u/SunAfraid7348

Essentially, destroying the Blight is the only thing that matters, right?

Would you or have you used Blood Magic, to save Ferelden?

This post is subjective, ofc, so I’m not claiming it’s the ultimate truth. I made the meme with my DAO character, so it’s still DAO-related, right?

Ugh, don’t hate, just have fun with it. We all love Origins and that’s enough.

Rate the drip. 🔥

What do you think these two bad boys are up to and more importantly…
Who is who and why are they going to the Deep Roads?

Give me your unhinged explanations.

I think The Urn of Sacred Ashes is one of the strongest showcases of how awesome the quests in Origins were, particularly because it manages to combine lore, atmosphere, exploration and roleplaying choices so effectively.

The journey to Haven has a completely different tone from the earlier parts of the game. There is something unsettling about arriving in an isolated village where everyone seems strangely devoted to Andraste, while the truth behind their beliefs gradually becomes clearer. Father Kolgrim is especially memorable to me because he is such a fanatical believer.

I also really like Genitivi's role in the quest. He approaches the Urn not simply as a believer, but as a scholar determined to uncover the truth behind one of the most important legends in Andrastian history. His research gives the Warden a different perspective on the quest: while the Chantry believers treat the Urn as a sacred relic, Genitivi is fascinated by its history, its whereabouts, and the evidence surrounding the stories that have been passed down about it.

The overall structure of the quest leaves a lot of room for roleplaying as well.
A devout Andrastian Warden might approach the Urn with genuine reverence, while a skeptical or pragmatic Warden could view the entire pilgrimage as a means to an end.
An especially ruthless character can take things in a completely different direction and the game's willingness to accommodate those choices is one of the reasons the quest remains so memorable.

I'd be interested to hear how other people approached it too!

Did you treat the Urn as a sacred religious artifact, simply as the means of saving Eamon or did your Warden's personal beliefs lead you somewhere completely different?

This post is about my current playthrough and thus the story I've been developing around my elven mage, Ewayn Surana, who eventually becomes a blood mage and makes some dark choices as he experience the journey of DAO.

This isn't simply a playthrough built around making "evil" choices though.
I'm trying to tell a tragedy through the choices Ewayn makes and the person he gradually becomes. His story begins with a child whose parents are killed by templars, leaving him with a deep fear of powerlessness and an obsession with freedom. The Circle then gives him something he has never truly possessed before: power.

From there, he begins to develop the belief that strength is the only reliable path to freedom, while increasingly viewing those who surrender their power as weak.

The interesting part is that Ewayn's philosophy isn't entirely wrong, and many of his experiences will continue to reinforce it. The tragedy will come from what that belief eventually turns him into and from the contradictions he refuses or is unable to acknowledge in himself.

For now, however, I have only written down his background. So this is the foundation of the character and the worldview that will shape everything that follows and thus a part 0:

Lothering: The Boy Who Was Taken

Born as a mage and to that also in an elven family, much of Ewayn's early years revolved around keeping a low profile and living isolated from the outside world, which he materially knew only as Lothering. This was mainly due to his parents, who had immediately recognised what their son was, before anyone else had a chance to do so.
Nowadays he can hardly remember much of those days long gone, what remained etched into his memories are the arguments his parents would have had. About his unusually strong ties to magic, about the possibility of fleeing to the Dalish and about what it meant to live as elves in a human world. They knew that their son carried two burdens in a society that had little patience for either. For he was an elf in a human world and a mage in a realm where magic was watched, feared and ultimately claimed by the Chantry. And even though he was not a usual child, his potential was even more unusual. It would remain a constant reminder of the danger that his very existence could bring upon the family and of how little protection was available to them, should those who held power ever discover what he was.

