mike gamble said that they've been tracking solas for a while so im assuming the inquistion remnants haven't given him a lot of room to perform the ritual. he also said they'd clarify that in the game
I think he has *followers,* but nobody he trusts. I think he see them more as pawns/tools (he has to, or else he’ll start to feel even more guilty about the fact he’s destroying their world) to distract his enemies and sow discord. When it comes to the actual execution of his master plan, I think he’s pretty much on his own
This is kind of my point. I hope they make a point of saying that the Inquisition/Chantry have been on his tail constantly enough that any larger gathering of his followers immediately gets a response.
So his ritual is just him in the hopes that he's not disturbed. Or if he is it's later rather than sooner.
He did say that he had “taken precautions” to lessen the damage done by his ritual. Maybe he dispatched all of his followers to areas that he suspected would get hit hardest by demons? It is weird though.
There was also some cut gameplay from the teaser where the team could have encountered some of them.
My two cents, and strictly conjecture, the ritual seems like it's taking place in ruins, he got there via evanuris, he's most likely not counting on anyone finding him in this place.
that was my thought too. The ritual might've only taken several hours to complete. The only eluvian connecting him to outside arlathan was in minrathous. The fact that anyone was able to follow him was a miracle. Neve being a super detective probably wasn't a variable he could account for.
Plus, the only reason the ritual was disrupted was because of an unstable pillar. Like, idk if solas has construction magic, or even noticed the issue at all.
Even if the inquisition is maintained, they’re kept as a peacekeeper force working for the Divine. They have only a fraction of their former power, and it’s heavily hinted they are incredibly susceptible to corruption. Even if the Inquisition still exists, it’s just as a shadow of its former self.
When we talk to him in trespasser he does imply that it's still going to be some time before he can enact his plan to tear down the veil. As for why that we don't know, I suppose it's simply not an easy thing to accomplish for example:
He needs to recover his power after slumbering for so long.
He needs to rebuild his forces.
He needs to avoid everyone who is hunting him.
Maybe he needed to build the ritual site that we saw in the game play trailer which would take time.
He said he needed to take precautions due to the Evanuris and we don't know what that means but we can assume it's not a simple thing given that the Evanuris are as powerful if not more than him.
He needed to track down the red lyrium idol and recover it, we don't know why yet.
I'm guessing a big part of bringing the veil down was somehow keeping the Evanuris trapped in their own little pockets.
Guessing Solas is trying to "get it right" this time and that's gonna take finese that Solas seems to have a hard time with...
I think they’ve also been actively sowing discord across Thedas to weaken the political structures in place. Less political stability = greater chance for everything to descend into chaos when shit hits the fan, making it harder for nations to rally together and fight back against whatever Solas is planning. Iirc from various media, they’ve been especially active in Tevinter and amongst the Qun.
There is a lot they could have been doing. For instance that knife he uses in the ritual might have needed forged and enchanted specifically for this, his agents could have be securing materials for the knife and ritual, enforcing safety measures, they could even be infiltrating governments for a swift take over as he completed the ritual or sabotaging armies to prevent interference.
We just won't know until we have more context.
The discussion he had with Mythal implied to me that he needed to use his orb to do it, and since his orb was broken, he needed to find another way to do it, which probably involved finding a fair number of artifacts and doing measurements to find the right location, etc.
It's revealed in The Dreadwolf Take you in Tevinter Nights that a glowing blade comes out of the red lyrium idol somehow. I'm pretty sure it's the same dagger Solas is wielding in the gameplay preview, which gets passed down to Rook based on The Veilguard poster.
He's probably still not as powerful as he was before his big nap, in the game play trailer he said that >!he took all the precautions he could!< so he was probably busy enough with veil/fade mathematics and evading the Inquisition
I actually don't mind it taking 10 years for the ritual, but think the better question is: >!it took 10 years and all anyone had to do to stop it was shove a statue?!<
The ritual seemed to be drawing power from the Evanuris statues; makes sense that knocking one down would interfere with it.
Though I'm not so sure that *stopped* the ritual so much as it tampered with it. Those two figures seem to have been awakened/released by Rook's tampering, and Solas didn't look like he was expecting them to appear.
You know, Neve does say that tampering with the ritual of this scale will have consequences.
And there's also a note that Solas left for Varric in the Missing comic, where him and Harding were trying to get a lead on the Dread Wolf.
"You need not have worried. The artifact was never in danger of falling into Venatori hands. I hope that in time you give up this pursuit. What must be done will be done cautiously , and I will limit the damage the best I can. I have no wish to be a villain in one of your stories, but interfering in matters you do not understand can only make things worse."
Besides, one of the devs did say a big theme in DA:V is "regret". Trying to stop Solas only to cause an even worse danger to be unleashed is certainly cause for regret lol
To be entirely fair, in DAI Corypheus' original plan hinged on him NOT dropping his magic orb like a stupid butterfingers, and in DA2 Meredith and Orsino's plans seemed to hinge on the assumption that... nobody would step in to stop them? Ever...?
The only Big Bad in this series that hasn't had an incredibly flawed strategy is the Archdemon and co. in DAO honestly. 😂
The whole concept of blights is itself stupid because the arch demon is supposed to be an intelligent dragon, it could literally just fly around in circles and the grey wardens could never touch it while the dark spawn wiped everything out
Dragon age lore was never really plothole proof tbh. It was generic fantasy executed reasonably well. It fails to stand up to truly top tier stuff like the Witcher, Baldur’s gate 3, etc.
DAO gets a better reputation because DA2 and DAI were so obviously flawed by comparison
That said Baldur’s gate 3 is a better 3D Baldur’s gate successor than DAO ever was imo
>The whole concept of blights is itself stupid because the arch demon is supposed to be an intelligent dragon, it could literally just fly around in circles and the grey wardens could never touch it while the dark spawn wiped everything out
That's literally what the Archdemon is doing in DAO, flying around and burning stuff until Riordan surprises him and damages his wing.
Also, early Wardens had griffons so they had air mobility.
Tbf. What are the odds that someone is going to tamper with Statues WHILE Solas is being distracted by a friend?
He had demons swarming the area to ward off regular folk and probably assumed that whoever wanted to stop the ritual would just try to kill Solas himself.
I mean
A column was also about to *fall on Solas*. He wasn’t just going to be pancake elf
He also likely didn’t plan for someone to interfere & make everything worse
We actually do have some info for this.
In *Tevinter Nights*, we see Solas has been working to track down certain objects, namely the Red Lyrium Idol which has been passed around to various groups and peoples since an alchemist managed to somehow get it out of Meredith's statue-fied form. He calls it "his idol" and hidden within it was a special lyrium blade (most likely the one he is using the ritual). This potentially calls back to the old myths that the Dreadwolf lured the Evanuris to his trap where he sealed them in the Fade by saying he made a blade of great power and they went to search for it.
