It's been a while since I last played *Inquisition*, but if I remember right, Leliana has actually a dialogue in Skyhold about this. She was considering whether or not she had done the right thing by calling her agents back, saving their lives in doing so, but allowing Corypheus to attack them more easily. Leliana does think about what happened to Haven. Whether you agree with her or not depends on your Inquisitor.

She does quite literally explain that they had agents around and ready, but when signs indicated things were getting shifty, she pulled them back defensively, worried. Because, realistically, they didn't think anyone would attack the inquisition, realistically.

It's a damn army, come on

I mean, historically there are countless examples of armies marching past each other or bypassing each other and never knowing. Medieval reconnaissance was not easy. It wasn’t hard to get ambushed.

Wasn't there a Turkish battle where 2 armies passed each other and then one ended up attacking itself?

There's an apocryphal story of the Austrians attacking themselves because they thought they were fighting the Turks, but the actual evidence for it is quite thin. But there have been quite a few reconnaissance screwups in history.

>the Austrians attacking themselves Weren't it Serbians who got drunk and thought Turks attacking them.

Lmao that should feel awkward

Being Austrian, I haven't heard that story but 100% would believe it to be true 😅 we weren't known for military prowess. Quite the opposite. Our empire was basically just made from a bunch of advantageous marriage contracts and the fear of Napoleon.

Not sure about that but there's an [infamous example during WW2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wikinger) where the German Navy sent out group of ships into the North Sea to hunt for British shipping. That same evening, the Luftwaffe sent out a squadron of bombers over the North Sea...also to attack British shipping. Both units encountered each other and mistook each other for the british, leading to a battle. Several ships were sunk. Turns out the Luftwaffe and Navy did a poor job of talking to each other and inform each other they had units out there that night.

But if she recalled her agents, then that means she knew they were coming no? If she had time to recall them wouldn't she have had time to warn Haven? Even an hour or two of advanced knowledge would have allowed for a lot of people to be evacuated or for defenses to be sort of prepared, even if barely anything. Better than nothing. Plus, this wasn't two armies missing each other. It was an army marching onto your turf, where you would have expected sentries to be located in the places an army can pass through.

I’m replaying the game rn She says that her agents were going dark and she couldn’t reach them so she recalled them all for their safety and to try and figure out what was happening and then the attack happens She was thinking whether it would have been better to leave them out there in the hopes that one of them could have sent a message warning of the attack before dying but killing all her agents The Inquisitor can disagree and say that our people aren’t tools to be thrown away and that we have to be better than Cory in the house or can agree and say that the agents knew the risks and lives must be sacrificed

Ok, but the sheer fact that the agents near Haven were suddenly disappearing was plenty enough to put the whole place in Defcon 3. That is my point. The fact that the protagonists only seem to notice the attack right when they attack you is insane with these circumstances. If all of your sentries and scouts get taken out so comprehensively then your entire defensive line was just terrible. It is a bad plot point no matter how you look at it.

Not necessarily, think about their location. They are in a remote frozen valley in the Frost backs, so most lines of attack would be limited. And with limited lines of attack comes the risk that you can't exactly predict someone would even attack at all. The sentries she sent out there could have been dying to enemy forward scouts and agents, and by the time she received word of them dying off (Because she uses ravens to send messages) she assumed one of 3 scenario's. 1: They were abandoning their posts 2: A demon or rift is involved 3: They are under attack She had to process all of these possibilities in the mere moments before discovering the army over the hills. Its a bad network true but its a medieval network in a region nobody who is sane would attack in the first place. So the safest bet was to pull them back. She literally did everything correctly, she just had no time to organize any countermeasures, and there was also a big dragon stopping any reasonable counterattack.

Limited lines of attack is benefitial for defense. It means you can concentrate your vigilance on fewer avenues where you can be attacked from. The entire principle of defensive scouting is having an array of forward positions that are individually scouted and check with each other. They had this figured out in the medieval ages. I reiterate: If the entirety of the defensive line got flattened so comprehensively and simultaenously that not a single scout managed to get work back, then they just flat out sucked. There is just no two ways to argue about it. I am not even demanding that she prepared countermeasures. I am just having a hard time to believe that anyone experienced wouldn't immediately assume the worst, which is the most likely option, and immediately let everyone know. This isn't an attack on Leliana. It is just a bad plot point. They needed Haven to get attacked with their pants down so they simply made the defenses suck to get things moving.

Yes beneficial until they are overrun because it also means limited lines of escape. Yes but like I stated limited lines of attack, means limited positions to scout which means easier to ambush and eliminate forward positions as there are fewer people to watch out for each other. There is in the pretence that the enemy invaded so quickly and so numerously that few to no messages could make it back and those that did got there too late. Remember the enemy was barely a few hours out and they send their message by Raven. The problem its hard to assume the worst in a fantasy world where there are double to triple the variables. Its not that the defences suck, its that nobody would attack a small village at the bottom of a frozen basin with a force capable of rivalling one of the kingdoms of Thedas. For all intensive purposes from both a diplomatic and subterfuge perspective both Leliana and Josephine had ensured most threats diplomatic and internal were culled so the only logical threat is a force so overwhelming that even the best defensive position would not be able to get a message back in time. Which makes sense, if we talk about the Napolionic conquests or the Mongols speed really messed up communication lines. If you could outrun the messenger then no message can reach anyone.

let's also deep dive on the send message by raven part too. Ravens are probably carried in low numbers, so the frequency of check-ins is going to be naturally low. (compared to radios, say) Ravens can give away your position when sent (similar to radios if your opponent has the right equipment). If anything, I'd given Ravens the benefit here as you don't necessarily know that a flying raven is a messenger raven. A sent raven could be intentionally intercepted, especially with a big flying monster and mages. these interception methods are not obviously present from afar (unlike radio jamming which would increase general noise received) There is a natural amount of Ravens that don't make it back due to reasons not indicative of an attack (other wildlife, local poachers, poor training so they get distracted). plus the local area is not 100% safe to a scout (bears, rifts etc.), so two scouts failing to meet uo is not necessarily an attack either. How many check-ins need to be missed to indicate an attack rather than any other problem, and how much more likely would keeping out the scouts be to getting you a confirmed message through? That is the question leliana had to deal with. She got it wrong, but would anyone reasonably know the right answers beforehand?

The whole point of recalling them was to get what information they could and try to see what was happening. If all of your scouts are disappearing, it’s not of any use to leave them out there to continue to disappear Haven is also located in extreme wilderness and people could disappear easily. As the same time of either faction you get support from, the other faction has turned. Granting that it was a complete takeover of either side, the chances of any spies or informants escaping is little to none. No one would have anticipated that either side would’ve launched a full-on invasion on Haven If your agents are going dark then your priority is to try to figure out why. They were going of incomplete information and it’s kind of ridiculous to expect them to go into immediate crisis mode to prepare for an invasion of an army that they don’t even know exists

I stopped replying on the other conversation because it is circular at this point, so I will just reply to this and then we all agree to disagree. 1) I don't begrudge the decision of calling the spies back. I am questioning the decisions of ONLY calling them back instead of doing it and then waking everyone the hell up to let them know what is happening. 2) I assume those are your veteran, seasoned guys you are sending out there and that it isn't their first rodeo. After all, this is important work. And if all of those guys suddenly start disappearing, there is 0 chance anyone would assume "the environment must have got them". You always prepare for the worst. 3) If your agents are disappearing out in some off mission, then yeah, you need to investigate why. But, if your agents whose mission was to keep watch of the immediate surrounding of your secluded base while you wage war against a powerful and unpredictable enemy, then that is a defcon 3 scenario, not a "Gee, I wonder what this is all about. Hopefully I find out in the morning" situation. ------------ My point is merely this: The situation and the context around it pointed to the need of a lot more urgency and preventive measures than what was displayed and I refuse to believe that a former assassin wouldn't be paranoid enough to agree. Leliana got done dirty and dumbed down in this specific situation by the plot's need to move forward no matter how. That is my position. We can agree to disagree.

