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[teh DRUMPf!!]

 (I read these in reverse order, going backwards from my post...)

 

I could also post pictures of prison rape but that might go against actually serve a point against pro-Templars.

 

 

 

You probably go to sleep dreaming of Jews in ovens. Hitler would be proud

 

 

 

 

 

The other candidates make it seem like their changes will last last their reigns. Vivienne's ending guarantees that all her benefits will be gone the minute she isn't divine.

 

No, it most certainly does not seem that way with Leliana, considering the glaring co-qualifier "For the moment" attached to her epilogue (meaning the success of her reforms are only being measured in the immediate). That hardly inspires confidence.

 

Vivienne wins back support from initial detractors upon reinstating the Circle. Go look it up. And before that, she had enough support/power to crush them anyway. I am not sure where (other than your head) you are getting this "guarantee."

[MisterJB]

See my post above. These societies are not miniscule. 

They are. The clan in Masked Empire had less than 50 members.

Just because they have certain advantages they can use to fight against more powerful foes, that doesn't mean it's numbers.

 

 

 

Keepers lead but do not hold absolute power as Keeper is only 

one of several prominent positions within a Clan. 

 

We have seen Keepers making unilateral decisions which have even harmed the clan without consulting any one else. And when these supposedly powerful elders have disagrees with these decisions, for instance Vellana and Ilen in DA2, they always abandoned the clan along with their supporters as if this was their only recourse.

 

If you have evidence the Keepers needs the approval of a majority of clanmates before taking a decisions or that the elders of the clan can hold a vote of no confidence and this means that the Keeper is legally obligated to act in the manner they want rather than that of his or her choice, then present it.

Otherwise, the Keeper is an autocrat.

 

 

 

Their position is one of tradition, they hold no whip and force no one to follow. 

 

That is called "cultural dominion" and it's no different from magic being associated with political power in Tevinter.

 

 

 

 Seers, also like Keepers, act as Spiritual Guides but do not rule.

 

World of Thedas page 80 "All decisions involving the welfare of most Rivaini communities rest solely with the eldest women. The most senior of these women are caled seers, who freely practice magic."

 

So, first of all "all decisions" meaning they have authority in matter beyond the spiritual.

Second, the senior of these eldest women is always a mage making a mage the person with the most authority in these communities. That is ruling.

 

 

 

The Avvar Shamans do not rule, the Thane does.

 

They paint their faces and are split into small tribes ruled by shamans

http://dragonage.wik...ry:_The_Chasind

 

 

The very codex uses the word "ruled" Despite that, are you going to argue they don't rule?

 

 

 

The Circle failed. These cultures withFREE Mages have not. 

 

So, the Circles have failed because, in the span of a thousand years, there has been a war. A war, might I add, that has not destroyed any society where the institution of the Circle exists.

However, we have seen three clans of Dalish being destroyed for the actions of their Keepers and yet, this system hasn't failed.

 

The logic here is astounding.

 

 

 

If these Mages, who have beenFREE for hundreds of years, regularly caused devastation do you not think these traditions wouldSTOP?

 

How many wars have been fought because magnats wish them to be fought so they can get richer? And yet, there are still billionaires.

 

 

 

 

"Normal" people of Thedas believe that Circles are necessary because the Chantry tells them so. Just like "normal" people believed that Templars were infallible. Just like "normal" people believe that Elves are lesser because of their race.

 

So, what they want doesn't matter because you don't like it.

 

People don't fear mages because of the Chantry. People fear mages because it's only natural to be afraid of those who can kill you with a thought and are doorways for demons to enter the material world.

 

Have you considered that perhaps it's the opposite that it's true. That the societies who don't fear mages don't fear them because the rulers are mages and have indocrinated the rest so as to legitimize their power?

 

Say, Tevinter with his "Magic is a sign the Maker has bestowed us with divine authority." or the Dalish with "All elves were once mages, we mages are the closest there is to the perfect elf."

