Dwarven design is well known by its geometrical style and, despite keeping squared, it differs significantly from the pointy--also geometrical--Tevinter design, even though sometimes one wonders if both cultures have some small design overlaps, specially in the architecture when it comes to frame doors.
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
Dwarves have only three patterns, maybe four, so far I’ve detected.
1- The first pattern is usually found in borders of columns of dwarven ruins. The tendency to a more square-ish design is clear.
2- The second patterns [green one] is a kind of a laying C with some detail inside it. If I trace it, we can see that the carved figure ends up looking similar to the “cup” of the pattern number 3.
These patterns are usually accompany with this one I call “square wave”.
3- The third pattern [brown one] is a sort of a “cup” with a semi-circle inside.
4- The fourth pattern that I’m not sure to whom associate it with is this one, usually seen in the superior border of ruin columns. I found it in Tevinter ruins as well as Dwarven buildings, and until a better identification, I would say that this pattern is Tevinter/Dwarvish.
Architecture
It’s hard to say anything special about the dwarven architecture: we already saw it so many times: enormous caves and gigantic columns decorated with geometrical patterns [some of the above]. Their buildings are carved into the stone, not made out of bricks, which is natural since they are a race that developed an underground culture. There are no windows in these buildings because, with the exception of Fairel, they were always meant to be underground.
Door frames are very square-ish, with geometrical patterns on it, and I can see them as part of the inspiration that Tevinter took to develop their own door frames.
These doors also have some writing in them that follows the square-based flavour.
Decoration
The decoration of the walls is always very geometrical, making contrasts with different types of stones or shades of the same stone, patterns and textures applied to the stone.
There are some long holes in the walls that many times are filled with molten rocks that help to have a natural light all along the Deep Roads. We have seen these in different shape in DAO, DA2 and DAI.
Every corridor is decorated with [one or many of] the patterns commented above.
Among the most curious elements found in places of exclusive dwarven presence is the “dwarven seat”, which has very swirly-rounding elements that makes it very atypical for a dwarven object. This element was commented in detail in “Patterns and Styles: Elvhenan”.
Another curious decorative element that has been present since DAO is the Dwarven analogous Elven Tree Statue which is made in Dwarven style.
We find this element for the first time in DAO, in Orzammar. I think it’s pretty obvious its link to the spherical elvhen trees, and therefore, to Titans, showing from early time [DAO time!] that the relationship between dwarven and elvhenan via Titans have been part of the original design of this lore instead of being a “later unrelated addition” to it.
If these trees represents for the Elvhenan the power that lyrium gives them, which is related to the heart [circulatory system] of a titan, it also makes sense why dwarves will have this object in their decorations: as a reminder of their own origin, of the source they were cut off long time ago. In previous posts I also linked this spherical tree with a potential interpretation of the heart of a Titan, which reinforces all these concepts even more.
Finally, the last decorative item of quite interesting value are the set of Dwarven stone-paintings. The first one was seen in DA2, featuring the Gallows. The second one belongs to DAO, as part of the decoration we can see in Orzammar; it’s a drawing that features the dwarves and their relationship with The Stone. Curiously, the drawing has a low-key design that may suggest a sun in the background.
The third one is original from DAI, never seen in previous games. It features a unique tower that, considering the stalactites on the top [which can be interpreted as stalagmites or merely mountains], could be understood as an upside-down image, where the ground is on the top.
In that case, we obtain something that looks similar to a tower that was constructed hanging from above.
This structure makes me remember The Wellspring.
More details about dwarven decoration can be found in tags such as Dwarven sarcophagus, Dwarven stone-paintings, and Dwarven design.
Sha-Brytol decoration
As an extra detail, I like to highlight the curious design of what little we saw about the Sha-Brytol. I think that lore-wise, we can consider the Sha-Brytol as “ancient dwarves” if not disconnected dwarves that may have something in common with modern dwarven. They may have elements that modern dwarven kept without truly knowing what that means [as usually these things work with the passage of time]. In their corresponding posts, we talked a lot about the differences we saw with respect to modern dwarven.
Design-wise, modern dwarven display more square-based shapes,
while the Sha-Brytol create impressions of square shapes by using two triangles or triangular shapes. Even the squarish spirals of modern dwarven design are done in a triangular way by the Sha-Brytol. The presence of black metal with the form of spikes and claws is quite noticeable too, and it’s a detail that keeps linking these creatures with some resemblance to Tevinter design.
Another of these details is present in the decoration of the Sha-brytol bridges which, by using dwarven patterns and Tevinter claws, manage to create a pyramid-triangle figure.
More details about Sha-Brytol design can be found in
DLC: The Descent – The Sacrificial Gates of Segrummar
There are a number of sacrificial gates in the Deep Roads that can only be opened with bloodstained ancient gears. Valta's stone sense is leading her in other directions, but there must be something important behind these gates if someone took the trouble to lock them.
Personally I found these doors a bit unsatisfactory in their mystery. One has to collect sacrificial gears which are gears with dry blood on them in order to open Gates. What it’s curious is that Valta, a shaper, doesn’t recognise the metal of the gears, which I suspect means it’s a metal from another empire or another time.
Along this search, we update the codex The Gates of Segrummar.
The names of the gears suggest sacrifice. We know sacrifices are pretty common in blood magic rituals, usually performed by Tevinter, but we already had some hints in DA2 with the Primeval Thaig and with Kirkwall history and design, suggesting that dwarves and Tevinter mages may have worked together in nasty rituals associated with runes and glyphs. Places like the Dwarven Ruins underground in Crestwood: Flooded Caves or the burial in Hissing Wastes: Fairel tomb imply that Tevinter presence could have reached Dwarves in more aspects than mere lyrium trade.
The codex The Gates of Segrummar
The builder of these doors seems to be under a compulsion or command. They have crafted barriers to divide that allow conquer, mazes that are like redeeming prisons, and carvings are like wounds, implying that in here, they are speaking about the Stone or the Titan [carving the Stone is wounding her].
