Dragon Age: Origins/WMG

Archdemons, Darkspawn, etc

The Archdemons are holding back the mother of all Blights

What happens in a Blight? Darkspawn dig up one of the old gods of the Tevinter Imperium, it gets corrupted by the Taint, and assembles all the Darkspawn around into a massive army to overrun civilization. So what happens when the last of the dragon-gods is defeated? Are the Darkspawn all gonna lay down and die? Ummm... No. They're not going to go anywhere. There won't be any retreat underground to search for the next old god; all the Darkspawn in the world are going to surge up out of the Deep Roads in a massive, world-wide Blight. This will, naturally, lead to an After the End scenario. Harder to get fantasy any darker than that.

• The Architect was of the impression that the Darkspawn could be tamed and made to live alongside humanity with the Old Gods dead, but as with all Well Intentioned Extremists there's a good posibility he was talking out of his ass.
• Darkspawn are unable to coordinate sustained mass effort without the guiding intelligence of an archdemon. No archdemon = no Blight. Presumably, the darkspawn will just dwindle to a perpetual source of wandering monsters.
  • Observe the Dwarfs, who have been fighting the first Blight since it began. They can only tell a Blight is in progress because the pressure slacks off a bit.
    • That's because the Darkspawn move up to the surface during a Blight.
  • The darkspawn won't be able to organize any military-style action, but they'll still rip any non-darkspawn they see to pieces and spread their corruption.
    • • When the last archdemon is dead, the darkspawn won't hear their music anymore. What happens then is anyone's guess but it may be that the horde losses its will to to live and replenish itself, eventually dwindling away to nothing.
      • Or they'll become even more Ax Crazy and hurl themselves en masse at everyone else in the hopes that they can hear the song again in death. It's what happened to The Mother.

The Hurlock Vanguard is the player character if they had chosen a Human Commoner origin.

The game is interesting in that the third member of the group of recruits is entirely a random choice by Duncan, and that whoever duncan chooses controls the fate of Ferelden. Whether to visit one of 6 places just before the Battle at Ostagar. Out of the Six origins, I found it odd that dwarves and elves(well given how poor the elves have it in ferelden, the city elves are commoner while the Dalish serve the same sort of dignity as a noble) had commoner options but not humans.

Had Duncan picked a commoner, the commoner would have died due to lacking the courage and determination to overcome the Joining. The reason being is that every other origin had some conflict that drove them onward. Elves have their discrimination, Nobles, both human and dwarf have their court intrgiues.Commoner dwarfs suffer similar, if not worse treatment than an average elf. Mages are nigh-universally feared outside of their tower. But a human commoners? the most average and arguably comfortable class in Ferelden, the most he would have to worry about is being forced into military service by his king or something. He would have gone along with Duncan simply to escape the boredom of his life rather than something more epic worthy which is why he dies and becomes a darkspawn, and because Duncan chose him, he has the power to turn the tide in the Archdemon's favor.

• Nah. "Commoner" in those times doesn't mean "guy that sits in front of his TV set after and exiting workday at Wal-Mart". Regarding boredom, a noble's comfortable (indeed!) life was arguably more boring than a commoner's, with all it's hardships and dangers. The Human commoner was supposed to live on a farm near Redcliffe. (One plot element was that he was indebted to Dwyn the dwarf, who was going to marry the PC's sister in order to settle the debt.) In the end, the Commoner origin was cut because the develeopers felt it was too clichéed (isn't that how most adventure stories start? Peasant gets hurled out of his little world by some big event and saves the world... see the Monomyth.)

The "Dragon Age" will be an age of multiple Blights.

There are three remaining dragon gods scattered around the underground. Sequels will take place only a few years later, but in the other kingdoms that exist in the setting and are only mentioned intriguingly in Origins. The Anderfels, Orlais, Antiva, Tevinter...

• Two, actually. You destroy Urthemiel, the Dragon of Beauty. Mystery and Night are left. Ooohh, nice evil monikers....
• Just one problem - it would be incredibly boring to have the same plot premise repeat itself over and over again. It's more likely that the next games concentrate on different kinds of threats, such as the Qunari, and might involve preemtive attacks against the Darkspawn, as well. This troper would be surprised if Morrigan's child failed to play a major part in the future stories, as well...
  • If Morrigan's child is an Old God, technically he (or she) should be able to control the Darkspawn.
    • Not quite. The Old Gods clearly don't have a full control over the Darkspawn, since they get corrupted by the contact wit them. It's more likely that he is like a beacon to them, summoning them from all over the place unconsciously, as they hope to taint him back into an Archdemon.
  • This would make a certain amount of sense if it involved an entirely new main character, but Grey Wardens aren't Spectres; their job is only to fight Darkspawn/Blights, not preserve order in general or anything. The proper Grey Warden response to the Qunari would be neutrality and attempting to recruit some. But most of the game isn't spent fighting the Blight directly, but gathering allies against it; since those allies would be drastically different in a different region of Thedas, another game with an identical overarching plot would still be very different.
    • This all assumes that the next game is going to involve the Grey Wardens in some fashion, and this troper hasn't heard anything like that yet.

The last two Blights will happen at the same time.

Leading the two Archdemons to fight it out over who controls the Horde, with all of Thedas caught in the middle.

The Darkspawn do not eat their prisoners.

Instead, they use some dark rituals to turn them into Hurlocks (or maybe other humanoid Darkspawn we have not yet seen). Why, you may ask? Well, it just seems to be too much of a convenient coincidence that we did not see Duncan die onscreen (and the game wasn't really hesitant when it came to violent scenes, right?) and that shortly thereafter, we're told that Darkspawn are known to drag their surviving enemies underground to do god-knows-what with them. Maybe Duncan will come back as a High-Ranking Hurlock General or some other kind of Darkspawn and the player will have the chance to put him out of his misery or maybe find a cure to reverse the transformation. (Or at least give him back his free will, come on, hunting Darkspawn with a Darkspawn in your own party? Epic!)

• They explain what happens to prisoners in a Codex piece that comes up in the Deep Roads. Males are eaten, but females are subjected to a process that kills almost all of them, but turns the few survivors into Broodmothers who then give birth to the Darkspawn.
  • Although some are turned into Darkspawn or things like them, examples being the Blighted animals and poor Tamlen
• Word of God has stated that darkspawn are born from broodmothers, but broodmothers themselves are just a specific type of female ghoul. Just about any animal can become tainted/blighted, but they will not be actual darkspawn themselves.

The Darkspawn are immortal unless subjected to violent death.

The Ancient Darkspawn in the Dead Trenches would seem to be implying this, especially with the old Gray Warden helmet he's wearing. Most just die either in raids to the surface and the dwarven strongholds, or in fights against each other, but the few that survive will keep on getting stronger and better as long as they live. The Ancient may be a survivor all the way from the last Blight.

Dragons speak telepathically through the blood, and are of human intelligence.

By drinking the dragon's blood other races can communicate with said dragon, which is how they create groups of dragon cultists to guard their nests and care for their eggs. Related, Dragons are actually quite intelligent but the huge drop in their numbers means they now lack most of their culture or teaching, and have become little more than uneducated bandits and thugs.

• Moving on from this, the Tevinter Imperium was basically a giant Dragon Cult, with its leaders all having ingested the blood of the old gods. This link unfortunately went horribly wrong when these leaders travelled to the Black City, where this shared Dragon blood became the darkspawn taint.
  • Hmmmm. If the dragons are sentient like the other races, would that mean they have their own mages as well? That might explain what the old gods actually are...
  • The Codex states that one mage claimed an Old God taught him Blood Magic. If this theory is true they would be the most likely candidates to invent it in the first place, as blood is very important to them. Note that Fake-Andraste wants you to place her blood in the ashes in order to steal their power.
    • This could have possibly been accomplished, not by Dragons being telepathic, but by Blood Mages being the Magi equivalent of the Reaver warrior specialization - perhaps when Mages drink the blood of Dragons (including Old Gods) or demons (how most Blood Mages these days do it) they gain access to Blood Magic. While Dragons are said to be as smart as dolphins, it seems more likely that the first Tevinter Blood Mage was a Reaver cultist than the fact that a Dragon sat him down and explained to him how he could become a Blood Mage.

The Blight is the result of the Old Gods becoming Dragon-Abominations

Working off the theory about dragons above, the old gods were dragons with the Tevinter Imperium being one huge dragon cult. What caused the Blight wasn't the Magisters travelling to the Golden City, it was the old gods being possessed by demons.

• This theory is enchanced by the fact that most abominations are the result of blood magic being used to summon demons which then possess people. Guess what kind of magic the ancient Imperium used.
  • Not to mention, one would wonder where the Archdemons got that title from, being creatures seemingly unassociated with demons.
  • As shown in the Warden's Keep DLC, the power of the Darkspawn taint can be used to control what is essentially another form of blood magic. Perhaps because the taint has its roots in such power?
• As seen during the Nature of the Beast quest, a spirit possessing a living creature is capable of infecting people with a disease that either kills them or turns them into monsters, with the spirit being able to influence those infected.
• Demons just by themselves seem to have some kind of connection to the Blight, as the mages tower holds the same kind of corruption as the Deep Roads.
• Witherfangs' curse gives those who are infected with it traits from her host body, a wolf. While the darkspawn mostly just look deformed, their breeding cycle is almost identical to that of a dragon's-many males 'mating' with one much larger female, who gives birth to numerous offspring.
  • Their features are rather reptilian.
• The soul transfer that happens when an Archdemon dies sounds suspiciously like the process that Flemeth, an Abomination, uses to get new bodies, and they are apparently similar enough that she could devise a way to hijack the Archdemon's soul mid-transfer.
• The only real difference between the Blight and Witherfangs' curse is that the Blight is capable of infecting everything.
  • Which could be explained by dragons being more powerful than wolves and perhaps the demons taking over the Old Gods being more powerful than the Lady of the Forest.

The Architect and The Mother are some of the original Magister Lords who invaded the Golden City.

Future games will have you face other Magisters, and once they're all dead, the darkspawn will be cured.

• IIRC the Architect's origin is just that he was born an unusually smart darkspawn. The Mother was just one his experiments.
• The part about the Mother is Jossed in Awakening, and the Legacy DLC for Dragon Age 2 Josses it for the Architect. The main villain of Legacy is one of the original Tevinter magisters who breached the Black City, though, who has now become an ancient darkspawn that was just freed from a thousand years of captivity.
  • Corypheus is also the main villain for Dragon Age: Inquisition.

There's a very good reason why the Mother referred to the Architect as "the Father."

He was the one who made her into a broodmother, in hopes that their offspring would be like him. That failed miserably (like all of his other plans), but when he later created his Joining he decided to salvage her for that.

Over each of the Old Gods prisons is an Old Tevinter mage tower where it is easier to communicate with the Old God beneath. Finding the various towers reveals the locations of the Old Gods.

First off, we know that the Tevinter Imperium not only worshiped, but also communicated with the Old Gods and learned a great deal of magic from them. In Dragon Age: The Calling we are told that the Grey Wardens know the locations of the Old Gods prisons, and that they don't go down and destroy them simply because of all the darkspawn in the Deep Roads (with tons of them near the prisons). It would make sense for the Tevinter Imperium to build magi towers close to the various prisons and if they had that would mean to find the prisons one would merely have to look for old Tevinter towers. It stands to reason that one of those prisons was in the Korcari Wilds near Ostagar and that was the reason that the Imperium built the Tower of Ishal (and possibly why the Grey Wardens had a base nearby). It could also be the reasoned that Flemeth lived in the Korcari Wilds so as to communicate and learn from the Old God Urthemiel (including her immortaility spell which is similar to the way the Archedemon hops bodies). Flemeth may have even been working with Urthemiel to free the Old Gods soul from it's prison, and that it was actually from Urthemiel that Flemeth learned the ritual that Morrigan can use to put the Old Gods soul in a new body.

The Grey Wardens were founded by the Tevinter Magisters

There are several hints at this one. The Joining is essentially blood magic and Tevinter is well known for it's blood mages. The Grey Wardens were also founded in the Anderfels during a time when it was still part of the Tevinter Imperium. Then despite the fact that the it's not the most useful information Grey Wardens know the locations of the Old Gods and even had an old fortress near Ostagar where the Fifth Blight began. The locations of the Old Gods doesn't seem to be very common knowledge the way it would be it it was part of the regular Tevinter faith, so it stands to reason that the Archons didn't exactly like sharing their whereabouts with just anybody (though it's still possible they found out another way). If it actually was Tevinter that created the darkspawn the Grey Wardens could just be their clean-up crew.

• The Grey Wardens don't know where the Old Gods are. The dwarven kingdoms span the continent of Thedas, with only Orzammar and Kal-Sharok still being under dwarven control. Simply because the Blight began at Ostagar doesn't mean Urthemiel was located anywhere near.
  • The Senior Grey Wardens actually do know where the Old Gods are in Dragon Age: The Calling the entire danger posed by Bregan being capurured by the darkspawn was that as the former Warden Commander of Orlais he was one of the Wardens who knew the locations of the Old Gods. Had Bregan only known that the Old Gods were somewhere in the Deep Roads there would have been no danger in the beginning. Once Bregan was turned to the Architects side he actually informed him the locations of the Old God's prisons, and it was the Architects actions using said information that resulted in the start of the Fifth Blight in the first place. That the Grey Wardens know the locations was one of the key points of the The Calling.
    • Really? That's very interesting...I own both books, but I haven't gotten around to reading them. In any case, I doubt they're Tevinter clean-up crew, if just for the fact it took decades for the Grey Wardens to surface. They didn't react immediately. As for knowing where the Old Gods are...this is conjecture, since I haven't read it myself, but they do sense darkspawn. If Seniors can do it, it's probably because their senses have gotten more and more tainted, and the song of the Old Gods get stronger.

There is still the soul of a previous Old God wandering around out there.

This is tied fairly closely to the theory that the Flemeth/Morrigan ritual regarding the Archdemon baby was done before. Think about it: the entire purpose of the Grey Wardens is to produce SOMEBODY capable of not merely killing the Archdemon but destroying its soul. Everybody we talk to is absolutely certain that if a Grey Warden doesn't do it, the soul flees into the closest Darkspawn and thus we effectively get something akin to a neverending blight that will end only once the last Darkspawn is killed. Ask yourself WHY they are so certain about this fact. Ask yourself if there have been any reports of the Darkspawn completley being killed off only to rise again.

Which means that in addition to whatever the Architect is planning, we have one more active Archdemon out there in the body of your grunt Darkspawn, excluding the whole "Morrigan is having an Archdemon Baby" possibility. And any other Old Gods the Darkspawn will dig up in the meantime.

