I really need someone to walk me through this. The history of Frostback Basin since the second blight is spelled out pretty clearly in game, but huge chunks of the Tevinter and pre-Tevinter lore that are scattered around the place are still a mess in my head.
What actually happened to the priests of Razikale?
The Tevinter timeline is tough to piece together. Two in-game sources seem to suggest that forces moved into the basin shortly before their gods went silent, which would place their arrival in the same general timeframe as (but prior to) Corypheus' trip to the Golden City. The first is the seemingly rote inscription found here:
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Setting aside the nifty pointers to Mythal (and by extension Fates/Norns/Spider iconography), this doesn't seem particularly useful- but in context, it acts as a foil for other inscriptions that mark her initial silence and plead more and more desperately for a response.
The second source is the Mouth of Echoes codex, which also suggests Razikale didn't fall silent until after the priests had made contact with native Avvar. Her absence makes them desperate, forcing them to consider barbarian rituals and sites they'd originally laughed off as superstition.
The problem with this timeline is that it begs the question of why. If Tevinter's arrival in the basin came in the wake of Corypheus' expedition to the City and the sudden silence of their gods, there would be an obvious motivating factor there. The Vints have a pretty well-established history of hunting down and building over places of ancient power to try to tap into leftover Elvhen mojo and unsurprisingly, that's exactly what they do in the Basin as soon as Razikale falls silent. As we've seen, though, the little evidence we have suggests that they arrived while she was still active. And if that's true, then to spell out the obvious, the most likely reason they came is because Razikale told them to. That perspective (given her domain) throws a very different light on everything that followed: how intentional it was and the larger purpose it may have served.
We already know the outcome wasn't so good for the priests. =w=
"Silence has fallen, and madness descends."
"Run if you can. Madness has filled the silence. Do not return to this place."
On the surface, the "madness" described could just be the community falling apart without faith to give it structure, but that final scrawl suggests something darker- more like they were desperately trying to reach Razikale and something else emerged instead. This has some support in the codex for Razikale's Reach, where the native guide describes Tevinter abandoning their temples abruptly and without warning, underscoring the idea that open conflict with the Avvar didn't drive them out. It also seems like counter evidence for the Tale of Hyrngnar even as a metaphor, though it's possible the mutative force of oral history merged two separate entities into one.
So what do we know?
The prime suspect is the figure we find outside the sealed fortress-temple complex in the northeast: a statue so big I didn't even notice that it was one until I was halfway up its arm.
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The obvious:
1) Clearly ancient, and not Avvar or Tevinter in origin. Not their style, not their god.
2) Elvhen seems a safe bet, which makes the weathering of this statue significant. We're used to seeing ancient statuary in nearly pristine condition, carefully protected from exposure and age by old magic. This usual protection, along with the larger complex we'll look at shortly, seems purposefully shattered here. Support for the possibility of a Forgotten One.
3) Two short, goat-like horns and what seems to be a beard. No match for any known figure in the elvish Pantheon. More FO support.
4) The (apparently painful!) way roots seem to have burst from the ground to twine around the figure's outstretched arm echoes Cole's comment on the thorned growth and enormous exposed roots in the Kuldsdotten swamp: "The trees are fighting. They are very angry, but very slow." Whoever this is, it's a fair bet he pissed off Earth/Mythal.
The not-so-obvious:
When Tevinter first built their fortress outside the Temple gates, this statue was not there. While the figure itself seems to obviously predate Tevinter, all evidence at the site points to the fact that it emerged from the ground after the fortification was built, drastically shifting the stone around it in the process. Seen from above, the external walls form a nearly perfect circle, topped by a walkway and interspersed at regular intervals with Tevinter's signature metal spikes. This wall is abruptly interrupted exactly where the statue emerges from the earth, but not because they built around it. It's tough to show in a screenshot, but a quick look in game makes it clear that the piece that used to be contiguous (and the stone around it) seems to have been lifted almost straight up as the figure emerged from below, a considerable distance from where each side once connected.
