Just a BioWare Fan

Settling Down

The tower felt dank and empty after Kyla left with Duncan. Cullen dreamt of her often; the fleeting contacts and covert smiles haunted him. The other mages seemed dull in comparison and even overtures from friendly Templars could not tempt him. He focused on his training and renewed yet again his devotion to Andraste and the Maker.

Jowan’s display had shocked him out of the complacency into which he had so quickly settled. Between the proof that the mages needed closer watching and the removal of Kyla’s insidious, if delicious, influence he found himself more sure of his duty than ever. Events over the following weeks tested that new dedication.

The Warden’s sudden departure left all of Kinloch Hold on edge. The Templars who’d believed Duncan had been ready to recruit them groused about a blood mage and a slip of a girl, an apprentice mere months past her Harrowing, forcing him to leave before he could decide which of them to take.

I’ll preface this topic with the thing that always surprises me about conversations insisting that Anders was utterly changed to shoe-horn him into the Dragon Age 2 story line: I always assumed he was gay. The line about wishing for “a pretty girl on my arm” I presumed to be a figure of speech, a colloquialism rather than an actual expression of desire for female company.

Now, really, my Wardens were led to expect that everyone who knew her would adore a trip to her tent, so to speak. Morrigan was the sole exception and she didn’t like me anyway. Zev, Leliana, and Alistair were all but drooling on them. How could Anders possibly resist any of these amazing women unless he had no interest in female people?

Imagine my surprise at a male Warden’s complete inability to flirt with him, either. On top of that I find him eager to pursue a relationship with a LadyHawke in DA2. Apparently my Warden prowess had waned in Amaranthine. None of that has a blessed thing to do with Anders's personality. It’s mere sexuality.

If you really listen to Anders in Awakening you can hear the seeds of his bitterness, most clearly in his conversations with Justice. At the beginning he’s relieved at his reprieve from Templar pursuit and thrilled at his first tastes of freedom, certainly. For the first time in his life someone actively wants him to exercise his power to its full extent. Why wouldn’t he be a little giddy?

He’s still angry, however. He repeatedly expresses his frustration and guilt that the majority of mages are still subjected to the predation of the Templar Order under the Chantry’s rule. Combine his stated feelings with Justice’s single-mindedness et voila! You get Anders starting along that downward spiral. At the beginning of DA2 he’s still got his snark, he still shows sparks of fun, but he focuses less and less on himself and more on the injustice he perceives in the treatment of all mages in Thedas.

He tries to bury what he sees as his selfishness under a metric ton of sick and frightened refugees in Darktown but Justice sees right through that ploy. The real problem is not that Anders himself is free but that almost no other mage is. Once you talk to Karl—and Anders kills him—matters are only intensified.

Eventually the free clinic isn’t enough and he gets involved in the mage underground, smuggling people out of The Gallows. That assuages his guilt for a while but Justice gets harder and harder to control as the duo hear stories of what life is like in the Circle in Kirkwall. One step too far and he’s asked to butt out, essentially, thus removing an outlet for all that seething frustration. Is it any wonder he grows more and more withdrawn and defensive?

You can hear the resignation in his voice (and huge kudos to Adam Howden for the fantastic voice acting) when he finally settles on his ultimate plan and asks for help gathering the ingredients. It’s clear both in his animations and his words that he’s unhappy about deceiving you. I suspect Justice is no more thrilled with it than Anders, if you’ve taken the rivalry path and tried to keep their personalities separate. Neither can risk Hawke running to the Revered Mother, however.

From that point to the end it’s obvious how much his decision weighs on him. I imagine that, were the romance dialogue there, things would have gone downhill in the bedroom as well. All of his considerable energy has turned inward toward driving through his conscience to the ultimate goal: forcing the battle he deeply believes is the only way mages will ever truly gain freedom from Chantry rule.

Whether you agree with that conclusion or not (and goodness knows I’ve had Hawkes that fully bought into it and others that couldn’t have disagreed more) he’s utterly convinced of it. If anyone in Thedas might say it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees, it’s the Justice-Anders he’s become by the end of DA2. Little as he likes it, he does what has to be done in his (their?) eyes.

