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crypticcanidae · 2 months ago

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okay so i saw a post recently that introduced me to. several kinda badly written vg codex entries. but specifically the entries 'halla's resolve' and 'contract: the next march'. i didn't find either of those when i played the game, so when i read them i kinda just. yknow. fucking what???

i have Some Thoughts about them. and some of the implications they have for. thedas' worldbuilding? idk. i've done my best to make this readable

halla's resolve mentions 'mutual respect that began when Antiva stood strong with the Dales'.

this is a retcon, right? i know that's been thrown at a lot of things in vg regardless of if it's correct or not but. this for sure is i think? there's never been mention of anything like this before?

antiva and the dales are pretty far apart, geographically. they have orlais, nevarra, and the free marches between them on land. by sea, antivan ships could follow the coast down into the waking sea, but that's assuming the dales have access to the sea and weren't cut off by orlesian territory. the dales also seem to have been fairly isolationist, and happy to keep to themselves as long as no one bothered them - understandable, given the elves had only been freed from the imperium for. a couple hundred years? but not really conducive to forming alliances with neighbours.

overall, the dales and antiva weren't close enough for sheer proximity to have forced any sort of friendship to form, and even if they were, the elves may not have been interested (which again. fair enough, honestly.), but there was also little reason for them to form any sort of relationship through trade or anything else. the dales don't really seem to have had any ties to the human nations around them, and none of those nations would really have had any reason to be willing to oppose the orlesian empire for the dales.

also. during the exalted march against the dales, antiva was. kinda busy? fending off an invasion? so they probably wouldn't have been able to help, even if they wanted to. (this is how i can tell i'm putting more thought into a 30-word codex entry than the writers did, i spent like half an hour on the wiki throwing together a timeline to figure out what events were happening around the fall of the dales lmao. and i looked at a map of thedas. i'm not entirely convinced the writers did that either.)

mutual respect between who exactly? the nations of the dales and antiva, one of which was destroyed? the nation of antiva and the dalish people? we don't have reason to believe antiva's elves are treated any better than in the rest of thedas.

if we ignore all that and assume that antiva was, for some reason, involved in the exalted march, on the side of the dales. shouldn't this have had consequences we would have heard about? given that they lost? was the antiva of the glory age more supportive of elves than every other andrastian nation, and those elves were simply blamed for dragging antiva into their war until any support had vanished? did orlais seek any sort of retribution against antiva for siding with their enemy? we know thedas' people can hold grudges for centuries, given that elves and mages are still mistreated for actions over seven hundred and a thousand years old, respectively. what impact did siding with the elves and then losing actually have??

contract: the next march has the line 'If nations march on the elves, Antiva will not be silent. Never again.'

does this not directly contradict halla's resolve? to me, this one implies that when the dales were destroyed antiva stayed out of it, but the other one implies antiva directly involved itself in some way. which is it?? (or is this just another casualty of vg being scraped out of joplin and morrison's corpses in. what. 2 years? like how the griffons are simultaneously both a decade old and also still babies. yes im still pissed abt that.)

or is the implication here that the crows wouldn't allow antiva to be silent in the event of another march? in which case. other people have already said plenty abt vg portraying the crows as a family of friendly freedom fighters (and i do not buy the justification that house arainai was actually the only house buying slaves and abusing it's assassins. arainai was first, then second talon until shortly before the fifth blight, if anything they would have been the gold standard for how crow houses operate. also. zevran deserves better.) the crows are an organisation of contract killers. yes, entire houses can be hired for an operation, and presumably the crows as a whole, if you had enough money, but that brings up another problem for me (actually a couple):

who hired the crows for this contract? with what money? and what are the targets? 1. presumably, the dalish in an effort to protect themselves in the future, but was this something arranged by one elf, or one clan, or was this debated and decided by every clan at an arlathvhen or several? 2. the dalish are self-sufficient nomads, with only a few clans willing to trade with humans. they can likely make a decent amount of coing through that, but not enough to hire enough crows to ensure a response from all of antiva. the most valuable things most clans probably have are artifacts from the dales, which they would never part with willingly given that their culture is built around preserving and recovering as much of the dales as possible (which. why are the veiljumpers dedicated to recovering arlathan? where did they even come from? what was bellara's clan like? was she their first? did she want to be a keeper? and also. how does the lords of fortune's dalish expert work? do the lords get paid for returning elven artifacts? with what money? what about old human or dwarven artifacts? how many advisors do the lords have? which cultures get advisors?). 3. if a march is called against the elves. do the crows murder every chantry official in antiva? blackmail the nobility into noncompliance? what are they actually supposed to do against a march??

