Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[AdenYeshua]

For the record funny enough Mabari hounds "are at least as smart as your average tax collector" they are magically created dogs bred to handle very complex commands. "Find the Urn" is not really a complex command. I illustrated this point not to send you off into a nerd rage, it's to illustrate that sometimes it's prudent not to make up whatever. In the lore established there is NOTHING explicitly saying Mabari hounds weren't sent out to find the Urn. In the lore, you cannot argue that they weren't sent. See how frustrating it is?

It is you that has taken this to a crazy place not a single question was ignored, and I acknowledged most of your nonrelated to topic points. I didn't acknowledge Genitivi points because it seemingly has no bearing on the chantry. Or that he even has the Chantry's blessing, he came off as a Rogue Element, and still does.

 

In any case, you have won, actually a long time ago. My argument has always been it's the more reasonable safe option. Your argument(s) have been is it possible. While my Dog argument still stands and applies, in this case, it's just stupid. It opens up a ton of never going to be answered questions and plot holes.

 

If you want to curse, start calling names, take offense, or otherwise throw a fit that's also fine. There are a number of times I wanted to grab my keyboard and say "then why are their f***ing Templars in the village at all waiting around doing nothing if there supposed to be out finding this Urn" ordered no less. The answer is simple, the order does not apply to them and they have no obligation or interest in finding this Urn. Why use such and ass backward way of solving the issue? These are the same folks who made the "Right of Annulment" not only could the Chantry destroy all of Redcliffe but probably all of the Ferelden as well while there at it. Why resort to rumors of cures and sideways ways of handling the situation? My way is the way they were shown throughout all three games, they do what they can, but they just aren't interested in solving whatever issue is at hand. One has no questions and is neat and tidy.

 

My points were to illustrate the extremes of your argument. A point you seem very defensive about, I've heard wild tales, deep imagination, and literally made up titles. You argue that I am set in stone I'd argue the opposite I doubt Bioware itself could issue a statement on the matter then I change your mind. My only regret is we didn't get more of this fallen Templar he was literally one of a kind and reading all these back stories on him he almost seems bigger than the warden.

 

EDITED.

 

Except for ignoring vast amounts of evidence that the Chantry's interest in the Urn is dialed up to 11 in every place such evidence could possibly exist. Therefore looks incoherent and illegitimate.

 

 

I acknowledge some of the points you brought up, we have a very very different view of "dialing it up to 11" sending one brother, hiring a cloistered sister, and sending a knight or two hardly in my book counts as "dialing it up to 11" Jesus in that case what was Lothering? Dailing it up to 10,051? my version of 11 (and everyone else) is sending an army to secure the Urn, wiping out Redcliffe along the way to the Mages Tower. While killing everyone who was sort of involved in hiding it.

 

Actually, everything I've heard thus far results in a maybe passing interest in the relic. With a Meh like attitude which in most cases would barely be considered an effort much less dialing it to 11.

 

Alright, Qwinn I want you to go find this relic I'm going to give you two knights, a maybe Closterd sister that may or may not be still with us, and one of our scholars. Keep in mind if you do actually find anything we don't care, just make sure the Arl of some forgotten nation gets this cure! By the way when you're done stop by the Mages Tower and join your legions of knights and commit some genocide. Oh, and completely ignore the zombies coming out of the castle its cool it happens every Tuesday. We heard there is a mage involved but f*** it! It's Tuesday who needs oaths when you have umm... loyalty to the Arl. f*** his fellow knight and traveling companion we need to report this to the Templars! Oh, wait they don't give a s***. But his buddy does. ROFL.

 

-or- my way.

 

Hey, Qwinn a knight looking for the Urn died on the road. His fellow knight and traveling companion we should report this to. Ok? Sure... done.

