Taevyr

I don't see Maia secretly squeal over a romance novel, nor any sort of book come to think of it. Sten fits better: they're both soldiers who firmly believe in their country and have an extremely deadpan sense of humor. Also, Sten + barkspawn = Maia + Ishiza

How about Varric for Serafen: they're both short, hairy schemers, love a good story involving themselves, and are somehow sophisticated and vulgar at the same time.

Mirke's the new DLC sidekick: permanently drunk principi who, through a missing string of code, lacks underwear. There was a hilarious thread about that last part a few days ago. Considering Oghren's love for alcohol and..... peculiar discussions involving pants, I'd say it's perfect.

C'mon guys, i'm disappointed. Mirke is clearly the best candidate for deadfire's Oghren. Now to think of a Pallegina equivalent....

About two minutes after meeting Xoti, I really thought whoever wrote her just finished DA:O and had really taken a shine to Leliana. Religious female cloudcuckoolander whose god sends her prophetic dreams? Who's struggling with her "inner darkness", in which the player can effectively decide whether she gives in or not? It's all in there! I really liked those characters when i was 18 and first playing DA:O. Now, i feel like fate threw the human equivalent of a puppy in my party: sure, she's kind of adorable, fun to be around, and makes your big brother/sister instinct kick in; But she's also lacking in common sense, seems to be in love with EVERYONE, and can even go rabid post-game if you make the wrong choices. And just like with a puppy, you can't even leave them behind because you'd feel terrible.

Actually they do kind of hide it. You can see it in Hasongo, if you take Maia with you and press one of the surviving Rauataians (the girl i think) about their canons and excess of gunpowder, Maia cuts her off telling her something like "did I ask for the report of your inventory, soldier". It rubbed me the wrong way because Rauatai is hiding the research they were doing in Hasongo, and Maia doesn't want you to know about it. that's.... kind of what i meant, though I could have been more clear in hindsight. Didn't quite get that subtext on Hasongo myself though, nice catch.

I'm not sure I understand why people are using the term "innocent" for the person Maia killed. She killed the leader of an Huana tribes which are all members of the warrior cast. That leader was a warrior, one of the best in his village going by how they are selected too. Rauatai is invading the Deadfire, all warriors are enemies to them, especially the ones trying to unit tribes to opposite outsiders which is what that leader wanted to do. The quest seems to be an allegory for military preemptive strikes programs actually. I think you're taking the term "warrior caste" a bit too literally, since every noble, administrator and priest of the Huana's a member of it as well. By that logic, killing a group of Huana diplomats or bureaucrats is perfectly logical since they are technically "warriors". Ranga's in particular are selected at birth, if I remember correctly, which technically means they're born directly into rulership, not warriorhood. Also, Rauatai isn't invading the Deadfire again (yet), or they wouldn't have bothered hiding the continuous supply of gunpowder, armaments and cannons behind a trading company. He's considered an innocent since 1) He's the leader of a local tribe who merely wants to unite his people, and while Rauatai understandably sees it as a theat, there's nothing that says he opposes the presence of outsiders 2) Even if he was opposing Rauatai interests in his beliefs, he hasn't done anything that would warrant a kill order. I'm not saying Rauatai getting rid of him isn't understandable, but it was definitely not moral for them to do so, nor did the chief deserve to be shot. The quest is definitely an example of preemptive strikes though, and Rauatai seems rather fond of the "Divide and Conquer" strategy often used against a scattered, decentralized people. The combined focus on diplomacy with the bigger tribes, dominance over the weak ones, and manipulating a network of alliances and spies to keep it all under control reminded me of Caesar's work in Gaul, except in a more advanced age.

Beckoner/priest can be quite broken with high intelligence and the right skills: summon 4 ogres, buff them up to infinity and they'll hold back an army. Add ancient memory and consecrated ground for extra hp regen, the stun invocation for more CC, and you're set for life. For added fun, be a wael priest: free Illusion spells mean you can be in the fray without worrying about armor recovery time, and the free confusion/gaze of the adragan makes you even better at controlling the battlefield.