They speak of a sigil that may summon something, and use the doors to traps something that wants to escape, raking its claws on the door.
They speak of a creator: their father.
The third parchment implies that sacrifice is used as redemption, and the creator [their parent] lied to them, making of each task they commanded to them a trap. The sigil “broke” this person.
The last parchment seems to be written in blood: It seems that this person who writes is the "creator" [parent] of the first person in the previous parchments: they are the parent of the first one. They speak of "to sacrifice one's own child with a lie". Apparently this person is looking for a sigil hidden in the Deep Roads that can't be seen normally, you need to step in the Fade to see it. Meaning this person was a mage.
Apparently, there was a malign sigil in the Deep Roads that this mage and their child broke at a great cost.
The codex is too vague to draw deep conclusions, but I think there is an unclear connection between this and Kirkwall: a city which was made following a pattern which purpose is unclear. If we assume that Kirkwall’s sigil structure was meant to be used to step into the Fade, maybe this sigil that these doors break had similar purpose. We know that before the Blights something catastrophic happened here that awoke the titan causing the collapse of the mine bellow the Thaig Heidrun. It could have been an attempt to do what happened in Kirkwall.
Despite all the mystery created by this codex, behind the gates of each room we only find "relics" that are sent to Orzamar usually defended by a series of undead or Deep Road creatures such as deepstalkers or darkspawn. The gates themselves have nothing outstanding, there is no unique markers or details on them, they are just plain rooms filled with some generic assets. I think the thing to highlight in here is the codex and its concept of the Sigil, which brings a direct association with Kirkwall.
Another association with twisting runes and sigils that can only be seen from the Fade comes from the ancient Elvhenan, who used them to craft path of worthiness for petitioners and such as we see in the book The Masked Empire [for more details, read the post The Masked Empire: Felassan and bits of lore].
Since the first gate is a barrier, to separate and conquer, and the second one are mazes, I have the impression that this could be related to the Scaled Ones too, which is related to another codex of a dwarven father and his son, both from Kal-sharok. The Scaled Ones look like a draconic race with strong magical powers. Maybe the sigil that the people in the codex The Gates of Segrummar wanted to disrupt was created by the Scaled Ones, and it was them who wanted to “summon something”. Hard to guess.
Along these updates, there is another series of notes about an experiment with lyrim, which final result we see at the end of a cave. These upgrade a codex called Kolg's Journal:
Apparently Kolg was considered a dwarf without Stone-sense, but he assumed he could hear the Stone.
He was wounded and blinded by other dwarves due to his lack of Stone sense.
He began to pick raw lyrium with his hands. We know since DAO that this can cause madness, even in Dwarves despite their resistance.
We can suspect this person is going crazy because he is self-mutilating and yet he still sleeps [which is not what Valta does when she connected with the Titan]. So it seems safe to assume that this apparent connection with the Stone that Kolg has is more a consequence of his poor mental state than a reality.
Once more there are some common elements with the elven Uthenera: the communal song, the “being part of the song”, sleeping to become a memory.
After the Battle of Haven, earthquakes begin to shake the Storm Coast. Mine shafts are collapsing, threatening the Inquisition's lyrium trade with the dwarves of Orzammar, and the quakes aren't subsiding. The Inquisitor looks into the matter, meeting a dwarf Shaper named Valta and a Lieutenant of the Legion of the Dead named Renn. Valta believes there is an intelligence behind the quakes.
[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]
The DLC is quite straightforward: we meet Valta and we are informed about the situation, the potential causes of it, and some dwarven lore is dropped in the process. All this can be summarised as:
She claims that shapers preserve knowledge in the Memories, in the archive of Orzammar.
The memories are recorded in lyrium so they don’t fade.
She explains the Stone as an entity that is not a god for the dwarves, but it’s something they honour and respect.
She claims that being a shaper of memories is a gift and a set of qualities inborn that it’s not exactly a choice. It’s more like a “chosen one”.
The situation with the earthquakes is the following:
Since a while, earthquakes have been happening, collapsing a mine of lyrium
The Legion is not prepared for this kind of trouble, and the Wardens are not answering, so they resorted to the Inquisition.
They can’t afford to lose more lyrium mines: the surface relays too much on it for magic-power, and Orzammar’s economy is based on it.
The tremors have a rhythm, they are not like a song but more like breathing.
Valta thinks these earthquakes are caused by Titans.
A year ago, she found an ancient text which says that “Titans, living underground, sing in the Stone, shaping it”. This text predates the First Blight.
She knows that someone in the Dwarven Empire must have removed the information about the Titans in the Shaperate.
As we approach the encampment of the Legion, we see standard dwarven decoration that I place here for archive purposes but doesn’t need further explanations: there are dwarven statues, the elven rounded trees in “dwarven style”, geometrical decorations, and ceilings of raw stone.
The Hissing Wastes is a large stretch of desert in western Orlais. Thousands of years ago, Paragon Fairel fled to the surface with his clan to escape a catastrophic civil war among the dwarves waged with his inventions and founded Kal Repartha, the only known thaig built on the surface. The Venatori are searching the ruins of the long-abandoned colony for the powerful runes that Fairel created. Like Western Approach, the Hissing Wastes used to be a lush forest, before encroaching sands destroyed the trees' roots.
[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]
Fairel’s tomb is located in the East, where a dragon built a nest. The place, decorated with paragon dwarven statues and warriors, is sealed with a special key which parts can be obtained along the many smaller tombs and burials we find in the region.
One of the first tombs we visit to start assembling the key of Fairel’s tomb is Burial Grounds. Decorated with the usual paragon statues, it shows something unique so far:
On the same piece of stone decorated with a dwarven pattern, we see one of these stones that, so far, we have only seen related to ancient elvhen ruins. These stones have been seen in the elven ruins of Exalted Plains co-opted by the Chantry after the Exalted March; at the entrance of the Solasan temple in Forbidden Oasis; and in Razikale Reach [meaning this place was erected around or over an elven ruin, or simply Tevinter co-opted these stones as well]. The proof that these stones are ancient elvhen is in the forgotten elven temple in the Frostback Basin as well as in Solasan in Forbidden Oasis: both ancient elvhen tombs that were never disturbed before since the shards are only visible now with the help of the oculara.