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Though less dramatic, irregular buckling in the wall is noticeable at the other end of the struggle between the figure and his bonds as well. Again, suggesting that this now-frozen event took place after the wall was built.
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Add this to the fact that the larger basin area is criss-crossed with the faint traces of what seems to have been an extensive ancient complex, nearly obliterated by its initial destruction and the passage of time. I'm not sure this passes a sanity check, but the flat stone pathways we find everywhere in the basin, ringing the islands and forming broken bridges strike me as slightly too regular to be natural. Bonus weirdness: the odd circle of foundation stones filled with redcap mushrooms at the top of the hill.
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So. Big red flag for Tevinter finding and messing with something they shouldn't have. Check.
Tying it into the larger picture? Not as simple.
So who, exactly, is this?
Until now, we've only had a few threadbare hints that a goat-horned entity may once have existed in the elvish Pantheon. There's no related figure in Dalish myth (unsurprising, if you buy into the theory that the Forgotten Ones are former members who ticked off the Pantheon) and just three physical sources of possible significance:
1) Merrill's mirror. A goat icon tops the crest of her eluvian. Given the conspicuous absence of ram / goat references in modern Dalish mythology, the fact that it's prominently featured on a significant ancient Elvhen artifact lends considerable support to "Forgotten One" theory.
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The design is also unlike any other eluvian we've encountered in game- the looping bits in front suggesting it may not have been constructed with the intention of people entering it physically. This could make it a very early test-run of the core concept, a prototype, which given the domain knowledge necessary would suggest the unknown god would have to have had a very strong connection to Mythal.
Alternatively, the looping wooden pieces at the base might be an indication of how it came to be broken in the first place: roots twining around and squeezing until it shattered, similar to the statue we see outside the temple. From that perspective, its strikingly unique design could be the product of its creator's inability to create an eluvian by the usual means- the oddities a result of having to use an alternative materials and methods, suggesting an outsider's work. It's not clear.
2) The decapitated statue presenting a ram's head.
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Commemorating the Pantheon's triumph and the god's punishment? Possibly. The lack of context and the difference between goats and rams makes the link tenuous at best, but the tear stains on the ram's face are enough for me to leave this in the 'suspicious' pile.
3) The hanging totem. Though ostensibly a representation of Maferath's fall, the cyclical nature of the DA universe leaves the door open for alternate historical interpretations. The totem animals have been previously theorized as a raven/eagle, halla, and wolf - the triad of Elvhen revolution- but given that the basic image could extend from an even earlier triad, the central figure looks distinctly goat-like to me, making it the only icon of the three that can't be tied to a known entity.
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So, then... is this Geldauran?
*facepalms*
...I don't know. Unlike the final sealed prison of Solas'an, Geldauran's cell is empty- if that's actually what it was. That's not a surprise, since the journal we find claims Hakkon granted the first JoH the ability to see keystones and pointed them there "to learn the mysteries of winter". It's tough to separate lore-relevant hints from gameplay, but that benefit didn't necessarily involve confronting something inside. Our Inquisitor still gets cold-resistence rewards just for poking her head in, so it remains possible that Tevinter cracked the seal first, and the place was already empty by the time the JoH showed up.
Wait, hold up. Wouldn't that mean it's possible that Hakkon could have been Geldauran?
It's... technically possible. The Lady is the only god mentioned in the Avvar origin saga, and we have no idea when they incorporated Hakkon into their pantheon. On the one hand, the whole thing is almost too coincidental not to be connected in some way. The prison of a known Forgotten One in the same zone as a massive, obliterated ancient temple complex, complete with nameless crying god? That's hard to overlook.
On the other hand, how would it all fit? The leap from cell-trapped spirit to statue is really hard to explain, plus the waterfall tears (and the fact that the trees still seem to be fighting back) give the distinct impression that something is still active here.
Am I missing something? Is there an obvious way to neatly wrap all this up?
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