 

 

It is stated multiple times that those Mages were no longer affiliated with those in Redcliff

Ah, so all a mage has to do is say "I am not longer affiliated with the College" and suddenly it's no longer their responsability to prevent him from using magic to harm others.

 

 

 

nd that the Templars were causing just as much death and destruction. Ignoring that the Templars were just as destructive is willful ignorance.

 

Missing the point.

The point is that the mages rebelled under the basis that Templars were not needed because mages can police themselves.

Then, when mages started to attack people because "magic gave them the rigth", they washed their hands off it.

 

 

"You know full well that the Mages did not assist with the occupation of Redcliffe."

 

Well, they were allied with them, had Fiona and Lysas serving as atendants to Alexius, were allowed in the castle when Arl Teagan and anyone who didn't have magic were evicted.

How is that not assisting with the occupation?

 

"The tone of your post suggest that you are among those who believe that Tevinter is "EVIL". "

 

I suggest that, EVIL or not, the people of Ferelden are not interested in having Tevinter occupy their cities, evict their nobles and forbid the citizens from leaving under penalty of death.

 

"This is something that a Circle Mage would incorrectly tell you is impossible."

 

We only see Circle mages removing a demon from Connor and Circle Mage Wynne passing her spirit to Evangeline but...they just don't think it's possible because Chantry and stuff.

[MisterJB]

 

Coming from the guy who wants his Mage lover and child free and away from circles.

That's because they are better.

Why do I have to explain everything?

[Master Warder Z_]

[actionhero112]

It's not even a retcon. No where was it implied in DA:O that you are destined to spend your entire life in a tower. Several examples throughout the game show mages outside the ferelden tower, in capacities that aid the populace. 

 

But yeah screw mages.

 

Mages caused the blight. Blight caused red lyrium, Cori, and the archdemon. E.G. the final bosses of every dragon age game. Maybe in a few millennium if they haven't tried to end the world again, they can be free. Kill em all. 

[ShadowLordXII]

This debate's going in circles as expected.

 

So I'll just put in 2 more cents and leave it there.

 

The Circle failed. It had a good premise, but the Chantry's teachings and institutional failures created the recipe for the disaster known as the mage-templar war. A big reason has to do with something called Labeling Theory.

 

Vivienne's perspective isn't enough to absolve the above fact nor should it be held as fallible above anyone else due to her background and possible self-interest. It also fails to hold the Chantry accountable for it's own shares of mistakes rather than throwing most of the blame on mages and making them seem like children. Multiple perspectives place blame on all sides where it belongs while Vivienne alone stands out as a steadfast and somewhat stubborn defender of a sinking ship that most others have already abandoned.

 

On one hand, it's nice for Bioware to give us a complicated situation that has no easy answer without risk or negative consequence. On the other hand, these mage freedom debates can get tiresome since it eventually comes to where it is now.

[thesuperdarkone2]

This debate's going in circles as expected.

So I'll just put in 2 more cents and leave it there.

The Circle failed. It had a good premise, but the Chantry's teachings and institutional failures created the recipe for the disaster known as the mage-templar war. A big reason has to do with something called Labeling Theory.

Vivienne's perspective isn't enough to absolve the above fact nor should it be held as fallible above anyone else due to her background and possible self-interest. It also fails to hold the Chantry accountable for it's own shares of mistakes rather than throwing most of the blame on mages and making them seem like children. Multiple perspectives place blame on all sides where it belongs while Vivienne alone stands out as a steadfast and somewhat stubborn defender of a sinking ship that most others have already abandoned.

On one hand, it's nice for Bioware to give us a complicated situation that has no easy answer without risk or negative consequence. On the other hand, these mage freedom debates can get tiresome since it eventually comes to where it is now.

