explore-the-lore - Tumblr blog

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #7 - Broodmother

It is well-known that darkspawn carry off those captured in their raids to underground lairs. Most assume that the prisoners are eaten, or somehow tainted and turned into darkspawn themselves, though this could never account for the sheer numbers of the horde. Forays made by Grey Wardens into the underground have uncovered the answer.

When exposed to the darkspawn taint, men are driven mad and eventually die. Women, however, undergo great pain and gross mutations that cause most of them to perish. Those that survive, however, become the grotesque broodmothers. These giant, twisted behemoths birth many darkspawn at a time; a single broodmother can create thousands of darkspawn over the course of her lifetime. Each type of darkspawn is born from a different broodmother: humans produce hurlocks, dwarves produce genlocks, elves give birth to shrieks, and from Qunari are born the ogres.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon encountering the Broodmother in the Dead Trenches

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: no

So there are two things to talk about in regards to today's entry, one of which is a piece of critique that touches on a lot of the writing throughout Dragon Age: Origins. The other is some interesting pieces of lore that are thrown up by this entry, but I'm going to start with the critique. So let's just hold our collective breath and soldier through it so we can make it out the other side to the trivia, okay?

All right, so - I'm going to be blunt. Dragon Age: Origins has a massive, undeniable problem with sexism. For a game whose character creator screen tells you that "men and women are considered equal in Thedas," it contains far too many scenes of and casual references to sexual violence for that statement to be anything other than an infuriatingly hypocritical lie.

I'll leave the arguing about whether the game is a product of its time or not to somebody else, but suffice it to say that said preoccupation with sexual violence is the main reason I found it extremely difficult to get into Origins despite absolutely loving Inquisition and even DA2 in comparison.

And the whole thing is typefied in the game's treatment of the Broodmothers. Not content with simply having female victims of the darkspawn taint degrade into the form of Broodmothers naturally, the writers felt it necessary to add physical and emotional torture and the unspeakable horror of sexual violence at the hands of the darkspawn as a necessity for the transformation to even take place. Broodmothers can't even be born; they come about only as the result of indescribable torment of a living woman, a woman who is thereafter described as a grotesque and twisted behemoth rather than with any sympathy.

So? presumably some people are asking right now. So nothing bad is ever allowed to happen to female characters? The darkspawn are evil, they do evil things. It's not that deep.

The thing is, my problem isn't actually with the darkspawn in this case (though of course they are, as noted, utterly evil). It's in how the writers treat these events and portray them that my problem lies.

The Broodmothers are written about not as a terrible fate for all women to fear when the Blight approaches, but as something for men to be disgusted by. The dwarven Broodmother in the Dead Trenches remains an object of disgust and fear to innumerable players even to this day because of her ugliness, her grossness, and her departure from what it is thought that a woman "should" be. No one is ever sorry for her, or despairs at the life that was taken, or the horrors she endured. The Broodmother that the Warden slays has a name: Laryn. But the writers saw her as nothing more than a nightmare to haunt the dreams of players who were disgusted by her ugliness.

It plays into the so-old-it's-pre-biblical xenophobic myth of "they are coming to take our women and do terrible things to them." The same garbage that was apparently all the writers could think of to turn a Tabris player against the human nobility in the City Elf Origin. It doesn't matter who "they" are, when using this cheap scare tactic - all that matters is that they aren't "us," so they don't get to have "our" women. (Loghain is even portrayed as unsuccessfully trying to play off this ploy at the Landsmeet, saying that the Orlesians will come for "our" women if he is ousted as well, which just adds an extra layer of hypocrisy to the writers doing it themselves played entirely straight, not once but twice.)

The message of the Broodmothers is "you might have thought you hated the darkspawn because they murdered people, but now you should hate them because they take your women and turn them so ugly you don't consider them women anymore." And that's just... embarrassingly tasteless, Bioware.

But! Now we get to the trivia!

This is the only confirmation we have that the types of darkspawn correspond to living races, which is something I've seen much debate over in fan spaces, for reasons that I'll touch on here.

