#and information we get through codexes and murals in trespasser

[goatsorcery]

the fact that vallaslin are slave markings of the evanuris really should have had more relevance in a game wherein two of the evanuris return

[mumms-the-word]

Hi! This might be stupid but I am still a little confused how everything connects. The titans and the Evanuris and the blight especially.

Are you able to explain at little at all?

Oh dear sweet anon don’t worry, I’ve got you. I spent days trying to make sense of everything in my head so there is no shame for being confused—I was also confused for a minute because Veilguard blasts new lore at you with all the speed and quantity of a water from a high powered water hose. It’s a LOT.

So buckle up and I’ll explain briefly thoroughly but with humor, because I have not much to do this Christmas Eve (for the first time in a while). But if you're interested in a full lore dive with pictures and so on, like I've done with BG3 lore dives, let me know!

Under the cut for spoilers!

Okay so most of this comes from Solas’s murals in the lighthouse, which they show us out of order because the first three basically confirm what we learned in Trespasser, and then the next two really drop the lore bomb on us. There’s other stuff we learn from codexes, too, but the murals and the debriefing sessions from the companions tell us the majority of the information.

So, briefly: In the beginning there were mortals, spirits, and Titans. Some spirits, like Elgar'nan (formerly Tyranny or something) decided they wanted physical bodies, but they wanted their physical bodies to be powerful and capable of great feats of magic. So they stole the blood of the Titans (aka lyrium) to build their bodies.

Keep in mind, the Titans were probably one of the first primordial beings in Thedas and they are huge. They're the size of mountains; the lyrium veins that run through mines and caves in Thedas are their literal blood vessels. And (this gets into some codex hints and is partly headcanon) it sounds like lyrium in a pre-Veil, pre-war-with-the-elves world must have been INSANELY powerful and capable of all sorts of wonders. Like building physical bodies to house spirits and make them powerful people, as one example. Powering eluvians is another example.

Now, I imagine that casually stealing someone's blood is bound to make anyone angry (and isn't it so interesting that some of the first magic in Thedas was technically blood magic? but I digress). But it sounds like the first elves, the spirit-born elves like Elgar'nan and Mythal, didn't just take the blood, they straight up killed Titans, too. According to Elgar'nan's concept art way back in the early development stages of the game, the red crystals on his collar (he has them in the game too) are trophies from every Titan he's killed. That's a lot of Titans.

So we have a war between the elvhen (those who used lyrium to build bodies for their spirit selves) and the Titans (who are reasonably angry because they keep getting hurt and killed). Things get desperate, the Titans are winning, and the only way for the elves to win the war, according to Mythal, is to craft a relic and a ritual capable of mass-lobotomizing the Titans. If you can't kill them, neuter them. Or...something.

So that's what she and Solas do. Together they make the blue lyrium dagger (yes THE dagger we keep hauling around) and Solas says that with the proper ritual they can use it to sunder every Titan from their dreams.

Basically? He made every Titan Tranquil, but worse than Tranquil, because he sort of stole their entire minds and separated them from their bodies. That's even worse than being Tranquil. Imagine if your entire consciousness was forcibly ripped from your physical body and them sealed away in a cage. That's what Solas and Mythal did to the Titans.

Now, we're still in a pre-Veil world, so the physical world and the Fade are overlapping and all the same and so on. Basically, everything is magic and magic is everywhere. This includes the Titan Dreams, which are now some kind of living, magical force no longer anchored to a physical body. Also, their dreams were stolen in the middle of a war, so you can imagine that these dreams are probably not pleasant or peaceful to begin with. Cage up these angry dreams, leave them to stew for a few centuries, and you just know they're bound to turn into something bad.

Well, that's exacty what happens. As Solas says, these dreams will go on to become a "disembodied blight of pain and anger." Therefore, we have the Blight. The Big One. The Mother of all Blights.

But! Somehow, when they first sunder the dreams from the Titans, they seal away this Mega Blight. Problem solved! The Titans are quiet (lobotomized, not-quite-dead, etc) and the elven people are safe. And the Blight is sealed! All is well.

