[quote]Dave of Canada wrote...
What? There's no such thing as "basic human rights" on Thedas, it's a recent modern-world concept which is being applied by players to a fictional setting, commoners can be slaughtered and tortured for insignificant reasons and
you're talking about "human rights" existing?
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I'm taking the modern idea of human rights and applying it to Thedas. In my opinion, a set of basic human rights that everyone is entitled to is a good thing. So when I'm playing in a fictional setting such as DA, there's no reason for me not to carry over that idea. And yes, magic does amplify the ability to cause harm, but does that mean you should immediately write off everyone born with magic as 'too dangerous' and deny them those rights? As I said before, there are situations where that might be necessary. But defaulting to that position when the indivivdual is yet to show any sign that they might be a danger to others is where the problems start.
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Gameplay mechanics =/= Lore.
Mages are
far more dangerous than anyone with a sword or bow.
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Thankfully gameplay mechanics don't need to come into it anywhere. The things your Warden or Hawke does are canonical lore, so we have examples in lore of people with swords and bows killing hundreds, even thousands of darkspawn, plenty of demons, broodmothers and a couple of high dragons for good measure. If someone like that decided they wanted to cause harm to people, they could do far more harm than most mages.
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Unless they don't even know they're agreeing to those temptations due to the demon's manipulation. Demons don't come around like a drug dealer and go "wanna buy some blood magic?", they pressure the mage constantly and influence them in subtle ways.
Suddenly, BAM.
They're wearing an ugly flesh-suit and going to demon rave parties.
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And yet we have plenty of mages such as Wynne and Irving who have resisted demonic possession all their lives. No matter how insidious the demon's attempts, it is perfectly possible for a mage to avoid becoming an abomination.
As I said previously, apostates don't seem to become possessed with the frequency of circle mages. Whether that's because their training is more effective than that given in the circle - perhaps because blood magic and demons aren't taboo subjects for the apostate so they can learn to protect themselves from it and its lures, rather than being unable to learn about it for fear of being branded a maleficarum and made tranquil - or just chance, we don't know.
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The difference being they're keeping an eye on
one mage, anything goes wrong and they're probably well-equipped to deal with it. There can only be one mage at a time and whether they use blood magic or not ultimately ends up being their choice, which still doesn't stop them from screwing up.
Look at all the damage Avernus caused in Warden's Keep, he's just as responsible as the king's men in killing everyone.
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Where does it say the grey Wardens can only have a single mage? As far as I'm aware there are multiple Warden mages in each country. So no, they do have multiple mages to look after at once. If you look at the list of Wardens from Warden's keep, those who signed that bit of paper, there are at least two names on that list with titles that make it almost certain they are mages, and some of the others with more neutral titles could be mages as well.
Whilst the Wardens are probably well equipped to deal with anything going wrong as you say (Alistair was a Templar after all) ask yoursefl has anything gone wrong? Have we seen any instance of a mage joining the Wardens and becoming an abomination? Or summoning demons without explicit authority to do so? I might have just forgotten, but throughout Origins and DA2 we haven't seen or heard of or read a codex entry containing details of a Warden abomination. Again; once the mage is free from the circle, the desperation that drives them to consider such a path is no longer there.
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No, he was offered freedom from the Circle by Loghain and in exchange they'd help his war effort. When he approached the other senior enchanters, they all said " no" which prompted him to fight back. One man and his followers vs the rest.
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Consider the reasoning behind that refusal. If they were offered a straight up, alright you're free to go, they might have accepted. Consider that they were being freed from the circle only to be forced to fight in a civil war to help one man's power grab, and you can see why they refused. Evidently Uldred felt that anything was worth getting out of the circle and felt that he couldn't squander the opportunity. So he went too far.
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Averted
how? Releasing him? When the majority says he's being stupid, he fights back and causes the Circle disaster inadvertedly. The Circle system might've been the why behind his little "uprising" but you can't seriously expect idiots to get everything they want when they're fighting their peers.
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He didn't cause that disaster inadvertently. He was a senior enchanter remember, he knew full well what would happen if he chose to allow himself to become an abomination. He has been denied his basic freedom for years, and now he sees it as his one chance to experience life outside of a jail as being thrown away by his fellow mages. Evidently this was just too much. But he didn't inadvertently become an abomination, that's why what happens is such a terrible thing.
As for how it could have been averted? If he hadn't been a prisoner all his life in the first place, that's how it could have been averted.
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His--and his small group of followers--actions were prompted by Loghain's offer and being rejected by his peers, you could say the "neglect" at the Circle prompted his actions but it didn't influence anyone else. They were all raised in the same location, all heard the same offer, they all had the same choice. They refused and Uldred fought back because of it.
Fact is,
everybody else refused.
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See above
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Blood Magic is learned when you've made a deal with a demon, whether out of mutual benefits or because one side wins out far more but they don't need to spend time looking for demons. All they need to do is yell out "I want to make a deal" and demons flock to them, as demons will always try to manipulate mages.
They don't need to give in for the demon to possess them, however. The demon has subtle influences on the mage through it's constant presence, influencing it until ultimately the mage agrees to things which he / she wouldn't do under normal circumstances.
BAM, abomination.
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Blood magic can be learned directly from a demon like in DAO, but that's not the only way. You can learn it from books, as shown in Awakening, or from other sources - there is a codex entry which states that the original source of blood magic was the Old God Dumat. The point is that whilst using blood to power spells might be easily learned, it took the magisters a lot of study and a significant amount of time to realise that there are spells which can only be used only through blood magic, such as the ability to control minds. In other words, to have anything other than the most basic abilities in blood magic takes those mages significant amounts of time and study. During which time it is surprising that they are not discovered by Templars.
