Are the Old Gods the Elven Gods? || Girl Analyzes Dragon Age

yet one must ask what were the old gods what secrets of theirs did the ancient magisters know hello okay i know it's been a really long time i'd been considering coming back for a while and with all this new hype and well you know quarantine i figured there's no time like the present so let's see if i remember how to do this i might be a little rusty with the lore as i'm having trouble remembering what's been confirmed what's only been implied and what's just commonly accepted fan theory so please feel free to chime in in the comments and re-teach me if i need it so as you can see from the title this is by no means a new or original theory in fact i think it's probably one of the oldest ones i've heard floating around all the way back from when origins came out and there's lots of different variations on it to be honest i don't really like this theory too much because it kind of shrinks the in-game world and i've never really found any of the evidence to be super solid and there's a lot of pretty good arguments against it that i'll kind of cover as well but anyways my point is that i'm still not sure i'm fully convinced of this but the reason i'm super excited about it to make a video about it now is some of the new stuff that's been coming out makes it a little more intriguing to me i usually prefer to just use in-game and book references but for this i have to make an exception david gator the ex-lead writer of the first three dragon age games has recently been streaming in origins playthrough with summerfall studios giving some dev commentary and this little bit really stood out to me yeah originally the archdemon had like they had these had like a like a blank face like say imagine all black and had this sort of giant sort of ornate crown that's around the head and then was all sort of uh smoke and tentacles very very cthulu-esque and um but that was like one concept drawing so immediately i was reminded of a pair of statues that have always caught my attention okay i know a lot of you have said that i put way too much stock in the game art but doesn't this look pretty much exactly like what he was talking about there's the blank face the large ornate crown the cthulhu-like tentacles we have also seen a really similar figure in the dragon age 2 deep roads concept art in the world of thedas volume 1. and there's a picture in the new bioware stories and secrets book which i assume is the specific art that david gator was referring to so if this was the original concept design for the archdemons we can assume that this one was meant to be the old god urthemiel which is the archdemon of the fifth blight that we fight in origins and this makes sense considering that this statue is in the quarters of the architect in awakening he's the ancient magister who is the high priest of urthemiel that we meet in the book the calling and the awakening expansion and he is one of the magisters who first entered the golden city and brought the blight upon the world i've always been curious about these statues and images especially because according to the game files this is earth emile's heraldry it's pretty much spot on for the headdress that this statue wears so anyway the reason this whole thing got me thinking is in the dalish origin tamlin says that this statue next to it is a falandin an elven god i can't believe this you recognize this statue don't you i saw a picture of it in one of those old books the keeper never lets anyone touch it was one of the old gods the keeper called him a friend of the dead he was a guide who took people across the spirit land to their final rest in the beyond but he wasn't an evil god not like fenheral the great wolf it doesn't seem right that a place so wrong would be his while these obviously aren't the same statues they do have a lot of similarities the big headdress the blank face and almost tentacle-like arms like the original concept for an archdemon and they're located right next to each other in the architect's pad and both found together in the blood mages hideout in deneram tamlin also says yet these are human ruins remember why would they worship an elven god so if the dalish recognized this statue as one of their gods and the humans recognized a very similar looking statue as one of their gods does that mean that the two pantheons might be related or maybe even the same just interpreted in different ways you had something similar in ancient tevinter people kept the holidays but renamed them for the maker so instead of celebrating anderalis at the start of summer you have summer day and it's about the maker so the theory is that the seven old gods the ones that call to the darkspawn compelling them with the singular purpose of searching for their sleeping dragon forms imprisoned in the deep roads who rise as archdemons and blights and who wreak havoc and thedas are somehow related to the seven remaining elven gods so let's start with what we do know in the lore according to trespasser solas tells us this the false gods called me fenn harel when they finally went too far i formed the veil and banished them forever so seven old gods and seven remaining elven gods this would not include fen harel who was the one who locked them away or mythal who we find out was previously murdered by the other elven gods they killed mythol crime for which an eternity of torment is the only fitting punishment those two crazy kids are still out and about causing mischief and thetas but the remaining seven evan ears haven't been seen in like thousands of years that we know of if solas trapped these elven gods in the fade why haven't we seen them around well according