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[Siha]

Post-credits for Solavellans, you end up in a hellscape battling all of the trapped elven gods as high-powered bosses. (June drops the best crafting schematics.)

 

This is about the last thing to motivate me. What good are the best schematics after I mastered all the final battles? 

[Caddius]

Weekes: Also the giffons are bred by a group of steampunk gnomes.  They speak in iambic pentameter.

LAIDLAW: We don't have the budget for all of those characters to be animated. We have to cut the gnomes.

WEEKES: Never.

LAIDLAW: Have you been skipping your meds again?

WEEKES: There's a very simple solution here, Mike. We do it all in LEGO.

LAIDLAW: Where are we-

WEEKES: I've already made all of the models.

[Caddius]

This is about the last thing to motivate me. What good are the best schematics after I mastered all the final battles? 

It's always annoying when you only get the really cool looking gear at the end. 

KotOR: Now at long last, you can wear a replica of the robes the Dark Lord Revan wore! The last two fights in this thirty hour game will be the most stylish!

[Siha]

It's always annoying when you only get the really cool looking gear at the end. 

KotOR: Now at long last, you can wear a replica of the robes the Dark Lord Revan wore! The last two fights in this thirty hour game will be the most stylish!

 

Especially when they looked just like the other robes before. Only another shade of black.

[legbamel]

http://fenharelenasa...blr.com/page/12Found on this page.

I approve.

Spoiler

ageofdragon:

actualanders:

dreamerinsilico:

mllemaenad:

image
And then there are the Profane. What the hell is up with the Profane?

At the most basic level, of course, they are a textbook example of why eating red lyrium is a bad idea (you wouldn’t think you would need to explain this to people, but somehow …).

They might just be spirits, of course. Another case like the various undead monsters you’ll end up fighting pretty much anywhere in Thedas. Spirits who so completely failed to grasp the difference between a living thing and a not living thing that they ended up possessing a rock.

But then, of course, there is this:

We who are forgotten, remember,
We clawed at rock until our fingers bled,
We cried out for justice, but were unheard.
Our children wept in hunger,
And so we feasted upon the gods.
Here we wait, in aeons of silence.
We few, we profane.
– The Profane
That puts things in rather a different light. These were people who were abandoned or imprisoned – left to starve in the Deep Roads, just as Hawke and her friends have been left. Eating red lyrium was either a last ditch effort to survive, or a deliberate choice to become monsters in order to avenge themselves. Or both. Why not both.

To their credit, they do seem aware that eating lyrium is not really a great thing to do, although maybe not for practical reasons. In doing it, they are ‘feasting upon the gods’ and ‘profane’. Lyrium represents the gods, or perhaps literally is a god (modern dwarves venerate ‘the Stone’, after all). The question is, was it eating the gods that made them profane, or were they profane before that, and so figured they had nothing to lose?

One problem is that dwarven society is really good at forgetting things when it wants to. I mean, every civilisation covers up the nasty stuff, but the dwarves have made an art form out of it.

But things of interest, regardless.

In dwarven mythology, Rock Wraiths – Profane – are dwarves so corrupt and awful that the Stone has rejected them. So, the casteless, then. Now, setting aside the fact that that’s a bloody odd thing to say about beings who seem to be literally made of rock, the idea of casteless becoming Rock Wraiths upon death is a bit silly. There are a lot of casteless, and Rock Wraiths are incredibly rare. My poor Hawke might have trouble believing this, given that they just mobbed her, but so the Codex says. But still, the idea is there.

There isn’t really an origin story for the casteless. Shaper Czibor will tell you a little story about dwarven brothers and how they formed the caste system. It’s almost certainly not in any way a true story, but it exists. The casteless, however, are aggressively forgotten. The Shaper looked my Brosca Warden right in the eye and told her that before she became a Grey Warden, she did not exist. Common dwarves, who can’t avoid noticing the casteless, will tell you a little bit more. They’ll say casteless are descended from criminals and outcasts who weren’t supposed to breed – but did anyway.

Whatever happened to the Profane, it was deliberate. You don’t ‘cry out for justice’ if you’ve been trapped in a cave in. You might cry out for help, or in despair, but natural disasters aren’t deliberately oppressing you. Someone trapped the Profane in this place. And they didn’t just trap the adults, who might just possibly have done something awful enough that the rest of the population had to lock them up and run, they trapped the children too. Whoever they were, the Profane weren’t meant to survive. There wasn’t supposed to be a next generation.

So I wonder if maybe some of them ate lyrium and became Rock Wraiths … and some very few found a way out, and tried to go back to their people.

The other thing of note is that apparently the tabletop RPG claims that Rock Wraiths have a connection to the Fade and are prone to possession. I don’t own that, so I’m just going by what is in the Wiki, and I don’t know what words it actually uses. But certainly the Rock Wraith I got a screenshot of here is possessed, and the Profane use a fair bit of magic: they’ve a tendency to summon shades and throw lightning around and generally make your life unpleasant.

In one sense, that’s unremarkable. They eat lyrium. Meredith held onto that lyrium idol for a few years and she was bringing statues to life. Lyrium is living magic. It gives you super powers.

