#solas is ancient elves

[5arcasmw]

i know this has been talked about before but I CANNOT stop thinking about solas saying "please, rook, I do not wish to fight you"

like???

this is a man who has constantly betrayed, injured, and even killed his closest friends and confidants over and over and over again for thousands of years. he killed (or tranquilized) his oldest friend and former general just because he said "hey maybe people deserve rights" and he practically killed one of the last remaining embers of the woman he used to love. the woman he used to be conpletely beholden to. the woman he literally BURNED OFF OF HIS FACE so he could have enough power to tear down the veil.

and yet

he still refuses to hurt rook, and only lays a hand on them out of pure desperation during the sacrifice/worst ending when he literally has no other choice.

AND EVEN IN THAT ENDING he could have just turned them to stone and plucked the dagger out of their hand like he did to their companions but he DIDNT

he wanted to see the old world restored with them. if rook wasn't there to see it too, then what was the point?

even if your rook has a primarily negative/hostile relationship with him HE STILL DOESN'T KILL THEM!! HE STILL WANTS THEM TO LIVE!!!

if it really came down to it, though, solas probably would have killed them in order to tear down the veil and "fix" his mistake, but i KNOW that rook's death would have been one of, if not his biggest regret.

idk... i just think it's really interesting how solas becomes so obsessed with rook in his own way, more than almost anyone else we've seen him interact with. he could have killed them at any time, turned them to stone as soon as elgar'nan was defeated, but he didn't. he wanted them to see the old world restored with him so badly that it inevitably lead to his downfall.

[zaahvi]

GLORY TO THE RISEN GODS

[vampiremommyinquisition]

@monderette collab

The Wolf Wedding

[sleepy-little-lilac]

That letter exchange between Solas and Elgar'nan was literally just this

[sunlight-shunlight]

one thing about ancient arlathan i wish vg had gotten into (along with any other interesting details besides being vaguely desaturated haha) is that: the ecology should've been pretty crazy? i think it's hinted that spiders get really big in places where the veil is thin. and with all the ambient magic before the veil existed, surely there'd be tons of cool megafauna?? plus ghilan'nain was going ham with bioengineering stuff, there should be all kinds of things running around.

plus modern thedas has survived multiple rounds of blight, which would logically kill off tons of species and lead to a lot of places being turned completely barren... what would it have been like before that? it would add an interesting element to solas' nostalgia if the world is quite literally different in that way.

[alderaanplacesss]

Him: She’s probably thinking about other guys

Her: Do you think Mythal had a say in what Solas’s body looked like? Did she choose his features, when he begrudgingly followed her into physical form, to craft something she wanted? The freckles? The violet eyes? The pouty lips? So when she’d show her lapdog how she wanted to be touched, it would be for Mythal’s pleasure only? Is a part of why he resents his flesh because he was designed to appeal to the woman who betrayed him? Is that why Lavellan is so special? Because she saw Solas as a person and as physically attractive? Because she was someone else who wanted him and treated him right? And when she kissed him, it was with reverence to his spirit and his skin? Because Lavellan would have followed him to the ends of the earth as simply a nomadic apostate, as simply the man she loved?

[monderette]

collab with @vampiremommyinquisition

[pennabeast]

ok bear with me but au where felassan survives solas's murder attempt and shows up at skyhold months later and proceeds to spend inquisition psychologically tormenting him while posing as a fellow apostate

i cannot take credit for felassan's outfit, it was taken from a masked empire design by christina kraus

[apostatefeverdream]

oh solas dragonage you will create a situationship wherever you go

[aquamarinemarie]

Respectfully admiring her culture.

I laughed way too damn hard when I first turned around and saw this at one o'clock in the morning. 😂

[0alix0]

just love how we still have absolutely no details about how evanuris killed mythal :) the mother of all, elgar'nan's wife, a mother of 3 possibly 5 other gods (who probably killed their own mother hello??), "the voice of reason"

remember that? remember "they killed mythal... a crime for which an eternity of torment is the only fitting punishment"

yeah. love it)))

[nists]

tempting whispers, long long ago

i imagine this happens before Solas got his vallaslin, not too long after he made his body. we don't know when he got his vallaslin but i imagine it was later. also, Elgy doesn't have all his medals yet, and the lyrium is unblighted.

