Resposting from the other thread since I haven't seen mentioned here and it could be a big deal.
Spoiler
Possibly, but ancient elven graves aren't something we haven't encountered before. Even according to the Dalish, the immortal elves could die from wasting away if they never came out of uthenera. We found ancient elven graves (Arlathan era and earlier) in the Brecilian ruins and at Sundermount.
True, but Ishmael specifically referred to those buried in there as "noble elven dead" and there is no reason for him to lie to Ser Michel on an insignificant detail. And the fact that he says "where the noble elven dead were buried" implies the elves were already dead at the time of the burial which would make this simply a normal burial site.
True, but Ishmael specifically referred to those buried in there as "noble elven dead" and there is no reason for him to lie to Ser Michel on an insignificant detail. And the fact that he says "where the noble elven dead were buried" implies the elves were already dead at the time of the burial which would make this simply a normal burial site.
Sundermount looked like a normal burial site too. But I don't want to assume truth on what would also be assumptions. You could also assume that they were put into proper graves once they died in uthenera. Or if they died under other circumstances (immortality didn't mean they couldn't die from a rock falling on them, for example.) Or the entire uthenera site could be underground (some of the Brecilian and Sundermount site was like this) and of course any ancient elves in uthenera would have long since faded and died.
The possibility of them dying through other means is a valid point, especially considering that Arlathan society was more violent than we were lead to believe. However, according to elven legends, elders who went to sleep did so in places part room, part tomb. Therefore, by the own elven legends, they did not move them after succumbed.
Therefore, the FO's implication that these elves were dead when they were buried pokes some holes into the legend.
The possibility of them dying through other means is a valid point, especially considering that Arlathan society was more violent than we were lead to believe. However, according to elven legends, elders who went to sleep did so in places part room, part tomb. Therefore, by the own elven legends, they did not move them after succumbed.
Therefore, the FO's implication that these elves were dead when they were buried pokes some holes into the legend.
No more than before. Again, Sundermount has actual graves that are unmistakably what would be considered normal graves. But it was also called a uthenera site. The Brecilian uthenera site had the room type tombs, and some of them appeared to be underground. It's hard to say without depending heavily on interpretation.
Random question: Did Merrill's eluvian come from the Dalish origin or did she find it at Sundermount? I can't remember...
She found it in a ruin back in Ferelden.
iirc It could be Dalish but Duncan assumed it was Tevinter.
She found it in a ruin back in Ferelden.
Thanks! 
She found it in a ruin back in Ferelden.
iirc It could be Dalish but Duncan assumed it was Tevinter.
When you start to measure the outcomes of the conflict in number of bodies, you cross the line.
And hey... redemption?
The more important point is recognizing the myth that a open conflict with an escalated loss of life will actually end the bleeding by resolving the conflict and the loss of life. Arguing that 'a short open conflict will cost fewer lives than a long unpleasant peace' rests on an assumption that (a) it will be a short conflict, and (
that the rate of loss of life after the conflict will be significantly lower than the loss of life before it.
Looking into history, that's, ahem, remarkably unlikely. The only comparable measure of a thousand years is another thousand years: not just the one, ten, or hundred years of fighting and skirmishing 'openly', but also the rest of the millennia after that.
It's completely impossible to prove the results of course, but given the implied scale of the Circles (a few hundred at most), the unique rate of death for the Circles is already pretty low, and easily below a single modest war. Round up the 17 Annullments to 20, and place them at 500 per Circle just to be on the high side, and over the better part of a millenia you'd have 10,000 people... which sounds impressive, until you remember time scale.
If you spread that over a millenia (remember, nice rounding), that would be 10 per year. 10,000 total.
Compare that to, say, the Iraq War, where the low estimates put the death toll at averaging over 11,000 a year over ten years (2003-2013). In the American Revolution, 25,000 Americans are believed to have died during about 8 years, not including almost 20,000 British sailors and even more British soldiers. The War of 1812, an even lighter affair, has estimates of 15,000 over three years dying from all causes (less than 4,000 from combat on both sides). If you want to go back to more primitive, less capable conflicts, the First Jewish-Roman War (the one commonly associated with 'make a desert and call it peace'), was between 400,000 and over a million over just 7 years.
Really, just peruse this wiki page.
Point is, 10,000 over a millenia is small change. 10,000 deaths (deaths, I repeat: not casualties including wounded and sick) is the scale of modest wars of relatively comparable powers over periods of time less significantly less than a decade.
It shouldn't need to be noted how many of these modest, small conflicts had successor conflicts of similar or even greater scale within decades.
So the next time someone argues to you that a short war will resolve a problem and cost less than a long peace... be skeptical. The political conflict-resolving properties of war are notoriously overrated, and not only do they tend to have another conflict in short order as often as not, but even small and short wars can easily accumulate far more deaths than long-help policies of peace.
