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[Fuggyt]

     I've been reading several of the threads recently about whether Anders's actions were justified, whether the Templars are hypocrites, and whether the Circles are necessary.  While I know these points have already been discussed by DA loremasters more learned than I, I would like to weigh in by raising a point I brought up in another thread (which nobody responded to) and see if the loremasters agree.  You see, I believe any mage rebellion cannot possibly succeed.  Either the mages are numerous or powerful enough to resist or they are not.  If they are not, then Anders's act of terrorism merely blackens mages everywhere and, should it lead to open revolt, condemns the mages to the gentle instruction of an Exalted March and ultimately the kind of persecution that would make Diocletian wince.  But if they are, the Circles would never have been able to corral most if not all of the mages nor, for that matter, could the Tevinter Imperium ever have fallen.  So we must assume the mages are either not powerful or not numerous enough to resist.  I would say they are neither.
     Certainly an individual mage is incredibly powerful compared to a typical mundane, both in the game and in lore.  That's probably why I most enjoy playing them in RPGs, it's just so much fun to blow mobs to bloody flinders with a noncholant wave of the hand.  But they are far from being the Thedan equivalent of a nuclear weapon.  They're more like light artillery, and they are certainly far from invulnerable.  When the Templars storm the Gallows, they overrun a fairly numerous group of mages guarding the courtyard, and although a few of the Templars get the worst of it, they basically chop them down like straw.  You could argue they were probably apprentices and initiates and I'd agree, but the Warden and Hawke have exterminated enough mages in their travels to show there are limits to a mage's power which are usually reached with a sword through the rib cage.  You could argue further that some mages become so powerful they destroy entire city blocks and villages (Connor and Tarohne are usually cited at this point, together with various bits of lore about demons gaining control of entire cities and so forth), and I'd agree.  But even the most powerful maleficars, like Ulrich and the others, end up just as dead when the Warden or Hawke pokes them hard enough.  The same argument applies to abominations, who are pretty scary until they explode and then they're just messy ("The lake's right there").  Demons, of course, do not necessarily need to possess a mage and become an abomination.  Frequently they just pop up out of the pavement, but even a demon needs a good whooping now and then.
     So if an individual mage lacks to power to do more than wreak a fairly exceptional degree of havoc before getting overwhelmed, what about in groups?  But I have always gotten the impression, as another poster said in a thread I've been reading, that mages are a distinct minority.  Tradition has it, somewhat undermined by the events of Awakenings, that the Wardens have only one mage in their ranks at a time.  The source of this lore is a somewhat addled old mage in the Circle Tower but since Duncan and others repeatedly stress the value of mages in battle, you would think the Wardens would recruit more if mages were so common.  There are only perhaps a dozen or so Circle mages at Ostagar, too.  So they can't be that thick on the ground.  
     Yes, we are told in DA:2 that the numbers of mages have doubled, but we are told that by a Templar.  Furthermore, even if he's right, we don't know if that applies to Thedas or just to the mages in the Gallows.  If the former, perhaps it's a manifestation of the fulfillment of Sandal's prophecy, a sign of the magic coming back.  I'll believe that when I see it.  Until then, I suspect he's only talking about the mages he can see, and since under Meredith's dubious leadership the Templars become increasingly aggressive in rounding up apostates throughout the game, maybe he's only seeing the cells getting filled.  Regardless, I see no sign that the Gallows contains thousands of mages, as another poster attested elsewhere.  A few scores at most, I would say.  Because a couple of thousand mages could easily blow Meredith out of her armor, or reduce Kirkwall to dust, for that matter.  Therefore the mages of Kirkwall, and presumably throughout Thedas, are simply too scarce to harness their powers and resist incarceration by the Chantry through its Templars and Circles.  And isn't that how mages are brought to the Circles in the first place?  They're picked off one by one from their families when their powers first manifest, and we are led to believe time and again that the birth of a mage child is infrequent and usually socially stigmatizing.
     The fate of the Tevinter Imperium is the ultimate case in point.  Using blood magic and slavery, it once dominated almost all of Thedas.  But slave rebellions weakened Tevinter's hold on various outposts over and over, proving that the powers and numbers of the magisters, though extensive, were far from infallible or absolute.  And although Minrathous, protected by the most powerful mages on Thedas, has never fallen, Tevinter has gotten all it wants and then some from the Qunari.  Gathlock is not entirely trump but the technologies the Qunari already have or are verging on inventing doesn't bode well for the magisters in the long run.  Let the Qunari convert a bunch of clever dwarves who are good with machinery and the Black Divine will be dodging cruise missiles in the Argent Spire before too long.  And men with swords are just as capable of injustice and destruction as men with spells, as the Fereldens who struggled for so long against Orlais can attest.