 

It's your patch man, have fun with it. You deserve it. Your stance on things might be a bit... unique but you are still to be respected, even if I do get under your skin somehow. You take me not quoting some things as a factor that I didn't read them, that's cause you write a f***ing book. Like I said I have no new info, repeating is what I have to do. You have more info because there is more on your subject. I wasn't kidding you won awhile ago, you proved occasionally the Church does, in fact, work with a select few. The orders and reporting thing is a bit shaky as well as the "Knight of Redcliffe but really a knight of the Chantry OF Redcliffe". But it holds all the same, my original argument is that they can't be both, which is still true. Though I doubt very highly that it was Bioware's intent to display the Chantry working for the Arl reporting to him, especially since they spend about three games telling us the Chantry is this all powerful doesn't take s*** from no one organization.

Edited June 14, 2017 by AdenYeshua

[mckatsims]

"Also, since I am playing a female rogue and intend to romance Alistair, I'm going to install some of those Alistair mods that adds extra scenes, just to see if they work with your mod. Will let you know if anything goes awry."

Â

Not sure which mods you're talking about, but odds are It will all go awry. It will almost certainly end in tears. Sorry.

Â

Well wait. Maybe not. Where does the dialogue in these "new scenes" come from?

 

If they somehow avoid changing alistair_main.dlg, it may work. But if they touch that file, kaboom.

 

At the moment, I am mainly referring to these two mods: http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4690/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1420/? I don't think either of these tamper with dialogue or that .dlg file, but I could very much be wrong. If my game explodes, then I'll know why HAHA. ;)

[AdenYeshua]

One more tiny thing to add now that this fix is removed and official, what an utter disgrace and disregard for your own order. Sure he might have been serving in the Redcliffe chantry branch but that's no reason to not even acknowledge that he died. The only person who cared was a knight of an Arl. You would think someone anyone from that church would recognize one of there own killed. Or that the thieves on the road would not mess with one that has driven them off so many times.

 

Since we're in story making mode maybe the Redcliffe chantry is just full of assholes? Maybe they don't acknowledge the death of just Ser Henric cause he was a douche? Well at least you have the knights of Redcliffe Ser at least they consider you a brother f*#@ those chantry guys who cares about brotherhood when you have a quest for the Urn.

 

Poor bastard I hope he sits and the Redcliffe table in the Fade those templars suck a bag of dicks.

[ViktoriaLanders]

Many thanks Qwinn, for resolving this. Apparently Aden is not very cool-headed to debate the name of an extremely minor quest in a 8-year old video game.

Actually it's not, since this games inception fans and the creators themselves (including the very exsitence of this patch alone) has attempted to correct, change, fix, or alter already established lore. Sometimes even Bioware itself gets it totally wrong... House Dace comes to mind.

 

The BioWare wiki mentions that Jerrik Dace is the nephew of Lord Anwer Dace which contradicts this codex entry. Furthermore, it mentions that Mandar Dace is the son of Anwer Dace which also contradicts to the established in-game lore. It is not known which one of these versions is correct.

Thanks for letting me know. For the record, I have written this contradiction which you recite back to me :P

[dmg22]

I think you've added 4 pages since I started this, but I might as well post it anyways....

 

 

the Fallen Templar change to Fallen Knight

"But before I can change it at all, I need a compelling reason for why the way it is in vanilla is implausible, or fourth wall breaking, or inconsistent."

 

IMHO it's all those things. I just makes no sense to me as written.

 

The key phrase is here....

-"So many of my fellow knights (of the Arl) have been searching for the Urn..."

can't be...

"So many of my fellow knights (general term including templars) have been searching for the Urn..."

Because...

The Templars are a military organization. With a mission.

"The Templar Order is a military order of the Chantry that hunts apostates and maleficar and watches over the mages from the Circle of Magi. While templars are officially deemed a force of defenders by the Chantry, established to protect the communities of the faithful from magical threats, they are in fact an army unto themselves; well-equipped, highly disciplined and devoted to their duties." http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Templar_Order

-What would happen if the Knight Commander sent every templar (or even a significant number) from the Redcliff chantry to search for a object that most would consider a myth and a child set someone's hair on fire, or an abomination showed up, or a vengeful apostate came and burned down the chantry? Killing scores of people in the process?

