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lairofdragonagelore · 8 months ago

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I've finished DAV, and I'm quite worried about the fact that this game simply destroyed every aspect of the Lore in a way that makes no sense and it's beyond "fix" or intention to blend it with the one that exists already.

The enviroments have nothing to say, since they were made by reusing a lot of nonense assets: Nevarra has plenty of Avvar statues and DAI Tevinter assets, Anderfels is filled with Ferelden statues to the point you see torches with the Calenhad symbol on them and nobody cares. DAV Tevinter is made out of DAI dwarven assets with some new ones based on a strange "china-town" design, with squared snake-dragons and mao neck dresses. Even the colours of its pallete were changed: jade green and red, instead of the black, grey and dark yellow [Patterns and Styles: Tevinter].

Elvhenan assets were remade uselessly, because you could have used the ones in DAI and it would have been perfect. The Elvhenan were a timeless civilization, you show that by showing no change or evolution in their buildings and statues... yet... The disappontment has been enourmous. Especially in the aspect of the Lore. Instead of having answers, we had oversimplification of complex details that simply break apart all what we know. So, I'm still in shock, not knowing what to do with this game, realising it was the culmination of a long list of things that were breaking the lore slowly [the comics after Until We Sleep, the Netflix series, the podcasts]. For the moment, I leave this link of this Reddit user who expresses exactly my sentiment of sadness with all the Lore and the character richness that were the main identity of Bioware games in general and in DA franchise in particular. I'm not even sure if all the analysis I've been doing have any sense to be finished now. DA lore has been reseted to become a generic fantasy game without complexity at all. We mourn what it could have been a good story and an epic lore.

Since this user's posts seem to have been deleted in previous opportunities I copy-paste their words here because they express exactly what I feel about this game. Dragon Age has died, unfortunately.

I'm a big time Dragon Age lover and have enjoyed every game in the series. Personally, I think Inquisition is the best in the series. And I was excited for Veilguard right up until I actually began playing it. Now, I want to clear things up at the start as to what I look for and believe makes a good Dragon Age game. To start, I DON'T CARE ABOUT COMBAT. I. Do. Not. Care.

You can make it Origins tactical. DA2 fast tactical. DAI hybrid. God of War action, I don't care. Dragon Age has always had combat that was...fine. A nice distraction and breakup in between the bits I actually care about: narrative ROLEPLAYING, story, characters, and exploration. I don't give a crap how great the combat is if the narrative roleplaying and writing are poor, I'm not playing BioWare titles for amazing gameplay. I am here for the story, the characters, and the roleplaying. Truth is, for a time I considered DATV's combat to be the best in the series.

And this is why I feel the game is a terrible Dragon Age, because it lacks or fails to respect those elements concerned with narrative roleplaying, story, characters, and exploration. Now, in many reviews and online videos you'll hear some reference often to the drop in writing quality. And a lot of time people will incorrectly say that the writing with the characters is to "modern" or "Marvel quippy" or not "dark" enough. I think these people are wrong, they recognize there is a drop in writing quality from previous games but aren't able to articulate why that is.

Dragon Age has never adopted any sort of faux medieval speech and vocabulary (though we'll get into this more later). This is a series that used "epic fail" as a thing someone uttered in the very first game. It's always had anachronistic dialogue and banter. So why is it such a drop then? Why is it considered poor? Simple. This is a game that does not believe in the world it has setup for over a decade. It does not believe in or engage properly with its own world and lore. I mean, look no further than the title "The Veilguard" a phrase that is never uttered by anyone in our group, and further proof it was a last minute marketing change. Compare to Inquisition where the title is apparent from the start in the game and has actual meaning.

You see, characters in DATV do not feel or react to events the way they should based on the lore. Why is no one constantly asking what the hell the Inquisitor is doing? The Inquisitor is kind of a BIG DEAL when it comes to Solas and Elven Gods, my Inquisitor drank from the WELL OF SORROWS! So why are we sitting around thinking at the start, "hmm lemme think who I can contact who might know more." The Herald of Andraste! They know more Rook, the guy that is technically your boss. The Inquisitor! Who else have you been working for this entire time? Who do you think told Varric to recruit you?!

But even removing the Inquisitor, the Elven Gods being real and also near synonymous with the old Tevinter Gods is kind of a BIG DEAL. It was only a theory fans crafted long ago that slowly revealed itself to be true. And it completely upends known religious dogma on all sides. Yet, why aren't people we meet going through a massive existential crisis? For instance, the Veil Jumpers we initially meet were presumably told off-screen about Fen'Harel, and are seemingly cool with this massive knowledge alone. But then we talk about those two other Gods being released and they're like, "well, shit those two aren't good." As if they have any clue if the fables about those Gods are real when we previously just upended everything they thought about the Dreadwolf! Why are you acting like this is another Tuesday?! Your entire religion is wrong. In that same conversation, Strife notes "Solas might be a bastard, but compared to the Evunaris? Let's just say they weren't know for being kind rulers."

My brother in Anduril, what are you talking about! Elven religion teaches that Elgar'nan was so beloved by the Earth that it "the land brought forth great birds and beasts of sky and forest, and all manner of wonderful green things." And that he fought the jealous Sun that tried to burn the land and all beasts away. Custom says that he and Mythal, "created the world as we know it" after defeating the Sun. He is literally described as one of the "good" Gods. WHY ARE YOU ASSUMING HE IS EVIL! It's like finding out Satan is real, but not as evil as have come to believe and then being told Jesus Christ is back and a devout Christian going, "well shit, that can't be good." WHAT?!

The same goes for Andraste and the Chant of Light, it took me 30 hours of playing before ONE character mentioned Andraste and the implications with the Chant and it was never brought up again. Our entire party is seemingly made up of unphased atheists. Now compare to something like Inquisition which explored this aspect HARD and was amazing for it. You'd get into great debates with religious figures and party members about the implications of Corypheus actually being a Tevinter Magister of old. And you'd talk about what it means towards the religious dogma preached and how much is true. And these intense political and religious discussions are present in every previous game, and not confined to a single conversation with one party member where it is seemingly resolved.

These conversations do not happen in DATV because there is no depth to the writing or engagement with the world. The Elven Gods are evil and need to be stopped. That's it. We don't need to think about the implications this has on Dalish customs and religion. Fuck it, all the Dalish are going to still wear their Vallaslin slave brand tattoos. Let's forget about Trespasser implying Solas was removing them from followers coming to join him. Let's even forget they were likely all told at this point that they are slave brands, nope still going to wear them yet speak blasphemy with every sentence against our Gods. No one cares about Andraste or The Maker or the Chant. Big deal if these Elven Gods contradict the overwhelming majority religion in Thedas. Not a single party member has religious or cultural objections to killing the Elven Gods; not a problem. Not one single elf wants to join Solas in tearing down The Veil and getting immortality again?

Again, let's forget about Trespasser setting up Solas gathering MANY Elven followers from Dalish clans who would be super inclined to join him after experiencing CENTURIES of discrimination and slavery by humans. The better question is what Elves wouldn't join Solas at the start? And what Elves wouldn't look at the other two Gods and go, "meh, maybe we should give them a try. They can't be worse than humans, right?" In DA2 you had elves joining The Qun to escape the discrimination of humans, but not ONE ELF wants to join Solas or Elgar'nan? Those Ancient Elves in the Temple of Mythal? I guess they all died, right?

This extends to EVERY single element of Dragon Age that previously had depth to it, it now has been completely removed. Those murdering Antivan Crows? Oh, they're just good Italian Mob Family that protect their city. Tevinter? Yes, it has poor people, but we're trying to do better. Oh, slavery? No, no we don't show that here. The Qun? The what now? No, they are all Antaam now, and so that means they are all generic evil warlords. No, they don't even attempt to follow their own hardcore view of The Qun like when Templars split from the Chantry, they're just warlords now that like plunder. Dwarves and their rigid Caste society? We don't do that here. Elves and racism across Thedas? Elves used to experience racism? News to me, what's a Shemlen? Never heard of that term, we like all humans. Pirates? That is insensitive, we are Lords of Fortune and we are sure to return any cultural artifacts found to their rightful owners; it belongs in a museum after all. The fucking Fade and spirits? Wait, you mean its different than generic fantasy spirit world? I'm sorry, that's too complicated here.

This either intentional disregard of the lore or plain ignorance also extends to environmental design. The asset reuse from Inquisition is particularly hilarious and must speak to the developers not having time after the switch from MP. Why are the same statues found in Val Royeaux in DAI also in Tevinter and Antiva? Why are those stupid Fen'Harel Wolf statues EVERYWHERE? Even in the catacombs of other Elven Gods! There are no statues of Elgar'nan or Ghilan'nain. Nothing for June or Anduril. Dirthamen. Falon'Din. Nothing. No, the only Gods that seem to get statues are coincidentally the ones who already had assets created for DAI or past titles that could be reused. Hmmm.

This continues into character designs too, why do the Veiljumpers and Shadow Dragons all dress richly? They are supposed to be poor as fuck. There's a codex entry about Veiljumpers finding a lost cache of old ancient elven armor and weapons and so boom they all get to dress like High Elven Lords and not the dirty, poor, wandering Dalish clans they are supposed to come from. Why do this? There isn't even an attempt to explaining why the Shadow Dragons, an organization supposed to be secretive, has branded clothing in bright rich colors and fabrics for all members. Naturally, it must be incredibly difficult for Tevinter authorities to not identify them.

This lack of depth and verisimilitude, naturally, affects all the characters. Because in this game you cannot roleplay and you cannot ask questions. In Dragon Age Inquisition, once you started the game, you could immediately interrogate Varric about what happened to every DA2 character despite the Inquisitor never meeting them, you know because it respects its players. You could speak to shop keepers, blacksmiths, your horse master. You could interrogate every single person to learn more about them and the world. The same goes for your player character in DA2 and Origins. You show in Denermin and find yourself knee deep in a quest to help Wade the Blacksmith craft the perfect armor. Here you can't actually speak to a single shopkeeper to ask questions and get some lore bits. You can't ask party members questions about their background, religious beliefs, upbringing, their factions, etc. You can't ask any returning characters any questions either about what they've been doing. Enter a brand new area? Great, you're not asking anyone questions about this never before seen place.

How does a lost Dwarven thaig survive every single blight? How are their immortal lichs in Neverra? How long has that been a thing? Why haven't they told anyone about the Elven gods or any other knowledge they've accumulated in an immortal lifespan? If immortality is so "easy" why can't Solas just do that to restore the Elves? Why are the Venatori, Tevinter Supremacists, following Elven Gods? Wouldn't that be a major identity crisis? Why would Antaam, who still preach the Qun, follow an Elven God that speaks blasphemy with ever breadth? Sshhhh, no questions. You get what is directly told to you and that's it, no follow-up questions.

Party members do not conflict with each other or interrogate each other's beliefs which is why their banter feels inconsequential and meaningless. Lucanis is a assassin, he kills people for money. The same organization that marked Zevran for death for failing a contract. The same one that took him as a kid and trained him to murder, often brutally, for coin. And yet no one really seems to care. He's just a nice Italian assassin from a nice assassin organization. Who cares. Let's instead talk about cooking, at length. Harding, a devout follower of Andraste, has no qualms with Elven Gods wreaking havoc on known religion. We get one conversation you can tell her to believe what she wants, and that's the end of that debate. Bellara also gets about two whole conversations about the conflict concerning her Gods wreaking havoc, both easily resolved. We don't need to think about any larger implications or doubt her loyalty when the Elven pantheon are seeking to restore her people that have been discriminated against since forever. Emmerich, a necromancer of Neverra, apparently has no religious belief. A codex entry even states that those of the Mourn Watch don't know where the soul goes after death. They don't like to think about it. Buddy, Mortalitasi belief is literally that our souls return to the Void alongside The Maker, but to keep balance a exchange must be wrought with The Fade to allow a spirit to house the now empty vessel. How do you not know the religion and customs of your own faction and land? This man has a whole quest line about funerary rights, yet not ONCE mentions religion and what he believes happens after death?! Sshhhh, no questions. No thinking.

Hey, remember The Fade? Remember how mages go to dream there every night. Remember how The Black City is always visible there? No? Well, we don't either. You won't see The Black City in The Fade. You might see it in The Crossroads in a closed off section, even though it is NOT The Fade. Oh, we're going to have you physically enter The Fade in multiple quest lines and no one will think it's a big deal. No, you still can't see The Black City. Now, The Fade is reduced to nothing more than your generic fantasy spirit world. It has none of the previous rules and lore that bound it before. Demons can bind to non-mages and we won't attempt to explain it. Solas fucks with The Veil and not a single mage notices a change in their dreams when they sleep at night. No biggie.

Lastly, let's return at last to the actual minutiae of writing. I stated at the start the writing isn't bad because of Marvel quippiness, which the series has always had. I was partly lying. Yes, the series has always had anachronistic dialogue. It has had meme language in its own previous titles. But, it was just that, a small joke here and there. For the most part the series actually tried to use it's own sort of "older" speech patterns. I think a perfect example has to do with Taash, she eventually finds her own identity and declares she is proudly "non-binary." Literally stating, "so, I'm non-binary." I have no issue with this sort of inclusivity in Dragon Age, it's what the series is known for. Yet, why does that sound wrong? Simple, it's far too anachronistic. It doesn't belong in Dragon Age. In Inquisition, Dorian let's us know he's gay. But he doesn't say, "I'm gay!" or "I'm a homosexual" those terms would not exist in his world. Instead he says, "I prefer the company of men."

And it's these little subtle changes in writing that makes it feel all the more different. We went from "I once ventured in to The Fade to serve the Old Gods of Tevinter in person. I found there only chaos and corruption. Dead whispers. Now I shall return under no name but my own, to champion withered Tevinter and correct this blighted world gone wrong. Pray that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the Gods. And it was empty."

To: "Well, shit. That can't be good."

So, what do we have when all is said and done? Well, we have a decent generic fantasy action game. An intentional attempt by the developers to remove every edge from the world of Dragon Age in place of a very simple, easy to understand world with not much depth beyond what you see. You don't need to think, just play and have fun. This is beyond turning a MP game into a SP game, which so blatantly obvious in this game. DA2 was developed in 16 months, but is carried strong by its writing. You see, nothing prevented them from just acknowledging their own world they created. It costs very little to write around what already exists. Even if you can't make no assets or redesign the world. Writing is cheap and having characters voice these elements is not as costly as a redesign. No, they chose to remove the edge in every element because this was design intentionally for the masses with easy to understand world and zero depth.

But I wanted to play Dragon Age. I wanted to get into intense religious debates with party members as known lore is completely upended. I wanted to debate Elvish clans deciding to join Solas or the other Gods due to their treatment by human society. I wanted to debate the ethics of necromancy with the Mortalitasi of Neverra's Crypts. I wanted to engage in intense debating with Solas on the ethics of his goal. I wanted to see Tevinter react to a real push for anti-slavery and actually see the slavery in the slave capital of the world. I wanted to butt heads with the Antivan Crows and call them out for the murderers they are. I wanted to see the Black Divine and debate the Chant of Light with them. I wanted to speak to the Archon of Tevinter and see how he felt about the Venatori's past efforts in Inquisition. Hey, what happened to Meredith Reborn in Kirkwall and her idol and Red Templar worshipers? Forget about it.

We got none of this. I got a game that is pretty much disrespectful of its own world. I waited 10 years for this? Why even bother if this is the result? They may as well have just killed every previous character we ever knew, including Solas, offscreen and started anew with this game. Because as a Dragon Age game and sequel, it's terrible and no returning character is how they should be.

And when we get to the ending, that's pretty much what they did. Everything you did in all the past games? Well, that was pointless. Everyone is probably dead. King Alistair. Gaspard. Celene. King Bhelen. The Arl of Redcliffe. The Divine. The Circle of Magi. The Templars. The Seekers. Everything, everyone, and every organization that existed in the South is likely dead and destroyed. And now Dragon Age can become what they wanted, a generic fantasy IP.

But I just wanted to play Dragon Age.

#ask #not ask but .... I dont know where to put this #DAV #DAV disappointment

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lairofdragonagelore · 8 months ago

Note

I don’t have a question—just wanted to say that somehow I never found you before! Just read through the entire “playing DA like an archaeologist” series in anticipation of Veilguard, and wanted to thank you for doing such incredible work. Thought I knew everything about this lore and I was happily very wrong!

Also we better find out wtf is up with that Strange Idol, because I think it’s the key to everything :)

Hello! :D

Thank you very much for spending time, reading all this. I will try to continue this blog with Veilguard [I still have several drafts on DAI and concepts to explore that I'm hoping Veilguard will help me to shape and rephrase in better terms], even though some things I've seen in spoilers made me wonder how much of the consistency in art and buildings were remade from scratch in DAV, making it hard to connect with the rest of the games [as it's impossible nowadays to use any enviromental telling from DAO]. And indeed! Wtf with that Stange Idol? And the Red Lyrium Idol too? So many questions, I hope we will be given the true lore and not rewritten things in the last moment for "shock value" or simplified concepts to make it easy to digest for new players. Soon we will know!

#ask #I'm grateful for your time

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lairofdragonagelore · 8 months ago

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Patterns and Styles: Avvar/Alamarri

Avvar/Alamarri design is quite rustic, stone-based, and sometimes it's hard to differentiate one from another considering their cultural history: the Avvar are a branch of the Alamarri that moved towards the Mountains. Alamarri as well as Avvar and Chasind have a long story of inter-racial mix with the dwarves of Orzammar, which is clear in their art: heavily based on stone and with some imagery of dwarves.

However, it is important to remember that Avvar in particular may have had also relationships with the Elvhenan, as Tyrdda's lover was an elven woman. Their tradition with mages and their treatment of the spirits also resembles their influence from the elvhenan culture. This strange mix is then reflected in the art.

This series of posts are not exhaustive since I’ve developed a very detailed list of tags tracking certain features of a given design. These posts merely try to gather in one place the symbols and elements I used most of the time when identifying buildings in my analysis of DAI.

[This post is part of the series “Patterns and Styles ”] [Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

Patterns

When it comes to patterns, the only one that I can assume is alamarri it's an intricated rhomboid pattern [celtic-like] that we can find in some columns of arches that are spread all over Ferelden. It's not clear for me that this pattern was later imported by the Avvar. However, it's interesting to highlight the resemblance to the elvhenan walls in temples such as in Mythal's Temple [see Patterns and Styles: Elvhenan] which also seems to be related to the pattern found in the pants that Dalish wear, and ironically, Qunari too.

Statues and decorations

1 - Keepers of Fear and their variations

Part of the reason I consider these statues as Keepers of Fear is that they represent similar imagery; they share the style and some characteristics, and are related to the codex The Keepers of Fear. They display the despair and fear that the Alamarri felt when the Blight came from the north. They tend to be elongated humanoids, usually with pointy teeth, without a nose, and screaming/cowering body language.

They also appear close to one another, in groups, in Kenric’s study room in the DLC Jaws of Hakkon [ Frostback Basin [DLC]: Miscellaneous ] implying similar origin for study. They also decorate the paths that head to the Avvar Hold in the DLC, and inside the hold itself.

In the Fade, we find the codex The Keepers of Fear on one of these statues, where we learn that the Alamarri/Avvar used them to scream inside them during the time of the Blight, thinking the darkspawn were spirits. As we know thanks to the DLC Jaws of Hakkon, the Avvar [and by extension most likely the Alamarri and the Chasind] would feed the spirits to keep them close [spirits] or away [demons] from their communities.

1A - Screaming Keeper [Alamarri/Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Crestwood, in a place a bit isolated closed to a destroyed Andraste statue,

In Fallow Mire: Granite Point [not original from this place],

In Frostback Basin [DLC]: Stone-Bear Hold Avvars : Everywhere, specially along the paths.

In Hinterlands: Minor places, in several places and caves.

In Hinterlands: Redcliffe – Future, along the corridors of the fortress as the Fade and the Waking World get merged.

In the Fade Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, in many places, since this part of the Fade we visit is close to the lair of a Nightmare Demon who feeds upon the Fear and Despair. At some point one of these statues triggers the codex The Keepers of Fear.

The Fade of Flemeth: Part 1, Part 2, as decoration of an avvar/alamarri corridor.

Brief description: This statue is elongated. It has long arms, and its hands are grabbing the face, distorted in fear as it screams. It has no nose. There are some strange appendages falling down and making an extension of its chin [thick beard?]. We can see the ribs very easily, suggesting illness or hunger. It also has elongated legs, one of them crossing over the hip that conveys an impression of more terror and fear.

These Keepers appear quite regularly in all places over Ferelden and the Frostback Mountains. They are inserted in the landscape or along paths, and we can see they are a good reflection of what the codex The Keepers of Fear says: They are part of the Avvar/Alamarri "superstition”: They thought the Darkspawns were bad spirits that fed on fear, so they crafted these statues to feed them far away from their communities, to keep them satisfied and away from them. However, when this did not work [since the darkspawn are not spirits], the Alamarri/Avvar used these statues to scream inside them and pour all their fear into them, “burn” it in order to get rid of it, and go to battle against the darkspawn no matter their gender or age.

In the Frostback Basin [DLC], we can find these statues flanking the path to the Avvar Hold or inside it. In the Fade it makes sense for them to appear where the Lair of the demon Nightmare lives: he has been feeding upon these fears for centuries.

1B - Screaming heads [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Frostback Basin [DLC]: Miscellaneous: everywhere

In Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open , Wolf Hollow, Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path [as a part of the stanza], and Minor places

In Hinterlands: Redcliffe - Future, as the Waking World and the Fade merge one another.

In Therinfal Redoubt [in the part of the Fade]

In the Fade Part 1, Part 3, in many places. This part of the Fade we visit is close to the lair of a Nightmare Demon who feeds on Fear and Despair, so it makes sense we see so many of these Keepers.

The Fade of Flemeth: Part 1, as decoration of an avvar/alamarri corridor.

Brief description: This statue is an isolated head with two faces [front and back display different shapes], I can see humanoid faces in them: one as a screaming melted human without nose [which can also be considered the face of a Terror demon or a ghoul], and the other one as a screaming boar of pointy teeth, which inside its mouth there is another screaming face. Everything is too deformed to be precise.

The game efficiently combines these heads in ways that seem to create new different horror statues by clipping them.

We find these faces all over Ferelden and the Frostback Mountains, specially in Avvar/Alamarri territory.

1C - Sitting screaming humanoid [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Frostback Basin [DLC]: Stone-Bear Hold Avvars : specially in small cliffs into the sea, where the Avvar can be seen fishing. It can also be found aside a path inside the Avvar Hold.

In the Hinterlands: The Unknown Ruin [Mihris] clipped with a skull.

In the The Fade of Flemeth: Part 2, clipped with a skull.

In Hissing Wastes: scattered objects and ruins, inside a crevice where a Fereldan vendor has been placed, but we only find their mabari and several objects of Ferelden iconography.

Brief description: This statue is elongated and shares many characteristics present in 1A and 1B. It shows long arms, hands covering the eyes, screaming out of fear as it cowers. It's sitting inside a basket. It has no nose and its teeth are pointy. We can see the ribs very easily, suggesting hunger or illness.

During the DLC Frostback Basin [DLC]: Stone-Bear Hold Avvars, Dorian will point out this is an Avvar statue, which makes sense considering we are in an avvar hold.

1D - Sitting screaming humanoid with hands inside the mouth [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Razikale’s Reach, as part of the stratification of the Temple when it was taken by the Avvar-Hakkonite and rejected the Tevinters that had been installed around the time of the first Blight.

Inside Skyhold if you pick the Avvar decoration.

Brief description: This statue is elongated and shares many characteristics present in 1A, 1C, 1E and 2. It displays long arms, but no hands. It’s not clear if the hands are inside the mouth or means they were eaten [I favour this second option since these statues tend to be scrawny, conveying the idea of famine, another very common fear among the Avvar, specially during the Blight times]. It has no nose and its teeth are pointy. Its legs are protruding from over the shoulders, giving the sense that this figure is sitting and cowering. We can see a bit of its ribs in between the arms. The position is similar to 1C and 2.

1E - Sitting screaming deepstalker humanoid [Likely Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Hinterlands: The Unknown Ruin [Mihris] , at the sides of another Avvar/Alamarri statue [1C] clipped with a skull.

In the Fade Part 2 and Part 3, It is a zone where we find a Tevinter sacrificial altar.

In the Fade of Flemeth: Part 1, this statue is beside a sacrificial altar again.

In The Fade of Flemeth: Part 2, it appears at the end, where we find Flemeth. They are positioned as to form a frame for the statue that was stabbed in the back and bleeds.

Brief description: These statues share some similarities with 1A, 1C and 1D: they show long arms, with hands grabbing the sides of the face as it screams. It has no nose nor eyes. We can see the ribs very easily, giving a sense of skeleton [extreme famine?]. What makes this statue particular is the strange mouth, closer in shape to a deepstalker’s mouth. It’s not clear if the figure is sitting, since it has no legs. Its base has the outline of a figure that reinforces the idea of screaming in terror and rising its arms. This figure has a shape that also resembles a terror demon.

In some places in the Fade, the head of this statue is burning, making clear suggestion to the codex of the Keepers of Fear, in particular to the part where they burn their screams of fear to find courage to fight [and die] against the darkspwan.

Rarely appears alone [it’s usually presented in pairs], and when it does, bones and bodies are shown below it, relating it to sacrifices and death. Most likely the concept of sacrifice comes from the part of the codex where once the fears are burnt, the alamarri went to fight a hopeless battle.

What’s interesting of this statue is that it’s a central piece of decoration in the Lair of the Nightmare Demon, in the Fade [check Part 4]. There, we see four of these statues, vomiting blood. Around this spilled blood, some bits of red lyrium can be found. This construction may be entirely done for shock value, since it’s a reuse of several assets assembled in a way that inspire terror and fear just in the moment where the Inquisitor faces the Nightmare demon.

2 - Eroded dragon skull and variations [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Swamp Kulsdotten, in the Frostback basin

In Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open , Wolf Hollow , and Redcliffe – Future.

