#potential foci

When the Breach is closed with the help of Mages or Templars, there is a celebration in Haven. However, it lasts not longer, since it is immediately under attack of Corypheus and his Red Templars.

The most important part of this quest in my opinion is all the information that Corypheus gives us. It’s as valuable as the little bits he dropped in DA2: Legacy

I think Corypheus here speaks of a truth that mortals cannot have, referring to the truth that there are no gods. He claims that the inquisitor, pretending to be a Herald of a goddess, is not different than what he was once with Dumat [”Know me, know what you have pretended to be”]

I find curious he speaks of himself as “the will of Corypheus”. Considering his ability to jump into different bodies, probably this will is the only real thing that Corypheus is. The concept of “will” is explored once more with Abelas: the Well of Sorrows contains the “will” of all the high priests of Mythal. And they all are bound to the “will” of Mythal [check the post about Temple of Mythal to see these details]

It’s also interesting that he claims that the Anchor was his “craft”. So this energy, which we know it’s Fen’Harel’s energy, is concentrated in a hand, that was Corypheus’ doing. This would explain loosely why he was in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, looking for Justinia. Apparently, for whatever reason Justinia is needed, she was a component of what Corypheuys needed to do to unlock the power of the Orb, anchor it, and use it for himself.

I’m still curious why, from any other better candidate, such as an elf or a human with dragon blood, or even a mage, Corypheus chose Justinia, a mere [magically speaking] powerless human, to unlock the power of the Orb [I wrote some old considerations to question here on this matter]

However, when we question this to Corypheus, he claims it was about the chaos generated by killing important leader figures in the political world of Thedas. I get that, but he could have killed the Divine as he wanted to do with Celene in order to ensure chaos. Instead, he dragged some kind of energy from her, and that’s one of the biggest mysteries in this narrative for me. Why Justinia?

He once more confirms he entered the Fade in the name of Dumat [”in the name of another”] to “serve the Old Gods in person”, which I assume it’s to help them to stop being silent. Let’s remember that the Old Gods had communication with their priests via dreams until they went silent and Tevinter fell in despair to the point that they developed rituals to break into the Fade and look for them personally.

What Corypheus found in the Black City was “chaos, corruption [understood as the Blight], and dead whispers.

There is once more this italic “will” in the text, where Corypheus emphasises that he had gathered the will to return by his own name, without following Dumat anymore. He realised the place of the gods was empty, and in almost a human gesture, he wants to become the god that the humanity always asked for. 

Sure, this is not merely an altruistic goal, but certainly is a motivation a bit more complex than power-hunger as the Chantry always narrated the story of the Sidereal Magisters.  Corypheus is not the best candidate for a god, but I like how all the information we had about the Tevinter Magisters acquires a different hue here. Corypheus is a blighted immortal creature, who is also Tevinter culturally speaking, so his moral will always be quite questionable, and he turning into a god is something as terrible as the shattering of the Veil. However, there is some degree of “nobility” [I knot it’s a big word, but I can’t come with another one] in his mission that I’m not sure how much it’s perceived: he knows humanity cannot handle the truth that the gods do not exist, so he wants to become the god they deserve. I wonder if Corypheus’ story doesn’t hide a parallel with the Evanuris, or at least, some of them. We know that Falon’Din was a power-hunger creature, but maybe Mythal or others wanted, originally, to be the god for The People, because the world was too cruel without any. 

Once Haven is destroyed and we endure the song of Mother Giselle, Solas speaks with the inquisitor dropping some details:

Solas informs the Inquisitor that the orb that Corypheus holds is elven. In fact, by the end of Tresspasser we will know he gave it to him somehow hoping that the unlock would kill Corypheus. He had just awaken from his slumber and was too weakened to do it by himself.

He confirms that unlocking the orb was what destroyed and killed so many in the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

Solas is surprised for Corypheus survival. By the time we reach the Temple of Mythal, we will learn that Corypheus’ will can jump into other blighted creatures and revive from them, but this procedure only happens if he is close to his dragon. This is probably a retcon from DA2: Legacy

Solas calls the orb with the Tevinter name: foci, and he claims they channelled the power of the “elven gods”, probably meaning the Evanuris.

