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justavulcan · 5 months

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Backgrounds With Class: Golgari Agent

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer. So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with. Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

Golgari Agent

The Golgari Agent Artificer is one of the kraul, a wingless merchant who recently took over the family business. Poling a narrow raft through the undercity’s sewer network isn’t glamorous work, but it does afford her a fine selection of various fungi and other ingredients for her elixirs and salves. If push comes to shove, her alchemical expertise is for more than just brewing potions; many an undercity predator has tasted her home-made deathspore bombs and opted for easier prey elsewhere.

The Golgari Agent Barbarian has been a member of his neighborhood’s hunting party since he became of age. Eschewing moodmark paint in favor of a hunter’s mottled camouflage pigments, he knows how to track and run down prey with the pack coordination of a wolf. This talent’s not hyperbole, either; his last encounter with one of the Selesnya’s ledev guardians supplied him with a fine wolf-pelt cowl he wears proudly over his hunter’s paint. Sometimes he even thinks the spirit of the wolf takes over on the hunt; it would account for the times he’s come to after a kill with blood on his face.

The Golgari Agent Bard knows better than most how things of import can turn up anywhere. A findbroker by trade, her ability to discover the history behind any gewgaw or trinket she scrounges up has more than doubled her profit on occasion. Gifted with a turn of phrase and the eerie, low-pitch ocarina she cares for like a child, her ambitions don’t stop at finding lost art- she yearns to be the first to rediscover some buried vault or basement thought long lost.

The Golgari Agent Cleric, in accordance with the Swarm’s care for the cycle of life and death, has been responsible for dozens of acts of euthanasia in her life. It doesn’t take an expert to recognize when a hunter’s been taken by zombie fungus, or when a red reaver bloom’s explosive dispersal drives a whole apartment block mad with aggression. It just takes care and respect for the final solace of death to ease people’s suffering. That her focus also comes in handy fending off territorial disputes is icing.

The Golgari Agent Druid is, technically, a drudge, one of the zombified dead that the Swarm relies on for muscle, both on the farm and the battlefield. However, unknown processes allowed the fungal parasite to seize full control of the host, and arrive at a consciousness of their own. Now, they’re busy determining the meaning of their new existence. While they work it out, they shamble about the Undercity, working odd jobs tending livestock and helping farmers with their natural understanding of other fungi.

The Golgari Agent Fighter is militant, a troll-blooded human with the strength of arm and heart to testify to his lineage. While for the moment just one of the many toughs that lurk around the Undercity looking for easy prey, his true goal is far less provincial: to climb the Swarm’s political ladder and become one of Jarad’s closest advisors or even his bodyguard. To this end, he’s quick to speak out in aggression against surface- dwellers intruding on his domain, or take the initiative and lead a raiding party himself.

The Golgari Agent Monk was always gifted with swiftness of arm and wit; as a nymph he scrapped with his siblings more days than not, and has since taken to far more dangerous partners to improve her skills. He mostly works as a guide for the rare surface-dweller to travel below the sunlit streets, and even distills his own moonshine from fermenting fruit and the ample yeast colonies on his travels. He’s become quite the alcoholic aficionado, and claims he fights even better when he’s had a few drinks.

The Golgari Agent Paladin was, like many of his Ordruun kin, originally slated to join the Boros Legion as a cadet when he came of age. He did, but when a raid went bad and he was left for dead in the Undercity by a sergeant he knew to be corrupt, he swore he wouldn’t leave the darkened streets and buried closes of Ravnica until the man lay dead before him. A childhood roaming the near-surface reaches and a minotaur’s innate sense of direction have served him well, and his new guild feeds the cold core of his desire for vengeance happily so long as it’s pointed at their mutual enemies.

The Golgari Agent Ranger always liked bugs. Wasn’t much of a choice, really, living in one of the many tenement buildings sunk below the sunlit streets of upper Ravnica- you learned to deal with the scurrying things of the world young. Cultivating a unique magical bond with them was the work of many long nights, but the result has been beyond reproach- his many tiny friends are stronger than they look, and complement his hunting well as they ensure that his prey can never truly escape.

