Dragon Age Meta Nexus

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.

i've got a hard time believing they even really got on board w the andrastian chantry thing for the first few hundred years at least. and we've seen how pro-mage the avvar are - and it's canon that pre-andrastian ferelden was very similar religiously to the avvar. and ferelden was never under the tevinter imperium's rule in the same way the rest of thedas was. so a) lacking infrastructure and b) lacking the cultural trauma of …. well, being ruled by tevinter blood mages.

Because apparently the Mage-Templar War is back in full swing here on Tumblr, and while I do side with mages (seriously, every playthrough), there are some points that have gotta be made here, and I haven't seen anyone else make them yet. The first and maybe the most obvious thing about the templars is that they are a military order in the service of the Chantry. And yet this obvious fact is possibly one of the least understood. We'll start by examining a possible reason for this.

Reviewing our posts (1, 2, 3) about eluvians the other day made me think about the lack of eluvians in DA2 other than Merrill's troublesome mirror. "Well," thought I, "there is Xenon's weird mirror, but that is just a courtesy to the fans and doesn't really fit in the lore……wait a minute! What if it is a really modded eluvian?"

Thanks for the ask! I hope we are the right blog, because you gave us an excuse to research some of our favorites: Spirits, Justice, Cole, and Fade shenanigans. Ironically, I was writing about spirits and Fade crossings for another post when I got distracted by Elgar'nan. Theses (I don't often get to use the plural!): Justice is trapped in the mortal world due to his own desire to fulfill his purpose, his (mostly) mistaken belief that he will fade away and die without a host body, and his growing fascination with the waking world. The spirits and demons that possess sylvans and corpses return to the Fade as energy, like any other spirit, unless outside forces intervene to continue their purpose.

So anyone else think that there are more "Well of Sorrows" in the series than just Mythal's? It's clear that groundwork was laid for shit to go down with the elven gods, their eluvians, the titans, and much more since the beginning of the series. It stands to reason that there may well have been other Wells shown earlier in the series…so let the speculations commence!

As we noted in yesterday's post, Mythal's temple existed for ages before the creation of the Veil and the loss of elvhen immortality. We have every reason to believe that the Well of Sorrows existed in those ages when the Evanuris waged war against the Titans, 'tamed' the land, exiled the Forbidden Ones, and reached the pinnacle of their powers. What would the Well have been used for during the glory days of Arlathan?

Previously on "Well Shit", we deduced that Mythal's Well was used to keep sensitive information in the hands of loyal (*cough* geas: ie magical binding for instant loyalty and controlability) followers, and that it may have originally been used to help elves and spirits manage emotions and personality which would make it more difficult for them to live in the Fade. The Well appears to have been essential to the Sentinels' ability to preserve Mythal's wisdom. So why wasn't the Well despoiled along with the rest of her temple? Did the Well only contain the knowledge of the priests who survived the attack on Mythal's temple? Or was the destruction of her temple merely meant to break her worshipers' will? Could the geas binding the will of the Well's recipient been enough to keep her rivals at bay? Or did they already have all the knowledge they could have gained from Mythal's Well from another source? There was, after all, an elven god devoted to knowledge and secrets…

We have examined why the Well of Sorrows was so important to the ancient elvhen Sentinels, the origins of the Vir'abelasan, and whether Dirthamen's Temple once contained a Well as well. If our theory that the Well of Sorrows is more than a plot device for Inquisition, and that it and many other important story elements for the rest of the Dragon Age series were previewed in earlier games, then it stands to reason there should be something like the Well of Sorrows in Origins or DA2. And it is there.

Sometime last year, I posted a very short piece about the Lady of the Forest and her role as a spirit. Lately, there has been a resurgence in reblogs of that post, which is all well and good, but in truth the theory itself was never truly expanded upon, mostly because it's part of something much, much bigger. The original premise of that post was basically that the Lady of the Forest was a spirit of the earth, because she says as much herself. People either loved this or hated this, and I'll be clear in saying that it is not a theory so much as taking what she herself says at face value. Those that did not like it seemed to be of a similar mind that it messed with what we know of spirits, and therefore it couldn't possibly be true, despite the video evidence presented from her own mouth that the Lady of the Forest was never drawn across the Veil.

They say the darkspawn came in a crawl, whispers in the dark, people vanishing along the Deep Roads. When Dumat rose in the First Blight, the dwarves already knew there was something different about these creatures that had harried them in the darkness (Codex: The Blights). They were bolder, organized, and when they at last had their general, their decimation was fast.

We begin our exploration of the Deep Roads in the heart of the Dwarven Kingdom: Orzammar. Once one of the twelve great thaigs (DA:O Loading Screen), Orzammar is now the last bastion of the dwarves, or so it was believed prior to the announcement of the rediscovery of old Kal-Sharok (Codex: Cut to Kal-Sharok).

I was thinking about Solas and Sera, and the fact that he considered her on of "his people" or "our people" when he was trying to if she would understand the elven language. But when the inquisitor asks if Solas is happy for Briala as a fellow elf, and he said he does not consider himself the same as her. So what do you think made Solas consider Sera as one of "his people" and not the other elfs in the game?

Some thoughts on Andraste's mother. Her sword - which we now know only as Glandivalis - was given to Shartan by Andraste. Random additional info on the sword: The word 'glandival' appears one other time in DA materials - in an "elven version" of a lullaby 'local to Denerim and nearby villages to the south' called Where Willows Wail. Glandival is translated as 'believe.' Glandivalis could be a blade named Belief. This sword is later loot in a quest in DAII called Pride Unbound from a Pride (hubris) demon named Hybris. It deals electricity damage and has a 2.5% chance to enslave normal enemies. You read that right. Shartan named a blade with the power to enslave Belief.

A great deal of the Dragon Age fandom was, and still is, deeply intrigued by our beloved elvhen sentinel, Abelas. His poise, his authority, and especially his role within the game keep many Dalish and Anciet Elvhen fans at the edge of their seats. He offers a view into the past in which no other character has been able to provide (besides, perhaps, Solas, but we later learn that he has kept more secrets to himself than he has exposed), deep into the past of the Ancient Elves and what now remains of their people. Further more, with the revelation of Fen'Harel's identity, we now seek to learn more of what becomes of Abelas and the Ancient Elves, and how they may influence the next Dragon Age game.

the-emerald-halla on Inquisition