Very, very, bad things would happen to the Knight Commander. And even if he were liberal, sympathetic, corrupt, incompetent, lyrium addled, and/or just plain stupid, he would know that. He could not take that kind of a risk even if he wanted to.

-The real world equivalent would be a violatation of the Prime Directive. Oops, I mean of a General Order.

Additionally, the king is dead! Civil war is at hand! Darkspawn are on the move!

No military commander with half a brain is going to split his command into little pieces in that situation.

He just wouldn't do it.

Regarding some of the other points made...

"Is it implausible that the Templars of the Redcliffe Chantry would join the quest for the Urn?"

Yes. As outlined above. Very much so.

"As Ser Donall put it: "Every knight of Redcliffe has gone in search of the Urn of Sacred Ashes." Is it plausible that that statement could be considered true if it *didn't* include every knight serving the Redcliff Chantry?" I don't think so. And note that to win the argument, NONE of the knights of the Redcliffe chantry would go on the quest. That simply doesn't jibe with Ser Donall's statement. I am no longer seeing how a Templar knight stationed in the Redcliffe chantry could fail to quality as a "Knight of Redcliffe".

Yes. There are 2 different military organizations at the same location with a similar rank structure....

-In the real world it would go like this...

As the Commander put it: "Every Captain on the base has gone on maneuvers to find the enemies underground missile command post." And the person he was talking to would understand (because of the context and/or his uniform) that he was talking about Army Captains and not Navy Captains who happened to be on the same base.


"Oh, one additional note on A Fallen Templar: If the Templar Knights of the Redcliffe Chantry refused to go on the Urn quest - why are they not in the Redcliffe Chantry when you get there? Harrith shows up only after Attack at Nightfall. I suppose they could all have died to a man in the attacks before you get there, but... increasingly implausible."


Some died. Some were gathering up mages newly come into their power and bringing them to the Circle. Some were chasing an apostate. There was a report of a blood mage way out at Pearl and some went to check it out. Because of the upheaval and confusion the lyrium shipment didn't arrive and they're sick in bed. Some were away at a training exercise 3 counties over, etc., etc.

In other words they were doing their jobs. Not gone off on some half assed quest.

[Thandal]

The Dwarf Commoner "quest" is to find the guy ripping-off Beraht (the Carta boss) and then deciding what to do with him. And with the lyrium he was trying to smuggle on the side. And how much about either to tell Beraht. :wink:

[Qwinn]

Sorry folks. It's a Cuban thing. Plus a sick on antibiotics thing, and a haven't slept in a week thing.

 

There are some much better arguments on the table now, but will have to wait till I get home. Only thing I'll insert for now is that several arguments rely on the notion that Redcliffe was under threat of attack when the Search began, and they wouldn't leave it in such a state. The Search predates the attack by weeks. The only thing threatened in redcliffe when the Search began was the Arl.

 

Thandal, sorry, I meant dwarf commoners don't seem to have a quest after the origin. Now that I think of it tho, I guess the only race based quest after the Origins is "Of Noble Birth". Huh, had it in my head that there were more.

[Qwinn]

Came home from work early. So sick I wanna die.

 

All right. First off - Aden, sorry I went off. For the record, I didn't call you names. I like you. I called your arguments lots and lots of names. In my defense, they were really asking for it. Still are, I gotta say, but I'll endeavor to keep my composure going forward.

 

"I didn't acknowledge Genitivi points because it seemingly has no bearing on the chantry. Or that he even has the Chantry's blessing, he came off as a Rogue Element, and still does."

 

What? The Chantry funds his expedition. That is stated explicitly both in his dialogue and in the epilogue. I already quoted it (and there are multiple additional quotes to back it up, but they are mostly repetitive). How is that not granting him not just their blessing, but their actual human and material resources?

