Hissing Wastes: scattered objects and ruins
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”
[Index page of Dragon Age Lore ]
