#last flight

1. Isseya is already established as a morally gray character, willing to do basically anything if it meant ending the Fourth Blight, even when it went against her own personal morals.

2. Her Calling advanced quickly because of the blight, and it's theorized in Last Flight that all her use of Blood Magic probably didn't help, either.

3. She has been alive for CENTURIES after she should have died on her Calling. She is more Darkspawn than elf, more akin to The Architect or Corypheus than she is Davrin, by the time we meet her in game.

4. And this is the doozy, in the novel The Calling, we see what happens when Wardens don't die on their Calling. We know what happens when they let their taint change them. We saw what happened when the Architect advanced their Calling so that they might keep their minds... They didn't. After only months, Bregan starts to lose it. The blight is anger. It's rage. It is a literal plague of HATE. And it twists not just his body, but his mind too.

So, imagine Isseya, already angry. Already wracked with guilt, grief, and righteous anger when she goes on her Calling. And then she doesn't die, but Revas, her griffon, does. And so Isseya is all alone, festering in her own negative emotions for centuries, all while the blight in her veins slowly takes over and whispers nothing but hate directly into her brain. For over 400 YEARS.

And it all comes down to the Wardens. She blames them for what she became, for the fate of the griffons (understandably so), and her madness spirals into making an alternate Weisshaupt, recruiting her own order of Blighted Wardens.

(side note: was she working with The Architect? Because this is some Architect shit.)

And then Ghilan'nain shows up with an offer to help "save" the griffons. And Isseya is blighted, driven mad with centuries of unmitigated hate. So she takes Ghilan'nain's offer, never once seeing how she's being used all over again. Because the blight has blinded her with hate for the Wardens.

Isseya's character hasn't been botched. They didn't do her dirty. Her story is SAD. Heartbreaking even. It's a tragedy and a warning, of what that much hate can do to a person.

Did I wish better for her? Absolutely. I loved Isseya in Last Flight, and my heart broke for her then. But unraveling the Gloom Howler that first time? Realizing who she was and WHY this was happening? It was an amazing experience. (The way I said, "oh, Isseya"??? Tear my heart to shreds, Bioware.)

But, just because Isseya's fate is tragic, doesn't mean she was written poorly. From what we know about her, the blight, and the Calling, her character is actually very consistent and believable.

Dragon age art challenge: Grey Wardens

Day 5 (final). Warden

Isseya, Garahel's sister, the heroine of Fourth Blight

The first griffin Isseya put through the joining was already blighted in battle, and dying from it. Quickly. Griffins are extra sensitive to the Blight and any attempts made to join them resulted in the animals going berserk and tearing themselves, and anyone else in range, to pieces to get away from what was now in their veins.

In a well meaning, but misguided effort to save one of the animals she loved, she used blood magic to alter the griffon's mind, to convince it the Blight in it's system was just a regular cold, and it didn't need to fight it, then put it through the joining.

It worked, but it changed the griffon. Made it stronger, fight harder. More difficult to handle. The griffon ultimately went out in a spectacular blaze of glory, and people didn't know what she did, just that she did SOMETHING, and that griffon did ten griffons worth of damage on it's way out.

The fourth blight was far worse, far longer than any of the blights we have witnessed first hand. I think it lasted like 15 years? And it was going badly for Thedas. They ordered Isseya to do what she had done to the first griffon again as a last ditch to stand a chance at I *think* Starkhaven (it's been a little bit since I read last flight, so I'm sketchy on dates and what battles were fought specifically when). She hated doing this, but it was orders, and it was exploit this handful of griffons or watch the world die. She's a warden, she signed up to stop the blight at any cost. In war, victory. In death, sacrifice.

By the time her brother Garahel slays Andoral, she's had to blight a number of griffons, and the constant blood magic use has massively accelerated the blight in her own body. Her brother garahel is this golden haired pretty boy beloved by everyone who looks upon him, and Isseya looks so much like a ghoul at this point people are uncomfortable being in the same room as her. Even though this is completely due to her service to the wardens.

Then, the remaining joined griffons start going mad. And then it starts to spread to the other, non-joined griffons. In using blood magic to convince the griffons the blight was just a disease, she had caused it to become one. A contagious one.

It's one of the most interesting examples of how dangerous blood magic actually is we ever see. We're just told over and over "blood magic bad, slippery slope to killing people. Bad. Even if you use your own." And we never really see explicitly why it's an inherently dangerous form of magic until this.

