Your comparison is flawed.
We do lock away citizens when they have a bomb, regardless of why they have it or if they intended to use it
And mages, for better or worse, are born with bombs.
[/quote]
My point was that everyone has the capability to not only build a bomb but use it. We don't lock them away for it.
Similarly, all mages have the capability to abuse their magic and destroy civilization. But they're locked away for the threat they might pose, rather then for anything they did.
Mages are -- by Chantry dogma -- labeled as walking time bombs that have demons plaguing them 24/7 -- or at least, a lot of the time.
Not only has game evidence never supported this claim, but it's also been extremely contradictory on how demons plague mages.
Lob pointed this out earlier. A mage only has to deal with demons when the demon is in the real world -- either through crossing the Veil or summoned by a mage -- or if the mage is in the Fade. Those are the only times possession is a risk. This is what the game stated in DAO, and cannot be argued against.
Considering how DAII actually contradicted this established lore, much of the Abominations that happened in-game are the result of plot stupidity and are lore-breaking.
What next? You give a mage cookies and he turns into an Abomination?
[quote]And their initial opinion was all that mattered. They were okay with the situation, even actively advocated it in internal debates. No amount of you trying to twist them into looking like supporters for mage-freedom now can change this.
[/quote]
Their initial opinion doesn't matter anymore, because the entire situation has changed. You can't say "They wanted the Circles" is the opinion that matters if their opinion changed to "**** the Circles. They truly don't care about us."
[quote]No, a templar in the Circle of Montsimmard is accepting bribes. You are too happy to extend the existence of corrupt individuals to an entire organization, yet complain when the same is being done to mages.
Perhaps we should dissolve the entire LAPD? After all, the Rampart scandal means that all cops must be corrupt.
[/quote]
Considering the mage in question got to live in a manor far outside of the Circle and was once the First Enchanter, I think that entire Circle is corrupt. Unless you're going to argue that the First Enchanter disappearing is something that is easily ignorable by the entire Order present there or that only one Templar was bribed.
And I'm sorry, but that's just absurd. The First Enchanter gets to leave the Circle for the rest of her life and you think it's because only one Templar was bribed? So what, the rest were just fine with it, but they weren't bribed?
So you must think that a First Enchanter going to live in her manor for the rest of her life -- as the codex states -- is something that wouldn't be noticed.
You can't say that a mage who was in an important position of power in the Circle and that got to leave the Circle because of her family's money did so by the work of one single Templar.
[quote]Define "imprison"? I've seen quite a number of Circle mages walking around outside their cells.
[/quote]
Considering Gaider himself said they imprison their mages, imprison seems like the right word.
[quote]No, it's not. A single person saying "place B sucks more than place A" doesn't mean place A really sucks. You don't know anything about Starkhaven, you simply presume again.[/quote]
Then he would've said "Place A was far better then Place B", if A was truly a better place.
[quote]From "Asunder":
[/quote]
Fair enough.
[quote]I find it fascinating how you don't see that your own argument could just as easily be turned around to declare mages as a people being corrupt, given that the aforementioned 5 Circles also have their fair share of mages abusing their power[/quote]
"Abusing their power"?. There are only a scant few mages that actually fall into that category.
Decimus' only crime was wanting freedom for himself and his fellow mages, even if that meant Templars had to die. And in fact, some mages have fought the Templars off in pursuit of their freedom and have gone their whole lives without harming others or turning into an Abomination.
Uldred -- though his methods were definitely bad -- merely wanted freedom for the Circle.
Tarohne is an apostate, as was Quentin. And both were certifiably insane. They cannot be held accountable for the Circles. Quentin was a member of the Starkhaven Circle, but he hasn't been one for a long time and is thus an apostate.
Huon went mad because he was more then likely abused in the Circle and hadn't seen his wife in 10 years.
Evelina merely wanted to see her children, and when fighting off the Templars she became possessed -- and this is another instance of lore being conflicted since she couldn't have been possessed in the real world unless a demon crossed over.