• The First Blight lasted nearly two hundred years. The Grey Wardens didn't come around until nearly a hundred years into it. You don't think that in those hundred years, the armies of the Tevinter Imperium, who would have been more than willing to use blood magic, summon demons, and who knows what else, didn't kill Dumat at least once before the Wardens were founded? That's most likely how they know the Archdemon will just move to another Darkspawn body if a Grey Warden doesn't kill it. Besides, as you said yourself, the Blight doesn't end until the Archdemon is dead, whether it's in its original body or not.
  • Yup. The first Archdemon got killed a bunch of times, and came right back. The codex says that people thought it's ability to come back from the dead was proof of that it was a god (because, you know, that's what gods do). The first Grey Wardens could feel it as the dragon died and was reborn, and they figured out how it was pulling off that particular trick. I doubt any other Archdemon is wandering around, given that the entire purpose of the Grey Wardens is to render them Deader Than Dead.
  • See the WMG down below re: Flemeth's ritual and Andraste for another speculation as to where the soul of the First Archdemon might be.

A Grey Warden doesn't need to deliver the killing blow to the Archdemon.

The Archdemon's soul seeks the closest body with the Taint, therefore a Grey Warden simply needs to be standing closer to the Archdemon when it is slain than a Darkspawn.

• • It's simply safer that the Warden administer the final blow in order to be the closest carrier of the taint.

Archdemons can't possess Grey Wardens like Darkspawn because of the Archdemon blood used in the Joining.

• The Wardens say that Darkspawn are soulless creatures and this allows the Archdemon to Body Surf through them and that the soul of a Grey Warden is what causes the two to self-destruct when the Warden kills the Archdemon. In Legacy Corypheus may have taken over the body of Larius/Jeneka; if this is true it throws some holes into the idea of the "two souls cancel each other out" method. What really kills the Archdemon is the remnant of the previous Archdemon's power that all Grey Wardens carry in their Taint, a spiritual poison for the current Archdemon. Corypheus is one of the human Magisters that started the Blight and is unaffected by the Archdemon poison, which may make him more of a threat than an actual Archdemon since every Grey Warden and Darkspawn (except maybe the Architect) is a potential vessel for him.

The Calling doesn't necessarily kill Grey Wardens.

Everyone once in a while, a Grey Warden comes along that's badass enough (or thought to bring many, many health potions) to take whatever the Darkspawn dish out. If that happens, they eventually succumb to the taint and become Darkspawn.

Andraste, The Chantry, etc

Leliana is a double agent

Leliana, a very well trained spy who outright admits she can shape her personality to become "the girl you fall in love with" appears, out of the blue, with some convincing sob story to get the warden to take her along. She then befriends the warden, and possibly seduces him/her. This is pretty classic espionage, really. It fits, too, being as Leliana has basically become chantry special forces by Dragon Age 2. The entire time she was travelling with the warden, she was gathering intelligence for the Chantry. Once you get to the ashes, you find out her story was made up. Now, one could dismiss her as simply wanting attention, but think about it. How would she know where the warden was going to be and when? How did she even know that the warden was alive? She has an intelligence network feeding her intel, that's how. That intelligence network is a part of the Chantry. Priestesses, templars, all keeping an eye open and feeding information back to Leliana.

• All of the companions have their own 'personal item', which they come pre-equipped with and which usually relates to their past somehow. Leliana's item? An amulet called the "Seeker's Circle". And who is she working for in Dragon Age 2? The Seekers.
• Sadly, this theory has been entirely Jossed by Dragon Age: Inquisition. Leliana reveals in that game that she was recruited as the Chantry spymaster after Dragon Age 1, at the same time that the former Revered Mother of Lothering rose to become the new Divine.

The Chantry is one gigantic scam.

In the "Search for the True Prophet" Gift, there's a statement that Andraste may have actually just been a Mage. That would explain the kind of Fade-like properties around her Urn's location. There's also the fact that the Blight doesn't seem to be related to be related to the Fade despite the Chantry's statement. Alistair and several others hint that they are all skeptical of it. The Archdemon is an old Dragon God that's been infected by something, utterly unrelated to the Tevinter empire's mages who supposedly broke creation. The Chantry is just running a lot of propaganda to capitalize on their fake religion.

• Jossed, at least partially, by the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest. Andraste definitely existed, and her mortal remains definitely did become the focus of powers not explainable by ordinary magic. If she was a mage, she must have been a mage bonded with the mother of all benevolent Fade spirits.
  • If you bring Oghren along with you when you talk to the guardian, he mentions that the mountain the Urn is on top of is absolutely filled with incredibly powerful veins of lyrium. Several centuries being exposed to the essence of magic, and being the focus of faith of tens of thousands of people, could be an alternate explanation for the Urn's power.
  • Maybe she did bond with the mother of all benevolent Fade spirits... the Maker.
• If you haul Morrigan along with you to the Circle she will comment that the growths growing on the walls due to the abominations looks surprisingly similar to darkspawn corruption.
• Not exactly Jossed, just made ambigious. An alternative explanation for the Ashes' power is mentioned - that they've crystallized the essence of the faith of all those who believed in Andraste. Like with real world religions, you can go either way with no more or less evidence to support you. Though that idea of an incredibly powerful Fade-spirit supporting her has quite a bit of charm to it...
  • I very much doubt that the Chantry is a scam, all involved seem to believe in the truth of the Chant of Light and are at worst Lawful Stupid. It is however almost certain that the truth of the matter is a little different from what they believe.
• If you read The Calling it reveals Andraste often went down to the Deep Roads to talk to The Maker by an 'emerald lake'. They do indeed find this emerald lake, and it is indeed strangely free from Darkspawn taint...
• Maybe not a scam from the people involved with it, but possibly a scam from "The Maker". It's mentioned that sometimes people who have magic but are unaware of it will attribute the things that they cause to happen to faith or to another being. It's possible that Andraste was an unknowing mage who attracted the attention of a very powerful spirit, who then lied to her in order to get her to pledge herself to him. He makes up all sorts of things and gives her lots of "miracles" to impress her, and once she dies he loses interest in humans and ignores her followers from then on.
• Note that Dragon Age codex entries are not always written in third-person omniscient. There is nothing that shows whether or not the in-game book "The Search For The True Prophet" is a valid scholarly work, or the Ferelden equivalent of Von Daniken's UFO books. Note that the prime tenet of the Chantry being "Magic exists to serve man, not to rule over him" gives the Chantry every reason to be direly insulted by any claims that Andraste was a mage, whether those claims are true or false.
• Also, it would be just like this game to make the Tevinter Chantry the closest to Andraste's intentions.
• Somewhat Jossed. In the Legacy DLC for Dragon Age 2, it becomes apparent that Corypheus - the person who has been trying to steal your blood - is one of the Tevinter Magisters who tried to enter the Golden City. As in the story, he was cast back as a Darkspawn. So the Maker - and His city - do exist, it's just not clear if it's as simple as the Chantry makes it. Also, in the Fade, you can see the Black City off in the distance, but that can be chalked up to the collective thoughts of everybody in the Fade expecting it there.
  • Corypheus never actually says that he encountered a being that could be described as the Maker and implies that the city was already blackened when they got there. All Legacy really confirms is that the Magisters did physically enter the City at the behest of the Old Gods seeking power and brought back the darkspawn taint.

The "Maker" was a Pride Demon

Come on. What's more prideful thought than "I am the sole chosen and beloved of the creator of the Universe, meant to create a powerful religion that will last until the end of time"? The Tevinter Imperium actually saved the world by putting her to a torch, after their learned Magisters realized that she was in fact a powerful Abomination at this point.

• As if to add to this, in The History of the Chantry: Chapter 4, an excerpt reads: "In these dark times, mankind scrambled for a light, any light. Some found comfort in demonic cults that promised power and riches in return for worship." The Chantry's goal is to convert the entire world into worship of the Maker, on the promise that He will build them a paradise. In other words, by the Chantry's own logic, He has promised power and riches in exchange for worship. So, the difference between the widespread religion to the Maker and these demonic cults is...?
  • The Chantry does nice things (or at least tries to)?
  • Who's to say that a demonic cult has to be evil? Even if you worship an unholy demon, one of the best ways to gain dedicated converts is a good public works campaign sponsored by your Ministry of Darkness.
  • Also, looking at some of the fringes of what the chantry does, there's the templars. They are lyrium addicts that will go into dementia from it. They 'guard' mages against becoming abominations (wouldn't like any other demons to rise to the same power, would we?).
  • The chantries teachings require them to spread the chant to all people, violently if necessary.
  • A codex entry in the sequel mentions an apocryphal story about Andraste going to the top of Sundermount (a mountain important to the plot of the first act and a source of bad mojo from an ancient battle that occurred there) and returning in tears and clearly disturbed. Considering there's an imprisoned demon atop Sundermount and that Flemeth is resurrected there it raises some interesting questions...
• Revising the previous WMG, Andraste didn't bond with the ultimate benevolent Fade spirit. She bonded with the ultimate Pride demon.
• It might be a bit of a knock against the more blind followers of religions around the world, though whether or not its intentional remains to be seen.

The High Dragon Really Is Andraste

Andraste was a rare example of a Mage born with the power to change the world. AS her legend grew, she was eventually reborn as a dragon. The old gods where also originally powerful mages and legendary "heroes" of the Tevinter people before being reborn as dragons. This also happened to Flemeth. Had she lived, Dragon Andraste would have moved under ground to sleep, be awaked by the darkspawn, and become the Archdemon Andraste.

Demons are spirits who were originally corrupted by people.

Not deliberately, but simply by staying in proximity of a weakness in the Veil. Notice that is where the highest concentration of demons remain, where they're most conscious of the material world, and where they become familiar with psyches through dream. And they are all most basically identified with human flaws, original sins. The spirits exposed to those qualities come to identify themselves with them. They in turn wish to possess human forms because they've become addicted to those qualities, and are driven to experience them more intensely. Not all spirits who come to inhabit the mortal plane are demons, Great Oak for one example, it's just that the most destructive ones that are as big a bastard as humans get all the attention.

• There's some support for this in dialog between Anders and Justice:

Anders: Aren't demons simply spirits with unique and sparkling personalities?
Justice: They have been perverted by their desires.

Justice doesn't deny their similarity, and affirms that demons have been corrupted rather than existing in a state of original evil.

• Alternatively, all spirits have been corrupted by proximity to humans - demons are just the ones unlucky enough to be corrupted by negative emotions rather than positive or neutral ones.
  • That would explain the spirits of higher order ideals, like Courage and Justice. You could go one further and speculate that without that influence, spirits don't coalesce self-awareness, don't become entities, don't really exist. Then you have to wonder what would be the Maker, if not an expression of something in the sentient condition. Sort of like a reverse Platonic idea.
• In the sequel Merrill admonishes Anders for thinking that there are "good" spirits as all spirits are dangerous to some extent. Even the noble Justice became Vengeance when Ander's anger corrupted him.

Andraste is the original Archdemon, Dumat reborn through a ritual similar to Morrigan's.

• Her Exalted March began 28 years after Dumat was killed. Presumably when she was about 28 years old.

The Darkspawn were intentionally created by the Maker to eliminate the competition.

• It fits eerily well. A bunch of mages enter the Maker's realm, and he sees an opportunity. The plan is simple: Infect them with the Blight, a sort of Old-God-rabies. The first darkspawn reproduce, go into the earth and infect the Old Gods. One by one, they rise to the surface, only to be killed each and every time. It's all an epic Xanatos Gambit with the intent of making the people of Thedas destroy their own Gods. It may be risky, but considering that, canonically, people always manage to stop the Blight...

Spirit possession is a viable solution to Demonic Possession problem

...and possibly the Blood Magic problem, too. If you think about it, the two main arguments for the Circles system the Chantry has is a) that mages tend to get possessed by demons and b) that they resort to blood magic and Mind Control. Now, the demon possession is always a risk and currently, the only known solution is Tranquility. Blood magic is not inherently evil (cf. Merrill) and mages usually turn to it after exhausting all other options.

There is another solution, however: replacing the Harrowing with a spirit quest of sorts, where the initiate finds and bonds with a benevolent spirit of the Fade (like Wynne). There have been no known cases of double-possession known in the canon (were there?), and having a spirit to draw upon for power will make resorting to blood magic less likely, solving both cardinal problems at once. In practice, it will turn all (Circle) mages into Spirit Healers by default... which, if nothing else, would considerably improve their standing among the muggles.

Of course, that can go bad, too, as Anders' example in the sequel shows.

The Maker is Fen'Harel from the Elven Pantheon

The codex entry for Fen'Harel states that he could move among the Elven gods, and more violent gods of another people. The Elven tale says he tricked both pantheons to remove them selves to their respective realms while he worked out a Truce(what he told the Elven gods) or brought about the Elven gods downfall(what he told the Forgotten Ones/the other gods). The latter group retreated into the abyss, where they were sealed away. The Chant of Light says the Maker sealed the Old Gods beneath the earth in prisons where they would sleep. These seem a little to similar too me to be a coincidence.

• Jossed by the post-credits stinger and the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, which reveals the identity of Fen'Harel. It's Solas.

All the mythologies in the setting are true

Related to above - all the different stories and mythologies are corrupted memories of the same events. As noted above, there are distinct similarities between the story of Fen'Harel sealing the gods away and the story of the Maker sealing away the Tevinter Old Gods. It all comes from the same ancient events - the Tevinter old gods attacked Flemeth's home in the Fade, so she fired back and sealed them away. In the process, they created/accidentally released the Darkspawn taint on their people. Since then, Flemeth has been working to defeat Blights, staying in the background but always present helping the heroes who are needed to get things moving in the right direction. Andraste was one of her early efforts, but the Chantry screwed things up, so she needs to clean shop before she can move to the Endgame.

Companions

Morjolaine was right about Leliana. Leliana could not stay away from the Great Game. The Blight was just an excuse to get back into the Game.

While the reasons Leliana returns to intruige may ultimately change if hardened or not, the fact is that the dramatic events around her are the things bards sing about in epic ballads.

The once in a lifetime/Age chance to play with stakes as high as the fate of nations and the lives of every one in Fereldan and possibly beyond, was too great lure to resist.

And if played skillfully enough, end up OPENLY becoming the mistress of the King of Fereldan (while being an Orlesian!) and confessing being a Bard/Spy/Assassin to said King's face, and perhaps be more loved then the Queen by said King AND Chantry (as a lay sister) with Orlesian support to boot! Her children might actually be royalty one day..., playing the game far better than Marjolaine could have dreamed.

• Played with in Dragon Age: Inquisition. While that reveals that Leliana did get back into The Game regardless of dialogue choices in Dragon Age Origins, at the highest levels of Chantry black ops, the reason she did so is because her original spiritual mentor - the Revered Mother of Lothering - had been promoted to become the new Divine and one of her first acts was to recruit Leliana for her personal staff and then tell her 'I need you to go back to what you used to do for a living, but this time it'll be the Maker's work'.

Flemeth, Morrigan, and The Ritual

Flemeth is an Old God

The Old Gods are spirits possessing humans. Flemeth is an Abomination and she can turn into a Dragon. Unlike the Archdemons, she wasn't corrupted by her transformation.