Armies passing each other by is one thing, an army marching on a settlement that you protect - quite another.

Sure, but these armies didn't have the option of using scrying magics. Standard historical tactics and logistics get thrown out the window when mages enter the field. Realistically the biggest advantage that a nation like Tevinter has, is unmatched logistical superiority. If Leliana doesn't employ heavy use of mages amongst her agents, she's basically failing.

Mages, the people the Inquisition didn't have until you decided to either side with them or not, because before then, as the Inquisition was not recognized by the Chantry, who just happen to *run* the Circles, would have none available? Outside a couple but one presumed Corypheus is strong enough to counter act anything *Vivienne* can try, and Solas... We don't count Solas, because from a meta point of view things got out of hand but he is confident he can *fix* things (if I remember correctly he has dialogue that say as much) Those same mages, if you sided with them would be fresh into the Inquisition and therefore not deployable with scouts, *and* they just helped close a big honking hole in the sky, I dunno how magic works exactly but methinks they'd need a moment or two. So no, we don't have mages to scry Corypheus' location, or his army.

Honest question, is scrying magic even a thing? The closest equivalent I can think of is the circle’s phylacteries. But this requires the person’s blood and only really points you in their direction, which clearly wouldn’t work since we don’t have the blood. Haven’t read the comics or anything like that.

As far as I recall no. There’s like one mention of scrying in dragon age and it’s only used to find the Eluvian in the Witch Hunt dlc. And that’s ancient elven magic so we have no reason to believe a modern circle mage or apostate would be able to accomplish anything similar.

Yes, there is. Finn uses some in Witch Hunt and he does use blood. The use of blood does make it impossible to scry for Corypheus.

Right, I forgot about Finn '-' Isn't it also a whole ritual that needs something personal (in Morrigan's case was the ring)? I might be remembering wrong, but if not, then what would be presented of Corypheus', even in the case it would work?

They do need a personal effect (I think it’s also been a bit of time for me) and I pretty sure they really don’t have anything on Corypheus I don’t think. Im not sure they even realized it was Corypheus in the beginning of Inquisition.

They only knew him as the "Elder One" at the end of the Mage/Templar mission. Before that, they didn't know it was an organised enemy. They only found out about Corypheus when he leads the attack on Haven. And assuming that IYHSB happens within a few hours or days from the recruitment, that's not much time for the spies to start looking for information on the Elder One.

I'm just engaging in a hypothetical scenario, because for all I know there is no such thing as scrying spells in Thedas, the closer would be Morrigan's ring but that was originally created by Flemeth and aparently is not something easily done.

Leliana's assets predate the Inquisition.

They are not mages. Mages in this world are not *free* to do as they like. The Chantry *certainly* would not give any such freedom as to be a *spy* for a *spymaster* who is *very* pro-mage.

Leliana wouldn't have a problem recruiting apostates as agents. And just keep her mouth shut about it. It would be even easier to ensure their loyalty - she is in the position to help them evade the chantry.

Leliana worked directly under the Divine. Her operations are effectively off the books. You aren't giving her or her station enough credit. Look into how the CIA handles their affairs.

Not the same. We don't have mages the CHURCH effectly enslaves their whole life, do we? I'd be impressed if there were people living in a tower somewhere with phylacteries in place just in case they go rogue. Real world logic in a high fantasy setting game makes little sense. I don't know if even the Divine can just go "you have those mages, no biggie." Just look at how a Divine Leliana is handled by the Chantry. *Assassinations* were attempted.

But Corypheus has himself and plenty of other mages too. Presumably there are countermeasures.

I can't believe I have to repeat myself but there is no such thing as scrying magics in Dragon Age. People can't track with magic in the world very well, thats why there is an extensive underworld in the game. Otherwise why hire a contemporary Assassin when a mage can find someone faster? Hence my point.

Yes there is. Finn used it in Witch Hunt but it uses blood to find the person, of which they have none of Corypheus. Not disagreeing with your point on the assassins though.

Yeah, its the same kind they use for Phylacteries. But it can mainly point you in a direction, not give you an exact position as to where they are. Hence I said they can't track very well with it.

How is she supposed to employ mages in her scouts? Thedas is not supportive of mages so she doesn't have any unless you recruit them and if you do none of them are trained in scouting and would be a hinderance.

Yes but we usually classify those armies/people as stupid. OP has a point, and even later on in skyhold if I remember correctly, leliana beats herself up about it. To not see an entire army coming, especially when in a defensive position is just terrible intelligence.

My good friend, if anything blame the writers.

With pleasure!

She doesn't exist without the writers. Obviously it's the writers' fault, but from an in-universe perspective, it's hers.

well the problem is that in-universe she shouldn't really make this mistake so its more on the writers forgetting their own character it is her fault but still the writers suck

Yeah, I just had this talk with her about blaming herself. I didn't even give it much thought during my initial playthrough. But this time it just hit me. Yeah girl, you kinda ARE responsible. Why do we even have a spymaster if we can't even see an ARMY coming? And yeah, she's remorseful about pulling her people back and not slowing the army down. But I'm not even expecting her spies to sabotage them. I just expect them to warn us a couple days in advance. Intel about troop movements and absolutely everything about at least our immediate surroundings is the bare minimum of what I'd expect if you're at least trying to do a half-decent job. You don't gather an army and march through snowy mountains within a couple of hours. We would have easily had time to set up a proper defense, set traps, ambushes etc and figure out a proper evacuation plan. But no, our spymaster can't make us aware of them until they're literally at our doorstep.

IMO, the story would be boring if the attack at Haven didn't happen, so I don't really care at the end of the day. Characters making mistakes and bad things happening are what keep a story going. Also, sometimes villains have moments of competency, even Corypheus. 

... Damn, Corypheus really was an idiot, wasn't he?

I don't think seeing an entire army coming is in the spymaster's job description personally. Spies aren't scouts. Spys are creeping around in enemy territory getting you information. I'm pretty sure missing an entire freaking army walking up to your camp is squarely on the shoulders of the army commander.

The army being able to get that close to Haven is definitely on Cullen, but the fact that the Inquisition didn't even know that an army that size existed or who its leaders were is 100% the Spymaster's fault.

To be fair, we knew about the army didn't we? Since it's the mages or templars we didn't went to solve the problems of. We knew it existed, should definitely have known earlier that it was marching toward us though

If Leliana was doing her job there would've been spies embedded among the mages and templars at Redcliffe and Therinfal, respectively, who would've been able to tip off the inquisition "hey, the army is mobilizing towards Haven"

Can't really embed a spy as a red templar...

That's like saying "a cop can't use drugs while undercover!"

No it isn't. If they used red lyrium theyd be under his control and dependant on it. I mean think about it for a few seconds

Red lyrium is blighted lyrium. No. They can’t use it Cory’s influence over people infected with the blight is why we’re fighting him after it led to his release

LOL, I understand why it happened for gameplay reasons, but frankly its embarrassing for the entire inquisition.

It wasn't a recognised inquisition with the Chantry denouncing it and extremely limited resources. Assuming that IYHSB occurs just a few days after recruiting the Mages/Templars, there is not much time for the scouts to start searching for info on the Elder One. The Inquisition didn't know about the Elder One or that the enemy is organised before the recruitment (presumably coz it was hard to get spies into both camps and Corypheus' lieutenant would have gotten rid of any found). Unless we assume that there was a huge time gap between recruiting the Mages/Templars and the sealing of the breach, there really wasn't much time for gathering any intelligence. Not to mention there was already an issue with traitors among the spies.

Considering "In your heart shall burn" has a power required of 1, it implies that you're meant to do it really soon after recruiting the mages or templars, so presumably in Canon the two missions happen almost on top of each other in the timeline.

Personally, I think Cullen is more to blame than Leliana. When Leliana call back her agents, she’s kinda being cautious and playing the long run as, while she noticied something was happening (which is her job), she can’t let her agents and contacts die on the field, as the Inquisition would be totally blind to futur threat without them. On the other hand, I don’t remember Cullen raising real alarm regarding how Haven was an undefendable and enclaved place without any known evacuation road, and he should also had put scouts and warchtowers all over the nearby moutains (which I don’t remember being a thing in game) as it would have prevented your army from being corner in Haven and rather confront the invader with an actual strategy way before they reached the door. Moreover, when Vivienne comes to you to criticize the decision to choose Haven as the Inquisition HQ, even if she’s right, she’s addressing this criticism to the wrong person, as you weren’t the Inquisitor, and Cullen being a general and without inquisitor, it would have been his role to take such decision. So yeah, Leliana might be a bit responsible for what happened, but I feel like Cullen is wayyyy more to blame for this all of this.

To be fair, it seemed that the battle was won if Corypheus didn’t have a pseudo Archdemon with him. Cullen’s plan was to hold the line and bombard them with artillery more or less, and it worked. When the dragon came in, it was over. But even then, Corypheus’ army was decimated, and trapped on the other side of the mountains once the trebuchets locked the pass down.

Like Leiliana, Cullen also takes responsibility for his failures in that regard when you first talk to him at Skyhold. He realizes that it was a poor base of operations and commits to never making the same mistake again. Also, Cullen is a commander, not a general. And has zero experience actually leading a military body outside of the hierarchy and closed scope of the circle, so it's somewhat understandable that he had a lot of blind spots at first. Leiliana has been a spy her entire adult life, so it's a little less forgiveable IMO

I always thought that Cullen was a poor choice to command inquisition’s army, like, sure he has extended knowledge about mages, templars and the effects of red lyrium or blood magic as he witnessed it first hand, and that makes him a particularly precious advisor, but other than that, he doesn’t stand as a particularly good leader to command troops.

Haven was in a terrible position for something like that, and that also wasn’t the spymasters job. What happened at haven happened because nobody was expecting something like that to happen, and you are all partly to blame for it. None of you even knew an army of such a size with any motivation to attack you existed.

Not expecting an actual attack on such remote location is fair, but not knowing an army existed at all? That's 100% a spymaster's job (and fault). She should've had at least a general idea of what happened in Redcliffe/Therinfal when you resolved the other questline and she should've known about a large army travelling along the same routes everyone else uses (because armies cannot realistically function off-road) and likely razing villages along the way. The talk about scouts is kinda poorly written because those are indeed supposed to by army's area of responsibility, but in general Leliana not handwaving away her failure is on point

They are mind controlled super horrors led by a zombie. Seems a but unlikely to assume they can't function off road

One possibility is mages and while magic has a huge potential of cheating logistics away, it is never shown to do so. Second possibility is Red Templars who, while having some super horros in their ranks already and affected by red lyrium, are still people whith all the limitation that entails. Both groups have to just *walk* to Haven and roads help immensely with that even if we assume they have no need for a supply train

Sure they help but they absolutely aren't just people with the same limitations. Do you remember anything about them when they fight? Hell they probably could have used the deep roads even with Cory being darkspawn

Deep Roads are are possibility that would explain the army not being seen half a continent in advance, but Cory doesn't use the Darkspawn in DAI. I don't remember being given a definitive answer if it is because he can't or because he doesn't want to, but it's entirely possible they would have to fight their way through. Might be even viable with the number thinned out by the recent Blight

Sadly, reprimanding her for being a poor spymaster and preparing her to become a good pope are mutually exclusive.

I'm doing a replay and just had this scene also. It's interesting because when you first meet Varric he tells you about how he runs a spy network, and you ask him whether he could be the Inquisition's spymaster. He says "Leiliana is a much better spymaster than me because I care too much about my people whereas she will do what it takes to get the job done" (paraphrased). Then Leiliana does this bullshit. Lmao. If I had the option in the game, I'd fire her and put Varric in charge immediately.

Varric’s reports would all read like spy fanfiction, but other than that I don’t see many downsides.

"GODDAMNIT, VARRIC! I only wanted a report about whether it was safe to lick ice in winter or not. NOT A FUCKING NOVEL!"

considering they already working with a limited resources....if you kept losing that resources and dunno why...its better to pull them back. and Varric would pretty much did the same thing.....but the problem is he would probably keep doing it, Leliana at least won't do that again....unless you soften her. "but its Leliana's job to know!" yeah....if there aren't any message coming back to her...she wouldn't know, she ain't a god lol

Isn't calling her agents back a decision the inquisitor can influence though? I swear I recall a dialogue option where you can sway her decision (not that it really affects anything).

No. You can have her spare an agent that betrays you and you can confirm/chastise the decision to pull back the agents, but you can’t influence whether she does it or not.

Ahhhhh. That must be it. Oh isn't that convo part of "hardening" her/influencing her becoming Divine?

Yep, turns out the traits you want to encourage in a spymaster are pretty much the opposite of the traits you want to encourage in a pope. 

It is a critical piece of softening her (much to people’s chagrin, as it is frequently missed and is very early in the game), but I don’t think it influences her becoming divine.

Correct, it just influences what type of divine she becomes, *if* she does.

Surely if she had the Intel to know to withdraw, she had the Intel on how WHAT she was withdrawing from was enough of a threat to withdraw from.

She didn't know anything - her only intel was scouts disappearing. Still should have been enough to at least realise something bad is about to happen and put everyone on alert

Tbf, we don't know when she got that info and everyone was kind of distracted with the breach. 

If scouts go dark consistently from a singular direction going closer and closer to Haven you should be able to conclude something is coming. Not what, or why. But clearly something at does not have the best wishes of the inquisition in mind. Which should be enough to warrant an evacuation of any non-critical staff and civilians

Yeah, she knew something was up as a number of her scouts vanished. And she decided to protect the rest of the scouts by pulling them back. She didn't know if there was an army coming, or if a mole was selling out agents, or if the Templars or Mages were retaliating.

There are spies everywhere in every nation. Tevinter has spies in Nevarra, who has spies in Orlais, who has spies in Par Vollen, who has spies in all human nations. It's no surprise that an organization as big as the Inquisition that took in anyone willing would be filled with spies. Leliana is not omniscient.

Couple of things here: * First of all, the resources at the disposal of the Inquisition aren't infinite. At the beginning of the game they are even sparse. * Second of all, you put spies where there are information worth spying on. In this case: Mage/Templar factions, Chantry, different nobles household, refugiee camp etc. You don't send spies in the middle of nowhere. * At last, you need you spies to be able to sort relevant information and send them to you. Considering there are Dragons in almost half of the maps you're visiting (one of them being near Redcliff Castle), reports about people seeing dragons must be usual enough to not really take care of the one about Corypheus.

Yeah it's not the job of spies to see an army coming, that's a military job for scouts and guards on an advanced perimeter/ watchtower.

Yup. Leliana could have had more information on Corypheus had she kept her informants on the Mage/Templar factions you chose to not save, but it's also probable these guys would have been killed which could explain why she called them back.

To be fair though, it seems like in the Inquisition's hierarchy, the scouts fall under the Spymaster's command and not the Commander, at least partially. Those dudes with hoods who I assume are scouts report to her all the time and several of the War Table missions to unlock new areas are Leliana's, such as Scout the Hinterlands and Scout the Storm Coast.

While you’re correct, the game seems to treat the Inquisition’s scouts as Leliana’s agents rather than Cullens. This may have been a holdover from when the devs wanted army management to be more of a thing in the game, or it may have just been a matter of the writers not really knowing how militaries work.

> Mage/Templar factions Mage/Templar factions like the ones Corypheus corrupted and marched on Haven?

Yeah, the ones Leliana probably lost track of when she sent people to support the Inquisitor at the faction of their choosing instead. At this point in the game her network is not as powerful as it becomes later. 

