#davg lb

[symphorine]

dock town time. lots of quality time with neve!!!

we finish going through the crossroads. find this codex entry near a tree person overlooking the main plaza:

On Mapping the Unmappable This appears to be a piece of litter. Closer inspection reveals that it is an obsessively drawn map folded like a Rivaini paper toy. Unfolding it creates a three-dimensional model of... something. A scrawled note is visible: I refuse to be beaten. These are reflections of true places; they have logical form. Therefore, these streets and their origin points can be mapped as anywhere else. I have charted the shifting, intertwinning dreams of a primordial sloth demon and its victims. I will not be bested by architecture. My mentor keeps whining. "Some things are unknowable, Virien. You're courting madness, Virien." Well, I say to him: Would a madwoman concoct and entirely new schema of wisp mapping incantations just for this? The rest is unreadable.

interesting! i wouldn't call the part of the crossroads where we are streets. roads, paths, but streets implies buildings on both sides to me, something very much belonging in a village, town, city, and that's not what the crossroads look like. so did they change? did they use to look very different? in his note in the lighthouse (https://symphorine.tumblr.com/post/766887207286046720), felassan does say that "the path outside is fractured" and expressed dismay at the state of the lighthouse; it's possible the crossroads also degraded with time. also idk if i'm reading too much into it, but is the "shifting, intertwinning dreams of a primordial sloth demon and its victims" a reference to the fade section at the end of broken circle in origins?

i also enjoy the musings on mirrors and reflections - from this note, bellara when she fixes the eluvian, one of felassan's notes. i don't think it ever really culminates into anything, but it's fun to think about, and an easy jumping point if anybody wants to write about fucked up times in the crossroads :')

onwards to dock town! first we meet the shadow dragons. tarquin is grumpy and lets us know his life sucks. i am immediately charmed. then we meet the viper/ashur, who has good manners, and by contrast im even more endeared by tarquin.

neve talks about dock town very much in a tone of "it's a shithole but it's my shithole". no wonder she got along with varric and his kirkwall complex. speaking of, varric is mentioned (tarquin asks neve "is this about your work with varric?") but somehow we avoid mention of his death yet again. we get an idea of the situation in minrathous: the cult (the venatori) are actively moving (The Viper: "Underground sacrifices, dangerous relics flooding the black market... the cult's gathering power.") Now, the only "power" mentioned here is basically just literal magical power (through blood magic and relics), but i'd imagine they are gathering/increasing political influence as well? though it's not entirely clear how open the venatori are at this point.

we're also given the venatori motivation:

Neve: The Venatori want one thing. If an ancient power promised them control of Tevinter... Tarquin: They'd sign the deal in blood.

(not their blood, mind you)

Once again, I find it frustrating that we get this straightforward explanation and then never get any nuance from venatori we meet, or proof of dissent in the ranks in any way. I suppose that them being a cult makes it more understandable, if we take it as not just a derogatory designation but a literal one. i'll stop here before speaking more on this because i did pick treviso in my previous playthrough, and so I assume my experience with minrathous was very different from what it'll be this time around (where i'll choose it instead), but considering the piss poor "nuance" we got for the qunari/antaam in treviso, i don't have much hope. it's in line with the direction taken by the game, but it's still disappointing.

anyway. we then learn a dangerous relic that enhances blood magic is in dock town, and neve won't let that stand. rook offers to help, and we go on a tour of the area.

small banter as we walk around; i had bellara with me and neve here.

Rook: So you live in Dock Town? Neve: My whole life. Unless I'm away on a case. Or crashing in the Fade. Bellara: I heard the Archon's Palace shot at you. Which is bad. Bellara: And now we're chasing this relic. Which is also bad. Neve: This is why I never get sleep.

we get to the temple of Andraste, surrounded by civilians in bad shape that seem to have just gotten attacked by demons (the first time around, I thought they were still victims of the demons that appeared during solas' ritual, which was like. less than a week ago.) some of them are elves and, even more notable, qunari. except that because we're not seeing slaves, the implication is that they're just citizens or refugees? which has interesting implications. elves in tevinter are almost always slaves, and if not, they are at risk of being made slaves at the first bout of bad luck. qunari are also surprising, because while it's not really mentioned this game, tevinter is and has been at war with the qunari for a while, and i don't think they'd particularly care about the internal politics of the qun in terms of benevolence towards individuals. if we're taking this at face value, it seems like opinions have changed enough that elves and qunari can be present in the capital of tevinter while being free, not enslaved or imprisoned.

Neve: Blocked. We need another way in. Bellara, in the most delighted tone of voice: Oooh. Are we breaking into a chantry? Neve: The courtyard's public public ground. and we can't lose the trail.

Bellara's excitment at breaking and entering in a chantry is great i love her.

we go through back alleys, and one of the buildings we pass has a dead man with several dead (or at least non functional) candlehops around. there's no codex and no mention of this later as far as i remember, but i thought it was intriguing! to me it looks like this was some sort of candlehop relay hub? and someone sabotaged it (with murder).

in the first room we get into there's a dead body and a note:

UNSENT LETTER Marcus, I've been delayed at the chantry. The sisters need time to gathe the records we requested. I'm sitting on the steps as I write this. Someone just ran through the courtyard and gave me a weird look. I thought they could carry this letter, but I'll find someone else. I wish the sisters would hurry. I'll be very late, but still wait for me at the Lamplighter. I'll be there. -- Sybil

I don't remember getting to talk to anyone about this at the Lamplighter? maybe i missed it, but if not, it could have been a fun thing to add.

When we get in the chantry proper we find dozens of dead bodies, and fight some demons. I counted across the courtyard, the upper courtyard, and the hallways, 85 dead bodies.

we find also a note on one of the deads in the hallway:

BLOOD-SPATTERED NOTE Another complaint -- rumors of someone shifty seen carrying some sort of relic. People are worried it's unstable and might draw demons. Could be nothing, but we've got too many people on edge. I'm sending you to the Temple. Just check it out so we can say we did. I'll meet you after. -L

two things there: first, we later learn that the knight-commander's name is Lenos - maybe he is the one who wrote this note? second, im very amused that unstable relics that draw demons is such a problem that regular people see someone look shady and are like "oh this is gonna be a demon problem", but it's still interesting, both because it gives us a glimpse into the way their attitude is different to this compared to the south (i feel like people in southern thedas would be more panicked and agressive about this, but here, although people are clearly on edge, it seems otherwise it was business at usual), and into how often this kind of thing happens (enough that multiple people clocked it very fast and reported it, and that whoever wrote this note was a little blasé about it).

overall not much more I noted in this quest until the end, although we do meet rana and learn neve works with her, but avoids the other templars. it's pretty clear why when we get to the end: despite us catching albin bataris, a magister's son, right as he is receiving and using the dangerous blood magic relic, the knight-commander comes in as we're done fighting, accompanied by bataris senior, and albin bataris gets off free (while we do arrest the smuggler, who doesn't benefit from a magister swooping on for her). knoght commander lenos clashes with neve, who's unhappy about the situation, but we can end the quest on a positive note still: at least we got the relic and stopped the demons it released.

something here is that as we walk through the streets, overhear conversation, and talk to neve's informants, we learn some stuff about the Threads: a crime syndicate, they run smuggling (the smuggler we pursue is from the threads) and protection rackets (getting rid of demons for a fee, or a favor), most likely other stuff as well (maybe blackmail, counterfeiting, shit like that). as Neve recognizes the smuggler, she says "Smuggling, sure. But red lyrium? Working with Venatori? That's not your style." yay for criminals with standards! I'm not being facetious this is what i want from this game. also fun to see the breadth of neve's contacts! the shadow dragons, sure, but also vendors, errand runners, later elek who's a pretty high ranking member of the threads, etc.

albin also gets to leave while telling us very unsubtly that the venatori are rising. cartoon villain main. you almost just got killed by your own summoned demons bro.

we also see neve in general just caring about dock town and her people. she immediately takes the case of the relic, repeats that it's her neighborhood and neighbors, is kind to her informants, asks a beggar if she's got a safe place to stay for the night... she starts this off by telling us dock town will eat us alive if we're not careful, that it's a dangerous place, but it's so clear in every word and action that it's her home and she loves it so deeply, with all its people.

back to the lighthouse! im gonna try to go back as often as i can this run. neve's room is updated with some more furniture! the lighthouse in general also has a lot more plants and vines!

i think this might be the last major appearance change apart from unlocking the other companions' areas? but i'll keep an eye out just in case. either way it's nice to see and more welcoming than the bare trees and debris from before, although it gives it the air of being abandoned as nature reclaims it. i interpret it as really being more a show of life than neglect though, since imo this is happening because there are people living in it again, possibly also because the caretaker has a more permanent presence, and it's connected to the crossroads through the vi'revas that bellara fixed; overall all of this is instilling life in it again - it's messy, but green and suddenly thriving.