He says that some “were dedicated to specific member of the pantheon”, which I infer it means that not all the Evanuris had an orb.

We know that Corypheus wants to enter the Fade and the Black City once more. We know he is already immortal and has immense power. What’s it in the Fade that he needs and that will be necessary for becoming a god? So far we speculated from Trespasser, the Evanuris claimed godhood through the use of lyrium or through the titan’s hearts that ended up being the orbs. 

This implies that there must be another component to acquire godhood, and it may be in the Black City, whatever this place is.

We start the zone finding abandoned cages with corpses. 

Nearby, there is a cave that visually explains of what’s going: some people are being kidnapped to be part of experiments. In fact, as we are going to learn later, in many places of Western Approach the Venatori are developing projects, experiments, and excavations, all at the same time, coordinated by Crassius Servis. They are taking people to the templars who infuse them with red lyrium. The place has a device that makes us suspect the use of some Tevinter elements that we will see in The Still Ruin later.

Staring at this configuration, I assumed what’s the intention of some of those elements.  

A thrummer, called that way by official art [here]. I guess by its name that it works like an arcane motor, powering the “injector”.

As a colourful note, beside this device, there is a blood symbol I didn’t find in any other place in game. I have no idea what it is.

The thrummer has an hexagonal thing that I called “battery” because it reminds me to an imitation of Solas’ orb. We know that the elven orbs can be crafted in big amounts since in the Shattered Library we find many of them scattered around, and like I always repeat, Tevinter co-opted [or was taught] a lot of elven elements. They called those orbs as Foci [Dorian’s words]. If this is the case, we know two things about the elven orbs:

First, they store energy. This was said by Solas in Tresspasser when he explains that while he was in his slumber, his orb gathered energy for that millennia, reason why the Conclave exploded: all that energy was suddenly released since he could not unlock it in a safe way due to his weakness.

Second, they augment a person’s powers and spells [Solas’ words after Haven].

We have little information about Tevinter foci, but a codex in Frostback Mountains, during the time of the Ancient Tevinter, hinted that they were crafted in massive scale to be used into the walls of Razikale Reach in order to enhance the potential communication with her. So, if Tevinter correctly immitated the orbs to store energy, we can be more or less confident to consider that they also managed the massive production of foci. So, they could potentially be part of many Tevinter devices. In fact, we see these hexagonal structures with swirls and lines [which are not exactly a fingerprint like the elven orb] in many Tevinter devices. 

Sadly, this is a speculation and so far, the way I justify a bit the elements of this room

The thrummer is connected to the large metallic thing I call “injector” via a “power cord”. The Injector has a lot of red lyrium at its base. We see this object in many places, most of the time filled with red Lyrium, but in the Still Ruin, we see it filled with a green substance that I assume it’s related to the Fade [following the codices of the place, it could be Essence of Fade].  By the position of the injector and the effect we see on the corpse laying on the table, we can assume its function: injects an element into the subject.

The process seems to be enhanced with magic as well since we see a glyph below the victim table. It’s the typical snake-glyph we find in many places, most of the time it’s correlated to Blood magic, which in this context, seems reasonable too. Check General glyphs and magical symbols for more details.

This room alone makes us suspect that the Red Templars, having a small population of Templars, are experimenting with commoners, trying to find a process to transform them into red-lyrium creatures. It’s known that most people die when ingesting lyrium, so they never pass through the transformation that most Templars do. Templars may have a natural resistance due to the usage of common lyrium.

Close to the end of the Chantry Trail Signs we find a researcher of Dragons: Frederic of Serault,  who will inform us, once we killed all the dragons, and we explore the topic in a war table mission, that Dragons are resistant to the  blight, generating cysts that contain it [they are not immune, just resistant]. He also explains to us the mysterious big, black chasm in the region

The big chasm that borders this region and shows patches of poisoned land was caused by the Second Blight when a swarm of darkspwans tainted the land forever.