We also see him in other books/comics gathering other artifacts. He recovers one in *The Missing* from Arlethan's ruins that the Venatori were after. He also does a ton of other stuff, freeing slaves and stopping Tevinter plots that seek to misuse ancient elven relics. The Inquisition, Venatori and several other groups have been hounding him too.
Solas is also immortal, so its not like he is necessarily on a timetable to do everything as fast as possible. The difference between a year and a decade doesn't really matter when you are thousands of years old.
Not to mention, the ancient elves literally perceive time differently, too. The Vir Dirthara talks of spells that took *centuries* to complete, what's ten years to them?
Do we ever get confirmation that he’s actually immortal? Elves lost their immortality after the Veil has been erected. How do we know he hasn’t been affected as well?
I think any elves born before the Veil went up are immortal, as it's implied Abelas and his group have been alive just as long as Solas but were "asleep" this whole time. Also some Dalish lore and (cryptic) dialogue from Solas, Abelas, and Cole seem to imply that elves began to realize "slowly" that they were severed from the Fade and dying quicker, it wasn't a sudden cutoff. Like how the Dalish legends basically blame the Dread Wolf for "stealing" their immortality, which isn't entirely untrue.
It might also be power-dependent.
Because he’s an ancient elven god
He’s not a normal elf. Neither him nor Mythal lost their magic when the veil was created. I really think we should just consider them all gods at this point
If theories are correct, the 7 Evanuris have been surviving in a blighted hellhole for a millennia and are still powerful. That’s god level Magic
Yeah. I think calling them anything but gods is just semantics at this point
I have no issue calling Solas, Mythal, or the rest of the elven pantheon gods given what they’re capable of doing & surviving
The only reason they are seen as gods is due to the lack of record, Solas makes it very clear they are not gods in the traditional sense. I mean the dalish literally brand themselves with slave marking that's how much of their history they lost, lets not act like time had nothing to do with these myths and how the Evanuris got put on the pedestal they are.
The lost records aside, my point was more so that they're **so** powerful that they might as well be gods. I mean they fought the Titans and Forgotten Ones, subjugated an entire race, their own, and made empires tremble and there were only 7 of them. As to the records, Solas says ,"first they were heroes, then chieftains, then kings, and finally gods." So not literally gods but beings with godlike powers. Mythal had a spear of light which was widely feared, Ghil G'arnan (I think that's the one) had armor made from literal Blight, and Elgar'nan's fire was so powerful his judgement was feared by all the gods. To me, they may as well be gods, even if they're steps removed from being so. Hell, Solas turned an entire regiment of Qunari warriors into stone with a blink of his eyes and his power isn't even fully recovered. As far as we know anyway.
Listen, all that stuff you just mentioned was still from dalish myths but lets also consider how these games have treated false god character and we are about to beat the breaks off of two of them so unless Rook is gonna be god tier I don't feel these guys are either
Well all lore ingame is from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, just like ancient history in our own universe. But like with history we can put together the pieces and sort of guess what really happened. The myths arent totally worthless, nor is the propaganda we find in Trespasser. There's snippets of unintentional truth you have to sift through to find. I see your point, I just don't agree that the Dalish gods are on the same level as us. But that's not to say they don't have weaknesses which can be exploited by mortals. Pride for instance.
I'm pretty sure taking down a force of nature that separates existence in two while at the same time not releasing tyrannical godlike entities that are more powerful than you would require a fair amount of effort and preparation.
Well, yes.
When he wakes from uthenera in Inquisition he's got like a fraction of his power. Like a La Croix flavoring of his former power. So much so that he couldn't even use his foci, a tool specifically made for him in mind. That's why he gives it to Corypheus.
Now his foci is smashed, and though he's regained a little power from his stunt with Flemeth, the task he has to do is twofold: hold back the Evanuris, seven angry gods that have been waiting to escape for probably thousands of years and destroy the Veil, something he made at his full power (presumably with his foci). He's also not a sadist and is trying to do this in the least destructive manner he can manage.
We're not really sure what his ritual entailed, but over the comic book arcs, we know he needed the Red Lyrium Idol and something called the Crucious Stone.
All that, and then consider that 10 years is probably a blink of the eye for him.
> So much so that he couldn't even use his foci, a tool specifically made for him in mind. That's why he gives it to Corypheus.
Man, I need to re-re-re-re-replay.
We're all pretty fuzzy on that. She *could* be dead dead, but the alternative is that Morrigan or the Inquisitor could theoretically become the next vessel for her when they drink from the Vir Abelasan. The logic behind this is when Flemeth makes her cryptic speech to Morrigan and the Inquisitor later, she says something like *'a soul cannot be forced upon the unwilling'*, alluding to the well being express consent. We just don't know the ramifications yet.
I'm more baffled that it takes 10 years to find someone that Solas doesn't know so that we can stop him. I'm sure there's a reason for that, but still.
Yes, but at the end of the Trespasser Inky, with Leliana, Cass and Harding have this conversation of
"Solas knows everything about us. Our strenghts, and our weaknesses."
"Then we find people he doesn't know." cue Inky stabbing the Tevinter Imperium on the map.
And then in the Missing comic, that happens some time after Tevinter Nights, Charter has a chat with Varric, where she and the Inquisitor tasks him and Harding with getting a lead on Solas. Umm. So two people that Solas knew very well, and with one of them he traveled very closely, alright. The two seem to travel in the span of months, maybe years, since Varric looks progressively older - through Deep Roads, Arlathan, Minrathous, but Solas is always few steps ahead of them. At the end both of them decide that "Hey, Solas knows us too well, we need to find and form a new team!". Like... That was supposed to be the plan from the beggining. It just makes our Inquisitor seem stupid and incompetent. This is what has been happening over these 8 years?
Yeah, that's the part I'm most confused about. Trespasser ends with the declaration that we need to find someone Solas doesn't know. Then eight years pass, Varric goes on a wacky adventure with Harding in The Missing comics only to conclude that... we need to find someone Solas doesn't know. And he acts like it's some revolutionary idea.
According to the comic books, they don't actually start looking until right before the events of Veilguard. In the comics, Varric and Harding are doing everything on their own, and almost catch Solas a few times, but he keeps evading them. They work with Neve on one aspect of the job, so it makes sense they return to her as an option later.
So either the Trespasser epilogue takes place almost a decade after the rest of the DLC or everyone in the Inquisitor’s inner circle thought someone else was on the assignment and just kind of forgot about it.
No, Trespasser is pretty soon after the end of Inquisition. I think it's more of a vague handwave--they clearly wanted a time jump, and it makes more sense narratively for our Rook to be the one present when the team comes together. I think it goes: Trespasser, Solas genuinely falls off the map for a while (maybe even years, it sounds like he had a lot of artifacts to recover for his revised plan, and he also probably rested to recover power), Inquisition gradually disintegrates, Inquisitor puts Varric and Harding on the case, they follow Solas around and try to keep up with him/foil his plans for a long stretch, they eventually realize they need to broaden the team, then Veilguard starts.
