Status Updates From Tevinter Nights (Dragon Age...

Most horse girl thing is naming your horse after an Archdemon

I wish we had Viago and his dapper cane in game.

An Old Crow’s Old Tricks

• Now, I am a Crow simp, but this is one of my favorite stories.

• I really, really wish we could have had Lessef and Tainsley in DATV, especially because in the absence of Flemeth, we were really hurting for kick-ass old lady representstion

• Also Bicklius is such a unique take on both magisters and arcane warriors

Hey, remember when people were prejudiced against elves in noted dark fantasy franchise Dragon Age?

Herold Had the Plan

• It was nice to see the ramifications of the Antaam’s war and the desecration of the north. It really helps to emphasize how bloody and brutal Thedas is.

• I also found it interesting that Bharv ultimately did not tell Elim what the amulet did. It helps sell the moral ambiguity of the Lords that DATV tried to skirt around.

Freaking Bharv

Genitivi Dies at the End

• It ws so good until that last blurb. Leaving the reveal of Brother Genitivi as the Dowager was enough of a postmodern deconstruction.

Rasaan should have been a part of DATV, especially the Antiva arc.

We love petty writers, and writers writing pettily about petty writers.

The Wigmaker Job

• My biggest regret is we got more of this Lucanis in DATV. There’s a ruthlessness here that I would have loved to have seen explored more.

The modified “One for sorrow” poem is a nice touch.

The phrase “…racist blood mages” feels rather modern, though not inaccurate.

Back when the Crows could be portrayed as cruel.

The Streets of Minrathous

• Not a lot to say about this one. I did find it interesting how an extremist group can break down into different factions.

• Idk if it’s my opinions on Neve filtering through, or the fact that I’ve read so much Dresden Files that mage detectives are held to a high standard, but the noir vibe didn’t click.

I wish we saw these “mage-based justicars” in DATV

Murder by Death Mages

• Really, not much to say on this one. Nevarran politics is patently absurd.

“…because she was a mage no longer chained to any Circle of Magi…”

So the Mortalitasi aren’t so much a branch of the Circle as they are the Circle within Nevarra

Hunger

• This felt like an homage to Origins. Grey Wardens being heroes, doing thankless work. The presence of werewolves and hunger demons, conspicuously absent from later games.

Luck in the Gardens

• Feketuky writes weird really well— the oddities of the Necropolis, the eldritch Cekorax.

• The Lovecraft influence is strong, with first person narration and a thing from beyond the world breaching in.

• Also, thematically loved the idea of Hollix, a master of disguise, going against a creature that absorbs others’ physiognomy.

It’s not just mages who can earn their freedom. It’s anyone with at sufficient talent, seems like.

“…a Lord of Fortune’s got to have some standards that sets them apart from common glory-seekers, and that’s one for me.”

I do love the idea that the Lords have a morality, but it’s a personal code of ethics rather than a faction-wide one. Fits the rag-tag pirate idea.

Been tinkering through this a story at a time. Largely good fun!

Callback

• Personally, I found it hard to keep track of the action with so many perspective shifts between each paragraph

• Harritt, Dagna, and Cabot’s cameos were great. I feel Elan and Morris’ simply didn’t have as strong a personality in DAI, so their return doesn’t have the same effect.

• Possibly a prelude to the regret prison? At least thematically?

• The last lines 💯

“I’m a bartender. I drown regret.”

CABOT MY MAN

“I wonder if you know the dread that’s coming?”

Then it didn’t.