29 réponses à ce sujet

[Darkly Tranquil]

Good point, though unless they've changed one of their founding premises - "We'll never confirm or deny the existence of the Maker" - then the Maker is going to be the last one standing as a (potential) deity.  Stripping away the godhood of the others and leaving the Maker intact seems like the lore is slowly aligning with the Chantry's version of things (at least in the larger picture) rather than making a case for no gods.
 
That makes me sad.  I actually liked the Elven pantheon better than the Chantry, and for as good a story as it makes, I do wish that they had let the elves keep their gods.

Yeah, I kind of feel that given the way they have pretty much shot holes in everyone else's beliefs, refusing to reveal the truth about the Maker seems like a cop out. I'd quite like it if we got to the end of it all and found that the punch line of DA was "No gods, no masters".

[Windwalker57]

I agree with the theory that the Old Gods were high-level demons in semi-mortal dragon form, similar to Hakkon.  Thedas historians suspect the existence of an eighth Old God dragon; I submit that this is in fact Hakkon.  The Avvar claim that the nature of a spirit/demon can be altered by the mortals who worship it, and thus both Hakkon and the Old Gods became what their cults wanted them to be.

 

Now, the Old Gods are corrupted into archdemons by darkspawn, suggesting that the darkspawn taint is a more powerful magic than the Old Gods themselves.  That tracks; the taint is a curse from the Maker, who previously defeated the Old Gods and sealed them away.

 

Which brings us to crazy theory 174(d), section 8.  What if the ancient Tevinters, like the Avvar,  always knew that the Old Gods were demons?  The notes on Corypheus suggest that the attempt to enter the Golden City occurred after Dumat stopped answering his followers' prayers-that is, after he was sealed away.  So, what if they were actually trying to enter the realm of spirits and demons in order to 'rescue' the Old Gods, and curse is a punishment for trying?

[Mistic]

As for Solas's worry about killing the Old Gods, I figured it  was the same as the Architect's - he says that without Old Gods to keep them under the ground, the Darkspawn would come up to the surface, and it would be a permanent blight.

 

I wouldn't put much trust on anything Solas may think about the taint and the darkspawn. By his own words, he was asleep during every Blight, and he didn't expect that Corypheus would have reached immortality thanks to the taint. I'd dare to say that even the Hero of Ferelden knows more about it than he does (and that's saying a lot, since the HoF started as a total newbie).

 

On the other hand, the Well of Sorrows had suspiciously specific knowledge about the link between Corypheus and his fake dragon even before Flemeth appeared, so maybe Mythal's connection with dragons should be taken into deeper consideration.

[Mephistobr]

It is possible and I actually agree that the Old Gods of Tevinter were powerful demons/spirits and that they are now inside the body of Great/High Dragons.

 

But that also raises questions:

 

Svarah Sun-Hair specifically says that once the spirit inhabit a mortal body in our world, it loses the ability to hear prayer and speak to the people, same thing happens if Cole is more bound to the human body, although to a lesser degree. If that is true to all spirits/demons, that should happen to the Old Gods as well, wich means that, either it wans't the old gods that spoke to the ancient people of Tevinter and taught them about magic, because that would be impossible, it was someonelse; or the Old Gods were bound the their dragon forms later, but who did it, and how/why?.

[ModernAcademic]

So it occurs to me that we fought a god in the body of a dragon in Hakkon.  

 

While the theory that the Old Gods were either the Forgotten Ones or the Evanuris of Elven lore (in spite of Solas's skepticism that "no one has ever connected the old gods of Tevinter" with the elven gods), it seems to me like they were more like the Avvar gods than anything else.

 

Evidence is circumstantial, admittedly:

• The Hakkon-possessed dragon can talk and reason, and taunts the Inquisitor during the battle.  It is not simply an Avvar superstition like the stuff around Storvacker seems to be.  There is an intelligence and power in that dragons do not otherwise have.
• What others call "powerful spirits" the Avvar call "gods."  Any meaningful distinction seems impossible - perhaps we could have a corollary to Clarke's law, "Any sufficiently advanced spirit is indistinguishable from a god."
• Mages and magic can summon a spirit to possess a dragon and give it physical form.  This is dangerous, as Thane Sun-Hair tells us.  "The gods should stay in dreams where they belong."
• The Tevinter dragon-gods are in stasis, unable to live or die until corrupted, as Hakkon was.  The only difference is that the Old Gods remained conscious and aware and able to call to followers.  The powers used to trap them may have been different.

This has one major implication for Thedas, of course, because of what happens when an Avvar god dies.  Its followers pray and worship and remember, and a new spirit rises and becomes what the dead god was.  The Avvar are fine with this - Thane Sun-Hair says Hakkon is in need of "a good rebirthing."

 

We keep running into secret cults and altars of Dumat.  Could the Dragon of Silence be brought back the way Avvars will bring back Hakkon?

 

I think this is a great dissertation on the subject of spirits and their relation to godhood in Thedas. There are a lot of good points that correlate the divine pantheons with the possibility of the gods actually being evolved and powerful spirits - or, if we consider the case of the Evanuris, mages that embodied said spirits - and who may possibly have subverted their true purpose, like the Elven gods, for instance, thus becoming demons.