Guest Post: Murphy's Perfect Dragon Age - Part Four

 Last week, I started on your followers/allies for this hypothetical Dragon Age game of awesome, and it involved a lot of pushing to get characters from previous games involved in the advisoring and warrioring action. Now it’s time to finish off companions and look at the rogues and mages that would be in your party.

 Rogues

 Varric Tethras: What? Everyone loves Varric. He’s been in two games already and his popularity has yet to wane even slightly, and since he wasn’t a romance option, he’s arguably a more viable option for this list than some of those who showed up in the last post (hello, Cullen). Varric’s great, everyone loves Varric.

 In terms of what he does, he’d probably fulfil much the same party role as he did before: One of your long range hitters, with some extra focus on laying traps.

 Skoll: Here’s something that has been circling fandom: What if there’s a red lyrium version of Fenris somewhere? With red lyrium now absolutely everywhere as a result of Corypheus, this is definitely now a much more distinct possibility, and it’s hard to believe some enterprising magister wouldn’t want to try an experiment in that regard.

 Thus is Skoll created. A human slave, she has the same strange markings as Fenris, bar that hers are of red lyrium, resulting in powerful phasing powers (and other strange abilities besides), but making her dangerously mentally unstable, especially as the red lyrium spreads throughout her body.

 I am imagining a character very much in the vein of Jack from Mass Effect 2. Abrasive, dangerous, extremely distrustful of Tevinter and people in general, and with the possibility of being a liability if she gets out of control. She’d function as your party’s assassin, using twin daggers and semi-magical abilities to get close to enemies, do massive damage, and then flit away again.

 Yvonna Urvellan: This list is a bit elf short right now, so here’s an elf. Specifically, an elvish Grey Warden, because this list is also a bit Grey Warden short. No nonsense, rather bewildered by how Tevinter-y everything she is (being from Orlais, where things are much more sensible), and steadfastly devoted to doing good in the world, and defending it from Blights.

 I realise this sounds a bit like Blackwall, but Blackwall was boring, and I’d hope this character would be a shade more interesting. I mean, for starters, she wouldn’t have a beard, and also, she’d talk about things other than how awesome being a Grey Warden is.

Mages

 Illyria Aquila: We have precious few characters from the Tevinter elite so far, so here’s Illyria! The eldest daughter of a Tevinter magister, Illyria is a keen Old God enthusiast and worshipper who takes umbrage at the blasphemy of a demon trying to assume the power of her deities, and also may or may not have an agenda towards Old God worship becoming more acceptable in Tevinter.

 Illyria is privileged and deeply entrenched in Tevinter society, which might provide a nice contrast to all the downtrodden people and foreigners we have filling out the cast, and provide a good opportunity for conflict.

 In terms of combat, she’d probably tend towards destructive schools of magic, and her specialism would be along the lines of inflicting status effects and utilising a few heavy damage spells, like Dorian’s Necromancer class.

 Gwydion Hylanda: More elves! More elves. A slave freed to join the Inquisition, Gwydion could be a powerful elven mage, with his characterisation going one of two ways: The obvious route of an angry slave who hates his slavemasters, or the more nauseating route of a slave who has been stockholmed into thinking that his lot in life is a good one, and that slavery is great. Horrible as it is, we know slaves like that have existed in slave-keeping countries, from time to time.

 I think if it were the latter, he’d have to undergo a character arc where he realises it’s not okay.

 Gwydion would be a healer type (we direly need to bring back healing spells), whose specialisation, Druid, would focus on healing, shielding and buffing his allies. The ultimate support mage, essentially, since our mage line-up is very attack heavy.

 Eligos: So we’ve had a spirit taking material form and slowly becoming human in Cole, and we’ve seen a spirit transforming into a demon in Justice, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen a demon transforming into a spirit, and I feel like that’s a storyline that could have a lot of potential.

 In a world rapidly going mad, a magister performs a blood sacrifice of his slaves to summon a powerful Pride demon. It possesses the body of one of his slaves, killing the magister and offering its services to the Archon, because Maker knows it doesn’t want one of its powerful, rival demons becoming an Old God.

 Eligos could be tricky, cunning and manipulative, but also a font of knowledge about demons, the Fade and Thedasian history. Over time, Eligos’ exposure to humanity could start to transform him for the better, causing him to become less Pride demon and more Wisdom spirit. For his specialisation, a Summoner class that allows him to summon your stock enemy demons to aid the party for a limited period of time would be nice.