They lost their First (Merrill), lost 3 hunters to a Varterral which normally give Dalish free pass, lost their Halla (their "friends"), they're trapped at the foot of Sundermount which is cursed, they lost their Keeper, and finally, they attacked me and I wiped them out.
So who or what doomed them?
Was it the compact forged between Marethari and Flemeth? To pay her secret debt to Flemmy, Malithari brought the clan to Sundermount to wait for Hawke, the person that eventually kills them. It's the perfect crime, they do Flem's bidding and then dead men tell no tales.
Or was it Merrill's consorting with the Pride demon that led to her "Fall"? Failure as First, failure with the mirror, the stabbing death of motherly Marethari, and realization that despite her precautions she was completely beguiled. A parable about being damned by the Maker for consorting with evil and using blood magic?
But would she ever have found and consorted with Pridey, if not for the Keeper having brought the clan there to begin with, which was at Flemeth's direction. I'm tellin' ya, Flem's got her boney fingers all in this stew!
Or maybe it was just a run of bad luck? ;) KatherineMarieS. (talk) 23:59, November 2, 2011 (UTC)
Gaider.174.45.9.40 (talk) 00:42, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
Tamlen for touching the goddamn Eluvian in the first place. Tommyspa (talk) 01:17, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
Hmm... I don't think we've ever met a Varterral that let anything pass, including a Dalish. Flemeth didn't even know Hawke existed until after the clan had arrived at Sundermount. They didn't "lose" their first, they cast her away. Merrill may have left of her own volition, but I'm damn sure the dalish wouldn't let her back in again. And, considering that the progression of that plot thread is directly dependant upon Hawke's relationship with Merrill, one could in fact say that it is the player who damns the dalish. Gaider and company leave us several ways to avoid many of the events that transpire, such as the death of Marethari, so it is ultimately our own actions that determine their fate. If they die, it's because we killed them. --Isolationistmagi (talk) 01:29, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure Marethari's death is up to the player, because by Act 3 Merrill is intent on summoning the demon even if you are on the rivalry path and didn't give her the arulinhome-thingy. So I guess that even if you refuse to go with her and safeguard everyone, she would just ask someone else and still do it. Varric and Isabela would probably go with her anyway, so she would never really have to do it alone.--SunyiNyufi (talk) 13:37, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
- Isabella isn't even necessarilly alive by this point without player intervention, and Varric doesn't strike me as the type of person to be into that sort of thing unless Hawke is somehow involved, but I could be wrong. Even so, all of what you said is purely hypothetical, as there is no evidence that Merrill summons the demon behind Hawke's back, wheras there is evidence that she does not. I played through the entire game right up to the point where I can start the last straw, without ever doing Merrill's quest. I stopped by the dalish clan to see how they were doing and, sure enough, Marethari was still there and still kicking. Marethari only dies if the player gets involved. --Isolationistmagi (talk) 21:00, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
- Varric does basically everything he can to protect Merrill throughout the game, so I guess if Merrill decided to do the demon-summon-thing, he would go with her. And yeah, sure what I said is only hypothetical, but what you mention doesn't really count either, cos you can't prove that Merrill didn't go to Sundermount without you right before Last Straw... So I would say, if you didn't do Merrill's quest, at best you don't know if Marethari is dead or live by the end of DA2. * sigh * I wish this game also had some sort of epilogue slides like DAO...--SunyiNyufi (talk) 21:38, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
- Isabella isn't even necessarilly alive by this point without player intervention, and Varric doesn't strike me as the type of person to be into that sort of thing unless Hawke is somehow involved, but I could be wrong. Even so, all of what you said is purely hypothetical, as there is no evidence that Merrill summons the demon behind Hawke's back, wheras there is evidence that she does not. I played through the entire game right up to the point where I can start the last straw, without ever doing Merrill's quest. I stopped by the dalish clan to see how they were doing and, sure enough, Marethari was still there and still kicking. Marethari only dies if the player gets involved. --Isolationistmagi (talk) 21:00, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
- Merrill was with me when I went to the gallows, so that leaves a very narrow window (the time it took me to enter the house, read the letter, and leave) to do the entire quest and be back in time to follow Hawke and company to the gallows. (If you think she can walk to sundermount, kill a pride demon as well as her entire clan, and walk back to Kirkwall in thirty seconds, more power to you.) There simply isn't enough time for her to do the quest. So logically, the quest was never done, and the dalish are still alive. Also, the death of the dalish elves is not cannon, so the only person that can damn them is the PC. --Isolationistmagi (talk) 22:36, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
I forgot about the halla. That was just bad luck, or Gaider. Take your pick. --Isolationistmagi (talk) 01:30, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
I suppose it would be Marethari's fault. Her role as keeper was to protect the clan and protect the history of the people, she placed Merrill above that and screwed her clan over in the process. If she viewed Merrill to be such a danger (letting the demon go free, using the shattered mirror) then she should have killed her, or at the very least made what was going to happen not harm the clan. Never left sundermount, never told Hawke the mirror was never going to work (I assume merril was told this, she wouldn't care), didn't tell the clan what she was going to do and made them fear Merrill. I understand why she didn't do these things, but that doesn't mean I approve. (Knight Templar (talk) 04:00, November 3, 2011 (UTC))
Marethari probably should have protected the clan more, especially after she knew what danger Merrill was putting herself and others in, but at the end of the day it was the humans at the start of the Dalish origin that gave Tamlen and a Mahariel warden the curiosity to venture into the ruin and discover the eluvian that doomed the clan, in my opinion. If the eluvian had never been discovered it is likely that Merrill would never have turned to blood magic and put her clan at risk with the demon. ChemistryCat (talk) 05:56, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
I've never met a Varterral that let anything pass either, but during the quest for the Arulin'Holm, Merrill states that "Varterral normally let the Dalish do as they please, unless it's been provoked." And Zevran had no trouble, in fact, he was trying to draw the Crows into the Varterral.