From the first conversation you’re shown that Anders is a passionate, exuberant man. While Justice and Kirkwall strip his veneer of good cheer away under their combined, relentless assault he’s still the same person. When you romance him or go down the friendship path with him you get flashes of his humor late into the second act.

It surprises me that so many people confuse character development with a retcon. If you explore all of his dialogues you can follow his progress through DA: Awakening and DA2. It may not be what I would have wanted for his character but it made sense in the context of the story the writer’s wanted to tell.

Let me outline the point made again and again in the Dragon Age portions of the BSN that has spawned this post. “The sexuality of an NPC should be set, not something the main character influences. Knowing I can romance the same person with both genders ruins my immersion!”

My response? Quit meta-gaming. If you can’t do that simply restrain yourself and don’t romance the same character with both genders. Unless the companion in question makes his or her sexual preferences explicit, your player character does not know what they are. If you think that person should be straight don’t initiate a homosexual relationship and vice versa.

Then there’s the sub-argument that BioWare’s games are too player-centric in general and the move to variable sexual preferences is a further step in the wrong direction. All I can say in response to that is to ask why you’ve chosen to play an RPG if you don’t want to influence the game universe. Is that not what they’re for? Go play Halo if you want an exciting game with a good story with characters you can’t change.

Routine Disruptions

There were accusations and even proven incidents of Templars stepping over the boundary between guarding and abusing. The Order was no different than any other group: bad apples found their way into it. What was deemed a healthy fear of mages had been ingrained in each of them and some chose to prove their dedication by dominating their charges instead of monitoring them.

The long quiet that Cullen found in the Ferelden Circle tower fostered a sense of protection rather than oppression. It led to boredom more than violence but that lack of excitement posed its own dangers. Whispers circulated and he heard stories of beatings or more-subtle punishments for infractions real, imagined, or even invented for entertainment.

Half of those whispers in Cullen’s first days at Kinloch Hold concerned a young man brought to the tower by force at the unusually advanced age of twelve. From the very beginning the boy had tried to escape the Circle’s confines. He had taken advantage of the beach excursions novice mages had once enjoyed to swim away one afternoon.

If Wishes Were Horses

Anders glanced up from healing some sweet-looking, filthy child while his parents wrung their hands. He’d known I was coming and his own freshly-scrubbed face shone in the light of his magic.

The tableau showed me a dedicated healer exhausting himself in the service of others, but I couldn’t help but suspect he’d arranged it for my benefit. It echoed the scene in which we’d first met so closely that it seemed precisely the sort of obvious ploy Anders would try.

The image of the endearing bumbler couldn’t stand up, however, to the fact that this was yet another attempt at deception. He might as well have put up a shrine to Andraste in one corner and a choir or urchins in the other. I crossed my arms and leaned against a nearby table to show that I wasn’t fooled.

Struggles and Striving

By the afternoon Sebastian and I talked through our discontent we’d spent hours together in one parlor or another, chatting politely with yet another noble family that simply had to host the Champion one time more than their neighbors. We’d danced a hundred stately rounds when I couldn’t face another boorish rich boy who’d never done anything more exciting than walk through Lowtown once on a dare.

His presence at these balls and dinner parties gave him unprecedented access to the nobles of Kirkwall. I often tried to deflect attention to his cause. Talk of betrayal and murder in Starkhaven meant a welcome relief from scrutiny, short-lived though it might have been, and genteel Sebastian made quite the impression on the ladies of Hightown.

The prince’s genuine sorrow and piety won their hearts but no breath of scandal ever touched him. Their husbands found him honorable and masculine enough to be likable, as well. In fact some of them told him how much they enjoyed his company much more aggressively than their wives. He told me of their advances in hushed tones and oblique language.

After the Storm

It had been a year since I’d staggered out of the keep that no longer had a Viscount. In the power vacuum his death left Meredith expanded at an alarming rate and every inch of her bristled with unreasoning fear. Even mages who never left the Gallows, who had, until recently, supported the Templars, stood accused of plotting and nefarious deeds.