There is a constant use of this stone in ancient elvhenan-related spaces to simply assume this is a merely reuse of assets. Maybe these surface dwarven incorporated elvhenan elements in their tombs if they had some potential involvement with Tevinter [who co-opted as many elvhenan elements as possible]
Truth be told, style-wise, this stone displays more resemblance to the lids of Razikale Ceremony and Horned warrior holding a sword than to any elvhen art we saw so far. The warriors with shields and spears are the same ones that appear at the bottom of the lids of Razikale Ceremony and Horned warrior holding a sword. So I'm not so sure why they appear inside the ancient elvhen tombs. Logically speaking, the ancient elvhen tombs existed before than any dwarven or Tevinter civilisation, so the chances for the lids to be elvhen is higher than to be Tevinter. Still, the style is so different to what we've seen in elvhen murals and paintings that makes me suspicious.
To have some clarification, we obtain the landmark The Empty Square, saying that this is a bas relief of an enormous, helmeted dwarf, flanked by two smaller dwarves, marching out of a mountain under a beaming sun. Clearly it's the depiction of Fairel and his two sons, so probably in this case this stone is a reuse of assets because there is no way to see that description in the object.
Anyway, these tombs will update a codex called Dwarven Inscriptions: Hissing Wastes, in which we are narrated the story of paragon Fairel and his two sons:
Fairel built with the help of his sons a Thaig on the surface that was as good as any other underground .
It implies that Fairel fled the underground because his own creation, a kind of particular weapon, crafted strife that destroyed thaigs and clans. It seems that the war between clans escalated with the development of Fairel’s weapons, so he “hid from the war” on the surface.
After years, Fairel dies of age and makes his sons promise to take care of each other. His sons crafted monuments in his honour [so I suppose many of those paragon dwarf monuments along the Hissing Wastes are meant to be Fairel] and locked away their father’s great works: a rune.
Each of his sons ruled half of the Thaig, but since they ruled differently, frictions arose, ending up in a duel where one of them killed the other. The winner ruled the whole Thaig and erected halls to mourn his brother.
It’s explained that pride had a lot to do with the story of Fariel and his sons.
In each of these burials we find a key fragment.
These burials have patterns of undeniable dwarven style: the C pattern, the geometrical doors, general lines of geometrical design.
As it has happened with the The Lost Temple of Dirthamen, these tombs are more or less all the same, displaying similar elements in different configurations. They are decorated with two types of dwarven statues and most of these burials have three main stone-paintings,
one of them we saw a lot in DAO, related of how the dwarves work the stone,
the other two show a tower/building that has strong reminiscence of the Gallows in Kirwall. These paintings have been present in DA2.
We can see a lot of elements clipped in strange ways to give the sense of “different” or “odd” room while still keeping the dwarven style: the elven trees in dwarven style are fused into the columns, as well as the head-part of the dwarven sarcophagi. The patterns are dwarven without any doubt.
Among the unusual details we find in these tombs there is this one which triggers the codex Demons of the Stone where a magister Venatori studies and wonders about the defence system that these tombs have. We learn that lighting the torches [of veilfire] in a wrong order summons demons, which is quite a feat for dwarves-made artefacts. Someone who seems to be a mage or specialised on bounding souls to the stone adds at the end of this codex several things:
The demons are bound into the rock. Which is a big warning for the player; this may imply two potential answers:
Fairel's dwarves could have been something close to mages [Like Valta?].
Fairel's dwarves had intimate relationships with mages [AKA Tevinter], which is a reasonable option considering that in one of these tombs we find Claws of Dumat. So, they may have strengthen their relationship with Tevinter once they reached the surface.
The magister in this codex thinks about the Gangue, an old concept that appears very briefly in DAO. The dwarves think The Stone as balanced but not pure. It contains an "ancient corruption" that only the Legion of the Dead can face, it's a "darkness" [once more, another reference to a darkness that could have implications with the Blight] that only they can cut away. This magister Gallus reads the word Gangue in the walls, and despite making a study about these demons, he can’t have any conclusion because they are dormant in the stone.
As an extra detail: when demons are triggered in these tombs after lighting up the braziers in an incorrect order, Cole will say a line which implies that these demons are spirits of dwarves, they still think themselves as such, but they sound ancient and old like dust. [Personal comment: It’s interesting that few centuries later after Fairel reaches the surface, the First Blight hits and Caridin develops a kind of forge-technique with the Anvil of Void that “bounds” dwarven souls to stone golems, making them alive. I’m not sure if maybe Caridin and Fairel clans are slightly related, but we can see there is a slight pattern in the sense that dwarves, or at least a part of them, had ancient knowledge of how to bound living souls to the Stone.]
Another detail that makes us suspect that these dwarves may have been related to Tevinter, or developed themselves mage dwarves, is the presence of veilfire runes. We know from codices and notes from Fare Mire and Hinterlands that any mage can learn to craft these runes in veilfire. It’s a matter of practice. But it’s an art that needs a mage. Also, the shape of this sigil is the same one we see in Tevinter ruins, not in Elvhen ones.
Another unusual tomb is this one in which the ceiling fell apart, and from an urn or vessel some plants grew. It doesn’t have anything different to the others burials except for the plant on the table, and our old mysterious friends:
The old, mysterious Claws of Dumat.
Fairel, Paragon, fled from the strife his brilliance created,
the strife that destroyed thaigs, sundered houses, from weapons that clan used against clan.
His own clan and his two sons followed Fairel to the pitiless surface,
the surface where they would hide from the war that took their home.
