Art, cupcakes, and more Dragon Age
I need some Dragon Age icons. I am uploading screenshots to the website, which I will then proceed to save and icon with glee. What? So I want Alistair's face all over my internet. If that is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Anyway! Today I went with ruiza to see her brother graduate from Cornish. It was a really great ceremony... being an arts school, the performances and speeches were a lot of fun. There was a really fantastic performance by a trombone player who had played with Muddy Waters, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington... I felt really lucky to see that. Also, why did I not know that Cornish has a gamelan orchestra? I fucking love gamelan! So, yes, it was very exciting thing, and I was pleased that I went.
They had marvelous cupcakes, too. It was a miracle that I only ate one.
Anyway, when I got home, I, predictably, played more Dragon Age: Origins. It was a session full of fetch-quests, but I also manged to fill it with a lot of chatting with my party, and that was enjoyable. So, this is probably not as exciting (and definitely not as full of capslock) as the last one, but... here it is anyway.
When we last left our heroes, the Dalish elf Lyna had left the ruined city of Ostagar with her fellow Grey Warden, Alistair, and the witch Morrigan. We are heading north to Redcliffe to seek out Arl Eamon, an acquaintance of Alistair's whom he believes will help us rally against Loghain, the general who betrayed us and has spread a rumor that the Grey Wardens are responsible for the King Douchebag Cailan's death. (I feel a little bad about how hard I was on him. Not that he didn't deserve a little kicking around, but... uff.) Anyway, we stop off in a village called Lothering in hopes of getting supplies and information.
The first thing that happens as we enter the village is I stop and I say to my dog, “do you see anything interesting?”
Thracys barks, runs off, and comes back with a hundred-year-old bottle of wine.
Shit. This dog is a winner.
The second thing that happens is that Alistair and Morrigan start to snark at each other, which I will never complain about. The thing that I really liked about this interaction, though, is that Morrigan won't leave him alone for his being upset over Duncan's death, but Alistair will not hear it. Hell, no, Alistair fucking owns his grief, and isn't ashamed of or emasculated by it, AND I LOVE IT! It's admirable, it's wise, and most of all, it's healthy.
As it would turn out, the village is packed to bursting with refugees fleeing the Blight. I'm a pretty stoic sort of elf, and I don't have a lot of sympathy to spare for humans, but the sight of the refugee tents, the tavern and chantry jammed full of as many who'll fit, all those who have already lost loved ones to the darkspawn or to the bandits who have descended on the chaos... it awakens some inconvenient, awkward feelings. Empathy, one might say. Perhaps I see just a little of that same awful downtroddenness and hopelessness as I have seen in my enslaved brethren, the city elves. Perhaps it's the sight of humans not bloodthirsty, not arrogant, not cruel... just miserable.
We head first to the chantry, which appears to be the seat of power in this awful place. The templars there explain the state of things-with the Blight approaching, everyone is preparing to flee north, and all the while Loghain's men are prowling about, plus mercenaries and bandits, and all the more, knights from Arl Eamon who are seeking a relic for some reason or another. A message posted outside the chantry says that some groups of bandits are making a real mess of things, and promises a reward to whoever can find and kill them... as we poke around, we pick up a few more tasks from village folk in need of help. Yes, as much as I won't admit it, these stiff elvish heartstrings are tugged just a little. Generally, my reaction to this is, “stop that, it hurts,” but... hmm.
Some of Loghain's men are hanging around in the tavern, and they make a fuss about having apparently been searching for someone who fits my description. They're obviously intent on picking a fight with whomever will have one even before I say, yes, I am a Grey Warden... which proves to be something of a mistake. Some woman from the sidelines jumps in to speak in our favor; she's clearly foreign, since she has an accent and a bit of an odd manner, too. The soldiers are out for blood, though, and soon we're brawling, but they aren't so dumb that they won't surrender. I send them off with a message for Loghain... that we know what he has done.
