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[dragonflight288]

As I was at work during a break, I was thinking about the Descent DLC and how I was about to start it as a dwarf Inquisitor for the first time, and it occurred to me from the last time I played it.

 

Since lyrium is actually Titan blood, does that make any magic ritual, any at all, a form of blood magic? Are the templars using blood magic as they imbibe lyrium to gain their powers? Is the ritual to free Connor of the Demon's control using lyrium blood magic like Jowan's ritual is, only without a death?

 

This is seriously a huge implication that I had not considered the first time I played through it as I was too busy thinking about how the dwarves are literally connected to the stone, the titans and the lyrium in such a way that there really is a stone sense. 

 

Thoughts?

[Lazarillo]

Yes, it is.  This was pretty much the only significant revelation of The Descent, IMO, since none of the other bits hinted at got any sort of legitimate resolution.

[vertigomez]

And blood magic's effectiveness is augmented with pain and suffering. Makes you wonder if the Titans themselves are in agony.

[In Exile]

We have no idea what it means to be "Titan's blood". We're still acting like a titan is a form of life we can comprehend - but we've never seen what kind of being a titan is meant to be in DA. The lyrium veins are tied to this being. That doesn't make it blood in the way we understand it - or in the "vital force" sense it is used in DA.

[DomeWing333]

I think the implication is that all magic relies on tapping into the life force of something, whether it be a Titan or yourself/other people. The "works best with extreme pain and death" aspect of blood magic is probably due to that being the moment when a creature's will to live is at its highest, but I don't think that's a relevant component when the creature is as massive and powerful as a Titan.

 

The part that gets me is the presence of lyrium veins in the Fade. Are there Titans in the Fade? How are they related to the Fade's magical properties?

[Steelcan]

We have no idea what it means to be "Titan's blood". We're still acting like a titan is a form of life we can comprehend - but we've never seen what kind of being a titan is meant to be in DA. The lyrium veins are tied to this being. That doesn't make it blood in the way we understand it - or in the "vital force" sense it is used in DA.

pretty much this

 

it could just be blood in a metaphorical sense

[BansheeOwnage]

Maybe it's titan lymph. Lymph magic!

[thats1evildude]

Let's not go nuts with the whole "lyrium=Titan blood" analogy. We don't even know if it hurts the Titan to mine lyrium.

 

If it were, you'd think Valta's first stop would be Orzammar to shout "Stop the mining! We're killing our gods!"

[dragonflight288]

We have no idea what it means to be "Titan's blood". We're still acting like a titan is a form of life we can comprehend - but we've never seen what kind of being a titan is meant to be in DA. The lyrium veins are tied to this being. That doesn't make it blood in the way we understand it - or in the "vital force" sense it is used in DA.

 

Maybe, maybe not. At first I thought lyrium was nothing more than concentrated magic as an ore way back in Origins. It wasn't until Inquisition came out that I started second-guessing that with the whole red lyrium is blighted thing, but even then I didn't stop to think it was living or part of something living. Now we have new lore on these Titans and next to no knowledge of them. 

 

I'm not willing to write lyrium off as not part of the vital force sense as used up to this point because there's so much unknowns at present, but nor will I rule out that it may very well simply be a unique thing and breaks the laws of normal blood magic and thus doesn't count either. 

 

It just seems that, based on what we know, anything involving lyrium is now a form of blood magic without further knowledge, as I define blood magic anything that uses blood to power a spell, or as the Chantry may say, used as a component, something Finn points out in Witch Hunt as a grey area.

 

Now I have a hilarious image in my head of informing Meredith that she and all her templars are using blood magic, not just in phylacteries but also in their use of lyrium and hope she doesn't cut off my head for suggesting it. 

 

It won't happen, but I do kind of want to picture her reaction. 

[Andromelek]

I'm concerned about something, Titans are huge, and the Temple of Sacred Ashes had a lot of Lyrium veins, if that's part of the Titan we met, then does that mean that it is being corrupted?

[dragonflight288]

I'm concerned about something, Titans are huge, and the Temple of Sacred Ashes had a lot of Lyrium veins, if that's part of the Titan we met, then does that mean that it is being corrupted?

That...is not something I considered.

[In Exile]

I'm concerned about something, Titans are huge, and the Temple of Sacred Ashes had a lot of Lyrium veins, if that's part of the Titan we met, then does that mean that it is being corrupted?

Well, if we're going to get into it - and we recall that the temple of Sacred Ashes appears to be a converted Temple of Mythal (the fight with Corypheus reveals that under the ruined floor of the temple a mural of Mythal is hidden) - there's a much more interesting theory: the Evanuris built their temples on the corpse of a Titan they slew.