• While it's hardly impossible that Flemeth could be a being like the Old Gods, it's highly improbable that she could be one herself - she's way too weak, for one matter.
  • The Old Gods are not spirits possessing humans. The Old Gods are just flat out uber-powerful dragons (most likely). Morrigan's child on the other hand, will be a purified old god spirit possessing a human form. My personal theory is that Flemeth was created from the same ritual that created Morrigan's child, and that her goal here is to gain a powerful ally (one of equal power to her) to use in a war against the chantry. (Once the baby's grown.)
• We know that Flemeth told Morrigan of the ritual to conceiving an Old God, and that she sent Morrigan with us to prepare her for the body-snatching ritual. It seems very likely that Flemeth's plan all along was to body-snatch Morrigan's child, in which case it's not so much that Flemeth IS an Old God so much as that she wants to BECOME an Old God.
  • I had that thought, too, except that what's important about the kid is its spirit, not its body. The only atypical quality about the physical form is the taint needed to commit the whole soul-transfer thing. So if Flemeth body-snatched it, would she actually gain anything special from the effort? Unless her body-snatching is less outright replacing one person's soul with her own, and more of a spiritual Fusion Dance...
• If Flemeth actually is an Old God, she's likely Razikale, the Dragon of Mystery. She's always cryptic and deflects direct questions with sarcasm and vague answers. She doesn't turn into a dragon, she's a dragon that assumes A Form You Are Comfortable With.

Morrigan's ritual is entirely her own idea and not Flemeth's.

Before you leave Flemeth's hut after Ostagar, ask her for some advice in general. She says something like, "Trust not the weakness in men's hearts. Look to no-one to defeat the Blight but yourself. Else, it will always nip at your heels." Considering she needs the PC to ultimately back down from sacrificing himself - this advice seems a bit odd. Also, if Morrigan was in on this plan from the start - why did she continue to antagonize Alistair, one of only two (or if the PC is female - the only) sperm donors in sight.

• I think it's pretty unlikely that Morrigan came up with the ritual on her own. And here are my reasons why.
  • Where would Morrigan get the knowledge for that a ritual like that, if not from Flemeth?
    • Well, depending on the players actions, there's The Black Grimoire or even Flemeth's Grimoire itself. Even if the player gives neither to Morrigan it seems unlikely that Flemeth had her grimoire on her constantly. If Morrigan is to believed, it seems that soul transference is Flemeth's schtick. She could have adapted the ritual from one of those.
  • Flemeth's advice to the Warden seems to be more like "Telling someone else about the Blight and leaving it up to them won't work, you need to do everything yourself", which would fit if her plans were to send Morrigan along with the Grey Warden who slays the Archdemon.
  • It's hard to imagine Flemeth letting her intended replacement body walk off into danger if there wasn't something worth the risk to be gained from it.
    • But according to Morrigan there is something to be gained to her walking off. The more powerful Morrigan is, the easier it is for Flemeth to acclimatise. Morrigan even suggested she might have wanted some peace and quiet to prepare for the ritual. And the Blight is a threat. Even to Flemeth.
  • Morrigan antagonized Alistair because she didn't think it mattered if she did. She was brought up away from society and other people, and if you ask her about her upbringing she tells you she was raised to value survival above all else. She believes other people think the same way, so, in her mind, if she offered a way to save someone from dying, then of course they would take it.
    • Except she also knows that batting her eyes and being friendly to men is the best way to get what she wants. She even tells you that. She knows that Alistair wouldn't back out from his duty of killing the Archdemon, he would need a better reason than just survival.
    • More simply, she antagonized Alistair because she just doesn't like him. Alistair is pretty much the anthropomorphic personification of every personality trait that Morrigan most despises: he's weak-willed, he's happy when other people tell him what to do, and he actively avoids seizing power. Add in that she's an apostate mage and he's a templar, and, really, its not surprising that she spends most of the game unloading on him. Morrigan is sarcastic and cold even with people she likes... someone she has no respect or affection for is going to get savaged.
  • Morrigan flat out tells you that she got the ritual from her mother, and there really would be no point in lying about it. It's not like it really makes a difference whether the ritual was her idea or Flemeth's, so it's kinda odd for her to be lying for no reason.
• Morrigan doesn't seem to have as much to gain from the ritual. You pretty much need to be Flemeth to do the Grand Theft Me trick.
  • Note that Morrigan leaves you no matter how in love she is with you. Obviously her plans for the child require her to isolate it from all social contact but herself. What kind of plan would this suggest? The plan where Morrigan follows Flemeth's example with her own childrearing, and tries to keep her god-child ignorant and easily manipulated by its dear mother. If you can't possess the body of a god, controlling one is the next best thing...
    • It is possible for Morrigan to let you come along with her and your son. So apparently she had a change of heart.

Flemeth and/or Morrigan's (depending on how things play out) plan was to create a being capable of controlling the darkspawn.

If I interpreted it correctly, the Archdemon takes control of the darkspawn Hive Mind when it is tainted. But the child already has the taint, inherited from its Grey Warden father, giving it an inborn connection to the darkspawn. This combined with the soul of the Old God should allow it to hijack the hive mind and control the horde.

Morrigan lied about Flemeth's immortality ritual and secretly manipulated you to do her dirty work.

Shale points out that only Morrigan can read the book, so we're taking her word for that. As soon as you confront Flemeth, she asks if Morrigan has found someone that dances to her tune. Basically, she asks if you're doing Morrigan's bidding! Flemeth neither directly confirms nor denies Morrigan's theory. She will offer a bribe of the book if you tell Morrigan she is dead, saying she'll be back later... which she would still want to do even if she were not wanting to possess Morrigan. In fact, she treats the whole thing as though it were rather expected. It seems like it could easily be a simply power play on Morrigan so she is the only one standing at the end controlling the reborn Old God.

The Flemeth in the game isn't the original Flemeth

The Reason why Flemeth is so unsurprised that the Warden comes to kill her is because she's done this before, from both sides of the equation. At some time in the past, "Flemeth" was the daughter who found someone to slay [i]her[/i] mother, and then took her place as the witch of the wilds, and continued the body-snatching from then on. There are a few things that point to this, namely "Flemeth's" nonchalance about the whole thing and her insistence that the truth doesn't matter. If she beats you or bribes you, then she will body-snatch Morrigan and continue on as she always has, and if she fails then Morrigan will become the new "Flemeth" in her place. Also there is the fact that she doesn't really seem to feel any connection to the name Flemeth, which may indicate that it's not her real name.

• Always 2 there are: the mother and daughter.
• Makes sense in Dred Pirate Roberts sort of way. The legend of Flemeth, the ageless Witch of the Wilds, would be a great way to keep outsiders away whether it's still her original spirit or not.
• Partially jossed: In Dragon Age 2 we find out Flemeth had a way out the entire time.
• Entirely jossed: In Dragon Age: Inquisition we find out that every word of Flemeth's origin story as presented in Origins was literally true. She actually is an ancient Chasind sorceress that got possessed/merged with an ancient, unbelievably powerful Fade spirit, specifically the remaining essence of the murdered elven goddess Mythal, and has been alive the entire time. The only thing that turns out to be wrong is she doesn't actually steal the bodies of her children..

Morrigan's child will be able to shapeshift into a dragon or even an archdemon

A human born with the soul of an Old God, who happened to have the shape of dragons? A mother who is an expert in shapeshifting, WHOSE mother was explicly shown to be able to turn into a dragon? I think it's pretty likely that (s)he'll learn to turn into a dragon, or perhaps even an archdemon, at some point. Also, the character itself would offer dozens of plot chances. For example, with that conditions, isn't the child likely to get tainted? Will it become a new archdemon? Or what would happen if it became a Warden? If it were to become an archdemon, would it be able to retain some sanity? Maybe it could use its human form to explain the darkspawn motives? Or could it, as a new archdemon, even be able to control the darkspawn and force them to do something good, providing the sanity is retained?

Flemeth is behind EVERYTHING.

She certainly seemed to be clairvoyant and the ability to see the future does exist in Thedas, as evidenced by the statue encountered in the Mage Origin story. Thus, she could easily have manipulated everything from the beginning. It was she who convinced the Magisters to go to the Golden City (she herself might even have been a magister), knowing full well what would happen to them. From there she bided her time until they found Dumat and the First Blight nearly brought about the end of the world. Taking advantage of these desperate times, she reveals the secret of tainting oneself and gaining the ability to slay the Archdemon, leading to the founding of the Grey Wardens. With the Blight ended, she retreats to the Korcari Wilds, the locals begin telling stories about this Witch of the Wilds, stories which she encourages so that her true identity will be lost to history, and she begins the practice of raising daughters whose bodies she can steal. Flash forward several centuries and Flemeth ventures into the Deep Roads to locate a certain newborn Hurlock Emissary, who she alters to be a different from all other darkspawn. Flemeth then goes on to raise Morrigan and wait until the Architect accidentally starts the Fifth Blight by tainting Urthemiel, the Dragon of BEAUTY. The events of Origins then play out and only two phases of her plan remain: to possess Morrigan Jr. (assuming that the Warden agreed to the ritual, but that seems like too good a plot point not to canonize) in order to gain power, eternal life, and eternal beauty and for the Architect (or his faction, if later games reveal his death to be canon, but that just seems like it would be a waste) to kill Razikale and Lusacan so that no one will ever have the power to oppose her.

• She sure could have done a better job at putting her plot into action, because as it is, this is taking Gambit Roulette Up to Eleven It took nearly a hundred years before the first Grey Wardens formed to combat the First Blight, and another hundred years before they finally figured out how to kill the Archdemon. All accounts seem to imply that the death of Dumat and ending of the First Blight was nothing short of a miracle. For something that was vital to her plans and going to bring about the end of the world, one would think she'd take a more active role in moving it forward...
  • Unless she had as much to gain during an ongoing Blight as she gains from it ending. But what?
    • The Blight did weaken the Imperium enough that Andraste was nearly able to topple it. I can't imagine that happening if the Blight hadn't done so much damage. So Flemeth was getting rid of all possible rivals, perhaps? Maybe even engineered Andraste's rise herself.
• The Dragon Age II demo lends credence to this theory—the demo lets you play through the early parts of Hawke's origin story, and you get rescued from an Ogre by Flemeth, who then transports your character to Kirkwall where DA II picks up in earnest. This would suggest that Flemeth has been the driving force behind events in the world, to purpose unknown.

The Dark Ritual has been done successfully before.

Both Morrigan and Flemeth are very certain going through with it will work, and if the PC complies, by all appearances, it does. But how could they be certain? How could they truly be sure that conceiving a Grey Warden's child on the eve before the slaying of the Archdemon would transfer the (uncorrupted) soul of the Old God to the unborn? Probably because it already has been accomplished. Even now, there could be at least one Old God running around that nobody (except Flemeth, possibly) knows about.

• Wasn't it mentioned (during the sacrafice epilouge) that the four other Grey Wardens who killed an Archdemon died doing so, which implies that all the Archdemons before this one had their souls destroyed.
  • It's not expressly stated that they all died from absorbing the Archdemon soul. It's entirely possible that the Ritual had been performed before and the Warden simply died of his wounds sustained in combat. A double KO.
• It could have been preformed in some other context; with a demon, a fade spirit, or some other creature. Hell, it could well be how Flemeth was originally created.

Flemeth was the dragon the Dragon Age was named after.

• A fair bit Jossed, in one of the Codices it is mentioned that at the start of the Age the name was already planned, but then when the announcement was due a dragon showed up and they changed it then and there. Dragon Age is the title of the decade/century/multiple centuries.
  • How is it jossed? The above theory is about Flemeth being the dragon that prompted the name change.
  • And it's almost certain that Flemeth is old enough to have been around then.

Flemeth has been taking gradual possession of Morrigan ever since she began reading the Black Grimoire.

With her magic training, not only is Morrigan conditioned to host Flemeth's full power, but she also has the ability to initiate the possession ritual hidden in Flemeth's grimoires. With Morrigan's greed for more magical knowledge, she willingly sprung the trap, making the process much less painful than a forced possession. Though Morrigan probably believes her reasons for wanting the 'true' grimoire, who can tell how much of her personality was still her own at any given time? And when you come for her head, Flemeth has all the arrogance of someone who knows she can't lose—she doesn't have to play roulette, she's already got the game wrapped with her gambits.

• She DID offer to give it up without a fight and said that the fight for it is something she's done plenty of times. She didn't say she ever won.

Flemeth's death was a Thanatos Gambit.

She wanted to observe Morrigan in peace, just as she suggests she will if you choose not to fight her. She has her reasons for not wanting to kill the Warden, but she can't allow the fight be too easy, since that would be even more suspicious. She's a powerful shapeshifter, so she could be any one of the animals around, perhaps one of the ravens—or all of them.

• I think it's pretty clear that she didn't necessarily want to die—I imagine it's not that easy to come back. She does offer you her book, free of charge, so long as you don't kill her. Still, it's pretty apparent from the first game (now even more so with the second) that this is all just a Xanatos Gambit on her part. I think she easily factored in her possible death, and I don't think it makes that much impact onto the story.
  • My point was that her death, not her non-death, was the Thanatos Gambit. She prefers not to fight, since there's no winning outcome for her either way, and if the player doesn't insist on it, then she has no need of a Thanatos Gambit. If the Warden feels they have to kill her, then she needs to employ the Thanatos Gambit to put her Xanatos Gambit back on track and simply carry on regardless. It's also possible that she faked her death, by any definition of death—did you think because you got experience and could loot her that she must've been truly slain?
• In Dragon Age II, Flemeth has Hawke bring an amulet to Keeper Marethari, and Merrill performs a ritual on it that brings Flemeth into their presence. There is at least a year between Hawke receiving the amulet and the ritual. In that time, the Warden could have killed Flemeth on Morrigan's behalf. As far as the Warden and his companions know, Flemeth is dead. This lets Flemeth scheme in peace as long as Hawke and/or the Dalish clan don't talk about her existence.

The Maker didn't send Leliana with the Warden, a mage (possibly Flemeth) did.

It turns out in Dragon Age: The Calling that the Architect faked the prophetic vision that Commander Genevieve had that then drew her and the other Wardens to the Deep Roads using blood magic. Earlier in the book we get a detailed explanation of how mages can make prophesies and how prophesies are heavily tied to the Fade by the mage Fiona. It is also heavily implied (but never stated outright) in Origins and The Stolen Throne that Flemeth is a master of prophesy. It is possible that Flemeth, or another mage, used a similar method to compel Leliana to leave Lothering to go with the Warden. Had it been Flemeth it might have been to give the Warden more skilled help in their journey. Had it been another mage... Maker only knows

Flemeth wasn't trying to create a new body with the Dark Ritual. She was trying to create a mate.

When Morrigan is confronted in the Witch Hunt DLC, she tells the Warden that Flemeth isn't human, nor she an abomination, meaning that all the stories about her origin probably aren't true. Given her preference for taking the form of a dragon, it seems entirely possible she's something akin to the Old Gods, if not some forgotten Old Goddess herself, in human form. So it seems possible that her motivation for putting a male Old God in human body is to make a mate for herself. With his help, she could give birth to something new and, given what we know about Flemeth, something very powerful and dangerous.

