Dragon Age and Tolkien obsessed and making it everyone else’s problem | Descended into Solavellan Hell and can’t get out (also don’t want out) | Occasionally writes fan fiction as TheStormwindKid on AO3
Castles in the Fade, or What Was the Point of the Veil Anyway
Something that will now haunt me until the end of time is why was the concept of the Veil ever introduced into this series.
We’ve been hearing about it since the very first game. There’s a codex entry about tears in the Veil in Origins. Tamlen mentions a thin spot in the Veil if you play a Dalish elf. Sandal has a prophecy in Dragon Age 2: “One day the magic will come back—all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see.” Admittedly, this is just one line said by a character who often says odd things, but it hinted to the fact they were planning to do something with the Veil from the very beginning. The state of the Veil is repeatedly brought up. It all had to mean something! Or so I thought.
When I saw “The Dread Wolf Rises” quest in Veilguard, I said, “Oh, here we go!” The Veil is coming down, magic is coming back, and it’s going to set up such an interesting story for the next game.
Alas, no.
I hadn’t really enjoyed my time playing Veilguard up until this point. It felt like the game was ducking and dodging every bit of world building and lore that could possibly bring nuance or complexity to the story. Every returning character or faction was a cardboard cutout of themself. They shoved Solas is a time-out box and gave him nothing to do. They refused to let him have any impact or influence on the story when he had been set up to be our main antagonist back in Trespasser. This game used to be called Dreadwolf! And while we learn about his past… we never talk to him about it. In the present, he’s in stasis.
Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain are our villains. And they are your typical evil for evil’s sake villains. They are mad, bad, and only as dangerous as the narrative will allow as to not give Rook and co too much trouble. They are surprisingly patient while Rook fixes all their companions’ problems… until Elgar’nan moves the moon to cause an eclipse. A vital component in making his own lyrium dagger. For some reason. This guy can move a satellite!? And he just let Rook walk away in previous encounters… twice. Ok. Sure.
The Evil Duo need their own dagger ostensibly to tear down the Veil, because they want to unleash the full force of the Blight onto the world. Because they are evil. And they were thwarted last time they tried to Blight the entire world. Why do they think Blighting the world is a good idea? What’s the point of ruling a world if everyone is dead? I guess they haven’t thought that through, because of the madness and the evilness.
Ok, I thought. Perhaps the gods will be the one to tear down the Veil. Or maybe we’ll have a choice to let Solas do it his way before they can, which will be less chaotic and less full of Blight. Because the Veil has to be coming down one way or another? Why introduce the concept of the Veil, especially a Veil that has been thinning and failing since the series began, if it’s just going to… stay.
There is a principle in storytelling called Chekov’s gun. If something is mentioned in a story, it must have a purpose. If you keeping mentioning that gun hanging on the wall over the fireplace, it’s because at some point in the story, someone is going to take it down and use it. The Veil felt like Chekov’s gun to me. Chekov’s Veil, if you will. It’s been here from the beginning of our tale, the spectre hanging over our protagonists’ heads for multiple games.
The Veil has been a character unto itself. It was the central focus of the third game, and its dissolution was set up to be the core conflict of the fourth game. We learn everything we thought we knew about the Veil was a lie. It was not created by the Maker to separate the Fade from this world because of jealous spirits, it was created by a guy named Solas to trap the elven gods and the Blight from destroying the world. Also, the elven gods were never gods, and they are also evil.
This reveal will surely throw the Andrastian religion into chaos! This puts the very existence of the Maker into question! The Evanuris are a lie; it’s only fair Catholicism—oh, I mean—the Chantry is a lie too. We briefly touch on that in Veilguard… then it is quietly discarded. Religious crisis averted.
But I digress.
When the title of the fourth game was changed from Dreadwolf to Veilguard, I started to see the writing on the wall. Still, I held out hope the Veil would have some greater purpose in the story. That its introduction as a concept was for a reason. That something in this world would change.
Instead, from the get-go, the question of the Veil is no question at all. We only get Solas and Varric making oblique or catastrophizing statements about it. Solas says little beyond he has a plan. If I ever wanted to hear a villain monologue about their plan, it was now! Varric, on the other hand, decries Solas’s plan. He warns that should the Veil fall, it will destroy the world and drown it in demons. And that’s that.