The obvious egregious detail is, of course, the genlock emissaries. Somehow, despite the Stone cutting healthy dwarves off from the Fade entirely, it seems that the Blight can at least occasionally break down that barrier and allow genlocks to use magic. It might be that the reason for this is that the Blight in their blood separates the dwarves from any hold the Stone might still have over them - or possibly only did so in the past, until the titan that is producing all the red lyrium in Thedas was Blighted. It's obviously going to remain up in the air as to whether Bioware will just ignore it or claim it was a mistake, or produce an explanation, until we get any further games. But it's still fun to theorise!

I am quite glad to be done with the writing of this entry, I will be honest. There's still a huge stigma involved in talking about sexism in videogames, and I know that a lot of fans consider Origins so excellent as to be un-criticisable, but I didn't feel comfortable glossing over what to me was an enormous issue with this game.

Next time, something more cheery! Corpses.

If you found any of this meta helpful or insightful, please consider buying me a coffee!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #6 - Bronto

"There's only two things a noble will step aside for: Paragons and angry brontos." --Dwarven saying.

This hulking beast was originally bred by the dwarven Shaperate as a beast of burden and food source, the rough equivalent to surface oxen and cows. Some versions of bronto have even been developed as dwarven mounts, valued far more for their sure-footedness and stamina than for their speed. While present within Orzammar in large numbers, some bronto still exist in packs within the Deep Roads, having returned to a wild state after the fall of the dwarven kingdoms. They require remarkably little sustenance, consuming organic material from water, fungus and even rocks (hence the "rock-licker" appellation used by many dwarves to describe bronto), and exist in primarily dormant states until provoked. An angry, charging bronto is considered to be a rather dangerous opponent.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon first encountering a Bronto in combat

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: yes, a slightly-altered codex entry in DA:I

So, a quite short entry for today! I want to begin by just quickly pointing out how I've always been puzzled by the way that brontos are called brontos, despite not really resembling the brontosaurus in any way. So I went and looked up the meaning of the word "brontosaurus," and apparently it translates from Greek as "thunder-lizard." According to this logic, the brontos in Thedas are apparently so-named for the thunderous sound of their footfalls in the underground dark of the Deep Roads, which is an image that I greatly enjoy!

It's worth noting, however, that their nose-horns and odd number of toes make them an applicable member of the Rhinoceroditae family alongside more common rhinos - so the idea of rhinoceroses as we know them existing in Thedas (particularly in some of the warmer areas like Tevinter or further north into Qunari territory) isn't out of the question!

We learn something new every day!

Those pieces of trivia aside, looking at the brontos is interesting because they fit into a kind of niche that represents many animals created for fantasy or scifi writing; the "ordinary-animal-but-x" trope. Now, it's understandable that this is common. Humans are, by nature of living in this one particular world, not very good at imagining the otherworldly. So we end up with giant blue hummingbird/butterfly creatures from James Cameron's Avatar that are still simply referred to as "horses" because that's the role that they were created to fill, and the varren from Mass Effect who are treated just like dogs, but cool, alien dogs.

Bioware has a real tendency to do this with animals built to fill the role of horses and other large quadrupeds (they do name oxen and cattle specifically in the codex entry). Both the halla and the bronto are essentially "horses-but-elvish" and "oxen-but-dwarvish" creations designed purely to give cultural flavour to something that is considered an integral part of life in fantasy worlds (however inaccurate that may or may not be).

The codex's insistence that brontos really don't need to eat much (which I'm sure is causing raised eyebrows in anybody who has ever owned any animal larger than a medium-sized dog) seems to indicate that the writers had trouble conceiving of any real-world animal that could survive in the Deep Roads given the limited sustenance down there, and thus a "fantasy version" of a real life animal was the best solution. As I have mentioned before, a great many cultures in the real world didn't actually need the services of mounts in the way that traditional fantasy often assumes they did, so Bioware might perhaps have been better served leaving the dwarves without beasts of burden; but it is done now, and here we are, having to accept the fact that animals weighing many tonnes can survive off licking rocks.