• If this is true, it would also explain why she waited for Urthemiel the Dragon of Beauty to be turned into an Archdemon. She wanted her future mate to be a Bishonen.

Flemeth is the true Big Bad of the entire Dragon Age.

It's her scheme going on behind the scenes in the first game after all. Even the Archdemon was her Unwitting Pawn. She is also confirmed to have survived whatever the Warden did or didn't do to her in Origins and will play a role in Hawke's story in Dragon Age 2. The "Rise to Power" tagline of the second game concerning Hawke's tale might also be referring to Flemeth taking a more active role in Thedas again. The series, and the Dragon Age itself will likely end with a final confrontation with Flemeth, and the Player Character of the last game will have to choose to side with or against her.

Morrigan is preparing the God Child to oppose Flemeth

At the end of Witch Hunt (underwhelming as it was), Morrigan is still greatly concerned with Flemeth's activities. At some point during the journey with the Warden, Morrigan discovered (perhaps from the Grimoire) what Flemeth truly is and what she has in store for the world. What she found scared her straight. Or perhaps her time with the Warden softened her. Whatever the reason, she realized that she had the power (or at least the opportunity) to stop Flemeth. Morrigan talks about needing to help the child prepare for what is to come, for his destiny. She may even tell the Warden that what she wants is no longer important. Flemeth must be stopped and Morrigan is going to devote her life to ensuring that the one being capable of stopping Flemeth is ready to face her when the time comes.

• • And, in a related bit, he or she will be either the player character of a future game or a companion!

Flemeth's ritual has been used once before, and the result was Andraste.

• From what little we know, Flemeth's ritual would have created a human being with the re-purified soul of an Old God, and presumably at least some of the power. What uniquely-powerful, semi-divine human already exists in Ferelden's history? And while there's no date given for Andraste's birth, according to the timeline she called her first Exalted March 28 years after the death of Dumat, the first Archdemon.
  • Of course, its hardly like that Flemeth created the Chantry. But there's nothing that said she created that ritual, merely that she and her student Morrigan are the only people still alive who know it.

Flemeth is a Trickster Mentor, and Morrigan will be the Big Bad

It's quite possible that Flemeth is not evil, but instead a Well-Intentioned Extremist who subtly leads heroes towards some unknown goal. If the so-called Maker is evil, which some of these WMGs imply, then it woud work in her favor to weaken the Chantry. Conversely, while Flemeth wants to destroy what she sees as a church gone corrupt, Morrigan just wants to rule the world, having become a bit too zealous with Flemeth's ideals. This is why she goes rogue. After Anders's manipulation of Hawke in Dragon Age 2, it isn't so far-fetched that she could scheme to this level of nastiness.

Flemeth is Andraste

Possibly tied in with the above. Flemeth's origin is a strange mish-mash of the Chantry's story of Andraste and Morrigan's story of her origin. Once the Maker turned his back on humanity, however, Flemeth/Andraste (after coming back from the dead) cried "What the Flames, hero?" The Cutie had been broken, leaving Flemeth to take a more nihilistic view of the world and giving her the desire to get revenge on the Maker she sees as abandoning her children.

• • Addendum: Furthermore, Flemeth sees the Chantry as abandoning whatever principles she originally set forth and beccoming corrupt.
  • Who says she ever died in the first place? Everything the Chantry says about Flemeth could very well be apocryphal.

Flemeth is Fen'Harel, who's an Old God, who's a High Dragon, who's Andraste, who's the Maker, who's Sandal, who's the OGS, who's the Bhaalspawn.

Flemeth is everyone, ever.

This is the most obvious WMG on the entire page.

• Seriously, she could be a case of I Have Many Names and Julius Beethoven Da Vinci in that she started the myth of the Maker as Andraste while secretly being one of the Old Gods who tricked and imprisoned her peers. She also pulled this with the Elven Gods (whatever they were) as Fen'Harel.

Flemeth has already possessed Morrigan by the time Witch Hunt comes along.

And you are playing right into her hands.

• • Made worse by the noted personality change in Morrigan, and her insistence that Flemeth cannot be fought. Perhaps Flemeth's impersonation of her daughter isn't perfect. And perhaps some Wardens just followed a psychotic, body-stealing witch into another dimension instead of the woman they love.

I am Flemeth

I am joking, of course. Flemeth doesn't have an internet connection this fast. And if I were, I certainly wouldn't be trying to bring about a new age of doom upon all life. Because that would be wrong.

Flemeth is Flemeth

She's not an archdemon or a super-mage or a god. She's something unique.

The Dark Ritual happens no matter what you do

Morrigan would just prefer to conceive a child with the PC. If he's not interested (or a woman), she'll use Loghain or Alastair, whichever one's alive and with the party. If Loghain's around, but he rejects the offer, she could be leaving the party to find Alastair if he's alive. Otherwise, there's always that Orlesian warden. Any of the endings would then have the father of her child delivering the final blow and surviving, dying without killing the Archdemon, or letting another Grey Warden die killing the archdemon. The player's choices only affect who's involved in the ritual—that way the third game in the series can proceed under the assumption it happened, somehow.

Morrigan is an aspect of Flemeth

More specifically, Morrigan (and every other "daughter" of Flemeth) is literally the personification of Flemeth's youth, innocence/inexperience and beauty: the "Maiden" aspect of a triune being. (Dragon Age: Origins perhaps takes place during a "liminal" period wherein she transitions from maiden to matron, while Flemeth herself fully shifts from matron to crone)

In short, Flemeth is the Thedas version of figures like Hecate or the Morrigan. It's likely she predates the "Flemeth" legend and could be, in fact, the "Shadow Goddess" mentioned in the DA Traveler's guide.

Regardless: Morrigan's sending the Warden to slay Flemeth is not out of fear of possession (the simplicity of which Flemeth even mocks: "that she does... but do you?") but prompted by a full blown existential crisis. Flemeth expects this, of course, as it's something of a rite-of-passage for her maiden incarnation.

Grey Wardens

Dogs can be Grey Wardens.

• This will largely be an argument as whether or not dogs have souls in DA but dogs DO get blight sickness, and they can survive it, so if they can survive the Taint from the Blight, then surviving the joining should be possible.
  • Pretty much confirmed by The Calling. They don't go through the Joining, but after surviving blight sickness, they're immune.

The Joining is even more dangerous and difficult to survive during a Blight

Just because it pisses me off that Dwarf Wardens pass out in Origins, but Oghren stays standing in Awakening for a cheap laugh.

Maric the Manwhore, Alistair and other bastards.

The epilogue to Dragon Age: The Calling confirms the following

King Cailan Theirin does indeed die at the hands of that ogre in the trailer and it'll be our job to find Maric and Fiona's son to put him on the throne.

Alistair and Morrigan are the secret, illegitimate children of King Maric.

To begin with, Maric said he had already paid a price for the knowledge he gained from the Witch of the Wild and he did spend time alone with her. In addition, Maric and Fiona's unknown son had blond hair and was given up so that he could have a life away from politics. Duncan, who recruited Alistair an "orphan" who bares a resemblance to King Cailan, would know exactly where their son was. Both Alistair and Morrigan are billed as the most important companions in your party and this goes a long way in explaining why.

• Screenshots confirm--Alistair is definitely the next heir. Don't know about Morrigan though.
  • Morrigan tells you that she doesn't actually know whether Flemeth actually is her mother or if she was adopted. In addition (endgame spoilers), one of the endings involves getting Alistair to sleep with Morrigan. So Morrigan is probably not related to Maric.
    • They could still be. Just because it's Squick doesn't mean it's not so.
  • Maric's alone time with Flemmeth was I believe about thirty years ago, which would make Morrigan a little older than she seems. It's... possible though (Maric's promise has to have some significance after all).
  • Hmmm... a powerful sorceress impregnated by her royal half-brother. Where have I heard this before? Notice the similarities between the names Alistair/Arthur and Morrigan/Morgause; no way that's incidental. There are also several conversations throughout the course of the game that might hint at this.
    • Morrigan: So you met this sibling of yours?
    • Alistair: Half-sister, but yes.
    • Morrigan: And she turned out to be an insufferable hag?
    • Alistair: You'd have liked her. You two have a lot in common.
  • If you don't sleep with Morrigan just before the big battle, that could mean that her kid is the bastard child of King Alistar. Does anyone else smell a sub-plot for a future title?
  • Oh dear God, the child is Mordred.
    • You all just blew my mind.

Alistair's mother is really Fiona, not some Redcliffe maid.

Arl Eamon and Maric used the dead maid as a coverstory to hide the fact that an elven mage was his true mother. When Fiona handed her baby to Maric during the epilogue of The Calling at no point did he think, "Oh crap! Another bastard to hide." The only person to might see through Eamon's lie was the maid's daughter whom he ran off from his castle, which considering the girl has just recently been orphaned seems a bit out of character. Alistair also seems to be quite skilled in his Templar abilities which do seem to require some skill in magic to pull off (and he is also not taking Lyrium supplements which may, or may not be required for those abilities to work). Magical abilty would appear to be a genetic trait as the Chantry discourages the mages from having relations and the Tevinter Imperium used to have records of all the geneologies of families producing gifted children. Alistair also has a strong liking for magical iconography. The lead writer David Gaider has also said that the game's Codex entries are not 100% accurate, merely reporting what characters believe.

• Who else suddenly wants to create an elven rogue or mage and get the sexy on with Alistair, just for the sake of irony and making bad jokes about Theirin preferences?
  • I finished origins with a female mage elf (and i did not know about The Calling yet), romanced Alistair, and had him have a child with Morrigan. This, coupled with the "Mordred" theory definately blew my mind at many levels.
  • Furthermore, Fiona and Alistair will reunite. Ferelden has lost almost all it's Grey Wardens so will need a couple more 'on loan', and Fiona is an obvious candidate. She doesn't suffer the taint anymore so there's no reason she's not still living, and if the Architect shows up again she's the only one who can give necessary exposition.
    • Having not read the book, I may not be in a position to comment, But apparently The Architect is the Big Bad for the expansion, so...
  • Having just read the book, this seems very unlikely; Loghain notes that one of the reasons Maric gave Alistair up was that it would have humiliated Rowan. Rowan was nearly four years dead by the time Fiona had her kid.
    • He may have meant humiliated the memory of Rowan, perhaps?
      • Alistair's Codex says Eamon sheltered him to hide his existence from Rowan, for what it's worth. Plus Alistair mentions having to show Cailan around Redcliffe castle when they were children, so that probably means Alistair's older.

Maric is alive

• His fate is described as being lost at sea, a classic literary technique to keep a character out of the way until the writer wants to being him back in the action.
  • According to the Dragon Age Wiki, rumor has it that Maric is alive and being held in an Orlesian prison. Many signs point to Orlais being the setting of Dragon Age III . . .
  • Hinted at in The Silent Grove! He was actually in an Antivan prison but was broken out by a Witch of the Wilds.

Dragon Age takes place in the same universe as...

There is a Show Within a Show about Mabari War Dogs in the same vein as Rex The Wonder Dog.

It's a propaganda piece. In a society as dog-loving as this, of course they'd glorify dogs until they're like Rex.

The 13th Warrior takes place in the Dragon Age universe.

Fadlan is a Qunari. The other twelve warriors may be Chasind. And the cannibalistic Wendol are - of course - Darkspawn.

Dragon Age is set in the same world as Jade Empire.

The Fade is present in Jade Empire... it is the "world" where the Spirit Monk was when he/she was dead. The people of the Jade Empire just have a different understanding of the Fade than those in Thedas. The "gods" are simply Fade spirits. The Water Dragon is a Lawful Neutral Fade spirit that has taken a particular interest in the Jade Empire. The Empire is located on a continent on the other side of the world from Thedas. Jade Empire is set some time later than Dragon Age, as Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom, who is presumably from Ferelden, is wielding a gun.

• The process for making golems is horrifically similar in both games, if not outright copy-and-paste like the restless spirits encountered in both games; the different appearance of the ghosts in Empire could be explained as a side-effect of the Water Dragon's imprisonment. Furthermore, the cannibals of Jade Empire are similar to the darkspawn and they both have some ugly "mothers," the cannibal's noted as being an Old One-style creature like the Archdemons. In the case of Durge it's noted to be a special case in the cosmology of Jade Empire that exists in the world of the living and the dead, maybe another section of the Fade altogether. It's almost a shame Black Whirlwind didn't make a cameo on his post-game world tour (he and Oghren could have had a hell of a drinking contest) if the games were set about the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if this is revealed to be Bioware's plan, their own Fantasy Counterpart Culture world to put their licenses in.

The Fade is The Warp from WFB or 40k.

I defy anyone to look at a Desire Demon and not see it's the first cousin to a Daemonette; they are described as a sort of all-in-one package for things Slaanesh does. Sloth demons are in fact entropic entities and thus Father Nurgle's children. Rage demons are Khornate in their desires but owe their imagery to Khaela Mensa Kaine and the Avatar...who might just be an aspect of Khorne anyways. Shades, Revenants, and Ash Wraiths are various demons of Chaos Undivided or lesser beings represented in things like Dark Heresy. Abominations are painfully daemonhostlike. Only Pride demons don't fall into the obvious slot, not being even partially Tzeentchian.

• The mages also look a lot like psykers, in terms of their tendency to get demonically possessed and/or explode if untrained. That said, you can enter the Fade relatively unarmored, and come back in one piece; the Warp isn't so forgiving.
• Could just be a 'young' Warp, before the concentrated vices of multiple races twisted it into the Hell it is by the time of Warhammer.
• I think it's also important to note that there's a boss named Fulgrim. Which in my opinion shows that this game draws at least some inspiration from Warhammer.

The 7th Blight will be called Emergence Day

After the sixth blight, the dark spawn are 'permanently' defeated and forgotten, the Dwarves and Elves interbreed with men to the point there are no fullbreeds left and the Chantry figures out someway to seal off the real world from the Fade. History becomes legend and the nations of the world advance in technology for a few thousand years, until an imulsion drilling rig wakes up the last old god. The Qunari become Kai's people, the dwarven blood explains the wide frames of the Gears, the Locust are obviously Darkspawn.

• • Baird is a descendant of both Alistair and Morrigan, thus explaining his snarking habit as In the Blood.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect are the same setting

Dragon Age is actually set in the distant past of the Mass Effect universe. Thedas is the origin planet of the Reapers as the Reapers were originally the old gods of the Tevinter Imperium.

The Old Gods are Reapers and the Maker is a Prothean

The Humans/Elves/Dwarves are all human off shoots made by the protheans from kidnapped Cro Magnons. The Old Gods are reaper avatars like the Collector General and the Dark Spawn are husks. Lyrium is element zero and mages are those who've been exposed to large amounts of it in utero. In the 2nd or 3rd Dragon Age Commander Shepard and the Normandy will show up to recruit the Grey Wardens, as they are able to sense the Reaper's intentions. Naturally, this will lead to Back-to-Back Badasses.

