Dragon age Female City-elf origin.

Played through the origin for a female city-elf this weekend. Originally when I played I chose mage, found it to my liking and pretty much stuck, neglecting some of the more interesting origins.
As my girlfriend recently played through the city-elf origins, and I realised there was a potential for gender differences, so played a female to mirror her male.




Gender Bender
By and large the gender you choose in dragon-age tends to only really effect minor things, like who you can shack up with in the party camp (more on that at some later point.).
In the city elf origins, it's the day of your arranged wedding. Elves are essentially the 1960's blacks of the dragon age universe. Used to be slaves, aren't any more, but still live in segregated poverty, often working as servants.

Weddings are often arranged to help keep their diminishing gene-pool varied, so that there aren't too many cousin weddings, as they're a dying race.

Anyway, it's the day of your wedding. The son of some local human baron shows up, and pretty much demands elven women for sex.
 
There's a beautiful parallel here, in that he views the elves as a race of beasts, but still lusts after the women, simultaneously desiring and revilling them, using sex/rape as a tool of control. I won't go into a feminist rant, but this is definetly becoming the norm for some men of my generation, where they'll lust after a woman to the point of near-violence, viewing them purely for their sexual aspects and losing respect for them as people/individuals. Porn is a good example of this. Take this mentallity and put it towards beautiful, somewhat (creepily) child-like women, who are considered animals. Not good.

At this point the Bann Vaughn (lords son) is beaten back by your cousin Shianni, and then pisses off for a while. He eventually shows up during the wedding ceremony, and carts off most of the women.

Escape and Resuce
The main difference here is that if you're a female elf, you get carted off as well. If you're male, you then join your other cousin Soris in rescuing the women, with a bit of planning with Duncan, your eventual recruiter into the Grey Wardens.

The next events play out more or less the same. If you're female Soris and your would-be husband Nelaros show up and coupled with your superior martial skills fight your way to the ladies, with Nelaros dying along the way. If you're male, you're instead breaking in to rescue your bride-to-be Nesiara as well as the others.

With a trail of blood, you eventually break into the Bann's room, where he's been... entertaining himself (as well as 2 guards for that added icky-sticky grossness) with your cousin Shianni.

At this point, the Bann tries to make a deal. He offers you 40 gold to go away and leave the women with him, otherwise you MUST fight, potentially killing the son of a Lord (Arl I think they're called).

Critical Miss
Now, I personally feel there was a missed oppurtunity here for a rather emotionally constipating moral dilemma.

Should you rescue the women? Undoubtedly. Leaving them will result in their rape and potential deaths. No one should have to endure that.

However, should you kill Vaughan? Elves found guilty of the murder of a lords son, a subjugated race suddenly performing an uprising... Could result in genocide.

The converse to this argument is that if you allow Vaughn to do his dastardly deed once, he might take that as an open invitation for future encounters.

Anyway, my point is that rather than make that a very powerful moment of moral dilemma, save the few but risk the genocide, it's instead reduced to "Are you going to be a complete asshole or not?"

Big Number
Secondly. 40. FUCKING. GOLD?!?!?!

They're in Denerim, there's a brothel called the Pearl. I by no means condone the use of prostitution, and actually find it an abhorrent and disgusting act. But in the instance of being a rapist or being a prostitute user, prostitution is definetly not the worse of the two crimes. While you're a scum-bag either way, at least with prostitution the women get something out of it.
Plus, the pearl girls only charge something like 20 silver. 40 gold would have been enough to hire 20 prostitutes, with at least some pretence of being willing. Hell, only hire 4 and give them 10 gold each, you've got the same numbers.

Now I know that's not the point. This was the Bann being a horrible tyrant, and it was probably more the act of embarrassing, controlling and forcing people that by all intent and purposes are beneath him that really got him off than anything else, but still.

Also, having a blade against your neck is bound to untie some purse-strings.


So you kill him, sadly too late for Shianni to walk away completely unscathed, but she survives at least, and none of the others are harmed.

You're then approached by guards, at which point I claimed guilt for the murder, and you're subsequently rescued by Duncan conscripting you into the Grey Wardens. No harm done to the elven alienage, and you don't have to hang, and no-one else (Sorris) gets in trouble.

Easily the best of the starting quest, with a clearly defined evil, and I've never felt more scared for my character than with my Female Elf. Nor more satisfying to kill your way out of somewhere, I felt no sympathy or regret for a single person killed...