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But what always gets me is the scale of the decisions and judgments they’re forced to make and the horrifying consequences. Choose the mages or the templars, and one of those groups is left to suffer in horrific ways - torment, torture, death, madness, mutilation. Thousands are left to violence inflicted on them, force-fed blight. Then there are the consequences that ripple out from those choices too - villages enslaved, people forced into manual labour, innocent people killed, ordinary lives ruined because of decisions made from a war table by the Inquisitor.

Those are the choices the Inquisitor has to live with. Every time they look into the eyes of a blighted templar or a blighted mage before cutting them down, they’re killing someone they left to their fate. Someone who might have been saved, if the Inquisitor had chosen differently.

What does Solas say? "Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain."

And imagine the people who’d hate them for that.

Then the Inquisitor has to sit in judgment on a throne and decide the fate of individuals. And in the words of Josie, lives should never be used as currency. But in war - in a supernatural war - they are and the Inquisitor can use them as such. Do you use those lives for your own needs? Do you cut them down in vengeance, or give them a punishment that fits the crime?

And better yet - what if they’re good at the Game?

My own Inquisitor chooses Briala. It’s one of the few moments in the story where I let my Dalish Inquisitor make a selfish decision, one that’s meant to benefit her people. But that decision results in the death of the Empress, and while that isn’t what she wanted, it happened, and now that's another person's blood that stains her hands.

So now you have an Inquisitor who isn’t just making battlefield decisions. They’re wheeling and dealing in secrets, spying, blackmailing, and exchanging information through the shadows. Whether they love the Game or hate it doesn’t really matter - they still sought out the secrets and manipulated powerful people - they pulled the strings of a massive political and military dynasty.

The War Table missions throw in even more consequences depending on what choices you make in succession. Maybe they don't feel as tense as we only read of the consequences, we don't see them with our own eyes. There are a series of Grey Warden missions that if you choose poorly, can push them almost to extinction. And how many agents and assassins did the Inquisitor have at their fingertips to deploy at will? It continued on even past Trespasser - that pesky Inquisitor, getting involved in Nevarran business - who do they thing they are?

And whether you have an Inquisitor who revels in the role or rejects it, the Inquisitor still enacted judgment. They still made those choices and caused irrevocable harm to other people. They were always destroying a world that belonged to someone else. They were always making people living comfortably, very uncomfortable. Solas has dialogue in Veilguard about how his own rebellion made comfortable people, uncomfortable - it would seem if anyone knows what the Inquisitor faces best, it's him.

I imagine some people being delighted to see the great Eye and Sword emblem of the Inquisitor marching into town - while others feared it, or hated it.

And what will the propaganda say about our beloved Inquisitor two hundred years from now, especially considering what was erased about Ameridan? Considering how history changed the tales of the Fen'Harel - the Dread Wolf?

Dorian seemed almost downright prophetic when he said Magister Pavus couldn’t come to Skyhold and be seen with the “dread Inquisitor.” Imagine a servant in that inn, working quietly in the back, overhearing this conversation. They catch that one title - the dread Inquisitor - and whisper it to someone else. Then that person whispers it to someone else, and before you know it:

The Dread Inquisitor, indeed.

So, how does all this weigh on a person?

we know that Orlais conquered Fereldan and that Fereldan gained its independence, and that Tevinter and the Qunari both fight for control over Seheron and are resisted by its native population—but there's nothing at all in the history that should give somebody from Fereldan (as Hawke is) the idea that Seheron is the "land of spices" in the way that India was to the English

The concept of "race" absolutely does exist in Thedas, as has been confirmed by dev comments out of game, written in World of Thedas vol. 1, and in-game dialogue. Darker skinned people in Thedas canonically suffer from colourism/racism. This is a choice the devs made because I guess they couldn't possibly imagine a fantasy world where that doesn't exist.

The entirety of Thedas is colonized... but even after human colonization, we have a plethora of examples of human-run nations colonizing other human-run nations. Mostly from Orlais and Tevinter. And in terms of specifically colonizing for the purpose of extracting - well, Kirkwall is right there, with its history of being nothing but a mining colony for Tevinter. We don't even know what happened to the people who lived in the area known as Kirkwall prior to this, other than that they existed, because we're just not supposed to think about it I guess...

There is indeed canonical confirmation that Seheron exports spices. From Hard in Hightown: "They say you can buy anything in the Lowtown Bazaar. It's mostly true. On the right day, you can find vendors hawking spices from Seheron..." And the writers have indeed thrown around the word "exotic" to describe Rivain (and Rivaini themselves) especially.

The "smells of spices" probably stems specifically from this line of dialouge from Sten in DAO: "I miss the smells of Seheron. Tea and incense and the sea. Ferelden smells of wet dogs."

@/icewa1ker has gone into greater detail about what a mess of orientalism BioWare has inserted into the games when it comes to Rivain especially. Really great posts.

Mother of Halla | Ghilan’nain

For @evanurisweek 💖💖