[symphorine]

time to return to the scene of the crime (ritual site) (solas did the crime)

ill skip over most of the quest bc it's just exploring the ruins and there's not much new. i did spy a halla statue, but nothing that really gives any insight as to what they're ruins of. we go through pretty extensive built and paved sections, so i'm wondering if we're in a part that used to be the city of arlathan proper, with plenty of different buildings, proper streets, etc.

did take a couple of screenshots of the view from the floating ruins, which gives an idea of what arlathan forest looks like.

i was a little confused about the mountains, but got this map from the fandom wiki:

we do see the white spire to the east, a mountain in antiva, and a mountain range on the west and southwest, which are the hundred pillars from tevinter. my guess is the ruins we're at are in the southwest side of arlathan forest, since we seem to be looking at a mountain range rather than a singular peak? arlathan forest is also right on the coast. iirc in the tevinter night "three trees to midnight" story, we follow characters captured by qunari and set to work between the edge of the forest and a beach. it's set a few years before DAVG, so whether qunari forces are still attempting to penetrate the forest or have been forced to give up because of veil jumpers' effort is up in the air. it's possible that when the antaam broke away from the rest of the qun, some of them were there.

there's also this map from tevinter nights, also found on the fandom wiki, which i find less readable but is a little different (more up to date with recent lore additions/changes):

the end of the quest at the ritual site sees us getting the dagger and harding awakening some magic powers when she touches the pure lyrium dagger, a first for dwarves, as far she (and anyone else) knows.

interesting thing: in the following screencap, taken at the beginning of the quest, we see where the dagger fell. the ground is cracked, and blue light comes from those cracks, indicating magic.

in the following two screencaps, taken at the end of the quest, where the dagger was planted into the ground briefly, there's actually what looks like lyrium veins growing:

it looks like it's not part of the rock either, but growing from nothing on top of it. i don't know what to make of it, just thought it was interesting. surely if lyrium was self replicating like this dwarves would have lyrium farms instead of mines, right? maybe it's just a small scale phenomenon?

other than that, the big thing is obviously harding talking with words and a voice that are obviously not her own. transcript of what she says while she's glowing blue from what's happening:

"This is the eternal hymn, the prayer, and the proclamation. Isatunoll. I am. We are. Free again. Whole again. Here again. Here... again..."

During this speech, she floats up in this rock, then bursts out of it. Again, it's got clear lyrium veins (god I just realized lyrium veins is so literal with lyrium being the blood of the titans. very cool).

And then she turns darkspawn into stone. This is stuff that is explored in her companion quests, so not much to say at this stage. Harding is very much a conduit for new lore in the game, in ways that did irk me a little, but i'll get to that when i progress to her quests. i do wish she had been more of her own character. it also makes it absolutely baffling to me that she can perma-die if you pick her as a second team leader in the ending, and frustrating, like she was really just a vehicle to deliver this knowledge to the player.

before we come back to the lighthouse, we get a little peek at our two elven gods

i looooove ghilannain's silhouette. i think elgarnan should have been more fucked up tbh. what we do learn here is that the darkspawn ghoul that we chased during the quest was controlled/influenced heavily by ghilannain to retrieve the dagger, and seeing as it failed, the gods now decide they need to make a new dagger - ghilannain specificies "made of red lyrium", for some reason. clearly regular lyrium wasn't a problem, since they wanted solas' dagger, but maybe it's a preference thing...? anyway. we now have. the entire motivation for the game i suppose. i guess it IS made obvious how pivotal the dagger is but... idk. it's not very impressive. in general i feel like they suffer from a crucial lack of development in the game. yes, of course as the main antagonists, we dont really spend a lot of time chatting to them, but i wish we'd gotten a bit more depths. especially since later we can hear snippets of conversation! also they have a scrying pool of sorts??? how does it work??? can they only see blighted creatures??? does it include wardens??? where the fuck are they in this screenshot??? it does look like elven architecture but i'd like to know where EXACTLY they are. somewhere in arlathan forest still? why would they not go themselves to pick up the dagger? is it too low-level work for them? are they too weak to risk it yet?

it does remind me tho of when they got freed and you saw solas turn towards them and look afraid. suddenly he didn't seem like the Dread Wolf, but like a very small and scared man. this is probably one of his greatest nightmares. good moment i liked it.

we go back to the lighthouse to have another huddle. harding says that she feels like something took her over and is worried it might be possession - neve reassures her, saying dwarves cannot be possessed because they aren't connected to the fade. i wonder if this is meant as like, a physical impossibility, or just that since dwarves dont dream or access the fade as easily, theyre just so much less likely to come into contact and make a deal with a demon?

a mage rook says it's not the magic they know, and then we have a beautiful bit of dialogue:

Rook: It's clearly Stone-focused. Which makes sense. Dwarves are Children of the Stone. Harding: Mages connect to the Fade. Dwarves reach out to the Stone? Maybe? Rook: Maybe. Harding: I guess we don't have any real answer.

i dont know guys i feel like you could have dug into this a little more T_T. especially frustrating playing a rook who is a scholar haha.

then you can tell harding how you view her new magic. not sure what it influences exactly apart from some dialogue later. i think maybe that's my gripe with a lot of those decisions being made a big deal out of (through the purple notifications): a lot of the time, it's just some dialogue you get or don't, not really something that has a real mechanical consequence (like actually influencing outcomes of situations). i might be wrong though.

lighthouse conversations after this: you can have a proper one with harding, where she expands a little more on isatunoll, and it being a proclamation of being , not "i", because that's a single being, and not "we", because that's multiple but separate. I think the closest analogy I'd give to what isatunoll seems to refer, which would have been the state of the dwarves before the titans were made tranquil, is a hive mind? maybe not quite that, but clearly dwarves were connected to each other through the titans, and to the titans, in very intrisic ways. harding also says she can't find any accurate mention of isatunoll in the books she's reading ("none of the histories are right."). as an aside, she never seemed particularly interested in dwarven history, or underground dwarves - it makes sense that she'd want to look into it now and suddenly feel closer to it, but where did she get those books on such short notice? did they just appear in the lighthouse?

speaking of the lighthouse! the library is now debris-free, and bellara's area, the workshop, is now open, though in the same state of neglect as the rest. we also of course now have the meditation room and get to arrange it. i was delighted to see a mourn watcher rook brings an urn with them... presumably it contains?? skeleton bits?? since nevarrans don't burn their deads??? anyway. imagine just lugging a whole urn around for months on end as you're travelling through thedas. tbf the mage thing, the magical project, also does not seem like something you'd bring with you for that. where were these objects before? who knows.

we unlock this codex entry in the meditation room:

On Life in the Lighthouse This ancient logbook is filled with meticulous veilfire runes. Though it is encoded, flicking through it offers vignettes of borrowed memory. Fearful refugees are ushered to the Lighthouse through eluvians, emerging from the infirmary and libraries as soldiers, spies, and scholars. Gardeners plant long-extinct herbs that grow, are harvested, and wither in the blink of an eye. The sharp smell of distilling medicine wafts from a window, and poison for the enemy drips into a vial. The arguments of a war council go on late into the night; fobidden songs are sung freely, with filthy lyrics substituted for the Evanuris' names. Finally, a heated conversation silhouetted against glass with quick shadows darting behind it. The argument ends with a wordless but unmistakable impression: "You summoned them: you feed them."

i love every scrap we get of what things were like for the ancient elves. it's nice to learn a bit more about the rebellion; it also seems like the lighthouse used to be a much larger place, if it housed all these people and rooms (libraries, plural, but also some kind of alchemy lab for poisons and medicines, at the very least, as well as gardens). and someone recorded this, wrote it in encoded runes - a member of the rebellion presumably? i was also wondering if it could be a spirit observing them, but solas makes it pretty clear later on that spirits were implicated in the conflict whether they wanted to or not, so i dont think there'd be any that just observes, especially in the heart of the rebellion.

solas sassed me so bad during this conversation with him i yelled at my screen. he asks if he overstated the danger, i picked the option to say he didn't, and he told me "How unfortunate for you." in the most mocking way. SOLAS. WHAT IS THIS. this man has no manners.

anyway, we learn that solas knows some of who we are and draws a parallel between him and us. I think that happens no matter what you choose - I'm gonna transcribe what happened with beryl, but I remember a similar dialogue with daea as well.

