#visual narration

We start with a small summary of what happened in Ferelden [which is the main motivation of Hawke’s story]: Darkspawn run amok on Ferelden, as we see an empty forest quickly filled with darkspwan icons, all encapsuled around a white circle. This is easy to identify: it’s the cinematic we have in DAO before the battle of Ostagar. 

From that encapsuled scenery, a dense thorny branch [with the usual trident-like design for lyrium veins] is shown, spreading upwards, as part of the pillars that support the bridge of the fort of Ostagar. Extra thorny vines grow and reach up the bridge as well, these are the common symbols that the game has been using over and over to mean the spread of the Taint or the Darkspawn. In the process, Varric narrates that the Darkspwan [=dark thorny vines] clashes with the army in Ostagar.

After the battle, the ruins of Ostagar are surrounded in red, emphasising how bloody and devastating that battle was. The illustration also moves to a side, as a representation of “the fall”.

Then we see the representation of Ferelden with the typical lions at both sides of King Cailan. The King wears his golden armour, which withers into a grey, broken figure, representing his death and the total failure of the battle. His image is replaced by Loghain’s, who holds a twisted dagger as a symbol of the betrayal, grey coloured as well.

On the image of Loghain, the paper cuts itself into the shape of a crown which bleeds blood, inside it there is only darkness at first, probably meaning the vacuum of royal power left by Cailan’s death [we know Anora rules over the land but the fact she is not royal blood remains true]. This vacuum of power caused by the death of Cailan brought consequences: the expansion of the darkspawn along the country. Slowly, we see that the darkness inside this crown turns into the image of the Chantry of Lothering. White thorny vines [representation of darkspawn] emerge from the ground, showing how the horde spreads without resistance. It’s true that the darkspawn/Taint is usually represented with dark/black thorny vines, in this case they are white to stand out from the dark red background. The Chantry is surrounded by a dome of blood which gets contaminated [turning black], probably interpreting the caged situation in which this town was when the darkspawn reached it [I will elaborate in a future post, but this constant symbol of thorny vines keeps reminding me of the Vallaslin of Elgar'nan.

The whole image is covered by more dark thorny vines coming from the left side of the screen, emphasising the overwhelming attack of the horde. The message is clear: the darkspawn’s expansion is unstoppable.

The windmill, symbol of Lothering [as well as Red Cliff, but in this case it doesn’t apply], is presented darkened, burnt, and broken, while at the sides of the screen, skeletons are shown with fire: the village was burnt and innocent died.

After the chaos, more dark thorny vines spread, showing how relentless the darkspawn are. Lothering has been totally destroyed and controlled by the horde. 

As the image turns dark due to so many dark thorny vines, we are informed that the champion barely escaped in time. That's the end of the introduction of the context in which Hawke’s family is escaping.  ---- After some gameplay, Varric returns to narrate ----

 When Varric resumes his narration, the image of Flemeth appears. This part is interesting because  from the bottom of her image, lines that look like lyrium veins raise up over her outfit, which looks like a mountain. In fact, if one observes the outline of her figure, the whole image looks like a volcano erupting. Maybe it’s an excess of observation, but I think there is a bit of intention in making her skirt look like a mountain with obvious lyrium veins on it [this is a symbol that appears in all games], specially after DAI DLC in which we learnt that Mythal was the responsible of killing/taking a titan’s heart. But that’s for another post. 

On the background, there is a water-like texture accompanied with lines that may look like lyrium. They seem to be used to represent Flemeth's magical powers or maybe her relationship with water: the well of sorrows. This could be a bit far-stretched as well. 

She displays her figure holding a staff which has always appeared in her concept art (Art of Thedas), or in games like Heroes of Dragon Age, and, so far, DAO has shown this symbol on the forehead of Andraste statues [we will find this symbol in some Eluvians in DAI as well]. On the background, the same symbol of the shape of her staff appears once more [outlined with a beige-colour]. I personally think this is a symbol that represents Flemeth.

Continuing with Varric’s narration, the following image is Gwaren, where Flemeth flew with the champion's family. Nothing more to say here.

   Hawke’s family sailed across the Waking Sea.

