#da comic

Story

We see that Shirallas, the magister that promised him power, and Cedric Marquette reach the Castellum Tenebris owned now by the bastard son of Danarius.

They remove Danarius' son from the castle and plan to use the sarcophagus to imbue Shirallas with red lyrium, then arm him with a sword made out of the red lyrium idol. The goal to turn Shirallas into this living weapon is to repel the Qunari invasion and recover Tevinter's former glory.

Meanwhile, Danarius' son, without his castle, goes to a tavern to drink in frustration. The group intercepts him and forces him to speak about what the magister plans to do. He reveals the details after being tortured by Fenris, including a secret passage into the castle.

The city close to the castle [Neromenian] is also invaded by the Qunari who want to stop these magisters from creating these aberrant warriors. They try to force their entrance into the castle.

As the group infiltrates into the castle via the secret passage, they find a Dragon inside, which presence is justified later: its fire is part of the process of creating a red wraith.

We see the variant in the process of creating a perrepatae like Fenris when used red lyrium: it requires a sword made out of a fragment of the red lyrium idol, which will survive the procedure.

With the dragon breath, the process is instantaneous.

We see the process by which Shirallas finally gets his most desired power. But he remains under the command of the Magister, simply because he was broken as Fenris told him he was going to end up. It’s worth noting that we have an aesthetic that relates rage, vengeful sense, Elgar’nar’s symbology, and thorny vines in the figure of Shirallas. All these elements are related to the Red Lyrium, which naturally has an “angry” energy, according to Cole’s words. Each of these elements is also potentially related to the codex  Veilfire Runes in the Deep Roads found in the mural “The Death of a Titan”. It explains that something angry/red was hidden underground, unleashed because the Evanuris wanted more power, and vines tried to cage it for a while. I can see similar symbology in here, in Shirallas. I wonder if the Evanuris managed to do something like these magisters have been doing with red lyrium in order to reach divine power. If we think about it, Titans and Dragons both had the power to change reality. Dragons via the Fade, and Titans, apparently, through the reinforcement of reality by shaping The Stone, so Elvhenan had two sources of immense power to reach divinity: dragon blood and titan blood=lyrium.

Shirallas is now a red wraith, and we see his body has been marked with red lines that may or may not look like a vine. It does not have the symmetric and flawless shape that Fenris’ tattoo has. It’s a more chaotic version, following the untamed nature of the red lyrium. 

Fenris wounds him deadly, but Shirallas heals immediately. 

Marquette begins to panic and claims that the only way to stop the red wraith’s healing powers is to separate him from his weapon. After all, his sword was made out of a piece of the idol, which feeds from the red lyrium inside Shirallas’ body and, in consequence, heals him. Here is where we see that makes some sense the fact that the red lyrium idol self-regenerates: its powers can be transferred to a weapon. Knowing this, Ser Aaron Hawthorne sacrifices himself, separating Shirallas from the sword. This is probably the only action he feels it will ever matter in his life.

After this, Fenris can easily behead Shirallas.

I suppose the comic introduced to us the concept of Red Wraith that we may see in the future game. It’s the only reason I see to have made the concept so central in the comics. The red wraith also reinforces again the idea that the red lyrium is about rage and vengeance, and not by chance was narrated through an elf with the vallaslin of Elgar’nan, which tattoo design is a thorny vine. In contrast, we also see along the comic a human mage using thorny vines as her magic to kill and defend her people, as well as healing them.

Once the battle is over, they prepare Ser Aaron Hawthorne’s body for a proper bury in his origin city, and check what happened with the items that allowed the creation of the red wraith: the sarcophagus is deep into the ground thanks to Francesca, and the red lyrium sword will be sent to the Inquisition.

The red lyrium idol is in the hands of Danarius’ son, who wants to use it to guarantee his permanence in the Venatori. By the last panels of the comic, we know he’s being scryed by Solas... using an eluvian [?].

I found this a bit annoying too. Eluvians were used to travel long distances. Tevinters managed to use them for communication, meaning, that they could talk through them with another person who also had an eluvian. This one used by Solas works like a surveillance camera  moving over the head of Danarius’ son, lol. Are eluvian allowed to have this scry property? I’m not sure.

Comics are really wild when it comes to details in the lore and show up how much Gaider was needed to keep some lore consistency. Since he left Bioware, the products that have been appearing related to Dragon Age have a lot of weird, never hinted lore, that makes me fear the fate of the world of Thedas in the future games.

Relevant details:

Why the title? This story is focused on the Castellum Tenebris, Danarius’ castle that now is owned by his bastard son, where the first Red Wraith was created, hence the name of the comic.

Time: After defeating Corypheus and [maybe] after the DLC Tresspasser. I assume this because Varric is Viscount of Kirkwall.

Characters: We learn a bit more about Ser Aaron Hawthorne [the truth about his legend in Ostagar]:

He is haunted by his sense of uselessness when he was part of Loghain’s army that left the King Cailan in the middle of the battle against the darkspawn. 

He had managed to reach Cailan with plenty of time, but it did not matter, since the ogre killed him in front of him, and since then, Ser Aaron Hawthorne has not been the same anymore, feeling that none of his actions truly mattered in the end. That’s why he ends up being so bold during the combat against the Red Wraith and sacrifices to finally make one of his actions matter.

Concepts:  what can this comic provide in terms of lore?

We have an explanation, again, of the process that made warriors [Blue Wraiths] like Fenris:

It includes the sarcophagus, a sword made out of lyrium which disappears when it gets fused into the body of the subject, and a fire-based spell that should last hours. The process was slow and filled with excruciating pain.

In contrast, the process of creating a Red Wraith is faster, reduced to minutes, due to the use of red lyrium and dragonfire. It includes Danarius’ sarcophagus too, and a sword made out of the red lyrium idol. 

Since the red lyrium idol seem to have healing properties in itself [information hinted in the book Tevinter Nights], it provides healing power to the red wraith as long as the wraith is in contact with the weapon.

By the end of the story, Marquette gives the idol to Danarius’ son who wants to impress the Venatori so he can be still part of them. The inconsistency with which DA lore treats the red lyrium idol, in a world that already knows that the red lyrium is terrible.... is astounding.

A curious detail: Marquette implies that the red lyrium has been rendered useless, emphasised by the drawing which shows it like a wooden carved piece, without red lyrium in it. I always claimed in my post Red Lyrium Idol  that the figure looked like made out of wood and not of red lyrium. This makes me suspect that the red lyrium idol feeds on red lyrium, but it is not made out of it. How this affects the lore is impossible to know for me, since there is no detailed information about it.