Mage-Templar War

The Mage-Templar War broke out in 9:40 Dragon between the mages and the templars. It fomented following the Battle of Kirkwall, a city state in the southern Free Marches, in 9:37 Dragon and officially erupted with the abolition of the Circles in Orlais, in 9:38-9:39 Dragon.

Background
Following the Second Qunari Invasion of Kirkwall, Hawke, a Ferelden refugee, was appointed Champion of Kirkwall for helping to evict the Qunari presence. After 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.

The rebellion of the Kirkwall Circle
After the death of Lord Viscount Marlowe Dumar in 9:34 Dragon Age, Knight-Commander Meredith of the templars took stewardship of Kirkwall. Peace was barely kept in check by Grand Cleric Elthina, though she did little to alleviate the growing tension. 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 the mages and templars.



Meanwhile the templar Thrask was conspiring to depose Meredith, teaching one mage and templar at a time that they don't need to hate each other. 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 to dissuade further attempts. Meredith was convinced that Orsino was the one behind this conspiracy and vice versa.

Given that according to Ser Karras Meredith has requested the Divine in Val Royeaux for the Right of Annulment even prior to the described events, the situation became extremely tense.

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 the matter 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, interfered to tell that the friction between the Circle and templars and the Chantry's apathy towards the abuses of its military arm had gone on for too long. Seconds later, the Kirkwall chantry exploded, killing Grand Cleric Elthina and everybody else within. Anders stated that he destroyed the Chantry and thus removed the chance of compromise because there was no real chance of compromise, and in order to show Thedas that the Circles of Magi weren't a solution.

Knight-Commander Meredith retaliated by invoking the Right of Annulment, calling on the templars to execute all the Mages in Kirkwall, with First Enchanter Orsino gathering the Circle together to fight the templars. Both factions petitioned for the Champion's assistance: Orsino arguing the Circle was innocent of any involvement in Anders' crime, while Meredith countered that Kirkwall would descend into anarchy if the people were not granted retribution for Elthina's murder.



Fighting raged across Kirkwall, as the Champion encountered mages and templars battling 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 fighting across the Gallows was brutal. Many mages were cut down by the templars blades, while many templars were slaughtered by fire, ice and lighting spells. As it went on some mages turned to blood magic and unleashed demons on the templars.

The carnage saw many on both sides lose their lives, the deaths of his fellow mages seeming to push Orsino into despair and 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 statues 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.

Present day
As of 9:40 Dragon, the Andrastian Chantry is crumbling, with over nine hundred years of relative stability shattered. While some of the Seekers are known to remain loyal to the Chantry and the reigning Divine, others, as well as many of the Templars, have rebelled and left the Chantry to hunt and fight mages on their own terms.



The Divine desperately seeks to put an end to the conflict, and assigned those Seekers remaining loyal to her 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 Warden-Commander of Amaranthine.

Cassandra Pentaghast was also sent to find Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall. She captured one of Hawke's companions, the dwarf Varric Tethras and brought him back to Kirkwall, interrogating him in the old Amell Estate in an attempt to discover the Champion's current whereabouts and the true origins of the war. Tethras knew nothing of the Champion's fate, but said he highly doubts that Hawke was dead. Satisfied, Cassandra then took her contingent of Seekers and departed Kirkwall.