It appears to be the day for Thedas scholarschip. Let me add a contribution of my own. This is an attempt to explain all Fade-related phenomena on the basis of a single statement about its nature, extrapolating and creating appropriate terms for the description if needed. In order to understand the basics better, I have underlined statements taken directly from primary sources. I have written this as an in-world document because - don't laugh - it was easier, and also more fun. Feel free to reply in the same style or not.
**Start in-world document**
On the nature of the Fade
by Eorlin Amell
In my recent mage manifesto, I made statements about the Fade and the Veil which have drawn some attention. Since that document was political, I could not explain those statements in depth there, but I am very glad to share my theory about the Fade and its nature with others, so that it may be refined and extended, and possibly rejected through scholarly debate and experimentation.
The Premise:
There have been various attempts to explain the Fade. Of them all, I have selected the well-known statement by Magister Mareno as the only one with no religious bias to provide the fundament of my theory. The Fade is not a different dimension. It is an aspect of the one reality which people can connect to by altering their mental state. Most people do that while dreaming, mages can do it deliberately with the help of lyrium, Dreamers can do it naturally.
Everything in the Fade is subject to being shaped by the mental activity of living beings. That means that everything in the Fade is made of a substance which can be shaped thusly, as opposed to material reality. Because it co-exists with material reality, we can conclude that this substance is insubstantial to matter and will not displace it, and that matter will not displace it in turn.
I will call this substance "aether" and define it by these two characteristics: that it and matter do not displace each other and that it is subject to being shaped by the mental activity of living beings. It will remain to be seen if we can discover additional attributes that distinguish aether from matter.
The Veil:
That (see above) means the Fade is all around us all the time, but because aether reacts to thoughts, memories and passions, we can shut ourselves off from it by conditioning ourselves to be unaware of it. While awake, the normal person is unaware of the Fade, and thus the Fade is blind to them. While dreaming, we lose that conditioning and thus regain the connection to the Fade we naturally have.
Some mages who have looked far into the Fade are convinced that the Veil did not always exist, that there was a time before the Veil. If so, then that means there was a time before people were conditioned to be unaware of the Fade while awake. Which brings me to my first important hypothesis: The Veil is an artifact of cultural conditioning. If it fails, then the Veil will fail and we will see increasing interaction between the Fade and material reality, manifesting as more intense dreams, a higher prevalence of chaotic mental states and demonic possession, and holes in people's perception which appear as if a "Veil of Light" was physically torn - because that's the image most people have when thinking of the Veil. The Fade will no longer be blind to the waking world.
The Dreamers:
My second hypothesis: the Veil was created as civilization arose and became more complex, and order was increasingly needed to keep it intact. The Fade is a chaotic realm, and a structured life is impossible if creatures from your dreams and nightmares are present all the time. I contend that it was the ancient Dreamers who created the Veil by conditioning the minds of people in order to blind the Fade against them while they were awake. This process would have needed a long time and was more a natural, progressive development than based on a conscious decision by the Dreamers. In time, the Dreamers were revered for "dispersing the primeval nightmares" and bring order. Of course, some would abuse the power they had gained, and from that come the stories about Dreamers as god-kings and tyrants.
Interaction between the Fade and material reality:
Normally, we only enter the Fade with our minds. Our bodies remain unaffected. But Tevinter sources which have lately acquired significant credibility claim that it is possible to "physically enter the Fade". This appears to contradict my premise. My hypothesis is that the expression "physically entering the Fade" means "transmuting your body into aether". This would explain why this is said to be so hard that the ancient magisters needed the blood of hundreds of slaves for their attempt. It would also explain....the appearance of the higher darkspawn. If you transmute your body into aether, you become subject to the laws of the Fade, namely your aether body will be subject to being reshaped by the mental activity of living beings. We now know that the ancient magisters indeed entered the Fade to search for a golden city, that it wasn't what they expected when they arrived there, and that at least some of them were transformed into what we now know as darkspawn(*1). No doubt the ancient magisters had a formidable mental resilience, still whatever happened at the City, whether it was golden or black at the time, was likely of an order of magnitude sufficient to overcome it. If you consider the accounts of those who have seen a higher darkspawn - unfortunately only two encounters are reported, one of them my own - you will notice that they look as if their matter has been mixed with that of some object. If their first generation lost control of their form while in aether form and then transformed back before control was reestablished, this is one of several plausible outcomes.
*1 Note that I give no credence at all to the religious dimension of the tale. Religious tales are written to be instructive and compromise truth in order to achieve that purpose. Scholarship must be based on descriptive accounts.
Demonic visits:
If if is possible to transmute the matter of living beings into aether and back, it follows that it should also be possible for denizens of the Fade to transform their bodies into matter. Thus, demons can enter material reality as physical beings, and because aether is much more mutable than matter, this would probably not be nearly as difficult. Nonetheless, as a rule demons would not want to do this, due to the difficulty of transforming back. In most cases, what we perceive as a physical demon is a being or object possessed by the demon and changed by its whims.
Summary:
The Fade is an aspect of the one reality which people can "enter" by adjusting their perception, whether through a dream, with the help of lyrium or by natural abiity. It is made of a substance I call aether, which is characterized as being subject to being shaped by the mental activity of living beings, and by not displacing matter. The Veil is an artifact of mental conditioning created by the ancient Dreamers through cultural conditioning in order to protect the growing civilization from the Fade's chaotic effects. It blinds the Fade to people's presence while awake. If it fails, we will see a drastic increase in Fade-related phenomena. It is possible to transform the bodies of living entities from matter to aether and back, which can be described as physically moving between the two aspects of reality.
