I fed birds with my true love

and then we ran into her mom, which was. mixed.

realism!

but like. she's all this AND she feeds the seabirds.

...okay why is Emmrich's companion exploration talent still locked?

I also can't find the wardens faction merchant - the person in the hall at the marker sells me things, but doesn't have a faction upgrade or sell valuables menu

I assume the shadow dragons one is unavailable because of. the quencies.

there's a wisp merchant in the crossroads that should have the sell valuables option for the faction that got the Quencies, I have been informed by a friend

I'm not sure you can level it up like a faction store though

AH

I shall find it!

...somehow

hmm. I see four merchants in the converged city, but none have the sell valuables option

hm. idk that's what my friend nein said. maybe there's an additional trigger...

I may need to advance the msq a bit more

which I'm not going to do until I'm more caught up on quests

...is there a max character level on this thing?

there must be

it may be that I'm on an easy difficulty, but my level is getting...high

much faster than I expected

I'm mid-20s and still in Signs and Portents

I may be. too strong. for this difficulty.

I feel like this double-size horrifically mutated qunari was supposed to take more than 15 seconds to kill

maybe I will increase difficulty level

taking it to "Adventurer" because that was a very sad boss fight

Neve: Taash, do you like being a woman?
Taash: tch! Nobody likes being a woman.

darling...

I like Neve being there for this conversation. It feels more like friends, and less like me telling Taash how to feel

it's not a Romance Path Thing

Neve just like “ah.”

Adventurer difficulty thus far has been definitely scarier but also makes combat feel rewarding

like there's a point to learning how it works

I am enjoying the whole Antaam situation more than I thought I would at first glance

someone clearly both had the qunari facts book open, and had looked into how real people act

"did the antaam violently rebel because we've been sorting the violent assholes into the military the whole time? perhaps?"

and the fact that, since this is a military coup/rebellion/mass desertion/roman emperor behavior, all the Qunari infrastructure is lost to the Antaam

and therefore they must seize and occupy and extract resources from other pre-existing infrastructure

or starve

this is exactly what the Iron Bull was afraid breaking with the Qun would turn him into, what he thought of as Tal-Vashoth behavior, but scaled up massively

and I think that's neat!

I like that I'm not fighting the Antaam because Foreign Horde or because Evil Communism, but because of Extremely Typical Person Behaviors

turns out that the genderjob category into which you send every kid who makes you go "man we gotta find an outlet for this aggression" uhhh gets bored by "we have decided to win Thedas through conversion and demonstrating how cool we are"

and they have A Skill to fall back on

(I will carry my belief that qunlat has three person-markers based not on gender or sex like English but on what job you do, because in the Qun your job is who you are)

(this makes a LOT of DAO party dialogue in particular make more sense, if Sten is struggling to identify let alone describe this major linguistic gap)

it would be NICE if the hall of valor TOLD me what I was about to be fighting so I could EQUIP for the right ELEMENT

okay. plot.

...yeah, it would take a BIG city to give the world's most famous one-armed qunari some anonymity

I really should have gone back to my inq save for a visual reference

this one looks. too young.

"I'd be angry too."
"Angry enough to start a rebellion?"
Neve. I'm a Shadow Dragon. you KNOW the answer to that.

I have unlocked "Solas sad memory hour" and I have collected SEVERAL

Yu Yevon is here???

oh thank fuck we're getting, at last, equal opportunity religion-wrongness

"you're asking if we just disproved the entire Andrastian faith"

yes! yes! let them also be wrong!

Lace, I'm sorry your faith is shaken, but you're in good company at least? no elves are having a good time rn

I love Team Analysis Time, ngl

...okay so. they took lyrium to build their divine bodies, apparently not knowing...well, I know that's Titan blood

and now somehow regular elves are just regular flesh?

