231 réponses à ce sujet

[ModernAcademic]

Spirits that corrupt mortals  were previously corrupted by mortals  a demon is the twisted state of a spirit not it's natural one.

 

A spirit is not a benevolent thing in contrast to a demon. They are not imaculate, perfect creatures. It just IS. It's a thing whose nature compels it to observe the material realm and LEARN from it. So if it learns bad things, how the hell is that the fault of people? Why doesn't the spirit have the intelligence on what is he supposed to absorb and what not?

 

And another thing. A good person can do something terrible in the name of good intentions. A spirit of Justice that possessed a man could execute an innocent thinking he was guilty of a crime. It could bring suffering to people in the name of Justice. What if it finds out what it did later on? If he becomes a demon because he refuses to admit his guilt, no one is to blame. He's the one that made a mistake moved by his noble, high and mighty intentions.

 

Didn't Justice think you should kill the Architect, even though he never ordered the attack on your fortress (the blame was on the Withered, whom you kill early in the game)? He might be the embodiment of feelings of doing justice, but as a spirit, he's being unjust. And I don't think it was the mortals' influence that did that. It was his own error in judgement. 

[DarkAmaranth1966]

I think too many are giving "spirit" too much meaning. Simply put, spirits are beings that do not have physical bodies PERIOD. Not perfect, not unchanging, not a archetype, just at least somewhat intelligent beings without bodies. Flawed as any other being, nothing special really but, because of the veil, modern peoples of Thedas do not understand them as the ancient elves did. Solas even point out that spirits are people, so it stands to reason the have flaws, struggles, can lie, betray a friend, etc... same as any other person just when they do it, they generally become demons and get stuck on being hurtful in some way.

 

The veil also keeps them form understanding mortals. They don't socialize in the same manner, they are mostly simplistic and have one track minds. Like a person with ASD, they get so focused on one special interest that they fail to see anything else until they know all there is to know about that one interest. For some that's rage, pride, sloth, desire, despair, hunger, etc and, they become what Thedas knows as demons.

 

I do think that at one time, spirits and elves had symbiotic relationships and it is the removal of that that caused elven mortality. In other words all ancient elves were/are possessed by spirits but, it's simply their natural state.

[Illegitimus]

 

But DA clearly follows the traditional century-old belief that Spirit = Immortal and Pure while Reality = Transient and Impure. Humans are condemned to be these cursed creatures, born with an inherent evil nature. For a game full of different lores, cultures and mythologies, it's certainly VERY CLOSE to the Christian/Jewish notion that the human being is a filthy creature that needs to be corrected (even punished) by a perfect God living in an ideal realm.

 

It's an idea that bothers me deeply.

 

 

I don't see much of a basis for it.  The Fade is every bit as much a corrupt cesspool as is the physical world.  It is very frequently a place of torment and insanity.

 

As for the elves, it wouldn't be especially surprising if, with the veil up and most of them suddenly denied the magic to stay healthy that the humans moving into the power vacuum, that contact with them would pose a big risk of infection with diseases they were no longer ready to handle.  The idea that the loss of their agelessness came from contact with the quicklings is probably embroidery.  But an invasive disease-carrying new life form moving into a set ecology can certainly shorten lifespans.  

[Qis]

Human is a pollution, a cancer to this planet, like virus who breed and breed, consume everything and then move on to other places then breed and breed again...Elven are the cure....

 

[LightningPoodle]

Human is a pollution, a cancer to this planet, like virus who breed and breed, consume everything and then move on to other places then breed and breed again...Elven are the cure....

 

Elves are the ones spreading the disease! Look at their little hovels in the glorious human cities! They are like vermin, crawling through the dirt and pestilence that they call a home. They need to be cleansed with holy fire! They need to be stamped out!

[Qis]

Elves are the ones spreading the disease! Look at their little hovels in the glorious human cities! They are like vermin, crawling through the dirt and pestilence that they call a home. They need to be cleansed with holy fire! They need to be stamped out!