Rook: Then you know that powerful opposition doesn't frighten me. I find a way to get the job done, whatever it takes. Solas: I suppose I was not so different when I started. Rook: Started what? Solas: My rebellion against the Evanuris -- the "elven gods", as you call them.

side note: fun early apparition of "whatever it takes".

solas then tells us that the gods "wish to reclaim their dominion over the world." that's fine, i guess, but it rubs me the wrong way that we hear our main antagonists' goals through a third party who's assuming it's what they want. that could have been a fun twist! you can perfectly keep elgarnan and ghilannain as evil bad guys while saying they have more complex or specific aims than solas says or thinks; then that could contrast solas' conviction that he is always right, as well (until he realizes he was wrong and decides to destroy the world again about it, of course).

and then some fun stuff:

Solas: First, the blight. What exists in this world is a bare fragment of its power. The rest is imprisoned... until they release it. Rook: (Why blight the world?) I don't understand. Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain were elves like you, right? Why would they want to blight the world? Solas: It is my fault. As the Dread Wolf, I was a thorn in their side. Solas: When my efforts weakened their grasp on the elven people, they grew frustrated. Then desperate. Rook: And turned to the blight. Solas: Once the corruption took hold of them, they were blind to its horror. It was just another source of power for them. Solas: Now, they would blight the world without hesitation and call us backward and foolish for opposing them. Rook: (It's bigger than what we have?) The rest of the blight is imprisoned? There's more than what's in the world already? Solas: Yes. Centuries ago, the magisters of Tevinter opened my prison. A tiny fragment of the blight escaped. Solas: That fragment grew beneath the earth and led to the Blights that have swept across this world. Solas: However terrible the blight is now, it is a mere fraction of what we will see if its full power is unleashed. Rook: (It didn't escape?) The blight didn't escape with the gods? Solas: Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain escaped largely empty-handed, fortunately. Most of the blight is still trapped in the prison I created ages ago. Rook: So what we saw at the village, that's them not at full strength? Solas: Correct.

these are the questions you can ask solas about the blight before continuing the conversation. all interesting tidbits! the blight existed before they turned to it - we know it's the anger of the titans, a consequence of making them tranquil. it was considered bad, including by the evanuris: solas saying that once the corruption advanced enough, they were blind to its horrors implies that they used not to be. the blight we know and have known since origins is only a LITTLE of it, which is humbling. the titans were gods in their own right; that their fury is much bigger and worse than what we've seen also makes sense.

also, the magisters did unleash the blight, but it is not of the maker. someone call the chantry i need to destroy their entire ideology asap (if everyone else' beliefs are getting fucked, i don't see why the chantry should be different. but i will complain about this later for sure). this confirms that the golden/black city was arlathan. corypheus said in dai that he throne of the gods was empty, so either he saw the evanuris in their prison but did not recognize them as gods, or the magisters just didn't go very far into that prison (plausible! it was a ritual that demanded a lot of power and they resorted to a lot of blood magic just to enter the fade physically, let alone go further into it. I wonder if it would have demanded less power if they hadn't been trying to get into solas' prison? also, was it on accident or not?). it is intriguing that the blight escaped first with no god, and now the gods escaped with no blight. were they held in different sections of solas' prison? also, honestly, what the fuck was that prison like? thousands of years imprisoned with your fellow tyrants in the fade? AND additionally: the evanuris and the forgotten ones seem to have disappeared at the same time, but solas only ever talks about imprisoning the evanuris, despite legends saying he imprisoned both (in different prisons). and we see anaris later, coming from and being send back to the fade. what happened to the forgotten ones exactly? clearly they're not in with the evanuris.

anyway. then solas tells us to find the tyrants and bullies, the cruel and the corrupt, because that's where elgarnan and ghilannain will seek followers, as they "care little for the elves". I do agree they don't care for the well-being of the elves, for sure, but i was expecting a "you were ours and you shall be again" angle to be played much more strongly in the game. it soooort of happens, with the way elgarnan talks to and about the dalish, but not that much. but now we've establish that anyone who works with the gods is evil anyway.

it's frustrating because then it's just reinforced that the venatori and antaam are purely evil, with very few exceptions - or not even exceptions, just... contact with members that show another facet. I'm thinking of the crow and venatori lovers in treviso, and the brief dialogue with the butcher in treviso as well. the enemies being uniformly bad, something that is never questioned, is definitely a disappointing and frustrating aspect of the game, especially when racism is thrown in the mix with the antaam (the way theyre depicted is dehumanizing and sexualized and just. so bad. plenty of other posts have touched upon this but it bears repeating.)

finally, "And when you see Varric, please tell him that I... regret what happened." SOLAS WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU.

actually this does remind me of something i forgot to write about earlier, about the very beginning of the ritual site quest, when harding and neve have a bit of a fight. Harding at one point mentions Varric, and Neve says that he knew what he was in for, he knew what the risks were. so clearly varric is not a taboo subject in front of rook. HOW did rook not stumble into conversation that made them realize varric was dead and an illusion during the game? it must span at least MONTHS.

caught up with my screenshots folder, so ill play some more tomorrow probably! I think from next week, as I go back to work, I'll prob play during the weekend and write these posts during the week, but we'll see.

[symphorine]

taking a walk around arlathan forest! to go to d'meta's crossing

the tree people. wish we could comment on it??? its definitely creepy. some look like they got turned in very intense moments, some look pretty peaceful. when did this happen? is this something that happens continually? either way it sure gives a particular ambiance :')

little neve and bellara banter about the forest, I think just when seeing the first tree people. it also played the same when i came through with harding in previous playthrough.

Neve: Sounds like a lot happened here. Bellara: What hasn't happened? This area is where Tevinter magisters destroyed Arlathan City centuries ago. Whole lot of bloog magic during the war. Neve: And now? Bellara: Whatever Solas did stirred up everything again. Bellara: The old blood magic from the war... it never went away. Bellara: Ancient relics appear out of thin air, ruins float... Bellara: It's like... an old wound that never healed. And now it's bleeding again.

Letter we find on a desk overlooking the VJ's camp

A Lament for Fallen Elvhenan From a Veil Jumper's letter: I hear tall watchtowers once stood where these waters emptied into the sky, their torches lit to guide the weary traveler. Sometimes on still days, when the mist hangs low on the river, I can imagine the lighted path up to the golden spires of Arlathan, and the voices of my people calling me home. I know Elvhenan, our lost civilization, is not how I imagine it. Arlathan was a place of wonder and magic, and also of conflict and war, ruled by tyrants. Yet still I mourn it, and wishg that I could have seen it just once, and called it mine. Added below in different handwriting: These feelings are not yours alone. There is no sin in grieving what was lost, imperfect thought it was. -- Strife.

i like that we get to see a glimpse of complex feelings about all this in the veil jumpers. considering they are at the very least primarily dalish (if not all), I wish we could talk to them more, or overhear more dialogue about how they feel about the evanuris and the truth behind the legends they've been hearing all their lives! and how two of those gods are now walking thedas! it's especially nice to see this for strife, since we do talk to him more but we're mostly restricted by like, plot urgency. maybe it's different if you play a veil jumper rook?

getting to the boat, in that area we find two halla, one dead and one alive. irelin says later in davrin's personal quest that the veil jumpers have been so busy they've neglected to check on the halla, but they're literally minutes away from camp, so... idk. level population oversight maybe.

we find that first owl statue, which when activated (really fun to me that we get to hear rook hoot) shows this note:

EXPLORER'S JOURNAL: DISCOVERY I'm convinced these owls are more than statues. There's a power behind these silent guardians. I'm hesitant to tamper with them, but on the other hand, owls represent wisdom and transformation. I can't imagine a monument to such noble creatures would be harmful. -- Renay Limfort

D'Meta's Crossing is a big tone shift coming from arlathan forest and i LOVED IT, even before my warden rook said they sensed blight i was very excited to see fucked up things. and boy is that village fucked up. we've seen some of the new blight already, but this is a whole other level. i don't think there's anything in particular i want to note here though. aside from maybe the mayor's fate? if you send him to the wardens, he ends up saving a group of wardens in the hossberg wetlands later on. presumably, if you don't, they just die? as a warden i decided to bring him in, mainly because the situation is clearly getting dire really fast, and the more bodies to fight the blight, the better, but bellara was not happy about that :') he also has some lines about how he's trying to atone for what he did and seems sincere, which I suppose could play into the larger theme of regret in the game, but tbh it just felt relatively standard in terms of wardens shit.

also the dragon looks goooooood

some fun screenshots of the village and stuff:

i guess this is also the first encounter with ghilannain and glimpse into what she's doing - from the conversation with jahel, one of the veil jumpers, "a blood ritual, to release the blight" (which I guess is what caused the sinkhole to the deep roads that is now in the middle of the village?), from the dialogue with mayor julius "ghilannain's new creation", according to harding "so the gods could gain power from the blight". not sure exactly how this worked tbh. the blight already exists here, and both elgarnan and ghilannain are already blighted. but this is a conjecture from harding, and it's possible this was just ghilannain toying with the blight and seeing what she could with it now.