In the video can be seen barely in half a second, but there is a curious kraken coming up from the sea, as if it were one of the many dangers when sailing. It can be seen better in the guide book.  

Immediately after, we see the iconic image of Kirkwall: the fortress [black wall] with two white humanoid slaves. Around the fortress, the water has turned red due to the spill of blood. In principle, we think it’s the blood of slave labour, but the game would suggest later that many blood sacrifices has been made in the underground of this place with consequences not clear for the city. 

As we zoom-in the entrance,  we start to see the chains and a constant red background that, in more than one occasion has been represented in other symbols along the game as a red pool of blood. Or is it red lyrium? In the beginning I never hesitated to understand it as blood, until some loadscreen [**] illustrations began to suggest another possibility [this will be presented in a series of posts about the architecture of Kirkwall]. 

This image coincides with Varric saying that, long time ago, slaves from all corners of Thedas were put to work in the quarries of this city under the control of Tevinter. And I think this piece of information is key: Tevinter used this place not just to make of it a slave trade center; it was a quarry for mining purposes, mainly stone to erect Tevinter temples or to expand the Imperial Highway. And we saw in this game that, by digging deeper, you could access to old, ancient Thaigs, older than Orzammar itself.  I think this mining aspect of the ancient Kirkwall is an interesting detail to keep in mind for later.  [More details in the series of posts about the architecture of Kirkwall]. 

The next scene is a darkened one, which hides the many chains still present in this city while Varric narrates the fact that now Kirkwall is a free city, even though it’s quite questionable.

 As we walk into the gates deeper and deeper, we see the Gallows, filled with slaves that try to cover their ears [are they trying not to hear a song?]. We see them in the fort but also under water, maybe as sacrifices to fill the pools and canals of blood that are part of the architecture of Kirkwall. 

There is another detail: in the main colossal statues that hang from the coast, as well as those metallic ones decorating the gallows, we can see that these screaming slaves have human ears, but the white drawings, the ones more easily found everywhere around the city, or even maybe the ones done by the slaves themselves, keep hiding their ears. Maybe it’s just circumstantial and means nothing, but I like to highlight how, with the exception of the metallic statues, the rest of the iconography of these slaves is always covering their ears when we know that the majority of the slaves were elves.  It’s also true that Thedas has a long history of erasing elven ears in pieces of arts, monuments and even historical pictures. 

---- After some gameplay, Varric returns to narrate ----

When Varric resumes, we are back to Ferelden: we see a tower that I think it's the representation of Fort Drakon, where the final battle of DAO took place and the “blight was defeated” with the death of the Archdemon. Its icon doesn't coincides with the usual one that represents Fort Drakon, but it's the only one making sense since it has two peaks on its top. The Tower of the Magi makes no sense. So, I go for this symbol being an oversimplification of the symbol of Fort Drakon.

Around this tower we see branches or algae. These branches do not look like the thorny vines that always represents the Taint or the Darkspawn, this one looks a lot like a Vallasllin design [June design to be precise], with leaves around it. But to be honest, I don’t think that makes any sense, unless your Warden is Dalish. It is as if the vine, instead of being thorny, now white and healed, grows leaves around it. It's strange to interpret this algae-thing as a vine because so far, during two games, such symbol has always been associated with lyrium veins [non thorny] or Taint/darkspwan [thorny]. They have never been associated with anything positive and benevolent as they are used in this illustration.

These branches extend below and surround Lothering,  but despite the success in destroying the archdemon, there was no healing for Lothering: the windmill collapses, meaning how the town was destroyed for good. From the hill of ashes of this town, appears a circle which displays the figure of Hawke, meaning that someone who came from these ashes has now home elsewhere: Kirkwall.

Varric continues his narration in Kirkwall, where the champion is working for smugglers or mercenaries when the qunari come. The curious detail about the picture of the qunari used in this part is on the background: it uses a similar pattern that we will see repeated a lot in DAI murals: a mosaic-made undulating pattern, dark one on the top, golden one on the bottom. It could be the most obvious representation of water or flow, but it’s curious that it’s made in the same mosaic-like style than the murals we will see in DAI.

The qunari arrival drips dark ink over a trouble that is still underground:  the conflict between mages vs templars, which grows as it does the Qunari problem. 