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Wynne, Finn, Irving, Bethany and others do come up. Hell, the end of Asunder makes it clear that the leaders of each fraternity are split with wanting to go to war or wanting to maintain the status quo. One vote was the "majority",
one. That's
hardly a majority.
And that's even with the huge crackdown on mages after Kirkwall.
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At the end of Asunder even Wynne thinks the Templars have gone too far. Bethany can either die or join the grey wardens; her joining the circle isn't set yet. And finally that one vote represents the Aequitarian fraternity; the largest fraternity of mages, meaning that one vote in favour of war represents a significant majority, significant enough that even the Loyalists go along with it.
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What? Do you think the anti-magic Templar wouldn't have been able to handle it when reinforcements from Denerim arrived?
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Even Greagoir is doubtful that the shield on the door will hold for long enough for the right of Annulment to arrive. And there is a reason why mages become abominations remember; its when they are pushed to the brink and see no other way out - they surrender control to the demon in exchange for greater power. With the sheer number of abominations in the circle tower, do you think the Templars could have held out for long enough without your arrival? This codex entry sums up the effectiveness of templars versus a single abomination.
http://dragonage.wik...ry:_Abomination I reckon by that description without your intervention it's obvious which way things would have gone.
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The city as a whole remained fine. Guards defended civilians, Templar slaughtered the mages in the streets and they were all pushed back into the Circle and far away from the city. Casualties were mostly among those in the Chantry, Priests / Templar / Elthina / Affirmed / Scribes / ect and that occured before the Rite and the mage-hunt began.
They
contained the situation.
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And what about the scenes with the blood mage surrounded by templar corpses (the one who summons 20 gazillion shades and was a pain in the ass the beat) or the burning houses? What do you think happened to the inhabitants there. For all the good that the guards did in containing the situation, the city suffered a great deal, even just in the areas you see. We have no idea how bad things were in other parts of the city.
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I... don't get your point.
So because the Circle defended civilians for hundreds of years, the war makes it a failure and that we should forget about the atrocities of Blackmarsh and Redcliffe simply because they're insignificant to war?
That makes no sense, their war would only brew more anti-Mage sentiments (which isn't hard to do) and lead to people celebrating when mages are shackled and suffer far more brutality for their attempted rebellion. Any rebellion without any long-term plan or "true" leadership serves no purpose other than making your cause seem more idiotic.
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The circle has for the most part prevented the mages from doing too much damage. As you say, atrocities such as those at Redcliffe still occur so they aren't exactly a resounding success, but they do mitigate some of the damage. What I am saying is that the loss of life and the suffering caused by mages such as the Baroness or Connor or other mages which I am sure have caused great damage that we don't know about, is at the end of the day on the scale of a villages or towns. Numbers which would still pale in comparison to a full scale war which could occur if the Templars and Chantry are unable to accept that the mages are free now and no longer under their control.
Thats just the mages; there's also the fact that the Grand Enchanter is a grey warden, an organisation which has become increasingly involved in political affairs and which we are told has suffered hostilities from the Chantry in the past for invoking the right of Conscription. Then there's Ferelden, whose monarch is shown to have sheltered apostates. Then there's the threat of an exalted march against Kirkwall; whose to say that the other city states in the Free Marches wouldn't take that kind of attack as a threat to their independence too. Then there's the fact that the Templars have split from the Chantry. In other words, there is already a great deal of turmoil within the Chantry and Templar organisations, and it seems somewhat unlikely they could strike a decisive blow across all every country where they have power to stop the mages from striking back. In other words, its not going to be a quick tussle, there's going to be a lot of death and suffering due to a war that is being caused by the Templars wanting the mages back in the circle. If the circles had been abolished a long time ago, this war would not happen. That is why locking the mages up in the Circle could, in the long run, cause more suffering than they prevented by doing so.
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Isolde was a noblewoman which was far more concerned about her motherhood and appearences rather than the Circle system. The same would've happened anywhere else--even in Tevinter--because pretty much
everybody understands keeping mages at home untrained with their families is idiotic.
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To the contrary, Isolde is only worried about Connor's safety; her dialogue is that she was scared that they would take Connor away, and that she thought if he learned enough to be safe, she would not have to send him to the circle.
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Ha, no. The mages were protected from commoners for hundreds of years, they were given private lodgings with food / clothing and an education. Meanwhile, commoners didn't have to worry about being mind controlled / slaughtered / reanimated / having their entire village burned down.
Those thinking in the short-term are the mages fighting for freedom, not the mages who designed the Circle in the first place.
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They are given lodgings that they cannot leave under normal circumstances. They have no freedom. That's only the beginning. The Templars are hardly good jailers; some mages are sexually abused - I'm sure this has occurred in real life prisons too, but that doesn't make it any less despicable - in addition to the things we see happen in Asunder. Cole was a real person who was brought to the circle, thrown in jail, forgotten about and left to starve to death. When the Templars realised - too late- they simply removed all mention of him from the records. And that's before you consider the brutality of the rite of Tranquility; the two mages we have seen who have been cured, whether temporary or permanent, begged for death rather than return to tranquility. In my book that makes what they do to mages a crime far worse than simply murdering them.
Modifié par DuskWarden, 23 juin 2012 - 09:46 .
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