Yes this is where my suspension of disbelief draws the line, you should know by now that I have strange nitpicks!

The "ordinary-animal-but-x" trope can be done well, as long as you put sufficient thought into it. Instances like the varren and adhi from the Mass Effect series are easy enough to gloss over, not offensive or making any glaring errors, but very few examples reach the level of the Daemons from the His Dark Materials series (by Phillip Pullman), which retains the familiarity of everyday animals with enough magic to capture the imagination and leave readers wondering what their own Daemons would be. The brontos tend towards the more unmemorable end of the scale, which may be why there were no options for bronto mounts in Dragon Age Inquisition despite their models being in the game already - unlike the dracolisk mounts.

So today I'm mostly here to say - let's learn from the humble bronto. Let's not write ourselves into a position where we have gigantic creatures surviving off miniscule amounts of fungus. You can be truly imaginative with your fantasy and scifi creatures without straying too far from the safety of established forms and patterns, as long as you're careful not to stretch the bounds of credibility. (Yes, again, in the context of the writings, I am saying that rhinoceroses surviving off licking rocks stretches credibility more than magical Daemons that represent the human soul! It's all relative~)

If you found any of this meta helpful or insightful, please consider buying me a coffee!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #5 - Bear

"No beast is more beloved by Dirthamen than the bear. When the world was new, Dirthamen gave one secret to each creature to keep. The foxes traded their secrets to Andruil for wings. The hares shouted theirs to the treetops. The birds sold theirs for gold and silver. Only the bears kept Dirthamen's gift, deep within their dens, they slept the months away in the company of their secrets and nothing else.

When Dirthamen discovered what had been done with his gifts, he snatched the wings from the foxes, silenced the voices of the hares, and turned the birds into paupers. But the bears he honored for their steadfastness."

--Transcribed from a Dalish tale, 9:8 Dragon

Normally, it is almost unheard of for bears to attack travellers. They are, in fact, so shy and so inactive during the day that most people never encounter a bear at all. However, should a bear be provoked, they are remarkably dangerous. The normally placid-seeming creatures become enraged, and can strike massive blows with their paws, capable of knocking a man off his feet.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon first encountering an Bear in combat

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: no, the Bear codex in DA:I is entirely different

So, today we get our first taste of Dalish culture in the codices! If you don't already know this about me, I absolutely love the Dalish elves, and I tend to play elves whenever I can in most games (though I highly disapprove of their metre-long ears in World of Warcraft, but that's a whole other conversation). Being able to play a Dalish elf Inquisitor was a huge plus for me, and I immediately wanted to play a Dalish warden in DA:O, only to be very disappointed that they didn't have the Irish accents from the later games.

One of the things that I love greatly about the Dalish is their rich polytheistic religion and their oral storytelling history. So having a codex entry like this that recounts one of the stories of the Dalish in a style similar to many found in real-world polytheistic religions is really very exciting and enriching for me.

A lot of mythological tales (whether directly tied to religions or simply as a part of oral traditional history) deal with questions about the animal kingdom that the people telling those stories didn't know an answer to, because they lacked the science. Indigenous Australian cultures near where I live have a famous story (known as Tiddalik the Frog) that explains the behaviour of the Water-holding Frog which burrows underground during droughts and emerge only during rains. The ancient Greeks had all manner of myths to explain natural phenomenon from thunder, to the change of seasons from winter to spring, to the existence of the mint plant. Ancient Norse mythology dealt heavily with explanations for volcanoes.

Whether there are any stories in the real world that specifically deal with the hibernation habits of bears is unknown to me, but it's definitely a topic that makes sense for this exact kind of cultural tradition.

The real beauty of utilising this kind of storytelling, from a narrative and worldbuilding perspective, is that it serves an incredibly sharp contrast with the Andrastian religion and its undeniable parallels to real-world Christianity. In stories with multiple religions it can often be tough to make them feel distinct, so the deliberate choice to juxtapose these two very different approaches to religious belief does a great job of helping a new player instantly understand the difference between them.