I only realize that the woman from before was fighting along with us when she catches my eye afterward, flecked with as much blood as Alistair and I are, and apologizes for joining in. Now I see what the oddness is about her-her name is Leliana, she was a member of the clergy, and she proceeds to explain that the Maker has commanded her to help the Grey Wardens. Well, this confuses and frightens me and the whole rest of the party, but she reveals that she has some rather un-priest-like talents that would be at our disposal if we allowed her to come along. I certainly can't say no to more helping hands, even if they do strike me as a bit looney. I have the sad feeling that she will not be the looniest.
Wait, what, I can only have three other people in my party at a time? Aww, but I want to have everyone in my party. I don't want to have to get rid of anyone, especially my dog, but... my dog can't talk. And I have noticed by now that the party makes pretty darned good banter even if I'm not doing anything interesting. So, well. I will keep Leliana in my party. Thracys can hang out in the... uh, wherever it is that other partymembers go and hang out, until I decide it's time to switch around. Looking at stats, Alistair and I are sixth level while pretty much everyone else is seventh, so if I switch around the others, I hope that our experience will even out after a bit.
Anyway, metagame aside, we go out after the bandits, but on the way, we see a giant man locked in a cage on the outskirts of town, presumably left there to die or to be ripped apart by the oncoming hordes. I'm curious, so I stop to ask who he is.
He says he's a prisoner (I can see that); his name is Sten. Leliana says he murdered an entire family, and this is his sentence. Oh. Seems legit! Morrigan expresses remarkable indignation at his being left to die in this manner (and suggests trading him for Alistair), and I... have apparently resigned myself to a party of lunatics, so, what the heck. He expresses what I think is a genuine desire to atone, and he could be useful, provided we can keep him from murdering anybody else (except Loghain... no, have at Loghain, seriously). Once things with the bandits are all mopped up, I'll talk to the Revered Mother at the chantry to see if she'll release him into our custody.
Hold off, let's tally things up, here. We have: a Witch of the Wilds whom I'm not really sure will restrain herself from murdering Alistair in his sleep, a Mabari hound with great taste in wine, an ex-Sister who may well be utterly mad, and now a giant barbarian man who plead guilty to the murder of a family.
Is this real? Is this sane?
Ahahaha.
Well, then. We take care of the bandits, but on our way back to town... we're stopped by an uncomfortably large group of the refugees. Let's see, here. Makeshift weapons... check. Awkward standing around and staring at us as we approach... check. Reluctant but resigned expressions... oh, dear.
The leader of them explains rather apologetically to us that, well, he doesn't care if we killed the king or not, but the bounty on our heads is enough to help out the village significantly.
Oh, no, guys, don't do that... you're idiots, you won't last ten seconds against us. Guys! Don't make us murder you. ;__; Guys, seriously, would you just surrender? Please? Oh... okay, could one of you surrender? … No?
Well. Fuck.
So we murder about twenty idiots who should probably have known better anyway. I (in-game) don't really care, since they made one hell of a stupid choice, but I (out-of-game) am expecting some serious retribution for this. But... nobody so much as looks twice at us, and the clergy are just as helpful as they were before, and... you know, I have a terrible feeling that it will come back later to bite me in the ass and I should just have not ever, ever mentioned being a Grey Warden at all to anybody.
Welp... not much we can do about it now, except that now the danger of being what we are has started to sink in, and I'll be a little more careful about throwing my title around in the future.
Tangentially, nobody in my party seems even remotely concerned about the bounty on our heads, the increased risk that nobody will help us due to this rumor, or the fact that the rumor exists at all. Are we just... really super-confident that people will believe us over Loghain?
Fuck you, Loghain. Seriously, when I next see you, I swear I will do everything in my power to stab you in the face with my fist, repeatedly.