And here is where all the narrations of Varric during Act 1 finish. 

[**] The Loadscreen I was referring to is this one: The symbol it shows in the middle is the one representing Emerius, the City of Chains. The stone [curiously coloured in red] shows square-ish swirly patterns, very common so far in the dwarven representation of lyrium, while some geometric trident-like shapes at the very edge of the screen can be seen.

1. First picture has little interest: humans fighting the Archdemon on the top of the Fort Drakon. It shows the ending of DAO. Detail worth noting: the main human has a vine-esque detail in his cheek. It could be a Vallaslin [unlikely, since he is a human=rounded ears] or a hint of taint [more likely]. Another detail worth noticing is the white circle around the Archdemon. We know these circles have a particular meaning in Solas’ murals [see posts related to it, work in progress still]. They tend to be related to archdemons as protectors of “walls” that contain a greater danger [most probably the corrupted aspect of the Dread Wolf, according the last mural we saw in the teasing trailer of DA4]

2. The dragon disappears when it's killed. Fort Drakon is shown clean with some red lines [blood?] growing at both sides. These lines speak volumes: they start with the same strokes [and colour!] we see in most vallaslins, but they darkened and turned, once more, into the recurrent symbol of thorny vines [Elgar’nan design]. 

3. These lines keep growing and turn into the typical symbol we have been seeing since DAO introduction: thorny vines that represent the Blight or the Taint [since we only have access to Andrastian narrators]. This symbol is always present when the narration of the darkspawn appears. 4. The following image shows how the thorny vines have roots on a legion of darkspawn. This drawing reinforces the interpretation that the thorny vines represent the Blight/Taint.

5. This picture is more than interesting. We see Fort Drakon as the highest tower in the region, surrounded by Denerin. The mountains around turn red and veiny, suggesting the “core” of this circulatory system is deep beneath the underground and its reaching the surface. Similar symbol of red veins will be used in DA2 to represent the red lyrium = the tainted blood of the titans. So since Awakening they had been subtly showing this concept for a while.The following transition is even more interesting. 6. From those red tainted mountains, more vines raises, reaching two figures that look like puppets. This may suggest what we learnt in DAI: the corrupted blood of the titans, aka The Taint, is responsible of, at least, the anomalous darkspawn. 7. These puppets end up being the Mother and The Father [The Architect]. Here is where the narrator informs us that the darkspwan has been fractured into two factions. It's also worth noting that the Mother has her spider-legs in a position that makes you recall the bettle-horns that we find in most Darkspawn settlements:

8. Now, this is another interesting detail. The narration always follows the thorny vines, which now, after passing through the darkspwan leaders, acquired a Dwarven style, looking exactly the same as Dwarves draw lyrium veins.

9. And those geometrical vines reach a scene where Darkspawn are attacking people.

The first picture shows the Magisters Sidereal doing a blood sacrifice to reach their goal: the image on the background, the Golden city where the Maker dwells, according to the Chantry. This castle becomes darker as the ritual proceeds. This symbol will be used all over the series to represent the Black City. By its side we see laurel leaves, assuming it’s a symbol of victory or just another symbol to represent Tevinter. If we only focus on the DA lore, laurel represents Andraste’s sacrifice, which in this case means little, since the story of the Magisters is previous to Andraste. In the following scene, a dark vine is born from the Black City, symbol of the blight infection, which reaches the tree.

The second picture represents a tree, symbol of life, withered by the Blight as the narration goes. But the Blight not only withers it, it gives it thorns. Maybe it’s just a symbol of infection, since the Blight is represented in this presentation as a thorny vine, but here is where another interpretation can be made. This is the Chantry story, and we know that DAO is all about unreliable narrators saying the same tale. If we see this part of the presentation with Elven eyes, we may have another details. Why we want to relate this to elves? Because since the book Tevinter Nights was released, one may start to relate elves with the creation of the Blight. So, following that thought, we can associate this image with a vhenadahl, the typical massive tree we find in the alienages used by the city elves to remember Arlathan. Because the Blight, it becomes “thorny”, showing that the population is infected and changed. Now, that’s only the city elf point of view. If we see this tree symbol with Dalish eyes, we can notice it resemblance to the valasllin of Falon'Din, the Friend of the dead. So the tree full of leaves would represent “the people” dying. There is also a constellation called Fervanis, which represents an oak, but this imagery is related to Andruil [who explored the Abyss and returned carrying a disease, according the tales (**) ]. After the scene, this tree becomes thorny and dies, all its leaves fall. One should take into consideration the powerful symbol of this tree since in DA4 a similar tree has a strong presence in the trailer. This tree, that may represent the “elven people” or some of the Elven Gods mentioned before, is also seen in murals where Solas faces the Dread Wolf (***).