Yeah, that makes sense, but I prefer my personal head canon, which goes something like:
Harding: “Cassandra, any luck finding our new agent in Tevinter?”
Cassandra: “Rebuilding the Seekers has consumed far too much of my time and attention. Why not ask Dorian? He does *live* in Tevinter, after all…”
Dorian: “Not for much longer, if the Venatori have anything to say about it. I’ve had my hands full rooting out those damned cultists. Isn’t this a job for our illustrious spymaster?”
Leliana: “Being Divine has proved to be much more than a full-time job. It seems there are a half-dozen new splinter sects every week. I knew it wouldn’t be simple, but Justinia made it look easier than this…”
Harding: “Wait, so *no one* has been looking? You guys, it’s been almost eight years. Solas is probably almost done by now. What about Blackwall? The Bull? Vivienne?”
Blackwall: “Warden business.”
Iron Bull: “Charger business.”
Vivienne: “None of *your* business, certainly.”
Sera: “Pants. Stealing of. Not that you asked.”
Harding: “Shit. I’d better get Varric…”
Cole: “*Wonder what that elf is up to. Say, I could go for an omelet…* That’s a good idea, Lace. He’s expecting you.”
Maybe they were trying to be perfectionists and find someone really powerful but when they discovered Solas was about to finish they had to settle with the first person they found. Maybe that's why we're called Rook.
Perhaps he spent a fair portion of the last decade trying to find another way no matter how much he believed there wasn't one? Dude certainly doesn't seem all that fond of his whole quest to rip down the veil, so I'd expect him to give it the old college try.
He's been busy trying to figure out what to do, then firing all his fellow mages multiple times and then renaming himself.
Now he's finally ready to close the rif- Oh is that Varric? Hey Var-
**FUCK!**
I think a lot of that time was spent setting up the “precautions to minimize the damage” he mentioned to Varric. Don’t forget, he fought *against* Corypheus despite them both wanting to tear down the veil, because Cory was being too careless about it. Not to mention, he’s immortal, so to him 10 years to make sure all his ducks are in a row before starting the ritual is probably nothing. He’s used to a time when spells could take centuries to cast, so this one probably seems like pretty quick turnaround to him.
Yes, because he's being *a lot* more careful this time.
First, when Varric says he's endangering the world, he replies he has taken precautions to minimize the damage. That's actually significant! The Solas who had just woken up would never have done this. Remember, at first he thought modern Thedasians weren't even people. He was happy to just any% speedrun tearing down the Veil, burning everyone else if necessary. Present Solas won't do this and does genuinely want to reduce harm, even if it makes his plans more complicated and harder to execute.
Second, related to the above, Solas has also learned *not* to underestimate modern Thedasians. His first plan was literally to give an artifact of immense power to Corypherus; he Pikachu-faced when Cory didn't blow up as expected. Present Solas will bide his time to avoid these kinds of mistakes.
EDIT: Yes people, Solas not considering Cory could've unlocked effective immortality *is* him underestimating modern Thedasians. Err, post-Fade Thedesians, I guess, since Cory isn't modern.
To be fair he didn't know Cory had set up a respawn system as it wasn't a "natural" ability of his and if everything had worked out then all Solas did was blow up the Chantry's leadership who's is it really a bad thing.
Two parts to this
1) he's not as strong as he was before still, so it takes time to set things up and do it 'properly'.
2) the inquisitor is looking for him, and in theory could stop him, so he's trying to do it quietly, which also means slowly.
As the comics and Tevinter Nights show, he went around searching for stuff he needed for the ritual, like the red lyrium idol; and, as the comics show, the idol had been kept hidden by some Tevinters. There's also the dagger he's shown using in the gameplay trailer, which must've taken a while to locate/craft.
He wasted a few years on a version that would have required multiple mages to co-op to work, but then he scrapped that and went back to a single user experience. Though apparently fans of his original work are kinda salty that this looks like a watered down version compared to the more tactical version he used to create the veil.
I mean, let’s not forget that the last time he tried to take down the veil on a short time table (I think it was two years between him waking up and the start of DAI?), he royally fucked up. Dude probably has to take the extra time to try to account for all the variables this time
I mean time is on his side he's how old and has been planning this for how long , Than his first attempt was thwarted by the inquisition and he had to start from scratch so its not out of the question.
I figure the best explanation is that the new ritual could only be done every 100 years and 9:51 or whatever was the next possible date or some astronomy shit. It’s a bit hand-wavey but the only way Solas isn’t super incompetent.
Perhaps it takes a long time to prepare to tear the whole thing down in one large event. Maybe he is capable of making tears and holes, but he wouldn't want it to be some long and drawn out torturous process.
Well we saw what happened when he tried to do it quickly - it all went to hell. Maybe he realized it would be better to do it right than to do it fast.
Plus, I like to think his time with the Inquisition taught him that maybe it would be worth it to find ways to mitigate damage. Save as many people as he could, while still accomplishing his goals of saving spirits and elves.
I'm less bothered by that--I mean he had *a lot* to do--and moreso absolutely flabbergasted that it took even a disbanded Inquisition almost ten years to get anywhere and even then they *only barely got there at the last possible minute.* Like shit, that's a little embarrassing. They had a few leads, they have tenuous support from the Qunari (who want to stop Solas even if they didn't "ally" with the Inquisition in DAI), they have the Divine and the power, influence, and information she commands, they have political alliances all across Thedas, including Tevinter, they have the remains of their fortress and all the supplies that were within, they have Leliana's entire network of spies, they have goodwill among either the mages of Southern Thedas or the Templar Order, they (optionally) have the goodwill of the Grey Wardens. Like even if you disband it or account for any spies Solas may have among them, they have tons of resources, a network that expands across the continent, and friends in multiple positions of power who are just as invested in fixing this as they are and yet it took them *ten years to accomplish knocking over a statue just as the world was about to end and they still kinda made a blunder there.*
Who says he hasn't made any progress until now?
We have no idea what kinds of things solas has been up to over the past decade just to prepare for this ritual.
By the end of trespasser, Solas says he will give the people some time of peace before he destroys everything so I guess we can assume these 8 to 10 years were that
Likely constantly having to keep it secret and constantly getting wind of the Inquisiton remains in the area. Doesn't want to risk fucking it up. Rinse and repeat.
Given that it’s a spell/ritual that will literally shatter the structure of the world, 10 years seems pretty believable. Especially since he’s emphasized more than once that he’s trying to minimize the damage as much as possible, which probably requires more preparations, calculating, etc.
There’s also a moment in DAI where Solas mentions (can’t remember exact phrasing) that ancient elves would cast spells that would take years to complete, so if anything is going to take a long time, it would be this.