There is a shot of the temple of Mythal floating around from an airborne POV that shows it built on a crevice that looks a great deal like the altar for the titan in Descent. We get hints in Trespasser that the Evanuris went to war with the Titans, that Mythal slew one, and that the world bloomed.

I think the temples of the Evanuris, the seat of their power, was built on top of the corpse of a Titan. This works with other theories - namely that the "old gods" are the bodies of the Evanuris, their "prison" is actually the temple they once ruled as God-kings, and the beings we think are "old gods" are actually abominations like Hakkon.

If we accept the theory that the elves were once spirits, then the idea of making a new God - like how the Avaar constantly remake their own gods by willing a spirit to be like the god their remember - is not so absurd. It's quite easy to see how the elves trapped in a world with the Veil would long to re-create their old world.

Anyway, back to the Titans. I think we're too stuck on thinking of Thedas as a purely material world. If the Veil is truly a fabrication and the real nature of the world was a lot more malleable - and seeing as how so many of the places the Eluvians connect to are akin to floating masses of land suspended in nothing - it may well be that a Titan is just a being that "grows" on top of one of these masses. Lyrium would just be a vein - it would be holding the world together.

[YourFunnyUncle]

The other day I did Dagna's "The Arcanist and The Fade" war table mission and it struck me that when you talk to her afterwards and she talks about "feeling mountain-tall" and "thinking all the thoughts" of her people, she might have been experiencing what it's like to be a Titan. Perhaps in some way they perform a similar role for dwarves that the fade and spirits/demons do for the other sentient races, and maybe they've been somehow sundered, which is why she says that dwarves are both the same as and different from Tranquil... Ah... there are just scraps to go on right now...

[straykat]

I've never actually played this DLC, but I would be happy if they finally made a dwarf centric story and this was just a setup. I criticize the extra races in this game, but it's only because they don't blend as well here. But what if the next game wasn't exactly/totally Tevinter. Dwarves and Kal-Sharok might be cool.

[YourFunnyUncle]

So I happen to have just started the Hissing Wastes in my current playthrough and I happened upon this note left by a Venatori mage:

 

 

It suggests that ancient dwarves had some sort of connection to spirits that is now lost... Another hint in a similar direction to what Dagna said...

[Obadiah]

I'm concerned about something, Titans are huge, and the Temple of Sacred Ashes had a lot of Lyrium veins, if that's part of the Titan we met, then does that mean that it is being corrupted?

I'd say that's a pretty good explanation for what's going on - the Titan is infected with the Taint and is slowly being corrupted.

I'm not sure what the connection is with Blights - maybe the Old God Archdemons were actually helping keep the Titan healthy or fight the Taint, until they were each corrupted by the darkspawn. Since DAO I've been wondering what the point of Blights were. I mean, if the goal is to overrun the surface, why attack as soon as one Archdemon is found? Why not wake two, or maybe all? The end result of the Blights seems to be a dead Archdemon - maybe that's its purpose?

[thats1evildude]

So I happen to have just started the Hissing Wastes in my current playthrough and I happened upon this note left by a Venatori mage:



It suggests that ancient dwarves had some sort of connection to spirits that is now lost... Another hint in a similar direction to what Dagna said...

That ties into an old DAO quest: the Gangue Shade, which involved summoning a demon at Bownammar.

http://dragonage.wik...he_Gangue_Shade

"The Stone has a will that surrounds and directs: she guides even when we are willfully blind to her presence. But she is not pure. The Stone bears a corruption as old as balance. For dwarves to prosper, the gangue - the waste and unstable rock - must be cut away. But like the Stone, the gangue also has an influence."

And then Cole says the spirits think they're still dwarves. Perhaps the gangue are unworthy spirits returned to the Stone?

[In Exile]

I'd say that's a pretty good explanation for what's going on - the Titan is infected with the Taint and is slowly being corrupted.

I'm not sure what the connection is with Blights - maybe the Old God Archdemons were actually helping keep the Titan healthy or fight the Taint, until they were each corrupted by the darkspawn. Since DAO I've been wondering what the point of Blights were. I mean, if the goal is to overrun the surface, why attack as soon as one Archdemon is found? Why not wake two, or maybe all? The end result of the Blights seems to be a dead Archdemon - maybe that's its purpose?

 

I don't think the darkspawn are after the old gods. I think the old gods are a red herring, and the darkspawn are truly after a Titan (or directed by one). We learn in Descent that the dwarves hear a "song" - music - from the Titan. Justice tells us in DA:A that lyrium "sings" in outside of the Fade. While going insane, Bartrand describes the red lyrium idol as "singing" and hears the music. I don't think the "call" is actually the call of the old gods - I think it's the call of the Titan, and specifically the corrupted Titan. 