Especially since these debates do nothing to change anyone's mind. Has anyone actually changed their views because of these threads? Seems like all these threads devolve into arguments just so pro Templars can have a circle jerk where they can hate mages

[TK514]

You probably go to sleep dreaming of Jews in ovens. Hitler would be proud

 

It's like you go out of your way to make it impossible to take you seriously.

[MisterJB]

What happened to arguing for the pleasure of it?

[teh DRUMPf!!]

What happened to arguing for the pleasure of it?

 

Hear, hear.

 

At least for me, my objective is to test my position against cross-examination. Discard what does not hold, adopt what does.

 

I actually started off with the belief that mages should be independent, but it got to a point where that just did not hold up in my eyes, so I shifted (due in no small part to these discussions, so I would dispute that they do not change anyone's mind, using myself as the evidence).

[Iakus]

  Had Fiona not been manipulated by Alexius through magic no less, perhaps she should have got her **** together. 

ACtually we know what would have happened.  She would have come begging the Inquisition to save them.

[Iakus]

 
But it is no surprise that someone who's lived in the graces of a duke would be numbed to it all.

CHeck out Vivienne's section of WoT volume 2 and see how wonderful it was for Vivienne or Bastien.  The relationship hurt both of them more than it helped.

[Iakus]

 

"Normal" people of Thedas believe that Circles are necessary because the Chantry tells them so. Just like "normal" people believed that Templars were infallible. Just like "normal" people believe that Elves are lesser because of their race.

 

"Normal" people in Thedas are terrified of mages and would lynch them given half a chance.  Templars protect mages from them as much as they protect people from renegade mages.

[Iakus]

That is a pretty big non-sequitur you got there.

 

Vivienne holding that power in itself is a very big deal for all mages, not just herself. It sets precedent for magekind holding titles/office. If you ask me, that is a much greater (in a sense of being both superior and having more impact) than just cutting them loose on society.

 

For now, the Chantry remains united. Though difficult for many to accept, a mage sits on the Sunburst Throne and will remain there.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

ACtually we know what would have happened.  She would have come begging the Inquisition to save them.

Which is evidence that she's not entirely stupid. I don't think she made a good wartime leader, since while Sports is probably right that most people would give into panic a wartime leader needs to be better than that or else stuff like Alexius happens, but her instincts before the pressure was retroactively applied were decent. (At least insofar as what to do after the explosion. The mage effort to curb or remove the Templars before that should have been done better than she did it or not at all. My preference is for curbing them, and doing a better job than she did since she wasn't wrong to think the Templars were being overly harsh in some ways.)

[Iakus]

One would've expected a former Grey Warden to be better at crisis management.

I think we can see where Alistair gets his brains...

[Iakus]

Double post

[Deztyn]

Thast's simply collateral damage from wartime. It happens all the time with mundanes, too. And Teagan's list is rather short...just look at the areas where Gaspard's and Celene's troops fought.

If the damage was caused by the mage/templar war it would be a much longer list. Teagan's letter doesn't mention combat, and he's a reasonable and compassionate man. Very unlikely to blame people for defending themselves.

You are also severely underestimating the impact of just those few events.

For example, the loss of crops.

In a place like Ferelden crops are vital to the survival of a family. It's how they feed their children, their livestock, it's how they make their money, and locals may depend on trading to produce their own wares and feed their own families.

Without a successful harvest, people starve and die. Crops can not be easily replaced, they are weeks, months, sometimes even years of hard work. If these people had no way of seeking reparations, if this was the act of a random mage rather than an ally of the Inquisition, those families would be ruined, and depending on it's size, the economy of their entire village could suffer.

Incidents like this can't be brushed aside as inconsequential. It's one mage's potential to destroy many, many lives without even intending to harm anyone.

Vivienne says, "Do you know how young mages are found? A little girl has a nightmare, and in her sleep, she burns her house down. A teenage boy has a fit, and lightning rips his mother to pieces. Imagine your own childhood and what would have happened if the darkest corner of your heart had a will of its own. People don't learn the fear of magic at Chantry services, my dear. They learn it from us."