Except, well, no, the elven people are now being enslaved by Elgar'nan and some of the other Evanuris who are a bit drunk on power from killing one of Thedas's most powerful primordial forces. Solas is like "Sorry this isn't actually what I signed up for" and rebels against all of them, including Mythal. Rebellion ensues. Solas becomes Fen’Harel. Elvhenan grows into an impressive empire for the elves.

But the Evanuris still want more power! One of them, Andruil, stumbles upon the Blight again (according to a Dalish legend which may or may not be real, but we're going to pretend it is). Mythal steps in and it gets resealed and sorted, but now the Evanuris have had a taste for what the Blight can do for them.

So now they're actively looking for ways to break into the Blight so they can use it for themselves. Solas catches wind of this, goes to Mythal, and is like "I know we're on opposite sides here, but the other Evanuris will listen to you, and if they don't, you should join me instead." She's like "Don't worry, babe, I'll talk to them."

And then they stab her with her own lyrium dagger and she dies.

And also they might have released...a tiny bit of the blight? Because we see Ghilan'nain messing with it during Solas's rebellion memories.

So, shit, now they have the Blight, and they're using it, and Mythal is dead, and things are REALLY REALLY BAD NOW.

So Solas is like "There's only one thing I can do here" and he stages an attack on Elgar'nan's citadel so he can steal the dagger back (this is the third Solas memory in the Crossroads) and then prepares a ritual to seal all the remaining Evanuris into one big glittering golden palace thing along with 100% of the Blight and use the life forces of the Evanuris to create the cage that will trap them there.

The goal? Cut them off from the Fade, seal them up with the Blight, let them get corrupted and rot for eternity, the end! Evanuris get stuck in a small bubble with no Fade and all Blight, the rest of the world gets the Fade and peace.

Yeah that…didn’t work.

What actually happened is the ritual failed somehow and instead of locking 7 wackos in a singular little prison with no Fade, Solas trapped them and the Blight in the pretty golden palace and also trapped all of the Fade in a very BIG bubble with the Veil between it and the rest of the world.

This is how he created the Veil. By accident.

So now we have the Blight and the Evanuris in a golden city and we have the Veil.

Also, he trapped the Evanuris, but he didn't trap the dragons they had bound their souls to. These dragons, which would go on to become the Archdemons who run the Blights in Thedas for several centuries (and five Blights), went into some kind of hibernation. I think? But also they became the gods that the Tevinter Empire worshipped, so maybe they weren't in hibernation yet. No idea! Point is, their dragons/The Archdemons were still around in Thedas, and the Tevinter people were like "those guys are rad, they are our gods now."

And also at some point the dragons went into hibernation below the ground. Unclear when.

Now fast forward a few centuries. The Evanuris have been whispering to the priests who worship these dragons/Archdemons and tempting them to break into the Golden City (unclear if they think the Maker built the Golden City by this point or if that came later, I'd have to check the timelines, but it doesn't matter right now). Eventually several magisters/priests are like "yeah! we should do that! Let's break into the Golden City and claim untold levels of power!"

Except what they actually did was break into a Blight Prison with seven Evanuris wackos, get immediately zapped by the Blight, and cast back out into their own world. We know this from the Chant of Light.

These magisters became the first of the early modern darkspawn, the pests we've had to fight for three and a half games, and thus the First Blight began.

So, long story short, Solas and Mythal created the Blight by separating Titans from their dreams and then letting those dreams fester in a cage for a while. Then the Evanuris tried to use the Blight and Solas got Mythal to try and stop them. But they killed Mythal and kept using the Blight. So Solas used their life forces to trap them and the Blight in the Golden City, and also accidentally created the Veil when he did so. And then a while later the Tevinter magisters broke into the Golden City and started the slow chain of events that led to Veilguard.

Hope that helped?? 😂 sorry it was so long winded

[carabas]

Just sorting through the options for those Evanuris on the mural in a hopeless attempt to keep it all straight.

(The tl;dr version of this post is that I can see a case for the Evanuris on the left being Falon’din, Ghilan’nain, or Mythal, and there’s different implications depending on which one’s correct but hey they all do boil down to fighting terrifying gods.)