We never really learn why Solas wants to tear the Veil down, or why he thinks it will help anyone. “The Veil is a wound inflicted upon this world. It must be healed,” he says. And that’s basically all he says about it in Veilguard. In Inquisition and Trespasser, we learn it took the immortality from the elves. It cut most of magic off from the world. Spirits are trapped and are being corrupted into demons, and most of what we know about spirits and demons is wrong. There are ancient elves possibly asleep? That part is left vague, but ancient elves are still about. We meet some in Mythal’s temple. There seems to have been some merit in bringing it down, because elves were flocking to Solas’s cause at the end of Trespasser. He had agents working for him already. What do they know that we don’t know?
Apparently nothing, because by the time Veilguard rolls around, there are no mention of agents. He is working alone. His only motivation now seems to be he’s too deep in his sunk-cost fallacy. The Veil is unnatural, so it must be removed—consequences be damned. We are never given any reason to think Solas has a leg to stand on in his pursuit of tearing down the Veil. We never hear any kind of counter argument from anyone, not even Solas, as to why the Veil should come down. We are only told it will destroy the world. It will drown the world in demons. This is all Solas’s fault.
There is no nuance. No complexity. No moral quandary to mull over. The game gives us vague warnings with no explanation as to what exactly is so world-annihilating about the Veil coming down. We must take Varric’s word at face value. We’re the heroes; Solas is the villain. Stop him.
It makes me wonder why Solas was ever a companion in Inquisition, let alone a romance option. Solas was presented to us as a complicated character in Inquisition. We had the potential throughout the game to make him see the value of this world, to help him realize he was wrong about it. “We aren’t even people to you,” the Inquisitor says in Trespasser. Solas replies, “Not at first. You showed me that I was wrong...again.” He began the third game viewing the world as tranquil, seeing the people in it as nothing more than figments in a nightmare, just as we saw our companions in the In Hushed Whispers quest. He ends the game having made friends, having recognized he was mistaken. He might have even fallen in love. (Or he may still seen no merit in this world if the Inquisitor antagonized him the entirety of their time together.) But something makes him continue with his plan to tear down the Veil, despite recognizing this world is real. He must know something we don’t. Something we’ll learn about in the next game.
We’ve been hearing about the Veil for three games now. We’ve set up our complex antivillain for the next installment, and he’s going to tear the Veil down. We swear to stop him or save him. But it has to be more complex than that. It can’t be so straightforward. Uncomplicated. Simple. Boring. Right? Right?
Nope. He really is just the villain, mustache-twirling and all. He apparently had no greater motivation, no as of yet unrevealed knowledge that would put this whole Veil thing into a new context. It was really as simple as the Veil falling will destroy the world, so Solas must be stopped. There is no new information that is revealed which makes us question what we are doing. Solas is never given any nuance or complexity to his actions. Nuance and complexity have actively been taken away. Both him and the Veil are looking like they are the worst things to be in a story: pointless. Why introduce the Veil if it’s just going to remain unchanged? Why introduce a character like Solas, bother humanizing him (for lack of a better term), giving us his backstory, setting him up as a cunning antagonist, only to make him look stupid, then put him on a shelf until the last ten minutes of your game?
Solas was the trickster archetype of this tale. He was our version of Loki from Norse mythology. What is the role of the trickster archetype? To challenge the status quo. To bring about events of extreme change, like say, the tearing down of a Veil that holds back all of magic. Loki is a huge contributing factor in Ragnarök. Through his manipulation, he causes the death of the beloved god, Baldr. This ushers in a long winter, which signifies the beginning of the end. Loki is imprisoned for this crime. When the final battle between gods and giants begins, the sun and moon are swallowed, plunging the earth into darkness. The earth shakes and Loki is freed to fight on the side of the giants. The world burns in raw chaos, falls beneath the sea, and is reborn. The world is remade, and a new realm of the gods and a new, better earth is formed.
It really felt like this was the setup they were going for. Solas causes the death of Mythal, and this is his catalyst for creating the Veil, which ushers in a world without magic. This could be seen as equivalent to the long winter. Solas falls asleep, trapped in dreams. He wakes and sets in motion bringing about the apocalypse. It’s not a perfect one to one, but it’s there if you squint. We have a war against the gods in Veilguard. I was expecting a few remaining Titans to wake and join the fight. But we don’t get any of that. There is a final battle, but it does not end in the end of the world. Or a better world. It just ends, and everything is the same.
