This is what being in the Dragon Age fandom looks like. We are all Detective Neve Gallus.
lanafofana reblogged
unhinged, btw, that bioware has to keep assuring people that the game is still dark and gritty because the cinematic trailer was kind of flashy and the art style has changed. for dragon age. the game that was doing "marvel dialogue" before the mcu even really existed (iron man came out in 08, dao came out in 09). the game with a species of hairless pig rabbits, one of which is named schmooples. the game with swooping is bad. the game where you could solve a sidequest about a pining elf boy by fucking the girl he's pining for. we're really gonna pretend this game series never had a significant amount of silliness and humor? fenris tells varric he likes to dance through the empty rooms in danarius' manor. hawke has an entire personality archetype that can be summed up as "shitposter." we're really going to pretend dragon age (the series where people can walk in on you and bull having kinky sex) is all dark and mature and has never had light or silly moments as a major part of its formula. insane
lanafofana reblogged
Sunday greeting people.
Thank you all very much for all the support i’ve been getting in a very short amount of time. I’m very bad at any type of sincerity in general but i want ya’ll to know that people liking my stuff on here is really helping with the low self esteem i’ve been feeling with my art lately. Thank you truly.
Anyway here’s a quick Zevran sketch i did a little bit ago, i quote this to myself daily I don’t know why. Have a lovely end of the week!
(still posting older stuff to fill my page up a little, plus it’s too hot to do anything right now teehee)
lanafofana reblogged
"I love you, Zevran. I hope you know that."
"Yes... Yes, I know that."
— commission art by @sinizade, posted with permission
lanafofana reblogged
zevran 💀💀💀
lanafofana reblogged
exploring Origins Toolset (a gift that keeps on giving) and the V.A. directions for Arl Howe are FASCINATING. he has a secondary thought appended to every line of dialogue during the opening scene of Human Noble Origin -- and the insight into his psyche is somehow even more fucked-up than I thought
Bryce: I'm sorry pup; I didn't see you there. Howe, you remember my daughter? Howe: I see she's become a lovely young woman. Pleased to see you again, my dear.
Friendly, but hollow. "Here's the necessary exchange of pleasantries nobles must go through. I'm kind of preoccuppied with making sure your father is on track for my secret plan."
Cousland: Is your family here, Arl Howe? Howe: Oh no, I left them in Amaranthine, well away from the fighting in the south. They do send their best wishes.
Distracted. "I left them well out of harm's way. Though I don't want you to know harm is coming."
Howe: My son Thomas asked after you. Perhaps I should bring him with me next time.
Gauging the player's reaction. "My son wants to marry you. I don't approve, but mentioning it may get you to trust me."
Cousland (version 1): To what end? Howe: Ha! "To what end", she says! So glib, too. She's just like her mother when she talks like that.
Friendly, slightly menacing undertone. "You don't fool me, girl. You're playing dumb, but you're smarter than your reply suggests. I won't underestimate anyone in your family."
Cousland (version 2): ...Thomas is a few years younger than I am. Howe: As you get older, those years make less difference. A lesson often hard won.
Elsewhere. "It doesn't matter how old you are. You won't be getting any older."
THIS IS CRAZY. THIS IS A CRAZY THING TO SAY. OR THINK SECRETLY AS YOU'RE EXCHANGING PLEASANTRIES
The people using the BG3 character creator and mod magic to bring DA characters into a whole new beautifully graphic'd existence are doing god's work.
lanafofana reblogged
- Zevran: I am hardly the person to lecture on the worthier points of human nature, but surely this is a fine time to display the oft-lauded virtue known as mercy?
- Zevran: I deserved to die, and you spared me. Why are you so quick to condemn these mages?
- Warden: You’re a lot better-looking than most of the mages.
- Zevran: Why, thank you. Flattery would normally distract me, but not today. Inconvenient, no?
- Warden: You’re saying I made a mistake sparing you?
- Zevran: (Nervous laughter) Perhaps. But you did it nevertheless, no?
- Warden: Magic and knives are different.
- Zevran: Magic can kill. Knives can kill. Even small children launched at great speed could kill.
- Zevran: Why single out the wielders of one and not the others?
- Warden: Mages can do more damage with one spell than you ever could.
- Zevran: Mm. Touché.
- Zevran: I’ve taken the lives of many throughout my career, but this is no measured act. There is no chase, no hunt, no dignity in this… there is only slaughter.