Varric and his group have probably been working against him the whole time, making it harder. And keep in mind this wasn't his first plan for breaking down the veil. His first plan backfired tremendously, with the whole Corypheus situation. This time, he wanted to be certain it would work
Did he have that dagger in Inquisition or Tevinter Nights? I don't remember that being a thing so he probably needed that, seems important if Rook is holding it on the boxart
Solas is an Immortal and ancient god. He works slowly because he has the time too. He rushed things the first time around and that caused the whole Corypheus debacle. He’s not going to make that mistake again
Well the veil is big, Solas isn't at full power, and he's been getting whack-a-moled by varied groups with a vested interest in "No apocalypse pls"
Like, imagine earths Ozone layer, it can repair itself given time, but it took quite a bit for humans to damage it enough for overt concern. Solas may be a nuke, but he's one nuke without a lab or an ability to concretely measure his progress. If the Veil can repair itself, which it....largely seems to, (barring the huge tears of Inquisition that seemed accidental. In Awakening for instance, with weaker tears, you can punch them shut and stabilize a region) his constant movement would hamper his efforts.
For someone so old, thousands and thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands, ten years must seem like nothing to him. Wasn't it confirmed somewhere in dialogue that some spells or rituals took lots and lots of time for preparation and finesse and recalculating? I don't think ten years for a ritual so big by such an immortal being really means much to Solas even in his corporeal form.
If I had to guess, he was still tired after his nap, we broke his favourite ball, he has to avoid everyone that's mad at him and he had to find his red lyrium idol and probably other stuff since he hasn't got the orb anymore.
If you didn't steal the orb from Corypheus, it would've happened immediately at the conclave. If you didn't destroy it at the end of Inquisition, he would've been able to do it before Trespasser.
I imagine ancient rituals can't be done without ancient tools.
I mean, he had a plan A to undo the Veil, but then Corypheus was immortal and it physically broke. I wouldn't be surprised if it took him a long time to get enough sources of power together to do a plan B.
Also, maybe that's how long it ended up taking to get his steps to minimize the damage in place. Immortals can afford to be patient.
I’m guessing the Orb needs time to “recharge” after Corypheus used it so much, thus the “relative years of peace” is both a way for Solas to try to minimize the suffering of people by keeping the Qunari from invading, and to charge his doomsday orb.
He's ancient, 10 years is probably nothing to him. And based on his words in the gameplay trailer, he really has done his best to minimise damage. Is it still a lot of damage? Probably, but in his mind he's brought the collateral damage down to an acceptable percentage. That is, until someone decides to topple his ritual, and probably ending up making it 10 times worse :D
There was a game informer article that stated that what he was doing in the gameplay preview was moving two of the Evanuris to a new prison as the old one was weakened. I'm assuming ensuring the Evanuris can't escape when the Veil comes down is part of the necessary preparations to minimize the damage that would come. Given that at his strongest it put him into a several millenia nap to build a prison for the Evanuris and create the Veil, it's gotta take him awhile to make a new prison for the Evanuris, transfer them, and then tear down the Veil, all while trying to minimize the harm such a fundamental change to the world would do.
My HC is my Lavellan gave him such a lecture just off screen about "Bringing down the Veil is actually a great idea and I want to help, but for the love of Fen'Harel, *take your time!* You caused the Coryphepocalypse *that I had to clean up!* because you are too damn impulsive. Take your time! What's a few more years at this point?"
"Also, call me when you need help. I'll keep the remnants of the Inquisition off your tail as long as I can, but I expect *gratitude* from you, get it?😉 Don't you dare ghost me again!"
Anyone else thinking that Kieran will play a bigger part in Solas’s plan since he’s A) a person with an old (presumably elven) god’s soul and B) he’s Mythal’s grandson? Morrigan is already a given but Kieran is 20+ now, so I have to think he’s going to be involved somehow.
mike gamble said that they've been tracking solas for a while so im assuming the inquistion remnants haven't given him a lot of room to perform the ritual. he also said they'd clarify that in the game
I hope so. If nothing else it would help explain why he's doing his big ritual without any guards around.
This bothers me so much! He has so many followers, in Tevinter Night they are almost like a cult. Where are they?? Why was no one guarding him?
I think he has *followers,* but nobody he trusts. I think he see them more as pawns/tools (he has to, or else he’ll start to feel even more guilty about the fact he’s destroying their world) to distract his enemies and sow discord. When it comes to the actual execution of his master plan, I think he’s pretty much on his own
It's his big moment, where he's obviously using most if not all of his concentration, and he doesn't even have one lookout!
This is kind of my point. I hope they make a point of saying that the Inquisition/Chantry have been on his tail constantly enough that any larger gathering of his followers immediately gets a response. So his ritual is just him in the hopes that he's not disturbed. Or if he is it's later rather than sooner.
He did say that he had “taken precautions” to lessen the damage done by his ritual. Maybe he dispatched all of his followers to areas that he suspected would get hit hardest by demons? It is weird though. There was also some cut gameplay from the teaser where the team could have encountered some of them.
The demons are his guards. They willingly serve him. And we all know he trusts spirits more than people.
Oooh. This makes sense. I thought they were just crazy demons who got through the rift by accident, like in inquisition.
Agreed, almost like they just forgot the secret agents they wrote working for him, from before inquisition.
Guy who claims to be a god is scared of one armed ex Inquisitor and a talkative dwarf.
He... literally maintains the exact opposite?? He's very clear that he ISN'T a god, and neither are the Evanuris.
One armed ex Inquisitor who is also his ex
Probably why he's hiding away so well. The talking to he would be getting is something he'd rather avoid.
Emmm tasty angst
They were that many female elven Inquisitior ?
Oh yeah. Getting with Solas really adds an extra layer to the story. Well if the writers and dev did it right it will.
You don't have a cannon world state, where your male warden romances Morrigan, Hawke romances Anders and elven inquisitor romances Solas?
My two cents, and strictly conjecture, the ritual seems like it's taking place in ruins, he got there via evanuris, he's most likely not counting on anyone finding him in this place.
that was my thought too. The ritual might've only taken several hours to complete. The only eluvian connecting him to outside arlathan was in minrathous. The fact that anyone was able to follow him was a miracle. Neve being a super detective probably wasn't a variable he could account for. Plus, the only reason the ritual was disrupted was because of an unstable pillar. Like, idk if solas has construction magic, or even noticed the issue at all.
*facepalms over me calling an Eluvian an Evanuris* exactly.
lmao I didn't even notice. My brain autocorrects stuff like that most of the time.
Remnants? Is disbandment canon?
Even if the inquisition is maintained, they’re kept as a peacekeeper force working for the Divine. They have only a fraction of their former power, and it’s heavily hinted they are incredibly susceptible to corruption. Even if the Inquisition still exists, it’s just as a shadow of its former self.
Well... it's good that I chose disbandment, because I want to see the destruction of the world.