also at the end when you leave the mayor, he says that no one could withstand the influence of the gods, and bellara says "Watch me.", which I think is a GREAT parallel if you pick her to do the wards at the end and she becomes blighted and tells elgarnan that he's not her god while using the blight against him. bellaraaaaaa i love u. free gifset idea tbh

im probably not gonna say much about the extra varric narrations. the art is nice but i really do not care for them and in fact i think they detract from the game.

a codex entry from the veil jumpers (which i think actually is from before u go to the boat but my screenshots are not entirely in order):

Scouting Report: Apparition Expedition scouting report, Veil Jumper Caeda reporting: I was in the northernmost stretch of Arlathan Forest trying to find a way into the Gennelis ruin. We recently discovered an old journal that claimed a lost halla keeper found a room full of relics inside Gennelis, down in the labyrinth. The entrance was blocked by rubble. As I was getting ready to wedge myself through a gap, an apparition appeared in front of it. It seemed to be blocking my way. Whatever it was, it wasn't solid, so I think I could've passed through it, but it seemed to be waving its arms. It felt like a warning -- that I shouldn't enter the ruins. I didn't argue and turned and ran.

everybody give it up for genre aware veil jumper caeda who definitely saved his own life there. gives a little bit of insight on VJ missions again! he was alone in a part of the forest clearly far away and possibly dangerous - even before the apparition warned him away, he was going to go into an old ruined labyrinth, which cannot be a good idea. so I guess, while there are probably some members who do more ordinary things - hunting and foraging for food, trading, maintaining the camp, mapping the forest, patrolling - long expeditions alone in ruins don't seem out of the ordinary.

when we get back to the camp, we get to have a conversation with strife and irelin and morrigan appears! i did not expect her to be there this early so i was really surprised in my first pt. i feel like throughout the game she was very much used as a character to pad some gaps and give rook information, rather than... fully as who she is and what she can do, which is a shame. but then again, considering we couldn't import anything to do with her, I suppose her role had to remain pretty removed so her actions and dialogue didn't contradict things we might have done in previous games.

also morrigan and harding are pals I guess? they weren't particularly close in inquisition (i don't even know if morrigan /talked/ to harding then), but it could make sense that they've worked together more closely in the ten years since while harding was looking for solas.

I do think they could've stood to make morrigan look older, but she does have crow's feet and lines when her face moves, so it's not entirely half assed.

Some of the conversation:

Harding: Morrigan helped the Inquisition when Varric and I were part of it. She knew more about ancient magic than anyone except Solas. [...] Morrigan: As dangerous as Solas himself may be, his imprisonment of the gods was just. Morrigan: To leave them unchecked would have been the very end of Thedas. Rook: (So you know the Dread Wolf?) Just to be clear, you know your old friend Solas is actually the Dread Wolf? Morrigan: So I have come to learn. It rather explains how he knew such a great deal of ancient elven history... Morrigan: And why he became so vexed when I attempted to explain it to him.

she rolls her eyes when she says that last part. it is funny, but also i think bioware maybe poking fun at how people who played an elven inquisitor did not appreciate getting explained their own history by morrigan? idk maybe im reading too much into this. i give it a pass because I think it would make solas look like he just bit into a lemon to know someone called him and morrigan friends and I think that man should be bullied forever.

we then get some info from morrigan about the vi'revas, Solas's special eluvian, and his dagger, and onwards we go. bellara goes to the lighthouse to fix the eluvian, and rook, neve and harding go to the ritual site to get the lyrium dagger that solas used to open the fade, and also to stab varric.

[symphorine]

opened the secret room (music room) and yeah it is in the same rough state as the rest. took screenshots of the paintings as well, wanna see if they get restored as the lighthouse does. also up there some pics of the hallway, hallways side, and ceiling. because I got the codex on the piano and it was the same both with a solasmancing inquisitor and one that didn't, i think it refers to mythal rather than the inquisitor.

also took some pics of the conservatory (harding's area)

and neve's (cant remember the name and cant be assed to start up the game sorry neve)

just for future comparison.

had that first library huddle with neve and harding, nothing particularly jumped out at me except for the line "Are you sure Solas can't use blood magic to affect your mind?" which. well. GREAT question neve. incidentally would you like to mention what happened to varric.

found this note as well on the top of the right library stairs, on the ground.

FADED NOTE Look at this place. We planned a rebellion here once. Said we'd change the future of the elves, throw off tyrants, and we did. Now the path outside is fractured. It'll be hard rekindling all the eluvians. Solas, if you see this: I'll be looking for you, out in this world and in the mortal one. Don't cause too much trouble before I get there.

Most likely from felassan, even if it's not signed. Wonder when he left it, if he was awake longer than solas after the veil was created. Can't remember if he mentioned anything about that in the masked empire. i will say, this is yet another of solas' friends that he killed himself. solas. stop that. for fuck's sake.

[symphorine]

let's go see our friend varric and then do some stuff - talk to neve, fix the eluvian, run around the lighthouse, go to the crossroads, dig around into solas' memories some more.

theres not much in terms of interesting bits being talked about, but it drives me nuts that i can't deicde if varric is mostly a product of rook imagining him, or if he's mostly a creation of solas. because that gives very different interpretations to a lot of lines! when varric shows concern, are you imagining your friend, or is solas playing him how he thinks he would act? when varric talks about solas, how much is him/what he's told you, and how much is solas filtering his own vision of himself AND what he thinks varric's vision of him is? when varric gives you advice about being a leader, are you remembering his (kind of trite ngl, you rehash the same thing like three times if you go through the extra questions) advice, or is solas already trying to manipulate and mold you?

also this. it's either a cheeky foreshadowing/hint OR solas being an absolute asshole. i need to know!!!

lighthouse bits. the caretaker's shop is and has been accessible already but without them. also this above the library shelves:

that's elgar'nan's symbol right?? again, is this asset reuse or deliberate? because if deliberate then i have questions. esp when iirc later it's mentioned that elgar'nan views the lighthouse as solas trying to recreate something of his(?). i can't remember the details right now but hopefully when i come across it again i'll remember this bit.

next neve conversation about where to look for allies. we get pointed to lucanis (side note, rook can ask neve if "mage killer" doesn't bother her, but doesn't seem we can say anything if rook is a mage. i feel like personally i'd be a little bit alarmed!) and neve wants to go back to dock town and check in with the shadow dragons. also she is so pretty

she presents the shadow dragons as "They're a resistance group that fights slavers, blood magic, and Imperial corruption." i dont want to rehash too much things about how bioware clearly decided to throw nuance out the window and shied away from portraying slavery, but i'll repeat that it's a shame this is our introduction and then we don't really get to see them do that. i DID pick treviso and lose access to shadow dragons npcs on my first run so also very possible that on a saved minrathous playthrough, it's different, but that doesn't change the fact that slavery is in this game a little setting spice and nothing more. which sucks. and re: blood magic, it's frustrating that we do get in previous games more contrasted depictions, even in dai - in particular i'm thinking about a codex entry talking about a blood mage healer - but in veilguard blood magic is just 100% bad. it's not worth writing an essay about it here, but it's still disappointing (though not surprising - after dai the direction in which they were going for blood magic was pretty clear).

we go to the eluvian and bellara fixes it.

Harding: What is that place? Bellara: If I had to guess? It's the Fade. Another part of it, I mean. Neve: Didn't Morrigan say this eluvian could go anywhere? Didn't think that meant "elsewhere in the Fade". Bellara: She called it the Vi'Revas. "Freedom of ways". I wonder... [...] Bellara: Some of the older texts talk about a place in the Fade where all the eluvians meet. Bellara: A crossroads... where you could travel across all of Thedas in just minutes. Harding: Right! We saw something similar, when we were chasing Solas. I wonder if it's the same? Spirit (the Caretaker): It is alike. And it is not. [...] Caretaker: The wolf's fang. You carry it now. Caretaker: Old paths. A new journey.

Plus this codex entry:

Magic Dampener Notes Initial notes on the dampener's operation: -Dampener creates a counter-resonance to the Fade. That's why it's safe to live here. No one's been torn ap[art yet (that I know of). -But the counter-resonance from the dampener is tuned to this specific part of the Fade. The more you move away from this spot, the less effective it would be. -There's a theory that every mage has a unique resonance -- the way they touch magic is just a little bit different. -Theoretically, could you tune the dampener to a person's resonance instead? Make it so they couldn't use magic? -Would be hard to figure out someone's specific resonance. Would need examples of their magic. -Need third volume of Harris's Collected Essays. Will ask the professor if he has it. Bellara

I transcribed the convo because the Crossroads make me feel insane and I will talk about them a bit later. I love the codex entry, I thought Bellara's technical writings and musings were all really well done and interesting - before this, if you go bother her while she's fixing the eluvian, she also mentions waiting for lyrium to cure, and during this convo she talk about the distortion in the eluvian's special machinery. it's fun! it helps selling her as an actual expert as well, someone who does understand the workings and theory of things. also i loooooove magic tech. i just think it's cool. i also thought that part about figuring out someone's resonances and keeping them from doing magic would come back later, but it never did.

the thing that bothers me a little is her note of "asking the professor if he has it." she might be already corresponding with Emmrich at this point? although it wold probably have been a short acquaintance still. and he's obviously not there yet. just feels kind of out of place.

