Well, it's a shame.

For all the warts, BSN was the place for Bioware fans to be with other Bioware fans and talk lore and characters. No other media really covers it. No other site really fills that niche. It was a great way for fans to talk to eachother horizontally, rather than vertically with Bioware and back.

Facebook really isn't the same- especially for someone like myself who doesn't do social media much. Comment sections in youtube don't have a community feel either.

Le sigh.

Top shelf has more of the better people I've seen- including our very own Artifice- so I'll probably set up there most. RPG codex may be the lore hunt, but still.

Good to know Lady and Gorgi and some others will be around.

As a thought-

I'm all for a parallel community like this, but it might be better to piggy-back onto some other forum. Since BSN's most remarkable thing is it's lore focus, another lore forum for games would be welcome.

I've heard things about RPG codex. Not all good, but it's an established community with a breadth of games and topics about them. What I have heard suggests that lore is a selling point- and that's what we all are, right?

I'm creating an account there- same name and all- so hopefully I'll see you there. I've seen some familiar faces there already.

Cheers,

Dean

I say avoid the Chantry altogether. More specifically the Southern Chantry. They themselves have habit of not being the best at negotiation. They have a pretty well defined idea of how mages should be managed, and are not exactly culturally sensitive to those who manage them differently.

 

Rivain is perhaps the primary instance where the Chantry was unwilling to compromise with local tradition.​ A Circle was put in to appease them, libraries stocked, mages sent, education underway. But the Chantry was all but mortified to learn that mages were  allowed to leave the Cirlce on a regular basis, still allowed to visit their families, and train under local Seers. Even though the Rivaini populace was even willing to operate with the Templars and further their investigations instead of shunning them.

Now--and this is important context---the Rivaini people do practice arts concerning possession. It is part of their culture. It is understandable, and even commendable to a degree, that the Chantry was concerned with these practices. But according to certain (but not all) accounts, the Right of Annulment was more in response to mages continually participating in local freedoms/culture than they were possession. 

 

But from my point of view the danger is clear. The Southern Chantry may not be willing to compromise, and may use whatever foothold they have in another culture to initiate a slaughter. Whatever hypothetical agreement the Dalish would have with the Circle/Chantry would be a tumultuous set of relations at best and an opening for a massacre at worst. I'd sooner have the Dalish form a compromise with the Avaar, the Mortalitasi, Orzamaar or even Tevinter before they got anywhere near Orlais or the Chantry.

 

A compromise can only work if both are willing to put in effort, and as it is, it is likely neither side will want to.

The other bit is that neither 'side' may be able to. The Andrastian Chantry exists, but the Divine- no matter who it is- is going to be contested and beset with problems of making the Mage reforms of post-Inquisition, and the Qunari-Tevinter concerns, and so on. Their ability to make, or enforce, major changes is limited. If a local nation doesn't play ball, like Rivaini and the mages, there's not too much they can do (though an Inquisition under the Divine will help as an enforcement mechanism).

And thing is, the Dalish have it even worse. The Chantry has a single leader with whom negotiations can occur. The Dalish don't. They're so decentralized that negotiation would, on a continental level, be meaningless. There'd be no way for Dalish negotiator at Clan X to be able to force Clan Z to follow an agreement in spirit and letter. Even if the decade-long reunion meeting somehow came to a consensus to support it, there'd be no means to enforce it. There's no Dalish Inqusition to keep the clans in line.

But!

That doesn't mean negotiations aren't possible, or desirable. It just means the target should change from 'the Chantry' to 'the Andrastian nation.'

You don't like Orlais? Cool. Neverra doesn't like Orlais either. Neither does Ferelden. Strike a deal with them, and you could likely get a better, and different, deal.

If the Dalish form de-facto regional confederations- where local clans who actually do bump into and interact with eachother come to consensus agreements- those regional-units could conduct their own negotiations with the regional elites. Such an agreement would have no bearing on Dalish across the continent, but who cares? It's not pretending to be all-encompasing. It can be tailored to the regional concerns, and the regional compromises.

In Rivaini, the Chantry and the Crown prize political stability over doctrinal thoroughness. Even if we didn't have an encampment there already, the local Dalish tribes would have the basis to have a strong negotiating position. They don't rock the boat, and they get left alone.

In Ferelden, we have a strong farmer-centric culture, and we know of Dalish friction with farmers and merchants and established populations. The Dalish boon didn't pan out- too much of a land-claim by too weak a Crown dependent on small independent farmers- but a smaller-scale agreement with local Banns might be a better fit. Arrange a cease fire, and supporting things, and you might have something more plausible even if it's not 'territory' per see.

Near Kirkwall, where the Templars were (still are?) strong, Mages might be the real sticking point. Maybe the clan there agree to transfer their mages to clans near other Marcher cities that don't have the objection. Say, wherever Sebastian from- and maybe that city-state's concession is that the local Dalish clans allow missionary activity.

And so on and so on. Can't get a good deal with Orlais? Okay. Maybe staying outside it is better. Maybe Nevarra is more willing to give you shelter, if you pass on information when crossing the Orlais border. Or try somewhere else. Try to make arrangements to live with your neighbors, whoever your neighbors are. Build settlements, and enclaves, and even if you offer some token loyalty/support to the crown if you have a population base you can maintain your autonomy and start building culture centers.

Will this work everywhere? No- some humans won't be willing to make a deal, and some Dalish won't be willing to make the concessions needed for a deal. Will these culture nodes be different from eachother? By necessity. Is cultural uniformity going to be lost? Sure. After some time, a mage-less Kirkwall Dalish clan may not see the big deal of mage-keepers, while others embrace it stronger. But this isn't instead of keeping cultural uniformity- cultural uniformity has already been lost. The Clans are already fragmenting socially, politically, culturally.