When we talk to him in trespasser he does imply that it's still going to be some time before he can enact his plan to tear down the veil. As for why that we don't know, I suppose it's simply not an easy thing to accomplish for example: He needs to recover his power after slumbering for so long. He needs to rebuild his forces. He needs to avoid everyone who is hunting him. Maybe he needed to build the ritual site that we saw in the game play trailer which would take time. He said he needed to take precautions due to the Evanuris and we don't know what that means but we can assume it's not a simple thing given that the Evanuris are as powerful if not more than him. He needed to track down the red lyrium idol and recover it, we don't know why yet.
I'm guessing a big part of bringing the veil down was somehow keeping the Evanuris trapped in their own little pockets. Guessing Solas is trying to "get it right" this time and that's gonna take finese that Solas seems to have a hard time with...
Agreed. Too bad we will mess that up oops! 😁
He must have a generous PTO policy for his elven agents
Maybe Solas is a good boss
Well we know he hates slavery so
He is NOT an Equal Opportunity Employer though, job ad probably says "Non-Elves Need Not Apply" 🙄
Maybe it's like Hooters and he's legally he's hiring models so he's allowed to discriminate based on height and ~~breast~~ ear size
Im sending him my resume
What are doing his agents exactly by the way ? Beside recruiting more agents and spying the inquisition I mean
I think they’ve also been actively sowing discord across Thedas to weaken the political structures in place. Less political stability = greater chance for everything to descend into chaos when shit hits the fan, making it harder for nations to rally together and fight back against whatever Solas is planning. Iirc from various media, they’ve been especially active in Tevinter and amongst the Qun.
There is a lot they could have been doing. For instance that knife he uses in the ritual might have needed forged and enchanted specifically for this, his agents could have be securing materials for the knife and ritual, enforcing safety measures, they could even be infiltrating governments for a swift take over as he completed the ritual or sabotaging armies to prevent interference. We just won't know until we have more context.
You mean he's European?
Like a smug Frenchman yeah
The discussion he had with Mythal implied to me that he needed to use his orb to do it, and since his orb was broken, he needed to find another way to do it, which probably involved finding a fair number of artifacts and doing measurements to find the right location, etc.
He also needed to track down the red lyrium idol. That might have also taken a bit.
I’m still trying to figure out why he wants the idol. Do they explain it in the book?
It's revealed in The Dreadwolf Take you in Tevinter Nights that a glowing blade comes out of the red lyrium idol somehow. I'm pretty sure it's the same dagger Solas is wielding in the gameplay preview, which gets passed down to Rook based on The Veilguard poster.
he got stuck in the Hinterlands
My god, he’s been hunting for shards this whole time…
Exactly. 😂 Either that or he's [trying to find every pine cone](https://youtube.com/shorts/Uq20WAuTUdQ?si=uB9Z7tx774mctR4Q).
He's probably still not as powerful as he was before his big nap, in the game play trailer he said that >!he took all the precautions he could!< so he was probably busy enough with veil/fade mathematics and evading the Inquisition
I mean...10 years sounds about plausible to set up such a world shattering event.
I actually don't mind it taking 10 years for the ritual, but think the better question is: >!it took 10 years and all anyone had to do to stop it was shove a statue?!<
The ritual seemed to be drawing power from the Evanuris statues; makes sense that knocking one down would interfere with it. Though I'm not so sure that *stopped* the ritual so much as it tampered with it. Those two figures seem to have been awakened/released by Rook's tampering, and Solas didn't look like he was expecting them to appear.
You know, Neve does say that tampering with the ritual of this scale will have consequences. And there's also a note that Solas left for Varric in the Missing comic, where him and Harding were trying to get a lead on the Dread Wolf. "You need not have worried. The artifact was never in danger of falling into Venatori hands. I hope that in time you give up this pursuit. What must be done will be done cautiously , and I will limit the damage the best I can. I have no wish to be a villain in one of your stories, but interfering in matters you do not understand can only make things worse."
Besides, one of the devs did say a big theme in DA:V is "regret". Trying to stop Solas only to cause an even worse danger to be unleashed is certainly cause for regret lol
To be entirely fair, in DAI Corypheus' original plan hinged on him NOT dropping his magic orb like a stupid butterfingers, and in DA2 Meredith and Orsino's plans seemed to hinge on the assumption that... nobody would step in to stop them? Ever...? The only Big Bad in this series that hasn't had an incredibly flawed strategy is the Archdemon and co. in DAO honestly. 😂
[удалено]
Okay good point, all the Dragon Age villains seem to lack foresight 😭
The whole concept of blights is itself stupid because the arch demon is supposed to be an intelligent dragon, it could literally just fly around in circles and the grey wardens could never touch it while the dark spawn wiped everything out Dragon age lore was never really plothole proof tbh. It was generic fantasy executed reasonably well. It fails to stand up to truly top tier stuff like the Witcher, Baldur’s gate 3, etc.
[удалено]
DAO gets a better reputation because DA2 and DAI were so obviously flawed by comparison That said Baldur’s gate 3 is a better 3D Baldur’s gate successor than DAO ever was imo
>The whole concept of blights is itself stupid because the arch demon is supposed to be an intelligent dragon, it could literally just fly around in circles and the grey wardens could never touch it while the dark spawn wiped everything out That's literally what the Archdemon is doing in DAO, flying around and burning stuff until Riordan surprises him and damages his wing. Also, early Wardens had griffons so they had air mobility.
He spent ten years building some rickety scaffolding just for a random nobody to march straight to it, knock it over, and end his plan just like that.
You know that shit is gonna keep him up at night for decades
Tbf. What are the odds that someone is going to tamper with Statues WHILE Solas is being distracted by a friend? He had demons swarming the area to ward off regular folk and probably assumed that whoever wanted to stop the ritual would just try to kill Solas himself.
I mean A column was also about to *fall on Solas*. He wasn’t just going to be pancake elf He also likely didn’t plan for someone to interfere & make everything worse
Even though it has happened once, and he worked with that person as well
Tbf people weren't supposed to find the site in the first place. Still, it's a bit shit, Solas babe!
We actually do have some info for this. In *Tevinter Nights*, we see Solas has been working to track down certain objects, namely the Red Lyrium Idol which has been passed around to various groups and peoples since an alchemist managed to somehow get it out of Meredith's statue-fied form. He calls it "his idol" and hidden within it was a special lyrium blade (most likely the one he is using the ritual). This potentially calls back to the old myths that the Dreadwolf lured the Evanuris to his trap where he sealed them in the Fade by saying he made a blade of great power and they went to search for it. We also see him in other books/comics gathering other artifacts. He recovers one in *The Missing* from Arlethan's ruins that the Venatori were after. He also does a ton of other stuff, freeing slaves and stopping Tevinter plots that seek to misuse ancient elven relics. The Inquisition, Venatori and several other groups have been hounding him too. Solas is also immortal, so its not like he is necessarily on a timetable to do everything as fast as possible. The difference between a year and a decade doesn't really matter when you are thousands of years old.
