The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Shattered Library; Inverted Ward
The Shattered Library, or Vir Dirthara, are ruins of an ancient elvhen library, suspended between the Waking World and the Fade. It was the living knowledge of the elvhen empire that comprised libraries of every city and wisdom of every court. When Fen'Harel created the Veil, it weakened magic, making elvhen cities and structures crumbled. Vir Dirthara was one of the countless elvhen marvels that were intrinsically tied to the Fade and dependent on its presence that the Veil fractured. Now it is a series of floating isles that barely have any connection one another.
This place is divided into different sections:
Entrance
Courtyard
Broken Tower
Scholar's Retreat
Sundered Hall
Lower Archives
Inverted Ward
The first curious thing we see is that the floating isle of the Inverted Ward has two columns decorated with Female Kossith/ Desire demon /Tevinter Warrior: the same statues that decorate the Imperial Highway in the Waking World. Why something Tevinter would appear here? Unless this is something Elvhen co-opted by the Tevinter, but the fact that the warrior is undeniably a Tevinter fighter, I do not contemplate this option of the co-option here. The only thing I find, lore-wise, to explain this, is what Solas told us at the end of Tresspasser: the Shattered Library was connected to the Fade, so maybe it reflected some bits of the Waking World onto the library. We know the Imperial Highway has been developed for decades before the events of the Magister Sidereal. It was, in a sense, a connection between cities of the Waking World. If we remember the codex The Laws of Nature in the Fade, we can understands that the objects with the purpose of connection will appear in the Fade reinforcing its purpose. If the Imperial Highway helped to connect cities, it seems natural to have a reflection of it in this Shattered Library which connected, according The Archivist’s words, cities through records and elvhen through shared memories.
The benefit of seeing them here is that we have a more detailed access to the bottom of these statues that I didn’t have in “Hissing Wastes: Venatori main camp”. We can see the female demon/kossith is standing on a spiralled arrange of skulls and bones. Similar to the warrior.
Once we visited all the small isles around and activated the red eggs that allow the reconstruction of the main bridge, we have access to this golden hand which holds a nicely decorated eluvian. This one will send us to the Inverted Ward, the massive chamber we see in front of it, upside-down.
We are welcomed by the Viddasala. There is no much important information going on here. The Qunari think that the Inquisition works for agents of Fen’Harel.
The central part of this chamber is decorated with two paths of yellow mosaics with the symbol of the asterisk. From the statue of Humanoid Mythal flows water and fills a rectangular pool in the middle.
There are Howling Fen'Harel statues in a protecting position, slightly below Mythal statue.
The configuration, so symmetrical [taking into consideration that some of the statues may have fallen due to the events that happened in this place] seems to suggest that Mythal was honoured in the centre, and had protection from Fen’Harel in three different levels [low front, by her sides, and above her]. The owl also seemed to offer some protection from a bigger distance [if we assume there was another one in the other side to keep it symmetrical], as well as the Eagles [which to me seems such an odd sight in elvhen ruins. Maybe it’s simply a reflection of the Waking World filling the space that the owl should cover? I don’t know].
And from above and behind Mythal, the most curious detail of all this configuration: Andruil.
At the sides of this place we see small platforms that have access to other eluvians. They are decorated with Dragon Mythal statue.
There are small rooms beside the central chamber that contained more books and tables, maybe to have local dissertations and private reading. The upper part of these rooms have particular arcs that we saw on the roof of the Forgotten Sanctuary.
When we explore these side-rooms where the Qunari have been sleeping, we trigger some codices like The Risk of Saarebas. It explains two details:
It justifies why the Qunari are here: they have been studying the creation of the Veil. They think it was done by stripping power from the evanuris. They want to repeat the process to strengthen the Veil.
In order to do so, they are using their own saarebas, “immersing them in a sea of magic until it seems impossible for them to do anything but drown”. This may explain why we have been reading and seeing Saarebas overdosed with Lyrium and why the need of mining so much lyrium in the Deep Roads.
In this room we find an owl statue that we had seen in some Andrastian places like Therinfal Redoubt and in Skyhold, in the war table room as well as the Inquisitior’s personal library.
These places are decorated with a rug I can’t identify.
As I said before, the configuration of the Inverted Ward places Mythal in a central, honoured spot.
Behind her, there is a small corridor with an eluvian that heads to the Courtyard.
On top of this corridor’s eluvian, we see once more this peculiar symbol: two Golden Rings, one inside the other, and an elven orb in the middle.
Behind the Elven Owl statues we find two mosaics of Fen’Harel.
At the left corner, there is a broken eluvian blocked with purple fire. Solas must have destroyed this access. The interesting detail is that inside the chest we find here, we find the schematics of Elgar’nan Enaste [Bless or favour of Elgar’nan], a powerful bow.
At the right side, we see another broken eluvian
Behind Mythal’s statue, we find the last piece of The Archivist.
There is something interesting how you see Mythal’s statue when you are coming out from the central eluvian: The light scatters around her giving a feeling of powerful and angelic and divine.