After this we finally have sun in the lighthouse!!!! a few screenshots:

cloudy sky, but finally sunlight which is soooo nice. in that third screenshit, we see a smoking chimney on a building attached to the library. wonder what the smoke is coming from? at this point I can't think of any open area that would cause it. of course, it's possible there are places in the lighthouse that are working independantly. The floating building with that half sphere also looks interesting, mostly because it's probably something specific. I said in a previous post that I think the lighthouse probably used to be much bigger - i think the floating islances used to be attached/accessible in some way to the main part where we are.

in the fourth screenshot, I (finally) noticed the symbol on the tower building. it looks like one of the other gods' symbol - i've seen people map it to sylaise? although nothing certain. would be interesting if it was though - in his exchange with elgar'nan later on (transcribed here) solas says that "our great cities came from Sylaise". For the Dalish, she is also known as the Hearthkeeper and is "the goddess of all domestic arts". Her way is also called The Vir Atish'an, The Way of Peace. did sylaise perhaps build the lighthouse before it became the hideout of the rebellion? did she enter the conflict with the titans or solas later, and this worked with him for longer? maybe she was, like ghilan'nain, not one of the very first born elves? we know frustratingly little about the evanuris other than mythal, elgar'nan and ghilan'nain.

either way, it is now less depressing to run around the lighthouse. yay sunlight.

onwards to the crossroads.

MIRRORS UPON MIRRORS This place is amazing. June's normal eluvians function with twinned lyrium fragments. One always leads to another. Solas somehow talked the Crossroads into making Fade-eluvians that override them. His own network to run our rebellion. Provided you ignore all the old stories about holding mirrors up to mirrors and getting caught in the infinite reflections. -Felassan

note you find on the side of the passage to the middle dock.

THE CROSSROADS MAKE ME INSANE. the best way i can reconcile all this is that the crossroads are the hidden hardware of eluvian travel that solas managed to access but that gets hidden by "regular" eluvian travel.

so the crossroads existed before solas tapped into them and "talked them into" making "Fade-eluvians". we also know there is at least one instance of separate crossroads: the one the evanuris used. briala, in the masked empire, also gains control of a (the? barring solas'?) network of eluvians - which COULD be the one the evanuris used. either way it cannot be this one, because she locked it with a secret passphrase that felassan refused to learn from her, and solas can't know it (yes felassan is in the book! if you want to see more of him you can read it). plus, upon entering the crossroads in the books, felassan says he has no idea what this place is - of course it's possible he's lying (although he doesn't tend to lie to briala), or him knowing about the crossroads in davg is a retcon bc they hadn't planned that bit yet.

page 278-279 of the masked empire:

"What is this place?" she asked Felassan, who was rocking back and forth on his heels. "You know, da'len, I honestly have no idea." He leaned over and poked at the stones. "It's not the Fade. The runes are elven... If I had to guess, I would say that our ancestors actually created some sort of tiny world between the eluvians." "Can that be done?" "Apparently." [...] "And this little world seems to like us." Briala was about the ask him to explain when Ser Michel stepped through the eluvian and onto the path. "Maker's breath!" he swore, shaking his head and stumbling. Briala reached out and grabbed one armored arm to steady him. A moment later, Celene came through as well. She stiffened, clutched her head, and dropped to one knee with a low cry. "Felassan, what's wrong?" It seemed worse for them than it had been for her. Celene shuddered, wincing, and used Briala for support as she slowly pulled herself up. "I suspect that this land was made for the elves," Felassan said as Michel stood up, stiff and awkward, wincing against the light. "Which they aren't."

So the crossroads they walk in the book are worse for humans than for elves - the humans also walk slower, and it takes them more effort, while briala notes she and felassan had been walking at a relaxed pace and she didn't feel exertion from it. the path ends at another single eluvian. when they go through it, they come into the mortal world again - in a chamber with several eluvians. in general, they go through several of those mirror-to-mirror paths to find more chambers - that are themselves a crossroads - and the elven runes they come across are also hard to impossible for the humans to decipher, but briala, in her pov, notes that they look perfectly simple and logical to her. she gains control to them and we're told that the eluvians are all activated - the ones still in working order at least - but dormant until she wills it otherwise, or presumably someone else uses the passphrase (although at the point she is the only one who knows it). it DOES seem like there are a fair number of eluvians that are working.

ok so my theory is this. the eluvians that briala controls are the ones the evanuris did - a physical network, with physical hubs, like changing buses or tram lines. felassan seemed to sincerely not know what the non-fade (but clearly not mortal world either) path between eluvians was, so maybe it appeard as the magic degraded over the centuries? and it used to be that this transitional space was imperceptible. the crossroads we use in veilguard are the same, or similar, to the ones morrigan takes us to in inquisition - and similarly used to not be fragmented islands, but a better connected whole, that allowed solas and his allies to go anywhere. and this was achieved by connecting the fade to the eluvians - basically hacking the eluvians. this means they are different in nature to thos inter-eluvian paths in the book, and that's why non-elves arent in pain when they enter them. why solas is the one who could do it and not the evanuris, I'm not sure. ok i think i've finally reconciled it all for myself.

side note but i miss felassan. honestly he should have been part of the "good end" with mythal and the inquisitor. bring back his ghost and make solas have a heart attack.

ALRIGHT NOW THAT IVE SOLVED MY ELUVIANS AND CROSSROADS CONFUSION. let's have a look around!

there are three different mosaics on the ground facing (chin towards) the three docks. they all seem to be stylized renditions of a wolf's face - the first with two eyes and some flourishes on the lower part fo the face, the second with six eyes, the third a flatter triangle - could arguably not be a wolf, but then idk what it would be. not sure what it means but i thought it was a neat detail.

we take the fade ferry of the dock in the third row of the pics, which is gonna lead us to (the fade island with the eluvian for) minrathous.

cool callback to kirkwall which used to be a slave port with those giant statues. now actually talk about slavery. :/

we see the refugee spirits - i wish this was a little more expanded upon just bc like. we're told this isnt exactly the fade. is it connected to it still? have these spirits been here since the veil happened? or do they freely come and go between the crossroads and other parts of the fade? and the gods' corruption encroaching is what is preventing them from leaving? also one of my only real complaints about sort of like, atmosphere stuff, which is that they really could have stood to use more than two (2) models for the spirits

we find this note in the main sort of. plaza. i can't say crossroads again that's just too many times in one post.

THE VANISHED CITY I'm dreaming, but this time I know I am. Even if I didn't, this place would tell me. I'd never dream of a place like this. Cities are full of people. An empty city is the bones of a good meal. A reminder that makes a hungry woman sad. -Susan Kravizielle, Jainen Circle, 8:20 Blessed.

she was dreaming and found herself in the crossroads. also interesting! they can't be that far removed in nature from the fade if someone can just stumble upon them in dreams. i also like the "An empty city is the bones of a good meal." line.

last section here will be the solas memory of ghilan'nain's lab.

we meet an elf, tarasahl, who talks to us as if we were a fellow agent of the dread wolf who'd been sent with her to infiltrate ghilan'nain's lab. it's clear with how she talks about solas that she respects him greatly, and that he's already seen as more than he is - greater than life, at least, a hero, if not a god. the labs are covered in blight, and solas comes in person to help you and tarasahl - bc of the gravity of the infection ("This unnatural corruption demanded my personal attention."). you split up again to find an exit route - "to the surface", so ghil's lab here is underground. rook notes that solas sounds "rattled" and "spooked [...] by the blight"

reminds me of the "horrors of hormak" story, where grey wardens find a strange pool surrounded by horrible experiments made of mashed up creatures deep under a mountain. the narrator collapses the path in and out of that, but there were carvings on the walls that indicated there were eleven other places like that, I think - other labs waiting to be discovered. I honestly thought they'd come in play in veilguard, but besides this memory, we dont actually see or get any info on where ghilan'nain is experimenting with darkspawn. kind of a shame, it could have been interesting - esp if you saw this memory before, and got to talk to solas after about the lab.

as we go and fight the memory's darkspawn, one of the companions notes that these are darkspawn that are similar to the ones we fought before in arlathan - rook says "Maybe the darkspawn we've been seeing aren't new. Maybe they're old." ghilan'nain blights tarasahl in the memory - she cries out "Wolf! Help me!", so again solas is like. this Figure, rather than just a man. i know varric says in the conversation earlier that solas "never wanted to be a god, he's just a man", so it's just a nice juxtaposition. he may not have wanted to be, but the way he act ("this corruption demanded my personal attention) and his position as leader of the rebellion, as the person responsible for his followers' freedom, show that he's already in that role, separated from the rest of his people. felassan, in his notes, seems to be consistent in their closeness, so i dont think solas was entirely isolated in that way, but there's already this pedestal under him.