Back to the matters at hand. On our next visit to the chantry, we run into an old friend of Alistair's, who informs us that Arl Eamon is sick with some illness that no one can cure, and which is rapidly growing worse. This explains why his knights are suddenly scouring the lands for a relic even when the threat of the Blight is so great-some believe that it's the only cure. This clearly distresses Alistair, and it's agreed that we should probably make haste towards Redcliffe. With that, we chat with the Revered Mother and get Sten released, and after turning in the last few quests that I had open, we set off.
Throughout our time in Lothering, I chatted a whole lot with Alistair and Morrigan, or, at least, as much as they would allow me to. I got Morrigan to tell me loads of stories about her mother, Flemeth, and Alistair spilled a little about his childhood, his relationship to the Arl, and his time in the chantry, training to be a templar. I LOVE THIS CHARACTER. He gets more interesting and more human (in the good, sympathetic way, not in the “fitting my character's awful assumptions about humans” way) with every interaction I have with him, and I. FUCKING. LOVE IT.
We kill some darkspawn on the highway and save a couple dwarves, but this time, having learned my lesson, I say nothing about who I am and only that we're certainly heading in different directions. It seems best to leave it at that, and we leave to continue our journey northward.
We cut to a cinematic. I am dreaming, and it's not pretty. In fact, it's horrifying. I see the dragon again, scales and spines glistening with power, mouth dripping and spewing plumes of noxious gas, eyes staring through me... I hear its voice, and although I can't understand the words, they burrow in me and seethe and burn and freeze, and then, suddenly, Alistair wakes me.
We've made camp, the whole motley lot of us. It's a little before dawn, I would say. Alistair explains a little about how the Grey Wardens can sense the archdemon's communication in dreams... tells me that it gets easier to control with time. Privately, this is a comfort, but all I say is that I wasn't frightened. It's only partially a lie... I'm not frightened of the dreams themselves, really. I'm only frightened by what they portend.
Alistair, being the greatest man, admits freely that the dreams made him scream like a little girl.
And that is all for tonight.
I do want to mention, though, a couple things that struck me about earlier sessions but that I failed to mention while I was writing about them. First is that, before Alistair and I had left Flemeth's place in the Wilds with Morrigan, I had tried for the first time to ask him about who he was and why he became a Grey Warden, and there were two big things about this interaction that struck me rather powerfully.
I've been making deliberate choices to have my character overlook or misunderstand Alistair's humor whenever I can, since she is very much all-business and also lacks a certain understanding of human emotions. So, when I asked Alistair how he became a Warden and he said in jest that he choked on darkspawn blood and was miserable the same as I'd done, and had I forgotten already, I figured that Lyna's rather humorless nature would construe this as deflection or even hostility rather than jest, so I replied, “if you don't want to talk about it, just say so.”
To this, Alistair said fairly sadly, “I didn't mean it that way. Don't be like that.” I was really impressed by this-by the fact that he actually called me out on it. I really feel that the game is rewarding me for getting into the roleplaying by having put all this effort into the characters' responses, and the interaction is so satisfying because of this.
The second was that, at a point during Alistair's explanation of how Duncan had recruited him, he says that the cleric in charge of his chantry had been very resistant to letting him go, such that she almost had Duncan arrested and Duncan had to formally invoke the right of conscription. Alistair acts-maybe he actually is, it's hard to tell-completely clueless as to why this lady might be so resistant to letting him go, considering that he really was terrible at his job from the sound of things... and he says all this literally as the camera zooms in to deliberately showcase his fantastically attractive features.
Yeah, Alistair. I can't think of any reason.
I mean, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there's an awful lot going on in this game that tells me I cannot possibly read too much into ANYTHING IN IT. And I love this.
The third thing was that I chanced to be reading through some of Flemeth's dialogue from our first meeting, when I still had Daveth and Jory with me. I noticed that she actually foreshadows to Jory's face that he's going to die. She says something like he doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things. I totally did not catch this at first, but when I was looking back and I happened to read the line, I just about shrieked. Seriously! This game is layered like the most delicious layer cake of fiction, and I fully plan to stuff my face with it until I physically cannot digest any more.