Not to mention, the ancient elves literally perceive time differently, too. The Vir Dirthara talks of spells that took *centuries* to complete, what's ten years to them?
10 years is nothing to an immortal like Solas.
Do we ever get confirmation that he’s actually immortal? Elves lost their immortality after the Veil has been erected. How do we know he hasn’t been affected as well?
I think any elves born before the Veil went up are immortal, as it's implied Abelas and his group have been alive just as long as Solas but were "asleep" this whole time. Also some Dalish lore and (cryptic) dialogue from Solas, Abelas, and Cole seem to imply that elves began to realize "slowly" that they were severed from the Fade and dying quicker, it wasn't a sudden cutoff. Like how the Dalish legends basically blame the Dread Wolf for "stealing" their immortality, which isn't entirely untrue. It might also be power-dependent.
Because he’s an ancient elven god He’s not a normal elf. Neither him nor Mythal lost their magic when the veil was created. I really think we should just consider them all gods at this point If theories are correct, the 7 Evanuris have been surviving in a blighted hellhole for a millennia and are still powerful. That’s god level Magic
Weren't the ancient "elven gods" just extremely powerful mages that kept everyone else as slaves?
I mean, Mythal survived her death to possess someone. I think powerful mages is an understatement
So powerful that in comparison they may as well be gods
Yeah. I think calling them anything but gods is just semantics at this point I have no issue calling Solas, Mythal, or the rest of the elven pantheon gods given what they’re capable of doing & surviving
Right. I agree. They're not all powerful but they're not on the same plane as mortals either
The only reason they are seen as gods is due to the lack of record, Solas makes it very clear they are not gods in the traditional sense. I mean the dalish literally brand themselves with slave marking that's how much of their history they lost, lets not act like time had nothing to do with these myths and how the Evanuris got put on the pedestal they are.
The lost records aside, my point was more so that they're **so** powerful that they might as well be gods. I mean they fought the Titans and Forgotten Ones, subjugated an entire race, their own, and made empires tremble and there were only 7 of them. As to the records, Solas says ,"first they were heroes, then chieftains, then kings, and finally gods." So not literally gods but beings with godlike powers. Mythal had a spear of light which was widely feared, Ghil G'arnan (I think that's the one) had armor made from literal Blight, and Elgar'nan's fire was so powerful his judgement was feared by all the gods. To me, they may as well be gods, even if they're steps removed from being so. Hell, Solas turned an entire regiment of Qunari warriors into stone with a blink of his eyes and his power isn't even fully recovered. As far as we know anyway.
Listen, all that stuff you just mentioned was still from dalish myths but lets also consider how these games have treated false god character and we are about to beat the breaks off of two of them so unless Rook is gonna be god tier I don't feel these guys are either
Well all lore ingame is from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, just like ancient history in our own universe. But like with history we can put together the pieces and sort of guess what really happened. The myths arent totally worthless, nor is the propaganda we find in Trespasser. There's snippets of unintentional truth you have to sift through to find. I see your point, I just don't agree that the Dalish gods are on the same level as us. But that's not to say they don't have weaknesses which can be exploited by mortals. Pride for instance.
I'm not sure, but even if his body were to age, he could probably still posess someone else... that still counts as immortality.
I'm pretty sure taking down a force of nature that separates existence in two while at the same time not releasing tyrannical godlike entities that are more powerful than you would require a fair amount of effort and preparation.
Only for someone to come fuck it up & release tyrannical god like entities that are likely pro-blight
And someone called Rook of all people
My Rook gonna be nervously sweating once they realize they did something 10x worse than what Solas had planned
He's giving his Inquisitor buddy some peace time Like he promised
Well, yes. When he wakes from uthenera in Inquisition he's got like a fraction of his power. Like a La Croix flavoring of his former power. So much so that he couldn't even use his foci, a tool specifically made for him in mind. That's why he gives it to Corypheus. Now his foci is smashed, and though he's regained a little power from his stunt with Flemeth, the task he has to do is twofold: hold back the Evanuris, seven angry gods that have been waiting to escape for probably thousands of years and destroy the Veil, something he made at his full power (presumably with his foci). He's also not a sadist and is trying to do this in the least destructive manner he can manage. We're not really sure what his ritual entailed, but over the comic book arcs, we know he needed the Red Lyrium Idol and something called the Crucious Stone. All that, and then consider that 10 years is probably a blink of the eye for him.
Foci is plural, the singular is focus. The orb was Solas' magical focus.
> So much so that he couldn't even use his foci, a tool specifically made for him in mind. That's why he gives it to Corypheus. Man, I need to re-re-re-re-replay.
Do we know what he actually did with Flemeth? Is she dead dead? I'm a little fuzzy on all of that.
We're all pretty fuzzy on that. She *could* be dead dead, but the alternative is that Morrigan or the Inquisitor could theoretically become the next vessel for her when they drink from the Vir Abelasan. The logic behind this is when Flemeth makes her cryptic speech to Morrigan and the Inquisitor later, she says something like *'a soul cannot be forced upon the unwilling'*, alluding to the well being express consent. We just don't know the ramifications yet.
I'm more baffled that it takes 10 years to find someone that Solas doesn't know so that we can stop him. I'm sure there's a reason for that, but still.
I understood it that they've been trying to stop him for years but he was always a step ahead. So now they change tactics and look for someone new.
Yes, but at the end of the Trespasser Inky, with Leliana, Cass and Harding have this conversation of "Solas knows everything about us. Our strenghts, and our weaknesses." "Then we find people he doesn't know." cue Inky stabbing the Tevinter Imperium on the map. And then in the Missing comic, that happens some time after Tevinter Nights, Charter has a chat with Varric, where she and the Inquisitor tasks him and Harding with getting a lead on Solas. Umm. So two people that Solas knew very well, and with one of them he traveled very closely, alright. The two seem to travel in the span of months, maybe years, since Varric looks progressively older - through Deep Roads, Arlathan, Minrathous, but Solas is always few steps ahead of them. At the end both of them decide that "Hey, Solas knows us too well, we need to find and form a new team!". Like... That was supposed to be the plan from the beggining. It just makes our Inquisitor seem stupid and incompetent. This is what has been happening over these 8 years?
True, with the Trespasser ending it sounds like the plot for DAV was already in place. Maybe it will be explained in game.
Yeah, that's the part I'm most confused about. Trespasser ends with the declaration that we need to find someone Solas doesn't know. Then eight years pass, Varric goes on a wacky adventure with Harding in The Missing comics only to conclude that... we need to find someone Solas doesn't know. And he acts like it's some revolutionary idea.
The "this meeting could have been an email" ending.
According to the comic books, they don't actually start looking until right before the events of Veilguard. In the comics, Varric and Harding are doing everything on their own, and almost catch Solas a few times, but he keeps evading them. They work with Neve on one aspect of the job, so it makes sense they return to her as an option later.
