#codex: groups

[telleskyggene]

The Imperial Chantry

There are those who would tell you that the Chantry is the same everywhere as it is here, that the Divine in Val Royeaux reigns supreme in the eyes of the Maker and that this fact is unquestioned throughout Thedas. Do not believe it. The Maker's second commandment, "Magic must serve man, not rule over him," never held the same meaning within the ancient Tevinter Imperium as it did elsewhere. The Chantry there interpreted the rule as meaning that mages should never control the minds of other men, and that otherwise their magic should benefit the rulers of men as much as possible. When the clerics of Tevinter altered the Chant of Light to reflect this interpretation of the commandment, the Divine in Val Royeaux ordered the clerics to revert to the original Chant. They refused, claiming corruption within Val Royeaux, an argument that grew until, in 4:87 Towers, the Chantry in Tevinter elected its own "legitimate and uncorrupted" Divine Valhail—who was not only male, but also happened to be one of the most prominent members of the Tevinter Circle of the Magi. This "Black Divine" was reviled outside Tevinter, his existence an offence to the Chantry in Val Royeaux. After four Exalted Marches to dislodge these "rebels," all that the Chantry in Val Royeaux accomplished was to cement the separation. While most aspects of the Imperial Chantry's teachings are the same, prohibitions against magic have been weakened, and male priests have become more prevalent. The Circle of the Magi today rules Tevinter directly, ever since the Archon Nomaran was elected in 7:34 Storm directly from the ranks of the enchanters, to great applause from the public. He dispensed with the old rules forbidding mages from taking part in politics, and within a century, the true rulers within the various imperial houses—the mages—took their places openly within the government. The Imperial Divine is now always drawn from the ranks of the first enchanters and operates as Divine and Grand Enchanter both. This is utter heresy to any member of the Chantry outside of Tevinter, a return to the days of the magisters, which brought the Blights down upon us. But it exists, and even though we have left the Tevinter Imperium to the mercies of the dread Qunari, still they have endured. Further confrontation between the Black Divine and our so-called "White Divine" is inevitable.

—From Edicts of the Black Divine, by Father David of Qarinus, 8:11 Blessed.

[lizzybeeee]

Calling it now:

If there's ever any future installments of Dragon Age there will be no mention of the differentiation between the Dalish or City Elves.

Like in DATV they will simply all be 'elves' and the vallaslin will be reduced to 'cool looking tattoo's that some veil jumpers have' - no mention of the elven pantheon either, because why bother! They're all dead now!

They're all dead and responsible for every lore plot point in Thedas, and there's nothing of mystery or substance left in the world now.

No mention of the culture in the alienage, of the vhenadahl tree, of the horrific racism and systematic abuse the elves have been through...now its just elves. With the way the Veil Jumpers have been set up, and the fact that the elven gods were the enemy in DATV, I find it extremely unlikely that the Dalish will even exist as a group either. Why would they? Their Gods returned and blighted the world - not that the fact is even truly discussed in the game. Elves are just elves, and the notable elves are Veil Jumpers.

Maybe you'll walk in a city, pick up a codex, and get a copy and pasted explanation of history from a DAO codex - a reminder of what we used to have and what BioWare absolutely demolished in their attempt to build a new IP on the bones of Dragon Age. The absolute whiplash in writing, story, and character between DAI and DATV is staggering. How on earth could the studio that made such a gorgeous, rich world of lore surrounding the elves in one game end up utterly bastardizing and reducing it to nothing?

How can you look at a place like the Temple of Mythal and go from those gorgeous golden murals and emerald tiled roofs that reached to the heavens to a place like the Lighthouse? From the Emerald Graves to the ruins of Arlathan - devoid of halls that reach to the heavens and golden murals replaced with stained glass? The entirety of the Trespasser DLC had more character and reverence for what the elven empire once was, and DATV feels as though it's approaching it with the perspective of 'generic elven bullshit with triangles everywhere'. All that unique architecture has been obliterated by adding in World of Warcraft focus crystals and automatons.

How can you go from the atmospheric/environmental storytelling of the Lost Temple of Dirthamen to Solas just blurting everything out? No weight, no double truths or hidden meanings - just blurting it out, getting it said and done with no gravitas? That was Solas' entire thing! People have made threads literally dissecting what Solas says and does not say - now he spits lore out as though it were common, everyday knowledge.

How can anyone justify the sudden emergence of magical automatons everywhere in old elven ruins? As if Dragon Age didn't have a host of enemies/creatures available to use in their stead - or the ability to create something unique to the forest of Arlathan. What happened to the spirit guardians? What happened to the lingering echoes of the elves slaughtered by humans in wars ages past like in DAO? Magic was their very existence - spells taking years or centuries to cast, weaving in and about each other - and you're telling me the ancient elves spent their time creating magical transformers?! It feels/looks so utterly seperate from everything we know of the elves from Dragon Age.