[treviso-nights]

can you elaborate more on your thought process here?

“in a shocking and completely predictable turn of events, felassan is actually the revolutionary solas thinks he is”

yes! (forewarning: so many ppl on here are actual analytic geniuses and i am 10000% no such thing.)

so, to me, solas thinks of himself as an anti-hero when i would say he's an anti-villain. he reads himself as "tragic" but ultimately thinks of his goal as "good", and will proselytize even the most uninterested party (such as varric, sera, and iron bull) in demeaning and often racist ways (for example, see solas repeatedly calling the qunari "savages" and "brutes" to iron bull's face).

he is quick to abandon, betray, and kill anyone as long as he deems it necessary, and imo, there is a profound lack of loyalty and integrity "true" abolitionists/revolutionary leaders need to possess. after all, despite a lot of people ignoring epler telling us that solas abandoned his army of freed elves (and fine, that's fair since this is all fiction anwyay) bc he realized he wasn't "management material", i personally think it's a perfect characterization of who solas actually is—that of a distorted, warped spirit who no longer resembles his original ideal but attempts to convince himself and those around him that his ultimate purposes are still that ideal... which is why i think felassan is such a nice counterpart to this idea—

bc in veilguard, when we see flashbacks of felassan's growing alarm of solas's disregard for the lives of their soldiers, he is unwilling to part with his friend out of a sense of loyalty and general hope that the ends will justify the means. ironically, i think felassan was saved from corruption by solas entering uthenera because this could've easily led to him forever excusing away solas's actions, just as solas did for mythal for thousands of years.

so now we have felassan, wandering the world and watching it evolve first-hand in a way which the ancient elves did not get a chance to do. idk if we ever got confirmation that he also entered uthenera at some point (if we did, i missed it), but in time, he got to bond with the "modern" elves in an authentic manner which solas decided was counterintuitive after waking (although how he ever thought walking up to a dalish clan and pronouncing his godhood was EVER a good idea is beyond me, tho i forget if that was actually the case or if i'm making that shit up), leading him to come to the conclusion that the elves are actually people after all, which solas could not do without help from the inquisition.

i could keep going, but basically, felassan's capacity to form and experience real friendships (and not rely on abandonment, manipulation, or outright murder as a foundation or last resort for those friendships), TEACH (not convince) those willing to learn (instead of proselytizing), and evolve his own personal perspectives (and then stay ACCOUNTABLE to those perspectives and act in alignment with them), are all antithetical to the actions we see solas take in inquisition, trespasser, and veilguard. only when you trick him in veilguard's ending scene does he begin to understand his own foolishness (tho i have no doubt he will never understand the depth of that foolishness unless he sheds his mortal body and somehow regains his true essence) because even if you choose to redeem him, he ignores rook's/the inquisitor's pleas to just stop until mythal comes out to "release him" from his service. (which i'm sure he would also use to excuse his actions.)

to me, felassan is the archetype of the empathetic, considerate, loyal, and steadfast revolutionary. not solas. his ability to learn, trust others, and take responsibility for his actions are what makes me think so. and i wish we got to see more of him in veilguard :(

[tadpole-apocalypse]

My Dragon Age art folder has 1,633 files in it. Some of them are variants/sketch/junk versions of the same piece, but still. That's a lot of work for one fandom. Anyways I think these two are the best of the lot:

[pennabeast]

🤔idk i just wanted to draw them hanging out

special shout out to @crabs-with-sticks who is doing the lord's work aka writing actual ot3 fic. it's an ancient arlathan au and oh boy it's fun!!! go read Small Tyrannies while i play with legos

stuck staring at a vast PEPE SILVIA board trying to decide timeline and dynamic evolution and how i want the au to work out so until then just get random blips of thought

[achlysfx]

SPOILERS from the artbook below:

Edit: I dont know if I was supposed to get the artbook this early (as release date was supposed to be Nov 8th), but it answers a LOT of lore questions about the game series.