Back to Isseya though. Garahel's lover's Griffon had a clutch of eggs sired by Garahel's Crookytail. Isseya, knowing there was no stopping what was now in motion with the griffons, set out to do her one last act of penance. She took, and purified those eggs, hid them in a ward that kept them in stasis, so that they might only hatch once the griffons were gone, and this disease had died with them, so they might have a chance. And then she hid the clues to their location, and begged that whoever find them not let them be used by the wardens again.

And then she went on her calling.

These are not the actions of a villain. Isseya EMBODIES the warden principal of sacrifice. But it isn't glorious battle rewarded by a quick death alongside an archdemon for her. It's death by inches, by blight, knowingly and willingly accelerated in her own body to stop it from consuming the world. Sacrificing her ideals, the animals she loves, her brother, Garahel. Isseya gives it all for the wardens, to end the blight, and is not thanked for it or remembered kindly.

And she did everything she could to seed the slightest bit of hope, that both in spite of her and because of her, griffons might return to the world, as free creatures.

Her Veilguard arc feels like really egregious character assassination, and I wish she had been given an ounce of the sympathy that other characters had been given. It made sense for her to be here, thematically, mistakes and regret, and good intentions still leading to bad ends, but she deserved the same opportunity for forgiveness and/or redemption that Solas, Mythal, Cyrian, even Illario got.

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Benedict Cumberbatch To Star In Thriller ‘Last Flight’.

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Benedict joined the Cotswolds House Draw campaign in aid of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

🏡my post / Stroud Times article

⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ FIN ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹

BONUS: February gifsets

Isseya, a mage, would have been so weak after her last flight with Revas at the end of the Fourth Blight. Worn out by her Calling, would she perhaps have met a Fade spirit that could have extended her lifespan? Would that spirit have changed and become the Gloomstalker? (this abomination would need a colloquial Elvish or Anders name instead of "Gloomstalker", IMO, but it would ultimately reveal itself by name as a spirit of some virtue or vice).

Isseya persists, corrupted by the intensity of her grief, so far gone that she has raised the bones of the griffons that sickened and died from the Joining. In her unending madness, the only way she could think of to pursue forgiveness is to twist magic into reanimating the griffons she'd poisoned. Maybe we are confronted with her astride a skeletal Revas, a ghoulish version of the Warden she once was. The Cauldron becomes her stronghold, her anchor point. She cares for the eyrie, maybe even directing the griffons to attack darkspawn in the Hossberg area of the Anderfels. Does she extract every last speck of the Taint from the bones, taking it into herself as she did with the clutch of eggs, purifying the griffons while further corrupting herself?

She may compel the reanimated griffons to attack the living Wardens - maybe because of the grudge she holds against the Order from Ages ago, or maybe because she can no longer distinguish between the taint in a Warden versus the taint in a Darkspawn. Or perhaps she kills Wardens herself to fuel the blood magic she uses to purify the griffons.

Can you imagine the feeling of fighting masses of undead griffons to get to Isseya and end her hold on the wetlands? The horror of Davrin being forced to order Assan to attack the corpses of his ancestors? What if Smoke or Crookytail was among them?

Would Isseya really be unjustified, if these were her actions? Would we empathize with her, or would we smite her for her deeds?

Maybe she has no idea the clutch of eggs she once purified and hid away has hatched, and seeing the hatchlings is the catalyst that begins to eat away the corrosion on her spirit.

Maybe there is something left of Garahel in the Fade, and it is drawn to the Cauldron to reunite with Isseya and stop her from continuing her ghastly work. And if that happened, would we finally glimpse what becomes of a Warden's spirit after they slay an Archdemon? If Garahel's spirit did emerge from the Fade, would it be partly him and partly Andoral? And would Isseya's spirit be soothed or enraged by his presence?

Recently, I participated in the Dragon Age Big Bang and was paired with @talesoferyngalen on their fic "Falling Feels Like Flying", which is now live over on the @dragonagebigbang tumblr.

I was very pleased with the piece I did for the fic and wanted to highlight it here. The scene it comes from is great (the whole fic is great) and when I first read it, the imagery just popped into my head and I was like "This is it. I have to draw this."

So, without further ado, here's Isseya about to make a potentially Bad Decision:

Benedict Cumberbatch To Star In Thriller ‘Last Flight’; Protagonist Launching For EFM.

HOW IT'S GOING: