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[Willowhugger]

Yes, let's remember that the Wardens' morality depends on Orc-Zombie Plague being a real thing.

[HiroVoid]

A warden driven mad by the calling isn't exactly a good reference.

Yeah.  That felt more like the Warden-Commander taking out her grief of being a warden on the rest of the world.  They were also a bit haunted by the fact that they essentially are wardens who get all the bad aspects of it and pretty much only keeping watch and fighting darkspawn hoards every now and then.

[Willowhugger]

Yeah.  That felt more like the Warden-Commander taking out her grief of being a warden on the rest of the world.  They were also a bit haunted by the fact that they essentially are wardens who get all the bad aspects of it and pretty much only keeping watch and fighting darkspawn hoards every now and then.

Part of why I liked the Calling is it did expose the human flaws of Wardens.

 

You had a gung-ho woman who seems like the perfect Warden.

 

And yet she's continually passed over for her brother who doesn't even want to be a Warden.

 

Was he even a better warrior or was it just sexism?

[Jedi Master of Orion]

 

 

 

Spoiler

Because no one ever used blood magic to control them after the Joining. Previously, when the griffons were exposed to the taint, they just ripped eachother and everyone around them apart.  Isseya was the first one to use BM during the ritual, so they didn't die immediately.

 

I also think it's possible she's not the *first* person to do it, but she was the first person to do it on a large scale. If one Warden did it to one griffon and they died quickly, maybe the disease wouldn't spread.

 

 

Why did they end up resorting to that sort of thing in what was at the time the shortest Blight? I mean even counting only the second half of the First Blight after they learned enough about manipulating the darkspawn taint to create Grey Wardens in the first place, it was still ten times as long as the Fourth Blight. Why weren't they desperate enough back then?

[HiroVoid]

Part of why I liked the Calling is it did expose the human flaws of Wardens.

 

You had a gung-ho woman who seems like the perfect Warden.

 

And yet she's continually passed over for her brother who doesn't even want to be a Warden.

 

Was he even a better warrior or was it just sexism?

Pretty sure he was better.  The only way the woman was even able to join was if her brother joined as well which is why the guy's so spiteful if I remember right.

[HiroVoid]

Why did they end up resorting to that sort of thing in what was at the time the shortest Blight?

Eh.  The Warden can have dwarves put to the forge to become golems for the fifth blight, and that's not even gone a year yet.

[Willowhugger]

Why did they end up resorting to that sort of thing in what was at the time the shortest Blight? I mean even counting only the second half of the First blight when they learned enough about manipulating the darkspawn taint to create Grey Wardens in the first place, it was still ten times as long as the Fourth Blight. Why weren't they desperate enough back then?

Because the shortest Blight is still millions of people dead.

 

They didn't have Blood Magic then.

 

They only got Blood Magic because one Warden chose to learn it.

 

She learned it from an Antivan Crow.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

Because the shortest Blight was still millions of people dead?

 

But if that's true, surely they would have resorted to such desperate measures long before the Exalted Age then?

[HiroVoid]

But if that's true, surely they would have resorted to such desperate measures long before the Exalted Age then?

Maybe they didn't think about it.  Apparently DA:O was the first spotting of a broodmother (unless that's been changed).

[Willowhugger]

I don't mind their morality. I just wished they engaged more in problem solving and research. Instead of just churning out the same old ritual and oath of vigilance for 2000 years. They're so entrenched in this sacred oath that they don't do anything else. Just 24/7, 365 days a year of constant killing of darkspawn and waiting for another archdemon. Rinse/repeat.

 

There's a good reason for that, though.

See Sophie Dryden.

 

Sophie Dryden and Avernus were taking down a Tyrant.

Yet everyone treats the Wardens in Fereldan DIFFERENTLY because of that.

 

They've also forgotten their King served people's heads on plates.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

Maybe they didn't think about it.  Apparently DA:O was the first spotting of a broodmother (unless that's been changed).

 

No they knew about Broodmothers before, but supposedly didn't know how they were created or where they came from. Even that sort of strikes me as a stretch but whatever.

[The Elder King]

Because the shortest Blight is still millions of people dead.
 
They didn't have Blood Magic then.
 
They only got Blood Magic because one Warden chose to learn it.
 
She learned it from an Antivan Crow.

Oh, interesting, the Crows recruit mages as well?

[Willowhugger]

But if that's true, surely they would have resorted to such desperate measures long before the Exalted Age then?

I think this book shows that the Grey Wardens would flat-out have resorted to such measures without hesitation if they'd known about them.

It's why Isseya is so scared of letting the Wardens know about the Griffon eggs.

She KNOWS they'd resort to Blood Magic AGAIN.

 

Why?

Because they'll do anything to stop the Blights. The Wardens don't have an "off" switch.

[DalishRanger]

Just finished the novel, and overall I have to say I enjoyed it, even if it was a bit short compared to the other tie-in novels.

