125 réponses à ce sujet

[Sarah1281]

Mages don't HAVE to do the Harrowing. Some people choose to become Tranquil. Or try to pull a Jowan but hopefully with less Ferelden-destabalizing.

[Kileyan]

removed post: not appropriate for forum

Modifié par Kileyan, 11 mars 2010 - 06:51 .

[ijustwananame1]

[quote]Andorfiend wrote...



Have none of you heard of the French Foreign Legion?

[/quote]

What? The Foreign Legion are in no way suicide troops. They are special forces, that’s all.

[quote]

The hashishiyyin?

[/quote]

They were a religious cult. They also had to get their killers high before they went on missions.

[quote]

Suicide bombers?

[/quote]

The majority of suicide bombers are mentally disturbed.

[quote]

People sign up for jobs they don't expect to return from ALL THE TIME! For a variety of reasons. Not a valid excuse for keeping it secret.

[/quote]

Correct. Sane people sign up for jobs of which, and here’s the key, they expect the survival rate to be low.



Very few sign up for jobs in which death is absolutely guaranteed.

[quote]



Also "Adulthood plus 30~40 years" is NOT a short lifespan by the standards of a society without modern sanitation and medicine. Yes magic is better than medicine for healing wounds. Apparently not for poison or disease, and disease is what usually kills you. So still shot down.

[/quote]

Not really. Not if you’re an elf.



Plus… there are plenty of “old people” within the game.



Nowhere does it suggest that sixty-ish is as good as it gets.

[quote]Andorfiend wrote...





Remember the Memphis Belle? B-17 in WW2? Remember what she was famous for? She was the first US bomber in WW 2 that actually completed a tour of duty. Before her no one had actually made it through 25 missions alive. But the air crews still took off every day, and men back in the states still lied about their ages to sign up. Thinking no one will sign up for dangerous duty is an insult to human courage.

[/quote]

Here’s the difference… People such as the crew of the Memphis Belle were not guaranteed to die. They did not, effectively, sign their own death warrants as soon as they got in the aircraft.



Yes, there was a very good chance they would die. However, it was not a guarantee.



There’s a major psychological difference between doing something in which the odds are not good and signing up to die.

[quote]



Besides which depending on your origin story 1 or 2 out of three initiates at your joining are criminals that faced death sentences if Duncan hadn't recuited them. Clearly the Wardens don't have a problem with recuiting jailbirds. It used to be common in the US for judges to offer jail or the Army.

[/quote]

Which might suggest that the Wardens did this because they had recruitment problems?

[quote]

If offered a choice of the rope or the chalice how many people wouldn't take that gamble for another 30+ years of life? Especially given the conditions of the jails in Ferelden.

[/quote]

Why risk losing them? Enough of them are going to die during initiation anyway.

[quote]



People today routinely risk their lives for fun.

[/quote]

Yes, they risk their lives. They don’t go out knowing that they’re going to die.

[quote]

Finally we have no idea how poor the odds are. Daveth died. You didn't. Only one person died at Allisters initiation and we have no idea how many drank from the chalice. So the odds of death are somewhere between 50/50 and

1%? Who knows?

[/quote]

Going by your ceremony, it’s 1/3.

[quote]

Put it this way. If someone dumped you into Ferelden and your choice was to face Arl Howe's 'justice' or join the Wardens, which would you pick?[/quote]

Put it this way … how many people would join the Wardens if they weren’t facing “Arl Howe’s Justice”?



Not many, I’d bet. Not if they knew the truth.

[Andorfiend]

ijustwananame1 wrote...

Going by your ceremony, it’s 1/3.

Incorrect. Ser Jory did not die because the ceremony killed him. He died because Duncan killed him after he panicked at the strangeness an unexpectedness of the ceremony. If Duncan hadn't been trying to sell him a bill of goods it would never have happened. Either he wouldn't have tried to sign on in the first place or it wouldn't have come as a shock. Chalk it up as one more casualty lost amidst the tens of thousands that die due to the policy of silence.