And so his parents had decided that their son had to be hidden, from the sight of outsiders and from the questions that would inevitably follow, and for nearly a decade, they had succeeded...
Ewayn grew up in Lothering without much knowledge of life beyond his immediate home, his parents and those he knew as neighbours, and within those narrow boundaries life had become ordinary, as much as such a thing was possible for someone existing as an elven boy with magical capabilities. His parents kept their world small around him, shielding him from the attention of others and allowing him a childhood that, for all its isolation, was still a childhood. The wider world was something spoken about in hushed voices, something that existed beyond the familiar roads and houses of Lothering, and for a time that was enough.

But as time passed, that which had helped him stay hidden would eventually become the very thing that drew attention to him, as the neighbours started wondering.
Why did the boy always stay at home?
Why did he talk so little?
What was he hiding?
Questions whispered became rumours, and rumours became suspicion, until eventually the Chantry wanted to see what was happening at the Surana household. Two templars were sent on what should have been a harmless inspection, but as they and their questions arrived, the quiet life his parents had fought to preserve would begin to unravel.

It did not take long before an outburst of emotions would show them what the parents had tried so desperately to conceal. This boy was a mage, one that was obviously gifted and thus, in the eyes of those abominations, obviously dangerous. Chantry law was clear and as sharp as the blade that would eventually strike his parents, who refused to obey the templars' orders and surrender their son. What had begun as questions became commands, and what had been a home became the place where the authority his parents had feared for years, finally arrived to claim what it believed belonged to it. To Ewayn, there was no law in that moment, no doctrine and no justification, only the figures that had entered his home and the terror that followed them.

They were slain in front of him and he was taken away.

Not old enough to fully grasp what had occurred, he could only cope with the raw reality underneath the politics.
The essential truth was simple: those who possessed authority had invaded their home, killed his family and shackled him away. His new home was the Prison of Magi, a place where he would be raised from now on, surrounded by knowledge and magic that he would eventually learn to master but without the freedom that had once been his, without him ever knowing its value. The arguments about the Dalish, once nothing more than frightened possibilities spoken between his parents, would become memories of a life that might have been. From that day onward, freedom, or rather the lack of it, was no longer some distant idea but a concrete reality that he had to endure, a path imposed upon him by people who possessed the power to decide what his life would become.

His life was taken, this was now his life.

The Circle: The Prisoner Who Learned

Ewayn was thrown into the Circle at a young age. The events that had brought him there had blackened his heart with a fear that he rarely showed to anyone but himself, mostly in those nights where no one could hear the faint noise of his whining. There was no rebellious spirit in him then, only a broken kid, for he had understood that to rebel without any power was simply a pathway to pain or even death. He was a prisoner, and he knew it, but he was also a child who had already learned that there was little to be gained from fighting against a force that could take his life away as easily as it had taken the lives of his parents.

So he became even more silent than he had ever been before. He obeyed the rules imposed upon him and he observed the structures that made up the bars of his cage. He was watching them, all of them. The Templars, senior Mages and his peers. Which rules were merely appearances, which were truly enforced and which people possessed real authority. He learned who could give orders, who could challenge them and who had the power to make others obey. The Circle was not simply a place where he was taught to become a mage, it was the first great institution of power that Ewayn had ever known from within, and so he watched it as carefully as he watched the people who lived inside it.

But more than anything else, he learned. He learned to wield the powers gifted to him by Creation, and this place, for all the chains that surrounded him, would give him the necessary education and discipline to develop that gift into something far greater than he could ever imagine back then. The Circle taught him the language of magic, the discipline required to command it and the dangers that came with allowing that power to command him in return. He learned that the Fade was not simply some distant mystery but a place that pressed against the world around him, and that the power he carried could draw things from it that no ordinary person could even perceive.

The Schools of Entropy and Spirit Magic would thus prove to be the ones he was most capable in. He took readily to magic that manipulated the condition of others and to the strange, intangible nature of the Fade, finding an understanding in both that did not come as naturally to the other disciplines. He learned those as well, of course, but these two came most naturally to him. And so, as his abilities grew, his talent could no longer be ignored and his confidence would begin to develop alongside it. The boy who had once been afraid to speak too loudly began to discover something that he had never possessed before, something that could not simply be taken from him by another person's command. He had power of his own. Eventually, this would become a defining pillar of his future arrogance and might.