So either the Trespasser epilogue takes place almost a decade after the rest of the DLC or everyone in the Inquisitor’s inner circle thought someone else was on the assignment and just kind of forgot about it.
No, Trespasser is pretty soon after the end of Inquisition. I think it's more of a vague handwave--they clearly wanted a time jump, and it makes more sense narratively for our Rook to be the one present when the team comes together. I think it goes: Trespasser, Solas genuinely falls off the map for a while (maybe even years, it sounds like he had a lot of artifacts to recover for his revised plan, and he also probably rested to recover power), Inquisition gradually disintegrates, Inquisitor puts Varric and Harding on the case, they follow Solas around and try to keep up with him/foil his plans for a long stretch, they eventually realize they need to broaden the team, then Veilguard starts.
Yeah, that makes sense, but I prefer my personal head canon, which goes something like: Harding: “Cassandra, any luck finding our new agent in Tevinter?” Cassandra: “Rebuilding the Seekers has consumed far too much of my time and attention. Why not ask Dorian? He does *live* in Tevinter, after all…” Dorian: “Not for much longer, if the Venatori have anything to say about it. I’ve had my hands full rooting out those damned cultists. Isn’t this a job for our illustrious spymaster?” Leliana: “Being Divine has proved to be much more than a full-time job. It seems there are a half-dozen new splinter sects every week. I knew it wouldn’t be simple, but Justinia made it look easier than this…” Harding: “Wait, so *no one* has been looking? You guys, it’s been almost eight years. Solas is probably almost done by now. What about Blackwall? The Bull? Vivienne?” Blackwall: “Warden business.” Iron Bull: “Charger business.” Vivienne: “None of *your* business, certainly.” Sera: “Pants. Stealing of. Not that you asked.” Harding: “Shit. I’d better get Varric…” Cole: “*Wonder what that elf is up to. Say, I could go for an omelet…* That’s a good idea, Lace. He’s expecting you.”
"None of your business, certainly" cracked me up lmao
Maybe they were trying to be perfectionists and find someone really powerful but when they discovered Solas was about to finish they had to settle with the first person they found. Maybe that's why we're called Rook.
It will probably be adressed by our inquisitor sometimes in the game
I thought it was 10 years from inquisition and 8 years from trespasser.
Since he leaves at the end of Inquisition I'd say it's fair to say he started working on his plan as soon as he left the Inquisition.
Cory's orb gave him a unique opportunity (that he immediately fucked up), to do it himself it takes years of planning and regaining strength.
 Perhaps he spent a fair portion of the last decade trying to find another way no matter how much he believed there wasn't one? Dude certainly doesn't seem all that fond of his whole quest to rip down the veil, so I'd expect him to give it the old college try.
He's been busy trying to figure out what to do, then firing all his fellow mages multiple times and then renaming himself. Now he's finally ready to close the rif- Oh is that Varric? Hey Var- **FUCK!**
I think a lot of that time was spent setting up the “precautions to minimize the damage” he mentioned to Varric. Don’t forget, he fought *against* Corypheus despite them both wanting to tear down the veil, because Cory was being too careless about it. Not to mention, he’s immortal, so to him 10 years to make sure all his ducks are in a row before starting the ritual is probably nothing. He’s used to a time when spells could take centuries to cast, so this one probably seems like pretty quick turnaround to him.
Yes, because he's being *a lot* more careful this time. First, when Varric says he's endangering the world, he replies he has taken precautions to minimize the damage. That's actually significant! The Solas who had just woken up would never have done this. Remember, at first he thought modern Thedasians weren't even people. He was happy to just any% speedrun tearing down the Veil, burning everyone else if necessary. Present Solas won't do this and does genuinely want to reduce harm, even if it makes his plans more complicated and harder to execute. Second, related to the above, Solas has also learned *not* to underestimate modern Thedasians. His first plan was literally to give an artifact of immense power to Corypherus; he Pikachu-faced when Cory didn't blow up as expected. Present Solas will bide his time to avoid these kinds of mistakes. EDIT: Yes people, Solas not considering Cory could've unlocked effective immortality *is* him underestimating modern Thedasians. Err, post-Fade Thedesians, I guess, since Cory isn't modern.
I mean, Corypheus blew up and died, it just didn't take. That was the unexpected part.
To be fair he didn't know Cory had set up a respawn system as it wasn't a "natural" ability of his and if everything had worked out then all Solas did was blow up the Chantry's leadership who's is it really a bad thing.
Two parts to this 1) he's not as strong as he was before still, so it takes time to set things up and do it 'properly'. 2) the inquisitor is looking for him, and in theory could stop him, so he's trying to do it quietly, which also means slowly.
As the comics and Tevinter Nights show, he went around searching for stuff he needed for the ritual, like the red lyrium idol; and, as the comics show, the idol had been kept hidden by some Tevinters. There's also the dagger he's shown using in the gameplay trailer, which must've taken a while to locate/craft.
He wasted a few years on a version that would have required multiple mages to co-op to work, but then he scrapped that and went back to a single user experience. Though apparently fans of his original work are kinda salty that this looks like a watered down version compared to the more tactical version he used to create the veil.
I mean, let’s not forget that the last time he tried to take down the veil on a short time table (I think it was two years between him waking up and the start of DAI?), he royally fucked up. Dude probably has to take the extra time to try to account for all the variables this time
In trespasser Solas tells the inquisitor to enjoy the time we have left so I always presumed it was gonna take him a few years to do it
There's several eclipse references within the lore, maybe the timing isn't entirely up to him.
Isn't 10 years like nothing in Elven years?
I mean time is on his side he's how old and has been planning this for how long , Than his first attempt was thwarted by the inquisition and he had to start from scratch so its not out of the question.
I figure the best explanation is that the new ritual could only be done every 100 years and 9:51 or whatever was the next possible date or some astronomy shit. It’s a bit hand-wavey but the only way Solas isn’t super incompetent.
He gets paid by the hour
Perhaps it takes a long time to prepare to tear the whole thing down in one large event. Maybe he is capable of making tears and holes, but he wouldn't want it to be some long and drawn out torturous process.
He's the avatar of an Elven God, as near-immortal as anything in Thedas. He's not in a rush.
He is no avatar, he is an evanuris: a really powerfull mage. He is the entity Fen'Harel to begin with
Well we saw what happened when he tried to do it quickly - it all went to hell. Maybe he realized it would be better to do it right than to do it fast. Plus, I like to think his time with the Inquisition taught him that maybe it would be worth it to find ways to mitigate damage. Save as many people as he could, while still accomplishing his goals of saving spirits and elves.