It's also very interesting to note the change in attitude towards bears (and, I think, Ferelden in general) from the writers over the course of the series. While Origins dealt a lot with the nobility of Ferelden and only in the Brecilian Forest with the Dalish did we see the truly wild corners of Ferelden, once they introduced playing in Orlais a lot of "ordinary" Ferelden culture suddenly became much wilder and much more woodsy. To this end, the codex entry on bears in Inquisition talks about them from a human perspective, indicative of the sudden shift in belief that humans in Ferelden might rarely see such creatures.

The last paragraph, especially "Normally, it is unheard of for bears to attack travellers," is most particularly ironic to anybody who has spent any amount of time in the Hinterlands.

On the other hand, given my love for the Dalish, I am not one to complain about getting to hear some of their cultural lore regarding bears, or indeed any of their tales at all! If I had my way, every codex entry would deal with Dalish culture - or at least all of them that I could get away with! Tomorrow we continue with our animal theme, though next time it's an animal commonly found among the dwarves, rather than the Dalish.

If you found any of this meta helpful or insightful, please consider buying me a coffee!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #4 - Ash Wraith

Legend has it that when Andraste's Ashes were taken into hiding, some of her closest disciples gave themselves to the fire, that their restless souls might remain to guard her final resting place forever.

Whether they are the spirits of Andraste's disciples or merely Fade spirits, the temple that houses the Sacred Urn is filled with wraiths. Created from a burnt corpse, an ash wraith is a powerful and amorphous opponent able to lash and smother while being immune to most physical attacks. Even if successfully dispersed, it can reform at a later time. Magic is the only real way to fight such a creature, wind and ice attacks being the most useful.

They are capable of creating small whirlwinds that are devastating to anyone unfortunate enough to get close, and their touch leaves a person drained.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon first encountering an Ash Wraith in combat

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: no

So, today's entry is, perhaps blessedly, quite a simple one. There isn't a lot to analyse in terms of writing or narrative device because the ash wraiths share only a very tangential relationship to the main plot, and only occur in one specific area of the base game, the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

One at least somewhat noteworthy aspect in regards to the writing is that, despite not naming an author for this codex, the player who pays attention will know almost certainly that the writer must have been Brother Genitivi, as no other scholar has even confirmed the existence of the Temple since the time when it was founded. His statements about how magic is most useful in slaying the ash wraiths conjures up amusing mental images of him watching the player character struggle while fighting them, and making diligent notes. Presumably he and Mordin Solus would get along swimmingly!

Much more interesting are the lore implications that this codex, and indeed the existence of ash wraiths, has. The Andrastian faith has long held the belief that cremating the dead was necessary in order to protect their bodies from being possessed by spirits - but according to the ash wraiths, even this is not an actual protection from possession. However much of a spark of life could be said to remain in the ashes from a cremated body, it is enough for a spirit that seeks a home to latch onto and animate.

While Brother Genitivi mentions that in myth, ash wraiths were considered to specifically be the spirits of the disciples of Andraste (possibly a tale told by the Chantry as an explanation as to how their preferred method of honouring the dead could fail to protect them from possession), he also posits that they could simply be ordinary Fade spirits, and this is likely the case given that ash wraiths also appear in the basement in Honnleath (in the Stone Prisoner DLC).

With this in mind, it becomes quite clear that the only burial practice in southern Thedas with a guarantee of keeping the deceased's body from being possessed by hostile spirits is that of the Nevarran Mortalitasi, who essentially just beat form-seeking spirits to the punch by summoning others to posses the body preemptively.

Given the devout, practically slavish adherence to doctrine of most of the Chantry's higher echelons, and its predisposition towards violent schisms as with Tevinter and the Black Divine, it seems possible that the acceptance of the Mortalitasi customs that run so contrary to the rest of the southern Chantry's teachings may be helped along by the fact that it is known that cremating bodies isn't actually a foolproof protection. It is not in the Chantry's nature to be flexible under ordinary circumstances, so there must be some mitigating reason behind their acceptance of the Mortalitasi, and this very well may be it.

