1008 réponses à ce sujet

[Crow_22]

Well, aside from the arguments above. The answer to the question: they didn't care if you did or not.

Lol this was totally you and Hawke to make the choice. I took the side of the mages because to me, it made more sense. Since Hawke WAS a mage himself (In the actual trailer and in mine ) I decided to make it so I allied with mages.

Either way, it would've shown that this massacure and mindless slaughter of innocents is unjust to the mages, and they would rebel. Even if Hawke DIDN'T ally with them. If Hawke sided with the Templars he would be under extreme investigation knowing them, and they would more than likely end up throwing him in jail within a church or fort somewhere. Still, aside from that theory the fact remains that the Templars would see this that mages truly ARE dangerous and command a 'Total Annulment" as I would call it, thus a mission to destroy the mages. At any costs.

Either choice was unjust. In war, there is no right or wrong really, because in the end. There is always going to be deaths of innocents, there will always be war. And no, this was not the cause of some radical religion this was the cause of human folly. As most wars are.

[dragonflight288]

All is fair in love and war.

[sphinxess]

Crow_22 wrote...

Well, aside from the arguments above. The answer to the question: they didn't care if you did or not.

Lol this was totally you and Hawke to make the choice. I took the side of the mages because to me, it made more sense. Since Hawke WAS a mage himself (In the actual trailer and in mine ) I decided to make it so I allied with mages.

Either way, it would've shown that this massacure and mindless slaughter of innocents is unjust to the mages, and they would rebel. Even if Hawke DIDN'T ally with them. If Hawke sided with the Templars he would be under extreme investigation knowing them, and they would more than likely end up throwing him in jail within a church or fort somewhere. Still, aside from that theory the fact remains that the Templars would see this that mages truly ARE dangerous and command a 'Total Annulment" as I would call it, thus a mission to destroy the mages. At any costs.

Either choice was unjust. In war, there is no right or wrong really, because in the end. There is always going to be deaths of innocents, there will always be war. And no, this was not the cause of some radical religion this was the cause of human folly. As most wars are.

<Watches the world light up as the Andres-Bomb is used against more chantry targets>

[Silfren]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Silfren wrote...
Go ahead, repost the damn thing.  The damage is already done, I'm irreparably scarred for life thanks to you and your enablers.  *glares at various forumites*

I actually have other ones.

<_<

That said....I have no choice but to ask...what scene is the second one based from?  

[PsychoWARD23]

Ryzaki wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

The problem is that they did this by having mages act randomly evil all the time, instead of having the Templars act with some semblance of rationality.

This pretty much. 

There was so many crazies on both sides I kind of wanted to nuke them all and be done with it. 

[In Exile]

LobselVith8 wrote...
Cullen's willingness to go against Meredith when she's going against a pro-mage Hawke never really made any sense to me. This particular Hawke is killing templars - why would Cullen care if the Champion is arrested or even killed resisting arrest? It's not even like Hawke surrendered to Meredith or anything like that.

Because Cullen thinks life is better than death, and is a supporter of the Rite of Tranquility. Capturing as many mages as possible to make them Tranquil instead of killing them would be right up his alley.

[Silfren]

DPSSOC wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...
She did care.  However, she put it very correctly and very eloquantly when she said that Andraste did not overthrow the Imperium with a strongly worded letter.

No I got that and sympathized, but she knows that innocent people died because of what they'd done, that children had died, and that it was all for nothing, but she still defends it.  That's a startling lack of remorse from where I'm sitting.  No acknowledgement that they made a mistake, that perhaps Uldred went to far, nothing.

IanPolaris wrote...
Summoning the Demons was risky but that does not in of itself make you a monster.  What the demons did afterwords is NOT her fault and the rebels are as much victimized by the demons as are the loyalists.

-Polaris

I light the match that burns the house down; it's my fault.  Doesn't matter if it wasn't my intent, it's still my fault.

Funny, I picked up on her having plenty of remorse in my playthrough.  She states "I know I have no right to ask for mercy, but I didn't mean for this death and destruction...we were just trying to free ourselves."  

