#thinking about jaws of hakkon threads maybe

[martyrmarked]

thinking about jaws of hakkon

[broodwoof]

Tevinter Nights: The Horror of Hormak - major spoilers!

also some spoilers for Jaws of Hakkon & Trespasser

note: if you do interact with this post, you can obviously talk about this particular short story, but please don't talk about any others in the collection! I'm still working through it!

first little caveat: this is not @ing anyone's reads on ghilly! just sharing my own thoughts and reactions. if others see her as fucked up, that's cool too, it's a very fascinating read for sure!

Ghilan'nain is not present within this story.

That's maybe obvious, but also crucial: she is not physically here. She is represented in the art within the chambers:

It was perhaps the oppressive nature of the place acting upon his worst fears, but it seemed to him that the priestess’s smile grew a little wider, and a little crueler, with each subsequent image.

Ramesh admits that his reading might be skewed, and that's entirely possible, but at the same time, I find it likely that he's interpreting this correctly - but what that means is not so clear-cut.

Shifting gears for a moment, let's look at Trespasser.

The story told through the ruins we travel through paints Fen'Harel, Solas, as a savior, a hero, a rebel who saves slaves. He says that it paints him in too favorable a light, a myth in a different direction than what the Evanuris believed, or what the Dalish now believe of Fen'Harel.

And all through Inquisition, there is a thread of the myth surpassing the person. It happens to Cassandra, the heroic woman who single-handedly slayed a dragon to save the Divine, supposedly; it obviously happens to the Inquisitor; and it happens with Inquisitor Ameridan, a man whose entire reality has been erased and supplanted with myth. The individual is lost in the face of their mythos.

So. Ghilan'nain.

According to the Dalish, she is a guide. Turned into the first halla by Andruil, after a hunter took his vengeance against her for cursing him to never be able to kill again - and that was only done, supposedly, because he had killed a hawk, one of the creatures associated with Andruil. So their tales are interwoven in this particular version, where Ghilan'nain defended Andruil, and then Andruil sought to save Ghilan'nain, and finally transformed her.

Is this the favorable telling?

Here, the implication is that Ghilan'nain is not only the source of this - which I agree with - but the deliberate mastermind behind it - which I question. The increasingly cruel priestess imagery isn't necessarily any more true than the Dalish legends. In both, they are representing a single figure as an extreme, one end of the spectrum of good or evil.

There's a pool of transformative fluid. Creatures walk through the fluid, are cocooned, and emerge changed. This is what we know to be true.

Where the fluid came from, where the lyrium came from, what connection it has with Ghilan'nain in the present, if any, when she is supposedly sealed away by Solas... none of this is known, or knowable, really.

For instance, some possibilities:

The fluid is Ghilan'nain. Grim, this, but she who changes so many things became so changed that she no longer resembles anything remotely living, instead becoming a part of the (un)natural world. I don't think this is the case, but it does kinda fit the tone of the story!

The fluid is part of Ghilan'nain. My instinct is to say her blood, perhaps mixed with something else, and left in these 12 sites for some reason. If so, was this her doing? Or was it something someone else did? Was it done to her?

The fluid is what empowers Ghilan'nain. No evidence for this anywhere, but idk, it's a possibility. In which case, these 12 mountains could be seen as places to seal her powers away, that were perhaps infiltrated eventually.

With that in mind, the artwork could be a warning. While the obvious is that it's a warning about Ghilan'nain herself, it could be using her image as a warning of the power that lay here. Increasingly disturbing imagery created by those who wanted this place to be left alone.

But then, why the beauty of it all?

At the same time, if this was Ghilly's will, why the horror of it all? Why is all the art just that edge of wrong, when presumably if it was being made for her or to honor her - whether out of respect, fear, or both - it presumably wouldn't have that wrongness about it?

Of course, there are reasons for that, too. Little things added near the end as subtle warnings from those desperate to communicate but unable to leave any more obvious signs.

Pretty much my takeaway here is that, as compelling as this story is, and as much as I genuinely really enjoyed it, I feel no closer to knowing anything about Ghilan'nain than I did at the start 😂

And I'm kind of glad about that! I like how open-ended the Evanuris really are. I was wary about reading this in a way because I didn't want to end up with a narrower view of her, but it honestly didn't seem to narrow anything down whatsoever.