@Riverdaleswhiteflash
If you are saying that because mage parents can react badly and do massive damage when someone hurts their children they aren't entitled to raise their children, then we should remove the children of every noble in Thedas because most of their wars started the same way.
There's a thought.
Jokes aside, probably most of the reason a mage isn't permitted to raise their own children is because they don't need those children underfoot if something goes wrong. Which can happen at any given second given that this is where potential-abominations are concentrated to keep them from those who can't defend themselves magically. But yes, that parents can go insane where their children are concerned is another reason this is a good idea.
@Riverdaleswhiteflash
Your point is not just disgusting, it's moot.
As for Zathrian, it still stands that a single example doesn't set the standards for the whole, that's just plain collective punishment.
Could you elaborate on how this point is moot?
It's not punishment, it's prevention. Sort of like how someone with a dangerous disease can be forced into quarantine despite not being guilty of any crime or moral failing.
@Riverdaleswhiteflash
His clan wasn't going to be wipped out by Werewolves as the Lady knew he was the only one who could undo the curse and the humans killed by the curse are no more than humans killed by normal Dalish elfs on their constant skirmishes.
You're putting a lot more faith in Swiftrunner's restraint than I think is wise. It doesn't take much to persuade him to murder all the Dalish despite the fact that this is unwise. And just because there are humans killed by the Dalish in other ways doesn't make this any more acceptable, if that's your argument. (I hope it wasn't. Please tell me I misunderstood you.)
You are trying to generalize a particular problem for the whole and this just doesn't work.
Sure a Dalish Abomination can destroy it's clan but so can a circle abomination destroy their hold and both can break free and wreck havoc just as fine, however, when the incident happens on a circle it usually gets much worse than a single abomination with much dire consequences.
I am trying to offer a solution, or at least a system of fail-safes. Why don't you get off your high horse and tell me what you think failing safely looks like? You say that I could achieve the same level of safety without doing the amoral things I'm resigned to doing. Yet somehow you fail to go into detail. If you cannot show me another way, do not brand me a tyrant.
A Dalish abomination needs to either destroy or flee from a few dozen archers with no anti-magical abilities who might not even have mage support. Then it can do whatever it wants, and most likely nobody it encounters will be on the lookout for it. An abomination in the Circle Tower needs to slip past, subvert, or destroy hundreds of mages and Templars, without being killed or spooking the Templars enough to call for an Annulment. I imagine that most abominations forming in the Towers don't turn into anything like an Annulment level threat, but if they do they still need to be out of there before reinforcements get there. That at least one circle (Kinloch Hold) is on an island doesn't seem like it would help them do that.
Uldred's rebellion wasn't really contained when you remember that Ferelden was under a Blight and that templar reinforcements would have never managed to come, if it wasn't for the HoF there would have been hundreds of abominations breaking free into Thedas and killing thousands in contrast to a single Dalish abomination who can potentially kill a clan of a few dozens.
Where does the abomination go after it kills that clan of dozens? Does it simply take its host body into the Fade? No, I'm pretty sure it wanders the world killing until someone somehow finds and kills it. If it can kill people as quickly as they learn of it that might be a while. But anyway, if you want an abomination to have as few people around it, why are you advocating for them living in cities? Most of the mages from the Circle wouldn't otherwise have lived in clans. They'd have lived in cities, towns, and villages. There could be more than a few dozen people at risk if a mage turned in one of those. Possibly a thousand.
Meanwhile the abominations in Kinloch Hold were trapped behind a steel door and a magical barrier which the Templars were hoping would hold for as long as it took reinforcements to get there. Yeah, that's not a good situation, but the abominations were contained for the moment and people outside the Tower were being told of the problem. That last bit, where if a mage turns there's a central authority that word can be sent to, is a major advantage that Circles have over mage free societies.
Worse of all and most telling of your warped perception is how you don't even consider hundreds of innocent mages slaughtered or forcibly possessed to be civilian casualties.
Fine. "Defenseless civilians." Maybe I worded the distinction poorly, but I'm a little concerned that you don't seem to see one.
Picture two teachers, each with a mage student. One is a Senior Enchanter trying to teach the mage magic. The other is a cobbler trying to teach the mage how to make shoes. Both mage children get possessed.
One of the teachers is in a bad situation that he might or might not be able to extricate himself from. The other might as well rush to his liquor cabinet to see whether or not he can get a drink down before the end. Lest you somehow miss the point entirely, it's the Senior Enchanter who might survive and the cobbler who's screwed. (Unless you somehow think that having even one abomination in the Circle is grounds for Annulment.)
The most stupid thing one can do is lock several mages in the same place because if a single one goes wrong he can potentially corrupt all the others even against their choice because unlike Dalish or Avaar mages the circle ones have nowhere to run when that happens and will inevitably get murdered by proxy when the templars are forced to call the Right of Annulment because they lost control of the situation they were supposed to avoid.
Is it? Bear in mind that if the mages are locked in with the abomination that wants to possess them, the abomination is locked in with a bunch of Templars that want to kill it and a bunch of mages who don't want to die. If the mages can't run, neither can the abomination. And if this isn't enough, and things go so far to hell that everything in the Circle needs to die, that's still not as bad as if a bunch of abominations had somehow formed somewhere with nobody keeping tabs on them. Suppose they do force their way out of the Circle and into the general population. That still takes them longer than if there were no Templars for them to force their way through.
Another ridiculous notion is proposing changes to the circle system once it already fell apart and nearly brought half of all Theodosian civilizations down alongside it.
