thedinanshiral
The Dinan'shiral
I overanalyse anything and everything Dragon Age. May take requests. Spoilers for everything.
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Official Tumblr account for BioWare: [link] - it's new.
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I am the REGRET of a GOD, YOU-
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Yeah, I thought the griffon rider was implied lol
I don't see Hawke handling anything beyond a mabari (my Hawke was purple, him trying to train or use an actual hawke for that purpose would be a hilarious disaster)
As for magical artifacts I think there's two basic varieties: the ones that need magic to be activated, and the ones already inmbued with magic that anyone can use. The sending crystal probably falls in the latter category if we consider the Inquisitor may not be a mage and still gets to use one. Also there's "elven stones", said to not require magic to be used; considering Tevinter appropriated most of elven magical culture and technology I'm 99.9% sure sending crystals and elven stones are the exact same thing.
Writing systems in Thedas
We know there’s a variety of languages in Thedas but I’m very curious, how do they write?? Our characters find codices, letters, novel chapters, messages and reports all over the map, and of course we get to read them in a language we understand. But what would all that look like in-world?
Of course i started taking screenshots of my DAI game whenever i came across any form of writing. Turns out there’s plenty.
It’s a fantasy setting, so the letters, books, and signs we see are purposely made to look the part, the writing shown in game is unreadable to us. Some of it looks blocky, some of it in what seems to be cursive letters looks almost sanskrit-based but not really, some look like print so at least we know they also write in paragraphs.
Czytaj dalej
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Hi! I'm glad you liked my post.
To answer some of your questions.. Yes, there are pigeons in Thedas ( Shale in Dragon Age Origins really, really dislikes them), although I don't recall any mention of them being used to carry letters. Another form of communication are crystals! Dorian in Inquisition uses one with a romanced Inquisitor in the epilogue card if I recall correctly. There's also memory stones in the Circle of Magi for communication between them. Once upon a time I'm sure Grey Wardens must have used Griffons too. Personally I think Dreamers could just chat while in the Fade too but that'd be very much uncommon. Lastly, in Tevinter it is very likely they have other ways of communication entirely dependant on magic, for example in this concept art of Tevinter we can see some small dolls carrying tiny scrolls
If by any chance the network of Eluvians were to be fully restored and parts of it made available for public use, the restrictions of distance would be no more and people would just walk like the mailman but that ain't ever happening lol
So, as things stand now and unless the next game brings something new, I think it's safe to say crows are the most common way used to send letters around.
Writing systems in Thedas
We know there’s a variety of languages in Thedas but I’m very curious, how do they write?? Our characters find codices, letters, novel chapters, messages and reports all over the map, and of course we get to read them in a language we understand. But what would all that look like in-world?
Of course i started taking screenshots of my DAI game whenever i came across any form of writing. Turns out there’s plenty.
It’s a fantasy setting, so the letters, books, and signs we see are purposely made to look the part, the writing shown in game is unreadable to us. Some of it looks blocky, some of it in what seems to be cursive letters looks almost sanskrit-based but not really, some look like print so at least we know they also write in paragraphs.
Czytaj dalej
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Evanuris Who's who
This is just my personal and very intuitive interpretation of the Evanuris signature symbols. I base my take on recent art, general Evanuris lore and previous depictions of them, primarily mosaics from the Temple of Mythal in DAI. I know others have done this with nicer graphics but everything here is homemade and made with love -on my phone- so please bear with me..
First, from the trailer we got the first depiction of all these Evanuris symbols
Andruil and Ghilan'nain are explained here.
Elgar'nan: it's front and center, as he's the top authority among them. Also, shows up in the trailer mural, implied to be one of the future enemies in the story and he's elvhen God of Vengeance so i'd say if anyone's gonna show up to get even with Solas that'd be him.
June and Sylaise: Possibly the Evanuris we know the least about, and if Solas didn't comment on them at the Temple of Mythal in DAI i'd say they were ok-ish? Either siblings or married (or both, because mythology). Most people think the sun-like one is Elgar'nan as he's the sun in the elvhen pantheon but Sylaise is the Hearthkeeper and nothing else remotely references fire or heat. Her mosaic at the Temple of Mythal shows her wearing a crown of leafs, of which this "sun" could easily be a stylized version. As for June, God of the Craft, all i have is ..it looks like a helmet.
Falon'din and Dirthamen: as Guide of the dead Falon'din is represented in the mosaics as holding a shepard's staff so i assigned him the symbol closest to a staff. As for Dirthamen, as Keeper of Secrets he's depicted in mosaics covering his mouth with both hands. On this first picture, simple 2D, neither headpiece can be fully appreciated, but one could say the "staff" one fits in the empty space of the other one, and these two were said to be inseparable, twin souls, with a bond that trascended any labels, shadow and reflection of one another.
