#corypheus's prison

[bohemiantea-scorpiocoffee]

The Grey Warden Prison

The lengths I am going to for my fic is just astounding when I think about it. I mean I’m also indulging the hell out of my lore nerd brain in doing this, let’s be real, but: trying to model Corypheus’s Prison from the game maps so I can reverse engineer it for my conception of the Aeonar is a little touched in the head.

Anyway. So this is what I have so far:

This is *really* roughly put together, if I wanted to do a better job I’d pull up my Fireworks. The right map is the Vimmark Chasm map: the white dot at bottom is where you enter from the Vimmark Wasteland map. Areas 3 and 4 are the “outpost” section, and that balcony thing on the right is pretty much a balcony:

Note where the party is standing/facing is where the blue dot is on the balcony map. To the right, then, we basically have a preview of the Final Seal floor. That orientation helps anchor all the rest of the floors with their seals, since the seal rooms will be right underneath each other in the tower stack.

The left map is the Carta Hideout map, aligned to match up with the Chasm entrance. Roughly, that is: there’s no mention how long the mining tunnel cart track takes from this front door:

(The door is behind Hawke: see the mini-map quest arrow vs Hawke’s position arrow.)

So from the Carta Hideout map, the white dot in the wide tunnel just past room 5 is where it enters the prison proper, AKA Sashamiri’s Floor AKA “fuck now we’re trapped in Hotel California.”

Sashamiri’s floor is the third map I added, and I aligned it this way so the tower (room 5, the seal where you fight your first gigantic pride demon) would be properly aligned how we saw it from the chasm balconies. This means going from the mining tunnels with the Carta to Sashamiri’s floor involves either a ramp or a stair that turns us where we emerge (the drumstick looking portion to the right of room 1).

Aligning Farele’s floor with the other floors is going to be a bitch and a half because I’m pretty sure the whole map will be cattywumpus to everything else.

(The reason why I’m talking about the Aeonar in connection with Corypheus’s Grey Warden prison is because of this piece I wrote some time ago.)

[bohemiantea-scorpiocoffee]

Grey Warden Prison, take 2

Welp. I couldn't let it go, so instead I reached for my tracing paper, traced the game maps, then studied videos on each floor to help give them more context with each other. And while the transitions between each floor suck and make no sense, this is about as much sense as I could make of the whole thing. This is sketchy but so are the Grey Wardens, Maker love'em.

This is how the floors are stacked and organized, basically. You enter via Sashamiri's floor after you leave the Carta Hideout mining tunnels, go down to Farele's floor, down to the Tower base, then up to either Daneken's or Riannon's, and up again to the Final Seal. Note that the Final Seal map occupies roughly the same level as the Vimmark Chasm map, and I'd used that to help orient the placement of the tower and the rest of the floors.

Vimmark Chasm is the base map, top left is the Carta Hideout, top right is the Final Seal in the tower proper.

Sashamiri's floor, oriented so its entrance aligns with the hideout exit and the tower.

Farele's floor. I hate that you can't align its entrance with the previous floor's exit, but we can pretend the loading screens take us past the connecting tunnels. It is aligned as best as possible, though, keeping the seal room where it should be.

Tower base. This lines up much easier. Note that while the game map shows you only one exit, screencaps/video review shows a potential of two (Janeka's entrance to the scene is a potential third and not shown). One up the seat of stairs, and the other in obscured doorway(s) to the side(s) of it.

From here, one goes up several floors' worth of stairs or ramps or both to get to Riannon or Daneka's floor(s).

Riannon's floor. It's so similar in layout to Daneken's with only slight change so I just did one tracing sketch.

Daneken's floor. The change is really that simple, with slight tweak to the tower room (which if Riannon's floor is the Nexus puzzle and if Daneken's floor is empty of all but some brutal golems). Where one enters or exits also changes depending on the floor.

That takes us back to the Final Seal room and thus back to where we started. This is, uh, a pretty huge and messy complex. Though it was built to contain Corpheus, there is a lot more going on in this thing that I feel as if it could once have had secondary purposes.

Also in the process of untangling all this, it hit me that the blood magic used was very powerful: it didn't just create some hefty seals for Corypheus, but bound guardian demons as preventatives should those seals have been opened. Those demons were meant to be a very brutally effective warning against going further. Built by Warden-Commander Farele and Warden Sashamiri at the end of the First Blight (1004 TE - see the "Privileged to the Wardens" codex) and before the creation of the Chantry means that those who built the prison were very likely Tevinter mages. Reading the Second and Third Legionnaire's journals also tells us part of its construction used lyrium in the walls -- dwarven Wardens, maybe, assisting? Or just human enchanters. Still a lot of Tevene construction.