I believe in spreading the truth. I also believe in not telling everyone that Elves Are Secretly Demons

(which isn't what we would say, but - look, if Jewish people were actually secret lizard wizards, I would not want that to spread)

the fact that both the other elves ^approval up really says it all

Taash: So what kind of spirit do you think Solas was?
Bellara: Well, his name is elven for "pride"
Taash: Oh. Okay.

question: answered

pride<->wisdom being...in Solas's Inq companion quest, we saw a wisdom spirit being twisted into a pride demon

yeah, the Titans probably DID think "people draining their blood and wearing it" was an attack. due to. the attack.

...ah

the blight was made by using that lyrium dagger to - to Tranquilize the Titans

yeah, Lace. that's the Solas experience.

was not expecting for today's "sympathy for the devil" moment to be sympathy for the blight

but here we are

mood, Lace. mood.

group Solas roast, best team activity

bad news: yeah he's gonna fuck us over
good news: now we know what he feels bad about >:33

getting to say "I think Solas is a self-pitying monster" was very satisfying

we just added to his Total Genocide Count, and he's still saying, "no no no, THIS genocide will fix it"

--wait what

Dirthamen and Falon-din were a single spirit split in two?

so Mythal is Benevolence<->Retribution

as Solas is Wisdom<->Pride

definitely not me saveloading because I want to win this conversation

there we go!

dwarf magic! titans! valta is a giant rock now!

hm. Solas emphasized pretty hard that we must use his lyrium dagger to kill the Evanuris.

I wonder if that's the poison pill

he killed Mythal with it and took her power

you would think Weisshaupt would be crumpling less when faced with the archdemon, given that it is their entire job to kill one

sorry to my like 2 companions who objected to me cold-cocking the First Warden

"You have made a sworn enemy of the First Warden" my dude my narrator: I already had

Rook tried talking. she tried talking, repeatedly. she really does prefer it!

he refused to listen, he refused to accept her aid, and now we're out of time

I mean. he tried to have Rook arrested and tried for giving him a warning. he was her sworn enemy, even if she wasn't his yet

dragon blowing down his doors and he still wanted her arrested for coming to help

and for telling him his shit-ass Show Of Force tactics were going to get everyone killed

which they were

they couldn't bring the Hero of Ferelden back, because - well, partly because them being alive or dead is a quantum thingummy

but also because if they were here the Wardens would follow them - the only person to have slain an Archdemon and lived

I savescummed the conversation with mythal too lmao

right! I gotta

lmao love how 99.9% of grey wardens are less good at not dying than the blacksmith's eight-year-old daughter

someone needs to take care of this sassy lost child and I guess it's us

vice versa!

this sassy lost child saved my entire ass

she was fine the whole time

--I assume the plan has whoever you brought in the "stab Ghilan'nain" role, but it is VERY appropriate that I picked Lucanis

this is what I recruited him for: to assassinate a mage

no it's always Lucanis

it's his job!

he'd be mad if someone else did it

oh good!

it's true

I just happened to also have him as my third party member

I had davrin and bellara because I Need Heals To Live

I saved treviso, so lucanis still has his heal

...and I'm gonna choose to not yell at the first warden

this one time

Hadassah isn't here for glory; she's here to keep people alive

hmm

it worked, and Davrin didn't die.

I wonder - is what reacts with the Warden's soul and destroys both the power invested in the archdemon by its corresponding god?

it runs through the blight, so if a non-warden kills the archdemon, the power just runs to the next darkspawn and reconstitutes

the Warden, and Morrigan's ritual, are about controlling where the power goes

but if the god is present, the power snaps back to them

...Varric saying he's going to go take a nap makes me wonder

if Rook is *actually

the only person Solas can reach

Varric, uh, definitely bled on the ritual site

Rook and Bellara are talking about uh

activist guilt

and it's. I love it.

"who is that guilt helping?"

