This is a follow-up to this thread (feel free to ignore it) I started when I hadn't even gotten through Val Royeaux yet. I was as fascinated by Solas' Fade experiences and their implications then as I am now.
The Fade is the most unique and amazing aspect of DA lore, IMO. Not arguing that- just saying that it hasn't been done so well in any other game as an explanation for magic, spirits, etc., that it's done with an exceptional amount of detailed rendering and even indulges philosophical implications, and that it's what most intrigues me with DA's lore going forward.
Just thought I'd mention that first before delving into a digression- haha. (It gets more complimentary later...) The basis of the concept of the Fade is the fallacy that there are two separate worlds- roughly "reality" and "magic world." In the real world there is no separation, and it's not a harmony of both, as Solas would have us believe, but rather exclusively one: the real world. ("Clap if you believe in fairies!!!" exhorted the real world announcer. "Do we have to?" *slap*) Magic has no actual effect in the real world except in fiction, as fiction- something real world people write and read and perform and fantasize about. But there's a more interesting aspect to DA's handling of the dissonance: the Fade is a collection of memories, primal emotions, "spirits" once-living or just-generated, even quantum potential. There is a fairly distinct "realm" designated as "Fade"-applicable, even if that realm is "experienced" for "real" as we play the game. We can be killed in the Fade physically in Trespasser after all, which makes it awkward describing the Fade as not just another physical place to visit... since we can physically visit it, and it always looks pretty much like the same place. We're never in the Fade wondering if we're really in Kirkwall or just a Fade manifestation of Kirkwall: those huge greenish floating rock masses are sorta a giveaway. ("Look, there's' a spinning jack!")
The mention of "spirits" immediately calls to mind (OK, for me anyway) the difference between a monist and a dualist. A dualist (whose perspective corresponds with the conceptualization of a "Fade") sees existence as divided between two distinct seeming extremes- typically "mind/spirit/soul" and "body." It's the view held most eagerly by children, children most able to believe something simply because they can imagine it. That Cole was a "spirit" that "became" a "real" person is completely believable to a child... since they can imagine it up. It's the basis of a tremendous (and embarrassing) amount of adult fallacy as well, of course, but then I'd have to delve into religion and politics which I'll eschew... reluctantly... The main thing is that DA's Fade reflects this so well: it consists entirely of the things that can be imagined up into "existence"- and makes it a "real" thing to deal with in-game.
A monist recognizes that the world = the world, that there is no separation between "spirit" and body, that the physical is the world, that the mind or spirit or name-your-euphemism is a physical manifestation, that the seeming separation in the world is only a way of looking at it rather than a mechanic of existence itself, in effect that the Fade is anthropomorphism at its finest. Entirely real human experience- dreams, fantasies, feral urges, instincts, wishes- have an explanation: they're what the human brain (maybe the brains of other organisms, but I'm a speciesist, so HAHAHA stupid mice and dolphins!) can conceive abstractly. Human consciousness- the product of a type of species that used brain development to advance its interests- makes all of that conceivable... but not necessarily realizable. The true distinction is not between imaginatively doing and physically doing (which are the same thing) but between what we can conceive of doing and we can actually do. The fact that people so often poorly estimate what they can actually do does not, however, reflect on the nature of reality: it reflects on the nature of how our consciousness works. That dwarves can't cast spells in DA is a product of humans designing them that way for whatever self-absorbed reasons they have, not because my fantasy of dwarves doesn't include a potential for spell-casting. So there!
Put more succinctly, DA's dynamic involves a distinction between spirits/imagination/emotion and the "real" world, but, in fact, the more accurate distinction is between ways people experience the world and the world itself. Except that in the latter case there's no Veil other than our more or less reliable capacity for comprehension. In that other thread I'd speculated that DA's core lore (not dealing with the politics of the qun or Vints or the Orlesian "game," more the foundation of existence) could come down to freedom vs order- a theme not usually played out regarding the foundation of existence- and in a sense it did, but it's more a matter of reified (curious real world term) mental tendencies vs established game physics. And that's the nature of fiction itself: how far the author will bend the rules of reality to make the story fit.
I'm such a wet blanket. But the way DA approaches the matter is still utterly fascinating to me. It's not presented as a given the way most games do: "OK, this is a fantasy world, so, of course, there's spells. Ain't our Fireballs cool?" The writers have non-self-consciously integrated an elaborate and fairly sophisticated explanation for how magic exists, for how "Rage" and "LustDesire" and such spirits exist, for what magic has done to the world we experience, for- wait, they haven't mentioned that midichlorians are stronger in mage blood... and they're not even done explaining it all yet! Or letting it play itself out in entirely. What do Titans have to do with the magic that the Evanurisianesians depended upon, growing their magic lyrium veins into the very stone? This is why DAI is a profound development on previous DA's, whatever gameplay considerations might go into evaluating the franchise's history. Now we're not just left with DAO's vague (but still intriguing) explanation to mages that they get their abilities from this Fade thingy where there's a City thingy and, you know, demons and spirits. We know that the Veil is "artificial," that the world is otherwise a wash between imagination and fixed structure, that the Fade isn't chaos but a reflection of the experiences of people living in the world, that the Fade has a physical history and some not-yet-quite-fully-known effect on the world if the Veil isn't "in place."
The fact that the "Veil" is more the suspension of disbelief than a dam holding back wild imagination doesn't make it any less fascinating. I mean, how does "the world" without the Veil affect, say, those connect-the-dot stars? Does that vast universe that DA mentions "up" there (and depicts in the Hissing Wastes skies) play a part in "where" the Fade is? The Fade would be terribly pedestrian if it were confined only to Thedas- if that's what the whole planet is called rather than just the continental group we "know" so far. Is there extrathedasional life in the universe? (ME meets DA...) And what about other continents on "the planet"- which doesn't exactly have a name after all since we don't yet even have a Thedas Magellan in DA that has sailed the seas to verify the world isn't flat and that India is the other continental mass. For all we know folks over there- "those across the sea"- know it's a spherical world and are about to launch a mission to the moon. Did they notice the Conclave Rift from over there? How does the Fade affect them over there? Do they have darkspawn and blights or are darkspawn localized to the known Thedas continents? Or dragons which can fly the seas? How did they get there? Are they remnants of Elvhenan as well? Do the Deep Roads extend that far? These are the kinds of things that DA invites us to speculate about- as well as more "conservative" speculations about what's really going on in Par Vollen or Kal-Shirok or Vintland (how mundane!).
DA is just such a worldly imaginary world. 
I'd rather obsess about DA's mythology than the meh presumptuous real world mythologies any day. Not that the devs are obligated to explain (concoct) every possible fundamental detail of the universe they create... but they've actually been doing that! Just felt it worth an appreciative mention...
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