There is a strong presence of Grey Warden monuments remembering fallen heroic wardens because this region was strongly affected by the Second Blight.  Although this place was initially mostly Tevinter [the great prison Coravacus and The Still Ruin, plus extra small fortresses along the way] many of these buildings were taken by the Grey Warden and repurposed when the blight hit.  

All over the game we find these skeletons, and in this place they are quite common, specially on the poisoned zones. I would like to know if these are normal animals, like wyverns, or they are darkspawn instead. We even found them in Emerald Green [where the dragon is] so I guess it’s not darkspawn. So, what kind of animal it is? It has a strange spike and neck protector that calls my attention: does DA have an animal who naturally has metal parts in their bones? I ask because there are so many characters and elements with a spike on their head/helm that... you know. This could be part of the list as well to understand its influence on the tales. 

Dustytop Fort

Close to the keep we capture, there is a small ruin of a fort called Dustytop.

We can see here the usual ancient Tevinter patterns. The pointy battlements decorated with hexagonal figures and lattices of rhomboids. The Tevinter door frames or arcs seem to have a dwarven inspiration. More details in Tevinter Design and Style [Main post].

Sand Flats

Sand Flats has a small fort that will be involved in the main quest, showing wardens binding themselves to demons. The bridge shows Grey Warden banners, but it displays two metallic Tevinter “golems” that we saw in the Gallows in DA2 [Check Architecture of Kirkwall : Gallows and Lowtown/Darktown]. They had come to life thanks to the presence of red lyrium.

The fort has at its sides gigantic blades or claws, that makes it look like the fortress is resting on a symmetrical clawed hand [I imagine, since it’s Tevinter design, it’s meant to look like resting on a dragon’s paw].  These “claws” will appear in many objects hinting Tevinter intervention [For example, the Sha-Brytol bridges].

These statues are strange in what they depict. Its head is Andraste-like, while in the rest of her body, especially in boots, knees, and chest, it looks like the armour in Mythal’s statues.  From the shoulders several blades protrude, imitating wings. They have two faces, one at the front and the other at the back, holding different weapons. They have four arms in total. I can not avoid noticing the similarities of the statues of Mythal and Andraste with this one. What surprises me is that these ruins were built in a pre-blight time, so there was no way for these Ancient Tevinters to know anything about Andraste, so most of the inspiration may have come from Mythal.

This fort has two codices at the entrance

Ritual Tower which explains that most of these ruins were built before the First Blight, which is when the Tevinter Imperium expanded all over the south. This means that most Tevinter ruins found in the south are pre-blights. There was an intention in this expansion: it allowed them to build places dedicated to experiments; we have as confirmed examples by now Kirkwall in DA2, and The Still Ruins in DAI.

 These "golems", even though are present in this small fortress, can be found n the middle of the desert:

The codex the Gate Guardians talks about a tale created by the artist of these statues: One day, a golem like these appeared to him. It told him that it needed the blood of the earth to survive [lyrium]. The artist simply pointed out in the direction where a mage lived and the statue followed the instructions. We learn here that these golems have a lyrium bar inside just for the sake of this tale. They have no real function in them. But on the other hand, we still remember DA2, and I find it a bit ironic and poetic that this Tevinter artist never saw one of his piece become like the tale he spread around.  

Other places

Close to the Keep taken by Inquisition, surrounding the entrance of the Tevinter Prison Coracavus, there are toxic sulphur pits that fill the air with poisonous gases. They look different to normal sand. To prevent this constant emission of poisonous gas, we can order the Inquisition to construct a device that allows us to cross it safely. And here is where things are a bit annoying to me.

The inquisition builds this

A kind of tank with strong Tevinter design and Tevinter symbols on it. This is a reuse of an asset, sadly.

Almost in the centre of the map we find a beautifully elaborated construction with a magical barrier. This is The Still Ruins that I will cover in another post.

In the south there is a cave partially covered by stone blocks that only when fighting the dragon can be moved.  Around it, we see some dwarven’s pillars falling apart, so this construction must have been dwarven.

Inside we find a dwarven sarcophagus for all the dwarven wardens that died during the Second Blight.