Could you give an argument that it is, rather than an assertion? They're not actually the same.
Besides, Thedas wasn't actually destroyed. It came closer than it should have been, but it was still standing afterwards. Besides, most of that wasn't even the Mage-Templar War. Most of that was Corypheus, who was manipulating the Mage-Templar War among many other things. The Mage-Templar War wasn't even the worst thing he had: that would probably be either the Breach or the demon army. And it should be noted that Corypheus was a product of mage freedom.
Besides, is one civil war over the course of a few centuries really all that bad a track record? My country didn't manage to go one century after its founding before we had one, and while people are arguing this country is failing in a lot of ways nobody's giving that as a reason. And I'll note that you seem to have argued that the Avaar should be given another chance despite unleashing a possessed dragon that everyone takes to be a country destroying threat twice. One civilization almost destroyed itself once with aid from an outside agitator. Another almost destroyed a foreign nation out of its own perceived self-interest twice. Which is a worse track record?
Finally, most of the reason the Circles fell at all was a combination of Meredith seeking reasons to destroy her charges, and Lambert seeking reasons to repress his even farther than the Circle called for. (Plus his poor investigation of Adrian's frameup.) If the authorities had just done their jobs intelligently, Adrian and Anders' attempts at forcing mages to fight by calling down Templar punishment on the guilty and innocent alike would have failed, and the mages would have stood by and let them be executed. And since both Lambert and Meredith are dead it seems like that might be less of an issue.
The collective of Dalish clans, Avaar tribes, Rivaini seers and so forth didn't bring about the destruction of their societies because of their corrupt mage repressive systems, trying to apply historical revisionism and conterfactual scenarios to justify something that already failed is for fan fictions and not serious discussions.
None of you can offer evidence that the circle system, with all it's corruption and oppressiveness, gives better results at preventing magic abuse and demonic possession than more liberal and mage inclusive ones.
You guys just ramble pathetic anti-mage evangelism to defend a system which already failed and crumbled catastrophically while preaching counterfactual potential scenarios which never materialized in the first place, if you can't find evidence that circles are better than less draconian alternatives then all your points about mage contention fall flat.
I've offered some evidence, but it's somehow all either "counterfactual" or "an exception." Let's see if this is any better.
The Dalish have lost clans, and the abominations that killed those clans don't just go away afterwards. They wander the world killing things. I suppose I'll listen to any arguments that this is "counterfactual" but I really don't see how you can argue that that would go any other way. And if you can't, you'll have to concede that there's room for a Dalish mistake to have far worse consequences for humans than for the Dalish. (Well, just going by the raw numbers. The humans can probably afford two villages better than the Dalish can afford one clan.) Now, no one abomination is going to destroy the entire Dalish people, but they only have so many clans, don't they?
And you haven't answered our argument that we don't know anything about Rivain's handling of abominations other than what WoG tells us: namely that they just accept that it will happen. Which means that most of the people an abomination encounters will probably not have any magic to defend themselves with. Unless you can counter that, maybe you should stop using this as an example.
The Avaar have a system for stopping abominations that apparently never fails. Now, this is something I feel weird saying, because perfect systems are not otherwise how this setting works. But we apparently have Solas asserting that their system never fails, and I can believe he'd know and I see no reason to believe he'd feel any need to go to the added effort needed to lie. Congratulations, there is a system that to all appearances outperforms the Circles. Now all we need to do is figure out how to apply this system more widely... which is going to be a problem.
The Avaar use spirits to protect their mages, and encourage all their mages to take in and release a spirit. That's unsafe. They also have spirits who go out and kill all the weak mages who can't resist demons and who the Circles would Tranquilize. I can think of two problems with that: one, that the mage isn't at least being given a choice between Tranquility and death as happens in the Circles, and two that they're trusting a spirit to cull their mages. The Avaar apparently get away with all of this because they have some top spirits keeping watch over all of this. Now, the Avaar have managed to get spirits that can be trusted to do all of this. For a new region to do the same would mean running the risk of meeting a demon. And lets not skate over the risk that the Avaar might end up with a demon as well. For one thing the spirit they have killing their weak mages or teaching their young ones might become corrupt. That wouldn't be a major problem, since there are overseer spirits who can handle that. Unless one of them gets corrupted. Not to mention that when one of their spirits dies, they go into the Fade to get another. That could end well, or Hakkon Wintersbreath Tenth Of His Name could be a disguised Pride Demon. Since we know they do, in fact disguise themselves.
Was Anders a Dalish mage, was he an Avaar mage or a Rivaini seer? Nope, he was a circle mage turned Abomination and driven mad because of horrible abuses felt under his time in the circle. Your precious system created it's own ultimate nemesis and destroyer, failed to stop him and even drove tens of thousands of mages to support the cause of a mass murderer because they were abused like he was.
Anders wasn't trying to get them to rebel against the Circle's business as usual. He was trying to force it into a war by manipulating the Right of Annulment, because the mages had put up with the Circle's business as usual. And he was only as effective as he was because Meredith let him be so. If Meredith hadn't already wanted to Annul the Circle his destruction of the Cathedral at Kirkwall would have led to only his own death. Which means there's a lesson here that can improve the Circle and be used to stop it from exploding into civil war again: namely, don't make crazy people Knight-Commanders. Can your system even be improved on? You handwaved all of this last time. Don't do that again. Or if you do, don't somehow claim to be the one using reason when you need to ignore the other side's arguments.
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