The Emergent Compendium

knight-enchanter:

A codex entry found during Act 3 of DAII, with the Black Emporium. It’s a mysterious book, the pages of which fill with new entries of its own accord – each a single image accompanied by a line of “gibberish”. At least some of these appear to be predictions or records of things that have happened. One for example seems to make reference to Sten.

One of the images the author of the codex entry saw was 

two shadowed spheres among stars

The accompanying gibberish read

aboofqp iboxE’kbC px bpmfizb kX

The gibberish is a cipher. It can be decoded by moving back each letter 3 spaces in the alphabet and reversing it. The translated subtitle reads

an eclipse as Fen’Harel stirred

This spheres and eclipses business remind me of two of the murals seen in Tresspasser (1, 2). It may be worth noting that Thedas has two moons, and that Elgar’nan is said to have once thrown down the sun from the sky. It might be a reference to foci. As to the stirring.. because a few years later, Solas awoke perhaps? The Kirkwall rebellion (Act 3) is 9:37, DA:I begins in 9:41 and Solas awoke a year before joining so 9:40 approximately. Or else a reference to something he’s done in the past perhaps, or seeks to do.

Why do you support Solas’s plan (with all the info we currently know about it, anyway)? I can see the anti-plan side all too well.

eeblingtheshade:

viva-la-dalish:

Ok, so I’m going to prefix my answer here with the fact that we don’t know all the details of this plan yet so I’m not fully prepared to commit, but what information we do have is conflicting at best, and doesn’t indicate the kind of total annihilation Solas is predicting.

What Solas says: the modern elves are not his people and his plan is to destroy the world to save the elvhen (his people, wherever they are). 

What the games have said over the course of the series:

• Most recently in this DLC, all of the ancient elf spirits,

  wisdom spirits etc call Lavellan ‘honored elvhen’

• The crossroads visibly present differently to elven inquisitors in both the dlc and the main game.

• All elves are able to move through the eluvians as easily ancient elves ancient elves (TME). That has to do with recognising (ancient) elven magic. The eluvians think they’re elvhen.

• Kieran says the Dalish inquisitor’s blood is very old. 

• Gaider in trying to explain why elf genetics can’t be passed on effectively said it was to do with magic that was dormant, not missing. 

• There is a specific codex entry you find in the fade portion of the main game talking about how Cory and the magisters used a whole bunch of elven servants specifically to crack open the fade the first time. One presumes, because their magic is still the same/similar enough to that one the ancient elves / Solas who made the damn thing in the first place.

• The mage-future we saw in game was unacceptable to Solas, so one assumes it is worse in varying ways than what he has planned. Not everyone was dead instantly as far as we could see, the bigger problem was Corypheus and red lyrium everywhere. 

• He’s seen both sides of history, and he’s not into causing pain without a reasonable pay off. Which says something about the current state of the world. 

• SANDAL’S PROPHECY.

• All the elves are migrating. I want to know what he told the Dalish elves to convince them following Fen’harel was a good idea.

The long and short of all of this is I a) think Solas might be wrong about the modern elves being so different from the ancient elves and it’s arrogance talking. b) He’s theorising total destruction as worst case scenario, but we’ve seen worst case before, and it wasn’t total destruction in the way he’s describing. 

The current world is broken. People are already dying. Genocide is already happening. Spirits are suffering and becoming corrupt. Not going through with Solas’s plan isn’t going to make these things better. 

I may be slightly very biased in my wanting to return the elves (and presumably the dwarves) to their original states, but we also don’t have any evidence so far that it would doom humans / qunari / other races either: they all existed pre-veil as well, and we don’t know what they potentially lost as a result. 

My theory in the ‘destruction’ kind of sense is that yes things will be destroyed but not in quite the way most people assume. As in things will be remade, rejoined, and reshaped. They will cease to exist in their current form. But that doesn’t mean they cease to exist altogether. If saving the world meant that the minds of everyone were permanently changed (without their permission) to a state they were supposedly meant to exist in, is it worth it? Maybe. That is the question isn’t it?

Overall, my biggest qualm is that it’s one of Solas’s plans, which historically haven’t always had the best outcomes. But maybe three time’s the charm? I’m not ready to vilify it without further information, given the potential it has to heal (and there’s no present alternative that seems to offer this in the slightest). 

*coughs in moonkeep‘s general direction* ❤

Things I want from the next Dragon Age Game/s:

onehundred-fandoms:

lavellanlove:

lavellanlove:

Dragon Age: The Uprising

An awakening-style expansion set in the Tevinter Imperium. The Inquisitor travels to Tevinter, seeking new companions to help infiltrate Fen’Harel’s ranks and disrupt his plans from within.