AND THEN THAT FINAL DIALOGUE IN THE MEMORY

Solas: You would unleash a blight on this world and call it a masterwork! You, who were the most sensitive of us... Ghilan'nain: All that I am belongs to the pursuit of creation. You chose to contrain yourself. I must climb to the heights only understood by gods. Ghilan'nain: I go now to join them. [Ghilan'nain leaves, Solas watching her.] Tarasahl: Wolf... you are greater than any of them. Please. Help me. Rook (He won't help her): He's too afraid of the blight to do anything but end her pain. Solas: I am so sorry I failed you. There is only one way I can help you now. Tarasahl: Wolf... Solas (to Rook): This place, and the corruption within it, must be eradicated. No trace can be allowed to spread. Solas: Go. Your work here is done. There is no need for you to witness what I must do. [Memory ends] Rook: It's over. Solas destroyed the lab, the blight that was here... and his agent. Bellara: He wasn't just her leader, he was her god. And this is her reward?

bellara at the end is bc she was with me, but I believe any of the other companions would say something similar. I picked "he won't help her" this time around, but if I remember correctly what happens is the same no matter what rook chooses, the memory plays out the same.

I NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THESE ANCIENT ELVES' DYNAMICS. BIOWARE.

it's not unlocked now, but we get these codices later on:

Letter from Solas to Ghilan'nain I have seen your creatures. Some are beautiful, some are horrific, but all are brilliant. I can understand how such incredible achievements could make one feel like a god. Perhaps that explains the terror you have caused, and the transformations wrought upon those unable to defend themselves. But you must know that you are not a god. You are a mage, and a title from the Evanuris cannot alter that. If anything, joining their ranks will bind you to their political will. You could make creatures to protect our people from the Evanuris. Why debase yourself and threaten our people by joining them? Of course, I know why. I hope you gain peace with Andruil. You would not be the first to sacrifice your morals for love.

and

Ghilan'nain's reply Solas: I have always respected your intellect and your investigations into magic's boundaries. But you err in assuming I seek a title. Like you, I am not among the firstborn. The Evanuris will grant me magic I could never attain. New forms, new matrices of blood, already swim in my dreams. This is not for Andruil. Andruil petitioned on my behalf. She supports me, always, in everything. You say to craft creatures to protect our people. I have already given them my halla. I made them when I was younger. Untraveled. Naive. I did not know then what flesh could do when compelled. Tell our people to treasure those animals. I could not make them now. At the bottom of the letter is the stamp of a stylized halla head.

it's getting late and i don't have coherent thoughts but solas and ghilan'nain clearly had a prior, at the very least cordial relationship, if not friendship! AND THEN WE GET NONE OF THAT BETWEEN THEM IN GAME. NO MENTION. WHY NOT. PLEASE.

the memory also places Ghilan'nain's ascension to the position of evanuris as happening during solas' rebellion, or shortly before maybe. she chose to do this despite the conflict, and solas pleading her not to (though he doesn't even believe it will work himself). whether the rebellion was already underway or not, solas' oppositon to the evanuris is clearly already firm and known.

most of what's said also reinforces again solas already being considered an equal to the evanuris - in power (whether deserved or not) and in standing. bellara's assertion that he was her god seems accurate, even if he didn't claim the title of god for himself.

i think it's also interesting to see solas' reaction to the blight... having played the game already we know that he is (along with the evanuris) responsible for it. he's scared of it and destroys it completely and ruthlessly - I don't know if he could have cured it or not in tarasahl (the game is. giving very conflicting information on curing the blight), and if he could have, if he wasn't confident enough that it would eliminate all traces of it. in present day, in inquisition, we've also seen him react very strongly to it, and very negatively to wardens, judging that infecting themselves with the blight to fight it is foolish and dangerous. i think he honestly fears the blight even more than the evanuris. for all that i keep thinking of how scared he looks at the ritual, when he turns around and elgar'nan and ghilan'nain tower over him; that he warns us they are very powerful, and they clearly always were, they are still... people. powerful ones, but you can fight. the blight spreads and infects and destroys no matter what and it any shred of it is present it will inevitably corrupt. it's a very different enemy, and even if none of it escaped more, ghilan'nain and elgar'nan bring more of it into the mortal world by virtue of being positively imbibed with it. they're carriers of the infection and its virulency - and then of course they're able to use it as a tool, but even without that it's a terrifying thing.

it's frustrating that he is so judgemental towards wardens without explaining why - partly bc of course it's hypocritical, but also bc i would love for him to give us more details on the blight and how it works. i also think this would have been a great opportunity to bring up broodmothers, if he knows they exists. fascinatingly horrible piece of lore. are they something that "evolved" so to speak, or did ghilan'nain create them first?

ok gotta go to bed now, but next is a little bit more crossroads, then dock town! extra screenshots for the road

[symphorine]

right. did the bellara recruit quest! pausing before going to D'Meta's Crossing

i did do a headcount for VJs in the camp and found 19 (20 with Bellara). that said it looked like more in the cinematic just before, and we obviously dont see the whole encampment, like where they sleep, which is also presumably where all the wounded got taken.

plus this line from Irelin: "Eleven wounded, sixteen on bed rest, and some of our most experienced fighters are still missing!". I think we can estimate VJ numbers to be around 60-70? assuming all wounded have been taken away that's 20 + 11 + 16 = 47, "some of your most experienced fighters" probably less than ten, let's say 55 bc its a nice number, and adding some for people not at camp but with the injured. not counting jumpers who might have died in the chaos.

EDIT: looked aorund again and actually found 25 veil jumpers, including four that seemed injured and were on beds under the staircase. its clearly not all the wounded so i think the math is still mostly correct, but for accuracy's sake.

also we have a definite timeline for things here based on conversation in the quest: bellara says the sky opened a couple days ago. so that's when the ritual was happening, and we slept for a little less than that.

Bellara: Protocol is to wait a full week before they send anyone out to look for me. I've only been gone three days.

Not super notable but gives some insight on veil jumper expeditions. Bellara was sent alone and is considered one of the most capable, so maybe she gets a longer time allowance before assuming trouble? but there IS a protocol in place.

Bellara: The surge of raw magic in the area. These artifacts started waking up a while ago, but in fits and starts. One here, a couple there...

Bellara: Then a couple of days ago, the sky split open. And now? Raw magic, thick as fog. Only a god -- or gods -- could have done that.

I'm taking so may goddamn screenshots. I need to start organizing them after this. ANYWAY.

so confirmation that the artifacts had been starting to wake up before this. "A while ago" can mean... kind of anything. Arlathan had a reputation for being an area where magic behaves weirdly before now. My personal hc here is gonna be that it started when inquisition happened and the breach presumably started weakening the veil on a scale large enough to reach arlathan forest (+ despite the inquisitor closing the breach, we know rifts continued appearing, so instability was not resolved entirely), but there's not really anything definitive here. could have started thirty years, fifty years ago or longer. or been more recent.

Fade bubble! New phenomenon. Seems confined to Arlathan, I don't think we encounter any anywhere else (or... again, actually?). The floating water kind of anomaly has its own name, "whirlpool", so does happen in places other than the ruins we visit here.

A BARELY LEGIBLE NOTE Construct broke my leg. Veradan took a blade to the gut. We can hear them above us, on the bridge. Once they leage, we'll make a break for it. They can't wait for us forever, right?

Note found under the bridge that leads to the first set of ruins. thank you dead NPC for writing this for some reason. bellara says a little before that the constructs are animated by spirits, and attuned to the artifact to protect it (the artifact here being the important thing at the middle of the ruins, not something random). we also see a little later how artifacts can still be running now despite being thousands of years old. interesting - and with the knowledge now that the elves started as spirits - that these binds on the armors 1) kept the spirits as spirits (bellara does make the distinction clearly between it being spirits and not demons) and 2) lasted all this time despite the elven empire having been destroyed long ago. i wonder, how did the ancient elves treat the spirits they were living alongside? this was pre-veil. we know solas, as one who used to be a spirit himself, treats them with affection and respect, but was it the case for all elves, especially the ones born further down the line, of physical bodies? the empire was large, did the way elves treat spirits vary much from place to place? from evanuris/forgotten one/other "warlords" to another? did the spirits volunteer to do this?

