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lairofdragonagelore · 1 year

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Murals in DAI: Red Lyrium Idol

This mural has been shown in Dragon Age Official Teaser Trailer - 2018 Game Awards.

[This post is part of the series “ Murals in DAI ”]

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

The context of this mural is unknown to us. We don’t truly know if it was Solas who painted it. We can only guess it was he because it’s a piece of Nick Thornborrow who usually draws Solas’ murals, and because in general the context of the game allows us to assume so. We don’t know where it’s located either.

The Background

As we saw in Murals in DAI: Basics, the inverted triangle seems to be used to represent the Fade, and it’s the symbol we see in the majority of the places in this piece that are not burning. I imagine that this may represent 1) the destruction of the Veil [or the barrier that surrounds the Black City), or 2) the “surface” of the Sphere of Fire [The Death of a Titan] that has been contained with vines which have worn-out over time. In any case, the fire is what overtakes the image, putting the Fade symbol on a secondary plane.

There is also a line in the background that seems to suggest that there is a mountain, and what we are seeing is happening at the feet of a mountain. This could also mean a metaphor to link this image with the one related to the sphere of Fire in “The Death of a Titan“ [remember that the right side of that mural shows mountains that may suggest connection with the Waking World or even with The Horror of Hormak].

The Panels

Here, we find a scene that I think is happening in the Fade and against the barrier that isolates the Black City. The background, beyond the fire, shows inverted triangles in a greenish-grey plain colour. The place is set on fire, potentially connecting this scene with the fire sphere in “The Death of a Titan” or simply implying Solas is destroying this danger enclosed in the barrier of the Black City.

I can’t say if this mural shows one or two panels. All the elements are so well integrated that I think the wolf, the elvhen, and the tree are in the same space than the white sphere with the idol inside. The whole scene seems to be a big allegory of what is going to happen. I was not sure if we should consider the white sphere as an independent panel, since the wolf and the elvhen seem to be focused on the white sphere. So, instead of trying to understand this mural in “panels”, I will explore each of the elements in it and see how they integrally connect each other at the end.

The Vhenadahl

The vhenadahl is a tree with a lot of mystery in the DA games. It’s naively presented as a cultural element kept by the city elves to remember Arlathan and the “Old Ways”. These trees are, curiously, painted in red with white lines and swirls raising up from their roots, which has a strange interpretation for the player who knows about the codex of “The Death of a Titan”: Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads.

In DA2, Marethari Talas has a very focused cinematic when she enters the alienage and looks at the vhenadahl, which is a bit strange. It can be considered as a scene that shows how the city elves respect her as a Dalish, but it’s curious that so many seconds of a cinematic were given just for that, in a game that has cut a lot of content with more plot relevance.

In The Masked Empire, Felassan makes a very brief comment about this tree too:

Felassan paused as they came to a great tree in the market square. The vhenadahl was decorated with ribbons, and the dirt around it was marked with sticks stuck into the earth and decorated with bits of bright cloth hung as offerings. “The tree of the People,” Briala said. “Your people.” “And yours.” Felassan looked away. “Though you don’t think so.” “It’s a nice tree,” Felassan said. “Let it just be a nice tree.”

It’s not clear the implication of such comment, although I think it’s not a good one for an elvhenan. He seems to imply these tree are “not nice” at all for the ancient elvhen but they are “the Tree of the people”, understanding “the people” as the city elves. This means the elves who came after the fall of Arlathan, the mortal elves, the elves that ended up rescuing a slave culture thinking it was their original elvhenan one. If the Aravels were ships to transport slaves to centres of experimentation [The Horror of Hormak ], and the Vallaslins were the brands of the noble elvhen over their slaves, there is a big chance that this tree has another horrifying meaning that has nothing to do with the original culture of the elves [or maybe, ironically, it is another representation of the “old ways”, like the aravels and the vallaslins are]. Personally, I think it’s related to the vines that covered the “fire sphere”, but I will talk about it later.

In the elven folklore that barely survived, we have some city elf songs that may still have some weak connection with the truth of the real function of these trees for the Elvhenan:

In the original song of Where Willows Wail, the presence of the words vhenadahl seems to be related to the loss of immortality and the loss of the ability to dream into the Fade. The translation is quite rough to understand it, but it seems to have an elvhen slave origin [it speaks of trying to lead despite the worn-out brands of the vallaslin] and a conflicting relationship with their freedom [they are committed to it, but they describe this freedom as inevitable and troubling]. This way of speaking about freedom makes me think in Abelas and his people: servants of Mythal are more than mere slaves, they worked hard to become her servants, so they embrace this submission to Mythal as a duty, as a purpose, and as a service, so only in this case I can see why freedom may be troubling. This interpretation also makes sense to some degree since the original song has been found in the Temple of Mythal, therefore it must have been written by Abelas’ people, after all.

