Dragon Age: the Veilguard Was Packed with Lore — But Many of Us Overlooked It
— PART ONE — [ 2 ]
Welcome back, friends and travellers. If you've been here a while, you'll know that I wrote 30,000 words of predictions in the week and a half before DA:tV released. But here's the most surprising thing—I was right, for the most part.
I spent my first Veilguard playthrough grinning (and then sobbing) at all the lore reveals. And here's the thing: I think most of us missed a lot of them, including even me.
So let's begin with...
Titans: Dark and Light, Compassion and Rage, the Eternal Hymn and its Endless Listeners (1/2)
This is your warning: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Dragon Age: the Veilguard, and all Dragon Age content made before Veilguard.
Alright, pals. If you've been here a while, you know how this goes. I always start by listing what we're going to cover, like anyone who's never fully recovered from academia.
Today's Discussion:
What Veilguard (Re)Taught Us about the Titans
The Titans the first Shapers of the known world.
The Titans are beings of the Abyss.
The Titans are sleeping, dormant—but alive.
Dwarves are the Titans' children, created to tend them.
The Evanuris mined the Titans' bodies to create people.
The Titans—the Earth—fought back.
What Veilguard (Re)Taught Us about the Titans
The best thing about Dragon Age, as someone who loves the series to death, is that its worldbuilding is consistent, but also bears the unique quality that we, as players, are not aware of it all. Our protagonists in each game don't know everything; the people they learn from also don't know everything. We learn what we can through codices that are all biased and need an extra layer of decoding. This is a feature, not a bug.
It also means that we did not know how to understand the Titans before. Even my 30,000 words of theorycrafting, especially my piece all about the Titans, had elements of speculation. I had to check that speculation against other sources like the Chant of Light, which is a source that we REALLY did not know how to decode when it was revealed piece by piece in DAO, DA2, World of Thedas, and Inquisition.
Here, I'm going to break it all down, piece by piece.
The Titans were the first Shapers of the (known) world.
It is said in the Descent DLC that Titans are enormous beings whose singing shapes the world. Their existence predates much of Thedas, if not all of it. The Titans are called the first Shapers for this reason, and in Veilguard it is restated several times over that they did, indeed, shape the world—for instance, by Cole in Inquisition.
"Their ancient shapers were mountains drawn of all their wills, walking their memories into valleys of the world." —Cole dialogue.
Inquisition told us so much more about the Titans than just that, though. The Titans have a realm all their own, a counterpart to the Fade, mentioned over and again in the Chant of Light and referenced as a quest name in Inquisition.
Here lies the abyss: the well of all souls.
The Titans are beings of the Abyss.
Now, it's important that I mention right here that the Chant of Light has existed long before Inquisition. In fact, its tale is what opens DA:O as the game begins. Recently Eurogamer stated that BioWare has had a massive lore document for the 20+ years of its existence, and I believe that there is no truer example of this than in the Chant of Light itself.
The Abyss, for a long time, was a mystery to us. Inquisition cleared it up a lot—not only with its game content, but with World of Thedas' publication shortly thereafter.
Not only is the Abyss referred to in many elven codices, but we go there. The key locations of the Descent DLC—the Forgotten Caverns, Bastion of the Pure, and the Wellspring—are in a region called the Uncharted Abyss.
Now, with Harding, we go deeper into the Deep Roads than the average dweller. The same is true in that instance: venture down far enough, and we reach a Titan's heart.
We find a Titan's heart there. But the Titan does not wake—none have before DA:tV, and even then, they have not fully woken. Because, for as long as we have known...
The Titans are sleeping, dormant—but alive.
"It's singing. A they that's an it that's asleep, but still making music." — Cole dialogue.
There is so much Cole dialogue in Inquisition that speaks on the sleeping Titans, on their old songs that once sang the same, on how they will never wake up, that it would be folly to try and post every codex here. Suffice it to say: Cole knows of the Titans, knows of their songs, and knows they are asleep. He is one of the pathways to our knowledge of the Titans in Inquisition, and his words are peppered throughout the game.
The Chant of Light also makes reference to a mountainous Maker, who oft speaks about a forgotten mountain. When Andraste meets the Maker "in darkness unbroken," specifically, these words are used:
The Maker Appears to Andraste (7) Eyes sorrow-blinded, in darkness unbroken There 'pon the mountain, a voice answered my call. "Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing, An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown. — Andraste 1:7
Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing — a being who has been broken, but whose heart still beats. We can hear that, in the Descent DLC.
Veilguard confirms that both sources are true through Harding, her personal quest, and the codices for the Dwarven people.
Records that exist outside of Orzammar mention "great sleeping Titans" and "the First Ancestors." — Codex Entry: Harding's Notes: Orzammar and Titans
Harding's experiences in Veilguard, in this way, serve to prove Cole right. That is a deliberate narrative choice: BioWare's way of saying, Yes, this is true. Yes, you should take Cole's take on Titans as correct.
We also know, from Cole, that this state of being is permanent. Not only are the Titans asleep, but they don't know how to wake.
Songs screaming far away. It wants to wake up but can't remember how. No one should be here. — Cole dialogue.
This becomes crucial information in Veilguard, and central to the main plot. It serves as the backdrop for what actually matters most to the characters living in Thedas right now, which is...
Dwarves are the Titans' children, created to tend them.
By now, a lot of people have seen this reveal in the art book: the dwarves were created to tend to their Titan hosts/makers. But we knew this before—we just didn't know it in context, and therefore we did not believe it to be objectively true of Thedas.