In the Therinfal Redoubt [As part of the decoration of the fortress’ main room]

In the The Fade of Flemeth: Part 1 as well as the common Raw Fade.

In Hinterlands: The Unknown Ruin [Mihris], as the base of the main, central figure, which is 1C with a clipped skull.

Brief description: I personally call it "Eroded dragon skull", because I have no other way to call it to tag it in the blog. I see a kind of dragon skull with horns that go backwards and then forward, but it also looks like a statue of a humanoid, with elongated legs that protrude from the sides of the skull. Like in the previous statues, it has no nose and seems to have pointy teeth at the end of the “snout”. All the details are blurred for what it looks like erosion.

On its back, this statue has a G symbol which doesn’t present the same level of erosion than the front. I only found a remotely similar symbol in the elven artefact. It’s a strange symbol, dwarven-like even for an “elven” artefact [looks like a squarish swirl]. In fact, that symbol can be found in dwarven objects [specially tapestry and rugs]. Once more, it’s only what I’ve observed, I don’t think we have any evidence to even speculate on this. It looks quite on purpose, though. A whole eroded statue with a clear G on its back is a choice in terms of design.

If we compare this statue with similar ones found in Avvar/Alamarri-related places the common characteristics show up:

It has long limbs, open mouth, and pointy teeth, without a nose. Through these similarities it seems reasonable to relate it with the Avvar culture.

3 - Tyrdda statue [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Hinterlands: Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path

and in Hinterlands: inside the Grand Forest Villa.

Tyrdda Bright-Axe was a legendary Alamarri chieftain who is considered the founder of the Avvar.

Brief description: The statue is simple, with a woman holding a sword [which is strange considering the Avvar always knew she was a mage and was holding a staff]. It has limbs a bit elongated and her ribs can be seen.

4 - Lady of the Sky [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In the Skyhold [Stone-Bear Hold Avvars ] when you pick Avvar Decoration

Brief description: This satue is an owl, representation of the Lady of the Skies. I find interesting in her design the ring around her head: small little spikes that may be related or may have inspired artistically other symbols in the game: the thorns that we have seen many times in vines, which have elven influence [after all, the Avvar have a strong elven influence in their culture if we consider the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path as more or less reliable with respect to her lover of leaf-like ears], or could be an inspiration of a sun. The symbolism of the Lady of the sky with the sun is also shown in her painted representation, as I talked about in the post Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun.

5 - Korth [Avvar]

Where it can be found:

Stone-Bear Hold Avvars , close to the entrance of the hold,

or in Skyhold when you pick Avvar decoration.

Brief description: This statue shares the similar position of 1C, 1D, and 2, but instead of being a squat position due to fear, in Korth’s case it’s because the weight of the stone. Korth is the Mountain-Father, so this representation shows he is supporting it. His face, so filled with beard, and his body, short and thick, seems to recall dwarven nature, which could exists since the dwarf influence in the Avvar is present in their tales [Trydda had a child with a dwarven prince]. Curiously, it has horns [that can be part of a potential helm he is wearing?]. He is snarling as he endures the weight of the mountain/Stone.

6 - Dwarf with long limbs [Likely Alamarri/Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Crestwood: surface , Crestwood: Flooded Caves , at the entrance of the drowned village,

In the Stone-Bear Hold Avvars, in the main throne room

In Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open , Wolf Hollow, and Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path showing the path to some of the statues that trigger Tyrdda’s story.

In an unknown place called the Forgotten Tower, where the presence of this statue seems to reinforce the idea that this place was inhabited by an avvar, as it shows the codex triggered in this place: Old Codex: Mouldy Journal.

Brief description: This statue shares the characteristic of having elongated arms crossed over the chest in similar fashion as some Fereldan drawings seem to have [see Nation Art: Ferelden]. It displays a short man with hair, long beard, and a long, curvy moustache. The back and the front are the same image.

This statue is one of the most reused all over Ferelden, specially in regions where the Avvar-Alamarri presence was strong in the past. I think they represent the dwarves, which makes sense if we read the tale of Tyrdda: Avvar’s chieftains descend from humans and dwarves.

A weak pattern may suggest them as “pointers” or “guides”. Sometimes they are placed in pairs creating a path towards a place of importance [see Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path]. Sometimes, as pointers of graves or special places.

7- Monolith with swirls [Likely Alamarri]

Where it can be found:

In Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open , Wolf Hollow, Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path

In the Forgotten Tower , where the presence of this statue seems to reinforce the idea that this place was inhabited by an avvar, as it shows the codex triggered in this place: Old Codex: Mouldy Journal.

Brief description: I’m not sure if it’s a mabari or a horse. The Avvar are not fond of the mabari, since they are a tamed animal; however, they seem to use an “avvar horse” that looks like a zebra, and it is a bit wild. On the other hand, I also suspect that this statue may be Chasind, simply because in DAO we saw similar monoliths with line patterns on them in the Kocari Wilds [Check Ostagar post or The Blackmarsh and the High Dragon for details]. Unfortunately, these monoliths have no codex associated with them and there is little to speculate about.

8 - Monolith with ropes [Likely Alamarri]

Where it can be found:

In Hinterlands: and Crestwood, but in general all over Ferelden.

In the Frostback Basin and inside the Stone-Bear Hold.

There is no much to say about this element. It appears everywhere, more as a decoration or a support for other statues.

9 - Table of Wolves [Confusing. Likely Ferelden]

Where it can be found:

In Crestwood: surface and Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open

Brief description: a metallic dark table decorated with spiky wolves. The wolves have a strong resemblance to the ones that were painted by Solas in his mural “Inquisition Formation” [Read “The actions of the Inquisitor”]. It seems related to the mabaris/wolves presented in 10A, which tend to appear in Ferelden-based enviroments. It seems to be Ferelden but it could also be inherited through the Alamarri culture. What always caught my attention was the material: unlike the rest of the Alamarri/Avvar statues, it’s not made of stone but dark metal, a Tevinter-origin characteristic.

10 - Mabaris

Mabaris are depicted all over Ferelden without much surprise; Ferelden has a culture deeply entangled with them. However, sometimes the hound silhouette seems to be confused with that one of the wolf and it’s hard to distinguish one from another. We know due to the legends [unreliable sources but decent enough for this level of understanding] that the Alamarri had their dogs. The potential Alamarri origin of the The Ash Warriors [who fight with their mabaris beside them] seem to support those [unreliable] legends. However, the Avvar are not fond of tamed animals, and prefer wild ones that can be befriended, hence why a wolf is more suitable for them. Considering this detail, it’s natural to understand the following statues as somewhat in between the lines of the Culture of the Alamarri, the Avvar, and the Ferelden [maybe even Chasind too?]. The blurred difference between mabari and wolf translates into the difficulty of deciding to which culture these statues belong to.

10A - Pointy Mabaris [Likely Ferelden]

Where it can be found:

In some places in Crestwood: surface

In Therinfal Redoubt as part of the decoration of the Fortress’ main room.

In Frostback Mountains: Haven, as part of the decoration.

Brief description: The look too similar to the wolves drawn by Solas in his mural “Inquisition Formation” [Read “The actions of the Inquisitor”].

10B - Mabaris with lines [Likely Alamarri/Avvar]

Where it can be found:

In Fallow Mire: Granite Point , it is not original from this place, but since it’s kept beside other Avvar statues it may imply same origin too.

In Hinterlands: Wolf Hollow, again found with other Avvar statues.

In Therinfal Redoubt as decoration

Brief description: It is almost a monolith, similar to the ones we find in the Kocari Wilds in DAO [ read Ostagar post or The Blackmarsh and the High Dragon for details] and to 7 but with less curvy lines and more angular ones.

In the Fade Part 3, one of the heads of 1B has this statue sprouting from its mouth, which offers the codex A Plea from the Warrior to the Spirits. It seems to be written by an avvar/alamarri or a descendant of them, for example a Ferelden person who remembers the “old ways”. It speaks about how the wolves had been allies to the humans once, but the softening of the human, the replacement of the hunt as a survival means for an agricultural lifestyle, changed this relationship, replacing the wolf and the hunt, by a hound and a sedentary life. There is a reinforcement of the concept of the wolf as a symbol of freedom and rebellion, as a creature who doesn’t simply obey, like a hound does. Then, the Darkspawn came, putting at risk this comfortable sedentary life, showing how little power hounds have. “Kill the hound in my heart […] in its place, give me the wolf”. The wolf is representation of power, bravery, and freedom, as the mabari represents obedience and loyalty.

10C - Beheaded female Mabari [Likely Ferelden]

Where it can be found:

In Hinterlands: Minor places, specially in a cave where we see several Avvar statues and some Tevinter ones.

In the Forgotten Tower, where the presence of Avvar statues combined with the codex of this place: Old Codex: Mouldy Journal seem to reinforce the idea that this tower was inhabited by an Avvar who was rescued by an Elvhenan.

Brief description: It depicts a female mabari which has been feeding puppies [flaccid mammals]. On her back there is a spiky pattern that could be related to the spiky style of the wolves in 9 or 10A. What it’s disturbing is her head, which is barely kept in place because it’s attached with strips that have written runes on them. Inside the space between her head and body, there is usually fire [Waking World] or meat [Fade].

10D - Spiked Mabari [Likely Ferelden]

Where it can be found:

Mostly in Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open

And in the Seeker fortress during Cassandra’s personal quest.

Brief description: These are mabari-totem figures in styles that can be Ferelden most likely, but seem to be inspired in Alamarri/Avvar ones since they have some similarities in style to 10B and 10C. There are no codex associated with them.

11 - Additional elements:

There is an Avvar table used in Stone-Bear Hold Avvars , that was also used to erect the hero of Ferelden’s monument in Hinterlands: Redcliffe - Present , so we can suspect avvar-alamarri-ferelden origin of it.

In Skyhold, when we activate the Avvar decoration, we find a unique statue that is not seen anywhere else: it looks like a tree branch-hand holding a bowl. It gives me the impression of a sylvanian hand.

#patterns and styles #pattern design #avvar design #avvar #chasind #alamarri design #alamarri #mabari statues #mabari #lady of the skies #korth

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lairofdragonagelore · 9 months ago

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Hello there! Thank you so much for this resource, it's incredible! I've been poring over it whenever I have a chance for days now. I want to read everything I can on the Fade and lyrium and Titans and stuff, and it seems Dagna has a lot of insights. Do you know where I could find all of her dialogue, or are you planning on looking into it someday? Thank you again <3

Hello!

Thank you very much, I'm trying to cover a lot of topics in this blog with as much use of occam's razor as I can.

If you read my axioms section, which explains the criteria with which I try to analise this lore, you will see that I don't consider Dagna a reliable source of knowledge. She is a dwarf [naturally disconnected from the Fade, lore-wise] and she studied under the Chantry, which has a considerable misunderstanding of magic and spirits. Her perception of reality is highly biased by Chantry superstitions, unfortunately. It's true she has some banter where she speaks about a "mind-hive" she is connected to for some seconds, a sense of being part of an entity as tall as a mountain, and that's all the insight I personally give to her. I'm afraid I don't know where you can find a compilation of Dagna's dialogues. I can assure you I'm not planing to do it for the reason above. However, I can point you out some things that may be of your interest:

If you think Dagna has insignt I would highly recommend you to check Valta, who becomes a character I would consider a lot more reliable at the end of the DLC. For more information, check all posts tagged as The Descent in the Inquisition section:

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – Valta and environment

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – The Sacrificial Gates of Segrummar

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – The Deep Roads

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – The Uncharted Abyss, Forgotten Caverns

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent –The Uncharted Abbys, Bastion of the Pure

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – Ancient Dwarven Memory Wall

Storm Coast [DLC]: The Descent – The Wellspring

Aditional posts related to the Fade can be found in:

The Raw Fade, Here Lies the Abyss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Fade - Flemeth: Part 1, Part 2, The Final Piece

The Shattered Library is also related to the Fade , more like entangled to it:

The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; The Archivist

The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; Entrance and Courtyard

The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; Broken Tower and Scholar’s Retreat

The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; Sundered Hall and Lower Archives

The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; Inverted Ward

And about Lyrium and Titans, I've worked in a big compilation of "things that have songs" in all this lore, and despite being speculative, I've separated what it's raw information from the games or books from what it's personal speculation, so any reader can still work on their own conclusions with clean material. I think you will enjoy this post in particular since it has a section about dwarves and their disconnection to the Fade and Magic that has a lot of fitting points with what Valta will say later in the DLC: Songs and elements that sing and whisper in DA Lore.

And for an extra post about Titans, the mural “The Death of a Titan” is also recommended.

Have a good day!

#ask #ASK #titan #lyrium #dwarves

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lairofdragonagelore · 9 months ago

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Dragon Age: Vows and Vengeance

Episodes: 1, 2, 3, and 4

Episodet: 5, 6, 7, and 8

Personal Conclusions

What lore do we extract from them? What seems to be questionable or a recall of a concept from a previous game? I basically collect the interesting ideas and make small speculations or comments on them, testing their reliability or lore consistency as far as I can.

*These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore [read the end of the post]

Episode 5: The Scales of Justice

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This story happens in Par Vollen, Qunari lands.

Thaash seems to have a natural sense to perceive where to go, to the point maps are useless for her. She is called “Qunari”, but when she interacts with other Qunari, we can perceive a certain disdain by the Qun but not a total rejection from her part. We still need to learn where she stands at with the Qun. She speaks Qunlat [or I think that was the chant about]

There is a treasure presented: Ruins of Bloodfire Stones, sacred rubies that are forged from the scales of a dragon. This treasure is in the “Temple of the Lost Dragon”, sacred ground for the Qunari.

Drayden and Nadia are jailed in a building described as a pyramid. This may be direct callback to the codex The Pyramids of Par Vollen, but weirdly incorporated, because in the podcast they are mere prisons when the codex explains they were closer to [Ghilan'nain] laboratories [more details in the Par Vollen section of Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun].

This podcast presents very questionable Qunari lore: I won’t rant here, but certainly the whole episode shows how little the writers know about the lore of the Qunari, their moral values, their language, their strict rules that they follow, the importance of the “role” in Qunari society. I highly recommend not to use this content for anything Qunari-lore related. In general, this applies to all the series of podcasts, as we are seeing progressively.

Painful, very painful use of Kadan word. That a Qunari child steps in front of a Kithshok to stop his role… it’s painful. What is this? And the implications that Qunari could not care much about kids or their enemies, when we know their culture is all about not wasting resources, not even your enemy when it’s capable of becoming a useful weapon for you, it’s also painful. These writers had no idea what the Qunari were, and Epler, who had to check this, either.

The writers also don’t know about dragon lore in DA. Female dragons are always winged dragons. It doesn’t matter their spine colour.

The conclusion of how the ring works and how it will guide Elio throughout the Fade to Nadia…. All this is confusing and just so out of the blue in my opinion.

Drayden has seasicknes.

Language is immersion breaker: “yep”, “ain’t”, “piss off”, “you guys”, “jinx”, “nah”. They are a step from start using “lol”. It was a bit annoying that many characters have been using "yep" in the previous podcasts, but in here the language fell on the modern English. I can see this as a careless work.

Our future companion Taash is introduced in this episode.

Personal opinion: As we check the writers we discover the following: Will Melton has a long career very focused in Marvel-like scripts, which shows it in the podcasts, unfortunately. On the other hand, we have Jeremy Novick whose portfolio seems a lot more serious but a shorter career. The director Matt Sav is a person who has more experience with musicals, music, and musicians than… well, narrative story in fantasy genre. I think we can assume these podcasts are a bad product, as it was Absolution: made by people who had no experience in the genre, no real knowledge of the franchise, and they were more doing a freelance job badly paid by Bioware/EA [most likely] since the big majority of their seniors were laid-off in the last decade or simply quit. The only exception is Trick Weekes [who "inherited" Gaider's role in the company], but certainly they can't do everything. They are the only person with the “Bioware” style of narrative that was always so valued in the games of this genre. What i felt with this podcast is that the company is just relaying on Dragon Age's fame to convince new players that this is a good product [the podcast], or use the despair of old fans that have been waiting a decade for a new story in this world. As usual, companies keep killing good art concepts. Update: And as it was expected, Epler explained later that the authors of these podcasts knew no Lore [details at the end of this post].

Episode 6:

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This story starts at the shores of Rivain and continues in Antiva. Antiva has been suffering earthquakes that have swallowed entire villages, sudden teleportations (????? Because the Veil is thin I guess? These podcasts are a pain for lore fans), the forests have been wasted, terrible storms hit the land, and the crops have become rotten overnight. Clearly, the story informs us that a series of unnatural disasters have been hitting this country. This context has increased the social frictions and can bring political consequences.

Marethari Talas apparently wrote books or shared her stories about dreamers before becoming an abomination [??]

Elio, as heir of a family of Dreamers, is suspected to be able to find Nadia just… because they have a connection[??] product of the Eye that exploded in episode 1 [???]. What's lore?

Drayden's old name is Aristide of House Amato, which seems to be a noble antivan family. She has a mabari called Ophelia too [there are no other dog breeds in Thedas, it seems, lol].

Our future companion Lucanis Dellamorte is introduced in this episode. Which considering the situation he is in the game [no spoilers] it would mean these podcasts are happening, at least, a year before The Veilguard. This podcast also puts Lucanis in a situation that shows him as not so specialized on killing Venatori Mages, since Drayden’s father hired him to be his bodyguard [more reasons to see that these podcasts are not truly well inserted in the lore]. Apparently, Lucanis and Drayden’s father were good friends since the latter found in Lucanis a kind of confident, speaking a lot about his child Drayden. Maybe honouring that friendship is the reason why Lucanis does not mind to work for free for Drayden in this case.

Episode 7:

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This Episode starts in Antiva, and continues in Nevarra. We see Nevarra being hit by earthquakes and storms, similar to Antiva, but no sudden teleportations happen here because the “writing” doesn’t need it, apparently.

Introducing a finger inside a deep stabbing wound is a way to asses if inner organs were hurt. You can also feel “spams and arterial ejections” [?????]

“If there's one thing a Crow can do besides killing, it's treating a wound” Potentially possible? I don’t know if I trust this sentence after listening that said Crow fingered an open wound.

Blood of the Black Rot: concoction that gets into the humors, slowly turning the blood into something like oil. Ironically, black rot has some references in DAO when it comes to the Taint. There are no lore-about a poison described as such. Strangely enough, the poison produces black veins in the white of the eye, finding some resemblance to the Blight. Is this intentional or the writers just kept messing the little lore? I don’t think it even matters. We are informed that there is no antidote.

A weird “blood magic” called “Exsanguination” is shown: blood magic can be used to take out all the blood of a person [so the body has no blood for some time], “cleanse” it of any poison in the air with the help of spirits [????], and put it back into the body. It’s not what the blood magic in DA lore is about: Blood fuels magic when you don’t have mana or lyrium to drink, it is used to summoning demons, and to control the mind of mortals. Can we assume this is a new use? I don’t know.

The antivans claim that there is no strong necromancer in Antiva, when we know Yavanna has been around in its Swamps for a long time. It’s true that in the comic The Silent Grove she is killed, but nobody but Alistair, Varric, and Isabela know about it. That Lucanis proposes to cross half country with a poisoned person instead of approaching the Witch of the Wild closer to them is unexpected. Yavanna has brought back people from death to ask them questions, so her necromancy arts are unquestionable. Crossing an entire country is a lot more reasonable.

Being “touched by the fade” makes you “resistant to death” [as Emmrich literally says, which is an absurd]. Let’s assume that was a mistake that nobody corrected and we learn that they are resistant to poison: It is also absurd in DA lore; since mages [who have a deeper connection to the Fade, if anything] are not poison-resistant. These writers keep showing that they have no idea what they are writing about [which is reasonable, they never worked in fantasy genre or DA context] but also it shows how little care Bioware had to keep these podcasts consistent.

Manfred doesn’t speak, he just makes sounds. He apparently has a connection with Emmrich that allows him to fully understand him. Apparently he doesn’t like nicknames.

Emmrich can send a message “beyond the Veil” to Drayden, who is unconscious. So, in terms of lore, are they telling us that Drayden is walking in the Fade? So they are more like a mage than anything else. And What’s this weird “message beyond the Veil”? It sounds a bit of a nonsense. Imagine that if the Mages could communicate through the Fade in this fashion, Thedas would already have a system of interconnected Circles with Mages bringing and sending messages all across the continent.

Emmrich informs us that the ritual that Solas and Elio performed in the Silent Plains caused some general consequences on the Veil in all the region.

The authors managed to create an original character [Nadia] and write her absolutely out of character in this episode, showing her with a blind, naive trust to the owners of the Castle [Pascal and Spinella] who are maniacally giggling, sighing menacingly, and emphasizing in a cheap acting words like “crypts”, “divine”, and behaving in the most suspicious ever. Plain, obvious, cartoon evil characters. And yet, Nadia doesn’t even question them, when she has been mistrusting every person who was not Elio in all the previous episodes. She even drinks what they offer to her without batting her eyes, despite all the obvious, villainous tone that the whole conversation has. This brings the question: how much do we can trust the companion’s characterization in these podcasts when they can’t keep consistent their own original character?

Demons are characterized as in the Christian mythology instead of the DA lore. Demons sing chants to… do magic. [??????]

Emmrich speaks with the demon as if this were a demonic possession in a Christian context, even starting to perform an exorcism [??????!!!]. It has no way to be perceived like this by mages in DA lore context: once a person has been possessed, they barely can be fixed. The few cases where possessions were removed implied a journey to the Fade with a lot of lyrium involved if the saviours were not mages, to kill the demon in the Fade [Connor’s case in DAO, Pharamond in Asunder, and Feynriel in DA2]. Even when the possession has been done by a Spirit who is willingly to leave the body, it also requires a good amount of Lyrium [Frostback Basin [DLC]: Stone-Bear Hold Avvars - Part 1]. By the way Emmrich speaks, looks like he is about to perform an exorcism in the most christian way possible, giving us yet another evidence that these podcasts have no DA lore. “You are not welcome to that body. You shall leave now” is not what a mage in DA world will say, since they know that any posessed person is already very compromised. By the sounds we listen, we can guess the excorcism is starteing, so the demon, instead of abandoning the body, kills it [???].

Somehow the ring that was in Bellara’s flicker, that was taken by the Corrupted/possessed Templar, now is in the hands of Possessed Elio. Again, the object seems to work like a GPS, when nothing in DA lore behaves like that, only phylacteries.

By the end of the episode, Emmrich can see that Elio is not a human, but he never saw it in Pascal. Consistency issues. Once more, we have more proofs that we can’t trust these podcasts: not for their lore, nor for their companion’s skills/characterizations. They barely are consistent within the same episode. The writing is so bad that the character ability appears out of the blue and disappears right afterwards to fulfill the story’s requirement.

Our future companion Emmrich is introduced in this episode.

Episode 8:

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This Episode starts in Nevarra and continues in Miranthous, making a stroll through the Fade.

The main demon of this story is called Maeror [????], not a human emotion in common, as always happened in every single demon shown in DA games and books . Instead they picked a Latin word for "grief, lamentation". Apparently this demon has been following Nadia since a child and he “marked” her , explainign why she was always a cold-heart and aggressive person [Christian demon-like, not DA lore demon]. It’s also implied that she may have accepted him as a child, since she “embraced darkness” [so, in this mess, the authors are telling us that Nadia was always marked but not possessed, but later she was XD how anyone can take these things seriously?]. This demon tortured her all her childhood, somehow “lost her”, and then he re-found her when the Eye exploded. He “killed” but also “possessed” Elio [the inconsistency with its own story is stunning], then corrupted a Templar who he possessed too [remember the Templar immediately changed targets: from chasing Bellara, he started to chase Nadia], and somehow, he again retook Elio’s body [???]. All this process had as a goal to reach her and “possess” her and claims that when he possessess her body, he will not alter his ability of being an Altus Mage [?? what?] even though he would be in another body [a non-magical one with non-Altus abilities]. To half-justify this, the demon claims that Elio’s body is dying [?] because “all the energy and lyrium of the Fade” [??? WTF?]. Since the authors don’t understand that DA demons feed upon human emotions, it’s impossible to understand this demon, since it doesn’t behave like a DA demon but a Christian demon. An entire episode proving that nobody from Bioware truly cared about this.

Again, the lack of lore knowledge of the authors and the disdain of Bioware in taking a careful look of these episodes put us in a complicated position to understand how to fit this in DA lore.

Neve claims that the anomalies are getting worse. This detail makes us suspect these podcasts are closer to the point where we start the game DA:tV, which makes Lucanis’ episode completely inconsistent. But who cares? The Authors and Bioware clearly not, lol.

Once more, the demon sings chants before possessing, because the authors have a Christian concept of a demon. “(distorted) (chanting) Energies of darkness, unburden the lost from their prisons of misery. Invoke our sacred Veil as we cross the barrier from one mind to the next.” [please, Sacred Veil!?]

Neve tells us about the terrible past of Tevinter and how hard it had it: in the Steel Age Qunari invaded Minrathous. Invasion is a big word: During the Steel Age Tevinter lost Par Vollen to the Qunari, and the Qunari invaded Rivain and Antiva, taking control of Treviso. They were even reaching the Free Marches. Miranthous never was invaded even though Tevinter minor cities around it were compromised and some attacks to the main city were made [similar situation in which Veilguard is]. This is an event called the Qunari Wars [Book of World of Thedas]. Again, the writing is so bad that it explicitly says that one of the big scars that these attacks left on Tevinter was the “collapse of a catacomb” [???] and the leaders of the moment never considered them worthy to fix them. Only Liberati go there to commit suicide [??] when in the beginning of the episode we were told that they used these catacombs as households. Inconsistencies within the same story.

Suddenly we have a found family trope with a lot of characters that were barely met hours ago, or in the case of Drayden or Harding, had some few weeks of knowing each other very shallowly. The level of Marvel movie-like bad dialogues and situations here is incredibly immersion-disruptive.

“NEVE: With that portal he opened, I'm going to tap directly into the Fade and fill this entire chamber with a disruption field”. Neve became a Rift mage out of the blue [??].

Our future companion Neve is introduced in this episode.