The Inquisitor allies with Mae, working with Dorian to reform the Magesterium; Fenris, who either escaped Daenerius again or left Kirkwall to wreak havoc on the slave trade; Auri, an elven rogue committed to liberating her fellow slaves from their power-crazed masters’ blood magic rituals; Feynriel, a dreamer struggling to find his place after he fled to the Imperium to learn to control his rare magical gifts; Krem, who either barely survived the Venatori ambush or took a reprieve from the Chargers to deliver his own brand of mercenary justice in his homeland; and Briala, whose knowledge of the eluvian network is invaluable to helping the Inquisitor find her former companion and save him from himself. You also get a cameo from Bianca (warrior/rogue) or Dagna (mage), who crafts you a custom, class-dependent weapon for your left arm.

For the majority of Uprising, you play as the Inquisitor. The exception is an infiltration quest in the main storyline, during which you play as one of your elven companions (whichever one you choose to be your spy). Fen’Harel and his agents are intervening to save the elven slaves from a veritable massacre by the Magisters, and your task is to gain his trust and embed yourself in his operation – without being discovered.

You and your new companions must find Fen’Harel before he destroys the world. You just hope that by the time you do, it’s not too late to change his heart.

---

Dragon Age: The Cure
Set in the Anderfels. We play as a new hero, recruited into the Wardens by Rainier/Bethany/Carver (depending on World State). Origin would dictate the circumstances, but eventually you go to Weisshaupt for training, only to see the deep corruption of the Wardens first hand.

The First Warden is trying to rule over the region as a dictatorial tyrant. Senior officers are mysteriously being assassinated, political upheaval is everywhere, and the Wardens are caught between the growing Darkspawn threat spreading through Northern Thedas, the Calling that is driving them mad, and the infighting threatening to destroy the Order.

An extremist sect of Wardens breaks away from the order, eschewing their duty to fight darkspawn and swearing absolute fealty to the First Warden alone. The only hope for the order is the last remaining Warden Commander, who left years prior to try to find a cure the the calling. With the help of the Commander’s old ally Morrigan and a cast of new companions, it is up to the hero to find the Commander, stop the calling, and unlock the powerful secrets that can save Thedas from the coming of the sixth Blight. 

Update: Seriously considering writing this now. If I did, would anyone be interested? Would anyone read it? I figure we have at least a few years of time to bide between now and some real closure. 😛

Damn that sounds quite cool D: I would read it.

Sounds good to me!

DA4: Wolf Hunt? (Or, Why The Next Game May Be Bioware’s First Direct Sequel)

heartlighting:

SPOILERS ABOUND, OBVIOUSLY.

Keep reading

What I want from DA4

I’m just going to start compiling a list, to which I can add in future reblogs as I think of things. Feel free to reblog and add your wishes to the list too. 🙂

• A chance to change Solas’ mind, obviously. Preferably through finding the “third way” – i.e. a way to remove the Veil and restore magic WITHOUT destroying the world as we know it. I don’t want defeating him to be a necessity of the story.
• Finding out where the Blight actually came from. Now that we know where the Veil came from…and with all the hints in the games now about dwarves and red lyrium and the Profane and Corypheus and everything that figures into how the blight started…I hope DA4 (or 5 or beyond, if there’s a chance of the series going for more than 4 games…) finally explains all that.
• A way to not only remove the veil and restore magic but also get rid of the Blight? 😀
• Tevinter! This one seems strongly hinted at in the DLC anyway, but I definitely want to see gameplay there. And while we’re at it, I want to see Rivain, and Nevarra, and the Tirashan, and Par Vollen, and Seheron, and Antiva, and Weisshaupt…I need fanfic references everywhere!
• The Inquisition still involved somehow, as the DLC ending hints they will be…but I think I’d rather a new protagonist than for DA4 to focus on the Inquisitor again. (How OOC Hawke seemed in DAI makes me worry for cameos of the Inquisitor and/or Warden or Hawke in DA4 though…) Someone in the last day or so posted a theory that the protagonist of DA4 would be the Inquisition’s main agent in Tevinter, someone Solas wouldn’t recognize, and I’d love for that to be true.
• More in the Fade! I may be the only person in the world who really really looks forward to the Fade in ALL THREE DA games so far, but I really quite like those parts. So I expect I’ll like future installments of it too.
• More of the Deep Roads, but only because I liked Descent. The Deep Roads in DAO and DA2 are far from my favorite things, but Descent was fun.
• More codex entries of Varric’s books! Wouldn’t it be fun to pick up chapters of “All This Shit Is Weird: The Inquisitor ___ Story” in DA4 the way you pick up chapters of “Hard in Hightown” in DAI? Especially after hearing Cassandra read bits of it in the Trespasser credits! That was the best. Thing. Ever.
• Decent hair.