The exact part of the story that this burial has is the one related to the exodus of Fairel and the causes of it: his weapon, which caused strife and destroyed clans. This is the main reason why I think Fairel’s house, as runecrafters, may have helped magisters to create Kirkwall [which is built following glyphs and runes patterns]. We know from the Fade that these Claws of Dumat help to potentiate spells through blood sacrifices. Maybe unwillingly, Fairel ended up being involved with the Tevinters that stepped into the Fade. There is clearly a link between these ruins and Corypheus: Corypheus used these altar-claws as an innovation to improve the Tevinter spells when he was still a human, and he also knew about these ruins, thus he commanded Venatori to dig them.
Also, the presence of Tevinter elements here must have been brought in the past, during the ancient times, for sure in the times of Corypheus when he was a human magister, since these ruins where not known by anyone until now: it was Corypheus who informed the Venatori about them, and the Shaperate never knew about them since they “recorded Fairel as dead”. So I think it’s reasonable to keep supporting the idea that these ruins were involved with the ancient Tevinters.
If we enter to the chamber where the main sarcophagus is buried in this tomb, meaning the next room after the one with the claws of Dumat, we see a better decorated chamber which has one stone-painting hanging: the one that displays Kirkwall, the gallows.
Bellow each stone-paintings there are seats. On the table, and in front of the sarcophagus, we have the urn.
Each of these dwarven seats have a very alarming decoration. If we see closely, the decoration has swirl engravings, and thorny vines coming out with fire or thorns from a kind of flower or arch, below which we see a Sun. This decoration seems to call some elements from the mural of “The Death of a Titan” and specifically from the codex Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads. However, this seat is not truly “dwarven”, but Elven. We can find this same object that is attacked to the back rest in several elven-related places, such as Serna’s tomb in the Hinterlands, beside the statue of the “maker” during Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path in the Hinterlands, and in elven temples such the one we visit for Cradle of Sulevin.
The DLC of Jaws of Hakkon showed us that places with strong leaks into the Fade sometimes can produce an over-healthy, colourful overgrowth, and make time pass slower so the objects in this zone have resistance to decay and erosion; they are _preserved_ despite the conditions they are under. Somehow, I feel a similar effect has been hinted here in this tomb. The roots of the trees should have been died with the sand, as the codex of the region tells us, yet, we see deep roots on the ceiling.
In one of the last burials we visit, we see the three stone-paintings perfectly clean: there are three images: the work on the stone, used in DAO, the image of Kirkwall/gallows, used in DA2 and the central one, which is a tower that looks like the central part of Kirkwall, which was seen in DA2 as well. Below this stone-painting we see a broken urn on a seat.
Fairel’s tomb
When we reach the entrance of the tomb of Fairel, as a small curious detail, we see that on the top of one of the columns, there is a small altar to a golden Dragon Mythal statue. It’s a very odd place to find an elvhen element. Maybe some passing group of Dalish or maybe just one elf [since there is only one single candle] left it there recently.
Finally, once we access to the Fairel’s tomb, we see two warrior statues resting they weight on their swords. I assume, given the context, these are Fairel’s sons. The central part of this chamber is a dwarven sarcophagus in front of a table which contains an urn, scrolls, books, etc. All over the place we can see the typical geometrical patterns of the dwarven style.
In here we see only two stone-paintings: the one that shows the work on the stone, and the other which is kirkwall/the gallows [Are these Fairel’s works as well? Nothing can clarify this doubt]. We find Fairel’s main “work” that his sons sealed with his body: it’s a strange rune, but the game never again focused on this rune, so It’s not even clear if the treasure is gone or this is all what it is and the game doesn’t care to spoil us more.
Among the loot that we find here, the only decent items is a dagger called Promise of the Storm which description cannot be more vague. Clearly it's ancient but we can’t say nothing more than that. Could it have been done by Fairel? Is it part of the many treasures crafted by Fairel? Not a clue.
Hissing Wastes: Perseverance and A journal on Dwarven Ruins.
Exploring this desert we find a spirit of Perseverance and pieces of a journal that reconstruct the many situations that a scholar experienced as well as their interpretation of what they found in the ruins.
Perseverance
This is a nice small detail in the region that I personally enjoyed. We find a woman reciting religious words in four opportunities. She is mysterious, appears out of nowhere, and speaks alone.
It’s curious this spirit chose that shape. My guess is that, like Cole or the spirit we met in the Fade with the shape of Justinia, this spirit may have found something valuable in a Chantry sister who may have come to this desert to spread the word of the Maker. We know that the Chantry believes that the Maker will see his children again when his word has been spread across all Thedas. She must have thought it was a good idea to spread the Maker’s word in this desert [if that’s not perseverance I don’t know what it is]. Probably she must have died due to the hard conditions or the dangerous wild life living here, but the spirit, moved by the sister’s perseverance, took her role.
As we persevere in our task, trying to get all the fragments of the key that opens Fairel’s tomb, she appears before the inquisitor four times.
Solas at first does not notice her true nature. He claims she is harmless but clearly there is something odd to her.
The last time we meet her, she gives us a reward: a bow called perseverance, which form is the same one than Elgan’ar’s blessing’s [another bow]. Quite a choice for a reuse, uhn. The inscription of the item reminds me Flemeth’s words. “I’ve suffered, as the world has suffered”. If I’m allowed to do a little of speculation, maybe it’s a very bland hint of Mythal being close to the nature of a spirit of perseverance, in the same way Solas is close to the nature of a spirit of Wisdom.
She disappears, glowing in green, and Solas’ “of course” gives us all the information we need to be more than sure that this entity was a spirit of perseverance. I don’t know, I like it, the whole quest has a Neil Gaiman’s flavour to it, no?
Hissing Wastes: A journal on Dwarven Ruins
This is a very long, ongoing codex that gets updated with each page you find all over the region. Exploration is rewarded with this codex, pretty much like the codex of The Enigma of Kirkwall in DA2.
It starts when we enter the Hissing Wastes, since it activates automatically The Hissing Wastes, where a third-year student from the University of Orlais [we know later this is Felicity's sister] talks to Felicity trying to convince her not to go to the Hisssing Wastes due to the danger and inhospitable conditions. This is the letter than convinced Felicity not to accompany the dwarven scholar who wrote this codex ["I wish Felicity's sister hadn't talked her out of joining me"] .