The lawfulness is part of it, but the main gist is this: The other factions would likely deal with deserters by way of execution as well, which is not something I oppose, even with Aeldys doing it; Aeldys, however, doesn't just execute them, but goes and hangs their lighted skulls of her castle as a twisted joke/warning as well. And while I may be wrong in my belief that being able to choose under which consuegla flag you sail, also means you can change your choice freely, it's still hypocritical of someone so enamored with freedom to brutally punish her underlings for exercising said freedom, and even makes grim reminders out of them. Also, after looking up the definition of the word, paramilitary appears to mean something slightly different in english than i thought, and the principi clearly fit the definition. Sorry about that.

Yeah, but that menagerie was pretty sweet. Or, to like her as a character because she at least has second thoughts about an order that she followed but didn't agree with. And, the Huana have a permanent slave class as part of their culture - do we want them to have strong leaders to carry that forward? It is the gray areas that make this an interesting discussion. I'm not sure that I'd call the Roparu a "slave class". Nobody *owns* a Roparu; you can't buy them, sell them, trade them, etc. And the Roparu appear to have rights; nobody forces them out of bed with whips and clubs and beats them if they don't show up for work. They're treated very badly, but they're more like Untouchables than slaves. To me, it's more like a strange form of tribal communism: everyone owns everything up to the point where it gets redistributed, and the distribution never quite goes fairly with the ruling/warrior class taking the majority of stuff and the Roparu getting nothing but scraps. While the Roparu have clear rights, like any Huana civilian, their main right is "the right to starve" in times of lean, which is probably one they'd be happy to give up. Also, they live in a literal ghetto, piles of half-rotten food, guarded gates and all. Nobody chooses to live in a literal ghetto unless they have no choice.

Ah, I mistook the Nuremberg thing then . Sorry for that, since the moral side of "following orders" is definitely at play here, lawful or not. I definitely agree that Maia's assignment is less gray than the bounties, especially since no-one was supposed to know it even happened and the target's a civilian. But i think Maia handled it well: while she did carry out the assignment, she's not going to hide the fact that it shook her and she doesn't agree with using those methods at all. One key element is also her mentioning how the next leader takes up the last one's cause: Her worry isn't simply that she killed an innocent, it's that she killed an innocent without a good reason. Whether there's ever a good reason to kill an innocent is up for debate, of course, and it's never going to be the moral thing to do, but it's something I liked about her reasoning. P.S. I have to say, I'm kind of surprised by how civilized these discussions are over here. Most fora I know would've stoked up a flame war already.

Where did you get the idea any principi crew could be considered a "paramilitary group", or that they stole a ship? They were an independent pirate crew who chose to sail under Aeldys' flag, and left when they grew distasteful of her methods, taking their ship with them since, you know, it's their ship . Since the principi are nothing but a loosely connected brotherhood led by infighting consuegla captains under whose flag you can freely choose to sail, there's no principi law stating they can't do so. Neither is there a principi law stating Aeldys can't use their skulls as nightlights, but I consider "leaving because your self-chosen captain is a bit too crazy for your tastes" to be more understandable, and moral, than "making nightlights out of your former subordinates because they wouldn't follow you anymore". The rauataians would likely hunt down, sentence, and probably execute soldiers that went AWOL, as would any other military do in a contested area, no matter the age; the cannoneer I picked up at the brass citadel could leave the RDF to join my crew without a hitch though, presumably since she didn't just pack up and leave without going through the proper processing. The Huana military would probably do the same, or throw them into the old city which amounts to the same thing. The vailians' action depends on whether they breached contract, and what terms there were in case of a breach, though they'd probably try and find a loophole to get rid of them anyway. In each of these cases, however, it's either a member of a military group defecting or going AWOL, or a breach of contract, the terms of which would be defined by the contract in question; both cases are also supported by law, unlike piracy. I won't say that Aeldys killing defectors isn't understandable, given her faction and position, but it's also far from a lawful, quick execution as well as quite hypocritical considering her devotion to freedom.