I suppose the immediate rebuttal is that she can't be taken at her word.  Regardless, I think she was being honest in that scene, and interpreted her response as being very remorseful.  Further statements from her are: "We thought....someone always has to take the first step...force a change, no matter the cost" and of course, "Andraste waged war on the Imperium.  She didn't write a strongly worded letter," as well as "She reshaped civilization, freed the slaves, and gave us the Chantry.  But people died for it."

This is the part that keeps getting glossed over.  Any time there's a revolution, people always die, innocent and guilty alike, and it always sucks when undeserving people die.  But it doesn't follow that a repressive system should be maintained because the cost of either reforming it or tearing it down completely will be the deaths of innocents.

There was no way for the mages to gain any freedom, any concessions at all, in the current system.  I've only seen one person put forth a possible alternative to bloodshed, and I don't find that option a viable one.  Everyone else who is against a mage revolution seems to believe that the mages should just live with things the way they are rather than forcibly free themselves.  

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the position that a person's motivations automatically mitigate their actions, per the truism someone else already mentioned: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  But at the same time I don't buy into the notion that once you cross the line and resort to bloodshed, that makes you an automatic monster irrespective of everything else.  After all, by that logic, everyone who sides with the templars to Annul the Circle becomes a monster, even if their motivation was something other than "OMG MAGES EVIL MUST DIE."  Things just aren't that simple.  

I wonder how many people even bother to consider that argument in light of Andraste's own war.  The Chantry-fed belief is that she was basically a freedom fighter, overthrowing the Imperium because of its institutions of slavery and blood magic.  But she could just as easily be seen as a conquerer whose primary concern with those institutions was the opportunity to use them as propaganda against the Imperium in order to gain popular support.  This line of thought is touched on in the book The Stolen Throne, wherein Maric is pondering a statue of Andraste and noting that if the Chantry was interested in historical honesty, they would portray her not as holding a bowl, but with a sword in hand, because she was a conquerer as much as a prophet.

However, in either scenario, it's a sure bet that innocent people were slaughtered by the droves, and by Andraste's own forces as well as her enemies.  What makes her revolution morally sound and above reproach, but a mage rebellion less deserving of such?

[In Exile]

Silfren wrote...
The whole attitude seems to be that there is never any justification for "evil" no matter what a person is subjected to, that somehow a person is obligated to always take the moral high road no matter what abuses they suffer.  It's an extremely privileged position to take, and taken to its most extreme conclusion, it means that the only good mage is a dead mage, since a mage is apparently supposed to die before resorting to blood magic or demons.

That's like... the Christian moral system in a nutshell. Sacrifice and suffering before sin. Blood magic is the sin, and sacrifice is enduring all that punishment because it's the right thing to do.

Note, this isn't an attempt to make a religious point. But there is a very strong cultural background to support exactly this sort of moral attitude: that the right move is to suffer without objection.

[Silfren]

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

Deztyn wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
My preferred way to fix everything in Ferelden is to get someone who is sane and rational made Divine. I'd rather reform Andrasteism than crush it. I'd far prefer an Andrasteism that is closer to its original roots, especially if it turns out that Andraste was, you know, a mage, as we're lead to suspect when we find the Ashes. More than anything, I'd like to see the whole church change because of this, stop preaching that mages are Maker-cursed, restore the parts of history they've expurgated, stop oppressing the elves and spreading propaganda about the Dalish.

Nearly every reference to the mages being cursed that I can remember is about their alarming ability to become possessed by a demon and go on a rampage. I don't think that's something mages should ever stop hearing about

What you're making a mistake with, in my very humble opinion, is in assuming that such possession happens in a vacuum - without even considering the causes.

Constantly reminding ("accusing" is the precise word actually) someone that he/she may fall prey to a demon would not be my way of going about it. It would simply work toward undermining his/her confidence in countering such possession and confidence in the Chantry itself, to say the least. My objective, if I were taking up such a task, would be to arm the person better against becoming possessed.

