Sifr1449 wrote...
Personally, I always thought that her old hag form in Origins was designed to lure the Warden and others into a false sense of security. When Alistair sees her for instance, he's incredulous that this crazy old woman could be the Flemeth of legend and even the Warden can admit to thinking the same.
That whole schtick is unconvincing like you wouldn't believe, though. You might sort of go along with it because of the way the story is presented (when Flemeth is around the player is essentially a passive observer / listener, with the exception of that late encounter in DA:O of course), but I can pretty much guarantee that in a more 'first-person' setting, i.e. when you ARE the character, Flemeth's disguise would be wafer thin. You would KNOW she's one powerful &*%%$%^#$^, because she's signalling such in decidedly unsubtle terms (and by way of simple reasoning - she got you away from the clutches of the Darkspawn) and in any pen & paper RPG campaign all the players would go 'Aw hell, she's one powerful shapeshifting dragon/demon/sorceress/deity who has plans for us'. All kinds of spells would fly to identify / detect magic, particularly those related to disguises, alignment, glamour etc.
I've done characters like Flemeth as a DM, and run into them as a player. They work best as long as they haven't revealed themselves but everybody knows they are more than they seem. It's a suspense mystery thing. Once they reveal themselves, they're basically done (her turning into a dragon was pretty much a 'yeah, whatever, bring on the XP' experience for me), but in some stories these characters stick around like bubblegum on the sole of a shoe.
In DA:O she was a well-executed version of that standard NPC / plot device though, for a large part because of Kate Mulgrew's voice acting (she makes for a great old hag whom you suspect was once a very strict governess - sternly attractive in her own way - who believed in corporeal punishment, but maybe that's just me
)
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