     Which brings me back to Anders.  Personally, I feel his act of terrorism was unjustified, but only because of his incredibly indefensible choice of targets.  Elthina certainly had the authority to take control of the situation, reform conditions in the Circle, and reign in or outright dismiss Meredith and her failure to act is regrettable.  But that failure is neither necessarily incompetence or culpability.  Elthina was doing what she genuinely thought was best and at least cannot be accused of hypocrisy.  If Anders had walked up to Meredith and immolated himself and her both, it might be different.  Even Seeker Cassandra concedes that Meredith provoked the massacre in the Gallows by her treatment of the mages.  But as I've said, even a political assassination of Meredith, a much more limited and excusable alternative to blowing up the Chantry, would have accomplished little, because the mages themselves are ultimately unable to change their own condition.  The mages will always be oppressed and rebellions will always be quashed.
     Ultimately, I believe that magic itself is not to blame.  It exists, whether mundanes like it or not, and those who are born with it asked for neither the power nor the personal responsibility that goes with it.  If Javaris had really managed to steal enough Gathlock, Anders wouldn't have needed magic for his reprehensible grand gesture--if the elven fanatic had gotten her hands on it, she would have done as much or worse.  In either case, it is not the means that are in question, it is the twisted motives behind them.  The elf releases the saar-quamek, remember, and if hundreds didn't die it wasn't her fault.  For that matter, the poison you find for Isabella's contact Martin might make a handy weapon of mass destruction, as effective at disposing of a roomful of inconvenient acquaintances as a fireball.  Anders was right when he told Hawke after Leandra's death that it wasn't the magic, it was the murderer.  He was also right when he pointed out to Fenris that it doesn't take a demon nor even a mage to be a vicious killer.
     It comes down to personal responsibility.  Society has a right to expect personal responsibility from all its members, including mages, and the right to make and enforce laws to see that individuals are accountable for their actions.  But it is ethically insufficient in my view to hold anyone accountable for something they haven't done just because they might be capable of doing it.  The same logic that applies to imprisoning mages applies to everybody with a weapon, everybody with military training, and everybody with a blunt or sharp object lying around the house.  I know the counterargument well.  Mages are more susceptible to demonic possession and thus more likely as a group to commit acts of violence, and their power if corrupted can do disproportionate harm until overcome, usually at great cost.  Perhaps, but that is at best a utilitarian argument, not an ethical one. 
     Besides, one can make the point that the cure is worse than the disease.  As Varric says, the tighter Meredith squeezed the mages the harder they fought back.  Almost all the violent and psychotic mages, including Anders, Ulrich, Grace and Decimus, Huon, ad infinitum, were reacting against the oppression and injustice they felt they experienced in the Circles.  I'm not saying it makes them right but it at least explains their motives.    Besides, where else would a young mage learn about dangerous and forbidden magic expect whispered in the night among a dormitory full of potential malcontents?  Malcolm Hawke never taught his mage children blood magic; quite to the contrary, he opposed it strongly and instilled in them the higher values of service to others and personal responsibility.  Even Flemeth taught Morrigan enough about blood magic for her to avoid it.
     Anyway, thanks for reading if you got this far.  I just wanted to get that off my chest.  I look forward with anticipatory to the inevitable attacks and arguments that I hope will follow in this thread.  Loremasters, have at me!
    

[CrimsonZephyr]

The back and forth argument that this post will spawn is gonna suck.

[Trolldrool]

I was barely able to read anything of what you said because of the immense wall of text, so I might have missed your point entirely.

[The majority of this post was completely wrong and I did, as I feared, miss the point entirely. For this reason, and to spare future readers from being spammed with wrong assumptions and speculations, all the unnecessary bits have been cut.]

Modifié par Trolldrool, 24 novembre 2012 - 06:46 .

[Fuggyt]

No, that's not my point at all. I guess I'll learn to double-space between paragraphs after this. My point is that mages as a group are not numerous or individually powerful enough to resist the Chantry and their threat to dominate Thedas exaggerated.

[Trolldrool]

Okay, sorry. My mistake.