billy the squid wrote...
dragonflight288 wrote...
billy the squid wrote...
dragonflight288 wrote...
Sutamina wrote...
Xilizhra wrote...
At this point, stepping down from power.
could you come up with something far more persuasive please
Let me try.
ahem.
*snip*
Was that more persuasive?
Sorry I missed that, I was distracted by the manipulation and aggressive attacks by certain factions within the Circle their inability to control their own people, violent uprising despite the Divine being a sympathiser and Wynne trying to work with the Chantry, leading to the Templars seeing the Chantry as defunct and incapable of maintaining order and moving to re establish order by force.
Let alone the inherrent risk posed by Mages moving in and out of free society. I can't wait until one wants to enter politics and is discovered to have been practicing blood magic in a move to assert political dominance, vindicating everything the Templars have moved to prevent. Especially given the catalogue of disasters which have been attributed to a single mage, even under tutilage, which results in an escalating body count.
And more often than not, many of the rogue mage elements have been driven to desperation by the templars, and if they are criminals then they shall be treated as criminals. And if they turn abomination, we know from Connor that if the deal was made of their own volition then that also means the connection between the mage and the demon can be severed, and if they're full-blown abomination then they need to be killed.
But take real life social experiments, particularly the Stanford Prison Experiment, and you get a realistic view of what the Circle system produces. Give one group ALL the power and don't provide much oversight or punishment when that power is abusd, then they will ultimately abuse it, and the prisoners will turn inward, rebel, or become what they have been treated as. Treat a mage as a beast, and you shouldn't be surprised if that mage starts acting like a beast, and if you treat them as an abomination that's going to happen, regardless of their life experiences, personality, or control over their power, and do this to enough of them, it will be no surprise if you drive many of them into becoming abominations.
The circle system is almost identacle (adding in fictional elements) as the Stanford Prison Experiment, so while you may see mages becoming abominations and certain fraternities being unable to control their own and the danger of blood magic, I see an entire demographic treated as little more than dirt because of something they were born with, are oppressed their whole lives over, and many of them end up becoming exactly as they had been treated by the templars and the Chantry.
Remove the oppression, but keep a force of templars to deal with the criminal element of mages, and you'll have a much better system.
For those who don't know about the Stanford Prison Experiment, here's a link.
news.stanford.edu/pr/97/970108prisonexp.html
Despiration? Like the entire faction who precipitated the current war by framing and murdering one of their own, when the Divine had intervined on their behalf and the other 3 factions had voted not to ceede from the Circle. That's not despirate, that's a coldly calculating manipulation of the situation to make their own personal power play. A quarter of the mages and their senior enchanters went along with that.
We know from Connor that if a deal is made it's already too late for hundreds of people who end up dead, because of the actions of a single mage. And you want them to live anywhere they want, with no way to keep track of where they are scattered across Thedas? I can't see a problem coming down the line like a ton of bricks using that methodology.
Making a deal with the demon, and then saving the boy, necessitated having a circle to call on in the first place. The practical logistics of having mages scattered aboput all of Thedas, is a recipie for disaster, given that the Templars cannot physically oversee every mage in Thedas, protect the Chantry, hunt maleficar, abominations in addition to their other duties.
I don't consider Meredith as the norm for all knight commanders, unless you, by that virtue, determine that all senior enchanters are the same as the libetarian faction and used murder, blood amgic and manipulation to force their wish on the 3/4 of mages who didn't want to ceed from the circle. So The Templars treated all them as beasts to did they? 3/4 of the mage population via their Senior enchanters suffered from Stockholm syndrom?
The circle is a practical necessity and a necessary evil to guard against the potential dangers. Wynne and a significant majority thought so. And if they were treated so horrifyingly bad, then why did they vote to stay? Perhaps they thought that trying to resolve the situation with a mage sympathetic Divine would be more effective that violently revolting, vindicating the Templar fear and leading to the right of annulment. How would a Templar tell a libertarian who is an apostate and maleficar from a conservative mage when the Circles are broken and in open revolt.
First off, let's discuss the desperation aspect. Kerras entered into the mages dorms and threatened them with tranquility unless they kept quiet, and we here this from Alain in Act 3 if Kerras lives, so we know he was raping mages, and strongly implies he wishes to rape a female Hawke. Blood magic is the only kind of magic a mage can use that a tempal can't negate, so if a templar is abusing their power, and the mage is getting raped, then yes, I'd say they are desperate. And it was the Seekers, Lambert to be precise, who wanted to commit cold-blooded murder on Pharamond to prevent others from finding out that tranquility was now curable, and the threat of tranquility is one of the mages greatest fears, often driving mages to escape the towers or to put up a last stand, not caring about themselves or those around them anymore when pushed into a corner.
Mages have their share of dirty laundry, but is it dirty because they were driven to it by fear and prejudice, or because they were rotten all along? I believe it's the former. The guilty ought to be punished when they commit crimes, but don't discount the nature of the templars relationship with the mages, and how much the templars as an institution, as well as the Chantry as an organization, only barely tolerate magic at best and openly despise it and seek to destroy it in all forms at worst.
Cullen's line about how mages are nothing more than weapons stand out, and how you can't treat them as people, even though they do have emotions, thoughts, ambitions, dreams, and such. As does Ser Metton being appointed by Meredith (according to his codex entry) to lead a death squad, killing non-mages who are sympathizers or family members, because of his zealous nature. Or Alrik's tranquil solution and Cullen's apparant support of it by saying there is a case to lobotomize every mage in existence, destroy their soul, remove their free-will and take away their very emotions. All for the crime of existing.
And it was the templars who declared the war in the first place, and it was the Seekers who struck the first blow (even though Fiona WAS going out of her way to provoke them.) And the blood started getting spilled (courtesy of Lambert and the Templars) before the mages even left the Chantry.
Now the deal with Connor was a tragedy no matter how you slice it. But you can't put it all on the mage here because there were so many factors going on there that it's difficult to get into. If Loghain never interfered with the templars capturing Jowan, it wouldn't have happened. If Isolde hadn't sent the knights away, they might've stopped it before people suffered, if Isolde wasn't so scared of losing her son because she was terrified of the Circle system and forever losing her son, it wouldn't have happened, if Eamon hadn't been poisoned, it wouldn't have happened. If Ostagar had been won, there would've been no need for Loghain to bring Jowan in and it wouldn't have happened, if Jowan was actually competent, it might not have happened.
It was a worst case scenario brought on by desperation of Isolde to kep her son, desperation of Connor to save his father, a lack of military forces, national politics because Loghain is a paranoid nut at the time (although his fears about Orlais turn out to be correct) and a rather incompetent mage brought in as a tutor.
I'm not defending the demon or anything of the sort, but because of all the factors going on here, my point is pretty simple, you can't blame it on only one thing, like an untrained mage or Loghain, or even a foolish mother.
If 3/4 really had Stockholm Syndrome and support the Chantry, why would the templars and the Seekers be so scared of the mages leaving? They would otherwise have majority vote. Many mages in the Loyalist faction (Kalei) have been so indoctrinated and have such little self-esteem that their greatest wish is to be killed by the templars just so they could be cleansed of their taint.
And if being a templar is such a necessary evil, then please explain to me why it is necessary to keep mages from marrying except with special permission or why it is necessary to take all their children away from the as chantry property? Why are they allowed to have Death Squads killing non-mages who may or may not have actually committed any crimes other than sympathizing with mages or offering a relative a couch to sleep on for a night and some food to eat. Without a trial I might add.
You may call it a thankless and necessary job, but a lot of what they do is way over the top.
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