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[PsychoBlonde]

You know what'd also be interesting about the souls that "return" (according to the Avvar) . . . what if souls that have been around the block a few times are mages?  That magical ability tends to run in bloodlines because the returning soul generally re-expresses in one of its descendants (hence why it was so important for Finn to perform the rite of return himself, or else he'd lose his name and no longer be Calder's son any more).  But any person can build up a strong enough soul that it can come back, so a mage can appear anywhere.

[Sifr]

There were Orlesian nobles talking about praying to the Maker, hoping he will answer prayers, and if not, then just pray.

A faithful Inquisitor can say "I am the Maker's chosen!"

The Chantry itself asks if the PC is the Maker's chosen.

Such thoughts oppose the doctrine of abandonment, as it implies the Maker is still interacting with the world, directly or indirectly.

It's been a long time since I played, so I can't think of much, but I recall Inquisition really throwing the Maker around a lot, and I thought it strange because I expected Andraste to be talked about more since Origins says she still cares and such, but the Maker will not answer prayers.

 

That's why the Chantry largely considers us a Heretic at the start of the game, because the entire idea of a "Herald of Andraste" being chosen by either Andraste or sent by the Maker is so anathema to what the Chantry teaches, as their stance is the Maker does not directly get involved.

 

It seems that the Chantry view actions that serve the Maker and the Chantry (such as the Warden stopping the Blight) as fulfilling what the Maker intended them to do. This suggests that the Chantry view of the Maker's involvement in the world is limited, so that while he might have a plan and purpose for his creations, it's up to each person to figure out for themselves, rather than him giving them directions or hints to what he wants done?

 

Or to quote the novel Good Omens;

 

"God does not play dice with the universe; he plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and highly complex game of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time."

[Daerog]

We know souls can be trapped in the Fade. We know spirits can be pulled from the Fade and bound to something.

Maybe it is possible to pull a soul out of the Fade?

Well, it is possible it is just a spirit mimicking a dead person... but maybe Augur can sense the difference...



I made a theory years ago that said the souls of the ancient Sidreal are bound to the blight and reborn through it. So, if one was killed before one could body-hop, the one would be eventually reborn through a broodmother, but lose memory. This would explain how the Architect was different from Cory and thinks him/itself as another darkspawn, unlike Cory.

[Dai Grepher]

I don't see why Corypheus would want to create any kind of powerful spirit of good. I think the most likely reason was to send a message and plunge Thedas into chaos. Kill the Maker's agent, remove the one leader most able to unify the people, and use her spirit to unlock the orb. She was just the perfect target, and she was easy for Corypheus to get to.

[thesuperdarkone2]

We know souls can be trapped in the Fade. We know spirits can be pulled from the Fade and bound to something.

Maybe it is possible to pull a soul out of the Fade?

 

That already happened in the Alistair comics. In the comics, Alistair's group requires information that a dead magister knew so Maevaris pulls his soul out of the Fade so he can be interrogated.

[Akiza]

That already happened in the Alistair comics. In the comics, Alistair's group requires information that a dead magister knew so Maevaris pulls his soul out of the Fade so he can be interrogated.

I don't think is possible to do that to every soul but just to someone who died from a short period of time

[Aliceeverafter]

 

Maybe a "god" is something that people manufacture through worship.  It is like a storehouse of their wishing and hoping, gradually accumulating power.

It would explain how demons like the Nightmare work, too--they're like an anti-god, a repository of fears instead of more positive emotions.

Terry Pratchett wrote about this. It's an interesting idea, that gods are created if enough people think something really happens (like the god of things getting stuck in kitchen drawers, or the sock monster etc). so not a new idea. and after all, there's nothing as strong as belief.

[PsychoBlonde]

I think you're on to something...

 

 

 

While you're on a roll with your theory: since Solas claims he made the Veil, where/how does a combined world (the real and the fade) fit into this theory?

 

In the elven library in Trespasser you come across elves describing spirits as "brethren of the air" who "have not yet taken physical form" and also there's reference to the Forbidden Ones (Gaxkang, Xebenkek, and Imshael among others) dropping their physical forms in order to go hide in the Fade.  So it would seem that in the pre-Veil world, spirits taking physical form (like Cole) wasn't all that uncommon, and this may be where the elves originally came from.  Also keep in mind that the pre-Veil elves *really were immortal* so the concept of "life after death" would have been kind of nonsensical to them.  Uthenera was more a form of "sleep" to them than "death", and the "soul" of the elf in Uthenera wandered the Fade freely.  As far as they were concerned, if you were still persisting you were still probably "alive" in some form.  But you had to attain a certain level of power/wisdom before you could enter Uthenera or otherwise persist.  So that kind of tends to back up the idea that the "soul" that persists after you die is something you have to build/acquire over time.  With the Veil, that soul (IF you have one strong enough to persist and maintain memories) is trapped away from the world, so it can't interact very much with the living.  And post-veil people probably don't have the capability to build up strong enough souls to do much of anything.

