1890 réponses à ce sujet

[Avilia]

ReiSilver wrote...

Weirdly I didn't find Cullen creepy until he started his paranoid ramblings, insisting all mages needed to be killed, then again in DA2 when he gets anti-mage with "They're not people like you and me" and talking about having a divine right over mages. Before that he just seemed shy and awkward but infatuated with Surana/Amell.
After DA2 I just can't get over the high numbers of tranquil and the torture implements/equipment in the Gallows, it's like he's been revisiting what was done to him on mages; defiling their minds and torturing them, even if it was Meredith's idea he was complicit in it. Cullen saying he wanted to arrest Hawke instead of killing him/her doesn't fill me with much confidence when my Hawke is a mage and knowing Cullen is ok with there being six Iron Maidens in an open courtyard area of the gallows...

Can you tell me where the Iron Maidens are and during which Act they appear?  I've just tried various saves at various points and can't find them.  I wondered if they were related to Best Served Cold but they're not there after that either.

Edit ToP:

Modifié par Avilia, 23 août 2011 - 09:15 .

[R2s Muse]

Ah, phew, Gala. Thanks for reading through that Sheryl Chee thread more fully. That's a really interesting tidbit! Guess it's too easy to jump on the "he's creepy" bandwagon - esp when DG says it. Personally, I still haven't done the full mage playthrough of DA:O.  I just did the mage origin part and quit, but when Cullen ran away from me he just seemed sorta... lame, so didn't really intrigue me. Still have to go do that.  I also was reading the Alistair dialogue page for its templar refs and realizing how much of it I missed the first two PTs -- and how much I missed him. I just freaking love that man!

Anyway... back to Cullen! Right! Yes, like Avilia, I'm curious about where the torture equipment was to be found in the Gallows. I know the name of the place conjures certain images, but I'm not sure if I've seen them...

Also, I meant to say it a few pages back, but was thinking this morning about someone's point that Witch Hunt was written around when they were conceiving DA2. I didn't realize that there are DA2 refs in it. Cool! Hmmm... this really does suggest that Cullen had some actual rehabilitation in Greenfell. I feel this worming its way into my head!canon.

Thank the Maker they decided to let Cullen heal!

[erilben]

Avilia wrote...

Can you tell me where the Iron Maidens are and during which Act they appear?  I've just tried various saves at various points and can't find them.  I wondered if they were related to Best Served Cold but they're not there after that either.

They're inside the Gallow Prisions where you get to talk to all your party members before the final battle if you had side with the mages.

[Avilia]

@erilben - ty kindly

[Avilia]

Here we go then:







They look old but its hard to tell if they're in use or just left over from the days when the Gallows was a Tevinter prison. I've never noticed them before - would have seemed part of the decorations I suppose.

The last one looks like something used to catch blood - for blood magic rituals perhaps?

Sorry for posting the shots - I hope the mods don't mind but I wanted to show them so others didn't need to go hunting through saved files.

Modifié par Avilia, 23 août 2011 - 10:39 .

[R2s Muse]

Oh my. Thanks everyone. Guess I missed that. The iron maiden-y thing I had thought was just a sarcophagus or something when I saw it in the Harriman's basement. But that all is unequivocally torture equipment. Jeesh.

[Galagraphia]

 Well, since they are in the mages' part of the Gallows, I think they are just decorations.
Also, an interesting letter popped up on tumblr today:

Click for more details.
We know from Anders that Alrik personally tranquil'd Karl, so I guess, this Ser Bardel ended up somewhere in the Lowtown, begging for lyrium.
See how the Order works: a decent templar tells the bad templar that the bad templar is doing something wrong. The bad templar uses a "Sacred Duty" or a "Divine Task" argument, and a good templar ends up kicked out of the order. And what we have? The order loses a good templar, who respected his wards and treated them better and maybe helped them somehow. And the percentage of decent templars goes down, while the percentage of bad ones rises. I bet most of the decent templars decide not to mess with the high-ranking bad templars and just keep doing they job. And, like Bethany said, they are doing it fine. Some of those good templars even work with the Mage Underground. 
What I'm trying to say is that we can't blame those men for doing their jobs, because nobody benefits from their refusal to follow the orders, except people like Alrik, who will get what they want anyway.