• There's more implying this: aside from the possibility of Flemeth's death causing the immortality (we do have precedent for such: the Archdemon can survive by possessing any Darkspawn nearby), Morrigan's behavior in Witch Hunt is utterly different from the main game, subdued and submissive to Flemeth's will where once she was casually defiant to it. This approaches possible Fridge Horror if the warden agrees to Morrigan's plan, as Flemeth's two body hops away from a massively powerful host.

The Maker is an Old World Of Darkness Mage.

Ok, bare with me on this one. The Fade is more than a little similar to the Umbra from Mage. There's a good reason, it was made in it's image. In one of the Time Of Judgement scenarios for Mage the PCs can use a spiritual city to escape from the World of Darkness before all magic dies there and to get in at the ground floor of a new creation. It also says that maybe the new world will be haunted by the image of a great city or the ruin of it. Sound like the Black City to you? So, one mage survives the trip out of the World of Darkness and starts creating a world. He includes things he knows, like humans and an animistic spirit world, but also makes sure THIS world has magic built in at the roots. Unfortunately two other mages managed to follow him, a Nephandus and a Technocrat. The Nephandus, always willing to make chaos and destruction, created the Darkspawn. The Technocrat, offended by the idea of an entire magical world, used Progenitor genetic engineering to create the Qunari. A big, strong race with (relavtivly) high tech and a hatred of magic. The Maker Mage saw this and other stuff, figured he failed, and left the world to stew in it's own juices, only briefly becoming involved again when he got the hots for Andraste. Hows that for a WMG?

Thedas is a part of Arda.

Albeit the southern hemisphere of Arda. The continent of Middle-earth resides in the western part of that world. Dragon Age takes place around the same time as The Lord of the Rings.

Dragon Age shares a universe with Metroid

The Old Gods/Archdemons are members of Ridley's species, lyrium is phazon, elves and qunari will become or are from the races of Samus's friends in the manga, and darkspawn are like Dark Samus what with the tainting and distorted versions of other species.

Sten is a Scar Expy.

They're both religious men with dark skin and short white hair who are trying to atone for unjustified murder of innocents, who have a weakness for cute things and a tendency to be taciturn. The timing fits: Dragon Age Origins was released in 2009, and Volume 15 of Fullmetal Alchemist (Wherin Scar's backstory is developed) was released in english in 2007.

Dragon Age takes place in the future of the Mass Effect universe.

In the timeline of the worst ending for Mass Effect 2, Reapers invade, the denizens of the galaxy fight back - but lose. So they pull a Prothean gambit, isolating what few planets remain and erasing all records of them in order to hide them from the genocide and hope for the best. This is easier to do for them and much more successful than it was for the Protheans, since the Reapers don't have access to the Citadel. But the colonies - cut off from interstellar travel and communication by necessity - gradually revert to more primitive civilizations out of necessity. Dragon Age actually takes place on Feros, where the remaining humans have diverged into various branches ('regular' humans, dwarves, elves, qunari, etc.) and inevitably forgotten their original history as colonists. The darkspawn are actually people and native beasts, like dragons, which have been infected by remaining Thorian spores and mutated over time. Hence the 'taint'. Lyrium is Element Zero - its effects are largely the same, but due to some very mild halucenogens in the planet's atmosphere, people interpret them differently and have subsequently found some bizarre ways of manipulating them as well. Overuse, however, can result in mass hallucination and violent behavior.

Loghain is secretly Kain.

Loghain is secretly Kain. Orlais is secretly ruled by the hylden, explaining his paranoia towards them. The Grey Wardens are actually the Sarafan, explaining his distain for them. The player character is actually Raziel, before dying and becoming a vampire. If you squint real hard, tilt your head to the side, and have just the right lighting, this explains everything. Except why Loghain isn't more of a badass.

• • Actually, unless it is stated somewhere in supplemental material that he was, the Human Noble Kain was not especially badass. Loghain does look a bit like Kain before he got vampire-ized, and the PC DOES help him see that his true enemy is the Old God......

Dragon Age is the very distant past of Star Wars

The Fade is fundamentally a place of unpredictability, but what if it becomes pacified, peaceful? Somewhere, somehow, the substance of the fade is drastically altered, and demons are weakened into smaller beings known as midi-chlorians. What was once a near tangible place of dreams fades into the background, a mere Force of nature. The black city, the old gods fade, and even the maker fade away, while the Quanari continue to develop technology. When the people of Thedas take to the stars, they bring hyperspace technology with them, discovering many other races capable of connecting to the fade/force.

Through this however, persists one figure. She was once known as Flemmeth. She emerged prominently once as Kreia, who reconnected a tranquil back to the force, before fading again from history.

• A long, long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away.

Dragon Age III will be a fight between...

A Flemeth possessed god-child and Superman, who fell to ferelden as seen in Dragon Age I.

The child in the "Superman" encounter will be much more important than a random Shout-Out.

In a later game he will appear as a party member (he'd only be nine at the end of II) and have mysterious abilities that don't fit with the magic of the setting. He's actually a genetically-engineered Tyke Bomb from the future and was sent back in time to prevent a horrible event that will destroy the world so thoroughly it will eventually end all life on the planet.

Dragon Age takes place in the same world as His Dark Materials.

Only several centuries later. The Magister Lords of the Tevinter Imperium are identical to the Magisterium from His Dark Materials.

The Land South Of The Wilds Is Winterfell.

Bioware has outright stated that A Song of Ice and Fire was a major inspiration for the series. In Origins the codex for the wilds states that if one travels far enough south through the wilds, the land becomes cold. In A Song of Ice and Fire, the unexplored lands extend North to an unknown amount. However, they know barbarians live deep enough into the forest. Both are home to rare monsters.

• On a side note, if this is the case, then the Darkspawn are the Others, the Chasind would be identical to the Wildlings, and Nymeria (the legendary witch queen after which Arya named her wolf) might be another name of Flemeth.
  • The Others are not Darkspawn. They're Qunari.

Thedas and Westeros are interchangeable.

Just to use the Human Noble origin: You begin as the second son/daughter in House Stark Cousland, a well-respected noble family with a reputation for loyalty, staying out of courtly politics, and a willingness to get their hands dirty to get the job done. You grow up in the North Borderlands, in a region a fair distance away from the port capitol city of King's Landing Denerim, which features a highly defensible fortress commanding the city walls known as the Red Keep Fort Drakon. The crowning jewel of your family's holdings is a large keep with many live-in civilians that also serves as the local town, known as Winterfell Highever.

• The first conversation of the game is held between Bryce Cousland and his loyal bannerman vassal, Arl Bolton Howe. As it happens, as Howe arrives, the Couslands are playing host to a veteran member of the Night's Watch Grey Wardens, Duncan. That night, after Howe's sudden but inevitable betrayal, Duncan helps you escape in exchange for your promise to take the black take the Grey. He takes you to a ruined, but still heavily defended, fortification far to the north south called the Wall Ostagar, which has since time immemorial been the realm's only line of defense against otherworldly demonic creatures called the Others Darkspawn. During your first foray beyond the Wall into the Wilds, you come across a powerful magic-using wildling apostate. And when the Darkspawn finally overrun Ostagar's defenses, the fun-loving, heroic, and irresponsible King Robert Cailin is killed, leaving the realm in the hands of his wife, the scheming Queen Cersei Anora. Through her, her father, the ruthless but effective Lord Tywin Lannister Loghain, takes power as regent. Loghain, of course, is best known for his vital role in overthrowing the Targaryen dynasty Orlesian occupation. But without a true King on the throne, the realm begins to split apart between the various nobles, with some making overtures of independence, leading to the War of the Five Kings Ferelden civil war.

Dragon Age takes place in the far future of the Elder Scrolls universe.

As of Oblivion, the Empire in Cyrodiil is on the verge of collapsing/being completely re-vamped due to the lack of an emperor from the Septim bloodline. Eventually, it will become the Tevinter Imperium. The Nine Divines will still be worshipped, but all of them will gain a dragon-ish bent thanks to the increased reverence for Akatosh. Due to the changes in the structure of the empire, slavery will become legal again. Thanks to that there will be several outright wars between the Argonians, Khajiit, Dunmer, Imperials, etc., which will lead to more use of magic, and eventually result in A: the utter (or at least, quite thorough) wipe-out of the beast races and most elves, and some odd reverberations through the Daedric realms, thanks also largely to Mehrunes Dagon's take-over attempt and the subsequent 'permanent Dragon Fire' spell which Martin's sacrifice created. Access to the Oblivion planes becomes more difficult, leading to the creation of the Fade (which is really just a single plane of Oblivion, probably Sheogorath's) and a daedric curse curtosy of a highly pissed-off Dagon (i.e. darkspawn). Over time the memory of these events becomes scattered, warped, and contested, leaving only a vague association between Tevinter and the darkspawn, and with most of the Dunmer (the most prominent Daedra-worshippers) wiped out, Daedra worship falls out of popular practice. But the Nine Divines remain, and so does the legend of Alessia - which Andraste plays upon in order to unite people against the by-then-utterly-corrupt Imperium, taking elements of a prominent religion and re-working them into a new one that subsequently challenges it.

• • Related; the Redguard homeland and the Qunari homeland are the same. It was destroyed in a war between the two. Redguard fled to Tamriel, Qunari to Thedas.

Thedas is also the setting for Claymore

Similarities between Grey Wardens and Claymores (Enemy-Detecting Radar, risk of And Then John Was a Zombie) and they seem to be a Gender Flip of each other (bad idea to have male Claymores, bad idea to have female Grey Wardens). I figure Youma are Quinari infected with Darkspawn taint and overdosed on Lyrium, with some magic-based mutations thrown in.

Thedas exists within the continuity of The Sandman

And Dream of the Endless is the Maker. Thedas is a world existing within the Dreaming but somewhat divorced from the 'raw' Dreaming, while the Fade is the Dreaming itself (and behaves much like it). Some humans from Thedas did bodily enter the Dreaming (Dream's castle, no less, or at least their conception of it) for which reason Dream created the Darkspawn taint in their world - Disproportionate Retribution, but fitting of Dream's character.

Thedas is Earth Post-Synergy

Similar to the theory that Thedas is in the distant past of the Mass Effect universe, except in this case it's the FUTURE after Shepard has reached the Crucible and chosen synergy, thus making every form of life a hybrid of both organic and synthetic. Earth, devastated in the wake of the Reapers' assault, descends into a primitive society, developing again starting from the Iron Age, except now with magic (a misinterpretation of biotics, which are now wholly integrated into the human body since they are now partially synthetic). The Fade is a wireless internet connection to the Crucible, as the Golden City. The Maker is an interpretation of the Catalyst, and Shepard is Andraste. The story of Shepard fighting the Reapers has become distorted through the ages as parents attempt to explain to their children the ways of a world they'll never see. The Darkspawn and demons are the remnants of Reaper tech left unchecked, and humanity has evolved along different paths, perhaps even interbreeding with aliens, thus some branches becoming dwarves, elves and the Qunari.

Future Games

Sten,Morrigan and the PC will return as future big bads

One of the alt endings confirms that sten will return at the head of an army one day and Morrigan probably isn't up to any good.

The sequel will revolve around a war between religions

Morrigan will revive the worship of the Old Gods with the aid of her son, who will represent an alternative Messiah-figure to many, and will be both wiser than his years and a miracle-making prophet before he turns six. This ofcourse doesn't sit well with the Chantry, who will seek to raise an Exalted March against her. The Grey Wardens won't be happy about the kid's existence either, especially when there's a chance that he might be Tainted into an Archdemon, again. And meanwhile the Qunari are planning an assault of their own, bringing the philosophy of the Qun with them to mix things up even further. And you'll be in the middle of it all, determining which side will come out on the top, and trying to prevent a world war from happening.

Duncan will be back for Dragon Age II

C'mon, they Never Found the Body!

• Possibly Jossed by the DLC Return to Ostagar that will let you, well, return to Ostagar. Would be odd if there wasn't any chance whatsoever of recovering Duncan's corpse. And his cool, high-level gear, of course.
  • You don't find the body.
• Alternatively, Duncan will be back for The Awakening. The Architect has a vested interest in keeping Grey Wardens alive.
• Might be a fine possibility. To quote the feature list:

Five new party members, and the return of an old favourite Now, start guessing whom that could be. Of course, it might also be one of the old party members.

• Jossed. On the social boards, David Gaider (the Lead Writer for the franchise) wrote the following:

Duncan is dead. If he appears again, it would have to be in a story that takes place prior to Origins, if anything.

The PC in the sequel will be Morrigan Jr.

A human with the potential to become one of the most powerful beings in the world, who starts out morally as a blank slate but with the constant danger that they may fall to the dark side hard. It's the ideal Bioware protagonist.

• This one has been confirmed by BioWare as not true since not only is there the possibility for Morrigan to not have a child in the first place, when Dragon Age II starts the child would not have been conceived yet and when it ends the child would only be around 9 years old.
• Also, the "Witch Hunt" DLC, which centers around finding Morrigan is meant to settle her part of the story.
  • Not that it really succeeded at doing so. Even if you kill her, the way she went off would easily make it possible for her to come back later.
• It's said in Witch Hunt that Morrigan Jr. is male, so unless they recon it, it's not going to happen. It's just unlikely that Bioware wouldn't allow you to play as a female character. Imagine the outcry of the Fans If you can only play a male human/ half-human.
• On a related note, Morrigan Jr.'s name will be... Morgan, because Morrigan does not seem like the type to put much effort into names. There will be much lampshading of this.

Morgan: Mother wanted to name me after my father, but... for some reason it wasn't possible.

Assuming you let him live, Jowan will become a party member in a sequel or expansion.

• It is confirmed that Jowan would have been a potential party member by using the Right of Conscription on him after Redcliffe. It's very possible a DLC might add that possibility. It's doubtful he'd be a party member in an expansion or sequel, since in almost every instance, he's executed for his crimes.
  • Alternatively, we will get a DLC chronicle of Jowan and his new party breaking into Aeonar to rescue Lily. C'mon, how awesome would that be?
  • Given that several party members appear in Dragon Age II and the Expanded Universe even if you killed them personally, it may not matter what you decided to do with Jowan. Two of the choices are letting him go free and sending him back to the Circle to be made Tranquil and it's not hard to see Jowan escaping again in the second choice. The epilogue cards at the end of Origins are pretty much to be taken with a grain of salt considering how easily they're retconned in II.

Provided that they still exist, the big conflict in Dragon Age II will be between Morrigan's child and The Architect.

The Child wants to eradicate the Darkspawn and take the power of the other Old Gods for himself, and the Architect still wishes to continue his work on freeing the Darkspawn from their compulsion. So, Devil you helped create and know a tad too well vs. The Devil that tortured you for a bit and caused the whole mess in the first place! Fun choices for everyone!

• Jossed.

Seranni will return in a sequel or expansion.

