Heart of Stone

Elthina wasn’t a sweet innocent grandmother. She was one of the Empire’s generals. The brothers and sisters and missionaries of the clergy were its soldiers. You can cloud it in as much religious iconography as you want but that doesn’t change the fact. There are lots of generals who want peace and lots of soldiers who want absolutely nothing to do with actual physical fighting, who care about helping people. But if they go into their position completely deluded about the reality of what it is, that doesn’t make them innocent. It is wrong to attack people for their religious beliefs. It is not wrong to attack people who are trying to infringe on your rights and manipulate the law for the benefit of their own absolute rule, even if they’re doing it by way of or under guise of practicing their religion. Religion stops being about differences of belief when it starts being backed by military power. The Chantry has had this since day one. They were always free to trample over anyone and anything they wanted and to paint those people in as negative a light as possible to justify their actions. The Chantry has never, once in their entire span of existence, ever been about diplomacy or peace or talking anything out. Ever. The Orlesian Empire and the Chantry have been in each other’s pockets since their inception. There are a whole lot of times where they practically act as a single entity. Orlais pumped a ton of power into the Chantry early on, and it was an incredibly wise investment. Orlais has always been about sucking up as much of Thedas as possible for themselves, and the Chantry learned how to imitate them so well that they eventually even surpassed them. Maybe it’s cynical, but it looks like the places where Orlais really started to falter and fail were the places where they couldn’t rely on the Chantry to come running to help them out by declaring an Exalted March on their enemies. And then even when Orlais lost power, it was still connected enough to the Chantry—and the Chantry’s constantly expanding power—that they never really completely got crushed. If you’re curious about the details, there’s a free quick-and-dirty history lesson under the cut.

Dragon Age 30 Day Challenge

(Day 2) Favorite Character

Loghain Mac Tir. 

I won’t lie. During my first play through I killed him, and didn’t regret it for a second.

I was playing the game solely on the surface. I didn’t care about the motivations of, well, anyone really.

Over the course of reading up on the game, after I bought it, I managed to spoil a good part of the ending for myself. It’s a habit that I still cannot manage to break in for any of my fandoms.

What really caught my eye was the idea that I could be Queen. What little kid doesn’t dream of being King or Queen someday? I know I sure did. 

That’s what I set out to do, and I did it.

[Insert period of time during which I became obsessed with Dragon Age fan fiction, over-modding my game, and all things Alistair. I played Dragon Age 2, romanced Anders, and waited on baited breath for a cameo from my favorite cheese-loving King of Ferelden.]

Eventually, though, something changed. I’m not sure what, and I’m not sure when. All I know is I was seeing Thedas in a whole new light.

In fact, I was looking at everything in a whole new light.

Mostly I realized not everything is black and white. The world is a big grey area. 

I also developed an obsession with fictional antagonists (Loki, Zod, etc.). It was the whole tall, dark, and deadly thing.

(My personal DA canon went from what Mass Effect would consider the “Paragon” path to what my headcanons would consider “Renegon”.)

One day I was looking up random pairings on FF.net (before I discovered the ever-glorious AO3) and came across Arsinoe de Blassenville’s “Victory at Ostagar”. After reading about half of that story (I haven’t actually finished it. It’s perpetually on my to-do list.), I started reading up on Loghain. 

Knowing why he made the decisions he made shed yet another whole new light on the whole of Dragon Age: Origins.

The man made mistakes. Big ones. And most Loghain fans I know don’t make excuses for him. They do, however, look at the events surrounding the game from his point of view.

Even if I didn’t like Loghain as a “person” (which I do), his character arc is truly one of the best I’ve ever come across. In anything. Ever. 

I always think of Harvey Dent’s quote: ”You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” when thinking of the Teryn, even though I hate the word “villain”. I much prefer “antagonist”.

Dragon Age place claim for “Unshaken by the Darkness" 

The Fade

The study of the Fade is as old as humankind. For so long as men have dreamed, we have walked its twisting paths, sometimes catching a glimpse of the city at its heart. Always as close as our own thoughts, but impossibly separated from our world.

The Tevinter Imperium once spent vast fortunes of gold, lyrium, and human slaves in an effort to map the terrain of the Fade, an ultimately futile endeavor. Although portions of it belong to powerful spirits, all of the Fade is in constant flux. The Imperium succeeded in finding the disparate and ever-shifting realms of a dozen demon lords, as well as cataloging a few hundred types of spirits, before they were forced to abandon the project.

The relationship of dreamers to the Fade is complex. Even when entering the Fade through the use of lyrium, mortals are not able to control or affect it. The spirits who dwell there, however, can, and as the Chantry teaches us, the great flaw of the spirits is that they have neither imagination nor ambition. They create what they see through their sleeping visitors, building elaborate copies of our cities, people, and events, which, like the reflections in a mirror, ultimately lack context or life of their own. Even the most powerful demons merely plagiarize the worst thoughts and fears of mortals, and build their realms with no other ambition than to taste life.

—From Tranquility and the Role of the Fade in Human Culture, by First Enchanter Josephus.

Top 5 misconceptions about evolution: A guide to demystify the foundation of modern biology.

Version 1.0

Here is an infographic to help inform citizens.  From my experience most people who misunderstand evolution are actually misinformed about what science is and how it operates.  That said, here are five of the biggest barriers faced when one explains evolution - I have faced these and they are documented in the literature.

I hope you can build on my work and improve the communication between the scientists and the public.

I decided to separate them to make it easier to keep track of my RPs.  If you were RPing with Risa on this blog, please be aware you’ll be getting responses from the ExiledPrincessofOrzammar.

Take a look at him there.

What do you see?

I’ll tell you what I see. I see someone deeply troubled, consumed by self loathing, guilt and regrets spiraling further down as time progresses and circumstances beyond anyone’s control are weighing him down bit by bit until he almost snaps.

This isn’t the expression of an evil being determined to make a power grab.

I decided to separate them to make it easier to keep track of my RPs.  If you were RPing with Risa on this blog, please be aware you’ll be getting responses from the ExiledPrincessofOrzammar.

I decided to separate them to make it easier to keep track of my RPs.  If you were RPing with Risa on this blog, please be aware you’ll be getting responses from the ExiledPrincessofOrzammar.

I decided to separate them to make it easier to keep track of my RPs.  If you were RPing with Risa on this blog, please be aware you’ll be getting responses from the ExiledPrincessofOrzammar.

I decided to separate them to make it easier to keep track of my RPs.  If you were RPing with Risa on this blog, please be aware you’ll be getting responses from the ExiledPrincessofOrzammar.