My only criticism of this is the factions worth spying on are the ones most valuable to Coryphius because they've gone rogue: Templars and mages. You get suspicious reports about both and it makes reasonable sense that whichever faction you choose not to investigate personally, spies are sent to suss out whatever is going on with the one you don't. To your point about dragons vs darkspawn, especially a magister. I would imagine Leliana, who participated in ending the Fifth Blight with the Hero of Ferelden, would take that information quite seriously. I used my warden for Awakening so I'm assuming Leliana would have kept tabs on the goings on there as well and would be aware of a magisters power. Dragons are dangerous, yes, but there are only really a few that you encounter that are an active threat to the people living there and even then, you aren't really given a whole lot of pressure to deal with them. It's more a local government issue aside from all the red templar and undead problems going on. Honestly the only real pressure I feel to kill them is for Iron Bull and my own completionist mindset.

Have you not talked to Leliana at Skyhold? The conversation you can have with her is the second part of hardening or softening her (the first being back in Haven). She pulled back her scouts before the attack on Haven to await more information because several of them were overdue and never reported back in and she blames herself for what happened.

~~Did you even talk to her post Haven? She literally addresses it and admits she fucked up.~~ But she can strangle a man to death with her tights after months of torture. That's a level of spy flex I can only admire. Can you imagine Varric doing that? Me neither.

Speak for yourself, I'm imagining Varric strangling me with his thighs every single day 😤

Seducing Varric into it like  *"Your neck looks good. And uhh... your collarbones are very supportive."*

R/downbad

I needed a good laugh. DAI is the only game I’ve played in the series thus far and I was super disappointed you can’t romance him 🥺 Instantly fell in love with him. I even told my husband I was going to seduce that dwarf lol. But then my inquisitor met Dorian and all is well.

They're out in the middle of nowhere. You have to pass through places where there *are* spies to get spied on. It's not like she's got a satellite she can take pictures with.

Leliana says she has scouts who got killed, so she pulled back all her scouts, which led to no advanced warning on the attack. Presumably they were stationed in a circle around Haven so that you could get advanced warning about an attack, but clearly it didn’t work out. As others have pointed out, usually scouts/watch towers would be the responsibility of the army (and fall under Cullen), however Leliana/Cullen’s response makes it clear that the scouts fall under Leliana. The main thing that confuses me is that usually dead scouts mean that something is coming and is a cause for high alert, not something casual like Leliana makes it out to be. In addition, getting nothing from the scouts is incredibly odd. Either the scouts were incredibly poorly trained/equipped or Corypheus had amazing vanguard that were great at taking out the inquisition scouts before they could raise the alarm. It’s a plot hole that they cover with “Leliana is incompetent”, which isn’t really a good cover.

Corypheus also had a dragon that can fly damn fast. I imagine that helped take out the watch towers pretty quickly. I imagine the scouts that Leliana pulled back were quite close, to explain how quickly everything unfolded.

And, if you choose the templars rather than the mages, he has a lieutenant that can warp time, something that no other mage can do.

Hell, he still has that if he has the mages, she's just not his main lieutenant.

Calpernia can’t change time (at least as far as I know), that’s just Alexius

Ah, It's been ages since I did a Templar run, so I assumed Calpurnia had something going on I'd forgotten about.

Yeah I think the dragons getting a bit overlooked. A flimsy watch tower ain’t gonna do much when a dragon can just fly through it. Preventing it from signaling to other towers. And even if scouts were able to be close enough to identify the army without being killed by the dragon, they likely aren’t sprinting back to Haven fast enough to make a difference. They probably couldn’t even get back before the army, I imagine an army of red lyrium powered Templars/mages have probably got better stamina and constant speed than some poor scout that’s trying to run through snow.

Even if the dragon took out the watch towers, it was able to get there so quickly that it was able to completely eviscerate the watch tower before they could fire a flaming arrow or light a beacon or whatever their alert system was?

Given how fast we see that thing can fly, and they were all presumably made out of wood? Yes. There's a *reason* Dragons were once hunted to extinction.

>It’s a plot hole that they cover with “Leliana is incompetent”, which isn’t really a good cover. I always felt like it was because Leliana had softened up a bit since Origins. She has been hardened since Origins, either during by the Warden or sometime later. And she's softening up a bit again, the Inquisitor can either reharden or soften her. This moment of softness made her prioritize the lives of her scouts, as she didn't know what was killing them and called them back to reorganize and try a different tactic before losing any more of them. That's how I interpreted it anyway.

Actually, with DA being a heavily magical setting, I'd argue that competent armies have BETTER reconnaissance options than a spy satellite. Put a competent mage on recon, and they don't even need to leave the goddamn keep.

How? Scrying magic is quite barebones in this setting. Basically down to stuff like knowing where someone is if they have your specially made ring, and being able to track down an eluvian if you have the shard of one and blood of an elf. You can also spy via the Fade, but that requires you to know specifically who you're looking for.

Honestly, this person doesn’t seem to understand magic OR the place of mages in DA. Like, mages aren’t just getting used as scouts or military. On top of their limitations with magic in DA, most of Thedas doesn’t trust them

Well, they do have *some* military use (think the lore of the Knight-Enchanters, or King Cailan summoning the Circle Mages to fight the Blight), but it's not much and tightly controlled. While the Inquisition would be more open than most in this regard, they'd still mainly be used as magical artillery, given what we know of how Mages work in this setting.

They also probably wouldn’t have had established mage use until Skyhold

Yeah, it would have been whichever rando Mages signed up on their own, plus whichever of the rebel Mages they'd managed to integrate in such short order after recruiting them (if you did).

Except armies in DA don’t use mages because they’re seen as high risk

Play the Mage Origin and exhaust the dialog with Duncan in the tower, talk to the mages in the War camp. The game heavily pushes the idea that mages are lucrative for warfare, and implies that war mages are capable of devastating massed enemy forces.

I hate to break it to you but spying in a Medieval kind of world is not easy, if your marching your army on an Enemy what is the first thing you do? Send scouts/assassins to kill Lookouts and when your scouts/assassins die you don't know what happens until you send more out there but that could take hours tell they miss a check in and thats assuming you have men to spare at the drop of a hat like its a game of Civilization 6 Sorry but Leliana can't just check Facebook and see Coryphesus post on Facebook "Marching on Haven to destroy this "Herald of Andresta" Wish me luck!" that's not how shit actually works or boot up her personal satellite to see a massive army marching on your base

Neither can a sizeable attack force just teleport right next to a mountain town that has limited amount of paths that lead to it... A hundred(s) of people with their support wagons in tow rolling through the countryside for at least a week is not a surprise stealth attack operation.

Yeah, it’s happened before in actual history, they could send out raiders/scouts to kill the people before they’re able to warn the main group, or in this case, they could be using the dragon they have, or chory’s own magic to outpace any scouts/forward watchers, or to destroy em before they had any idea they were under attack, therefore being unable to warn haven

The small army does not magically teleport next to Haven (because that is said to be impossible in DA universe). It needs to come walking from somewhere. This is not about what happened in the two hours right before the invasion. This is about them needing to move through the countryside to even get to the mountains where Haven is, and start climbing up it from the limited pathways there are, and all of this, no-one happens to notice?

Ik, I never said anything about teleporting, and everything I said was about how chory’s army could surprise attack haven Remember, this has happened in our own history, and we don’t got dragons, magic infused super soldiers, people with the ability to wield magic, and a thousands of years old super mage priest who visited the afterlife. It’s really not that hard to believe, especially since people make mistakes, and that the inquisition was distracted with the immediate after effects of “closing the breach”, the integration of whatever group they supported, and the fact that they were essentially scraping by in terms of resources/manpower/influence at that point. It’s really not that hard to believe

You keep mentioning 'this has happened in real life'. Two viking ships doing a night raid at a shore town is not the same thing as all of this overland army business. Feel free to give an example of a real-life event where a distant mountain fort with plenty of people, who have every reason to expect someone to be coming for them, getting pants-down surprised by an army that are coming in through a very finite number of mountain passages... after spending a week approaching the mountains across the surrounding countryside. No, having the dragon swooping down to eat watchtowers is not a stealth maneuver.