Put it this way … how many people would join the Wardens if they weren’t facing “Arl Howe’s Justice”?

Not many, I’d bet. Not if they knew the truth.

The reason I mentioned the French foreign legion is becuase it's a place to go when you want to completely escape your old life, and you don't really mind a high risk of death. People do this sort of thing. In enough numbers to make a famed legion out of. In game the dwarves do the exact same thing, only their joining ceremony is a funeral. To get all that pesky 'hope of survival' crap out of their heads. Can you really say joining the Wardens is a worse idea than joining the legion of the dead?

You're hung up on the idea that joining the Wardens is a death sentence. So is being born my friend. Joining the Wardens might mean you die howling mad in a cavern in thirty years, or you might get run over by a carridge while sprinting away from the recruiter. Humans are really, really good at rationalizing reasons to do stupid things, and frankly joining the Wardens isn't that stupid. It's not a harder or more risky life than almost any mercenary company or army and historical armies were packed with young men eager to join the army to get the hell off the farm or out of the slums. Because farm and slum life suck. A lot. What's better, 30 years of an exciting life with good comerades doing vital, heroic work, or 60 years of toil and misery as a dirt farmer?

Heck I'd join the Wardens if offered the chance. My current life sucks, so why not? My grandparents lived long and healthy lives, so joining would almost certainly reduce my life expectancy by about 20 years. Having seen what death by old age is like however I'm willing to take that chance.

[Cazlee]

Andorfiend wrote...

ijustwananame1 wrote...

Going by your ceremony, it’s 1/3.

Incorrect.
Ser Jory did not die because the ceremony killed him. He died because
Duncan killed him after he panicked at the strangeness an
unexpectedness of the ceremony. If Duncan hadn't been trying to sell
him a bill of goods it would never have happened. Either he wouldn't
have tried to sign on in the first place or it wouldn't have come as a
shock. Chalk it up as one more casualty lost amidst the tens of
thousands that die due to the policy of silence.

Our game shows a 2/3 survival rate. Daveth dies, but the PC and Loghaine live. Alistair says that only one person died in his joining, but we don't know how many survived. I think Riordan was there to witness his ritual? So there may have been a few other Orlesians participating in it with Alistair.  So that's a 67%+ survival rate.

Modifié par Cazlee, 11 mars 2010 - 09:49 .

[krylo]

Trying to calculate a survival rate from what we've seen in the game is pointless. We have a pool of two joinings, one of which included one Grey Warden and the other included two.



The rate could be anywhere from 1% survival all the way up to 99% survival. It's probably more of 25-75% rate given dialogue, but we really have absolutely no way to know with such a small sample size.



It'd be like if I'm brunette and I have a blonde friend, and I use the two of us as a sample size for calculating the percentage of blondes and brunettes in the world. You need at least a few thousand joinings picked at random from different locations around the world and with participants of varying backgrounds to even begin trying to calculate survival rates.

[DarkCamel]

The taint affects people differently as they age, consuming them more rapidly the older the Warden gets. It doesn't provide a bonus to your lifespan, as much as caps it. Riordan hints at this if you talk to him about Loghain.



Secondly, the Wardens do have standards. They want recruits who are capable and resolute in battle. If they recruited anyone facing a death sentence, they would end up with unreliable troops.



Lastly, remember what the taint is, and what it represents. Most people would see the joining as a willing imbibing of corruption associated with the worst sin of mankind. Joining the Wardens is more than simply drinking the blood of some beast, or taking drugs. Joining the Wardens literally means that you voluntarily absorb the corruption of the darkspawn themselves.



There is no real-life comparison, though I will give it a shot:



If the knowledge of the joining became public, think of the modern day reaction to a European church whose priests were discovered to engage in cannibalism. The Wardens and their taint would be hunted like the darkspawn themselves.



From a Warden's perspective think of someone who informed you that you were to drink a cup of blood containing Ebola and Bubonic plague, and if you survived, that you would carry the infection and eventually die a painful death from it.



There are very good reasons for keep the joining a secret, not only from recruits, but from society as a whole.

