Is it any wonder that the Brecilian Forest is one of our favorite areas to theorize about? So many interesting details to dissect! Is there something going on with the globe and the circles? Almost certainly! Are they related to the Veil artifacts? Possibly! And the Forest Ruins are just the beginning.

I look in wonder at your skills with Thedas' map. I have a problem I wish I had an answer to: How does Redcliffe village work? We get different maps for it in DAO and in DAI (supposed eastern part) and they don't seem to fit together. I can also not make heads or tails of Redcliff's supposed location on the world map (like with position of rivers/lake) in relation to the mini map in, say DAI. Nothing seems to add up. Could you help me make sense of this? Maybe maps need some turning or sth.? Nothing about the geographical lore of Redcliffe makes any sense. For example, the codex entry used both in Origins and Inquisition is full of nonsensical statements.

Is the Crossroads essential to eluvian travel? Or could there possibly be a way to 'link' two eluvians to each other and bypass the Crossroads altogether? Eluvian lore. I love eluvian lore! Looking through the instances of eluvian use in the games and in The Masked Empire, I would say yes, it's totally possible to connect two eluvians without using the Crossroads. The only things that seem essential to the operation of an eluvian is sufficient knowledge and power to create a path connecting two eluvians. If the distance being traveled is sufficiently short, neither of these pose much of a problem. The longer the distance, however, the more difficult it is to gather the power to create the path.

I read quite a bit about navigation and astronomy instruments, including astrolabes, while I was in high school and in my early college years. I was writing fanfiction for a very different fandom at that time that I felt required knowledge of 16th century sailing. I did notice that the globes in the Brecilian ruins resembled an orrery under glass and the orbs I jokingly called "weird ass whirligigs" do bear a resemblance to a dioptra or an armillary sphere. So could they be used for astronomy?

In thinking about Cullen and the significance of his possible romantic relationship with the Inquisitor (primarily for fanfic writing purposes), I've often wondered about the tortures he suffered at Kinloch and the effect that his experiences might have on it - particularly on starting that kind of relationship to begin with.

Ortan Thaig potentially numbers among the oldest and most vibrant of the dwarven thaigs, falling long after most of the other thaigs, lasting until as late as the Fourth Blight in the Exalted Age sometime between 5:12 and 5:24 Exalted (DAO Orta Dialogue; WOT 1, pg 98). We are not sure precisely when it was founded, but this was definitely earlier than the First Blight, because Paragon Caridin was born in this thaig (WOT2. pg 24).

Finally, this conversation is important to note, because I occasionally see people say that the mages never wanted to rebel until Anders blew up the Chantry, when that just isn't true. The Libertarians are the second largest group of mages. That is a really big portion. Enough so that in 9:31 they have enough power to petition separating from the Chantry the first time, as detailed by Wynne right here. They try again in 9:37. Then finally in 9:39, the rebellion began. So, let's not pretend that there was no large force against the Circles before Anders blew up the Chantry. Fiona was working her ass off for years, before Anders even took his Harrowing.

All of surviving Dwarven culture is shaped by war. They've been at war 1,200 years. If you were asked 'what is the worst injustice in all of Thedas' history?' I think most of us would first answer the Circles, or the forced addiction of Templars, or slavery in Tevinter, or the treatment of dissenters by the Qunari, or the alienages and the oppression of elves. But that dwarves have had to serve as a constant frontline defense against the endless waves of Darkspawn invaders for the last 1,200 years is the worst injustice in Thedas' history.

Q: Hello! I was wondering whether you knew of a lore-specific reason why only the Keeper and Firsts of the dalish clans are taught how to read and write in elvish? It just seems impractical if they want to preserve the language, since oral tradition is notoriously inefficient. More elves being taught elvish also means more people to pass on the language if something dreadful happens to both the Keeper and the First. Sorry if there's an obvious reason I've missed, it just really bothers me.

I just had to look up the ingredients of magebane for a conversation in another tab. The canonical ingredients are lyrium dust, 'concentrator agent', and 'corrupter agent'. Concentrator agent is made of heatherum and foxite (which are not mentioned outside the context of this ingredient) and corrupter agent is made of blighted lifestones. … which incidentally may mean that magebane exists because of the Blight.

I needed this today, and couldn't find it, so I went digging through WOT and pulled them up

So, as mentioned in the midst of some excited yelling about something else entirely, the 'great weapon' found in the Tomb of Fairel is a Superb Demon-Slaying Rune. (Unless it's the Bianca-only aiming module which raises so many more questions about the history of dwarven ingenuity, but I'm sticking with the demon-slaying rune.) So, here's some thoughts on that.