The Golgari Agent Rogue has aspired to become one of the Ochran ever since one killed his abusive parents in front of him. Starry-eyed about becoming one of the Swarm’s most famous killers, he moved to the Undercity the next week, escaping the home of his blood family to find new kin. He had a rough time of it, begging and sweeping out chimneys, but he picked up the poisons quickly, and has always been slight enough to slip down sewer pipes and chimneys to find the target.

The Golgari Agent Sorcerer was a washout before he was anything of real use- literally. Originally an experimental attempt at forming a drake-human krasis for the Guardian Project, he was mistaken by a careless lab assistant for a failure and flushed out of his transformation tank before his scales, wing flaps, and poison glands fully developed. Recovered by a rot farmer accustomed to handling the runoff from the Simic lab in question, he’s grown to appreciate his new environment- and has already misdirected or slain the first attempts of the lab’s owner to track him down for retrieval.

The Golgari Agent Warlock always made a point of delving deeper and into tighter environs than his contemporaries. Never a good fit with hunter or shaman, he explored the depths of the Undercity all on his own before stumbling one day into an as-yet undiscovered chamber. The figure sitting on the throne there was enormous in size and patched together from all different creatures, but when it stirred to see the boy before it, all it did was offer him a set of knucklebones on string. Taking them was the beginning of something, and now the man treasures the talisman that forms the link to his patron.

The Golgari Agent Wizard has been a rot farmer for decades. It’s only now, lately, that he’s set out to travel and study magic in the hopes of winning his farm back. It was taken from him by a devkarin lich, an objective lesson in might making right within the Swarm, and he hopes to master enough of the necromancer’s art to bend the new owner’s undead farmhands to his will. He’s quickly finding that things are very big outside his secluded cavern home, and even that he likes it- perhaps enough to keep him from going back.

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lairofdragonagelore · 2 years

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Exalted Plains

The Exalted Plains, also known as Dirthavaren ("the promise") in elvish, is a grassland region of the Dales in Orlais. Centuries ago, the Dalish kingdom met its end here, the holdouts of the elven army making their last stand, refusing to surrender against the champions of Andraste: the templar, the sister, and the nobleman patron. The champions' cause was just, and their faith led them to victory. The plains were henceforth called "Exalted". After the elves' defeat and the dissolution of their kingdom, Ville Montevelan became the first human settlement in the Dales, presided over by Revered Mother Amity, Champion of the Exalted March.

Currently, the region is a contested battlefield during the War of the Lions until Empress Empress Celene and Gaspard de Chalons's armies agreed to cease hostilities.

[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]

When entering this zone, Solas explains that this place has a thin Veil product of the battles that happened long time ago: the Exalted March of Dales. So we know we are going to see a mixture of elven ruins and human settlements.

Scout Harding will inform us that in the area there is a group of rebels who are tired of the War of the Lions, and wants the Dales for themselves.

The first thing we see when we enter this zone are these statues that, design-wise, they are very, very close to the Humanoid Dirthamen/Falon'Din. Humanoid Dirthamen/Falon'Din is a squatted hooded figure, who doesn’t have any object in his hand. This one holds a plate which works as a brazier. In fact, the elven statues are placed in this entrance, but on the Emerald Graves side:

They are called Guardians of the Path, and by the note they trigger, they are Andrastian. Still the striking similarity between these statues and the one we associate with Dirthamen makes me suspect that, once conquered, the Orlesians repurposed the native statues.

The first ruin we find, which surrounds the camp, is an elven one, with a dragon painting on one of its columns.