In the third picture, there is a focus on the vine, which extends all over the presentation. Clearly, due to the narration, it is a representation of the Blight, but it’s curious that this vine concept can be found in elven tales and vallaslins instead of the chantry’s words or chantry iconography. The main vallaslins with strong predominance of thorns are Andruil’s and Elgar’nan. The meaning of Andruil has been explained in point 2. Elgar’nan is the elven god of vengeance, so the Blight could be interpreted as a vengeance from an elven point of view. It’s also worth noting that in Trespasser the mural of the Titans was related to Mythal striking titans, taking their powers, and then, a description of a vine spreading around a fire sphere followed.

The fourth picture shows a circle that may represent dragons or the Old Gods [since at the top of it we see two dragon heads] trapping the Tevinter Magisters who scream until a flash of light turns them black figures with flashing eyes: the first Darkspawn. In the middle of the circle there is another with soft swirls in it: maybe a subtle representation of the  Somnaborium[ orb of destruction] that tevinter mages used to create as a replica of the elven ones.

In the fifth image, the circle is not black anymore, it has runes of magic that maybe represent the Taint Magic [the hidden element all across the series until the books The Calling and Tevinter Nights]. The dark figures are now a representation of the darkspawn. In the bottom left of the frame, a man screams and in a flash, the figure turns into five dark, sinister peacock feathers. They have five eye-like forms, which represent the original five Magister Sidereal of the first picture in this presentation. The colours and shape of these feathers are used in many murals representing the Tevinter Pride of the Magisters Sidereal that doomed Thedas (****).

In the last picture, we only see the five Magisters that “returned” from the sacred -now corrupted- place turned into darkspawn, and the Blight began. That image can be found in one of the books of The World of Thedas. In it, the five blighted magisters have a figure hovering them that can be seen as a dragon in the DA2 style, or an oversimplification of the DAO Old Gods figures.

(**)  The Dalish story says that, because her love for challenging hunts, Andruil followed the Forgotten Ones into the Abyss, something that ultimately drove her mad. Andruil put on armor made of the Void and made weapons of darkness. She brought plague to her lands and howled things meant to be forgotten. Finally Mythal successfully challenged her and stole her knowledge of how to find the Void.

(***) Thorny tree is also present in the murals

(****) The Black city is represented many times as black peacock feathers that looks like eyes. The colours remain despite changing across the murals.

Over the city of Kirwall, surrounded by blood, framed inside the same structure that looks like a press device during the previous presentation [which I assume it’s the Gallows] we see a figure on a white circle wearing a golden cape: this represents the champion of Kirkwall who now has a Hero-like status due to his participation in the battle against the Qunari. Unlike in the presentation 2, where his weapons were made of gold due to the wealth found and earned through battle in the Deep Roads, now he wears a golden cape, symbol of the deep prestige he has in the City.

Over that circle, we see the Viscount’s Keep eagle, representation that now Hawke is the most important person of the city, taking a place as important as the Viscount [who is now dead]. From the circle, a black line [neither twisted nor thorny] runs along the screen while flowers bloom around it. Since Hawke has been associated with the concept of a tree in the previous presentation [growing roots to mean how he settled down in this city and made it his own] it seems natural to think of this black line as a branch. The blooming flowers may be the representation of his hero-like fame. This interpretation seems to be correct because Varric is narrating at that moment that every noble that survived the Qunari battle owned their lives to Hawke, for this reason, he became not only a hero but the most important person in the city. Hawke is “blooming” over a background of chaos: we see the symbols of the factions that keep fighting with each other: Templars and Chantry-Circle mages [curious detail, we keep seeing the sun of the Imperial Chantry, not the classical one]. The blooming continues over a framed piece of the Gallows: we see a pool filled with blood crossed by a bridge which is the one we walk across in the final fight against Orsino. In some codex it’s explained that pools like these were used to be filled with blood, exactly like this image shows.

