#hormak

The chambers in this place have a constant theme: shifting horns of a halla. The change is not sudden but progressive, as the repetition of the images suggests. The columns also speak of progressive shifting, a constant iteration of the same illustration producing small changes on the picture while humanoid and monster begin to change one another. 

Although there are “monsters” described all along those pages, the repetitive presence of the halla is undeniable, even in the carving of the columns. This temple of shifting and mutation seems to highlight the horns of the halla, and so far, the only Evanuris we were informed as related to this animal is the mother of Hallas: Ghilan'nain. In the Temple of Mythal, where the information is more accurate only because it belonged to the time these events happened, we find out her codex explaining that she is related to the creation of giants, hallas, and other monsters. This ability is what allowed Ghilan'nain to become an Evanuris, otherwise, she would have been another one of “the people” [ a standard elf=servant?]. 

In this book, there are some descriptions that brought to my mind objects and elements we saw in the games:

The third band focuses on hallas, and the shape described in them reminds me of the mural paintings we find in DAI:

the hallas are wrongly depicted: they have too many horns, they look more rounded, almost insectoid-like.

[Also include the first image of this post: the winged halla]

The structure of the last chamber, where we find the pool of grey viscous fluid [which smells like sea water] and a massive crystal of lyrium over it, reminded me immediately to Amgarrak. 

In Amgarrak we learnt that a Tevinter Mage wanted to recreate a Golem made of flesh, using a massive artefact to trap “fade spirits” into the flesh golem. The process to craft these golems was not simple since, apparently, it required of Lyrium wells filled with raw lyrium over which a massive structure with Lyrium veins hovered. These artefacts powered up the whole Thaig to produce shifts in the planes. 

If DAO content can still be held and compared to DAI content, I would imagine this chamber described in the book was the original artefact that "inspired" the Tevinter Mage [I’m not saying they are the same, but the fact that the brine pool fuse creatures, and in Amgarrak the spirits were forced on fused corpses, seems to share a link in the concept of fusing bodies in different states]. Both chambers seem to do something similar: fusion of spirits/bodies with others.

In Amgarrak the artefact catches spirits from the Fade and forces them into golems of fused corpses. In the artefact of Tevinter Nights it looks like it fuses living bodies AND souls. This grey pool feels like a corrupted, abandoned artefact that stopped doing its original purpose. If we follow what we learnt in the previous chamber narrated in the book, about shifting and progressive change, this pool, which I suppose used to produce that progressive shift between people and monsters, seems to be broken. It is progressive with humanoids, as Jovis says, while with darkspawn the procedure is instantaneous. Maybe the lack of soul has to do something in this. 

This also brings to my mind all what we learnt in the Lost Temple of Dirthamen: Dirthamen priests and disciples had a deep knowledge of bounding souls and bodies, to the point I suspect that Dirthamen and Falon’Din had this kind of relationship, hence you can never differentiate one from the other. It’s not by chance that in the Lost Temple of Dirthamen we have no mosaic of Dirthamen, several ones of Falon’Din and one in red of Ghilan’nain. The link could potentially be the “secret of bounding spirits to flesh” [in the same fashion that the disciples ended up doing with the High Priest in this place. For more details, read the post about the Lost Temple of Dirthamen] 

It’s worth noting that in the chamber of the book, the lyrium crystal glows in green-yellow-ish colours, which seems to be the usual colour of Fade-related stuff in DAI [rifts, rift magic, veilfire, possession of spirits like in Hakkon’s case].

When it comes to the interpretation of the mural with the bands, I have two possibilities: 

1) The first chamber speaks of Evanuris with their slaves cowering in terror, inserting disease in them via magical procedures, and then sending them to the mountains. A simple reading of this means that the Evanuris’ slaves lived in terror, knowing the danger of being subjects of experiments (infected) by the mages and sent to the mountains. Which is strange, purposeless even, since it is in these mountains where the transformation happens. The original disease forced via magic is a previous condition for a better result of the final transformation later? Impossible to say.

2) The other interpretation I can do is in a reverse direction, from the lower band to the top: kidnapped elves, inside aravel-prisons, are sent to the mountains where they are subjected to a procedure that turns them into chimeras. The process is slow and controlled. This disease, inserted by the mages in a way or another, can be contained by the evanuris with the use of Vallaslin [which is a design made of blood and probably, originally related to blood magic]. In this way, the Evanuris had a total control on the elves wearing a Vallaslin, since without it, the transformation continues. This gave them the power to amass countless servants who lived in terror for what they had inside, only controlled by the whims of their masters.

