The Desperate Apostate.

Dragon Age Origins Blog fatesplaything2 Fates Plaything: Jowan Part Two

“Am I not allowed to have regrets?” - Jowan

Welcome to Part Two of this feature on Jowan. If you missed last week’s installment, you can read it HERE

The Mage Origin is critical for better understanding Jowan. The first time I came around the Redcliffe Dungeon, all I knew was that he’s a blood mage and that he may or may not be responsible for the horrors taking place in town. But as the trusting Grey Warden Cousland I was, I believed he wanted to help and let him out to assist me. Little did I know then I was sealing his fate.

But with the proper background, the next time I saw Jowan locked up in that dungeon, I felt pity that his life had gone so wrong up to that point. The tragedy of his life was something was something I was sure I wanted to fix – so much to even fix his code-broken path to redemption.

Dragon Age Origins Blog jowandungeon Fates Plaything: Jowan Part Two

The Traitorous Tutor

After his narrow and daring escape from the Circle Tower and now branded as a blood mage apostate, Jowan was on the run, desperate to find salvation from his predicament. Although the templars no longer had his phylactery to track him with, that didn’t necessarily mean he was safe from their hunting.

By a stroke of, what appeared to be luck at the time, Jowan gets connected with Teryn Loghain, who offers him a glimmer of hope to solve his serious problems. Lady Isolde of Redcliffe happens to be looking for an apostate to train her mage son, so that he might not be collected by the templars and taken to a life forever cooped into the Circle Tower. And with Arl Eamon being a political enemy for Loghain in his machinations to usurp/save Ferelden, the opportunity arises for the Teryn to send Jowan in as an agent under the pretense of the tutor but with the plan to eliminate a major player in Ferelden’s structue of nobility. If Jowan can accomplish the deed, Loghain promises to do what he can to help Jowan live free.

To Jowan, this path, although paved over the grave of Arl Eamon, must sound too good to pass up. As he tells the Warden, why wouldn’t he trust Teryn Loghain, the hero of Ferelden? And especially when the Teryn understands Jowan’s plight and offers (perhaps falsely, perhaps not) to help, how could Jowan refuse?

The situation poses a moral questions of sorts – would you kill someone else to save yourself? A majority of people might argue no. But, combine that question with Loghain’s deception that Arl Eamon is a serious, imminent threat to Ferelden’s safety, and you’ve created somewhat of a ticking timebomb scenario. Should Jowan kill Arl Eamon to spare other lives that might be lost in civil war? Add the cherry on top that Loghain will help Jowan with his whole blood-mage-apostate issue and the scenario can actually to sound like the right thing to do.

And so he takes that path and poisons the Arl. But nothing ever is simple for Jowan, and of course, everything goes wrong.

Dragon Age Origins Blog Connor and Isolde Fates Plaything: Jowan Part Two

The Scapegoat

Jowan poisons the Arl but obviously isn’t too discreet about it and gets caught. And soon enough, people start dying and the castle starts spewing out walking corpses every night into Redcliffe village. Lady Isolde, naturally turns her wrath on him as the cause.

This is where blame games gets complicated. Technically, the whole walking dead thing isn’t directly attributable to Jowan, since the plague is the work of a demon joined with Connor’s desire to save his father’s life. Indirectly the mess is Jowan’s fault, because there would be no demon if there were no poison and, as a result, no dying Arl. However, Jowan poisoning the Arl can, as described above, also be contributed to Loghain, who concocted the plan to eliminate an enemy and is using Jowan as his tool to do so.

But at the root of it all is Isolde. She knows her son is magic-cursed and refuses to lose him to the Circle. He inability to let her son go spawns the need for an apostate tutor, which opens the door for Loghain and allows Jowan to walk in, whose poisoning causes the demon to possess Connor which spawns the corpses.

Jowan’s failure and blame lies in not rejecting Loghain’s offer to posion the Arl. But the cards in his hand are lousy after what happened in the Circle Tower. He’s in trouble and desperate, and I’d argue that it’s human nature to dig yourself deeper into a hole trying to get out of one. Who as a child, teen or adult hasn’t faced a bad situation and tried to lie their way out of it, only to have those lies fold to even worsening consequences? It’s true that’s  Jowan’s hole-digging is on a more grand scale than the previous situation, but he’s caught in the flux of other people’s misdeeds that only amplify his own problems.

Is he to blame for attempting to assassinate the Arl? Yes. But is he solely to blame or even mostly to blame for Redcliffe? I say no. Anyhow, it’s up to you how to deal with him.

Continue on page two …

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