You do realize that desertion IS punishable by death in modern militaries, right (Article 85 UCMJ)? Hell, in the US at the current moment falling asleep on guard duty is punishable by death (Article 113). It is very important in armed conflicts that people are where they're supposed to be and doing what they're supposed to be doing. Similar rationale can be applied to pirates. Neither "modern" nor "military" are applicable to Aeldys' faction or even the principi in general. I get the idea of punishing desertion, but unless the US army has a new policy that includes beheading deserters and using their skulls as torchlights, or the US marines have started pillaging transport ships, I don't see the comparison. Also, the pirates in question were a crew whose captain served under her, yet decided to jump ship (pun intended) when she got too brutal for them, so technically you could chalk it up to "morally objectionable orders" if we would continue comparing to a modern military.

we have naked companions now, and all we need to do is sail for deadlight? ALL HANDS ON DECK, THIS IS A MIR(A)K(L)E!

Concerning the map, I'd say Rauatai at the very least must be somewhere next to the Deadfire, since it was taken over by Huana refugees who probably didn't just ignore the eastern reach on their journey. Also, I think I recall an interview or something in which the first game's setting, so roughly Dyrwood + Eir glanfath, is said to be about the size of Iberia. The Living lands as either a future main setting or the focus of a large DLC would be great, and i hope Beast of Winter will take us either to Naasitaq or the White that wends.

Drunken master subclass anyone?

By the time i had to make my choice, i already knew it was either Rauatai or the Huana: I'm not giving control over Ukaizo and an entire archipelago to pirates, no matter how noble hearted they may be at heart, nor did i like the prospect of handing it over to a company selling soul dust as a youth revitalizer. It's sad for the animancers in their employ, but Ukaizo becomes the subject of animancy research in every ending: i doubt the actually driven researchers would stay with the vailians when they have a chance to study Ukaizo, no matter which faction holds it. I had my doubts about helping the Huana, since they seem to be stuck in their traditional ways quite badly, not to mention Onekaza would still need to force the other tribes to accept her leadership e.g. the Wahaki and the Port Maje tribe. When she made that foolish declaration that "no outsider would set foot on Ukaizo", basically forcing the factions to go to war if they want Eora to survive, my choice was relatively easily made. The Rauataians are imperialists, no doubt about it. But they also build up the places they conquer as seen in Sayuka, and seem to prefer a relatively bloodless takeover over a battleground, as evidenced by the assassinations. It's not moral by far, but it's the best i thought we got. However, I was mostly convinced by the way their leadership talks about ending the storms of Rauatai to allow their homeland grow: kudos to those voice actors, because you can really hear the hope in their voicework. Sure, those storms end in every ending, but I didn't know that at the time, and it's a very worthy goal. One thing I wonder about is this: most people here talk about how their choice is the right one by pointing towards the ending slides, which is more than reasonable. However, unless you're metagaming your choice or going for a "perfect playthrough" of sorts, you probably didn't make your choice because of what happens afterwards, and I wonder why people chose their endgame faction when they didn't yet know how it would end. PS: as for Aeldys' moral superiority, this is the same woman who hung defector skulls on the walls of her fortress to make a pun, no matter how great that pun may be. She's a loose cannon who happens to enjoy being aimed at slavers, and not being interested in ruling nor having a goal does help reduce your kill count. Which could probably use some reducing, her being a pirate and stuff.