I have [speculative] reasons to think that part of this procedure is related to the Vallaslin, simply because the paintings in DAI. We have two in particular that show the shifted/weird halla, carrying a red colour on it. The elves in white have clear signs of vallaslin on their faces.  

Similar row of white-blank elves can be seen in another drawing, walking like zombies, faceless and chest erased, as if they have no mind nor heart, and a red  swirly mark falls over their shoulders. As usual, this red has swirls, making it related to lyrium. All this under the Golden Ring we mostly see with the elven statue of the owl.

Another interesting detail we can take from this book is that it seems that the aravels, an iconic Dalish element, was originally to be a means for transportation of slaves. It seems very Dalish to rebuild their culture by using yet another slave element: vallaslin that determined who were their owner, aravels that were prison-ships, and hallas [Ghilan’nain’s favoured animal] “leading the path” to their destiny. 

When we go to the next chamber, and we see chimerical darkspawn, plus the mosaic previously depicting unknown flowers and animals, I think this may connect with The Descent, in the codex of Ailsa’s diary, a grey warden who lives her last days of The Calling. She says the following things:

I cut through the darkspawn horde, expecting to find only more of them the deeper I traveled. But nothing has matched my expectations. "Deep Roads" brought to mind darkspawn, dwarven ruins, caverns, and death—but there's an entire underground world here. Just today, I came across plants with lyrium-streaked veins. I took a bath in a lake that held crisp, fresh water and cautious animals, large and small, that I'd never seen before. I can't be the first Warden to witness such wonders.

But then I stumbled across something horrible. I smelled it before I saw it: bodies. Hurlocks, genlocks, creatures I didn't recognize—hundreds of them, mutilated, tortured, and thrown into pits.

She points out beautiful flowers and unknown animals, which is what the Hormak’s engraving walls show. The other point is that Ailsa seems to see a pit of “failed experiments”. It’s not said explicitly, but both places state about creatures that are unrecognisable for Wardens [who have seen a lot in their lives and specially in the Deep Road]. I think it seems worthy to keep this detail in mind.

Jovis is presented as something not quite similar to a Harvester, but clearly a grotesque fusion with an insect. The Harvester in DAO and DA2 was the fusion of a spirit or a living creature with corpses; here, it’s the fusion of living creatures with different spirits, fighting for the control of their common body.

There is also something very disturbing that Jovis says: “She cannot have it. Not again.” The Again implies that she had it before. And it’s a she. With all the info we had, the straightforward conclusion seems to be the priest who used this pool to create chimeras.  Ghilan'nain’s?

If you read the art of the three bands from the bottom to the top [a direction more related to hierarchy], one can interpret that twisted hallas guided prison-ships elves into places like this one we are in. Probably these twelve temples looked like heaven: temples of elven design that we have seen as beautiful, pristine even [as the book remarks], filled with beauty, flowers and strange animals. These places were beautiful for the Evanuris, not for the slaves.  The Evanuris forced disease into their slaves, using animals, causing small shifts in them until the change make them into monsters. Only then, the Evanuris felt content with the result. This was the foundation of the power of the evanuris, who controlled the masses of elves out of terror. Or this could have been how they developed armies. 

We also know that back then the Evanuris were at war, first with the Titans, and later with themselves. This fusing process seems to be an interesting one for creating perfect armies, as the Warden Ramesh points out in the book.

As a last detail, specially related to the “shifting”, the DAI paintings may display something of the like in their mysterious paintings: We see an elf with marks on his face that are not clear if they are Vallaslin or style lines to mark shadows. In any case, both elves always display patterns on their upper body. 

The pattern in both elves is the same with only a change in the colour. The warrior one has white legs, no marks on them. The second one shows a darkening of his colours and patterns, and his legs follow the colours and patterns we see later in the lizard figure and in the halla.  At the background of the second elf we see in white the design of the Golden Ring that the owl statue always holds in its talons.

First thing we find when we enter the place are these geometric trees. The way they decorate the streets of Orzammar made me remember a faint concept of the crossroad trees. I like to point out this detail because it seems to speak how deep elven culture has been present in dwarven history, but it had a dwarven evolution. The elven object was adopted in their culture, but reshaped to fit their own cultural style. This is so accurate from an anthropological point of view.

We also find minor objects that I want to highlight  to have them present just in case. These strange orbs are used as mere decorations in Orzammar, so far I saw.

