angstyporcupines

[angstyporcupines]

happy glorious 25th of may

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in this new year I want you to be alright. I hope you move out. I hope you have enough money to feel safe. I hope you abandon shame and forgive yourself. I hope you get enough sleep and some good news. I hope you laugh a lot and the heaviness of the world eases a bit. I wish you to be alright.

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ppl were asking why leandra called hawke his surname in that other post so here's an explanation <3

(commission info // kofi support!)

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i bring more hawke hawke!! (aka mine and @highladyofdusk's da2 playthru!)

(commission info // kofi support!)

[angstyporcupines]

Thedas, Köppen Climates, and Me, Once Again Thinking too Deep About Dragon Age.

So in honor of Dragon Age Day, I present to you some maps that have come to fruition due to my herb project and all the science explanations about them. So I took the map of Thedas I made and slapped all this together and if this all interests you please continue. Just know 99% of this is generalizations. I’m also just an amateur with an art degree.

[Image: A map of Thedas, the continent from the game franchise Dragon Age. It is colour coded to show the various climates. To the right side is the colour index for all the Köppen Climates.]

So I wanted to know the climates of the areas of Thedas so I could “properly” place the plants and herbs of Thedas. After all nature has specialized niches that need to be filled! You need variety to be resistant to disease and to be able to adapt to the environment. 

This was such a consideration for me as I was looking to flesh out the natural world and since I could break the constraints that come from a game,  such as limiting assets for performance and clarity for the player.

That said, I took concretes in lore that I already knew to inform most of these. From environmental aspects as the Donarks, Seheron, and Par Vollen having jungles. That Ferelden has longer winters than the rest of Thedas. That due to the Blight the Anderfels is harsh steppes and desert.

Another consideration was the flora we knew grew in specific places. Such as coffee growing in Antiva, that meant it had to be in what we would call the Bean Belt. Same with the cinnamon and nutmeg in Seheron. Or that Rivian grows cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and tea leaves.

So with all of that, those influenced my placements of climates as well as my estimation of where Thedas was placed on the globe.

The rest is going below the cut, because there is a lot of science talk. Its long. Like I said, I’m thinking too deep about this. 

Keep reading

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Dragon Age Origins Font Download

[Hello, I couldn't find a working version of the in game fonts for Dragon Age: Origins, but I managed to find them in the game files. There's a download here. I'm sure there are versions out there, I just couldn't get them to work. As far as I can tell, these work fine, appearing in the font list as the names above.]

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An introduction to Chantry hierarchy, for the uninitiated, or else for our northern friends.  I believe there was also a guide intended for Rivaini ambassadors, which you may find useful.  

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03.08.2020 | All-in-one Map of Kirkwall, 9:34 Dragon. 

Things I learned:

A4 paper was waaaaay too small

Should probably use smaller tip pens in future rather than the grey i used here for the interior walls on the Viscount’s Keep, the Chantry, and the Templar Hall.

I made up a few chunks in order to make the image coherent, because something must exist in those places but we never see what. 

You never actually see an on-land exit from Kirkwall to the rest of the Free Marches

Darktown must actually be basically the entire city again underneath itself, but we only see a small section of it during game-play. 

I didn’t include the Black Emporium because it doesn’t seem like that kind of place that ends up on a map. It’s a ‘you have to know where it is already’ kind of place. 

Not sure how I feel about the roof shading here - it increased the contrast between the streets and the buildings, which is what I wanted it to do, but it also loses the distinctions between individual buildings. In the end I figured that’s less important in a game where Hawke can’t actually go in any old building willy-nilly. 

the actual in-game maps are also extremely literal - they only show where Hawke can stand. If a wall has a barrel or a stall or a pile of something next to it, the path on the map will go around that stuff. 

 I definitely enjoyed my first foray into fantasy cartography, though, and learning from this project was useful. :)

[angstyporcupines]

yo why is dorian’s temptation fear always depicted as dorian being tempted by sexy men and physical pleasure, rather than the temptation to “give in” to the expectations of his father and country? he’s not afraid to suck dick he’s afraid of how much easier it would be just to shut his mouth and settle down into the life they made for him to continue the whole awful cycle again instead of constantly raging against the entire rotten fucking mess at great emotional and personal cost

[angstyporcupines]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3)

Keep reading

[angstyporcupines]

Merrill is: intelligent, skilled, sweet, determined, strong-willed, proud

Merrill is NOT: dumb, childish, careless, selfish, evil

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Blank DA:I scrolls for reports, letters, etc. Feel free to use as you wish.

