Happy Dragon Age Day! I am briefly Dragon Age posting to offer a potential insight into what we might be looking at with the new cinematic trailer that just dropped for Dreadwolf today. It’s not anything especially profound or plot-y, but it might help illuminate some lore things.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, or don’t want to be spoiled, scroll past this.
Before I share screenshots of the trailer, we’ll backtrack to a game I have never been able to finish for lack of technology to play them on (I’ve started it three times across three different devices that I’ve either lost access to or which broke or which are too nerfed to run the games): which is Dragon Age 2.
More specifically, what I want to call to mind here is a codex entry from Dragon Age 2 that can be found in the DLC area, the Black Emporium, during Act 3 of the game. The entry, which by Scholar Bodaliere and entitled “The Emergent Compendium,” details about mysterious volumes which are described as being automatos: wherein new entries appear of their own accord, “with no scrivener’s quill in sight. When a mage consultant says it’s impossible, but your own eyes see it happen—and often—it’s clearly a wonder.” The entries appear magically, accompanied by gibberish, and disappear, as if they had never been written at all.
There are series of gibberish phrases that are included in the codex entry, which were encoded in a simple transpose cypher where each letter in the alphabet is shifted three places backward. The phrases maintained correct capitalization and punctuation, but are written backwards – and one of them was: “Two shadowed spheres among stars subtitled “aboofqp iboxE'kbC px bpmfizb kX” - the cypher of which can be decoded as: "An eclipse as Fen'Harel stirred“
“Two shadowed spheres among stars
An eclipse as Fen'Harel stirred”
So obviously now we look at the trailer:
The opening image of Solas, where Varric as the narrator tells us: “I knew him as Solas, a thoughtful mage obsessed with dreams.”
Then the mood shifts, and Varric continues: “But long ago, he had a different name: Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf, ancient elven god of lies or heroic rebel against tyranny depending on which story you believe.”
What’s it’s interesting to me in this imagery is that we initially see Solas transposed against what appears to be a sun, and as Fen'Harel stirs, the light becomes eclipsed by the shadows of the dread wolf. It’s kind a fun little nod to the naming scheme given that one of the meanings of Solas’ name (in Irish and Scottish, specifically) is “sunlight,” and the metaphorical imagery and the language we are seeing is effectively Solas being eclipsed by Fen’Harel. Solas’ name can also mean “happiness,” which in some ways is antithetical to Fen’Harel’s moniker, the Dread Wolf.
After this imagery, we see another
Which, first, I’d like to side-tangent to the fact that the lines and such remind me of how the Gallifreyan names are written in Doctor Who (see below) which I thought was interesting to note in light (lol) of the fact that Patrick Weekes just revealed in the livestream for 2022 Dragon Age Day that Solas’ characterization was deeply inspired by the Tenth Doctor.
“Two shadowed spheres among stars” – those look a lot like two shadowed spheres among a star chart or map.
“An eclipse as Fen'Harel stirred” – doesn’t it look like they’re shadowed? And then… eclipsed…?
When I try to think of the antithesis to light, it’s shadow, darkness – and this of course draws my attention to the lore of the Forgotten Ones. From the Codex entry: Elven God Andruil: “Andruil put on armor made of the Void, and all forgot her true face. She made weapons of darkness, and plague ate her lands. She howled things meant to be forgotten, and the other gods became fearful Andruil would hunt them in turn.”
The darkness here in the fanwiki and the lore points toward the taint, “The taint is a corruption spread by the darkspawn that ultimately makes the victim hear the call of the Old Gods.”
Where else do we see the taint, as described above? In the teaser trailer, when the two orbs are darkened:
I couldn’t even begin to guess exactly where we are going, but I think it’s pretty explicit that we are seeing a connection between Solas, the taint, the Evanuris, and the Forgotten Ones, and if we are lucky, lore that hasn’t really come into play since Origins will start to become more relevant again.
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