Dragon Age Short Story 2022: As We Fly

See my above "spoilered" comment. An agent of Solas was trying to escalate the war between Tevinter and the Qun, so it wouldn't be surprising if he was pulling the strings in some way. After all, the Antaam attacking the Tevinter mainland immediately followed on from him foiling their plot in the south, so maybe that was his main aim all the time and helping the south was just what he wanted us to believe. The Qun are terrified of the Fade and it may be that they have good reason for this beyond just regular demons. The Dalish Keepers speak of Fen'Harel stalking the Fade, so they at least have encountered him there. Perhaps the Qunari have had nightmares in the past of the Dread Wolf.

I would say that points more to Tevinter, or more correctly the current Magisterium, being an absolute incompetent bunch of idiots. As Dorian says to us, Tevinter were proud of the fact that they had managed to recover what they had lost on the mainland and hold the Qun at bay all these years, without the assistance of the southern nations. Last time, the Antaam tried a major assault, the year after Dorian was born, whilst initially they made gains because of the element of surprise, the Magisterium quickly managed to order a counter offensive that resulted in ignoble defeat for the Arishok of that time and his subsequent demotion. It was seeing this firsthand that made a young Sten declare they could only succeed with better intelligence. That would involve the Ben'Hassrath and it is clear that their activities did increase subsequently and could account for some of the ease of their success. However, Tevinter were also aware of this danger and had their own counterintelligence, so there must have been a big failure somewhere along the line for the Qun to have made such inroads with hardly any pushback from other side.

As for the rest of Thedas. According to the epilogue of Trespasser, if you allied with the Qun, then Par Vollen were making friendly overtures towards the Divine in order to at least keep the south out of the war but even come in on their side. This being the case, breaking the Llomerryn Accord would make no sense unless the Antaam wanted the Divine to order an Exalted March against them and ally with Tevinter. In any case, what benefit do the Antaam think they get from fighting on two fronts? Splitting their forces in that way would surely weaken their offensive, unless they do now have the backing of Par Vollen. That is what puzzles me.

Its also possible they attacked Treviso by sea and then moved north to Brynnlaw so they don’t have to thread supply lines around the edges of the Arlathan forest.

I’m warming up to the idea that surrounding the forest is the actual purpose behind this whole invasion.

This makes me think that the way the major plots are going to be split will be something like:

• Qunari invasion plot in Tevinter and Antiva with the Lucerni, Venatori and the Crows

• Blight plot in Nevarra and The Anderfels with the Mortalitassi, Wardens and maybe Executors

• Converging in the Arlathan forest with Solas, the weird Dalish clan from Three Trees to Midnight and maybe the elven gods

Or I'm reading too much into it.
I gotta say, spreading the story over 4 countries will either be underwhelming, a la Val Royeaux, or overwhelming, because you'd get 4 countries worth of developing content thrown at you, and I'm afraid a good part of it will feel like fluff.

Regarding the contracts, I take it more as the Crows need them for intelligence, rather than them not doing anything unless they're paid, especially with their own country getting invaded. They probably don't have the direct access or ways of gathering intelligence on the entire Antaam in such minutiae that they know exactly who to target kill in order to effectively cripple the Antaam themselves, so they rely on contracts because the ones writing them up do have that intelligence. 

As for the savagery of the leaders, I get it. I can buy that some of them aren't ready for this level of military action, Iron Bull himself is an example that it's easy to go berserk under enough strain, but first with with Bastaar and now the Lash, I feel they may try to portray all the Antaam leaders like this. I'd like to see a story where the Antaam leader, not a Ben-Hassrath, is that type of focused, controlled and unwavering general, the type of commander who led the Qunari to conquer almost half of Thedas the first time. Cruelty without bounds is effective only in the short term but it doesn't win wars, as we see in this story with the next in line to take over after the Lash just orders his men to leave him to his death. I don't imagine that the first Qunari invasion was riddled with Bastaar's and Lash's.

Wonder if this would have an impact on us going to Antiva at some point and/or increasing the odds of Zevran and/or Josie showing up in DA:D? I feel like a solid portion of the game will take place in Tevinter but at times we will have a main quest diversion to have to go to the say Antiva or the Anderfels or Rivain or etc. in order to do something. Would allow Minrathous to be fleshed out while being able to see the other countries in the north we have only heard about but also not seen.