Neve: Do you know what this place was? Bellara: Could've been a temple. Could've been where they stored food. Bellara: But judging by the sentinels? It's probably something more important. Bellara: It almost feels like an armory. Or something like that. Neve: Why would there be an armory this far out? Bellara: Warlords. Ancient elves had a lot of them.

the tidbit that made me add "warlords" above. no idea what period those warlords would have existed: when the elves became a more numerous people? when the evanuris emerged - as the most powerful warlords? after the evanuris' fall and the veil was created, before the humans took over? when fighting humans (the tevinter imperium) conquering people and territory? possibly at all those points in different forms? i think for this we can discard the last 2 actually, as we're exploring and talking about the ruins and their location, and we know for sure they were built pre-veil (in universe, i would assume architecture pre and post veil would be distinct enough to mark the difference, but also the archive we find was built by anaris, so definitely pre-veil time).

actually the fact that this is where we find anaris' archive spirit is interesting in itself as well. we're in arlathan forest, where arlathan used to stand, ruled by the evanuris, and anaris was an enemy of theirs. did the archive get seized during a fight and they brought it to a location (the ruins we are exploring) that was evanuris controlled? was it moved here by followers of anaris after solas trapped the evanuris (and according to legend, also the forgotten ones - drives me insane they're barely mentioned in conjunction with this)? or was this somewhere anaris lived? if it was, he lived really close to his enemies' strongest position. if these are the same ruins we visit during bellara's later companion quests, it's definitely somewhere anaris spent time. I know we find some codex entries that he wrote as well, but i dont remember the exact locations (the ones talking about the mystery substance - the final one is signed by him and found in what seemed like a hidden office iirc). just food for thought. tbh even if it's not the same ruins, we're still running around in arlathan forest during those later quests, so either way anaris seems to have been hanging around close to arlathan, and running for his life at the same time (that last entry mentions he's escaping the evanuris iirc).

bellara and neve banter :> i love bellara

Bellara: So you're really Neve Gallus? The detective from Minrathous? Neve: Last time I checked... Bellara: I've read about you. You've gone after some powerful mages before... but Fen'Harel, the real Gen'Harel? Neve: And now, Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, apparently... Bellara: My actual gods are out there trying to end the world and Neve Gallus is on the case. Bellara: I just... I can't believe it!

just think it's a cute banter. also gives us some idea of how known neve is! obviously bellara seems to be paying particular attention, and heard about neve from reading minrathous papers, so it's not like neve is. you know. batman levels of famous detective. but enough to make the papers, including in cases against powerful mages. I think that's pretty notable in tevinter!! that she was able to bring them to public justice or expose them, and papers were able to report on that.

next i entered the part of the ruins that were blighted, and we met our first darkspawn. noted as incredibly unusual to see them there, this deep in arlathan forest, and also that they look odd (so bellara has had encounters with darkspawn before, and in general it's something that does happen around arlathan it seems. we know from previous games that the darkspawn are around even when it's not a major blight, so it's not surprising, but still a tidbit to note).

there were two wolf statues at the entrance of this part of the ruins. is this just assets reuse or should we infer that whoever built this place was involved or allied with solas? from dalish legends we know that he seemed to go between evanuris and forgotten ones with ease, but i wouldnt say they all considered him enough of an ally to have his statues there. mythal would, and possibly some of the forgotten ones, though we don't know which. elgar'nan def wouldnt lol. he didnt seem to get along with ghilan'nain after her ascension to the statute of evanuris, so prob not her either, and i dont think he's been linked to anyone else in particular.

A WEATHER-STAINED NOTE We have found the usurpers' archive spirit. It is not the Dread Wolf's creation as we surmised, but another's. You can guess whose. Removing it could be risky, but leaving it equally so. I await your orders, Lord Elgar'nan. -- Captain Athnarel

Note found a little off this wolves-flanked entrance, next to a skeleton face down on the ground. Accompanying banter when arriving in that corner (not when reading the note):

Neve: Someone met a bad end here. Bellara: Even mages have trouble with the artifacts here. They expect them to work like, you know, normal magic. Bellara: But they're different. The magic's... more alive. Somehow.

i'd say that this confirms these ruins were anaris', and where he left his archive spirit (since the note doesnt seem to have been sent, if the skeleton is the author). the wolf statues would then indicate he was pretty close with solas in some way. interesting is that this is the usurpers', plural, archive spirit, created by anaris. later on it seems to basically just sing anaris' praises (so like, its creator is not explicit, but it's either anaris or someone who was seriously into him. or into kissing up to him). imagine being one of anaris' allies and what's supposed to be your collective archive just talks about how this dude is amazing. he seems like a delight (no).

Neve: So if this is an armory, what sort of artifact are we finding? A weapon? Bellara: An archive spirit: Rook: A what? Bellara: A creature of the Fade, bound to a crystal. Ancient elves used them to store knowledge - and to help them dream.

don't really know what to make of the "help them dream" bit but found it interesting! especially pre-veil! and knowing that what they did to the titans, rendering them tranquil, is also described at taking away their dreams, or severing them from dreams.

after that, met the darkspawn, eating a dead halla. bellara confirms that it's very literally unexpected to see them there ("Darkspawn. Here. I would never have believed it. Until today.") plus this exchange:

Bellara: I've never seen darkspawn this deep into Arlathan Forest before. As far as I know, it's never happened. Neve: Could the elven gods be commanding the darkspawn? Solas did say they were blighted. Bellara: You saw those darkspawn, though. Something was different about them. Rook: And we'll stop them. Once we get out of this bubble.

this is the first area we find that's seriously blighted - or blighted at all, actually. bellara remarks that where the blight tendrils and boils are makes it seem like it's feeding on the magic.

plus this note, found in a side room in this portion of the ruins:

A CRACKED SCROLL ...the stench of decay fills the air. The Evanuris now wield power beyond anything I've seen. Their magic is fueled by corruption and death, and creeps even now into the stones. We cannot outlast this siege.

so the darkspawn seem to be new in terms of recent years, but the blight itself is probably old? did it birth the darkspawn as soon as ghilan'nain and elgar'nan came back?

not much of note until we get to the central room. except i did find this staff in it:

A staff called Flamebranch. The description reads: "Create by Andrastian mages, this staff illustrates both the destructive power of fire and its life-giving, cleansing nature.

why am i finding an andrastian staff deep into unexplored eleven ruins... im gonna rule out lore reasons and say this was just an oversight but if anybody wants to play with that. it's there.

we find the nadas dirthalen and it's broken, so bellara will spend some time with it. it does talk first in elvhen and then in common (common? trade tongue? whatever it is we're supposed to be speaking) (i think its the native language in both ferelden and the free marches? just based on like. accents. maybe just in ferelden. anyway, off topic). we'll see more of it later on. bellara does explain how the artifacts are powered up: through a crystal that "focuses the ambient magical energy". pretty neat, although i wonder if it would be able to work anywhere else. since she said they only started waking up "a while ago" and now suddenly more rapidly, there probably wasnt enough ambient magic to keep them truly powered on for a long time. it makes sense, since they were designed with the pre-veil world in mind - magic was a lot more present and integrated. i wonder when and how the veil jumpers realized that's how it worked, when the artifacts started to "wake up" or before then - or if they even were the first ones. it's very plausible for other dalish elves (or even human mages, since we know tevinter in particular took ancient elven tech and tried to recreate it) to have examined elven artifacts and found the battery, and maybe even how to activate it, in the thousands of years between the fall of arlathan and this. it's not common knowledge among everyone, but is it amongs dalish elves/people who study elven history?

i think that's it for this bit of playing. still, lots of stuff haha.

[symphorine]

The Dread Wolf's Eluvian Most of us have only traveled through the eluvians at the whims of those who called themselves our gods. We know them as mirrors that always go from one to another, a bonder pair linked no matter the distance. Solas has outsmarted the so-called gods. If we used normal eluvians, they could track us to our lair. Solas has improved upon June's work by creating a mirror whose singing stone can change its tune to take us to any aluvian and not just its bonded partner. Thus ,we can travel wherever this rebellion needs us, with no fear of pursuit. Travel is as safe as a normal eluvian. If you have questions, ask for the Slow Arrow, and I will guide you. - Felassan

codex we find right in front of the lighthouse eluvian. interesting... mostly bc it doesn't. actually talk about the crossroads? what exactly are they? an in-between liminal space that Becomes when the eluvians are linked? and persists afterwards? maybe something to think on later when ive. actually gone into the crossroads and find some more codex entries. but ooh are the crossroads actually only an artifact of solas' improvements? if regular eluvians are a simple one to one, presumably there would be no need, and most importantly no possibility, for the crossroads. at best it would be a single passage in the fade. i think maybe that tracks! with the way the caretaker talks about solas, and the crossroads seem to be in general placed under his ownership (loosely).