Dude, I’m not getting dragged into a bitch fit about a 10 yr old game, I don’t care, believe what you want

It's not so much about the game, I just want to make sure you don't continue imagining real armies just appearing around the globe without any prep work to get them there.

Ya it's one thing if the inquisition is surprised by a force that's incoming from a good distance away, but weren't they like right at their doorstep by the time anyone noticed? That doesn't make any sense.

I'm fine with it being a story beat that has to happen, that's fine. The way they handled it, though, just makes everyone look bad. At least say that it was because of Cullen's addiction that the scouts were mishandled, or a a spy masquerading as a pilgrim/refugee/conscript placed a cursed item in Leliana's tent that made her ignore all the messages from her spies. Her just going 'guess I'm bad at this, huh' just seems so light-hearted.

I think tbh all they *really* had to do was establish that there was a sizeable force incoming and they were approaching from the only viable exit that a mass of people could reasonably escape from. Isn't Haven on or near a mountain top and there's specific paths you have to take to get there? So basically they can't leave without a battle anyway or a crap ton of people dying trying to flee on foot against the invading army.

They are super horrors and a zombie. They probably can march whenever and however they like. These aren't just normal people

I’d argue that red Lyrium amped templars/mages are not rolling in with support wagons… They probably literally just trudged there with what ever they were carrying and that’s it. Half of them have turned into great big behemoth/abomination looking monsters. I wouldn’t be holding them to the limitations of a regular army. They can more than likely march non-stop and at a greater speed. And a black Dragon would easily be able to topple any watch towers in the middle of night that might be in the way before they could even signal. And Haven being so remote it’s probable that the army could march straight there without being seen, again they’re red lyrium powered monstrosities, they probably don’t need a neat road to walk on and can likely avoid any civilisation between them and where they’re going. I’d say it’s plenty plausible they could have marched all the way there at a rapid rate without anyone detecting them until they were basically on the door step.

Her spies were dissappear (presumably getting killed), that's why she didn't get any reports about the army prior to her pulling them back. I'm also going to agree with my Inquisitor here that even if she had her spies remained in the field, they would probably all died before they can reports anything back anyway.

It is not the job of spies to monitor armies and enemy movements (they can, but it's not their primary job and they would only do so if they have infiltrated the enemies forces, which they won't have prior to the attack on Haven because they wouldn't have known about the army in order to have infiltrated it). It is the job of the scouts and guards to notice an army is coming and report on its movements. So if anything the failure would be on Cullen for not having advanced enough outposts or scout patrols to have given a warning

Except the game keeps Leliana referring explicitly to "MY scouts" early on, not Cullen's. Which is a bit unusual given a general of an army would typically command the scouting corps as well, and that may well be the case once the Inquisition actually has an army and Leliana focuses more on espionage and transfers the scout corps to the army. But given the Inquisition is very cobbled together to begin as a glorified militia and not intended for large-scale maneuvers, it makes more sense that Leliana oversees the scouts--alongside the spies--at that point as she's the overall intelligence gatherer. So it really is Leliana's fault on their being intel-blind and being surprised like that, though it's still also Cullen's fault for not having a better defensive/escape plan in place.

Keep in mind that before the battle, they don't know Corypheus exists, that he wants to murder the Inquisitor, or what the Venatori plan to do with the mages or Templars. Before Haven is destroyed, the Inquisition is just an organization trying to close a tear in the Veil. It isnt an army or military force, and it only wants to recruit the Templars or mages for their magical abilities. Haven being indefensible doesn't matter much at that point, because they have no reason to think an army would come and attack Haven directly. After the battle, all that changes and the defenses and plans of the Inquisition, the whole game, changes drastically. It's like if the CDC was trying to treat a smallpox outbreak in america, and out of nowhere Russia attacks the CDC, tries to kill the director, and Putin announces the world will die in disease and destruction. Its so unexpected and the CDC on its own wouldn't be ready for it.

I am convinced half the ppl on this sub don't actually play the games.

Uhm well lets see they are a grassroots organization with barely any legitimacy sitting in a frozen valley. Who would have thought a huge army would march to a remote region to attack, especially not just after they closed the breech. I really don't see you being a better head of intelligence.

It kind of goes to show how good of a spymaster she is that you can only bring up one example in the entire game. The only hint she had in game of an army approaching was her agents going dark, so she called back the remainders. It's not like anybody had any reason to think the templars or mages were going to attack randomly and nobody knew of Corypheus except maybe Varric who thought he was dead and had no reason to connect him to current eventd

Leliana explicitly takes responsibility for that failure since she pulled her lookouts back. She likely didn’t have a lot of resources to work with, so she probably wasn’t keen on wasting her scouts on watching remote regions like the Frostbacks when they could be utilized to watch other areas of interest. So there’s an in-universe justification. It’s not the greatest excuse writing-wise, but at least they attempt to address it and tie it into her character arc. I’d also argue that Cullen shares some responsibility for the failure, which he acknowledges outright, even if the scouts were apparently under Leliana’s command. If anything, I find it more surprising that she didn’t suspect something about Corypheus snatching up the Red Templars before they caught the Inquisition by surprise at Haven. With the mages there’s the time-travel excuse, but given that she had eyes and ears on the Templar Order, you think she would have sussed out that something was amiss.

She’s distracted, Too busy being locked in her chambers reading steamy romance letters from the warden by candlelight to see Corypheus coming over the mountain.

In my worldstate she could only have read letters from the Warden to Morrigan. Still never saw it coming.

Steamy romance letters with dirty woodcuts.

Scouts are what they needed, there should have been some sort of early warning system in place but I suppose you could hand wave that with the inquisition being quite new.

I assumed she was spying more on like political stuff and dangers not actual demons. But I could be wrong

I'm at more anguish about her hardening. The 1st choice (and a crucial one) if you don't want her hardened is to talk her out of killing an agent who betrayed the Inquisition and killed his mates. Without any background info (and we get none) it's totally pointless, and the options to talk her out of it include "killing is never a solution" (says a person who killed hundreds of humans, elves etc.). Just so lame. Compare to talking Mordin out of killing Maelon. It has context, it is an emotional moment, not a thought through decision (otherwise Mordin would follow through with it no matter what you say).

I mean, this type of thing happened constantly in actual medieval warfare. Scouts and spies are not infinite. If you don’t have them in the right places, or if the enemy army is smart enough, you can get caught off guard by an advancing army. There is no such thing as aerial surveillance. You don’t see the armies moving around like on a Civ board. It’s not that hard to get ambushed and it not necessarily be a failure of your sentries or scouts. There are countless historical examples of an army straight up bypassing another army and arriving at unguarded strongholds because the commander decided to match a dozen miles west instead of east. All of that said, it does seem like the Inquisition should have had more warning. She mentions she had scouts go missing. But then, the writing is very clear that it was a fuckup, and both Leliana and Cuellen view it as an embarrassment and own the fuckup. So nothing really feels off about it to me.

Even the Romans relied heavily on their scouts. Sure, the Romans could use brute force if they had to but they preferred to pick their battles, play to their strengths.

Even the Romans relied heavily on their scouts. Sure, the Romans could use brute force if they had to but they preferred to pick their battles, play to their strengths.

Even the Romans relied heavily on their scouts. Sure, the Romans could use brute force if they had to but they preferred to pick their battles, play to their strengths.

This is kinda what happens when you have writers that don't understand military tactics. IMO every big scale fantasy game needs to have a massive ass Warhammer nerd in their writing staff.

