TK514 wrote...
Palidane wrote...
Ok, let's try to move discussion along.
DA3 has just started and your an Inquisitor. Let's just say your job is to end the Mage-Templar War. The mages are holed up in Andoral's Reach, where they await the onslaught of the Templars, who have broken ties with the Chantry in order to kill more mages.
What do you do?
The Templars are in a tough spot here. Normally, I'd say just maintain the seige of The Reach, because Mages need to eat just like everyone else. Poison the water supplies, throw festering animal corpses over the walls, that sort of thing, and wait until desperation forces the mages out into open battle.
The main reason this doesn't seem to be a valid strategy for the Templars is because they are also fighting against time. Since they have broken with the Chantry, the Templars have to bring the mages to battle and defeat them before the lyrium supply runs out. That means instead of a protracted seige, the Templars are going to be forced into a costly assault. That means breaking down the fortress and dealing with whatever horrors the more extremist mages have done to themselves and their supposed allies inside. Avernus, Uldred and Orsino (And Decimus, and Grace, and....) give us some pretty good examples of what extremist mages will do when given the chance, and thus what the Templars will face once they get inside. Past that, even should the Templars prevail, I'd say they're still in trouble. Ultimately they have to secure another supply of Lyrium or cease to be a functioning organization.
The Mages also can't get their own food. The population isn't very sympathetic, they've all grown up in towers, and their confined to one castle anyway. I don't think you can magically summon food, so they have to survive on whatevers in the fortress. So if they're limited by food, and the templars are limited by Lyrium, all signs point to this being one enormous knock-down battle
That said, Lord Seeker Lambert might have found ways to get around the Chantry's lyrium trade. If the mages can likewise magically summon food, we are looking at a very odd situation. When the defenders can call down fire from above, your gonna need more than a battering ram to break in. I'm thinking long range catapults and ballista will be neccessary, which I'm not sure the templars have. Heck, they might need explosives, which is only available from the Qunari (who might donate it if they think it will help the baas learn to tame their mages) or a certain dwarf friend of ours.
In the meantime, were I Justina and the Chantry, I would begin rebuilding the Chantry aligned Templars and Circles with an eye towards a more progressive and humane system of checks and balances. I would make the Mages and Templars partners in the quarantine, rather than watcher and watched. I'd also use the Chantry's considerable economic power to strengthen the monopolistic flow of lyrium from the dwarves to the Chantry. I'd want the breakaway Templars to get just enough lyrium to deal with the rebel mages, and then cut off what remains of both sides.
Exactly what I'm planning on. The Circle system works, the mages just need more say. A lot more, but still. I think I'd cut off the templars immediatley though. These guys have gone rogue completely, and are the ultimate loose cannons. This is a very delicate situation, and the Chantry has to do everything it can to bring down the fanatics on it's own side. Mages are more polite when they know your the only thing keeping the zealots off them.
If I'm a mage, I'm in the most trouble of all. On one hand, I'm in a fortress besieged by an army that wants to kill me because I'm a mage. On the other hand, I'm locked inside a fortress with a fair number of desperate people and lunatics who are going to start turning to blood magic once the lyrium runs out, and most likely going to start summoning demons and fade spirits to bolster their forces. It's not much of a step before that sort of thing starts leading to sacrifice and possession. In short, the mages have to win quickly and decisively enough to scatter and escape before they are destroyed from within, and even should that happen, life is looking pretty bleak. A mage would spend the rest of their lives in fear, wondering if today is the day the mage hunters show up or, perhaps even worse, the day that friends and neighbors finally clue in to the fact that they have a mage among them and set up the bonfire in the middle of town.
Regardless of if they win or not, the Mages have chosen pretty much the single worst method they could have of gaining their 'freedom', because ultimately they will never be free. Normal society simply has too much reason to fear them, and too many years of Andrastian reminders to hate them. A smarter council of mages would have petitioned the Divine directly to address the worst of the abuses, and worked from within to change the system. Now, I'm afraid it's too late for those who fled to the Reach.
The situation has mostly been taken out of their hands now. But your right, the mages have to either come to and understanding with the Chantry or wipe it out, which is beyond their capabilities.
One thing we have to keep in mind though is that not every mage in Thedas is as at Andoral's Reach. We have many still in their Circles, right along side the templars. The Ferelden Circle was able to overpower their resident Templars though, and they weren't even unified. If most Circles can take out the templars immediatley on hand (assuming ALL templars are breaking ties with the Chantry, which doesn't strike me as likely), then they have time to get their act together before reinforcements arrive from the capital. This could start sieges all across Thedas.
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