Personal Conclusions:

These episodes are highly unreliable as source of lore and characterization of the companions, since it has shown that even their original characters are written out of character when they need the story to go in some direction.

Everything is so interconnected that makes feel Thedas as a small world. There was no need for Nadia or Elio to exist, and to make every companion connected through them. An episode of each companions showing us a bit of their daily life would have been enough.

The writing is bad, and considering the portfolio of the authors, it’s focused on marvel product series, with bad, unbelievable, and very convenient stories and characters, where facts are told instead of being shown. All this, so alien to Bioware narrative style, is immensely disruptive for the narration.

The level of sound quality was marvellous, as well as the VA of the companions.

I certainly will bury this and pretend it never existed, as I did with Absolution. These are product that show a need to sell a product instead of keep adding and expanding a rich world as it is Dragon Age.

These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore:

#podcasts #DAV #episodes 5 6 7 8 #I should abandon these posts and delete them and pretend they don't exist as i do with Absolution #but not having completion is always an issue for me #Youtube

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lairofdragonagelore · 9 months ago

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Dragon Age: Vows and Vengeance

Episodes: 1, 2, 3, and 4

Episodet: 5, 6, 7, and 8

*These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore [read the end of the post]

Episode 1: Once a Thief…

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This story starts in Minrathous and finishes in its borders with Anderfels.

Solas has been collecting relics all across Thedas. This is the reason why he has been hiring people to do research/digging work. This is not new, we know this from the book Tevinter Nights and the Comics.

The Archives of the Magisterium in Minrathous have a broad “collection of objects, scrap of writing, relics, or antiquities that are “remotely” interesting to the Empire”. Among them, the Eye of Kethisca.

The Eye of Kethisca: This is a new relic that appears in this story for the first time. We can suspect it's used to stabilise the Veil, locally. The object interacted with Nadia first, humming to her. It’s not clear if Elio is accustomed to that humming, the tense situation urges him to ignore it, or he cannot perceive it at all. I suspect the latter.

The object glows and “unleashed a wave of energy that tore the ground up and almost killed Elio.”

Solas assures that there is nothing to fear about this relic, and claims it was “made from a rare gem mined in the caves beneath them”. The object “forms a bond with a person and it amplifies their powers”. This is a strange piece of lore I cannnot connect with anything else from previous games. Binding processes are quite important and central in the stories of Dragon Age, but they tend to be magical ones with some level of ritual and procedure. In this case, it happens accidentally and spontaneously.

This Eye was “crafted centuries ago by a powerful dreamer” named An’Dante, who is related to Elio Andante [it seems that the original surname changed over the ages]. Solas implies to know Elio or his anscestors and claims that the Magister is a powerful rift mage, hence his suspicion for him to be the key to stabilise the Veil in this region via the relic.

This means that Elio Andante was related to a dreamer called An’Dante, which apostrophe [in my opinion, and all the following is a speculation] seems to imply an elvish name. I’m suspecting Elio belongs to one of the many Tevinter lineages that has some relationship or maybe even elven blood in them. It won't be the first time we are hinted with this concept: in the comic Blue Wraith we see a similar clue; Fenris claims that Francesca's plant magic was only seen in Dalish clans. It's clear for me that this increases the implications of ancient Tevinter being more tight with the Elvhenan than through invasion, co-opt, and erasure of their influence in the Tevinter culture [similar parallel can be found among the Dalish and Orlais in the South]. We also need to remember the highly cryptic codex Astrariums, which claims that Tevinter was more focused on astronomy before adopting the Magisterium system. On the other hand, via the many constellation codices we have all over DAI, we can see some bland links between Tevinter and Elvhenan culture. This link may imply that Tevinter and Elvhenan may have had better relationships than those that were developed after the Magisterium system was established. Another clue can be found in the Tevinter Mosaics, where one of the main Magisters is depicted with pointy ears and bare feet.

Solas is not sure if the magister perceived the Eye, so he keeps asking Elio if he can notice the Fade and this energy coming from the relic. We know, as listeners, that Nadia does. The lack of response from Elio leaves us without knowing if he can perceive it or not. We can assume that Elio does not, but he wants to leave a mark in the world, changing it for the better as he confessed to Nadia later. Therefore, he doesn’t deny nor confirm the lack of bond towards the Eye. He thinks this was fated for him. So, in his desire to become helpful in a moment of his life when he lost all his power and status, Elio wants to be “the chosen one” in this mission. Therefore, he performs the ritual and fails.

It’s also curious that a non-mage [Nadia] can perceive the energy [thin Veil] of the cave. Is this a lore inconsiscency? I would assume that this is a hint to reinforce the idea that the Eye was bond to her, and not to Elio.

Solas uses the word reckoning in his dialogue not by chance, this word is related to Flemeth’s words, and the revenge she has to archieve for Mythal. A reckoning that will shake the very heavens and will heal a broken, agonizing world.

The Eye starts to hum when they enter the cave. Solas explains this is an “ancient city chamber, once home to unspeakable acts. Many were sacrificed on these grounds, and the blood that was spilled weakened the barriers between the worlds.” They chant in Arcanum and Elvish. The cave seems to vibrate and probably some tear is open? Hard to know with only sounds. In my opinon, it is not really possible to connect this chamber with Horrors of Hormak from Tevinter Nights.

The ritual goes wrong. I especulate it is because the relic was not bound to Elio but Nadia. The Eye explodes, the cave collapses, and Solas and Nadia escape but leave Elio behind, since he has “crossed over”. I assume this is a similar situation to the one we saw in DAI when a tear opened right below the falling bridge of Adamant Fortress [read a refresh in Orlais, Western Approach: Adamant Fortress].

We learn later that Solas went to visit an “ancient burial grounds in the Hinterlands”. I don’t know if we can claim these hiterlands are the same ones in Ferelden.

When Nadia rides the horse at the end of the story, she has a connection with Elio. We can assume that these connections are possible due to the thinning of the Veil all over the world, and because maybe her bond to the Eye makes her bound to Elio [who carries the lineage of the crafter] stronger. However, it's a detail I would question from a lore-wise perspective. We never saw this kind of situation before. The only time we stepped into the Fade, physically, was in DAI, and there was no connection with those left in Adamant Fortress. This is a characteristc that may have been introduced now to explain what will eventually happen between Solas and Rook: we know Solas will be trapped in the Fade and bound to Rook to whom he speaks to.

Our future companion Neve is introduced in this episode.

Episode 2: The Cult of the Doom Blade

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This story happens in Anderfels.

We learn there is a cult called “Cult of the Doom Blade”, which worships “The Deathless One”. It’s commanded by Bolmor. The Cult attacks and coherces a nearby town under the threat of the Hunger of the Deadless One, which has to be satified with sacrifices. Each month the villagers have a blind drawing. Two amongst them are chosen for the offering, but no one has ever seen what happens.

The ritual that Solas is performing to lock the Evanuris is causing a lot of alterations: tremors, anomalies, the veil grows thin. These events are taken advantage of by the cult to reinforce the idea of the “end of the world” and to force villagers to accept regular humanoid sacrifices. The one time that the town tried to fight them back they suffered a retaliation that made the cult take all their children.

Nadia meets Harding and explains why she is looking for Solas. Suddenly, her head rings and another contact with Elio from the Fade is established. She collapses and cames back to her senses later.

We are introduced to Drayden Kiel, a mysterious character: They define themself as a writer, scholar, and historian, who has been studying the Cult of the Doom Blade for nearly a year. Their goal was to study the cult and stop it for good. They read books about war, and claim that learning the patterns in history allows us to avoid being stuck. However, their story changes at the end of the podcasts: They were “researching the cult because they study the Fade”. The link between the Fade and the Cult is not clear for us. The Cult is not making the Fade thinier in this part of Anderfels so this line is curious at best. “If your problem lies beyond the Veil, I can actually help you”, they say, confidently.

Drayden is quite cunning. They claim they were researching the cult, had a plan of their own to escape with life and with the other sacrifice woman, and then entangled Harding and Nadia in a conversation to gently force them to fight for the town. They are good at reading the enemy and at learning their pattners to use them against them, reason why Drayden won a fight against Nadia only using their sword. Drayden made shock bombs durign dinner that allowed them to win the final battle. “It's a little trick I picked up from these things called books.” There is a lot of cunning and evasive very subtle in this character. Clearly there is more to Drayden than what they are allowing us to see.

Our future companion Harding is introduced in this episode

Episode 3: A Deadly Descent

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This story happens in Anderfels, in a place that has a "crumbling face protruding from a cliff. It's the statue of The Green Guardian". In this place, neither "insects nor worms can survive the lands. No body can decay here".

There is a very popular mix in the Anderfels described as “rotten fruit sludge for your most refined taste buds.” Drayden even perceives it as sweet, which makes us assume that their year spent in this place is true: they have an “acquired taste” for this berverage.

Drayden claims that “If their studies of the Fade have taught them anything, it's that the future always hides in the past.”

Drayden is called by Haring “little egg” and by Nadia as “companion”, keeping them gender-free. Later, Drayden is smited by Davrin. We also learn they hate spiders.

In another scene, Davrin thinks and shares his thoughts to Goff about the rumour they heard: griffons are not extinct. This is an immediate call to the book The Last Flight where we discover 13 griffon eggs were saved from the Blight.

Drayden displays strange connotations; the natural way in which they speak about death makes us suspect some mortalitasi point of view in their vision of life: “Our deaths follow us like a shadow, seems only natural to make its acquaintance.”

When they step into darkspawns, Drayden claims to know about Blight magic, a knowledge we expect only Grey Warden could have. “Blight magic, look at the eyes behind it. Oh no. Genlocks”. So they know more than only Fade, they know about the darkspwan, their differences, and the Blight Magic; subjects of study a bit distant one another, and some of them extremelly secret for a particular Order.

It’s curiuous that the narrative, through repetition, presents Solas as a betrayer and a person who has “forced” Elio to perfom the ritual:

NADIA: (sighs) Elio, my partner, he wasn't just some magic wielder, he was an Altus mage and part of the Magisterium. But the Dread Wolf put a plan in motion to turn the Templars against him. He wanted to force Elio into a corner so he'd have no choice but to help him perform a dangerous ritual. (sighs) But the Wolf betrayed us. And now Elio is trapped somewhere in the Fade. Me and my companion here seek only to rescue him before it's too late. And we received information from the Inquisition that led us here. But now we walk away from the very tunnels that may reveal the Dread Wolf himself!

If we go back to the Episode 1, Elio was not forced to do this, Solas asked several times if Elio was connected to the Fade and the relic, and Elio did not answer straighfoward because his personal desire for being the source of change. Solas also said that the Ritual was as safe as possible. The misunderstanding lays in the fact that Nadia was the one bound to the relic, and therefore, the one who should have performed the ritual. We don’t know if Solas called the Templars upon Elio either. In fact, it would have been strange, considering he already had hired Nadia’s people to get the relic. If anything, Elio was the one who brougt attention upon himself with the guards. What I want to point out here is that we are shown once again how the narrative twists in a way that one character changes the facts, creates a whole different story, and spreads it to a lot of people, changing it 180 degree. This phenomenon is a reiterative topic in DA Lore: The eternal unreliable narrators that explain sitautions that have been twisted over time.

When they walk to the mine, the ground cracks, and they fall into its depths. As they escape from a mob of spiders, they find another underground chamber:

DRAYDEN: This chamber, it feels different from the cave. I can sense something. DAVRIN: You feel all that lyrium coursing through the walls. DRAYDEN: No, it's more than that. The Veil is thin here. We should be careful.

This to me reinforces the suspicion that Drayden is a mage in disguise or has spirits around them. No other characters in DA lore can perceive the state of the Veil when it’s not obvious [aka, a tear is right open in front of them]. However, the lore-questionable explanation will be given in Episode 4.

In this chamber, we find a mosaic that is described by Drayen as: “This is no ordinary mosaic. Look at the way the circle is split down the middle. The top half is onyx. It's like a mirror![...] You can see your reflection in the darkness. And this portrait below, the figures are upside down and pointing to the stars and to the sky” On it there are small wolf totems that represent the Dread Wolf usually placed at the Dalish camps in Arlathan.

This mosaic has an elven inscription that they can’t read, so Davrin translates the text from this ancient dialect: "Guide me on the path that splits the land between sun and moon." This is a concept that has started to be present in the lore in the last time, specially during the development of DAV [for example, in the Vinyl Art] but the oldest reference to suns, moons, and eclipses belong to DA2, that can be read in The Emergent Compendium. However, there were no other references all over DAI.

Solving the puzzle, Drayen presses some stars on the mosaic and the lyrium glows intensily, opening an energy fissure. If anything, this sounds like the description of an Eluvian and supports the idea that the Eluvian are made of lyrium [thus, they glow in that particular blue shown in DAI and can be corrupted by the Blight as it had happened in DAO]. This fissure apparently opens two exits: a tunel and a portal.

Our future companion Davrin is introduced in this episode.

Episode 4: Beyond the Veil

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This story is located in the Arlathan Forest, which “shifts like a prism, magic rippling everywhere”. The whole episode shows its physical and time instabilities, and how dangerous it can be. This place was also featured in the comic The Missing [read the post for more details] with some questionable lore concepts [as it has been happening since Gaider left Bioware].

Bellara is chased by Templars that want her artifact. The object in question is Flicker, “an ancient Elven device built with secret metallurgical techniques lost to time.” It’s a relic that works as a guide or a hound in the Fade, “like a wisp that can lead through the Fade”. Again, this concept is quite questionable: during the time in which the Waking World and the Fade were one, why Elvhenan would requiere such specific device more suited for the instabilities that it has once the Veil was created? I hope we are provided some logical explanation about this.

The Flicker needs a “Fade sparkle” to come back to life. If anything, this process can be related to the creation of worlds as we saw in the codex Raising the Sonallium analysed in Ancient Elven codices; Vir Dirthara where we see the creation of "life/worlds" by using the energy of the Fade.

Apparently, Bellara can animate trees. I’m not sure how this looks like, but I hope it’s not like Sylvans, since those are spirits trapped in or possessing trees. Decades of lore would become questionable otherwise.

There is a new concept of “bubbles”, places in the Arlathan Forest that have no instabilities of any kind.

The concept of Veil Jumpers is introduced: "an alliance of interested parties that have been trying to figure out what's happening in the forest, what's causing all of these anomalies, and ultimately, wants to seek to restore order on these lands". We were told about them in the comic The Missing, where Strife [also present in the book Tevinter Nights] is featured as well.

Bellara's role is to “map” the Fade, which is a concept a bit worrisome for me. We have been told via codices [reliable and not, for example Walking the Fade: Frozen Moments] during three games, that the constant change of the Fade, eternally reflecting the Waking World, makes it impossible to truly map it. Bellara also claims that “the deeper one looks, the less they seem to know about the Fade” which may be a link to the mysterious codex in DAI called The Deepest Fade which interpretation I’ve worked on Ancient Elven codices; Vir Dirthara.

We are informed that Solas has just recently taken another artifact from the depths of this Forest; this is a calling to the events happening in the comic The Missing.

We finally are explained why Drayden feels so odd: they basically can listen to spirits, an ability that always belonged to mages in DA lore. The explanation for their case, as a non-mage and yet having these powers, is highly questionable in my opinion. They developed the concept of “strange child touched by the Fade”, as if this were an unnusual case of sorcery a la DnD, when in DA lore, every single mage is a sorcerer, and wizardry does not exist. The unnecesary creation of yet another strange category is questionable, specially when we have been told in 3 games and several books that there are low magic mages, that barely can cast anyhting, and yet they feel the Fade and can suffer the same dangers than any mage. Another potential explanation, with less lore-breaking implications, is that Drayden may be an elf-blooded human, so they developed this sensitivity to the Fade as a consequence of the recent alterations that the Veil has been suffering for the last decades under Solas’ ritual [let's remember that Solas wants to heal/return the world to its previous state where elves were eternal and magical]. However, we don’t see this effect in more elves or elf-blooded humans to consider it a potential explanation. Again, a very questionable concept in my opinion. I hope a better in-lore justification is provided in the game. Addition: We also have the situation of the Seekers that acquire a magic/Fade-related power when a Spirit touches them after their tranquility. Maybe there is something of this in this character [and Lucanis].

The group jumps into the Fade and Nadia meets Elio, but due to the many hints shown in their dialogue, we can suspect this is not the real Elio but a spirit trying to trick Nadia. Later, the Templar that was chasing them in the beginning of the episode appears in the Fade as a “corrupted” entity and kills Elio. This situation messes witih Nadia's emotions. Is this Templar another spirit?

The corrupted templar rises a whole “army from the Fade itself” [?] that are all “lyrium-corrupted”[???]. Suddenly, this Templar seems less of a spirit and more of a Red Templar. It’s confusing at best.

As Bellara and Drayden try to bring Nadia to her senses, a “Fade Storm” appears, making the Fade more unstable [???]. This may be part of the consequences of the ritual that Solas is performing. Apparently, going deeper into the Storm is safer [???] since “the Templars will be just as susceptible as them, corruption or no”. The logic in this part of the podcast is highly questionable. They finally escape the Fade through a tear.

The Templar kept the ring that Elio gave to Nadia and finishes the scene with a clear intention of using it against her [?]. Very confusing.

“There's a small fluctuation in the ether right there. I think it's the Veil!” That line is so weird, I’m very worried about the lore of this game and how much has been pulled out of nowhere just to make it easy and fast.

It’s a bit funny for me that after 3 games showing the gravity of physically stepping into the Fade and the dramatic implications of the Black City, we are just able to jump in and out of the Fade as if it were not big deal and we can walk around the Black City as if it were a park. The concepts lost entirely their gravity and solemnity. The comic was more serious and careful with this. You never stepped into the Fade, you only walked through zones where the Veil was extemelly thin due to Solas' ritual.

The story ends with Nadia and Drayden falling in Pall Vollen, where qunari soldiers speak Common perfectly, without any accent, instead of Qunlat.

We are introduced to our future companion Bellara.

These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore:

#podcasts #Youtube #davrin #harding #neve gallus #DAV #vows and vengeance #episode 1 2 3 4

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lairofdragonagelore · 10 months ago

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Flemeth / Mythal (part 1)

Flemeth is an enigmatic character along the series that seems to be related to the whole plot of Dragon Age since DAO. In the present post I will try to collect all the relevant information about her and about what she says, since she is one of the characters that I think we can rely more when it comes to digging the "truth" behind the DA lore.

The current post has the following sections:

Flemeth in DAO

Story of Conobar and Osen

Flemeth in DA2

Flemeth in DAI

Mythal as an Elvhenan Goddess

Mythal as a Changed Goddess

Flemeth and Mythal

Mythal and the Well of Sorrows

Flemeth and the Music

Flemeth, Mythal, and Motherhood

Artwork of Flemeth

Flemeth in the books (or comics)

Conclusions

Flemeth in DAO

When we meet Flemeth for the first time, we know she saved the Warden and Alistair from the massacre of Ostagar. She turned into a creature (later we will know it was a dragon), grabbed each of them in her talons, and returned to her shack where Morrigan nursed them back to health.

When you interact with her, she speaks about her position related to some topics:

Belief: she considers the wisest attitude is to doubt in what to believe. This makes a lot of sense when you see DA series overall: we know that history changed over time due to the inaccuracy that information acquires over generations due to oral transmission or political interests that modify historical records such in the case of the dwarves [more details about this in the post The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light].

She knows all about the Grey Warden business: She knows about the treaties, and the magic that seals those. Since Morrigan knows about the ancient magic that allowed her to protect Urthemiel’s soul by the end of the game, and this was always the original plan of Flemeth, we can assume this knowledge and the mechanics with which Grey Warden deal with the Blight were all well-known by Flemeth too. This makes sense too if we think that a contemporaneous of Flemeth, Solas, also knows a lot of details about how the Blight works and how the Grey Wardens deal with it [for example, read the section Blight and Grey Wardens in Solas sharing Lore: Part 1 - Part 2]. We can assume that part of the Grey Warden’s knowledge may have come from Arlathan, according some small pieces of information that we have from Seekers: Tarohne, the Fell Grimoire, and Xebenkeck].

Mythal [inside Flemeth] knows how to keep the Darkspawn away: This detail is never focused on in her conversations, so it's easy to miss. Flemeth can keep the darkspawn far away from her shack despite being in the zone where the main outbreak happened. This is not minor at all. Later, in the comic The Missing, we learn that Solas has been hiding in places that have enormous populations of Darkspwan and he has never been bothered by them. Since he has absorbed Flemeth's powers at this point of the story, we can suspect that this ability to keep the darkspawn away is something related to Mythal herself.

It’s clear that Flemeth, who has been a figure who has pushed the History of Thedas in a certain direction, had a clear interest in the Warden. Later, we discover her original plan was to keep Urthemiel’s soul [but this depends on the player’s choices after all, and the "canon" Bioware world state is one where Urthemiel’s soul has been destroyed, since the warden dies]. However, it’s hard to ponder the truth in her words. On one side, we know that Mythal was a creature of compassion and love, the embodiment of motherhood. So giving Morrigan to this mission may have truly been a bit worrisome for her. On the other hand, we know she has been rising Morrigan to become, most likely, the next host of Mythal [“the inheritor in the new age”], so she may value her more for this role. Maybe it’s both, because Flemeth/Myhtal are both complex creatures, human and elvhenan, and dragon [this concept was always repeated by Solas in DAI: Mythal is more than just one aspect, she is complex]. What we can see in the overall story is that, certainly, Flemeth saved Ferelden when she saved the Warden: without the Warden, the Blight would have expanded too fast over Ferelden [which had no wardens to fight it back] and when the Wardens of Orlais could have been aware of this situation, the spread may have been too hard to repel. We see this in the DLC "The Darkspawn Chronicles".

These lines are hard to determine if they hide a bit of the story of Mythal or the human Flemeth. Men killed for her, and this “determined all what followed”. If we keep in mind the many speculations I crafted in Songs and elements that sing and whisper in DA Lore, one has the impression that the Evanuris wanted a power that Mythal had. They may have tried to extract it from her, killing her in the process. Maybe even corrupting her, as I suggested in Speculations about the Vinyl Art, which is also supported by the story The Horror of Hormak. All the issue of the creation of the Veil and the Blight seems to be related to this original assassination, as Solas told us.

But Flemeth's line may also be related to the story of Conobar and Osen, which I will talk about later in this post. Flemeth became one with Mythal after these events, after "men killed for Flemeth".

She claims that names are useless. And we can see this in her case; in the end we don’t really know her real, human name. We know that some historians in Thedas claim that Flemeth never existed as a girl in Highever, while she has a name among the elves [Asha'bellanar, woman of many years], another among the Chasind [Flemeth], and another when it comes to Mythal. This dismiss about the names can also come from Mythal herself: let’s remember that Elvhen seemed to change their names according to their purpose, following a rule similar to the ones that spirits have. Abelas told us he had a different name before serving Mythal, another when he did, and Abelas when she died. Solas wishes for him to find a new name, aka, a new purpose [read Temple of Mythal, Part 5], so the Elvhenan have a different concept of how names work. If Mythal cares little about her name, could that mean she lost purpose after her assassination?

Unlike Solas, Flemeth seems to recognise the use of the Grey Wardens, but it’s hard to know if these words are just said to convince the Warden she is in favour of them or it’s truly what she believes.

She certainly claims that “men’s hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature”, a line that links many others from her monologue in DAI. It also implies the events of Mythal’s assassination: we don’t know how the event transpired, but due to Abelas’ words [Arbor Wilds: Temple of Mythal - Part 5 ] we know that she was betrayed and killed by those who attacked her Temple. Solas claims it was the Evanuris [Somewhere[DLC Trespasser]: Elven Ruins]. And we also know that Solas has a resentful conversation with the Inquisitor who drank from the Well of Sorrows and supports the idea of sharing the power with “friends”. Solas will disagree, saying that sometimes it’s better to let a single person keep all the power, to prevent the group abusing of it [read the section Evanuris and Worshipping in Solas shares Lore, Part 2]. This conversation, even though it is not explicit, seems to be related to the assassination of Mythal and the desire for the Evanuris to have the power she grabbed, maybe, during the strike of one of the Titans and may have shared with them [read “The Death of a Titan” for details].

A curious line that Flemeth says is that Cailan does not see that the “evil behind the Blight is the true threat”. This may be Flemeth claiming that the Archdemon is the one responsible of the incoming Blight, or [if we compare this with Avernus’ words [read Soldier’s Peak]], it’s the entity trapped in the Black City, the true origin of the Song that blighted creatures hear [I wrote about this speculation in Speculations about the Vinyl Art].

In the DLC, Morrigan starts to speak like Flemeth, and basically says that change is what will make Thedas free. We can assume that a lot of Morrigan’s ways of seeing the world are Flemeth’s teaching. In DAI, Flemeth questions Morrigan’s intent to protect the old knowledge, and she claims that Morrigan is interested in that because she taught her to do it. We can assume, then, that the way Morrigan sees the world is also the way Flemeth’s sees it, although a lot more obscured, since Morrigan has not Mythal’s knowledge.

Conobar and Osen Story

There are two stories about Flemeth that, despite we never know which one is the true one, we can conclude something clear that DA series always repeats to us: stories hide some degree of truth, but most of them have changed across ages, sometimes due to political interests, sometimes as a consequence of co-opting or assimilating different cultures in a region. Stories are unreliable sources of information, and even institutions that record the information to avoid this degradation of the truth, like the Shaperate, are not perfect and they are victims of distortion [more due to conflict of interests than progressive decay of the information caused by oral transmission].

So, this is the first story in DA series that sets our mind to the main topic that DA series is about: every source of information is unreliable to a certain degree; We can’t trust the Shaperate, for the reasons claimed above, we can’t trust Dalish lore either, because it has been changed due to the fragile nature of oral tradition and their slavery, we can’t even trust Tevinter records, because they may have been manipulated to a certain degree to keep the cult of the dragons or they simply had a terrible understanding of other cultures [but I have my doubts, since we never had access to the main library of Miranthous, which archives are only available for magisters and the Archon, which means a lot of hidden truths may be recorded there, but not spread in order to keep the Empire in control]

But returning to the story of Flemeth. The first narrator we have of this legend is the codex Flemeth. This narration has the following characteristics:

Flemeth was born in Highever, was known as a mage, and married to Bann Conobar

She fell in love with a poet called Osen, and both ran away to find shelter in Chasind tribes [in the Wilds].