What I'm interested in though is about the situation in Tevinter. Do we hear anything about possession being as common there as you suggest it is in Ferelden and/or Kirkwall (CulturalGeekGirl did say Ferelden, rather mistakenly, I think)?  And is it as catastropic? If it is not common or catastropic, why is it not so? What is it that makes demons prey particularly upon those mages we've seen in Kirkwall, for instance?

In any case, I think more research on demonic possessions needs to be undertaken. I know the Chantry and the Templars forbid it, as suggested in the Journal of Enchanter Wilhelm. We hardly seem to know anything about the "whys" of things (not much about the Fade, about the spirits and demons that inhabit it), and certainly these restrictions aren't helping much. The Litany of Andralla is another example of a research actually benefitting - the Chantry seems to have little qualms about the Circle using it, even though it doesn't sanction such research - a hyporcitical attitude at best.

To the best of my knowledge, we have exactly one codex that discusses a mage-turned-abomination going on a rampage.  It's in, I believe, the codex that discusses the inception of the Right of Annulment.  Anyway, according to that codex, the abomination was on the loose for a full year before being caught, and in that time had killed seventy people.

I'm sorry to say, I'm underwhelmed by that revelation.  Seventy murders over the course of a year doesn't strike me as a catastrophic level of Doom.  That's fewer than two deaths a week.  Any person can cause that level of damage, with nothing more than their bare hands.  If possessed mages are supposed to be so much more apocalyptically dangerous than a non-mage, or even just a non-possessed mage, that codex fails to convey it.

[Silfren]

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

Silfren wrote...

You do realize that the point is that whether or not it's officially legal to rape the mages is completely beside the point?  Just like it's not exactly legal to rape anyone in the real world, and yet rapists get away with it ALL the time because as crimes go it's the one least often taken seriously?

Getting away from real world issues, the fact of the matter is that the Chantry system creates an environment where templars can do as they like, legality be damned.  If a mage is made to fear being executed or made Tranquil if they dare try to seek justice, what recourse do they have?

The issue is in having a schism between what one professes to uphold and what one actually does in practice - hypocrisy, with the system of law becoming one merely of double standard. The situation in Tevinter (controlled by another Chantry) seems similar - a magister calls the shots there, with the end result being not the abuse of mages, but that of elven and human slaves. Oppression in both cases being the common denominator.

In a place like the Ferelden Circle, where it appears that the Knight Commander is a just man, templars are not permitted to behave as if they are above the law.  In this kind of situation, mages are not going to feel powerless, because they will generally be able to trust that any complaints they have will be heard.  In this scenario, the First Enchanter has a solid working relationship with the Knight Commander.

In a Circle like the one in the Gallows of Kirkwall, however, the First Enchanter does not have a joint working relationship with the Knight Commander.  Instead, de factor the Knight Commander behaves as if the First Enchanter is just another mage, rather than her joint collaborator in the Circle's dealings.  Between that, and the Knight Commander's inherent contempt for mages, you have an environment where no mage is going to feel safe going to the First Enchanter to field complaints about abuse.  Moreover, even if they did, there is no real reason to believe, based on anything we see in game, that the First Enchanter could actually do anything about it, as that would require a Knight Commander who was actually interested in making her templars attend to the law and not permitting them to regard mages as a class of people specially set aside to be templar playthings for whom pesky laws against abuse don't apply.

What do I think is the actual issue with this? That the fates of the many is now dependent upon the arbitrary "working relationships," as you put it, between two persons. It is no longer about any kind of objective law.

tl;dr it's a strawman to talk about rape and other abuses not being legal when the fact of their legality is irrelevant.

Right.

However, it would be wrong to say that all or even many templars resort to abuse, just because they can. Because the error would essentially be the same - one cannot say anything about any particular mage or templar based on actions of another.

Oh, I agree with that.  My issue, however, is that the nature of the Chantry-controlled system of Circles is tailor-made to support that kind of environment.  There's no third-party oversight, no check-and-balance system of any sort.  Mages not being abused depends utterly on the moral quality of their overseers.

[Silfren]

In Exile wrote...