She is the only one in the Architect's faction who will definitively survive, regardless of the player's actions, leaving a way for the Architect's work to continue even in his absence. Furthermore, her sister, Velanna, may be in possession of some Plot Armor (especially since, if left at the keep while you save Amaranthine, no one ever finds her body, giving her ample sequel oppotunity as well to continue that whole plot thread. But things may indeed get worse. Seranni possesses the same sickly look that most tainted individuals bear, which means it might very well be possible she could become a Broodmother! Her mind seems to display signs of transformation, as she initially takes steps to ensure the Warden and company escape, before becoming fully complicit to the Architect and his plans, and is completely indifferent to the death of her clan at his machinations. Her decription of him as being "tender" is not very reassuring, either (among other things).

• • Mere Tainting does not turn women into Broodmothers. It's a long, complex process that most candidates don't survive. Seranni is likely to be like Utha, who endured in the same condition for decades.
  • She's not the only one of the Architect's faction who is still alive. In the Architect's diary he mentions a Disciple called the Seeker, who's apparantely behind all the problems in the Wending woods. He's also never fought over the course of the game.

The Architect's meddling will backfire horribly.

In Awakening, he reveals his grand plan to help the Darkspawn: use the immunity found in Grey Warden blood to cut the Darkspawn off from the call of the Old Gods. And so far, it appears to work great! The Darkspawn are freed, and even become intelligent, thinking creatures like him! If you side with him at the end, then it's implied he goes on to free all the Darkspawn in this manner, and even if you kill him, his followers escape to the deep roads anyway, so they could theoretically carry on his work even without him. So what's the problem with this scenario? The immunity of a Grey Warden doesn't last forever. It's only a matter of time before a Grey Warden's immunity runs out, and then they start hearing the call of the Old Gods themselves. So all the Darkspawn that were freed will eventually go right back to trying to find the Old Gods/destroy the world. Except they won't go back to being mindless monsters, they will keep the intelligence they gained, even as they serve the Old Gods. So in the end, all the Architect accomplished was to make the Darkspawn an even bigger threat.

• Part of the Architect's original plan was to find and kill the Old Gods, though it's unclear if he still planned to do this after the plan changed from tainting everyone else to immunizing all the darkspawn. Of course, Awakening proved that intelligent darkspawn can still carry out mini-Blights (and probably larger scale ones given the opportunity) without an archdemon if they have some type of leadership, so in the end it seems that none of the Architect's plans would ever work in the long term.
• Alternatively, the Architect's plans will work too well and he'll create Disciples as smart as he is, but minus his more affable qualities. Becoming intelligent does not mean that they turn good after all. We've already seen how the Mother and her spawn turned out.
• Considering that his two major attempts at meddling in the backstory turned Urthemiel into an Archdemon and created The Mother, it's almost a given that this is going to happen again if he is allowed to survive.

The Dragon Age sequel won't allow game transfers.

I should probably rephrase that they * might* , but a lot of your personal decisions won't make a difference. I'm really really really hoping I'm wrong, but everything seems to indicate that. Besides the incredibly short amount of time in between this game, and the new game (February 2011), Awakening ignored an obvious decision: whether your character sacrificed themselves. Besides that, the obvious Sequel Hook of the God Baby...if they choose to be faithful to your decision, you'd think a gigantic plot element would be missing. Then there's Eamon's foreshadowing of Connor, if you didn't kill him: that's another plot point they'd have to ignore if they allowed your decisions to carry through. I know they did this for ME, but the decisions of Mass Effect 1 aren't as phenomenally important as they are in Dragon Age. Perhaps this can be avoided by the game occuring in a different country (who cares who's king of Orzammar when you have Kal-Sharok! Who cares about the Ferelden Circle when you can visit Orlais' Circle! Who cares if you're Queen of Ferelden, when you can be the Empress's kid! I have a strong feeling the next game will occur in Orlais.), but that's just a different way of ignoring your decisions: by making them unimportant.

• This troper is inclined to believe that the game will allow a partial transfer, the same as the Awakening, with a few most major choices pre-written, but a few others still free to change, along with your stats and appearance, ofcourse.
• This has been Jossed by Word of God; you will be able to trasnfer your Origins and Awakening saves to Dragon Age 2 ^{[dead link]} , although who knows what choices you made will truly have any effect...

Hawke will have a grudge against the Gray Wardens

Hawke is from Lothering, one of the few places you absolutely cannot save in the previous game. This could mean that, justifiable or not, s/he could hold a grudge at the Gray Wardens for failing to save her/his town.

• I'd wonder why, though, since its possible for Hawke to never even know a Warden is nearby—besides that, the game is about Hawke's rise to power. After Loghain is revealed to be a traitor, there's even less reason.

Cassandra is a future party member.

Either for an expansion, DLC, or Dragon Age 3.

• Considering she's getting her own movie, this is seeming more and more likely.

The next game will be set in Orlais

Alastair speaks to you in Dragon Age II and talks about how Orlais is undergoing civil unrest, with assassination attempts and a brewing conspiracy to  reconquer Ferelden. A similar conversation occurs in Witch Hunt, with two mages talking about the civil unrest in Kirkwall. This is a Chekov's Gun, meant to tell us what Dragon Age 3 will be about.

• That's where Bohdain and Sandal are headed as well.
• And Wynne and Shale in the novel Asunder.

Hawke and The Warden will team up

Spoiler; The ending reveals that the chantry is looking for both Hawke and the Warden to help solve their problems, and perhaps for other reasons. A future game will revolve around the two greatest heroes in Thedas joining forces. One's the Champion who brought the Chantry to ruin, the other's the hero who killed the Archdemon and ended the Blight. Together, they save Thedas!

• The plot will at least partly consist of the two putting their respective bands back together to form a Supergroup.
• This'll be difficult considering your Warden's face isn't saved in Dragon Age II . That's probably one of the reasons he/she never appears.
• Simple answer? Have them show up wearing a hood/helm, using the camera to avoid showing their face, and then let the player use the character customization feature on them as well. As for voices, get one pair(male and female) of voice actors for the human noble and human mage warden, get one pair for the dwarf noble and dwarf commoner, get one pair for the city elf and elf mage, and a pair for the dalish. Expensive? Yea, but cheaper than a pair for each individual origin.
  • They pretty much did the same thing in Mass Effect 2, so there's precedent.

Sten will become Arishok

In a future game, Sten from Origins will be promoted to the position of Arishok. The previous Arishok is killed by Hawke or if he leaves with Isabella, she escapes and steals the relic from him again, proving him unworthy. Sten, the only living Qunari to face down a Blight, a well traveled warrior who has seen other nations beyond the scope of the Qunari at war, will be deemed the best suitable replacement.

• Of course, he'll no longer be Sten.
• True. But he'll still be awesome.
• While I don't have a complete understanding of qunari morality, I somehow feel that to the leaders, Sten having helped save Fereldan might be considered aiding the enemy and a form of treason. Then again, they might just value the fact that Sten is perhaps the only qunari with the best understanding of Fereldan and the Blight and send him back for more info-gathering missions.
  • Given that his purpose for being there was understanding what is the Blight I imagine they'd accept him back. He wasn't there on a war mission.
  • Exactly. Sten's mission was 'Take a scout team and find out if the Blight is a danger to the qunari'. He comes back with the answer 'It was an extreme danger to all that lives, but I helped stop it before it reached us'. I can't imagine even qunari logic having a problem with that.
• In addition to this, he will be introduced wearing some sort of helmet and not speaking, appearing in pre-rendered cutscenes. The last of these cutscenes will show him removing his helmet to speak to his men... And eat a cookie.
  • While playing with a kitten... I mean, helping it train!

There will be a female Qunari companion in DA 3

Bioware's probably got the message that we want female qunari by now. She'll most likely be Tal'vashoth, having abandoned the qun because of its restrictions on women fighting.

• • Or she was raised outside of the Qunari (and technically isn't one as the Qunari are a creed instead of a race) and has a more cheerful disposition and the ability to pick grown men up and throw them through doors. A seven foot-tall Genki Girl with muscles.

The next game will be in Orlais or the Tevinter Imperium

It might not happen, but quite a few characters were talking about trouble in Orlais. The third game will have an Orlaisian hero, who will dealing with invading Qunari or whatever political problem is going there. The fourth game will have The Warden, The Champion, and the Orlaisian all in it fighting to save Thedas and pick up the broken pieces(most notably in the second game). That or it will take place in the Tevinter Imperium with the hero leading a slave rebellion following the theme and warnings of change.

• • I really hope not. I'd rather carry on with an established character, either the Warden or Hawke(or both, preferably), than start a new one all over again. Would I like to see Orlais and Tevinter? Yes. I'd love to visit both. I'd love to see a new game take place in both or either. But I don't want to wait until a fourth game comes out to enjoy the return of my characters from the previous games.
    • Well maybe it doesn't have to be an entirely new character. Maybe it's following the Warden and Leliana Mass Effect 2 style. He's been gone for very long and now has to face whatever made him disappear in the first place.
  • Bohdan did mention that he and Sandal will be moving to Orlais. So they will probably help the PC of DA 3 like they've done with the the champion and the Warden.
  • Orlaisian wardens will pop up all ominous towards the end of Act 2 saying they need to be in Orlais.

Dragonage 2 will take place in the Anderfels

You'll get to visit the Grey Warden's fortress, travel to the blight lands, and maybe make a side trip to Kal Shirok.

• This has been confirmed as false. Dragon Age 2 is taking place in the Free Marches.

Dragonage 3 will take place in the Anderfels

See above.

• If the series is successful and continues on long enough, then yes, there will be a Dragon Age game in Anderfels one day. As certain as there will be a Dragon Age in Rivain, Tevinter, Antiva, Orlais and any other nation on the map. So please, if this WMG turns out to be wrong don't make a WMG saying "Dragonage 4 will takes place in the Anderfels". At least not unless there are actual hints about Anderfels as a possible setting of the next game.

The player may end up fighting Grey Wardens and/or Templars in Dragon Age 2

Assuming the player went through with the ritual, you have to figure that the Grey Warden leadership is going to be very curious as to how an Archdemon can be killed without the Warden in question dying. An investigation will reveal the player's complicity in an act of magic that the Wardens will consider perilously close to the kind that created the Darkspawn in the first place. The player will then be given the choice between helping the Wardens and possibly the Templars hunt down Morrigan or fighting against them to protect her and the child. Neither option will be particularly pleasant.

• This now seems very likely, during one of the narrator sequences in the extended demo for Dragon Age 2 an Inquistor by the name of Cassandra mentions that the Chantry is in ruins and the world is on the brink of war. The reason that the Chantry sent Cassandra to find Hawke in the first place is because they need him to help reassemble the pieces. If Dragon Age 2 allows the breadth of choice many players hope for the Chantry may not like Hawke's decision.
  • Depending on your choices in Legacy, you'll fight some Grey Wardens but not the entire organization.

Dog has responsibilities of his own in Denerim that keep him from joining you in Awakening

Namely acting as breeding stock for Ferelden's Mabari. Just look at how many of the poor hounds died during the Battle of Ostagar. And what better sire for the next generation of warhounds than the companion of the champion who defeated the Blight?

• This is actually confirmed in Witch Hunt.

Dragon Age 2 will have different prologues like the first game.

Pretty self-explanatory. Depending on the choices made by the PC, you can begin the game from the palace in Denerim, the Warden HQ in Amaranthine, the Frostback mountains, etc.

• New information on Dragon Age 2 has confirmed this as not true. The main character will be Hawke, a villager from Lothering who fled with his/her family when the darkspawn came. According to BioWare a majority of the story differences become apparent in the middle of the game instead of the end.
• Well, if you don't have save data to import, there's three different ways you can select for how the blight went.

Ballad of Ayesleigh

There's a codex entry that details a song about the penultimate battle of the last Blight. Note this verse:

when darkness comes
and swallows light
heed our words
and we shall rise

Seems to suggest that at some point maybe we'll be able to raise a battlefield of dead Wardens to fight for us (Return of the King comes to mind as a model). And it will be awesome.

Sten will be a Legacy Character

Specifically, in the sequel Hawke will encounter a Qunari who also self-identifies by his military ranking of Sten. However it's not the one from Origins, merely being another Qunari who got himself into the Free Marches and prefers not to divulge his name. The character might also have a different personality from The Stoic of the first game to differentiate from Sten 1.0 and to show that they aren't a Planet of Hats.

• Averted/subverted/converted? "Sten," being a job title or rank for the Qunari and not an actual individual name, do appear in Dragon Age II, but mostly as enemies. Furthermore, far from averting the concept the Qunari being a Planet of Hats (Culture Of Hats?), it pretty much affirms the concept. The entire character of the Qunari people is that the Qun more or less abolishes individuality altogether, meaning that for a character to become dramatically different from another of their title would have to become a Tal'vashoth.

A future game will take place in post-apocalyptic Thedas.

One of two possible scenarios will take place:

• The Architect will perform his Joining on all the Darkspawn and they will organize under a powerful leader, one who is even more dangerous than the Mother. This leader will send all the Darkspawn to the surface in order to conquer or eradicate the other races of Thedas.
• (as suggested above) Following the death of the last Old God, the Darkspawn will go insane, spend some time slaughtering each other in the Deep Roads, and finally surge to surface in a Blight that will only end once every single one of them has been eradicated.

In either scenario, the Darkspawn will barely be defeated at huge cost, perhaps even leaving one or more races (most likely Dwarves) extinct, and the world will need to be rebuilt.

There will be, if not in Dragon Age II then in DA3, a Disciple party member.

Possibly a Token Evil Teammate, possibly a type V anti-hero. It will hide its identity by wearing a mask and heavy clothing

• So... Goris?
• In Awakening, if you make The Messenger fight with you, and then choose to free him afterwards, he gets a mention in the epilogue. Something about a helpful hooded traveler with a slight lisp, who aids those he finds. BioWare, please make him a party member. You can always bring in a Suspiciously Similar Substitute or have him get better if the player imports a save where they killed him.
• Bioware loves Enemy Mine, especially with their apparent policy of subverting Planet of Hats (ex. Legion). Hell, you could even recruit Loghain, who is pretty much the Big Bad of Origins. I'd be really surprised if we never recruit a Disciple.

A Tevinter Magister will be a companion in a future game

Either as a Dark Is Not Evil character or a Token Evil Teammate, the character will give the players a new perspective on the Imperium. As a Token Evil Teammate, he/she might be an Expy of Edwin from Baldur's Gate since the Imperium is basically the setting's equivalent of Thay (nation filled with evil powerhungry mages).

• Feynriel in one of his possible fates in Dragon Age II goes to Tevinter to study his powers, making him a strong candidate. Of course, there are also the possible choices of making him Tranquil or an Abomination though he could also be a temporary party member for a set of missions.

Every Dragon Age game will end in the player character disappearing...

Until Dragon Age VII or later. Then, for the final game, you will get a party composed ENTIRELY of previous Dragon Age PCs, all of them as badass as Hawke or the Warden. You will then face the aforementioned mother of all blights.

Dragon Age 3 will let the player unify the Free Marches.