At any rate, this fairly simple entry in Explore the Lore is one of my favourites just because I remain extremely impressed with my screenshot of the ash wraith used in the image banner XD that is some art there, my friends.

If you found any of this meta helpful or insightful, please consider buying me a coffee!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #3 - Archdemon

”In Darkness eternal they searched, For those who had goaded them on, Until at last they found their prize, Their god, their betrayer: The sleeping dragon Dumat. Their taint Twisted even the false-god, and the whisperer Awoke at last, in pain and horror, and led Them to wreak havoc upon all the nations of the world: The first Blight."

--Threnodies 8:7

The false dragon-gods of the Tevinter Imperium lie buried deep within the earth, where they have been imprisoned since the Maker cast them down.

No one knows what it is that drives the darkspawn in their relentless search for the sleeping Old Gods. Perhaps it is instinct, as moths will fly into torch flames. Perhaps there is some remnant of desire for vengeance upon the ones who goaded the Magisters to assault heaven. Whatever the reason, when darkspawn find one of these ancient dragons, it is immediately afflicted by the taint. It awakens twisted and corrupted, and leads the darkspawn in a full-scale invasion of the land: a Blight.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon arriving at Ostagar

Updates: 1) upon reaching the Dead Trenches in the Deep Roads, and 2) after speaking to Riordan in Redcliffe Castle

Update 1: Urthemiel was once the Tevinter God of beauty. In ancient times, he was worshipped by musicians, artists and poets. The Feast of Urthemiel was the grandest celebration of the year, an event that lasted a full twelve days. Plays and entire symphonies were written in his honor. Now, he is a maddened husk of his former self, filled with nothing but a desire to destroy all life.

Update 2: When the first Blight began, many brave men and women threw themselves at Dumat, the first archdemon, trying to strike him down. But no matter the numbers, no matter their strength, he would always return. This was proof, some said, of his divine power.

But the Grey Wardens soon learned otherwise. Their tainted blood bound them to the Archdemon, and they could hear it, feel it, as it died and was born anew, its spirit drawn to possess the nearest tainted creature. The darkspawn were mindless, soulless, empty shells of flesh that could be bent and remade in the dragon's image. But a man... a man's soul was not so malleable. When a Warden's hand struck a fatal blow against Dumat, the Old God's spirit was drawn not to a darkspawn but to the man who had slain him. In that moment, the souls of both the Warden and the Archdemon were utterly destroyed. And the dragon rose no more. The Blight was over.

Appearance in later games: no

I told you we'd moved away from mages vs. templars, didn't I? Quite a strange situation to have the final boss of the game be the third-ever codex entry, but, once again, alphabetical order will do you that way sometimes!

This is one of the numerous codex entries that either consists of, or at least is prefaced by, a quote from the Chant of Light. We've discussed using in-universe authored text before, but there's definitely an extra layer added to the worldbuilding and immersion that comes from a text like the Chant of Light - something that's designed wholly to be a kind of parallel-universe mirror of our own Abrahamic holy texts. The numbering system that the Chant utilises, with book and chapter and verse, is in the real world quite unique to spiritual texts, and thus it immediately conveys to the audience that same sense of weight that a quote from the Bible or the Torah or Quran would.

For this reason I think it's no coincidence that the game opens on a quote from the Chant, also discussing the Blight. Fantasy author David Eddings (of The Belgariad and Sparhawk fame) once wrote about opening his stories with a prologue that showcased in-universe mythology in order to fully hook the reader in to the world that he had built, and this remains a fairly common narrative tool in fantasy - just look at the Lord of the Rings movies, for example.

Coupling this sense of history and mythology with a literary device designed to invoke the weight and solemnity of our extremely recognisable religious texts gives these entries a depth that they wouldn't have if they were first-hand accounts like the previous two codices we've examined. It's exactly the sort of writing and framing device that you would bring out for the final boss of your game, and it functions to perfection.