to the world of thedas volume 1 the dalish believed that their gods were trapped by fenheral in the black city and then there's also the theory that the black city was once the ancient city of arlathan the canticle of exaltations in the chant of light also tells us that there are seven gates to the black city it says and i looked up and saw the seven gates of the black city shatter and darkness cloaked both realms solas tells us in trespasser the elven legends of immortality all true it was not the arrival of humans that caused them to begin aging it was me the veil took everything from the elves even themselves according to the timeline in the world of thedas vol 1 it was only 50 years after the elves began aging that the old gods began whispering to humanity that's a really really really short amount of time when we're talking in terms of millennia only 50 years after the elven gods were trapped in the fade was when the old gods started whispering i mean it could just be a coincidence eventually according to the same timeline the old gods whisperings managed to convince their high priests to come and find them in the golden city which is now the black city and promise them godhood should they [Music] the succeed we sought the golden light you offered the power of the gods themselves now remember we still don't know for sure that that's where the elven gods are trapped but if it is it would be pretty friggin weird that the old gods would also be in the black city wanting their priests to come find them there i guess that's just assuming that the whispers were being truthful corypheus and his priest pals listened to the urgings and teachings of their gods to complete a massive blood magic ritual and they committed what the chantry considers to be the second sin tearing open the veil to physically enter the golden city after this the old gods went silent and no longer spoke to their followers while he says that he doesn't subscribe to this theory call from the kingdom a great channel you should subscribe to made a video a few years back linked below with a really interesting point that i don't know why i hadn't thought of it or heard of it before but it's so clear he says when the manchester's breached the black city something had to have changed to make them suddenly go silent the spirits of the old gods previously would talk to their followers in dreams through the fade so when the magisters broke into whatever was holding them in the fade the gods must not have had access to the fade anymore maybe their spirits escaped and returned to their physical bodies making them literally unable to speak to their followers and dreams i mean we saw this exact same thing happen with the jaws of hakkon the jaws of hakkon sought to bind their god in mortal form and bring war to the lowlands ages ago the old jaws of hakkon did the same they brought their god to life to destroy the lowlands their foolishness lost hakkon to all avar now they would free him and begin again what did you mean when you said that their foolishness lost hakkon to all over when they bound hakkon to mortal form he became blood of this world he could hear no prayers nor speak to the august all he could do was kill then he vanished instead of dying as though rendered mute lost for ages so if the same thing happened with the spirits of the old gods being bound to physical dragon forms they'd have to resort to using the calling to help them escape from their physical prisons so let's talk about the physical an important thing to remember is that we've only seen the elven mosaics and statues of the evanuris in the games but it sounds like dragons could have been a common physical form for them to take after all we've seen flemethal in all three games being able to turn into a dragon she turned into a giant bird and plucked the two of you from atop the tower one in each talon in origins if you try to kill her at morrigan's request she'll turn into a dragon to fight you she saves hawking company from the darkspawn at the beginning of dragon age 2. impressive where'd you learn how to turn into a dragon perhaps i am a dragon and she either sends a dragon protector or teaches morrigan how to match kurfis's dragon in inquisition most of the mythal statues in her temple and symbols and inquisition are pretty dragon-like as well so i think it's pretty clear that at least mythal had some dragon shape-shifting abilities and connections did the others well tamlin's origins fallon din statue i mentioned earlier sherlock's winged though not quite a dragon but still pretty similar to some of the month all statues we see in inquisition in the codex we find in the temple of mythal called song to falandin it says the people swore their lives to fallondin who mastered the dark that lies whose shadows hunger whose faithful sing whose wings of death surround him thick as night lathanavir master squire be our guide through shapeless worlds and airless skies so falandin was associated with wings wings of death also in the temple of mythal we see a song to elgernon that says elginon wrath and thunder give us glory give us victory over the earth that shakes our cities strike the usurpers with your lightning burn the ground under your gaze bring wing and death against those who throw down our work elgin on help us tame the land in the hissing wastes we find a journal entry about the dwarven ruins in the area that says i was tracing heraldry etched on a wall when i noticed pictures of weapons with winged lizards worked into the decoration i spent the rest of the day translating the inscriptions this verse was apparently passed down through firel's house through his father to his father's father and so on for