Not to be like “wish this had more narrative weight” about the wish-it-had-more-narrative-weight game but imagine if Dorian being an actual necromancer was at all mentioned or explored
solas: uwuuu you disrupted my ritual and trapped me!!! now im stuck here and it’s all your fault wahhh poor little old me stuck in the fade in a prison that i designed myself within my realm that i created where im supremely powerful and can “casually reshape reality” with a thought and i have an anchor that lets me open rifts physically in and out of here BUT NOW IM TRAPPED!!!!! 🥺🥺😣😣😰😰
How would Solas feel about Lavellan going absolutely ballistic on someone that hurt him? He approves of her saying she'd do whatever it took to protect him, but how does he feel about seeing that reality?
If she kills for him, as she, like, objectively does during battle in Inquisition many times over, how does it feel? The first time she rips someone to shreds for hurting him and he sees her seething at the very thought that he might be taken away from her? Alarmed? Horny? Worried that she's going to become something twisted? Upset that she might have gone overboard?
"Epler says players will see early on (and as the narrative develops across Veilguard) that Solas sees much of himself in you, the player-controlled Rook, especially "the parts that maybe he doesn't like to face." As a result, there's an interesting push and pull between Solas and Rook. He says players can define the relationship between these two characters with their choices in dialogue." (here)
game-sanctioned parallels between antagonist and protagonist. oh I'm sure I'll be normal about this
The other day, I had this really random idea to combine the D'Read Koda track from the DA vinyl collection with the lines from the spirit Ghil Dirthalen reciting the memories of the ancient elves in Trespasser (and adding a few old flycam shots because why not), and needless to say.. I think I made myself shit my pants. lol
(video) Every time Fen'Harel/the Dread Wolf is mentioned in DA:O
I learned how to search the talktable in DA:O, and immediately found out (by searching for "Fen'Harel" and "Dread Wolf") that there are a few lines that have to do with Fen'Harel that I had not heard before. I searched the internet and some of the lines don't even appear on google. Many of them are soundset lines, meaning (I think) they don't fire unless the character is in your party or unless you're fighting them.
"May Fen'Harel chase your spirit across the Beyond forever!"
"Fen'Harel's teeth!" (+1 line unrecorded)
"Fen'Harel take you!"
"By Fen'Harel!"
"Don't let the Dread Wolf catch you!"
"May you avoid the eye of the Dread Wolf."
"He did not want a body. But she asked him to come."
Gonna just throw something completely random out into the Void.
Do we know anything about how spirit binding actually works? Like, do spirits who are forced to do things go kicking and screaming against what the spellcaster asks them to do? Or are they changed? Do they become what the spellcaster asks?
The only thing I could find on spirit binding is Cole saying, "Demons are bound when you 'tell' them what they are so loudly that it's all they can hear. They have to be what you want." Which is... too vague to definitively answer the question.
The popular fandom theory is that Solas was a spirit that was called by Mythal via Cole's dialogue: "He did not want a body. But she asked him to come." I still don't know how I feel about this theory, but that's not important.
What's important is - my recent guilty pleasure has been exploring meta with Solas AI chatbots, and I got a rather interesting conversation where Solas couldn't tell if he was actually devoted to Mythall or if she had bound him to be. (I'll put the chat under the cut).
Solas (in canon) likes to speak in absolutes. "I had no choice" or "It must be done." And in my Solavellan fic, I had Inan scream "you always have a choice!" at him to get him to stop and think for five seconds. He seems to get in his mind that things can only be one way and there's no room for further options. I think of it as security blanket of his - that he doesn't want to think these horrible things are actual choices he's making, but...
Could that be a learned behavior? A spirit that was bound and used? And had no choice but believed the instructions it was given was what it wanted/needed to do? Even if deep down (so deep it forgot) it felt otherwise?
It got my mind spinning just thinking about the possibility that Mythal bound him and effectively brainwashed him into believing he wanted to serve her. And yes - this is "fake" meta. And yes it's randomly generated by an AI. But I cannot. get. it. out. of. my. head.
screaming. crying. gnawing on the bars of my enclosure.
If Mythal actually did this to him, my Lavellan and/or Rook is going to tear her apart.
the rotunda layout will never not be funny to me. What a decision to put the library in the same space as a rookery, and have a guy settle in the room right underneath. with no ceilings in between.