#telana

The first thing that stood out is that all three are stubborn people. Once they've decided something is worth pursuing, they're incredibly difficult to sway. Merrill obsessed with restoring the eluvian, Telana refusing to leave Ameridan and Solas spending years pursuing veilfall.

The second thing they share is that love and loyalty sit at the centre of many of their choices. None of them are primarily motivated by power, status, or personal gain. Their lives are shaped by devotion, whether that's to a person, a cause, their people, or a belief.

The third is their willingness to go it alone. Merrill becomes clanless and is willing to endure solitude for her goals. Telana dies alone searching for Ameridan. Solas repeatedly chooses paths that leave him apart from the people he cares about (ending the relationship with a romanced Lavellan to walk the din’anshiral).

Merrill, Telana, and Solas are all characters whose stories revolve around holding onto something despite great cost, and all three choose someone they remain devoted to through hardship, distance, pain, and time. (And yes, I include Solas in this. Even after years of separation, he writes to Lavellan, vows never to forget her, and slips right back into calling Lavellan vhenan.)

Considering vhenan is 'my heart' there is very strong symbolism. We may love many people throughout our lives, but we only have one 'heart' and it's required for living.

Solas seems most 'alive' when he's with Lavellan. Lavellan draws him into the present moment, out of the Fade and into the physical world, a world he’s trying to deny. Lavellan is someone who pulls Solas back toward living rather than merely existing or heading down a path of death. There is a second layer of symbolism as well: Solas refuses to let Lavellan witness what he will become. In a sense, it’s almost as though he leaves his heart behind for safekeeping, that Solas, who he wants to be, can remain beating with Lavellan.

When Ameridan disappears, Telana refuses to let him go. She waits, enters uthenera in the hope of finding him through dreams, and dies still searching for him. The heart is the organ that sustains life, and Telana spends her final days searching for the person she considers hers. She dies with her search unfinished, her body unable to live without her heart.

For Merrill the heart symbolism is a bit different, I think it lies in what a heart does. A heart sustains the body by continually sending blood through it. Hawke occupies a similar role in Merrill's life. Her ambitions, and pursuit of the eluvian remain unchanged, yet Hawke becomes woven through it, a constant presence that helps sustain the life she's chosen to live.

Merrill's use of the word is particularly interesting to me because she's one of the modern elven characters most invested in recovering the knowledge and traditions of ancient Elvhenan. She also recites In Uthenera, an elven ballad that contains one of the only other uses of vhenan in the series. Given her fascination with preserving the past, it feels fitting she'd use a word for Hawke that appears so rarely and carries significance.

For an ancient culture that was both spirit and form, there may have been few declarations more intimate and more sacred than telling another person: you are my heart. You are the thing that keeps me living in this biological form. In this sense, Solas' denial of Lavellan almost feels like a denial of himself, he regrets manifesting so much that to accept his love for Lavellan is also to accept the world and himself physically in it.

In all three cases, vhenan is given to someone who is so woven into the speaker's life despite distance, hardship, pain, or time. That's why the word feels sacred to me. Much like the heart itself, they have become so woven into the being of the person who bears them.

Note: When a term appears this rarely in officially written narratives, I can't help looking for patterns and symbolism in who uses it and why. Whether that was the writers' intent or not, those patterns become part of how I interpret the word and then integrate it into my own world state.

2nd Note: In Uthenera is about loss, mortality, separation, and the approach of death, which I find fascinating given that those same themes run through these 3 relationships associated with the word.

Kenric: The scholar

The DLC starts with a scholar looking for the last place of resting of the previous inquisitor, assuming it’s in the Frostback Basin. The gist of all this part and the whole DLC when it comes to Ameridan is that the Chantry knows little [or erased a lot] about this inquisitor because political reasons. Many of those mysteries are discovered by the end of the DLC, showing us how much the “official History” lies due to political or mass control reasons.

On the other hand, Kenric explicitly makes some comparisons with buckles and how History is told through the merging of cultures in a single place which has been inheriting the buildings of the previous ones: the resulting ruins is a combination of all the inhabitants through time. This is a nice call back to the player in basically all the series of DA; we have been seeing this since DAO, in the Ruins of Brecilian Forest where elven ruins were taken by Tevinters [or the other way around], or Kinlock Hold; a tower made by Avvar and dwarves which was taken by Tevinters first and then by Ferelden later to install the Circle of Magi of Ferelden, or Vigil’s Keep in Amaranthine which was made by Avvars and Dwarves and later taken by Ferelden. There are many examples along the series. So, basically, Kenric (and Collete) is there to teach us how to read the mess of the structures and buildings we see around.