Or don't give a shit. As much as I love Origins and I do to the point, where i've played it to death to the point of ruining it for myself, the tactical side of cutscenes are questionable. The battle where Loghain betrays(i forget the name) is poorly done, maybe on purpose but a thin defensive line against a superior enemy? You ain't spamming magic and arrows constantly? No caltrops and beartraps? You release the Mabaris by themselves? Make the anvil part a pain in the arse and piss off the Darkspawn. Then strike. Granted, the battle was doomed because the horde was insanely big. The battle of denerim? A massive charge? It worked but really do wish, it was done better. I could see a dwarven shield wall being used as a big fuck off battering ram with dalish arrows being loosed everywhere etc..

Agreed on the battle for the wilds. If the Darkspawn were willing to charge into a tight choke point with embedded archer positions along the old Tevinter fort, the Fereldan force really just needed to dig in and grind for a victory in detail, while their warmages ripped the bulk of the Darkspawn horde apart. I agree that the defensive lines are set up to fail. In this kind of situation, you absolutely want your elite heavy infantry as your anvil, not a flanking unit. If the front falls, the archer, mage, and artillery positions are compromised, and the defensive point they chose was ideal for limiting the impact of the Darkspawn's numarical advantage. Realistically the only reason why there isn't cavelry is because of engine limitations, so maybe we can assume that Loghains forces were mounted, at which point, yeah losing your heavy cav support to treason is a big issue. Absolutely keep the dogs in reserve as either a flanking or cleanup force. Using them as light shock troops at the start of the fight was a waste.

Tbf Lelianna is not military and they were focused on the templars and mages closing the breach. You can't spy on a faction you don't even know exists. Technically that's more on Cullen because it'd be his department to have scouts watching for approaching enemy forces. Leliana is a spymaster as in like espionage and political shit, not a scout or ranger looking out the perimeter for threats. I would just say as well that initially the inquisiton was kind of a cobbled together organization in the wake of the destruction of the conclave. They were working with little support and most likely very green recruits. It's not until skyhold where there seems to be a degree of actual professionalism and competency.

At this point in the story the whole Inquisition is still fledgling and finding its footing. It's not until after they reach Skyhold and the Inquisitor takes over that they become a true force within Thedas. Leliana isn't exactly equipped to do military reconnaissance at this point. He natural skill is more in being an agent herself. Deception, assassinations and blackmail is what she excels. Leading an intelligence agency takes a completely different skillset that she has to develop still.

I'm honestly not sure you understand what spies do. They aren't scouts.

My gosh, it's just like in fictional shows where they blame the spy master for not knowing everything. I'm sure there must be a similar scene in Game of Thrones somewhere. 😆

This feels kinda nitpicky tbh. The person who is truly to blame for Haven getting destroyed and the surprise attack is Solas, you know the guy who literally gave Corypheus a key to open the veil and was right there in Haven the whole time. No one in the Inquisition knew who the Elder One was or even that he was some existential threat beyond a powerful magister, even the little information you get about him before the attack is barely enough to work with in starting to find out. Whichever force you don’t pick you have no idea they are working with the person responsible for the Conclave being destroyed, especially if you choose the mages because you have no interactions with the Templars outside of that first trip to Val Royeaux. There is no warning about them like you get when you go to meet Fiona in Redcliffe. Hell, there’s literally no reason to expect a massive army to attack Haven either, as the Inquistion barely fills up that tiny town and isn’t even much of a threat at that point and what info you might have is focused on Orlais and what Corypheus intends to do, none of which points to the Inquisition or Haven being a target. Leliana’s people being killed could be due to any number of reasons and recalling them is the smart move until you know more. Scouts/spies going dark doesn’t automatically mean an incoming army or that an attack is imminent. Also, every single person in that army is blighted thanks to red lyrium, and they could very easily have traveled through the Deep Roads which we know cover much of Ferelden. His army would have had the easiest possible march toward Haven of any army ever. They don’t need supplies like a traditional army and they can move their entire force underground unimpeded. I think it would be ridiculous to expect anyone beyond Solas to have any idea that Corypheus even still existed beyond whoever it is that warns you just before the attack. I wouldn’t even blame Cullen for the attack and I would gladly blame him if I could.

She blames herself from missing it but even then, it wasn't really her job. She's a spy master, she's not responsible for scouting. If there's anyone to blame it would be Cullen not her.

Then why does Leliana call them her scouts and is the one giving them orders to pull back?

This is the fault of the writers. The fact that NO ONE heard the army coming until they were right there strains disbelief to the point of stupidity. That said, she and Cullen take responsibility for what happened and this was when the Inquisition was basically three heretics in a trenchcoat. It's an outlier.

I think you underestimate how often armies would surprise or ambush settlements historically. It’s not *that* unbelievable.

I do think this is a big issue, and even the conversation with her afterward doesn’t really explain why nobody anywhere has noticed a full on army accompanied by a giant darkspawn and a literal dragon. Pulling your scouts back doesn’t give us enough info to fully believably understand that. Obviously the flip side is that she’s hamstrung by narrative necessity—Cory needs to attack Haven to move the plot forward, and so you do have to pick between unsatisfying options of “Leliana didn’t notice” or “she noticed and it didn’t matter,” although I do think the latter would have been better. I also think this ties into a larger piece of narrative dissatisfaction, which is that we never really get a sense to understand what exactly the status quo in Thedas feels like. Obviously fantasy video games like this one need some kind of stakes, but pace all the “dark fantasy” fans out there, Thedas isn’t Silent Hill. Bad and scary shit does happen, and also, so does farming and governing and bards and trade and education and whatever else. Like is it possible that Orlais, Ferelden, Orzammar, the Chantry, Nevarra, and Tevinter (at least) don’t have ANY info or chance to see a big ass army marching around the Ferelden borderlands? I guess, but even during the Blight there seemed more structure than that, and even in Kirkwall there were people who knew what was going on. We don’t have a good point of reference for how fucked up things are, or if they are.

Corypheus’ army did most of their operating in the south of Thedas, which is far less occupied than the other parts. Or in the Western Approach, which again was on the fringes of civilization. Even Haven is out in the middle of nowhere. I think people underestimate how armies could move in medieval warfare. They could absolutely move through areas in a way that didn’t alert locals. Or if they did, they killed the locals and or enemy scouts. Cities and towns got ambushed by armies all the time. Outmaneuvering your enemy with your army was like 75% of winning the battle back then.

The world is full of magic and corypheus would have access to magic others dont...i always figured that's how he tricked lelliana

Both Cullen *and* Leliana dropped the ball here. Cullen is in charge of the foot soldiers and the scouts, and they should've seen Corypheus and his army coming. Leliana's spies should've been hearing whispers of what was happening. But bioware wanted to add tension, make a big reveal, and make the move to Skyhold. So they decided to make both Cullen and Leliana absolutely fail their jobs. Bioware handled it in a bad way, and there's no denying that.

Before Leliana brought it up, I had not even considered that it was Leliana's spies that were doing the scouting, rather than, you know actual trained military people under Cullen's command. Then she blamed herself, and I was like *omfg yes you should blame yourself but not as much as anyone who let you take over that responsibility*. Oh wait, this is when Cullen has been going cold turkey, which might have *something* to do with this whole situation unfolding as it did. This is not your grand-Divine's Inquisition, this is a clown circus.

Realistically reconnaissance should be Cullen's job not Leliana's. The CIA doesn't do reconnaissance for the pentagon. Leliana is a trained intelligence/stealth/special operative not a reconnaissance officer. Leliana's job should be knowing which courtiers and nobles are sympathetic to Cory, not knowing troop movements. But it is obviously different in game. You can talk to her about it afterwards. That conversation is a necessary part of softening her. She talks about pulling her troops back to protect their lives, and how that made it easier for Cory to sneak up on them. You can tell her that she was right to protect them (soften) or that she should have prioritized their objective (hardened).

I mean, why would her spies be anywhere near Haven. They need to know what’s happening everywhere else except there. I imagine anyone who did notice the army coming their way just either got caught or didn’t make it in time.

Scouting the area is not the job of a spymaster.