[Sabriana]

The Joining can't really be such a huge secret, because Anora blabs out right at the Landsmeet, in full ear-shot of everyone, that the survival rate of the joining is not 100%. She has more to say about the ritual, but I don't recall off-hand.

How does she know? If she knows, who else does? She is no GW, and therefore not sworn to secrecy at all, so she might have told others.

[Cazlee]

krylo wrote...

Trying to calculate a survival rate from what we've seen in the game is pointless. We have a pool of two joinings, one of which included one Grey Warden and the other included two.

Agreed that the sample size is too small. But also in the back of my mind I'm thinking about Awakening and if we have six friends that we can make wardens I really doubt that four of them die. Maybe one or two max... so I'm a bit more optimistic about the stats.  

[Cazlee]

Sabriana wrote...

The Joining can't really be such a huge secret, because Anora blabs out right at the Landsmeet, in full ear-shot of everyone, that the survival rate of the joining is not 100%. She has more to say about the ritual, but I don't recall off-hand.
How does she know? If she knows, who else does? She is no GW, and therefore not sworn to secrecy at all, so she might have told others.

Lol. At one point when my HNF was talking to Anora it seemed like she knew more about the wardens than my PC did. She showed so much faith in their ability.  But considering Anora's personal status, her husband's infatuation with the wardens, and her father's paranoia about them, it's not a big stretch that they might have told her that the wardens have a dangerous initiation process. That's all she may have known until Riordan mentions the joining at the landsmeet (I think he mentions it first). That's where she learns what the initiation is called, puts two and two together and jumps on the idea.

[krylo]

Sabriana wrote...

The Joining can't really be such a huge secret, because Anora blabs out right at the Landsmeet, in full ear-shot of everyone, that the survival rate of the joining is not 100%. She has more to say about the ritual, but I don't recall off-hand.
How does she know? If she knows, who else does? She is no GW, and therefore not sworn to secrecy at all, so she might have told others.

I'd assume the joining being a less than 100% survival rate would be common knowledge, honestly.  What exactly it is, would not be.

The reason is that... well let's take our joining.  We're in an army camp.  Five people go up to the pedestal.  One is dead for no apparent reason, one was gutted like a fish, and three come back alive.  Unless Alistair and Duncan are both master rogues with infinity +1 cunning, there's no way they are disposing of those bodies without the people in the camp knowing about it.

I'm sure we weren't the first/only joinings done where people would know that not everyone who goes into a joining gets to come back in one, breathing, piece.

Modifié par krylo, 11 mars 2010 - 10:12 .

[Ken555]

krylo wrote...

Sabriana wrote...

The Joining can't really be such a huge secret, because Anora blabs out right at the Landsmeet, in full ear-shot of everyone, that the survival rate of the joining is not 100%. She has more to say about the ritual, but I don't recall off-hand.
How does she know? If she knows, who else does? She is no GW, and therefore not sworn to secrecy at all, so she might have told others.

I'd assume the joining being a less than 100% survival rate would be common knowledge, honestly.  What exactly it is, would not be.

The reason is that... well let's take our joining.  We're in an army camp.  Five people go up to the pedestal.  One is dead for no apparent reason, one was gutted like a fish, and three come back alive.  Unless Alistair and Duncan are both master rogues with infinity +1 cunning, there's no way they are disposing of those bodies without the people in the camp knowing about it.

I'm sure we weren't the first/only joinings done where people would know that not everyone who goes into a joining gets to come back in one, breathing, piece.

Thats true.

[Cazlee]

That depends on how long the wardens were fighting alongside the king's army. Alistair was made a warden six months prior to meeting him at Ostagar. So our PC's ritual might have been the first joining that could have been witnessed by the king's army -- and then they were slaughtered.

Edit: clarity

Modifié par Cazlee, 11 mars 2010 - 10:20 .

[Sabriana]

And therefore, knowledge that the joining can be extremely detrimental to one's health and life-span cannot be such a big secret after all.