Along with the excerpt from the Threnodies, we see yet more character bias, with the bitter southern Andrastian condemnation of the Tevinter Imperium's early religions and practices, calling them "false gods" even though at the time, the Maker had not yet made himself known to anyone, so they weren't really "false" at all. It also uses highly descriptive language to further attempt to associate everything to do with the Magisters and the old gods with taint and corruption and evil.

This codex entry is also notable in that it is the first we have looked at that gains significant updates as the game goes on. With the Archdemon being so closely tied to the story of Origins, updating the codex with extra information as the player progresses through the narrative is an excellent way to signify that the character is gaining knowledge and expertise as they go about their quest without forcing players, who might be unwilling, to listen to it in expository dialogue.

The first update is notable mainly in its tonal shift from the main passage. While the original entry is heavily condemning and has no sympathies for the Archdemon or the Tevene culture that revered him, the first update takes an almost sorrowful tone, practically lamenting the fall of Urthemiel to the Blight, and using personal pronouns to describe him rather than the distancing tactic of "the false god."

The second update gives less new information, more or less repeating much of what Riordan tells the Warden during the conversation that causes the codex entry to be updated. It does go into more detail, however, about the devastating events of the First Blight, and how the Wardens discovered the method necessary to kill the Archdemon in the first place.

For a moment however, I want to talk about some of the lore implications that are stirred up to the surface by that second update. I can't be the first to have made this connection, but there's a definite parallel between the transfer of the Archdemon's soul (and later, Corypheus) between bodies containing the Blight, and Flemeth (who we now know as Mythal) transferring her soul between her body and the body of her daughters. Given that parallel, there's an even more undeniable one between these two events and the Dark Ritual that transfers Urthemiel's soul into Morrigan's baby.

It's the fact that Flemeth can only transfer her soul into a daughter - someone who shares her own blood - that is the most interesting factor here. If some amount of relation is necessary, it might imply that Urthemiel and Flemeth are related as well. There has been a lot of speculation about the relationship between the old gods and the evanuris, and given Flemeth's penchant for shapeshifting into a dragon, it might not be entirely beyond the realm of reason to infer a familial connection of some kind between her and the dragon-gods of Tevinter - though what kind of relationship remains murky, of course.

Unfortunately, we will naturally just have to wait to get any answers. But until then, we can continue to admire Urthemiel, in all his bright purple majesty!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #2 - Arcane Horror

"Upon ascending to the second floor of the tower, we were greeted by a gruesome sight: a ragged collection of bones wearing the robes of one of the senior enchanters. I had known her for years, watched her raise countless apprentices, and now she was a mere puppet for some demon."

--Transcribed from a tale told by a templar in Antiva City, 7:13 Storm

Demons, of course, have no form in our world. When they enter, either where the Veil is particularly thin or through blood magic summoning, they must take possession of a body.

When a pride demon takes control of the corpse of a mage, an arcane horror is born. Although they appear to be little more than bones, these are fierce creatures, possessing not only all the spellcasting abilities of a living mage, but also the capacity to heal and even command other animated corpses.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon first encountering an Arcane Horror in combat

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: yes, identically in DA2 and in abbreviated form in DA:I

So, probably fortunately, there's a lot less to unpack in today's edition of Explore the Lore. Not every edition is going to be an in-depth look at author intent and the different layers of emotion that the writers are trying to convey - and, honestly, thank goodness, because that would get exhausting!

When looking at this entry about the arcane horror, we do see to a certain extent the same kind of disconnect between the clinical commentary on the excerpted writing and the much more emotional transcription that we talked about with abominations, but there's less active condemnation of the mage victim involved. The deliberate wording that makes sure the reader is aware that a demon is controlling a mage's corpse, the quite explicit clarification that the mage was not fault, is almost jarring simply in its presence, compared to other Chantry writings about magic.

A reader might then ask themselves, why, if not to demonise the victim, is the tone of the commentary so cold and commanding? The answer, from a real-world perspective, is that it transforms the gruesome tale into a bite-sized piece of easily-digestible information, such as might invoke a classroom or textbook setting.