Conobar sets a trap: he claims to be dying, asking for Flemeth to see him for the last time.

Conobar kills Osen and kidnaps Flemeth, imprisoning her in a castle.

Flemeth summons a spirit of Vengenace and ends up possessed by it. She kills Conobar and flees to the Kocari Wilds.

As the Witch of the Wild, she kidnaps Chasind men to sire her daughters.

This way Flemeth leads a Chasind army to strike the Alamarri tribes.

A Hero called Cormac defeats Flemeth and burns her with her daughters.

Leliana’s version contains the following characteristics, pretty similar to the Codex's:

Flemeth was beautiful, and got the attention of the Lord of Highever: Conobar.

She married Conobar.

Conobar discovered that Flemeth was a mage, and kept it in secret, fearing she would be taken from him.

With his blessing, Flemeth practised magic in secret.

When Osen appears, both of them fall in love. They run away from the lands of Conobar and find shelter in Chasind tribes.

Then, the news of Conobar dying, and wanting to see Flemeth for the last time, convinced her to return to Highever.

When the couple entered the city, Osen was slain in front of Flemeth and she was prisoned a the castle, in order to wait Conobar’s judgement.

Asking for revenge, Flemeth summoned a demon to kill Conobar, but the spell went awry and the demon possessed her. As an abomination, she killed all the people inside the castle, including Conobar.

Then Flemeth flew to the Kocari Wild and sired daughters with the help of Chasind men.

Morrigan’s version, which is what Flemeth told her, contains the following events:

During the time when this land was not even called Ferelden, Flemeth was beautiful and married with the poor poet Osen, and Lord Conobar had been interested in her from afar.

Conobar offered Osen wealth and power in exchange of Flemeth, to which both, Osen and Flemeth, accepted.

However, Conobar did not have this wealth, so he killed Osen in a field apart, in secret.

Then, Flemeth used the spirits to learn about Osen’s fate and swore revenge.

Flemeth used the spirits to kill Conobar and then fled to the Kocari Wilds

Conobar’s allies chased her, so she found a demon in the Wilds that gave her the power to survive.

Morrigan says that Flemeth never rose Chasind armies to invade the lowlanders, and neither she fought Cormac.

According to Morrigan, Cormac led a brutal civil war against his own people, and later he justified it as a means to remove evil. Flemeth was attached to this legend much later [this shows all what I’ve been telling in this blog about how stories evolve along the time and satisfy certain political or social needs, details in The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light].

In DAI, the Inquisitor summarises Flemeth’s tale as:

Flemeth left her husband for a lover,

Her husband tricked her, killed her lover, and imprisoned her

Then a spirit came to grant her revenge: Mythal

Flemeth agrees that this was her tale, which is closer to the standard tale than to the story she shared with Morrigan. But we also know Flemeth: she can care less about what anyone thinks about her life.

What we can conclude is that Flemeth asked for revenge and Mythal granted it in that moment. We can also assume she told Morrigan a different story, to teach her about not trusting men, about how dangerous mages are for them, and how power is all what matters. Teachings that will prevent Morrigan [once she inherited the fragment that Flemeth wanted to] from falling and making the same mistakes that, maybe, cost Mythal's life.

Flemeth in DA2

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In case we never fought Flemeth in DAO, DA2 starts by giving us the information about her nature: she is a dragon, or at least, she can polymorph into one. It’s hinted that this part of the game happened at the same time of DAO, after Flemeth rescued the warden, but before her potential fight against them. We can have a conversation with her about this dragon nature, and it’s never clear if she is one or can turn into one. Again, Flemeth and her philosophy of “believe what you want”. Of course, we, as players, can suspect this is the true [or at least one of the both] nature of Mythal thanks to her Dragon mosaic and statues in her Temple.

She meets Hawke family when Lothering is being attacked by hordes of Darkspawn.

She has her line of “It’s fate or chance” here, and it seems it’s in this moment when she foresaw the utility of Hawke as someone who can carry her piece. “It’s fate or chance” to survive once more the assassination that may suffer, again, at the hands of someone she gave some care [care with interests but still yet, she repeats a similar story to Mythal's once more]. Apparently, this is the “music she has to dance” as long as it plays. As usual, it’s hard to find clear meaning in Flemeth’s cryptic words.

She again reinforces the idea that names matter little. She seems to dismiss the legend that claims she steals children and considers herself closer to an apostate.

When she claims that she has an appointment, we know she refers to the second meeting she will have with the Warden. A potential chance of being assassinated again. This comment seems to me that she can foresee the future, or at least, glimpses of potential futures. She knows she has a big chance of dying at the Warden's hands, and therefore she gets interested in Hawke as a carrier of her fragment.

As I wrote in Marethari Talas, Flemeth remembers well who made a pact with her across the ages, and makes uses of them.

When we kill Wesley, Flemeth speaks “Without an end there can be no peace. It gets no easier. ” The implications of this line may or may not have a relevance with the speculation I did in Speculations about the Vinyl Art. If this speculation ends up being reasonable, maybe this line is also related to her fate: she needs to end her own corrupted shape in order to find peace. There must be a radical destruction to build upon the ruins. This concept is repeated over and over in all the lore of DA series, applying the idea of removing civilisations, for example in Par Vollen, or system, such as the Circle of Magi.

When we reach Marethari, we have some hints that she and Flemeth had a deal time ago. I spoke about this in Marethari Talas.

Marethari tells us that Flemeth’s word is valuable, reason why I always keep her words as the ones closest to the truth in the DA series, despite being so cryptic and sometimes, pretty useless due to it. Even in the way Marethari speaks about promises, one can suspect that Flemeth and Mythal are also keeping a promise. Hence, we can infer indirectly, that Mythal and Flemeth are creatures that value promises and words heavily.

It’s also interesting where Flemeth is raised once more: this is a cementery dedicated to Dalish uthenera [and I clarify Dalish one because it seems to be the “wrongly understood” Uthenera, that has nothing to do with the Elvhenan Uthenera, which has been seen in more details in the book The Masked Empire]. In here, we find souls bound to this place to defend it, called shadow warriors which shape resembles Elvhenan: bald elves. Now, this is what the Dalish say about this place. But let’s never forget that the time of Arlathan has been kept in their lore in a very unreliable state, so it’s hard to know if this is truly the case in here. After all, this cemetery has the Strange Idol in it, which is never clear which function had in the ancient Dalish culture. To refresh a bit all the mysteries about this idol, read The Strange Idol.

We reach an altar where Merril sings a part of the song Uthenera, as Flemeth raises from the amulet. The verses that Merril sings are:

emma ir abelas souver'inan isala hamin vhenan him dor'felas in uthenera na revas elder your time is come now I am filled with sorrow weary eyes need resting heart has become grey and slow in waking sleep is freedom

The first thing I notice, that Flemeth repeats with the elven Inquisitor, is her respect and kindness to the Dalish. She calls them “the People”, which is such a curious contrast with Solas, who doesn’t call them “his people”. “So young and bright” is another description she always gives to them, which encourages again my suspicion that the Dalish are not elvhenan turned into mortal ones [since Solas and Abelas and his people seem to retain their ageless nature as well as their baldness] but a product that came after. A transformation? Certainly something related to slavery, shape, and the Vallaslin that we have been hinted in several materials such as The Horror of Hormak [General] and The Horror of Hormak [Personal Speculation], as well as visually in some mosaics such as in the “Lifting of the Vallaslin" in Fen’Harel’s mountain ruins.

Flemeth asks if Merril knows who she is beyond the title of Asha'bellanar, and when Merril claims that she knows little, then Flemeth tells her not to bend the knee. It seems that she prefers those gestures when they come from people who know her as Mythal [she claims that these are “manners” in DAI when an inquisitor bows before her seeing her as Mythal]. This may seem to coincide with what Abelas has told us: Mythal followers are not slaves, but servants on their own volition. In these small details we can see that Mythal was not an Evanuris that asked worshipping unless it was with free will. Same as it happens with the Well of Sorrows, which I covered in the post Temple of Myhtal - Part 5.

Maybe this is minor, but Flemeth appears in the exact line of “in Uthenera we find freedom”, with a shot that seems to imply that Flemeth has everything but freedom or peace, bound to a cycle of assassination at the hands of people's personal interests. This also may be a hint about how Uthenera is something entirely different to what Dalish, and by extension the player, think to believe. I will try to write an Uthenera post eventually.

The amulet had a small piece of her in case the inevitable occur.

“if I know Morrigan, it already has [occurred the inevitable]”, she claims. This line makes me hint that this Flemeth is not truly aware of what happened in her “death” against the warden. This whole situation also seems to imply that Flemeth always dies, even when your Warden makes a deal with her and tricks Morrigan. In which case, there will be 2 Flemeth at the same time in a world state where you don’t kill Flemeth [intended or a small mistake from Bioware devs? I assume the latter]. In case Flemeth died, could it be that this small piece of her keeps the exact same memory that it had at the moment of the creation of this magical amulet? She doesn't know what happened during that last meeting with the Warden?

But we can be sure that Flemeth knows Morrigan well enough to the point to see her future confusion with the possession issue. This makes us understand Flemeth as Mythal who has been raising her as the next inheritor, teaching her to be tough and resilient, and mainly, surviving at any cost. Reasons why Flemeth raised Morrigan so roughly. However, in DAI, it seems that she also tested Morrigan’s sense of motherhood in that scene where she pretends she will keep Kieran to fulfil their destiny [check The Final Piece: Part 2]. This again emphasises that Mythal is not only a goddess of Motherhood and care, but also of Revenge with a terrible, furious side, as Solas said in Arbor Wilds: Altar of Mythal.

From all the companions’ comments when meeting Flemeth, the most interesting ones come from Fenris and Anders.

Fenris has a broad experience in seeing fucked-up creatures made out from blood magic due to his Tevinter background. He claims he can’t perceive Flemeth as an abomination, a spirit, nor a powerful mage. Because she is…. A dragon? A Forgotten One? It’s true Fenris is not the most reliable character we can have to perceive the truth, but maybe this is a hint about Mythal’s true nature.

Anders also gets confused, which is curious, because he is already possessed and has the unique perception of a spirit as well as a mage. It seems that Anders can see the magic in mages [as it has happened if your Hawke is a mage and you pretend not to be one in front of him, he will claim he can see magic power around the player]. So it seems he sees Flemeth’s power around her too, but it’s confusing for him; it’s not of a mage nor an abomination, therefore it may be because Mythal has “dragon magic”? Forgotten Magic? Hard to speculate. But we can be sure that Mythal’s powers are unique, never seen in the average world of Thedas mages. These comments may hint us that Mythal has a unique nature, whether a dragon one or a Forgotten One. Or maybe both, because there are speculations where I suspect the Forgotten Ones are, in fact, special, powerful, ancient dragons [read the series of comics for understanding this].

When she explains her own nature she says these valuable words:

“I’m a fly in the ointment. I am a whisper in the shadows. I am also and old, old woman. More than that you need not know” “Must I be in only one place? Bodies are such limiting things. I am but a fragment cast adrift from the whole. A bit of flotsam to cling to in the storm”.

I like to highlight the tone of these words. She claims to be a "fly in the ointment", someone who bothers the bigger plans or success of someone else. She is something that has happened, that the ones that assassinated her did not expect. Also, beside the expression, why would she use such a comparison for herself? Flies are disgusting creatures, carrion-like. Why the grandiose Mythal would claim herself as a fly? So much has she diminished? Or this is also related to some self-hate to the potential corruption version that may be caged in the Black City as I speculated in the post Speculations about the Vinyl Art? Maybe I am reading too much in an average expression. In DAI, she also uses a similar Metaphor to describe herself: “I’m but a shadow, lingering in the sun”. Once more, it is an image of a diminished creature.

She also reinforces the idea that Mythal can take different bodies, and be in different places at the same time. She describes herself as a "fragment cast adrift", which is an expression that also gives an idea of being lost. A "flotsam to cling to in the storm", which is another metaphor with a more ominous concept that, once again, seem to coincide with the speculations I talked about in Speculations about the Vinyl Art. Flemeth is, in summary, a piece of a bigger thing, a bit lost and wandering in Thedas, a shadow that dies slowly under the sun, but also a flotsam to cling to in a chaotic storm. All images of someone broken, diminished, tarnished, agonising, that still tries to survive.

When we ask about her plans, she remains as cryptic as usual: "Destiny awaits us both", which is a line repeated later with Kieran in The Fade - Flemeth:Part 2: "He [Kieran] has a destiny to accomplish". She claims in that opportunity that creatures like Kieran and her [who contain fragments of ancient entities] have a fate or a destiny, that doesn't care about what they want or what kind of humans they are.

Flemeth's words also speak about a radical, inevitable change of the configuration of the world: "We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into th abyss." As I talked many times along the blog, Abyss and Void seem to be synonyms, and both also refer to the depth of Thedas, deeper than the Deep Roads, and may be related to the Titans. That the world fears the plummet into the abyss, sounds a lot similar to the image that Exaltations 1, in Chant of Light - Part 2, where we can read the prophecy of the world's fate: enormous entities will awake, the world will crumble into the abyss as these entities arise. And this is inevitable. In general I won't consider anything from the Chantry reliable at all, but in this aspect I consider the design choice: these fragments were written by the devs to imply an incoming prophecy of an event that we may see soon.

Not by chance, the cinematic shows in this part the high place where they are, in a mountain. I think there is a potential foreshadowing here about the awakening of the Titans that somehow is related to keep caging the Black City, or containing the evil in it. I also implied in many posts that the Titans may be under a forced Uthenera, and all these elements may be interrelated in a more complicated fashion.

Flemeth speaks about giving Hawke an advice that still it's not entirely clear: a leap to the precipice of change, which translated into DAI it may refer to the leap, or fall, that Hawke and the Inquisitor made in Adamant fortress when they fell into the Fade. In there, they float to prevent death. But all this quest didn't really feel like a "radical change" in the plot. We only recover the Inquisitor's memories that put some perspective to who is Corypheus and the power of the orb, nothing more. It's not like Corypheus is new in that plot, we met him for the first time in the DLC of DA2, after all. So, what does this advice truly mean?

For some reason, I always read this as an advice from Flemeth to keep Hawke in the Fade, because Alistair, or Stout, would be more important later in the fight against the "big evil" behind the Blight. But still, this is mere speculation.

In a more hopeful reading, maybe Hawke was the only one able to survive the Fade, although the last chapter of "Hard in Hightown: Chapter ???" found in the DAI Fade clearly shows that Hawke died, content of fulfilling his destiny with that.

At the end of the encounter, Flemeth gives Hawke her sympathy, which may imply she knows that Hawke will have a complicated future; specially related to their mother, and since Mythal is/was the embodiment of motherhood, this may strike her a bit deeper.

Another small detail is that we are informed that Flemeth regrets a lot to the point she was poisoned. Should we take this literally? Should we understand that she, as Myhtal, even may have changed her name because regrets, and could have picked one that personified another attribute like regret or rage? Or this reget comes from Flemeth, her human shape, and Morrigan's raising? Impossible to say.

Flemeth in DAI

Inquisition has a lot of content and scenes where we can extract bits of information about Mythal, her divinity dominion, and Flemeth. To keep things a bit more organised, I try to gather the scenes more or less according a general topic.

Mythal as an Elvhena Goddess

If we perform the ritual to summon Mythal in her Altar, there are 2 different lines available to do so. In both cases, it starts the same:

"We few who travel far, call to me, and I will come. Without mercy, without fear" "Without mercy? That sounds rather ominous" "Indeed"

However, if the inquisitor drank from the Well, and we have Solas in the party, we have an extra line for the invocation:

Inquisitor: "We few who travel far, call to me, and I will come. Without mercy, without fear" Solas: "Cry havoc in the moonlight, let the fire of vengeance burn, the cause is clear"

Solas' addition shows Mythal as a revenge embodiment in here. I think this is a key piece in the lore: In this scene, we learn something extremely important and which is never again reinforced: this place is not in the Temple of Mythal, because the Temple of Mythal was a place of Justice, while this altar has another objective; only if you bring Solas you learn that this is where you come to ask for revenge. Because Mythal represents Justice [Mythal in Evanuris], but also revenge, a concept that so far, we had always aligned to Elgar'nan, and it was here where I started to suspect that maybe, Mythal and Elgar'nan are two sides of the same entity. However, we also have to remember that due to Elgar'nan's destructive fury, Mythal took his place to pass judgement over the People, according to the codex The Judgment of Mythal, which I analysed in Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal. Even though this is the first time we are informed strictly that Mythal could be called for revenge, it is not new for us that Mythal has a terrible side: since DAO and in DA2 [with Merril] we learnt that you don't want to infuriate Mythal because she may be just and the embodiment of motherhood, but she is also terrible with her enemies and those who don't keep their promises.

Morrigan: "You know who I am. From high priest to high priest, I am the last to drink of sorrows. Come to us Mythal. Whatever you are, whatever remains. I invoke your name and your power."

This line is only said by Morrigan, who adds a peculiar unique set of words: From high priest to high priest. It's hard to speculate why she would say that. Is she more prepared to drink from the Well because she was trained, unconsciously, to become a priest by Flemeth? Or this is a mistake from the devs? Is she talking about the entities trapped in the Well of Sorrow, who were all priests of Mythal who left their "wills" in the Well? Or she is talking about Mythal herself, considering her as a priest of another higher entity? For me is hard to decide.

When the Inquisitor drinks from the Well, they don't speak the line "from higih priest to high priest", it's merely "You know who I am, the last to drink from your Well of Sorrows. Come to us Mythal. Whatever you are, whatever remains. I invoke your name and your power."

This detail hardly is useful for any decent speculation. We can only assume that Morrigan is more prepared to handle the power of the Well simply because she is a mage who learnt the ancient magic of "what once was".

When the inquisitor bends their knee before Flemeth, or thanks her for coming, knowing she is Mythal, Flemeth claims that these are manners, and unlike with Merril, she accepts the reverence. Once again this seems to encourage what Abelas explained to us: Mythal doesn't have slaves but servants willingly to worship her. You are not her slave, and you have to earn the right to server her. If you don't want to, she would not force you. This concept of "manners" will be repeated in the book The Stolen Throne, where we see Flemeth appreciating Maric's manners when he bends his knee to her [read section below] respecting her power and wisdom.

If the Inquisitor is disrespectful, Flemeth acts similar to Merril's case

"That's Mythal?" "You invoke that name so easily. I wonder if you know what it means."

This shows to me that she gives a lot the benefit of the doubt, and understands deeply the ignorance of mortal creatures. She has other needs than being worshipped, even though she appreciates it.

When Morrigan is controlled by Flemeth to stop the Inquisitor:

Morrigan: If she did not have this hold over me... Flemeth: Then you would do something even more foolish. In this place, my power is greater than yours. Do not tempt me further.

This is a curious information: in the Fade, or at least, in this part of the Fade, Flemeth's power is greater. This could be because the evanuris-elvhenan nature of Mythal, as creatures of the Fade, but it could also be due to her dragon nature. If we remember the comic Until We Sleep, we find that dragons and their blood had a particular power in the Fade, they are basically Somniari or Dreamers, able to control the Fade and make it into reality. Curiously, in this comic, Titus—who has yellow eyes like Flemeth, Morrigan, and Yavanna—is related to dragon blood rituals that gave him strong powers. In the comic is implied that these powers come from the Old Gods, or Dragon Gods, which again reinforces the assumption that maybe the Forgotten Ones were dragons originally worshipped by the Elvhenan until they claimed divinity as their own and did not need them anymore [further exploration of this concept in Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History].

Mythal as a Changed Goddess

When we learn that we need to summon Mythal, an elven inquisitor will reinforce a concept that has been repeated all over Flemeth's lines:

Elven Inquisitor: "My people believe that Mythal was trapped beyond the Fade long ago. Even if she is not, she has never shown any evidence of being alive, never responded to our prayers."

This shows that despite Mythal is who was once, she also changed deeply, hence she stopped being powerful or being present for The People, even though we always see Flemeth being kind with Merril, or an Elven Inquisitor. There is a dear sentiment for them, but distant.

Inquisitor: I presume you know what we're up against Flemeth: better than you can possible imagine

This part of the dialogue is when the Inquisitor asks her for help about Corypheus. It's hard to know what Flemeth is exactly referring to: Is she talking about magisters? The blight, the red lyrium, or most likely, a mage pretending to ascend to godhood? This last option makes more sense, since Solas told us about Mythal stopping Falon'Din from his uncontrollable desire of being worshipped in mass. So, we can assume that there is a soft confirmation about what Solas told us about Mythal: she fought against people who abused their power to increase their worshipping or tried to acquire godhood. Further details, read Temple of Mythal, What pride had Wrought: Part 2.

When the Inquisitor is non-elven, and claims that Flemeth should tell the truth to the world, she goes:

Inquisitor: If Mythal is within you, why not reveal yourself? Flemeth: And to whom should I reveal myself? I: To the elves? To everyone? F: [Laughs] I knew the hearts of men even before Myhtal came to me. It's why she came to me. They do not want the truth, and I... I am but a shadow, lingering in the sun. I: Why did Mythal come to you? F: For a reckoning that will shake the very heavens.

Morrigan: And you follow her whims? Do you even know what she truly is? Flemeth: You seek to preserve the powers that were, but to what end? It is because I taught you, girl, because things happened that were never meant to happen. She was betrayed as I was betrayed - as the world was betrayed! Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me, and I will see her avenged! Alas, so long as the music plays, we dance.

We have here, again, the Revenge vibes that Mythal seems to support and encourage in Flemeth. We are told, cryptically once more, that Flemeth had always had a desire to preserve ancient powers or entities. It's maybe not so clear to understand if the preservation of Urthemiel in DAO was Mythal's desire or Flemeth's. But we can be sure that Flemeth wanted to preserve Mythal in herself, as she wanted Morrigan to preserve Urthemiel in Kieran's body. Flemeth has always been interested in preserving ancient entities, specially dragon-like: another example is Yavanna, a daughter she raised specifically to take care of a temple where many ancient dragons hibernate [for details, read The Silent Grove].

"She was betrayed as I was betrayed - as the world was betrayed! " This line, so iconic, and in combination with all the proofs gathered in these posts, makes us suspect that the Betrayal of Mythal is her assassination [at the hands of those that attacked her Temple, according to Abelas' words]. The Betrayal of Flemeth is also unknown, but we know it is related to one of a mixture of the several versions of her story with Conobar and Osen. And the betrayal of the world could be the creation of the Blight that required brutal measures to be contained: hence the creation of the Veil and the destruction of the Elvhenan empire with it: a betrayal to the world that these elvhenan knew so far. With this I mean that I'm not sure what "world" Flemeth refers here: the Thedas we know, or the ancient world with no Veil?

It's also in this part where we have this iconic line about the music, which encourages the theory that the original source of the Blight's song is a corrupted entity trapped and/or fused with the Evanuris in the Black City [details in the post Speculations about the Vinyl Art].

We also suspect by the bold lines ["because things happened that were never meant to happen"], in combination with Solas' words about how difficult is to kill an Evanuris, that something truly terrible happened to Mythal to get killed. We know she was betrayed [ icon we saw in her Fade where a big statue we assume it's Dirthamen's exhibits a sword on his back, as a perfect symbol of betrayal: The Fade – Flemeth: Part 2], and something happened to her that not only changed her, as she claimed above, but also made terrible things happen; things that were not meant to happen.

Elven Inquisitor: Mythal was the goddess of justice. I've seen the statues. She... Flemeth: Was one of the People. Yes, indeed. So young and vibrant. You do the People proud and have come far. I: If Mythal is part of you why haven't you helped us? We’ve called to you, prayed to you. F: What was could not be changed. I: What about now? You know so much…. F: You know not what you ask, child.

As we can see, when the Inquisitor is Elven, Flemeth is kinder, and repeats similar behaviour we saw with Merril: she calls them young and vibrant, and respects them as "The People", when we know that Abelas, Felassan, and Solas, ancient elvhenan of that time, dismiss Dalish as non-elvhenan or even consider them Children. This always looked very curious to me, since apparently all of them are followers of Mythal in a way or another, yet they do not respect the Dalish as Flemeth does.

In this cryptic piece of dialogue we also realise that Mythal changed in a way that it shouldn't have happened. Maybe it could be reading too much in between lines but Flemeth claims that asking for Mythal's help is something terrible, something beyond possibility, because "they don't know what they are asking". Something so terrible happened to Mythal that changed her in a way that made her impossible for her to help The People. This again, seems to encourage the hypothesis we worked on in Speculations about the Vinyl Art.

#mythal #flemeth #high speculation #ancient elvhen #elvhenan

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lairofdragonagelore · 10 months ago

Text

Flemeth / Mythal (part 2)

The current post has the following bolded sections:

Flemeth in DAO

Story of Conobar and Osen

Flemeth in DA2

Flemeth in DAI

Mythal as an Elvhenan Goddess

Mythal as a Changed Goddess

Flemeth and Mythal

Mythal and the Well of Sorrows

Flemeth and the Music

Flemeth, Mythal, and Motherhood

Artwork of Flemeth

Flemeth in the books (or comics)

Conclusions

Flemeth and Mythal

If Kieran doesn't exist, the Inquisitor who drank from the Well will stop Morrigan from attacking Flemeth when she appears. However, if Kieran exists, Flemeth claims in this situation: "You will endanger the boy" meaning that this power she is planning to use may hurt him. It's hard to know if this is just a comment she does, a display of Mythal's motherhood, or simply a way to piss Morrigan off.

In another fragment of this scene, we have a cryptic explanation of how Flemeth can contain Mythal:

“Once I was but a woman, crying out in the lonely darkness for justice. And she came to me, a wisp of an ancient being, and she granted me all I wanted and more. I have carried Mythal through the ages ever since, seeking the justice denied to her. […] She is a part of me, no more separe than your heart from your chest." [...] "But what was Mythal? A legend given name and called a god, or something more? Truth is not the end, but a beginning.”

