Calpernia: From Corypheus to the DA 4 Party?

Yeah, he's with Motive now. Motive still helps out BW though.

Samson was more three-dimensional than Calpernia.

I don't neccesarily think it was gone, I just don't think it was really shown all that much. His premise, of being an ex-templar who was abandoned by the Chantry, seems interesting enough. He even showed a form of compassion to a tranquil. But somehow his cutscenes in DAI just fell flat. He just seemed like someone who wanted to watch the world burn, caring nothing of the men and people he was sacrificing along the way and even taking away thier humanity by administrating red lyrium. He blathers on about giving them purpose, but its hard to view that purpose as anything but standard evil diatribe when it seems to lead to nothing but red lyrium monstrosities. It's easy to dismiss and roll your eyes at.

His short story in comparison shed more light on mindset, and why he was willing to push the red templars to such extremes. He wasn't just frustrated with his abandonment by the Chantry, he felt disillusioned with the world in general. In his view, the world is an abomination and is more or less already lost: "We’re going to break this blighted world and rebuild it. There’ll be blood and a lot of it will be ours.” He hardened his tone. “Some of you will change—maybe into something monstrous. But then you’ll be invincible.
[...] We have to be monstrous. You think the world’s going to change because you ask it nicely? We’re fighting a beast that’s had its righteous claws into Thedas for far too long—we need the same ruthlessness."

But yeah. At the end of the day, I still end up liking Calpernia more than Samson as far as game portrayals go. I even prefer her as a character in general but I can see Samson's potential too.

This is where I get so frustrated that character development often seems to end up occurring in associated media rather than in the game itself. Still at least with Calpernia we still got some sense of the person in the stories, whereas Samson barely had any development at all in game. Strangely enough that was also true of Corypheus on Samson's side of the story. I still think Corypheus could have been so much more interesting than he was but we did get some degree of insight in Champions of the Just.

Which highlights another beef of mine. Do not put character development of the main antagonist in only one side of a branching plot line. Personally I think it should never have been split like that in DAI and we should still have got insights into Corypheus and both his lieutenants no matter who you went to. Of course, I also thought time travel should never had been part of Thedas.

I remember thinking when I played DA2 for the first time that Samson was a gentle soul beneath all the crankiness and lyrium addiction that poisoned his mind. He was kind enough to my Hawke anyway, when I heard that he was one of the bad guys in DAI I remember thinking wtf? It felt like character went the opposite way

I am personally hoping DA4 brings back the murder knife or something like it. To kill potential companions, former game antagonists like Calpernia, quest objectives, or what have you. That being said, I do believe Calpernia may have something that will be relevant to our cause in DA4. Namely, her intelligence network. In DAI we learn that one of her primary interests is elevating the slaves of Tevinter, so it was only natural to assume she had contacts of some sort within Tevinter borders.

World of Thedas even expands on this and clarified that she created a network of spies loyal to "her and her alone", and that by and large, she erased virtually all known records of her existence before her time as "Calpernia". And that by the time Corypheaus was defeated, her venatori loyalists were either scattered to the winds or hell bent on hiding her secrets. What are the odds that this network just vanished? Especially if she's still alive?

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a network that we need to keep an eye on. Odds are good Solas has agents in there just due to the inevitable slave-overlap, but the reverse could also apply. Even if it does come from a tevinter nationalist, Calpernia could prove herself a valuable ally in fighting Solas. Or if not an ally, then a powerful figure of interest that we can manipulate or deal with in some manner to pursue our greater goal. 

If I recall the Samson looked vastly different in DA2...I honestly didn't recognise him either when I first played DAI. I did think his story needed to be fleshed out more, his character from DA2 to DAI felt way too different.

The maybe weird thing about Calpernia is that Corypheus saw something in her immediately. She's not only a powerful mage but it seems she really believed Corypheus would help her end slavery in Tevinter. Calpernia wasn't the only Venatori hoodwinked by Corypheus, various high profile mages in Tevinter Nights have also seemingly joined the Venatori under the guise of freeing the slaves (based on Tevinter Nights).

I've mentioned before, Corypheus' end-goals have seemed to uncannily align with Solas' even after Trespasser. And Solas was the person who started the original elven slave rebellion. So I do wonder if Corypheus' ultimate plan derives from his orb, and if there is actually a method to his madness. Most of the slaves in Tevinter are elves I'm guessing, and they are now targeted for recruitment by Solas as well as the Qunari and the Venatori are also using the excuse of freeing the slaves to recruit more members. Maybe these factions really need elven blood to further their own goals... Because we already know elven blood is powerful, it's been used to reveal hidden areas and artefacts and was used to enter the fade by Corypheus initially.

So maybe the Venatori are using the guise of freeing the slaves when in actual fact all of these different factions, the Venatori, Solas, the Qunari, need elven blood ('the Tevinter you forgot') to access the Black City itself.

If I was writing DA4 (lol) I would make Calpernia a Venatori insider, Magekiller basically has already set up her entrance into the game.

Once she helps Marius and Tessa escape she now has a pretty major conflict of interest as a high ranking Venatori that could be interestingly resolved in DA4.

We could be presented with a choice on whether or not to recruit her as an agent, with alternate consequences that impact the slaves in Tevinter.

No, not all. Merrill for example isn’t a murderer at all.

And no, Calpernia is not a Rommel. That’s an insult to him. For example Rommel actually treated his prisoners well, while Calpernia works here to death with no care for their well-being.