@Lamora,

Only read your TLDR, just gonna say that this is not a matter of privilege but of human rights. Every instance we see proves the templars right...because it would be borning to deal with "nice mages."

We need more context.

 

That's just it though - the entire Mage vs Templar divide is fucking stupid, because practically speaking everyone who isn't a complete asshat is on the same side. Magic is fucking dangerous, yes. But the vast majority of mages, who are just average people, would be just as willing to stop maleficar and the spread of blood magic as your average Templar. Because who actually wants to see their family and friends slaughtered by demons/undead?

Instead, the whole thing is framed as all the Templars vs all the Mages, and things fall apart as people get defensive and lash out.

 

If you ever played through the Mage origin of DAO, you have your context. The previous status quo fucking worked. The Mage Warden character was literal proof that Circles are capable of producing mages of worth to general society, and that those who rebelled against the establishment (Jowan who became an apostate blood mage assassin, Uldred who needs no further explanation, Anders) generally are not.

I support the templars because the templars generally want things to go back to that, whereas the main mage front is trying to separate from templars completely, which I don't agree with.

 

And if the status quo produces that many people apparently just desperate to rebel (not just Uldred and Jowan, all those people who followed Uldred out of desperation who you cut through on the way through the Tower), something isn't right.

 

Actually, I played against the Circle system as my mage DAO. And became a blood mage. Basing full context over the Mage Warden is not applicable because it is so fluid and based on player choice.

There is not enough context to know how badly mages were abused accross the entire board to determine whether the Circle is justified or not.

 

I can categorically say I disagree on every level.

Creating a society that fears, ostracizes and subjugates mages is a recipe for disaster. Any species has ingrained survival instincts, you push them into a corner and you'll eventually get hurt. Justina saw this war coming from a mile away, citing ( relayed through others) the current system as the cause.

And why should regular humans get preference anyway over mages? Why do the rights of the humans come before the rights of the mage?

On a similar note, should we lock regular humans away for hunting whole species to extinction? The Penterghast family were supposedly almost singularly responsible for driving Dragons to extinction.

I honestly tried not to cringe when you argued Mages have it 'cush'. I really did...

Mages can police themselves. Any unimaginable horror you can picture a mage doing goes both ways. If every 'legit' mage wasn't locked away in the middle of nowhere, they'd be better placed to police it, notice the signs, and even stop it.

Keep locking them away and subjugating them though? You may as well serve them up to the Demons.

 

It's funny because Mages are legit responsible for SO MUCH bad shit in the DA universe, like, almost all of it. They're the reason why the Blight is a thing, like, that right there is a pretty fucking good reason to go "yeah, we kinda need some way to stop these guys from causing the end of the world again".

Seriously, it's kinda been shown in canon that no, we fucking can't trust mages to police themselves, because it's human nature to go "Well sure HE died horribly from doing the exact same thing that I'm about to do, but obviously it'll go better for me", so having a group of people that can stop that shit from happening is pretty fucking good.

Obviously the current system has it's flaws, but going "But muh mages" and thinking that they should just be left alone to do what they want is legit the cause of 90% of bad things in DA.

 

At least part of the problems stem from a complete lack of understanding about magic and the Fade.

I mean the Ancient Elves were a highly magical race, and they were advanced, intelligent, and weren't run amok with demons.

I mean how much of this whole "Mage can't be trusted!!!!" stems from the fact that humans and mages are imprinting their own values of what the Fade and spirits should be onto the Fade. It's a fairly self-propagating situation.

It's pretty clear that if you approach the Fade negatively bad shit is going to happen, but if you approach with an open mind, you can get some pretty decent results. So yeah, the mages need policing, because magic is fairly dangerous, but the goal should be to limit magic, but expand their understanding of it, because that's pretty much the only way any progress is going to be made.

 

Firstly, mages being responsible for the blight is not fact. It is the religious doctrine of the chantry, but it cannot be taken as an arguable fact. Just like the existence of the Maker it is shrouded in history.

Secondly, your argument against mages policing themselves is faulty. Practically every time a mage uses blood magic to become an abomination is when they are left with no other choice in their minds. Orsino for example. He was certain he would perish and so made a deal with a demon. It's more of a kamikaze thing for most.

Thirdly, your claim of 90% being attributed to mages in DA can hardly be used to contexualize the entire world. The number you give, which is debatable, can only be applied to the game where conflict has to happen.

We have historical proof that mages can be fine on their own without destroying the world. Tevinter has plenty of free mages and they police themselves without destroying the world. The Dalish have their own mages apart from the Templars. Abominations are isolated cases for the most part. Why should all mages be treated with fear and deprived of their rights because of the actions of a few?

It's the equivalent of hating Jewish people because their ancestors killed Jesus. Or the equivalent of locking up all muslims because of extremists.

 

Exceptno, that's kinda flat out wrong. Elves are the minority group that gets fucked over that we're meant to feel sorry for, because that's what happened. And y'know your comparison kinda falls apart since well, your shitty examples basically apply to the elves, in that they get fucked over for no reason, whilst there's say (and being VERY generous) a 1% that a mage could go crazy and cause shittons of people to die, and that's ignoring all the ones that CHOOSE to go for blood magic and other shit instead of just being tricked into it.

That isn't to say that the current system is perfect, like I said before, it definately has it's flaws but well and can definitely can be improved but well. How many Apocalypses have the Templars caused? How often have the Templars blown up a building full of innocent people to prove a point? How often has a Templar gone insane and started murdering people because the voices in his head tell him to?