ALSO this is clearly propaganda. yay wartime propaganda. also seems to imply travel was not entirely free ("at the whims")? or is it just bc obviously the location of eluvians was decided by the evanuris, since they were the ones creating them?

also interesting in terms of solas' skills. june is the god of craft and building (also irelin wears his vallaslin!), so clearly was like, not a small time player. i think solas refers to him later as like "our greatest buildings came from june". but solas was able to improve upon his work. was it just solas? did other elves work on this as well, but he ended up getting the credit as project manager to reinforce his image in the rebellion?

and more minor but felassan again being like. if you are lost or confused ask for me and i will help. nice dude. wish he was still alive and around. actually i would have LOVED to see him help rook & co and fight with solas omg. rip felassan

snippets of strife and irelin convo - not all

Strife: This is because of Fen'Harel's -- sorry, Solas's ritual, isn't it?

Strife: If those two [Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain] are back out in the world... it explains a lot.

Strife: Solas might be a bastard, but compared to the Evanuris?

Strife: Let's just say they weren't known for being kind rulers.

Irelin: There's a reason Solas led a rebellion against the Evanuris. And a reason he imprisoned them.

Strife: We've still got dozens of Veil Jumpers unaccounted for.

Rook: How can we help? Irelin: We need to find Bellara Lutare. She's the best there is at working with our ancient artifacts.

Irelin: She was off looking for another artifact before this ritual shook everything loose.

Irelin: If anyone can get a handle on all this wild magic -- and the artifacts it's setting off -- it'll be her.

irelin is so pretty. anyway. dozens of veiljumpers unaccounted for - ill try to do a headcount when i do get to the VJ camp, but this is useful to get numbers. more than a dozen less than a hundred, i'd say, which is a large window but still. idr if we get any more particulars on how the veil jumpers started? they seem to be a recent organization formally, but from tevinter nights we know strife and irelin, at least, were around already a few years ago, and presumably there have been dalish clans in arlathan forest for a while (there permanently? travelling and leaving? a mix of both? how much did they all try to explore the ruins? were they more or less accessible before this? what about inquisition time, when the veil was definitely weakened, even if arlathan forest was far away from the Breach? did some dalish stay there, separating from their clan, to explore the ruins more?)

also it's been pointed out before but. "[the evanuris] weren't known for being kind rulers." since when exactly? i dont mean this flippantly im literal. definitely not the wider view in inquisition. what's changed?

this is more speculation than canon for various reasons, but: iirc most of the elves we heard of starting to follow solas in trespasser were city elves (makes sense, especially with the mounting tension in Orlais since the masked empire's events - and dalish people presumably would absolutely not trust someone who fashions himself the dread wolf, whether or not he truly is). from what we know city elves have even less access to knowledge of elvhen history than the dalish, so maybe it was easier/ran less contrary to their deeply held beliefs to hear the evanuris were also terrible masters who enslaved their ancestors? definitely resonated with their own plight as city elves. so that's one thing - but the veil jumpers must have been (and still be) mostly composed of dalish members. strife iirc was not born dalish and joined later, but i think irelin is dalish, bellara definitely is. when and how did they find this information? they cant have just accepted what solas said. what did they find in the ruins? was it in areas/artifacts suddenly accessible and awoken by veil instabilities and the gods' presence? and how widespread is it? we basically only interact with or hear ambient convo from the veil jumpers' members in terms of dalish elves (besides dalish npcs we save and don't really talk to). is this knowledge that only the VJ have, and most of the rest of the dalish are carrying on as normal? how DO other dalish clans react when they inform them of this?

also a more personal gripe: the constant talk of artifacts to retrieve is... hm... feels like filler? like something for VJ to do. what artifacts? what do they do? how do you classify them? clearly there are very different types! i wanna know more! it's sort of acceptable for this first conversation bc we're meeting for the first time and there's no time ot go into details, but it happens again and again in later interactions. tell me more! where ARE your artifacts! what do they do! who else besides bellara is working on fixing them! i want to knowwwww

and ofc the eternal question: last time we were in thedas, eluvians were also not something commonly known; most of them were broken, and finding working ones was rare. in da2, Merrill spends all game trying to make one work, and sure she doesn't have a lot of resources, but it doesn't seem to be an easy task. at the very least, she needs Power that isn't readily available, which is why she uses blood magic (someone correct me if i'm rembering wrong). how come now there are 1) eluvians everywhere (we'll ignore the convenience of their location bc yes that's obviously dictated by game mechanics rather than lore) (altho i might go back to that later when ive unlocked more of the map and have ruminated more) and 2) so many eluvians in working order! did solas fix and transport them all to ease his travels? that would open interesting implications in terms of where he's been going and why in those last ten years.

[symphorine]

as i go through my second playthrough, i want to catalogue things i find interesting. this will be full of spoilers. im gonna tag it as #davg lb, so you can mute that if you're not interested. they'll prob be pretty long.

i've just finished the prologue with beryl and am now exploring the lighthouse for the first time. i did remember it was in much less impressive shape, but not quite how much. besides some areas not being accessible yet, there is a lot of debris and seemingly dead trees, and the lighting is less warm, more like a cloudy day (keeping in mind i upped the gamma for my game and i thiiiink photomode pics keep that in?).

i also took some screenshots of the room you wake up in, and where varric is for the rest of the game. i find it interesting that it does appear stocked, presumably with some pharmaceutic stuff as that's where harding stands to look for elfroot (and where we were put to recover). four beds - did we all sleep here at first? when did harding and neve find their little areas had activated, so to speak? how did that happen? also bianca on the bedside table near varric, with candles... is this another thing only we see, or did harding and neve set it up as some sort of makeshift shrine? actually, do they see the fourth bed? i have so many logistics questions about this.

the library. also in worse shape, debris, disorder, the not yet upgraded floating core, but overall still pretty solid. it makes sense, with it being where the core is housed, that it would be what holds its own shape best? but still. clearly in a state of disuse and neglect.

solas lived here, at least for some time during the ten years varric & co chased after him, and presumably, because he mentions both lightouse and eluvians in our first dialogue with him (just before this), has been here recently. we'll find the secret side room in a bit and i'll see if it also starts in a pretty sorry state.

did solas just not take care of it - it seems he's acting alone now, none of his numerous elven folloers mentioned in Trespasser in sight, so he had no reason to maintain a larger space? or did the lighthouse degrade immediately when he was trapped in the fade prison, which seems to be another closed portion of the fade, similar to what the lighthouse is in that sense? how much is it connected to solas?

a few other quick shots for fun i took of the hallway out of the infirmary and during the prologue. i think the environments are my favorite thing about the game tbh.

also, a codex you find under neve's room.

On Divine Imperatives The Helm of the Solar is destroyed. Elgar'nan's favorite torture is over; too many agents have been rescued with their minds burnt out by that memory of an enraged sun. I feel a lesson here. The Helm was not created to torment. But the Evanuris are not as we are. A god's ruminations carry their own will, and imperatives. Memory bleeds into their icons and transmutes them, as fire begets fire. For our Wolf-Lord, who puts so much of himself into his creations - what imperatives do they carry? The heart of a rebellion must remain hidden, yet the light of divinity is uncontainable. We must be swift. A thought linger: Even as he saves us, what does he impart upon us? Reflections by Shirahn, One Who Renounced Daern'thal

just found it interesting! also daern'thal was a forgotten one. not that we didn't know solas freed slaves from forgotten ones and evanuris both, but the forgotten ones feel like such an afterthought besides a couple of times in the game (basically just... bellara's companion storyline, iirc?), i just thought it was noteworthy. also interesting musings from the author esp in conjunction with what we learn of ancient elves later (they used to be spirits, and it's hinted that as such they still carried the characteristics of identifying strongly with a specific emotion and its counterpart. are they some of the imperatives the author alludes to? what about "Memory bleeds into their icons"? i think what is in this codex is more literal than metaphorical, but still).

also "Even as he saves us, what does he impart upon us?" is obviously a big theme with Solas. i played as an elf my first playthrough and it felt even more relevant, and i wish we could argue with solas more about it. although i suppose the idea of his character here is that he will stay stubborn and commited until the very end no matter what. he believes he is right, and that he needs to take the veil down, but also very much that it is For The Good Of The Elven People. he thinks he IS saving them, but what does that come with? he thinks the price is worth it. also "his creations" - what creations? is the lighthouse one? what else?

obviously he is ostensibly doing it For Elves (or at least it's what he says and how he gathers followers in Trespasser), but he did also consistently say that the current elves are not his people in DAI, and detaches himself from them in this game also (cant recall the exact dialogue tho). they seem more like a convenient excuse than truly the cause he is championning. the veil matters more because it was His Big Mistake than for the consequences it had, if that makes sense.