It's not a question of diverging, but how much. Controlling it- creating nodes that can keep records and formalize traditions and share- can help preserve what is there better. Instead of meeting once a decade, culture centers can stay in stay in contact with eachother constantly, make and maintain correspondances, arrange summits. An entire College of Elves, if you will- autonomous, self-defining, self-regulating. Not all elves will recognize it, any more than all mages recognize the Circle, but it would be something new and different that could actually try to speak on behalf of the elves, rather than proclaim themselves the Elfiest of Elves and trudge on towards self-ruin.

Dependent on the tolerance of the locals? Sure- but the Dalish already are. If a Kingdom wanted to wipe out the Dalish clans in their area, there's nothing stopping them from trying. A change from nomadism? Absolutely- but the Dalish have always claimed they want to. Contentions? Absolutely.

The nature of compromise is that you always give up things you don't actually want to give up. Cultural compromise is the same. If the Dalish wanted to make the changes without outsiders acting as a catalyst, they already would have. But being for the sake of co-existence with someone else doesn't make a reform not a reform, and it doesn't make the gains- peace, social growth, co-existence- any less valuable than what was given up.

Your suggestions are based on the implicit assumption that the Chantry's ideology is rightfully dominant. That I contest.

 

There's nothing implicit about the Chantry being 'rightfully' dominant. It simply is. Existence is not endorsement, but ultimately only addressing reality makes real changes to, well, real conditions.

 

To agree to the Dalish mages having to go to the Circle, for instance, that's like  - to use a current example - to give in to Turkey's demand to extradite supposed members of the Gülen movement on their say-so, with no evidence that they've done anything wrong. It would go completely against fundamental aspects of the Dalish culture.

 

Which 'fundamental aspect' is this? That the tribe exists to serve the Keeper? The mages are the rightful leaders of mundanes? Those might be as fundamental to the Dalish as 'it's the human's fault', but that doesn't mean it's good. On abstract, or practicality, in short term or long.

As a leadership selection strategy just in terms of leadership quality, it's stupid- mages are not inherently smarter, wiser, or more capable leaders than mundanes. In terms of history, it's somewhere between ironic and unintentional hypocratic ignorance- the Dalish, who claim to never submit again, submit to mage leaders because that's what they think they've always done, not realizing that mage-eltism was the first submission of the people. Practically and ideologically, the premise that some people deserve to boss around The People just because of an accident of birth is something that easily deserves to be questioned.

And that's just internally. What does that cultural practice do externally? It antagonizes the very people whose tolerance the Dalish clans need to survive. It creates a constant tension which leaves the proud people fleeing for their safety on a constant basis. It's one of the biggest reasons they can't establish enclaves and re-establish the sort of society that would do far better at preserving elven history and other cultural practices. The Ancient Elves weren't nomads, so the Dalish are always going to have to give up their current way of life anyway even in the most ideal circumstances.

The Dalish culture isn't The Way Things Should Be Always. It always is, always was, and inevitably would change. If it's going to change, it would absolutely be worth considering the deliberate ways it could change that might actually benefit the Dalish. Changing a mediocre leadership that primarily exists 'because that's how it's always been done' is absolutely worth considering, if only to decide what, exactly, about it is worth preserving.

That's why I threw out a spectrum of things that could be considered, not a single proposal I'm positing as The Way. Obviously most of them will be rejected- though whether those rejections are wise is a separate thing..Ditching mages entirely would certainly be radical- but the point isn't that the Dalish would, but that they could, and that there could be real benefits from such a cultural change.

 

 

Any compromise that deserves the name has to treat the two cultures as equally valid, to start with (not that I think either one is particularly worth defending, but that's a different story). To agree to stop killing or imprisoning each other would be a good first step, along with visiting rights into the other's territory (not by armies, of course) in order to get to know each other better. Cultural contact, that would be the way to co-existence. The implicit assumption of superiority has to stop, on *both* sides. 

 

Enjoy watching the Dalish decline on the way to extinction, then, because the two cultures aren't on equal footing.

One is established, well organized, militarily robust, has a dynamic political system both capable of conducting negotiations and better equipped at fulfilling them, is growing in capability and influence over time, and finally is secure enough in its position that the situation is a minor concern, not an existential threat. The other the Dalish, who are in a decline in nearly every respect. The two groups can not compromise as equal if they are not equal in every politically relevant category.

The Dalish need things to change more. The Dalish need an improvement in relations more. The Dalish are in far  greater danger if the negotiations do not pan out. The Dalish are asking for far more, and already have far less to offer. For the Chantry and Andrastian nations, this is handling a minor and occasional nuissance: for the Dalish, relations with the Chantry are an existential subject.

The negotiating positions are not equal, and preconditioning relations on the pretense that they will be will accomplish nothing.

 

Agreeing to cultural contact would be a big step for the Dalish given their present stance, and especially since they're the less powerful culture. The other side has to recognize that. What comes of that, who knows?

Relative effort on your part is irrelevant unless it corresponds to a relevant impact on the other party's part. Someone who struggles on something that offers very little benefit to the other party isn't going to impress anyone into making significant concessions.

If you want trade with someone, you have to give them something that they want- not something that's hard for your to deliver. Whether it's hard for you to deliver or not is irrelevant to their vaulation of it.

 

Maybe the Dalish will have to stay in remote regions in the end, maybe not, but I see no justification for a demand to submit to Chantry rules regarding mages, except perhaps for the surplus mages who would otherwise be cast out. As for their system of rulership, it isn't any worse than any other system on Thedas.