I'm confiscating the coffee from both Lucanis and Neve

they need more sleep and less anxiety

...if Davrin had told me he was okay, I would've had to call him a liar

ah. "what do I do once I've done the thing I was for?"

and, as is traditional, you apply a young creature in need of care

oh hey

I just got kabedon'd by a tall qunari who can spit fire

life is good, despite the horrors

I love when Rook imitates other characters' voices

voice actor enrichment

characters like Flynn are a signal, to me, that the people making the game actually listened to fan criticisms

because I know something I was saying was that in previous DA games, the diversity of the PCs was profoundly not matched by the world at large

so it means a lot to see a nonbinary Sidequest NPC

because that's just a thing people can be in the world

on the verso, it is incredibly bullshit that "forget what your mom wants" is a romance-ending conversation choice with Taash here

when that's what a friend says

that's what someone who loves you says

instead I have to open with "your mom loves you and has her reasons"

there's also a nonbinary npc who shows up for like two lines

the governor of treviso

yeah! I noticed them too!

I was like OMG HOLY SHIT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN???

and then we got flynn too!

I got a real sweet banter about gender words between taash and rowan, one of the lords of fortune standing in the hall of valor

I love gathering the team around the dining table

it's correct

we are Team As Family

also where else seats twelve

Davrin/Lucanis enemies to coworkers to...???

other than the library table aka "emmrich why is THAT the chair you chose to move in here"

the couch ladies are the only truly valid ones

Fantasy Arthur Conan Doyle is in the Garden in Minrathous

ow okay not ready for the desperation demon

got killed dead

doing uh

going to the elven ruin with Bellara

oh this is fun

watching Anaris pull the "they turned into demons because Cyrian messed up, definitely not because I wanted that to happen"

watching Bellara have...all this...

"Why couldn't you stay a memory?" hello fucking OW?!

Bellara...of course she is trying to make this her fault somehow

even though she never faltered

...and of course she decides it's her job to fix it

to stop him

even though no one is asking her to

oh these are fun conversations

Davrin getting Emmrich to help pursue his questline

meanwhile, Lace fessing up to Lucanis about being a chronic people-pleaser

(I too like the smell of coffee but not its taste)

Lucanis spent half that chat with an expression that said that if Thedas had therapy he would be about to gently suggest Lace give it a try

now

I am exploring Blackthorne Manor

which in my heart I am calling Blackwood Manor, after We Have Always Lived in the Castle

btw:

OW PAIN MY HEART

anyway now I'm having feelings about Emmrich

and about how he's a necromancer, and also a man of such deep and earnest compassion

oh LOVING the fade-echo library

say what you like about Emmrich's nemesis, she's got style

mad science mage style

...Johanna, why on earth do you want to conquer Nevarra? then you'll have to rule it after!

that's boring you don't want it

I loooved the fade echo library what fun level design

okay went after Zara

...if Ilario wants to convince me he's not the traitor in the Crows, it's not working

I saw Zara - who, uh, wow that was an entire public bath of blood, fuck, that's just ridiculous - start to call him "beloved"

as he killed her when she was about to tell Lucanis who the Venatori turned

and then...put him under

with a command

I know damn well Lucanis isn't the danger to the Family here

even if Rook isn't allowed to

I just. before Ilario jumped in, Lucanis was in control - enough to tell Zara to talk even though Spite wanted to go straight for the stab

yeah I was really like come on did nobody else hear the 'amatu-'

Hadassah is Tevene

so's noy, originally!

well, sort of

tevinter slave, anyway

I was fucking sus as hell of Ilario from the start - who benefits from Lucanis's disappearance? the guy who was never going to be ranked above him

who benefits from Caterina's death? the last man standing

and going "no the Venatori aren't a problem" is...sus

tevinter slave counts! the point is native language

oh good. Lucanis is twigging to the fact that suppressing Spite with blood magic isn't something Ilario should know

and that Ilario knew all the things a traitor had to know

g-d. Emmrich pulling me aside to ask me about my funeral preferences

I love that

it's an important thing to discuss! I'm aware! I agree!

illario just had sus vibes from word one. squirrelly little fucker

yeah, but I gave him a chance, because he's a Crow

he is, professionally, sus

teia isn't sus!

teia could easily be pretending not to be sus!

all assassins are sus

cute convo with Taash and Lace and Hadassah

telling Lace, it looks like we've got it handled because you didn't see that bit

it's not that we're better at it than you