Edited to clarify: By life-span I mean the immediate cessation of it due to the ritual, not the 30+- years.

Modifié par Sabriana, 11 mars 2010 - 10:22 .

[krylo]

Cazlee wrote...

That depends on how long the wardens were fighting alongside the king's army. Alistair was made a warden six months prior to meeting him at Ostagar. So our PC's ritual might have been the first joining that could have been witnessed by the king's army -- and then they were slaughtered.

Edit: clarity

King's army, sure.

But how about the last blight?

How about the joinings of the last few thousand Wardens?

Were all of them done in secret behind closed doors?  If so then why didn't Duncan and Alistair bring you out into the Wilds for the ritual away from prying eyes, where casualties could be explained away by a 'dark spawn attack'?  Why be so open with it?

Sabriana wrote...

And therefore, knowledge that the joining can be extremely detrimental to one's health and life-span cannot be such a big secret after all.

Edited to clarify: By life-span I mean the immediate cessation of it due to the ritual, not the 30+- years.

Exactly.

Modifié par krylo, 11 mars 2010 - 10:24 .

[Cazlee]

It wasn't safe to be out in the wilds after dark and the ritual was done in a private area of the camp and they were blanketed by darkness. Plus, why would Duncan kill Ser Jory out of anything but necessity? If you believe that the joining is not a secret, then you believe that Duncan is lying?

[krylo]

Cazlee wrote...

It wasn't safe to be out in the wilds after dark and the ritual was done in a private area of the camp and they were blanketed by darkness. Plus, why would Duncan kill Ser Jory out of anything but necessity? If you believe that the joining is not a secret, then you believe that Duncan is lying?

What the Joining actually IS, is definitely a secret.  No one knows they drink darkspawn blood mixed with archdemon blood and lyrium that has been enchanted.  THAT's secret.

What isn't, and couldn't be, secret is the fact that there's a chance of the initiates not surviving the ritual.

[Sabriana]

I believe he's mistaken, and perhaps he wanted to stop Ser Jory from making it 'official' knowledge. Alistair also splits if Loghain is spared. Why didn't Riordan use the murder knife on Alistair? Of the two, Jory and Alistair, who had more knowledge of the GW and their secrets?

The mages had to prepare the ritual/old temple, would they not wonder what the heck is going on? They at least knew where the GW would go for whatever reason. With the lyrium/magical enhanced blood. It would also be quite noticable that of the 5 GW in camp suddenly there are only 3 with no explanation apparent.

Neither Cailan, nor Loghain, nor Anora are GW, so none of them could possibly know anything about the ritual at all if it were such a closely guarded secret.

Not all GWs are loyal, either. Witness Uthra (sp?)

[Cazlee]

Alistair's group completed their ritual before the armies gathered at Ostagar, so the first time in 400+ years that people outside the wardens might hear about the danger of the initiation process is when our PC's group undergoes the ritual. Even then, Duncan and Alistair could have arranged to cover up the casualties.
Edit: for example, the gray wardens had their own camp. They could have hidden the bodies there and then say they died in battle. 

Modifié par Cazlee, 11 mars 2010 - 10:48 .

[Herr Uhl]

Sabriana wrote...

I believe he's mistaken, and perhaps he wanted to stop Ser Jory from making it 'official' knowledge. Alistair also splits if Loghain is spared. Why didn't Riordan use the murder knife on Alistair? Of the two, Jory and Alistair, who had more knowledge of the GW and their secrets?

Neither Cailan, nor Loghain, nor Anora are GW, so none of them could possibly know anything about the ritual at all if it were such a closely guarded secret.

They only need to know that not all survive it, which could be more common knowledge. Jory and Daveth seemed to know that it would be dangerous beforehand. Alastair wouldn't spout the secrets the same way Jory would, that "no glory" face pretty much says it all.

And because Riordan is more awesome than Duncan.

[krylo]

Cazlee wrote...