This is a truth that can not be disputed. Wynne discovered her magic when she almost set a boy who made her mad on fire. Anders discovered his when he burned down his family's barn.

In Asunder, the protagonists deal with a prejudiced peasant and one of the characters accuses him of hating mages because of the whole blight thing: "History? I don't care about history. I care about Jean-Petit. His farmhouse got burned down two weeks ago, with him in it. You know who done it? His daughter, a spiteful little thing the templars had to drag off before she killed anyone else."

And a little later, "It wasn't just Jean-Petit. Last year there was a man in Val Bresins who turned into a demon in the middle of the marketplace! The hedge witch who blighted the Arlans crop! The Wickens boy who talked to ghosts--you know it was him that was killing our poor dogs!"

This is why the common man fears and hates mages. This isn't a fear you can unlearn, it isn't a fear that is entirely unjust or misplaced, and it isn't a fear you can blame on Chantry propaganda.

As for mages not being strongarmed in to rebellion, that's a bit of an oversimplification. The heads of the Fraternities voted to rebel. One of these heads was the Aequitarian head, who was originally a Libertarian and who we don't know actually consulted his new constituents.

Rhys didn't consult the other Aequitarians. He tells Adrian he doesn't know how he'll vote. He didn't even know he would be the one casting the vote in advance and had been an official member if the Aequitarians for all of a day. Damn Wynne's womb.

I found it interesting that the only person we meet in Inquisition who identifies as an Aequitarian emphatically hates the rebellion and thinks it never should have happened.

Something else to remember, most of the fraternity representatives actually voted against the rebellion. The Libertarian and Aequitarian votes just counted for more people. We can't even say for sure that a majority wanted the rebellion.

Even if they did, at that point they have an unpleasant binary choice to make: Rebel or go back to the Circles as they had become. No, likely with even harsher restrictions in place. Never mind that the ones voting had already been labeled apostates and were risking death, tranquility or imprisonment if they did choose to go back.

Now if there were options to pursue change within the Circles. A chance to improve the lot of mages without a war, I suspect the majority would have voted for that. Prior to the events in Kirkwall the Libertarians were not a very large fraternity.

What I got from him is that he chose the mage rebellion because he believed in mage solidarity. If he decided to go to Fiona's refuge, it was out of free will. He could have deserted or gone into hiding like the others. It's hardly the conscription you make it out to be.

Uh. Have you payed attention to Vivienne's dialogue about what happened to mages that didn't want to rebel? Many of them were murdered by the other mages.

Here's a banter with Cole about the subject:

Cole: Sour smell in the tower library. Rotten meat and ashes. Too quiet without the apprentices. Something crunches underfoot. Burned finger bones glitter in the ash like pearls. Ice in my veins. The archivist... what was her name?

Vivienne: Get. Out.

Cole: Why did they kill her? She was just like them!

Vivienne: They helped her. Just like you did. Anyone who wouldn't fight for freedom was freed by fire and lightning. Stay out of my thoughts demon. My memories are my own.

The First Enchanter of Ostwick, potentially the Inquisitor's mentor, was murdered by her own apprentice. It wasn't exactly a good time to be a loyalist.

Hear, hear.

At least for me, my objective is to test my position against cross-examination. Discard what does not hold, adopt what does.

I actually started off with the belief that mages should be independent, but it got to a point where that just did not hold up in my eyes, so I shifted (due in no small part to these discussions, so I would dispute that they do not change anyone's mind, using myself as the evidence).

I always enjoyed the Templars, Chantry and Circle lore, but I favored the mage position a bit during Origins. Until I was playing devil's advocate with a die-hard mage supporter. I convinced myself that it was the only right way while just trying to convince someone else to consider a different perspective.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

One would've expected a former Grey Warden to be better at crisis management.

I think we can see where Alistair gets his brains...