Initial assumption: two Evanuris with arms folded like corpses suspended upside down in front of spheres, when we’ve previously seen spheres used to represent the gods being sealed away. So these are the final two seals, final two archdemons. Based on what each of the old gods represent, it’s extremely likely that Razikale of Mystery = Dirthamen of Secrets and owl-associated Lusacan of Night = Falon’din of Death, which works well since the twin souls are supposed to be pretty much inseparable. Twin soul thing also goes well with the promotional image of two dragons - although if Solas is deliberately going to be breaking the seals (that’s a big if), then we don’t actually need the twin souls to be together to explain why we’re seeing two dragons rise at the same time. Still, I like not separating the twins. (We’ve also seen gods chained and suspended upside down over a sphere in the Lies of the Evanuris mosaic in Trespasser - the scene isn’t specifically stated to be about sealing the gods away, but about revealing that the gods can die.)

Complicating factors here:

Ghilan’nain resemblance: the character on the left is almost certainly a representation of a concept art image that’s monstrous in the same way we’ve seen Ghilan’nain’s creations looking monstrous. We’ve seen so much about Ghilan’nain in Inquisition and Tevinter Nights, it would make sense for her to appear now. Also that silhouette looks like it has mandibles.

Mythal resemblance: we’ve seen this character’s crescent-shaped head before in a statue in the Deep Roads, near a codex that talks about how most of these statues in the Deep Roads are representations of Mythal. There’s also an almost identical statue but with a sun-shaped head in the Crossroads, and Mythal and Elgar’nan have sun-moon associations, so point in favor of the crescent-shaped head representing Mythal. Mythal’s also said to have emerged from water and to have taken the form of a great serpent to fight Andruil - I’d assumed great serpent just meant dragon and the water was metaphorical, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Ghilan’nain is not the only god with forms at least this monstrous. Solas painted the figures so large, weighing on him, and this is the interpretation that would probably have the most significance for him and deserve to be painted that large. But is this how he would depict Mythal?

That concept art with that crescent-headed four-armed serpent creature looked as if it's set in the present, not the distant past - present-day heroes fighting the freed gods. It’s accompanied by the note, "The Evil Gods have Thedas in their sights and only heroes can stop them. The shadows of the past stir, and new heroes must rise to fight them." That doesn’t rule out Mythal certainly, but it does point more to the gods who are being freed from the Black City.

Falon’din resemblance: the creature in that concept art image is like a combination of three different statues we’ve seen - it’s got the crescent-shaped head of that statue in the Deep Roads, which reminds me of an owl and which I would have guessed as representing Falon’din if it weren’t for that nearby codex about Mythal, and it’s also got the four arms and spear of two different elven statues that appear together in Origins. The one with the spear is stated to be Falon’din. The one with four arms closely resembles it, similar head shape just pointier, like a more inhuman variation on the same theme, but isn’t specifically identified - so, a variation on the same god? Dirthamen because of the twin soul thing? Another Evanuris entirely? There’s not enough information. This is a pretty thin connection to Falon’din though - spears aren’t exactly unusual, and we’ve seen four arms on other statues too, like this Tsathoggua-looking one used at the altar of Dumat/for Merrill’s Audacity demon/in elven ruins - for all we can tell, it may be that all the gods enjoy having a few extra limbs from time to time.

If it’s Falon’din, initial assumptions still work, no adjustments needed, no new information here really except about what kinds of forms he might take, and the other Evanuris in the mural can be assumed to be Dirthamen.

If it’s Mythal, then it’s not about the final two seals after all, it’s about gods who can be/have been/will be killed, same as stated about the suspended god in the Lies of the Evanuris mosaic. Death of Mythal balanced against the sealing of Elgar’nan and the other gods, maybe, or Solas’s need to kill or otherwise somehow deal with the gods if he brings down the Veil.

If it’s Ghilan’nain, possibility one: it’s still about the final two archdemons, and Ghilan’nain corresponds to one of the two remaining Old Gods. I'm not a fan of this option because I can’t see any particular correspondences between her and the gods of either night or mystery - I mean, yes, she’s a bit mysterious, but you’ve got an elven god of secrets right there in Dirthamen - and also it means the twin souls won’t be rising together after all. (If the other suspended Evanuris is both Falon’din and Dirthamen and we’re getting a two-headed dragon sharing one body, that’d be a neat way to avoid splitting up the twins, but then the archdemon math doesn’t match up properly - seven sealed gods, seven archdemons, only two archdemons left.) But the end result is I just need to rethink the correspondences. If this is the right interpretation, then the other Evanuris suspended with her could be almost anyone.

