DreamerM wrote...
Pride Demons showing up always kind of bothered me though, just because I believed the Codex when it said they were so powerful and dangerous that just one actually escaping to the mortal plane would threaten the entire world. And yet several turned up in DA:2 and the world is none the worse for it.
I agree.
Though I think my main beef is that Pride Demons that are supposed to be uber-powerful and
cunning, but we rarely see them as anything more than Yet Another Monster To Kill in DA2.
There was a real problem with using certain monster types sparingly and appropriately, which I again think goes back to the "Well, we don't have a lot of monster models to draw from and we haven't used THIS one in a while..."
So there are degrees of Abomination now? I'm glad that's not confusing...
Oh, Connor was an abomination. But common perception of what an abomination is that
1) It's a mage possessed by a demon
2) Utterly devoid of humanity
Connor was only halfway there for some reason.
Acutally I think you DON'T see any Tranquil become Abominations. You see mages do it, but not the Tranquil. One of the benefits of the Rite is that the Tranquil can't be possessed, because they have no connection to the Fade. The Tranquil we met in the Tower were afraid for their lives because they had no spells to protect themselves, but they were not afraid of being possessed.
And Janders didn't possess Karl. I think that incident where he "brought a peice of the fade into the world" means Anders contains a .... concentrated version of whatever link to the Fade the Rite severs to make a mage Tranquil. I'd be curious to know if this is an effect Anders has on all Tranquil all the time, or if it only happens when he glows in the same room as a Tranquil mage.
Also, this has to be a quality unique to Justice, right? The Abominations in the Circle weren't causing the Tranquil to wake up... is that because those people were possessed from a distance, like Conner was, as opposed to Justice was physically inside Anders? How is it none of the magic-users in Thedas have researched this?
And this, again, makes me wonder what would happen if you tried the Rite of Tranquility on Janders, since he's not really connected to the Fade, he IS the Fade, he carries it inside him.
I think it's by now been confirmed (or vouched for) by others that Tranquil do get abominated in DA:O.
I agree that Anders/Justice doesn't possess Karl. My argument is that it's a spirit/demon's connection to the Fade that could breach the division that the Rite of Tranquility introduces. In Karl's situation it's temporary and he reverts very quickly to being Tranquil--but like you said, Karl isn't possessed. He's exposed to Justice for a brief moment, and it's the spirit's Fade connection that restores him.
Likewise the Tranquil in DAO are exposed to demons, Fade denizens, and to all appearances their connection to magic is restored once they are possessed.
Do I think a demon/spirit could cure Tranquility? If it could, I think Anders would have cured Karl, so no, not without the demon/spirit actually taking up residence in the Tranquil.
DreamerM
Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...
An abomination is, by definition, a mage possessed by a demon.
What about the spirits that AREN'T demons, like Justice or Wynne's Faith? Those people are no less possessed then Ulrich was, were they?
Now we're just arguing semantics.
The Chantry defines an abomination as a mage possessed by a malign spirit, ergo a demon, and the demon is controlling them and their powers.
Whether the Chantry extends this to include *all* possessed mages I don't know. Benign spirit possessions are supposedly rare to unheard of, and I'd be interested to know if Wynne publicised her possession to Irving or the Templars.
Mostly what's required is clarification on what being "possessed" can mean. I was given the impression that most possessions were like Conner's: where a demon still in the Fade possesses a mage from afar. Conner still looked human but it was the demon doing most of the driving: Conner was barely aware what was happening around him. Now is this some quality of the long-distance possession that made Conner so powerless in this situation, or was it because of Conner's poor training, or was it some stipend that the demon insisted on while keeping Arl Eamon alive?
I doubt we'll get everything explained. Even if the mages in the game knew everything there is to know about demons, spirits, possession and the Fade, the writers would just dangle the odd fact before us and giggle as we kept trying to grab them.
We don't have much of a frame of reference for Ulrich, but he was only a bit more appalling post-possession then he was pre-possession. This means if you can i.d which of his actions were his own and which were the demon's, you are better at this then I am.
Uldred summoned his demon during a meeting in the Circle Tower, and that's when things got crazy and Uldred effectively 'ceased to be'.
And then there's the case of Wynne and Anders. Wynne was philisophical and kind and wants to Do Good and share wisdom and protect the innocent and the like...you could argue that without Faith she wouldn't have left the Tower to travel with the Hero, but I could point out that she also cheated death, knew she was living on borrowed time and wanted to do something meaningful with her last days. If this was any change from her normal personality, I didn't notice it. As far as we can tell, this spirit never talks to Wynne and never even tries to take control of her body from her.
So far, Wynne's spirit has proven benign. Apparently she's turning up in Gaider's third DA novel, and in light of DA2 I'll be interested to see if anything develops between her and her spirit.
Anders's personality changed dramatically. I don't know if this is because we know Justice was physically on this plane when he possessed him, so the effect was much more intense, but his survival instinct and all the defenses of humor and fatalism he'd assembled so he could live in this world were thrown out and replaced with an unrelenting Justice Drive right for the rocks of Reality. Anders actually says that he can't have a conversation with Justice, their thoughts are too inter-mingled, but if that's the case when why can Justice occasionally override Anders's control and cause black-outs? That says he has to still be seperate on some level. Plus there was the Fade, were you could, for a moment, actually see Justice in "peaceful" control.
As Merrill says, all spirits are different and individual, like people are. They can all be dangerous.
Perhaps the reason there are so many differences between abominations is because there are so many differences between spirits and demons...and their hosts.
I will always resent that we could not take that one-of-a-kind moment to actually TALK to Justice, and find out his opinion of what's been going the heck on in that new head of his, as well as get more information about Vengence, but...nope! Not important. Lets go back to worrying about that Dreamer (silly name) and his terror of his demon-problem, nevermind that that kid doesn't really MATTER for the game's conclusion and Justice really, really does.
I wanted to talk to Justice in DA:A about certain things and never got the chance. That annoyed me too.
Retour en haut
You make a compelling argument there. Alright then, I won't. Since the corgis demand it. 