A Journal on Dwarven Ruins relates a lot of interesting things that can be summarised as:
This dwarven person came to this place with the only purpose of investigating the old surface thaig.
We don’t know the name of this person, but we know they had a dwarven grandmother who taught them old dwarven language. Sounds like a scholar since they speak about world-famous treaties. They seem to know the struggles of the scholar world.
They wonder immediately onto two options when it comes to the old surface thaig. They consider that the "commonly known fact" that dwarves never built cities on the surface is wrong, given the evidence in this region [very scholar and very objective, questioning what's considered a fact for so long simply because Evidence is saying otherwise] or that it was made by some people who imitated dwarves.
Hundreds of years ago, before the First Blight, several houses left their thaigs to settle down on the surface place under the leadership of a paragon: master smith Paragon Fairel
They don't know if these clans left the underground running away from a war, or to prevent it.
The Shaperate recorded Fairel as dead in the Deep Roads during a war between two thaigs that were using his runecraft to develop weapons of destruction. Clearly, this is a lie or a half-truth.
This scholar analyses heraldry on drawings he found on some of the ruins: they see weapons with winged lizards worked into the decoration [could it be one of the (winged) reptiles in the commonly known symbol of Tevinter]. Translation of the inscriptions may suggest that this thaig struggled a lot with fire-breathing dragons, reason why they developed these weapons that this scholar sees.
This scholar met Perseverance, this spirit that appears in different places of this region. Considering the way she presented herself to the inquisitor, we can assume she must have been touched by the scholar’s perseverance in their study of the ruins. I loved that detail.
They discover Fariel's tomb in the East but can't open the door, since they need to collect all the pieces of the key that the Inquisitor ends up doing.
This person recognises that the tombs that the Venatori are digging have ancient style.
Sadly this person was attacked by spiders and it seems their wounds were infected [”[they are] hot to the touch”]. They discovered the name of the Thaig: Kal Repartha: "A place where we may meet in peace."
The last part of this journal is found in a small Venatori camp, which I consider it means that the dwarf was found by the Venatori, probably with fever, and they may have killed them or used their blood for fuelling their spells, as one of the slaves they met before had warned them. I think this scholar is dead by now, even though we don’t have certainty about it.
Alongside with the Journal on Dwarven Ruins, we find letters and orders in most of the small encampments set around the tombs that the Venatori are digging. They are more chaotic than the journal, and can be summarised as:
The letters are mostly between Estoris, Hatrmmonum, Avanthum, Sellanus, Vertis, Devrenix and Magisters Urathus; Members of the Venatori.
Estoris seems to lead several digs at the same time.
Avanthum seems to be a scholar on ancient dwarven ruins. They had located all these ruins and, by reading the texts, knows that they are pre-blights: “They predate 700 TE” [The first blight is around 800 TE]
Vertis seems to be a precious slave for his knowledge, since there are orders about not making him work hard, since he cost them a fortune.
They found the exact place where the dwarves came out from the underground [ in A Blocked Doorway, the image above]. Fairel and his people collapsed the lower levels, giving no chance to return to the underground.
More details about this in the post of Fairel’s tomb.
The Venatori are using slaves for all the work in the desert. I was hoping to find a dwarven one, assuming they could be this scholar whose journal we have been reading all along, but it seems they must have died already.
The Hissing Wastes is a large stretch of desert in western Orlais. Thousands of years ago, Paragon Fairel fled to the surface with his clan to escape a catastrophic civil war among the dwarves waged with his inventions and founded Kal Repartha, the only known thaig built on the surface. The Venatori are excavating the ruins of the long-abandoned colony for the powerful runes that Fairel created. Like Western Approach, the Hissing Wastes used to be a lush forest, before encroaching sands destroyed the trees' roots.
[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]
When we enter this region, Scout Harding tells us that there is not much in this place with the exception of a surface old dwarven ruins.
Just steps away from the camp where we start this region we find a Ferelden Wyvern. This cursed statue annoys me a lot because it appears in places which makes no sense at all, and it’s hard to consider it an Eastern Egg, because its presence is massive. It’s not like the unnoticed krogan head we find in DAI, hanging from the wall in the section of hunt trophies of the Winter Palace; it’s a statue that has main focus even in loadscreens like the ones from the Still Ruins. Anyway.
Of course, every now and then we see the typical statues of dwarves, in their paragon versions or sometimes simply being dwarves in a neutral stance. They usually mark a place where a burial or some dwarven ruin is nearby. Maybe the Paragon statue is in honour of Fairel, while the non-paragon statues represent his two sons. We know this Thaig has been decorated in similar fashion since it was co-ruled by the two sons when Fairel died until one of them killed the other.
In the north-west of the map, inside a deep crevice that works like a small “oasis” due to the shadow that it may provide during daylight, we find a shop whose owner may return eventually. All the symbols in this shop [a Ferelden horse painted on the tent, several elements with mabari shapes, and a Ferelden banner, in addition with a living mabari], suggest that this merchant is a Ferelden seller with, maybe, avvar ascendancy, since to a side of his shop, we find one of the many versions of Keepers of Fear. This particular one will be seen again in the Stone-Bear hold [Jaws of Hakkon].
In some spots of the map we find these pieces of rock protruding the surface and glowing in green. They are usually close to Fade rifts and demons, implying that the Fade is so thin that part of the Fade geology is leaking into the waking world
There is a body we find in an isolated spot of the map, close to a dry, petrified fallen tree. There is A Worn Diary which triggers a diary where this person, now dead, wonders about the nature of the shards.
What they say is very interesting: the spirits told this person that these stones were here since ages ago. It means that the Veil prevented them to be seen. Since Solas has one of them in his desk, it seems reasonable to suspect this is the means he used to seal the Evanuris.