The elves say that Elgar'nan was "born of the Sun and the Earth" and that the land brought forth plants and beasts and so forth as a favor to Elgar'nan.  The Sun got pissed off that Elgar'nan favored the Earth and burned everything, so Elgar'nan kicked the sun's ass and buried it in the earth, although he changed his mind later at Mythal's insistence.

 

This might be a poetic way of describing something along the lines of:

 

The first elves were powerful spirits who figured out how to take physical form (somehow).  I suspect that "the Sun" in this story may be a metaphorical way of saying "magic", so the elves take physical form, the Titans are like "oh cool" and start making interesting things for the Elves to play with, the elves get a little out of hand and blow everything up with magic, the elven leaders wrestle with magic and finally learn how to control it without blowing everything up, possibly by using lyrium--they start building stuff, they eventually get greedy and begin mining lyrium very aggressively, the Titans create various critters (like the dwarves) in an effort to stop the elves, Mythal kills a Titan, there's a big war between the Elves and the Dwarves which leads to the elven leaders becoming more aggressive and eventually holding themselves up as gods (I suspect that this is the war that Solas was referring to at the end of Trespasser), millions of lesser elves are enslaved, Solas begins organizing resistance, POSSIBLY with Mythal's blessing and support, the other Evanuris get pissed off and kill Mythal in retaliation, Solas creates the Veil, simultaneously destroying the elven empire and (maybe?) sending the Titans to sleep, causing the Dwarves to "wake up" and become independently sentient.
 

It's just a theory, tho, it's all very sketchy.  It doesn't explain where the modern post-veil races came from (although, who knows, maybe humans are a cross between elves and dwarves).  As for the Qunari, who knows, there were some references in Inquisition to "those across the sea" in various war table missions and, at a guess that refers to the civilization that the Qunari fled from.  Maybe the post-veil races all arose from various magical experiments and have since diverged and become their own thing. 

[PsychoBlonde]

Terry Pratchett wrote about this. It's an interesting idea, that gods are created if enough people think something really happens (like the god of things getting stuck in kitchen drawers, or the sock monster etc). so not a new idea. and after all, there's nothing as strong as belief.

 

Pratchett wrote about it in the context of a DIFFERENT fantasy world. Anything he said viz Discworld has no bearing on whether there's evidence in the DA lore for this kind of theory one way or the other.  Pointing out this kind of similarity is like saying "well the dragons in Pern have four legs and a tail so DA dragons must be able to go between and communicate telepathically".  What one person made up has no bearing on what another person made up even if they are cosmetically similar.

[kimgoold]

It would also mean that all the gods and demons that plague the world are basically given that power by people.  It would explain why Solas is trying to gather up a following instead of just using his mighty mage powers to do whatever he wants.  His orb may have been a simple repository for the accumulation of his "godhood"--the tool he used to access that power instead of just letting it accumulate in the Fade.  The Divine has no such tool, so her "godhood" was semi-independent and only effective within the Fade.  Solas was a god for a long, long time, so even if very few people believed in him any more he could still have accumulated immense power over time.

 

The explosions from the Anchor in the Tresspasser DLC may have been that power--reposed in the Inquisitor by her dramatic defeat of Corypheus--overloading because the Inquisitor didn't really know how it worked.  The Anchor was a gateway to that power that allowed it to be accessed.

 

This is a great theory, if the Devs expand on how the Evanuris, Fen'harel and the Inquisitor could be semi-divine along these lines in DA4 the game will be awesome. I love this idea and hope it is used in DA4. 

[SwobyJ]

Considering how adamantly against dealing with spirits the modern Chantry is, I'd say it's reasonable to suspect that the Chantry's entire belief system is basically organized around the principle of preventing such gods from being created.  (They're adamantly opposed to cults of all kinds.)

 

The bit about "if everybody sings the Chant, the Maker will come back" basically is just there to tell them "spread the dang chant".