Ghilan’nain possibility two: the mural is not representing the final two seals after all, it’s representing Evanuris outside the Black City in some other sense. Possibly the Old God soul taken from Kieran? I do like the Ghilan’nain-Urthemiel match up. (In which case, possibilities for the other Evanuris on the mural: does Sandal have an old god soul? Did Andraste, who was born the same year the first archdemon died?) Or alternatively, is it simply showing the gods about to wake after the archdemons have been killed? That would fit best with the note about “the evil gods have Thedas in their sights” with that concept art, but in that case, why are we seeing just two, are they waking up in a staggered way instead of all at once?

Also this:

I’d initially been assuming that the spheres in the new mural are the equivalent of the seven on the bottom of this mural, or the ones in the earlier DA4 teaser art with the idol, seven seals for the Evanuris with five seals already broken - but maybe it’s more like whatever those two at the top left and right represent, complete with those wavy lines around Ghilan’nain/Mythal/Falon’din/whoever that is (access to the Fade being cut off/restored?).

[thedinanshiral]

On Solas

Decided to try to organise some of my thoughts on Solas, so here it goes.

What we first know of Solas is that he’s an elf and a mage, the elven hobo apostate. From the game we can learn he’s an electromancer (in autolevel he prioritises the Storm tree abilities), and later on a Rift Mage, one could assume because he’s the “Fade expert” but further on we learn is because he’s the one responsible for the creation of the Veil. 

There have always been elements linking him to Fen’Harel and then to the Fade and the Veil, as seen in the Fade Wall Shield dropped by Gaxkang (one of the Forbiden Ones) in DAO, a shield with a name that basically means Veil (what’s the wall in the Fade?) and has a wolf head design on it, design that somewhat resembles the Mask of Fen’Harel as seen in DA:Redemption. That Mask of Fen’Harel can be used to open portals on the Veil and into the Fade, and is activated in Redemption through an ritual that includes blood ( in the miniseries it turns out to be an elven girl’s blood).

Considering his stance on blood magic (remarkably similar to Merrill’s, by the way), I think it’s safe to say he has used it before. That’s possibly why the Mask of Fen’Harel is activated with blood, and that’s why in order to break the Veil open time and time again we’ve seen big bloody sacrifices must be made. First record of this is the Magisters Sidereal using blood magic and almost all lyrium available in Tevinter to rip the Veil open (lyrium also being blood, and elven slaves prefered for sacrifice for their special elven blood, this means a lot of blood with magical properties of one or other nature is required to break through the Veil), second instance of some form of blood offering meant to grant one physical access to the Fade is when Corypheus kills Divine Justinia during a ritual we only saw a glimpse of and was never explained. Thridly, we have repeated mentions of how spirits feel drawn to the Veil there where there’s been bloodshed, particularly battlefields. So it’s safe to assume blood in enough quantities weakens the Veil enough to make an opening.

The red lyrium idol is his. In Tevinter Nights he claimed it so, and i’ve already discussed this idol at length in a previous post. In TN however we get other bits of information, like how the idol seems to have a self-regenerating property (when it’s found intact inside Meredith’s red lyrium statue after she had used the idol to craft a sword), and most curiously, how it seems to be hollow and have some liquid inside that makes it feel like when one holds a bottle. We also learn in the Mortalitasi account that the idol may have a hidden blade and become a ritual knife. Perhaps the value of the red lyrium idol is not in it being made of red lyrium, but on its content. Say the idol we see is a hilt, it can produce a blade, and it’s filled with ...blood. I think it’s possible its content is blood.

As per Cole’s comment in Trespasser, “the wolf chewed its leg off to escape the trap”, that sounds more like he sacrificed a big part of himself, most likely his power, that he may have concentrated and stored in the very same idol used for the Veil ritual. It would also explain why the one who created the Veil would wake up from Uthenera so weakened. There’s his foci as well, but I think that one mainly held memories, and in those memories there was knowledge that could grant great power (rather than containing actual power). Why he’d be after the foci first and not the idol could be because the foci was the safest option, or the one he already knew the location of. Clearly, the Anchor was plan A, and the red lyrium idol seems to be plan B.