Silfren wrote...
The whole attitude seems to be that there is never any justification for "evil" no matter what a person is subjected to, that somehow a person is obligated to always take the moral high road no matter what abuses they suffer.  It's an extremely privileged position to take, and taken to its most extreme conclusion, it means that the only good mage is a dead mage, since a mage is apparently supposed to die before resorting to blood magic or demons.

That's like... the Christian moral system in a nutshell. Sacrifice and suffering before sin. Blood magic is the sin, and sacrifice is enduring all that punishment because it's the right thing to do.

Note, this isn't an attempt to make a religious point. But there is a very strong cultural background to support exactly this sort of moral attitude: that the right move is to suffer without objection.

yes, I was thinking about that particular religious mindset when I wrote the post.  Hell, I used to exemplify that belief, before I awakened to the reality of how self-righteous and abhorrent it is.  

[IanPolaris]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

So, as long as you feel bad about it, any sort of horrific action you do, is totally justifiable?

I didn't say that.  I said that if you felt bad about it, then you weren't a monster.  In this case, however (DAO tower rebellion) it was do or die and anything is justifiable to survive (read Hobbes sometime).

-Polaris

[In Exile]

Silfren wrote...
yes, I was thinking about that particular religious mindset when I wrote the post.  Hell, I used to exemplify that belief, before I awakened to the reality of how self-righteous and abhorrent it is. 

The thing is, justice becomes a muddled concept once the system breaks down. I can sympathize with the downtrodden mages - but what do you do when you have your victim become violent and unrepentant? You can't have people escape from punishment for their crimes, even if some of that is understandable.

To give you an example: a mage turning to blood magic to escape and survive from a templar trying to rape and kill him, that's understandable. But then using that blood magic to strike back at the templars, it becomes a revenge killing.

[IanPolaris]

In Exile wrote...

Silfren wrote...
yes, I was thinking about that particular religious mindset when I wrote the post.  Hell, I used to exemplify that belief, before I awakened to the reality of how self-righteous and abhorrent it is. 

The thing is, justice becomes a muddled concept once the system breaks down. I can sympathize with the downtrodden mages - but what do you do when you have your victim become violent and unrepentant? You can't have people escape from punishment for their crimes, even if some of that is understandable.

To give you an example: a mage turning to blood magic to escape and survive from a templar trying to rape and kill him, that's understandable. But then using that blood magic to strike back at the templars, it becomes a revenge killing.

If there is TRUE justice, however, circumstances DO matter and can at least mitigate the crime sometimes entirely (the entire notion of justifiable homocide is based on this idea).  The problem is the Chantry refuses to recognize mages as fellow human beings with Maker given rights and has thus seized magical power in a very dehumanizing and hypocritical way.  When all options to peace are eliminated, violence becomes justified.

-Polaris

[Silfren]

In Exile wrote...

Silfren wrote...
yes, I was thinking about that particular religious mindset when I wrote the post.  Hell, I used to exemplify that belief, before I awakened to the reality of how self-righteous and abhorrent it is. 

The thing is, justice becomes a muddled concept once the system breaks down. I can sympathize with the downtrodden mages - but what do you do when you have your victim become violent and unrepentant? You can't have people escape from punishment for their crimes, even if some of that is understandable.

To give you an example: a mage turning to blood magic to escape and survive from a templar trying to rape and kill him, that's understandable. But then using that blood magic to strike back at the templars, it becomes a revenge killing.

I don't see revenge as inherently wrong.  As has been said, revenge and justice are different faces of the same coin.  Granted, I see your point, but I think there's a moral difference between an abused mage turning to blood magic to strike against the templars, and using it against people not associated with the Chantry in any way.  I'd have an issue with a mage using blood magic against random civilians, but I don't have the same issue with them going on the attack against templars, even those templars who weren't directly or even indirectly related to their abuse.

I'm not saying that all templars are evil, abusing jackasses who deserve to be killed, on the grounds that one evil templar makes all of them culpable. 