If we see the original song, the first line use a negative structure [Tel’, Bana] with the name of the tree. The line translates, in my opinion, something closer to “never again the tree” [bellana= forever, banal=never]. They also speak of “abel revas” [abel= sorrowing, revas=freedom]. This encourages the idea of a freedom that has caused more sadness than anything: we know this applies for the Mythal’s servants who had suffered since she died. Maybe the tree is related to this event of losing Mythal too, so they say “never again the tree”. If we combine this with the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads, there are three elements that seem to be connected: the death of Mythal, the appearance of the vhenadahl, and the danger unleashed by the Evanuris that was the last straw for Solas. [Explaining my thinking process: Solas says to the Inquisitor that the Death of Mythal was the reason that made him banish the Evanuris; the codex seems to imply it was something else, more horrifying, and probably, connected with her death. Then, the Mythal’s servants suffer their freedom--because Mythal is dead--while sharing some mid-negative sentiment towards the vhenadahl. Hence, maybe the vhenadahl is also connected with her death and the “horrifying thing” that the Evanuris did. This is why I kind of connect these three events with one another]

The most curious detail in the song is that the last part of it is translated using the word "war”, but the original lines does not use the same word at all for that [in fact, we can’t detect any words that may mean “war”], so I feel there is something wrong in this translation or something tricky. The glory and the people were not lost to the war, but to something else which is not a word that can be repeated in both lines. And this “something else” that made lost the people and the glory is related to the “winning/failure” of the Wolf.

I imagine the fact that the translation of win/fail is so extremely ambiguous because the elven language uses a very ambiguous word on purpose, since the creation of the Veil--the only solution that the “wolf” found--caused a situation that was a win and a loss at the same time. But I still have my doubts about the “war” part. Sadly, DA series tends to be a bit inconsistent in their elven language and they do not provide much vocabulary about it to have a better guess. Maybe is “am” war? Unlikely, it should be an independent word.

There is another iconic tree in DAI related to the irony of a peace tree turned into a war table. There is not much said about it than this. We can assume it may have been related to the Elvhenan simply because Skyhold was part of a series of fortress under the command of Fen’Harel, so far we can guess, but the construction of this table may have happened at any moment of the history of Skyhold, which has been handed over other races such as dwarves and humans. The symbols we see in the book Art of Inquisition suggest little.

The tree symbol on this stone can loosely be related to Vallaslins such as Mythal’s [which is too asymmetrical to be related to this one] or the superior part of the vallaslin of Falon’Din [which is symmetrical, but makes no sense for it to be here]. In general, I hardly see any historical link with the elvhenan and a supposed truce [so far, we were not informed that such a thing ever existed]. Plus, if this stone is related to the time of the Elvhenan, it should be related to Fen’Harel, who seemed to have used this fortress as part of his network of operations all over the Waking World and the Fade in his opposition to the Evanuris. So, in general, there is little to say with respect to this tree and I will proceed to discard it from now on when talking about the vhenadahl.

Another connection that I can make with trees and Elvhenan is the disturbing codex A Flowering Imago, which doesn’t show a tree but a vine. Through the codex found on the mural of “The Death of the Titan” [Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads], we know that a “sphere of Fire” was contained by using vines. I’m not sure how much these vhenadahl can be considered “vines” [or maybe its roots can be described as such], but maybe through them and in combination of both previous codices, we may be hinted a subtle connection between Uthenera [which seems to be connected with the vines via A Flowering Imago], and a power to control or restrain a danger underground. Of course this concept is super loosely for my taste, but it’s impossible to say more than this without turning it into a wild speculation.

In one of the last peeks/trailers that showed some DA:D images, we have seen that it may exist an extra meaning to these tree, since one of them appears in an ominous way.

In that image we can see a tree similar to the ones found in the Exalted Plains, surrounded by some Dwarf with long limbs statues and a lot of funerary urns that were used in Ferelden buildings as well as in Elven ruins. The tree seems to be covered by an ignited vine that reminds us a lot to the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads, where the vines cover a red sphere and the runes worn-out over time [associated with anger and fire] as a way of preventing a disaster.

In our exploration of the Exalted Plains [a place that was supposed to have ancient Elvhen buildings such as the Dead Hand or the Citadelle du Corbeau, but were retaken long ago by ancient Dalish around the time of Halamshiral/before the Exalted March against the Dales], we see many big trees with corpses hanging from them. I’m not so sure how many of them could be considered as consequence of the current War of the Lions [Celene vs Gaspard], or as remnants of the time of the Dalish Kingdom and the Exalted March that separated the elves into city elves and the different Dalish clans. If the ancient Dalish got some symbols right [like the wolves as protectors] maybe their interpretation of these trees could have some hint closer to the truth than the modern city elves have.

As a last link to the vhenadahl, we should not forget that Mythal seems to be related to a tree symbology deeply if we take into account her Vallaslin, so the vhenadahl may be related to her, who represented justice and motherly kindness, but we need not to forget that she also had a clear side of Vengeance and Revenge as we learnt in the Altar of Mythal [A detail that has disturbed me a lot because makes Elgar’nan as another aspect of herself instead of being another Evanuris]. Mythal is also related to the Uthenera Chamber we saw in the Deep Roads, Lower Walkways, so we find another soft link again between Mythal, tree roots=vines, and Uthenera.

