Is Blood Magic as Dangerous/Evil as Dragon Age Makes It Out To Be

[Winter]

In my A Look at A Look at Marethari from Dragon Age II, CharlesPhipps and I got into a debate over whether Marethari was as bad as I thought she was (thank you for debating with me CharlesPhipps it was very engaging) and one point they brought up was that because Merrill was using Blood magic was one of the reason they viewed Merrill as in the wrong due to how bad Blood Magic is presented in DA2.

My counterpoint was that the blood magic didn't actually effect anything in the plot beyond Merrill using said blood magic to cleanse the Eluvian of the Blight and that Marethari's emotional abuse towards Merrill and her misleading the rest of the clan on how much the Spirit/Demon had influenced Merrill did WAAAY More harm then anything Merrill did throughout the story.

However, CharlesPhipps did make a point that most cases of mages using Blood Magic the mage in question wasn't exactly the nicest person in the game with many of the blood mages in question being rather vial people. One of them was a serial killer who kills Hawke's mom and another killed his own wife.

However, I would argue that just all the people who used blood magic weren't exactly the most stable of individual. Take the Ferelden refuge we meet in act 3, the one who turned to blood magic and had become an abomination. It's made clear that the Templars had been mistreating her for years and eventually she turned to blood magic and made a deal with a demon to get revenge on the Templars who had mistreated her.

I would argue that the years of being treated like $#!t played a bigger factor in her going insane then learning blood magic. I agree with Chuck that she's the one who made her choices and that no one forced her to go down this path BUT the fact remains that she only learned Blood Magic AFTER years of being abused for committing the terrible crime of... being a mage.

One other point I made was that, and spoilers for anyone who hasn't yet seen/played Dragon Age: Inquisition, is that as we learn from the DAI DLC The Decent EVERY Mage in Thedas is a blood magic. As we learn in that DLC, which is hinted throughout the main game, Lyrium is actual the blood of these powerful creatures known as Titans. This means that everyone who's ever used lyrium, to either boast their magic or to use it in some ritual, like say a cleansing ritual to remove the blight from a magical item like the Eluvian, those mages are using blood magic.

As we've seen while every mage uses lyrium but most mages are perfectly normal people who aren't insane or dangerous. Hell, you as the player in all three games regularly drink Lyrium to get boast in combat along with all the other mages in your parties.

So, using the fact that all mages do, in fact, use blood magic with no risk of becoming evil can we really say that blood magic is as bad as the first two games make it out to be? And yes, I know David Gaider said that blood magic is presented as a suckers game but given what we've learned with lyrium and what characters like Solas have said that could be changing in the series itself.

[bz316]

Based on what we see in the games, I think the issue with blood magic isn't that it's "bad" or "evil" per se, but more to do with where it leads. Basically, it's kind of a Red Queen type scenario. Blood magic provides a HUGE amount of power relative to other types of magic, so mages naturally want to use it. The problem is, if mages exist in some kind of competitive state with one another (ex.the Tevinter Imperium), then everyone wants to use it to avoid falling behind. So, to gain advantage over one's rivals, rather than using one's OWN blood willingly (since it's an inherently finite source), one starts to turn to the unwilling to reap further gains and avoid diminishing returns. And so others do the same to an ever increasing degree to gain advantage and to avoid falling behind. Blood Magic is basically the "nuclear weapons" of Dragon Age. The act of atomic fission or fusion is not inherently "bad," but the mere presence of technology to utilize it creates an instantaneous no-win scenario for everyone. It's the same with blood magic, in that allowing it to any degree on a societal level produces a kind of arms race between users that inevitably reaps a terrible toll on non-mages.

[Madner Kami]

So, using the fact that all mages do, in fact, use blood magic with no risk of becoming evil can we really say that blood magic is as bad as the first two games make it out to be?

See that's the thing though. People who come into contact with raw lyrium do tend to go crazy. It's explicitly stated and displayed, that the dwarfs mining the stuff do have a rather obvious tendency to fall apart as a person over time and I recall that the Templars using the stuff, wasn't exactly without risk either. There's a case to be made, that blood magic does make people go kaputt and that people who use it tend to not be the most responsible users in the first place, doesn't exactly help the case.

That you as the player don't have to deal with any of the repercussions of drinking lyrium as if you were an electric-scooter-using 200kg+ Walmart bulk Coca-Cola-buyer or even blood magic itself, doesn't really proove anything, as it's primarily a gameplay issue. Anything happening ingame, does indicate that there's an inherent problem there.

As for my personal opinion: I do not tend to see the demons as inherently evil. I percieve them as spirits of concepts which, if exercised without restraint, are harmfull, but if you don't exercise those concepts at all, you're basically not alive. Case in point, the Tranquils.
For example, desire. We all desire things. Love, friendship, money. Hell, just the act of wanting to be alive is a desire in the first place. None of that is inherently evil, except if the desire is acted upon without restraint. Greed, obsession, possesiveness are the natural result of not exercising restraint or critical thinking about one's own desires and those are obviously evil. I think the same is true about blood magic. If you exercise restraint and don't fall into the extreme, then there is no inherent harm. Obviously just using blood is kind of problematic, even if it's your own, as it involves harming a living beeing, even if it's a willing subject, but there it is. The problem isn't that you use it or why you use it, but how you use it.

