9 réponses à ce sujet

[Brass_Buckles]

I didn't want to get into a detailed discussion about uthenara in the Solas thread, so I brought it here--a thread to discuss all things pertaining to the ancient elves' waking sleep.

 

Uthenara is the deathlike sleep ancient elves used to undergo, when they would enter the Fade but their bodies would remain alive behind them.  It may or may not have been the secret to their immortality, if they were ever even really immortal as they believe.

 

But beyond that, I don't know a whole lot.  I don't remember ever reading if they can wake from it at all, and given the song Leliana sings, not to mention the aspects mentioned by Felassen in Masked Empire, where the slumbering elders would watch over the other elves, it seems to me like they don't generally wake from it.

 

So... if they never were meant to wake, could they be wakened? Or did they eventually die, making elven immortality a lie, hence the tombs? And is there any possibility that there are still some out there, slumbering away?

 

Also, what state does an elf who is in uthenara go into, physically, outside of the Fade, after a few hundred years of sleeping?  I would think that their muscles would atrophy, etc.  Felassen noted that they'd get sustenance from herbs, until they could sustain their bodies entirely from the Fade.  Would dehydration still be an issue?  What about parasites and pests, with no one looking after them?  We know of at least one ancient who was murdered in his or her sleep with a cut throat.

 

The tombs clearly had dead elves--there were sarcophogi as well as beds.  So what killed them?  War, disease, accidents?  Failure to adapt to uthenara?  Fade spirits?

 

And did all  tombs hold elves in uthenara?

 

Does World of Thedas shed any light on this, or do the comics?  Because it seems to me that the most information I recall seeing is located in Masked Empire.  There may be more info in the codexes in DA:O and DA:2, I just don't remember it--still replaying DA:O and reading the entries as I go.

[In Exile]

I think the lore right now is pretty open ended on whether this is a real state of living or just death with someone's spirit (possibly) going to the Fade.

We see one elf that supposedly was in this sleep state in DAO but that turned out to be a demon. Or one of those Fade echoes we saw in the Deep Roads in DAO or DAA.

[Brass_Buckles]

I think the lore right now is pretty open ended on whether this is a real state of living or just death with someone's spirit (possibly) going to the Fade.

We see one elf that supposedly was in this sleep state in DAO but that turned out to be a demon. Or one of those Fade echoes we saw in the Deep Roads in DAO or DAA.

 

See, I really do not remember that at all... it's been years since I played DA:O or DA:A.

 

To me, uthenara really just seems like death being referred to as not-death, but then Masked Empire tells us that they still had to eat, until they learned to draw energy straight from the Fade.  What with the caretaking and the feeding etc. it sort of sounded like how the ancient Egyptians (and some other cultures, of which some continue to exist) would handle their mummies.

 

Yet, I think the elves would have known it it were truly death.  And they were supposed to be immortal.  Supposed to be.  Logically I would expect that the elves could wake after a certain amount of time, or when they got tired of wandering the Fade and playing guardian angel to the other elves, but we just don't hear about that, we only hear about tombs and death and white beds.

 

And how would an elf be treated by other elves, after waking from uthenara, anyway, assuming they could?  Would they be due even more respect than elven elders usually were accorded?  We know that elders (hahren) are highly revered among the Dalish, and there's evidence that they were just as much if not more so in ancient elven history.

 

All I have are questions, it seems.

[In Exile]

There's lots of reasons to think the elves were never immortal and that they used some other magical means to prolong their lives (like blood magic). So the fact that the current incarnation of elves think the old elves were ageless (they do use the phrase immortal, but it's obvious it's immortal in the don't die of old age and/or maybe disease sense, not unkillable sense) does not  per se mean that Arlathan elveness never actually aged or died of old age.  

 

That being said, the fact that the elves had to be fed at first to not starve to death doesn't create a problem for the theory that the elves were not capable of doing of old age, because dying of starvation (like being stabbed in the face) is an unrelated way to die. 

