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ofcrowsanddragons · 1 day ago

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Okay this was going to be in the tags of a reblog, but then I hit the tumblr tag limit (...whoops? I talk too much...) AND realized the scope of what I was talking about was slightly different than what the OP was talking about. So now you get this massive post instead! (And it did become massive. I researched on the wiki and YouTube and everything. Sorry!)

TL;DR: People keep bringing up the existence of the Avvar in relation to Spite and Lucanis being unable to separate, mostly in a negative way or to critique the writing choices, and I don't think that's actually a fair criticism if we look at Veilguard's characters' background specifically rather than what we as players might bring to the table.

So if you didn't know because you didn't have the DLC or didn't play Inquisition, or are new to the series, you may not know that in the Inquistion DLC "Jaws of Hakkon", we are introduced to a specific band of Avvar living in the Frostback Basin.

For the sake of brevity, I'm linking to the wiki if you need a refresher on who the Avvar are, but one really intriguing thing we found out was that per the wiki:

The augurs [Avvar mages] allow their apprentices to be possessed by a summoned Spirit and the spirit teaches the mage how to control their magic with patience and kindness. When the teaching is done, the mage must then release the spirit through a ritual that involves burning an offering and casting a taxing spell that usually requires a vial of lyrium to replenish one's strength. Weak mages unable to control their magic remain possessed and the Avvars' spirit gods watch them both so neither soul becomes corrupted. If the abomination becomes corrupted or the mage stands at risk of harming the hold, then one day the abomination is killed in their sleep

Because we learned this in Inquistion, I saw a lot of people take umbrage to the game's insistence that Lucanis and Spite couldn't be separated. After all, we know the Avvar have some kind of ritual!

... but is that a fair thing for the characters to know?

I am saving Harding for last, just FYI; if your particular concern was with Harding having been present for the DLC, that's close to the end of the post.

Outside of Harding, few of our companions in this game are from the south except possibly Bellara and maybe Rook, depending on your head canons. All the rest of them are from the North. None of them have any reason to have directly encountered the Avvar.

Now in relation to Lucanis's abomination problem, Taash and Rivain are their own thing; idk if there was help in Rivain or if Taash knew enough to help Lucanis find it if there was, or if Rowan might have been a lead... had Rivain even really gotten much time or development at all. They are a major caveat, but not one specific to the Avvar problem, so I won't spend much time on that.

For the focus of this post: Taash was raised by a mother who had been brought up in the beliefs of the Qun, and they grew up in Rivain. Rivain is incredibly far north from Fereldan and the Frostback Basin; Taash is not a mage themselves. They have no reason to know about the Avvar beyond the odd sailor's tale.

But Emmrich, Neve, and Lucanis are all northern Humans and some flavor of culturally Andrastian. The Avvar live as far south as it is possible to go in Thedas and are looked down upon by more powerful societies and governments. There's no particular reason word of their mages' practices and capabilities would reach Nevarra or Tevinter or Antiva.

The Avvar aren't super open to outsiders outside of the specific circumstances set up by Inquisition (with good reason) and you can't tell me that interacting more freely with societies lead by the Orlesian Chantry would have gone well in the past.

Antiva probably most closely relates to the southern Chantry we know. None of the Chantry clerics we've ever met would be spreading the knowledge that "hey, yeah, these people outside our faith claim they can undo possession", if they even believe it. And that's assuming that before Inquisition the Avvar ever trusted anyone enough to let that knowledge spread, given the Chantry's history of Templars seizing non-Andrastians and of exalted Marches.

(Also, how much that word was allowed to spread by your Inquisitor and their advisors following the Jaws of Hakkon DLC, if they thought it wise to spread to the rank and file at all. )

It also largely wouldn't be relevant to Lucanis or anyone in his social circles if anyone in Antiva did know. Lucanis's job is mostly to hunt blood mages who are in positions of power and obstacles enough for someone to pay an exorbitant fee for their assassination. It's doubtful anyone is going to spend the gold to hire the heir to the First Talon, or a Crow in general, to assassinate an Avvar leader.

Tevinter, on the other hand, has a whole complex with blood magic. So I imagine their mages are either hiding blood magic (and thus not likely to discover whatever secret it is the Avvar have found given the risks of corruption they are taking themselves.) Or else they are trying to set themselves apart from blood mages and extra worried by demons as a result. They are also some kind of Andrastian, and though the full extent of the differences isn't perfectly delineated, I wouldn't be surprised if they have some of the same cultural hang ups.

Emmrich is a specialist in spirits, yes, but given that Nevarra's focus is on necromancy in particular, and how they view spirits as possibly embodying aspects of their mourned and beloved dead, it makes sense they wouldn't spend time developing an expertise around living willing possessions.