Then I suspect Solas has what I call Word power, a form of influence or manifestation magic. I’ve found two distinct instances where Solas seems to use this, the first being when at Skyhold he tells the Inquisitor to “wake up”, revealing their conversation was taking place in a dream in the Fade. Upon realising “this isn’t real” the Inquisitor doesn’t wake up, they only do it after Solas gives the command. The other instance is after Solas leaves the Inquisition, when the Inquisitor can talk to Cole and he speaks Solas’ words, a message Solas delivers through him.

Solas is also a Dreamer, possibly why the Inquisitor walks in on him while dreaming at Skyhold, and surely how Solas can manage to kill people in their sleep in TN (granted, those were dwarves and dwarves allegedly don’t dream, but as far as we know they may still have a presence in the Fade while asleep, just have no memory of dreaming, no awareness of it). In fact the first appearance of Solas in DA media was in TME where he meets Felassan in the Fade, while he dreams to contact him. It’s widely believed that Solas killed Felassan then and there.

Then he is clearly an artist. Seems murals are his primary medium for storytelling. He adorns the rotunda in Skyhold with murals depicting the story of the Inquisition as it unfolds. Trespasser has several more murals telling stories of what happened, and I think it’s safe to assume there’s more than one self-portrait in them. 

He’s a shapeshifter, as pointed by some codex entries that imply the Evanuris took dragon forms on ocassion, and in the Evanuris propaganda against him found at the Vir Dirthara. He is twice the shapeshifter or perhaps not a good one, depends on your perspective, if we consider his chosen form, the Dread wolf, is described as either a giant wolf with dragon-like scales, or a dragon of some lupine features.  Is the Dread Wolf a wolf that looks like a dragon, or a dragon that looks like a wolf? I found it kind of funny how in TN his appearance description includes spirits forming as wings of fire to fly him around. Personally I don’t consider Regret’s description here because that was a particular demon feeding off what he had left behind, not his actual image.

He is, in a way, the Maker. Of present Thedas, shaped by his creating the Veil. The implications of this interpretation brings forth many more questions i’m not currently dwelling on.Let’s ignore this for now and possibly forever, it gives me a headache.

He was a warrior, as expressed in his banter with Blackwall. Considering how in post-Arlathan wolves were guardians to the Emerald Knights, and how in Trespasser’s Deep Roads his statues are described as guarding alongside Mythal’s, it’s possible he was once one of Mythal’s soldiers, perhaps part of her personal Guard, becoming a friend -or more  - favoured enough, maybe rewarded for his service reaching to a point where he became almost an equal? From this analysis it could be that Solas ascended to Evanuris status after his contribution in the war against the Titans. He was rebel fighter too, as evidenced in his banter with Sera, he possibly started as part of a large army but then started a revolution that operated in much smaller cells.

He was Skyhold’s former master. That fortress belonged to him. The very name of the place, elven in origin, hints at it being the location from where the Veil was placed, or at the very least where the ritual for it was initially performed. I suspect he also had a significant presence in the Exalted Plains, something about it reminds me of the landscape from the Elven Ruins at Trespasser, also because it’s the one and only place so far where we see a shrine dedicated to Fen’Harel. In an area with an electric dragon ( yet another hint at his electromancy). More importantly, while the shrine’s codex leads us to believe the reason why elves would make the Dread Wolf any offering would be to appease him and be spared his evil doings, this shrine depicts a black wolf figure and a white wolf figure, which are reminiscing of Solas’ tarot cards, The Tower (big menaching shadow wolf figure) and The Hierophant ( fluffy white companion wolf figure). Whatever the reasons for the Dalish to erect a shrine to the Dread Wolf it seems somehow in some way a certain knowledge of his dual nature is not entirely lost. Also, there’s the gigantic wolf statue atop a mountain in the distance, biggest one i’ve seen so far:

Which brings me to the main point of this ramble, his latest symbol depincting three wolf heads on a brooch he’s wearing in DA4 concept art.