I liked Vivienne ... until the Trespasser epilogue slides when she brings back the Circle. I thought the College of Enchanters was meant to provide a safe environnent for mages to learn, so her bringing the Circles back when I wanted them gone all along just felt like she was desperately trying to hold on to her power and clout. I'm angrier at Bioware for putting this in the game in the first place, but I'd love to know what you make of it.

Timeline for the "shortest Blight" calculations with dates instead of relative time. Again, click the image for a full-size version. World of Thedas says that the Blight started in 9:30 and ended in 9:31, so this is a calculation of the date you need to start the origin to have the Blight end on Firstday 9:31 if you finish it as quickly as possible.

So DA:I introduced the concept of the Dalish Mage, something that's been desired by players since DA:O. If you wanted to be a Mage in DA:O, you were straight into the Circle DARN YOU, but we did encounter Dalish Mages elsewhere (namely with Velanna in Awakenings, Lanaya and Zathrian in Origins, Merrill and Marethari in both Origins and DA:2, various references in the books over time, and finally an Elf Mage Inquisitor and a Dalish tribe in the Exalted Plains and Emerald Graves in Inquisition as well as Minaeve (who we will count since she was born to a Dalish tribe despite being raised in a Circle and because her story matters in a bit). From this there has stemmed a renewed interest in Dalish mages as a whole, especially with the rise of Solasmancers and the like, and so this lore/meta serves to correct a few misinterpretations that come along (particularly for those who have ONLY played DA:I - you're missing out <3).

When @the-queen-of-thedas sent us this thought, I believed it would be relatively easy to write up our thoughts on the Blight and its possible connections to the Titans. We'd done some minor work on that topic before, and we've been collecting evidence for a more detailed post ever since. Two weeks later and I feel like I have just scratched the surface of whether or not the Titans created the taint. I have 20 pages of notes, three false starts, and found myself questioning the whole premise. Is there a connection between the Titans and the blight? Absolutely! But there are so many layers to dwarven lore that I've ended up going down one rabbit hole after another. So I've decided to chunk this bronto into more manageable, and readable, pieces. Thesis: The taint manipulates the ability of those it infects to access the Fade, whether they be ghoul or warden, human or dwarf.

I think there is a fairly simple, albeit probably magical, answer to the question. Whatever gives the Grey Wardens their resistance to the taint makes it nigh impossible for them to pass the taint on to others. Even with prolonged exposure to a warden's body, like during a rare warden pregnancy, the warden is not contagious, including to the child. In fact, we know that Morrigan had to go to extreme, probably blood magicky, means to have a baby with the taint. Wardens just don't pass it on.

(direct link, original post @ http://valerie1972.tumblr.com/post/162615642289 ) Adding to my list of Resources You Didn't Know You Needed And Maybe Don't Need Anyway, here's a list I've been compiling of all of the books and authors we know of in Thedas. You can sort and download to your hearts' content; by default they're sorted by author and then by title. Author names have been converted to something akin to "lastname, firstname" when an equivalent doesn't exist. Titles were kept intact when they're used as part of the author's official name but if they seemed extraneous I dropped them. As a good example, "Brother Ferdinand Genitivi, Chantry Scholar" is "Genitivi, Brother Ferdinand" on the table. "Unknown" can mean that it's either not given or that it's truly unknown in-world; there are also a few "Anonymous" authors. The books, plays, and stories are gleaned mostly from Codex citations, but there are also things in there that are mentioned in other in-universe books (like the plays mentioned in The Compendium of Orlesian Theater and the novels rated by the Randy Dowager) and in other contexts in-game (like the list of books Solas requests at Skyhold and Varric's published works). This does not include things like diaries, letters, and other "informal" written communication, even if it's used as a citation for a codex entry. It does include oral tales, especially stories told by Dalish and alienage elves.

I've only seen these one place: inside the Fade at Adamant. BUT they show up where you run into water, and there's a weird codex message from a washed up bottle that says they don't know if the water is fake and formed by the Fade or else real water from the Rift at Crestwood draining into the world. It seems a long bloody way to Crestwood from Adamant, and while the Fade cannot be mapped, the distance DOES matter because otherwise Solas's statements about having to travel around to actually get new stories and spirits. This means distance is important but perhaps the route and exact amount is not.

In our last video we covered the basics of the theory that the Avvar goddess the Lady of the Skies is synonymous with the elven goddess Mythal. We also looked into ways that Korth the Mountain Father might have been a Titan, and established the groundwork for a complex look into early mythology, legend, and oral history for Thedas. In this video, we'll take that a step further, breaking down some of those early myths, and what historical record we do have, to analyse some of the earliest events in our timeline fundamental to the shaping of the world. If you have not watched Part One, you should do that first.