[bohemiantea-scorpiocoffee]

A Whole Lot of Well, Shit

One of the things that used to puzzle me a little was how Corypheus even learned about red lyrium in the first place. The quest “Well, Shit” heavily implies that it was through Bianca, but that didn’t quite completely track for me. (Also, as much as I do not care for her, I also didn’t want to place the entirety of blame on her. I’d rather be upset with her for her failings in her relationship with Varric than making her a scapegoat for all the red lyrium shenanigans that came after. There’s always more at work behind the scenes in stories like this, anyway.)

This is the dialogue from “Well, Shit” - note that “Larius” can be switched out for “Janeka” depending on whom Hawke sided with in DA2 Legacy:

Bianca: *key found* “There you are.” *locks door* “They won’t be able to use this entrance again.” Varric: “Bianca.” Inquisitor: “You were the one who leaked the thaig’s location.” Bianca: “It’s not like that. Not... entirely.” *sighs* “Shit.” Bianca: “When I got the location, I went and had a look for myself. And I found the red lyrium, and I ...studied it.” Varric: “You know what it does to people!” Bianca: “I was doing you a favor! You wanna know how this stuff works just as much as I do. I just... wanted to figure it out.” Inquisitor: “How did you go from studying red lyrium to giving the location to Corypheus?” Bianca: “I found out that red lyrium... it has the Blight, Varric. Do you know what that means?” Varric: “What, that two deadly things combine to form something super awful?” Bianca: “Lyrium is alive, or... something like it. Blight doesn’t infect minerals, only animals. I couldn’t get any further on my own, so I looked for a Grey Warden mage. Blight and magical expertise in one, right? And I found this guy, Larius. He seemed really interested in helping my research. So I gave him a key.” Varric: “Larius? He was the Grey Warden we met in Corypheus’s... aw, shit. I knew something seemed off.” Bianca: “I didn’t realize until you said you found red lyrium at Haven. I came here and, well... then I went to you. Inquisitor: “That name mean something to you, Varric?” Varric: “He was at the Grey Warden prison where we found Corypheus. And he definitely wasn’t a mage before.” What Bianca is definitely guilty of is giving Corypheus the location of a small buffet of red lyrium and an opportunity to study it. What’s not so certain is whether or not this also revealed red lyrium’s existence to him.

I believe it’s entirely possible that Corypheus could have heard about the existence of red lyrium before meeting Bianca thanks to another person he met in Kirkwall: Samson. 

Unfortunately the same sort of codex entry does not show up in DA2/Legacy for Janeka, but this is a codex that is supposed to show (and is often bugged from not appearing): A Strange Sighting

Yesterday, I saw a man I could swear was Larius, just walking around Lowtown. I wasn't sure at first, but that armor, that hair... he's unmistakable.

He was talking to Samson, of all people. I can't imagine what a Grey Warden commander and an ex-templar vagrant have in common, but they seemed intent in their discussion. When I came closer, Larius pulled Samson into a doorway---I don't know if he saw me or not, but it seemed almost like they were avoiding me.

Anders says that no one as far gone to the taint as Larius would ever have been reinstated by the Grey Wardens. Even without Corypheus, Larius will be plagued by the calls of the Archdemons until they drive him mad.

I tried to contact the Grey Wardens, to find out why they let him return to Kirkwall, but they weren't talking. They won't acknowledge a Warden named Janeka, a prison in the Vimmarks, a captive darkspawn magister, or ever having worked with Father.

they didn't even want to hear what Corypheus claimed to be--I'm certain they know something about what happened down there, but whatever it is, they're not sharing.

--From the diary of Garrett/Marian Hawke

Samson, especially if you helped reinstate him near the end of the game, would have known about Meredith’s sword and related to Larius/Corypheus what it did for her, power-wise, before she became a red lyrium statue. It also helps explain how you can “reobtain” Meredith’s sword Certainty, which had definitely shattered and was what turned her, or helped her turn, into a red lyrium statue.

I will also note that Hawke trying to contact the Wardens about what happened and trying to get answers is likely what alerted Stroud/Alistair/Loghain and put them on the trail and being worried about the Archdemon-like body hopping. (Because personally, that too had seemed strange to me -- how they’d up and wonder and start asking in the first place. This way helps connect the dots.)