Maia's mission was an assassination of an effective leader who was politically inconvenient. He was innocent of any wrongdoing. That isn't exactly the same as killing someone for criminal behavior. You can certainly argue that killing is not the right penalty for a criminal, but one of those seems worse than the other. No? If we start talking viewpoints, how about this one: Maia's simply carrying out her orders to build a better Rauatai, while the bounty hunter chooses to murder people so long as he gets paid for it. "I was just following orders" didn't work as a defense at Nuremberg. Should it have? There are, of course, multiple ways to look at every situation. Not all of them are equivalent and you have to make choices about how to act in the world. You stated several viewpoints in your post. Do you have an opinion about any of them? Personally, I'd say that Maia was a soldier carrying out orders, exemplified by the fact that she carried out her orders without a problem, despite her doubt concerning the target and belief that assassinations shouldn't be the way her country deals with potential problems. I'd also say that a nazi comparison is as tasteless here as anywhere else. She performed a single assignment to secretly eliminate, in her view, a potential enemy leader, and it shakes her enough to turn to the watcher with her doubts about a mission that was clearly supposed to be off the record. Equating that with the Nuremberg trials, involving several years continuously exterminating millions for which no good reason could ever be given, is just bad taste, though it is an excellent example of Godwin's law . As for the bounties, they're bounties in an RPG, but it IS an Obsidian RPG. The killing you do in an RPG throughout your journey isn't really up for debate in my view: it's still a combat RPG, and you need to earn EXP somehow. Bounties, like in any RPG, are mostly a way to earn quick money, yet as you say several bounties clearly cross the line. Yet a bounty hunter would still choose to fulfill those bounties of his own free will, should he take them; Maia was given an order, in an era where disobeying orders because of moral problems is unheard of. And that's the main problem here: in our day and age, a soldier following orders that are clearly bad is a bad person for not objecting. Before WW2, however, you simply followed orders because that's what you're supposed to do, morality didn't enter the picture. In Rauatai's rigid, manifest-destiny society, I don't see things being any other way, and while that doesn't absolve her of responsibility, you can't just discount it

Maia's mission was an assassination of an effective leader who was politically inconvenient. He was innocent of any wrongdoing. That isn't exactly the same as killing someone for criminal behavior. You can certainly argue that killing is not the right penalty for a criminal, but one of those seems worse than the other. No? If we start talking viewpoints, how about this one: Maia's simply carrying out her orders to build a better Rauatai, while the bounty hunter chooses to murder people so long as he gets paid for it. Or this one: Maia chose to join the army as a sharpshooter and is thus simply a murderer at heart, while a bounty hunter is simply performing a contract to make ends meet, and is nothing more than an innocent tool of murder. Or this one: Pointless conjectures about the similarities between freelance bounty hunting and government-ordered assassinations don't really serve anyone, especially when most arguments could fit both sides equally as long as we try hard enough. The morality of bounties went out the window the moment the factions started targeting each other with them, no matter how legal they may be in the eyes of the faction that happens to profit from them. The morality/legality of assassinations isn't exactly vague either, in my view. The deadfire's a lawless, uncontrolled zone outside of the major ports, and the factions profit wherever possible: Slave labor, assassination and hiring people to play pirate with enemy ships are all examples of those. Or can you honestly say that every bounty you encounter in-game was clearly and undeniably aimed at an evil person, and couldn't possibly have been a convenient way to eliminate enemy leaders without starting a war?

If i'm not mistaken, the Rauatai officer says that they have paperwork legitimizing the use of privateers against every target he gives, and that "they'll know we're at war when we stop handing in paperwork" or something like that. So it seems more like every faction implicitly agrees that using independent parties to eliminate enemy assets is ok, so long as the factions don't get directly involved.

The former are military/navy/mercenary and the latter are innocent civilians? There are no bounties to murder innocent civilian targets, or political figures. One's a free agent choosing out of his own will to eliminate a certain faction's enemies for coin, the other's a soldier following orders even though she's not entirely comfortable with them. There isn't much of a comparison to make.

There's the kraken you can encounter at the end of the Sayuka quest involving the underwater Engwithan ruin, if you choose to ignore Galawain. Was the first time in the game i actually had to micro my companions.

This is bull****. The whole conversation after she's fulfilled her mission is about how she DOESN'T want to take part in these kind of missions, nor ever performed an assassination before: something about not being the one to fire the first shot, and not wanting to kill people without knowing it will improve other people's lives or future. She IS extremely loyal to her homeland, but she clearly doesn't like what it's becoming in the Deadfire.

