End of an Empire, The Fall of Arlathan
So when we imagine the end of an empire, it’s usually fairly dramatic. Fires burning, barbarian hordes swarming the city, blood running in the streets. Sometimes that’s accurate, sometimes not.
The fall of Rome in 476 CE was actually a fairly understated affair, and the art above isn’t at all representative of what happened.
I once had a history prof say that if the fall of Rome happened today, it wouldn’t be a front page story, it would be tucked in the back pages along with the personals.
Now you may be wondering why on earth i’m talking about the fall of rome on a Dragon Age blog.
Well, Because the fall of an empire in Thedas would have the sort of bloody end that we imagine Rome had.
When Arlathan fell, it wasn’t a simple transition of power, a coup or even an invasion or siege. When Arlathan fell it was the complete and utter destruction of a way of life.
Arlathan quite literally fell.
In an early discussion with Solas in haven he describes Arlathan as having “palaces floating among the clouds”
Now in the Thedas that we know there aren’t any structures floating, not even in Tevinter. So it’s safe to assume that those sort of structures were only possible due to the nature of the world before the veil. That the magic of the ancient elves and their connection to the fade allowed these structures to exist.
Now imagine, your’e an elf in ancient Arlathan, maybe a slave, maybe a priest. You live your life on the earth and amongst the clouds, moving freely in a world where magic is as easy as breathing.
One day your on the land tending to halla, and then the world shifts.
Suddenly the worlds around you is different then it once was. The spirits around you are gone, the ever present hum of magic in the air is gone. You feel like you’ve been hollowed out, you feel raw and scared and suddenly bereft, there’s something missing within you. The world is duller, changed.
And then you hear the screaming and look up.
Arlathan is falling
Towers and halls are crumbling to the ground, the screams are overwhelming as people desperately try to escape, but they can’t escape.
bodies and buildings crash to the ground.
Across Thedas countless elves die as their world crumbles, millennia of knowledge is lost.
The veil falls like a guillotine, those whose spirits are in the fade find themselves cut off.
Thousands of elves made tranquil in a moment.
Arlathan is razed
The Elvhen empire burns and falls
Dareth Shiral