 

That said, I did notice at least one lore error (a rather insignificant one, mind) that I found amusing. Dunno if anyone's brought it up before, but I don't have the time to go through 17 pages of discussion to check, so apologies if I'm repeating:

 

Spoiler

On page 47, Garahel makes a quip about seducing a Qunari. Problem is, he makes this joke in 5:12 Exalted and the Qunari didn't show up in Thedas until 6:30 Steel. I'm not counting the small colony of kossith that came to the Wilds in -410 Ancient; I doubt Garahel knew of them, and they weren't the Qunari yet back then.

 

Plus, this, though it's already been discussed earlier in this topic from what I glimpsed:

Spoiler

I also noticed the dwarven templar, though I'm not sure if that's a continuity error or just an oddity. We already know there are a handful of dwarves who have converted to Andrasteanism and that they're not immune to lyrium. Still, rather strange.

[HiroVoid]

Oh, interesting, the Crows recruit mages as well?

I think practically every mercenary/underground company recruits mages as much as they can get away with.

[Willowhugger]

Oh, interesting, the Crows recruit mages as well?

It would appear so.

 

They mostly train their own soldiers but take recruits when they're exceptionally skilled.

In this case, he wasn't a Blood Mage beforehand but learned it due to a Templar deciding that an Abomination was outside his purview.

The Crows weren't pleased they neglected to mention this fact.

But they still completed the contract. The Crow Mage, in particular, tricked the demon into teaching it Blood Magic first.

[Willowhugger]

Just finished the novel, and overall I have to say I enjoyed it, even if it was a bit short compared to the other tie-in novels.

 

That said, I did notice at least one lore error (a rather insignificant one, mind) that I found amusing. Dunno if anyone's brought it up before, but I don't have the time to go through 17 pages of discussion to check, so apologies if I'm repeating:

 

Spoiler

On page 47, Garahel makes a quip about seducing a Qunari. Problem is, he makes this joke in 5:12 Exalted and the Qunari didn't show up in Thedas until 6:30 Steel. I'm not counting the small colony of kossith that came to the Wilds in -410 Ancient; I doubt Garahel knew of them, and they weren't the Qunari yet back then.

 

The author explained it in the thread in the Merchandise forum.

 

There was a couple of contacts ahead of time due to Griffon riders.

 

She would have used the Kossith in the Fereldan swamps, though, if she'd known.

[DalishRanger]

The author explained it in the thread in the Merchandise forum.

 

There was a couple of contacts ahead of time due to Griffon riders.

 

She would have used the Kossith in the Fereldan swamps, though, if she'd known.

 

Ah, I see! That's pretty neat. Thanks, was a bit perplexed by that.

[Willowhugger]

I think it's like Vikings in Canada for the Qunari at this time.

 

:-)

[Willowhugger]

What the author wrote Re: The Qunari

 

I wanted to use ogres (ogres are cool!), which meant that the Qunari could not be totally removed from the rest of the world, since you need to have Qunari to get ogres. When I started writing this book, I had not yet read the World of Thedas, so I didn't know about the darkspawn-slaughtered colony in the Korcari Wilds. That would have been a shortcut to the entire thing.

But, since I wasn't aware of that then, my reasoning went: a world that has high-speed aerial travel is a "smaller" world than one that doesn't, and a Grey Warden who just happens to fly overhead and spot one of those guys is probably going to be all "whoa, what is THAT?" and drop down to investigate. Therefore it would not be completely unreasonable to think that isolated contact might have been made once or twice, by that or other means, and that at least some Grey Warden scouts might be at least broadly aware of what Qunari are (if only to the limited extent of "hey, these guys are not darkspawn, we don't need to freak out about them even though they look kinda weird"). But, of course, that's not their primary focus, and it's also not hard to imagine that the few Wardens who maybe hypothetically did know about Qunari got wiped during the Fourth Blight, and then there are no more griffons so the possibility of accidental re-contact goes way down, and we get back to a world-state where nobody remembers what Qunari are until they invade.

 

However, at the same time, I didn't want to portray Qunari as being so common or widely known that one would actually make an on-screen appearance in Last Flight, because then there would clearly be a canon conflict. To split the difference, they only got a one-off mention in a throwaway line. I figured that would cover all my bases as to who knew what when and how there could be ogres in the Fourth Blight, as the readers who cared enough to worry about that kind of stuff would be able to make the connection, and everybody else would just skip past it.

 

But obviously I'm not actually all that confident that it worked, which is why I wrote this whole long spoiler explanation about it.

[TheChosenOne]

I just want to know if Griffons are coming back 

 

Griffons!!! 

 

[DalishRanger]

I think it's like Vikings in Canada for the Qunari at this time.

 

:-)

 

As a humongous history nerd, I heartily approve of that comparison.

[MisterJB]

There's a mistake in page 131.

Isseya realizes Darkspawn are coming by the sound of their footsteps, is surprised by it and unable to tell how many there are due to echo.

However, she's been a Warden for seven years and thus she should be able to sense them.

[Hellion Rex]

I just want to know if Griffons are coming back 

 

Griffons!!! 

 

Yup, they are back, dear.