But at the same time – however mutated, lost and strange they may be, these are almost certainly dwarves. Dwarves dreaming in the Fade. Dwarves doing magic. Dwarves getting possessed by demons. And they claim to have been trapped aeons ago. So long ago that their people might not have had Paragons or castes. That’s just bizarre.

So then I wonder – which came first?

Of all the societies in Thedas, I would say the dwarves most resemble the Qunari. They live by a religion that doesn’t care very much about gods or the Fade – although of course it has its own kind of mysticism. They have a rigid social structure in which everybody is expected to play a particular role – and woe betide anyone who has dreams of their own. They are intensely isolationist, and they are scientifically advanced. The details differ, of course. But the framework is the same.

The Qunari are utterly terrified of their mages – maybe even more so than the Chantry. Dwarves just don’t have any. Maybe they were more efficient at getting rid of them.

Then I think thematically. Dragon Age 2 is largely about the desperate things people do when they feel trapped, from the small-scale stories of Hawke’s friends to the large-scale fate of the world. It’s unfortunate that it’s a little light on the plight of the elves, but given how unfocused Inquisition was, perhaps it’s a good thing they decided to hone in on the plight of the mages.

In Kirkwall, some mages – like Orsino – choose to become monsters because they can see no other way to keep fighting. Some, like Evelina, become monsters because they are too frightened to think rationally. It’s not a question of blame. If you push people to breaking point, sometimes they break in ways that are … let’s say unpleasant for the people who are hurting them.

But I do rather wonder if we just found more imprisoned mages. They are profane. Cursed. Saarebas. The idea gets around.

Now, it’s worth backing up a minute. Lyrium is, after all, supposed to be very bad for mages – even worse than it is for an ordinary person, and it’s pretty awful for an ordinary person. But that assumes the Profane initially consumed raw lyrium. They may have done no such thing. Lyrium had religious significance for these dwarves, they may well have known how to prepare it. It is suggested that these dwarves are unique. By this point they are no longer flesh and blood, so the old rules don’t apply.

It’s also hard to timeline such creatures, but past a certain point I’m not willing to try. They are from very long ago, when the world was different.

Whatever went on with the Profane, they are … remarkable. They aren’t Red Templars, and they aren’t darkspawn. They are unique. And even if they weren’t lost mages before, they are now. They are dwarves who do magic. The cure in this instance isn’t anywhere near worth the price – but as proof that it could still be possible for them to do it? That is interesting.

(Emphasis mine)

Did you just propose the idea that the Profane are dwarven mages, long since discriminated and imprisoned within a Thaig…

Mind blown.

What more, this theory makes every bit of sense. That dwarves systematically went around imprisoning and condemning their mages within abandoned areas of the Deep Roads for what ever reason that came about. Not because mage oppression reasons (aka: “oh no it’s everywhere”…even though it is), rather because of all the evidence given to us in that Thaig.

Not to mention Sandal who was left alone in an isolated, abandoned Thaig (mind you one filled with glorious mosaics that further the idea of elves and dwarves sharing magic, from WoT2) as well, most likely addled from lyrium that he no doubt was forced to live off too and showing every bit of the signs to being a mage himself.

So yes, this one of the best theories I’ve seen put together on in this fandom and I’m actually really invested in this one now.

This gives me a thousand feels.  I'm fascinated by the tidbits of dwarven history (and current events) we've been given.  So much is going on there.  When will BioWare give me my dwarf lore?!?!

[Cee]

I did finally get to create something I loved for Solas thanks to the JoH cloth drops and armor tinter, and that is on my pre-end save. I later crafted him something else from JoH, but it's not quite the same. Debating which to let him take with him.

 

Also my rogue armor got cooler looking, but I liked most of it throughout.

 

In games, this does bother me.

[Illyria]

Solas prompts:

 

Salit and Solas: I gave my life to stand beside you

f!Lavellan and Solas: Long walks late at night (this is the most canon Solas!prompt I have ever got)

Solas and Corypheus: bake sale

Solas and Stroud: Not what I thought

Seneschal Varel and Solas: The way thing should be

 

Non-Solas prompts:

 

Aveline Vallen and Ser Otto Alrick: nothing to worry about

 

Spoiler

One day Aveline arrested Ser Otto Alrick.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

 

Irving and FInn: Tangled Sheets (good luck getting that mental image out of your head)

[Sah291]

deleted...sorry, wrong thread.

[Cee]

Solas prompts:

 

Salit and Solas: I gave my life to stand beside you

f!Lavellan and Solas: Long walks late at night (this is the most canon Solas!prompt I have ever got)

Solas and Corypheus: bake sale

 

I have to use that f!Lavellan one. It's the most basic of ideas but it must happen.

 

Bake sale has the potential yo be funny, but I see that as a feature over on Vhenantrash.

[Illyria]

I have to use that f!Lavellan one. It's the most basic of ideas but it must happen.

 

Bake sale has the potential yo be funny, but I see that as a feature over on Vhenantrash.