The thing is that according to the narrative they were pushing in Tevinter Nights, the reason they are behaving differently this time round is that they don't have the priesthood on hand to keep them in check. I suppose this could be plausible. In DAO Sten went crazy when he panicked on discovering the loss of his sword, before recovering his composure after murdering the family. In DA2 the Arishok finally blew a fuse when he had to cope without Rasaan to advise him. Presumably he went on the mission without her because it was thought to be a simple collection and delivery. Then apparently those back in Par Vollen couldn't send her or anyone else to advise him without his specific request. So, the hierarchy of the Qun does leave some problems when things don't go according to plan. The Qun were being pretty brutal towards the citizens of Kirkwall during that engagement. So, it is hard to know what might be typical behaviour by members of the Antaam towards the civilian population when not under the direction of the priesthood. However, we do know that many Tal-Vashoth turn savage after making their escape, which is why Bull so hated the idea of being one. However, he was from the Ben'Hassrath, so had already been assessed as being more than the average muscle required for the Antaam. Sten was also considered unusual among his fellow junior officers by the Tevinter spies because he had subtlety of thinking. Maybe most members of the Antaam, even senior officers, are just full of repressed savagery.

See, the Arishok is the exact type of commander I'm talking about. He wasn't cruel to his subordinates and his subordinates weren't cruel to each other (not that we know of, at least). They were a single-minded, focused and terrifying small army that burned down most of Kirkwall in a single evening with no reinforcements and with half or more of their number having become Tal'Vashoth by that point, anyway. Of course they were savage towards their enemies, that's what they do as a conquering army, that's what they did during their initial conquest and all other subsequent ones. Since no priestesses were around to convert, the short term solution of getting Kirkwall to submit was to silence dissenters as soon as possible. That's what you do in that kind of situation if you want to conquer a city fast and with limited resources. The Arishok also didn't start killing everyone the moment he arrived in Kirkwall, he waited, watched, was patient. He steeped in the dregs of Kirkwall for years before he snapped because Kirkwall is Kirkwall. There are several points in the game where the Arishok indulges the solutions you bring to him instead of going on a murder spree at the drop of a hat.

And with Sten, after that initial outburst, he is decidedly remorseful of what he'd done and does essentially what Iron Bull did. Had that happened to him in Seheron or Par Volen, he'd've given himself to be reeducated but, in absence of that, he let himself be captured and left to starve and be killed by darkspawn. Bringing him along in DAO, even if he still doesn't have his sword, he doesn't go on mindless murder sprees and he seems quite in control of himself whenever I talk to him. He pretty much always confronts the Warden's leadership ability and their choices, he doesn't seem to be in control of himself simply because the Warden is telling him what to do.

Now, as you said, maybe the Arishok and Sten are the odd ones out and they're all filled with repressed savagery but they still need to have someone in charge who can keep them in check, otherwise it all goes pear shaped rather fast. I gotta say that isn't very interesting for a villain, nor is it threatening, in the long run they become a joke. Both Three Tree to Midnight and this new story have had a good amount of making the Qunari look like a joke and have the characters in the stories make jokes at their expense to drive that impression through. I want the Qunari to continue inspiring Borg levels of dread (when the Borg were also good, anyway).

I'm with you, I'm ready to dump 200 hours into this sucker.  

Fluff more in the sense that it won't be impactful but rather there to fill in the time.
I hope that won't be the case but I do fear that having to develop and show off 4 separate countries in a single game might lead to us either seeing very small areas of them (underwhelmed because that won't do those countries justice) or seeing big areas but mostly empty or having side content just to pad out play time (overwhelmed with quests but not impactful in the grand scheme of things).

Mind you, this is merely my speculation based on the spotlight these settings and factions have been getting in extended media. Obviously, we don't know anything about the actual span of the game.
Tevinter will surely be in the game due to the end of Trespasser. Antiva very likely, as well, because of the Qunari plotline connection. For Nevarra and the Anderfels I'm going on the fact that Tevinter Nights has 2 stories in Nevarra with the Mortalitassi, and a Mortalitassi character present in a third story, while the Wardens also have 2 stories and there was that one (supposedly) Grey Warden character, Davrin, in the BTS video from a while ago and also there was some concept art that might look like a Warden fortress in a desert (supposedly a fortress in the Anderfels if not Weisshaupt fortress itself).