It seems our trickster god caused his apocalypse thousands of years before our story started, when he created the Veil. His role in this tale was over before ours began, and he really is just some relic from a long-past age. He has no role, no purpose in this story. He is here to be thwarted. He is no Loki at all.
If you can’t tell, I wanted the Veil to come down. Did I think the Veil coming down would be painless? Have no negative consequences? No. Of course not. But keeping it up has negative consequences too. And it made for an interesting story. Or at least it could have. But we never explore that. The game presents no counter argument to having the Veil stay up, which, again, begs the question: what was the point of introducing the concept of the Veil at all?
Did I think the Veil coming down was actually the best solution to help Thedas become a better place? I don’t know, and I never will, because the game never argues for it one way or another. It just tells you to want it in place and to stop asking questions. In real life, a catastrophic event is not the best way to solve any of the world’s problems. But this is the realm of fiction. We have gods and monsters, magic and myth. We have introduced the status quo of Thedas, recognized it needs to change, then our trickster god appears ready to fulfill his role in the narrative.
Instead, it all comes to nothing.
I got to the end of Veilguard… and everything was more or less the same as it was at the start of Origins. Veilguard actually tries its hardest to pretend any previously mentioned problems don’t exist, so of course the Veil coming down has no merit. There are no problems to solve in this world, apparently. Solas is just stuck in the past and can’t get with the times. Silly Solas.
The Veil isn’t even a permanent solution. It wasn’t to begin with. It was some duct tape wrapped around a broken pipe, and we’ve just slapped an extra piece of tape on it. It’s still leaking. It is still unnatural, and will fall eventually one way or another. Large amounts of bloodshed weaken it, so I guess Thedas better achieve world peace real quick to avoid any battles. There were seven super-powered mages holding it together… now there is just one. Ironically, the Veil was going to fall after two more Blights anyway. The Wardens were doing Solas’s work for him! It would also have released the full force of the Blight at that time… which Solas was trying to avoid, I presume.
It feels like keeping the Veil up just pushed a big problem onto Thedas’ future generations. We’ll keep slapping bandaids on it until it all falls apart. Someone else can deal with the fallout, but we’ll be dead by then, so who cares.
Primarily, I wanted the Veil to come down from a storytelling perspective. The Veil was an interesting concept and I wanted the story to do something interesting with it. Conflict is what makes stories stories and the Veil coming down could create so much compelling and complex conflict. And the Fade is weird, and I like weird. Stories are also about change, and I wanted to see Thedas change. Yet, Veilguard is over, and barely anything has changed. Instead of magic coming back being a conflict for the next game, they went with Fantasy Illuminati. Oh.
The Veil turned out to be a nothing-burger, and no problems in this world are even close to being solved. Slavery is still rampant in Tevinter. The elven people are still oppressed everywhere. Mages have no more rights in the South than they did in Origins. Spirits are still trapped and being corrupted. The Calling still exists, though might be different somehow now? They don’t really get into that. The Chantry’s validity is still not allowed to be questioned. The Blight still exists in some form, but again it’s vague. Oh, and we learn the dwarves have been gravely wronged, and the Titans are still tranquil. At least if you redeem Solas and a romanced Lavellan joins him, they can work together on healing the Blight and helping the Titans. Oh, good. One problem is being acknowledged and some action will be taken. Offscreen. Hurray? Solas doesn’t have a really great track record of fixing problems, so Lavellan is definitely going to need to be there to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.
For some reason, this game seemed terrified of letting us think about anything for more than two seconds. It shied away from complexity or nuance at every turn. The game is called The Veilguard—ironically, that word is never uttered in the game—but we are given no real motive for guarding the Veil. We’re unquestionably the hero. The villains are uncomplicatedly evil. Save the world… never wonder what you are doing or why.
I wanted the game to make me question if the Veil staying up or coming down was the right choice. I needed to be given a real counter argument. Convince me the alternative would actually be better or worse, because as I mentioned… things suck quite a bit in Thedas already for a lot of people right now. Let the Veil’s fate be a difficult choice to make. If the conflict cannot be what to do about the Veil, it should be am I doing the right thing about the Veil. If the heart of your game is so thin on motive, everything else falls apart around it.
I hoped they were setting up a complex, Thedas-sized existential conflict for this game in Trespasser, but no. I wanted something to happen, but nothing did.