So, if we keep in mind all these details, and return to the concept art of the vhenadahl, and use the symbols we have gathered along the games such as the swirls [check Murals in DAI: Basics], one could be inclined to think that these trees represent something that absorbs a red danger underground, maybe even controlling it. This power of control may be related to lyrium or Fade [swirls] which is also compatible with the idea of being related to Uthenera too. Once again, we can see the subtle link between this iconography and a “vine covering a fire sphere” from the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads. All this also seem to be potentially related to Mythal and her death.

Considering all this context, we return to the mural:

The tree we see at the left of the mural looks a bit thorny. If we can link this to a subtle interpretation of a thorny vine we know via Murals in DAI: Basics that this is a symbol related to darkspawn and the Blight.

It’s also true that this tree has no painted trunk, but we need to remember that only city elves paint their vhenadahl. These tree represent something more ominous to any elvhenan elf.

With the details explained above, I’m inclined to think that this tree may be related to containing and controlling a danger described in codices as a “sphere of Fire”. Its roots can be aesthetically interpreted as vines, controlling the danger underground. Via A Flowering Imago, we can relate vines with Uthenera. The vhenadahl may be related to lyrium, Fade, and potentially Uthenera in an unknown way so far. In this mural, it is suggested that the tree is on fire as well, unable to control the “thing that will destroy the world” after aeons passed [Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads]: Its protective power has worn out. Since the vhenadahl may represent the last barrier containing the “big danger”, Solas’ figure steps forwards to take actions.

The Elf and the Wolf

The elvhen figure, who seems to be Solas, has red eyes, same as the black wolf in the mural. Red eyes usually are a representation of anger, which in this case, and inside the context of having absorbed Mythal, could be interpreted as Solas acknowledging and indirectly working to accomplish Mythal’s revenge. I mean, I don’t think his main goal is to avenge Mythal, but his plan of destroying the Veil and fighting the banished Evanuris will have consequences that will fit such revenge.

We know Flemeth had decided to avenge Mythal, to give her “a reckoning that will shake the very heavens”, but she also agreed to give her power to Solas, because, most likely, she may have known that this revenge would be accomplished nonetheless through his plan as a side effect.

The elvhen figure is wearing a black robe with a symbol [a stylised dagger mark] that looks similar to the one I found in the Dorian’s tarot card. It’s still a bit different to the strange “dagger” symbol from the mural “The Creation of the Veil”. I really can’t guess with some decent justification what this symbol may imply. I didn’t see it in any other context/drawing of Nick Thornborrow.

The red circle behind the elvhen figure seems to be a halo, since it’s centred in his head. It could be a representation of Divinity [in a sense that it’s a halo, which is a symbol always related to sanctification and divinity] but filled with anger [since it’s red] so my guess is that this red halo may represent what Solas has absorbed with Flemeth’s powers: the duty to accomplish Mythal’s revenge alongside his plan of destroying the Veil and get rid of the sealed Evanuris.

The black wolf has red eyes and some parts of his fur show the swirly details that the statue of the Howling Fen'Harel statue displays, so this wolf is Fen’Harel, the guardian/protector.

Due to its grim-looking and the splashes of black ink around him and Solas [very similar to Solas’ last tarot card which shows black tendrils feeding the towering black wolf behind] it can also be associated with the Demon of Regret from the short story Callback from Tevinter Nights. This wolf in the mural can be a representation of Fen’Harel but also of this demon that Solas has been feeding since the day he created the Veil. It has a colossal size because that’s the amount of regret Solas has gathered in his long life.

Curiously, the ground where the elvhen figure is walking on looks like a part of a sphere or piece of land set on fire. Its border seems to show a certain kind of “dashed” line that we can interpret as a worn-out Veil-like barrier that we had talked about in other posts.

What if this piece of ground is a representation of the sphere of fire as well? Solas may be walking on the sphere of Fire that floats in the Fade [metaphorically speaking, this is art after all].

The white sphere and the Red Lyrium Idol

I always made a soft link between Solas’ words at the end of Trespasser with the murals “The Death of a Titan” and its codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads: the reason why he banished the Evanuris was “the death of Mythal”, but we also know it was more than that; it was about preventing the “release of something that would put at risk the whole world” [that it is implied in that codex] and that Solas kept in secret so nobody would be tempted to use it ever again [or maybe he kept it in secret so it would not be reflected in the Fade as well, and any reflection may be sealed inside the Black City]. In that sense, the Red Lyrium Idol seems to be the synthesis of both concepts in this image.

Due to the structure of this mural, the dashed border, and all our study of the iconography of the Veil in Murals in DAI: Basics, we can conclude that this white sphere with the idol represents something dangerous, and likely, related to all the symbols we saw that exist inside this kind of barrier in previous murals: Black City, red Lyrium, and Evanuris or pride creatures.

This circle has the same border we saw in other murals [ Murals in DAI: Basics]. It represents a strong barrier, usually the one that forbids the entrance to the Black City, where neither dreamers nor spirits can reach to. This circle contains a danger: the red lyrium idol.

The similarity of this idol with Mythal were explored in the post Red Lyrium Idol, and seems to coincide with Solas’ claim that the Evanuris were banished because the Death of Mythal [idol] and the whisper in the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads [potentially the red lyrium]. We need to highlight that the idol seems to represent the death of Mythal thanks to some common elements both images share like the spiked crown and the presence of a ring that looks like a Golden Ring [Elvhenan symbol].