Now, onto the vinyl covers. The first one here is Arlathan pre-disaster. We see the city with all its spires watched over by a huge dragon that for completion's sake i assigned as Mythal; while she lived, the world was in order, more or less. There's also a mysterious tiny figure below, hooded and holding a staff that kinda looks like Elgar'nan's symbol; at first i thought it could be Fen'harel but it actually fits as Elgar'nan or one of his people, because it's still possible he's responsible for her death.
And now the best part, the alternative cover presents a much darker scenario, Arlathan falling. With the city crumbling down, a different, visibly aggressive/hostile dragon watching over it with horns that, yet again, resemble Elgar'nan's symbol, and hanging from the edge of its wings we see heads, each wearing an Evanuris headpiece. The mysterious hooded figure is gone here, the floating ground it stood on already gone.
Once i put the names i noticed this placement, where the lovers are across each other, and the twins are directly facing each other (as you would a mirror); i found it a bit curious because this only works if we go with my assigned correspondences.
Speaking of the twins, let's check this concept art for a bit. It depicts the party of heroes fighting off drakspawn while two dragons say hi in the background. But is it really two dragons? I see two heads ..but also only two wings. Could it be a double headed dragon?? Concidentally two Archdemons remain, and people have speculated what better way to fuck up Thedas than with two Blights at once? On top of Solas taking down the Veil and reshaping the fabric of reality, again. No such thing as a boring day in Thedas.
Important to note is the remaining Archdemons correspond to the Old Gods Razikale the dragon of Mystery, and Lusacan, dragon of Night. If you adhere to the theory that says the tevinter Old Gods are actually the Evanuris -i've wrote on this extensively-, one possibility is Razikale corresponds with Dirthamen (dragon of mystery? keeper of secrets? potato potahto, same thing) while Lusacan corresponds with Falon'din (dragon of night? guide of the dead? darkness all around). If we've been right about these equivalences then this piece of art would be showing indeed a two-headed dragon, the Twins. Their bond so strong, so transcendental, so inseparable they return to the world as one, for a recharged Blight.
The only tiny detail against this is that Razikale is referred to as a she, whereas the twins are presumed to be male, however i don't let this take from my fun because ancient elves were very particular and their perception of sex and gender must have been like nothing we can think of today.
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The Missing
Having read the latest Dragon Age comic there's really not much i have to say about it. We follow Varric and Harding on their mission to find Solas, and get to see them meet some characters from previous comics like the Crows Viago and Teia, and some Tevinter Nights characters as well. The premise is simple: there's an artifact somewhere and everyone's trying to get it -Solas, the Venatori-, and our party is trying to find Solas so there they go. We get to see a little bit of Tevinter, and a little bit of the Arlathan Forest which only made me wonder how certain things could be made in the next game (distorsions in the very fabric of space-time are always interesting to me, there's a lot that could be made with that setting, gameplay wise).
As i think i've mentioned before, these side media are often made in preparation for the next installment in the series, the Dragon Age comics have rarely been lore-heavy for newcomers and hints for veterans are few and cute but not exactly groundbreaking (they better leave that for the actual game!)
Only one frame caught my attention:
In this scene out party has arrived at the temple lost in the Arlathan Forest where they expected to find the coveted artifact and Solas himself. Alas, both are gone already, but we as the readers are treated to these murals, one familiar and one not.
I'm not saying Solas was the only elf capable of making such murals but he's been practically designated as the artist behind nearly every elvhen mural seen so far, and that wolf one is no exception.
Is the location in the comic the same as in the trailer? We can't tell for now.
But it's the other part of the mural that i have to focus on. I had seen it before -spoilers can be unavoidable sometimes - and it bothers me considerably that it wasn't until i saw it on my own copy that i realized something.
People almost immediately interpreted the figures to be Ghilan'nain and Andruil, particularly because the one standing has a headpiece that very much resembles one of the upside-down figures in the trailer's mural
This, coupled with some previous concept art led people to believe the figure should be Ghilan'nain..
...or is she?
You see, the recent Dragon Age vinyl came with gorgeous cover variants, depicting the city of Arlathan before and after Solas' action, and the latter shows what seem to be the faces of most of the other Evanuris
Their headpieces are the same as shown in another part of the trailer
The moment this one came out everyone tried to guess what design corresponded to which Evanuris. I tried it too but didn't take notes so excuse me i'm not trying again now,maybe later
When i looked at that panel in the comic, it hit me. The sitting figure, with the half-moon headpiece, the same as in one of the gods on the trailer mural, the same as the grotesque sea monster...might not be Ghilan'nain. Despite all possible readings covered so far, it may actually be..Andruil.