However, I see it the same way I see any action of war.  Each and every soldier on the battlefield, looked upon as indviduals, may not be evil people who deserve to be executed.  But it's a war, they are an acceptable target for the enemy to blow up.  It may not be a pleasant thought, and it makes for a very gruesome visual, but that's what war is.  We can talk about which side in the war had the moral high ground based on their reasons for fighting, but at the end of a day, when there's a war going on, all combatants in the war are acceptable targets.

[The Baconer]

Silfren wrote...
The whole attitude seems to be that there is never any justification for "evil" no matter what a person is subjected to, that somehow a person is obligated to always take the moral high road no matter what abuses they suffer.  It's an extremely privileged position to take, and taken to its most extreme conclusion, it means that the only good mage is a dead mage, since a mage is apparently supposed to die before resorting to blood magic or demons.

10/10

[MichaelFinnegan]

Silfren wrote...

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

What I'm interested in though is about the situation in Tevinter. Do we hear anything about possession being as common there as you suggest it is in Ferelden and/or Kirkwall (CulturalGeekGirl did say Ferelden, rather mistakenly, I think)?  And is it as catastropic? If it is not common or catastropic, why is it not so? What is it that makes demons prey particularly upon those mages we've seen in Kirkwall, for instance?

To the best of my knowledge, we have exactly one codex that discusses a mage-turned-abomination going on a rampage.  It's in, I believe, the codex that discusses the inception of the Right of Annulment.  Anyway, according to that codex, the abomination was on the loose for a full year before being caught, and in that time had killed seventy people.

That would be at the Circle of Nevarra. Still nothing about any abominations from Tevinter. That is a bit curious to me, to say the least.

I'm sorry to say, I'm underwhelmed by that revelation.  Seventy murders over the course of a year doesn't strike me as a catastrophic level of Doom.  That's fewer than two deaths a week.  Any person can cause that level of damage, with nothing more than their bare hands.  If possessed mages are supposed to be so much more apocalyptically dangerous than a non-mage, or even just a non-possessed mage, that codex fails to convey it.

I was more looking at a counterpoint to what happened with the mages at Kirkwall. Tevinter seemed to be it. And given that blood magic seems to be so openly practiced there, it seems rather odd not to hear about any abominations. It could very well be that news about it doesn't reach the rest of Thedas.

Anyway, the example you cite actually caused the Right of Annulment to be. So, it was to the powers that be that it was rather "catastropic" (the word as noted by a Chantry scholar in that Codex, I might add). And this Right has been performed approximately once every 41 years since then (not including the one at Kirkwall, I think).

Modifié par MichaelFinnegan, 18 juin 2011 - 06:01 .

[MichaelFinnegan]

Silfren wrote...

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

However, it would be wrong to say that all or even many templars resort to abuse, just because they can. Because the error would essentially be the same - one cannot say anything about any particular mage or templar based on actions of another.

Oh, I agree with that.  My issue, however, is that the nature of the Chantry-controlled system of Circles is tailor-made to support that kind of environment.  There's no third-party oversight, no check-and-balance system of any sort.  Mages not being abused depends utterly on the moral quality of their overseers.

I was more thinking about Thrask and Emeric. When I think more about it, Templars are born into the same system that mages are; and probably some of them have been deliberately made addicted to lyrium - muddling their thinking (perhaps so that they don't question authority?). And also, I didn't hear so much about wholesale abuse of their power - outside Kirkwall at least.

Perhaps it is the system that more than anything else needs reform.

[Silfren]

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

Silfren wrote...

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

What I'm interested in though is about the situation in Tevinter. Do we hear anything about possession being as common there as you suggest it is in Ferelden and/or Kirkwall (CulturalGeekGirl did say Ferelden, rather mistakenly, I think)?  And is it as catastropic? If it is not common or catastropic, why is it not so? What is it that makes demons prey particularly upon those mages we've seen in Kirkwall, for instance?

To the best of my knowledge, we have exactly one codex that discusses a mage-turned-abomination going on a rampage.  It's in, I believe, the codex that discusses the inception of the Right of Annulment.  Anyway, according to that codex, the abomination was on the loose for a full year before being caught, and in that time had killed seventy people.