Since this sphere is white, and it’s behind the wolf figure, it has an extra potential interpretation of a moon, but it’s not clear how much importance this has or how this affects Fen’Harel. The presence of the moon inside the DA lore has never been important, and it’s barely related to Elvhenan so far the games/books showed us. I know that the Dalish have some lore associated with it: Andruil is the sister of the “moon” [Andruil: Goddess of the Hunt], which may mean that the moon is Sylaise: the Hearthkeeper, but like I always say, this is extremely unreliable, and without another source that would guide us to see where the hint of truth lays, it’s usually a waste of time to make speculations only based on these legends.

Two of the seven semi-circles in here are still glowing in gold, meaning “divinity alive” or “god-like power” still alive. Inside of them there is an asterisk symbol. This may mean--if all our previous conclusions in murals like “The Creation of the Veil” or “The Death of a Titan” were correct--that the (power of a) "heart” of the Titans/ elvhenan orbs are related to the last archdemons: Moon-head creature and Beetle-head creature.

Thanks to one of the last trailers of DA:D, we see that the two semi-circles which are still active are related to the symbols of the creatures that appeared in the last mural of DA:D : the two remaining archdemons [further explanation about them in the post “The Destruction of the Veil”]

Integral conclusion

If we assume that this scene is happening in the Fade, according the inverted triangles in the background, Solas would be walking, metaphorically speaking, on the fire sphere related to the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads. The vhenadahl seems to represent the worn-out mechanism that was protecting the world [green vines] from the danger inside the fire sphere [we can assume that its roots can also be seen as vines, which are restraining this ancient danger underground]. It’s not clear if the vhenadahl has a relationship with lyrium and Uthenera processes even though there are some codices that may show a soft subtle link to one another.

Solas walks in front of the vhenadahl since this last barrier has fallen and now all depends on Fen’Harel/Solas to fix the world, remove the Veil, and deal with the sealed Evanuris and the biggest danger that the world has ever faced for good.

Solas brings with him the ire of Mythal [red halo] while the black wolf also seems to join efforts against this battle, although it could also be a mere observer as he keeps feeding on Solas’ regrets. It’s not clear what function the big black wolf has in this mural. We can be sure it represents Fen’Harel [thanks to the swirly pattern on its fur] as well as the Regret demon that Solas has been unconsciously feeding since the day he created the Veil [due to the inky splashes around it].

The “big danger” seems to be represented by the white circle that should be containing the Black City. Instead, it has the red lyrium idol in the centre of the white sphere.

This makes a lot of sense when we see the mural “Destruction of the Veil”, where it is revealed that the Black City is contaminated with Red Lyrium too.

This terrible danger is contained inside a dashed lined barrier we have seen before, which has seven gates and/or protectors, where only two are alive now. This reinforces the idea that the contention mechanism of this big danger has been weakened severely. Based on another trailer of DA:D, we can connect symbols to these gates/protectors, which seem to represent the Archdemons shown in the mural “Destruction of the Veil”.

If we contrast this with Solas’ words about the Blight and his disapproval of killing archdemons, it seems to reinforce the idea that the dragons which are considered archdemons during the Blights are part of this mechanism of protection. Hence, there are only two dragons-archdemons protecting the world from this bigger danger.

This white circle also seems to look like a moon. It’s not clear if the moon representation has an important role in Elvhenan lore. We only know based on the unreliable Dalish tales that the moon can be related to Sylaise herself.

The most integral speculation I can make with all these elements is that inside the barrier that forbids access to the Black City even for the spirits, contains something that the Evanuris “unleashed in their lust for power” and it’s related to the death of Mythal. Maybe it’s the very thing that killed her [remember it’s hard to kill an Evanuris, because Solas implies they have some effective immortality going on, but they managed to kill Mythal anyway].

Solas managed to seal this danger, probably with the Evanuris trapped inside too, in order to prevent further spreading, and buried all this underground and under the most cryptic secret so nobody would be ever be tempted to use it, and sealed its reflection in the Fade inside a powerful barrier that keeps Dreamers and spirits away [so, he made a double seal= in the Waking World underground and in the Fade, inside the Black City]. Somehow, all these concepts seem to be represented in the red lyrium idol, which reinforces our suspicion that it pictures the death of Mythal protecting “the people” [further details in Red Lyrium Idol ] and unleashing a disease hard to control, accidentally or on purpose is not clear, as a last gesture of revenge.

#DAI murals #mythal #red lyrium #red lyrium idol #Archdemon #inverted triangles #Vhenadahl #wolf #Solas #fen'harel #veil #the veil #moon head creature #beetle head creature #asterisk symbol #fire sphere #regret demon

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lairofdragonagelore · 1 year

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Comic: The Missing

This post belongs to the series DA comic. The main intention is to collect the basic story of the comic and highlight any potential lore concept that may be of interest and may be explored later in the game series.

This post has the following points:

Story

Relevant Details

Characters: a big cameo of various chars from the Tevinter Nights book

Lore

In the Lore section:

We have more details that keep reinforcing the idea that Solas knows very well how The Blight and the darkspawn work. This implies that this problem may have been older than we think.