L-R: No seal, Amell/Hawke seal, Grey Wardens seal, blank seal (create your own wax seal)

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Memos from the desk of Josephine Montilyet

“The commander is an intelligent, cautious man. I’m grateful he’s in charge of our standing army. Still, he does sometimes resemble the man with a hammer to whom everything appears as a nail.”

Worker: “First Enchanter Vivienne wishes to register a complaint about the upholstery in the dining hall.” Josephine: “I’ve already told her, we cannot replace it with velvet right now.” Josephine: “…it is a little worn.”

“You may tell The Iron Bull that I am quite sure I don’t want to ‘spill a few cold ones’ with him in the tavern. What does that even mean?”

Josephine: “Please tell Lord Dorian that I can’t get him an invitation to the Wintersend Ball in Lydes.” Worker: “He won’t be surprised. He said it would probably be beyond you.” Josephine: “It’s not beyond me, it’s…. (sighs). Tell him I’ll try.”

“I wanted to tell you that I share their sentiments, Inquisitor, and… well, I suppose I just did.”

Keep reading

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Also thoughts I have yesterday while tipsy: you heard of Thedas games like Wicked Grace now get ready for

Mage Tower.

What’s Mage Tower? 

It’s Jenga but for mages. Basically, you go through the whole set up of setting blocks up on a tower but the rule is you can’t use anything but magic to remove a block and it must be put on top of the tower with any damage to it or the tower (so, if you think you can cheat by using fire magic to turn the block into ashes, you’re wrong–and also an ass)

so no hands, not fingers, no grabbing into the tower or catching a block, you’ve only got your magic to trust here–if you make the tower fall apart, well, then I guess you’re a shitty mage aren’t you

mages can also sabotage other players with their magic but only on their turn–so say if a mage freezes some blocks in place? Completely valid. Yep. It’s a dick move but legal.

MAGE TOWER

THE REASON FOR A FIGHT IN THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS IN A TAVERN NEAR YOU

[angstyporcupines]

It was incredibly frustrating trying to find the blank maps for Dragon Age 2 in the game files, so here they are to save the trouble for anyone else who wants to see them

#da2 #references #resources

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Interactive Map of Thedas v.2.0

An update! A bit later than I anticipated because I discovered that tumblr removes input fields from custom pages and had to find another hosting solution.

New Features:

Ability to hide/show features (borders, labels, etc.)

Deep Roads Map (many thanks to higheverrains, who allowed me to extrapolate from their Deep Roads theory and add it as a feature to the map! It is hidden by default but can be viewed by checking “Show Deep Roads Map” under Show Features.)

Two different distance grids (each with 30km/60km versions based on average walking/riding distance in a day) based on different theories.

Labels on the oceans and seas!

Added a handful of additional locations from DAI

Improvements / Bug Fixes:

Zooming in/out functions more smoothly now

West Hill is now in the correct location (… also thanks to higheverrains)

… Rivain no longer gets chopped in half when you zoom in on it.

Coming Soon(ish):

My next goalpost is to refactor some of the code to make the map load more quickly. Once that is complete, I’ll probably gradually move into adding additional detail based on the location maps from DAI. Let me know if you are interested in helping out! (No coding experience required, just a basic image editor and some patience)

Interested in seeing more?

Let me know what you’d like to see! If you go the extra mile and give me rough coordinates for the location on the map + the zoom factor you were viewing it at when you got the coordinates, I can have it up much more quickly!

Let me know if you see any incorrect/outdated information.

View the New Map Here

#resources #maps

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Okay guys, for writing/general reference, a bit about what a ‘blacksmith’ is and isn’t:

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON, usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

Look, when metalworkers and individual shops and masters were the height of industry, this shit got REALLY specific.  There were people who spent their whole lives making pins.  Just pins.  Foundries specialized and made only bells, only cannon, only cauldrons, etc.  This is scratching the surface, I just wanted to make the point that ‘blacksmith’ is not the same thing as ‘magical muscly person who knows how to do everything related to metal’.

#resources