Things had gotten so bad that even Cullen, her second in command, had begun to question her judgment. Though he never admitted it in so many words he’d begun to shade the truth and then outright lie to her to keep her placated as best he could.

The haunted look he’d had when we’d first met, an artifact of some horrific experience in the Ferelden Circle, had faded in the first few years I had known him. Over the months after I was named Champion the deep circles beneath his eyes returned again. As Knight-Lieutenant he retained enough authority to do much without involving Meredith but he couldn’t have been more than ten years my senior and a good number of those he tried to command were much older.

Into the Mouth of Madness

I’d tossed down a torch before I climbed into the basement of the foundry and, by the time I’d negotiated the ladder, Bela had used it to light others that hung ready around the walls. Clearly this was no bolthole but a regularly-used passage.

The door on the far end opened onto a larger space around which half of the brands had already been lit. A quick scan of the floor revealed nothing more than a few widely-spaced droplets. I had no time to look for more, however, as shades appeared all around us. Whether they’d been summoned because the killer knew we approached or they had been set to attack anyone hardly mattered.

At first I assumed the stench the filled the space came from the summoned creatures themselves. Anders, however, reminded me that none of our previous fights with shades or other denizens of the Fade had smelled this awful. It was the stink of rot and decay, the funk of death, and it did not come from the otherworldly fiends.

All Is Revealed

I sent ‘Bela, Sebastian, and Varric back to The Hanged Man and walked past my own front door, sparing it a longing glance before I continued past and up the nearby stairs to the Viscount’s Keep. This was going to be an uncomfortable confrontation but putting it off wouldn’t make it any easier.

During the day the bright stonework hosted a couple of minor food stalls and a number of nobles milling about, seeing and being seen. But this late at night thugs and criminals often lurked in the shadows of the white pillars hoping for easy pickings as unwary residents made their way home from dinner parties and card games. Happily, I didn’t encounter someone looking to rob me or worse as I crossed the courtyard in front of my door.

The keep’s grand entrance hall stood nearly empty, only a few guards scattered about the vaulted space and up the steps to the second level. I’d never known there were so many stairs in all the world before I’ve moved to Kirkwall. With everything built on top of itself even the slums, like Gamlen’s hovel, had two or three levels and were stacked to conserve space.

Suspects and Evidence

We continued our search of the Du Puis mansion, finding shades guarding several passages. By then we were suspicious enough to begin opening closets and cupboards in search of clues. Such intrusiveness yielded quick results: in one of the guest rooms we found a chest filled with luxurious dresses.

Emeric had told us that Gascard was single and we saw no other evidence of a woman living in the house. It certainly looked incriminating, though Anders pointed out that the good messer could enjoy wearing the clothes himself. They alone wouldn’t have convinced me but then we found a rack of blood vials sitting on a desk on the second floor. Anders confirmed that they had been used in some sort of blood magic, though he was unfamiliar with the exact enchantment.

The expansive sitting rooms down the corridor held a reply from the Starkhaven Circle of Magi to an inquiry about their missing mages. Unsurprisingly, it told Du Puis in no uncertain terms that lost enchanters, if any, remained the province of the Templars and not some minor noble in a different city. Why the man would be looking for a lost mage in the first place none of us could guess.

Interrupted Investigations

Varric would be sorely disappointed in my ability to weave a story, even after so much time spent at his side listening to him effortlessly pull a dozen such lines together. Yet again I’ve forgotten an important thread in my own tale. But our investigation into Kirkwall’s disappearing women came home to roost with a vengeance that even Justice could have envied.

It started early on, one of the first jobs I took after my year with Athenril when Bethany and I were still amassing the funds we needed to buy our way into the Deep Roads expedition. A thoroughly distasteful but wealthy man by the name of Ghyslain de Carrac, his Orlesian accent so thick you could have used it for mortar, hired us to find his wife. Apparently she’d disappeared and her family suspected him of foul play, a concern he found more disturbing than the fact that she’d gone missing.

The only hint he gave us was the name Jethann, a whore at the Blooming Rose. Ninette had been rather free with her favors, it seemed, even with those whose favors were not free. Ghyslain had only found out about the elf when Jethann had sent the woman lilies just before she’d gone but the prostitute wouldn’t talk to his customer’s husband.

