Mage: Mages deserve to be as free as any man!
Templar: But look at the Tevinter Imperium! We can't allow the creation of another evil mage empire!
Mage: Oh, that will never happen.
(War happens, mages are released)
Mage: Let's go fight for a darkspawn god and join an army of evil mages!
Mage: Mages deserve to be as free as any man!
Templar: But look at the Tevinter Imperium! We can't allow the creation of another evil mage empire!
Mage: Oh, that will never happen.
(War happens, mages are released)
Mage: Let's go fight for a darkspawn god and join an army of evil mages!
I do not think any of them knew about the Elder One when they joined up.
I do not think any of them knew about the Elder One when they joined up.
How about when they were marching on Haven? Did they know then?
"Oh dear, that fellow in the lead seems to have a rather bad skin condition. He should really use more moisturizer."
How about when they were marching on Haven? Did they know then?
"Oh dear, that fellow in the lead seems to have a rather bad skin condition. He should really use more moisturizer."
Likely under some form of mind control at that point. At least that's my theory.
I think that's why you get to go to Redcliffe to see them before deciding. It doesn't necessarily give you a reason to choose the Templars, it really just gives you a reason to not choose the Mages.
Likely under some form of mind control at that point. At least that's my theory.
That would be a really lame cop out/weak writing.
That would be a really lame cop out/weak writing.
Maybe but they did set it up throughout the game that Corypheus/ The Venatori at large could and were not above using such things to achieve their ends.
Mage: Mages deserve to be as free as any man!
Templar: But look at the Tevinter Imperium! We can't allow the creation of another evil mage empire!
Mage: Oh, that will never happen.
(War happens, mages are released)
Mage: Let's go fight for a darkspawn god and join an army of evil mages!
Maybe having to fight a war in the first place, in a world that was taught to fear and hate them, and given no chance to prove themselves or left alone to organize their own institution and instead hunted down like animals for a couple of years made them desperate and scared enough to make ill-thought out decisions to survive...
Ally with them and dissolve the Circles and see where they are during Trespasser. Answer: they're doing fine; no one says there's any problems.
Mages siding with Tevinter seems like a good enough reason to salvage the Templars.
Also Fiona is a:
Maybe having to fight a war in the first place, in a world that was taught to fear and hate them, and given no chance to prove themselves or left alone to organize their own institution and instead hunted down like animals for a couple of years made them desperate and scared enough to make ill-thought out decisions to survive...
Ally with them and dissolve the Circles and see where they are during Trespasser. Answer: they're doing fine; no one says there's any problems.
By the end of Trespasser you find out that Elven mages made themselves gods, and were destroying their world (power corrupts). You also find out your friend Solas another mage plans to destroy the world.
.......................and you just got rid of a darkspawn mage who wanted to be god.
To say the truth, in my first, absolutely spoiler-free PT, my Inquisitor went to Redcliff fully prepared to ally with the mages.
Seeing all this mess (Mages allied with Tevinter? Arl of Redcliff thrown out of his own castle? Ferelden possibly marching to take Redcliff back?) she marched out straight to Terinfal and never looked back.
A roll of the dice decision maybe?
I think that's why you get to go to Redcliffe to see them before deciding. It doesn't necessarily give you a reason to choose the Templars, it really just gives you a reason to not choose the Mages.
Yes, a reason not to choose the mages perhaps. But as I've pointed out time after time in this thread, after what you learn at Redcliffe, it's no longer about who you choose to help you with the rifts - there's now a more immediate threat that screams out to be dealt with as fast as possible: the threat of time magic being used against inquisition in a decisive way.
You don't know how far along Alexius is in developing this magic, and if he's at the cusp of a breakthrough, the inquisition could be lost, and the question of mages or templars be made irrelevant by Alexius stopping time around inquisition forces, freezing them in place, and winning by default.
So after Redcliffe, the ONLY question is how to stop Alexius as fast as possible, and any decision to leave Redcliffe alone and go after the templars instead, has to be justified in the light of this fact.