For as he looked around the Circle, there was actually little that offended him at first, and the Cage was a mere illusion, upheld by those that were trapped in it. Mages possessed power and yet most of them did almost nothing with it. They had internalised the restrictions placed upon them. They had thrown themselves underneath the authority of the Templars. And most of all, fear and servitude had become a permanent condition of their existence. Ewayn could not understand it, and he did not want to. To him, possessing power while willingly surrendering one's ability to use it was a form of weakness. Those around him were not powerless, far from it, but they had allowed themselves to become powerless through their actions and their inaction, accepting the framework given to them rather than testing how far it could be pushed.

And this view on power, or rather strength, became fundamental to Ewayn's worldview, and so he began to hate the Circle. As he grew older, this attitude would grow with him, even though he did not fully understand how much of that hatred actually originated from the events and trauma of his childhood. So he started telling himself that he hated the Circle Mages because they wasted his and their magical talent. Because they and this place made strong people weak. Because the mages living here were cowards who had accepted their chains. Overall, it was easier to believe those things, for it was the institution of the Circle which had taken his parents from him, and Ewayn could not admit how much that actually mattered to him. It was easier to despise the people who remained than to acknowledge that some part of him was still that child watching his parents die.

There were others, but Jowan was the first who tried to be a friend, and he would keep on trying for years to follow. Ewayn, however, never truly reciprocated. He regarded Jowan with the same disdain he increasingly showed toward many of the other apprentices. Jowan was not necessarily useless, but he was ordinary overall, uncertain in his actions and too emotionally driven for Ewayn's liking. Where Ewayn had learned to keep his thoughts buried and his emotions under control, Jowan allowed his feelings to influence his decisions, and to Ewayn that was another sign of weakness.
So Ewayn began to realise something. This world was fundamentally divided.

For there were those that could act and those whom merely endured.
Those who possessed power and those who surrendered it.
Those who decided what would happen and those who simply accepted what happened to them.

And this viewpoint would only sharpen as his age grew and the Harrowing approached.

Eventually, I plan on posting all about my Blood Mage run, but for now...

When it comes to Alistair, he loses a mentor.

You can help him heal...

...or become his tormentor.

Dragon Age bedeutet für mich, Thedas zu erleben. Ein Teil dieser Welt zu sein.

Vor inzwischen 15 Jahren habe ich zufällig das Cover von Dragon Age Origins für die Xbox 360 in einem Laden gesehen. Ich war fasziniert von den Möglichkeiten, die auf der Rückseite beworben wurden und noch viel überraschter, als das fertige Spiel am Ende all das nicht nur erfüllt, sondern sogar übertroffen hat.

15 Jahre und rund zehn Spieldurchläufe später, drei davon als Ultimate Edition auf dem PC, ist Dragon Age, oder vielmehr Thedas, für mich immer noch die beeindruckendste Fantasywelt, die ich je erleben durfte.

Für mich ist Origins bis heute allerdings der einzige Teil der Reihe, der dieses Gefühl wirklich eingefangen hat.

Die Origin Stories waren weit mehr als unterschiedliche Prologe. Sie gaben deinem Charakter einen Platz in dieser Welt, lange bevor er oder sie ein Grauer Wächter wurde. Ob Mensch, Elf oder Zwerg; man bekam Thedas nicht einfach erklärt, man lebte darin. In der Gesellschaft, den Vorurteilen, der Politik und der Kultur. All das war viel weniger Lore im Codex und viel mehr Teil der eigenen Geschichte für mich. Und die gewählte Herkunft begleitete einen bis zum Ende des Spiels. Sie beeinflusste Dialoge, Beziehungen und die Art, wie die Welt auf den Charakter reagierte und wie man selbst sie wahrnahm.

