ironically, spiders

it's alluded to in some of the fics i've posted and i probably mentioned Somewhere that in saar's main timeline no one Actively Stops solas from pulling down the veil. as in, the reason he doesn't do it is bc he realizes at the last minute he can't do it. not anymore.

do i have a whole wip comic turned animatic turned idek what about this, for Years now?? don't ask

but then he can't have a well-deserved breakdown about that bc he had an agreement with mythal. and she's NOT PLEASED he's going back on it. and like, unlike in da4, he took fucking precautions that no one would interrupt him. literally all of skyhold is in a sleeping beauty coma rn

which means no one's coming to save him.

so he gets out of there by the SKIN OF HIS TEETH. like it's Bad. holding-in-his-own-guts bad. the orb's shattered (bc i'm not dealing with the fucking red lyrium idol nonsense), he's bleeding out, we're not even adressing the mental state bc BAD doesn't even Begin to cover it, and he drags himself to the only place he can think of: the inquisitor's room in skyhold

so saar gets to wake up to him FULLY DYING on her carpets

and she has no idea what happened. like solas is in no state to explain the mythal Or the veil thing, and like, yes, saar has learned blood magic at this point, and she drank the blood of a great dragon in the silent grove to become probably the worst reaver the world has seen in centuries

but solas was always the healer, between the two of them.

yes, her mom was a physician and she did teach saar when she was young, but she's never learned how to do anything Serious, neither with magic or by normal means AND DEFINITELY NOT how to fix shit like 'arm shredded down to the bone' or the part where his innards are spilling out

so she literally keeps his heart beating and his blood flowing until her spirits manage to stitch him back together enough he's not gonna immediately die if she stops.

LIKE. to be clear. the last time they met in person, saar came away thinking that solas was eventually gonna force a fight on her. that she would have to stop him With Violence. that he maybe even Wanted her to. that's why she went after the great dragon for a power-up bc we all fucking remember trespasser! turning people to stone with a thought is not something she can fight against!!

and solas fully expected to saar to kill him once he pulled down the veil, and/or to die trying to wrangle the evanuris

but no

she's got her hand inside his ribcage bc she refuses to let him die

lying on my kitchen tiles bc the blight wiki page section where the known curing-the-blight events are listed Doesn't include the fact that solas EVIDENTLY, NOT THAT THEY EVER REMOTELY EXPLAIN HOW, cleansed the blight of the red lyrium idol to recreate the lyrium dagger in veilguard

like for the record i do not enjoy the blight lore in veilguard. the veil's an accident now but the blight is a basically known & accepted consequence and it is ALSO the elves' fault shut uppppppp

but for a game that is SO chock-full of the blight, in the enemies and the backstory and the justifications and the threat and basically wiping all of southern thedas off the map no i will never not be pissed about that HOW. HOW. does the fact that you have a guy sitting in your head who successfully cleansed the taint not come up

and it's not like we're not sitting on an ever-longer list of blight-being-cured/cleansed events either!! MERRILL DID IT WITH DUCT TAPE AND A POCKET KNIFE IN DA2

but no

the only way we deal with the blight is by killing elgar'nan and ghil'anain. AND THEN CONVENIENTLY THE SEETHING MORASS OF BLIGHT THAT FUCKING COVERS MINRATHOUS JUST DISAPPEARS

don't worry no one will even have to clean up that archdemon corpse!! sentient darkspawn whomst!! the blight is a "scared animal" but we're not doing anything with that either!!!

again. for the record. i liked the blight better when it was a mostly-unknowable eldritch horror force. but oh my god why would you introduce all these elements AND THEN IGNORE THEM

the ENTIRE south of thedas got overrun by the blight, ditto half of the north and god knows what happened in seheron and par vollen. nothing you did in any previous games matters now bc it's basically all wiped off the map and don't even get me started on the executors secret ending AND ALSO just talking about This game! did you actually save the world. did you.

but don't worry about the mountains of corpses! we won't have to deal with the blight ever again! the giant blighted archdemon and a city's worth of blight tendrils just got sucked into Somewhere Else, and the rest of the blight is basically gone now too, even from your companion who got turbo-blighted 5 min ago! and the rest will never get out bc solas is (voluntarily or not, does it even MATTER) babysitting it! ~to atone~

functionally, narratively, solas did a redemption-via-death. if he, y'know, goes willingly. he's gone the blight's gone don't even worry about it atoning doesn't have to involve Actually Fixing Anything, we're just wiping the slate clean by having a near-global apocalypse DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT THIS IS THE GOOD ENDING

did anyone. ever get to prove him wrong.

does he actually get to atone by working to bring back the good parts of pre-veil thedas.

NOPE AND NOPE

da:i and trespasser it was like 'is this world worth saving/repairing' and then veilguard is like 'nevermind actually thats not a question we're remotely interested in HERE HAVE AN APOCALYPSE'

honestly. hilarious. ha ha do you hear me laughing. that veilguard not only starts with a set-up where solas' veil new prison ritual nonsense is actually necessary. bc the veil's leaky and WILL come down if nothing's done about it. and by the end of it it's like. Considering The Blight Apocalypse. (the rest of the blight being potentially able to escape notwithstanding) the veil coming down may actually be an opportunity to salvage a lot of the world, bc now we're in an ACTIVE APOCALYPSE

which was not the fucking case in da:i/trespasser

AND YET. the question of 'should the veil come down' is treated as a categorical No, with not even a debate about it

(like for the record personally i'm in camp 'veil stays up and they do the hard work of making the world better without global-reality-warping powers bc that's the only way we can fix things over here in the real world and i really really want stories where that Works')

but that it's not even a question??? when that question was THE ENTIRE EMOTIONAL THRUST OF TRESPASSER

what are you doing. What Are You Doing.