THIS FUCKING GAME. THIS FUCKING GAME.
original entry @ DreamWidth.org -
comments - use OpenID
Anyway! Today I went with ruiza to see her brother graduate from Cornish. It was a really great ceremony... being an arts school, the performances and speeches were a lot of fun. There was a really fantastic performance by a trombone player who had played with Muddy Waters, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington... I felt really lucky to see that. Also, why did I not know that Cornish has a gamelan orchestra? I fucking love gamelan! So, yes, it was very exciting thing, and I was pleased that I went.
They had marvelous cupcakes, too. It was a miracle that I only ate one.
Anyway, when I got home, I, predictably, played more Dragon Age: Origins. It was a session full of fetch-quests, but I also manged to fill it with a lot of chatting with my party, and that was enjoyable. So, this is probably not as exciting (and definitely not as full of capslock) as the last one, but... here it is anyway.
When we last left our heroes, the Dalish elf Lyna had left the ruined city of Ostagar with her fellow Grey Warden, Alistair, and the witch Morrigan. We are heading north to Redcliffe to seek out Arl Eamon, an acquaintance of Alistair's whom he believes will help us rally against Loghain, the general who betrayed us and has spread a rumor that the Grey Wardens are responsible for the King Douchebag Cailan's death. (I feel a little bad about how hard I was on him. Not that he didn't deserve a little kicking around, but... uff.) Anyway, we stop off in a village called Lothering in hopes of getting supplies and information.
The first thing that happens as we enter the village is I stop and I say to my dog, “do you see anything interesting?”
Thracys barks, runs off, and comes back with a hundred-year-old bottle of wine.
Shit. This dog is a winner.
The second thing that happens is that Alistair and Morrigan start to snark at each other, which I will never complain about. The thing that I really liked about this interaction, though, is that Morrigan won't leave him alone for his being upset over Duncan's death, but Alistair will not hear it. Hell, no, Alistair fucking owns his grief, and isn't ashamed of or emasculated by it, AND I LOVE IT! It's admirable, it's wise, and most of all, it's healthy.
As it would turn out, the village is packed to bursting with refugees fleeing the Blight. I'm a pretty stoic sort of elf, and I don't have a lot of sympathy to spare for humans, but the sight of the refugee tents, the tavern and chantry jammed full of as many who'll fit, all those who have already lost loved ones to the darkspawn or to the bandits who have descended on the chaos... it awakens some inconvenient, awkward feelings. Empathy, one might say. Perhaps I see just a little of that same awful downtroddenness and hopelessness as I have seen in my enslaved brethren, the city elves. Perhaps it's the sight of humans not bloodthirsty, not arrogant, not cruel... just miserable.
We head first to the chantry, which appears to be the seat of power in this awful place. The templars there explain the state of things-with the Blight approaching, everyone is preparing to flee north, and all the while Loghain's men are prowling about, plus mercenaries and bandits, and all the more, knights from Arl Eamon who are seeking a relic for some reason or another. A message posted outside the chantry says that some groups of bandits are making a real mess of things, and promises a reward to whoever can find and kill them... as we poke around, we pick up a few more tasks from village folk in need of help. Yes, as much as I won't admit it, these stiff elvish heartstrings are tugged just a little. Generally, my reaction to this is, “stop that, it hurts,” but... hmm.
Some of Loghain's men are hanging around in the tavern, and they make a fuss about having apparently been searching for someone who fits my description. They're obviously intent on picking a fight with whomever will have one even before I say, yes, I am a Grey Warden... which proves to be something of a mistake. Some woman from the sidelines jumps in to speak in our favor; she's clearly foreign, since she has an accent and a bit of an odd manner, too. The soldiers are out for blood, though, and soon we're brawling, but they aren't so dumb that they won't surrender. I send them off with a message for Loghain... that we know what he has done.
