When The Redemptive Cleansing spreads to every corner of Thedas, The Maker will return to us with His Divine Gift of Absolution, and we will be born anew. His plan predates the conception of The Black City, so conceived as to initiate the cleansing should any into whom He'd breathed life be so presumptuous as to seek to stand before Him on equal footing. The moment our ancestors – those man-mages of the Tevinter of old – revealed to Him that most ill of intents seated deep within their stolen hearts, they had failed The Maker's test, dooming all of creation with them.
– From Chant of Redemption, as whispered to me upon the wind by Archdemon Andoral.
It is important to understand that, contrary to what the Chantry would have us believe, the so-called Golden City did not come to ruin as a result of the encroaching mages' corruptive influence: it was all along ruinous and decrepit, its splendorous facade indiscernible to all but the eyes of the corrupt. Though many believe this location to have housed The Maker Himself, those who have gazed outward from within its bounds know best the obvious truth: He's made no one place His home, for all that which exists belongs solely to Him.
But the corrupt do not see with clarity; what is positively vile is, by their eyes, golden. On that fateful day, the most depraved of man's kind succumbed to The Black City's dark allure – the foul notion that any man could possibly elevate himself to the level of his creator – and unwittingly set His plan in motion. Cleansed of their corruption, they emerged, fully obedient and utterly incorruptible. By The Maker's design, they had become what we refer to as the darkspawn.
Seeking nothing more than to redeem themselves in the eyes of The Maker, from then on they would do only His bidding, and He bade them return to Thedas to cleanse that land of the taint of men. And the darkspawn set out to perform this task, eager as they were, in the hopes that success here would warrant them absolution for their ancestors' disparaging affront to His authority.
Indeed, The Maker had sought to forgive His ever-so-obedient servants. By His mercy and their success, they should earn the privilege to serve as vessels – living hosts – for His original and most beloved creation: the spirits of the fade. Only in so doing could the darkspawn hope to attain redemption in the eyes of The Maker.
In joining with the denizens of the fade, the darkspawn stand to gain the freedom of will, intelligence and curiosity of their otherworldly counterparts, who in turn will be bound by the inherent incorruptibility of the darkspawn, thereby freeing them of their insatiable hunger for emotions like desire and rage. (A note is scribbled beside the main body of text: I fear that the resulting entity might prove to be far greater than the sum of its components.)
The Maker knows that His spirits long for nothing more than to experience the wonders of Thedas firsthand – a privilege once afforded to the races of men. And so it will come to pass that when all of man's kind are but empty shells and their hollowed vessels filled, Thedas will be home to a race that is solely worthy of His adoration.
We are at the dawning of a new era.
(A note has been inserted beneath the final passage: This was among his belongings, Turin. Do you think, maybe, the late Warden was telling us the truth – that he could actually hear the call of the Archdemon? See to it that this finds its way to the Shaperate.)
-- Found written upon bound pages of parchment discovered in a recently reclaimed Dwarven thaig, tucked within a long-abandoned armored suit of the fashion commonly donned by the Legion of the Dead. These pages are distinguished by a common feature: a bold watermark depicting a griffon with talons outstretched.
Modifié par Korvayer, 21 janvier 2010 - 04:47 .
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