Feynriel never abuses his power, and he's an apostate Somniari. The Somniari attract demons 24/7 definitely, but they can't be used as evidence for all mages being haunted by demons. They can only be used as evidence for all Somniari.
Merrill never abuses her powers, nor does Marethari -- at least, not her magic. Her status as Keeper I believe she abused, but I don't want to rehash that old debate again. In fact, Dalish mages never abuse their power.
Some of these never abused their power, while others were driven to that point by the Templars. You can't say the Mages are the bad guys here if the Templars are the ones causing them to be the bad guys.
The only one that comes close to being labeled such is Zathrian, but he never abused his power. He was right to punish the people that raped his daughter and killed his son. His only crime -- which had nothing to do with abusing his power -- was that he let his anger cloud his judgement.
We see more good mages then we do bad mages. Contrast this to how many bad Templars we see in comparison to the good ones.
Grace is the only one that can be said to have abused her power, and that's only for a pro-Templar Hawke because the pro-mage Hawke makes absolutely no sense at all.
The Tevinter Magisters -- most anyway -- abuse their power certainly, but for them it's expected since that was the culture they were brought up in.
[quote]And if that ratio is 15% to 85%? Or 5% to 95%?
Haven't you stressed religious fervor being mandatory for templars being a bad thing? As per the Codex you were pointing at, loyalty is just as mandatory - but you are cherrypicking, dismissing the aspects that don't fly with your argument.
[/quote]
Which doesn't mean they're being loyal to the Chantry. Loyalty can be to a person, country, group, or cause.
The corrupt Templars are loyal to how they perceive the Order's cause -- Mages bad! Mages bad! -- and not to the Order itself, nor to the Chantry.
If they were loyal to the Chantry, they wouldn't have broken away from the Divine. The Divine is the Chantry. She speaks for all of Andrastian Thedas. To break away from her means they aren't loyal to her or the Chantry.
[quote]Fortunately for the mages, the Chantry isn't advocating this position. Unless you are referring to the Right of Annulment - but that one doesn't concern all mages but "only" all mages living in a single location which is seen as unredeemable. As such, the term "genocide" is incorrect.
[/quote]
Fortunately for the Mages, the Divine and whoever agreed with her isn't advocating the culling of all mages.
Unfortunately for the mages, the Templars are.
And the RoA is genocide, always. Justified when it's warranted like in the case of Ferelden, but it's always genocide.
Meredith's RoA was definitely an unjustified genocide.
[quote]And even as an elf I'd still prefer Orlais to Tevinter. Look at Fenris and tell me you'd do otherwise.
[/quote]
No you wouldn't. Orlais is the same as Tevinter pretty much, as the Orlesian woman in Denerim will tell you.
You wouldn't be enslaved to a mage, but you'd still be enslaved.
[quote]So what are you proposing, lying to their faces? Albeit brutal, the truth is likely to result in a more cautious mage who is aware of the dangers his powers pose.
As I stated a few days ago, personally I am most in line with Greagoir's statement, though - "magic is a gift and a curse".
[/quote]
NO. I'm not proposing lying to them. You can tell them their gift -- and it is a gift -- comes with responsibilities, that they need training. You can do all manner of things that still tells them it's not an easy life they now have to live without telling them they're cursed.
As I said a few posts ago, if you come up with the problems you see in the system entirely -- both Mages and Templars -- I will give you my ideas for reform.
Because not only is this little quote-by-quote thing getting tiresome -- I gotta scroll back up and scroll back down, scroll up, scroll down -- but we're not even addressing the core problems of the situation.
How the system needs to reform.
[quote]Bad. Only that it wouldn't matter. From what I've seen in history and contemporary society, most people finding themselves at the receiving end of a communal measure to advance the position of the group at the expense of a few do not like it, regardless of what it's about.
"I have to pay more taxes just because I'm rich? INJUSTICE!"[/quote]
But the rich are hardly being deprived of anything that justifies such a complaint. So they have to pay some money. They're still rich at the end of the day.
Mages on the other hand are being deprived of their rights.
Gaider himself said that mages can only marry as a reward for "good behavior". Meaning they're prisoners who can only have something that the rest of society can have by being good people in their cages -- gilded or torturous.
