Two mage apprentices in love - one conquers the Harrowing, the other becomes a Tranquil. Can their relationship survive?

This is quite a small mod: basically a couple of conversations within the Mages Origin section, an encounter on the road out of Lothering, and a finale late in the 'Broken Circle' quest.

On the second floor of the tower, in the Senior Mages' Library, is a young woman named Sophia. Sophia and the player were in love, but the prejudice against Tranquils amongst mages is strong.

Really this is just an exploration of an idea. Of course, this is fantasy; such dilemmas have no parallel in the real world, do they?

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Version History:

v1.3 (2010/09/22) - Act 3: when your minds are in the Fade, who protects your bodies? Plus a bit of tidying up of the Lothering stuff.
v1.2 (2010/08/25) - Act 2: an unexpected encounter on the road out of Lothering. Plus a bit more tidying up of the origins stuff.
v1.1 (2010/08/02) - Small extension to relationship in mage origins phase, plus tiny addition to the final mage origin
cutscene. Tidied up plots, conversations and staging.
v1.0 (2010/07/19) - Initial Release

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Installation:

If you have a previous version installed, delete any BPSophia (or Sophia_BP) folder from your overrides, if present, and uninstall the dazip.

This version of the mod is released as a .dazip. It can be installed using the built-in daupdater, see http://www.dragonagenexus.com/articles/article.php?id=19. Alternatively you can use a utility such as DAModder, http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=286, or (in my opinion the best option) DAO-Modmanager, http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=277. The advantage of a utility is that it can be used to uninstall the mod again, which daupdater can't do.

Start a game as a mage - male or female, human or elven. After your Harrowing, go up to the second floor and talk to Sophia.

For Act 2, just head north out of Lothering. If your Sophia quest is active (ie if you did Act 1), then the second part should trigger.

Act 3 triggers when you return from the Fade during the Broken Circle quest sequence.

If you use gastank's 'Dragon Age Rules Fixpack', please also download BPSophia_v1_3_fix_override.zip and unzip it into your packages\core\override folder.

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Known Problems & Incompatibilities:

Sophia was previously known as 'bhm200cr_f_e_tranquil', so any mod which changes this NPC will obviously clash. I've also replaced the Lothering trigger, lotr100_pc_crossed_area; I don't know of any other mods which use this, but it is an obvious modding point, so there might be.

I've overwritten the APR_base 2DA for the three sorts of corpse. This clashes with gastank's wonderful 'Dragon Age Rules Fixpack', http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1601. Installing the 'fix_override' zip means this is only a minor clash (basically his 'shattering blow' fix won't work on corpses). At present the Fixpack is still in rapidly evolving beta, but I'll try to find a way around the incompatibility once things are stable.

I know the robo-voice is horrible, but I think it's better than nothing.

The story is now complete, but I want to do something about the robovoice, and there is bound to be a bit of cleaning up to do on the Act 3 cutscenes. So, hopefully, one more update and the mod is done.

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Utility Scripts:

I've included a couple of my testing scripts, in case anyone would like to see the effects of the early choices on later conversations. These are:

bp_sophia_setrejected - this sets the flag to say that you rejected Sophia in the early part of the story;
bp_sophia_setbuild - sets the flag to say that you continued your relationship with Sophia;
bp_sophia_clearplot - unsets all the Sophia plotflags. This has its own path when you return from the Fade.

To see the effects, run DA:O with the console enabled (see http://www.dragonagenexus.com/articles/article.php?id=16). Save the game at an appropriate point (eg just before you exit the Fade). Then, once you have seen the story for the choices you did make, you can go back to the save, go into console mode (it's a ` on a UK keyboard - I think on most keyboards it's the key underneath Esc, but I could be wrong) and type 'runscript bp_sophia_setrejected', for example (no quotes, of course), to see what would be different if you had rejected Sophia (or 'runscript bp_sophia_setbuild' if you did reject her and want to see what would have happened if the relationship had continued).

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Thanks To:

MichaelaM for a discussion which triggered the original idea, plus the suggestion that I follow through in the Broken Circle.

Several tutorial writers for bits and pieces of ideas that have helped me in my ongoing struggle with the Toolset, including:

John Vanderbeck's series of introductory tutorials on Beyond Fereldon,
http://dragonagemodding.wordpress.com/author/jwvanderbeck/
The many (anonymous) tutorials on the DA Builder Wiki,
http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Tutorials
DragonAge22's series of video tutorials. I generally prefer text-based tutorials, but these helped me a lot,
http://www.dragongaming.co.uk/videos/

Bioware for an incredible game, plus a modding toolset which, whilst frustratingly flawed, is still an incredibly powerful storytelling tool.