hundreds of generations from the stone have no fear of anything but the stoneless sky betrays with wings of flame if the surface must be breached if there is no other way bring weapons against the ur talk and heed their screams ertok means dragon why was it part of an ancient crest why were these dwarves so worried about a monster they'd never see that they worked into their weapons a codex with a similar message found in the deep roads written by an elf converted to the cune and trespasser says war i don't remember any legends about our people fighting the dwarves though i remember my keeper telling a story about how the dwarves fear the sun because of el granon's fire a metaphor for the elves of arlathan driving the dwarves underground and speaking of all these hints that algernon also had dragon-like tendencies in dragon age origins the object you click on to get elgarnon's codex is this strangely dragon-like mask thing june's two and then there's the codex ancient elven writing that you can get from the temple of mythal and it translates if you let your inquisitor drink from the well of sorrows it says his crime is high treason he took on a form reserved for the gods in their chosen and dared to fly in the shape of the divine the center belongs to dirthamen he claims he took wings at the urging of gilanon and begs protection from mythal she does not show him favor and will let elgernon judge him for one moment there is an image of a shifting shadowy mass with blazing eyes whose form may be one or many then it fades so was that divine winged shape a dragon i think it's safe to say that there's a good chance that the evanuris could either turn into dragons themselves or at least had dragon counterparts to represent them what if this was a form they took for intimidation more power or as a way to be more palatable to the humans who held a lot of contempt for the elves okay so what if their physical dragon formed bodies were locked away in their prisons in the deep roads which some have speculated are within titans but again the titans thing is a whole other video for another time and then their spirits were locked away in the black city in the fade with the veil cutting them off from being able to fully function in either realm could they have been using blight magic for ultimate power as we saw with corypheus blight magic gave him effective immortality and the darkspawn serve as a huge army of thralls to do their bidding that's a whole lot of power as i said in the beginning this theory has a lot of variations ranging from the idea that the old gods are the elven gods or that they're at least connected to them in some way i'm not going to go into super detail for them all as this video is already pretty long and there's just so many of them but here are some of the basics i've heard theories that the old gods are the elven gods high priests or champions or chosen as it was called in the ancient elven writing codex or that they're each of the elven gods protectors like mythal's dragon in inquisition or maybe they're like the red lyrium dragon is to corypheus solas the dragon corypheus commands could it truly be an archdemon one assumes that if it were we would be facing a blight so what is it then a corrupted dragon simply another dark spawn it is connected to corypheus such a relation goes beyond mere control it is a bond it makes you wonder if that's all the archdemons themselves are pets to beings who no longer exist i would not go as far as that or maybe the elven gods spirits were bound to dragon forms as a means of imprisonment kind of like hakkon was gods cannot be reborn until they die hakkon needs a good rebirthing if you say so or maybe they were the elven gods horcruxes i agreed to deliver the amulet though you could have told me you were inside it just a piece a small piece but it was all i needed a bit of security should the inevitable occur and if i know my morning it already has or maybe each of the old gods serve as seals to each of the evanuris's prisons and by killing them off they each have a chance at being freed they sleep masked in a mirror hiding hurting and to wake them where did it go i apologize cole that is not a pain you can heal is this why solas is so pissed about the grey wardens then he didn't want them dead because first of my people do not die so easily he knew they'd be able to come back and just wanted to trap them to ensure an eternity of torment they killed mythol crime for which an eternity of torment is the only fitting punishment so is he pissed at the grey wardens for screwing up his whole plan the wardens see themselves the world's defense against the blight do they not yes why do you sound so skeptical doesn't everyone know this when an arts demon rises they slay it what will they do when all the archdemons are slain uh retire without arch demons there can be no blights is that the reasoning right where are you going with this nowhere i hope they are correct you don't think much of the grey warden solas they are fools a fact only amplified by corypheus is meddling i am not blind to their failings but hawke and the inquisitor are alive now because because alistair's actions define a single man the warden's insistence on tampering with forces they do not understand that is what defines their order a harsh assessment but after adamant perhaps not undeserved we must stop the wardens from carrying out this insane plan inquisitor to seek out these old gods deliberately in some bizarre attempt to preempt the blight grey wardens have always been dangerous they care for nothing beyond stopping the dark spawn like a fair maiden chasing a butterfly of a cliff except if you don't stop them we'll all fall