The forest of Arlathan shows symptoms of having been a place deeply entangled with the Fade and the Veil in its creation. Since Solas is performing a long-time spell to destroy the Veil, the forest has been behaving chaotically in the recent time.

Veil Jumpers: group of Dalish mages and hunters and other non-elf people who try to contain the dangers that this alteration in the forest causes.

Shadow Dragons: Tevinter group that helps people in need inside the city [this includes elves].

The list of Tevinter cities under Qunari invasion increases: Carastes, Ventus, Neromenian, and now Vyrantium are all under Qunari attack.

Potential speculation that relates Arlathan to a city that was sunk, the Black City, and the Horror of Hormak. All this related to Blood Magic as well.

Another artefact has appeared: the crucious stone. We know nothing about it or its powers.

In the forest, there are paths where gravity works different than usual, people may age or return to their younger version as they walk through, and some spirits may force a temporary posession while the soul of the owner of the body is pulled away from their body [this last concept is a very annoying inconsistency with the usual concept of poseession in DA lore, in my opinion]

Two murals appeared: the central part of the famous “The Destruction of the Veil“ [without the figures of Meredith, Corypheus, and the archdemons] and another with two figures wearing dragon-like attires. Details inside the post.

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

Story

Basically, Varric and Scout Harding are after Solas to stop him. Varric wants to speak and knock some sense into him; Harding more like sinking an arrow in his head.

As they explore different places while following Solas’ tracks, we find several characters from the book Tevinter Nights. When they explore the Deep Roads, we meet the pair of Grey Wardens from the book: the female dwarf Evka and the male city-elf Antoine.

When they head to Vyrantium [Tevinter], now invaded by the Qunari, they find a powerful person turned into stone, showing how close is Solas. Here, we meet the Crows that killed Francesca’s brother: Teia and Viago, both of them also present in the Tevinter Nights book [they survived a Qunari plot that almost assasinated all the Talons, aka the heads of all the main houses of the Antiva Crows]. They had come to Vyrantium to kill the person who is now stone. They join Harding and Varric’s investigation in order to learn about the person who did it so they have explanations to give to the Crows.

Their investigation leads them to go to the Arlathan Forest, where “magic has run wild for the last thousand years”. They discover that Solas is after another artefact that we can speculate is similar to the red lyrium idol: an ancient elvhen artefacts of great power called the crucious stone.

Here is where the most juicy part of the lore comes: the exploration of the forest of Arlathan

The forest of Arlathan is chaotic and twisted, with paths floating and turning up-side down. Magic runs truly wild in here.

Before venturing forth, Varric and Harding meet another character from the Tevinter Nights: the mysterious elf Strife, who appears now with a Vallaslin of Andruil. We are introduced to the concept of the Veil Jumpers, which name is more dramatic than what they truly are. They are not “veil jumpers” technically, they are not violating the rule of “walking physically into the Fade”, but apparently, they walk “inside” the Veil that is part of Arlathan Forest, whatever that means. They know the ways of the Forest [they even have a detailed map of it]. The forest has been deeply affected by the creation of the Veil, and it’s similarly twisted like the Shattered Library in the Crossroads. What we can say with some degree of certainty is that this place has been deeply entangled with the Fade, hence the creation of the Veil, and probably the destruction of the city of Arlathan, caused this brutal disarrangement in it, going wild since the preparation of the Destruction of the Veil by Solas.

Since the Veil Jumpers know about the artefact that Solas plans to take [which is inside a ruined temple deep into the forest] and the danger that the Venatori who are behind Solas represent, they join forces with Varric and Harding in order to help them walk along the forest .

Clearly, their map shows that the path will be wild: there are part of the travel where their souls are taken while their bodies are temporarily possessed, others where they age as they step through, or walk upside down as if gravity works different here.

Finally, they reach to the ruined temple and find out that Solas was there already. We know that he even painted a mural, the famous “The Destruction of the Veil“. It is not clear if this mural was painted recently and the chaotic magic of this place made it look aged, or it was painted long time ago, when the Temple was pristine.

In the temple, Solas left a letter where he explains that Varric and company don’t understand what’s happening. Solas also says that he will try to reduce the damage that his plans will cause as much as possible. As usual with these plots, we never know what’s going on exactly because the character who knows it considers us not enough to fully understand it.

It’s curious that so far, we know about two elvhenan artefacts that are related to alterations of the Veil. Maybe they were part of the creation of the Veil, so it makes sense for Solas to know so well their location and their importance in the process of destroying the Veil: The red lyrium idol was in the depth of a lost, odd Thaig, close to Kirkwall, where the Veil is the thinnest, and the crucious stone is located in the core of a Forest that was deeply entangled with the Fade and the Veil.

Without stop, the dwarves now go to Miranthous, the capital of Tevinter, where we find yet another char that was mentioned [but never seen] in the book Tevinter Nights: Neve Gallus; a private investigator and mage, who knows all what’s happening in the city. They learn that Solas passed through the city, helped to free some slave elves, and ended up using the dwarves to prevent the Venatori from recapturing them. This part of the comic is quite shallow in my opinion, with nothing interesting to highlight in terms of lore [beside the apparent existance of a group called the Shadow Dragons]. It contains a lot of “action” scenes that are not that great to see in comic style, in my opinion.

