eight marks the final kill

also just saying but i think illario as a mage has some very fun applications. in this beautiful world lucanis is partially trained to be his own personal templar. caterina sees magical power and fears it, but loves it enough to want to control it. lucanis is fed lyrium to help “manage” illario despite illario’s self control being so drilled into him that he’d resist all temptation. magekiller gets a whole new meaning and despite lucanis and illario’s best attempts at being brothers, some kind of real camaraderie that rises above the resentment once in a while, how do you ever get over the fact that he is trained to kill people like you. lucanis is even more miserable. mage-templar tensions in a new and weird exciting way. and then the lyrium that is in lucanis’ body is the perfect place for a demon to settle in and thrive so caterina inadvertently creates a mage so backwardsly repressed that he can’t even get possessed otherwise he Loses some imaginary fight with his grandma, vs. a templar that’s been taking so much lyrium that a demon burrows its way into him. anyone else understand me orrr

the other thing about the crows being the way they are in veilguard is that i genuinely think it makes zevran's arc in origins look worse. a story about a person who needs to be shown mercy and friendship before he can even start to fathom living a life outside of them, fighting back against the organisation that abused him and he's literally just a rank and file crow so there must be hundreds of crows with the same story as him. which would lead me to believe there would be moral/idealogical conflicts if you try to play a 'good' rook interacting with the heir to a crow house, especially first talon. maybe this is a bit of metagaming in that the player knows more about how terrible the crows are than a pc would. but also can we be for real the thedas equivalent of the mob not being taken seriously? rook walks to talon number seven and is like "heyyyy so you're the guy?" and doesn't even blanche at the realisation that this is a talon? i should have been given the option to cuss out viago just because he IS a talon like legitimately what can eg. a veil jumper know about the crows beyond that they are dangerous and shouldn't be trusted unless you have the gold to ensure it. but instead you kind of walk up to marlon brando and he's like "luigi great you brought me these two random guys. now don't tell anyone you two but youse must go save my grandson. i trust youse above anyone else to do this." like why the fuck is marlon brando telling me this shit. and presumably if a foreign national private investigator (neve) can set up a meeting with the mob boss then weirdly enough it makes caterina look so stupidly accessible like mind you not even loghain met a talon in person. there wasn't even a stupid test of faith before you walk into the top floor of their casino. in fact helping an orphan entrench himself further into the crows and help them recruit EVEN MORE orphans into the mob is treated as quote unquote good because the crows rule antiva. and this is supposed to be the leadership of the antivan crows who made zevran's life so utterly miserable he thought he had to kill himself to get out of it. from what you see in veilguard there's nothing to even run away from they are so comically frustratingly nothingburgers

always mad over when the writers forget a character has other relationships, or don’t bother showing it in favor of another dynamic they are a part of. like the course of action they’re taking utterly pipebombs the other important people in their life but the writers don’t care because they need this scene to be dramatic and nothing else matters . i guess