this is one of the few things we actually see him really lose his about i mean he's like really yelling about it now i'm not gonna go into which elven god might line up with which old god because more than enough other people have done it already and there's just so many possibilities since their realms of godhead don't quite match up but we do see some overlap in some areas the biggest example being razikal and dirthamen raziquel is the old god of mysteries and dirthamen is the elven god of secrets these two realms are pretty closely tied at least in my mind and we see a lot of mention of both of these gods in dragon age inquisition and a lot of their themes are pretty similar perhaps this is setting us up for something as far as we know razziquel is one of the two old god dragons that are still alive for example we see a slab of razzikel's worshippers in the lost idol landmark in the western approach we visit razakil's reach in jaws of hakkon dlc and we also come across a bunch of tevinter writings about this old god of mysteries the one called tevinter inscription says silence has fallen those who call out to her in dreams hear nothing our letters to the capital go unanswered no supplies have been sent and our messengers do not return from the north we are alone razzikel oh shadow which obscures the path ahead deliver your faithful save us from the silence which devours this sounds an awful lot like a piece of the codex we get from the lost temple of dirthamen in inquisition it says we few whisper here where shadow dwells some words remain unuttered truths are pushed down down where they shall never arise again dirthamen is gone he said our highest one brings to us this gravest news what shall we do where shall we go what are the old secrets that burn within our hearts they will come for us in the night those who could steal the words from our lips and our god no longer rises to our defense we claw at the walls at the walls now we pray for a dawn that will never arrive and both of the followers of these gods seem to go mad when their god left them another vague clue that solas and the elven gods have something to do with the old gods is a piece of artwork from the first teaser trailer for dragon age 4 that we were given at the game awards in 2018. here we can see an elf the dread wolf and the red lyrium idol while we can and have gotten into theories in itself about what this all means the thing that's standing out to me right now in terms of this is the seven half circles surrounding the main circle in the center seven seven remaining elven gods seven old gods five of those circles are dim and two are lit we know that five archdemons have risen and been slain while two remain sleeping but presumably alive could this be what these half circles represent why would they be associated with an elf and the dread wolf if they weren't related somehow and editing me is coming in to add some of the new tasty tidbits from the 2020 game awards teaser trailer that just came out alright we see this mural with two large looming figures one of them the moon head looks an awfully lot like this huge centipede sea serpentish monster that we've seen cut off in the 2020 behind the scenes trailer but that we can also see slightly edited and in full in the new 2020 bioware stories and secrets book in the book the caption says the evil gods have thedas in their sights and only heroes can stop them the shadows of the past stir and new heroes must rise to fight them so if we go with what the caption implies this sounds like it's a picture of an evil god a shadow from the past this moon head also really reminds me of this moon-headed winged statue that we can find in the deep roads and trespasser with a codex entry under it written by an elf it says these statues are old better shaped than anything i've seen on the surface many of them are from mythal though and fenn herrell not in a spot of honor but guarding attending protector and all mother why are you honored here so far from the light of the sun and why was the dread wolf at your side so does that mean that this winged moon-headed statue is supposed to be mythal and if so is that the same as the moon head in the new trailer and book we have after all heard of mythal turning into a serpent in the elven god android codex which the new concept art kind of reminds me of another interesting thing to note but just adds more to the confusion is that the moon headed centipede sea serpent monster thing that we see here has a golden spear which brings to mind the codex unreadable elven writing that says she took the radiance of the stars divided them into grains of light then stored them in a shaft of gold andrew blood and force save us from the time this weapon is thrown your people pray to you spare us the moment we become your sacrifice there's a brief image of an elaborate golden spear glowing with unbearable heat then it fades so there are hints towards mythal and or andrewell and i've heard a lot of people suspecting that it also might be gilanon since she has been connected with like these crazy horrific creatures but no matter what it seems like these figures may be related to the elven gods but it seems weird to me that there'd be only two why only two where are the others why those two but what else do we have two of two remaining old gods that are left alive raziquel and lucicon perhaps whatever elven gods these represent may be associated with the two old gods that are left they do look strangely on theme with that original archdemon concept art and statue mentioned in the beginning of this video the weird shaped headdresses and the blank faces and the expanded version of this mural even shows what i think