And again, Nevarra is nominally adherent to the southern Chantry. We don't know how those practices differ in reality, but Nevarra and Orlais always have a "clash of expansionist powers" thing going on in the background, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's still a tricky line even between the necromancy and living possession, at least if the Mortalitasi don't want to give an excuse to spark an Exalted March.

And yes, the Chantry is weakened in DA:I; that's part of why the information can escape at all, according to the war table operation discussed later on in Harding's section. But it doesn't stay weakened (look at the Exalted Council), and I don't think it's reasonable to believe that the Inquisition's discovery would completely proliferate the North, if at all. before the conservatives in the Chantry gained enough force to quash it again. And that's if your Inquisitor didn't decide to keep the facts quiet, either for religious reasons or to avoid drawing outside ire down on the Avvar.

As for Davrin and Bellara? Davrin doesn't want shit to do with the Fade anyway. He tells Emmrich he doesn't know if the Fade is real; he is not going to be the source of any help here. We don't have a firm place of origin for Davrin's clan, but if Uncle Eldrin is still living in Arlathan, and he was a major influence on Davrin as a child, I can't imagine it was so far south as Fereldan.

Bellara, on the other hand, might have grown up in Orlais. She says something about her mother selling furniture there, but I'm not sure if that means they typically migrated in Orlais or if they came later on, maybe after Inquisition. And of course, by Veilguard, she's relocated to Arlathan forest, where the Dalish do have some small permanent settlements, which is about as far north from the Frostbacks as you can get

I know she hasn't been to Fereldan, as she has the lines "There are a few Dalish clans in Ferelden, aren't there Nuvenis, I think. Oh, and maybe Sabrae.". The Avvar are located in the Frostbacks, part of Fereldan's border, and those we encounter in Inquisition are specifically in the Frostback Basin, so far south they're almost off the map. So it doesn't seem likely she'd have encountered them directly.

(I also imagine that while the Dalish and the Avvar don't necessarily have reason to be hostile to one another, it likely wouldn't be overly safe for them to be seen as "banding together". )

The Dalish have their own culture and their own pressures specifically being targeted not only for being non-Andrastian but also non human by Templars of the Orlesian Chantry, and a large focus of their magic is preserving or rediscovering the lost magic of the ancient elves.

Why would the ancient elves need in depth knowledge of possession when they began as spirits who took their mortal forms with Lyrium not the normal possess a human process we see elsewhere in the series? (What overlap there was in those early days only Solas knows but in general)?

So I really do understand why it's frustrating as a player to know, say during the conversation between Lucanis, Neve, and Bellara about options for dealing with Spite, that the Avvar exist and have this process. Or when Lucanis asks Emmrich, then has his "man about to fall off the edge" laugh when Emmrich tells him that so far as he knows, Lucanis and Spite are stuck.

But just because it makes sense for the players to know something, doesn't mean it makes sense for the characters to know it, when considering their own societal and cultural backgrounds and lived experiences.

Of course the major hang up becomes Harding, who was the Inquisition scout that did reconnaissance before the Inquisitor's arrival in the Jaws of Hakon DLC. She, of course, is from Fereldan, and was there to potentially learn the same information as the Inquisitor.

In fact, I wondered during some of my early playthroughs if that was why we had Bellara and Neve both present in Lucanis's post recruitment scene in the kitchen and not Harding.

But if we look at the facts?

Harding was initially present Base Camp with the Orlesian professor, who wasn't interested in researching the Avvar at all. She was present when the Inquisitor and the Professor were looking into the shrine Ameridan, and then in the Hold itself during the Inquisitor's war council with Svarah Sunhair about the fortress raid. She does question some about the Hakkonite's Dragon being possessed by an Avvar God, but the specific relevant facts about mage possession aren't brought up in her presence.

The spirits leading up to the fight with Hakkon himself wouldn't likely have sounded different than other demon possessions, arcane horrors, etc, in the recounting of the fight. The usualness or unusualness of a spirit possessing an entire Dragon still has nothing to do with Lucanis and Spite's dilemma.

When asked what she thinks about the Avvar, Harding primarily discusses tales she had been told in her home village, their archers, and the possibility of riding on their shoulders. Mages don't enter the discussion, and even the Inqusitor only learns these facts if they encounter a specific NPC in the wilderness.

Now, you can recruit that mage as an agent for Josephine, but that's 100% player dependent. It won't happen in everyone's world state. So, as far as I have been able to gather, it's entirely possible Harding doesn't know about the Avvar method, depending on what your Inquisitor would have told her.

Okay, you insist, but my Inquisitor would have told everyone they could. To prove a point or out of astonishment or whatever. Or I definitely recruited that NPC, so the word should have gotten out, since Josephine says she was of interest to scholars. So why isn't Harding offering it as a lead?

Well, ignoring that DATV doesn't really implement something that isn't true for all players:

Harding herself is not a mage. Even if the Avvar or the Inquisitor were very, very open with her about the Avvar mages' possession during training, she is not going to be able to explain the actual methodology.