Play Female!Hawke, complete the Rivalry romance with Sebastian, and side with the Templars at the end. The game finishes with the head of state of the most powerful city-state in the Free Marches (Starkhaven) proposing marriage to the head of state of the second most powerful city-state in the Free Marches (Kirkwall). There's no way this was an accident.

Dragon Age 3 starts in Orlais with the PC asking Leliana about the Warden. The Warden and Hawke later appear

The Player Character will ask about appearance and personality and perhaps accomplishments if there isn't an Origins import. Later on, the Warden and Hawke join as possible companions/important NPCs.

Alternatively...

The PC of Dragon Age 3 will be the adoptive child of The Warden's love interest

Thus, they may also be considered the Warden's child. This will also lead to a double class feature: Be raised by Leliana or Zevran and you can be half rogue (handy for Orlais), be raised by Alistair to be half warrior, be raised by Morrigan to be half mage. If the dark ritual was accepted, you may also be the Warden (or Alistair's) biological child.

The Player Character

The main character fails the Harrowing

Think about it: the real challenge of the Harrowing is a Pride demon, the most powerful and cunning of fade spirits. A mere apprentice supposedly manages to escape it by doing nothing more than revealing the demon's nature. While this seems a little suspect already, think about the rest of the game: the Warden cannot make a wrong decision. Nothing that the Warden does short of dying an ignoble death will prevent them from ultimately stopping the Blight and saving Ferelden. This kind of self-centered, egotistical delusion seems to perfectly fit the nature of a Pride demon. This also means that all mage PC's are really Abominations, and poor Cullen was seasoned and spit-roasted faster than Jowan can say "blood mage."

• OR the entire game is the Harrowing. The Pride demon says, "Keep your wits about you, mage. True tests... never end."

The Pride Demon from the Harrowing possessed Uldred

The whole "Broken Circle" thing was the result of a massive mistake on the part of the Mages. They trapped a Pride Demon in a corner of the fade, stripping it of most of it's power and using it as a test for their apprentices. But it wasn't happy with this. It found a way to communicate with an ambitious mage, Uldred, teaching him Blood Magic and feeding his delusions of ultimate power. Finally, with the rest of the country distracted by Ostagar, it struck, possessing Uldred and using his followers to take revenge on the Circle for his humiliation then begin an invasion of Ferelden. Perhaps Irving and co will be a little more careful how they test their apprentices from now on...

• I got the impression that Uldred had been communicating with demons for a lot longer than that. Of course, just because he'd been communicating with said test-demon doesn't mean that it couldn't keep, ya know, testing folks.
• Here's another problem. The Pride Demon isn't obviously an enemy during the Harrowing. The PC figures it out thanks to some hinting from the Rage Demon that was likely the real test. The Pride Demon just happened to be near when you started, and decided to tag along and see if it could find a way to possess you. Once you reveal it, it has no reason to press harder, and simply concedes defeat. Pride Demons are insidious, their influence is nearly impossible to detect. How many apprentices have passed the Harrowing lately? Could every one of them have realized a Pride Demon's work?

All the Origins are true.

There are countless little moments for each origin that make it seem like they should be the canon one. Well, they all are. If you pay attention to the timeline, the various events of the origins actually take place at different points. The dwarf commoner origin takes place only a week or so before dwarf noble origin, but the mage one seems to take place a few months later, and to make any sense the Dalish origin would have to take place relatively soon before Ostagar.

This might allow for multiple quest options to be tackled at once, as well as having a "specialist" for each major quest area (except Redcliffe, though Alistair might count for that), and time would be of the essence in fighting the Blight—indeed, this might be the only way that significant side questing could be explicable. This would also explain why you only ever have four people in a given area (except for camp and the final battle), even when it makes a lot more sense for there to be everyone (such as in the fight against the Broodmother or the battle to save Redcliffe), as they're all split up and operating in concert. When the party is split in the final push, all the Wardens could go forward—and there would be enough to split up to tackle the Alienage and Market simultaneously, while all the non-Wardens would remain behind. It could even allow Alistair to remain on good terms with the Wardens when Loghain is spared: the Wardens take a vote, and a bare majority vote to spare him. Alistair still quits in disgust, but he remains close with those Wardens who voted to kill Loghain. (He also still makes his speech, and points out only a few of the Wardens, specifically those that voted with him, and takes command at the gates to rally them.

Finally, it means that the DLC and expansion need not all apply to the same character: the one who romanced Morrigan would of course do Witch Hunt; a cunning one with maxed Coercion could become the arl of Amaranthine, perhaps bringing a few others with them; and a dwarf Warden made Paragon and assigned to work in Orzammar could do Golems of Amgarrak.

The Canonical Grey Warden of Origins is female, and Alistair fathered Morrigan's child

That child, in addition to having the soul of an Old God, will also be the only heir to the throne of Ferelden, due to the difficulty of Grey Wardens conceiving that Alistair mentions. Morrigan also seemed very certain that the child wouldn't be used "against" Ferelden, but providing an heir isn't "against", is it? Plus, how could a power-gatherer resist the temptation of creating a God-Emperor?

• • Pretty much Jossed. That there are multiple-choice "default" endings for Dragon Age: Origins, and specifically thatone of them allows for Alistair to be exiled, suggests there is no canon Warden.
    • Well, technically, the "Hero of Ferelden" (male noble who did the dark ritual and made Alistair king) is labelled default, the other two are labelled as pre-sets. Whether that labelling means something is a different question.
      • The strangest thing about this possible origin is that it's alluded to in The Stolen Throne that Maric is also Morrigan's father, making her Alistair's half-sister, and heavily borrowing from Arthurian Legend. Perhaps an homage?

The Secret Lives of NPCs

Sandal has pure lyrium running through his veins instead of blood.

Having liquid magical Green Rocks in lieu of blood could explain Sandal's mental problems, instinctive mastery of enchantment, and him being able to kill a small army of darkspawn with his bare hands.

Sandal is autistic

Total lack of social skills combined with savant-level skill in one area? Sounds like autism to me. He may also be the first recorded Autistic Badass.

• Well, he is outright called a savant at one point (according to Bodahn)--but I'd say he doesn't really act like an autistic kid. He seems to be mostly aware of the outside world, and the number one feature of austism is an inability to understand or communicate with others. And, sheesh, I'm going to be incredibly surprised if there isn't already a trope labeling how austistic kids have special magical powers that allow them to shape the world. Maybe Sandal, if autistic, would be the first autistic kid with physical superpowers. And anyhow, it's pretty much stated it was the exposure to lyrium that made him that way.
  • Ever heard of high-functioning Downs? Just because they say it's lyrium doesn't mean it is-this is the Middle Ages we're talking about here.
    • Well, being made Tranquil, which is sort of like a Magical Lobotomy for mages that turns you into a emotionless robot but you can handle enchantment and potentially mind melting and lethal magical stuff called lyrium so being born with brain damage might give you some of the same benefits. Though Sandal seems lucky enough to retain a personality (could be because he is dwarf.) Tough to test because Dwarves don't become mages and are born resistant to magic/lyrium anyway.

Loghain's coup was long planned

In the human noble start Howe does something suicidally stupid, attacking another noble. He knows the king however won't be any position to make him pay the piper for it though. Similarly it's later shown that he's torturing another noble's son, and has another different noble's son locked up in his dungeons. Add in his smuggling and money laundering and he knew, and has known, for some time the king would die. The only way he'd know that is if Loghain told him of his plans. Probably why Howe didn't have his troops at Ostagar. Loghain isn't a man driven to protect his country, he's a cold manipulative regicidal bastard.

• Loghain doesn't care about his country!? The reason he killed the king was because he saw the man as too idealistic and wasting the country's forces fighting the Darkspawn! His enmity to the Orlesians is what drives him, not some psychopathic tendency towards the aristocracy.
• Indeed. If you read The Stolen Throne, then you know that Loghain couldn't care less about personal power, or what people think of him. He cares about nothing but the country - he's the living image of a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Loghain probably started planning his coup when Cailan declared that they should get help from the Orlesians, and wouldn't back down. That's the one thing that he couldn't take, no matter what. Remember that the arrangements for the battle of Ostragar must have taken weeks or months - there's no indication that Loghain would have made any of this plots before this time. Even Arl Eamon's poisoning happened after this, as you know if you play the Mage Origin. Also note that most of the atrocities blamed on Loghain were done by Arl Howe, who Loghain turned blind eye to in order to have at least one loyal ally among the nobility. Loghain didn't want Cailan to die because he knew that most of the nobles would turn against him if that happened, but if it was a choice between Cailan and Ferelden in his mind, then there was no comparison.
  • It has been confirmed by David Gaider that Loghain was plotting against Cailan before Ostagar. Arl Eamon was also poisoned before The Battle of Ostagar. The Redcliffe knight in Lothering says that Arl Eamon has been ill for months. He even uses that fact as an argument against Loghain being involved. Loghain's section in the It Just Bugs Me topic has more discussion on how heavily Loghain was involved in things like the Cousland massacre.
    • Er, the person who poisoned Arl Eamon was none other than Jowan the Blood Mage. The same Jowan who escapes the Circle Tower during the Mage Origin story. The poisoning can't have started before Jowan escaped, which in turn happened right when Duncan came looking for recruits to deal with the Blight at Ostragar.
    • This is true—however, it doesn't mean Loghain didn't get ahold of Jowan before Ostagar. We don't know when Jowan was captured by the templars, and it's possible only an emissary of Loghain instructed him to poison Arl Eamon. It's only a day's journey to Redcliffe from the Circle Tower, and presumably much more from there to Ostagar. The time frame is still possible.
  • I'll accept that Loghain had been planning against King Cailan for quite a while, but it wasn't because he had some deep-seated hatred of Cailan or the aristocracy. It was because the King placed too much trust in the Grey Wardens, a move that Loghain saw as at best, foolish, and at worse as inviting Orlesian spies into the upper reaches of government.
  • Haven't played it yet, but Return to Ostagar apparently implies that Cailan was having an affair with Empress Celene I of Orlais and was going to forge an alliance with Orlais. Loghain learned of this and considered Cailan to be betraying Ferelden.
    • Loghain didn't know about it. Or at least he pretends not to. You can take him to Ostagar.
    • You know, one of the rumors that you can hear from the bartender is that the King was cheating on Anora, Loghain found out about it, and that's why he left him to die at Ostagar. Since it was mixed in with a bunch of other wild speculation I didn't pay it any attention the first time I heard it, but now that it seems that Cailan actually was cheating on her it sounds a lot more suspicious.
    • If you persuade Cailan's bodyguard at Ostagar (prior to the battle, of course), he'll tell you that he heard Cailan and Loghain arguing about Anora, although he wasn't paying close enough attention to hear too many details.
    • At PAX, David Gaider confirmed that Cailan was planning on dumping Anora for Celene and that Loghain was lying when he said he didn't know about that.
    • However, Dragon Age: Inquisition reveals that Empress Celene is a lesbian and had absolutely zero interest in marrying anyone, so...

The entire story of Origins was a result of a Xanatos Gambit by King Cailan.

He already knew 1) of Loghain's possible impending betrayal, 2) that Alistair was his half-brother, and 3) that between his father-in-law's treachery and the approaching darkspawn horde there was no way he could come out of this situation alive. So, he deliberately sent Alistair out of the way to keep the royal bloodline alive, and the other Grey Warden (the player character) with him to ensure the Blight would be defeated. Futhermore, having them stationed at the top of the tower meant they could see the betrayal occur, and then act on it. Then he marched straight into the fight, setting it up so if Loghain did go through with the planned betrayal, he would come off obviously looking like the villain. If Loghain didn't betray them, the darkspawn get beaten back. The one thing he didn't foresee was the darkspawn invading the tower from underneath, which nearly derailed his plan. However, Flemeth's intervention managed to set the plan back on track.

• Why not just arrest Loghain, or find someway to relieve him of his troop, or wait for reinforcement from Redcliff and Orlais. If all of the above is not an option, he can always find some way to personally get out of battle and escape to somewhere.
  • Cailan is young and somewhat pro-Orlais, so he probably couldn't count on full support of the aristocracy, while Loghain is popular among aristocrats and has powerful friends. If Cailan just arrested Loghain, he'd have to fear open civil war and that would make defense against the blight even more problematic.
• Minor nitpick: it doesn't look like the PC/Alistair actually saw the betrayal occur. We see the betrayal happen, and then it cuts back to the tower and shows you standing by the beacon, having just lit it, and Alistair standing over the ogre in a position that suggests that you have JUST killed it and he is making sure it's dead. So just a minute or so after the beacon was lit, you were rushed by more darkspawn and taken down. Also, when Duncan is on his knees about to expire, he looks up to see the beacon lit, and the way that it's shot seems to imply that it was just lit and he was able to see that you did your job just before he died, for dramatic purposes. Finally, when you wake up afterwards, you can ask Morrigan what happened to the king and the darkspawn, and if you had seen the betrayal, you would already know that the king was dead. So if all this is correct, the betrayal was happening at the same time that you were fighting your ogre, and you were unaware of it until Morrigan told you.
• Perhaps just to add to this, maybe Cailan was in cahoots with Flemeth the entire time! According to Gaider, the Dark Ritual could only have been done with a recently tainted Grey Warden. How very convenient, then, that the king has the two most recent recruits be the ones kept outside the battle, where they'll presumably be safest, and where they can more easily be scooped up by a shapeshifting witch. Contrived Coincidence? Or...

Leliana isn't bisexual - she's flat-out lesbian.

If the Warden is female, she never shows any attraction to men. Her attraction to a male Warden is a combination of Even The Lesbians Want Him and If It's You It's Okay.

