A Lair of Lore @lairofdragonagelore - Tumblr Blog

Index of content - Dragon Age

Because Tumblr keeps deleting my posts without giving me a damn warning, the only way I have to recover them is to keep their links, so here is an extensive list of content I want to protect in my already butchered tumblr. It will be updated progressively. It’s easily found in the side column of my blog.

Update: because the limit restrictions in posts [less than 200 links per post] I had to break this list in several bits.

#index

lore-ren-theories

|| The Fall || The Archdemon (Dragons) || Freed are slaves (Subjugation) || Invasion || Sacrifice ||

Decided to do some renders of the DA:I mosaics that hopefully are a little easier to look at than the in-game assets! While there is amazing high res concept art, I thought it was a shame I couldn't find any high res renders of the actual mosaics so I made some myself. Texture assignment is a lil vibes based because otherwise you can't make out any details lol.

#Tevinter mosaics #dragon #magisters

I'm sorry if you've already been asked but I've only just come across you and my love for the DA lore is hurting me thanks to the last farce of a game we got. If I could ask, if you can heal me lol, for your thoughts about the ancient elves? Evanuris and Solas included. I don't even know what I'm asking. Just reassure me they wouldn't be like that, Solas isn't that stupid, Ghilly and Elgy aren't cardboard cutouts. I've my lost my faith and need to hear rich lore from before. 🥹🥹

You made me laugh, wounded fellow.

#asks

Will you be doing anything with the lore Veilguard provided?

Hi there,

short answer: no.

#ask #sorry i dropped some poison for the game... dont read the long answer if you want to avoid DAV negativity #i barely can hold it #dragon age critical

Time and Dates in Thedas

Years and brief Timeline

Months

Annums

This post is entirely canon, but it will be added as additional material to the series of Crafted Lore I'm working on.

0 TE || -1195 Ancient : Foundation of Tevinter Imperium 800 TE || -395 Ancient: The First Blight begins 1025 TE || -170 Ancient : The death of Andraste 1035 TE || -160 Ancient : Hessarian converts the Impertium to Andrastianism. 1170 TE || -25 Ancient : Emerius falls in a slave rebellion and it’s renamed Kirkwall. 1080 TE || -15 Ancient : Orzammar seals the last of the Deep Roads, cutting off Kal-Sharok. 1092 TE || -3 Ancient : Drakon formalises the Cult of the Maker, creating the Chantry and using it to unify all the tribes of the South. 1195 TE || 1:00 or 1:01 Divine : Establishment of the Chantry, Justinia I becomes the first Divine. 1199 TE || 1:04 or 1:05 Divine: The Second Blight begins in Anderfeles. Zazikel awakes. 1215 TE || 1:19 or 1:20 Divine: The Chantry and the Inquisition sign the Nevarran Accord. Circle of Magi and the Templar Order are created. 1423 TE || 2:08 or 2:09 Glory: Red Crossing happens and Divine Renata I calls the Exalted March of the Dales. 1424 TE || 2:82 or 2:83 Glory: Divine Galatea grants the Right of Annulment to Templars. 1404 TE || 3:09 or 3:10 Divine: The Third Blight begins. Toth Awakes. 1481 TE || 3:86 or 3:87 Towers: The Chantry Schism. Tevinter names his own Divine: Valhail I. 1534 TE || 4:39 or 4:40 Black: The Orlesian Chantry calls four Exalted Marches against the Imperium. All fail. 1606 TE || 5:11 or 5:12 Exalted: The Fourth Blight begins. Andoral awakes. 1726 TE || 6:31 or 6:32 Steel: Qunari ships arrive in masse in Seheron and northern of Rivain. The First Qunari War begins. 1819 TE || 7:24 or 7:25 Storm: The Imperial and the Orlesian Chantry both call the First Exalted March on the Qunari to retake Seheron and free Rivain. 1846 TE || 7:51 or 7:52 Storm: Second Exalted March on the Qunari. It ends in disaster with most of Antiva captured by the Qunari. 1849 TE || 7:54 or 7:55 Storm: Third and final Exalted March on the Qunari. 1849 TE || 7:83 or 7:84 Storm: All Thedosian nations except Tevinter sign the Llomerryn Accords putting an end to the Qunari invasions to the continent. Much of the northern Thedas is laid waste in the decades of Qunari invasion. They focus on rebuilding. 2013 TE || 9:19 or 9:20 Dragon: Celene I ascends to the throne in Orlais. 2014 TE || 9:20 or 9:21 Dragon: Knight-Commander Meredith overthrows the previous viscount of Kirkwall and makes Marlowe Dumar the new one. 2024 TE || 9:29 or 9:30 Dragon: The Fifth Blight begins in Ferelden. Urthemiel awakes. 2025 TE || 9:30 or 9:31 Dragon: The Architect appears, accompanied with the awakened darkspawn. Amgarrak is overrun by twisted creatures called Harvesters. Because a shipweck, the Arishok and hundreads of soldiers stay in Kirkwall. Expedition to the Deep Roads [Act 1 from DA2]. 2029 TE || 9:33 or 9:34 Dragon: The Arishok beheads the Viscount of Kirkwall and seizes control of the city. Hawke drives the Qunari outside the city and is named Champion. 2032 TE || 9:36 or 9:37 Dragon: Anders destroys the Kirkwall Chantry and the Mage-Templar War starts, spreading to the rest of Thedas. 2034 TE || 9:39 or 9:40 Dragon: Uprising in the White Spire. The Seeker Lambert cancels the Nevarran Accord. Allegiences between the Seekers, the Templars and the Chantry are split. He disolves the Circle of Magi. 2035 TE || 9:40 or 9:41 Dragon: The Breach appears in the South