Alistair's group completed their ritual before the armies gathered at Ostagar, so the first time in 400+ years that people outside the wardens might hear about the danger of the initiation process is when our PC's group undergoes the ritual. Even then, Duncan and Alistair could have arranged to cover up the casualties.
Edit: for example, the gray wardens had their own camp. They could have hidden the bodies there and then say they died in battle. 

That's making some pretty big assumptions.  And the GW camp was in the middle of camp surrounded by other camps with guards going back and forth.

You think no one would have noticed the Grey Wardens carrying a couple body bags/corpses back to it?

[Cazlee]

Sabriana wrote...
I believe he's mistaken, and perhaps he wanted to stop Ser Jory from making it 'official' knowledge. Alistair also splits if Loghain is spared. Why didn't Riordan use the murder knife on Alistair? Of the two, Jory and Alistair, who had more knowledge of the GW and their secrets?

In order for Alistair to survive and leave, you have to convince Anora to spare him. Riordan won't go against your wishes.  Plus if he had done anything, the banns would have become extremely suspicious/mistrustful.  The best thing for Riordan to do was to let him walk out. 

The mages had to prepare the ritual/old temple, would they not wonder what the heck is going on? They at least knew where the GW would go for whatever reason. With the lyrium/magical enhanced blood.

The mages may have been aware that the gray wardens have an initiation
process. Not necessarily that the initiation process is dangerous. Or
that the initiation process uses blood magic. 

It would also be quite noticable that of the 5 GW in camp suddenly there are only 3 with no explanation apparent.

There are a dozen or more gray wardens and they have their own camp. King Caillan is said to often be drinking with them.

Neither Cailan, nor Loghain, nor Anora are GW, so none of them could possibly know anything about the ritual at all if it were such a closely guarded secret.
Not all GWs are loyal, either. Witness Uthra (sp?)

I don't know who Uthra is, but actually I'm sure that King Cailan knows more than he's letting on... due to his status and infatuation with the wardens.

[Cazlee]

krylo wrote...

Cazlee wrote...

Alistair's group completed their ritual before the armies gathered at Ostagar, so the first time in 400+ years that people outside the wardens might hear about the danger of the initiation process is when our PC's group undergoes the ritual. Even then, Duncan and Alistair could have arranged to cover up the casualties.
Edit: for example, the gray wardens had their own camp. They could have hidden the bodies there and then say they died in battle. 

That's making some pretty big assumptions.  And the GW camp was in the middle of camp surrounded by other camps with guards going back and forth.

You think no one would have noticed the Grey Wardens carrying a couple body bags/corpses back to it?

No one seems to notice when I lug around three corpses in Denerim or when I dump them in the church well either. Anyways that was just one example. Duncan most likely has his own methods.

[Sabriana]

The other GWs are separated from the King's camp. They are never visible. None of the initiates are allowed to leave the king's camp area, at least my PC wasn't, she was stopped by the soldiers.

If the mages prepared the ritual and the blood, they would surely know that the prepared mixture was a part in the joining. They are not stupid, after all.

Alistair's deposition toward the GWs is nothing but bad at the point of his walk-out. I don't really care about the game mechanics and Anora, my point is that Alistair is allowed to just walk away. Riordan is the senior GW while my PC is a wet-behind-the-ears warden. She has witnessed Duncan's murder of Jory, why would she be surprised if Riordan did the same to Alistair? Perhaps not in full view of the Landsmeet, but Alistair could disappear without a trace later on. I think he even does so under certain circumstances.

I'm not claiming that Riordan has anything to do with it, just that it can be done, simply because it is done in-game. Again, no one knows why or where he disappears to, so I'm not claiming anything here, just pointing things out.

Where would Cailan know these things from? Maric? If so, if Cailan knows, and Anora knows, who else does?

And I agree, Herr Uhl. Riordan is more awesome than Duncan

[Cazlee]

By time the initiates gathered the blood, the mages were done with their part.



If the circumstances had been different, and if there wasn't an audience present, then Riordan could have intervened. But that was impossible given the situation he was in.



Every noble knows what the initiation process is called and that it is potentially fatal now because of the landsmeet.