Ferelden And The Sea

Daemon Age: Inquisition

Dorian’s Loved Ones

Gereon Alexius & Pteriidum - Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) Like Alexius, emperor penguins go to extreme lengths for their children, of which each season they only have one. If they lose their child, they will even steal one from another penguin. Penguins care deeply for others (see Alexius wanting to fight corruption in Tevinter), but the love for their child trumps all. After the magister’s run with the Venatori, Pteriidum manifests Gereon’s deteriorating mental health as catastrophic molt.

Felix & Melzar - Yellow-winged bat (Lavia frons) Bats are symbols of vigilance, and Felix will dutifully watch his father in order to help him and others. Bats are also known as holders of disease, similar to how Felix suffers from the Blight. Yellow-winged bats are social animals and will search for their fellows if they are lost. They are also especially vigilant; during the day, one of a mated pair will stay awake to guard their territory. And they’re yellow.

Halward Pavus & Aplites - Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) A bass is no trogon or felid, but it is a carnivore, and its mouth is full of teeth. It will eat anything in its path, and will not change course in its ascension. While not feared, it is formidable. Aplites is kept wet by enchanted jewelry and “swims” through the air in a bubble of water following her other half. Halward and Aplites had great things planned for their son, but if it takes too long for the fry to leave, the parent bass will not hesitate to eat them.

Today is 11/11 which marks 101 years of Poland regaining independence and I thought it is a perfect time to publish a post that I’ve been working on for a while. 

Ferelden from Polish Perspective aka Why We Can Relate to Dog Lords So Much. 

This is a sort of compilation of my own thoughts I had while playing the games and various talks with my Polish friends. It is not supposed to force any ideas or teach others how to interpret the game. I just thought it could be entertaining for anyone interested in history and culture. I was trying not to elaborate too much on the subject here but it still ended up being A Very Long Post TM. To make this post a little neater to read, I divided this post into 4 sections:

1. History

2. Fashion and Food

3. Politics

4. Relationships with Other Countries

I will be very happy if you find a minute or two to read some of my points. If you have any additional questions or comments feel free to leave me a message :)

And once again - enormous thanks to @aeducanka​ for proofreading. I would be a poor mess without you. 

Keep reading

DA Cinematic Designer Derek: "I can confidently say myself that when I messed around with the character creator, it was absolutely one of the best I’ve EVER played with. And that was in its earlier stages." [source]

You say that gamers should buy something else if they don't enjoy a series or franchise. But to me, this is contradicted by you also saying that gamers would rather get angry instead of leaving. I don't get what you are saying here. Are you implying that gamers are too incompetent to find something else?

It's not contradictory at all. What people should do and what they want to do are often not the same, usually because it is easier and feels better to do what they want rather than what they should. My friends tell me they should go to the gym and exercise regularly, but they want to play games on the couch. They aren't incompetent, they knows how and why to go to the gym. They just don't want to, in large part because it is easier and more pleasant to play games on the couch than it is to go to the gym and exercise. Going to the gym and exercising regularly requires significant effort and actual action on their part. Staying home and playing games on the couch requires significantly less effort and action.

It is a similar situation for gamers entrenched in a franchise. The franchise is familiar and comfortable to them. They've already played it a long time and generally liked it. When things go sideways, it's easy to complain and get angry. It's easy to post angrily and make memes. However, the chances of getting a positive response to these complaints is practically nil. It often takes weeks, months, or even years to address the issues that players complain about if the dev team chooses to do so at all. In the meantime, there are new games regularly getting released that may serve a player's needs better than their current franchise du jour. Trying and playing a new game will achieve better results than complaining and doing nothing. However, this requires more significant effort and action on the player's part - they have to get the new game, install it, try it, learn the new foibles, and see if they like it. If they don't like it sufficiently, they'll have to repeat the process. Instead, complaining about the game they were playing and used to like is much easier and requires almost zero effort. The path of least resistance is often the most popular.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

Rook: sooo, i got the lighthouse as a base, this cool structure in the fade. how were you guys adventuring?

Inquisitor: i had a castle in the frostback mountains called skyhold

Hawke: well, we lived with my uncle for a bit and then i had a house in high town of kirkwall

Warden: ...

Warden: tent in a forest

no but how popular are maryden’s songs?? i know she’s playing in every tavern we go to but that could be a conveniently identical npc because inquisition didn’t have a ton of models lol

like what kind of notoriety does Scout Lace Harding have? is rook going to feel like they’re meeting, idk, billie jean. eleanor rigby. jolene herself

One of the craziest things about Dragon Age (and this might help those of you who don’t go here kind of understand what people are yelling about in the coming months) is its lore. But I don’t mean that in the way you’re probably thinking.