#tevinter #chantry #calendar

Erratum

It’s natural to encounter mistakes when working solo over the years. That’s why this section is essential. In the spirit of collaboration and learning, if you happen to spot any inaccuracies in the canon lore shared on this blog, please feel free to let me know. I’d be delighted to make corrections if you can point me to reliable sources. However, please keep in mind that I won’t be including speculations or personal opinions. Please remember to regularly check this document for any updates or corrections to concepts that I might not have been able to revise throughout the entire blog.

#Erratum #archdemon #Corypheus #Dragons #Immortality #Magisters #Old Gods #Taint

Hi! First of all, THANK YOU for your blog and each and every post, I've spent hours and hours digging in while waiting for Dreadwolf (those were the days). I'd like to know if you are going to continue your investigation, despite the fact Bioware was reusing assets big time (as per your latest post), or do you have no interest for it? Thank you again!

Thank you very much for your time in reading!

#ask

felassan

EuroGamer: 'BioWare knew the deepest secrets of Dragon Age lore 20 years ago, and locked it away in an uber-plot doc'

Original creator David Gaider on how "some of the big mysteries are being solved".

Rest of post under a cut due to length and possible spoilers.

"As I write about the secrets hidden in Dragon Age's mysterious Fade, and as I uncover some of them playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, one question keeps rising up in my mind. How much did BioWare know about future events when first developing the series more than 20 years ago? That's a long time, and back then BioWare didn't know there would be a second game, which is why Dragon Age: Origins has an elaborate and far-reaching epilogue. Why lay so much lore-track ahead of yourself if you don't think you'll ever get there? But look more closely at Origins and there are big clues suggesting BioWare did know about future Dragon Age events. There are obvious signs in the original game, such as establishing recurring themes like Old Gods and the Blight and Archdemons. But there's also Flemeth, Morrigan's witchy mother, who's intimately linked to events in the series now - more specifically: intimately linked to Solas. Does her existence mean Solas was known about back then too? There's only one person I can think of to answer this and it's David Gaider, the original creator of Dragon Age's world and lore. We've talked before, once in a podcast and once for a piece on the magic of fantasy maps, where we discussed the creation of Dragon Age's world. And much to my surprise, when I ask him what he and the BioWare team knew back then, he says they knew it all. "By the time we released Dragon Age: Origins, we were basically sure that it was one and done, but there was, back when we made the world, an overarching plan," he says. "The way I created the world was to seed plots in various parts of the world that could be part of a game, a single game, and then there was the overall uber-plot, which I didn't know for certain that we would ever get to but I had an understanding of how it all worked together. "A lot of that was in my head until we were starting Inquisition and the writers got a little bit impatient with my memory or lack thereof, so they pinned me down and dragged the uber-plot out of me. I'd talked about it, I'd hinted at it, but never really spelled out how it all connected, so they dragged it out of me, we put it into a master lore doc, the secret lore, which we had to hide from most of the team.""