I want to feel challenged and changed by a story, not left feeling empty. I’m tired of superficial entertainment. I want to sink my teeth into a narrative that doesn’t paint the world in broad strokes of black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains.
Ultimately, I think my issue is why even introduce a concept like The Veil if you’re not going to do anything interesting with it. Or anything at all. What I thought was Chekov’s Veil turned out to just be a MacGuffin. And that’s disappointing.
I don’t know why, but some people like to place Solas into a kind of emotional and ideological stasis where he never changes. But Solas is capable of change. It might feel slow and complicated, but we see it across the games.
I’ve talked before about how Solas goes from 'sorry, I’m going to have to destroy your world completely to save mine' to 'I’ve gathered spirits to help minimise the damage.' He admits it would still mean thousands of deaths, which is horrific, but it’s no longer the total annihilation he spoke about in Trespasser. So while it’s not perfect moral progression, it's still change.
And the topic of the Dalish shows change in him too.
Solas didn’t hate the Dalish because they weren’t ancient elves. His frustration was tied to grief, disorientation, and what happened when he first woke up.
“I tried to explain the truth to one clan. When I convinced them that I was truly Fen’Harel, they attacked me. After that, I hid my explanations behind the façade of having witnessed events in the Fade.”
As a fellow Solavellan in a server I'm in said so eloquently: “It’s interesting to consider his deception wasn’t born from a desire to deceive, but to protect himself.”
People can interpret Solas however they want, but context has to matter at some point. He wakes from uthenera traumatised. He’s lost his world, his people, and thousands of years of history because of him! He awakens into a Thedas where almost everything he knew has been distorted, forgotten, or exaggerated. Of course he struggles to connect to modern elves at first. That disconnect is part of the tragedy of his character.
But even on the Dalish, Solas changes. Yes, early on in DAI, Solas expresses a lot of anger towards the Dalish and considers himself apart.
Solas: I have wandered many roads in my time, and crossed paths with your people on more than one occasion.
Inquisitor Lavellan: We are both of the same people, Solas.
Solas: The Dalish I met felt... differently on the subject.
OR
Inquisitor: I hope Briala uses her position to help your people.
Solas: How would helping Briala help… Oh, you mean elves! I’m sorry, I was confused. I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves.”
Then later, in Veilguard, after helping rescue enslaved Dalish prisoners:
Solas: The Dalish prisoners escaped safely?
Rook (elven): We got them away free and clear.
Solas: Good. Your time with the Veil Jumpers probably taught you some of my history with our people. Whatever my frustrations with them, it was a privilege to be able to help our people again.
In DAI he distances himself from modern elves but his time in the Inquisition changes him - he tells Rook that despite himself, he grew fond of people in the Inquisition (maybe fell in love even). In VG, he includes himself with them: our people. And calling it a privilege carries genuine emotional meaning. He valued being able to save and protect them.
And when Rook asks him directly why he found the Dalish frustrating:
Solas: It is unfair to them. I lived for thousands of years, and after I imprisoned the Evanuris, I slept for thousands more. I awoke in a world that had forgotten the ancient times almost entirely. And those who tried to remember elven history, like the Dalish, had gotten so much wrong.”
Again, this frustration isn’t rooted in hatred or superiority. It’s rooted in waking up to find history he personally lived through distorted beyond recognition (to him). But even then, he still acknowledges their perspective:
There was truth to their stories. My rebellion had indeed disrupted the lives of those who had been comfortable. And when I created the Veil, I destroyed an empire. Their judgments were fair, if clouded.
Ok, so he's still being so Solas here, but in that, he's acknowledging their perspective and his role in creating the world they inherited. Solas is a character that reflects and has awareness.
I can’t engage with interpretations of Solas that flatten him into a completely static character with no capacity for growth or reconsideration. If people want to read him as a liar manipulating everyone 24/7, fine. If they want to keep him emotionally frozen in place forever, they are free to do so. My interest lies in engaging with the narrative arc the story presents, and that arc shows Solas changing, reassessing, softening in some areas, and struggling in others. He’s contradictory and paradoxical and capable of change.
I feel like the way that solas talks to sera becomes a lot more sympathetic when you combine the (unconfirmed) deleted arc where sera was revealed as a mage & the implication from the legends that Fen’Harel was an archer.