This entry about the arcane horror could have been a more narrative-based story about apostates dying and their corpses being possessed by demons to wreak havoc on townspeople. It could have been a story about Grey Warden mages binding pride demons to their fallen companions to continue fighting during a Blight. But instead we were given this: what looks like a page from a textbook, one that might be given out to templars to read during their training.

Bioware has always treated the mages and templars as two diametrically-opposed sides of the same coin, often quite literally in regards to the choices made available to player, and this makes them inextricably intertwined from a lore perspective. Choosing to showcase this codex entry from the perspective of the templar watchers, rather than a fellow mage, gives an opportunity to further build a picture of the environment inside the Circles.

A Chantry scholar is writing about the death and possession of a mage as though it's merely a sad accident that the templars must clean up, with no thought for the mage themselves. The emotive transcription tells the young templar-in-training that some of the things they may be asked to kill will be people they have known well, for years, and the calm, detached commentary serves to normalise this in its reader's mind, reminding the templar that demons must be slain wherever they appear and for whatever reason.

Whether this sort of reading is provided to the templars before they read about abominations or the process of the Harrowing is unknown, but grooming somebody to understand the concept of killing someone they know well, through this lens as a valiant action that allows the mage's body to be laid to rest, could certainly be used by the Chantry as a first step on the path towards far worse actions.

In addition, the words of both a mage Trevelyan and Cullen about the mages and templars barely interacting with each other are thrown into a slightly different light: the templars have been trained to understand that someday they may have to slay the mages they interact with, so they attempt deliberately to limit their interactions, for the sake of the steadiness of their future blades. And yet in doing so, even for what might be perceived as the right reasons, if only in the hopes of stopping an arcane horror, the distance they impose is exactly what leads to the maltreatment of their charges, as they lack a connection strong enough to overcome the Chantry conditioning.

It's a great example of using in-universe authored text to give a very clear picture of both the subject being described, and the environment in which it exists to need description, at the same time. Many authors like to use in-universe books, poems and other texts to convey worldbuilding information (Tolkien is a fairly obvious, but prime, example), and this codex entry shows how effective it can be!

Next entry we move away from the unending saga of mage vs. templar, hooray! We'll be back, of course, but it's always nice to have a break!

If you found any of this meta insightful or helpful, please consider buying me a coffee!

[explore-the-lore]

Explore the Lore #1 - Abomination

"We arrived in the dead of night. We had been tracking the maleficar for days, and finally had him cornered... or so we thought.

As we approached, a home on the edge of the town exploded, sending splinters of wood and fist-sized chunks of rocks into our ranks. We had but moments to regroup before fire rained from the sky, the sounds of destruction wrapped in a hideous laughter from the center of the village.

There, perched atop the spire of the village chantry, stood the mage. But he was human no longer.

We shouted prayers to the Maker and deflected what magic we could, but as we fought, the creature fought harder. I saw my comrades fall, burned by the flaming sky or crushed by debris. The monstrous creature, looking as if a demon were wearing a man like a twisted suit of skin, spotted me and grinned. We had forced it to this, I realized; the mage had made this pact, given himself over to the demon to survive our assault."

—Transcribed from a tale told by a former templar in Cumberland, 8:84 Blessed.

It is known that mages are able to walk the Fade while completely aware of their surroundings, unlike most others who may only enter the realm as dreamers and leave it scarcely aware of their experience. Demons are drawn to mages, though whether it is because of this awareness or simply by virtue of their magical power in our world is unknown.

Regardless of the reason, a demon always attempts to possess a mage when it encounters one—by force or by making some kind of deal depending on the strength of the mage. Should the demon get the upper hand, the result is an unholy union known as an abomination. Abominations have been responsible for some of the worst cataclysms in history, and the notion that some mage in a remote tower could turn into such a creature unbeknownst to any was the driving force behind the creation of the Circle of Magi.

Thankfully, abominations are rare. The Circle has methods for weeding out those who are too at risk for demonic possession, and scant few mages would give up their free will to submit to such a bond with a demon. But once an abomination is created, it will do its best to create more. Considering that entire squads of templars have been known to fall at the hands of a single abomination, it is not surprising that the Chantry takes the business of the Circle of Magi very seriously indeed.