I only realize that the woman from before was fighting along with us when she catches my eye afterward, flecked with as much blood as Alistair and I are, and apologizes for joining in. Now I see what the oddness is about her-her name is Leliana, she was a member of the clergy, and she proceeds to explain that the Maker has commanded her to help the Grey Wardens. Well, this confuses and frightens me and the whole rest of the party, but she reveals that she has some rather un-priest-like talents that would be at our disposal if we allowed her to come along. I certainly can't say no to more helping hands, even if they do strike me as a bit looney. I have the sad feeling that she will not be the looniest.
Wait, what, I can only have three other people in my party at a time? Aww, but I want to have everyone in my party. I don't want to have to get rid of anyone, especially my dog, but... my dog can't talk. And I have noticed by now that the party makes pretty darned good banter even if I'm not doing anything interesting. So, well. I will keep Leliana in my party. Thracys can hang out in the... uh, wherever it is that other partymembers go and hang out, until I decide it's time to switch around. Looking at stats, Alistair and I are sixth level while pretty much everyone else is seventh, so if I switch around the others, I hope that our experience will even out after a bit.
Anyway, metagame aside, we go out after the bandits, but on the way, we see a giant man locked in a cage on the outskirts of town, presumably left there to die or to be ripped apart by the oncoming hordes. I'm curious, so I stop to ask who he is.
He says he's a prisoner (I can see that); his name is Sten. Leliana says he murdered an entire family, and this is his sentence. Oh. Seems legit! Morrigan expresses remarkable indignation at his being left to die in this manner (and suggests trading him for Alistair), and I... have apparently resigned myself to a party of lunatics, so, what the heck. He expresses what I think is a genuine desire to atone, and he could be useful, provided we can keep him from murdering anybody else (except Loghain... no, have at Loghain, seriously). Once things with the bandits are all mopped up, I'll talk to the Revered Mother at the chantry to see if she'll release him into our custody.
Hold off, let's tally things up, here. We have: a Witch of the Wilds whom I'm not really sure will restrain herself from murdering Alistair in his sleep, a Mabari hound with great taste in wine, an ex-Sister who may well be utterly mad, and now a giant barbarian man who plead guilty to the murder of a family.
Is this real? Is this sane?
Ahahaha.
Well, then. We take care of the bandits, but on our way back to town... we're stopped by an uncomfortably large group of the refugees. Let's see, here. Makeshift weapons... check. Awkward standing around and staring at us as we approach... check. Reluctant but resigned expressions... oh, dear.
The leader of them explains rather apologetically to us that, well, he doesn't care if we killed the king or not, but the bounty on our heads is enough to help out the village significantly.
Oh, no, guys, don't do that... you're idiots, you won't last ten seconds against us. Guys! Don't make us murder you. ;__; Guys, seriously, would you just surrender? Please? Oh... okay, could one of you surrender? … No?
Well. Fuck.
So we murder about twenty idiots who should probably have known better anyway. I (in-game) don't really care, since they made one hell of a stupid choice, but I (out-of-game) am expecting some serious retribution for this. But... nobody so much as looks twice at us, and the clergy are just as helpful as they were before, and... you know, I have a terrible feeling that it will come back later to bite me in the ass and I should just have not ever, ever mentioned being a Grey Warden at all to anybody.
Welp... not much we can do about it now, except that now the danger of being what we are has started to sink in, and I'll be a little more careful about throwing my title around in the future.
Tangentially, nobody in my party seems even remotely concerned about the bounty on our heads, the increased risk that nobody will help us due to this rumor, or the fact that the rumor exists at all. Are we just... really super-confident that people will believe us over Loghain?
Fuck you, Loghain. Seriously, when I next see you, I swear I will do everything in my power to stab you in the face with my fist, repeatedly.
Back to the matters at hand. On our next visit to the chantry, we run into an old friend of Alistair's, who informs us that Arl Eamon is sick with some illness that no one can cure, and which is rapidly growing worse. This explains why his knights are suddenly scouring the lands for a relic even when the threat of the Blight is so great-some believe that it's the only cure. This clearly distresses Alistair, and it's agreed that we should probably make haste towards Redcliffe. With that, we chat with the Revered Mother and get Sten released, and after turning in the last few quests that I had open, we set off.