Do you have any evidence they will **** it up? It's not the first adra pillar they're experimenting upon, you know, so they're not complete noobs at it and know the dangers.Btw, I loved what they did in Neketaka - a teleportation invention? That one hell of a breakthrough! When they figure out the details in full, people will be able to travel instantly through adra to other continents, how cool is that? I love the idea of animancy and it's possibilities, but i get pretty squeamish when I find out the trading company behind it is grinding up the same pillars used to transport souls to the wheel and reincarnation, and selling the dust as a very effective revitalizer. Not to mention they do so while, and i quote the wiki, " Animancers are not sure of the ultimate effect of luminous adra on the souls or the impact of its use on reincarnation and Berath's Wheel. That doesn't stop kith from consuming it in ever growing quantities, both in liquid form and smoked in tobacco and svef pipes". Animancy probably holds more possibilities than any real-world science, and the animancers in Neketaka were doing ground-breaking stuff as evidenced by the teleportation. They're responsible enough to see the dangers, but get ignored by the company: quoting the wiki "Although animancers insist on caution and restraint, the dangers of luminous adra are commonly ignored, even as early adopters begin to exhibit strange behavior commonly ascribed to elder Awakened or disturbed Watchers: Conversing with ghosts, detachment from reality, and regression into past lives. The dominant theory posits that by ingesting adra, recreational users are experiencing echoes of other people's lives or otherwise unwittingly entering the spirit world without the necessary bracing." They know the dangers, it's simply not profitable for the company to recognize them. Take this example: the Poko Kohara pillar got corrupted by a Huana man who was extremely hateful and irrational towards the Vailians. Now imagine the Vailians come in, aren't as kind to the Huana as you hope they'll be, and those Huana souls end up passing through the very pillar they're now mining and experimenting on. To me, it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

She didn't know they were assassinations requests until after the fact. She didn't know what was in her missive until she opened it after she left the party and never opened the other missives. How could she tell you beforehand? Thinking the other two missives were assassinations after the fact is speculation from the Watcher and her too. She's shifty because the missives are part of her spy work and she hates being a spy. Really, what kind of spy goes everywhere telling everyone they are a spy? Please Don't be so naive. But whatever, personally, I wouldn't have minded her being a spy so much if she did just that, quietly spying on other factions, gathering info. But no, she had to drag the Watcher into this as well, fully expecting him/her to help even though as you say she's not a friend or comrade. I guess her joining the party somehow automatically supposes the Watcher supports her faction, even if that is not true. You call me naive because I choose to believe her when she tells me she didn't know until she opened her missives which she's done after she left the party? Maia sucks at hiding what she feels and thinks which results in saying inappropriate things or super awkwardness all over quests and tasks. She's too honest with her feelings to be a liar. and people are overblowing the "dragged the Watcher". She ask you to play postman. It was clear as day that those people were also spy and you don't have to help them with their other problems. Hell, if you hate Rauatai so much, why are you keeping one of their spy in your party? ^this I really wonder how anyone thought those missives wouldn't involve some scheming of a sort, especially since Maia mentions them coming from Atsura, who's the most manipulative guy in the game. No offense, but how did your way of thinking go? "Oh, Maia who literally jests 'You probably wonder how rauatai placed a spy in your team' the moment after you recruit her, is asking me to help her deliver some missives from the extremely shady Rauatai "diplomat". She doesn't know nor even wants to know the content, says they're important to Rauatai interests, and we have to deliver them to rauataians in notable non-rauatai settlements over the deadfire. THIS SURE SEEMS WHOLESOME AND TRUSTWORTHY TO ME!" Not to mention she's obviously uncomfortable with it as well. The way i read it, Maia's a "my country, right or wrong" type when you meet her: She'll do what needs to be done to help her country, but she's not going to act like it's the right thing, or even that her country's necessarily right in doing things that way. Hell, it's literally the main discussion behind her companion quest. As for the factions: The Huana deserve their homeland, but will end up going full traditional isolationism with it, Caste sytem and all. The Vailians deserve a chance to further the scientific progress of the world, but bring a whole new meaning to the phrase "soul-crushing colonialism". The Rauataians need resources to sustain their homeland and deserve a chance at ending the storms of Rauatai, but would take over the deadfire and its cultures to do so, either through assasination or through direct conquest if necessary. The pirates are pirates, not much more to be said. At least they're straightforward about it. They all have worthy goals, and are all willing to do what it takes to reach them. We wouldn't be having this discussion otherwise.