"This uber-plot document was only viewable on a need-to-know basis, he says, and only around 20 people on the team had access to it - other senior writers mostly. And even though Gaider left the Dragon Age team after Inquisition, and then eight years ago BioWare altogether, meaning he didn't work on The Veilguard at all, he believes - by looking at the events in the new game - his uber-plot lore "has more or less held up". That's impressive. What's even more impressive, or exciting, is that back then he also envisaged a potential end state for the entire Dragon Age series - a point at which it would make no sense for the series to carry on. "I always had this dream of where it would all end, the very last plot," he says, "which I won't say because who knows, we could still end up there. But the idea that this uber-plot was this sort of biggest, finite... That the final thing you could do in this world that would break it was there as a 'maybe we would get to do that one day'... There was just the idea of certain big, world-shaking things that were seeded in that arc, some of which have already come to pass, like the return of Fen'Harel." You've read that correctly: the idea to have Fen'Harel, also known as the Dread Wolf, reappear, was seeded all the way back then, way before Inquisition - the game in which he does actually reappear. But the concept for Solas, as a character who was Fen'Harel in disguise, was a newer idea. "That spawned from a conversation I had with Patrick [Weekes] and a number of other writers," Gaider says, "as an idea of 'what if you had a villain that spent an entire game where he's actually in the party and you get to know him?' Now, the god version and his larger role in the plot, yes that was known, but not that he would be presented as a character named Solas." Fen'Harel being known about means the other elven gods were known about, which means all of that stuff Solas reveals about his godly siblings - that they're not gods at all but evil elven mages he locked away behind the Veil - was known about back then too. "Oh yeah," Gaider says. "Everything that Solas tells you [at the end of Inquisition DLC, Trespasser]: it's all part of that original uber-lore - that was all in our mind." But why have so much lore if you're not certain you'll get to ever realise it? Well, to create a believable illusion. By creating an "excess" of lore, as Gaider describes it, Origins made Thedas feel like an old and believable place. A place with history, rather than a Western set that was all facade and no substance."

"BioWare also did something canny with the lore it did relay then, too: it shared it through the voices of characters living in the world, making it inherently fallible. In doing this, Dragon Age veiled its truths behind biases. The church-like organisation of the Chantry proclaims one truth, while the elves and dwarves proclaim another. Sidenote: you can experience this yourself through different racial origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins. This way, there's no one, objective, irrefutable, truth. "To get the truth, you kind of have to pick between the lines," Gaider says. So even though elven legends are coming true through the existence of Solas and The Veilguard's antagonist gods, it doesn't mean that's the one and only truth. There's truth in what the Chantry teaches and what the dwarves say, he tells me, which ignites my curiosity intensely. BioWare has also been tricksy in how it's rubbed out the lore the further back in time you go. "In general, the further the history goes back, we always would purposefully obfuscate it more and more," Gaider says - "make it more biased and more untrue no matter who was talking, just so that the absolute truth was rarely knowable. I like that idea from a world standpoint, that the player always has to wonder and bring their own beliefs to it." It leads into a founding principle of Dragon Age, which is doubt - because without it, you can't have faith, a particularly important concept in the series. It's where the whole idea of the Chantry's Maker comes from and with it, the legend about the fabled Golden City - now the Black City - at the heart of the Fade. This is the very centre of the lore web, and, I imagine, it's close to the series endpoint Gaider imagined long ago. All secrets end there. Did Gaider know what was in the Black City when he laid down Origins' lore? That's the question - and it startles me how casually he answers this. "Oh, yeah," he says. "What was in the Black City: that's the uber-plot. I knew exactly. "Was it as detailed in the first draft of the world?" he goes on. "No. I had an idea of the early history because that's where I started making the world. So the things that were true early-early: I knew exactly what the Black City was and the idea of what the elves believed, and what humans believed vis-a-vis the Chantry - that was all settled on really early. Then I expanded the world and the uber-plot bubbled out of that.""