That would be at the Circle of Nevarra. Still nothing about any abominations from Tevinter. That is a bit curious to me, to say the least.

I'm sorry to say, I'm underwhelmed by that revelation.  Seventy murders over the course of a year doesn't strike me as a catastrophic level of Doom.  That's fewer than two deaths a week.  Any person can cause that level of damage, with nothing more than their bare hands.  If possessed mages are supposed to be so much more apocalyptically dangerous than a non-mage, or even just a non-possessed mage, that codex fails to convey it.

I was more looking at a counterpoint to what happened with the mages at Kirkwall. Tevinter seemed to be it. And given that blood magic seems to be so openly practiced there, it seems rather odd not to hear about any abominations. It could very well be that news about it doesn't reach the rest of Thedas.

Anyway, the example you cite actually caused the Right of Annulment to be. So, it was to the powers that be that it was rather "catastropic" (the word as noted by a Chantry scholar in that Codex, I might add). And this Right has been performed approximately once every 41 years since then (not including the one at Kirkwall, I think).

I think the fact that Tevinter is not a distant memory speaks to the fact that abominations and blood mages don't spell the end of civilization as we know it.  If mages living free was the apocalyptic calamity the (White) Chantry would have us believe, then it stands to reason that Tevinter would be a smoking ruin, since not only are mages free, but in charge of the place.  

Modifié par Silfren, 18 juin 2011 - 06:22 .

[MichaelFinnegan]

In Exile wrote...

Silfren wrote...
yes, I was thinking about that particular religious mindset when I wrote the post.  Hell, I used to exemplify that belief, before I awakened to the reality of how self-righteous and abhorrent it is. 

The thing is, justice becomes a muddled concept once the system breaks down. I can sympathize with the downtrodden mages - but what do you do when you have your victim become violent and unrepentant? You can't have people escape from punishment for their crimes, even if some of that is understandable.

To give you an example: a mage turning to blood magic to escape and survive from a templar trying to rape and kill him, that's understandable. But then using that blood magic to strike back at the templars, it becomes a revenge killing.

The question actually is: where does one draw the line? Would someone wait for such an injustice to happen to him/her (knowing that it is already happening to others) or would he/she take up blood magic in anticipation of the problem?

Anyway, once a war if afoot, I think most morality goes outside the window. It is therefore imperative on those somewhat narrow-minded groups who set up such systems based on expediency, to ponder about the long term consequences of their actions.

[MichaelFinnegan]

Silfren wrote...

I think the fact that Tevinter is not a distant memory speaks to the fact that abominations and blood mages don't spell the end of civilization as we know it.  If mages living free was the apocalyptic calamity the (White) Chantry would have us believe, then it stands to reason that Tevinter would be a smoking ruin, since not only are mages free, but in charge of the place.  

Yes, that is true. I think the main issue is that one injustice can't be an answer to another. Even if the Imperium caused all that suffering a long time ago, it in no way excuses the shackling of the mages we see now in other parts of Thedas.

[dragonflight288]

I don't see revenge as inherently wrong. As has been said, revenge and justice are different faces of the same coin. Granted, I see your point, but I think there's a moral difference between an abused mage turning to blood magic to strike against the templars, and using it against people not associated with the Chantry in any way. I'd have an issue with a mage using blood magic against random civilians, but I don't have the same issue with them going on the attack against templars, even those templars who weren't directly or even indirectly related to their abuse.

I'm not saying that all templars are evil, abusing jackasses who deserve to be killed, on the grounds that one evil templar makes all of them culpable.

However, I see it the same way I see any action of war. Each and every soldier on the battlefield, looked upon as indviduals, may not be evil people who deserve to be executed. But it's a war, they are an acceptable target for the enemy to blow up. It may not be a pleasant thought, and it makes for a very gruesome visual, but that's what war is. We can talk about which side in the war had the moral high ground based on their reasons for fighting, but at the end of a day, when there's a war going on, all combatants in the war are acceptable targets.