 

The justification for considering is is 'survival of the Dalish as a relevant polity within Andrastian lands, so that they can represent the True Elfy Way for all elves in the future.

If the Dalish exile themselves outside Andrastian lands, they won't be leading or bringing in the city elves. If the Dalish succumb to fragmentation, they won't maintain the True Elfy Way. If the Dalish refuse reconciliation and instead remain in opposition, attrition, or even face outright eradication later, the Dalish will be dead and there will be no True Elfy Way and no Elfy Alternative for the city elves at all.

Dalish culture needs to change to save itself. If it refuses to change itself, it's just trapping itself in its current downward trajectory.

 

That you change how you select your rulers as demanded by someone else is actually a most significant indication of submission. It's about the last thing any culture would agree to.

 

It's also one of the most important things to consider, because how you select your leaders determines how you establish your elites, and the wrong sort of elites can be far more ruinous for the culture. Elites should take actions for the culture as a whole- the culture shouldn't be built around protecting the elites.

If the Dalish can make a strong argument on the merits of a Mage-Keeper system, that's fine- but they can only do that if the pros and the cons are considered. So far the pros have been 'that's how they always do it,' 'change is bad,' and 'mages are more more worthy.'

Forgive me if I find none of those particularly laudable.

Compromise?   Lying you mean, just as they did about the Herald of Andraste.    Compromising your beliefs is submission.  

If compromising your beliefs is submission, then the Dalish are about to be either become delusional or submit to a small thing called 'reality.' Dalish culture is built on long series of ignorant and objectively wrong falsehoods, starting with their religion and continuing to their history. Their belief in the mythic past doesn't make it true. If you wish to call compromise to reality a moral failure of submission, go ahead.

 

I believe the Chantry is a false religion and a big fat lie.   As such I do not acknowledge their authority.    It is about time someone stood up to them particularly when every secular power only gives lip service to the morality in the Chant.     Incidentally the Maker doesn't like liars.

 

 

 

So what? Whether you believe in the morality or moral authority of the Chantry or not is irrelevant to whether dealing with them can help the elves. The only authority you need to recognize- if you intend to help the Dalish that is- is that the Chantry and Andrastian nations are a fact of existence in Thedas.

They are not the ones of a trajectory of cultural collapse and outright eradication. They are not the ones who have no polity and get less and less alike every generation. They are not the ones whose existence depends on the tolerance of those they despise with historical vendettas that are largely unreciprocated.

The Chantry exists. Deny it if you want, but denying it doesn't help the Dalish one iota. Short of the end of the world, it will continue to exist- and the end of the world will eradicate the Dalish way of life just as thoroughly as any them. If the Dalish want to pretend to moral superiority and refuse to deal with the powers that be in hopes of outlasting the humans,

There are, by the way, two significant powers that stand up to the Chantry. The first is an enslaving tyranny of cultural chauvenists who have a long and ignoble history of doing far more to destroy the elven Culture than the Chantry ever has. The other is Tevinter. Neither of them will come out on top and be better for the elfy elves than co-existence with the Chantry.

Things I want to add to Dean's proposal:

Shifting Keepers into the roles the Avaar Mages play, spiritual/arcane advisors and making a generally elected Clan Chief based on how well they can manage and lead the entire clan (maybe the Keeper can be Chief if they prove to the whole clan they can effectively lead/manage them beyond "I'm a Mage and this was how our ancestors did it."

Cultural exchanges between the Dalish and Circle, have young Mages trained in their Dalish ways until young adult hood, then have them sent to Circle to share their knowledge, learn about non-Dalish practices, and show they are responsible with their magic, then they either go back to their Clan, go to another Clan, or stay or whatever. (sort of like a College... Of Enchanters).

The impartial Templar/Inquisitor observer of Dalish practice of Magic can be an Elf, or even a Dalish who works for the Chantry or closest ruling Kingdom and agrees to to be impartial (not sure if I'm using impartial right but...)

Finally! This one understands!

We can make proposals. We can negotiate degrees, and exchanges. We can propose new ideas and new ways of thinking that might actually help whatever we consider our goals to be.

Zathrian has an obligation to aid the Grey Wardens. There is a treaty. It doesn't matter whether he wants to have all of Ferelden burn - he's committed, as all clans have, to stop the Blight.

You asked why I think he's a madman: allowing hundreds of thousands of people to die awful deaths and cursing an entire land to devastation for the sake of vengeance is the action of a madman.

As to his lies, you misunderstood or mischaracterized the point: Zathrian knows for an absolute fact that his immortality is not the product of prolonged isolation from humans. The Dalish believe something more racist than any IRL race supremacist group - even the Nazis didn't argue groups actually festered with disease and had to be quarantined (to my knowledge). Zathrian - rather than doing anything to advance the lore of his people - actively allows them to spread a myth about him he knows is false. That's a complete betrayal of what he is supposed to do as Keeper.

Disease-beliefs of unliked minorities are actually pretty common. It ranges from context to context, but it's pretty common to associate a despised population group with filth, dirtyness, and so on. Think of the term 'wet back', and then some.

The Nazi's were a special breed of crazy, since Hitler believed that Jewish contamination even affected sciences and laws of physics on some crazy-stupid level.

That's not compromise, that's complete cultural surrender.

Since when was 'submission to elven mages' the complete cultural summation of the Dalish, let alone a good aspect of their culture?

Ignore, of course, that I  threw out a number of potential options the Dalish could play a change to the Keeper system, some of which didn't even contest the continued role of mage-rulers.