Point 1: You're not Inquisitor yet. You're a person who went to Haven for your own reasons and ended up waking up in a cell with some weird magic thing stuck to your hand that is killing you. If you're a dwarf you were there for lyrium smuggling, as a qunari you're there just as a job and as an elf you're there to spy. None of these are likely to be particularly trusting of the high ranking Chantry people who come in to interrogate you. Then you get dragged up a mountain with everyone blaming you for the disaster and somehow manage to do something that stabilizes the big hole in the sky.
You wake up again and find out you're a now holy avatar and are being used as a figurehead by the people who were just holding you prisoner. And they want to use that weird magic mark that was previously killing you to close the breach by pouring a bunch of magic into it ("what could possibly go wrong with powering up something we barely understand?"). And to do that all you need to do is be the bait in a trap for a crazy magister cultist who successfully seized a highly defensible fortress and the apparent ability to manipulate time.
Alternatively you could convince the templars to weaken the magic so you can wave your weird magic mark around and hopefully close it. All this requires is dealing with a bunch of nobles and pompous Lord Seeker. You don't know about red lyrium or the envy demon so there's no reason to believe the templars are that dangerous and can't be reasoned with.
Keep in mind that you are not in charge yet. Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine and Cullen are running the show, you're the figurehead who does the dirty work. Once the breach is closed THEY can deal with the whole Redcliffe situation since they're the ones with the training and authority to do so.
If being self-serving doesn't fit with your headcanon you can consider Cullen's statement "if you go in there you'll die. And we'll lose the only means we have of closing these rifts." Sending the one thing that is able to close the rifts or the breach into extreme danger seems like a bad risk. The danger of having the Breach never closed trumps time magic and Redcliffe's capture for now. Doing Hushed Whispers illustrates that very clearly, without the Herald the world is pretty much doomed. For the good of the world as a whole, Alexius' trap must be avoided.
The danger of having the Breach never closed trumps time magic and Redcliffe's capture for now. Doing Hushed Whispers illustrates that very clearly, without the Herald the world is pretty much doomed. For the good of the world as a whole, Alexius' trap must be avoided.
The danger of time magic is in the very fact that it would achieve what you consider the greater threat: the breaches never being closed. And as far as you know, the threat of time magic is immediate, while going to recruit the templars for the purpose of closing the rifts presents no such time pressure.
If Alexius manages to master time magic enough to be able to freeze the inquisition, and the inquisitor, in time, then the breaches will never be closed just as surely as if the Inquisitor was dead.
To stop that, it seems it's worth the inquisitor (or inquisitor-to-be) to risk his/her life - because failure to do so would seem to seriously risk forfeiting that life, and indeed the entire fight. So, from the perspective of the inquisitor (and I'll call him/her "the inquisitor" for the sake of convenience - I know that that title hasn't been achieved yet), one one hand there's a huge immediate threat, and on the other, a potential wild goose chase that can wait until the more immediate threat has been dealt with.
And as for the Inquisitor not being the leader before being made the Inquisitor, the only way in which he/she wasn't the leader was in name. The others in the inner circle still looked to him/her for all the major decisions, and deferred to his/her will. The giving of the title of Inquisitor only made formal, what was practically the case already. Cassandra told you as much, in the ceremony to give you the title.
My apologies ahead if this will sound rude, but I mean it as a genuine question: "Did you wanted role-play reasons to go to templars or just an opportunity to argue why going to mages is better?"
If it's the first, then you've been already given a lot of tips. And they are all valid. You might ask Why? or Who validates them? Well, it's the personality of your Herald of Andraste who validates the reasons. If you're not comfortable with role-playing someone who has the presented views, try reloading your game back to Val Royeaux, pay close attention to what Lucy is saying, then pay close attention to what Cassandra says (don't forget to ask her about Lucy) and then, your Herald might find, that "something's wrong with the templars, better go check on them and then accept Fiona's invitation to the tea party". 
If you're not comfortable with this approach either, then there's no point in torturing yourself with desperate and futile attempts to find suitable reasoning. Take a break, have coffee (or tea or hot chocolate), go to mages or make another character who will go to the mages and you might get into a mood when you will be comfortable with templars later. 