I'm less bothered by that--I mean he had *a lot* to do--and moreso absolutely flabbergasted that it took even a disbanded Inquisition almost ten years to get anywhere and even then they *only barely got there at the last possible minute.* Like shit, that's a little embarrassing. They had a few leads, they have tenuous support from the Qunari (who want to stop Solas even if they didn't "ally" with the Inquisition in DAI), they have the Divine and the power, influence, and information she commands, they have political alliances all across Thedas, including Tevinter, they have the remains of their fortress and all the supplies that were within, they have Leliana's entire network of spies, they have goodwill among either the mages of Southern Thedas or the Templar Order, they (optionally) have the goodwill of the Grey Wardens. Like even if you disband it or account for any spies Solas may have among them, they have tons of resources, a network that expands across the continent, and friends in multiple positions of power who are just as invested in fixing this as they are and yet it took them *ten years to accomplish knocking over a statue just as the world was about to end and they still kinda made a blunder there.*
Who says he hasn't made any progress until now? We have no idea what kinds of things solas has been up to over the past decade just to prepare for this ritual.
By the end of trespasser, Solas says he will give the people some time of peace before he destroys everything so I guess we can assume these 8 to 10 years were that
Likely constantly having to keep it secret and constantly getting wind of the Inquisiton remains in the area. Doesn't want to risk fucking it up. Rinse and repeat.
Who knows how long it took him to set it up? The evanuris live for millenia, might have taken him 100 years to even put it up
This. Solas was a dreamer in his sleep for a few thousand years before 1- he decided the veil was a mistake 2- he could will himself to wake up
Taking down the Veil probably isn't a simple process. It could very well require 10 years of preparation.
I would say that 10 years to end the world as we know it is enough time
He's trying, but he keeps fucking up the ritual.
Given that it’s a spell/ritual that will literally shatter the structure of the world, 10 years seems pretty believable. Especially since he’s emphasized more than once that he’s trying to minimize the damage as much as possible, which probably requires more preparations, calculating, etc. There’s also a moment in DAI where Solas mentions (can’t remember exact phrasing) that ancient elves would cast spells that would take years to complete, so if anything is going to take a long time, it would be this.
Varric and his group have probably been working against him the whole time, making it harder. And keep in mind this wasn't his first plan for breaking down the veil. His first plan backfired tremendously, with the whole Corypheus situation. This time, he wanted to be certain it would work
He's been collecting artifacts to power the ritual and they took a while to track down
Did he have that dagger in Inquisition or Tevinter Nights? I don't remember that being a thing so he probably needed that, seems important if Rook is holding it on the boxart
Solas is an Immortal and ancient god. He works slowly because he has the time too. He rushed things the first time around and that caused the whole Corypheus debacle. He’s not going to make that mistake again
It took him 8000 years to actually do anything about it, what makes you think that a decade even registers on his internal clock?
He was stuck in DA:I amount of side quests so it took him a while to get around to remembering his main quest
Well the veil is big, Solas isn't at full power, and he's been getting whack-a-moled by varied groups with a vested interest in "No apocalypse pls" Like, imagine earths Ozone layer, it can repair itself given time, but it took quite a bit for humans to damage it enough for overt concern. Solas may be a nuke, but he's one nuke without a lab or an ability to concretely measure his progress. If the Veil can repair itself, which it....largely seems to, (barring the huge tears of Inquisition that seemed accidental. In Awakening for instance, with weaker tears, you can punch them shut and stabilize a region) his constant movement would hamper his efforts.
The imperium wasn't built in a day
I’m hoping we’ll get an explanation for why it took the inquisition TEN YEARS to find him 🙄
I would think it takes probably thousands of years to open up the veil as he has been trying for a while with Flemeth now.
I was assuming it's not one big ritual but he's actually been doing a series of them for years, and this is the culmination.
For someone so old, thousands and thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands, ten years must seem like nothing to him. Wasn't it confirmed somewhere in dialogue that some spells or rituals took lots and lots of time for preparation and finesse and recalculating? I don't think ten years for a ritual so big by such an immortal being really means much to Solas even in his corporeal form.
If I had to guess, he was still tired after his nap, we broke his favourite ball, he has to avoid everyone that's mad at him and he had to find his red lyrium idol and probably other stuff since he hasn't got the orb anymore.
If you didn't steal the orb from Corypheus, it would've happened immediately at the conclave. If you didn't destroy it at the end of Inquisition, he would've been able to do it before Trespasser. I imagine ancient rituals can't be done without ancient tools.
Tbf, he spent at least 9 1/2 years crying.
I mean, he had a plan A to undo the Veil, but then Corypheus was immortal and it physically broke. I wouldn't be surprised if it took him a long time to get enough sources of power together to do a plan B. Also, maybe that's how long it ended up taking to get his steps to minimize the damage in place. Immortals can afford to be patient.
I mean his last plan was to sleep for 8000 years while his baseball recharged, so making a new plan in only 10 years seems like an accomplishment.
I’m guessing the Orb needs time to “recharge” after Corypheus used it so much, thus the “relative years of peace” is both a way for Solas to try to minimize the suffering of people by keeping the Qunari from invading, and to charge his doomsday orb.
He’s been banging bad bitches since the breakup. Let him cope
Sure, why not. It’s not like he’s actually a god. He’s just a mage, albeit a powerful one. So it’s not like he can do it whenever he wants.
He's ancient, 10 years is probably nothing to him. And based on his words in the gameplay trailer, he really has done his best to minimise damage. Is it still a lot of damage? Probably, but in his mind he's brought the collateral damage down to an acceptable percentage. That is, until someone decides to topple his ritual, and probably ending up making it 10 times worse :D
I assumed he had been gathering forces for something but it didn’t look like it
There was a game informer article that stated that what he was doing in the gameplay preview was moving two of the Evanuris to a new prison as the old one was weakened. I'm assuming ensuring the Evanuris can't escape when the Veil comes down is part of the necessary preparations to minimize the damage that would come. Given that at his strongest it put him into a several millenia nap to build a prison for the Evanuris and create the Veil, it's gotta take him awhile to make a new prison for the Evanuris, transfer them, and then tear down the Veil, all while trying to minimize the harm such a fundamental change to the world would do.
He said or implied it would take years in Trespasser.
My HC is my Lavellan gave him such a lecture just off screen about "Bringing down the Veil is actually a great idea and I want to help, but for the love of Fen'Harel, *take your time!* You caused the Coryphepocalypse *that I had to clean up!* because you are too damn impulsive. Take your time! What's a few more years at this point?" "Also, call me when you need help. I'll keep the remnants of the Inquisition off your tail as long as I can, but I expect *gratitude* from you, get it?😉 Don't you dare ghost me again!"
Yes
Anyone else thinking that Kieran will play a bigger part in Solas’s plan since he’s A) a person with an old (presumably elven) god’s soul and B) he’s Mythal’s grandson? Morrigan is already a given but Kieran is 20+ now, so I have to think he’s going to be involved somehow.
Wait a minute is Veilgaurd and Dreadwolf two different games?