The blooming branch stops at the image of Meredith at the same time Varric explains that Hawke is the most important person in Kirkwall, with the exception of Meredith, who take the power left by the dead Viscount.

The frictions between Meredith and Orsino are represented in this image with  scratches on their images [in particular on the surfaces that put them in contact]. It’s a continuous scratching to the point we lose the images and everything is black.

We see darkness due to the excess of scratches/frictions, and then it jumps to something that it's not clear for me what represents: there is an open gate, between columns that shows symbols of lyrium veins which design has been used already in some load-screens.  

A single tower appears, its peak is surrounded by a white circle, which is a symbol more typical for Hawke as we saw along the presentations. The narration says that the tension between the Templars squeezing and the mages resisting simply escalated to the point where the tower began to bleed [the lyrium veins at the immediate sides disappear] to finally break. Where the main veins of lyrium were in the first slide, now appear Templars splattered in blood [the lyrium veins, meaning the mages, are gone because they killed them].

I assume this is an unusual representation of the “Circle of Magi” [since it’s not like the one we found in DAO], and its collapse represents Meredith asking for the Right of Annulment, fact we know she asked for even before the Act 3 starts. Another interpretation of this scene is given by the place where this tower stands up: it’s a field of white triangles. We saw that in other parts of DA2 presentations triangular-ish icons represent water, or more precisely, the ocean. So this tower could represent Kirwall circle of magi, and the fact that the Templars slay mages and the tensions between mages and Templars escalate to the point of collapse, remains the same.

When this tower breaks, it starts to spread “roots”, but now with a style closer to the way dwarves have been representing lyrium veins in past games. Some of them are red due to the blood, potentially meaning how the lyrium, usually used for making magic more potent, was replaced by blood due to the despair of the mages in Kirkwall [and some fanatics of the ancient glory of Tevinter, like Tarohne]. This could be the representation of how mages, desperate because the Right of Annulment, started to fall prey to demons and blood magic, as Orsino showed us in the end.

All these roots reach circles where you can see the representation of Hakwe, the symbol of Templars, and the symbol of the [Imperial] Chantry. These circles are interconnected with these lyrium veins [some more square-ish, others more swirly, which DAO has shown us as more Avaar-Elven symbols of the lyrium. I remember the ceiling of the Circle of Magi, for example].  A strip of grey colour, with the symbols of more [red] lyrium veins crosses both circles.

After three years of that situation, the roots go into a bigger circle with a pattern of a soldier, a Chantry sun and a building?, they surround a group of people in hooded robes, laying on the symbol of the Chanty which grows darker, as Varric says all crashed down. Probably this is the representation of the bomb that destroyed all the priests and sisters inside the Chantry.

The second part of this narration, is at the end of the game

We see the image of the gallows [or it could be the black wall that represents Kirkwall], and at its sides, clean blue lyrium veins, that turn red and angry as a red stain from the bottom spreads [the spilled blood raises?]: the Templars can be defied.

Hawke is not in a surrounded nice white circle anymore, but in a deformed contour of red anger, that fury is what it's spreading now [instead the branches of the tree that represented Hawke before]. It burns the chantry symbol, representing how he defended the mages that were going to be killed without a real cause with the Right of Annulment.

What follows is Varric’s pages, commenting about the fate of the companions and Hawke, who leave the city for good. We see Kirkwall’s map

the companions page

Hawke page with both symbols of being a warrior or a mage.

And then, some curious pages follow:  We see one where the Gallows [we can barely see the head of the slaves below] seems to have a very clear structure for some reason: it follows the orientation of a fork. We can see the oversimplification of this drawing on the upper part of the screen. What surprises me here is that the Gallows has two domes. These representations have been pestering all murals and iconography in Dragon Age: the black city is encapsulated in several layers, the red idol is represented inside a dome in some murals, etc.  What this may suggest is what we can relate with the Enigma of Kirkall: This city, and in particular the Gallows, were built with more than the purpose to trade slaves; here, strange and big-scale blood sacrifices have been made. And considering that the Thaig where we find the red idol has Claws of Dumat in it, I’m very inclined to think that Tevinter may have already known about red lyrium and Kirkwall was a key city for that. [More details of these speculations in the post of Kirkwall History]

On a lighter note, as Varric closes his book, we see this page, where we can see Shale destroying chickens in her never-ending obsession against birds. [Sadly, I could not capture it while playing it, but I did it in the video]

and again, a last frame is for Flemeth in a picture I analysed in the presentation of Act 1.