The last page of the comic clearly shows the cliffhanger of what will be the main protagonist of DA:D, a person who is unknown to Solas.

Relevant details

Why the title? I guess the Missing (person) represents Solas, the character that Varric and Scout Harding are after.

Time: After the DLC Tresspasser. I assume this because Varric is Viscount of Kirkwall and everyone is after Solas.

Places: Vyrantium is, like the other Tevinter cities [such as Carastes, Ventus, and Neromenian], under Qunari invasion. We also visit the forest of Arlathan.

Characters: There is a group of characters that appear in the comic and belonged to the book, but they are not explored deeply. It’s basically a cameo of each of them: the Grey wardens Evka and Antoine, the Crows Teia and Viago, the mysterious elf Strife, and the mentioned Tevinter private investigator and mage Neve Gallus.

Lore: The most important part of the comics; what can they provide in terms of lore?

We have a reinforcement of the concept that Solas knows a lot about the Blight: like Flemeth, he knows how to keep the darkspawn far away from him [similar to how Flemeth’s hut was free of darkspawns as long as she was around]. Morrigan told us in DAO that it was part of Flemeth’s magical tricks. Maybe it was something related to Mythal’s nature, which now is part of Solas’ too.

Vyrantium is under Qunari invasion. This gives us an idea that Tevinter is being invaded by the Qunari with little resistance due to the inner fight against the Venatori. Tevinter is falling apart, fighting two wars at the same time; an external one against the Qunari and an internal one against the Venatori. This situation is extremelly dangerous for everyone in Thedas: if Tevinter falls, Thedas knows that they would have no other force to hold the line against the Qunari [we were informed about this in comic: Magekiller]. The situation is dire. So far we know, Carastes, Ventus, Neromenian, and now Vyrantium are all under the Qunari control.

Shadow Dragons: A Tevinter group that Neve Gallus helps; they apparently help people in need [this includes elves]. It’s not clear how and why, but seems to show, in contrast with the usually cartoonish evil Tevinter that we see, a group of Tevinters that want a better and kinder country. I guess it’s a concept that will be developed later in the DA:D game.

Arlathan Forest

If we compare the Forest of Arlathan with all the strange things we saw in the Eluvian network but mainly in the Shattered Library [check the posts of the Crossroads in DA: Inquisition] we can conclude that they behave similarly, so we can assume that the Fade was deeply entangled with the forest, left to chaos when the Veil was created. This makes us pull a very easy conclusion with all the lore about Arlathan that we had via Solas and Felassan [read Felassan and bits of lore]: This Forest may have been where the original Arlathan was built. Thanks to some more-or-less “reliable” sources [read Tarohne, the Fell Grimoire, and Xebenkeck], we know this city was where the blood magic was originated, from a Seeker’s point of view [keep this detail in mind].

Thanks to Felassan’s words, we know this city was strongly dependent of magic, and potentially, of Fade itself [like the Shattered Library]. The unreliable tales of the Dalish claim that the city was “sunk” by Tevinter [read Arlathan’s codices in Ancient Elven codices; Din'an Hanin– Elgar’nan Bastion]. But on the other hand, we know that Solas colapsed a place where the Evanuris unleashed terrible things [read the main codex of “The Death of a Titan”], so there is potential lore that may link Arlathan as the place where terrible things were done by the Evanuris, and later it was collapsed, in similar fashion as we read about the The Horror of Hormak in the book. We also know that Arlathan seemed to be related to blood magic, which is a school that can produce horrors if misused [more details that may allow us to link it with similar horrors than the ones present in The Horror of Hormak ]. So, if Arlathan was sunk, or removed from existance [some people consider Arlathan is the Black City even though I can’t find any link or argument in favour nor against it], its magical nature may have been related to the Fade and, once removed/collapsed, it altered this place deeply, especially with the mofidications in the Veil that is experiencing now [Solas is performing a long-time spell to destroy the Veil].

Additional information can be found in the short story called Ruins of Reality:

We learn that Arlathan Forest has been behaving chaotically only recently, so we can suspect it’s related to Solas’ magic: he is performing a spell to destroy the Veil which takes some years [he implied that in Tresspasser’s ending, when he justifies that he helped the Inquisitor to avoid the Qunari invasion because he wanted to give Thedas some years of comfort before releasing the chaos that the destruction of the Veil will produce].

The forest shows alternate images of Strife; they are echos that have premonitory characteristics: they may show what is going to happen to him in few seconds.

Apparently, Strife is not a city-elf, but a Dalish from the clan Morlyn [but there are also implicit information linking him to the Excecutioners too, so maybe he “entered” the clan as a cover agent? It’s hard to specualte about Strife with the little info we have].

“His” clan had a leatherbound journal which started to write itself, describing sacred ruins in Arlathan Forest that guarded an artifact of fabled power. This is the crucious stone we see in the comic. Curiously, this journal sounds a lot like the book we find in a codex of DA2: The Emergent Compendium.

One of the Veil Jumpers claims that this Forest is the Veil itself, and thanks to the short story, we can assume that these anomalies are recent: they have started since Solas may have begun the spell to destroy the Veil [every previous interpretration keeps making sense].