 

"There are a number of times I wanted to grab my keyboard and say "then why are their f***ing Templars in the village at all waiting around doing nothing if there supposed to be out finding this Urn" ordered no less."

 

Aside from Harrith, who doesn't show up until after the entire situation is resolved and really is just a fetchit-quest delivery recipient for the Mage Collective quest and has no dialogue related to anything else whatsoever (but he nevertheless still has a huge effect on the lore we're discussing due solely to his title and position, which confirms the existence of the Redcliffe Templars), can you please point me to these Templars (plural) that you are referring to? Because they don't exist. At all. Anywhere. There are no other Redcliffe Templars in the game aside from Ser Henric himself. You are imagining, out of whole cloth, these supposedly disinterested Templars hanging around the village. That these completely non existent Templars are causing you to want to grab your keyboard and scream at me indicates.... something, and it's not about me.

 

"The answer is simple, the order does not apply to them and they have no obligation or interest in finding this Urn."

 

Sigh. We're still making this claim of their disinterest, despite massive overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and despite the total non-existence of these other Redcliffe Templars you're insisting somehow evince a lack of interest? You have ONE guy who shows no interest - Harrith. And he isn't there until after the attack, and until after you've been tasked to get the Urn yourself.

 

"My points were to illustrate the extremes of your argument."

 

What in God's green earth about my arguments has been "extreme"?

 

"I've heard wild tales, deep imagination, and literally made up titles."

 

I can't think of a single "wild tale", "deep imagination" or "literally made up title" in anything I've said. Every single thing I've referred to has been backed up by in game content (which, sorry to disappoint you, DOES include Ser Henric's armor and the name of his quest and the text of the journal entries for that quest. By acting as if that "doesn't count", you are doing what is the proper definition of "begging the question" - assuming your argument has already been proven correct as an integral and necessary part of your argument). Please, be specific. I'm particularly interested in that last one, as it's the most specific of the bunch. What title did I "literally" make up? Cause I haven't referred to any title as part of an argument except "Ser". EDIT: Ooooh, I get it. You think I claimed "(Templar) knight of (the) Redcliffe (Chantry). " as a title. No, it's not a title, never said or thought it was, thought the parentheses would have made that clear. It's just indisputably -what he is-, and my point was that an indisputable description of -what he is- contains all the necessary words: "knight", "of", and "Redcliffe".

 

You, on the other hand, make up these convoluted stories about Genitivi's expedition being utterly trivial (wait - I thought he didn't even have their *blessing*)? You reduced what is referred to as an expedition to Genitivi, Leliana, and "a couple of knights" out of entire cloth. THAT Is "wild tales" and "deep imagination". I haven't concocted anything out of thin air remotely like you did there.

 

And you know what blows that out of the water? What I quoted and you completely ignored? SEVERAL FAILED ATTEMPTS TO KILL A DRAGON FOR NO OTHER PURPOSE THAN TO FIND THE URN. You know what usually happens when you *fail* to kill a dragon? People die. Usually a whole bunch of people. An organization in the "disinterested" category would prooooobably quit after one attempt - or not make any attempt at all, in fact - let alone return for *several* attempts and enduring massive loss of life by failing to kill a dragon in pursuit of something you claim there is "no evidence whatsoever" that they had any interest in.

 

You know what? If there was even a shred of your completely made up "the expedition was just two knights and they had no real interest in it" fantasy in game - THAT would meet my test for a complete and total contradiction with the epilogue and dialogues concerning this matter, and it would represent a bug I'd have to fix. It's completely contradictory. What you are suggesting isn't just made up - it is spectacularly contradicted by literally everything and supported by literally nothing.

