#conspiracy theory board.jpeg

[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?).

[owenthetokencishet]

Okay there have GOT to be THOUSANDS of completely unhinged bullshit conspiracy theories out there in the Star Trek verse regarding WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED to the starship Discovery.

You've got a MASSIVE experimental science ship with HUNDREDS of crew aboard temporarily under the command of Christopher Pike, who is considered like the GREATEST captain in Starfleet history, oh and MOTHERFUCKING SPOCK was there too!

And one day, as soon as Pike and Spock transfer back to the Enterprise, the ship just... disappears. It's reported destroyed with all hands lost and anybody who says anything about the ship receives an immediate promotion to civilian.

NOT TO MENTION that this was the ship that ENDED the Klingon war! You can't just disappear something that historically significant!

So one MUST assume that there's all sorts of nonsense out there. Maybe, like Voq, the Pike and Spock sent back to the Enterprise were ACTUALLY KLINGON INFILTRATORS SET TO DESTROY THE FEDERATION FROM WITHIN and DISCOVERY was DESTROYED because they FOUND OUT

And of course when discovery arrives in the 3180's it's crew find all these conspiracy theories, have a good chuckle over them, and completely demolish hundreds of subspace message boards when they reveal that the TRUTH is way more completely fucking bonkers than any of the conspiracy theories.