Mythal(in times of Arlathan, so she doesn’t look like Flemeth) for russian #ElfZine! I finished this artwork a few months ago, and now I can finally post it
“I’ve faced tyrants and would-be gods. Seen friends loose life and limb. But there’s always someone bent on breaking the world. It’s time for a new hero. No magic hand, no ancient prophecy. The kind of person they’ll never see coming. We’ve got your back. I’ve got your back. Demons. Dragons. Darkspawn. Even the Dread Wolf. This, is your story.”
I think the teaser trailer did a really great job at giving us a general vibe the game will be going for. Trailers for the past Dragon Age games usually hit high notes of heroism; sacrifice, duty, might, etc. This trailer immediately feels different, and I’m personally keeping an open mind about that. I hesitate to use the word “dark” to describe media, because I feel that most people have a different definition of what makes something have a “dark tone” than I do, but I would apply that here. The music is cinematic not in the sense of epicness, but of dire straits. Dare I say I got more “end of the world” vibes from this trailer than from all of Inquisition.
The term “teaser trailer” is definitely appropriately used here, because that’s what it is; a tease. BioWare is very good at teasing, at sharing enough bits of information to keep you thinking, without giving it all away. So with that said, these are my own personal thoughts.
If you have not yet seen The Next Dragon Age Official Teaser Trailer released during the 2020 Game Awards, you can view it here: [Link]
The Mural
The trailer opens and closes with another large painting by Solas. A clear image of the entire mural was changed as the background of EA’s official Dragon Age webpage.
It interests me that Solas represented himself as the Dread Wolf with red mouth and blue eyes. In past depictions of Fen’Harel, he has red eyes and a blue moth, such as the DA:I tarot card:
The colours blue and red have traditionally been representative of opposite forces, most often good and evil, in media. If there is meaning to this, (because after all, it could just be a style choice,) I wonder if it is indicative of his role reversal from Inquisition?
On either side of the Dread Wolf are two figures, with familiar shapes as their heads:
These shapes are found fixated on top of metallic dragon statues and eluvians in Trespasser:
In the game files, they are referred to as the following:
prp_elv_TyrantIdolHead01
prp_elv_TyrantIdolHead02
prp_elv_TyrantIdolHead03
These “Tyrant Idol Heads” obviously represent the Evanuris. The second head that looks like the sun is obviously Elgar’nan. The third head I believe represents Mythal, as it holds resemblance to dragon horns, and Flemeth’s silhouette. The question remains which member of the Evanuris does the first represent, the one appearing as the head of the left creature in the mural. Given the monstrous nature, how @felassan pointed out the head and body has the same shape as a monster seen in concept art, and that Ghilan’nain’s monsters were recently explored in the Tevinter Nights story, the Horror of Hormak, Ghilan’nain is my guess.
The second figure in the mural? I think that is another Evanuris. This is a shot in the dark, but I wonder if perhaps June, given we know next to nothing about him thus far, and I do think it’s supposed to be a male one, given the stereotypically masculine body shape.
The figures are both hanging upside down with their hands folded over their chest. This is symbolic of martyrdom in Catholicism. (Why Solas has become Catholic, I do not know.)
At the bottom of the mural is, from right to left, the red lyrium statue of meredith with the red lyrium idol sword, a crumbling city full of red lyrium, and Corypheus with the orb. The circling yellow light around the city reads as an explosion to me, which is very interesting, given the plot of The Streets of Minrathous in Tevinter Nights. The remaining Venatori wish to summon a very powerful demon resting under the capital city, blowing it up in the process. Perhaps they are not the only ones with such a goal, or perhaps they will try again?
Fic summary: An agent of Fen’Harel defects to search for an alternative solution. Time travel with consequences. Lore exploration and expansion. Friends, rivals, lovers, and endless explanations. *aggressively stirs spaghetti pot*
Chapter summary: She is not in a good way.
~~
Even with the Amgetoll, she had ventured far…but this, this was going off the beaten path into places no outsider was meant.
When she found corpses of dwarves during the pursuit, she knew they’d bought into the worst of the Evanuris propaganda–and likely whatever Forgotten they were serving.
After stumbling through a thrumming forest swamped in fog, she found the base of a tower and a precarious staircase hewn along its face. Without a doubt, this was where she needed to go.
Ominous moaning dragged through the white vapour as she crested the final stair of the monolith. Maordrid stopped, scanning the cavern in stillness[…]
[…]Too high to see stalactites. The bulbous caps of the massive fungi could be glimpsed through the drifting clouds, but nothing moved noticeably.
Straight ahead and utterly untouched by the sea of white was an arrangement of coral-like growths surrounding a lotus structure covered in dwarven runes and other carvings. The tips of the ‘petals’ appeared to be lyrium or enchanted glass fused to the stone for the way they emanated a starlike radiance. Dendritic growths fanned out in a presenterly fashion and rising between the gaps, curling delicately over the lotus bulb were pale fronds of what could have been ice crystals or feathers.
Vardra had mentioned there were great conduits built in the Deep meant to catch the stray ‘notes’ of the Song emitted by raw lyrium and those emitted by the forests themselves. What ended up collected was ‘distilled’ and redistributed somehow throughout the Thaig and the Stone itself.
And the Sou’silairmor agents were in the heart of one. Or had been.
The moaning swelled again—Maordrid trotted across the bridge and beneath the arch, loosely keeping an eye on the runes and glowing grooves all heading the same direction.
“Explain why this is happening, Evarah? What is coming for us? Didn’t you clear the bloody forest?” She entered the lotus with great caution, stepping lightly as she cased the interior with her eyes. Bel’mana and her ward were in the midst of helping secure the eluvian in place between some pillars. The remaining eradin were positioned about the rest of the chamber, weapons at the ready as they kept a tense lookout.
One elf with a white-maned helm was standing precariously close to the glowing hole in the centre, looking in, her features awash with incandescent blue. “It won’t matter. Get the eluvian working and if anything comes, the Lords will take care of it.”
The other, holding a trident and shield stepped up on the opposite side, his face twisted in a scowl. “It is our duty—”
Maordrid retreated, backing into a shallow alcove as the moans from before, now warping to sound like several vocal cords stitched together, made their origin known. The bickering elves erupted into a panicked scramble. Conflicting orders were screamed and weapons were summoned with a hum of magic as the creature practically oozed through the roof, climbing its way down on multiple fleshy limbs. It resembled nothing she knew, except perhaps if one stretched the imagination to bring a dog and a lizard together in a truly unholy consummation. Whatever its forebears, they had clearly seen fit to abandon it in a place no one would hopefully ever lay witness, as it was a hideous composition of translucent throbbing flesh and a wide maw filled with hundreds of jagged yellow teeth.
She thought she had seen worse, initially thinking this was just another of Ghilan'nain’s many children of war. Until she noticed the glowing red open sores along its emaciated flank and spine…and the swollen tail with a massive, lidless bloodshot eye that curled over its flat head like a scorpion. The pupil was like a broken yolk, uneven, unblinking, and weeping a bright crimson fluid.
She knew this thing had spawned naturally down here—the elvhen were to blame for the infection.
Such abilities are certainly implied as being possible considering the Old Gods, who are connected to the Evanaris is some way (although we don’t know if they are the Evanuris, their Chosen, the Forgotten Ones, or something else, or somehow all at once!) whispered to humanity from the Fade.
Something called to Meredith from the Red Lyrium Idol. Corypheus was changed by his contact with the Golden City. Their inclusion in so many of the promotional images for DA4 suggests that these are not coincidences. They may truly be agents of the Dread Wolf’s true foes.
So….Tevinter Nights! Still reading it, but you know me and maps. I kind of like them. And while the book’s map is short on details, it had one very interesting image that caught my eye.
Let me zoom in a bit for you.
What an interesting depiction of the Veil! Complete with spikey projections!! Then I thought…we’ve seen those triangles before. Here they are clearly labeled as a visual representation of the Veil. And if they represent the Veil between the Fade and the Mortal World then…
….it is very likely that they mean the same thing here.
So this image may well be meant to show Solas creating the Veil.
Now that alone might not be groundbreaking. I think many of us thought that the triangles could represent magic or the Fade, but it seems to be more specific than that. These triangles are the Veil in Solas’ art.
Taking this as a working theory, then some interesting tin-foil hat analyses of the his other frescos is possible. Here is what I am thinking:
He walked among The People, freeing them of their bonds, cloaked in a proto-Veil (***) that shielded him and his followers from the eyes of the Evanaris.
Fen’Harel summoned all of his strength and cunning to raise the Veil across Thedas.
The Veil sundered the world of mortals from the Fade, but the alternative was worse. More war and more Titans felled for their orbs.
Thus the Veil keeps the Evanuris imprisoned in the Fade. Even now they watch through the mirrors, twisted and vengeful, waiting for a time they can return. And the sickness grows from within.
At least, that is one interpretation. These Veil triangles seem to be a go to symbol in Nick Thornborrow’s Dragon Age art (and if you can’t see these images, check out the beautiful full size versions there!). You can see a faded, failing Veil in the top right corner of the Dread Wolf Rises mural.
(The Veil is stretched too thin and chaos engulfs the world? And that Maker forsaken idol is the key? Yeah, that totally sounds like something that could happen in DA4.)
We already know that Nick Thornborrow uses symbols in a deliberate manner so it stands to reason that these triangles always represent the Veil, whether Solas was the artist or not.
The Veil triangles also appears in some of the tarot cards he created:
A demon with the mark of its Veil crossing fresh on its back.
Here is Corypheus sundering the Veil.
Thus image of the Sentinel Elves is interesting because we see the Veil triangles again, but also the diamond shapes on the right. Makes me wonder if the triangle represents the Veil from the mortal realm while the diamond shape is how it looks from a Faded perspective.
If that is the case, then I need to revise an analysis I did in another post. Sweet! That turns that image in an interesting direction! It still is the Evanuris trapped beyond the Veil, but the central symbol may mean more than I thought initially. I’ll have to update that soon!
When the triangle is the Veil…
So what can we do with this information? Knowing one symbol often makes others more decipherable. This leads to theories about these art works being more grounded in reasonable assumptions. It also shows us that when we see those same symbols used in other artwork, we can reasonably infer that they mean the same thing.
That is exciting because the imagery in Solas’ art shows up in other places that were not created by our favorite hobo apostate with god thighs. It would be a fun project to create a visual dictionary of common iconography used in Dragon Age and their likely meanings. While it will mostly still be guess work, it is a starting place….
Thanks for reading! I hope y’all are staying safe during these crazy times!
-MM
***PS - Those “V” shapes that I said might be a proto-Veil earlier in this post might also represent a mage who is talented at breaking the Veil. Might be part of the reason why Corypheus was so interested in Calpernia.