Once at Skyhold, you can have a conversation with Leliana where she blames herself for Corypheus's attack. And she explains some of her scouts went missing, presumably murdered by the massive army coming after you. And out of concern for the rest of her scouts, she pulled them back. She is angry at herself, saying she should've left them where they word so Haven could've had warning, and they could've *maybe* bought the Inquisition time to escape. Whether your dialogue choices are cruel or sympathetic, and whether you choose the dialogue option that hardens her or not. She swears she will not let what happened at Haven happen again. Leliana is an incredibly good Spymaster. Varric even admits she's better at it than him.

I think it’s more due to poor writing than anything else.

I do not think she should have blamed herself in front of your inquisitor. What I see in her is empathy and a golden heart. What you see is weakness and dumbness. As if humans can change everything at their will. Such conceit.

It’s more a terrible design choice for the game because at this point Corypheus has his fingers in a number of different groups spread across Thedas and somehow nobody knows? Best just to chock it up the breach/civil war/ other wars that are going on right now as to why Leliana hadn’t heard about any of this.

I feel like it's a frequent thing with sneak/surprise attacks in fiction, particularly more grounded fantasy fiction, where an enemy force appears out of the blue and not a single one of the typically-seen-as-competent scouts/rangers/wanderer types on team goodguy gives advance warning. Then it's left to the fanbase to handwave how a force big enough to hopelessly outnumber you, most of whom are on foot, managed to get inside a kilometre of you without being spotted. In Haven's case you can say various things about it being remote, Leliana focusing more on the schisms in Orlais/Chantry and pulling her spies out of the non-recruited faction for their own safety and Corypheus perhaps enabling the venatori/red templars to move supernaturally quickly but it does all feel a little bit like the aforementioned handwaving for the sake of enabling a bit of drama in the story.

I’m more pissed at Leliana for not knowing that Solas (or at least an agent of Fen’Harel) was infiltrating the inquisition for years with their own spies. And she let Solas evade capture for another ten years to get us to DAV??? AND she couldn’t track down Hawke but Varric could!?

The Solas one isn't actually a crazy failing in my opinion. The dude can communicate to his followers through dreams, was only actually in the Inquisition for a very chaotic year and she had no reason to suspect he had spies anywhere after he left, then the Inquisitions power and influence was at minimum greatly diminished post-Trespasser, so right after everyone learned he's a major threat, and even if she's Divine at that point so has those resources she also has a ton of other stuff to do in that role. The Hawke thing is more of an issue but it is trying to find and pin down one very capable person evading capture in a huge area. Varric is by default Hawkes ally and it seems like he just knew or at least kinda knew where Hawke was, not needing to actively locate them.

I'm even more baffled by the fact that the Left Hand of the Divine needs some Mother Giselle from the Hinterlands to tell her which of the clerics can be persuaded to support the Inquisition.

tbh i can forgive haven since corypheus came out of nowhere and we were very underfunded at the time, but in trespasser solas says how there’s spies tripping over spies at the height of the inquisition’s power! how did solas see the qunari coming but leliana didn’t?

There is dialogue for this at Skyhold. She made the decision to recall her scouts thus leading to innocent lives being lost. It weighs heavily on her and has a particular impact on her morally. You can choose for her to be more cunning and ruthless for the sake of the inquisition or you can choose to encourage her to be more caring about the people of the inquisition. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, you’re absolutely right, haven was almost solely leliana’s fault. Had she just kept her scouts in position they would have far more time to evacuate everyone and eliminate the risk of losing key figures for the inquisition. It was a massive miscalculation but she had good intentions for it and the game favors the decision to encourage Leliana to be far more caring. It kind of goes back to what Varric says when you ask about him not being the inquisition’s spymaster, he cares far too much, and ironically when Leliana cares too much, everything they built almost disappears.

"Let's make her Divine" get out of here

TLDR: Leliana knew the army was there. It had been there since the beginning of the game. What Leliana missed was who was in charge of that army. What is the event that kicks off this entire story? It's the meeting between *who*, again? Justinia and *who?* Not just the templars and the mages. *The leadership of* the templars and the mages. If you're sending your best, most valuable politicians to a meeting with the people who have spent the better part of the last few years trying to kill you, you send a sizable number of soldiers with them to keep them alive and ensure that they leave that meeting in one piece. It's an implicit threat that promises peace: We stay civil and come to terms, or I will fucking end you. Both the Templars and the Mages would have had a *significant* number of soldiers camped out within an easy march of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, just in case. There's the army. Leliana didn't miss them. Leliana knew *exactly* where it was from the beginning of the game. Who gets rammed up your backside when Corephyus attacks Haven? The side you *didn't* pick in the civil war. If you picked Templars, you get attacked by Mages. You pick Mages, you get attacked by Templars. It's not a third, secret army. It's the same fucking combatants you've been picking out of the Hinterlands since the game started, minus the side you picked. How can I be so sure that there *is,* in fact, still an army within a couple days march of Haven? Redcliffe. It's the only place the Mages have to go. We know *exactly* where the mages are because *we go there in the game*. So there's that army, locked down: the Mages are in Redcliffe, which I assume is within a week's travel of Haven because I cannot imagine the baby Inquisition being willing to lose two leaders and its main Fade expert longer than a week. And while we don't get the same luxury of visiting the presumed mass of Templars near the mass of mages, we are close enough to their base of operations to 1. travel there 2. kill the Envy Demon and handle the fallout from the Templar order imploding 3. travel *back* to Haven with the Templars and 4. get the breach fix set up in the time it takes for Corephyus, Calpernia and (I assume) Alexius to swipe the mages from Redcliffe. For the game to work, the timelines for both the Mages and the Templars have to be somewhat close--like, within a couple days of each other. So we have to assume the Templars are positioned similar to the Mages in Redcliffe, and we can eliminate any positions that put them too far from Redcliffe as that, and not Haven, is their target for the early game. Conclusion: We have two large armies in close proximity to each other, both within a week's ride of us (and probably MUCH closer.) Lelaina misses Corephyus's take-over of that force because it's very quiet, and essentially the replacement of one or two people with Corephyus's. IE--Lucius taking out the dissident Templars. That's the process we stumbled in on if we take the Templar's side. She doesn't notice Corephyus because as far as she knows, he's a weird darkspawn the Wardens kept as a pet, and he's dead now because Hawke and Varric happened to be there the first time he caused trouble. She's not looking for a dead guy. So now Corephyus has an army who is the sworn enemy of your army, and he hasn't had to do much to get it. Troop movements will now 100% be a reflection of your movements, because you have allied with the force's main enemy. Corephyus will be able to move his people without getting your dander up, if he times his movements to yours and makes it look like he's moving his people in response to your movements. In short (too late): All Corephyus had to hide, really, was himself and his dragon. The force he rammed through Haven's gate had been sitting in place since the explosion at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, right where they'd been since the game started. Leliana knew they were there the whole time; they just weren't *doing* anything. When we secured our allies, Corephyus secured his. When we moved our people to the Temple to seal the Breach, Corephyus would move his just a little bit closer to Haven, until he's within range of an attack. When he sees us making resource and manpower commitments to the Breach that we can't unwind easily, that's when he starts taking out Leliana's people. If he timed it right, when her people started going dark, we would have been midway through the prep for the seal. Leliana's not going to jeopardize the primary mission because her people are suddenly going AWOL an hour before we save the world. Day of our shot at the Breach, when everybody who is anybody in the Inquisition is at the Temple (including Leliana!) Corephyus starts sneaking his people through the woods and getting them positioned for the attack. Seal is successful, we throw a party because by then we *really* need a victory, and that's when he attacked. It was a chess game that we lost because we did not know we were playing.

I actually think she knew that Solas wasn't a normal apostate. Not that he was an elven god, but still. She knew something was weird with Blackwall even if she couldn't figure out what exactly, so I assume she felt the same about Solas.

Calling her terrible with only one example. Dang...