Besides the path there is a rectangle statue which on its top has a star-shaped fountain with a dove. On a side there is a reused elven/dwarven relic tablet that will trigger the codex Memorials of the Second Exalted March which will be updated as we read all these stones spread in the region. They explain how the “battle” against the elves was happening, mixing Andrastre’s tale with probably bits of History. It’s very curious how this piece of information depicts the elves as proud and murderous, far away from the Maker and Andraste, which is clearly a lie when we analyse Di’nan Hanin; these Dalish, unlike modern Dalish, had fused Andraste cult into their elven pantheon, not without reason: It had been some decades since they had recovered these lands thanks to Andraste’s promise.

The zone has several ramparts where the imperial army [either side] is trying to retake control from the undead and the demons. Recovering each of these is quite a repetitive task all over the place.

The only important comment about these ramparts is that they give us some idea to understand the function of these Strange Skull-Dragon totem : They seem to hold barriers around pits that allow the dead to rise, and also as columns surrounding zones with many undead or demons. They seem to be related to summoning rituals.

Along the region we find several Andrastian statues and the typical orlesian style in the remnants of the houses that still stand.

Fort Revasan shows the standard elven patterns of any elven ruin. The Orlesian occupation built extra, less durable additions with chess-like floors and decorated wooden elements.

Close to Fort Revasan there is a sealed entrance that requires a war table operation to be solved in order to open. It shows a Fen’Harel statue, guarding the entrance. It’s a nice detail to see that the base of his statue shows an eluvian-like pattern worth to keep present.

Very far away in the North, over the mountains that surround this region, we see a big Fen’Harel statue observing the Exalted Plains. It’s hard to guess what this zone represented in the time of the Elvhenan [not the Dalish kingdom]. This place has 3 main elvhen ruins: the one in the North Rampart, the Ghilan’nair’s grove, and the Graveyard Var Bellanaris. There are more than these, but they are too destroyed or small. It’s hard to ponder if all of them date of the same time.

At some kilometres of distance from the Fen’Harel’s statue, we see a tower of radical different style. At a single glance, we can see it’s Tevinter. More details of this in the Post about Exalted Plains: Citadelle du Corbeau.

Riverside Garrison is another elven ruin which patterns make it look like Elvhen: flower pattern, square pattern and swirl pattern.

Inside, we find more elements that allows us to suspect this is Elvehan from the time when the Veil did not exist. There is an elaborated tile that we will see in puzzles in the Temple of Mythal, and one of those rounded trees, growing out of it.

With the exception of the rounded tree, the decoration looks like an elvehnan crypt; its style is the same one we found in the crypts of the Temple of Mythal. There are bodies, skeletons and urns everywhere. Of course, DAI has several bodies and skeletons that they use for everything dead, so I won’t focus on the armour or the details of these objects. They are always the same no matter what kind of dead you are looking at: an avvar body, an elven body or a dwarven body.

Close to Revasan Fort, there is a collapsed bridge decorated with a statue of Andraste and a landmark called Pont Agur. It explains with dubious accuracy that after the Exalted March of the Dales some villagers drown trying to cross the river, so the mayor built this bridge and dedicated it to humans and elves too. This started a rumour about the mayor having elven blood, and had to step down. I think this shows how complex was this land after the March; these things [elves and humans in relationships] have been happening since long time ago, as the Tomb of Elandrin shows us with the incident of Red Crossing. For more details read Emerald Graves: Din’an Hanin, Tomb of Elandrin.

Beside Port Agur we find villa Montevelan, where this story of the mayor happened. This was the first human settlement after the Exalted March of the Dales. It’s all destroyed now.

Inside some ramparts we can see big trees that got my attention: I don’t know if they can be considered the original vhenadahl, the trees that the city elves try to grow as a memory of their Dalish roots. These trees can be found in ramparts as well as in the Citadelle du Corbeau. In many times, they show bodies hanging from its branches, so they inspire some murderous sentiment to such an elven symbol [if these tree are supposed to be vhenadahl, I’m just guessing since these can’t be found in other elven ruins, so they seem to be more Dalish than Elvish to me.]