 

You're asking the Dalish to give up one of their few cultural traditions all clans we've seen so far have in common - and what does the other side give for that?

 

Depending on what the compromise is on the Chantry side? Potentially a lot.

No longer being considered dangerous apostate harborers is the most significant, and with that comes thus no longer needing to be nomadic to escape from Chantry enforcers coming after the un-regulated mages. No longer being nomadic means they can create settlements. With settlements come transition from subsistence living to societal development: stable population bases, record repositories to keep and preserve lore beyond suspect oral tradition, and enduring political relations and (and thus alliances) with local interest groups to build political allies and advocates.

And that's just if the Templars (or whatever their re-named equivalent post-Inquisition) mage-security-wing of the Chantry are satisfied with whatever accomodation are done. Which depending on the deal, doesn't even necessarily necessitate an end to mage-keepers if other compromises are made- consider the proposal of a Templar-affiliated observor who's role is to watch and observe for maleficar tendencies, which will reduce ignorance and misinformation of what the Dalish mages actually do.

If reconciliation with the Chantry as a whole is achieved by changing mage supremacist leadership philosophy- and considering that one of the historic fears of Southern Thedas is the fear of mage rulers lording over mundanes, the Keeper system as-is doesn't help reassure any political partner- a whole world of political options for the good of the Dalish starts to open up.

International legitimization. Political normalization. Even the creation of a Dalish polity that can actually claim to represent at least some regional Dalish, and both negotiate and be negotiated with to raise grievences and moderate tensions with the Chantry and Chantry-deferring countrires. One of the best ways the Dalish could slow or stop their cultural dissentigration is to re-create a unified polity, and the best way they can take an actual leadership role for city elves across Thedas is if someone has the relations and the influence with the Chantry to bring their attention to city-elf issues as something other than a strictly national concern. The only polity with international standing that they could hope to piggy-back that sort of reach off of is the Chantry itself- and better relations with the Chantry would benefit Dalish clans wherever the Chantry has influence, which is to say almost everywhere that matters.

Make no mistake, and don't straw-man me as if I'm saying simply changing the Keeper system is sufficient. It's not, and there are a lot of other issues to be addressed. But what the Chantry might offer will, of course, depend on what the Dalish offer in-turn. Changes to the keeper system- a system that doesn't actually select the best or most knowledgeable or most lore-cogninant elfs to the role of cultural leader for merry bands of cultural preservationists- is something that is entirely in the Dalish's power to change, and has significant influences on their relations with the most necessary institution for rapprochement.

When negotiating, offers need to be something you can deliver and something the other side wants. Political changes to their leadership caste is something the Dalish can do without any outside help. Mage policy is also one of the very few things the Dalish can offer that the humans actually want.

If not that, what would you offer as a compromise that might entice the Chantry to the negotiating table?

(Besides such low-hanging fruit as, say, allowing Andrastian missionaries to visit the tribes.That might be good for the Chantry, but it doesn't do much for the Kingdoms.)

Ah, so it's no longer squatting if you slaughter the population? Good to know; that makes my evil alter ego's idea to cull the human population with magical disease seem much more palatable.

Not really. That not-alter-ego justified it on the basis of cultural contamination, after all. Even the culturally contaminated elves were going to have to die.

Ah, that lovely fantasy mindset in which decisions made by a few aristocrats are expected to be considered binding to the rest of the population. In other words, morally speaking, it's worthless bullshit.

And yet, it's one in which you engage in quite often, with your propensity towards authoritarian posturing on social changes and attempting to fix every situation to your desired outcome by picking the 'right' aristocrats and elites, no matter how credible (or wishful) you cast their support base to be.

 

So if Solas wins, the elves will own everything.

 

Including most the dead elves.

Of course, going on past history, Solas's record for winning is pretty bad, so it'll be more like the Evunaris will own everything, again.

What compromises?

The compromises that come with co-existence with others when you can't get everything you want.

This is, of course, an entirely separate question from whether the Dalish should want some things at all. Sometimes societies need to change and question things taken for granted just because that's how they always were. To return to the subject- mage Keepers. Why should the Dalish want this? Why shouldn't the Dalish want to change this?

You claim the Dalish revere magic, but magic a very small part what the Dalish do and how they live. They aren't a society built around the practice or conduct of magic: they don't enchant, they don't rely on it, it's not a particularly integral part of their religion or modern rituals. The primary place for mages in the clan isn't as magical workhorse to do things no other worker can, but as scholar and leader- two zones that magic is not a requirement for. It's a waste of the magical potential, and a oligarchial dynamic that exists for no reason than 'because that's how we always did so.'

That sort of conservatism is no excuse for choosing how to lead a society, particularly when it implicitly improves discrimination on the basis of accidents of birth. This is a bad cultural practice for the Dalish, just as it's a bad cultural practice of the Magisters. The favor of the Creators no more justify a mage oligarchy than the Maker favors the Tevinter Magisters oppression of Tevinter. Reverence for magic no more justifies a mage elite than fear of magic justifies the Saarebas. For the Dalish, it's a practice that's also their own choice, and it's a choice that has real-world implications with relations to the dominant powers surrounding them. Mage-leaders are an additional tension on top of mages themselves with the primary security threat. Mage-leaders are also intrensically biased with their own perspective, conflating their own interests with the interests of The People. A non-mage keeper could have a different perspective, including one where the needs of the many aren't entangled with the needs of the one on top.

What occurs from there can still be on the Dalish own terms, and be something other than a capitulation. What 'revering magic' means to them can be something they decide for themselves- without false delimmas of 'Dalish Keepers or Chantry Slaves.' This is the sort of change of thinking the Dalish need if they're going to change their situation rather than hope it changes for them for the better.

Of course no one really expects the Keepers to step down or diminish their position for the good of the people- why would they? They not just taught and indoctrinated (and teach and indoctrinate) that it's natural and right that their elven subordinates revere them. It's also in their class interests to keep encouraging the magic-less elves to defer to them. Whether or not it helps lead to the Dalish extinction isn't really how they're addressing their problems in the here-and-now, or else they would have made major changes already.

 

Those they have with the city elves? Or those they actually signed with the mages and failed so miserably to uphold? Or even those they also failed to uphold with the Templar order? The Chantry hasn't a good reputation at the time to uphold their compromises. Only a fool will make a compromise with an institution historically known to withhold their promises if things don't go the way they wanted.

 

Then fool every serious group in the world be, because they don't demand perfection and historically infallible partners before making deals. Not only are the partners for peace imperfect, but so are your very own Dalish. I could just as well mock any Andrastian advocate of better ties for the Dalish for compromising to xenophobic, racist, murderous, and demons-consorting tribals with bad history skills. These, too, would be accurate discriptions of Dalish behavior across history that could be lobbed at any Andrastian who suggested compromise- and about as fair a generalization.

Deals to make the world and improve relations better don't come from the morally pure people who like us and have never hurt or opposed us. If they did, we wouldn't have any reason to improve relations in the first place. And if the Dalish want to do something other than fragment and collapse as an identity, they're going to have to deal with the people and organizations that exist rather than fantasize that they'll somehow outlast them all and inherity the world if they change nothing about themselves.

But, well, if you like them being an impoverished people who excel at misery...

I was going to just roll my eyes and dismiss you outright as a not very serious person, but MisterJB had a good point of your penchant for exageration and sillyness.

I would also add generalization regarding the temperament of Templars alongside the ridiculous notion that a sole Templar would be dangerous when massively outnumbered and that a Chantry willing to compromise would be sending Alriks to Dalish clans so they can create intercultural accidents.
 

I'll admit, I laughed at the last one. Even a cynical, amoral pragmatist would know better.

Magic is part of Dalish culture, whatever the mages were in Arlathan, and whatever the Chantry believes about magic. Maybe is not sacrosanct for humans, but is important to elves. Is like if the Qun came and destroys human culture. It's not important for Qunari, but means a lot for humans, because it's their identity, their heritage, whatever if that culture's foundations aren't what they believe. 

 

Your solution is to surrender all mages, either exiling them to other kingdoms, or sending them to a prison for life: the Circle of Magi, with their corrupted templars. Yeah, some templars are good people, but those are a minority, the exception. Most templars are self-righteous bigots who believe superior to mages because their religion and oppress and humiliate even human mages, why not elven mages, who are already an oppressed people.

 

That or permit an exterior authority (again, a templar) to have power in the affairs of a clan. Maybe clan got lucky and got a Cullen-like templar, a good man or woman who cares for the elves' wellbeing. But most of the templars would kill the Dalish on sight just because they're elves. Remember, in Orlais is legal to kill elves if you have a rank (like Chevaliers). Why the majority of templars would be different? 

 

The only solution I agree with you is that of the Dalish leaving their ancestral lands and go to live where humans will not bother them. 

So it's not that you don't read, you just don't comprehend what's being raised, along with a dash of True Elf and then reducto ad ridicularum about how compromises can be negotiated. Got it.

Of course what he did was horrible. Was that ever in doubt?

Yes. You post things like-

"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."

-in lieu of actual arguments and then frame your counter-arguments to people's condemnation as a defense of him and his actions.

If you repeatedly reject a condemnation and contest even it's accuracy, you are rejecting the validity of its conclusion. In this case, 'making innocent people suffer is bad' was met with 'no one is innocent' and then a rationalization on behalf of Zathrian's crime.

The justifications people make for doing the horrible things they do are often stupid. 

Are in agreement that what Zathrian did was horrible, then? You make it sound like you have some doubts.
 

 

I'm not looking for a justifications. I'm interested in Zathrian's reasons for doing what he did. He clearly thought what he was doing was right. It could as well have have been matter of principle or simply not being able to let go of what had happened, instead of a way to deal with his pain, like I originally suggested.

 

Zathrian was a stupid bigot. Whether he thinks it was right is irrelevant to it actually being justified.

 

 

Clearly he did not think so. He kept himself alive with magic for so long - just so the curse could not be lifted? That could imply that he clearly was not yet satisfied with his revenge. He didn't want to let the suffering of the werewolves end.

 

So what?
 

 

 

I agree, it does seem that even if it caused him emotional distress to see his own people suffer from the same curse he had created as punishment for the humans, it was not enough to make him end the curse itself. 

 

So what?

So, your solution is for the Dalish to relinquish their culture, give themselves to the Circle (one of the worst institutions on Thedas), and live in poverty conditions without rights like the first group of elves that submitted to the goodwill of the Chantry?

If you ignored everything you actually quoted, sure, why not? You're not paying attention anyway.

If you're condemning any compromise or culture reform on any part of their culture as 'relinquishing' and treat it as a horrible thing, I'd have to ask you what about their sacrosant culture right now you think is so great that it deserves service. They're bitter, angry, ignorant, impoverished, as self-victimized as not, and committed to losing fights that are destroying them. They're also self-destructing and fragmenting as a culture as modern events and actual (as opposed to mythic) history overtake them.

The Dalish way of life is already doomed. They want it to be doomed, because even their own cultural zeitgast is the idea that they'll stop being nomads and start being a civlization again some day. None of them actually want to wander around on the cusp of attritional eradication forever more.

The Dalish culture will irrevocably change anyway. If it's going to change eventually anways, why not choose changes that benefit them sooner than never? Compromise is going to happen. It's not the same as total surrender.

 

 

The way it is headed is that the Evanuris are going to be made responsible for everything, including the Blight.   Where is that going to leave any of the elves, let alone the Dalish?   Likely forced by the writers to join Solas and then be killed in large numbers.   

 

 

Or, alternatively, stop trying to cling to myths of past glory and start building a future of their own without trying to create a mythic past. Even if it's humble, it can be real, while the imagined past never was.

 

Why are the historic aggressors the Avaar, who have repeatedly attacked the lowlanders, been given such a positive depiction of their culture compared with the Dalish? 

What makes you feel it was positive? They're impoverished, uneducated, largely unorganized people who are in frequent contact with themselves and others and who venerate often ambivalent and occasionally malevolent beings of their own creation. They have a short-term society which has little prospect of becoming greater and is less about benevolent progress and far more about general ambivalence, and while their magic/spirit policy is of interest it's far from ideal or a practical solution for the social ills of the rest of the continent.

 

Why couldn't the Dalish gods have been simple spirits like the Avaar?  

 

Could? No one's said they couldn't have been. They could have been anything. The Dalish gods also could also have been non existent and an entirely unsubstantiated myth.

The better question is- why should the Dalish gods have been simple spirits like the Avaar?

 

May be my Dalish Inquisitor will adopt the Avaar gods instead?   He is after all an honorary member of the Avaar.

 

Sure, why not if he's that desperate for something to worship?

He's also a religious icon, so he could totally adopt Andrastianism.

How can the dalish start a new future if humans try to kill them if they stay in one place for too long

By making compromises and working on creating conditions where humans won't try to kill them if they stay in one place too long. They've done it in Rivaini, and there are absolutely things they could change about themselves that would make co-location far easier.

We know that the primary reasons they get chased off at an institutional level- and that's really all it is, a shooing rather than a deliberate attempt to hunt and kill- in a lot of places is because of their deliberate choice of mage policy. If they didn't insist on mageocracy and simply let mundanes be their history-keepers and leaders, the Templars wouldn't give a damn and the Chantry would only care in so much that bushwhacking occurs. Not bushwhacking humans is easy- it takes more effort to do than not to do- and compromises could be made about what happens to their mages.

There's actually a number of compromises that could be done. Might a Dalish clans in a Kingdom simply refuse to have any mages, and trade them to other clans to be someone other kingdom's problem? They could easily turn over mages to the Circles for training and safeguarding and Templar goodwill, with a possible negotiation of those mages being allowed to keep Dalish lore/visit Dalish clans and regularly interact. Or, if the Dalish clan was really convincing and credible and committed to a nomadic way of life, perhaps they could negotiate to bring the Templar oversight in- that a Templar maintains nominal oversight, and walks with the clan, and can mediate conflicts with human villagers.

If the mage issue is resolved, the single biggest institutional barrier to the Dalish being sedentry is removed. It'd be a compromise, sure, but compromises will have to be made if the Dalish wish to live in other people's kingdoms. Mage policy is the most within their power to affect. Once the Templars no longer send them moving, they're just funny heathens like the rest of the minor cultures the Chantry doesn't bother too much with, like the Avaar. Distant, dangerous, often heretical, but not particularly threatening so long as they don't actually threaten. The modern Chantry doesn't drive off heathens for being heathens- and depending on how the Dalish negotiate their mage issue, the arrangement with the Chantry can even become part of their protections from more secular fear and opposition.

Alternatively, if the inherited customs of being slaves to super-mages is too much to compromise, the Dalish could always pull an Avaar and build a society on the distant reclusive edges of modern civilization, and simply do their mage business so far away that the Chantry doesn't really care. I hear far southern Thedas is lovely this time of year.

Will you give the Templars the same treatment? My guess is probably not

Your guess would be woefully ignorant, then. I've always been up for equivalent Mage/Templar tribunals as a part of the peace and subsequent reconciliation process.

When they killed Zathrian's children they also destroyed any future children they might have had - thus ending far more than just one life. This could be Zathrian's justification for cursing all their descendants.

 

It would also be insane.

Hypothetical prevention of life- who knows, maybe she was a lesbian, or was sterile, or would have been caught fornicating with a Halla and choked and shame and died the next day- is not the same as inflicting harm on actual, living people. Being a ****-blocker and preventing someone from getting knocked up and starting a thousand generations is not the same as actually killing a thousand people. One is an unfounded hypothetical- the other is real. If you wish to argue on the basis of unfounded hypoathetical could-have-beens, you'll have to also defend why your hypothetical is any more valid a basis for condemnation than any other. Maybe Zathrian's daughter would have given birth to Dalish Tito. Maybe she would massacred her people, in which case your logic would require us to thank her killers.

It would, in other words, be really stupid.

 

It will not make the perpetrators suffer any more, but it might help Zathrian cope with the pain his children's death has brought him.

 

Zathrian's angst is not a justification for torture and magical mutilation of innocents. Grief-stricken parents deserve therapy, not a license to sadism.

 

If you side with Zathrian and help him destroy the Lady and her werewolves it is over, either way... I don't know if he even then will be ever able to forgive or forget. Would it help him at all to try to make him see the light and make peace with the descendants of those who murdered his family? Maybe... or maybe it is just far too late.

 

You know what would have also helped him get over it?  Eating a poisonous herb and dying in his sleep. Or becoming an abomination. Either one would have ended up killing a lot fewer innocent people than what actually happened.
 

 

The blood of those dalish elves who were killed by these werewolves is on Zathrian's hands. I wonder what that makes him feel? Does he feel horrible remorse or is he still too blinded by his lust for revenge to care? Perhaps both. 

 

As someone already pointed out, we know exactly what Zathrian was willing to do- let his people continue suffering rather than stop spiting the innocent. Sure, he was willing to murder his victims to save his people, but it's pretty apparent he thought even death was too good for the werewolves.

Well, all the ones who were attacking innocents were pounded into the dirt by me, and the rebels in Redcliffe were punished for their actions against Ferelden by Ferelden, so I'd say justice was already handled.

So the answer is 'no' and 'never.' Got it.

The getting in touch every 10 years is to exchange new lore discoveries and discuss any major events that have occurred in the clans in between time.   The basic traditions and customs that the Dalish follow were established back in the time of the Dales.   That is what they are all meant to be following.    It is not a high school reunion, with people living separate lives according to different customs in their own homes, and just having a small commonality because they went to school together.   It is a whole way of life.   Look at the Jewish people.    They have been scattered to the ends of the earth but when two Jews come together, they can recognise one another by the common traditions and culture that they have maintained down the years despite never having got together.   There are some variations between different groups but not in core beliefs and traditions.    That is what I am getting at with the Dalish.    There would have been certain traditions and beliefs that would have been what they took from the Dales and before they split up into smaller clans, it would have been agreed that this was what they were trying to maintain above all else in remaining free.   It is their racial and cultural identity.   It matters to them.   If a clan feels free to just willy nilly change things that is not being Dalish.

 

This is historically illiterate. 'Jewish culture' is also extremely diverse and frequently internally contradictory, famously so. At many points in history has been highly fragmented as groups thoroughly sought assimilation in widely different societies. 'Jewish culture' as a singular is more the product of anti-semitic conspiracy than fact.

Jews in most of history, including the present, have not been interchangeable with eachother in core beliefs and traditions because their core beliefs are, like most population groups, determined by culture and heavily by where they live and the communities with which they reside. Assimilated Jewish Germans had far more incommon with Germans than they did with Jews of France, who were more like the French than the Jews of the Middle East, and so on. The belief that they were all alike with a common, alien identity is the product of anti-semitic conspiracy theories of international jewish cabals and resistance to the sort of social integration that Jewish communities frequently and actively sought. Jews have a shared religion and traditions, but cultural values are shaped by communities and the Jews were (and are!) as diverse as the many nations they've assimilated into. So are their interpretations of their shared faith- the phrase 'two jews, three opinions' exists because there isn't a singular interpretation of religion or identity that all practicing Jews fall into. There is constant, vibrant disagreement on anything you want, from interpretations of doctrine to how it should be applied in real life. There are jews who care deeply about religion, and there are Jews who barely give a **** about it. Jews are no more culturally monolithic than Christians.

If you wanted Dalish as culturally united as Jews, you got that.

If you wanted Dalish as culturally united as the antisemtic creation of the monolithic jewish archetype, but different, you were kidding yourself.

Now when a problem arises between Arlathvhens that their lore doesn't seem capable of dealing with, the Keeper and the clan are going to have to make the best of it and then refer back to the gathering of the elders (Hahren'al) for their opinion on the matter.    This is what happened with the issue of Zathrian when it came to light.   They discovered that after all these years he hadn't discovered the secret of their immortality but in fact had undertaken a forbidden ritual using manipulation of life and blood.   The elders then condemned this action as a crime against nature.   They understood why he had done it, but they did not condone it.   So if a Keeper turned up down the line doing the same thing, this would not be in keeping with Dalish customs as established by the Hahren'al.  

 

The Hahren'al doesn't establish what Dalish customs are. What Dalish actually do the other 9.9 years of the decade establishes Dalish customs are. If Keepers (plural) down the line keep doing the same thing, it is a Dalish custom no matter what the Hahren'al publicly espouses. Your cultural practices are what your culture practices on a regular basis, not what it claims it will practice once a decade or so.

Legally, blood magic is forbidden in Tevinter. Culturally, it's a tolerated and ongoing practice, whether it's publicly acknowledged or not.

 

I repeat the actions of Zathrian were not that of a typical Dalish and the clan leaders condemned it at the next Arlathvhen.  

 

 

Political gathering condemns unpopular thing after it fails disastrously. Shocking!

 

What Marethari did in DA2 was only typical in that Merrill was banished for refusing to give up magic that was specifically outlawed under Dalish tradition.  Much of the time she very much acted against Dalish tradition in persistently putting her clan at risk for the sake of a person who had left the clan through her own choices.

A Keeper risking a clan as an extension of their own biases and concerns is an established Dalish tradition in the clans we see. They're an authoritarian system which amplifies the authority's personal biases, whatever they are.

Nor was Merrill banished for defying Dalish law. Dalish has no law, or court to appeal. She was banished for defying Marethari's directions. She would not have been banished in a different clan whose Keeper disagreed with Marethari.

 

 

As for the narrative in DAI, let alone in Masked Empire, that is the whole problem.    The writers are increasingly making the Dalish appear less sympathetic to the player so setting them up to be destroyed without anyone being particularly upset over the matter.   That's what PW did in Masked Empire in making such a extreme caricature of Dalish belief.   They even made it far easier for Lavellan to get their clan killed than have a successful outcome.   I'm pretty sure the Dalish PC is the only one who can potentially lose their entire family in a war table mission.

 

 

Alternatively, since you seem to have a problem with every single instance in the media of the Dalish presentation, the problem is actually that you mis-understood the Dalish from the start, and each new iteration continues to fail to validate it.

It's fine to be upset that the Dalish aren't what you wanted them to be- the idea of the proud, noble savages heroicly resisting injustice as they valiantly struggle for what should be rightfully theirs, a group whom you wanted to restore to their lost claimed glories. There might have been a good story in that. But it doesn't make it bad writing if that was never the story Bioware wanted to tell with the Dalish.

I consider both Zathrian and the werewolves to be assholes for attacking the uninvolved. A truly just ending, in my mind, would involve curing the curse, but then bringing the werewolves back to the Dalish to face justice for the other Dalish they murdered/transformed.

Truly a dedication to justice. When will you apply the same standard of group accountability to the rebel mages?

"No one is innocent." - Leliana. 

And Leliana is objectively wrong. Innocence, when taken from broad meaningless abstracts and actually applied to specific contexts and crimes, is quite easy. All you have to do is not be guilty of a specific crime.

 

Killing those humans will not bring Zathrian's family back. They are dead forever and so should they who killed them suffer forever as well. They did not kill and rape Zathrian - they did that to his children. So the only way to get revenge is to do the same - curse them and all who descend from them.

 

Torturing their descendants- descendants who did not kill or rape Zathrian's children- will not make the perpetrators suffer one iota more. The perpetrators are already dead. They don't care, nor do their children who are also dead, nor do their children's children. They're all already dead.

Zathrian's revenge was satisfied centuries ago. All Zathrian has now is spite against the uninvolved who never harmed him or his daugher.
 

 

Eye for an eye, a son for a son.

 

Even if this were true, Hamarabi's code called for a limitation of vengeance, not an infinite perpetuation of it forever. It's equivalence in kind in the singular, not infinite. 'Justice', or revenge, would have to have been satisfied at the first retaliation.

Zathrian's vegeance under such a code would only have been permitted for the first child. Every person afterwards is Zathrian's unjustified crime, and thus his victims are entitled for someone of Zathrians.

Racism doesn't have to be based on hatred. Insensitivity is an extremely common manifestation of it.

Only if insisitivity is racially motivated. Insensitivity in general can be entirely non-racist.

Unless you're a mind-reader, which you aren't, claiming racism for apathy or insufficient support is just as baseless as accusing someone of complicity in rape if they want to consider the facts before they come to a conclusion.

I cannot have said this better even if I tried (because my bad english). I think the same. I was not a Dalish fan, but what they're doing is destroying one of the best non-tolkieneske elven concepts in modern fiction.

Since the Dalish have been written as highly self-destructive since DAO, wouldn't that be the point?

The Dalish have been depicted as many things, but I can't think of the time where the writers wrote of the Dalish way of life and attitudes as good. Deserving pity, sometimes, but hardly venerable. One of first possible introductions to the Dalish culture is to contemplate the murder of innocent humans with a mostly sympathetic ally encouraging cold-blooded murderer, and the great infliction we have to overcome in the course of the Dalish questline is of a bigoted man who woulld rather watch his people suffer and die than stop inflicting misery and suffering on innocent people.

That's not even getting into the Dalish narrative of DA2, let alone the revelations of DAI.

It is poor writing to suggest the reason clans are so different is living in seclusion when we are told they have a major gathering of the clans every 10 years specifically to exchange lore and keep in touch, so they will maintain a commonality between them.  

 

Dude, have you ever dealt with people who only get in touch every ten years?

(No, seriously- have you?)

That's, like, worse than high school reunions. At least those occur with people who actually lived and grew up together for significant portions of their life. Dalish have less contact with eachother than rival football teams. Every clan is bringing different experiences, and different perspectives, and different wants and needs, and only has a very short amount of time to share and take in each other's. And on top of that they're horse-trading people for their own personal needs and desires, before going away to live their own lives in their own corners of the world where their immediate neighbors once more have far more relevance. Yeah, a transferee takes their experiences with them, but foreign transfer students hardly culturally unite international schools. If a Dalish lives to the venerable age of fifty, they might- might- remember seeing a bunch of Dalish clans together four times in their life.

Getting more and more different, to the point of cultural fragmentation, isn't absurd, it's expected- so much so that expecting otherwise is ridiculous. Coming together once a decade in the name of cultural unity doesn't mean it actually does that, any more than making sure to drink water once a year keeps you alive. You have to drink water a lot more often that that to stay healthy, and you have to interact with people a lot more than once a decade to keep a uniform culture.

But the Dalish don't, which is why they don't, which is why the myth of a common True Elven culture has always been just that- a myth. The Dalish never had a single True Culture- they don't even have the record keeping to define their own culture, let alone the knowledge of what True Elf culture actually was. They just have common things so vague they're mostly non-falsifiable, and call it good enough since it's all interchangeable. We (and by 'we', I mean 'people who didn't actually think about it') only believed there was a single Dalish culture because our insights into Dalish culture were limited to effectively one clan type at first in DAO. Then in every source since we've seen different types, and different takes, on the Dalish identity.

There's no deconstruction, or fall, or reversal of things claimed, because none of this is new. Guess what? Those small groups of people in different places with different neighbors and different circumstances, filled with people with different views, who all only get together once a decade or so and do things their own way... they're actually kidna different from eachother! Who knew?

Well, besides the people who read the codexes about the difference in tribes, and listened to the Dalish elves and saw the differences in views and group dynamics, and had any passing familiarity with how common cultures are actually forged and maintained and noted how the Dalish lack most of those means.