Blood: The Key to Dragon Age

The more I think about it, the more and more I feel like blood is the thing that holds all of the dragon age lore together. And it can be broken down into a few main categories.

I’ve debated on whether or not “blood magic” should also be it’s own category, but I think it more stems off of or encompasses these other categories rather than being its own component.

What’s intriguing to me, is we encounter these three main categories very early on in Dragon Age: Origins through The Joining, the man ingredients of which are:

The Joining itself is technically a form of blood magic.

And then we get into some interesting connections between the three and the Fade:

I feel like these things are all connected in some way, and we’re just missing pieces to fit it all together.

I feel like if I were to draw a diagram with connected dots these should all connect and reveal something, so I tried that and got a combobulated mess.

I would love other thoughts, theories, things I missed on this.

Additional thought - is the Black City black because it’s tainted?

pretty sure it is. there’s the part about the gold city being corrupted into the black city and tevinter magisters get blamed

then in the DA2 Legacy DLC corypheus insists that it was already corrupted

I can’t remember exact wording right now. Someone else probably does, though.

Found it on his wiki page:

So I guess the question is, was the Black City always there? Or was it something Solas created to lock away the taint behind the Veil as well as the evanuris?

EDIT: Also Coryphheus says that he and the other Magisters took the taint willingly into their bodies to increase their power. Maybe that’s what Aurelian Titus meant when he said the Magisters were close to dominating the Fade but needed Great Dragon blood. That blood would have given them a resistance to the taint, which I can only assume drove them mad? Because Corypheus doesn’t remember what happened after that.

Still doesn’t make sense how blood magic can make it difficult to enter the Fade but still be a means of sundering it and mastering it.

my theory on why blood magic makes it difficult to enter the fade is that, well… blood is a manifestation of the physical, while the Fade is the metaphysical, and Lyrium is a bridge between the metaphysical and physical - it’s titan blood and exists in both ‘realms’, so i’m guessing that Titans are part of the Fade that was, idk, ripped from it when the Veil went up. And we know by Templars using magic that you can affect reality with your willpower without needing a from-birth special connection to the Fade.

But they’re like… mutually exclusive. Mages use a connection to the Fade to fuel their magic, and Templars use a connection to reality (and some lyrium, although it’s not actually necessary) to counter it. Templars may not use their blood to fuel magic, but they’re using their bodies.

So if a mage uses blood - a manifestation of the physical - to use magic, what they’re doing is weakening their connection to the Fade. Blocking parts of it.So just as much as the Fade is a means of sundering and mastering the physical reality, and inhabitants of the Fade have great difficulty existing in this world, the physical world is a means of sundering and mastering the Fade, while their inhabitants have great difficulty existing in the Fade.

Confusing but Interesting! This is why I lurv unreliable source material ^u^

And yeah, that’s pretty disappointing to learn about DA:I. Maybe it’s just because you’re learning it from Cullen, and he buys into the needing lyrium thing(though… can’t you talk him into going clean? Does he lose his Templar powers if you do that??) |:/

(sorry for not answering this sooner!!)

yeah it’s pretty fun!! i do felike some sort of detective, putting all these clues together. i’m gonna print a map of thedas just so i can do the pins-and-red-string thing.

it’s a possibility. He and Ser (the dude who teaches you the spec) are pretty loyalist templars, which… doesn’t really describe Alistair, let’s be honest. and we know from him that the chantry teaches that they absolutely do need lyrium to fully get their templar abilities.

You can talk him into going clean (actually reinforce his decision), but it’s unclear what happens to his powers after he quits, since he’s not a party member and like all non-controlable party members he doesn’t use any skill. I chose to believe, based on evidence in da2/origins, that templar abilities can be learned and acessed by anyone with enough training, but lyrium makes it easier and more effective; Cole mentions that magic and templar abilities are essentially the same, the difference being that while the mages pull things through the Fade, Templars push them back.

Oh sweet! Glad to hear Cole backs up our guessing on this ^u^

At the same time, dang; I thought Cullen would be a team member :( Thinking back about it now, though, he never seemed to pop up in screenshots, so that PROBABLY should have tipped me off |:T Plus, Bioware has this long habit going back to the Baldur’s Gate games of reducing class-duplication over the course of sequels, so avoiding having two potential sword-and-shield warriors in Cassandra and Cullen by making Cullen strictly an advisor is exactly the sort of thing they’d do >:/

I think Dwarves and Tranquil may be blocked from the Fade, but that they aren’t entirely cut off from it. Consider this:

I’ve only played most of Origins so far, but it seems pretty clear to me that the issue is more complicated than the in-game sources say it is. Rather than thinking of this as bad writing, I prefer to see it as the in-game info-sources being intentionally written as unreliable, and the writers meaning for players to pick up on that and start to realize something else is going on.

yeah, it’s the idea i get from the stuff i mentioned in my other post (spoiler alert btw), although i still want to dig up a bit and write a proper essay on it (if no one else has gotten to it first) when i can justify the time, as it would probably involve playing a dwarf inquisitor and i want to finish mosdef’s pt before i really start malika’s.

