Fashionably late? Maybe. Finally got a solid reference done for my VS seraph, Tinsel. Featuring their cool ... friends? Yeah!
Hungry, hungry blackguard. They're in rough shape and can't seem to remember much at all. It's probably fine tho.
Bonaventure & Skein are @reliquarian, Gangue is @nuclearloop, Pavise and our trader for scale is @pythosblathers, Thatch is @deadwooddross
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.
Native silver sculpture
As the heated waters of the deep earth forced their way into the spaces in the rock through which they were percolating, they encountered a different chemistry, forcing them to precipitate their cargo of precious metal into the joints of the surrounding gangue. The result resembles something one might see in an ethnographic museum, filled with artefacts from different world cultures, rather than the creation of our wonderful planet that it actually is. The specimen was mined at Batopilas, in the in the Chihuahua province of Mexico in 1968, and measures 5.1 x 3.5 x 3.2 cm .
Loz
Image credit: Joe Budd/Rob Lavinsky/iRocks.com