When we discover Telana and the bits of information about what Ameridan was meant to do in this area, and under the orders of Drakkon, we speak with Kenric again, who gives us quite an interesting detail in terms of how researchers in Thedas work: beyond his personal information [you can check wiki for that] he tells us that the University of Orlais, with its flaws, has a broader open mind to the incorporation of elves in their researchers, and, as he says, to contact spirits in order to have firsthand reports of battles. 

This two aspects mean, implicitly, that most of the information we gather in codices that belong to well established books inside this world, lack of elven point of view [nothing new under the sun] and some of them may be complete and total lies considering that any researcher can say their work has been based on an interview with spirits. It’s so unreliable. However, honest researchers such as Kenric, who will base their research on true words givien by Spirits, may have quite a unique and high-quality information of an event. 

All over the basin we find typical Avvar statues: in particular those called The Keepers of Fear which are everywhere in these lands, used as columns with braziers to illuminate the area, as signs to guide the path to the nearby hold [Stone-bear hold], or merely as decoration in the land. We also find Eroded dragon skull and monoliths with ropes that we have seen in other parts of Ferelden.

It’s not unusual to find fragments of ruins. Some are a combination of Avvar/Ferelden art, like these monoliths with a rope on the top, others are columns that had fallen apart from Tevinter buildings. We know it’s Tevinter because the pattern in the lower part of the columns has been seen in ancient Tevinter structures like  Coracavus or  The Still Ruins. 

Tevinter walls that predate the First Blight can be found as well. They use the same style [angular, pointy structures plus the hexagonal designs] than the ones we found in Western Approach.

There are several Tevinter outposts [or ruins of them] in the open of this region. Close to them we find these diapason-like devices decorated with the typical Tevinter dragon gargoyles. This diapason-like device was seen clearly in the base game during the Fade, in the quest Broken Window .  Although we could not guess its function back then, in this DLC they seem to work like transporters of “arcane” energy trough long distances.

Close to the encampment where the Inquisition is placed in the beginning of the DLC, there is cave which has some remnants of Ameridan’s presence and his companions. Its inside displays building walls with Tevinter patterns on it.

Among other codices and notes referring to Ameridan and his companions, there is a codex in this cave which triggers Mouth of Echoes. It seems a reliable codex since it was written by a Tevinter who lived here at that time. It speaks about a Tevinter appreciation of the avvar: they consider them savages, they laughed at the avvar who screamed their questions into this cave, waiting for an answer in the last whisper [this suggests that Tevinter, for once, did not slaughter the avvar on spot in this region, but observed them and interacted with them to the point they knew how the avvar named  this cave and how it worked for them]. Now, when Tevinters felt the absence of Razikale and lost their minds, the narrator begins to implicitly wonder if the avvar were not right about this cave and tries to analyse it in terms of Tevinter arcane knowledge: they assume that, if this cave works, it’s because there is thin Veil around. It's here where this person suggests to insert foci in the walls of the shrine they will erect in the name of Razikale and cut the stone in sacred shapes [dragon like?]. This scroll seems to be around the time of the First Blight simply because the gods went silent.

We need to remember that foci are the Tevinter equivalent of elven orbs, which usually have the property of magnifying the powers of the user.

We also find in the Basin the mysterious Ferelden Wyvern close to the astrarium.

The icetroll

In the same fashion than the saga of Tyrdda Bright-Axe Path, we find here a similar song about the Tale of Hryngnar, Ice-Troll.

Things that Tale of Hryngnar, Ice-Troll implies:

Trolls are disconnected from the Fade like the dwarves

Avvar warriors tried to kill Hryngnar to have a legend-mark, but they ended up killed by his icy-powers.

Hryngnar, the Ice-troll had protected the Avvar’s homes against giants.

When the warriors of Tevinter came to build their fortress here, the ice-troll also attacked them, freezing their walls to easily break them. This way, the tale explains how and why the Tevinter left which is presented as a mystery all along the DLC.