In Arlathan Forest, like in the Shattered Library [ Inverted Ward], we have places where we walk “upside down”.

However, there are effects that are unique of Arlathan Forest like spirits stealing your body, so you have to run after them for a good part of the path. Personally, this feels a bit of crappy lore. We never had lore in DA series that could explain or even suggest/suspect this, or could be close to this mechanism: possession [of a living creature] is a merge between the body’s soul and the spirit/demon, in the same body, and it’s hard to undo it. The Avvar have shown that it’s possible after an exhausting ritual [Sigrid’s quest explains about this part of the lore, check Stone-Bear Hold Avvars - Part 1]. Besides, this situation violates deeply the strong lore concept that possession cannot be performed unwillingly as we see it happens with Harding and Varric: they are not exactly informed to “allow” this temporal possession beforehand. One of the Veil Jumpers explains this only after Varric and Harding are “body-less” souls. Details like these make me question how much lore-consistent the DA:D game will end up being. Are we going to have a lot of crappy out-of-nowhere lore just to make a story that they can sell to new players while assuming the old ones are going to consume it no matter what? Anyways.

There are also parts where people age suddenly, because “time runs chaotically”.

We also see a unique Varterral [details in DLC: Witch Hunt] that looks nothing alike the ones we know from the lore:

creatures made out of stone and bark, that one can even suspect that they may be related to experiments similar to the ones performed in The Horror of Hormak. As usual, the Varterral is protecting something: in this case, the artefact [crucious stone] hidden in the ruined temple.

Finally, when we reach the Temple, two murals are seen: the central part of the famous “The Destruction of the Veil“ [without the figures of Meredith, Corypheus, and the archdemons], and another where we see two humanoids wearing dragon-like attires [Evanuris maybe?, one of them may potentially be Mythal?].

Mural of The destruction of the Veil

This mural is the central part of the one we saw in the trailer promotioning the game under the name of Dreadwolf. A detailed analysis of it can be found in “The Destruction of the Veil“.

This mural in this ruined temple may or may not be the same one we saw in the trailer, where Solas touches the wall. I have mixed feelings about this idea. On one hand, it makes sense that Solas may have reached this place in the Arlathan Forest and may have processed what he has to do through a mural, since it is his way to deal with his [lesser evil] decisions. We speculated about this in “The Creation of the Veil” and in “The Death of a Titan”. It’s also specualted in “The Dragon Slain” in “The actions of the Inquisitor”.

Solas is a character who wanted to learn and teach more than leading rebellions and giving orders [Cole says this in Tresspasser in his line: "Bare-faced but free, frolicking fighting, fierce. He wants to give wisdom, not orders"]. He has been changing over the centuries as the Evanuris pushed the situation to a point of no turning back with the assasination of Mythal. Now, he has to destroy the Veil and unleash the sealed Evanuris to deal with them for good, and also to contain and erradicate the “true” evil that has been hidden behind the thickest barrier of DA lore: the true danger to the world contained in the Black City [considering how much he knows about The Blight and is against it, I imagine this ultimate evil is related to the Blight]. However, it is not clear if this mural is contemporaneous but looking old due to the chaotic nature of time inside the Arlathan Forest, or it’s indeed an old mural, painted ages ago.

In any case, the big difference between the mural we saw in the trailer and the one we see in the comic is that, in the later, there are no Corypheus, Meredith, nor archdemons. This detail made me wonder if this mural is as old as the temple itself. If so, it would mean that this was a “to-do-later” task; an “unstoppable” ending that Solas saw coming when he sealed the Evanuris. He may have known that this was a needed action that would requiere a solution eventually. He only borrowed time to Thedas.

If we think that he sealed the Evanuris in the Black City [with Andruil probably Blighted already, as her codex seems to suggest in Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal], he may accidentally created the red lyrium, and put Great Dragons as guardians of the acess to this place [creatures who are resistant to the Blight but not immune, details in “The Creation of the Veil”]. One can suspect that Solas always knew that his creation of the Veil was a temporary solution, a trick to hold the big evil and give him time to plan and recover energy to truly deal with it in the future. For that, he needed the energy that the orb would gather for a millenia [but Corypheus wasted and broke].

Under this interpretation, the mural we see in the trailer would be a “redrawn” of the mural he did back in that time in the ruined temple of Arlathan Forest. In this recent version, he acknowledges two figures that were not a danger in ancient times: Meredith and Corypheus. Meredith somehow showed that Templars could use the power of the Red Lyrium [she showed how much power they can drawn from it; after all, Templars are the only ones who can use it without immediatelly die as common people do; we can conclude this from the many notes and codices related to experiments of red lyrium in Western Approach and Emprise du Lion]. Corypheus took the power of the orb and ended up destroying it. So now, Fen’Harel will need the help of the remaining Archdemons [if they are not blighted yet] and the remaining power of Mythal [within him], to erradicate the true Evil of the world [and avenge Mythal in the process? Flemeth wanted that for her].

