and republish it?

@logincrash do it out of spite.

[logincrash]

LMAO

baby back *****.png

Do not believe his lies.

pants on fire.png

► outdated info, left here for posterity

I knew something like that would happen. Here's the proof that I installed the latest 1.3 version.

cocainum.jpg

Do not waste your time on this mod. It's low quality AND the author is a butthurt pussy.