Lmaoooo I’ve been saying this. I love Leliana but how is it that we keep getting bamboozled? Everybody and their mama has a spy in the Inquisition. You’re also allowing people with shifty histories around me, the MVP. Like what exactly are you doing, ma’am? How can I trust the intelligence you give me when you don’t even know what’s happening on our front porch? She just comes across as incompetent due to the actual events even though the narrative insists that she’s a super scary badass spymaster

After watching the first few episodes of season 2 of House of the Dragon, she's like the CIA and KGB combined compared to the clowns in Westeros.

Yeah it's sort of insane, bad writing for sure.

I’d chalk this up to unrealistic writing rather than an actual flaw in a character.

It's bad writing. If you recall, geography is not the stongest suit of any Dragon Age game. Like that rush to Redcliffe and back to Denerim in DA:O or how far Haven is from Redcliffe in DA:I. Not to mention Haven to Val Royeaux or taking only a party of four in the field. All else being equal, I would agree that Leliana is shown both as incompetent at times as well as too competent at others. Again, it comes down to using flow charts for the plot. Thing is, we can't even get mad about *that* either since the game is made with new players in mind, too, or even primarily. I mean, how likely is it that Leliana barely recalls the secret passage at Redcliffe (a major plot point 10 years earlier), but perfectly remembers pinning undergarments to a Chantry board (a side option in Leliana's DLC, years before the 5^th Blight)? Do we really believe she doesn't know where the Warden is (a potential LI or spouse to her)? She doesn't acknowledge Blackwall as fake, but there's a note about it in the Skyhold Rookery just near her work table? Blackwall (Thom Rainier) even outright tells you he was in Ferelden during the 5^th Blight and Leliana is a veteran of the same. That note, written by the real Blackwall and dated 9:30, saying the Orlesian Wardens can't enter Ferelden due to closed borders, is practically redundant. By comparison, Leliana missing an army travelling the wilderness through snow can actually be explained away (medieval comms being slow, that army moving fast because of reasons etc.). The lack of mines, traps and other passive defences falls on Cullen and Cassandra, not Leliana. The lack of enough trebuchets is again on Cullen. The party and placement of flammable pots all throughout Haven is another bit of stupidity that can be squarelly placed on Cassandra (maybe) or Threnn and Adan, maybe even Josephine. Of course, without those pots, you'd not have the timed mini-quests to save the idiotic NPCs. With more trebuchets, you might not have to leave Haven. Let's not talk about Roderick telling you about the passage out of Haven, as if Leliana had not been there during the Blight or as if she had not already scouted that area when and since the Chantry had taken over the place (she's been the Left Hand since 9:34 or 9:35; the Chantry has taken over Haven for years, at least enough time to organize pilgrimages there). The list of inconsistencies goes on. The games are filled with them. All you can do is headcanon and RP.

I'm going to put this out there and may be unpopular. While the story of the dragon age is one of my favourite aspects, there are many instances of poor writing resulting in contrived situations for the sake that the plot has to plot. I blame the writing, not Leliana.

I wouldn’t use this example but… like how did she do the background checks? Blackwall is not a warden, Solas comes from nothing (Dorian even calls him out in party banter that who is he if not dalish or city elf), Varric hides shitload of things, and just why is that we know nothing of Morrigan before Wicked eyes, wicked hearts? They were together in DAO and she later says she knew she was in court.

**Leliana really is a terrible head of intelligence, isn't she?** Don't forget her performance at Skyhold! * qunari assassins attack the inquisitor, the only person capable of closing warp gates, and she doesn't know/care about it. How the hell qunari spies climb that mountain without her network knowing? * Josephine is attacked in her office by an assassin, and Jo is saved by accident, when Inky doesn't knock on the door ​ It is not surprising that the chantry is in ruins, having a spymaster like Leliana, and an investigator like Cassandra. (I mean... Cassandra tells the only witness "tell me why I should not kill you now?" Errr... because you don't have any semblence of evidence? I could just make up some lie to feed you false info you know)

The only time I really thought that was when Leliana managed to overlook Blackwall. You can find a [codex entry](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_A_Fine_Time_to_Close_a_Border) of the real Blackwall near where she's stationed in Skyhold that depicts a very different version of the Blackwall we have in Inquisition. I think a lot of it has to do with her having a blind spot towards Grey Wardens. She has the evidence right in front of her, but doesn't look any further into it. Leliana has a tendency to idealize people she cares about, ignoring all their flaws. Like with Justinia and Marjolaine before her betrayal. And that definitely happened after her time with the HoF (assuming they didn't kill her lol).

You got it completely wrong. The letter from the real Blackwall positioned in her office is exactly the clue that she KNEW ALL ALONG who fake!Blackwall was or rather who he wasn't. Leli herself even states in a conversation with Inky that 'he is not someone he expected him to be' (paraphrasing), which confirms she knows but decides to withhold this information. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out tbh. And no, she does not care about him at all, so your 'she has a blind spot for him' take is not right. There are no interactions, no line of dialogue pointing towards the conclusion that Leliana idolized Blackwall, so I am super confusing why you would even say that.

I just wonder why Leliana chose to withhold the information or her suspicions in the first place. If she knew that Blackwall was an imposter all along, why not do something about it? Even if she's keeping an eye on him, that's still a serious security risk. So I interpreted it that Leliana had a blind spot towards Grey Wardens in general (after her time with the Hero of Ferelden who she does idealize in most world states), and wants to believe Blackwall is a good person too by extension. When she mentions he's not what she expected, she also says that he seems to be a good person. She has the evidence right in front of her, but doesn't look any further into it. You could be right but that's how I saw it—part of Leliana's characterization/character flaw of idealizing certain people to the point of overlooking things that can be harmful (i.e. Justinia and Marjolaine). It's not that she cares about Blackwall *specifically*, but her feelings of love or friendship for the Hero of Ferelden had a [halo effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect) for **all** Grey Wardens. A form of cognitive bias, showing how she isn't infallible. Which I think makes her more interesting as a character.

I thought the point is that each of the advisors are kinda just ok at their jobs. Leliana is, as you said. Josephine is a minor noble who is a bit too hopeful for the world of politics and doesn't have any personal sway. Cullen is an ex templar, and that's kinda it. They all don't have big credentials, and they all could be replaced by people of higher status and capabilities. But they want to do it and are given the chance to, mirroring out character in a way

not terrible, just had an error of judgement....but it was quite problematic tho. but if i'm blaming anyone i blame the writer lol

In her defense, at that point she's grieving, going through a religious identity crisis AND she is suffering from a burnout. From a psychological point of view it's actually a miracle she can function as well as she does in the game. Most people IRL who suffer from just a burnout can't do anything for months. Her entire world has been shattered fairly recently and she's still handling an entire spy network. Keeping her mental state in mind, it makes sense that she'd make a mistake here or there. I'd say her biggest mistake was not looking into Solas's background story after they'd arrived at Skyhold, but I suppose she trusted Solas enough by that point because he had proven so reliable. But this? Honestly, hindsight is 20/20. As a spymaster you really don't want all your spies dying off in a short timeframe, because training people to become spies takes time and resources. So her defensive move to pull the agents back when Corypheus was swatting them down one by one is a valid strategy. I daresay the Inquisition would have been more screwed if they arrived at Skyhold and had to retrain their spy network from the ground up. That being said, she's definitely not the best spymaster out there. She's decent at her work and has years of experience, but I wouldn't consider her the best bard out there. Even Origins made this abundantly clear.

She's almost as bad as Liara was at being Shadow broker

Yeah, missing a big fuck off sized dragon that resembles a fucking archdemon. One, she may have personally fought during the 5th blight is rather a big oversight. That said, she acted with what she felt best. Haven was always gonna to be attacked regardless. If she had her agents out in the field, they all die and the Inquisition is blinded until they can get new ones. She pulls them back and the Inquisition shuts it's eyes whilst hoping for the best. Though, if you have a big fuck off sized dragon, just nuke Haven.

Solas: my spies at the Inquisition tripped over the Qunari spies ... Leliana: .... 🥹👉👈