Throughout our time in Lothering, I chatted a whole lot with Alistair and Morrigan, or, at least, as much as they would allow me to. I got Morrigan to tell me loads of stories about her mother, Flemeth, and Alistair spilled a little about his childhood, his relationship to the Arl, and his time in the chantry, training to be a templar. I LOVE THIS CHARACTER. He gets more interesting and more human (in the good, sympathetic way, not in the “fitting my character's awful assumptions about humans” way) with every interaction I have with him, and I. FUCKING. LOVE IT.
We kill some darkspawn on the highway and save a couple dwarves, but this time, having learned my lesson, I say nothing about who I am and only that we're certainly heading in different directions. It seems best to leave it at that, and we leave to continue our journey northward.
We cut to a cinematic. I am dreaming, and it's not pretty. In fact, it's horrifying. I see the dragon again, scales and spines glistening with power, mouth dripping and spewing plumes of noxious gas, eyes staring through me... I hear its voice, and although I can't understand the words, they burrow in me and seethe and burn and freeze, and then, suddenly, Alistair wakes me.
We've made camp, the whole motley lot of us. It's a little before dawn, I would say. Alistair explains a little about how the Grey Wardens can sense the archdemon's communication in dreams... tells me that it gets easier to control with time. Privately, this is a comfort, but all I say is that I wasn't frightened. It's only partially a lie... I'm not frightened of the dreams themselves, really. I'm only frightened by what they portend.
Alistair, being the greatest man, admits freely that the dreams made him scream like a little girl.
And that is all for tonight.
I do want to mention, though, a couple things that struck me about earlier sessions but that I failed to mention while I was writing about them. First is that, before Alistair and I had left Flemeth's place in the Wilds with Morrigan, I had tried for the first time to ask him about who he was and why he became a Grey Warden, and there were two big things about this interaction that struck me rather powerfully.
I've been making deliberate choices to have my character overlook or misunderstand Alistair's humor whenever I can, since she is very much all-business and also lacks a certain understanding of human emotions. So, when I asked Alistair how he became a Warden and he said in jest that he choked on darkspawn blood and was miserable the same as I'd done, and had I forgotten already, I figured that Lyna's rather humorless nature would construe this as deflection or even hostility rather than jest, so I replied, “if you don't want to talk about it, just say so.”
To this, Alistair said fairly sadly, “I didn't mean it that way. Don't be like that.” I was really impressed by this-by the fact that he actually called me out on it. I really feel that the game is rewarding me for getting into the roleplaying by having put all this effort into the characters' responses, and the interaction is so satisfying because of this.
The second was that, at a point during Alistair's explanation of how Duncan had recruited him, he says that the cleric in charge of his chantry had been very resistant to letting him go, such that she almost had Duncan arrested and Duncan had to formally invoke the right of conscription. Alistair acts-maybe he actually is, it's hard to tell-completely clueless as to why this lady might be so resistant to letting him go, considering that he really was terrible at his job from the sound of things... and he says all this literally as the camera zooms in to deliberately showcase his fantastically attractive features.
Yeah, Alistair. I can't think of any reason.
I mean, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there's an awful lot going on in this game that tells me I cannot possibly read too much into ANYTHING IN IT. And I love this.
The third thing was that I chanced to be reading through some of Flemeth's dialogue from our first meeting, when I still had Daveth and Jory with me. I noticed that she actually foreshadows to Jory's face that he's going to die. She says something like he doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things. I totally did not catch this at first, but when I was looking back and I happened to read the line, I just about shrieked. Seriously! This game is layered like the most delicious layer cake of fiction, and I fully plan to stuff my face with it until I physically cannot digest any more.
THIS FUCKING GAME. THIS FUCKING GAME.
original entry @ DreamWidth.org -
comments - use OpenID