If it's the latter, well, go on, then. 
Maybe but they did set it up throughout the game that Corypheus/ The Venatori at large could and were not above using such things to achieve their ends.
You're talking about the majority of the mage rebellion (so presumably the vast majority of mages in southern Thedas here). So logistic absurdity aside, it would weaken the themes/characterization by simply ascribing it to blood magic mind control and making the mages unaccountable for their actions.
And as for the Inquisitor not being the leader before being made the Inquisitor, the only way in which he/she wasn't the leader was in name. The others in the inner circle still looked to him/her for all the major decisions, and deferred to his/her will. The giving of the title of Inquisitor only made formal, what was practically the case already. Cassandra told you as much, in the ceremony to give you the title.
Yes, she says your decisions helped close the breach (by getting the mages/templars) and brought them out of Haven. Things you haven't done yet. Cullen give you an out for the Redcliffe plan by saying they can't in good conscious make you risk your life (which is pretty weak given everything else they have you do) not because you're in charge. Up until this decision you've been doing errands (go get Mother Giselle, go rescue people from Fallow Mire, go find Grey Wardens, etc). After Hushed Whispers Cullen makes a point of inviting you to the war council, which suggests you aren't a default participant. You decide war table missions but I think that's a game mechanics driven flaw in the narrative. Those aren't your decision to make yet.
Clearly Alexius' Plan A is to capture/kill the Herald. What if Alexius only needs you to get close to use time magic on you and trying the foil the trap backfires? What if his plan is to stop you from closing the breach and the best thing you can do is try and close it as fast as possible? The time pressure would now be to get the Templars and close the breach before Alexius thinks of Plan B.
Another option you can take is to go to Redcliffe and meet Alexius but not go to the Chantry to meet Felix and Dorian. One of the 2 dialogue options you have after getting the note is "this could be a trap." So believe it sounds very fishy and get the hell out of Redcliffe while you can. The time twisting rift outside of Redcliffe is a one-off mutant that you never encounter again; weird but hardly the oddest thing that seems to happen to you. Without the knowledge of time magic the urgency of dealing with Alexius rather than Lucius is removed.
But this all depends on what can of Herald you've headcannoned. It seems to me you're trapping yourself Swordfish, there are RP justifications for going with the Templars but none of them work for the character you're currently playing. Is your Herald the type who would trust this flippant Tevinter you just met? Is your Herald the type who would trust Leliana's agents to successfully infiltrate the castle and neutralise the Venatori (remember you just met her too)? Is your Herald the type who could even wrap their mind around the implications of time magic (keeping in mind it's much easier for us in the 21st century given that we are exposed to a lot of time travel stories)? If the answer to all of these is yes then there probably isn't a way for you to justify templars.
While I adore Dorian and the time in the future with him, I feel that the real loss in siding with the mages is missing out on the whole Cole experience. That is the only time the player and Inquisitor gets to experience Cole's abilities on a personal level during the whole game. I also think there is better justification for keeping him around after that than when he randomly shows up at Haven's gates. At least with Dorian at the gates he looks totally worn out, is possibly injured, and you may have already met him before, so it's an "I told you so" situation; not so with Cole.
That's also a good point. It never occurred to me because I often play with elves they often trust Solas or at least agree with him on most matters. So it seemed natural to accept what Solas says about Cole.
I actually prefer the demon/fade bit more than I do seeing the future. While I often pick mages because it aligns with my characters beliefs I find the templar mission better and far more interesting. It really annoys me how they had Fiona side with the Alexius. I know I know it was time travel, but it seems so out of character for her. She should know damn well that there are strings. There are always strings.
My apologies ahead if this will sound rude, but I mean it as a genuine question: "Did you wanted role-play reasons to go to templars or just an opportunity to argue why going to mages is better?"
If you read the thread, you'll see that I've acknowledged several times when someone presented a good idea that might work - although none seem to be quite up to the task of overcoming the urgency of the threat at Redcliffe, some do get close enough that I was - as I have stated - able to go on and go after the templars, with a little head-cannon action.