It's fair to question if this "ancient being" could not be a demon, as the Inquisitor says at some point. However, the voices of the Well say that Flemeth speaks the Truth. So, can we be [more or less] sure that Flemeth is not possessed by a demon? I personally have some issues about the accuracy and the reliability of the voices of the Well, because we know they are controlled by Mythal herself [read section below].

Flemeth also gives us room to wonder about who and what Mythal was. The fact she is cryptically telling us that Mythal was more than any other Evanuris makes me suspect and support the theory that Mythal is the one with double nature [instead of Fen'Harel], she is Evanuris and Forgotten One, and the Forgotten Ones were dragons that Evanuris and Elvhenan worshipped before claiming Divinity for themselves [details in Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History or in The Missing]

Flemeth: A herald, indeed. Shouting to the heavens, harbinger of a new age. As for me, I have had many names. But you... may call me Flemeth. Inquisitor: Flemeth appears in other legends, helping heroes for reasons of her own F: I nudge history, when it’s required. Other times, a shove is needed. [chuckles]

These pieces of information also tell us and reinforce what we saw in DAO and DA2: Flemeth meddles with human history so the events go to a direction she wants. It's not clear what goal is behind all this, but I think it's fair to conclude she is preparing what she promised to Mythal: avenge her, a reckoning that will shake the very heavens.

When Morrigan claims that Flemeth "prolongs her unnatural life by possessing the bodies of her daughters" Flemeth answers

Flemeth: That's what you believe, is it? Morrigan: I found your grimoire, and I am no fool, old woman Flemeth: [chuckles] Yet here you stand, bound into my service. My daughter ran from me long ago. I've let her be... until now, it seems.

Again, we have no clear answer about the process that allowed Flemeth to live so much or if it is this body the one that lived for centuries, but considering the piece of information we obtained from Yavanna in the comic The Silent Grove, I think it's fair to assume that is not Flemeth who is living through different bodies, but Mythal, who is so entangled with Flemeth's soul that now they are one single entity. Flemeth told us before that Mythal and herself are one thing. This concept is also reinforced when we speak with Anders in DA2 about his possessed condition: It's impossible to determine when Anders finishes and Justice starts. They are one now. However, this brings into account a sharp observation: we don't see this same condition in Kieran.

Do Flemeth and Kieran suffered similar possession condition? If Kieran has the power of an Old God, he will be called by Mythal in dreams, activate the Eluvian by his own, and walk into the Fade [The Fade - Flemeth: Part 1, Part 2]. Morrigan will say "To direct the eluvian here would require immense power". This fact shows us that Flemeth/Mythal shares similar powers to Urthemiel [the soul inside Kieran] since she is in the Fade by herself. This would support a little bit the idea I've been exploring long ago about the Forgotten Ones being dragons, and Mythal being one of them; the actual real Evanuris who is Evanuris and Forgotten One at the same time [and not Fen'Harel, as the unreliable Dalish Legends repeat] since in the comic Until We Sleep we learn that the Great Dragons had absolute control of the Fade [dreamer/somniari's powers-like].

Kieran: I'm sorry mother. I heard her calling to me. She said now was the time . Morrigan [to Flemeth]: Then what is it you want? Felemeth, looking at Kieran: One thing and one thing only. Kieran: I have to go, mother. Flemeth: He carries a piece of what once was, snatched from the jaws of darkness. You know this. Morrigan: He is not your pawn, mother. I will not let you use him. Flemeth: Have you not used him? Was that not your purpose, the reason you agreed to his creation? Morrigan: That was then. Now he... he is my son. [Flemeth tilts her head, curious, as if she was surprised of a response she was not expecting]

From this exchange we see again how Mythal is deeply related to the Old Gods. Even though we don't know the reason why she calls Urthemiel nor why or for what there is no time, we can see that Mythal has some level of command over Urthemiel.

We also see once more the concept of "Darkness", as a metaphoric word to mean "The Blight".

And finally, the whole scene seems to encourage the suspicion that Flemeth has been testing Morrigan's sense of motherhood, which again makes some sense: thanks to the Dev's notes in Somewhere in the Crossroads, The Silent Grove comic, and Kieran's words about the inheritor of a new age, we know Flemeth has been raising Morrigan to become the next Inheritor. We can assume it means she will be the inheritor of Myhtal's godhood, who may need some sense of motherhood in her willingly host, maybe?

Morrigan: Flemeth extends her life by possessing the bodies of her daughters'. That was the fate she intended for me. I thwarted her, and now she intends to have Kieran instead. Inquisitor: The way she talked about Kieran... Flemeth: I am not the only one carrying the soul of a being long thought lost. Morrigan: He is more than that, Mother. Flemeth: As am I, yet do you hear me complain? Our destinies are not so easily avoided, dear girl. [...] Inquisitor: If Kieran is so special, why did you wait until now to come for him? Flemeth: I did not know where he was. Morrigan cleverly hid him from me... until now Morrigan: T'was the well... Flemeth: Always grasping beyond your reach, despite all what I taught you.

Flemeth seems to compare herself to Kieran in nature and destinies: souls of old creatures that were considered gone, that remain entangled with the soul of the body they inhabit, and have a particular destiny to fulfil [which is unknown to us].

Another curious thing: even though Flemeth has enormous power, specially in the Fade, she was unable to locate Kieran for a long time. Only when someone drank from the Well she was able to do so. We know that Morrigan lived with Kieran in the spaces in-between for a long time [the Crossroads], so we can assume that these spaces are not connected to the Fade and certainly Evanuris can't perceive it. Again, we learnt about the nature of these spaces in-between in The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Elven Mountain Ruins, where the freed slaves tried to recover and hide from the Evanuris while gathering strength against them.

Inquisitor: You're... going to steal the body of a young boy? Flemeth: If my daughter believes it, that it must be so. [...] My daughter struggles. I expected no less of her.

Again, we see Mythal cannot care less to explain, and lets Morrigan to believe whatever she wants to. This coincides with what Flemeth told us in a previous scene: humans don't want the truth, and that's the true nature of their hearts. So, her approach is always “I will let you believe what you want to believe” and does nothing to make you change of opinion. In DAO, however, we find that she claims that the only wise attitude is to doubt about everything [Read DAO section in Part 1].

Mythal and the Well of Sorrows

If Morrigan drank from the Well of Sorrows:

Inquisitor: This meeting was not accident, was it? Flemeth: Clever lad/lass Morrigan: The voices.... came from you? Flemeth: The price of the Well seemed no dire thing when you saw so much gain, hmn?

If the Inquisitor drank from the Well of Sorrows:

Inquisitor: This meeting was not accident, was it? The voices from the well directed me here, and you direct them. Flemeth: Clever lad

This is also an important piece of lore: the Well of Sorrows, which gathers all the knowledge of all the high priests that served Mythal, and left their "will" in it [read Abelas' words about the concept of "will" that he lets transpire in Temple of Mythal-Part 5], are also controlled by Mythal. So this Well is not entirely a reliable independent source of information, it's as reliable as Flemeth wants it to be.

Inquisitor [If they drank from the Well]: So must I serve you now because I drank from the Well? Flemeth [chuckles]: Is that how you see yourself? A servant? I have no command for you. Not yet. Inquisitor [If Morrigan drank from the Well]: did you come here to make Morrigan serve you? Flemeth: [laughs] oh, what a servant she would make.

This piece continues supporting Abelas' words about Mythal's followers not being slave/servants against their will. Flemeth is amused to see how heavily the Inquisitor sees this position towards her, she jokes and laughs about it, and claims that there is no commands for the inquisitor. "Not yet", since she is also Flemeth, who will avenge Mythal, and will use any tool she can use to do so.

Flemeth: I wished to see who drank from the Well of Sorrows. It has been a very long time. [chuckle, if Morrian drank from it] Imagine my surprise to discover it was you. [if the Inquisitor drank it] Now I have, and he/she is free to go. Morrigan: and that's all? Flemeth: A soul is not forced upon the unwilling, Morrigan. You were never in danger from me.

This again shows how Mythal is not really fond of unwilling servants. She lets Morrigan/the Inquisitor free. And then, she claims that souls cannot be forced upon the unwilling. This line, as cryptic as anything that Flemeth says, seems to imply two things: Mythal never wanted slaves, but loyal followers. And if it's true that Flemeth's long life is because she transferred Mythal to her daughters, it should not be a process forced upon an unwilling host. Thanks to Yavanna in The Silent Grove, we suspect that Flemeth wanted Morrigan to be the next carrier of Mythal's fragment. Due to the Dev's note in Somewhere in the Crossroads, we confirm that Flemeth wanted this, and we suspect it is what she places in the Mirror before being consumed by Solas. Although if Solas took that piece of power/godhood, makes little sense to assume the same fragment was placed on the mirror, unless Mythal can divide that divine power [which is something she can do to some extent according to all what she told us about being a fragment of a whole]. In any case, we also know that Flemeth lets Morrigan/the Inquisitor free because she knows she will die soon at the hands of Solas [as the Dev's note in Somewhere in the Crossroads seems to confirm].

In the next scene, when the Inquisitor controls the dragon guardian of the altar, we see that, visually speaking, they use the same power that Flemeth cast on the one who drank from the well. So it seems to imply that the Inquisitor can control this dragon like Flemeth can control anyone who drank from the well.

Flemeth and the music:

It’s in DAO when we start seeing that Flemeth has a soft pattern of a music theme in her speech. When you find Flemeth for a second time, due to Morrigan’s personal quest, she speaks of “Morrigan’s music” as if it were a metaphor for Morrigan's manipulation. This image also brings us an analogy with the Blight and its sweet song, which manipulates blighted creatures into looking for Archdemons to awaken them [or most likely, to open the gates that keep trapped the entity in the Black City, the true origin of the song, according to Avernus in Soldier’s Peak]

Flemeth sounds very “done with” this potential assassination of her, again. This repeated situation where she sees that the ones she helped once return to kill her, may have given Mythal a bad taste in her mouth. In fact, she adds “It’s an old, old story [that Flemeth] even told. It’s a dance poor Flemeth knows well”, referring to Mythal’s. Back then, when we were playing DAO, it was impossible for us to understand the underlying meaning of these words even though we could notice there was something else. Now, thanks to DAI, all these lines are much clearer.

She doesn’t say the truth behind all this situation even if we ask her to do so simply because she knows the heart of humans: they do not want the Truth [this line was said in DAI], and she knows they prefer the comfort of the lies instead. “We believe what we want to believe”. Flemeth, then, turns into a Dragon and fights us if we choose that option. Only when we pick this option we can be sure she becomes a dragon. Up to that moment, we were hinted by Morrigan that Flemeth had polymorphed into a big unspecified creature and grabbed the Warden and Alistair in her talons.

Another reference to music that Flemeth uses appears in DAI:

Flemeth: You seek to preserve the powers that were, but to what end? It is because I taught you, girl, because things happened that were never meant to happen. She was betrayed as I was betrayed - as the world was betrayed! Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me, and I will see her avenged! Alas, so long as the music plays, we dance.

And considering the post Songs and elements that sing and whisper in DA Lore, we can agree that this line seems pretty curious and it almost allows us to link Flemeth's incoming avenge of Mythal with the Blighted song, specially if we explore all the hypothesis that sprouted in Speculations about the Vinyl Art.

Flemeth, Mythal, and Motherhood

The concept of Motherhood in Flemeth is controversial at best. Without going into a deep judgement of her character, we need to remember particular bits of lore and concepts we know about Mythal.

Mythal was always related to motherhood. It's not only something that is present in the unreliable Dalish legends, it's something we see clearly in the Temple of Mythal, and in her Mosaic [read Myhtal's section in the post Evanuris] and in Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal or Ancient Elven codices; Vir Dirthara.

In DAO, Flemeth--as the owner of a fragment of Mythal--is presented too explicitly as a witch that will possess Morrigan, questioning her genuine sense of motherhood. I think DAO had a poor presentation of a "misinterpretation", clarified later in DAI, simply because in DAO, at the end of Morrigan's Quest, there are two questionable items: Flemeth's Grimoire and "Robes of Possesion",

The grimoire doesn't say anything relevant in its description and all what we learn about it comes from Morrigan's perspective, who understands it very wrongly. But the robe has a straightforward description:

"The original intent of these robes is clear: a "welcome home" present from Flemeth, designed to sap Morrigan's will and ease the ancient sorceress's possession of her daughter. With Flemeth dead, these robes no longer pose a danger to Morrigan--but Maker help those who get in her way."

Again, this vision is after reading the grimoire and trusting Morrigan's interpretation. This item has -1 will, which seems to be very contradictory to what Flemeth claimed in DAI: "A soul is not forced upon the unwilling, you were never in danger from me" which means, in my opinion, three situations happened in all those years in between games:

Or DAO had a different idea about what to do with Flemeth originally and it changed over the years [very likely],

Or this robe is a bad designed red herring [they are lying to the player to avoid spoiling the concept of Mythal in Flemeth]

Or there is a real lore-wise explanation of this that needs a re-interpretation of the grimoire without the biases that Morrigan had acquired along her life. Maybe a re-read of this item with the Well of Sorrow's wisdom may enlighten us differently. However, this is speculation and we can't do it ingame.

We know that Yavanna in the comic The Silent Grove claims that Morrigan doesn't understand what Flemeth is doing, and apparently, what she will receive from her is a "gift", not unwillingly possession.

Kieran, if he has the old soul, will claim that Morrigan is the "inheritor" of the new age, which aligns with what Yavanna implies and the Dev's notes in DAI say: what Flemeth was trying to do is to give Morrigan the "essence of godhood, a gift that Morrigan misunderstood as hostile possession", read Somewhere in the Crossroads [Ending] for details.

The presentation of this issue in DAO makes us wonder a lot about Flemeth's sense of motherhood. On the other side, thanks to DAI, we know that Mythal was changed in a way that she abandoned her Children [the People she always seems to be so fond of], because "things happened that were never meant to happen". In DA2 and DAI we find that Mythal is also presented and perceived as a goddess that protects, with some degree of Motherhood, but also abandonment [especially in DAI]: She also abandoned Abelas and his people, as the new generations of guardians lose they deep devotion to Mythal [read Untranslatable Elven Writing, from Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal] .

On the other hand, we lack of context. We don't know how Mythal was killed, if it was due to a betrayal from the Evanuris because she trusted them, and why she raised Morrigan harder than she should have.

Even though this Mythal is changed and has a questionable sense of motherhood, we see in DAI a motherhood test: when Morrigan tells Flemeth to leave her son and take her instead, Flemeth takes Urthemiel's fragment and leaves them both alone. Later, Morrigan will claim this was a test she was not sure she had passed.

[Kieran looks at Flemeth] Flemeth: As you wish. [She looks at Morrigan] Hear my proposal, dear girl. Let me take the lad, and you are free of me forever. I will never interfere with or harm you again. Or, keep the lad with you... and you will never be safe from me. I will have my due. Morrigan: I will take my chances. Flemeth: I found you once, girl. What makes you think I will not find you again? Morrigan Take over my body now, if you must. Just let Kieran go. He will be better off without me, just as I was better off without you. [Flemeth seems to make a face of hurt, as if those words reached her. Then, she looks at Kieran, and it seems to look like they can communicate in silence. Then she smiles at him as a blue glow passes from Kieran's body to Flemeth's] Kieran: No more dreams? Flemeth: No more dreams. [As Kieran returns to his mother] A soul is not forced upon the unwilling, Morrigan. You were never in danger from me. Listen to the voices. They will teach you... as I never did. Flemeth: [...] I will have my due. Morrigan: He returns to me. Flemeth: Decided so quickly? Morrigan: Do whatever you wish. Take over my body now, if you must, but Kieran will be free of your clutches. I am many things, but I will not be the mother you were to me. [Flemeth seems to make a face of hurt, as if those words reached her.]

So, what seems to transpire in both scenes is that Flemeth ends up hurt by Morrigan's words about her bad motherhood. Another detail is that those who have ancient beings in their body seem to have "dreams", hard to understand what that means. We can't say if these dreams are, in truth, walks through the Fade, or something else.

Another thing that stands out is that these scenes seem to show that Flemeth has been testing Morrigan's sense of motherhood. And if the player doesn't suspect this earlier, the next scene is explicit about it:

Returning from the Fade: Morrigan: Are you alright, Kieran? You are not hurt? Kieran: I feel lonely. [kieran leaves] Morrigan: she wanted the Old God soul all along. Is it worth reminding myself that perhaps I do not know everything after all? My mother has the soul of an elven goddess—or whatever "Mythal" truly was—and her plans are unknown to me. [...] I knew she kept the truth from me. I even suspected she was not truly human... but this? I always thought the so-called "elven gods" were little more than glorified rulers, now I have doubts. And doubt is... an uncomfortable thing, Inquisitor. Just be thankful you did not drink from the Well. I am evidently tied to my mother for eternity. Inquisitor: So Kieran had... the soul of an Old God? Morrigan: [...], yes. He has never known anythign else. I am uncertain what effect this will have on him. [...] I told you at the temple. The magic of old must be preserved, no matter how feared. Kieran had a destiny, and now it is in Flemeth's hands. I suppose we shall see what she does with it. Inquisitor: For what it's woth, I think you did the right thing. Morrigan: Did I? She was testing me, and I cannot tell whether I passed.

Kieran's sense of loneliness brings immediately to our mind the case of Sigrid Gulsdotten in Frostback Basin [DLC]: Stone-Bear Hold Avvars - Part 1, who did not want to be separated from the being she was possessed by because she would feel lonely. What we can see in this scene is that removing a soul from a possessed body is possible and won't leave them scarred as the Dalish believe [Marethari Talas tells us this in DA2 and in Merril and the Eluvian].

We see that Morrigan continues in keeping and preserving magic of old times, as Flemeth told her to do all her life, and at the end of the scene, we are assured, if we had some doubts up to that moment, that Flemeth has been testing Morrigan in something she doesn't understand. We can suspect it may be related to her sense of Motherhood given the overall scenes, as Mythal is a mother before anything else. Maybe Flemeth is preparing Morrigan to be a better host for Mythal, with a better sense of motherhood, since she is the "inheritor" of a new age [could it mean the inheritor of an age that came after the revenge was taken?].

Artwork of Flemeth

Artwork of flemeth is broad and varied and may hide some extra details about the figure of Flemeth.

One of the pieces that brought my attention the most belongs to the Book of Thedas Volumen 1:

We see Flemeth in her dragon shape. The dragon has a beautiful foreshadowing detail: it has some swirls that we can find in Mythal's dragon shape statue in DAI. This dragon is not only telling us that it's Flemeth in her shapeshifter form, it's also Mythal [not only the shape of the horns is similar to the statue's; it has a central spike, read the Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The single spike].

Then, we find Flemeth in her war attire, depicted with a yellow sphere that coincide with the curvature of her staff. This ball can be interpreted in many ways: a mere design effect to make it look like glow, a sphere that can represent the orb power we see as an asterisk in many murals [Murals in DAI], the symbol of Mythal destroying a Titan [The Death of a Titan], or a sphere related to those red sphere explained in the Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal and Ancient Elven codices; Vir Dirthara. The sphere combined with the shape of her staff also seems to create an effect of an eye, also related to Mythal [at least in concept art]. The extreme of this Staff also appears in DA2, in Merril's loadscreen when we see the eluvian being broken [skim over the post Merril’s Eluvian to find the image].

This staff has a similar shape to the original design of Andraste's helm in her statue version of DAO, and it is also related to Flemeth several times in DA2 [in the background] or in other pieces of art where we see her holding this staff. We find in Patterns and Styles: Tevinter that some concept art seem to show a Tevinter staff inspired in this one, which again, makes a link between Tevinter and their dragon worshipping, with the Evanuris in a very indirect way.

However, this staff never made it into any game; I cannot say it was due to lore-wise reasons or simply it was hard to design in the games.

Finally, we see at the very right corner of the image an old woman with an apron that has a shape of an eye. This eye is the same one we find in the concept art of the Mythal's Temple guardians that did not make it into the game but we can see in the artbook of Inquisition. We can associate Mythal with a deep knowledge of the future that this eye may represent. We know Flemeth has been nudging history and [through the books], we can even suspect she has some foresee ability [read, for example, the meeting with Maric and Loghain in The Stolen Throne, several sections below].

The Eye may also be related to some presence in the dreams/Fade [let's remember that the Fade is a reflection of the Waking World, and you just need to "read and observe" the right way to have the information you need, according to Solas and several unreliable sources of Enchanters' codices]. In posts like Andrastian Design: Stained Glasses, the comic Until We Sleep or in Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun, I've talked about the impressive and yet easy to miss event of an elf in Val Royeaux who claims to have been visited by Mythal in dreams and after that conversation, he has his face burned with her vallaslin [Elven Servant Dreams of Mythal, another videos here]. The fact that Mythal can be related to the symbol of the eyes may show her relationship with foreseen powers and her ability to visit people in dreams and change reality through them. This is, so far we learnt in Feynriel quest [Feynriel - Somniari and Fade], the powers of the dreamers, and thanks to the comics Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep we know these powers also belonged to particularly powerful dragons.

In DA2, Flemeth's art can be found in the game itself in one of the Varric's narrations [Act 1]. In it, she looks like a mountain, with details of veins that make us suspect some relationship with titans and lyrium [design and visual detail discussed in Design of Kirkwall]. It's only in DAI where we learn through the codex and the mural “The Death of a Titan” that she was able to destroy a titan and, probably, took a unique power from it that may have encourage the Evanuris to kill her. It could also be the mere use of lyrium that the Evanuris started to implement in their magic to acquire more power and divine status. We can see in this image that the symbol of her staff is also in the background, cutting her in half: below the mountain, above the humanoid-dragon-like woman.

In this image, we see Flemeth wearing her war attire, which has a lot of parts that reminds us the statues of the Emerald Knights in Emerald Graves: Din'an Hanin or in the warrior version of Andraste herself. She is surrounded by dark smoke that reminds me the power that the elvhenan displayed in DAI: Abelas when he is killed by Morrigan, Flemeth when she is summoned as Mythal in her Altar, and Solas when consumes Flemeth's powers. In all these cases, they use dark smoke around them or in their powers. Read Somewhere in the Crossroads [Ending] to see the visual details of this. We see again the importance of the staff placed at the almost centre of the piece of art.

The "yellow mosaic" possesses a strong assumption: it has four shapes at the corners that may represent eluvians or something related to Mythal.

In the mural of “the Temple of Mythal” from “The actions of the Inquisitor”, we see that Solas draw a particular star of 8 points inside a door frame that resembles this “eluvian outline”, but it’s also the shape of the doors of the Temple of Mythal which represents Mythal herself in her dragon shape. All these symbols seem to reinforce the idea we explored in “The Death of a Titan”: Mythal seems to be related to the core power of a Titan represented by an asterisk that evolves into a golden ring and into a sun. However, it's curious to highlight that the sun was always a symbol related to Elgar'nan.

As I repeated several times in Speculations about the Vinyl Art, at times, we find some hints where stars or balls of fires [also understood as suns] are related to Mythal and Elgar’nan, making us suspect that, maybe, Mythal and Elgar’nan share a nature similar to Falon’Din and Dirthamen’s: apparently, the same creature with two different aspects from them. If this were the case, associating Mythal with the Sun would make sense, and it would also explain why, if Elgar’nan was so central in the Elvhenan culture, there are so few representations and statues of him, while Mythal overwhelms it.

The center of the mosaic displays the Asterisk Symbol [made of 8 points], which may be related to the core of a Titan [asterisk of 8 points too]. The link is immediate when we see that this asterisk is outlined by a shape that looks like a star or a Sun, inside a big ball with triangular-shape ends. This same symbol appears in the Trailer of DA4, behind Solas, when he is presented like an Hermit, mysterious, apostate mage. Around this “sun” we can make out several concentric lines that may refer to a “Golden Ring”.

The Asterik symbol also appears in murals such as “The Creation of the Veil” or “The Death of a Titan”, which allowed us to relate them with the core of a Titan and its immense power of “making real what you imagine by reinforcing the reality”, but this symbol also appears in a corner of Solas’ tarot card. For more details, read Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun .

Her art in Heroes of Dragon Age shows her more like a chasind mage, with a painted fave [1,2], and a curious staff of an appostate [1,4], which is also depicted, sometimes, in Solas' art. This staff made it into the game, and was reused many times in DA2 making it a bit meaningless. We can clearly see the similar design in her dress as a chasind mage [1,2] as well as in Flemeth's war attire [3]. In [3] we see again the staff that looks like an eye.

The vynil: I made a whole post about the potenciality of understanding the dragon we see in the Vynil as (a fragment of) Myhtal. Since it's a strong hypothesis, I will leave it there, so you can read more about it in Speculations about the Vinyl Art.

Flemeth in the books (or comics)

The Stolen Throne

In this book, we see Flemeth when Maric Theirin and Loghain are captured by Dalish that delivered them to her. As an exchange to leading them out of the Wilds, Flemeth requests Maric to make a promise we don't know about it, as well as giving him the knowledge that a Blight will occur in Ferelden. She also gives him a cryptic warning about Loghain: "Keep him close and he will betray you, each time worse than the last." These details reinforce the idea that she has foreseeing powers that were implied in the art through the symbol of the eye.

Flemeth is presented as a decrepit woman: " She was the very picture of a witch, wild white hair and a robe formed mostly of thick black furs and dark leather. Hanging down her back was a heavy cloak trimmed in fox fur, quite striking and delicately stitched. She carried a basket filled with large acorns and other items wrapped in red cloth".

She also uses sylvans. At some point, Loghan is attacked by a sylvan, what forces Maric to beg forgiveness to Flemeth. She is surprised, and once again, we see that she really appreciates "good manners":

Sweat trickling down his brow, Maric cleared his throat and carefully lowered himself to one knee. “I beg your pardon on behalf of my companion, good lady.” His voice was quiet, but the old woman appeared to be listening, fascinated. “We have been running for days now, and after the Dalish attacked us . . . we expected more of the same, despite the fact that you have offered no provocation. I apologize.” He bowed his head, trying his best to remember the courtly manners so painstakingly taught to him over the years by his mother. To think he had rolled his eyes at those lessons, assuming that he would never have an actual use for them. The witch laughed shrilly. “Manners? My, but that is unexpected.”