As for Flemeth specifically knowing Hawke, does that matter? Whomever she sent would have been the clan wiper outer, it just happened to be Hawke (us).
Anyone else think that the secret debt Marethari owed Flemeth was saving Merrill's life in DAO? And that was what sealed their fate? KatherineMarieS. (talk) 06:55, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
Zevran's a rogue, he could get by it in any number of ways. Also, savage dalish-eating Varterrals speak far more loudly then Merrill does as to the creatures' nature. I suppose Flemeth knowing Hawke doesn't really matter, but there is no guarantee that whoever is sent to deliver the amulet will kill the clan. Even if Marethari becomes an abomination and is killed, it is possible to talk your way out of fighting the clan. To that end, I stand by what I said before, it is ultimately the player that dooms Marethari's clan.
As to your theory about Flemeth saving Merrill, I see two large problems. The first is that is that Merrill encountered nothing in DAO that would require Flemeth's intervention to save her (unless you named your warden Merrill?) The second is that it is very clear on sundermount after the ritual that Merrill and Flemeth have not met before. (again, unless you named your warden Merrill?0 --Isolationistmagi (talk) 21:00, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
If she were punished by some divine power, I think it's not the Maker; perhaps the Creators or Fen'Harel; the deities of the Dalish. Still, I don't know who watches over Thedas.
Nothing is inherently evil about blood magic, as Merrill says. What makes it bad is that if you use others to empower yourself; selfish, not selfless sacrifice. When you compare Merrill's Blood of the First to Hawke's Blood Magic, she only has Wounds of the Past, the equivalent of Hemorrhage, but she doesn't have any other spells that would harm her allies, like Sacrifice, or enemies in a "reckless, violent" manner, such as Blood Slave.
In my opinion, it's curiosity...
Even though Tamlen had the option of leaving it, he decided to examine it. Merrill wanted to restore at least a piece of their legacy, so she was determined to fix the Eluvian, no matter the cost. It could also be Keeper Marethari's fault, in a sense that she wanted to discover the cursed Sundermount.
NicKeL BreaD Talk 10:02, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
...on a serious note, not that I do not believe gaider and his staff ruined the franchise...yes you could go all the way back to the origin in origins and blame the humans for finding the mirror, tamlem for touching it, merril for wanting it, flemeth for sending hawke there to enable merril, hawke for doing that, the warden and morrigan for making flemeth take the precaution of sending hawke there in the first place...or just mother nature for killing the clans hala and making it difficult to leave.
But blaming all the insignificant parties aside I have to agree with those who say the keeper doomed them all. Her over bearing want to protect merril and how poorly she went about is is what turned the clan on each other, stranded them, and got herself at the very least killed...all something that the calm calculating and intelligent keeper we saw in the origins clan would have handled completely differently.174.45.9.40 (talk) 10:04, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
Is Marethari all that different? She seems to know much more of elven lore (prehaps this is what is owed to Flemeth, never caught on to what that was about) but other than that I don't see much change. I replayed the Dalish origin the other day to be sure and the only characters I can see as out of line with their future counterparts are Hahren Paivel (who I mistook for the elder of Krikwall my first playthrough, given his title. I guess the alienage in Kirkwall is small enough they don't even have one?) as Paivel is far too kind to outsiders. Of course Merrill is the other, she is still has roughly the same character traits though (says inappropriate things without thinking, sub-par social skills and seems more intrested in dalish lore than anything else.) But to bring this back on topic and respond to NicKeL BreaD: True Merrill doesn't abuse the powers of blood magic, we never see her reading minds or controling thoughts if she ever tired to learn how. But the biggest danger of blood magic is the risk of possesion, and Merrill shows clearly the danger of that. (Knight Templar (talk) 20:28, November 3, 2011 (UTC))
- "But the biggest danger of blood magic is the risk of possesion, and Merrill shows clearly the danger of that."
- Why? She was never possessed? Someone else caused themselves to become so for her sake but who's to say that was necessary? The keeper was hardly making rational decisions up to that point and you certainly can't trust her judgement.174.45.9.40 (talk) 22:50, November 3, 2011 (UTC)