Mage-Templar War

The Mage-Templar War broke out in 9:37 Dragon Age, in Kirkwall, a city state in the southern Free Marches. The war erupted following the Battle of Kirkwall, when Circles across Thedas rose up in rebellion against Chantry control. The war is ongoing as of 9:40 Dragon and is being fought between the mages and templars.

Background
Following the Second Qunari Invasion of Kirkwall, Hawke, a Ferelden refugee, was appointed Champion of Kirkwall for helping to evict the Qunari presence. Following the death of Marlowe Dumar and his only heir, Saemus, Meredith Stannard, the knight-commander of the city's templars, assumed the position of viscount in all but name, which caused tensions amongst both the citizenry and the mages. Meredith's sanctions against the latter became increasingly harsh, while the nobility began to object to a templar ruling the city, many wishing for the Champion to become viscount.

Meredith's sanctions against the mages were strongly opposed by First Enchanter Orsino, who believed that Meredith was losing her mind, seeing maleficarum where none existed. Tensions reached a peak, and exploded into violence due to the actions of the apostate Anders.

Overview
After the death of Lord Viscount Marlowe Dumar in 9:34 Dragon Age, Knight-Commander Meredith of the templars takes stewardship of Kirkwall at the Chantry's request. Peace was barely kept in check by Grand Cleric Elthina, who did nothing to denounce Meredith's tyranny or change the behaviour of the Templar Order. But neither did she denounce the increasing attacks on the city by rebel mages. The citizens of Kirkwall soon began to cry for the Champion of Kirkwall to deliver salvation to the city.

The situation in Kirkwall soon became of great concern to the Divine in Val Royeaux, fearing that the city may become another Tevinter Imperium if the mages rebelled and thus sent an agent to the city to assess the danger and to pass a warning onto Elthina to flee should war break out. But Elthina stubbornly refused to abandon her flock, believing that she could make peace between both mages and templars.

Fearing that Meredith would cause open war with the mages so long as she remains in power, the templar Thrask began conspiring to depose her, gathering templars and mages together. However, he suffered a betrayal when one of his allies killed him in order to get revenge on the Champion for the death of her lover. The remaining conspirators were taken into custody by Meredith's loyalists and were brutally dealt with to dissuade further attempts. Meredith was convinced that Orsino was the one behind this conspiracy and vice versa.

The last straw came when Meredith accused First Enchanter Orsino of harbouring blood mages, demanding a full search of the Gallows to root them out; Orsino refused to allow it and stormed off, intending to bring this latest outrage to the Grand Cleric's attention. Things come to a head when Anders, an apostate healer and ex-Grey Warden and companion of the Champion of Kirkwall, concluded that the friction between the Circle and templars and the Chantry's apathy towards the templars' abuses has gone on for too long and that no one should forget the contributions of mages during the Fifth Blight. As a message to all of Thedas, he destroyed the Kirkwall chantry, killing Elthina in the process, thus removing the false hope of compromise. Wasting no time blaming the mages, Knight-Commander Meredith invoked the Right of Annulment calling on her Templars to execute all the Mages in Kirkwall, with First Enchanter Orsino gathering the Circle together to fight their hated oppressors. Both factions petitioned for the Champion's assistance: Orsino arguing the Circle did not deserve destruction when they played no part in Ander's crime, while Meredith countered that the city's people would descend into anarchy if retribution for Elthina's murder was not exacted

Fighting raged across Kirkwall, as the Champion encountered mages and templars fighting to the death across the city. The Circle mages barricaded themselves at the gallows to form a united front. Meanwhile Meredith gathered the entire templar order to attack the island fortress. Hawke arrived in the gallows courtyard just in time to see Orsino destroy the templar advance guard. But Meredith arrived seconds later with reinforcements. Orsino tried to negotiate a truce, but Meredith would accept nothing short of the Circle's surrender and execution. Orsino refused and vowed the templars would pay for this. But both sides accepted a temporary ceasefire to prepare their troops. Meredith began the final battle when the templars broke down the gates and they charged into the Gallows. The mages were waiting for them and the Gallows exploded in chaos, as mages and templars finally unleashed their full hatred for each other. The carnage saw many on both sides lose their lives, the deaths of his fellow mages seeming to push Orsino into insanity. Seeing no way out, Orsino used a blood magic ritual to merge with the dead bodies of his colleagues, becoming a monstrous construct to take the fight to Meredith. The Champion, forced to intervene, killed Orsino.

In the later stages of the battle, Meredith accused the Champion of being behind the affair, and ordered their arrest and execution. Sharing the view that she had gone too far, her templars refused, with the Knight-Captain ordering her to stand down. Meredith seemed to finally go completely mad. She used her pure-lyrium sword to animate the stautes lining the courtyard of the Gallows, and to give herself enhanced speed and strength. She turned on her own men and began to fight mages, templars and the Champion. The Champion defeated her eventually. Unable to accept defeat, Meredith tried to draw more power from the sword. But instead the sword shattered and its fragments infused with her body, petrifying her.

A number of mages managed to escape Kirkwall and spread word of the slaughter to the other Circles of Thedas. Outraged that the templars of Kirkwall would invoke the Right of Annulment to justify the deaths of an entire Circle for the crimes of one apostate, mages everywhere rose up in revolt.

Present day
As of 9:40 Dragon, the Andrastian Chantry is crumbling, with over nine hundred years of relative stability shattered. While the secret military branch known as the Seekers are known to remain loyal to the Chantry and the reigning Divine, Varric Tethras noted that the templars, the Chantry's official military arm, have rebelled and left the Chantry to hunt and fight mages on their own terms. Some templars, following Ser Thrask's example, may have also sided with the mages and contributed to their war effort. Others may take advantage of their newfound freedom from the Chantry to secure illicit supplies of lyrium by any means necessary to feed the lyrium addiction they have developed as a result of the Chantry's templar training regime.



The Divine desperately seeks to put an end to the conflict, and assigned the enigmatic Seekers to track down the only two people in all Thedas who may have the power and influence to put an end to the conflict. One of her agents, Leliana, was sent to track down one of them, the Hero of Ferelden.

Cassandra Pentaghast was also sent to find Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall. She captured one of Hawke's companions, the dwarf Varric Tethras in an attempt to discover the Champion's current whereabouts. Tethras knew nothing of the Champion's fate, but said he highly doubts that Hawke was dead.