[quote]I don't see how they were twisted. Andraste was against magic being abused "to rule over people instead to serve them". This is what the Chantry is about, too. That mages were put into circles is simply the result of how the world looked like at the time the Chantry was founded -> blood magic cults and abominations running amok.[/quote]
Magic exists to serve man, never to rule over him.
The Chantry sees this as "Mages shouldn't be in society at all. That's how they serve man".
Mages on the other hand see it as "We should use our powers to help society, but we shouldn't enslave them again."
Malcolm Hawke said it best: My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base
And if Andraste was a mage, I'm inclined to believe that she believed in the latter two. If she believed in the former one, then she would've been advocating her own isolation from the world.
[quote]An Imperium of mages, in case you forgot.
[/quote]
Considering we've only got one Imperium in all of Thedas -- at least, one using the title Imperium. People consider the Chantry to be another Imperium under a different name -- I don't know why you thought I forgot.
[quote]No, I don't think you're getting what I find confusing about the way you try to differ between faith and zeal.
Both zealots as well as "normally faithful" people believe in the same personal truth. This has zero effect on any universal truth. The fact that zealots are prone to the "browbeating" you mentioned is an ACTION made in the pursuit of one's cause. Which is what I was saying all along. Zeal is about the range of actions you find acceptable in the pursuit of your faith. Nothing more, nothing less.[/quote]
That's what I said.
Their fanatical belief in a personal truth doesn't make it a universal truth, despite how they now believe it to be one. And they will go to great lengths to impose their personal truth onto other people.
[quote]Not the ones owning a barrel of blackpowder, I reckon.[/quote]
And how do you determine who has blackpowder? Do you invade everyones' homes? Do you lock them all up because they might have blackpowder?
Tell me, how do you tell who has blackpowder in a society that doesn't have technological advances like we do -- which because of what we have makes it easier to identify them.
You're presented with two options here: Let them be free despite the risk they all pose or lock them all away because they might have a barrel of blackpowder in their homes.
And if you do the former, then you're a hypocrite because you would let one section that poses an almost equal risk to mages be free while you still maintain a vicegrip on the mages.
The fact that the Mages were not only rebelling against the Chantry but are also seeing help from outside sources -- the Mages' Collective, the populus of Ferelden, the populus of Kirkwall -- shows that many non-mages as well as mages disagree with the Circle system.
Even the blasted King of Ferelden is arguing for the Mages to have more independence!
And when you have people disagreeing with the system the way it is, then it's time for a change. When you have people that want reform and for the mages to have greater rights, then it's time for a change.
The Circle's education is necessary. But how it is instituted as a prison camp rather then a boarding school isn't.
[quote]Didn't we have these in DA2?
[/quote]
I mean possessed inanimate rocks, not Dwarves that turned into rock wraiths and were possessed.
Interestingly enough, the fact that a Hunger demon possessed such a creature -- and that the Rock Wraiths can perform magic -- implies that the Primeval Thaig Dwarves were mages. And it's a thought I've entertained for quite a while.
And as I believe, they were responsible for the Darkspawn. The Magisters merely were the cause of the first Awakened Darkspawn -- Corypheus and the Architect -- but we have nothing to indicate they were the cause of the first Darkspawn in existence.
Plus, we already know they couldn't seek out the Old Gods since they can't hear them. Which makes the notion of them finding the Old Gods rather far-fetched.
[quote]Says who? All we know is that she had a relationship with a mage of the rank of apprentice. That's it. Not all lovers of apprentices are their teachers. In fact, I'd suspect the majority of affairs happen in the same level of hierarchy.
[/quote]
So what you're saying is that she had to have been an apprentice, because there's no age limit on when a mage takes their Harrowing.
But then when I said that a mage could remain an apprentice for their whole life until they became strong enough, you pointed out that they can be deemed weak and made Tranquil.
Your argument is flawed.