The fact that sera learnt archery so inherently likely due to her magic & solas was probably a mage archer back in Arlathan (if everyone has magic, no one does (not really but it wouldn’t be special and you’d be looking for ways to one up your opponent)). Solas likely sees a part of his younger self in sera, the same way he’s likely seeing his younger self in both Cole and the inquisitor.
Some more of those travelling Keeper headcanons, because seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many problems these guys solve:
The reason we’ve never heard of them in-game is quite simply that a bunch of mages, travelling alone or in tiny groups, who act as the backbone of Dalish society are really vulnerable to Templars. The Dalish would rather let humans continue believing that exile nonsense than risk the Chantry completely crippling their communications network in a single generation - which it could do, if it tried. Lavellan’s ‘We gave them to other clans, or…’ line is them nearly breaking silence, catching themself, and stopping just in time.
They carry news between clans - everything from ‘So-and-so has had a baby’ to ‘The Grey Wardens request our help to fight the Blight; the army meets at Redcliffe in four months’. They also ferry clan members between clans, if a swap is taking place, and valuable artefacts between clans, if somebody wants to borrow somebody else’s arulin’holm.
They act as independent judges during times when a clan’s Keeper is too involved to be neutral, or when there is a dispute between two clans who can’t reach an amicable settlement on their own.
Some of the braver (or perhaps stupider) ones will venture into alienages periodically to perform marriage, birth and death rites. Needless to say, they’ve been avoiding Kirkwall in recent years.
Also, you know, sometimes Dalish kids elope and need a priest.
They take on apprentices, when there are children in need of training. Some of the really brave/stupid ones will even smuggle mage kids out of alienages before the Templars come down on their heads. (These kids, in turn, often grow up to be the ones who’ll wander back into alienages…)
They also take on clans in the case of a Keeper, First and Second all dying, or if the only clan mage left standing is too young to take on full responsibilities…
…on which note, yes, they can do vallaslin too.
There are Dalish myths about them - both the normal kind of myths, in which they are usually total badasses, and the urban legend kind, the ‘I hear they have somewhere secret to go to commune with the gods’ kind. They actually don’t, but hey, a little mystique is good for the image.
Don’t ever raise your blade to a travelling Keeper. They bear a vast, sacred burden, and the least we can do is treat them with utmost respect. If you really think one’s possessed, then you’d better have some damn solid proof.
Okay, but I really love this idea, because not only does this solve so many of the stupid, lore breaking problems that popped up when they introduced the “three mage limit” thing, but it’s also explains a lot of the more handwavy aspects of Dalish culture:
Wandering Keepers organizing Arlathvhens, passing word between clans like “Hey, so the big meeting’s gonna take place in the Brecilian forest exactly in five months, you in?”, and then acting as mediators and repositories of knowledge for the those who can’t make it. Cause you know that a Keeper up in the Anderfels isn’t gonna drag their clan on some three month journey to the Kokari Wilds, just to spend two weeks arguing over whether or this chamberpot was dedicated to June, or Syliase. They’ll still want to know what went down, of course, which is where these guys come in.
Wandering Keepers who act as walking libraries, who transcribe books and scrolls and maps that have weathered the ages to the point of near illegibility, and make sure every clan has written copies of their legends and histories - because they know better than anyone else that oral tradition alone isn’t going to keep after one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years.
They’re also census takers for the clans. No one really knows for sure how many Dalish elves are wandering around Thedas, but these guys will be able to give you a damn good estimate. And if it looks like a clan has shrunk past the point sustainability, they’ll step in and negotiate with other clans who’ve got too many mouths to feed, or too many orphans after their run-in with that asshole Lord So-and-So’s hunting party.
Maybe some even act as rudimentary genealogists, who can tell you which family line is most likely to produce a mage child, or whether there’s any risk of inbreeding in inter-clan marriages, because this guy’s grandmother’s half-brother is actually her father’s father, who ran away and married into the clan two generations ago.
“Some of the really brave/stupid ones will even smuggle mage kids out of alienages before the Templars come down on their heads.” I am willing to bet cold, hard cash that this is what started the whole “the Dalish will steal/eat your babies” legend. (Besides, ya’know, good old fashioned racism superstition). Some stranger shows up one day in the alienage, looking and smelling like they haven’t left the woods in years, drops mystical knowledge in your lap, and then vanishes a couple days later with several young children in tow? The elves will know what went down, but to any humans who might be watching, it’ll look like someone straight up absconded with a bunch of their kids, and everyone was too terrified of this mysterious wanderer and their secretive order to even consider standing up to them.