It may be symbolic in a couple of ways. First in regards to his identity as in the elf, the creator (Evanuris), and the betrayer. Secondly as in the man, the spirit, and the “god”. As well as the three different realms he is connected to: the physical world, the Void, and the Fade. Personally I doubt this is the strange symbol used by some self-identifying Agents of Fen’Harel in TN, I think what they may be wearing could be an elven rune or ancient symbol we haven’t seen yet, hence why it was described as “strange”. I mean, if I see three wolf heads, I say it’s three wolf heads. Interestingly enough, he still wears the wolf jawbone (in this new concept art, it has some new circular designs on it as well, if you zoom in on a better quality picture) and i’m forever curious why he even has that in the first place. Did he just pick it up to use as a subtle hint of his true identity, or did the bone belong to a wolf he cared about? Why has its design changed? 

So far this is what i have in mind about him. 

[boffinmerlin]

Alright, hopefully I can describe it in a way that makes sense. I'm not a theory writer, and I'm on mobile. 😅 I based this off of information we get in the game, as well as some lines in Tevinter Nights.

The first clue is the Sentinels at the Temple of Mythal. Abelas states that anyone who drinks from the Well of Sorrows will become "bound, as we are bound", implying that the Sentinels could be controlled in the way Flemythal controls the Inquisitor or Morrigan. (And remember how angry/concerned Solas was if a romanced Lavellan drinks from the Well... 👀)

In Trespasser, we see a lot of murals that Solas painted and, among them, a veilfire rune that gives the codex entry:

In the light of the veilfire, the runes seem to shift, coiling and uncoiling like snakes. A thunderous voice shatters the stillness, shouting:

"Hail Mythal, adjudicator and savior! She has struck down the pillars of the earth and rendered their demesne unto the People! Praise her name forever!"

For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire.

The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy.

A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic.

Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast.

A voice whispers:

"What the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would end us all. Let this place be forgotten. Let no one wake its anger. The People must rise before their false gods destroy them all."

If we assume that it, like the others, are Solas's murals, then we see a faithful devotee of Mythal for hundreds of years. Another theory that goes along with this one is that Solas was one of the servants under her control and that eventually she rewarded him with godhood, like Andruil rewarded Ghilan'Nain. Presumably, the connection between the two would've been severed at that point but perhaps it was moved to a more subconscious level instead...

Moving on, we go to Mythal, who's murder was the catalyst for essentially the destruction of the world. We don't know a lot of the details, but we can piece together that the rebellion was happening long before her murder. After her murder, he found the power and the resolve to create the veil and seal away the Evanuris. He didn't know what the veil would do to the world or his people, what if he also didn't come up with the idea himself?

Mythal claws her way to the ages (finding Andraste first, perhaps?) and finds Flemeth. She offers Flemeth vengeance in exchange for Flemeth's help planning her own vengeance. Flemythal states that she's after a "reckoning that will shake the heavens." At the end of the game, she clearly knew Solas would show up. (She actually does something with the eluvian, possibly another contingency of hers). Doesn't it seem weird that she just accepts her death and let's him take her power, even though she's presumably more powerful than him at that point?

Unless, that was her plan all along.

Why else would Flemeth carry her for hundreds upon hundreds of years, always staying in the shadows, only to die when Solas awakens? Perhaps she, as one of the original Evanuris, knew what the veil would do and planted the idea. Even though his connection would've been severed with his ascent to godhood, he refers to her as "the best of them" and seems to ignore that she obviously still oppressed the ancient elves (ex, Abelas and the Sentinels were there because they were bound by her will).

Then, in Tevinter Nights, Solas states that he "has no choice" but to go through with his plan, and that he's a foolish and stubborn man for doing it. Obviously, at this point he doesn't want to go through with it, but he's still going because he "has no choice." What if he meant that literally? What if it's not a duty to his people, but a duty to Mythal? Perhaps he realized his mistake when he absorbed her power, perhaps he's still in the dark, but...

"A reckoning that will shake the heavens." Solas intends to rip down the veil and reshape the world, but may or may not destroy everything in the process. Sounds like that would qualify as a reckoning. 😅

WAIT HOLD ON HOLD ON

What if Solas is possessed post game onwards by mythal but in like the same ways Anders and justice shared a body