Spoilers below.
The other day I took Cole in the Fade for the Here Lies the Abyss quest. When the Inquisitor & co. reach the portion or the Raw Fade with all the water that looks like it's near a lake, Cole says (paraphrase) "They still remember when they were higher, before it woke up and everything fell". In this the area you have the best view of the Black City, and I am about 95% sure that's what he was talking about. If that's true it means two things:
1) The Black City has residents. Some things or people are in there.
2) The Black City was once different. Cole implies that it was higher. My guess is that this could be literal.
Cole also says a few strange things in Skyhold that I assume were about the Black City. He talks about how the Red Templars hear a song that comes from whispers behind a door which wants to get out (the whispers), and something about a man (I assume Corypheus) that became "black inside" when he opened a door and entered a dark place. Both of those lines reference the taint in the Black City, and the taint seems to be personified as an actual entity/entities rather than a curse or virus. Granted, Cole speaks in riddles and poetry so that could just be his interpretation of it, but given Cole's unique abilities I think there's more to it than that. I had suspected the taint itself had a kind of awareness, and what Cole says seems to suggest this is true.
So, my guess is that the taint itself is the Forgotten Ones. The knowledge that the elven gods are real combined with the law of the conservation of information lead me to believe that the Forgotten Ones will have an impact on the on the story. They were supposedly locked away, and whatever is in the Black City is also trapped. An argument could be made that this is also true of the other elven gods, but while they are clearly individual entities, the Forgotten Ones could be a kind of unified being with a collective consciousness, allowing them to all speak through the taint as "whispers". Perhaps they were the voice that tricked Cory & crew into entering the Black City. It always seemed strange to me that Dumat would tell Cory to go the the Golden City to become a god. Why would Dumat tell him that? What does he get out of it? It makes even less sense if Dumat knew what was there and tricked Cory. Why blight him? What would Dumat get out of making darkspawn that would eventually taint him and cause him to die at the hands of the grey wardens? But if it was the Forgotten Ones calling to Cory, trying to get out, things make more sense. Cory & crew give them a foothold in the world, where they can spread and wreak destruction. Even if creating the darkspawn was an accident, wanting to be freed from the Black City it motivation enough for them to to trick Cory.
Regardless of whether or not the taint is the Forgotten Ones, I am now more curious than ever about what is in the Black City. And just WTF is "it" that awoke and royally screwed everything up? It'd be nice if we could explore the place at some point in game, but that would require giving the PC some plot armor that's several feet thick. Silver Warden (talk) 22:03, February 19, 2015 (UTC)
If I get it, to get to teh black city the veil has to be pretty thin... almost none existent. We know a place full of murder thins the veil, so a huuuuuuuuge murder would be needed to get to the black city. The only places in history where the veil was that thin is when the magisters murdered thousands of slaves and at the conclave... I'm willing to bet that this is the only game where we will be getting there on some future DLC.--
22:51, February 19, 2015 (UTC)
I've got plenty of theories on this subject myself, some along similar lines. 1 thing that makes it more complicated is that we still don't know for sure what the Old Gods actually were. What I consider to be most likely is that they weren't gods but high ranking (I.E., arch) demons that possessed great dragons. Part of why I think this is that calling tainted Old Gods archdemons really makes no sense unless they are demons. Could've called them Archspawn, the Tainted/Fallen/Dark Gods or something like that and it would've made more sense. It also seems pretty clear that even before they were tainted, the Old Gods were still evil. They represented silence, chaos, fire, slavery, beauty, mystery and night. All those things are neutral at best. It also seemed strange that Dumat (god of silence) would have so many conversations with people. You'd think he'd either be silent, demand silence from others or both (although both would be tricky). It's possible that the Old Gods/Archdemons simply wanted the taint (be it the Forgotten Ones or not) to be released to spread evil throughout Thedas and used Corypheus and the other magisters to that end. Perhaps they even wanted to be tainted. It could've increased their power somehow or the taint could've just used them as a means to escape and wanted to possess them to gain their power. 1 X-factor in all of this is the Maker. We still don't know what he was, if he was good/neutral/evil or if he even existed. As for Andraste, it seems likely that was Flemeth/Mythal. Perhaps the Maker was/is Elgar'nan? We know the Black City was already black by the time the magisters got there but it's unclear whether or not it was ever golden or always black. Vampire Damian (talk) 00:43, February 20, 2015 (UTC)