looks like tentacles speaking of statues statues and more statues there's another interesting overlapping statue that has always stood out to me it's this weird toad monkey looking thing in this cave from meryl's companion quest in dragon age 2 where her demon friend hung out and also the legacy dlc of dragon age 2 has an altar to dumat in corypheus's prison if this weird creature represents dumot then what's it doing in da nan hanin an elven ruin in the emerald graves and inquisition the last overlap i'll mention is the estrarium for the constellation tenebrium found in crestwood it pretty much speaks for itself called shadow in the common parlance likely due to the ancient association of the constellation tenebrium with lucikan the old god of darkness and the night it is odd however that the description for this constellation has always been an owl and not a dragon even in the tevinter texts this lends credence to the widely held belief that tanebrium was a name meant to supplant an older elven association perhaps with the elven god fallon din sometimes represented entails as a giant owl there is of course another explanation owls are nocturnal hunters and among earlier people were considered terrifying omens of loss fallondin and luciken an elven god and an old god represented by the same constellation so what's the evidence rebutting this theory well one of the biggies is something david gator wrote way back in 2009 on the now defunct bioware forums someone asked him about how the three big religions and thedas overlap and he wrote the dealers have slowly reassembled a religion from the pieces of lore though how complete it is cannot be known even so a few things are factual for one the original elven religion predates the cult of the old gods by a long time could the old gods have been based on the alvin gods possibly but there's nothing to suggest the elven gods were ever dragons and certainly the contempt the imperium held for the elven culture makes it unlikely they would think elven gods were worth worshipping consider also that it was the old gods that taught humanity its magic and encouraged them to destroy arlathan why would elven gods do this one could point to the forgotten ones look at the codex entry on fenn herrell for their mention and suggest that they had reason for vengeance though that would probably be against fen harel and their good brethren and not against the almond people themselves no still all of that depends on how much the knowledge given by daelish tales is complete he doesn't straight up say that they're not related however just like solas in this dialogue with him at skyhold nothing in any law connects my people to the old god dragons who became archdemons we know solas to tell very cleverly worded half-truths and lies of a mission he didn't say my people are not related to the old gods but that there is nothing in any lore which we already knew is true another discrepancy is the gender pronouns used for the elven gods and the old gods of the seven in the elven pantheon we've been discussing there are four who are referred to with he him pronouns and three referred to with she her pronouns the majority of the old gods have been referred to with he him pronouns other than razziquel and sometimes there seems to be some confusion about erthemia but it is kind of weird considering in the lore it has been hammered into our skulls across all the games that high dragons are only ever female but i think all this really proves is just that archdemons aren't actually just blighted high dragons there's something more another set of questions and thoughts that comes up for me with this theory is if mythal was able to come back from being killed and solas says the first of his people don't die so easily where are the five who've already been slain are they just slumbering like solas was after utilizing a lot of power or maybe they're surviving somewhere but are somehow purified and kind of reset in a way we know in certain world states kieran can possibly hold the soul of urthemiel who seems pretty purified and flemethal is the one who started that whole thing like isn't that why she sent morrigan with the warden in origins and then in inquisition she makes it a priority to get that soul from him why would she want to preserve the soul of one of her killers she was betrayed as i was betrayed as the world was betrayed mythol clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me and i will see her revenged and what would she do with it what happens in a world state where there is no kieran hosting the old god soul did the blight make sure it stayed dead dead and then what does that say about the theory that andraste was an old god baby to dumat like kieran could be to earthemil or that flemeth and mythol also have connections to dumat or the theory that the old gods are who the evanuris were in a war with that led them to be remembered as gods and on that note what about the theory that it's actually the forgotten ones who are related to the old gods i actually kind of like that theory a little better i can get into all those theories another time too so many questions and open-ended theories that lead to other theories that lead to other theories that leave this one kind of tenuous but very interesting to think about i think so what about you what do you guys think do you buy into this theory please share your thoughts in the comments and like and subscribe hopefully i'll see you again soon bye

Channel: girltriesgames

Views: 48,995

Keywords: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Old Gods, Evanuris, Elven Gods, Dragon Age II

Id: lPqYg3rvrB0

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021