So to your question I answer, yes, I did actually, really, honestly post here looking for a GOOD line of reasoning that would allow me to go after the templars after finding out the threat at Redcliffe. That I don't accept every suggestion as sufficient to the task, does not mean that I categorically deny that good suggestions aren't possible. In fact, I found a few here, and this thread helped me do what I wanted to do: go the templar route even after having gone to Redcliffe and seen the threat there.
To quote myself from an earlier post:
"The way I did it in the end was just to head-cannon it so that my Inquisitor was inexperienced with magic, and didn't trust her ability to deal with the situation, and going to the templars for help was a desperation move; one that backfired as she now discovered she cannot immediately go after Alexius with the templars after all. So she considers her actions to have been a mistake - and after seeing the templars fooled by a demon, she doesn't trust the templars enough to lead themselves, and subsumed the order into the Inquisition. But as she told Solas later, beggars can't be choosers, and she just has to make do with the situation as it is, and hope that Alexius isn't about to freeze all their asses.
The thing is even Dorian doesn't say "The situation here is so dire, you have to deal with it right away" It's more "tell me when you want to deal with it, I'll go with you".
Me - and my first Herald - didn't get the vibe "do it now or we are all doomed" from the whole Redcliff meetings at all.
The thing is even Dorian doesn't say "The situation here is so dire, you have to deal with it right away" It's more "tell me when you want to deal with it, I'll go with you".
Me - and my first Herald - didn't get the vibe "do it now or we are all doomed" from the whole Redcliff meetings at all.
For me, or my inquisitor, the danger was clear, and it didn't depend on Dorian spelling it out, or not doing so. She had seen time magic already slow things down - she now knew that Alexius was developing this magic. So it is not a great leap in reasoning to see that IF Alexius succeeds in improving that magic further, he'll be able to simply freeze all his enemies, including inquisition forces and the inquisitor herself, in time, thus taking them out. If that happens, the templars or mages question is made immediately irrelevant: you've lost, and the world is doomed.
So THAT is why it was so hard to justify my inquisitor not attending the danger immediately, and instead going off to try and recruit the reluctant templars.
Again... you see that big butthole in the sky, with the weird **** coming out of it? For all you know at the time, Alexius (whether through success or bungling--directly or indirectly) could be responsible for it. It could be the result of something that he's GOING to do from your present perspective if you don't stop him. You have every reason to believe that time-warping fade rifts and Giant Magic Goatse are connected. This "I'm outsmarting the plot because lol I'm genre savvy about paradoxes" thing just doesn't really work in-character.
Literally anything could be responsible for rift at that point in the story.
Who knows, maybe confronting Alexius is exactly what he wants which is why he hasn't time traveled to stop you. Maybe closing the rifts is what he wants as he hasn't time traveled to stop you yet. Maybe he anticipated altering time would draw you to him, and through observing futures, has decided it's the best means to disable you.
From what you know about Alexius's time travel capabilities at the time of deciding between the two quests, there is enough to go on to say that his time traveling isn't an issue, as you're not dead/captured and there has been no attempts to do so.
There are enough reasons to go either way if you just think about it logically.
While I adore Dorian and the time in the future with him, I feel that the real loss in siding with the mages is missing out on the whole Cole experience. That is the only time the player and Inquisitor gets to experience Cole's abilities on a personal level during the whole game. I also think there is better justification for keeping him around after that than when he randomly shows up at Haven's gates.
This is one of the reasons why I much prefer CotJ, yes. While there, rather disappointingly but predictably, is no follow-up to being mentally attacked by a highly powerful demon, at least during the struggle with Envy there is someone who shows concern and support for the protagonist for once. That almost never happens in the whole game otherwise, and it makes the very well-written introduction to this unique character even more powerful -- and also creates a strong foundation for trust, curiosity and gratitude, all reasons to not only accept but welcome his presence later on.
Likely under some form of mind control at that point. At least that's my theory.
There's no evidence of that, though -- and if the Venatori could do that, they wouldn't have to go through the whole song and dance with the Nightmare demon to bind the Warden mages.
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