I mean, quite literally, the way it presents its lore to you. In picking up notes and books as you go along and sifting through the codex, the game effectively asks you to act as an anthropologist. You’re met with a host of primary and secondary sources, some many hundreds of years apart from one another, written by anyone from the highest Chantry scholar to John Farmer, and you’re meant to constantly be questioning every piece of information you’re given. What biases are present in what I’m reading? What is fact and what is complete fabrication and what is, potentially, a slightly twisted version of a fact? How does one source potentially contradict another? The lore is one giant mystery-puzzle that you get to piece together across three games, and what conclusions you draw are going to be entirely different from someone else’s, and so on.

And yet, the series still does something even cooler than any of that. You realize, at a certain point, that this idea you have been engaging with on a meta-level — this idea that history is biased and fallible, that it’s written by colonizers and conquerers, genocidal racists and religious zealots, that the ability to control historical narrative is the prize you win for spilling the most blood — that idea is one of, if not perhaps THE most important, overarching theme of the series. The way that we remember history — what we remember and what we don’t, and why — and the impact that has on people on a sociological, political, cultural and psychological level, on both a macro and micro scale. It’s the entire thesis of the series’ main villain’s whole motivation.

And there’s gonna be a lot of people that don’t care about all that but me personally it makes me want to gnaw on a cinder block and scratch at my walls

fun little details around minrathous

so, because I love little worldbuilding details, I decided to scour minrathous and ended up finding lots of unique assets! some of my favorites below:

1. the viper watching rook from the rooftops

I already dedicated a one-off post to this, but the first time you travel to minrathous after the prologue, you can catch a glimpse of the viper on the rooftops.

2. the viper's wanted poster

speaking of the viper, he decides to meet up with you literally right across from a wanted poster of himself. so far, this is the only copy I've found, so it may be an entirely unique asset intentionally placed there. thanks to caitie ghiil dirthalen's post on the tevene alphabet, I was able to translate the heading as 'reward.' the second line? lorem ipsum lmao.

3. murder by candlehop

you can find this venatori surrounded numerous candlehops in a small locked alcove; I believe there are at least 10 candlehops in the vicinity?

4. serpents, serpents everywhere

unsurprisingly, snakes turn up a lot in the architectural details; you can find them in braziers, gutters, pipes, pillars, etc.

5. the cobbled swan sign

I was absolutely delighted to find out that the cobbled swan - the tavern you visit for several major story beats - has a unique sign. it's so cute :') (and contains another snake).

6. tevinter cuisine

the cobbled swan also offers an interesting look at some culinary staples of minrathous. the calamari and oysters were expected since it's a coastal city, but the scorpion pasta was a surprise...

Dragon Age NPC Ages in DA: The Veilguard

This assumes that the 9 years between Dragon Age Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard refer to the Trespasser DLC (as in the last time Varric would have seen Solas), versus the start of Dragon Age Inquisition. This places DAV in 9:53. Characters who showed up in a previous game will not be repeated in the lists for later games they also appeared in (i.e., Leliana is under DAO, not DAI).

Read more for length & spoiler reasons. The ages listed are assuming they have not had their birthday in 9:53 yet.

Dragon Age: Origins - 9:30 - 23 years prior

Alistair Theirin - 42

Morrigan - 48

Leliana - 49

Zevran Arainai - 47

Oghren Kondrat - 65

Wynne - RIP (would've been 70)

Shale - Eternal

Sten (now Arishok) - 66

Loghain Mac Tir - 74

Anora Mac Tir - 49

Dragon Age: Awakening - 9:31 - 22 years prior

Nathaniel Howe - 52

Anders - 53

Sigrun - 47

Velanna - 47

Dragon Age 2 - 9:30-9:37 - 23-16 years prior

Hawke - 47

Carver/Bethany Hawke - 42

Fenris - ~53

Isabela - 53

Merrill - ~46

Sebastian Vael - 45

Aveline Vallen - ~58

Varric Tethras - 52

Dragon Age Inquisition - 9:41-9:44 - 12-9 years prior

Josephine Montilyet - 40

Cullen Rutherford - 41

Cassandra Pentaghast - 49

Solas - ~2000 (appears mid-40s)

Sera - 31

Vivienne de Fer - 56

Blackwall/Thom Rainier - 57

the Iron Bull - 49

Dorian Pavus - 41

Cole - Ageless (appears 20, or he may have aged into his 30s if he were made more human in DAI)

Kieran - 21

Elf girls 🥹🌿🌸