Random question: Did Merrill's eluvian come from the Dalish origin or did she find it at Sundermount? I can't remember...
Yes, it is the same as the one in the Dalish origin.
It's completely impossible to prove the results of course, but given the implied scale of the Circles (a few hundred at most), the unique rate of death for the Circles is already pretty low, and easily below a single modest war. Round up the 17 Annullments to 20, and place them at 500 per Circle just to be on the high side, and over the better part of a millenia you'd have 10,000 people... which sounds impressive, until you remember time scale.
If you spread that over a millenia (remember, nice rounding), that would be 10 per year. 10,000 total.
Counting only Annulments strikes me as highly disingenuous. At minimum, I would say that one would need to count all failed Harrowings, all Rites of Tranquility, and all summary executions for blood magic/apostasy.
Counting only Annulments strikes me as highly disingenuous. At minimum, I would say that one would need to count all failed Harrowings, all Rites of Tranquility, and all summary executions for blood magic/apostasy.
(Bolded for emphasis)
Xil... when it comes to war... you may not want to list maiming as a criterion. War causes immense amounts of deaths in the short term... the number of maimed or crippled (physically or mentally) is astronomically higher.
The other two I can accept. But if you add the RoT as the cost of the circle then you also have to add maining and crippling injuries (mental or physical) on the side of the cost of war.
And the circles can never match that amount of suffering. Or even come close.
(Bolded for emphasis)
Xil... when it comes to war... you may not want to list maiming as a criterion. War causes immense amounts of deaths in the short term... the number of maimed or crippled (physically or mentally) is astronomically higher.
The other two I can accept. But if you add the RoT as the cost of the circle then you also have to add maining and crippling injuries (mental or physical) on the side of the cost of war.
And the circles can never match that amount of suffering. Or even come close.
But... but mages and Elves are the most oppressed-est unfortunate-est minorities in Thedas! No matter what happens their suffering is worse than those filthy Humans!
Counting only Annulments strikes me as highly disingenuous. At minimum, I would say that one would need to count all failed Harrowings, all Rites of Tranquility, and all summary executions for blood magic/apostasy.
Why do you think I chose 500 in a Circle, a number well above anything we've seen when associated with the Circle populations, and even threw in extra Annulments? And without even raising the difference between deaths and severely wounded, deaths that would have equivalents in other systems, or new/unique costs introduced by an alternative system?
There's nothing disingenuous about the point- wars are horrible ways to try and resolve political/cultural disputes, and certainly not on any basis of claiming the virtue of more lives spared. You could double, even triple that entire speculative death rate if you wished, and you'd still be well with the costs of small wars. I already rigged the numbers in your favor- multiplying the bias won't change the point.
Even raising it an entire magnitude puts you well within the cost of a moderate war... and raising it to that magnitude not only implies a mage population far larger than any we've seen indications of, but also a mage population that can actually support a significant war. The strongest argument that the mage rebellion wouldn't lead to casualties of a small war would have been that the mages are too few in number to do support a small war: the more you amp their population up by arguing the casualties/harms a minority of their number endure is larger, the larger the whole (and thus the scope of the conflict) will be as well.
All the Annullments in the Circle's history taken together would amount to a single small war. All costs of your others can feasibly do so as well- even if we want to ignore the standard societal attrition costs that mages will never actually escape after any revolution. It's easy to forget that the Circle's crime rates (especially murder) are artificial, not natural, lows due to the Templars oversight and taking on the roll of the boogeyman.
Wars are bloody. Arguing that the mages will save lives from enduring yet another one ranges from fanciful (in assuming there won't be more than one) to ignorant (blind to historic death tolls of wars).
Why do you think I chose 500 in a Circle, a number well above anything we've seen when associated with the Circle populations, and even threw in extra Annulments? And without even raising the difference between deaths and severely wounded, deaths that would have equivalents in other systems, or new/unique costs introduced by an alternative system?
I have to ask, do we have numbers about Circle populations? Reliable, supported by lore numbers, not just appreciations. I'm curious, it's one of those things that should be easy to state but I haven't seen anything about it (maybe because I haven't read WoT yet).
(Bolded for emphasis)
Xil... when it comes to war... you may not want to list maiming as a criterion. War causes immense amounts of deaths in the short term... the number of maimed or crippled (physically or mentally) is astronomically higher.
The other two I can accept. But if you add the RoT as the cost of the circle then you also have to add maining and crippling injuries (mental or physical) on the side of the cost of war.
And the circles can never match that amount of suffering. Or even come close.
For reference, the American Revolutionary War? Where the Americans are estimated to have lost 25,000 lives just on their side? American wounded are estimated at another 25,000.
A general rule of thumb is that wounded will tend to be at least the death rate, and then some. Disease will take it even further- there were about 1,700 American battle causalities in the Mexican-American War, but another 11,000 who died from disease. Died- but how many do you think survived?