So, in a short summary, we can assume two speculations about when this mural was drawn:

This mural was painted long time ago, probably by the time of the creation of the Veil and the caging of the Evanuris. Solas acknowledged that there was a bigger evil trapped in the Black City that should be eventually deal with it. This idea concords with the lack of figures such as Corypheyus and Meredith [they were not even born yet]. This speculation implies that Solas redrew this mural later [in the Dreadwolf trailer] with the additional characters who accelerated the need to deal with the Veil. I personally like this idea, although it adds inconsistency to previous interpretations [such as the potentiallity that the image of Fen’Harel with silvery-blue eyes was because he had absorved Mythal’s powers]. This could not be possible since back then, Solas was not aware that he will need to absorb Mythal’s powers to deal with this evil.

This mural was painted recently, but the chaotic nature of the Forest made it look aged and cropped parts of it, leaving only the central part of the original illustration. I don’t like this idea at all. The Magic of the forest is wild, but seems ridiculous to assume it can cut parts of a mural just because.

Mural of the Evanuris/Dragon priests

I suspect this mural shows dragon worshippers, or dragons in humanoid form.

Design-wise, both characters have no way to show their ears or heads. We don’t know if that black thing is hair or decoration of their hats. We don’t know if they are elves either. Their sleeves have in their inner side a texture that may suggest “dragon/lizard belly/inner parts”

The green one has a face in her knee; similar design is seen in the Mythal’s Temple’s guardians and in Solas’s Fen’Harel’s attire.

The hat of the green one has strong similarity with the hat of the attire of the Tevinter Archon. Since Tevinter always worshipped dragons as gods [and the design of their clothes and cities are related to dragons most of the time, details can be seen in “outfit” section from Patterns and Styles: Tevinter], one may suspect that this char in green may be related to a dragon [because she is one of them or because she worships one]. This link makes me guess that Elvhenan worshipped dragons originally, until they took Divinity [dragon blood maybe?] for themselves.

The shape of the hat of the green one is strongly related to Andraste’s helm and Flemeth’s staff too. In a less convincing way, it may be related to the strange figure in the Deep Roads that I called moon head creature. This makes me suspect that the figure in green may be Mythal, giving comfort to another, in a motherly way, as she always was depicted. Mythal was also a [green] dragon so it does not contradict my previous statement.

The other figure wearing reddish attire has a hat with the shape of what I called Bull horn head creature. We even find an eluvian with this shape on its top that directs us to the Sundered Hall and Lower Archives in the Shattered Library. I can’t speculate who is this one. A wild, very wild speculation is the following: If the green one is Mythal, the red one may be Urthemiel, simply because Flemeth always wanted to protect Urthemiel’s soul in DA:O. But as you can see, it’s a super weak argument with no confirmation at all [and we know that Urthemiel’s symbols is not the Bull horn head creature, so this seems a very wrong speculation].

Since the strong similarity with the Archon’s attire and the lizard-like details of their sleeves, this image makes me suspect that these two characters are wearing dragon-icon outfits, probably related to worshipping dragons. I consider this because we can make an analogy with another culture of Dragon-worshipping: Tevinter has designs where normal Tevinter people wears Archdemons/Dragon iconography as part of their outfit [check “Outfits” section in Patterns and Styles: Tevinter].

If each Evanuris worshipped a dragon, and tried to imitate/earn their powers and shape [the shape of the divine], we know that Mythal did not need that since she was a dragon herself. This would imply that she was, alongside the other Old Gods, another Great Dragon that was part of the group that later was understood as the Old Gods/Archdemons. The fact that she represents herself may be related to the strange addition in DAI that may have existed a 8th dragon among the Old Gods that represented simply a dragon [Constellation: Draconis]. It’s worth noting that this 8th dragon is seen more as a serpentine dragon, and serpentine is the shape that Mythal took to fight Andruil [read the codex of Andruil in Ancient Elven codices, Temple of Mythal].

So, with all these details, I find myself inclined to think that these two were two Evanuris or two Old Gods.

In the case of the Evanuris, they were worshipping or trying to have the “divine shape” [in an attire] of the dragons that controlled the skies when there was only “one song”. Dragons are, after all, “the blood of the world” [details in The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak, and Until We Sleep]

In the case of being Old Gods, the green one could be Mythal, considered the 8th Old God [the serpentine dragon] that was erased somehow, while the red one could be any other. One could suspect Urthemiel, but the shape of the hat has nothign to do with the symbol of Urthemiel that we know for sure.

As a last speculation that has no arguments to sustain itself: another potential identity for the one in red may be Dirthamen. We saw in the Fade of Flemeth: Part 2, that she has a statue of Dirthamen in a central position, bleeding, and in a design that implies that he may have been betrayed too. Dirthamen is the only one with almost no codices and iconography in most of the game [since most of it is always co-opted by Falon’Din, the best example of it is the Temple of Dirthamen Part 1 - Part 2, which has no mosaic of Dirthamen, ironically]. I always had the impression that Dirthamen was the only other Evanuris who, beside Mythal, could work in a positive way with Solas. But that’s basically my argument here: the lack of negative narrations of Dirthamen against Mythal does not necesarily mean that they were allies.

#da comic #comic #mythal #the blight #blight #arlathan #arlathan forest #veil jumper #strife #shadow dragon #varterral #dai murals #moon head creature #Bull horn head creature

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