There is no other way to look at war. International war crimes are usually charged when soldiers purposefully kill noncombatants or prisoners of war. Once the war starts, every chantry, every templar, every mage and apostate, innocent or otherwise would be perfectly acceptable targets. That is simply the nature of war.

Hmm. Maybe I'll start a thread or try to make a flash game where the player can be general of either mages or templar armies, and see how far you are willing to go to defeat the other on principle...and then write an epilogue based on if you win the war or not.

[Nightdragon8]

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

Silfren wrote...

I think the fact that Tevinter is not a distant memory speaks to the fact that abominations and blood mages don't spell the end of civilization as we know it.  If mages living free was the apocalyptic calamity the (White) Chantry would have us believe, then it stands to reason that Tevinter would be a smoking ruin, since not only are mages free, but in charge of the place.  

Yes, that is true. I think the main issue is that one injustice can't be an answer to another. Even if the Imperium caused all that suffering a long time ago, it in no way excuses the shackling of the mages we see now in other parts of Thedas.

The only problem is that what did Andreste mean with the words she spoke. I don't I have seen any codex pages where she said to lock them into a tower to watch them. Only that they should not use there magic to rule over others.

The problem is how people interpret the text and how they enfoce the rule.

Considering Blood magic can be used to control humans that itself is a clear use of magic controling the people. Then there is the always presant Ill just burn you alive or freeze you if you don't do what I say thing.

As it has been said, most don't konw a thing about magic so anyone  who has magic is automaticly feared. (because as history has shown us people fear other who are different) but in this case there is a clear reason to fear a mage. People just don't like the idea that someone can have so much power over another person.

I hate to bring this into this kind of forum but... IMO they should do a system like in Harry Potter. It seems the best kind of system to give mages freedom while giving them an envroment to learn how to control and not use there powers.

[maxernst]

MichaelFinnegan wrote...

Silfren wrote...

I think the fact that Tevinter is not a distant memory speaks to the fact that abominations and blood mages don't spell the end of civilization as we know it.  If mages living free was the apocalyptic calamity the (White) Chantry would have us believe, then it stands to reason that Tevinter would be a smoking ruin, since not only are mages free, but in charge of the place.  

Yes, that is true. I think the main issue is that one injustice can't be an answer to another. Even if the Imperium caused all that suffering a long time ago, it in no way excuses the shackling of the mages we see now in other parts of Thedas.

Except that as soon as the mages were let free, they wound up right back where they started.
Tevinter may not be a smoking ruin, but huge numbers of people are kept in much worse conditions than the mages in the rest of Thedas.  Being afraid that the mages will take over and enslave everybody else is not an irrational fear.  Without a system in place designed to prevent it from happening, I think eventually the mages will always take over.  And it will always be the blood mages who take control, because they have that extra power source, as well as the ability to mind control others, whereas other mages risk becoming addicted to lyrium if they try and go beyond their natural mana supply.  To me, mages are like a group of people that posess a huge technological edge on their neighbors, except that their edge is innate and can't be reverse-engineered or bought.  And if our history is any indication, the fate of the technological have nots has not been a pretty one, even in cases where they hugely outnumbered the more advanced group, as in the case of Cortez and Pizarro in Latin America.  The Tevinter Imperium is a very plausible and logical outcome of having a minority with extraordinary superhuman abilities. 

Modifié par maxernst, 18 juin 2011 - 10:55 .

[tmp7704]

Silfren wrote...

I'm sorry to say, I'm underwhelmed by that revelation.  Seventy murders over the course of a year doesn't strike me as a catastrophic level of Doom.  That's fewer than two deaths a week.  Any person can cause that level of damage, with nothing more than their bare hands.  If possessed mages are supposed to be so much more apocalyptically dangerous than a non-mage, or even just a non-possessed mage, that codex fails to convey it.

To put it in perspective, Ted Bundy took four years to kill 30 people. And it was enough to give him permanent spot as one of the most known serial killers. The infamous Jack the Ripper? Linked to 11 murders, at best.

While "any person can cause that level of damage" in theory, few people actually do.

Modifié par tmp7704, 19 juin 2011 - 01:12 .