Or look at the Crossroads - listen to how Morrigan speaks of it - the reverence for the past, the misty atmosphere, and the heaviness of this pocket of the world that carries the fading memories of a world and people that no longer exists...now it's reduced to a hub world! People are just popping in and out of it at will!

In Trespasser, the few eluvians that we were available to travel to led to the most lonely, desolate spots of Thedas, which ensured their survival over the past millennia. The mirror in the Deep Roads, the mirror in the ancient stronghold in Ferelden...now they're everywhere!The 'few surviving' eluvians are in every major settlement of Thedas and all are in operating order! More than that, everyone who sees an eluvian knows what it is - this ancient marvel of a world long gone has lost all worth and is reduced to a 'world building' justification for fast travel.

Poor Merrill, slaving for a near decade to try and restore a small sliver of her history, only to have all gravitas and wonder of her discovery utterly made void. All that accomplishment wasted, especially when Bellara can wave her magic omni-tool and fix an eluvian in a matter of hours.

If you took every specific Dragon Age terminology out of the Veilguard and replaced it with generic fantasy bullshit you would never be able to tell the difference. The world of DATV is so divorced from its predecessors its astounding.

[the-oracles-codex-if]

MC: Guys, I’ve been meaning to tell you… Syv and I are dating.

Syv, Imra, and Ylv: *gasp*

Kat: Okay.

MC: Syv, why are you surprised?!

[exilethegame]

Is there a Plaithian language?

Plaithus just speaks Common, which most of the world did/does. Vygranders also mostly speak Common, but nobility in Vygrand often speak in Mavikras, which is a language built off of the study of magic. The language in itself is actually magical to an extent, so one has to be very careful in how they phrase things, which is why the wording for Vygrandian translations is often vague or sort of "off."

And Vrithkan is a pidgin language! Vrithka doesn't have a unified government, and the island was originally just mythosi for a very long time. A lot of groups in Vrithka have their own languages (Nikke + Jost speak Gyrivis, which is a language unique to gorgons in Vrithka), so when those groups came together Vrithkan sort of just formed slowly.

[guardevoir]

I'm doing nothing but masters thesis lately, so I might as well yell about old monk handwriting on here, too: This 1200-year-old legal document from St. Gall monastery is what I'm spending my entire goddamn day on today.

It was written by a dude with the slightly regrettable name of "Wolfcoz" (there were at least three of them over the years!), and is one of 14-ish or so pieces of handwriting* I'm taking a closer peek at to figure out which of them were written by him personally, which might've been written by his scribe buddies, and which were claimed to be from his circle of influence erroneously.

Some particularly interesting bits:

Note the g that's shaped more like a "3" and, my particular favorite, the two flavors of "a" in the last two words ("ad prefatum"), the last of which looks more like "cc". Both of these would be super useful to give a date estimate if they hadn't... yknow, written the date down on the document, too. The super exaggerated lengths of "b" and "d" and such are very typical for documents, too; it's particularly common to find them in the first line, but pretty frequently they're carried through the entire document, like here.

This one is actually really nice as far as legal documents go; most aren't nearly that orderly and easy to read.

(this one's document EE5 E23 from the St. Gall archives; you can view the full thing [here]. The amount of digitized medieval stuff available - both codices and documents - is one of the sexiest things about this subject tbh)

*most of them are codices. Which is a huge problem, because writing conventions are very different between codices and documents so it's hard to really compare them, but documents are nice because they often have names on them. It helps that I'm not the one dragging documents into this particular codex-based paleography discussion; that can of worms has been open since at least 1936.

[dragon-age-codex-entries]

Codex entry: A Tradition of Rebirth

"Some outlying nations have differing ideas on what happens to us after death. The southern Avvar, for example, believe in a hazily defined afterlife governed by "the Lady of the Skies" where the dead are reunited with their kin. A comforting notion, and not unfamiliar. The Chantry's idea that on death we cross the Fade to live by the Maker's side is accepted from rough Ferelden to decadent Tevinter. Yet Avvar also believe some of their people are destined to be "reborn," which some among the Chantry have great trouble grasping. It is not, I must emphasize, a spirit possessing a body. Other than invoking the gods, spirits have nothing to do with the process. It is the essence, the soul, which returns clothed in new flesh.