Hell, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a decent amount of mages in DAI AGREE that the Templars are needed to stop some mages from doing shit, it's just that the current system needs to be fixed, not removed.

 

I'm not arguing for the removal of some sort of system, I'm arguing that the current system and society has legitimately failed and there needs to be a change. I'd go for a statute of secrecy/hogwarts personally...

It is one thing to have a police force there to prevent abominations. It is another thing entirely to lock up an entire group of people just because they might go bad.

The comparisons are legitimate. Mages are a group that have been discriminated against, imprisoned, and deprived of natural rights because of intolerance and the actions of a few. I'll point to the fact that playing a mage causes your court approval in Orlais to drop right off the bat.

You are arguing for guilty until proven innocent as opposed to innocent until proven guilty.

As for apocalypses caused by Templars? I'd like to point out that majority of the main villain's army is filled with Templars. I'd like to point out that there are just as many Templars killing innocents in DAI as mages if not more so.

Rather than using the Islamic comparison which is still apt...I'll go back to World War II in which the United State's essentially forced all Japanese immigrants into ghettos because of Pearl Harbor. These are human right's violations regardless of what people are capable of.

 

Let's not forget all Templars are drug addicts.

 

That's just it - most mages have no problem with the theoretical role of Templars. Because mages are people, and most people have no problem with not being murdered by abominations/having their families and friends murdered by abominations.

But the current set up pits all templars against all mages and that does literally nobody any good. The mages are a resource that should be tapped for fighting maleficar - they have an anti-magic spell tree too you know. In typical bioware fashion we have the point hammered home that there are tons of idiots who turn to blood magic in desperation rather than out of malice. In fact, most of the ones we see could be described like that.


If the primary role of the Circle really was education, and the primary role of the Templar really was aid and protection of everyone (including innocent mages), the system would be work really damn well. Religious dogma has unfortunately thrown a wrench in things.

That's another funky part, as Alistair has templar talents without the use of lyrium and expresses some doubt about their necessity. Do you need it to unlock the abilities? Is it actually necessary to retain them and his are just retconned out of existence?

 

So, like reality then?


I don't remember Alistair saying you don't need Lyrium, but Bioware left a massive plot hole in its own universe regarding Lyrium and its addictive qualities.

I remember something about them wanting to highlight that, but couldn't get around rationalizing the player guzzling the shit down out of necessity (to win as a mage, I guess?).

Seekers are templars that don't use Lyrium either, but they could have been made tranquil then had it reversed instead? They weren't clear on that either.

 

The reason I didn't side with the Templars in Inquisition is more because Alexius and the Venatori seemed like a much more immediate threat that needs to be addressed quickly, than because I really agreed with the mage side of the conflict. Whereas as far as you know until you actually arrive, the Templars are just dicking around in a fortress.

I actually did kind of want to side with the Templars since I didn't in either Origiins or DAII, and because the Order seems to go well with the Inquisition, but I can't really role-play a justification for it.

In previous games I thought this was a good point, but in this one you can bring this up to Vivienne if you're an elf. They say now that the reason they can get by with Templars is because they don't have any more than three mages in a clan at once: the Keeper, the First and a Second. If there are more mages, they get exiled from the clan -- the elf girl who studied creatures at Haven was one. I'm actually not sure this jives with Origins, since they seemed to imply that there were more than just three mages in Zathrian's clan including Wynne's old apprentice, but that's what they say now.

I remember him saying that the lyrium makes the abilities a lot stronger, and he left the Order before he was given his first draught. You can't really see a difference in the game since all Templars use the same abilities from the same skill tree I guess.

 

There are two justifications for it:

1) You're not the head of the Inquisition yet when the choice is being made. In fact, you can kind of argue that you're not really the main character until Skyhold, or the events immediately leading up to getting there.

Given that, the Inquisition (which is much more a collaborative effort at that time) is very Chantry/ Templar biased at that point.

2) Templars are good at fucking magic up. Like the Rift. They're also much better at following orders and aren't really in revolt in the same sense as the Mages are (even though they seceded from the Chantry to combat the Mages).

 

And more than a few are rapists.

I mean there's rampant abuse of Tranquils, and who knows how many people are made Tranquil for complete bullshit reasons.

I imagine Kirkwall isn't anywhere near the exception as we all think it is.

 

This is his game dialogue, bold for emphasis:

​

This was presumably the gameplay explanation for him not needing to use Lyrium and you being able to teach Oghren/Sten the Templar spec without them so much as touching the stuff.


This was obviously retconned with DA2's description of the Templar spec. The wiki sources an interview where Gaider says:

Sooo...*shrug*.

 

Out of all the advisers only Cullen seems to really be on the side of getting the Templars, so even if you handwave it and say it wasn't up to you, it seems unlikely that they'd wind up choosing the Templars.

Besides role-playing reasons though, I just liked playing the mage recruitment better.

Spoiler

I liked the time-travel and Dorian better than the Envy demon and Cole.

Not to mention you wind up fighting Red Templars either way.

 

So, slightly off topic.

I'm a little tired of spoiler tagging things. Can we get a mod to put a spoiler tag on the thread title and people can hold off coming here to talk shop until they finish Inquisition?

I'll be vague here:

I'm surprised you liked the time travel part. Though I very much prefer Dorian to Cole, I liked the Envy demon thing better. I felt more like a badass telling it to go fuck itself, especially as a mage.

I just don't like time travel in general though.