Fixing the Family

Viscount Dumar shuffled along the shadowed entry and into the moonlit expanse below us. His ashen face showed me that Aveline had already broken the news. I’d never before considered the man old, despite his balding grey head, but at that moment he seemed ancient. Aveline helped him up the stairs and he all but fell beside his son’s body.

As the guards cleared away the survivors Dumar gathered Saemus into his lap. For a time it appeared that he spared no thought for what surrounded him. Then he spoke to me, though his eyes never left the young man’s face. “Who did this?” he quavered, throat clogged with grief.

“She’s dead, sir.” Aveline spoke as matter-of-factly as ever. “We’re rounding up the accomplices that survived and they will stand for what they’ve done.”

“And the Arishok?”

“It’s a disaster!”

Anders threw his hands in the air and dropped back onto his heels. I dodged from his left but blood still spattered my cheek. My flamboyant healer did insist on melodrama after a battle when the injuries were relatively minor. When the wounds were serious it brought out his concentration and best bedside manner but the slash on Aveline’s leg inspired only histrionics.

“These edges won’t line up. What did that thug hit you with, a rose bush? You’re going to have another scar.”

Confrontation and Dismissal

Anders face settled into a serene smile and I wanted to take him in my arms to protect him from himself. He stared into my eyes, that pain I’d longed to erase hiding as he simply looked at me for once. That little crease between his brows that never seemed to disappear had gone and we just stood quietly. It was the most content I’d ever seen him look.

“Maker, I love you,” he breathed, snapping the moment. The enormity of what had happened struck me with the force of one of Varric’s bolts. I pulled free of him, my face aflame as I tugged my smalls into place, my eyes on the floor. My brain worked furiously trying to decide how to respond to him.

I hadn’t come here with the intention of seducing him, hadn’t meant any of this to happen. Yet here I was, half-clad and sweaty, catching increasingly confused looks from the corner of my eye as I restored my blouse to something resembling decency. Oh, sweet Andraste’s flaming left ear, what had I done?

Taken By Surprise

[NOTE: This chapter is NSFW and not for those under the age of 18. You've been warned.]

Bodahn never once expressed shock or concern when I came home coated in filth and blood as I did that afternoon. I suppose his experience traveling with the Hero of Ferelden had trained him to expect such behavior from women. He and Sandal did wonders with the things that dried to impenetrable crusts in the joints of my armor, as well. I’ve missed them sorely since they decided to leave for Orlais. I have offal from three fights ago still crunching in the articulations of my gauntlets.

Normally I’d have sunk into the bath and taken my time cleaning every last inch of myself but I was nearly frantic with worry. I didn’t even sit, just scrubbed down and splashed water over myself to remove the soap. Looking down after I stepped out of the tub I saw that had been a fortunate choice. Flakes and chunks of sewer goo floated on the surface and the smell could have felled a Qunari.

I threw on some casual clothes, a skirt and bloused shirt. My mother had managed to have the Amell family crest put on the back of half of my wardrobe, something I usually forgot when I was out of my armor. I’d been reminded about it embarrassingly often when drinking at The Hanged Man, one of the many reasons we mostly ended up lounging around Varric’s rooms casually intertwined, rather than down in the common rooms with the usual Lowtown crowd.

Sudden Reversals

Anders explained that one of the senior Templars, Ser Alrik, had been agitating for what he termed the Tranquil Solution under which all of the mages in the Gallows would have their connections with the Fade, and thus their magic and their emotions, severed. Isabela and Merrill looked as horrified as I felt. Such a program would go against everything the Circle was intended to do.

The Rite of Tranquility was supposed to protect people from mages who were too weak-willed to face a Harrowing or who had already proven dangerous without that test. Enchanters who transgressed went to mage’s prisons rather than undergoing the Rite. It was not used to punish the outspoken or disagreeable and the Chantry would never approve it for all mages.

Would they? I thought. Meredith was a little nuts and Elthina had shown all the backbone of an earthworm in defying the woman she’d appointed Knight-Commander. By the time Orsino appealed to the Divine and received an answer it could be too late to save any of the mages. Clearly the First Enchanter didn’t have the power to prevent his charges being made Tranquil against his wishes, unless he was complicit in the plan as well, something I found impossible to believe.