"Gaider shows me the original cosmology design document for Dragon Age: Origins as if to prove this - or rather for the game that would become DAO. The world was known as Peldea back then. I can't share this with you because I see it via a shared screen on a video call, and because Gaider doesn't want me to, mostly because the ideas are so old they're almost unrecognisable from what's in the series now. But I can tell you it's a document that's just over a page in length, and that there's a circular diagram at the top showing the world in the middle and the spirit realm ringed around it. And on that document is reference to the Chantry's beliefs about a God located in a citadel that can be found there. Gaider says BioWare knew about Fen'Harel (the Dread Wolf) 20 years ago when it was developing Dragon Age: Origins, and that he'd one day reappear. The Fade wasn't known as the Fade back then, either, but as the Dreaming, because it's the place people go when they dream - an idea that lives on still. And if that sounds familiar to any fans of The Sandman among you, it should. "I'd say The Sandman series was probably fairly prominently in my head," says Gaider. "I liked that amorphous geography that was born from the psyche of collective humanity. I'd say yes, if I was to point at something specifically, that's probably where the very first inspiration of it took root." It's a lot to take in, but it reinforces the admiration I have for Dragon Age. Just as I have when hearing about the creation of my other favourite fantasy worlds, such as A Song of Ice and Fire, I begin to understand the magnitude - and the deliberateness - of the plotting that went on. I wonder if one day the Dragon Age series will end in the way Gaider first imagined, albeit slightly altered by the many other pairs of hands shepherding it along now. What a curious feeling it must be to know, so many years in advance, where things might go. Where that end is, I don't know, but I do know we'll take a significant step towards it in The Veilguard. After all, we're coming into contact with gods who were there at the recorded beginning of it all. "Yeah - we have access to people who can tell us the truth from first-hand experience," Gaider says, "although again, it depends on what the writers did with it. But if they continued the tradition of Dragon Age, you never know for sure if Solas is telling you everything, or what you're learning is the entire truth. "But yes, some of the big mysteries are being solved. I mean, will they one day definitively tell you about the Maker? Will we crack the big mysteries of the world and just make them answered finally? And does that ruin one of the central precepts that Dragon Age is founded upon? Maybe," he says. "Ultimately, that lore, when you make it big and you hint at it and hint at it and hint at it, it becomes a Chekhov's Gun of sorts. Eventually you got to pony up.""

#gaider #lore #Lore consistency across games #clearly that consistency died in DAV....

lairofsentinel

Since this user's posts seem to have been deleted in previous opportunities I copy-paste their words here because they express exactly what I feel about this game. Dragon Age has died, unfortunately.

lairofdragonagelore

I've finished DAV, and I'm quite worried about the fact that this game simply destroyed every aspect of the Lore in a way that makes no sense and it's beyond "fix" or intention to blend it with the one that exists already.

The enviroments have nothing to say, since they were made by reusing a lot of nonense assets: Nevarra has plenty of Avvar statues and DAI Tevinter assets, Anderfels is filled with Ferelden statues to the point you see torches with the Calenhad symbol on them and nobody cares. DAV Tevinter is made out of DAI dwarven assets with some new ones based on a strange "china-town" design, with squared snake-dragons and mao neck dresses. Even the colours of its pallete were changed: jade green and red, instead of the black, grey and dark yellow [Patterns and Styles: Tevinter].

Elvhenan assets were remade uselessly, because you could have used the ones in DAI and it would have been perfect. The Elvhenan were a timeless civilization, you show that by showing no change or evolution in their buildings and statues... yet... The disappontment has been enourmous. Especially in the aspect of the Lore. Instead of having answers, we had oversimplification of complex details that simply break apart all what we know. So, I'm still in shock, not knowing what to do with this game, realising it was the culmination of a long list of things that were breaking the lore slowly [the comics after Until We Sleep, the Netflix series, the podcasts]. For the moment, I leave this link of this Reddit user who expresses exactly my sentiment of sadness with all the Lore and the character richness that were the main identity of Bioware games in general and in DA franchise in particular. I'm not even sure if all the analysis I've been doing have any sense to be finished now. DA lore has been reseted to become a generic fantasy game without complexity at all. We mourn what it could have been a good story and an epic lore.

#ask #not ask but .... I dont know where to put this #DAV #DAV disappointment

I don’t have a question—just wanted to say that somehow I never found you before! Just read through the entire “playing DA like an archaeologist” series in anticipation of Veilguard, and wanted to thank you for doing such incredible work. Thought I knew everything about this lore and I was happily very wrong!