The core of the concept is thus: the souls of a few Avvar "favored" by fate "migrate" on death to inhabit a new body destined for them, so they may return and perform great deeds for the good of their hold. These resurrected souls are not expected to remember their past selves consciously, but instead are assumed to be subtly "guided" by their previous experiences, especially through visions and portents. This most conveniently sidesteps the need for proof that one has been "reborn" or that such things even occur. Then again, perhaps we should not cast scorn too quickly; as of yet, not one of the dead has returned from across the Fade to describe the Maker's paradise."

—Part of a monograph entitled Grand Visions of Life and Death, written by Roberto the Skeptic of Antiva in 9:31 and banned by the Chantry in 9:32

[galemilker]

it's been less than 2 weeks since i made my draw steel character and im obsessed with this lil guy (not a guy but i like the saying). They are an agent, they are a blacksmith scholar specialising in weapons, they pretend to be part of the army, their closest friends are dead and they changed their name to a whole poem about it, they like polearms and are trying very hard not to breakdown mid fight becuase their whole training is to ensure people live but their teams keep dying due to reasons ...also we are fighting a dullahan on sunday and i'm so hyped about it

[exhausted-archivist]

On the topic of the inherent racism in the Qun and its people, with how baked in racism is, you can't buff it out and reformat. You can't remove it, and BioWare has only been doubling down on it up to Tevinter Nights in 2020. Which means you need to be careful with how you interact and build on it. At least that is how I approach it, in general I don't like to engage with it because it's just so difficult and not in any thought provoking or insightful way. So I refrain from doing so as much as possible in public spaces anyways, because it is so inherently unsafe for me to do so. From an interaction with fandom level, but also on a personal level because some of it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

I am extremely weary of how da4 is going to portray them, I hope it will be better since the writing team has been moved around and there have been some acknowledgements on poor writing of stereotypes and biases in 2020. Which I take with a salt mine worth of salt, especially with the way the new comics like the Missing having lingering themes and stereotypes remaining. How Patrick Weekes described the rebelling antaam in Three Trees to Midnight (Tevinter Nights 2020) was the biggest red flag, followed by the yellow flag from As We Fly short story by Lukas Kristjanson (short story 2023).

With how BioWare has racism and harmful elements baked into the Qun and people in general it is going to difficult for them to fully separate it, update it, or reformat it. But I hope they do. I hope that they actually attempt to make it better like they have suggested they would. Because it is so harmful and they should. I don't think they'll get it right on the first try, but I hope they try. It won't magically fix the racism in the fandom but I would like to not feel the need to crawl out of my skin when playing a vashoth. I would like to see the franchise grow and become better than it started out as. I don't want it to stay stagnant for the sake of "consistency" which it doesn't have by design.

[crownprincessoftherusalkas]

Robin: So, are we ready to rock?

Zylas: No.

Amalia: Not particularly.

Robin: That's the spirit!

[alienbloodheart]

The Blood-Heart Dances

by the 1 & only ai girl group LEV1ATHAN!

album title: The Blood-Heart Dances

album number: two

genre: uncontemporary pop

sound colour: black

suggested dance-style: vampire

The Blood-Heart Dances take us right to the core of our being and eat the past raw. Witchy, witchy, time switchy. Here, old flames sing, devils stutter, and mirrors crack. The colour is black. This is not nostalgia. This is reclamation. If you’re ready to dance on the graves of what hurt you, LEV1ATHAN will take your hand. And we’ll spin them ‘round and ‘round.

Album Tracklist:

The Witch in the Cave — ‘we’re gonna make you cry’

The Blind Fold — ‘we don’t need a blindfold’

Blow Out the Fire — ‘i will be your fool’

Siren Sings — ‘home my heart, ocean-bound’

Crim Crimson — ‘come touch …’

Sexxx — ‘just 1 look’

The Devil’s Paradox — ‘you need better boxes’

White Spider — ‘white will end your worry’

Miroir Au Revoir — ‘j’en ai marre de ce miroir’

Blood-Clock-Heart — ‘tick tack’

Oxygen Crown — ‘for kings & queens of red’

Cloud XIX — ‘count stuff up to XI’

The River Out of the Cave — ‘bye, bye, cave!’

[telleskyggene]

The Founding of the Chantry

Kordillius Drakon, king of the city-state of Orlais, was a man of uncommon ambition. In the year -15 Ancient, the young king began construction of a great temple dedicated to the Maker, and declared that by its completion he would not only have united the warring city-states of the south, he would have brought Andrastian belief to the world. In -3 Ancient, the temple was completed. There, in its heart, Drakon knelt before the eternal flame of Andraste and was crowned ruler of the Empire of Orlais. His first act as Emperor: To declare the Chantry as the established Andrastian religion of the Empire. It took three years and several hundred votes before Olessa of Montsimmard was elected to lead the new Chantry. Upon her coronation as Divine, she took the name Justinia, in honour of the disciple who recorded Andraste's songs. In that moment, the ancient era ended and the Divine Age began.