 

IF my theory is remotely accurate, even if there never was a "Maker" and it was your standard "we made this up to motivate people and explain things that make no dang sense" style of religion, there is probably some kind of Maker-spirit NOW and it is probably both immensely powerful and weirdly directionless given the ENORMOUS variety of beliefs regarding it.  Which could be horrifying, if you think about it--the Chantry set out to suppress this kind of thing and wound up creating the thermonuclear bomb of gods.

 

Or not, it may simply be nonspecific enough that there is no real singular entity you could call "The Maker" or "The Maker Accumulation".

 

Maker exists/'doesn't exist' beyond time and space. The very green weirdness of the Fade itself could be a manifestation of it. We may never have proof of Him but He may be in/involving 'All'.

 

The more people are 'ready' for the Maker (Leliana --> Herald Followers --> ? Return of 'Andraste'?), the more He will make himself Known. At least from a point of view.

 

Inquisition is all about playing the heretic and getting away with it. People here shouldn't be surprised to see other examples of 'heracy' gaining ground, especially after the established religious dogma is shown to fracture.

 

Any solution to these Maker questions will have multiple routes and multiple accepted answers.

[SwobyJ]

That's why the Chantry largely considers us a Heretic at the start of the game, because the entire idea of a "Herald of Andraste" being chosen by either Andraste or sent by the Maker is so anathema to what the Chantry teaches, as their stance is the Maker does not directly get involved.

 

It seems that the Chantry view actions that serve the Maker and the Chantry (such as the Warden stopping the Blight) as fulfilling what the Maker intended them to do. This suggests that the Chantry view of the Maker's involvement in the world is limited, so that while he might have a plan and purpose for his creations, it's up to each person to figure out for themselves, rather than him giving them directions or hints to what he wants done?

 

Or to quote the novel Good Omens;

 

"God does not play dice with the universe; he plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and highly complex game of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time."

 

I wouldn't say it is exactly anathema, but it is heretical to much of Chantry establishment. Bioware walked a line.

 

A Herald of Andraste 'adds' to Chantry lore, it doesn't subtract to it.

 

The Maker isn't returning. Yet.

 

Andraste isn't even returning. Yet.

 

The HERALD of Andraste is a loophole in the 'law' of the Chant, allowing a mortal to act as an agent of the chosen of the Maker. Lots of separation there. It isn't so much the Maker going "I like you again!" but instead the Maker allowing Andraste to send a Herald, that will lead up to Andraste returning , that will lead up to the Maker returning when the Chant is sung across all of Thedas. That is a VERY indirect involvement of the Maker, in terms of concrete understandings at least. 

 

But the establishment of the Chantry does not look at the little picture so much (just as, for example, they permit the small scales of lyrium addicted Templars for the sake of their bigger picture of keeping the Chantry in power and influence). They act in terms of grand control over regions and larger politics and the Exalted Marches etc. The have historically budged on policy before, but much less than what does happen due to DAI's events.

 

Leliana may not be personally vindicated in all of her hopes and dreams about the Maker in DAO, but she may end up being ultimately (semi-, as nothing will be proven, by design) vindicated by the lore.

 

And of course, one can have their own take on all this. One can openly disavow being a Herald but people tend to flock anyway. One can privately disavow being a Herald but keep the lie up. One can openly proclaim being a Herald but privately have doubts. One can openly disavow being a Herald privately consider if there's something to it. Etc. And all of this fits the story. Inquisition is about bringing up questions to others, to the setting of Thedas, and to ourselves as the protagonist - is isn't so much about achieving the acquisition of the best answers. But at least we feel we're on the 'right track/correct path' by asking questions in the first place (as opposed to, say, Hawke's relative lack of questioning, and Warden's limited ability to question). The Inquisitor is the start of an 'opening up' to the 'true' nature of Thedas and what is happening in the Dragon Age.

[PsychoBlonde]

The Andrastian Chantry is kind of a weird bird as a religion, anyway.  It's technically a deist religion, and it makes *specific* claims about The Maker's motives and goals in the context of actual historical events.  It also doesn't particularly call for faith but rather for a code of behavior--the vast majority of the people you can talk to about it don't really care much whether you believe or not.  It's almost as if it's mostly just a vehicle to get people to stop acting like assholes, and if you're not an ******* for your own reasons, well, good enough.

 

For a nominally monotheist religion it's actually EXTREMELY pagan, not *quite* to the level of the Greek sort of pagan where the god(s) are regarded as a bunch of quarrelsome jackasses, but still, pretty pagan.

 

In fact, the only arm of the Chantry that specifically calls for devout faith is . . . the Templars.  And it didn't exactly turn out well for them.