"Whaaaaaat??" you may say, but hear me out. Check the body language in that mural. It's loving, tender, one is lying on the other's lap, they look like lovers. As Andruil and Ghilan'nain are presumed to have been. With Andruil being the senior one, i think it makes more sense for her to be the one sitting, looking down at the other resting on her lap. If the headpieces the Evanuris wore were in any way related to their name or atributes, that alone changes how this scene can be understood. The resting figure's headpiece looks like two horns; which Evanuris was related to anything with horns...antlers...halla? Ghilan'nain Mother of Halla. She was so proud of the halla, the creation that granted her godhood, the one that still roams the land, why wouldn't she reference her finest work with her crown?
Whereas the other figure, seemingly more imposing, stronger perhaps, has a headpiece that closely resembles..a halfmoon, people thought. But let me offer an alternative: a bow. Andruil, goddess of the hunt. "Sister of the Moon, Mother of Hares, Lady of the Hunt". Her preferred weapon? Bow and arrow.
We know Andruil hunted in the Abyss, that it drove her mad, tainted, and apparently Horror of Hormak distracted us all because we thought it had to be Ghilan'nain, with her experiments, her monstrous creations, her underground labs of lyrium-induced genetic disasters. But what if it's not her, but her lover? What if it's Andruil? She "put an armor made of the Void and made weapons of darkness. She brought plague to her lands and howled things meant to be forgotten". She could very well be the giant sea monster in concept art. Monsters so massive don't need weapons, and that one is holding a spear. The devs note mentions "evil gods", and ok sure, Evanuris being evil is kinda debatable but the one we know for sure lost her freaking mind was Andruil.
Besides asking who's who, i think we should also consider why they're depicted like this in a mural, specially if we consider the very likely possibility that Solas made it. We know very little of his relationship with the Evanuris, other than Mythal. He didn't approve of them for sure, but he also still holds a deep love for all his people. We have at least one story that connects him with Andruil and Ghilan'nain, which is a bit odd, to say the least.
That's all i have for now. I think i'll read all the pre-Dreadwolf comics soon and work with that. Thanks for reading :)
#Evanuris#Ghilan'nain#Andruil#Dragon Age#Dragon Age The Missing#not my brightest writing i'm a bit rusty#maybe the two merged and that's why the creature has two sets of arms#everything is possible
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New year, new expectations
May 2024 have mercy on us all.
Now, that said, my copy of The Missing arrived, so I'll be reading that, slowly, under a microscope, hopefully I can sit down to write at length about it soon enough.
I keep trying to find HD quality scans of the Vinyl art but I understand they're probably too big to fit in a regular scanner so people have been sharing photos instead. Won't delve much on the interior art as Felassan already broke that down pretty nicely in a post I just shared, but the cover variants, uff, those are delicious and my mind gears are already rolling, I'll see what I can do about it.
I'll speculate on the next game details later on (my country is going through a moment -again- so I'm not on my best of moods and my energy is low low)
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Hi Felassan! Our DA vinyl arrived recently and I wanted to share the interior graphics, because the first one doesn't match what I've seen posted by others:
Based on the others you posted in the past I was expecting the first image to be a Warden graphic, but instead it's the same image as the final one! I don't know if this is a misprint or just a different version, but I wanted to share it with you and your followers and see what people thought.
Thank you for always being a positive source of Dragon Age news and theories!
hello! ◕‿◕ (thanku!!)
thanku for sharing these pictures and I hope you're enjoying the vinyl. so your vinyl booklet doesn't have a Warden/Hero of Ferelden image like the one on the left here anywhere in it, with the sword, griffon and chalice? interesting, I wonder if it's a misprint? for folks reading who got the vinyl, does your booklet have the Warden/HoF image or is it like this one?
[msg refs prev posts like this one]
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Photos of the Dragon Age OST vinyl booklet artwork have appeared online [source]. they were posted over on Reddit in the same thread/by the same user as the post with D'Read Koda in it (Reddit user LegendeRRisCZ17), in an update to said post.
for context, this is what we had seen previously of these art pieces, with the images being skewed and only some being in view. Twitter user Kiranox (@/veranox) was able to do some cool photo manipulation and unskew the skewed ones, but there were still images we hadn't been able to even see to try to unskew in the first place. [previous posts on these art pieces and the vinyl art in general including the cover dragon pieces, so that I'm not repeating myself supermuch in this post more than I am already: one, two, three, four]
in a previous post I wondered,
perhaps there are two pages for each PC/main game - HoF & DA:O (hence the Warden image on page 1), Hawke & DAII, and the Inquisitor & DA:I (hence the Solas Hermit symbols on page 6)? since this 'booklet’ comes with the vinyl, and the vinyl contains music from all 3 past main games
and it seems this may be the case, as here we can see:
left: Grey Warden imagery - griffon, Joining Chalice with darkspawn blood drop, sword. calls to mind sigils/heraldry of the Grey Wardens.
right: this pattern resembles the map of the Fade in DA:O.