I don't think you're being fair to the poor guy. My understanding of Darkspawn Chronicles is that the only reason he didn't save the world (albeit making it a bit of a nasty place along the way with some of the decisions the enemies you meet imply) is because there was an evil PC in the way. Fiona by comparison needed a good PC to protect her from helping screw it over.

 

I understand that Alistair comes off as dense at times, but he's a better leader than Fiona.

[GranfalloonMembr]

Especially since these debates do nothing to change anyone's mind. Has anyone actually changed their views because of these threads? Seems like all these threads devolve into arguments just so pro Templars can have a circle jerk where they can hate mages

 

It's kind of like trying to convince a conservative to become liberal or vice versa; you can't give them any kind of armour-piercing argument or statement that makes them reconsider everything they believe. You have a hard time even giving them something to think about that maybe might eventually lead to them changing their minds.

 

That's real world politics, but we're talking politics here too, politics in the DA-verse. And it seems to be just as divisive.

 

Anyhoo, I finished the main game by now. Somehow ended up with Cassandra as Divine instead of Leliana, but at least Vivienne was never in contention. (Maybe my refusal to do her wyvern quest had something to do with that. I took some small satisfaction from her saying that she wouldn't forget that slight--well, hey, if you wanted me to help you, maybe you should've kept your grubby hands off of my stuff.) And Cassandra is pretty reasonable when you come right down to it, a lot more reasonable than she first seemed when she debuted in DA2.

 

As for the post-credits scene...huh. Did not expect that.

[GranfalloonMembr]

Cole: Sour smell in the tower library. Rotten meat and ashes. Too quiet without the apprentices. Something crunches underfoot. Burned finger bones glitter in the ash like pearls. Ice in my veins. The archivist... what was her name?

Vivienne: Get. Out.

 

 

I used to take Cole and Vivienne out in the same party hoping to see Vivienne get frustrated and upset exactly like that, but eventually I stopped because it seemed to only result in poor Cole receiving verbal abuse from her, what with referring to him as a pet and an "it" and such. Glad to see evidence that it really was getting to her.

[Vilio1]

"Normal" people of Thedas believe that Circles are necessary because the Chantry tells them so. Just like "normal" people believed that Templars were infallible. Just like "normal" people believe that Elves are lesser because of their race.

My thoughts precisely. The moment Leliana reforms the chantry mages are enjoying unprecedented acceptance throughout Thedas.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

Looking at these arguments, I have come to the conclusion that mages need some form of supervision. Be it from other mages or an institution.

 

Having said that, I am of the opinion that the Chantry is incapable of being that supervisor. For the moment, the best supervisor of mages in Southern Thedas is the Inquisition.

 

Which means one needs to conscript the mages and elect Leliana or Cassandra as the Divine. Mage conscription with softened Leliana as the Divine is the best outcome of Thedas. Unfortunately, that outcome is also the most difficult one to achieve because mage conscription itself skews the Divine election in favor of Vivienne.

 

Personally, I settled for: Mage conscription, uniting Celene & Briala while executing Gaspard, Grey Wardens help the Inquisition, Leliana softened, Cassandra restores the Seekers and becomes Divine Victoria. It is the most realistic and practical outcome I can get without manipulating the system.

 

Under this outcome: Chantry is reformed, mages push to have closer ties to the Inquisition, there is peaceful coexistence between Elves & Humans in Orlais, the wench Vivienne gets nothing, Leliana becomes softened and can return to her beloved Hero of Ferelden.

 

[Sports72Xtrm]

ACtually we know what would have happened.  She would have come begging the Inquisition to save them.

You would paint finding common ground as a weakness? The Inquisition would help restore order and subdue the templars persecuting free mages and the mage rebels are able to allocate resources to bring lawless apostates to justice, fight corypheus, and seal the breach. It's literally a win-win scenario for everyone involved considering the templars just told the Inquisition to go to hell until they gather a big enough petition from nobles to soothe their egos.