 

Keep in mind also that mages could enter the fade at all, and the elves believed at a time they were all mages. So the fact that the elves slept and were in the Fade doesn't mean anything necessarily, other than maybe that all elves were truly mages in the past. 

[Brass_Buckles]

There's lots of reasons to think the elves were never immortal and that they used some other magical means to prolong their lives (like blood magic). So the fact that the current incarnation of elves think the old elves were ageless (they do use the phrase immortal, but it's obvious it's immortal in the don't die of old age and/or maybe disease sense, not unkillable sense) does not  per se mean that Arlathan elveness never actually aged or died of old age.  

 

That being said, the fact that the elves had to be fed at first to not starve to death doesn't create a problem for the theory that the elves were not capable of doing of old age, because dying of starvation (like being stabbed in the face) is an unrelated way to die. 

 

Keep in mind also that mages could enter the fade at all, and the elves believed at a time they were all mages. So the fact that the elves slept and were in the Fade doesn't mean anything necessarily, other than maybe that all elves were truly mages in the past. 

 

I don't think all elves were mages, but maybe all elven nobles, considering what Felassen said in Masked Empire.  It's a fact the Dalish (and city elves) have conveniently forgotten.  And similarly I think only the nobles ever entered uthenara.

 

Felassen didn't use blood magic to enter the Fade, but he DID use herbs, so he wasn't a dreamer, I think.  It wouldn't surprise me if the ancient elves did something similar.

 

As to what I meant by the elves needing to be fed when entering uthenara... I didn't mean that to say that they aren't immortal if they don't need food.  I think of them as immortal in the ageless way, too.  Disease apparently ravaged them when humans came ashore, though.  But again, the vibe I got was "servants/family members taking care of mummies of their dead loved ones and expecting those dead loved ones to watch over them in return."

 

And a strange thought I had... if the elves could enter the Fade and wander around after they got to a certain age, maybe their immortality had nothing to do with agelessness in their bodies.  Maybe rituals could be done to enable an elf to enter a new body (similar to Morrigan's Dark Ritual for the Old God).  In fact it makes quite a bit of sense that such a ritual would already exist, for Morrigan to base hers on, even if she had no idea that it would work for certain with an Old God.  Imagine:  a whole caste of nobility who could keep resurrecting themselves, over and over again.  And maybe if they chose a favored servant's family to be reborn into they could lift that family up.  Etc.  Both creepy and fascinating.

[EkhidnaDrakaina]

I don't think all elves were mages, but maybe all elven nobles, considering what Felassen said in Masked Empire.  It's a fact the Dalish (and city elves) have conveniently forgotten.  And similarly I think only the nobles ever entered uthenara.
 
Felassen didn't use blood magic to enter the Fade, but he DID use herbs, so he wasn't a dreamer, I think.  It wouldn't surprise me if the ancient elves did something similar.

Maybe it's something more akin to a drug induced state imitating the true dreaminess/Fade state. I hate to dispel the magicalness with more crude terms, but maybe that's all it is.

[Banxey]

There is a Codex Entry and from that (and also what Mihris said in TME) it seems that some people do believe they awoke from time to time. I suppose if a person can sustain themselves physically from energy in the Fade their body would be in a sort of suspended animation. 

[azarhal]

But again, the vibe I got was "servants/family members taking care of mummies of their dead loved ones and expecting those dead loved ones to watch over them in return."

 

The Pentaghasts want their burial rites back...

 

I always found Nevarran mummifying their dead in grand necropolis to have similarities to the elven burial sites seen in both games with the tombs and mummies. Despite the custom being created by a Magister advising the first Nevarran King, I always wondered if there was more to it.

 

[nightcobra]

so...

 

Solas, an expert on the fade... could he have been in the fade all this time and was only recently awakened while his body was in this uthenera "stasis"?

 

i know, i know it's very unlikely and that i'm most likely very far off the mark.

but hey, food for thought.

[wcholcombe]

I suspect the elves entering uthenara is just them being really skilled dreamers.