- the Hero of Ferelden & Dragon Age: Origins.
left: A diving bird, bearing a resemblance to Hawke’s tarot card in DA:I. In the background the sigil looks like Kirkwall heraldry.
right: this pattern brings to mind the ‘companion grid’ from Varric's book in the interrogation scenes in Dragon Age II.
- the Champion of Kirkwall & Dragon Age II.
left: the iconic Inquisitor helmet, the Inquisition hairy eyeball symbol, sword.
right: the 'four circles' pattern looks similar to the pattern on Solas’ Hermit Tarot card. (and in the middle is the sense once again of an eclipse - in the very center, a sun-like shape/representation of the sun. and behind that, two overlapping spheres/two shadowed spheres. like we've seen in the in-game cinematic and elsewhere)
- the Inquisitor and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
as for the shattering eluvian image (and the two images of dragons from the covers), I talked about them here and here so I won't repeat myself. but I guess this one represents some of the story of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. makes sense, there's a disc of DA:O music, a disc of DAII music, a disc of DA:I music, and then on the last disc it's bonus dlc tracks and bard songs from DA:I, but the last one is the one with D'Read Koda, so functionally it could be seen as a 'DA:D disc'.
the images also confirm what was written in the Reddit post before about Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe and the track called D'Read Koda.
[credit and source link: Reddit user LegendeRRisCZ17, link, via]
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Ok ok so. Did Solas put Ghilan’nain into time out with the rest of the evanuris? Was the big pile of hybrid monstrosities the Wardens found in The Horror of Hormak just a self perpetuating craft project she had left behind? Or do you think she’s actually physically in Thedas and working on darkspawn variants for a specific reason.
There are so many possibilities for how they will bring together the lore around the evanuris/old gods/forgotten ones/blight/titans/… in the end. It’s not really worth thinking about most of it at this point.
But Ghilan’nain has been mentioned a lot. Too much to be the feature antagonist, but she could definitely have a big chunk of story coming up.
Hi! Yes, Solas locked them all up, I have no doubt of that because had one been left out the world Solas woke up to would have been drastically different and we would have played an entirely different set of games. And I think Ghilan'nain had multiple projects going on and when she was locked away she may have kinda left the oven on at least in that Hormak location. So that lab kept running (the altered lyrium is still active, anything unfortunate enough to run into it will find out what she was cooking).
I have thought about most of it, Evanuris, Old Gods, Forgotten Ones, it's all a big salad but fun. What little we've seen so far points towards a couple of Evanuris and one is very likely to be Ghilan'nain, if she had multiple monster-making labs around Thedas that continued to function in her absence wouldn't it be a waste to see none of it?? We should totally get to check them out and fight some epic chimeras of her making.
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I was making a go-to file for all my companion card stuff and I realized that it might be helpful to share it and have all the patterns and brushes I’ve been using posted in one place so I can reference it later. And I added Lavellan’s card since it was lying around. These are big files so you might want to take a nap and drink some water while waiting out the download.
Objects | Textures Patterns | Brushes | Lavellan’s Card PSD
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Dragon Age: The Missing
Artist: Matt Taylor
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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf locales - Rivain
ᴜᴘᴏɴ ᴇᴀꜱᴛᴇʀɴ ꜱʜᴏʀᴇꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴜɴᴋɪꜱꜱᴇᴅ ꜱᴀɴᴅꜱ, ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ ᴏꜰ ꜰᴏʀᴛᴜɴᴇ ɴᴏ ʟᴏɴɢᴇʀ ʜᴏʟᴅ ᴅᴏᴍɪɴɪᴏɴ ᴏᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴀꜱᴛꜱ ᴏꜰ ʀɪᴠᴀɪɴ—ɴᴏᴛ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴅʀᴀɢᴏɴꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ɢʀᴏᴡɪɴɢ ʙᴏʟᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ʟᴀʏɪɴɢ ᴡᴀꜱᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ꜱʜɪᴘꜱ.
Image 3 art credit: Gabriela Isache
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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf locales - Antiva
ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪɴɴᴀᴄʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴍʏꜱᴛᴇʀʏ ᴀɴᴅ ɪɴᴛʀɪɢᴜᴇ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀᴏᴡꜱ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴇᴘ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡꜱ ᴏꜰ ʙᴇᴀᴜᴛɪꜰᴜʟ ᴀɴᴛɪᴠᴀ. ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ, ʜᴏᴡᴇᴠᴇʀ, ɪꜱ ᴀᴍɪꜱꜱ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ ꜱᴇᴛ ᴏɴ ᴜɴᴄᴏᴠᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ.
Image 8 art credit: Nipuni
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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf
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Sneak peek at the world of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf
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