DISCLAIMER: What follows is opinion, theory, and the wildest conjecture. It's also very fun. I invite you to try it. It's also gonna be kind of long. And will have a lot of spoilers.
So. Trespasser had some pretty big reveals, yeah? Some important things. Left us with a lot to think about. I've been thinking about Trespasser since I completed it, a while ago. And I've been playing more Dragon Age in the meantime, filtering what I learned previously through what I know now.
The Elven deities. The Evanuris. Not so much gods, as it later turned out. Instead, they are mages of such phenomenal power they acted much like deities in many ways. So powerful were they that even death could not stop them. And yet, they were also tyrants. And so Fen'harel, the Dread Wolf, the trickster god, raised the veil and imprisoned the Evanuris in the Fade.
But where?
Beings of such great power, surely we would have learned about them. Their might makes the strongest demons we have seen so far look like ants. And the Evanuris were self obsessed power hungry tyrants! They could not have stayed quiet in the Fade, from what it sounds. And perhaps they didn't. But I'll get to that later. Where then have the Evanuris been?
Perhaps in the one place in the Fade no one can go? The place that looms always on the horizon, no matter where you are, so tantalizingly close, yet always out of reach?
The Black City is the greatest mystery in the Fade. The only time people breached it, they were hurtled back to Thedas as the "first" darkspawn. Now, the Chantry teaches us it was once golden, that it was the seat of the Maker. But Corypheus (among others), one of the guys who actually went there, tells a different tale. "It was supposed to be golden! It was supposed to be ours!" The city was already black.
In fact, the Elves themselves believe Fen'harel trapped their gods in there. Perhaps the Black City is a twisted mirror of Arlathan, the Fade-bound portions that were cut off from the material world when the Veil was raised? Perhaps Solas erected it for them specifically? I can only guess. But I think that is where he trapped the Evanuris. Did it work? I'm not totally sure.
Now, Solas has many secrets. There is enough knowledge in that brain of his to fill a library. He knows more about the nature of magic and spirits and the Fade and many subjects beside, and confirmed much of what Merrill said in DA2 (That adorable little Dalish cinnamon roll had secret wisdom all along, I knew it. Eat trash, Fenris). But what I find most interesting of all is when we venture to the subject of the Blight. Solas knows something about the Blight. Something he isn't letting on, I felt that even before we found out everything about him. The Blight actually seems to scare him.
Then, Trespasser. We venture into Elven ruins in the Deep Roads. Learn of epic tales of Elven victories against the Titans and their soulless children (Dwarves) to harvest Lyrium. And yet, we learn of something else. Something mysterious. A cryptic message about what happened is written in Veilfire.
"The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy.
A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic.
Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast.
A voice whispers:
What the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would end us all. Let this place be forgotten. Let no one wake its anger. The People must rise before their false gods destroy them all."
The Chantry tells us that the seven Magisters who breached the Black City brought the taint to this world. Personally, I think that's absurd. If those seven were the first, they would have been the only. They would have no way of making new Darkspawn. Just ghouls and corpses. The Dwarves say that the Darkspawn have always been there, that there is perhaps a queen broodmother in some truly deep abysmal chasm. I feel that's the more likely story, though perhaps not exactly correct.
We have been told that the Black City holds within the secret of what the Blight actually is. Certainly, things that get too near the city become Tainted. I think the Evanuris found the taint. Perhaps the Evanuris even created the taint, as a corruption to try to destroy the Titans, turning their own blood against them. Either way, they knew of it. Perhaps it did not come from the Deep Roads. It's said that Andruil's lands were wracked by a mysterious plague after she returned from the Void. Maybe those Nevarran cultists, The Empty Ones, were right about one or two things.
Perhaps their time in solitude drove the Elven deities to true madness. Perhaps they have some greater plan. But I think that they watched the Magisters enter their prison from the shadows, the first living beings they'd seen since their imprisonment. I think they put the Blight on those Magisters and cast them back to earth.
Of course, that leaves the issue of Corypheus's testimony. "Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty!" Now, maybe the Evanuris didn't allow themselves to be seen. Maybe they watched from the shadows and tainted and cast out the Magisters when they weren't looking. Maybe they wiped their memory of that encounter, on accident or on purpose. Or maybe the Evanuris weren't there.
They didn't necessarily need to be there to taint the Magisters. They have clearly corrupted the entirety of the Black City, it radiates the Taint. But what they did need to do was get people in there. To taint them. But how? Well, maybe these unfathomably powerful mages figured out how to escape their confines. Perhaps they figured out how to speak in the minds of dreamers wandering the Fade. Perhaps they persuaded them to grant them freedom, on the other side of the Veil.
They murdered Mythal. Fen'harel trapped them. That leaves Elgar'nan, Falon'din, Dirthamen, Andruil, Ghilan'nain, Sylaise, and June. Seven gods of the Evanuris.
And seven Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium.
The Old Gods, they say, whispered in the minds of dreamers from the Black City. Promised power and knowledge and magic in exchange for freedom, on the other side of the Veil. And they were granted it. From Mythal, we know that the Evanuris can behave like spirits. From what we know of the Archdemons, and also thanks to Morrigan, the soul of the Old God is a thing separate from the dragon itself. The body doesn't really matter so much. Did the Evanuris possess High Dragons? Great Dragons? Or did they simply take that form themselves, mighty and majestic as they see themselves?
They never really cared about their people. They simply desired power, adoration. The Tevinters could give that to them, and so they took it. But they had more in mind. They're playing a long game. They wanted to spur the Magisters into the Black City. They wanted the Taint to spread. But why? Did they mean to go into hibernation? Did they mean to be corrupted and transformed into Archdemons? Perhaps the Grey Wardens are a big wrench thrown into their plans. Perhaps Solas knows this, or perhaps he does not. Perhaps he still thinks the Evanuris are safely locked away within the Black City.
And maybe they are! This was all just crazy theory, my train of thought speeding out of control. Anyway, yeah. This is what I think may be going on. I might be mad, I don't know.