We also can see again Flemeth's foresee abilities:

“So you are he,” the witch said, nodding with approval as she studied Maric. “I knew you would come, and the manner in which you would come, but not the when.” She let out a sharp guffaw and slapped her knees. “Isn’t it marvelous how very capricious magic can be with its information? It’s like asking a cat for directions—consider yourself lucky if it only tells you where to go!” She howled with laughter at her own joke.

This also makes sense with the image of the temple of Mythal and its guardians in the concept art, with eyeball tattoos or armour. We can assume this comes from her ability to present herself in the dreams of some people, as it happened with the elven man in Orlais. This symbol of eyes, also presented in the first art piece of the section of Flemeth Art, can be considered a way to represent her omnipresence due to her ability to visit everyone in dreams, or foreseen powers.

“Fortunes change.” The witch’s gaze shifted to far off in the distance. “One minute you’re in love, so much in love that you can’t imagine anything wrong ever happening. And the next you’re betrayed. Your love has been ripped from you like your own leg, and you swear you’d do anything—anything—to make those responsible pay.” Her eyes focused on Maric, and her voice became soft, caressing. “Sometimes vengeance changes the world. What will yours do, young man?”

This part seems to reinforce the concept that Flemeth and Mythal are allied in order to perform a revenge. Through the tales of Conobar and Osen, we know that Flemeth may have been avenged thanks to the help of Mythal, and now it's the turn of Mythal: for which Flemeth has been changing and modifying the events of the world in order to accomplish this so long-awaited reckoning.

Loghain stepped forward angrily. “Leave him alone.” The witch turned to regard him, her eyes delighted. “And what of yours? You’ve rage enough inside you, tempered into a blade of fine steel. Into whose heart will you plunge that one day, I wonder?” “Maric and I are not friends,” he growled, “but I don’t want him dead.” Her chuckle was mirthless. “Oh, you know what I speak of.” Loghain paled, but regained his composure almost immediately. “That . . . doesn’t matter any longer,” he stated evenly. “Doesn’t it? Have you forgiven them already, then? You no longer remember her cries as they held her down? The laughter of the soldiers as they held you back and made you watch? Your father when he—” “Stop!” Loghain shouted, his voice filled with as much terror as fury. Maric watched in shock as Loghain launched toward the witch as if to strangle her. He lurched to a halt before he reached her, hands clenched tightly into fists as he struggled against his impulse. The trees around the hut seemed to creak in anticipation, like coiled springs. The witch merely rocked and watched him quietly, unconcerned. “You see too much, old woman,” he muttered. “In fact,” her tone was dry, “I see just barely enough.”

We can see here Flemeth's powers: she sees Loghain and can see when he had to watch Orlesians rape and kill his mother in front of him, who was a mere powerless child at the time. She sees into a person and sees the most traumatic events in their past. And probably this is why she can see the future as well. Hence, another reason more why her original concept implied an eyeball.

Loghain also didn’t want to think about what sort of promise the witch had elicited from Maric. He had gone into her hut and had remained there for hours, long enough that Loghain grew concerned. He had been trying to peer in through its one filthy, grit-covered window when Maric walked out the door, alone. The man seemed shaken and quiet and was resistant to even the most casual efforts Loghain made to inquire about what had gone on. So it was to remain a secret, after all.

Later we can suspect that Maric was in shock because Flemeth told him the destiny he had to fulfil in the next book: The Calling.

The hut was empty of everything but dust and rot, as if nobody had lived there for years. They searched about, but there was no sign of the witch. There was also, he noticed, no sign of Dannon’s body or his makeshift grave. It seemed they were free to go. It took them four days’ travel to leave the Wilds. Supposedly, the witch had told Maric they would see the way out once they left her hut, and sure enough, not an hour away a bluebird appeared in the trees before them. It was so out of place, and sang so sweetly, that both Loghain and Maric took instant notice. As they approached, it flitted to the next tree and to the next until Loghain realized it was leading them. So they followed. When it reappeared the next morning, there could be no doubt. The only thing Maric didn’t talk about was the witch.

Loghain and Maric are guided out of the Wild, showing the powers that Flemeth had in the Kocari Wilds.

[As they returned to Ferelden and out of the Wilds] It wasn’t long after leaving the ruins that they encountered wolves again. For the first time, Loghain was truly beginning to believe that the old witch had called on greater magic to aid them than just summoning a bluebird guide. Loghain stood with his bow at the ready, eyeing the wolves warily, while Maric remained breathless beside him. The entire pack, however, maintained its distance and watched, but did not threaten. Loghain and Maric moved cautiously through the trees, with perhaps twenty large wolves sitting and staring at them silently with their feral yellow eyes. Still, nothing happened. As soon as they were out of sight, Loghain let out a long breath. He swore that he never wanted to encounter magic again as long as he lived, and Maric murmured agreement. [...] When the sun went down that day, the bluebird vanished.

Interestly enough, Flemeth also uses the help of wolves to guide Maric and Loghain out of the Wild. The curious detail I liked to highlight is that they all share the yellow eyes, a feature that has been very unique of certain characters: Flemeth and her daughters [Morrigan and Yavanna], Abelas, some Qunari [we can notice this in more detail in the comics], and Titus [a Magister who performed dragon blood drink rituals]. All of them related to Mythal and/or dragons. However, in DAI, the feral wolves always appeared with Fade-like coloured eyes.

Dragon Age: The Calling

Fourteen years later, Flemeth's words inspire Maric, now King of Ferelden, to accompany the Grey Wardens on their expedition into the Deep Roads. He later relays her words to Loghain, who disagrees with them and points out that she may have been deceiving them.

Maric steepled his hands together and considered. He hadn’t wanted to tell Loghain, but it seemed like he had no other choice. “Do you remember the witch we met in the Korcari Wilds?” he began. “Back during the rebellion, when we were fleeing the Orlesians?” Loghain appeared taken aback, as if he hadn’t expected a rational explanation. He hesitated only a moment. “Yes. The madwoman who nearly killed us both. What of her?” “She told me something.” Loghain looked at him expectantly. “And? She babbled many things, Maric.” “She told me that a Blight was coming to Ferelden.” He nodded slowly. “I see. Did she say when?” “Only that I wouldn’t live to see it.” Loghain rolled his eyes and walked a step away, running a hand through his black hair. It was a gesture of exasperation with which Maric was well familiar. “That is a prediction that almost anyone could safely make. She was trying to scare you, no doubt.” “She succeeded.” He turned and glared at Maric scornfully. “Did she not also tell you I was not to be trusted? Do you believe that now, too?” There was a tension in that look, and Maric knew why. The witch had said of Loghain, “Keep him close, and he will betray you. Each time worse than the last.” It was the only one of her pronouncements to which Loghain had been privy, and obviously he remembered it well. Perhaps he thought that if Maric believed one, he believed the other. Loghain had never betrayed him, not to his knowledge. It was something to keep in mind. “You think it’s a coincidence?” Maric asked, suddenly uncertain. “I believe this witch was serving her own purposes, and would lie about whatever she thought convenient. Magic is not to be trusted, Maric.” Loghain closed his eyes and then sighed. He shook his head slightly, as if what he was about to say was madness, but he opened his eyes anyhow and spoke with conviction. “But if you truly believe that the witch’s warning has merit, let me be the one to go into the Deep Roads, not you. Cailan needs his father.” “Cailan needs his mother.” His voice sounded hollow, even to himself. “And he needs a father who isn’t . . . I’m not doing him any good, Loghain. I’m not doing anyone any good here. It will be better if I’m out there, helping the kingdom.” “You are an idiot.” “What you need to do,” Maric ignored him, “is to stay. Look after Cailan. If something happens to me, you’ll need to be his regent and keep the kingdom together.” Loghain shook his head in frustration. “I can’t do that. Even if I believed this cryptic warning, I would not agree that it was worth placing you in the hands of these Orlesians. Not without an entire army to surround you.” Maric sighed and sat back in the throne. He knew that tone. When Loghain believed he was in the right, there was no dissuading him. He would sooner call the guards in here and attempt to have Maric locked up in the dungeon than see him do this. In Loghain’s mind, the Grey Wardens were Orlesian. The First Enchanter was Orlesian. This had to be some manner of plot—not that it would be the first. There had been several assassins over the years, as well as more than a few attempts by disaffected banns to overthrow him, and while Loghain could never prove that the Empire was behind them all, Maric did not disbelieve his theories. Perhaps he was even right about this. But what if he wasn’t? The witch had been crazy, almost certainly, but Maric still found it impossible to discount her words entirely. She had saved their lives, put them on the path out of the Korcari Wilds when otherwise they would have died. He had almost forgotten her warning about the Blight, but the very instant First Enchanter Remille had told him of the Wardens’ request for an audience, he had remembered. The thought of a Blight here in Ferelden was almost too much to bear. [...] Surely such a disaster was worth risking almost anything to avert. Loghain could dismiss the idea, but Maric was less convinced. What if the witch was correct? What if the whole point of receiving such a prophecy was that it gave you a chance to try to prevent it?

Here we have the mystery explained: Maric was told about the incoming Blight and that he would be dead by that time.

[...] “And here I thought it was the Commander’s charm,” Duncan quipped. Maric ignored him. “After my mother died, Loghain and I were lost in the Korcari Wilds trying to get away from the Orlesians,” he began, his voice solemn. “We met an old woman, a witch who saved us. She gave me a warning. She told me that a Blight was coming to Ferelden.” There was something more to his story, Fiona could see it. But he stopped there, snapping his mouth shut. Genevieve pondered the tale, and looked at Maric curiously. “A witch hiding in the Wilds? And you believe what she said?” “There were . . . other things she said that were true.” “Magic cannot see the future, Maric,” Fiona told him. “But there are visions. Mages can see them; you said so yourself.” He let out a long, ragged breath. “I don’t know if I trust her. I paid a high price for the witch’s words, however, and it just seems like too much of a coincidence if it isn’t true.” Fiona saw the shadow behind the man’s eyes. She didn’t know the full story of this witch, but she could see that its implications disturbed him. And he believed in what he had been told. But that was not so incredible, was it? Fiona believed in Genevieve’s vision. They all did. It was not difficult to believe that at the root of these visions lay the Blight, warnings against the coming disaster.

We learn that Maric was disturbed by the warning of the Blight, but also that he had paid a high price to be saved and informed of these things. The only thing I believe he was locked in a promise is what Yavanna says in the comic: He had to awake greater dragons that were sleeping, but somehow, he failed to his promise due to the kidnapping under Titus. Read the details in The Silent Grove .

Dragon Age: The Silent Grove

Flemeth is mentioned by another daughter, Yavanna, the Witch of the Wilds in the Tellari Swamps of Antiva, who reveals that Flemeth made Maric promise to come to the Silent Grove once his children were grown. She also says that Flemeth's ritual of possession that Morrigan feared is, in fact, a "gift."

Yavanna: I had no idea you had met my sister Alitair: Then you'll be shocked to hear how I encountered your mother. Flemeth likes sunsets, turning into things, and talking about how clever she is. I'm also told she possess her daughters. Y: Is that right? Ha! Alistair: What's so funny? Morrigan found out what Flemeth planned and we stopped it Y: That poor, confused child. It is a gift.

This coincide with the notes that Gaider shared few time ago about the planning of the scene of Flemeth's death or with the dev's notes inside the game [read Somewhere in the Crossroads [Ending]].

Conclusions

If we gather all the bits of information along the games, we have a more complete picture of Flemeth, her relationship with Mythal, and some degree of enlightenment about her goals:

She polymorphs into a Dragon [DAO], but we have a good amount of reasons to suspect she is a dragon, and probably one of the Greater Dragons that only are mentioned in the comics [The Silent Grove]. Since we find in Elvhenan ruins her mosaic as a mother of many [see Evanuris] but also as a dragon in the shape of a gate, we can suspect a double nature in her: Dragon and Evanuris/elvhen. This duality is one of the main reasons why we could suspect that the Evanuris who was Forgotten One and Creator [according the unreliable Dalish Legends] was her instead of Fen'Harel [since Solas told us he never was a god, and he has always been this elvhen we see, read Solas sharing Lore: Part 1 - Part 2 for refreshment]

She has a set of beliefs that justify and make her behaviour more understandable:

She believes that we have to doubt all what we know, which makes sense since the repeated theme in DA series is how unreliable history and stories are due to the nature of the political, social, and religious conditions in which they develop. She also reinforces a level of disinterest in trying to push the "truth" onto others. She is so tired and worn-out, and understands the "nature of humans" too deeply, that she knows that they will believe only in what they want to believe. It doesn't matter the truth, hence she does not put energy in sharing it, not even in those who are willingly to stay open minded for it ["They do not want the truth"]. When it comes to the truth, she claims it's not the end, but the beginning.

For her, names are useless. She is known across history by many names, and gives them no importance. This detail may say a lot: elvhenan put their goal and purpose in life in their own name; if she keeps part of this tradition in her Mythal mind, having no name is almost an equivalent of not having purpose.

Bodies are useless too: Mythal can take different bodies and be in different places at the same time. Flemeth has put a fragment of her in an amulet that allowed her to be raised in DA2 after potentially being killed in DAO. When you talk to her, you are informed that bodies are things that annoy her. This makes sense when we think in the shapeless culture that the Elvhenan had long time ago. Flemeth is a piece of a bigger thing, a bit lost and wandering in Thedas, a shadow that dies slowly under the sun, but also a flotsam to cling to in a chaotic storm. All images of someone broken, diminished, tarnished, agonizing, that still tries to survive because has one thing to accomplish: a destiny to fulfil. This terrible change in her was product of “things that happened that were never meant to happen" .

Flemeth has a clear goal and purpose, deeply related to the Revenge of Mythal. For that reason, she has been meddling in the History in order to orchestrate a big plan, which we, as players, have no idea about.

Betrayal and Revenge: Flemeth has this concept deeply attached to her persona. It's not only the Betrayal of Mythal by those "who attacked her Temple" and assassinate her, it's also Flemeth and a Betrayal from one of the men she was involved with, according to the unreliable tale of Conobar and Osen. If Mythal changed after the assasination, and her motherhood and Justice purpose were twisted and changed into Revenge, we may have conflicting lore about Elgar'nan and her [both with the same purpose of revenge]. This point is never clear with the games up to DAI.

However, via the Altar scene, we know she used to be called for revenge, even before the assasination, so Myhtal always had this aspect related to her.

"She was betrayed as I was betrayed - as the world was betrayed! " This line, so iconic, and in combination with all the proofs gathered in these posts, makes us suspect that the Betrayal of Myhtal is her assassination [at the hands of those that attacked her Temple, according to Abelas' words]. The Betrayal of Flemeth is also unknown, but we know it is related to a mixture of the several versions of her story with Conobar and Osen. But the betrayal of the world could mean the creation of the Blight that required brutal measures to be contained: hence the creation of the Veil and the destruction of the Elvhenan empire with it.

Flemeth remembers promises: According to Marethari, Flemeth always keeps her word, and has a good memory about those who made a pact and a promise with her. This is confirmed when Flemeth is surprised that Hawke kept their word.

Mythal, the elvhenan goddess: We know that Mythal is the embodiment of motherhood thanks to the unreliable Dalish legends, but also thanks to the only mosaic that shows her as an elvhenan [see Evanuris]. In this mosaic, she is depicted with a flaccid breast and five small creatures in her arms, as a symbol of breastfeeding babies. This version appears in the Temple of Mythal [Part 3], in the Emerald Graves: Din'an Hanin, and in the last platform where we fight Corypheus in DAI [Frostback Mountains: Somewhere North, although it's focused only on her elvhenan face]. However, there is another depicture of her: the dragon one, usually present in her Temple where she imparted Justice.

Motherhood and Justice: We know that Mythal represented these two concepts, and they were kept in the unreliable legends of the Dalish, as well as her "terrible" side, related to a certain degree of Wrath. The Dalish seem to justify this side as the "angry mother" side, but as we explore the games and focus on Flemeth, we discover that she always had a Revenge representation. Solas even confirms it in the Altar scene. This Revenge may be an interpretation of Justice, so it would still make sense. But it all depends on the degree of rationality that this revenge has in itself. Otherwise, it would have been crossing the same paths that Elgar'nan [if we can trust the representation that we have of him, since most of it comes from unreliable Dalish sources and elvhenan ones]. However, we always need to keep in mind Solas' words: Mythal was always a complex creature [hence more reasons to suspect her duality as Elvhenan/Evanuris and Forgotten One]

Blight and Grey Wardens: She seems to be aware of all the rituals and treaties related to the Grey Wardens. She also has enough power to always keep the darkspwan away, even when she lives in the place where the main outbreak happened [Kocari Wilds]. This is also implicity seen in Solas`case, in the comic The Missing; thanks to these powers that he absorved from Flemeth, he can hide in the Deep Roads overwhelmed by darkspawn while keeping himself safe from Venatori and other human dangers. This makes us suspect that Flemeth and/or Myhtal have a certain degree of command over the Blight. That Solas and Flemeth have a deep knowledge of the Blight and the Joining ritual of the Wardens is not surprising if we rememeber that these things may have come from the knowledge of ancient Arlathan elves [read Tarohne, the Fell Grimoire, and Xebenkeck for details]. Like Solas, she explicitly says that there is a bigger Evil behind the Blight, and it's what humanity should be worried about, not so much about the darkspwans [DAO].

Magic and powers that once were: Flemeth taught Morrigan a great deal of ancient magic related to forbidden rituals [DAO ending] or blood ancient magic. She encouraged in her daughters to preserve the powers of the Old at all cost [Morrigan] as well as give them the position of guardians of Dragons [Yavanna]. This makes us suspect that a lot of the ancient magic that Flemeth was always interested on preserving is related to ancient Dragons. Maybe this is a potential hint about the Forgotten Ones and the hypothesis that they may have been ancient powerful dragons that ruled the skies once [this was informed by Yavanna in The Silent Grove]

Foreseen powers: She seems to have a certain degree of foreseen powers, letting her know that Maric and Loghain will visit her in the Wilds, that our Warden in DAO was key in the survival of Ferelden, and that Hawke was useful for her due to a potential death at the hands of the Warden. Related to these powers comes the well known line "It's fate or chance? I can never decide". She also foresees a radical, inevitable change of the configuration of the world: "We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss." These powers don’t seem to be triggered at will; it seems she sees it in the moment she interacts with the person. She sees Loghain’s betrayal in the moment she sees him directly, as well as she sees Hawke’s usefulness in the moment she speaks to them face-to-face.

Via small hints in the concept art, we can relate Mythal with eyes that may represent her foreseeing abilites as well as her power of changing reality throuh dreams, giving us a clue that she is a dreamer, powers that we know via the comics Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep were part of the original powerful dragons that ruled the sky in the begining of the times.

Music: Flemeth talks about songs and music as a metaphor of the concept of "manipulation". Morrigan's song is the manipulation of the Warden to kill Flemeth. At other times, the concept of music is merely a metaphor of facts: Flemeth also is "dancing the same song", related to be killed by those who she helped or had some dedree of her trust [this may be a reflection of Mythal's story as well as Flemeth's with Conobar and Osen].

Dalish as the young, bright, and vibrant People: Flemeth, unlike any other elvhenan we saw in the series, has respect for the Dalish. She always claims they are vibrant and young, and they do not need to bend the knee before her [Merril] unless they truly know who she is [Elven Inquisitor].

We also know via Solas that the Evanuris are hard to kill [reason why he trapped them instead of killing them long ago], so we can assume the same characteristic applies to Mythal. If Mythal was “killed”, we can assume that whatever it happened had a big power considering how hard is to kill an evanuris, and even more so a powerful one as Mythal. Maybe this is the reason why she changed so much: death itself or the event that killed her changed her radically because it was too traumatic and extraordinary.

Worshipping of Mythal: Via Abelas, we know that Mythal does not like slaves; serving her has to be an act of volition; the person has to work on in order to acquire the "right to serve her". However, she abandoned her followers after the assassination. It seems that she changed so much that she could not or do not want to answer the prayers of her people [Abelas] nor the Dalish ones [Elven Inquisitor]. Even though it is not explicit, it seems to imply that answering those prayers would have been disastrous because she stopped being the Mythal they believe in, and now she is the embodiment of a terrible thing [maybe Vengeance itself? Maybe corruption? Hard to say]. If it's because she is now too related to Vengenace, it would bring some conflict to the lore and the representation of Elgar'nan. However, we were already warned that Mythal took Elgar'nan's place long time ago to pass judgement upon The People [The judgement of Mythal].

Mythal can use and activate eluvians to walk into the Fade, and this is a testament of her immense power. Apparently, Mythal and Flemeth are the strongest when they are in the Fade, or at least, in that part of the Fade when we meet her with Kieran [DAI]. This could be because the evanuris-elvhenan nature of Mythal, as a creature of the Fade, but it could also be due to her dragon nature. If we remember the comic Until We Sleep, we find out that dragons and their blood had a particular power in the Fade, they are basically Somniari or Dreamers, able to modify the Fade and turn it into reality.

Regrets: Flemeth claims she is so filled with regrets that they poisoned her [DA2]. Unfortunately, there is no more information about this aspect of her in other scenes.

Possession process: Flemeth describes her relationship with Mythal in a similar way that Anders does with Justice: they are one, hard to separate one from the other. We can suspect that the tale of Flemeth using her daughter’s bodies to extend her life may be a lie. Yavanna seems to laugh at that idea, as well as Flemeth does, but following her philosophy of “let them believe whatever they want”, she doesn’t clarify the idea. The strange thing in this piece of lore is that we don’t see this process in Kieran, who has a similar condition, in principle: an ancient being was hosted in his body. In his case, Flemeth is able to remove it without hurting the boy. The only other case we see in lore about de-posessing a person without harm is with the Avvar: the spirit is willing to leave the host without scarring them. Maybe this is what happens with Kieran, and thus his following commet after the process: he feels alone, like in the case of Sigrid Gulsdotten [read Stone-Bear Hold Avvars - Part 1]

Urthemiel piece: it seems that Flemeth has some level of command over Urthemiel to the point to ask him to reach for her in the Fade via the Eluvian. Both of them have a destiny to fulfil, whatever that is. We may suspect it is related to the revenge/justice of Mythal.

The Well of Sorrows is a device made of the will of all the high priests of Mythal. Despite being shown in the game as a reliable source of information, I would consider to treat it carefully since we are told it can be manipulated by Mythal herself.

#flemeth #mythal #elvhenan #yellow mosaic #high speculation #well of sorrows #evanuris

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lairofdragonagelore · 11 months ago

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Hi, I really like your lore pages! I've been trying to figure out what DA The Veilguard Bellara's Dalish tattoo is related to, the one primarily on her forehead. Usually they represent one of the elven gods, but hers doesn't look like any of the gods tattoos I've seen. Though I have not found any tattoos for the Forgotten Ones, so it's possible it could be from there. Though those gods are considered to be evil. Any ideas?

Hi!

Hers and the Warden companion's Vallaslin look like things we didn't see before, which made me feel very suspicious about how much this new game will end up breaking lore just to make it look cool or just to pursue a "shock effect", narratively speaking.

Davrin, in any case, seems to be a retcon redesign of Falon'Din's or Dirthamen's or Ghilan'nain's Vallaslin [check Evanuris], which I hate, you can't really decide which one among those.

Why do they have to redesign these Vallaslins again? They claimed that "every Dalish clan developed their own vallaslin" since they are not a very homogeneous community and each Keeper ends up modifying their "ancient history" in order to obtain some desired effect: keeping the young people of the clan safe, making the clan less reckless in some explorations, helping the clan with some mourning process, etc. After all, DA lore teaches us that legends and cultural symbols are conquered, used, co-opted, and modified in order to obtain some political or social benefits/effects [you can explore these concepts in Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun or in The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light]. I don't think the Dalish would be an exception to this natural process that even happens in our real life history. This, on one hand. On the other hand, even when something evolves and is co-opted and modified, you can trace their origin; you can see the source that inspired it. Pretty much we can see this on a design level in the Dalish Banner in DAI, for example: compare it with the Elvhenan Banner and the Orlesian decorations you find in all Orlais [see Patterns and Styles: Orlais],

and you will see that the Dalish banner is a combination and amalgamation of both, testament of their Elvhenan culture influenced strongly in the Dales by the Orlesians during the time of the Halamshiral [when humans and Dalish tried to co-exist before the Exalted March on the Dales]. And this is a single example, DA lore has tons of them. I don't see this process in these new companions' Vallaslin. I feel, with all the ignorance we have about the Veilguard, that they may have retconned the dalish vallaslins just "to make them look cooler" once again, and put a cheap explanation: Dalish clans are not a monolith, [which is true], but they are not modifying all their own lore extremely apart from what they consider their "true history", aka the unreliable Dalish legends. After all, we know via Merril, that all clans try to gather once every few years to exchange knowledge and relics; they have mechanics to still keep their own "culture" as one with slight modifications. So far as we played all games of DA, we know that every Dalish considers their Vallaslin as something to be proud of and, with the lore given by game files or Bioware itself [they gave us all the Vallaslin's names in DAI], we know that these are related to the Evanuris. So, we can fairly assume Dalish see it that way: they are honouring their gods.

However, in DAI, we were told that the Vallaslins are marks of ownerships on slaves, and we also know, due to Bioware and game files that they belong to the Evanuris so far. Even Felassan's [Felassan and bits of lore] is Mythal's Vallaslin. So, in conclusion, so far, we always have been seeing and being informed that these Vallaslins were related to Evanuris, who [according to Solas shared Lore Part 2] put this mark on their slaves/servants.

Her Vallaslin is basically an aesthetic third eye, symbol of knowledge and insight, which is a very cheap design detail for her characterization, in my personal opinion. Why could she not use a variation of the one of Dirthamen one, for example? Even the retconned design of the Vallaslin from DAO to DAI have some resemblance, one another. This feels like a "whatever cool symbol we can put on her face".