With the Inquisition either disbanded or in the hands of the Orlesian Chantry, it's quite likely that Harding no longer has any direct contacts among the Avvar. At best, she might reach out to the Inquisitor or Charter, hoping that their networks still stretch that far... and then she would have to wait for an uncertain reply.

The south eventually falls to megablight. The Avvar do join the Inquisitor's alliance, but looking for solutions for one specific man may not have been in the scope of their general focus, especially once they were driven to retreat to Skyhold and trying not to starve.

The specific information given to the Inquisitor states that the Avvar are only able to separate the spirit and the mage when the mage has sufficiently strong magic. Otherwise the two have no choice but to remain united, and are specifically watched for signs they are becoming corrupted and must be executed for the good of the Hold.

Lucanis isn't a mage. Whatever questions the Order of Fiery Promise, the Seekers, or Zara's experiments might raise about what's known about possession, it's entirely possible that the Avvar are also left scratching their heads.

If the Avvar only allow their mages to be possessed, and if the possessed person's strength in magic being insufficient means the ritual can't move forward, then they likely don't know what to do for Lucanis and Spite... and likely have no time to research how to help a one man anomaly when Fereldan falls to the Blight shortly after.

I will concede that this could have been made neater, in the end, by having a one off banter with Harding saying something about sending a letter to the Inquisitor or Charter to potentially reach out to the Avvar, but the conditions making a reply uncertain. Or even saying she got a reply that the Avvar said the ritual wouldn't work, but wouldn't disclose specifics in person and couldn't travel north with the state Fereldan is in.

Keep in mind, I still also don't personally think it's a major enough issue to fixate on when we know there were a lot of hard choices to be made in development due to EA.

But on the whole, the existence of this Avvar lore isn't the major "gotcha" refuting Spite and Lucanis's story the way I have seen some people insist it to be.

And let me be clear, I think that a lot of the criticisms of "Spite and Lucanis CAN be separate though!" miss Spite's role as a metaphor and Lucanis's general character arc of being forced to confront feelings or aspects of himself that he has been repressing out of fear.

But the argument that DATV lore is contradicting Inquisition lore, or that it's stupid for the gathered companions to not know a spirit and its host can be separated due to the Avvar existing, just doesn't hold water.

#adding that the possessed hair also involved red lyrium and one of zara renata's circle of venatori #so that was more fuckery #because the da universe LOVES fuckery and exceptions to rules #the wigmaker job #tevinter nights #I'll always bring back my perpetual “is spite a demon” thing but that's just for fun #crow thoughts #veilguard meta

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ofcrowsanddragons · 1 day ago

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Where the Avaar had kind of a nice, neat set of circumstances during which a young mage and a spirit would be bonded, and then they would mutually separate, Emmrich's dialogue implied to me (someone who has never stopped thinking about the Jaws of Hakkon DLC) that Spite and Lucanis were rather uniquely entwined.

You know what also wasn't a plot hole? The fact that Zara based her ritual on the Seekers (according to Lucanis), while the Seekers were also shown in Inquisition to base their own ritual around a candidate becoming possessed and then becoming un-possessed.

Zara knotted her subjects up together without a care for the wellbeing of either party, while the Avvar and the Seekers both tried to make it so that the beings involved could be separated after, because that was the point of those established rituals. What happened to Lucanis and Spite (and the other experiments/production line items) was supposed to be uniquely horrible.

For the sake of brevity, I'm linking to the wiki if you need a refresher on who the Avvar are, but one really intriguing thing we found out was that per the wiki:

Because we learned this in Inquistion, I saw a lot of people take umbrage to the game's insistence that Lucanis and Spite couldn't be separated. After all, we know the Avvar have some kind of ritual!

... but is that a fair thing for the characters to know?

I am saving Harding for last, just FYI; if your particular concern was with Harding having been present for the DLC, that's close to the end of the post.

(Also, how much that word was allowed to spread by your Inquisitor and their advisors following the Jaws of Hakkon DLC, if they thought it wise to spread to the rank and file at all. )

(I also imagine that while the Dalish and the Avvar don't necessarily have reason to be hostile to one another, it likely wouldn't be overly safe for them to be seen as "banding together". )

In fact, I wondered during some of my early playthroughs if that was why we had Bellara and Neve both present in Lucanis's post recruitment scene in the kitchen and not Harding.

But if we look at the facts?

Well, ignoring that DATV doesn't really implement something that isn't true for all players:

Keep in mind, I still also don't personally think it's a major enough issue to fixate on when we know there were a lot of hard choices to be made in development due to EA.

But on the whole, the existence of this Avvar lore isn't the major "gotcha" refuting Spite and Lucanis's story the way I have seen some people insist it to be.

#avvar #jaws of hakkon #dragon age inquisition #salt tag #veilguard meta #seekers of truth #lucanis dellamorte #spite dragon age #zara renata

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