Like the shards, these green glowing rocks have been “disguised”, hiding them from normal eyes, and only now, with the rifts, the disguise fell apart.
I’m not sure if these rocks are an ancient consequence of what Tevinter was doing in The Still Ruins. We know that Hissing Wastes and Western Approach used to be green landscapes. Western Approach was consumed by the Blight during the Second Blight, but in Hissing Wastes we are not informed which event caused so much sand that damaged the the tree roots and turned the area into a desert. One can suspect that the proximity with the long, deep chasm of blight in Western Approach may have helped to wither the area, but there is no codex or anything suggesting it. It could also be attributed to some Tevinter Experiment that went wrong here.
Now, the writer of this diary has a very strange relationship with spirits, because their actions depends on who the Inquisitor sided with. If the inquisitor sides with mages, the spirits will tell them to run away. If the inquisitor sided with templars, the spirits will tell them to stay there. Either way, this person dies. Since they speak with spirits sounds to me that this person is a mage or at least an apostate.
In a similar fashion, there is a part in the middle of the desert which looks like a part of a forest that existed once, with petrified leaf-less trees. A similar condition on the trees can be seen in the Frostback Basin in the Shallows, where the Veil is also thin and Tevinter experiments to communicate with Razikale have been done. I really don’t know how much we have to read into this.
Another strange scenario is this one, which appears as isolated in the desert as the others: some pieces of rock with similar angle of inclination [meaning, this looks like a blast that came from below with an angle of around 30º with the ground] protrude from the ground. The rocks could potentially be “leaks of the Fade”, and around them we see Tevinter golems, non-functional or destroyed. There is a Tevinter banner, and behind one of these spikes, a book that triggers the codex The First Blight: Chapter 3 - The Dwarves Fall. Of course its source is the unreliable Genitivi. What's interesting is that this chapter is focused on how the dwarves fell during the First Blight. I think there is a slight possibility that this thaig may have been involved with Tevinter back then in a deeper relationship than the usual one [meaning, a trade based relationship].
We know Tevinter treats dwarves living in their lands as honorary people even though they are not equal citizens. Another curious detail is that these dwarves in Minrathous are independent of Orzamar. There is a big gap in the lore about how these dwarves and Tevinter work together, all the information we have is this image from the book The World of Thedas, Vol1. So there is no room for speculation.
There is a proper oasis called Golden Oasis, where we can find yet another part of the codex A Journal on Dwarven Ruins. This place is filled with wyverns and has the entrance to a dwarven building but it’s blocked completely and can’t be accessed to.
On one of the many burials that contains fragments of the key of Fairel’s tomb, we find the Colossus of Orlais.
I spoke about this statue already in Coracavus; Front Corridor and South Entrance, where a similar statue can be found in a corridor of the prison. Another similar statue exists in Frostback Basin, inside the frozen Gates. The difference between all of them is that
The one from Coracavus has one spike up his head.
The Colossus in Hissing Wastes has one spike too, but going backwards. His ears are noticeable and rounded.
The one in Frostback Basin has two spikes going backwards.
In all cases, they display eroded faces that make difficult to see any details. It seems they wear beards. Their ears are impossible to see, with the exception of the Colossus in Hissing Wastes, which, by no chance, was the one being “sculpted” like the Emperor. It is the only one showing well defined human ears. To me, it looks like the sculptors took this ancient sculpture that was already there in the desert, and just modified details to make it look “human”. They never finished it though, since Celene cancelled it.
The other thing that all of them share is a strange, plain profile, similar the ones of the “elves from DA2″.
If we check the book Art of Inquisition we find
These statues seem to be “guiders” in the desert. The concept art on the bottom right displays many of these pointing out to the same direction. In the bottom left, they are statues that mark the entrance to a given territory. Now… who are these statues? Who made them? Their style is unique. If we try to explain things with what we have in-game, the only thing that comes to my mind is Fariel. He brought his clan and others to the surface, so these statues could have worked as signs in the expansion of the desert [an environment so difficult for dwarves to walk]. They are made of stone, which is reasonable for a dwarven made mark, but what doesn’t add up is that these figures are not drwarves. I’m not even sure if they are humans. These creatures are something else. Their different spikes, the lack of ears, the strange lack of a nose bridge, their weird profiles… I don’t know what’s going on here.
Few meters away from this colossus, we find a metal gear that we saw several times in Kirkwall during DA2. And this is surprising to me because there is no much sense in having this in the desert. Is this a way for the game to tell us that we should relate this thaig to Emerius? That both of them were crafted with the same hands or at least, share elements in common?
On one hand, we know that Kirkwall was designed with intricate streets and alleys to create enormous magical glyphs with its own architecture. On the other hand, Fairel founded a rune-crafting clan which made an exodus to the surface, isolating his clan from the rest of the dwarves. So it seems not too far to think that the ancient Tevinter and this clan of dwarves could have had some relationships, or even some involvement with Emerius? Sadly it’s pure speculation.
Objects scattered along the dessert
In some parts of the desert we can find ruins mostly covered by sand and destroyed. However, we can identify fragments of their structure which display patterns. Although these are isolated blocks of stone, we can be sure that they belong to a dwarven building thanks to its patterns.
Dwarven vessel found in several parts of the game.
Dwarven elements. The “elvhen” circular tree in dwarven style, dwarven bottles, containers, and a stone-painting.
We also find a very detailed scryer in an abandoned Venatori camp.
Tevinter table filled with candles and skulls that probably the person from the A Worn Diary was referring to.
We see several objects that we have been seeing in previous zones: Water dispenser, a scroll-library, torches, these hexagonal containers with the symbol of a sun, and another instrument that only recently I found out its function:
Apparently, it’s a holder of “powerful” books.
The city that existed once
We can see only small fragments of the city/thaig that Fairel crafted here. These columns are fused with the local surface stone,
We find more pieces of ruins, disconnected from the original structures that must have collapsed or covered with sand, which patterns keep giving us the certainty that they belonged to dwarven buildings.