**End in-world document**
I will say this in modern language because Thedas lacks the terms: this means that the Veil can be made to fail by the spreading of cultural memes. I contend that this is how the mage revolution contributes to the failing of the Veil we see happening in DAI, and whoever orchestrated the events is using a technique we would call memetic engineering.
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The following is an in-world style reply to the posts of TheConstantOne and others, first posted further down in the thread and copied here for the consolidation of ideas:
***start in-world document***
Addendum 1:
With this, I am replying to several comments and objections which have been raised regarding my theory.
First, I should clarify that cultural conditioning goes deeper than mere learning. Here's an example (which may be related or not): it is very hard to escape the teachings of the Chantry if you live anywhere in Ferelden or Orlais. You may even be hostile to the Chantry, but you are still aware of its teachings and know that they have dominion. To test the hypothesis that the Chantry's teachings have a particular influence on one's perceptions, you'd have to find people who've lived their whole lives in isolation from the Chantry's dominion and expose them to the phenomenon you suspect of being influenced by people's conditioning.
I will, however, concede this: while the Veil as an artifact of cultural condition comes *from* our minds, and while it has influences *on* our minds by conditioning us to be unaware of the Fade while awake, whether or not it is fully *of* our minds is an open question. It may be some sort of pervasive area influence, not unlike the Fade itself, perhaps even an attribute of the Fade itself. In fact, the latter appears rather plausible considering that all people (I'll get to the dwarves later) have a natural connection to the Fade unless made Tranquil, so there would already be a mechanism through which the conditioning could be applied. I propose an experiment akin to the example above to test this hypothesis but will, for now, adopt the hypothesis that the Veil is an attribute of the Fade.
Second, with regard to mages and Dreamers: yes, evidently there are attributes which influence how easy it is to change your perception and "enter the Fade". However, if the theory applies, mages and Dreamers still have distinct abilities: mages can channel "something" from the Fade, possibly transforming aether, in order to power their very real effects, and Dreamers have extended abilities to consciously shape aether within the Fade. Both are distinct from simply being able to enter the Fade (adjust your perception), which could be made possible for non-mages were the Veil to fail.
Third, with regard to apparently local differences in the strength of the Veil, I think it is plausible to assume that different entities have a different weight with regard to their influence on Fade-related phenomena like the Veil. It is also plausible to assume that all conscious beings have an influence on it, not just those of material reality. So an Old God might have an aura which enables it to influence people's conditioning on a large scale and thus weaken the Veil locally. Powerful spirits may be able to do the same on a smaller scale.(*1)
Fourth, with regard to the hypothesis that everything is immersed in the Fade, that is a more metaphysical question because if matter and aether can be transformed into each other, there is no way to infer one as being more primeval than the other, unless you can prove that defining attributes of the primary are present after being transmuted into the secondary, but not vice versa.
Fifth, about the concept of order: when I am speaking of order, I mean the order that naturally arises as civilization becomes more complex. This order and the desire for it exists regardless of whether it is conceptualized as an idea or not. I realize that this is a philosophical argument that neither side can win, but I do not believe that ideas can be primeval. I rather believe that they do not exist independently from the minds they rest in (*A), and it is impossible to conceptualize the idea without something material (or aetherial) to inspire it.
Sixth, at this moment I do not see a necessity to assume that the primeval origin of anything lies in the conscious act of some entity. Considering that no known entity has ever made much a claim, nor have we observed entites with that kind of power on a scale large enough to validate it, we do not have the knowledge to even judge the general validity of such an idea. It is usually considered good scholarschip not to introduce unknown entities into a debate unless they explain more problems than they cause. This is not the case here, especially since as I said, any hypothesis I would make about such things would be based on the assumption that ideas cannot be primeval.
*1
As an aside, I hypothesize that this power to influence large numbers of people at the same time was exactly that "power of the gods themselves" the ancient magisters were seeking, and that we are seeing an expression of it in the way the sleeping Old Gods call to the darkspawn, and the way the higher darkspawn can subtly influence those around them. In some way, the ancient magisters found what they sought.
Summary (without the metaphysical arguments):
*Cultural conditioning goes deeper than mere learning. It is a collective influence you can only escape by having lived in complete isolation from the dominant culture.
*It is possible that the Veil is some kind of pervasive area influence, maybe an attribute of the Fade itself, instead of being fully and only of our minds. This does not change that originates there and its main influence is on our minds.
*The collective perception of all conscious living beings influence the Veil's strength, from both "sides", and certain entities have different weights regarding this influence. Apparent local differences in the Veil's strength may be the result of that.
*The metaphysical arguments should be debated as a separate topic.
***End in-world document***
(*A) This means that Eorlin rejects philosophical idealism. Note that "idealism" in this context carries a very different meaning from the term as used in everyday life. The problem in question is also related to the "problem of universals" in metaphysics. Eorlin's position would be called "Nominalism" in the real world (Which I personally hold to be the only reasonable one. I'm always surprised there are intelligent people who think otherwise).
Modifié par Ieldra2, 07 novembre 2013 - 11:48 .
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