#archdemons are also highly intelligent enough to build an army of creatures who are generally mindless

[emerald-amidst-gold]

So, Dragons...

Time for me to ramble ramble about the whole basis of my fanfics when it comes to Dragon Age! 

Honestly, it all started when I was just playing, made Fane a Reaver, and decided that he would be a dragon. 

But then I started thinking and beautiful things can happen when one thinks for over long. 

To start: I’ve always believed dragons have a connection with Uthenera. My reasoning to that is because they go centuries without waking until something either awakens them (’normal’ dragons its could be a number of things and Archdemons are awakened with the Taint). Who’s to say that dragons don’t have magical connections or dreams, either? The Archdemon can reach out to a Warden in their dreams, but this could be from the Taint itself. Who knows? Furthermore, dragons expel elemental attacks (fire, ice, electricity), and the only beings we know that can do that from practically the moment they’re born is mages, albeit mages don’t come into their powers until fairly later in life, but that could be because of the presence of the Veil. 

So, what would potentially awaken a dragon other than the darkspawn or a ‘instinctual’ time clock to mate? Perhaps in the way Solas did? They just woke up after sleeping for years and years and years? Or did someone or something powerful wake them? And my thought on the dragons in Dragon Age: Inquisition is that the Breach woke them up. After all, Solas states that animals can be driven mad by the Breach and its effects (the wolves in the Hinterlands were being controlled by a demon that more or less probably came through a rift). I think this because of how many dragons we face in Inquisition (10 base; 3 DLC). That’s a total of 13 dragons where in the other games you had barely any. (Origins there are 4; that includes the Archdemon and in DA2, there’s the two in the Bone Pit).  

This influx in numbers proves to me that something is going on, and it could be the Breach’s influence or it could be something more. 

Now, in my stories, I constantly reiterate with Fane saying, ‘The Veil is driving my kin mad. It must come down. It isn’t natural to them. They see this world and it is wrong to them; it is wrong to me.’ This ties back to my thoughts on Uthenera. Imagine waking up centuries later to a world that was not what you fell asleep to. Imagine the sky feeling different, feeling like a wall rather than a clear expanse and not knowing why or how. Imagine seeing familiarity in everything, but it still feeling foreign because it is. Imagine not hearing or smelling your brethren, your kin, your people, when they were otherwise rulers of the skies. This exact thing is what happens to Solas; everything he wakes up to is not the world he knew and loved. And I believe the same thing happens with dragons who’ve been asleep for just as long, if not longer. 

They awaken to a world that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel like home. So, the ‘mindless’ destruction of settlements where they used to have a lair, the constant ‘ravaging’ of livestock where there used to be plains of game for easy picking? It’s all in an attempt to try and fix what feels so wrong. After all, would you be sane if you woke up in a place you were unfamiliar with, if all you ever knew was gone and destroyed by something you could only feel, but couldn’t see? I think dragons are more sentient than we’ve seen thus far, and they can feel emotions. Fear, despair, anger, happiness; I think they can feel it all. And to have your home torn to shreds, to have the world crumbling around you when it otherwise sang with life, to have pitchfork and boulders thrown at you because of ignorance and misconceptions, to see none of your people among the masses of snarls of disgust or eyes of fear of creatures you don’t recognize. That would induce madness, insanity so deep, so potent, so destructive that it would cause any being to lash out, to try and correct what was wrong, even though they knew they shouldn’t. Again, these are just my thoughts based on how I observe dragon movements in games and patterns they have, but I feel like something is missing. Dragons are more than just a fun boss battle or an inclusion for world building.

Mainly because dragons in Dragon Age appear in almost every ancient civilization. Tevinter with the Old Gods, who were represented by dragons. The Elvhen (basing this off the theory about the Forgotten Ones), who believed taking the form of a dragon was only reserved for divinity, and thus anyone that took that form without ‘inherent’ permission was considered reviled, to be forgotten. It’s a stretch, I know, but what if dragons were the first right along with the Elvhen? What if they were actual guardians of the world like how I depict in my stories, tasked with perserving and observing the creatures that had been wrought? 

Obviously, I’m leaving a lot out from the comics and whatnot, but from what I’ve read, those have some fascinating depictions and actual scenes where dragons are more than just mindless creatures fueled by lone instinct and primal surges. 

BIOWARE. I NEED ANSWERS. TELL ME I’M NOT MAD. 

Anyways, thank you for crinkling the tin foil with me! It’s a little scattered and sloppy, but percolating thoughts must be brewed! >:D