I have to ask, do we have numbers about Circle populations? Reliable, supported by lore numbers, not just appreciations. I'm curious, it's one of those things that should be easy to state but I haven't seen anything about it (maybe because I haven't read WoT yet).
Hard numbers? Not really. The lore is deliberately sparse with hard numbers, which is actually a good thing because it keeps numbers from contradicting. The ME universe choked on its numeric attempts. Gameplay and story/lore segregation is also at work: counting enemies in battle is silly due to the enemy exageration, counting people on the ground you can reach is obviously too low, and most of the setting is never visible in the first place. Even when it is, like the Ferelden Circle, gameplay versus 'reality' steeps in: the Circle Tower we climb in Ferelden makes little sense as a literal building. Think of it as the counting toilets phenomenum in video game architecture- how often do you see an appropriate number of toilets in settings you know toilets are supposed to be?
I would have extremely low confidence in any counting approach outside of a cutscene context (which are intended to give a sense of scale, not absolutes). The best we can get is to try to estimate scale of context and magnitudes and compare to things we do know better.
For example, we know (from being there) that the Kirkwall Annullment was pretty much carried out over a single night. The battle itself? Maybe a few hours, if that. That very much speaks to a smaller mage population in the hundreds, not thousands. (Which fits our narrative cutscene perspective of defenders grouped in the tens.)
About the only number I can recall is Anders claim that a dozen mages were Tranquilized in Kirkwall in a year. Mind you, this was Kirkwall, when Alrik was active, Anders claim is already loaded with hyperbole, and it makes no distinction between Anders claimed motivation (punishing dissent) and 'legitimate' motivations (First Enchanter sign off, voluntary Tranquility, etc).
We know (from being there) that the Kirkwall Annullment was pretty much carried out over a single night. The battle itself? Maybe a few hours, if that. That very much speaks to a mage population in the hundreds, not thousands. (Which fits our narrative cutscene perspective of defenders grouped in the tens.)
About the only number I can recall is Anders claim that a dozen mages were Tranquilized in Kirkwall in a year. Mind you, this was Kirkwall, when Alrik was active, Anders claim is already loaded with hyperbole, and it makes no distinction between Anders claimed motivation (punishing dissent) and 'legitimate' motivations (First Enchanter sign off, voluntary Tranquility, etc).
Well, the mages' strategy during the Kirkwall Annulment was to make time for the rest of the mages to flee while the defenders kept the attackers at bay. Even in the Templar route, they manage to do that. The planning of the battle was different form the Daismuid Circle in Rivain, so it makes sense it was shorter, no matter the numbers.
Ander's numbers, however, are more interesting. Because it also implies that the normal number of RoT is very low. That, or he was using the "mage" quote to specify "post-Harrowing mages". An important distinction since we know from Awakening that using RoT forcibly on mages who passed their Harrowings should be forbidden or incredibly exceptional at most. Do you remember the original quote, or its context?
(Bolded for emphasis)
Xil... when it comes to war... you may not want to list maiming as a criterion. War causes immense amounts of deaths in the short term... the number of maimed or crippled (physically or mentally) is astronomically higher.
The other two I can accept. But if you add the RoT as the cost of the circle then you also have to add maining and crippling injuries (mental or physical) on the side of the cost of war.
And the circles can never match that amount of suffering. Or even come close.
Not entirely, because physical injury like that is relatively less problematic when you have access to a lot of healing magic. Tranquility, on the other hand, has been something that's wholly impossible to fix until very recently, as well as obliterating the identity of whomever was subject to it. It's not the same thing.
Why do you think I chose 500 in a Circle, a number well above anything we've seen when associated with the Circle populations, and even threw in extra Annulments? And without even raising the difference between deaths and severely wounded, deaths that would have equivalents in other systems, or new/unique costs introduced by an alternative system?
There's nothing disingenuous about the point- wars are horrible ways to try and resolve political/cultural disputes, and certainly not on any basis of claiming the virtue of more lives spared. You could double, even triple that entire speculative death rate if you wished, and you'd still be well with the costs of small wars. I already rigged the numbers in your favor- multiplying the bias won't change the point.
Even raising it an entire magnitude puts you well within the cost of a moderate war... and raising it to that magnitude not only implies a mage population far larger than any we've seen indications of, but also a mage population that can actually support a significant war. The strongest argument that the mage rebellion wouldn't lead to casualties of a small war would have been that the mages are too few in number to do support a small war: the more you amp their population up by arguing the casualties/harms a minority of their number endure is larger, the larger the whole (and thus the scope of the conflict) will be as well.
All the Annullments in the Circle's history taken together would amount to a single small war. All costs of your others can feasibly do so as well- even if we want to ignore the standard societal attrition costs that mages will never actually escape after any revolution. It's easy to forget that the Circle's crime rates (especially murder) are artificial, not natural, lows due to the Templars oversight and taking on the roll of the boogeyman.