In this rampart in particular, we find a difference in comparison with the rest of the ramparts in the area: there is a small tower which construction date is hard to guess. It could have been built during the Exalted March or a bit earlier. The entrance is decorated with these enigmatic tablets, depicting the Razikale Ceremony and the Horned warrior holding a sword. We have established they were Tevinter due to their presence in Coracavus and The Still Ruins. Inside the tower we find a Tevinter inspector, Tevinter containers, and minor, decorative Tevinter elements. Inside this tower there is a codex about Legend of the Three Sisters: Book 3, which makes the player aware of how stories change depending on factors such as historical-political situation, countries or censorship. This is yet another call out that the game does to us, players, to not take every single story we read as 100% true.

It seems that Tevinter mages were present in the Exalted Plains at some point in History and performed some magic or experiments. Considering the Strange Skull-Dragon totem and the undead all over the place, I would be inclined to think that some faction during the Exalted March invited Tevinter mages to provide efforts in the battle. Which is a very odd concept if we remember that it was a war between Elves [many of them coming from families who had fought Tevinter by Andraste’s side to recover their freedom] and the Chantry of that time [which always had some frictions with Tevinter].

I thought in a possibility to explain this Tevinter presence: since many of the elves that fought in the Exalted March belonged to families that had been former slaves of Tevinter mages, some of them could have developed a vast knowledge of Tevinter arcane magic. I have the impression this is more or less proven in the Citadelle du Corbeau, where elves may have installed a Tevinter defence system in an elven ruin. Because of this last fact, I’m a bit inclined to think this is the reason why we find Tevinter elements in this region. However, that doesn’t add up that we find these tablets, which are more related to Tevinter gods and ceremonies than Elven ones. I can imagine elves resorting to Tevinter devices against the Chantry, but hardly performing rituals to Tevinter gods.

As a conclusion I don’t think we can make a decent explanation of why we find so many Tevinter objects in the ramparts and elven ruin when there is no Tevinter building in the whole region.

We see this rock with an eye in many places of Exalted Plains, usually, but not exclusively, representing the attack of Orlesians [at least in the context of Exalted Plains and Emerald green]. During the main quest, in the attack to Adamant Fortress, it was the Inquisition who used these stones. Clearly a reused asset with little meaning, so I will skip it.

In Victory Rise we find more Elven ruins: we can see the elven patterns of swirls and flowers around this door. In this place we find the codex of Legend of the Three Sisters: Book 1.

In Enavuris [such a name to confuse it so easily with Evanuris] we find a ruin that, after inspection, allows you to follow a quest to look for ancient elven glyphs. The power that the note The Elven Glyphs talks about ends up being the “Dirthamen’s wisdom”, a strange shield that can be found at the end of the exploration of the Lost Temple of Dirthamen which has an oddly Tevinter look. [See the post related to the Lost Temple of Dirthamen]. It’s hard to understand what each of these symbols that appear in the glyphs mean. Clearly, all of them are secrets, such it is the nature of Dirthamen. A brief, potential analysis can be found in the post of the Lost Temple of Dirthamen.

In Halin’sulahn we find a very small Dalish clan. They are placed close to a rock which shows the usual painting of a yellow halla, and the one that looks like a battle with many elves on hallas. There is also a statue of a hart. After talking with the Keeper of this clan we are informed about several elven-issues that the War of the Lions has caused.

The encampment shows the typical Dalish symbols: these fences with ragged hides and tree branches paint in red or green on them.

I always like to highlight that the Aravels keep these undulating lines that make me remember the undulating patterns in many, if not all, murals found in DAI. It is also worth remembering that the aravels were prison-ships filled with slaves that sent elves to dwarven cities [check The Horror of Hormak].

In search for those ancient elven glyphs, we explore a zone called Ancient Baths. By its name it seems to be an elven building which allowed baths in the river. Its entrance is decorated with two archer statues, and two wall paintings: the yellow halla, and the black twisted halla with white elves wearing vallaslin [the Dalish “remember” that golden hallas guided The people to places where they needed to be, specially in desperate times. The truth behind that probable is more twisted]. Every time I see these paintings I suspect that this building was meant to be used by slaves.