We also find parts of a stone road or a street in small patches along the desert, called “ancient road”
The village of Crestwood was hit hard by the darkspawn during the Fifth Blight. Many refugees from the south tried to find shelter in Crestwood, however some of them were carrying the blight disease and were infecting others. The diseased were moved to the caves beneath the town. When the invading darkspawn arrived and surrounded most of the valley, Mayor Gregory Dedrick decided to open the dam and flood the village, killing the darkspawn, and any remaining villagers inside, to save the lives of everyone else.
[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]
Once the zone has been drained, we have access to the Old Crestwood; several statues of the Dwarf with long limbs surround the village. This is a very curious detail, specially if we think that below this city there are dwarven ruins. In previous posts I had concluded that these statues were pointers or markers. Maybe in this case they are pointing that this area is where a dwarven ruin entrance exists. Now, one also wonders why don’t they show the typical statue of the generic paragon holding a hammer over his head. These probably were the markers done by the Avvar or alamarri. Or maybe these are a group of dwarves related to the Avvar and independent of Orzammar’s. We need to remember that both groups [Avvar or alamarri] had deep relationships with the dwarves to the point to produce offspring, something we never saw dorectly in DA games. Only in tales of the past Dwarves and humans mix.
We can find the old house of the Mayor where we discover that the one who flooded the town was him in order to prevent the spread of the Blight.
In a falling apart house we find a Spirit of Command who wants us to kill a rage demon. For that, we need to access to the lower caves of the village.
To complete this task, we head to a gate we find in a corner of the village that sends us down into the deep caves. Here it’s where we can see bodies and remnants of what happened ten years ago: people who had taken refuge in these caves died when the water raised.
Walking further, we discover that this underground contains Dwarven ruins.
At the end of the exploration, we find the rage demon, probably fed by all the rage that this flood caused in the victims ten years ago. This place where we fight the demon has columns decorated with dwarven sarcophagus lids.
In particular, and one of the most surprising elements I found in Crestwood, is this pair of strange sculptures that we only saw in two other places: in DA2 in the Primeval Thaig [check Primeval Thaig and Red Lyrium ], and then in the Descend, in a chamber where they are accompanied with Claws of Dumat.
This place seemed to be important, since it is decorated in this fashion. It’s even present in the book of Art of Inquisition [with the presence of a head in between the columns that we never saw before.
If one is careless, they can be mistakes for Claws of Dumat, but they are not. They share the same style than the claws: they are Tevinter, with a bird-like or dragon-like shape to it. In my opinion, they look like a Tevinter translation of the elven representation of the Dragon Myhtal statue.
Later on, I found a plaque close to this place, in a locked room, that seemed to imply this was a route that connected Aeducan Thaig with Gundaar Thaig [another famous Thaig, and one of the first in falling under the darkspawn threat]
This place, aside from those strange Tevinter-like statues, is filled with elements of Dwarven art: chairs, banners, table, rugs, statues, elven-tree-like statue in Dwarvish style, etc.
At the background of this chamber, we find the standard dwarven sarcophagus, the usual dwarven table, and an elven artefact.
When the breach in the lake is closed, the whole region looks much better and brighter [I know, I should have done the exploration using the daylight. My bad].
As something curious to notice in this game: they say that the rifts alter animals, but the only one we have seen mad were black wolves. And not only it’s a behavioural detail, it’s in their glowing green eyes. Their eyes glow as if they were coloured with Fade. They don’t have a pupil but a black crack, same as Corypheus has in the final battle.
We know in the quest of Hinterlands: Wolf Hollow how sensitives wolves are to the presence of the breach and demons. Maybe it’s just a narrative concept to emphasise Solas’ story.
In the ruin where we found the Ferelden Wyvern statues, the dragon finally shows up.
And of course, as it could not be missed in Ferelden regions: there is always some isolated remnant of Avvar art. So far I explored, this is the only one in Crestwood. So Avvars existed in this region [which makes a lot of sense with the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe [her clan lived here or nearby before heading to the mountains]]
The Western Approach is a large, arid expanse in southwestern Orlais. It was once a land of plenty. The rain came north over the Gamordan Peaks, turning the plains green and verdant for several months of the year. However, eight hundred years ago, that all changed.
The Approach became the site of a major battle during the Second Blight. The darkspawn swarmed out of the Abyssal Rift, a great chasm to the south, and corrupted it with their foul blood never allowing for the land beyond to recover... even after the darkspawn were all driven back underground. The Grey Wardens had Adamant Fortress erected by the dwarves to stand watch over the chasm.
[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]
We start the zone finding abandoned cages with corpses.
Nearby, there is a cave that visually explains of what’s going: some people are being kidnapped to be part of experiments. In fact, as we are going to learn later, in many places of Western Approach the Venatori are developing projects, experiments, and excavations, all at the same time, coordinated by Crassius Servis. They are taking people to the templars who infuse them with red lyrium. The place has a device that makes us suspect the use of some Tevinter elements that we will see in The Still Ruin later.
Staring at this configuration, I assumed what’s the intention of some of those elements.
A thrummer, called that way by official art [here]. I guess by its name that it works like an arcane motor, powering the “injector”.
As a colourful note, beside this device, there is a blood symbol I didn’t find in any other place in game. I have no idea what it is.
The thrummer has an hexagonal thing that I called “battery” because it reminds me to an imitation of Solas’ orb. We know that the elven orbs can be crafted in big amounts since in the Shattered Library we find many of them scattered around, and like I always repeat, Tevinter co-opted [or was taught] a lot of elven elements. They called those orbs as Foci [Dorian’s words]. If this is the case, we know two things about the elven orbs:
First, they store energy. This was said by Solas in Tresspasser when he explains that while he was in his slumber, his orb gathered energy for that millennia, reason why the Conclave exploded: all that energy was suddenly released since he could not unlock it in a safe way due to his weakness.
Second, they augment a person’s powers and spells [Solas’ words after Haven].