[CharlesPhipps]

Hey Winter,

Glad to engage in some spirited good-natured debate. Very interesting conversation.

I think the question of "good" or "evil" with Blood Magic is irrelevant after a certain point in Dragon Age and the average peasant, Dalish nomad, or even non-sorcerer doesn't actually have any real moral obligation to entertain. By which I mean that just because something is theoretically true doesn't mean that it is practically or defacto true.

If you're wondering what I mean, I'm going to explain that Blood Magic can theoretically be used in an ethical manner but that its very nature as a combat orientated, life-powered, mind-control, demon-related discipline of sorcery is so toxic as well as dangerous that it almost never going to be used save for evil activity. Also, the sheer amount of destruction that it causes is so disproportionate to the benefits that most Thedans are right to treat its practitioners with utter loathing.

WHY DO PEOPLE HATE BLOOD MAGES:

1. Blood Magic's uses are 99% highly unethical

The powers of blood magic as defined by the game are generally:

* The ability to extract vast amounts of magical power from sapient beings.
* Biomancy to alter the bodies of living beings to create things like Harvesters, flesh golems, and other things.
* The ability to summon and control Demons.
* Mind-control

I should note Blood Magic can't even be used for healing because healing is an ability other mages possess that they don't use Blood Magic for. Spirit-Healing is a discipline that uses merging with benevolent spirits but not controlling them as Wynne and Anders hold Blood Magic in utter contempt. Avernus can use Blood magic to extend his life unnaturally but he's experimenting with the Taint of the Old Gods.

Generally, if you're using Blood Magic then you are planning on killing someone or dominating someone or making Faustian pacts.

2. Blood magic is uniquely apocalyptic in its dangers

When people think of Blood Magic in Thedas, they generally think of the Blights that have caused Mad Max-esque Wastelands (The Anderfels) and millions of deaths in a society that generally fields armies in the tens of thousands. The Blights are the replacement for the Black Death in this world except the Plagues come with Orcs bashing children's faces in. The Blights were caused by the original Tevinter mages exploiting it in their Biblical "Tower of Babel"-esque plan to invade Heaven after a mass human sacrifice to open the gateway there.

Even if you assume the average Thedan peasant is an ignorant bigot, and he is, he's not WRONG to think Blood Magic opened avenues that have almost destroyed the world.

We also have much-smaller micro-apocalypses that have left whole regions devastated:

* Warden Keep was a town-sized Grey Warden base and became a literal haunted castle because of Avernus' experiments that you need the Hero of Fereldan or the Belmont Clan to clean out.
* The Circle of Fereldan was almost turned into a flesh-tower straight from Warhammer 40K and the one time the templars might have been RIGHT to purge the place before it spilled out onto the public (the Blood Mages--all trained sorcerers with good heads on their shoulders COMPLETELY lost control of it). .
* The town of Redcliffe had an actual ****ing zombie apocalypse because of a 14 year old boy getting hold of some spellbooks.
* The orphanage in the Alienage became full of horrifying demons and specters due to the pogrom happening next to the experiments by the Blood Mages you kill (this is theoretical but assume that random acts of murder don't normally produce armies of the dead).
* Debatable Example: The Thedas version of Elizabeth Bathory/Count Dracula harvested her entire peasant class to feed her hunger for immortality. To be fair, that's just because Orlais nobles are evil to begin with. However, it shows how peasants can be harvested as yet another tool for assholes.

3. Blood Magic comes from pure evil

There's a not insignificant argument that the source of Blood Magic as knowledge is tainted from the get go. If you read THE LAST FLIGHT, you find out that Blood Magic is taught directly by demons to mortals via brain download and those books are canon. However, even if you just stick with games you learn that Blood Magic is taught via demons.

There's one exception and that doesn't actually make things better. Blood Magic in Old Tevinter was taught to Corypheus and other Magistars by Dumat a.k.a the Old God who ordered them to invade Heaven to begin with.

Merrill learned Blood Magic from demons and attempted to apply it ethically. However, that's part of the reason why everyone reacts like she's playing with not so much fire but nuclear weapons.

Additional Notes

* There's also the "social" distinction of Blood Magic versus the use of Titan Blood. The use of lyrium is not known to be blood-based to the public as a whole but even if it was, Lyrium is something that is harvested from long-dead Titans, not the living, and abundantly available. Even then, its an argument against lyrium being used.
* Demons aren't "inherently evil" in the same sense that Spirits aren't "inherently good." They are utterly alien in their morality to human beings as they're pure representations of their concept. From the average Thedan peasant's perspective it's sophistry to draw a distinction, though. A Pride Demon will attempt to conquer, tempt, and dominate all beings while a Rage demon will kill everyone it encounters forever.

[TGLS]

Is this really a review topic and not a general SF topic?

[CharlesPhipps]

Is this really a review topic and not a general SF topic?

Chuck's opinion on Blood Magic is interesting as his Hawke is like, "Well, this is awkward."

Not:

"KILL THE DEMON ELF!"

[ArchaonTheEverchosen]

I think the problem with Blood Magic isn't due to it nature but is due to it users nature. People who turn to Blood Magic usually have weak will ( in fact in the game will is the least important stats when you go for Blood magic), therefore they lack the ability to resist their desire or emotion. Demon are predators who feed on emotion, meaning they want to increase the specific emotion aspect they represented so they can feed more, thus they have incentive to make human give in more to their desire and emotion.