- Warden: What about the people they might slaughter?
- Zevran: Might, not will. Committing genocide just because something might happen is more than the mark of a weak mind. It is insanity.
- Warden: Zevran, you’re a hypocrite.
- Zevran: Perhaps I am at that, and a thief and a murderer as well. But I looked my victims in the face.
dragonreine
Zevran fights the most for the little people, the downtrodden, the ones forgotten and shunned by society. Because Zevran knows all too well (more than most of the other companions) how it feels to be trapped in a role that you cannot choose to opt out of, only because of an accident of birth.
Poverty in his case, magic in theirs, but it is hard to not see the parallels.
Zevran rarely speaks up to push back against most of the warden’s decisions, some of which can be pretty dark and horrifying. But he does speak up in 3 specific cases: when you threaten to purge the mages, when you suggest the werewolves slaughter all the Dalish rather than just killing Zathrian, and when you listen to the Tevinter mage offering to leave with the elves as slaves or sacrifice them as a blood mage sacrifice.
The last two could be chalked up to them involving the deaths of elves, but Zevran’s connections to his elven heritage is flimsy at best. He considers himself Antivan first, a Crow second, and an elf third (though the Crow identity wavers and just becomes “assassin” the longer he is away from them). So why should he care?
Because in each case what you’re suggesting isn’t dignified death or necessary sacrifice. It’s wholesale slaughter of people who never had a choice. Mages didn’t choose to be mages. The city elves didn’t choose to be born in their alienage or get sold into slavery. The Dalish of the present day didn’t choose to curse the werewolves. Zevran regularly admits to being a murderer who enjoys the act of killing. But his victims are either people who were doing enough trouble to warrant their own deaths, or else they were marks that he killed (or accidentally let die in some cases) out of an obligation to the Crows.
Now that he’s free of them, he sees opportunities to sway you away from massive slaughter and he takes those opportunities even unfit means you’ll turn against him. He has no desire to join another organization where death is just heartless, transactional grabs at more and more power. He left the Crows for a reason. If you become that or worse, he leaves. But he tries to change your mind first.
It’s just doubly interesting that he does this with the circle quest too. It’s like he’s the only companion, other than maybe Wynne, who sees the mages as people first. Desperate people sure, but no different, really, than anyone else. Magic kills. Knives kill. People are just people.
I love him, okay, he’s so complex and the games and the fandom continually water him down to a sex fiend with witty one liners when deep down he’s so much more than that.
lanafofana reblogged
you asked what happened to Fereldan's circle. it was taken over by abominations.
lanafofana reblogged
alistair theirin in DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (2009)
lanafofana reblogged
seeing you so excited about dragon age has made me really want to get into it. if you've already talked about this and i missed it i am SO sorry but do you have any recommendations on where to start? it seems like so much fun but i am flying completely blind here, i know nothing but vibes and the fact that the games look right up my alley.
from my understanding there's 3(?) other games before veilguard (at least on steam haha) and they all seem to build off one another. would you recommend playing the other games first? (i know veilguard still hasn't released yet i just know next to nothing about the plot of the games and how much they're tied together raaahh)
again sorry if you've already talked about this, i just love seeing other people so excited about something, it makes me want to get invested in it too. hope you're having an excellent day! :)
Hello!!! I’m so excited that you’re interested in these games! They are some of my absolute favorites for a variety of reasons!
Currently there are 3 games + Veilguard (the 4th). The series starts with Dragon Age Origins, a gritty dark fantasy set in the country of Ferelden, which is being besieged by corrupted monsters called the darkspawn. You play a Grey Warden, a warrior (or mage!) selected to fight the darkspawn and save the country from ruin.
Dragon Age 2 picks up after the events of Origins and follows Hawke, a refugee from Ferelden who travels north to Kirkwall with their family…and then ends up being the person everyone asks to solve their problems. Results may vary, and it’s a fun chaotic time for all.
Dragon Age Inquisition takes place 3 years after DA2. The end of DA2 has spiraled out of control into a full on war. Everyone has gathered in one place to try and stop the fighting but, unexpectedly, the whole place goes kaboom with your character, the future Inquisitor, inside. They survive the explosion and end up with a mark on their hand that may just save the world, so now saving the world is their problem.
And soon we’ll have Veilguard, which takes place 10-12 years after DAI (12 years after Inquisition starts, 10 years after DAI’s epilogue DLC…it’s a long story). And it directly involves characters and plot arcs that began in DAI.
