RaMOs

One of the more pleasant distractions during my adventures, with one notable exception, was the discovery of a myriad of a type of item that I dubbed a Random Magical Object, or RaMO, scattered around many of the areas I inquisited. I am compelled by my admittedly pedantic nature to complete collections of this sort, even if there is little or no discernable reward. And I get distracted easily, leading to side-trips and detours that help with this sort of thing. The rules of what qualifies as a RaMO are entirely dictated by me, just so you know, because I coined the phrase. Generally, an item has to fulfill two of the three criteria laid out in the name to qualify: be randomly located, magical in some way, and/or an object. Also, they have to have some kind of tangible use, historical significance, or be otherwise interesting in some way. I don’t pick up and collect everything I find, that would be crazy and clutter Skyhold to an impossible degree with an endless assortment of spoons or rocks or bags or whatever.

The first RaMO I encountered was the most widespread of the lot, and the most unpleasant. In the Hinterlands, I discovered a magic-infused skull with a crystal set in its right eye mounted on top of a short post. Called ocularum, we discovered their horrible method of creation in Redcliffe Village. The Venatori had killed many Tranquil mages in order to use their skulls to create the items. When one looked through an ocularum at the landscape, the locations of another RaMo were revealed. These were mysterious objects called shards. To this day, I have no idea what they are shards of or where they come from, but there are hints that they are of ancient elven origin. Corypheus wanted them because they, somehow, granted access to the temple found in the Forbidden Oasis, and he wanted what was in it, so he had the Venatori create the ocularum to find them. Why they went through all this effort only to not follow through on the plan and leave the shards lying around for me to find instead, I could not tell you. The rest of the RaMOs I found required far less murder than those, fortunately. In many lands I found a series of ancient Tevinter objects called Astrariums that are used to view constellations. It didn’t matter if it was day or night, I would look through the telescope-like object, a constellation would appear and I would connect the stars in the proper order to create the designated pattern. When that was done three times in a given area, they would unlock a magically sealed door behind which typically lay some kind of treasure cache. Another set of items from ancient Tevinter found strewn around southern Thedas were the broken pieces of several mosaics. They were large, square tiles, not tiny stones, fortunately, and are an example of a non-magical RaMO. Unless you want to claim something like “knowledge is magic,” but in a world where I can hurl fire at will, magic is magic and knowledge, while amazing and incredibly valuable, is just knowledge. Oddly enough, I encountered several types of RaMO at the grand ball in Halamshiral when I saved Empress Celene. I found Caprice Coins all over the Winter Palace that made everyone like me when I tossed them into a fountain, which is apparently a tradition. The Game is weird. There were also small Halla statues throughout the palace, though these served an actual purpose, as they acted as magical keys to open doors. The last RaMO I found during that party stretches the term to its limit, as I actually gathered secrets from my fellow ball-goers. They count because some came in the form of incriminating documents, which are objects, and even the ones that I only heard still had to be conveyed to Leliana, which is close enough in my book. Which this thing you’re holding literally is, meaning they also count because, remember, I make the rules. Late in my inquisiting, I discovered two new types of RaMO in the Deep Roads while I was investigating the source of the recent earthquakes. One of these came in the form of gears that had been separated from the doors they were meant to open. The other was a set of personalized dwarven mugs that had been lost underground. Neither of these were magical, but they were definitely sets of intriguing and randomly located objects. There were many other RaMOs I encountered in my time, as well, including bottles of alcohol, pieces of chairs for me to pass judgment from and various other bits of furniture and decorations for Skyhold, songs, and even plant seeds for the garden. Though I could, and would prefer to, go into detail about all of these, it has been strongly recommended that I cut myself off and move on. Just know that this is being done under protest and my next book is going to be a definitive compendium of each and every RaMO I found as the Inquisitor.