 

Ignorant shemlen, if you drive the City Elves out, who want to wash your clothes, wipe your floor, clean up your rubbish and cook in your the kitchen? Shemlen?

[LightningPoodle]

Ignorant shemlen, if you drive the City Elves out, who want to wash your clothes, wipe your floor, clean up your rubbish and cook in your the kitchen? Shemlen?

 

I can get humans to do those jobs. They would give me less lip and would require fewer beatings to keep them in their place.

[Reznore57]

I don't buy the whole spirits are pure thing of love and compassion and through the influence of humans they can become bad.

Spirits are made with some kind of dualistic identity.

In the fade , they aren't good and they aren't bad , because there is no consequences .

 

Once they get in Thedas and interact with humans , the no consequence changes.

Cole who is compassion , and Solas think highly of those spirits , had to learn what compassion meant in Thedas.Murder knifing people in pain turned out to be bad , you can even say him messing with people heads even with the best of intentions , is still kinda meh.

Sure he can "take " the pain away , and save someone's life , but sometimes he could take away a lesson somebody needed to learn to grow.

 

Justice also had a case of tunnel vision which caused him to be caught in a silly loop.Everything needs to be just , everyone needs to be faced with justice.Isabela and Anders had a great banter about it , when she asks well in your fight to free mages , innocents are going to get harmed , then they will deserve justice as well.So where do you draw the line?

 

As for what Solas says , well he says a lot of things.

First he tells you spirits are dependant of human perceptions , but then he tells Cole at the end of the day he has free will and get to decide what he's going to be.

So which is it , Solas?

 

It's the same thing with Ishmael the "choice" spirit.Felassan who's probably an ancient elf was never in danger from him.It didn't mean the spirit wasn't dangerous , or that Felassan had only a pure "vision" of him.

He knows he craves chaos , and tell him he's going to get his wishes.

But Felassan knows what he's dealing with and let other people make a choice and get murdered.

 

Anyway back on topic, no I don't think humans corrupted elves.If you go this way you can say well ancient elves culture corrupted the humans , Tevinter is Tevinter with all its excess in part because they were in awe of the elven civilization .

About the spirity side , even avaars who are into spirits , worship them , and live peacefuly with them , says at the end of the day , a spirit has no place in the material world.

You can make a case , it's not a problem of humans and spirits interacting together , it's a problem of spirits working in a realm of consequences , they are badly equipped for that and thus needs to change .

It is not human responsability to coddle spirits and take care they never get in touch with something too complex for them to handle.

Spirits aren't toddlers .

[Mistic]

Didn't Justice think you should kill the Architect, even though he never ordered the attack on your fortress (the blame was on the Withered, whom you kill early in the game)? He might be the embodiment of feelings of doing justice, but as a spirit, he's being unjust. And I don't think it was the mortals' influence that did that. It was his own error in judgement. 

 

I'm not sure that's a good example. First, you have to accept the Architect's word that he wasn't responsible about the attack. It's not as if he didn't use the captured Wardens for his experiments, and his own notes in the lab say he did a similar thing to Velanna's Dalish group (by the way, another crime to add to the list). And then there's that little detail about him kidnapping our very PC.

 

Even without knowing what he did in the prequel book (and now the suspicions he was one of the Seven High Priests, 'the Architect of Love', who breached the Golden City and brought the Taint to Thedas), the Architect could be sentenced to death in several countries today, nevermind a medieval setting. And given that the PC decides his final fate, they will also decide if Justice's opinion is just or unjust. "Error of judgement" can't be claimed when you agree with him, after all.

[Vit246]

Elves are the ones spreading the disease! Look at their little hovels in the glorious human cities! They are like vermin, crawling through the dirt and pestilence that they call a home. They need to be cleansed with holy fire! They need to be stamped out!

You're a funny shemlen. Who's the one responsible for forcing them into little hovels in the glorious human cities in the first place?