As we proceed, we find a point where we need to jump off. This chamber, in its configuration [not grandeur], looks like the Temple of Mythal's main chamber where the priest stays in a high place, inaccessible to reach [no stairs in this chamber], looking from above down to the petitioner.

This section has ancient elven decorative elements: two inuksuit decorated with red swirls and a central squared stone, both elements used for the elven dead. More than half of the ruin has fallen apart but it seems to give an idea that this building was meant to be used to see baths in the river.

As it can be seen, the decoration is ancient elvhen.

As we explore the map, we find this statue which triggers Andruil's Messenger, a codex that produces more confusion than understanding of who is the god behind the owl symbol. There is a painting of a yellow halla beside the statue. Since it is an information given by Gisharel, it may be extremely wrong. The tale almost hides a command: the people, aka the slaved elves, will follow Andruil, she will tell them when to hunt, when to raise hallas, and when to settle down. And for that, she will use an owl. Since we do not truly have better sources confirming that the owl, crow, or raven are Dirthamen’s sacred animal, it’s hard to suspect how much of this tale has been twisted along the Dalish history.

In the open we see more of these four painting together: The row of slaved elves, The Armoured Figure, The Vallaslin shifting halla, and the black halla with elves wearing vallaslin. All these paintings together seem to speak about elves being capture, alienated [ they have no face nor heart] under the control of a symbol we have seen a lot: the golden ring, and these slaves are related to vallaslin and deformed hallas that shift. For more detail, see the post Nation Art: Elvhen.

Several times in the open we can find these owl statues or the archers. Sometimes even marking a path, as if they were guiding us to some places. Sometimes they are accompanied with the paintings.

The Path of flame, a name designated by the Chantry to this part, looks like the entrance of a bigger elven ruin, which is protected by two big Fen’Harel statues. The landmark we trigger around this area, extremely unreliable, suggests that this place was an elven arena. I hardly believe it, but certainly there is something about gathering many elves and forcing them to walk certain paths [aka, a path to mark slaves? considering the paintings]. The truth is, that the game has showed us two elvhen arenas already: In Emprise du Lion, called currently by orlesians names since the original ones were lost to the ages: Etienne’s Ring and Leontine’s Ring, which are now used by dragons. So, I have to say that despite not trusting this source in the slightest, the Ruined Arches of Exalted Plains have a similar look to those we see in Emprise du Lion. So maybe elves had rings after all but the purpose of them is completely unknown.

In this zone, we find a solitary statue of Fen’Harel on the waterfall.

Some meters away from it, there is a Shrine to Sylaise, which entrance is decorated in the same fashion than the Ancient Baths: two archers indicating the entrance, and two paintings depicting a yellow halla and a black halla wtih elves wearing vallaslin.

When we enter the temple, we only find crypt-related elements: inuksuit and urns, and a codex of Sylaise is triggered: Sylaise: the Hearthkeeper, which is the usual one we find in DAO, and extremely unreliable.

Inside the temple there is a small corner covered with a barrier, where a body can be found. This body has a valuable historical talisman of the Dales elves, and an ancient elven robe. It's not clear to me how to understand the situation in which we find it.

This talisman belonged to an historical warrior of the Dales, and since we find a Robe that looks like the same one than the Keeper of the Clan we met, I assume this body was an ancient Keeper who wanted to protect that talisman from the shemlen, and made a barrier with themselves inside, or they activated some trap of the small shrine and got caught in it..

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore ]

#Exalted Plains #elven design #Andrastian design #guardian of the path #paintings #Strange Skull-Dragon totem #Sitting Fen'Harel statue #Razikale Ceremony #Horned warrior holding a sword #Tevinter objects #aravel #dalish design #elvhen design #Elven Owl statue #Elven hart statue #Elven Archers #playing DA like an archaeologist

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