Category: Creatures

Acquisition: upon first encountering an Abomination in combat

Updates: none

Appearance in later games: yes, identical codex entry in DA2

Quite a heavy entry for our first ever Explore the Lore feature, but that's alphabetical organisation for you! You can lay your fears to rest, however; I'm not actually intending to wade all the way into the deeply complex and layered mage-templar debate in a codex entry describing a type of enemy. We'll leave that for... some other time. Perhaps.

But no, while Explore the Lore will undoubtedly talk about in-universe ramifications in some later entries, it's also important to consider a critical reading of the text that explores the author's intent with what is presented. In this case, as with many of the codex entries in the Creatures category, they're presenting to us a monster, but they don't necessarily have to present it in a monstrous way.

Taken in an in-universe context, the codices can be awkward to canonise. After all, the transcription here, and the commentary on it, didn't simply appear in the mind of the Warden PC the instant they saw an abomination for the first time. Instead, they act as complementary layers of worldbuilding designed to situate the player in what could be regarded as common knowledge from the setting, adding layers of immersion through the increased understanding of the audience.

And so here we have this picture of an abomination painted for us - a mage, hounded for days, who was eventually driven to give up their personhood out of fear of capture and death, a creature so piteous that the templar who had been tracking it later left the Order due to their experiences with it. And yet, at the same time, it is powerful, dangerous - even deadly. The surrender of self has been rewarded with the strength to mete out retribution for the things that drove them to the point of no return in the first place.

On the surface, it reads like an exploration of a dilemma that occurs many times throughout the mythology of many cultures. The idea of sacrificing humanity for power, for any number of different reasons, is so old as to be biblical, but here the twist is that the idea led to punishment which caused the sin, and not the other way around.

White western culture, particularly in the North Americas, tend to fixate on the Salem Witch Trials as an epitome of false persecution based on the mere idea of this deal made for dark power, and this codex entry plays into that cultural association. An abomination, therefore, is the metaphorical witch who burnt Salem to the ground when the townspeople tried to have her killed, despite never having harmed anyone prior.

The deliberate description of the templar's realisation that it was their actions that led to the mage's fate leaves no room for argument about the merciless pre-emptive punishments that the Chantry endorses and the effect they have on people born with magic. Who knows whether this particular mage had ever harmed innocents or used their powers for evil - that knowledge we are not given - but therein lies the rub. Now nobody will ever know, entirely because of the Chantry's stance on what it deems right vs. wrong.

But in truth it's the commentary following the transcription that throws the Chantry and its attitudes into sharpest relief. An element of moral ambiguity is retained by the templar author, given how deeply they were emotionally affected by the experience, but the cold, clinical commentary that follows attempts to grimly erase any sympathy that the mage who became an abomination might have garnered, and demonise any mages who may find themselves in similar positions.

It's a great example of writing exposing bias in characters - or, in this case, since we have no identity for the commenter, in the systematic structures that surround characters. The raw emotion of the templar's firsthand account is juxtaposed against a chilly, detached declaration that no mage is safe from demons, and therefore no non-mage is safe from mages without the existence of the Circles.

The codex, in essence, shows us the tragedy of the punishment causing the sin, and then immediately lays out after it an example of the exact attitude that causes both, aloof to the negative consequences of said attitude and interested only in tightening their grip ever further upon something they themselves are twisting to death.

As writers, we often have to remind ourselves to actively avoid writing with our own biases, but including those of our characters can be an extremely effective tool for both worldbuilding and helping the audience understand the experiences of those living in the worlds we are attempting to create. Additionally, as a reader/gamer/any kind of audience for any kind of text, being able to distinguish between character bias and author bias can lead to a much more thorough understanding of the texts you're examining, in any genre.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about starting out on such a grim note, but overall I feel that this was a very profound place to start! This feature will continue to run once or twice a week until I get done with everything or the sun dies, probably.

If you found any of this meta helpful or insightful, please consider buying me a coffee!