If I encounter spoilers, I only have myself to blame :p That post has some pretty nifty ideas ^u^ The thing about the Cadash having a stronger connection I particularly like, though I wonder if their being one of the earliest surfacer lineages, and thus some of the least “Dwarvey” Dwarves when it comes to Fade stuff, might also have something to do with it. I need to finish this first play through myself sooner or later so I can move on to other Wardens, the expansions, and DA2, but there’s always some fresh distraction :p :p

hmm, i hadnt considered that. it’s possible, since we know that surfacer dwarves slowly lose their resistance to lyrium, but not get back their ability to access the fade on their own.

this is so complicated! I wonder if the sourcebooks (forgot the actual word for them) have more details on lyrium that i’m not getting. it’s really confusing.

in a tangent, it makes me so mad how DAO/da2 says templars dont really need lyrium to get their abilities, but you have to start using it (presumably offscreen) to get the templar spec in dai.

Confusing but Interesting! This is why I lurv unreliable source material ^u^

And yeah, that’s pretty disappointing to learn about DA:I. Maybe it’s just because you’re learning it from Cullen, and he buys into the needing lyrium thing(though... can’t you talk him into going clean? Does he lose his Templar powers if you do that??) |:/

wait so then how do you get varric into the fade during night terrors in DA:II

PULLING SOMETHING OUT OF MY ASS, maybe it was a technicality? they were in a pocket dimension of the fade, not in the open fields of it, and getting there through feynriel dreamer abilities not their own dreams (which would make something like the nightmares in dao)

the more likely explanation is BIOWARE FUCKED UP THEIR OWN LORE AND DA2S WRITING SUCKS MAJOR DONG

im bunking that my friend bc feynriel is in a coma and it’s the keeper who puts them into the fade and when your friends ditch you she’s like “your pals woke up about ten mins ago” so yeah i think they just fucked up i think think we’re giving them too much credit

and now you’VE MENTIONED THE NIGHTMARES FROM DA:O HOW COME OGHREN GETS ONE???

mAYBE THEY CAN BE LIKE GUIDED INTO THE FADE THEY JUST CANT FIND IT BY THEMSELVES why are they fucking up my beautiful theories

I think Dwarves and Tranquil may be blocked from the Fade, but that they aren’t entirely cut off from it. Consider this:

I’ve only played most of Origins so far, but it seems pretty clear to me that the issue is more complicated than the in-game sources say it is. Rather than thinking of this as bad writing, I prefer to see it as the in-game info-sources being intentionally written as unreliable, and the writers meaning for players to pick up on that and start to realize something else is going on.

yeah, it’s the idea i get from the stuff i mentioned in my other post (spoiler alert btw), although i still want to dig up a bit and write a proper essay on it (if no one else has gotten to it first) when i can justify the time, as it would probably involve playing a dwarf inquisitor and i want to finish mosdef’s pt before i really start malika’s.

If I encounter spoilers, I only have myself to blame :p That post has some pretty nifty ideas ^u^ The thing about the Cadash having a stronger connection I particularly like, though I wonder if their being one of the earliest surfacer lineages, and thus some of the least “Dwarvey” Dwarves when it comes to Fade stuff, might also have something to do with it. I need to finish this first play through myself sooner or later so I can move on to other Wardens, the expansions, and DA2, but there’s always some fresh distraction :p :p

wait so then how do you get varric into the fade during night terrors in DA:II

PULLING SOMETHING OUT OF MY ASS, maybe it was a technicality? they were in a pocket dimension of the fade, not in the open fields of it, and getting there through feynriel dreamer abilities not their own dreams (which would make something like the nightmares in dao)

the more likely explanation is BIOWARE FUCKED UP THEIR OWN LORE AND DA2S WRITING SUCKS MAJOR DONG

im bunking that my friend bc feynriel is in a coma and it’s the keeper who puts them into the fade and when your friends ditch you she’s like “your pals woke up about ten mins ago” so yeah i think they just fucked up i think think we’re giving them too much credit

and now you’VE MENTIONED THE NIGHTMARES FROM DA:O HOW COME OGHREN GETS ONE???

mAYBE THEY CAN BE LIKE GUIDED INTO THE FADE THEY JUST CANT FIND IT BY THEMSELVES why are they fucking up my beautiful theories

I think Dwarves and Tranquil may be blocked from the Fade, but that they aren’t entirely cut off from it. Consider this:

I’ve only played most of Origins so far, but it seems pretty clear to me that the issue is more complicated than the in-game sources say it is. Rather than thinking of this as bad writing, I prefer to see it as the in-game info-sources being intentionally written as unreliable, and the writers meaning for players to pick up on that and start to realize something else is going on.