Disjointed Musings on Spirit Healing
syverce:
A question for DA writers and lore jockies out there: if you play/write a spirit healer do you put much thought into the spirits they channel? By the lore of it spirit healing is effectively allowing yourself to be possessed in order to have access to more power; with this any spirit healer is technically an abomination, even if the spirit leaves when you have no more need of it.
Cadryn is a spirit healer, and I have put some thought into it. It makes sense you would come to develop a relationship with certain spirits, like Wynne clearly had before her possession and reanimation, and the nature of that spirit doesn’t seem to matter (Wynne’s spirit of faith makes some sense; Justice doesn’t make a lot of sense as being able to fuel Anders’ magic unless its just the spirit itself, not their nature). If the nature of the spirit is not important, then Valor makes a lot of sense for a Mage Warden. As such, one of the spirits Cadryn commonly traffics with is Valor, the same one from the origin; the other is a Love spirit (they supposedly exist though we haven’t encountered one in game yet) drawn by some sappy angsty shit I should probably write out some day.
I bring this up because I haven’t had a chance to explore it in the course of Chains/N&A yet. I’m curious as to how other people handle it; I’ve not seen a lot of spirit healers out there in fanfic land, and people tend to handwave it with Anders, especially since the Justice and Spirit Healing modes are mutually exclusive.
I had always thought that while spirit healers do call on spirits they don’t actually get possessed per-say. It does put them at a higher risk since I imagine by calling on spirits they’re kind of making a big damn noise in the Fade which could attract unwanted things. The in-game blurbs made me think it’s more like summoning than possession, but that now makes me wonder if spirit healers actually do any damage to the veil in the areas they do their work in :/
I tried to work out which spirit my Hawke (Marric) would be calling on as things like Valour, Mercy and Justice didn’t really suit him so well and came across a list of Roman Virtues that seemed to include many of the named spirits we find in DA. So for Marric, being friendly and funny but also evasive and not likely to call himself brave I settled on Comitas/humor
Comitas — “Humour” — Ease of manner, courtesy, openness, and friendliness
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