[BaaBaaBlacksheep]

Human is a pollution, a cancer to this planet, like virus who breed and breed, consume everything and then move on to other places then breed and breed again...Elven are the cure....
 
https://www.youtube....h?v=IM1-DQ2Wo_w

Ha! I think the elves need to start a Mass Exodus to move out of human cities and find a place of their own to start a new home for the elves. Without any "human" influence whatsoever.

[LightningPoodle]

You're a funny shemlen. Who's the one responsible for forcing them into little hovels in the glorious human cities in the first place?

 

They done f-ed up! Humans just came in and took advantage of the situation, as is their right! The weak make way for the strong!

[Beerfish]

The knife ears are starting to get uppity again it seems, about time for a purge.

[Dai Grepher]

^Solas agrees.

[LightningPoodle]

The knife ears are starting to get uppity again it seems, about time for a purge.

 

Let's slaugher some knife-ears!

 

[Gervaise]

Sigh, why do these things always have to degenerate like this?   I was simply working to the basis that most legends have some basis in what actually happened.   Now I was originally of the opinion that the prejudice against humans was connected with the destruction of the settlement in the Forest of Arlathan (which may or may not have had anything to do with the real City of Arlathan).    However, it is clear that those elves had already withdrawn from contact with humans, just like the ones in the Arbor Wilds.    The Tevinter weren't even aware of their existence until people exploring the forest started to disappear or be found dead.   Eventually someone made it back with the news of what was in the forest; Tevinter sent peaceful envoys to try and establish some sort of dialogue and they were killed.    After several years of putting up with elven aggression the Archon decided to do something about it.    All this suggests that the elves had already decided they wanted nothing to do with humans.   This was nearly two thousand years after the elves were first said to have felt the Quickening.   

 

So whilst the two events have been combined in the minds of the later elven slaves and become confused; what  I am looking at is the reason why the original elves withdrew from all contact with the outside world.   To my mind, there is probably some element of truth in the story that the elves perceived the contact with humans was having a bad effect on them.  We know from DAO that there is evidence that elves and humans co-existed at one time, so why did they stop?    The Dalish tale says it was because those in contact with humans seemed to become more like them and less like themselves, resulting in a loss of immortality.

 

Whilst the origins of the elves pre-date recorded history, so it is very difficult to put precise dates in it, it is believed that Arlathan was founded some three thousand years before humans arrived in Thedas.      For 1400 years they seem to have existed in harmony with no other races around, then they made contact with the dwarves.    It would seem the elves considered that Mythal freed the dwarves in some way, since they were described as being soulless workers.    Regardless, it is possible that it was the battle with the Titans (who knows who started it?) which started the Evanuris on the road to godhood (unless of course there was an earlier conflict that we no nothing about).    

 

Anyway the elves apparently got on happily enough for another 1500 years until the humans appeared on the scene.    Then only 250 years later they are said to feel the Quickening.    Solas says this was because he raised the Veil.      I don't know exactly when Solas was "born" but you have 3000 years of everything seemingly going okay, the Evanuris ruling and no one complaining much about it, with Mythal administering justice to all, including the other gods; then all of a sudden everything goes to hell.    The Evanuris kill Mythal, Solas leads a rebellion against them, he sees the only means of victory to be raising the Veil and the empire comes crashing down, the elves all become mortal and lose their magic.    For some reason, the humans are connected with this in the minds of the modern elves.    May be this is just them mixing up their history (Abelas did seem clear the humans had nothing directly to do with the destruction of the empire) but I was just wondering if it wasn't just a coincidence that everything started to go wrong around the time the humans arrived in Thedas and the observation that they had an adverse effect on the elves (without knowing it themselves) did have some basis in fact.

 

I would also point out that it seems more than coincidence that the contact with the old gods and the rise of the human dreamers occurred only 50 years after elves first felt the Quickening.   So it would seem that you have destruction of empire, withdrawal of elves from contact with outside world, rise of the Neromenians (the first humans to arrive in Thedas), probably aided not only by the old gods but the scavenging of numerous elven artefacts they found in ruins.     In fact did someone encourage the elves to think the humans to blame so they would withdraw from contact and leave the way open to them?