Could Bellana's Vallaslin belong to the Forgotten Ones? Maybe, if you read all my posts, you may know that I've been playing with the idea that the Evanuris may have worshiped the Forgotten Ones first, who were dragons, and once the Evanuris acquired power [divinity] through the use of Titan's blood and other unknown elements extracted from them, they chased the Forgotten Ones [Andruil in particular], forcing them to hide in the "Abyss", a word we have seen many times in all the games to be related to places deep into the Deep Roads [complete analysis here: Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History ]. But the Evanuris not only took divinity power for themselves, they wanted to have the divine shape ["winged shape reserved only for the Divinity and their chosen ones"], and I think it's not too far-stretched to think that they co-opted all the symbols of their previous "ancient gods" to become Gods themselves. Remember that Solas doesn't say "vallaslins are marks of the Evanuris", but "of the gods that nobles worshiped" and yet the Dalish kept the name of the Evanuris attached to them:

Solas: I've discovered what those marks mean. Inquisitor: They honour the elven gods. S: No. They are slaving markings, or at least, they were in the time of ancient Arlathan. I: My clan's keeper said they honored the gods. These are their symbols. S:Yes. That's right. A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshiped. After Arlathan fell, the Dalish forgot. I: We try to preserve our culture, and this is what we keep? Relics of a time when we were no better than Tevinter? S:[…] You deserve better than what those cruel marks represent.

But can we question if these marks are truly from the Evanuris? Maybe the Dalish got this wrong too. The answer seems to imply that no, this part was correctly preserved: we had this curious example in Orlais where an elf who visited an old Temple of Mythal when he was a child had a dream during DAI in which Flemeth talked to him, and he woke up with the Vallaslin of Mythal on his face [I talked about this in Until We Sleep]. So we can be more or less sure that Mythal's Vallaslin is the one that the Devs gave us in DAI. Flemeth applies it on this new servant. Could this apply to all Evanuris? Well, that depends, since I don't know if it is Mythal the one who has double nature [Forgotten One and Evanuris] instead of Solas [I talked about this point all over my blog, many times].

However, it's also true that the tabletop core book [so questionable if its information is canon or not] says that some Dalish clans from the Tirashan forest wear red [blood based] Vallaslin and perform human sacrifices, and they are told to be related to rituals of the Forgotten Ones.

So far, we only know unreliable legends about the Forgotten Ones, as vague as they are, and only in the last DLC we may have found one of them, Geldaraun, who was, curiously, a dragon [read Frostback Basin [DLC]: Elvhen Tomb and Frozen Gate]. So, in general, Forgotten Ones are an immense mystery in all DA lore, and no game, comic, or book put a bit of light on this topic. It's as obscure as it was the first day.

On the other hand, and trying to debunk myself, we also have the example of Merril's Vallaslin, which was unique [maybe because they wanted to make her more unique herself? hence "let's made out a vallaslin out of nowhere"?], but also we can excuse that it was inherited from DAO [a game with a lot of visual difficulties, for example, they were unable to make the sun-mark on the tranquils' forehead, even though they knew it had to be there, lore-wise] and later, in DA2, we even find strange inconsistent vallaslin used on some elves that make no fucking sense [for example Huon, the blood mage elf who wears a castless dwarven mark on his face, is a blasting, enraging big wtf, lore-wise].

So, in short, can those strange Vallaslin be a representation of the Forgotten Ones? Maybe, we know so little about them that we can't truly answer with certainty.

We really don't know if the Forgotten Ones were evil, we only know that the Evanuris clearly made a big effort to erase them from History and indoctrinated their slaves to prosecute anyone who wanted to follow the Forgotten Ones [Pyre of the Forgotten]. Can we be sure that something is Evil just because the Evanuris considered so? We know Solas' story with Fen'Harel, and how the Evanuris saw him: as a rebel, a danger, someone you should not follow, and yet, Solas and the idea of Fen'Harel is a lot more complex and less evil than what the unreliable legends of the Dalish tell about him. So I have my doubts if someone or something is Evil just because the legacy of the Evanuris tells us so.

We only can glimpse a level of rivalry between Forgotten Ones and, at least, some of the Evanuris in Geldauran's tomb [read Elvhen Tomb]. We don't even know if the Forgotten Ones were elvhenan. Hence, all my speculation about them being Great Dragons. We only know three names: Geldauran, Anaris, and Daer'thal. Fen'Harel is considered a Forgotten One according the unreliable Dalish legends but I have my doubts, since Solas claims he has always been this elf you see, even though there is another part of him wandering the Fade [according to Cole's words]. However, Mythal is the only one of the Evanuris who has 2 different versions of her mosaic: one in elven form [a mother] and another in dragon form. If for a moment you consider the speculation that the Forgotten Ones were dragons, Mythal seems to fit better this dual condition than Solas. As you can see, my answer is very cautious, and basically I can't say much about these Vallaslin that they brought me a bit of worry of hardcore retcon. That's all what I can say with certainty. If they make a good in-lore explanation that justify these two strange Vallaslin, we may be in peace. Otherwise, it should be yet another retcon we have to endure, as we did with previous games. Although, DAO consistency is super low because the immense amount of visual difficulties they had, so DAO always sucked at environmental telling; DA2 and DAI are a lot more consistent one another [despite the difficulties that DA2 also had!], except with the Qunari lore, which was changed each time in each game, unfortunately.

Update: In Interview with John Epler, we learn that Bellara's Vallaslin is, indeed, Dirthamen's [??? wtf] and Davrin's.... Epler doesn't even remember the name of the god. So yes, imagine how careful they are with the lore details. I mean, we can only need to listen to the podcasts to realise they were absolutely careless with lore in the majority of the time. All these symptoms are giving me Marvel-like vibes from a game that should be the opposite.

#ask #High speculation #vallaslin

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lairofdragonagelore · 1 year ago

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The Claws of Dumat and the Tevinter Bird/Dragon

The Claw of Dumat was introduced to us for the first time, visually, in DA2, and it was not until DAI that we got information about it via a note. However, it was not alone; a second artefact that lacks of any information appeared beside it: a metallic sculpture of a bird or a dragon that I called along this blog the Tevinter bird.

[This post belongs to the series “Analysis and speculation of Statues”]

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

The Claws of Dumat

Where does this artefact appear? We have seen it four times already: In the Valdasine Thaig in DA2, in different places within the Fade of DAI, in Fairel's tomb in the Hissing Wastes of DAI, and in the DLC The Descent, inside a chamber of the Heidrun Thaig.

In DA2 game

The claws of Dumat appear for the first time in DA2, in the Primeval Thaig's entrance, at the sides of the main corridor that will lead us to the Thaig filled with Red Lyrium. This implies that this Thaig, which has no typical Dwarven decoration of Paragons and the writing on its walls was not traditional Dwarvish, was deeply related to Tevinter. The Thaig was located below the Deep Roads and was built before the First Blight [exact same characteristics than the Heidrun Thaig] .

We learn later that the Dwarves than inhabit this Thaig had strong trade relationships with Tevinter [they gave them lyrium, according to the codex Valdasine], and it is not clear if they were involved in the construction of Emerius [former name of Kirkwall]. The configuration of the Thaig makes us suspect that Tevinter made experiments here. There is a constant pattern along these rooms: blue lyrium, Claws of Dumat, and red lyrium, that makes us speculate that these three elements are related one another: immense source of lyrium that must have been used to feed the Claws of Dumat until the magisters used slave blood, which in the end, corrupted the lyrium and turned it into red one.

As we continue exploring the Thaig we find an interesting and mysterious codex: The profane. We interpreted it in details in the post Primeval Thaig and Red Lyrium : we assumed that these profane may have been dwarven or humans who were abandoned in this Thaig when it was closed, and hungry, started to eat lyrium, the "blood of the gods", becoming through the aeons into the "profane" creatures, that only endure hunger. Hence, they brought the attention of Hunger demons in a place where the Veil was already thin due to the experiments performed with Claws of Dumat. These profane creatures don't look similar to the abominations of the Red Templars, so we could assume that they only consumed blue lyrium and the corruption of it into red lyrium happened later.

As we continue exploring the Thaig, Varric recognises the last chamber as a Dwarven “Vault”, filled with many Claws of Dumat from which the red lyrium grows. Here, we find a staff called Valdasine, which codex says that before the First Blight, the Dwarven House called Valdasine provided lyrium to all the Empire. However, one day, they closed the doors of their Thaig and blocked communication with everyone. When the doors opened after a time, it was empty, no bodies were found, and there were no clues of what happened. From a design point of view, clearly the profane and this event must be connected: This thaig is the Valdasine’s Thaig, and the profane are all those families that were trapped here and forced to eat Lyrium. The age seems to coincide roughly: both events happened before the darkspawn existed. It's also worth noting that the presence of a staff implies that this Thaig had mages, since dwarven were unable to use magic. This reinforces the idea that Tevinter had a deep relationship with this Thaig in particular, and Tevinter mages were present here with some purpose [most likely, an experiment that required big amounts of Lyrium]. We have to remember that dwarves and Tevinter mages had shown another similar situation where Tevinter Mages experimented within dwarven Thaigs in Golems of Amgarrak. In it, a Tevinter mage was trying to recreate a fleshy alternative to Caridin's golems, crafting the mysterious Harvester.

In DAI game: The Fade

The second time we see the Claws are in the Fade of DAI. They appear at different times and contexts: In The Raw Fade - Part 1 among statues of the Free Marches eagle, implying a strong relationship of this artefact with Kirkwall. This may reinforce the idea we explored in DA2 in Kirkwall history and design and in particular with the Enigma of Kirkwall : It is likely that Kirkwall was where the breach to the Fade was done centuries ago, through blood sacrifice. This is also reinforced by the codex Claw of Dumat, where we learn that Corypheus trusted that this artefact would allow him to bring back Tevinter to its former glory.

In the section of the Fade that I called "The Tevinter Path" in The Raw Fade - Part 2 we find more Claws, implying that they were used in the process of reaching the gods that had gone silent. This event can be interpreted as the Magisters breaking into the Black City in the Fade physically.

In Flemeth’s Fade – Part 1 , we find another Claw in an intersection, where a statue of the Free Marches is shown in front of some Avvar Keepers of Fear. Again, this seems to represent the tumultuous history of the region of Kirkwall: Tevinter invaded natives of this place to build Emerius with a hidden purpose beyond the mere extraction of stones for the construction of the Imperial Highway [more details in Kirkwall history and design]

In DAI game: Fairel’s tomb

In the Hissing Wastes: Fairel tomb we find a Claw in one of the tombs, implying that the whole story of Fairel may have been related to Tevinter and its magisters as well. This makes sense if we remember that the Fairel were a clan specialised on Runecraft, and this art was used in the construction of Kirkwall. There is also a mention of runes/sigils that can only be seen from the Fade in the Heidrun Thaig in The Descent – The Sacrificial Gates of Segrummar.

The tomb where the claw appears displays a specific fragment of the story of Fairel:

Fairel, Paragon, fled from the strife his brilliance created, the strife that destroyed thaigs, sundered houses, from weapons that clan used against clan. His own clan and his two sons followed Fairel to the pitiless surface, the surface where they would hide from the war that took their home.

As we see, it is related to the exodus of Fairel and its causes: a weapon he developed, which provoked strife and destroyed clans. During this quest in DAI, we learn that this secret weapon is a kind of rune, but the game doesn't give it more importance later [it feels more because the rush of ending the game, than something lore-related]. This is the main reason why I think Fairel’s house, as runecrafters, may have helped magisters to develop Emerius [which is built following glyphs and runes patterns, for more details check Kirkwall history and design]. As a clan alone on the surface, during a time when most dwarves were underground, they may have relied on Tevinter or accepted any deal in order to survive.

There is clearly a link between the Fairel ruins and Corypheus: Corypheus knew about these forgotten ruins when nobody knew they were there, thus he commanded the Venatori to dig them and look for Fairel's particular weapon: a rune.

Also, the presence of Tevinter elements in this tomb must have been brought in the past, during the times of Corypheus when he was a human magister, since these ruins where not known by anyone until now: it was Corypheus who informed the Venatori about them. The Shaperate, the only other institution that may have had this knowledge, never knew about them since they “recorded Fairel as dead” as soon as he left the underground. So I think it’s reasonable to keep supporting the idea that this clan and these ruins were involved with the ancient Tevinters quite deeply.

In DAI game: DLC, the Descent

In The Descent – The Deep Roads we start the exploration of this region with a big Claw in the main room. It is flanked by two elven rounded trees in the dwarven style. This is already telling us that this Thaig, which predates the Blights, had Tevinter presence not only for trade: their blood ritual instruments had been incorporated to the decoration of the chambers of the Thaig Heidrun, built on a lyrium mine and then destroyed by and earthquake caused by unknown reasons [the stir of a woken-up Titan by an unknown event]. .

In front of the claw, there is a table with a game and a Dwarven stone-paintings that belongs to these strange paintings we found in Hissing Wastes: Fairel tomb, where we speculated that maybe represented Kirkwall, or another city Kirkwall-like.

Later, we find more Claws in another room where they are exposed in a way that implies worship. Since it's in here where the Tevinter bird appears, i will talk about this room later, in the Tevinter Bird section down below.

What do we know about the Claws of Dumat?

In the DAI Fade [ The Raw Fade - Part 1] we find an extremely juicy codex explaining about this artefact. The codex is written by Corpyheus’ slave who was sacrificed later. What we learn here is:

It implies that Corypheus has been developing different altars to “bring Tevinter to Glory” [Would that mean that the Tevinter bird is a prototype?].

We are informed that the Old Gods have been silent for a while and that has caused the loss of followers. This has been a source of fear in Corypheus. [This info is confirmed by Corypheus as well during Orlais: Shrine of Dumat]

This slave knows that Corypheus has been meeting with other “priests” to try to find a solution to the decline of the cult to the Old Gods.

Corypheus took his name around the time the Tevinter Magisters entered the Golden City. So we can assume this is a narration very close to the time in which the Sidereal Magisters stepped into the Fade physically.

Corypheus knew that the old elves were tied to the Fade, and the mortal elves have something of that power in their blood, hence he wanted to use their blood for the ritual of entering the Fade.

The Claw of Dumat supports the victim on its top, with shackles, and seems to drip blood along the statue to a pool with runes. [Could these runes be a creation of Fairel?]

It is implied that Corypheus used little blood magic before the silence of the Old Gods. The loss of god's voice made him fall in despair.

These words were written and reflected/preserved in the Fade at the base of one of these Claws of Dumat we find just after we pass by some Free Marches eagles. Again, the presence of the Free Marches eagles around the Claws of Dumat may be a representation of Kirkwall, but it could also represent another thing, maybe related to the Tevinter bird.

The Tevinter Bird/Dragon

It is a metal statue of something that looks like a bird or a dragon. It could be the “Tevinter” style of the usual Kirkwall eagle, or something else that escapes me completely. If one is careless, these draconic-bird-like statues can be mistakes for Claws of Dumat, but they are not. They share the same style than the Claws: they are Tevinter, made of dark metal, in an angular and pointy shape.

When we compare it with the statue of Mythal dragon shape, we can see some similitude, as if it were the same one but in the pointy “Tevinter” style. Of course, if this were the case, this metallic representation of Mythal lacks of its iconic spike.

In DA2 game

The first time we see this statue is in DA2, in the Primeval Thaig [read Primeval Thaig and Red Lyrium ], in a Chamber that Varric refers to as a Dwarven Vault but its key claims it to be a crypt. There are veins of red lyrium around these statues and around the Claws of Dumat.

In DAI game: Crestwood Caves

The next appearance is in Crestwood: Flooded Caves, at the entrance of a chamber of a Dwarven ruin.

This place seemed to be important, since it is decorated in this fashion. This entrance even has an illustration in the Book of Inquisition [image above], showing that these statues are placed at the side of the entrance completely on purpose. The position seems to be similar to Mythal statues we find in the elvhenan ruins or Temples.

In that illustration, however, we also see a big mask-face over them, reminding us those faces we saw in dwarven Thaigs in DAO, or in the Avril of Void. These faces always gave me the impression of being unconcious representations of the Titans within the dwarven culture.

Later on, I found a plaque close to this place, in a locked room, that seemed to imply this whole dwarven ruin was a route that connected Aeducan Thaig with Gundaar Thaig [another famous Thaig, and one of the first in falling under the darkspawn threat]. It’s interesting that the name Gundaar appears here, since it’s one of the three Thaigs that the lore considered lost and have been hiding curious developments [the other two are Kal-Sharok and Hormak, for more details read Orzammar, Witch Hunt, and The Horror of Hormak ].

In DAI game: Heidrun Thaig

The last appearance of the Tevinter bird was in DLC: The Descent – The Deep Roads where, despite the lack of information in a codex, we find a curious chamber in the Heidrun Thaig that may provide some insight.

The chamber in question seems to honour four statues: two Claws of Dumat and two Tevinter birds. This could have been a chamber of summoning or enhancing magic, since we know the Claws of Dumat were used with blood sacrifices to empower magic. So even though we don’t know what the Tevinter bird’s function could have been, the presence of the claws makes us infer that it may have been related to blood sacrifices and the process of breaching the Fade.

Another detail that supports this hypothesis is that, in this Thaig, blood magic has been performed long time ago: we meet an Arcane Horror in The Uncharted Abbys, Bastion of the Pure, who still performs blood magic with animal bodies [we find some dead animals that are still warm]. The curious detail is that this chamber has a lot of elvhenan objects: several inukshuk, an eluvian with the same frame that Merril's, and a statue of Humanoid Mythal. In the same chamber we also find one of the Tevinter sacrificial altars, which makes us suspect that Tevinter and Elvhenan knowledge have been fused in this place. That these elements appear in this part of the underground may be related to the fact that the Bastion of the Pure it's where we find the densest amount of lyrium [important component to cast powerful magic].

However, I'm not sure if we can assume this Arcane Horror is an ancient magister of that time. I’m more inclined to think that it is the father of the builder of The Sacrificial Gates of Segrummar, who needed to be in the Fade in order to see the sigil that is present in all this Thaig, apparently.

Speculations about the Tevinter bird/dragon

The information we have collected in here is rather scarce. We can have a good understanding of the Claws of Dumat, but it's hard to extrapolate all that to the Tevinter bird. So, I developed several hypothesis:

It's a prototype of a Claw of Dumat

According to the codex of the Claws of Dumat, Corypheus had been working on different prototypes, so we can assume this Tevinter bird may have been one of those: a mere prototype. However, if it was so, why would it be present in Valdasine's Thaig? You don't use failed prototypes. Unless its presence, in combination with the Claws, is what makes the claws work.

It's something related to Emerius

Kirkwall always had an iconic metallic statue of an eagle [1, 2]. We can even say that the geometrical symbol of Kirkwall [7] looks like an eagle extending its wings [7] even though the origin of that symbol has a strong resemblance with the original symbol of Emerius: a raising dragon [7].

In the Viscount's Keep, we see different other representations of the eagle [2, 3, 5, 6]. The origin of [3] seems to be [4] which is a symbol closer to the Emerius style than the current, geometrical one, so this design detail tells me that this symbol may have belonged to the time of Emerius. The fact that the claws of Dumat appear in the Fade close to the [1] eagle statues may represent something. Maybe the original rising dragon represented in the Emerius symbol was hidden later in a bird-like figure?

Since the dark metallic eagle represents Kirkwall [or Emerius if we are talking about old times], this draconic/bird statue may be the representation of another city with similar characteristics than Emerius, maybe less important during the time of the Tevinter Empire glory.

This idea is also suggested when we find a Claw of Dumat in the first chamber of DLC: The Descent – The Deep Roads , where we see one of those Dwarven stone-paintings, which is neither the usual painting we saw along DAO, nor the usual one representing Kirkwall in DA2.

There is also a weird "bird" statue that we only see in DA2, that I talked about it in Xenon and his Black Emporium, depicted as a humanoid bird with chains that holds a mask on it. I can't bring a decent, non-conspiracy relationship between them, but it's the only bird-like statue I can think of through all the games. This weird statue appears in many houses of Kirkwall in DA2 [specially noticeable in Danarius house].

It's a Forgotten One which, as a dragon, was taken by the Tevinter interpretation as Dumat [or any other Old God]

In the way it is presented in the Vault of DA2, and considering it has a draconic shape to it, we can even speculate that this statue is a small representation of Dumat himself.

Hence, this statue is attached to big chunks of metal and close to the Claws of Dumat in that Vault as a mere decoration.

I like to play with the thought that it may be Myhtal [as I did in the beginning of this Tevinter Bird section]: I already talked about the speculation of Mythal being of double nature [Evanuris and Forgotten One, that the unreliable oral tradition of the Dalish lore twisted to give it to Fen'Harel, details in Speculations about the Vinyl Art or Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun], and the Forgotten Ones being dragons that were worshipped by the Elvhenan until they claimed their divinity [read more in Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History]. In that moment on, they may have erased the ancient gods turning them into the forgotten ones, who escaped to the Abyss [which is related to the underground, where we know many dragons hibernate]. Therefore, there is a possibility that these forgotten dragons were taken later by the newly arrived humans [the Neomerians] who developed the cult of the Dragons, aka The Old Gods, being completely oblivious of the relationship that these creatures had with the Elvhenan, a civilisation they hated and despised. So that, they took the image of Mythal and considered it Dumat, and for that reason, they used this statue as a decoration to place around the Claws of Dumat.

The con of this interpretation is that it's not clear what kind of Dragon was the real Dumat-Archdemon which desolated the lands during the First Blight: was it truly Mythal? Another fragment of her? or was another Dragon? We already made a lot of speculations about the true Mythal being trapped in the Black City in the post Speculations about the Vinyl Art that makes this current speculation to falter.

Considering this horrible counter-argument, we could assume that maybe this is another Forgotten One that we have no name at all, but again, why would you put it close to the Claws of "Dumat" then?

Conclusion

It's clear that all speculations are pretty weak and lack of consistency to be considered seriously. For the moment, we know this statue exists, and may have some relationship with Tevinter, the Dwarves, and Emerius, even though we can't detail how that relationship is. Let's hope that future games, if they are not meant to destroy the DA lore, may give us some enlightenment on this matter.

#Analysis and speculation of Statues #Tevinter bird #Mythal #Free Marches eagles #Dragon Mythal statue #Claw of Dumat #Tevinter objects #high speculation #emerius #kirkwall

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lairofdragonagelore · 1 year ago

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Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun

In this post I will try to extensively gather all the sun-based or sun-like imagery that we find in all the games of Dragon Age. From the most typical ones to those which may seem obscure or with a hidden allegory/design. I will qualify their resemblance with the Sun symbol as Strong, Weak or other.

This post contains the following symbols

Chantry Sunburst

Elvhenan Culture: Sun symbol among the Evanuris

Elvhenan Culture: Asterisk Symbol and Elvhenan Doors

Elvhenan Culture: Golden Ring

Elvhenan Culture: Crappy Sun

Elvhenan Culture: Elgar’nan and Sylaise

Elvhenan Culture: Murals

Tevinter Culture: Green Star

Tevinter Culture: different decorative elements

Dwarven Culture: Fairel and Dwarven art

Ferelden Culture: The Sun Face and the geometrical Sun

Grey Wardens and the Sun

Avvar and the Sun

Flemeth

Qunari, Par Vollen, and the Solium Constellation

DAO design

Free Marches Rural Areas

[This post belongs to the series “Analysis and speculation of Statues”]

[Strong] Chantry Sunburst

The most typical one that appears in DA series is the Sun or Sunburst with wavy rays, repeated so much along the games that we can identify it immediately. It’s the unequivocally symbol of the Chantry. We found it in many versions, and it represents the “dawn” with the idea of hope and “new beginnings”, but also the fire that “purified” Andraste in her pyre to let her ascend to the Maker’s side. In the posts of Andrastian Art [Andrastian Design: Stained Glasses], we also find that “balls of fire” [which can be interpreted as a Sun in another way] are shown to represent the Maker or the Faith in Him.

Andraste’s single spiked helm seems to be inspired in a single sun ray, at least this is what an illustration in the Chant of Light [book of World Of Thedas] seems to suggest.

In general, most of the representations of the Chantry Sun have 16 rays.

The same sun-like symbol appears in its Tevinter version when we see the Imperial Chantry; the only difference with the Orlesian one is that the Tevinter Sunburst has straight rays.

As a detail, in DAO, we had the typical representation of the wavy sunburst present in some strange devices of Tevinter origin, for example, the ones we found in [Brecilian ruins], while the main Church in Denerim, or in Haven, display spikes that, more than resembling a sun, look like thorns or even a thorny vine. This may be a consequence of an original plan in linking, design-wise, the chantry symbology with the thorny vines that represent the Blight or the Darkspawn [As we explained in the section “Non-mural symbol: Thorny vines” from Murals in DAI: Basics], or merely it was a limitation of the design of the game, as we know DAO suffers from.

We also know that tranquils should display this symbol on their foreheads, burnt with lyrium, but as we saw along DAO, none of them had it. Later we were informed that the devs had problems to add this mark on the npc, therefore, it was never shown until DA2. When it comes to this symbol, it is interesting to see that tranquils carry the metaphor of “a Sun burning their minds and emptying them”, which may or may not be related with Dwarves and their fear to the Sun and potential relatinship of Elgar'nar shoving a fire ball into their underground lands [More details of this concept in Deep Roads [DLC Trespasser]: Lower Walkways in particular with the codex Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads,].

[Strong] Elvhenan Culture: Sun symbol among the Evanuris

Strangely close to the Chantry Sunburst symbol, we find the “half” sun symbol [tagged along the blog as Sun-head creature] in what we suspect was one of the ancient primordial dragon symbols that some Evanuris took over when they claimed Divinity [for more context, read Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History]. It’s hard to say which Evanuris took control of this symbol, but we know there is a clearly sun-like symbol present in the Crossroads of the DLC [as a statue, check The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Entrance] and in the Shattered Library [as an Eluvian, check Shattered Library; Entrance and Courtyard]. With the release of the Vinyl, we also discovered and reinforced the hypothesis that this symbol belongs to or was co-opted by an Evanuris [read Speculations about the Vinyl Art for details] thanks to the image of an elf wearing a hat with that shape.