There are carved pictures all over Orzammar that contain codex information. This one in particular has been picked because it seems to have a relevant place in Kal'Hirol [see the related post]. It's the figure of mountains, one made of gold. Mountains are important to Dwarven because they are the children of the stone. In a broader aspect, we know the mountains are related to Titans too. We also know that the Avvar have a Father-figure among their deities: Korth, the Mountain-father god. Mountains are present in many cultures of Thedas, but so far we still cannot say with certainty that all of them have the same link/meaning. It could be.

Following minor details of decoration, we found in Orzammar and in most Thaigs, a small set of decorative tiles with inserted gems in them.

They are usually red, green or yellow, the one in yellow seems to have a particular shape. It's the oversimplification of a figure, that seems to be present too on the top of most doors in Orzammar or other Thaigs. The only similar icon I can associate it with is the U horns that the Darkspawn seem to worship.  

There is also a small figure on the table that, so far, it doesn't make me relate to anything. The closest one but without any meaning, is the constellation of Silentir, a constellation related to Dumat, but constellations have little meaning among the Dwarves.

There are many geometrical patterns everywhere in Dwarven culture too. This is important to notice, especially when seeing the few iconography we have of June, elven God of craft [See post related to Elven pantheon].

As it's not strange, Dwarves have lyrium decorating their walls even in curious ways, like these apparent sections in the walls where you can see Lyrium veins and the “veins of the stone”

We also find this strange decorative piece that will be part of not only Orzammar decoration but also of most thaigs we visited. It's a stone that looks like a C covered in almost-geometrical swirls. This pattern is very present in Avvar architecture too, more in a curvy way [see the Mage Tower]. That the Avvars and Dwarven share this decorative pattern is not a mystery, since both cultures have developed close relationships all over Ferelden. Who influenced to whom is impossible to know. Now, what those swirl patterns mean? As I said in the post of Tower of the Circle of Magi [here] for the Avvars the swirls may have a representation of the Fade, always above and ever present in their buildings. In the case of Dwarves, it looks like more the representation of the “veins of the Stone”, aka the lyrium. An obvious pattern is seen in the Anvil of the Void.  It's also interesting to see that the thorny vine we saw in the presentation of DAO [here] becomes into these kind of geometrical swirls in the presentation of Awakening [here, work in process]. So the hidden meaning that this could be the representation of “healthy” blood of the Titan since it lacks of thorns, in contrast with the Blight=tainted blood=Red lyrium=thorny vine is present too.

Heading into the Deep Roads

We find a lot of items related to the Dead Legion in the Deep Roads. Statues picturing the legionnaires, rune-stones narrating part of their encounters, even special chambers where items of dead legion warriors are found. From all of them, the most curious item I saw was a helm which had lyrium on the inside. It made you think in the Sha-Brythol, even though there is no connection between the Legion of the Dead and them.

There is also a part in the Deep Roads where there is a Mystical Site of Power where you can summon a demon. Strange place considering that so far, Orzammar had no link with any other surfacer to dwell in blood-demonic-magical arts.

Then, deep, deep into the Deep Roads, we find the Anvil of the Void, where Caridin is secluded. The security Chamber has a lot of lyrium on its roof and its system is related to consume souls into the mouth of these masks.

After that chamber we finally reach the Anvil of the Void. Taking into account the place and how it looks like, there is a lot of lyrium around. Thick tentacle-like shaped veins emerge from the sides of the cliff of lava and the anvil itself is filled with lyrium. Like Amgarrak showed us, the process of inserting a soul into an object needs a lot of lyrium. And this particular place of the Deep Roads has more lyrium than any other place we saw in game. I like to speculate this is a place close to a titan's heart. We know that Lyrium veins indicate that we are inside a titan’s body. 

Then, the final detail of all Orzammar is this codex.

We read here interesting thaig names: Hormak, Kal Sharok, and Gundaar.

[Spoiler of Tevinter Nights] Hormak is where the story The Horror of Hormak is narrated. A place where elves lived and created monstrosities by combining living creatures into one, a similar fashion to what we saw in Amgarrak to create the Harverster or what Caridin did during the creation of golems.

Kal Sharok is another Thaig deeply related to mystery. It has been hinted that due to its apparent isolation and the presence of darkspawn, their dwarf population changed, becoming whiter and “tainted”. It was this Thaig which destroyed Cadash Thaig which helped escapee elves from Tevinter, and Kal Sharok did not want this fact to reach to Tevinter ears and risk their trade with the imperium.

Gundaar is a thaig which shared the fame of being as important as Orzammar but little more is said in games or books.