 

Also if you look at the Chant of Light, you have the original state of existence with the spirits being the first born of the Maker, living in harmony in a wonderful Golden City, but the Maker being disappointed they didn't do more with their world and so decided to mix things up a bit by making the material world and creating humans.     The spirits are said to be jealous of these new creations and if nothing else start to take an interest in them, after which everything goes downhill.     Again, there may be parallels to be drawn in all this.    To be honest, if you don't then it is nearly impossible to reconcile the Chant of Light with what we now know happened with regard to the early world and the Veil.

[CoM Solaufein]

I love Shem candles to light the way.

 

 

[Qis]

Human are weak, human have failed, strength of human failed because of greed...because of human darkspawn existed, I was there when human breach the Golden City and get cursed....human are scattered, divided...no strength left in the world of human

 

 

Spoiler

funnily, it is the same actor who talk **** about human lol

[sniper_arrow]

Sigh, why do these things always have to degenerate like this?   I was simply working to the basis that most legends have some basis in what actually happened.   Now I was originally of the opinion that the prejudice against humans was connected with the destruction of the settlement in the Forest of Arlathan (which may or may not have had anything to do with the real City of Arlathan).    However, it is clear that those elves had already withdrawn from contact with humans, just like the ones in the Arbor Wilds.    The Tevinter weren't even aware of their existence until people exploring the forest started to disappear or be found dead.   Eventually someone made it back with the news of what was in the forest; Tevinter sent peaceful envoys to try and establish some sort of dialogue and they were killed.    After several years of putting up with elven aggression the Archon decided to do something about it.    All this suggests that the elves had already decided they wanted nothing to do with humans.   This was nearly two thousand years after the elves were first said to have felt the Quickening.   

 

So whilst the two events have been combined in the minds of the later elven slaves and become confused; what  I am looking at is the reason why the original elves withdrew from all contact with the outside world.   To my mind, there is probably some element of truth in the story that the elves perceived the contact with humans was having a bad effect on them.  We know from DAO that there is evidence that elves and humans co-existed at one time, so why did they stop?    The Dalish tale says it was because those in contact with humans seemed to become more like them and less like themselves, resulting in a loss of immortality.

 

Whilst the origins of the elves pre-date recorded history, so it is very difficult to put precise dates in it, it is believed that Arlathan was founded some three thousand years before humans arrived in Thedas.      For 1400 years they seem to have existed in harmony with no other races around, then they made contact with the dwarves.    It would seem the elves considered that Mythal freed the dwarves in some way, since they were described as being soulless workers.    Regardless, it is possible that it was the battle with the Titans (who knows who started it?) which started the Evanuris on the road to godhood (unless of course there was an earlier conflict that we no nothing about).    

 

Anyway the elves apparently got on happily enough for another 1500 years until the humans appeared on the scene.    Then only 250 years later they are said to feel the Quickening.    Solas says this was because he raised the Veil.      I don't know exactly when Solas was "born" but you have 3000 years of everything seemingly going okay, the Evanuris ruling and no one complaining much about it, with Mythal administering justice to all, including the other gods; then all of a sudden everything goes to hell.    The Evanuris kill Mythal, Solas leads a rebellion against them, he sees the only means of victory to be raising the Veil and the empire comes crashing down, the elves all become mortal and lose their magic.    For some reason, the humans are connected with this in the minds of the modern elves.    May be this is just them mixing up their history (Abelas did seem clear the humans had nothing directly to do with the destruction of the empire) but I was just wondering if it wasn't just a coincidence that everything started to go wrong around the time the humans arrived in Thedas and the observation that they had an adverse effect on the elves (without knowing it themselves) did have some basis in fact.

 

I would also point out that it seems more than coincidence that the contact with the old gods and the rise of the human dreamers occurred only 50 years after elves first felt the Quickening.   So it would seem that you have destruction of empire, withdrawal of elves from contact with outside world, rise of the Neromenians (the first humans to arrive in Thedas), probably aided not only by the old gods but the scavenging of numerous elven artefacts they found in ruins.     In fact did someone encourage the elves to think the humans to blame so they would withdraw from contact and leave the way open to them?