A consistent detail of this image is that it’s a half-sun with exactly 7 rays.

[Weak] Elvhenan Culture: Asterisk Symbol and Elvhenan Doors

If we extend this imagery, and check other symbols that may look similar to a sun, we find the ancient Elvhenan Doors [Elven Ancient Shard-based door], which top displays a pointy sun of 8 rays that may or may not be related to the Asterisk symbols [also related to the Titan’s core, which I talked about in the post of Murals “The Death of a Titan”]. In the way the door gets illuminated when activated also makes us see a “circle” in it that can be loosely related to the “Golden Ring shape”. More details about this ring will be treated below.

This strange sun on the ancient door also makes us think in the Asterisk Symbol [made of 8 points], which lays at the centre of the yellow mosaic, which may be related to the core of a Titan [asterisk of 8 points too]. The link is immediate when we see that this asterisk is outlined by a shape that looks like a star or a Sun, inside a big ball with triangular-shape ends. This same symbol appears in the last Trailer of DA4, behind Solas, when he is presented like an Hermit, mysterious, apostate mage. Around this “sun” we can make out several concentric lines that may refer to a “Golden Ring”.

The Asterik symbol also appears in murals such as “The Creation of the Veil” or “The Death of a Titan”, which allowed us to relate them with the core of a Titan and its immense power of "making real what you imagine"reinforcing the reality", but this symbol also appears in a corner of Solas’ tarot card.

The yellow mosaic also has some shapes at the four corners that may represent eluvians or something related to Mythal. In the mural of “the Temple of Mythal” from “The actions of the Inquisitor”, we see that Solas draw a particular star of 8 points inside a door frame that resembles this “eluvian outline”, but it’s also the shape of the doors of the Temple of Mythal which represents Mythal herself in her dragon shape. All these symbols seem to reinforce the idea we explored in “The Death of a Titan”: Mythal seems to be related to the core power of a Titan represented by an asterisk that evolves into a golden ring and into a sun.

[Weak] Elvhenan Culture: Golden Ring

During the last trailer of DA4, we see Solas turns into the Black Dread Wolf as a sun in the background becomes a moon [single golden circle] and later, it separates itself into concentric rings, that may or may not be related to the “Golden Ring” so deeply entangled with Elvhenan culture. Thanks to this imagery, we may relate the Sun to the Golden Ring [specially if we consider that the mural presented in Nation Art: Elvhen displays the yellow ring in a position that may be considered “the sun”, but also the "authority/power above"]

We need to remember that the Golden Ring’s presence is always associated with control, power, and occasionally to Mythal and Dirthamen. In the mural of the “zombie elves”, it’s above all of them, and due to this position, it could be interpreted like a “sun” or moon upon the controlled, zombified elves. But I’m not too convinced in this interpretation, since we already explored in posts such as: Nation Art: Elvhen, Exalted Plains: Ghilan’nain’s Grove and the Dead Hand, DLC: Jaws of Hakkon - Frostback Basin, Elvhen Tomb, Ancient Elven codices; Fen’Harel’s mountain ruins, The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Elven Mountain Ruins; Vine-covered Tower, Murals in DAI: The Death of a Titan, and Speculations about the Vinyl Art that this ring was more related to control, power, or even forced change/shape in some cases. Due to its power or potential knowledge, it's also associated to Dirthamen Owl [which also could be Andruil's owl according some inconsistencies in the same Unreliable Dalish legends].

On the other hand, it’s never clear if this symbol may have morphed into a sun along the ages with the loss of memory that the Elves had throughout generations when they lost their immortality. However, I tend to consider that this Golden Ring may have changed into a Sun when it entered in contact with human groups, in the same way that I see the story of Fen'Harel gave enough context for humans to create the Maker myth based on him, potentially during the time of Halamshiral [for more details, read The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light]

This ring also appears in the last scene of DAI, when we defeat Corypheus, showing Mythal inside it, as bits of red lyrium sprout around it. This can be related to many speculations done in Speculations about the Vinyl Art, where we can conclude that another fragment/part of Mythal is still trapped in the Black City, corrupted, and contained by an immense power that may have been used before by the rest of the evanuris to control their own people.

The Golden Ring has also been seen enclosing Elven Tree Statues and Elven Orbs, implying its relationship with elvhenan power and/or Mythal’s [after all, we know that Mythal took the power from a Titan from which elvhen orbs were developed, and trees are also her symbol, according her vallaslin]. It's worth noting that the only working orb we saw in the game was Mythal’s, so far.

[Weak] Elvhenan Culture: Crappy Sun

There is also a strange symbol that I called “crappy sun” in the ancient tablet we find at the entrance and deep into the tomb of Forbidden Oasis: Solasan Temple [along this blog I’ve tagged it as “Stone in Razikale-Ceremony-style”]. It’s hard to say if it represents a sun or a breach. It may be related to a sun similar to the one of the Elven Ancient Shard-based door that, later, Tevinter co-opted to turn into the several versions of pointy suns we see in Tevinter Pre-blight ruins, [let’s remember they were not Andrastian yet, and still they had this symbology in their buildings and elements because it may have been related to ancient dragons, or taken from another elvhen symbology during the time of the Dreamers since there are some proofs, such as the Tevinter Mosaic [Invasion], that may show that Tevinter had a better relationship with elves back then].

Maybe the original symbol was related to Elgar’nan, as we see in his mosaic, where he shoves down the sun into the earth, and its rays are wavy and a bit “crappy”. If this relationship is correct, maybe what Elgar'nan shoved into the Earth to destroy the dwarves/Titans was not a sun but a breach? Again, a very unlikely hypothesis.

This “crappy sun” also has 8 rays.

[Strong] Elvhenan Culture: Elgar’nan and Sylaise

Elgar’nan’s mosaic was interpreted in the post Evanuris, and basically shows an elf shoving down a Sun of wavy rays into the Earth. It’s easy for us to relate this image to the unreliable Dalish legend of Elgar’nan [read Elgar'nan: God of Vengeance]. Elgar’nan is presented here as the son of the Sun itself, who tried to burn all life on the Land out of Jealousy, so Elgar’nan vowed vengeance against his Father’s cruelty, and his rage won against the fire of the Sun. Then, “Elgar'nan threw the sun down from the sky and buried him in a deep abyss created by the land's sorrow.”

This story can be followed later in the post Emprise du Lion: Pools of the Sun, where we find another unreliable Dalish legend claiming that this place has spring waters because it was here where Elgar’nan shoved the sun into the Earth. I also made a link to Sylaise considering the Elvhenan arenas we can see in this region, the presence of Sylaise’s Shrine, and her thirst for being always competing with someone. These details can make us suspect that this Sun could have been Sylaise [so deeply related to fire, the sun, and also as angry as Elgar’nan according the Song to Sylaise].

It’s very worth noting that these two legends, said by different clans, claim that Elgar’nan pushed the Sun into the Abyss. Another detail we have to assume is that "Abyss", "Beyond the Deep Roads" and "The Void" seem to be one thing related to the places where the Titan sleep [or even inside the Titan themselves] instead of a strange dimensional pocket we never saw before. This links the Elvhenan with the Dwarven in what we speculated in Murals in DAI: The Death of a Titan.

With this relationship, we see again the Sun as a weapon of destruction and control.

[Weak] Elvhenan Culture: Murals

Murals present a red sphere with rays that may imply a Sun .

In the mural “The Creation of the Veil” [1], we find a red sphere inside a black one, making us suspect it’s the big evil released by the Evanuris that Solas isolated with the creation of the Veil. Around it, there are seven “bubbles” with similar “rays” in grey and golden colours that may imply “gates” that would allow us the access to the central “sun” or red sphere.

In the mural “The Death of a Titan” [2] we talked extensively about the asterisk symbol, its representation of a Titan’s heart and all that power associated with it, as well as with Golden Rings. The codex in here speaks of a red sphere that contains fury, and maybe all of this can be related to a sun, or better said, the other way around: a Sun as a sphere of fire, related to fury, and buried below underground to contain its destruction. This also brings us some similarities with the unreliable Dalish legends about Elgar'nan.

In the mural “Red Lyrium Idol” [3] we also commented how the image looks as if Solas were walking on a sphere of fire. It may be related to the red lyrium idol too. Here, we keep linking this idea of a “sphere of fire” as a potential Sun.

In the murals of “The actions of the Inquisitor” [4], we see several times that the red sphere associated with the big evil isolated behind the thick, impenetrable barrier of the Black City seems to be positioned in places that may allow a soft interpretation as a “sun”in the sky.

These symbols seem to gather more importance as we analysed the Vinyl Art, where we find the concept of the Eclipse [as an ominous symbol of Fen’Harel that covers and hides the Sun] and a lot of iconography of stars, which can be interpreted as “suns”.

[Weak] Tevinter Culture: Green Star

Pre-Blight Tevinter art has a “star” symbol that may be interpreted as a sun, specially if we consider that the inside of this green star displays the symbol of the elvhenan Golden Ring in red colour. However, it seems more likely to be a symbol representing the power that one can extract from the Breaches. The green colour helps in this interpretation and puts it a bit farther away from a sun interpretation than other symbols. However, it keeps linking the Golden Ring with the power of creating a Breach.

[Confusing] Tevinter Culture: different decorative elements

The rest of the symbols in Tevinter objects may have some relationship with the Sun. For example, we find doors, boxes, and columns decorated with an 8-pointed star [1] but we also find another one with 6 points in something that looks like a box [2]. The shape of an “hexagonal” sun of 8-pointy rays can be found as well in objects like the “scrying orb” [4].

Among the outfits, we find a 3-ray comb used by Tevinter women [3], which may be related to the sun-based symbol of an Old God [and potentially related to the corresponding Evanuris associated with it]. This symbol is a lot closer to the "Sun-head creature" we found among Elvhenan objects.

As a curious one, I will always point out the strange, hidden Sun figure that belongs to the Free Marches decoration that can be found at the entrance of the Inner Sanctum in Western Approach: The Still Ruins, Viridis Walk and Inner Sanctum.

I think it’s clear and safe to say that most of the sun-based symbols present in Tevinter culture [and previous to their conversion to Andrastian religion] may have been originated from the contact with the Elvhenan [during the Dreamer time where we can see less repulsion to Elvhen according the Tevinter Mosaics] or [most likely] with the dragons that may have been related to the Elvhenan, as I made the connection in the comic post The Missing.

[Weak] Dwarven Culture: Fairel and Dwarven art

The Dwarves, at least the ones in the Fairel’s ruins, may have some link with the Sun as well. In these ruins we find the same exact stone tablet we find in the Ancient Elvhenan tombs [1], which displays the “crappy sun” I commented above. Once again, it could be a sun but also a breach, so there is no much sense to keep focusing on it.

Another symbol to relate the Sun to the Dwarves may or may not be an old “Dwarven stone-paintings” we saw since DAO, which basically shows a dwarf working the stone [3]. Based on symmetry, we could assume that the triangles on the background are stalagmites, but if we stretch-out this interpretation, they could even be seen as a sun with its rays. It’s very unlikely, since it seems to be more a design resource to highlight the scene of the stone-painting, but for completion’s sake I think it’s worthy to keep it commented here.

However, this simple design allows us to interpret it in different ways: the spikes we see can be pieces of rock protruding from the ground and the Dwarf in it is mining them [as its original codex in DAO seems to imply], but also it could be understood as a quarter of a Sun peeking through the corner of the image as a Dwarf works tirelessly.

Later in DAI we are introduced to another piece of art of similar characteristics [2]. The building was never possible to be identified unequivocally, and in posts like “Architecture of Kirkwall : Gallows and Lowtown/Darktown” I related it to representations of Kirkwall or cities that may be similar to Kirkwall where the runecraft mastery of dwarves was used [and probably, it was a source of pride for these clans, who may have kept the achievement immortalised in a piece of art reproduced among the noble dwarven families]. This piece also shows a background very similar to the one in [3] that may be a representation of stalagmites or a sun, if it’s stretched-out enough.

Another strange symbol in the dwarven furniture is the one presented in some stone-seats: an elaborated metal image that shows thorny vines on or over a sun [4]. This symbol appears in many other parts of the game where there are dwarven rooms, but also in Arbor Wilds :Cradle of Sulevin where we can read the Vir Tanadhal, However, in this case, the symbol is not completely the same one than in the Hissing Wastes: Fairel tomb.

It’s hard to suspect if this is a mere reuse of assets, it has a lore-related meaning, or it’s just a reflection that the Dwarves and the Ancient Elvhen had a relationship quite ancient [as it shows the Elvhen tree and its dwarven, more geometrical style, that I’ve been pointing out since DAO in Orzammar]. We have to remember that the Ancient Elvhenan saw the dwarves as soulless creatures, workers of the “pillars of Earth” and worthless. However, I always claimed it was never clear if this was a reference to ancient Dwarves that were linked to the Titan deeply to the point that they became Sha-Brytol after the break of the link, or were related to more independent dwarves as the ones we see now, who have a sense of Stone, but can’t understand the Titan with the exception of some gifted ones [such as Valta].

Finally, the dwarves have an additional aspect related to the Sun in the very unreliable codex called Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 2. I wrote about this codex in a more integral way in Deep Roads [DLC Trespasser]: Lower Walkways. But basically an ex-Dalish elf [now a Qun converted] relates Elgar’nan’s fire [which another unreliable Dalish legend, Elgar'nan: God of Vengeance, claims he shoved the Sun into the Earth] to the fear to the Sun that Dwarves experience [Read the section Elgar’nan and Sylaise above]. This may have been a Dev’s choice to makes us aware that there exists a relationship between the Sun and the dwarves, even though there is no lore material that can make it clear enough.

[Strong] Ferelden Culture: The Sun Face and the geometrical Sun

In the Tryptich presented in Andrastian Design: Tapestry and Tryptich, we find three symbols on top of each part of the scene: the six-snakes that represent Tevinter, the golden city above all the image representing the Maker or the Chantry Religion, and over the section of Ferelden/Orlais chantry, a 8-pointed sun which rays look like triangles. Once again, the resemblance of this symbol with the elvhenan sun in the mural “Temple of Mythal” is remarkable [check the Temple of Mythal in “The actions of the Inquisitor”] or the sun shape in the elvhenan yellow mosaic or in the background of Solas in the Trailer of DA:D. This could come from different roots:

1- An Orlesian root, considering how much of the elvhenan influence it had during the time of the Halamshiral and the coexistence of humans and elves in the Dales for some years [to the point where inter-racial families were made, as it was hinted all over the Exalted Plains]. I spoeculated how the idea of the Maker may have been developed during this time in the post The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light

2- Another potential root is related to the Alamarri root, and therefore, linked to the Avvar: this sun may be a representation of the Lady of the Sky for the same reasons I will explain below in the Section Avvars and the Sun.

We can find similar icon in the book World of Thedas, where they show a unique Ferelden Tryptich [3], which top displays this symbol with a sun that even may have a shape of a Golden Ring within it. In either case, we know that this symbol later was part of the Ferelden Chantry, which sun is very pointy, as DAO showed it [see the first section in this post: Chantry Sunburst].

In DAI, we find in some small towns of Ferelden, a unique strange Sun with a crying face [1]. On it we see a bird and a squirrel. It’s hard to know exactly what this is, [check the post Nation Art: Ferelden], but maybe it can be understood as a representation of Andraste made by Ferelden culture mixed with some local animals and fables created as a mixture of cultures, similar to the tale that related Wyverns to Andraste [check the wyvern section in Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The single spike].

There is also a fish drawn in the DLC of Hakkon on a fisherman shack [2], which displays a pattern that can be related to the “crappy sun” designs on its skin. Not sure what to make about it. The closest is that the Avvar represented this symbol as a way to reflect what they may have seen in the Isle of the Lady, where a big ancient breach have been there, open, since the time of Telana [read about this in “The Veil and the preservation of the Waking World” from the post Frostback Basin [DLC]: Miscellaneous ].

[Strong] Grey Wardens and the Sun

The typical symbol of the Grey Wardens involves a chalice that represents the Joining ritual. It always displays a Sun, and not any sun: it’s one with a strong resemblance to the Sunburst of the Chantry. Let’s remember that the Grey Wardens was and is an independent Order that doesn’t respond to the Chantry, and even more so: it was created before the existence of the Chantry, and before Andraste was born. So any quick explanation that this sun is present in this object due to some potential influence from the Chantry seem unlikely.

However, as I showed in Western Approach: The Still Ruins, Main Chamber and Hall of Silence, there are griffons with this same chalice that belonged to pre-Blight Tevinter, maybe remotely associated with Dumat in some ways [since they appear in a hall called “Hall of Silence”, and Dumat=Silence]. We know that the Joining, as a ritual of blood magic, came from the knowledge of Arlathan elves and Tevinter Mages during the desperate times of the First Blight when nothing seemed to stop the darkspawn and even slaying Dumat did not work the first time. Therefore, this Sun may have some relationship with the elvhenan, the Old Gods, or just the blood magic that allowed the creation of the Joining.

[Curious] Avvar and the Sun

The Avvar have a symbol that I always found very Sun-like due to its design and cultural concept: The Lady of the Sky. It’s not only the concept; the lady of the sky can be any important object in the sky; moons or suns. Since Thedas has two moons, it seems more plausible to think of her as unique as the Sun itself.

In the painting that represents her (found on a wall in the Frostback Mountains) we see a design of an owl which shape looks like a Sun. Even her sculpture in Skyhold displays small spikes around her neck which give her a low-key “sun-like” design, specially if we relate this shape with the “sun” shape we saw in the Ancient Elvhenan Yellow Mosaic or with the star we saw in the “Temple of Mythal” mural [in “The actions of the Inquisitor”] or with the Sun that appears behind Solas in the trailer.

Curiously, her banner displays her eyes in a shape that looks similar to the Golden Ring shape, but in black colour. That the Avvar have an art that may have resemblance with Elvhenan's is not strange for me if we remember that Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path’s story narrates that her lover was an elf that, as it is hinted, may have been the Lady of the Sky herself. This means that the Avvar always were a culture under the influence of the Elvhenan and the Dwarves [due to the marriages they arranged with the children of the Stone].

[Weak] Flemeth

Flemeth also had a unique concept art that shows all of her nature in one drawing: her dragon shape, Mythal, as the central part of it over a human figure that may be a petitioner; a bit aside and as if she were in a inner ring of a brown sphere, The Witch of the Wild: Flemeth, with a very particular staff inside a yellow circle that may be interpreted as a Sun. And very hidden in the corner, in the core of this sphere, now black, we see her as an "old, old woman" with a big eye drawn on her apron, at the edge of a cliff [potentially representing the fragment of Mythal that lives inside her]. This kind of eye is very similar to the ones that we see in the concept art armours of Mythal’s temple guardians. I assume it has to do with her omnipresence due to the manipulation of dreams [we know that she presented herself in dreams to an elf and marked him with the Vallaslin of Mythal after awakening, check the video]

Mythal also has bland hints related to Elgar’nan symbology, which is related to the sun, fire, and balls of fire with anger [check all this in the posts Speculations about the Vinyl Art and “The Death of a Titan”]. Flemeth ends up being related to all this since she carries a fragment of Mythal in her.

[Strong] Qunari, Par Vollen, and the Solium Constellation

The Qunari have little link with the Sun, but not the land they conquered. In the book World of Thedas we are informed about the existence of the Fex, a race we never saw nor had much information beyond the fact that they exist. May they be related to the Sun or a Sun-base proto religion? We don't know.

In the Codex Constellation: Solium, we learn that this constellation [which looks like a Sun/Star, image above, pretty similar to the Chantry Sunburst I may add] may have been a representation of the Sun or the Moon [or both] for the Neomerian [Ancient Tevinters], however, it could also represent Elgar’nan, since unreliable Dalish legends claim him to be the “eldest of the Sun”.

Another Codex, called The Pyramids of Par Vollen, tells us that the Jungles of this continent have ancient ruins that doesn’t seem to be tombs but places of scientific purposes. The shape of these ruins fits perfectly with the constellation of Solium, making them, in some way or another, related to the Sun. These pyramids are a great mystery in the DA lore, especially for their total lack of information beyond this codex. We know their walls show images of “intricate sea creatures, shipwrights, musicians, archers, and kings. Odd figures are depicted, tall, horned, always in a position of authority and respect.” It seems that there was no resistance when the Qunari came to conquer this place, so we can suspect that this previous civilization embraced the Qun without much resistance, in part, because the Qunari have horns, and that caused respect and authority. Or the civilisation had been gone long ago when they came. Or it was a civilisation that was developed by or under the authority of the Kossith, the ancient Qunari who had no Qun.

The brief description of these ruins also makes me link it, potentially, with the underground ruins we find in The Horror of Hormak .

[Confusing] DAO design

This section tries to relate the Sun shape with designs that may make the connection a bit stretched or not truly reasonable, therefore, DAO leads this part, lol.

We find that many places along the game, specially the ones related to puzzles [Honnleath and Enchanter Wilhelm’s basement] or to Tevinter experiments [Ruins of Brecilian Forest] display a platform on the ground with a symbol similar to the Sunburst of the Chantry. I’m not sure why they are there, specially in the Brecilian Forest, since we know this was a fortress probably developed by Tevinter [ which potentially may have co-opted, as usual, an ancient Elvhenan building and claimed it as its own] just to be taken by Dalish and humans later. This Fortress is a mess in terms of design and statues that it displays, so it’s hard, if not impossible, to truly take it seriously. To me it all feels more like a reuse of graphical resources, but just for the sake of completion, I add the present section.

More of these sun-like platforms can be found in the Tower of the Circle of Magi [which could potentially make sense since the tower was made by Avvar and Dwarves, and it may be a representation of the Lady of the Sky, as we saw in the Avvar section of this post] but also in the Temple of Andraste or in Denerim at the Fort Drakon which makes less sense [unless it is taken as a symbol from the Chantry itself]. Again, these inconsistencies make me suspect the reuse of assets in a game that could not afford to have 5 different platforms designs.

[Confusing] Free Marches Rural Areas

Another place where I found a sun-like symbol was in a very disturbing image of the book World of Thedas associated with a cautionary tale told to Free Marches kids. In it, we see that people/children are punished if they go outside a bubble of darkness with small “sun-like” symbols floating around. Each of these kids have a symbol on their belly or head. Curiously, one of these symbols is a small spiral that I’ve brought the attention upon long ago in the post Hinterlands: Statues, paintings, and structures found in the open where we found the alamarri statue I called Eroded dragon skull which has a “G symbol” on its back, which, at the same time, seems similar to the one present in a reiterative way all over the elvhen artefacts and in some dwarven rug designs.

I don't know how to interpret this image, mostly like the big black bubble that contains these klids seems to protect or shield them from the dangers outside. The kids that "behave badly" are dropped outside of it and are consumed by the dragon fire/jaws of the dangers outside. So in a very stretched way, we can interpret this image that the bubble filled with Suns protects people, or at least, it's the right path to follow not to be eaten by those monsters outside.

Conclusions

To put an end to this post, I would like to bring a short conclusion that we may have reached together along it. The Sun in Thedas is an ancient symbol that mostly every culture took to exploit and use in their own representation of gods/power.

This fact alone is not strange, since in anthropology we can see that severals cultures on Earth have developed religious rites or created Gods out of the Sun itself. The Sun is a symbol related to warmth, light, food, life, and security, so it seems reasonable for DA Lore to take it as the main symbol of Thedas civilisations.

The Sun in current Thedas is immediately associated with the Chantry and Andraste: it is a symbol of hope, of dawn, that provide the idea of new beginnings; it’s also the idea of the Maker itself and the Faith people have in him. It's also the fire that purifies in order to grant ascension [Andraste's case].

When it comes to Elvhenan, the Sun is immediately related to Elgar’nan, who was considered, according to the underaliable Dalish legends, the son of the Sun itself, who in order to save the Land shoved the sun into the ground, potentially causing a great damage to Dwarves and Titans.

There is also a symbol of a half-sun in an Eluvian, a statue, and in a hat worn by an elf, that may suggest that an original god, represented by the sun [potentially an ancient Dragon] was worshipped by the Evanuris. Lately, that symbol may have been co-opted by one of the Evanuris when they took divinity and the identity of the ancient gods they worshiped.

Elvhenan also seem to take the symbol of the asterisk as an oversimplification of the Sun, which across the murals, is also related to the heart of Titans, to power, and to the Golden Ring, which is also associated with control. So, for Elvhenan, we may suggest that the Sun represents immense power, if not, Divinity itself, that may end up being related to the core of Titans. The asterisk is also associated to the orb, a big power object.

Since Elvhenan were the first civilisation we know that started in Thedas [besides the Titans and their children], their symbols of power [asterisk, orb, golden ring] may have evolved along time to reach human groups which developed, later, all the sun symbols that ended up in the Chantry’s.

Thanks to Tevinter, we also can suspect that the Sun may have been a representation of an Old God, since they have a lot of sun-related images in their decoration and objects that belong to ancient times in which they were not Andrastian yet [in fact, so ancient times that Andraste herself was not born yet]. This may mean that the Sun symbol cloud have been taken from the Elvhenan or from the Ancient Dragons. Through Tevinter style, we also realise that the Elvhenan Golden Ring may have been used to create Breaches, which again shows and seems consistent with the idea of relating it to power and control. The symbol of Sun in Tevinter culture may be related originally with Elvhenan or with Ancient Dragons that Tevinter used to worship.

Dwarves have little representation of the sun for obvious reasons, but due to the unreliable legend of Elgar’nan and the war with the Titans, we may establish a relationship in which the dwarves endured the Sun [or the Elvhenan power] at some point in their story.

Thanks to the Grey Warden we can relate a sun with the idea of ancient Blood magic or ancient Dragon blood knowledge, since the Joining is represented by a chalice with a Sun on it.

The Avvar also have a low-key representation of the Sun in their Lady of the Sky, which may be just consequence of their deep relationship with the Elvhenan culture.

Par Vollen may have more answers about the Sun and ancient times, but the lore of DA world is very scarce on this region of the map of Thedas, so we can only speculate.

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