 

I think the olds gods - assuming they are the physical form of the Evanuris - are being corrupted simple out of revenge for what the Evanuris did to the Titan. DA loves its ironies lore wise. I think that the taint - or through the taint - this being we call the Titan "takes over" the form of the dragon. 

[AresKeith]

I don't think the darkspawn are after the old gods. I think the old gods are a red herring, and the darkspawn are truly after a Titan (or directed by one). We learn in Descent that the dwarves hear a "song" - music - from the Titan. Justice tells us in DA:A that lyrium "sings" in outside of the Fade. While going insane, Bartrand describes the red lyrium idol as "singing" and hears the music. I don't think the "call" is actually the call of the old gods - I think it's the call of the Titan, and specifically the corrupted Titan. 

 

I think the olds gods - assuming they are the physical form of the Evanuris - are being corrupted simple out of revenge for what the Evanuris did to the Titan. DA loves its ironies lore wise. I think that the taint - or through the taint - this being we call the Titan "takes over" the form of the dragon. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this actually turns out to be the case

[thats1evildude]

Whereas I think the Old Gods are separate from the Evanuris and the Titans entirely, and are actually connected to the qunari. Not sure what is the end goal of the Old Gods, but I think the darkspawn are their way out of their prison.

[In Exile]

Whereas I think the Old Gods are separate from the Evanuris and the Titans entirely, and are actually connected to the qunari. Not sure what is the end goal of the Old Gods, but I think the darkspawn are their way out of their prison.

 

The problem with any theory separating the OGs from either is that you now have two "songs" you have to explain, even though the sources of every "song" is tied to lyrium. So now regular lyrium has a song - a natural feature of the Titan - and we have red lyrium with its own song, and old gods with some third song? That is not every parsimonious, and themes like that in fiction tend to be consistent. 

 

Plus, their corruption is clearly not part of the plan, given what Mythal/Flemeth wants with the DR.

[Obadiah]

There's the song in Lyrium, Red Lyrium, the Strone, and the Taint, but there's also the whisper voices that Grey Wardens and Reavers hear when they injest the Archdemon and High Dragon blood in DAO.

[thats1evildude]

The problem with any theory separating the OGs from either is that you now have two "songs" you have to explain, even though the sources of every "song" is tied to lyrium. So now regular lyrium has a song - a natural feature of the Titan - and we have red lyrium with its own song, and old gods with some third song? That is not every parsimonious, and themes like that in fiction tend to be consistent.

Plus, their corruption is clearly not part of the plan, given what Mythal/Flemeth wants with the DR.

Cole describes the song of the Old Gods as being different than that of lyrium in Asunder. It's right at the start of Chapter 11.

Also, the fact that Flemeth wanted the essence of an uncorrupted Old God doesn't mean that's what the Old God itself wanted.

My thinking is that the Old Gods were a separate pantheon from the Evanuris; they co-existed with the elves, but they weren't connected beyond that. Flemeth just wanted Urthemiel's power.

[dragonflight288]

Cole describes the song of the Old Gods as being different than that of lyrium in Asunder. It's right at the star of Chapter 11.

Also, the fact that Flemeth wanted the essence of an uncorrupted Old God doesn't mean that's what the Old God itself wanted.

My thinking is that the Old Gods were a separate pantheon from the Evanuris; they co-existed with the elves, but they weren't connected beyond that. Flemeth just wanted Urthemiel's power.

 

Possibly, but one does not seek power for power's sake unless they're idiots who think power is the end. Someone like Flemeth wouldn't want that power unless she was planning on doing something with it.

 

So that begs the question of why. Why does she need power that as an evanuris, even a shadow of one, she cannot achieve? And why does Solas/Fen'Harel need to take it from her?

 

And do the Titans tie in to that at all? 

[dragonflight288]

That ties into an old DAO quest: the Gangue Shade, which involved summoning a demon at Bownammar.

http://dragonage.wik...he_Gangue_Shade

"The Stone has a will that surrounds and directs: she guides even when we are willfully blind to her presence. But she is not pure. The Stone bears a corruption as old as balance. For dwarves to prosper, the gangue - the waste and unstable rock - must be cut away. But like the Stone, the gangue also has an influence."

And then Cole says the spirits think they're still dwarves. Perhaps the gangue are unworthy spirits returned to the Stone?

 

Or possibly rejected by the titans themselves?

 

This new lore is absolutely fascinating in how the dwarves have a literal stone sense and that they may indeed return to the Stone at death.