Wars are bloody. Arguing that the mages will save lives from enduring yet another one ranges from fanciful (in assuming there won't be more than one) to ignorant (blind to historic death tolls of wars).
If mage populations are so small, and templar populations logically not much higher, with plenty of templars not even joining the Order in its secession... why would you assume that there would be so many nonmage civilian casualties to begin with? Are we to assume that a significant number of battles would be fought in towns with AOE spells being flung about willy-nilly? I'm fairly sure that the Veil tears will be inflicting a lot of them, yes, but I seriously doubt they're directly related to that war, in that they were started by one of the combatants.
In any case, it's a war the templars started. It has to be fought for survival if nothing else.
In any case, it's a war the templars started. It has to be fought for survival if nothing else.
*Cough*Anders.
Well, the mages' strategy during the Kirkwall Annulment was to make time for the rest of the mages to flee while the defenders kept the attackers at bay. Even in the Templar route, they manage to do that. The planning of the battle was different form the Daismuid Circle in Rivain, so it makes sense it was shorter, no matter the numbers.
I'd be hesitant to call the mages strategy in the Kirkwall Annulment a unique defensive/withdrawal strategy. Some mages managed to get out, yes, but it's not a scenario unique to Kirwall that we have any reason to believe other annuled Circles wouldn't have tried. Templars come in, some try to escape, most die. Given the power disparity between mages and templars, that's less a strategic choice and more the only option available to the mages.
It's not like the Kirkwall Annulment was a stalling action while the mages had a free avenue of retreat: by that point in the story the Templars effectively controlled the waters and were already aware of the smuggling tunnels. There were no open lines of escape- that doesn't mean mages couldn't escape, merely that they would find cracks in the encirclement rather than preserving a path.
When it comes to the pro-mage Hawke survival, the difference is probably more in the mages who are able to escape with Hawke when Cullen and the Templars make clear they won't stop Hawke's walk. Which was, obviously, breaking through rather than retreating from.
None of which tells us anything new about population figures, mind you- except in so much that Hawke's presence with the mages opens up an avenue of escape that otherwise wouldn't have existed.
Ander's numbers, however, are more interesting. Because it also implies that the normal number of RoT is very low. That, or he was using the "mage" quote to specify "post-Harrowing mages". An important distinction since we know from Awakening that using RoT forcibly on mages who passed their Harrowings should be forbidden or incredibly exceptional at most. Do you remember the original quote, or its context?
It's not the Tranquil Solution quest IIRC, but a different clinic dialogue. The beginning of Act 2, perhaps? This blog references the quote.
http://vieralynn.tum...sagree-that-the
It's not even an actual number: 'dozens', not 'a dozen', and it's a number only provided by Anders, who also puts the 'every day there are new Tranquil' at the start of Dissent. Which, if true, would contradict dozens by nearly a magnitude or more.
So, really, the only vague estimate we have is an extremely imprecise one provided by an extremely biased and unreliable exposition source.
If mage populations are so small, and templar populations logically not much higher, with plenty of templars not even joining the Order in its secession... why would you assume that there would be so many nonmage civilian casualties to begin with?
I don't- as I pointed out, the best argument that the casualties will be lower will be if the populations of lower. But if the populations are lower, the argument of greater population good on the basis of the combatants is more marginal and less relevant: fewer mages being effected no longer justifying the ever increasing other casualties.
Most deaths from wars don't come from combat: they come from the consequences of combat and people caught in the cross fire. Nonmage civilian, mage civilian- they are the same.
Are we to assume that a significant number of battles would be fought in towns with AOE spells being flung about willy-nilly?
No more than we should assume the American Revolution or most other wars were fought in towns with explosives being flung about willy-nilly. Which they weren't.
If you don't understand how wars cause casualties, perhaps you should avoid arguing that lives will be saved by means you don't understand.
In any case, it's a war the templars started. It has to be fought for survival if nothing else.
That's a meaningless criteria for victory, then, since survival isn't actually in question. Even in a Templar victory, the mages would survive.
*Cough*Anders.
The templars actually started that one too, as Anders wasn't acting as part of the Circle. Not that it was the true beginning of the war.
No more than we should assume the American Revolution or most other wars were fought in towns with explosives being flung about willy-nilly. Which they weren't.
If you don't understand how wars cause casualties, perhaps you should avoid arguing that lives will be saved by means you don't understand.
That was a war being fought over a nation, though. Given that capturing territory doesn't seem to be the goal of either side in this one, I wouldn't think that civilian population centers would be battlegrounds as often as what generally happens in other wars.
That's a meaningless criteria for victory, then, since survival isn't actually in question. Even in a Templar victory, the mages would survive.
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