Status Updates From Tevinter Nights (Dragon Age...

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.

The Horror of Hormak

• Pros: the attention to detail about art and architecture, and using subtle changes in such to build suspense.

• However, I wasn’t fond of the ending. Not that it didn’t work for the story, but it fell short of the promised “Horror” moniker. Shocking, yes. Horrifying, no.

As an art kid, the discussion of different cultures’ artistic signatures made me very happy.

Is acolyte a Warden rank? I thought it went recruit, then ensign?