There is not much to say here. I think we didn’t see trolls in DAI so far, so this creature may be a giant [which we have seen slaved by Venatori already]

Treating this tale as I do with Dalish’s, we can only say that it claims that the Tevinter presence disappeared because this creature attacked them in their fortress. I’m not sure that’s something we can confirm in the DLC with evidence. It’s more or less clear that Tevinter came here to contact Razikale when she went silent, but it’s not clear at all why they left, specially when there is evidence that they wanted to establish a new Minrathous here.

The last stanza of Hryngnar, the Ice-troll, is triggered at a statue we saw before in the Hissing Wastes. This statue is supposed to be a variation of the Keepers of Fear.

What’s funny is that the devs have been placing a joke to call out players in their syndrome of the conspiracy board guy. There is a codex that updates along several locations in the region, explaining about a bunch of lunatic topics. The codex is Mysteries of the Frostback Basin. It is very funny to read and see how the lack of evidence and sources makes all conclusions end up in hunches and ideas pulled from the author's ass. I laugh with his explanations "As proof, Professor Whalen Vankin maps Lines of Power Across the Basin in his book "Ode to the Ordo Templis Royalis." He does not SAY so in the book to a Casual Reader, but certain secret signs left by the Professor to befuddle his Enemies point to it very Clearly, if one reads the text eight times." lol, they speak to each theory-crafter of DA.

The author speaks of gigantic snake-kings, that we can, more or less, consider like titans, reptilian ones, that could be the ones we found in the Descent DLC called the Scaled Ones, and the moon men, which I don't know to what relate. Blighted creatures who had resistance? In any case, this codex is _too much_.

Later in game we will learn that these notes belong to the Avvar trader Helsdim, who lives in the Stone-Bear Hold and, if recruited by Inquisition, he will continue working on conspiracy theories that make no sense. 

In any case, this small detail about the conspiracy notes is useful because we can see once more that the presence of this drawing of many eyes means that whoever was there, was in a conspiracy board guy mode. He even used a glyph of magic.

The Veil and the preservation of the Waking World

An important lore concept we learn in this DLC is that the Veil being thin in some parts of the world is not always detrimental: we see patches of unknown flowers growing inside areas affected by the Fade. In the isle, we will be informed that the Veil delays the passage of time, which makes a lot of sense and is coherent with what we saw in the Western Approach: The Still Ruins, or Ameridan’s own magic, who kept the dragon and himself frost in time while casting something very Fade-like green.

When we visit the isle to see the fate of Ameridan's lover, we find her remains in a shack that still holds despite having passed 800 years. Around the body, there are many flowers.

Solas informs us that this rift is like the one we found in Still Ruins: and ancient rift that was not made by the current events in Inquisition.

When we open this rift, the spirit that has been keeping Telana’s memories speaks:

Telana was a dreamer Dalish

Drakkon asked Ameridan to slay the avvar dragon that was putting Orlais in danger.

Here,  we find a document that triggers the codex Ancient Document Protected in a Scroll Case which shows the deep relationship between Ameridan and the emperor of Orlais Drakkon. This confirms parts of our suspicions when exploring the Exalted Plains: Elves and Humans had a deeper relationship during the times before the Second Blight. 

Close to her remains, we find a book that triggers Unfallen Shack where we are informed that apparently time around the rifts passes slowly [or spirits of Preservation try to keep things in its original state], so ancient objects may look barely old if they were exposed to these rifts for centuries. This has an odd coincidence with Ameridan's powers: he stuck Hakkon and himself in time to keep it trapped. 

As a nice detail of how lore affects even at a small scale: there is some felandaris plants [they only grow where the Veil is thin] around this isle, since the rift has been open for several centuries.

From Telana’s skelleton we loot a bow with a description that seems reiterative again:

This bow seems to have its own pulse and is oddly warm to the touch.

Warm things with pulse. We have been seeing those in many places by now. According to Solas in The Lost Temple of Dirthamen, it is because the object has a part of the living thing inside. Another place where we feel this is in the Western Approach,  in the cave where we find the “thing in the dark” which has a statue of the  The Strange Idol which triggers the note: “This statue is oddly warm to the touch and shivers slightly, as though it might have a pulse.”  We can assume that this is caused by some spirit being bound to the statue, as it has been shown in DA2.