In truth, we've known about the elves and the dwarves' origin since the Chant of Light came out in full with World of Thedas volume 2.
At last did the Maker From the living world Make men. Immutable, as the substance of the earth, With souls made of dream and idea, hope and fear, Endless possibilities. — Threnodies 5:5
I talk about it in more depth in my Chant of Light dissection, but what this verse says in context is that the dwarves (the Maker's second children) are beings crafted by the maker: bodies made of lyrium, souls made of the same "dream and idea, hope and fear" as the original spirits.
This concept has already been massively hinted toward with both Valta (who has become The Oracle in DA:tV) and Dagna, who both connect to isatunoll during Descent and Inquisition's base game, respectively.
We've known about the Evanuris' horrible crimes since before Inquisition, as well, for the same reason and from the same verses in the Chant of Light.
Until, at last, some of the firstborn said: "Our Father has abandoned us for these lesser things. We have power over heaven. Let us rule over earth as well And become greater gods than our Father." (8) The demons appeared to the children of earth in dreams And named themselves gods, demanding fealty. — Threnodies 5
With the context given to us by Trespasser and Veilguard, we know without a doubt that the Evanuris are those "jealous spirits" that comprise the Maker's first children.
And just like the Chant describes, they sought to conquer the earth: the realm of the Titans.
The Evanuris mined the Titans' bodies to create people.
Trespasser taught us so much of what we needed to know about the Evanuris' and Titans' conflicts. Its codices in the Deep Roads outline how it was Mythal, specifically, creating some of the first elves in the coffins found in that zone. The Temple of Solasan features coffins of the exact same kind.
Ir sa tel'nal Mythal las ma theneras Ir san'a emma Him solas evanuris Da'durgen'lin Banal malas elgara Bellanaris, bellanaris. — Codex: Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 3
My (updated) translation: Isatunoll Mythal gives you dreams Lyrium within Becomes Solas evanuris Little stone boy You give nothing to the Titan (anymore) Forever, forever.
Trespasser reveals that Mythal mined the bodies of slain titans and rendered their demesne unto the People: she conquered Titans and used their bodies for her own ends. The hints about these actions, however, are not exclusive to Trespasser, nor to Solasan. These seeds were planted all the way back at the Temple of Mythal.
Elgar'nan, Wrath and Thunder, Give us glory. Give us victory, over the Earth that shakes our cities. Strike the usurpers with your lightning. Burn the ground under your gaze. Bring Winged Death against those who throw down our work. Elgar'nan, help us tame the land.
This codex to Elgar'nan makes reference to Elgar'nan giving victory over the Earth (capital-E, the Titans). Trespasser would follow this up with much context—that it was Mythal who was first known to have slain Titans, "rendering their demesne unto the People."
I theorized that Mythal's mining of Titans for lyrium to make elvhen bodies was what angered the Titans, based on codices in Trespasser and the Temple of Solasan. (I go into much more depth there!) Veilguard confirms this theory in Solas' Memory #4: A Memory of Manifestation.
Solas: I have the Fade. Besides, this talk of taking on a solid form. When you took the glowing stone to build your body, did the earth not shake? Mythal: The lyrium gives us the strength we had when we were of the Fade. We are the best of physical and spirit.
Mythal's crime was what took the war with the Titans in a new, darker direction. It was what would set off the chain of events that would change the very nature of the world—and it was foreshadowed, back in Inquisition, by Cole.
The Titans—the Earth—fought back.
"They made bodies from the earth, and the earth was afraid. It fought back, but they made it forget." — Cole dialogue.
In this post, I theorized that it was Solas' creation itself that caused the first Titan to "go red." That is to say, to change its nature and fight back. I used codices from Trespasser and Solasan to get there, as well as one paragraph from World of Thedas and this codex on Fen'Harel that describe the Forgotten Ones as "beings of terror, malice, spite, and pestilence."
Thinking about those words, and specifically terror, I read the codex in the secret Deep Roads room in Trespasser with fresh perspective.
For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire. The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy. A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic. Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast.
Terror. The first of the turned Titans. The fire/plant/ice imagery also caught my eye, and when I went back to Solasan to check, there were many hints that this was, indeed, where Terror came into being. (For more, go look at the most recently linked post in this section!)
Huge implications for Solas aside, what this codex taught me is that Titans' natures could change. This was confirmed in Veilguard many times over, yes—but my point here is that Inquisition taught this to me, just a few days before I gained the context of Veilguard. This was never a retcon! However, this lore plays exactly to BioWare's rules: we did not have the full context, and so almost no one read that Deep Roads codex as it was meant to be interpreted—including me, the first few times I read it!
It was only when I'd seen the achievement icons before Veilguard's release that it all clicked for me. All of the lore of Inquisition and everything before it made sense. That was never a bug, never a retcon, but a genius twist on BioWare's behalf: one that almost no one guessed at for an entire decade.
One that changes everything.
Titans, we know for certain now, behave as spirits. Obscure hints in World of Thedas, Inquisition, and the previous games have been confirmed in Veilguard. This new understanding changes not just the Titans, not just the dwarves, but reframes everything we know about the entire history of Thedas and how its magic system works.
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Thank you for reading! It means a lot when people engage with these. And don't worry: I'm not nearly through with them. It's taken me a while to compile everything, but with more of Veilguard added to the wiki every day, it's a lot easier to compile things for these posts!
(Immense thanks to the wiki staff, of course. <3)
Up Next: Titans and Spirits are far more similar than we think, and it means everything.
