Shem Fatale

Dragon Age: Inquisition | Spring In Thedas (Exalted Plains)

“Me? I’m no one. Lived near Redcliffe all my life. Herded sheep for my neighbor. When the Inquisition came through my village, I helped by telling them everything I knew about the area. Then I signed on. Wanted to see the world before it was swallowed up by… that thing out there.”

anyone can offer you a chance to see the world. adventure, beautiful foreign sights, respect for your skill, status when you go home, community and camaraderie among your fellow fighters. chances that you might never usually get as an ‘ordinary’ person, in this case living in a rural area as a (fantasy) minority. honestly for me the whole “get out there and see the world!” thing specifically evokes the real world evil of like, classic military recruitment rhetoric. it’s all a big adventure! never mind what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be doing it to.

and our first sight of harding is a confident smirk when she kills. (which we’re supposed to feel fine about and maybe think that she’s a #girlboss, because remember the mages and templars are Crazy, so killing them indiscriminately is fine. but let’s imagine dai is a serious game.) she obviously took very easily to violence in the inquisition’s name before she’d met any of the inquisition’s leaders, before the inquisition had a real direction, and before they had a simple-to-justify, no-longer-human enemy like corypheus. if she could be convinced to do all that by the inquisition’s scouts, then why not anyone else offering the same things? why not an inquisition that was actually, you know, an inquisition?

despite leading with wanting to see the world and not even mentioning any kind of moral motivation, harding definitely perceives herself as a good person and i don’t think she would go for anything that didn’t have a veneer of righteousness. she takes pride in the inquisition and what she believes to be its purpose. but any organisation can say they’re doing it for the good and order and stability of the world, right. any organisation can pass you that message through a recruiter who at least sounds like they believe it. and as a scout on the ground you’re so far from the war table that you will never really know why the people directing you are making their decisions. and you opt to kill whoever they tell you to kill anyway. even in some impossibly hypothetical world where those decisions are all just and measured and necessary, can it ever possibly be moral to just hand over your conscience like that? to kill blindly because those are your orders?

i feel like harding’s narrative veers so closely to real world recruitment rhetoric that i don’t just find it uninteresting to be like Yay It All Worked Out :), i find it Bad. this is not heroic when it happens in real life and i don’t think it should be heroic here. i know i’m in the genre where Pure And Honourable Warfare Of Our Innocent Boys And Girls Against Inhuman Monsters or Perhaps The Inherently Evil Foreign Horde of Baddies is virulently everywhere but i think that’s precisely why we should be aware and critical of it and thinking around it not just accepting it as fact you know

(With dialogue from Origins, II, and Inquisition!)

My pal @boltlightning had this galaxy brain idea! I decided to build it out for fun.

Inspired by the 45 by 45 connections puzzle by Thomas Colthurst, and using its code as a base, I have made a fun(? hopefully!) game for people whose brains are full of Dragon Age quotes.

Here's how you play:

Click a quote that you recognize, then click on another quote spoken by the same person to stack them together.

Keep on clicking quotes and adding them to the correct stacks. (You can also add two stacks together.) When you have collected all of someone's quotes into one stack, it will show that your collection is complete by transforming into their name.

Don't worry - you don't have to finish the game in one go! Even if you close the window, your progress should save - as long as you come back with the same browser/device, you can continue where you left off.

The game will be complete once you have collected 27 stacks of 12 quotes each by 27 different Dragon Age characters. (All from DAO, DA2, and DAI! Sorry, I just haven't played DAV enough to have a brain full of quotes about it.)

PLAY THE GAME IN-BROWSER HERE

History repeating itself.

updated March 26, 2026

Ferelden, 8:82 Blessed.

The Orlesian occupation rules the land with an iron fist while revolutionaries fight and die under the Rebel Queen's banner. As the recently promoted Knight-Corporal of Kinloch Hold's Circle of Magi, you are a proud member of the Templar Order, a 'politically neutral' force for good in this time of great darkness. So when your Knight-Captain absconds with a heavily pregnant mage, you are assigned the arduous task of hunting them down—as quickly and as discreetly as possible.

Yet all is not what it seems. Malevolent forces prowl both the dreaming and waking worlds, and a betrayal from within your ranks forces a choice: deliver the child to a distant safe haven, or die. Now saddled with a newborn and with no real alternatives, you find yourself leading an eclectic group of outcasts through a land torn apart by civil war, where loyalties, allegiances, and faith will all be put to the ultimate test.

Story & Features

A story-rich interactive fanfic set during the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden, about fifty years before the events of DAO.

Make choices and face outcomes, but be warned: the consequences are not always yours to pay.

Customizable PC including appearance, name, and gender identity.

Choose from four different backgrounds to determine your surname and unique starting origin in the Prologue.

Are you merciless or empathetic? Loyal or rebellious? Devout or questioning? Unlock special dialogues and actions through sheer force of personality.

Balance your lyrium gauge to utilize powerful templar abilities...or don't. Only good dogs heed the leash.

Multiple endings for both the main story and individual companions, including romances.

Companions & Romance

Lead a group of five companions through civil war-torn Ferelden and beyond. Form connections: influence and be influenced in return.

Will you cultivate an unbreakable bond with a friend, or earn the begrudging respect of a rival? Featuring a DA2-inspired friendship/rivalry system.

Pursue one of four romance options with or without your pants on (ace friendly). Two options for PCs of all genders, one for male & nonbinary PCs, and one for female & nonbinary PCs.

Sometimes a crew is six strangers, a weird baby, and a dog. The dog's name is customizable; the baby's is not.

Links