 

I added two more Solas prompts!

 

The f!Lavellan one reminds me of something I've been trying to write.

[Cee]

It kind of fills in a blank in something I've been trying to write with like....duh....think simple sometimes.

[Sifr]

It's always annoying when you only get the really cool looking gear at the end. 

KotOR: Now at long last, you can wear a replica of the robes the Dark Lord Revan wore! The last two fights in this thirty hour game will be the most stylish!

 

Reminds me of something that SFDebris joked in his DA and KotoR reviews, what's the point of finding equipment and cash when you get to a point in the game where buying and selling things become meaningless? Like meeting Sandal in Fort Drakon and the Gallows, what's the point stocking up or selling anything, since the game is going to be over once I walk through that door, rendering everything in my inventory pretty much meaningless?

 

[Rhoxi]

I think freedom was also needed.

 

I know I'm late to the party, but I just have to say that this is the most awesome Anders-related come back ever. I would throw a thousand likes at this if I could. Cee, you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you this post. 

[legbamel]

I've been resisting the prompt generator but I caved.  It promptly rewarded me with this.

Ser Agatha & Fenris: the taste of your mouth

Also:

Spoiler

Guardswoman Brennan & Marian Hawke: bound wrists

Felix Alexius & Marian Hawke: anything to keep warm

Orana & Justice: close your eyes (!)

Briala & Mihris: in the fade

Frederic & Cullen Rutherford: villain!

Weylon & Cailan: kisses to the unsuspecting (I'm picturing his corpse up on the bridge and am utterly grossed out by this one)

Varric Tethras & Corporal Vale: promises

Justice & Oghren: there are no words

and finally

Iron Bull & Stroud: the crush of rejection (I'm thinking literally, in this case)

 

Did you guys hear about the Solas quest to find him post-epilogue that was cut from the game (you probably did lol but I just heard too)? I have a feeling the DLC will be official now.

The rumor's been flying.  Team Optimism flags have been fluttering.  Confetti has not yet been thrown and I hear the blanket fort's in the wash just in case.

[Caddius]

Reminds me of something that SFDebris joked in his DA and KotoR reviews, what's the point of finding equipment and cash when you get to a point in the game where buying and selling things become meaningless? Like meeting Sandal in Fort Drakon and the Gallows, what's the point stocking up or selling anything, since the game is going to be over once I walk through that door, rendering everything in my inventory pretty much meaningless?

 

Step One: Sell everything to stock up on potions for Urthie.

Step Two: Cry as you realize you sold all your good gear as you import a naked Warden into Awakening.

[Sifr]

Step One: Sell everything to stock up on potions for Urthie.

Step Two: Cry as you realize you sold all your good gear as you import a naked Warden into Awakening.

 

Step Three: Keep all the weapons you pick up as a Hurlock Alpha in the Darkspawn Chronicles, only to realise that you'll never play him again and that there is absolutely no store anywhere because you've just gone through the marketplace killing all the merchants?

 

[legbamel]

That Leliana's a troll, I tell you.  I still say she knew all along that Solas's village was nothing but ancient ruins.  She only told you because she thought it would underscore how impossible finding him would be.  She just wants you under her murderous little thumb, I tell you!  It's a ploy!  A plot!  It's...

 

I may have had too much coffee this evening.

[CapricornSun]

Art time.

 

This pic of Solas... Oh my.

Spoiler

http://esuerc.tumblr...-paint-this-one

 

 

And coloring WIP of it.

Spoiler

http://esuerc.tumblr...ouring-previous

 

 

The reaction of Limpstella's Lavellan after finding out that Solas is Fen'Harel. xD

Spoiler

http://limpstella.tu...ter-finding-out

 

 

Chess

Spoiler

http://wranduin.co.v...py-so-take-this

 

 

Solas slightly disapproves.

Spoiler

http://ellalavellan....-man-i-know-you

 

 

Concept!Solas

Spoiler

http://heavensspire....rt-thus-far-its

 

 

Solas' shiny head.

Spoiler

http://rainsong777.t...ad-so-shiny-o-o

 

 

[Junebug]

Oh that "Solas slightly disapproves" one is so damn true. I actually did that to the screen when that moment happened! 

same omg. I was like "WHAT?! I thought you cared about people, boyfrand!?" 'cause I felt like that was so out of character. Yeah, he favors telling the truth but he also keeps the truth from people when necessary.

[NightSymphony]

Part of me kind of hopes that when we do find Solas, he'll be all dressed in wolf skins like in that picture....

[ChuChu]

The rumor's been flying.  Team Optimism flags have been fluttering.  Confetti has not yet been thrown and I hear the blanket fort's in the wash just in case.

Yessssssss!! Keep waving those flags of optimism! I really hope the interview will give us something substantial to cling to...

Also allow me to join in by -throwing confetti- !!! I'm stoked to hear the interviews and it will time so well for when I can read the new fancy World of Thedas (once it arrives, blaaaaaaah).

Spoiler'd because I can't draw anything new right at the moment, but while you've all seen it already, it rings appropriate.

Spoiler