All of the games tie together narratively, but they’re also each their own separate campaigns. It’s not like the Witcher where you play Geralt for 3 games, you’re playing 3 (now 4) completely different heroes. But the span of time between Origins and Veilguard is only 22 years in the Dragon Age Universe so—yeah, lots of events connect together.
With Veilguard so close, it’ll be a tough shave trying to finish even one of the games before Veilguard releases and the floodgates of spoilers spill over. That said, if Veilguard has you hyped, but you want to play a different Dragon Age game to get your feet wet and explore a bit of the world, go for DAI (the third one)! A typical full playthrough takes about 60ish hours if you’re not rushing (but some of my inquisitors had an upwards of 150+ hours, and I have rushed it at a 45 hour run once). You may not finish it before the Veilguard release date, but since it’s the one that directly ties into Veilguard, it means you can just hop right in from one to the next.
HOWEVER, if you are interested in the ways the games connect to each other and want to see how your decisions in one game affects the world in the next game, AND if you feel okay with sticking your head in the sand to avoid any and all Veilguard spoilers, you can start with Origins and play all three in order. Each game shapes elements of the world of the next one (for example, who is king or queen of Ferelden at the end of Origins will come up in small ways in DA2 and DAI), and that’s honestly my favorite part of the games. I love seeing echoes of my choices from Origins and DA2 in my DAI game. It really makes it feel like my choices matter.
But Veilguard looks like it’ll be a relatively clean slate. It doesn’t look like there will be choices from Origins or DA2 that carry forward into Veilguard. So if you want to start anywhere, start with DAI. You can always experience what it’s like as a “basic” world and go back later, after playing it and Veilguard and so on, to play the earlier games and see how you can shape and alter the worlds in new or interesting ways. That’s how a lot of DA fans start actually. They play DAI, find out that they can shape the world by playing the other games, and then go back to Origins.
That’s a long winded answer but I hope it helps! I’m in the middle of a DAI run right now and the game really has aged so well. It doesn’t feel like a 2014 game. It doesn’t feel that outdated. And honestly it’s pretty easy to pick up and play (though I recommend playing with a controller, whether you’re on console or PC. The keyboard and mouse controls are horrible).
Go forth and age the dragons haha have fun!!
lanafofana reblogged
lanafofana reblogged
the dumbfounded way leliana says "you- you're married?!" when you take her to meet the family the alienage. the way my warden was torn between choking on the trauma versus trying to explain that it was arranged and she's gay and it's NOT like that! all tabris wanted was to introduce her girlfriend to her dad but no. tevinter slavers posing as doctors have him and half your neighbors in cages.
saddest field trip since that time we had to kill zevran's ex-boyfriend five minutes after we killed leliana's ex-girlfriend.
lanafofana reblogged
the Origins PC and companions are genuinely the funniest group of people if you actually think about it, like you got:
- The Warden who literally got their job yesterday and was put in charge of saving the world for some reason
- the second-most-recent warden who immediately pushed all the responsibility on you and REALLY doesn’t want to tell you who his daddy is because that would mean more responsibility he does not want
- this random swamp witch who’s mother may or may not be Baba Yaga but she personally has never been anywhere larger than a small village and does NOT understand human interactions also she can turn into a spider
- a bisexual nun who you met in a bar who told you that God told her to tag along with you but actually she used to be a spy and has murdered a lot of people, but also she assures you that she never took vows of chastity so she’s dtf
- a grown up child soldier giant man who you got out of a cage for some reason who spends half the time negging you and talking in circles but is apparently into that and also the only thing he likes about your country is cookies
- an assassin that was hired to kill you and immediately started flirting with you the moment he failed at doing that and you just thought it was a good call to let him tag along
- an elderly woman who has assigned herself the role of group grandmother, really doesn’t want you to fuck or talk about griffins, and also she’s possessed. let’s be real, she probably regrets being in this group
- a dwarf who’s wife ended up being a psychopath and a lesbian, so he just decided to skip town with you
- a magical construct that has spent the last 30 years getting shit on by birds and just is REALLY pissed off by that
- A dog that is able to comprehend human language and uses that ability solely to beg for treats
And the optional:
- Literally the guy that you have been fighting against the entire fucking game
lanafofana reblogged
A small series of Tarot cards for Dragon Age: Origins companions, dedicated to their stories and personal quests. Rogue, Maiden, Witch and Knight ✨🌿