 

"Alright, Qwinn I want you to go find this relic I'm going to give you two knights, a maybe Closterd sister that may or may not be still with us, and one of our scholars. Keep in mind if you do actually find anything we don't care, just make sure the Arl of some forgotten nation gets this cure! By the way when you're done stop by the Mages Tower and join your legions of knights and commit some genocide. Oh, and completely ignore the zombies coming out of the castle its cool it happens every Tuesday. We heard there is a mage involved but f*** it! It's Tuesday who needs oaths when you have umm... loyalty to the Arl. f*** his fellow knight and traveling companion we need to report this to the Templars! Oh, wait they don't give a s***. But his buddy does. ROFL."

 

Wow. "Two knights" - completely made up. "Keep in mind if you do actually find anything we don't care" - except when they think they found it, they make SEVERAL FAILED ATTEMPTS TO KILL A DRAGON to get to it, which generally - I know, here's another one of my crazy made up wild tales! - gets a lot of people really really dead. That's a funny way of showing they don't care. "Oh, and completely ignore the zombies coming out of the castle its cool it happens every Tuesday" - which apparently means the Templars have access to a Tardis, since they were never, ever present in Redcliffe or ever to our knowledge aware of the zombie attacks, and which happened long before the expedition that takes place *after* the end of the game. "We heard there was a mage involved" - also utterly imaginary, not one shred of evidence to back it up, also requires time travel. "ROFL" - um. Yeah. I can see what you think is hilarious about this completely contradicted version of events you've spun for yourself here.

 

I don't think you realize how deeply you're damaging your own case. You're ignoring vast swaths of in game evidence, quotes from the dialogue and epilogue, "filling in gaps" like claiming the expedition was tiny based on -absolutely nothing- except that it's necessary to your argument, acting as if multiple failed attacks on an enraged dragon is something people do "every Tuesday", and presenting absolutely no in game evidence yourself. You're inventing multiple "disinterested" Templars hanging around Redcliife that exist nowhere in game and which would require time travel to be anywhere near the events you're claiming they do or don't want to take part in. Combine it with the insults and the tactic of ridicule and calling my position "extreme" for the act of pointing out copious evidence that contradicts your completely fantastical contortions attempting to justify this as a "fix" may win political arguments on the interwebs, but it doesn't budge me an inch, sorry. In fact, it just convinces me that your arguments can be dismissed safely.

 

Step up your game, man. I like you, but that was really, really sad. You're just proving to me that you're utterly partisan about this - you've decided on the end result you want, and you're rewriting everything to make it conform to it - and immune to hard evidence.

 

Now dgm22 made at least one good argument, so I'll get to that in a bit. Again, when done with this, I'm going to post a few details about updates to the mod based on feedback so far.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Okay, to dgm22:

 

• "Very, very, bad things would happen to the Knight Commander. And even if he were liberal, sympathetic, corrupt, incompetent, lyrium addled, and/or just plain stupid, he would know that. He could not take that kind of a risk even if he wanted to. "

 

No "even if he were" about it - we know he's all of those things. You really think his knights going out to help find the Urn would get him in more trouble than his ACTUAL practice of harboring and protecting the apostate mages of the Mage Collective? Cause if I were him, I know which case I'd prefer to go to my trial with. I think it's a silly argument that he IS willing to risk the latter, multiple times (and that is not conjecture - he *does*, repeatedly) but the former would be just way too risky for him. Not standing around ready in the unlikely case an apostate mage wanders by - BAD! Actually helping and supporting apostate mages directly - ACCEPTABLE RISK! Come on. And remember - there was nothing actually going on, no known threats on the horizon, when the Search began other than the Arl's sickness. Cailan hadn't even lost a battle against the darkspawn yet. I frankly don't think he'd get in any trouble at all for what I'm suggesting - I think I've established the Chantry's overwhelming interest in finding the Urn beyond question, and the Commander would be just as likely to get in trouble for NOT sending his knights on such an expedition. This is not the argument I'm considering a good one.

 

• "Additionally, the king is dead! Civil war is at hand! Darkspawn are on the move!
• No military commander with half a brain is going to split his command into little pieces in that situation.
• He just wouldn't do it.