You can't have it both ways. A mage can't have the option to remain an apprentice for 40 years because there's no age limit on the Harrowing and yet be made Tranquil because he/she is deemed weak. If they could remain an apprentice until they were powerful enough to undertake the Harrowing, then the RoT would never be performed on apprentices unless they were suspected of being maleficarum.
Not to mention that if she was an apostate she would've been thrown into the Harrowing right away, just as Bethany was.
If you play the game and look at her face, you'll see she's in her 30s or 40s. Considering that apprentice is shocked to see her Tranquil, she couldn't have been Tranquil long. And considering they were in love, I highly doubt she would volunteer for the RoT.
Especially when it's known Ser Alrik illegally Tranquils mages.
[quote]Tranquil aren't slaves. As per David Gaider, they do not just blindly follow orders as if they'd lack a will of their own, and they have the capacity to say "no". Aside from that, does it really strike you as so impossible that an apprentice is scared so much of the Harrowing that she'd opt for Tranquility rather than facing a demon? Because this happens all the time.
[/quote]
And I think Gaider's wrong.
Emotions are a critical aspect of free will. Tranquility is essentially mind-rape, just like blood magic's mind control is.
Emotions are tied to logic. They operate based off of one another. They're not opposites, but they do come into conflict with one another. To remove emotions removes
Emotion is a fuel in the pursuit of logic, or so I believe. Removing emotion destroys much of what makes one act logically.
Even the Dalish see what happens to the Tranquil as destroying their soul, which houses free will.
So that means that the Tranquil are slaves, because they have no soul. No free will. They're a husk, and even Karl -- who was illegally made Tranquil -- despises what happened to him.
Additionally, if that Tranquil could've said "No" then she would've, because she was in love with the elven mage apprentice. Her love of the apprentice was ripped away from her. If she had free will, she'd still be able to love, because she would've said no to Alrik and stayed with the man she loved.
But she didn't. She says that "only Alrik can command her now". She has no free will and is thus a slave, tantamount to being a carefully made construct.
Templars aren't allowed to be with mages just as much as mages aren't allowed to be with other mages. She was in love with the apprentice, but she didn't say no. Reason being: she couldn't. Her free will was stripped from her, despite what Gaider would like us to believe.
Gaider claims they think logically. That means that they'd adhere to the laws of the Circle as well regarding fraternizing between Mages and Templars. They would logically not allow such a thing and would say no. But they don't, because they're slaves with no sense of free will.
And yes, a Tranquil is still a Mage.
I don't think anyone should readily believe what any Tranquil says regarding being content with their lack of emotions until they've had a chance to come back. They may say they like it, but do they really? What would they say when they turn back.
From what I'm led to believe, Pharamond hated being Tranquil and asked Rhys to kill him because he didn't want to be turned back into one like Lambert wanted to happen.
At least, that's what I gather from what the wiki states -- though IMO, it's not very clear on the subject.
[quote]It wouldn't support anything because the fellow mages wouldn't be able to see whether Karras was raping Alain, whether he was beating him, or whether he was playing a game of cards with the mage.
[/quote]
That's why I said how he was raping him. I didn't say "It supports the notion that he's raping Alain.
Merely how he would go about doing so.
But again, Alain confirms that Karras was raping him when he says in Act 3 "The Templars.... ask things of us".
[quote]You're still not getting it. There was no change. Reaver abilities always required dragon-influence, in DA:O as well (as it is the dragon cult where you learn it). Demons can tell you about it, though, just as they can tell you about blood magic. They simply know a lot of secrets and use them to bargain with mortal mages.
[/quote]
There was a change. That blurb says that demons have something to do with the Reaver blood magic, but this is never supported in-game. Not even by the man who knows how one becomes a Reaver and tells the Warden. Not even by the author of the codex on how one becomes a Reaver and who labeled it as a definite form of blood magic.
The games consistently state that Dragon's blood is needed for one to become a Reaver. Aside from that one blurb, it's never supported in-game and thus has no bearing on the situation.
[quote]The only thing this quote of Brother Florian proves is that the Chantry views Reavers as blood magic. This isn't very shocking; I came to suspect as much in my previous post. It does not address what it actually is, however.