 

Also if you look at the Chant of Light, you have the original state of existence with the spirits being the first born of the Maker, living in harmony in a wonderful Golden City, but the Maker being disappointed they didn't do more with their world and so decided to mix things up a bit by making the material world and creating humans.     The spirits are said to be jealous of these new creations and if nothing else start to take an interest in them, after which everything goes downhill.     Again, there may be parallels to be drawn in all this.    To be honest, if you don't then it is nearly impossible to reconcile the Chant of Light with what we now know happened with regard to the early world and the Veil.

 

I think we need to know where humans originated or how they were created. I'm not quite sure if the first ever contact between humans and elves resulted in a misunderstanding or a fight (maybe that's why elves avoided them?).

[Dai Grepher]

Has anyone here checked out that new feature in the Dragon Age Keep? It has a map of Thedas with various locations and time periods. When you click on one it gives a short history for most places. It shows information for Arlathan, Tevinter, and the Chantry. Not sure if any of that helps, but it might. It can at least help paint a picture in your mind as to when certain events took place. To access it go to the Keep, then the left corner icon, and then click the option that says "world lore".

[Medhia_Nox]

 

But DA clearly follows the traditional century-old belief that Spirit = Immortal and Pure while Reality = Transient and Impure. Humans are condemned to be these cursed creatures, born with an inherent evil nature. For a game full of different lores, cultures and mythologies, it's certainly VERY CLOSE to the Christian/Jewish notion that the human being is a filthy creature that needs to be corrected (even punished) by a perfect God living in an ideal realm.

 

It's an idea that bothers me deeply.

 

The reasoning for this is sensible.  

 

Not all humans embrace their failures and iniquities - for those who have failed, but seek self-improvement, a goal must be designed.  That goal becomes a idealized view worthy of being sought after.   "Spirit" is conceptual - so it is natural to perceive it as pure and immortal because it's not effected by natural laws (let's forget for a moment how people corrupt ideas).

 

The world IS transient... there's nothing permanent about the natural world and that is how it functions.

 

As for "impure" - I feel like I would be grinding my gears to talk on this topic in this forum.  Nobody likes to have baseline criticism directed to their "team" (in this case "species").  

 

I'm curious... what other models would you propose that make sense? 

Spirit as corrupter?  Don't we already have Vengeance, Connor's desire demon and Feynriel's sloth (?) demon?  

 

Humans as pure?  What kind of world would that be?  It's preposterous to think of liars, thieves, whores and what have you as "pure".  Yes, sure... as "human".  Plenty of people celebrate failure as "humanity" - but that's different than calling it "purity".  

[Aren]

Elves are the ones spreading the disease! Look at their little hovels in the glorious human cities! They are like vermin, crawling through the dirt and pestilence that they call a home. They need to be cleansed with holy fire! They need to be stamped out!

And people still blame Solas for the way he feel when pretty much these is the mindset of the 80% of uneducated people in Thedas.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

And people still blame Solas for the way he feel when pretty much these is the mindset of the 80% of uneducated people in Thedas.

Solas' plan is going to kill the modern elves too. He's not their champion. 

Also I'd like to see hard facts for your 80% statement. 

[IllustriousT]

I didn't realize the hilarity in which this thread had become.

 

It is the time of the Elves!

 

[Aren]

Solas' plan is going to kill the modern elves too. He's not their champion. 

Also I'd like to see hard facts for your 80% statement. 

Most humans see very poorly the elves in the setting the two races are poorly connected aside from few institutions.

I don't know what kind of plan Solas is preparing and i don't even care if it will kill or not the modern elves seeing how he has become is a collective enemy of the world,point is that i was arguing about how the elves are mistreated by the majority of humans which is one of the several motivations which is pushing Solas to his path of destruction.