This narration starts with the image of a human that cracks and breaks apart. It’s just a regular grey human that represents Hawke when he was a grey nobody, but once the treasure of the Deep Roads gave him prestige enough, his grey image is replaced by the golden one shown below, yielding weapons in gold. This image is accompanied with the sentence: “The treasure found in the Deep Roads made us a fortune. The Champion moved up in the world.” Which seems to confirm this interpretation.

Around this grey human, there are some geometric patterns that seem to give the impression of dwarvish art [squarish swirls], meaning Deep Roads.

The human, now covered in gold thanks to this found treasure, is placed between two dark buildings that, curiously, have been used in illustrations inside the Art of Thedas to represent the Black City. In this case, I think it represents the Gallows which are usually oversimplified as two mirroring structures divided by a separation in between.

At the same time, it’s not exactly the shape of the Gallows, and resembles a bit the Viscount’s keep:

 and still it looks like a press device where the Champion is compressed.

The narration continues as we see that behind the Champion there is a tree of white canopy which roots grow quickly. Since Varric is exactly describing at this point about how the Deep Road treasure allowed the champion to buy a mansion in Hightown and everyone in the city started to know about him; this seems the obvious representation of how Hawke began to spread roots in Kirkwall [recovered the Amell’s mansion, developed wealth and fame, got involved with the problems of the city], while staying between two big buildings that represent the Gallows [I think?] where the main long-lasting political problem of Kirkwall lays.

One of the roots hits in between a hooded figure of yellow robe casting something, which must be a mage, and a dark hooded figure, which bottom shows dark tendrils, representing (in my opinion) a mage Grey Warden. Both figures are the same, since the dark cape has a pattern with the same symbol on both of them. 

The one casting what looks like a simplification of the Chantry Sun may represent the sibling’s fate of going to the Circle/becoming a Templar, while the other one, where the dark cloak covers them completely, dripping dark tendrils of what usually is represented as Taint, could be the other alternative: the sibling  becoming a Grey Warden. It's in this part where Varric changes his narration depending on the sibling’s fate.

The corruption of the figure of the Grey Warden drips to form a mountain of warriors representing the Qunari army, but also it was made in a shape that resembles the Viscount’s Keep where the Viscount was beheaded. It also looks like a mountain of warriors/templars holding their shields, and in a more distant way, the usual oversimplification of the Black City. I’m surprised of how multi-interpretive this image can be. This screen is accompanied with Varric’s narration about the Qunari being still present in the city.

This transition is what makes me suspect that those dark figures that form a mountain of warriors are not Qunari. In the bottom we see the unmistakable shape of Qunari in red. So who or what are those dark shapes in the background? I can’t say for sure.  Their heads look like templar helms, but at the same time, the whole image looks like the Black City, in which interior there is a thick vein of Red Lyirum. All this aditional interpretation resounds with DAI and the red lyrium templars. Was it a foreshadowing? But it makes no sense to represent this with the Qunari. Or maybe it’s what it’s happening elsewhere with the Templars while the Qunari drama is unfolding? 

That the qunari are in the same red than the red lyrium vein makes me wonder maybe too much and I’m afraid of being too carried away with overthinking the images [something that I don’t want to do].

If we remain in what we know up to DA2, this image can be interpreted as how the Gallows and the Viscount’s Keep were overtaken by the Qunari, who spilled blood and fury in equal measure. This interpretation makes sense with the following animation where the red lines simply get aflame and destroy the representation of power in the Viscount.  If we see again the representation of the Gallows in the map, we can see more or less that this black amount of creatures are forming the structure of the Gallows, and the separation that characterises the Gallows is filled with that red vein of blood that erupts, showing how explosive this situation was.