Dragon Age: Dark Fortress (Comic)

the shackle on it reminds me of the dragon the qunari had captured in trespasser

Ah, Ataashi. It's so satisfying to free her and just...

I'm more worried about characters being changed than I am characters dying, especially Vaea or Francesca.
For example, say Aaron does die. Does this harden Vaea, and she becomes numb to killing others thus removing a big part of what made her unique and why I liked her?

Inquisitor: I don’t kill THAT many people.

Dorian: Are you joking? I’m only surprised you didn’t kill someone just walking over here.

I would point out that the comic series has already ignored many of our world states in the attitude that Fenris expressed towards his former companions. He seemed very bitter and cynical which did not reflect his relationship with my Hawkes whether romanced or not. Also, he could be dead in some people's world states, yet he is still alive in the comic.

DG also stated at one time that eventually the markings would kill him, so from that perspective it would be Fenris to die in glorious battle rather than being slowly poisoned and crippled by the very thing that made him unique.

However, I think people are also forgetting his former friend, Shirallas. What if he realises what his ambition had done to him and chooses to sacrifice himself to save Fenris as part of a redemption arc?

You are probably right about Marius though, as he could well sacrifice himself facing off against Shirallas. Remember as well as undergoing the lyrium treatment, Shirallas was originally hoping to be trained as a perrepatae, just the same as Marius, so having these two in combat with one another would make sense.  I don't recall Marius demonstrating any special abilities in Magekiller but you would think that being given an specific designation should indicate unique abilities (against mages or magic?)

More impractical than cool.

Let's say you encounter some bandits out on the road. If you just beat them up, then they're free to rob and kill someone else. Crippling them is basically the same as killing them — if you break both their legs and leave them in the forest, they're basically food for predators — and turning them into the authorities might not be an option (in DAO, Loghain WAS the authorities).

Besides, you've seen prisons in Thedas. Death might be preferable to a life sentence in some poorly-lit, rat-infested cell.

Hey all,

Not gonna wade too much into the discussion of "sacrifice" in the solicit text or the fear of characters changing in a bad way. I will say that most of these characters were created by me and Christina (and two of the others were created by Greg Rucka, who's actually my best friend), so know that whatever we do with them is done with an eye to what's best for the character's story (which isn't always what's best for them as a person, I know). I hope that helps.

But I do want to respond to this point:


I simply want to say here, our story does not ignore any world state involving friendship and romance (the only world state we ignored is the one where he died).

Assume Fenris makes friends, is less bitter, is more open hearted, and is possibly romanced. Even if all of that is true, the group splits up, and we have never been told how he felt about that. We certainly never were told the decision was unanimous. If the group decides it's for the best, what happens to a guy who maybe didn't want to split up, because he'd never had friends before? And if (jumping to romance) the thing that makes the split okay is that the great love of his life is by his side, how does he feel when that great love sneaks off and leaves him alone?

Fenris is abandoned, and him having made friends or falling in love is not a protection from feeling angry about that - in fact, it's actually fuel for that anger.

Remember that a romanced Fenris is left behind by Hawke because Fenris would have died to protect Hawke, and Hawke "didn't want to give him the choice." How would you feel if the love of your life, even knowing you're a former slave, decides to take away your choice?

Now, people who wanted a happy ending for that romance have found what they can in the text to paint a happy ending onto Hawke's choices. But the game actually says very little about Fenris' attitude about these choices, except Varric saying he'd brood for a while and then go to join Hawke. But that is an assumption, and we are given no evidence that suggests this came to pass. (And it doesn't reflect a Hawke who is left in the fade)

Christina and I replayed DA II and DAI before writing Fenris, and replayed with a Fenris romance, just so we'd know exactly what was said by and about Fenris, and so we could avoid contradicting anything in as many world-states as possible (and especially the Fenrismance ones, since that's one of our two most frequent romances in DA II).

Anyway, I hope this doesn't come off as defensive, because I know that some people don't like the choices we made with Fenris, and that's absolutely fair. But I want to clarify that those choices don't contradict a Fenrismance world state or a Fenris friendship. Just a dead-Fenris worldstate.

For what that's worth.

Also sounds like a prime story opportunity. How long can this companion go before someone confronts her about her non-lethal approach? Or just as likely, how long is it before she realizes that her no-kill policy has its own problems. However well-intentioned she is, the unintentional cruelty of leaving someone to die by either the elements, mauling, or an unjust criminal system is bound to crop up at some point. The crumbling of idealism and the loss of innocence is a tale as old as time, and it would be interesting to see it portrayed in the Dragon Age setting. 

Even if she doesn't drop the no-kill rule, it would be interesting to see how she reconciles her ideals with reality.

I have to disagree with the PC being able to take her specialization though. If Bioware handles it the way I think they would, then I would probably take out a few bosses with the specialization only to be told I killed them anyway. Or I'd be knocking out all of these people and not be dealing with the fallout the same way Vaea was. Either make the usage of that specialization have consequences or don't add it in at all (like the lack of a blood mage specialization in DAI). Or at least have companions call us out on the specialization's implications.