[Avilia]

@Gala I tend to agree that they're decoration. Perhaps with a side benefit of intimidation. Bioware are not a subtle people, if they'd wanted us to assume mages were being tortured, there'd be blood splattered around, probably some bones and body parts as well.

[Monica21]

Avilia wrote...

@Gala I tend to agree that they're decoration. Perhaps with a side benefit of intimidation. Bioware are not a subtle people, if they'd wanted us to assume mages were being tortured, there'd be blood splattered around, probably some bones and body parts as well.

I don't know if I'd go with them being decoration, but I do think they're holdovers from Tevinter. I really don't think that Templars are putting disobedient mages inside Iron Maidens. And I think Bethany would have mentioned mages disappearing or screams. As it is, she seems reasonably content as a Circle Mage.

[Sialater]

Well... her sibling's status may protect her a bit. After all, I'm sure Hawke would take the Gallows apart brick by brick if they harmed her.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Galagraphia wrote...

What I'm trying to say is that we can't blame those men for doing their jobs, because nobody benefits from their refusal to follow the orders, except people like Alrik, who will get what they want anyway.

This is also why I roll my eyes nearly out of my head when someone says "but the order must change from within." The order has been designed to try to inhibit change from within! The order either needs to change from the top (via some kind of, I don't know, reformation or something), or from the outside (through the intervention of the state... or maybe of some outside hero), or simply be destroyed and replaced with something that works. That's the reason I'm willing to side with a group who wants to take serious action against the current Chantry system... there is no rational way any sort of improvement can be expected with the way the current system functions. I'm not saying that Andrasteism is bad, but the current Chantry seems fundamentally unsalvagable.

This also relates to the Stanford prison experiment that Galga mentioned earlier: sometimes I think people take the wrong lesson from that study. A lot of people look at it and think it means prisoner abuse is inevitable. Rather than looking at it that way, I think that If making normal people guards in a prison system makes them become abusive, maybe it's the inherent structure of prison systems that is the problem, Maybe cruelty to prisoners isn't an inherent flaw of humanity, bur rather an artifact of common flaws endemic to various prison systems.

It's also a reason that the prison model is absolutely the wrong model to use in most situations. I'd say something more like a parole system or a drug-use-monitoring system would be much more effective.

The whole situation is so messed up that I often feel the only sane option is to just burn it to the ground.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 23 août 2011 - 02:50 .

[Neminea]

Depends on the mentality of the prison system. Where I am from, there are probably as many social workers (shrinks etc) as there are guards working for the prisons. They focus on "helping" the so called criminals. If the templars and the chantry were more inclined to helping the mages instead of keeping them in check, the system might have worked.
But I guess that is neither here nor there, since I agree that unless something happens at the top or from outside the order, the system won't change.

[ReiSilver]

Avilia wrote...
*snip*


They look old but its hard to tell if they're in use or just left over from the days when the Gallows was a Tevinter prison. I've never noticed them before - would have seemed part of the decorations I suppose.

The last one looks like something used to catch blood - for blood magic rituals perhaps?

Sorry for posting the shots - I hope the mods don't mind but I wanted to show them so others didn't need to go hunting through saved files.

I doubt the Kirkwal circle, with Meredith as anti blood mage as she is, would keep blood magic implements anywhere near the mages there, although there is one thing in circles we know uses a bowl; The Harrowing.
Now I actually have no idea how that wooden-manacle set up is supposed to work, and I'm a bit too unsettled already to go searching through old torture implements to find out what it is. But I'm imagining Harrowed mages being tied down to it, rather then leaving them unbound while going through a ritual that purposefully puts them in a position encouraging possession.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Neminea wrote...

Depends on the mentality of the prison system. Where I am from, there are probably as many social workers (shrinks etc) as there are guards working for the prisons. They focus on "helping" the so called criminals. If the templars and the chantry were more inclined to helping the mages instead of keeping them in check, the system might have worked.
But I guess that is neither here nor there, since I agree that unless something happens at the top or from outside the order, the system won't change.

Yep. I was trying to say that the "default model" for prison, as represented in the Stanford Prison Experiment, may be inherently flawed, but that kind of model seems to be what we're stuck with in Thedas.

If I were going to talk about idealized prison systems, I'd talk about Oz (which exists in part to explore utopian ideals.) We actually see the Oz prison system under Ozma in the Patchwork Girl of Oz.

L. Frank Baum wrote...

Tollydiggle sat near him while he ate, sewing on some fancy work she held in her lap. When he had finished she cleared the table and then read to him a story from one of the books.

"Is this really a prison?" he asked, when she had finished reading.

"Indeed it is," she replied. "It is the only prison in the Land of Oz."

"And am I a prisoner?"

"Bless the child! Of course."

"Then why is the prison so fine, and why are you so kind to me?" he earnestly asked.

Tollydiggle seemed surprised by the question, but she presently answered:

"We consider a prisoner unfortunate. He is unfortunate in two ways--because he has done something wrong and because he is deprived of his liberty. Therefore we should treat him kindly, because of his misfortune, for otherwise he would become hard and bitter and would not be sorry he had done wrong. Ozma thinks that one who has committed a fault did so because he was not strong and brave; therefore she puts him in prison to make him strong and brave. When that is accomplished he is no longer a prisoner, but a good and loyal citizen and everyone is glad that he is now strong enough to resist doing wrong. You see, it is kindness that makes one strong and brave; and so we are kind to our prisoners."

I always tear up a bit when I read that, because it's so cool. And probably impossible to pull off in reality for a number of reasons mostly related to a mistaken trust in the efficacy of prison as a deterrent. Still, it's definitely what the model for the Circle should be, because the deterrent factor is irrelevant in an internment system... especially as mages under stress are more likely to be dangerous!

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 23 août 2011 - 03:27 .

[Avilia]

Monica21 wrote...

Avilia wrote...

@Gala I tend to agree that they're decoration. Perhaps with a side benefit of intimidation. Bioware are not a subtle people, if they'd wanted us to assume mages were being tortured, there'd be blood splattered around, probably some bones and body parts as well.

I don't know if I'd go with them being decoration, but I do think they're holdovers from Tevinter. I really don't think that Templars are putting disobedient mages inside Iron Maidens. And I think Bethany would have mentioned mages disappearing or screams. As it is, she seems reasonably content as a Circle Mage.

I meant decoration now, I'm sure the Tevinters used them for their intended purpose.

Modifié par Avilia, 23 août 2011 - 06:53 .

[Xilizhra]

We know from Anders that Alrik personally tranquil'd Karl, so I guess, this Ser Bardel ended up somewhere in the Lowtown, begging for lyrium.

Actually, the letter is found on the corpse of the templar lieutenant in Tranquility, which is rather tricky to get because you have to loot him before the battle is over. So I think Bardel did follow his orders after all, and then wound up killed by Hawke.

[R2s Muse]

As a brief interruption of our high-minded discussions of organizational prison reform in the greater Thedas region, I thought I would bring us back down to some low-minded drooling comparative anatomy. Jakface has some fun new (shirtless) sketches of our favorite blushing templar.

As you were.

[Avilia]

Noice...Jakface is my hero ;-)

[rak72]

I like his little tatoo

[Schratty]

I want Jakface's pin-up calendar so bad. Cullen is April's feature.

Modifié par Schratty, 23 août 2011 - 08:14 .

[Avilia]

*goes off to look at her digital copy* Yes, yes he is....

[rak72]

Schratty wrote...

I want Jakface's pin-up calendar so bad. Cullen is April's feature.

I want it too.   I don't see anyplace on the web site to place an order

[R2s Muse]

Schratty wrote...

I want Jakface's pin-up calendar so bad. Cullen is April's feature.

It's awesome... I have the digital version, but not yet the paper version. I finally had to ask her, and yes, he's laying in the rain, pulling one of those Flashdance-like ropes to dump additional water on himself. Kill me now.

[R2s Muse]

rak72 wrote...

Schratty wrote...

I want Jakface's pin-up calendar so bad. Cullen is April's feature.

I want it too.   I don't see anyplace on the web site to place an order

Not sure, but the orig calendar site says that she'll be selling more after all the original ones are mailed out.

[Avilia]

R2s Muse wrote...

Schratty wrote...

I want Jakface's pin-up calendar so bad. Cullen is April's feature.

It's awesome... I have the digital version, but not yet the paper version. I finally had to ask her, and yes, he's laying in the rain, pulling one of those Flashdance-like ropes to dump additional water on himself. Kill me now.

Is that what he has in  his hand?  I wondered...  Oh I see yes.