Holy shit I love this idea, and I especially love it for Merrill. This is so much better an ending for her post-game than being stuck in Kirkwall. If you don’t mind I’m totally going to steal this for my post-Kirkwall setting for Merrill.
The only problem is what to do with the Eluvian while she’s travelling. Hmm.
Well, in some of the endings she gives up on the Eluvian, right? I don’t particularly like that for her, but it could open up this possibility at least.
Dalish in the Chargers makes a whole lot more sense now. What a great cover! She would have protection and travel around a lot. Just stopping by the other clans on the side.
While the Inquisitor carries many titles, the least spoken of is the one given by the spirits. When the Augur calls them “the one who blazes like fire and mends the air,” it feels less like his wording and more like the words the spirits themselves gave to him. And they insist on seeing this person when they arrive.
But I'm particularly interested in how the Inquisitor is percieved by spirits and some dialogue gives us a clue.
Augur: How do you think you appear to the gods of the Fade? To those beyond the Veil, your hand burns like the watchman's bonfire.
The one who mends the sky is here, the one who closed the Breach has arrived - and they press what they know upon the Augur, recounting what the Inquisitor has done: Hushed Whispers, Champion of the Just, the Well of Sorrows. In the Fade, nothing about them is hidden. Their deeds travel ahead of them, and their light gives them away wherever they stand.
Inquisitor: Are you saying every spirit in the Fade knows where I am?
Augur: Only those nearby, but thoughts spread quickly among the gods.
Awareness travels among spirits - the one who blazes is near rippling through the Fade as spirits watch.
But spirits also feel the Inquisitor and recognize something familiar in them, perhaps that's part of what draws them - yet they don't quite know what the Inquisitor is.
The Spirit of Command: "What of you? I felt your coming. Is there something alike in us?"
They feel their coming before they even see the Inquisitor - they know that great blaze is drawing near. Command senses something familiar but also knows the Inquisitor isn’t a spirit. So what's it noticing?
The Anchor is rooted in ancient magic from Solas, Solas' own power stored over a millennia through his orb created the Anchor - that power which now weaves itself through the Inquisitor's body. It connects them directly to the Fade at all times. If spirits respond to what something is at its core, then reacting the way they are suggests the Anchor has changed the Inquisitor , being a part of the Veil changes them (metaphysically, physiologically).
In my own interpretation (as I've shared before), I believe the Inquisitor is a changed, liminal kind of being (all versions of the Inquisitor):
So, when I think of the Inquisitor and how the Spirits, with their spirit eyes might see them in the waking world while they are in the Fade - these are the images I have in my mind:
The adventures of Varric and Solas. Big thanks to fellow Fade Prison friends for helping with this - special shout out to @celesenova and @lotsofthinkythoughts for dialogue pieces.
Solas courtesy of this mod. Had these images in my head for awhile, nice to be able to finally bring them to life.
What if... what if we take a look at the first dialogue with Solas in Haven in detail, from a different angle? Now that we know the full truth, it is quite fascinating. The dialogue in which we ask Solas to tell us about himself is, without exaggeration, one of the most remarkable. Because it is not what it seems at first glance.
Inquisitor: What made you start studying the Fade?
Solas: I grew up in a village to the north. There was little to interest a young man, especially one gifted with magic. But as I slept, spirits of the Fade showed me glimpses of wonders I had never imagined. I treasured my dreams. Being awake, out of the Fade, became troublesome.
Solas: ...I learned how to defend myself from more aggressive spirits and how to interact safely with the rest. I learned how to control my dreams with full consciousness. There was so much I wanted to explore.