[/quote]
Of course they'd view it as blood magic. It is blood magic.
Did you ignore the parts of my previous posts where I pointed out how both Reaver abilities and blood mage abilites do the same things? Or that blood magic is about more then just using blood as a fuel for abilities, but also about gaining abilities from blood?
[quote]Given how it was first planned in DA:O to have addiction effects for templar characters, it more seems like a disconnect between Gaider and whoever wrote the lines for Alistair. Like someone in the team was "okay, we're taking out lyrium addiction", and then someone tried to weave it into the game with this bit.
Unfortunately, this sort of stuff happens, but I'm glad Gaider went this way. Would it be otherwise, lyrium maybe not being necessary for templar training would not be a nasty rumour but a widely known fact, and this just makes it less interesting imo.
[/quote]
It's irrelevant to me what they planned, because they scrapped it and it's thus inapplicable as lore.
What is lore is what I said Alistair says, and they have to abide by it. Or at the very least, admit when they're retconning the established lore.
But they've been doing a lot of retconning lately on some things, and it's starting to drive me up the wall. If they can't adhere to their own lore, then they're not really creating much of a valid setting.
[quote]Ah! Yeah, apparently you can also meet him later in the game when you don't kill him.
Not really shocking, though. It might be interesting if this list is changed depending on the options the player chose, however, or if it simply risks a "forced retcon" of a player decision.[/quote]
No no no, you misunderstood. This is something you get in Awakening. Apparently, even if Jowan's dead.
It has nothing to do with him being released that shocked me, but that even if you chose to kill him they're looking for him.
[quote]Well, he was studying blood magic.
You could argue that he only did so after he somehow found out about the scheduled Rite, but that seems like a very far stretch. Practicing blood magic isn't as easy as taking a book our of a shelf and skimming over a couple pages - I'm pretty certain it takes far more time to learn this than it does for a Rite of Tranquility to be executed after being ordered.
Interesting bit about the signatures, by the way, thanks for this bit of detail.
[/quote]
It's not that much of a stretch actually.
But it doesn't matter anyway.
Also, it seems that the Templars can inscribe runes into the walls of a Circle that render magic in a limited area unable to be performed. The basement had this -- confirmed by Lily -- and she realizes that the reason normal keys were used to access the corridors was because magical keys wouldn't work.
[quote]Maybe I'm mixing things up, but I don't recall argueing that Meredith didn't know about any Tranquil - I do not see why she'd be surprised. First off, we do not know the exact numbers of by how much the amount of Rites may have "skyrocketed", just as we do not know of the reasons provided. As previously stated, things in Kirkwall have escalated, and this includes Meredith's willingness to sanction more stern measures against wayward (in her eyes) mages.[/quote]
Which would still be illegal, as she needs the First Enchanter's approval to authorize the RoT on a mage.
[quote]
Especially when they were suggested by people she trusted.[/quote]
Anyone she trusts are apparently her sycophants. Karras thinks very much like Meredith -- even going so far as to say "Those robes will get what's coming to them" in Act 3 -- and is one of the higher-up cronies in her group.
[quote]
An example could be a directive like "any mage running from the tower falls under suspicion of working with the underground and needs to be made Tranquil, then we'll ask him to tell us about his contacts".[/quote]
That wouldn't justify it.
[quote]We also do not know whether these Rites were actually performed according to protocol, though this is a bit far-fetched as I expect a Rite of Tranquility to be a pretty big thing that is difficult to hide, so the more are performed, the greater the risk of discovery.[/quote]
It's not far-fetched when it's confirmed in-game and by Gaider himself a few times.
[quote]But I'm going to drop out of this thread now, at least for a while[/quote]
Do me a favor if you return. Let's stop this quote-by-quote business. It's hard for me to properly express my thoughts when I have to keep scrolling back up and down.
How about this -- which I've said I think in this post above and a few before it -- you come up with the problems you see in the system, on both fronts.
You're operating off of very limited information on how I would reform the system, and thus you don't really know how I view the situation aside from that the Order is corrupt -- and indeed, it is.
Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 25 mars 2012 - 04:39 .
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