We have little information about Tevinter foci, but a codex in Frostback Mountains, during the time of the Ancient Tevinter, hinted that they were crafted in massive scale to be used into the walls of Razikale Reach in order to enhance the potential communication with her. So, if Tevinter correctly immitated the orbs to store energy, we can be more or less confident to consider that they also managed the massive production of foci. So, they could potentially be part of many Tevinter devices. In fact, we see these hexagonal structures with swirls and lines [which are not exactly a fingerprint like the elven orb] in many Tevinter devices.
Sadly, this is a speculation and so far, the way I justify a bit the elements of this room
The thrummer is connected to the large metallic thing I call “injector” via a “power cord”. The Injector has a lot of red lyrium at its base. We see this object in many places, most of the time filled with red Lyrium, but in the Still Ruin, we see it filled with a green substance that I assume it’s related to the Fade [following the codices of the place, it could be Essence of Fade]. By the position of the injector and the effect we see on the corpse laying on the table, we can assume its function: injects an element into the subject.
The process seems to be enhanced with magic as well since we see a glyph below the victim table. It’s the typical snake-glyph we find in many places, most of the time it’s correlated to Blood magic, which in this context, seems reasonable too. Check General glyphs and magical symbols for more details.
This room alone makes us suspect that the Red Templars, having a small population of Templars, are experimenting with commoners, trying to find a process to transform them into red-lyrium creatures. It’s known that most people die when ingesting lyrium, so they never pass through the transformation that most Templars do. Templars may have a natural resistance due to the usage of common lyrium.
Close to the end of the Chantry Trail Signs we find a researcher of Dragons: Frederic of Serault, who will inform us, once we killed all the dragons, and we explore the topic in a war table mission, that Dragons are resistant to the blight, generating cysts that contain it [they are not immune, just resistant]. He also explains to us the mysterious big, black chasm in the region
The big chasm that borders this region and shows patches of poisoned land was caused by the Second Blight when a swarm of darkspwans tainted the land forever.
There is a strong presence of Grey Warden monuments remembering fallen heroic wardens because this region was strongly affected by the Second Blight. Although this place was initially mostly Tevinter [the great prison Coravacus and The Still Ruin, plus extra small fortresses along the way] many of these buildings were taken by the Grey Warden and repurposed when the blight hit.
All over the game we find these skeletons, and in this place they are quite common, specially on the poisoned zones. I would like to know if these are normal animals, like wyverns, or they are darkspawn instead. We even found them in Emerald Green [where the dragon is] so I guess it’s not darkspawn. So, what kind of animal it is? It has a strange spike and neck protector that calls my attention: does DA have an animal who naturally has metal parts in their bones? I ask because there are so many characters and elements with a spike on their head/helm that... you know. This could be part of the list as well to understand its influence on the tales.
Dustytop Fort
Close to the keep we capture, there is a small ruin of a fort called Dustytop.
We can see here the usual ancient Tevinter patterns. The pointy battlements decorated with hexagonal figures and lattices of rhomboids. The Tevinter door frames or arcs seem to have a dwarven inspiration. More details in Tevinter Design and Style [Main post].
Sand Flats
Sand Flats has a small fort that will be involved in the main quest, showing wardens binding themselves to demons. The bridge shows Grey Warden banners, but it displays two metallic Tevinter “golems” that we saw in the Gallows in DA2 [Check Architecture of Kirkwall : Gallows and Lowtown/Darktown]. They had come to life thanks to the presence of red lyrium.
The fort has at its sides gigantic blades or claws, that makes it look like the fortress is resting on a symmetrical clawed hand [I imagine, since it’s Tevinter design, it’s meant to look like resting on a dragon’s paw]. These “claws” will appear in many objects hinting Tevinter intervention [For example, the Sha-Brytol bridges].
These statues are strange in what they depict. Its head is Andraste-like, while in the rest of her body, especially in boots, knees, and chest, it looks like the armour in Mythal’s statues. From the shoulders several blades protrude, imitating wings. They have two faces, one at the front and the other at the back, holding different weapons. They have four arms in total. I can not avoid noticing the similarities of the statues of Mythal and Andraste with this one. What surprises me is that these ruins were built in a pre-blight time, so there was no way for these Ancient Tevinters to know anything about Andraste, so most of the inspiration may have come from Mythal.
This fort has two codices at the entrance
Ritual Tower which explains that most of these ruins were built before the First Blight, which is when the Tevinter Imperium expanded all over the south. This means that most Tevinter ruins found in the south are pre-blights. There was an intention in this expansion: it allowed them to build places dedicated to experiments; we have as confirmed examples by now Kirkwall in DA2, and The Still Ruins in DAI.
These "golems", even though are present in this small fortress, can be found n the middle of the desert:
The codex the Gate Guardians talks about a tale created by the artist of these statues: One day, a golem like these appeared to him. It told him that it needed the blood of the earth to survive [lyrium]. The artist simply pointed out in the direction where a mage lived and the statue followed the instructions. We learn here that these golems have a lyrium bar inside just for the sake of this tale. They have no real function in them. But on the other hand, we still remember DA2, and I find it a bit ironic and poetic that this Tevinter artist never saw one of his piece become like the tale he spread around.
Other places
Close to the Keep taken by Inquisition, surrounding the entrance of the Tevinter Prison Coracavus, there are toxic sulphur pits that fill the air with poisonous gases. They look different to normal sand. To prevent this constant emission of poisonous gas, we can order the Inquisition to construct a device that allows us to cross it safely. And here is where things are a bit annoying to me.
The inquisition builds this
A kind of tank with strong Tevinter design and Tevinter symbols on it. This is a reuse of an asset, sadly.
Almost in the centre of the map we find a beautifully elaborated construction with a magical barrier. This is The Still Ruins that I will cover in another post.
In the south there is a cave partially covered by stone blocks that only when fighting the dragon can be moved. Around it, we see some dwarven’s pillars falling apart, so this construction must have been dwarven.
Inside we find a dwarven sarcophagus for all the dwarven wardens that died during the Second Blight.