There are several possibilities here. Either Solas is still lying, having invented a backstory for himself, or he is distorting the truth. I lean more toward the latter, since Solas is a terrible liar who prefers to hide behind half-truths and metaphors. The "north" he speaks about is certainly Arlathan Forest or its surroundings. Solas manifested in this world before the building of Arlathan as a city and the future center of Elvhenan. After he created a body for himself, he obviously spent some time trying to adapt to life in a physical form, which is a hard and complex process itself. It is quite likely this happened in that very village he mentions, because Leliana found confirmation that it did indeed exist, but was destroyed centuries ago. This was so-called process of "growing up" as a person. He "grew", learning about himself, the capabilities of his body, his newfound emotions and preferences. We know, Solas did not want to create a body for himself and live in the physical world, and his words partly cover hints about it. He missed the Fade, which he could now only reach through dreams, so he quite likely indulged excessively in that state, initially disappointed with the waking world. He slept, studied the Fade, cherished his dreams, and learned to control them. Plus, he was learning how to protect himself from being possessed by unfriendly spirits, as he now needed to be able to do so due to his physical form, which could be easily taken over.
But the most interesting part begins here.
Inquisitor: I don’t know of any spirits by those names.
Solas: Not at all. I have built many lasting friendships. Spirits of wisdom, possessed of ancient knowledge, happy to share what they had seen. Spirits of purpose helped me search. Even wisps, curious and playful, would point out treasures I might have missed.
Inquisitor: I don’t know of any spirits by those names.
Solas: They rarely seek this world. When they do, their natures do not often survive exposure to the people they encounter. Wisdom and purpose are too easily twisted to pride and desire.
Do you see? Once we learn who Solas really is, all his real backstory, how differently it all resonates. I know some have criticized Solas because when you ask him to tell you about himself, he practically says nothing personal, delving into philosophy instead. In reality, he tells everything. He is literally telling us about himself, as he was asked, just in a veiled manner.
Inquisitor: You’re saying that you became friends with pride and desire demons?
Solas: They were not demons for me.
Inquisitor: Meaning?
Solas: The Fade reflects the minds of the living. If you expect a spirit of wisdom to be a pride demon, it will adapt. And if your mind is free of corrupting influences? If you understand the nature of the spirit? They can be fast friends.
And here, he essentially hints at the future development of your relationship with him. With Solas, it is actually very simple to earn his friendship. He may start calling you "my friend" already in Haven. The steps to achieve this are easy enough:
• Be inquisitive by asking questions (seriously, he approves of nearly every question; he encourages any attempt to understand the lore of the world, to learn about current events, to thoughtfully study the situation we find ourselves in);
• Help the people around;
• Support ideas of freedom;
• Reject senseless cruelty;
• Do not abuse the power given to us;
• Speak respectfully of spirits and elven culture.
The result: that very "they can be fast friends" (implying a quick and natural bond).
Conversely, if you see Solas as an arrogant and boring elven apostate, that is exactly how he will behave toward you with low approval, mirroring your own perception.
Emmrich speaks of how quickly spirits are drawn to someone who offers a grain of understanding. But we were told this much earlier, and it was Solas who was told this to us first.
I think there are two Dalish battle traditions that evolved directly from Solas’ rebellion: the Emerald Knights and the Fade Hunters.
In the The Lifting of the Vallaslin where “Images flash by: former slaves in ranks with Fen'Harel, armed and strong.” - we are given the image of Solas standing with the elves ready to fight. While history, propaganda, and retellings may have altered Solas’ story and the story of the rebellion, there are always pieces of truth that are preserved. As Solas himself says, “Something existed to start the legends.” Well, something existed to start these battle traditions as well. I’m not saying Solas invented them but the elves who fought and survived the chaos of the Veil would have passed on what they knew in their own tellings, talked of a time when the elves stood in battle with a great wolf. Over generations this would have evolved into the Emerald Knights who: "rode halla into battle and fought alongside wolf companions known as the Knight's Guardians." Guardians you say? Well, the Dread Wolf was known as a protector first before propaganda twisted truths.
Then we have the Fade Hunters, also Emerald Knights but they were “tasked with protecting the Dalish kingdom from maleficarum and demons.”
This seems like a practical application of knowledge of the Fade taken into battle. In a previous post I highlighted how Solas is addressed as Spirit Speaker as his first title. We also know spirits fought alongside Solas, Felassan and the rebels, and that the spirits were victims of the Evanuris just as the elves were. It would make sense that battle traditions passed on down from a time when the Fade and Physical world were one would result in something like the Fade Hunters.
Taken together, the Emerald Knights and the Fade Hunters don’t feel like separate inventions or later Dalish romanticism. One preserves the memory of fighting beside Fen’Harel in the physical world, the other carries forward how that same fight extended into the Fade. Over time, details change and blur, but truths persist and show themselves in these legends of great Dalish warriors.
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