contract: the next march's wiki page also notes the game files have a comment abt this entry, 'A standing contract should the elven nation come to threat.'

as i've noted before, there currently isn't an elven nation. unless vg is canonising the origins boon of the elves being granted land in ferelden! (and it's somehow survived the unspecified incident alistair can mention in da2). which is an odd choice but at this point. what the hell sure. that's why there's no dalish or city elves in vg, they're all actually getting blighted to starvation down in ferelden. which, if we're ignoring worldstate canons, could have three circles now! kinloch hold, the orzammar circle (the chantry prevents an independent circle so mages might head to orzammar anyway), and the jainen circle (from da legends, the mobile? game) which is mentioned in this crossroads note (the only good thing vg did).

also that timeline i mentioned, just in case anyone wants to check what i'm working off here

-165 ancient - land of the dales given to the elves

-30 ancient - nation of antiva formed

1:05 divine - darkspawn emerge in anderfels, second blight begins

1:16 divine - battle of cumberland

1:20 divine - nevarran accord signed, circle/templars/seekers founded

1:25 divine - darkspawn nearly destroy montsimmard, dales provide no assistance

1:31 divine - darkspawn assault minrathous, city survives but imperium is weakened. drakon's forces relieve siege of weisshaupt, conquer and convert anderfels.

1:40 divine - ferelden alamarri unite against darkspawn

1:45 divine - drakon dies, andrastianism becomes popular in antiva

1:50 divine - alamarri defeat chasind and avvar

1:65 divine - anderfels declare independence from orlais

1:95 divine - zazikel killed at starkhaven

2:09 glory - dales-orlais war breaks out after red crossing

2:10 glory - elves capture montsimmard, reach val royeaux. exalted march called, only orlais provides troops.

2:15 glory - starkhaven begins conquering free marches and antiva with tevinter support

2:20 glory - halamshiral conquered, elves split between city and dalish elves

2:33 glory - antivan cities ally with each other and free marches cities for defence

2:45 glory - starkhaven betrayed and annexed by tevinter

and some notes i couldn't really fit into the timeline

the imperium abandons the anderfels as the darkspawn spread east, at some point in the 26 years between the blight beginning and the darkspawn assaulting minrathous

drakon's armies are present at every major battle against the darkspawn across thedas, and they spread the chant of light everywhere they go

the elves don't help against the blight because they don't consider the orlesian empire to be any better than the imperium - this one's difficult because. yknow. the blight's an apocalypse, how can you not try to fight that? but also again. the elves have good reason not to trust humans. and if they had sent soldiers to combat the blight, who's to say orlais wouldn't have taken the chance to conquer the dales while they were weakened, even in the middle of a blight? they did exactly that in the anderfels, after all.

drakon's heir is ineffective militarily and politically, leading to a lot more damage from the blight, and creating the conditions for the anderfels to seek independence

the first dated crow contract (possibly just the first notable enough to be recorded?) was in 3:09 towers. the crows themselves began as an arm of the chantry in antiva. andrastianism, and then the orlesian chantry, was only becoming popular in antiva by 1:45 divine. the crows aren't mentioned in regards to starkhaven's invasion attempt in the glory age - does that mean they didn't quite exist yet, or that they just didn't have the power/influence to make an impact?

#this is always kinda hard cause like. on the one hand i *know* vg's dev cycle was god awful. the writers/artists/etc got fucked over by #mismanagement/executive meddling/whatever else. and i'm sure they did the best they could despite that! and things like these codex entries #being a mess is probably the price they paid to just get the game out. but on the other hand. so much of this game falls apart the second #you look too close. it's very much the culmination of ea/bioware not valuing their writers/chasing trends/every other poor choice made #behind-the-scenes. and i don't think that should be rewarded? otherwise we'll continue getting games hacked together at the last minute and #we'll keep hearing abt dev teams working under crunch/getting let go without notice/burning out of the industry entirely. and that's not #fair for any of us? like. this game cost 50 quid. i could have got two? three? games i actually enjoyed for that. maybe more. but i got vg #cause i thought at the very least it would continue the world and storytelling i'd gotten so attached to. and it didn't. it wasn't worth it #dragon age #datv critical #i wish i enjoyed gcse english poetry analysis as much as i enjoy poking holes in vg tbh #i was fuckin awful at poetry lmao #anyway hopefully that's everything. to anyone that reads this. i'm sorry. i hope you like walls of text.

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