Auch die Struktur von Origins hat dieses Gefühl getragen. Statt einen von einer spektakulären Sequenz zur nächsten zu schicken, ließ das Spiel einen Ferelden bereisen, Verbündete gewinnen, regionale Konflikte lösen und Entscheidungen treffen, deren Konsequenzen oft weit über die jeweilige Quest hinausgingen. Jede Region fühlte sich wie ihre eigene Geschichte an, mit Problemen, für die es selten eine eindeutig richtige Lösung gab.

Charaktere erinnerten sich an das, was man getan hatte. Gemeinschaften konnten an den eigenen Entscheidungen entweder wachsen, überdauern oder auch scheitern.

Und selbst die finale Schlacht ist dabei letztendlich das Ergebnis der Allianzen und zugehöriger Entscheidungen, die man sich über das gesamte Spiel hinweg erarbeitet hatte.

Genau deshalb fühlte sich Ferelden für mich gleichzeitig so groß und dich so greifbar an. Es war keine Kulisse voller Lore-Einträge, sondern eine Welt, die auf meine Anwesenheit reagierte. Ich hatte nie das Gefühl, die Geschichte nur zu beobachten. Ich war ein Teil von ihr und sie wurde ein Teil von mir. Dieses Gefühl ist bis heute geblieben, egal ob im ersten oder im zehnten Durchlauf.

Kein Dragon Age nach Origins konnte das für mich so dermaßen wieder erreichen. Die späteren Spiele haben die Welt größer gemacht, die Inszenierung verbessert und auch großartige Begleiter und Stories hervorgebracht. Gleichzeitig hatte ich aber immer stärker das Gefühl, dass die Tiefe des Rollenspiels und der dazugehörigen Welt, gegen Spektakel, Straffung und eine breitere Zugänglichkeit eingetauscht wurden.

Ich bin zwar weiterhin durch Thedas gereist aber ich hatte nicht mehr das Gefühl, wirklich dort "zu leben".

Dass mein Charakter Teil dieser Welt war und die Welt ihn auch als solchen wahrnahm, wurde für mich mit jedem Teil immer weiter entfernt. Hawke und der Inquisitor sind nicht "Ich". Mein Wächter war es schon.

Über Veilguard möchte ich dabei gar nicht erst anfangen.

Und ehrlich gesagt bekommt Thedas bis heute nicht die Anerkennung, die es verdient.

Es ist für mich nicht einfach nur BioWares Fantasywelt. Es steht problemlos neben seinen gigantischen Inspirationen Mittelerde oder Westeros. Nicht, weil es diese Welten kopiert, sondern weil es eine ganz eigene Identität besitzt, die sich seiner Inspirationen nicht schämt sondern sie zu etwas ganz neuem zusammengewürfelt hatte.

Die Kirche. Die Verderbnis. Die Grauen Wächter. Die Qunari. Tevinter. Orzammar...

Das sind keine austauschbaren Fantasy-Begriffe, sondern Bausteine einer Welt, die sich geschlossen, glaubwürdig und gelebt anfühlt. Wenn ich Thedas mit Der Herr der Ringe oder Das Lied von Eis und Feuer vergleiche, dann nicht, weil ich eine dieser Welten für besser halte. Sondern weil ich finde, dass Thedas denselben Platz in der Diskussion über die großen Fantasywelten verdient hätte.

Deshalb ist Origins für mich bis heute etwas ganz Besonderes.

Und je älter ich werde, desto mehr wird mir bewusst, dass ich mich jahrelang als Dragon-Age-Fan bezeichnet habe. Vielleicht war ich aber die ganze Zeit vor allem ein Dragon Age Origins-Fan.

Und ich glaube, das kann ich inzwischen akzeptieren.

Danke für's Lesen <3