The city of Kirkwall may sit, brooding and white, at the edge of the Amaranthine Sea but the closely wound alleys and stairs trap the freshening breezes that should ease the heat of summer. The months when the sun bakes the southern end of the Free Marches bring lethargy to the wealthy in Hightown, who cannot not be bothered to stir from the cool of their stone homes, and misery to the poor that squat below them.

Hawke stretched in the warm sand, wind drying the spray that dotted her bare skin. She turned to Anders where he lay propped on his elbows, head tipped back and ribs showing. His smile of contentment was worth the lie she’d told to lure him away from his fetid clinic in the rankest corner of Darktown for the afternoon.

She’d only discovered this little stretch of beach because a bandit she’d been pursuing had fallen from the jagged rocks above in his flight. A narrow ledge sloped beneath the forbidding edges, tucked into a small overhang in the cliff face, and from the paths of the mountain the way was utterly invisible. Coated in sweat already that morning, she’d determined that the refugees and slum denizens of the city could do without their healer for a day.

Back and Forth

A worthy battle we found atop overlooking the quarry: the mother dragon that had spawned the dragonlings we’d fought with in the tunnels. Yet after facing down Flemeth’s high dragon form a regular full-grown dragon didn’t intimidate me as much as I’d have thought. The biggest challenge lay in keeping out of its way when it loosed a full-throated trumpet that battered your ears and made your whole head swim. My shield provided enough cover so the gouts of flame barely singed the fringe on my armor but the teeth and claws were a different matter.

Isabela danced to stay behind mama dragon while Sebastian jockeyed for position on the piles of rock around the cave we’d just left, trying to stay out of her line of sight. He sank arrows into the hollow at the base of her neck and after a time it began to look like the dragon was wearing a ruff of feathers. Aveline and I kept her attention as much as we could, striking at intervals from behind our shields but mostly just letting the others chip away until she lay, magnificent and bloody, unable to fight back any longer.

Aveline and Sebastian argued about who should get the death blow until I finally walked over and ended the beautiful thing’s suffering. They both pouted the entire way back to Kirkwall, Isabela’s jibes pricking each of them. Meanwhile I dreamed of being able to transform as Flemeth had.

It was sheer torture. Hawke tossed and burned, her fever continuing for a third day, and Anders could think of nothing more to do for her. Broken bones and infestations of a personal nature were nothing, he could cure those in a trice. But the common cold remained the bane of all healers, magical or herbal.

If she were only ill Anders could have dealt well enough with the situation. He did, after all, run a clinic helping the sickest, dirtiest, and most hopeless people in Kirkwall. It was the delirium that promised to drive him mad.

At first she'd only talked to her father, something Anders had found fascinating. She had loved Malcolm Hawke, trusted and been devoted to him, and the man had escaped from the Circle here in Kirkwall, lived as a mercenary traveling Thedas, and then settled down with the love of his life to raise three amazing children, one of them a mage that he'd trained to be a strong and independent as he'd been. Anders rather wished he'd had a chance to meet the man.

We all know that, in the Dragon Age universe, Anders is not our tortured mage’s real name but a nickname based on his nationality. Whatever the powers-that-be at Bioware decide as far as accents go, the idea that people from the Anderfels have German accents has been bandied about the discussion forum and has stuck in my head as canon. Yet Anders does not have a German accent.

And thus, we come to the Pale Young Gentlemen and their song Fraulein. Despite the song title being a German word you’ll find no accent here, either. That’s rather too tenuous a connection to make this Anders’s theme song for the three years between Act 1 and Act 2, however. The secret lies in the lyrics.

If I could draw, I would make you a pretty picture. But I can't. And so I invite you, if you will, to picture Anders hanging out at The Hanged Man, watching Hawke and Isabela dancing on the tables. He’s been warning Hawke away from himself for a more than a year, now. This song is running through his head. He is, in fact, pining, as the chorus so clearly illustrates. The lyrics for the last verse of the song run thus: