#lucanshit

I'm happy that I called Neve Gallus and Lace Harding as companions in DA4. Neve looks amazing!

Really really wish I'd been wrong about Lucanishit Dellamorte.

The story 'The Wigmaker' in Tevinter Nights of the so called 'mage-killer' (who would actually be Marius or Tessa thank you very much) was one of the most poorly characterized pieces of crap I've ever read in my entire 12 years as an editor.

And trust me, please, when I say I've had to edit some real stinkers.

Agree with me or not, I honestly don't care. I know I'm right. Why?

Because there's science behind what works in writing good characters, good settings, good (insert a part of a story).

Editors like me exist to gently (or sometimes not so gently) smack an author over the head with the 'no, that's a ridiculous idea, perhaps tweak it to this instead' stick. And that character was ridiculous on so many levels.

I've already had people get rudely in my face for sharing a personal (and professional) opinion about Lucanishit today.

Reading is subjective. But what that actually means, is that what I like in a story, and what another person likes in a story will be different.

It's not a statement on professional quality of the story in question. That's a completely different topic.

It's very possible to enjoy a story with bad any of the above. Especially if you love reading and weren't foolish enough to become an editor like me.

Word to the wise, if you love reading? Don't become an editor. You end up developing all these pesky standards and knowledge about how story works (and how it doesn't).

It's even possible to enjoy a story that's poorly written or edited. But that enjoyment, which, yes, is absolutely subjective, is still not the same as whether the character, story, setting, or writing are actually good in the professional sense.

I have several NYT bestselling clients. I've worked in and around trad pub and indie pub for more than a decade. How story works is absolutely one of my AuDHD special interests, and as such, I've studied the nuts and bolts of it like I do any of my special interests. I'm not talking out of my ass here.

The fact is that some things work in writing, and some things don't. Some things work in particular types of stories, and some things don't. It's just the nature of the beast.

Seriously. Without being pissed off at me for disliking a story you may have liked? Think about it and read my professional issues with the character.

Something I feel we, as writers, need to constantly be doing is improving our craft. It always surprises me how many writers just get pissy and attack rather than taking the opportunity to engage in free education.

Because when an experienced professional of any sort breaks something down like this, that's what we're doing. Offering free education. (Tips are very much appreciated.)

This critique is based on the story 'The Wigmaker' in Tevinter Nights where we first meet Lucanis. I really hope the Lucanis we get in game will be different.

In the entirety of the DA series (books, games, comics, everything) have you ever seen an Antivan Crow act like such a chuny, emo edgelord? Nope.

A supposed Antivan Crow strutting around like some arrogant, badly imagined, assassin version of Harry Dresden just doesn't work.

Crows are wraiths. Shadows. The whole point is that no one sees them coming!

They don't advertise like Lucanishit does. Which is why I'd rather hoped it would be his cousin Illario chosen as the romanceable companion. He actually knows how to blend in. Illario spends a lot of the story rightfully calling Lucanis on his bullshit methods.

The first of many editorial hiccups in 'The Wigmaker' is that you really are very unlikely to shove a sword through a wall like that. And a supposedly experienced assassin would probably know that?

Even modern walls have studs and often solid insulation and wires in them.

But we're talking medieval like walls, which tended to be stone or lathe and plaster. Those walls are basically a sandwich of wooden lathes with stone/gravel fill in the middle, then plaster on top. You are not shoving a sword through one. You can barely drill through one with a power drill! Even if you did manage to? It would very likely ruin the blade.

Also, that would not be the shape of the wound if you actually did manage to shove your sword through one of those walls without breaking it and into someone's hand. Because hands have these weird things called bones in them.

Fan art has Crows as more flashy, sure, but in the series itself? The most you see is skin tight clothing and dangerous eyes.

Going up to an innkeeper and bloody advertising that you're a crow? WTAF is that? Lucanishit is supposed to be the grandson of Caterina Dellamorte, First Talon to the Antivan Crows.

A black leather trenchcoat? Really? Really really? And that's just points off on the style factor. Those things became the mark of try-hards a long time ago.

Do you have any idea how noisy those coats are? How much unnecessary weight it would put on a person who is supposed to move silently and unseen? Do you have any clue how noisy those things would be when you took a flying leap like Lucanishit did in 'The Wigmaker?' (Think loud leather wings). How much wind drag there'd be wearing something so ridiculous on a contract? Any clue how hard it would be to reach your weapons under something like that? Ugh. The devil is most certainly in the details, peeps.

Okay, so moving past the utterly ridiculous sartorial choices this so called master assassin wears, he and Illario are loudly talking about being Crows on their way to the mark.

Assassins and Assassination are illegal, y'know? At least Illario tried to blend in. For which Lucanis mocked him.

They get into position, which for some reason is during a hoity toity Tevinter party rather than when the mark was, y'know, alone.

Lucanis does some incredibly unrealistic, noisy acrobatics to get some keys. That by itself I could let slide, rule of cool exists.

But he does it in that ridiculous leather trenchcoat. I don't care how unlikely people are to look up (humans really don't look up very often unless we train ourselves to do so) a giant bat like person flopping around doing acrobatics would be kinda hard to miss.

Then we move on to some murders.

Now, it's part of almost every assassin's creed that you don't harm the innocent or the servants in taking out a mark. It's mentioned a few times about the Crows. Because, again, they're supposed to be the bogeyman in the dark you never see coming.

Lucanis murders a couple of paid guards and doesn't bother to make it clean or hide the bodies.

Finally, we're into the mark's inner sanctum. There's some particularly ghoulish stuff that the mark is guilty of, so I could see why it might annoy someone.

But there they are, two Antivan Crows in a secluded area near the Mark. That, if there were any actual assassins around would've been the end of the story.

But instead of killing the mark and disappearing like any crow should, Lucanis instead decides to make the veil thin enough to allow demons to easily come through.

Into a party of drunk Tevinter mages.

So now instead of a clean, fast kill, we have around 250 possessed mages and enslaved elves. And I think I read somewhere that elves feel being demon possessed is a fate worse than death.

Obviously, this is chaos. Red lyrium somehow acts like red lyrium never has in series, which I could let go because rule of cool.

Lucanishit then proceeds to fight a weird demon possessed mark. (I would point out that in that situation it would've been the demon that killed the mark, not Lucanis.)

But yes, eventually, after torturing red-lyrium Shelob, he pokes it enough to kill it. Which in DA canon doesn't always dispatch the demon back beyond the veil.

Not even gonna go into what intentionally thinning the veil there would do. Aren't people trying to stop that?

Then Lucanis and Illario escape.

Leaving some 248 demon possessed creatures behind at a city estate in the middle of Vyrantium.

Now, like them or not, the nobility are usually the ones who have the resources to hire the crows. So Lucanis has just taken out a large portion of potentially paying clients. That alone would likely be enough to have him removed as a crow in a very final fashion.

And what exactly do y'all think would happen when those demon possessed inevitability get out of the estate?

Innocent people of Vyrantium would be slaughtered. Demons would replicate themselves and further thin the veil.

And it would be the commoners and enslaved people harmed most. Because magisters have the resources to protect themselves from demons.

There is absolutely no mention of Lucanis sticking around to clean up his mess. None.

This is not a good story on the professional level. There are major problems with it.

The writing itself is snappy and catchy. The action is fast enough that if you don't rub two brain cells together, it could be entertaining.

But my editor brain is always on. I literally cannot turn it off anymore.

My eyeballs rolled so much during this story that I'm surprised they didn't fall out and land on the floor.

From everything we know about crow culture from Zevran, from short stories and comics, from the games and bits of Lore, Lucanishit is just so badly characterized it's actually shocking that the same author wrote what is one of my favourite stories in Tevinter nights, which is 'Eight Little Talons' and which also features the crows as crows should be characterized.

I honestly think the only saving of that character for me in the upcoming game will be if someone who has actually read the Dragon Age lore on the Antivan Crows did the writing for him.

I don't even care that he looks a bit like Keanu Reeves, who is one of my all time favourite actors, nor that assassins tend to be some of my favourite classes to play.

Not even that I was really looking forward to playing a Crow again.

Man, if only Viago wasn't with Teia I'd have paid body parts for him as the companion crow (or Teia for that matter). And my polyamorous heart would've exploded in happiness to have them as a team you could potentially be in a polyam relationship with.

If that subtle, wickedly clever old Caterina Dellamorte, Lucanis and Illario's grandmother, who has kept hold of her position as First Talon for so long, saw her grandson acting like that she'd probably do what she did to Emil. (Which, in case you haven't read it, was smash his head in with a heavy handled cane then stab him to death.)

What the hell happened? Were they smoking the Harry Dresden smoke a bit heavily when they wrote 'The Wigmaker?' Some other kind of smoke? Were the editors drunk?

I swear. These things are part of why I keep saying that Bioware needs better developmental and diversity editors.

And no, I'm not talking about me. I would love to get into writing and editing for games. (Side-eyes the last year in the gaming industry. I think?)

But I don't write about Dragon Age and other games in hopes of landing a job. I do it to get these thoughts out of my head. And because I just love gaming. I've been doing it for over 30 years.