Also we better find out wtf is up with that Strange Idol, because I think it’s the key to everything :)

Hello! :D

Thank you very much for spending time, reading all this. I will try to continue this blog with Veilguard [I still have several drafts on DAI and concepts to explore that I'm hoping Veilguard will help me to shape and rephrase in better terms], even though some things I've seen in spoilers made me wonder how much of the consistency in art and buildings were remade from scratch in DAV, making it hard to connect with the rest of the games [as it's impossible nowadays to use any enviromental telling from DAO]. And indeed! Wtf with that Stange Idol? And the Red Lyrium Idol too? So many questions, I hope we will be given the true lore and not rewritten things in the last moment for "shock value" or simplified concepts to make it easy to digest for new players. Soon we will know!

#ask #I'm grateful for your time

Patterns and Styles: Avvar/Alamarri

Avvar/Alamarri design is quite rustic, stone-based, and sometimes it's hard to differentiate one from another considering their cultural history: the Avvar are a branch of the Alamarri that moved towards the Mountains. Alamarri as well as Avvar and Chasind have a long story of inter-racial mix with the dwarves of Orzammar, which is clear in their art: heavily based on stone and with some imagery of dwarves.

However, it is important to remember that Avvar in particular may have had also relationships with the Elvhenan, as Tyrdda's lover was an elven woman. Their tradition with mages and their treatment of the spirits also resembles their influence from the elvhenan culture. This strange mix is then reflected in the art.

This series of posts are not exhaustive since I’ve developed a very detailed list of tags tracking certain features of a given design. These posts merely try to gather in one place the symbols and elements I used most of the time when identifying buildings in my analysis of DAI.

[This post is part of the series “Patterns and Styles ”] [Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

#patterns and styles #pattern design #avvar design #avvar #chasind #alamarri design #alamarri #mabari statues #mabari #lady of the skies #korth

Hello there! Thank you so much for this resource, it's incredible! I've been poring over it whenever I have a chance for days now. I want to read everything I can on the Fade and lyrium and Titans and stuff, and it seems Dagna has a lot of insights. Do you know where I could find all of her dialogue, or are you planning on looking into it someday? Thank you again <3

Hello!

#ask #ASK #titan #lyrium #dwarves

Dragon Age: Vows and Vengeance

Episodes: 1, 2, 3, and 4

Episodet: 5, 6, 7, and 8

Personal Conclusions

What lore do we extract from them? What seems to be questionable or a recall of a concept from a previous game? I basically collect the interesting ideas and make small speculations or comments on them, testing their reliability or lore consistency as far as I can.

*These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore [read the end of the post]

#podcasts #DAV #episodes 5 6 7 8 #I should abandon these posts and delete them and pretend they don't exist as i do with Absolution #but not having completion is always an issue for me #Youtube

Dragon Age: Vows and Vengeance

Episodes: 1, 2, 3, and 4

Episodet: 5, 6, 7, and 8

*These Podcasts, like Absolution, are not considered reliable sources of lore [read the end of the post]

#podcasts #Youtube #davrin #harding #neve gallus #DAV #vows and vengeance #episode 1 2 3 4

Flemeth / Mythal (part 1)

Flemeth is an enigmatic character along the series that seems to be related to the whole plot of Dragon Age since DAO. In the present post I will try to collect all the relevant information about her and about what she says, since she is one of the characters that I think we can rely more when it comes to digging the "truth" behind the DA lore.

The current post has the following sections:

Flemeth in DAO

Story of Conobar and Osen

Flemeth in DA2

Flemeth in DAI

Mythal as an Elvhenan Goddess

Mythal as a Changed Goddess

Flemeth and Mythal

Mythal and the Well of Sorrows

Flemeth and the Music

Flemeth, Mythal, and Motherhood

Artwork of Flemeth

Flemeth in the books (or comics)

Conclusions

#mythal #flemeth #high speculation #ancient elvhen #elvhenan

Flemeth / Mythal (part 2)

The current post has the following bolded sections:

Flemeth in DAO

Story of Conobar and Osen

Flemeth in DA2

Flemeth in DAI

Mythal as an Elvhenan Goddess

Mythal as a Changed Goddess

Flemeth and Mythal

Mythal and the Well of Sorrows

Flemeth and the Music

Flemeth, Mythal, and Motherhood

Artwork of Flemeth

Flemeth in the books (or comics)

Conclusions

Maric steepled his hands together and considered. He hadn’t wanted to tell Loghain, but it seemed like he had no other choice. “Do you remember the witch we met in the Korcari Wilds?” he began. “Back during the rebellion, when we were fleeing the Orlesians?” Loghain appeared taken aback, as if he hadn’t expected a rational explanation. He hesitated only a moment. “Yes. The madwoman who nearly killed us both. What of her?” “She told me something.” Loghain looked at him expectantly. “And? She babbled many things, Maric.” “She told me that a Blight was coming to Ferelden.” He nodded slowly. “I see. Did she say when?” “Only that I wouldn’t live to see it.” Loghain rolled his eyes and walked a step away, running a hand through his black hair. It was a gesture of exasperation with which Maric was well familiar. “That is a prediction that almost anyone could safely make. She was trying to scare you, no doubt.” “She succeeded.” He turned and glared at Maric scornfully. “Did she not also tell you I was not to be trusted? Do you believe that now, too?” There was a tension in that look, and Maric knew why. The witch had said of Loghain, “Keep him close, and he will betray you. Each time worse than the last.” It was the only one of her pronouncements to which Loghain had been privy, and obviously he remembered it well. Perhaps he thought that if Maric believed one, he believed the other. Loghain had never betrayed him, not to his knowledge. It was something to keep in mind. “You think it’s a coincidence?” Maric asked, suddenly uncertain. “I believe this witch was serving her own purposes, and would lie about whatever she thought convenient. Magic is not to be trusted, Maric.” Loghain closed his eyes and then sighed. He shook his head slightly, as if what he was about to say was madness, but he opened his eyes anyhow and spoke with conviction. “But if you truly believe that the witch’s warning has merit, let me be the one to go into the Deep Roads, not you. Cailan needs his father.” “Cailan needs his mother.” His voice sounded hollow, even to himself. “And he needs a father who isn’t . . . I’m not doing him any good, Loghain. I’m not doing anyone any good here. It will be better if I’m out there, helping the kingdom.” “You are an idiot.” “What you need to do,” Maric ignored him, “is to stay. Look after Cailan. If something happens to me, you’ll need to be his regent and keep the kingdom together.” Loghain shook his head in frustration. “I can’t do that. Even if I believed this cryptic warning, I would not agree that it was worth placing you in the hands of these Orlesians. Not without an entire army to surround you.” Maric sighed and sat back in the throne. He knew that tone. When Loghain believed he was in the right, there was no dissuading him. He would sooner call the guards in here and attempt to have Maric locked up in the dungeon than see him do this. In Loghain’s mind, the Grey Wardens were Orlesian. The First Enchanter was Orlesian. This had to be some manner of plot—not that it would be the first. There had been several assassins over the years, as well as more than a few attempts by disaffected banns to overthrow him, and while Loghain could never prove that the Empire was behind them all, Maric did not disbelieve his theories. Perhaps he was even right about this. But what if he wasn’t? The witch had been crazy, almost certainly, but Maric still found it impossible to discount her words entirely. She had saved their lives, put them on the path out of the Korcari Wilds when otherwise they would have died. He had almost forgotten her warning about the Blight, but the very instant First Enchanter Remille had told him of the Wardens’ request for an audience, he had remembered. The thought of a Blight here in Ferelden was almost too much to bear. [...] Surely such a disaster was worth risking almost anything to avert. Loghain could dismiss the idea, but Maric was less convinced. What if the witch was correct? What if the whole point of receiving such a prophecy was that it gave you a chance to try to prevent it?

#flemeth #mythal #elvhenan #yellow mosaic #high speculation #well of sorrows #evanuris

Hi, I really like your lore pages! I've been trying to figure out what DA The Veilguard Bellara's Dalish tattoo is related to, the one primarily on her forehead. Usually they represent one of the elven gods, but hers doesn't look like any of the gods tattoos I've seen. Though I have not found any tattoos for the Forgotten Ones, so it's possible it could be from there. Though those gods are considered to be evil. Any ideas?

Hi!

#ask #High speculation #vallaslin

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