Totally agreed that he wouldn't. But at the point where the Search began, Cailan was still very much alive, and he had won every single battle against the Darkspawn, and there was no inkling of civil war. You'll need to prove I'm incorrect about that to prove your case - but remember, Ser Donall and Ser Henric are found *in Lothering*, no more than a couple of days after the first darkspawn battle is lost and Cailan is killed. If the Search began after Cailan was killed, teleportation required to get the news from Ostagar to Redcliffe, the entire expedition organized and set out, and Donall and Henric making it to Lothering. And Donall's dialogue makes it clear the search had been ongoing for quite some time. The Search began *weeks* earlier. This is not the good argument, although if you thought up to this point that that was the order of events, I can see why you held the position you did.

 

-In the real world it would go like this...

As the Commander put it: "Every Captain on the base has gone on maneuvers to find the enemies underground missile command post." And the person he was talking to would understand (because of the context and/or his uniform) that he was talking about Army Captains and not Navy Captains who happened to be on the same base.

THIS is the good argument. Kudos. It actually addresses, for the very first time in this thread, the actual central core of my argument. To that, my response is this (and remember, in defense of the in game content, I only need to prove plausible, not likely or necessary): Notice how you capitalized the word "Captain". That's an explicit , defined rank - it would be analogous to Knight Captain of the Templars. Donall uses lower case "knight", which I would argue is more analogous to "officer" in a modern analogy. If a person on your hypothetical base said "Me and my fellow officers have been working on a strategy for the upcoming battle", is it perfectly plausible that he could be speaking of both the Army and Navy officers which he had, in fact, been working together with? Sure. Most especially with the deep level of bonding I would expect between the Templar knights and the extremely devout and religious Arl's knights, who in the case of Perth and his 3 knights no one would question being Templars themselves if you just changed their armor, and they represent 80% of the Arl's knights in game, heh.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Oh, and one more relevant piece of in game evidence directly related to the argument that the Templar knights would never leave Redcliffe as that would render it defenseless (this is in addition to my point that there was no threat at that time):

 

Player: "So the knights left the castle defenseless?"

 

Ser Perth: "Not at all. A great number of soldiers remained in Castle Redcliffe. I wonder if they perished there and were transformed into these... things."

 

The Arl's knights felt confident that the remaining non-knight forces remaining in Redcliffe were sufficient to its defense. I find it implausible to insist that the knights from the Chantry side would have HAD to disagree wit that, and refuse to join on that basis.

 

 

 

EDIT: And MORE in game evidence. This is the actual text of Ser Henric's note:

 

A knight's note.
So many of my fellow knights have been searching for the Urn. Surely one of them must have found Brother Genitivi by now. Still, until I hear that all is well, I must proceed as planned. Brother Genitivi holds the key to finding the Urn of Sacred Ashes: We always knew this, but I believe I now know where Brother Genitivi lies. I have been to his home in Denerim and found the trail, and I am amazed that other knights have not done likewise. Unless they have? No, it is best not to get caught up in thoughts of conspiracy. Ser Donall awaits my report in Lothering. I must go to him immediately and report what I have learned. Should anyone find these ramblings, all I ask is that he be informed of my fate. I pray that he complete what I cannot.

--A note from Ser Henric of Redcliffe.

So, to our previous time travel requirement, add a side trip to Genitivi's home in Denerim. It is now required that, in the time that it takes the players to get from Flemeth's Hut to Lothering, news of the king's death got to Redcliffe, they organized the expedition, they went to Denerim (with surprise that other knights didn't get there before he did), and then they trekked all the way back to Lothering.

 

Yeah, no.

 

And something else - I was wrong. That "Ser Henric of Redcliffe" isn't even the way he signed the note - that's just a third party description of what you just read. So we don't even need to get into the psychology of whether a Templar wouldn't feel morally required to spell out "of the Redcliffe Chantry" instead of "of Redcliffe" in his own signature (which made me headdesk violently, by the way).

Edited June 14, 2017 by Qwinn