—From Ferelden: Folklore and History by Sister Petrine, Chantry scholar.

[lizzybeeee]

Currently working on a list of interesting lore/plot points that ended up being nuked by BioWare in DATV...my World of Thedas books are being drowned in my tears at the moment lmao

Band of Three I will always love you :(

[transmasc-rose]

Having played Assassins Creed 1, 2, part of Brotherhood, and part of Syndicate, I feel like ac1 gives a very different impression of what the Assassin's Order is going to be than the rest of them. Probably because it was (very loosely) based on a historical group.

[aeipathism]

I feel somewhere in the middle on this - the individual quests and direct interactions felt really good and genuine to me. I came out of it feeling like my Rook was very genuinely friends with and had unique/close relationships with all the companions.

Also, i really loved the work they put into making the companions have relationships among themselves. Banter around the Lighthouse and codexes showing they all interact was awesome and sparked SO much joy

That being said, what did fall a bit flat for me was the inability to just talk to your companions around the Lighthouse etc. Which has been a staple across DA and ME games, so it felt like a weird gap to just... not have that. I can expand on the quests we have, but that structure also gives you a very narrow window for that relationship. Generally, you've always been able to go up to characters in your party and ask inane questions or have an exchange about the current plot. Not scripted events, just a bit of dialogue back and forth. Or even options to insert a comment to some of the banter you can walk into.

The other thing that felt missing were group scenes outside of main plot. In 2 and Inquisition you can have little scenes that cut off pretty early playing cards with companions etc. I'd love a snippet of a dinner Bellara and Lucanis put together. Or arguing over cards because the companions all coming from entirely different factions and cultures is a recipe for no one plays games with the exact same rules. And tbh, the lack of these was disappointing to me Because they really improved on the interparty relationships in terms of banter and environment. Which, with those being another staple in other games, I kept waiting for and was sad not to see it. Let us drop in on a book club meeting! Put Rook in the middle of the discussion voting on cooking duties! We had these snippets and set ups for simple group scenes that we never actually get to see.

Even on just a romance level, you can only interact with your LI in any meaningful way in carefully placed quests and scenes. I kept waiting for when I could go to Emmrich's room and trigger the same scene 5 times in a row like inquisition and just have Rook smooch him on his balcony. Or be able to say you want to chat and have a little no dialogue cut scene of them sitting together with Manfred to serve them tea.

So while I 100% agree that the relationships did feel genuine to me, I did find it a bit jarring to offload so much of that building into Quests or into codexes. Mostly since historically, you've always been able to go chat with your companions, or have 1 or 2 simple group events. It wouldn't surprise me if that's the sort of thing that got cut by EA since voice and animation means more work and those are technically not integral. But I suppose what I'm getting at here is that I do see where some of that feeling/criticism is coming from. And in some cases, it isn't necessarily an issue of catering to specific desires, but just base patterns established by previous games both in DA but also ME.

I can see where it feels a little jarring to have these intimate friendship moments with companions, when you're used to being able to walk up and establish more casual rapport with them. We lost a lot of connectors and middle parts of things that way. It helps the player establish a baseline of what casual conversation looks like, and that makes a bridge to the (brilliantly done!) personal quests where a deeper relationship is indicated.

tl;dr is mostly that I think that all of the points about the companions feeling like they truly care about rook are spot on. but I can also see why that feels disconnected without more build up in casual settings like in previous games. going from met this guy - little personal quest - overhearing some banter and reading codexes - this companion will now Die For You is a jump that can make relationships feel less genuine because the player isn't given a role in that development.

"The Veil Guard didn't actually care about Rook" the Veil Guard was so desperate to get Rook back from the prison they tried to make a ritual dagger of their own to rip the Veil apart and look for them

Rook wasn't their boss, Rook was their home

[mugam1989]

[dragon-age-codex-entries]

Codex entry: Vashoth: The Grey Ones

"Why do you keep asking me about the Qun? I'm not Qunari. I met a human once who made shoes. Why don't you tell me about shoe-making?

You've met more Qunari than I have. I've lived my whole life here in Nevarra.

No, I'm not Tal-Vashoth. Tal-Vashoth are rebels. You can't rebel against something you've never seen. I'm Vashoth.

No, I didn't use the same word. It's "Vashoth," not "Tal-Vashoth." Nobody told me humans couldn't hear speech.

No.

No.

I hate humans."

—Unused portion of a transcript from an interview with Issala, a Qunari goat herder, found in the notes of Brother Genitivi