Emerald Graves: Din'an Hanin, Elandrin’s Tomb
[...] What care have I for gods I have never seen, for a Maker I do not know? Let others distract themselves with such lofty concerns. I know only this life, I have seen only this world, and I care only for you.
Perhaps your priestess distrusts the sincerity of "uncivilized" elves. If she must hear me say I will follow the Maker, so be it. Your god intercedes as much as ours. My life will not change. [...]
-- Elandrin’s Letter
If we follow the corridors in the pit of the Hollowed Tombs and walk the paths that the Venatori opened, we can reach to the main place of these tombs. They are even deeper into the ground. Apparently, the Venatori could not enter to this place because it’s locked: it requires several Emerald seals to open.
As we see in the entrance, there are Dalish banners, and several elven urns around. The original banners [green ones over the door] have their heraldry faded, if they had any once. On top of the colossal door we find the strange idol’s face. The shape of the door is clearly elvhenan.
When we enter, we see a “kind of” symmetric chamber. The central idol in the middle [notice how the overgrowth and the banners are a design choice to hide the figure over the strange idol]
Flanking the entrance, there are many strange idols, surrounded by urns and inuksuit. Far beyond, there are rooms with three Myhtal dragons at the walls, looking at a coffin that, so far, we have always related to a Razikale Ceremony. Let’s break this down in details.
The sides of the entrance are welcomed with these idols. There are three levels: a superior and middle level filled with urns and idols, and a lower level that seems to be these pit-corridors we saw all around the tomb. If someone walked these pit-corridors, it would have been under the watch of many idols. As usual, the arcs that connect to the central pit where the main idol is are sealed.
The decoration of this place is a lot more rustic that the usual one related to other Evanuris’ temples, like Mythal’s: which walls were decorated with intricate golden patterns. This chamber follows the same style that the main one: rustic and stone-like. Which makes sense for crypts.
The fences surrounding the pits are undeniably elvhenan in design.
On the walls at the sides of the entrance there are paintings. These are, at the right, the typical ones of the deformed halla carrying inside several elves which wear vallaslin, while at the left, we have the “shifting” [or maybe bounding] halla. By just watching this configuration overall, one has the feeling that this place was used by slaves when it was in the hands of the Elvhenan, probably to perform a ritual of vallaslin/slavery. The slaves may have walked along the lower pit, while the priests or nobles simply observed the process or worshipped the main statue.
We notice that the symmetry of the amount of idols at the sides of the entrance is not right. It’s as if one of those in the highest level is missing. I can’t help but think that maybe the missing one is the one placed in Sundermount [where elves apparently did a last stand against Tevinter, in a battle older than the Exalted March]. If it’s truly missing, it’s the one that should have been placed over those stairs. In that place instead, we find more elven urns and a box with Dalish items.
In the corner of this chamber, a bit hidden, marked with the painting of a golden halla, we find a box with only a gold bracelet. There seems to be a link since both, halla and bracelet, are gold, but I don’t know what to make of it. We have so little information about these paintings.
The central idol has a similar disposition in this place as it has the humanoid Myhtal statue in the main chamber. It’s illuminated, placed in the centre of the whole configuration of this room, in the middle of a pit which has communication with the others pits across the different chambers but those entrances have been sealed. This one has a mechanism to raise a platform and approach the idol, though.
At the sides of the idol we find three Mythal statues in its dragon shape, only one has its head broken. The whole decoration is quite rustic, as it is with elvhenan crypts [we can remember Myhtal’s Temple’s crypts]. They are surrounded by inuksuit and urns. The dragons are looking at the coffin which lid displays the image of the Razikale Ceremony. This is quite a shocking element to find: were these coffins here before the Dalish took these ruins or it was added by them? If it’s the latter, it would explain why in the Exalted Plains we have these elements in the ramparts and the Citadelle du Corbeau has a tevinter defense device. It would mean that these Dalish not only incorporated Andrastian elements to their temples, but also Tevinter ones.
Maybe they confused this image with Andraste in the same way the Templar who wrote their impression on this image in the small cave of the Western Approach did, check Old Chantry Trail Signs for details.
Something that is easy to miss due to the design choice of hiding it: over the strange idol there is a Ferelden Wyvern. Now, we know from Crestwood: surface that wyverns have a relationship with Andraste due to an unofficial legend in the South. It’s hard to know if this statue was brought by the original Emerald Knights as it happened with the Andrastre statues, or it was here when they reclaimed the elvhenan ruin. I mean, we found this wyvern in The Still Ruin, we know this statue is in weird, ancient places, before the blight itself.
Behind the idol, we find more Dalish elements and epitaphs.
Once we solve the mechanism, a platform raises and allows us to reach the idol and the element it has been holding: a scroll. The scroll triggers The Death of Elandrin which explains the truth about Red Crossing, the last straw that triggered the Exalted March of the Dales. As Solas has said in the beginning of this region, both sides, human and Dalish, had been quite brutal. A detail worth noting is that Elandrin did not care about the elven gods. It shows now, explicitly, not only through the architecture, that these Dalish were a lot more flexible in their believes, even sceptical. We see only one of these Dalish in DA games: Ameridan, who had no problem in asking for help to Ghilan’nain and Andraste before facing Hakkon.
After taking the scroll we can trigger another codex on the idol: the last part of the codex The Emerald Knights.
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