#phylacteries

CONFESSION:

Short and humorous, but a very good explanation - even for the Non-Jews (Gentiles) out there.

Yep! Phylacteries are blood magic, but the Chantry is made up of hypocrites who have no problem with blood magic when it’s used to maintain a tight control over their weapons stock.

Evangeline wondered if she should try to stop it. Destroy the phylacteries? It was... unthinkable. Or was it? She had always felt leery of the templars using blood magic simply because it was convenient. And what would be the purpose of backing down now?--Asunder, pg 201

Gaider also said this in two different interviews:

“...We're talking about a Chantry that also has phylacteries in every Circle, which is a type of blood magic, so there's definitely an element of hypocrisy there.”--LINK

So @starla-nell and I were talking the other day and we noticed something, and the conclusion we landed on is mostly hers, but I have a minute and this should be here so here you go...

Phylacteries are obviously more than the Circles use them for. They glow near their source mage, and the wiki (I KNOW) says that they can be used to cast a spell remotely on said mage. When the mage dies, they stop glowing, arguably because there’s no link to connect with.

All that said, the black vials in Origins that house revenants are phylacteries, it seems. So it sure looks like they can house a soul.

Is the thing Flemeth gives Hawke, housing a piece of herself, a phylactery? She uses it to bring herself back to life.

The arcane warrior spirit in the gem in the Brecilian forest willingly went into it, thinking help could come later. But... they’d lost their body, what could help have done? They obviously thought it would accomplish something worthwhile.

All of this leads to the conclusion... one could use a phylactery to BRING A MAGE BACK FROM THE DEAD.

Related things to ponder: What of a tranquil’s phylactery? If their connection to the fade has been severed, what effect would that have?

A lich does the trick where he makes a seed his phylactery.  The seed grows into a tree, and that tree spawns a forest.  As this goes on, the lich becomes aware of everything in the forest, as his soul permeates it or at least is bound to it.  He starts to feel protective of the forest and become more and more engrossed by nature and life.  He is not being a parasite in the forest taking a ride in it, no, he is becoming the soul of the forest and its walking avatar.  Eventually his body is absorbed into nature.

A lich decides to make a phoenix her phylactery.  The phoenix actually agrees to it because they know what will eventually happen to the lich.  The phoenix’s celestial spirit will eventually bombard the lich with positive energy, slowly evicting the lich’s tie to them.  Or something stranger can happen, the lich and the phoenix might eventually share their bodies, and there may be a conflict between their souls if the phoenix is good and the lich is evil.  Or they could eventually merge together as a single being, the result being a very powerful undead phoenix. 

A lich makes their phylactery a group of unsuspecting, innocent people.  They know they would have to eventually re-create it as the people die, but boy is it clever, right?  Except the group of people start to get plagued by the presence of the lich’s soul, however the people collectively have more souls than a single lich does at any given time.  So the people’s souls start to influence the lich’s and the lich starts to become an insane amalgamation of all of those people’s personalities together. 

The lich ties their soul to the sun, or the moon maybe.  They eventually become absorbed into the moon or sun’s spirit, even moreso if their spirits are literal deities.  

A lich binds their soul to a certain spell, or even a song.  However now all that lich can do is sing or play that song or cast that spell for much of the rest of their days.  Or their being starts to embody certain features of the song or spell.