• One thing might kill that theory: in the alternate continuity of the Darkspawn Chronicles, it's implied that Alistair and Leliana hooked up.
  • Maybe Alistair has the "Just for you" ticket as well.
• From what she divulges from her past, it does sound like she's had several casual relations with men as a part of her bardic profession, and didn't mind about them. It's just that her only serious relationship before the game was with Majorlaine.
• Should be noted, she does express some interest in men. If the female warden is romancing Alistair and not Leliana, she eagerly inquires about Alistair's preformance. The warden can comment basicly that he's good but inexperienced. Leliana says its cute, that he's like a little puppy, which is good because it means he can be trained; she's definitely speaking from experience.
• In fact, it actually seems easier to romance her as a male Warden. There are several dialogue options right out of the gate (Neutral approval) that only appear/only work if the Warden is male ("Those initiates couldn't have been more lovely than you,"), which allow a male Warden to initiate a romance with her fairly early on. A female Warden, however, has to raise her approval to a high level (+50) first, then wait for her to make the first move, choose the right dialogue options, and express interest. Or complete her personal quest and talk to her about Majorlaine later, an option that requires an even higher approval (well over 70) and is also available to male Wardens. If that's all against her usual sexual preferences because even the lesbians want him, then we're talking about the male Warden's hotness being carried to ridiculous levels. (The male Warden is so hot that he turns lesbians straight! At neutral approval! With a single flirtatious comment!)
• Some of her dialogues with Zevran are also kind of flirtatious, such as one where Hardened Leliana dares him to remove his pants in front of her to "disprove some myths about elven men" before she'll "consider a tumble." In another a Warden of either gender who is romancing Zevran can ask her if she's been watching him, which nets a flustered response. The Warden can then tell her, "He's been claimed. My apologies."
• Some of her dialogue indicates that Leliana does not believe If It's You It's Okay is a valid foundation for a long-term emotional and physical relationship. (The only kind that she's interested in.) If a male Warden cheats on her with Zevran and then chooses certain dialogue options, she'll say, "You don't have to deny it. I always thought there was something missing between us. Now I know what that is," and break off the relationship. That indicates to me that she does not think that a heterosexual relationship between herself and a predominantly homosexual man would work, even if they liked each other. She might have just meant that "it" was that there was "someone else" in the picture, but the context that she said it in raises eyebrows—and she does not say the same thing to a female Warden who breaks up with her in the same manner by sleeping with Zevran. (Instead she says, "I think I made a mistake about you. It's not your fault, I'm sorry. Let's just put this behind us?") I have to wonder why she would think a relationship between herself and a straight male Warden would work if she was entirely homosexual herself.
• Remember that Leliana's primary character trait is devotion. If she's in love with you she's not going to show any attraction to anyone else, regardless of gender.

Sten's stoicism has nothing to do with him being Qunari or his natural character, but is a symptom of the cultural alienation resulting from his exile in Ferelden.

• Theory upheld! Dragon Age: Inquisition reveals that qunari are often very taciturn around southerners because followers of the Qun feel ashamed to display lack of mastery of a skill before strangers... including language skills. More simply, if they aren't very fluent in whatever Thedas uses for the common tongue (remember that qunari have their own language) then it will take extraordinary circumstances for them to talk at all. Since Sten is a soldier and not a linguist, he's not going to use a single unnecessary word because he's embarassed by his lack of fluency.

Leliana is the reincarnation of Andraste.

Strange that this hasn't been brought up already. Both are singers, and both hear the voice of the Maker. It isn't impossible.

• Maybe Leliana used to be an Andraste impersonator. And a lot of fans faithful Fereldans are damn sure the Queen Prophetess is not dead.

Leliana is the Narrator of Origins

Kinda like Varric, only without the Framing Story. She is a bard. She sings the game's title theme in-game. She is on a divine mission to follow the Warden and is romanceable by both genders. Leliana's Song is the only official content that has a narrator. Before the Final Battle, she tells the Warden that they are about to forge their own legend—in other words, she will tell the world about what happened from start to finish.

Ser Cauthrien is a demigod.

There is no way that any normal human could be that strong. Her in-game stats are comparable to the High Dragon. One of the Old Gods must have woken up from hibernation long enough to take human form and impregnate a peasant woman. The resulting daughter was Cauthrien, who was born with inhuman strength and durability. Loghain recognized this when she saved his life while still a youth, and quickly recruited her as his lieutenant.

The entire Darkspawn Chronicles campaign is Alistair having a nightmare.

In one of the endings where Alistair survives, he thinks to himself, "Good thing we had the Warden. Who knows what would have happened without him/her." However, this turns to Fridge Horror for him when he realizes that, had the Warden failed the Joining or been killed along the way, they would very likely have lost the war. That night, he is so disturbed that he has a nightmare, with his mind putting together a scenario of what would have happened if the Warden had failed the Joining, leaving him to try to stop the Archdemon and failing. What would be a worse nightmare for Alistair than having to take all the responsibility, become king, have Ferelden overrun by the victorious Darkspawn, the Warden (who was probably his close friend or lover) dead, him watching all of his companions fall around him, a nightmarish Hurlock warrior plunging its sword into him, and the Archdemon flying away alive to torment Thedas another day?

Alternatively, if Alistair was the one sacrificed, perhaps it is the Warden having the nightmare instead.

Ser Jory would have survived his Joining if Duncan hadn't knifed him.

Mainly just for that extra salt in the wound bit of irony.

• He wouldn't have survived as a Grey Warden for long though. You need at least a minimal amount of courage to survive as a Grey Warden. Jory doesn't have any.
  • He fights regular darkspawn well enough. He's not a complete coward—what bothers him is that he can't fight the Joining. It has nothing to do with his personal skill or valor. It's not an enemy he can fight. But hey, I could see him turning tail and running, too.
  • Yea, fighting doesn't seem much of a problem, though he might have shat himself at the first sight of an ogre, or the full horde, or a broodmother, or an archdemon. He wouldn't have been able to handle the full sacrifice of dedicating his whole life to fighting darkspawn, or dealing with the tough choices you have to make to fight the blight, though. But putting sword to genlock, he'd have no problem with.
    • And on top of all this, Jowan is nowhere near cool enough to be a Warden. Look at Duncan - dude earned that Badass Beard by being, you guessed it, badass.

The Circle never gets Jowan, even if the Warden decides to turn him in.

The very first thing the Warden can tell the head Mage right after telling the Arl to send Jowen to the tower is that Jowen is dead. Clearly, the Warden had made it to the tower before Jowan, and lied to protect him.

• They could also just retcon him into having survived and escaped somehow no matter what happened, like they did with Anders and Leliana.

The Hurlock Vanguard was the one who killed Duncan

Who do we see kill Duncan at Ostagar? A hurlock general, wearing the same style of armor as the Hurlock Vanguard in Darkspawn Chronicles. This was probably also the same hurlock who was seen signalling the darkspawn army to charge earlier. Obviously, the Archdemon sent one of his most trusted generals to oversee the Battle of Ostagar, and to ensure that the Archdemon could command the battle himself, as the Vanguard can hear his whispered commands directly. This same Vanguard then goes on to become the Bane of Thedas in Darkspawn Chronicles.

In the main game, the Hurlock Vanguard still existed, but was either the Vanguard who was encountered and killed in Return to Ostagar, or was the warrior-hurlock-general who the Warden has to track down and kill during the final missions in Denerim, right before going to face the Archdemon.

Real Life Motivations for In Game Events

The purpose of the game is to set up Bioware's personal version of the King Arthur Legend.

Alistair, the bastard son of the dead king who had been secretly raised by the king's uncle, bears remarkable similarities to King Arthur. It is also possible to make Morrigan, who David Gaider admits to having based off of Morgan le Fay, have sex with Alistair. In a future game Morrigan and Alistair's son (Mordred) will likely return and wage war upon Ferelden.

• Oh, someone else made this observation! I'll point out that Maric might have slept with Flemeth to conceive Morrigan, making Alistair and Morrigan half-siblings, as Arthur and Morgan le Fay were. Alistair seems to be a bit more of a Arthur/Lancelot type, whereas Calenhad definitely fills the role of a King Arthur/Queen Guinevere, by cheating on his wife with his Lancelot-equivalent. In that sense, an Anora/Alistair child (with him as the role of the damned Lancelot) would be a Galahad, no?
• I'll also add in that there is a random trigger scene (similar to the Starfang/Superman scene) that has an axe in a block of wood—you are asked to pull it at out, you do, people hereld you as the future king/queen. Obviously it's just an homage, but it's worth mentioning. And Alistair makes no comment on this, BTW—nor do you need to be a Cousland.

At some point, Oghren will make fun of Cowboy Bebop.

• One, he's voiced by Steve Blum. Two, he hits on any woman he can. Three, the word "bang" can have sexual context. The case rests.

Herren and Master Wade represent EA and Bioware, respectively

Think about it. When you meet the pair in Denerim, Herren is only interested in making profit and he "helps" Master Wade by taking care of the public relations part of the job by fronting the store. Meanwhile, Master Wade is only interested in working with very exotic materials (making good games) and in Awakening loudly complains about having to work with "lesser" materials (making shovelware, low budget maybe?). He also gets very annoyed when you suggest the idea that his work be fast because he doesn't like to be rushed, much to the chagrin of Herren who would rather have Wade pump out armor faster.

• • Oh, this is great! Haha! Made even better, because Word of God confirms they're in a gay relationship. XDD
    • And now, Herren just turned out to be a Desire Demon in disguise. And thanks to that, they're the only survivors of the Denerim Massacre in Darkspawn Chronicles. I think that may lend some credibility to this theory.

The Dragon Age is not just an age in Thedas; it applies to the real world as well!

The titular Dragon Age was so named for dragons were once again sighted in Thedas after having been thought extinct long before. It seems that after the game's release, there are a whole bunch of other fantasy RPGs coming out or just on the horizon, all of which involve, you guessed it, dragons suddenly reappearing in the world. And just like the Archdemon, when these guys appear, things get bad fast. In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Deathwing awakens and reshapes Azeroth. In Guild Wars 2, the Elder Dragons come alive and wreak havoc in Tyria. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, dragons appear in Tamriel, and can only be stopped by a lone hero.

How is this all relevant? It seems that a very literal Dragon Age has been ushered into the world of RPGs. Dragons are making a comeback as the badasses they are, after going through some nasty decay for so long. And they're PISSED!

"Oh," you say. "Dragons are a cliche. A bunch of unoriginal fantasy stories is hardly anything to excited over, let alone make a silly WMG on TV Tropes for." But you could be wrong! It's all an omen, and Bioware was letting us know something important. The dragons are coming back to Earth to unleash unholy vengeance on humanity! Run! Run for the hills before it's too late! None will surviiiiive!

• Bring It On. I have three words for the dragons: heat seeking missiles.
• I suppose the Volsunga Saga will become more widely read in such an event... A training manual, so to speak.

The Finn and Ariane where given "naive" personalities intentionally to make the Warden seem older.

The thing is this is the Warden's last adventure. And while they might not look, or even be that much older than either of them, they've already been through their Origin, the Blight, the Awakening, and the Amgarrak expidition by this point, where as Finn's never left the tower, and Ariane's never left her clan. In a way they're a lot like what the Mage and Dalish Origin characters could've become if the events of their Origin stories had never happened. They represent the Warden's lost innocence, while the last encounter with Morrigan represents the end of the Warden's adventures. If the Warden doesn't Join Morrigan beyond the Fade then they'd likly go to walk the deep roads after Witch Hunt. Either way, this is the end.

• Uh, where are your getting the idea that this is the end for the Warden? I agree the Warden has probably been greatly hardened from the events of Origins and Awakening, but the whole point of Witch Hunt is clearly to act as a kind of sequel hook, hinting at further adventures the Warden will have, probably involving Morrigan and her child. Dragon Age 2 further confirms the Warden will return. Even if this weren't so, chances are the Warden still has plenty left to live for. Acting as Commander of Fereldan's Grey Wardens for one. There's also the possibility of him/her being king/queen of Fereldan and having numerous other duties to attend to. Depending on one's actions during Origins, they've also probably got a lover and friends to go back to and, depending on your Origin, surviving family. All this, with about thirty years remaining until the taint kicks in, what makes you think the Warden is going for a jog in the Deep Roads anytime soon?
• I agree the Warden still has a bit of life left in them, but I still like the idea of the two "youngsters" making the Hero of Ferelden feel old. It seems poignant in some ways.

The Warden disappeared because (s)he was trying to bail out of the series.

We all remember that last blurb at the end of Awakening that claims the Warden eventually disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As of yet, we have no idea why...perhaps because it's not related to the workings of the Dragon Age universe at all! The Warden has left the series because (s)he didn't like where it was going.

Though it's not universal, many players were not only left disappointed with how DAO's expansions turned out, but were also uneasy with how Dragon Age 2 looked before and after release. Some even went so far as to abandon the series. But who's to say they were the only ones? Maybe the Player Characters themselves became so horribly disgusted with the forecast of Dragon Age, that they too left as a rage against Bioware!

Anders' Parentage

Anders is Wynne's missing child

Firstly, he comes with Spirit Healer talent. Secondly, his face resembles Wynne, at least a bit...

• Worth noting that Wynne also mentions to Alistair that her son would likely be alot like him, and Anders has the fan nickname 'Mage Alistair'.
• Alternately, it could be the Mage PC, considering the parent-child relationship the two can build up through the game and the fact that the Mage PC's parentage is kept a total mystery.
• Jossed; Wynne's son's name is Rhys and he's set to appear in the novel Asunder. Of course, that's not to say that Wynne hasn't had other children in her lifetime...

Alistair isn't the last of Maric's kids.

Think about it: we know that either Alistair was lied to about his parentage, or Maric has another bastard running around out there. And who do we meet, but a guy who's a mage (like the mother of the possible unknown baby), has a similar sense of humor to both Alistair and Maric, and looks suspiciously like Cailan ^{[dead link]} and Alistair?

Hell, for bonus points, check out Anderstair, Alistair with Anders' hair.

As far as I know, we're never really told about Anders' family—which, as a mage, probably isn't something even he himself would question. Plus, his sweetness with Ser Pounce-a-lot reminds at least this troper of Alistair (even the Penny Arcade Shout-Out in Chronicles lends support - Barkspawn, anyone?), and even the kingly sibling is seen as somewhat silly and childish. At first I wondered if Cailan was voiced by Greg Ellis...only for them to later cast him as Anders.

I'm just saying, if Anders isn't either Alistair's brother or Wynne's son (see earlier WMG), I will be supremely disappointed. Besides, it's rather amusing thinking of a templar and apostate being brothers, and the idea that at least one of his sons would get a touch of Maric's manho-itude.

• • While it may not be Anders specifically, Maric definitely has another bastard out there besides Alistair. If recruited into your party, Loghain can be questioned as to why Maric didn't raise Alistar himself instead of pawning him off on Eamon. Loghain tells you that Maric nearly did raise Alistair, but chose not to as it would have humiliated Rowan and thrown Cailan's status as heir into question. Rowan was already dead(for about three or four years) by the time Fiona had her kid, and she specifically stated she didn't want her child to be in contention for the thrown. Combine this with the fact that Goldanna, Alistair's half sister, remembers her mother giving birth to the king's child, says that a Redcliffe maid did have one of Maric's kids, thus making Alistair's parentage more or less confirmed. Anders being Alistair and Cailan's brother seems possible, but even if its not the case, there is a third Therin brother out there. Also, Cailan is the one who inherited Maric's manho-itude; Anora states that he had other women, and it's been suggested he was either stepping out on her with the empress of Orlais or was planning on dumping her for said empress.
  • Eh, jury's still out on whether or not Alistair is Fiona's kid. Some fans have guessed that when Loghain mentioned Alistair's birth humiliating Rowan, he could have just been talking about it insulting her memory. Goldanna's mother's death could also have been the cover story they used to hide the fact Alistair's mother was an elven mage. Maybe the woman died in childbirth with another man's son and Goldanna was mistaken or fed the lie about the boy's father being the king. Either that, or it actually was another of Maric's kids who really did die at birth and was used to cover Alistair's mother's identity. Not saying that any of this is true, but there are still ways Alistair could turn out to be Fiona's son.

Maric had an affair with a young Wynne. Anders is the result

Combining the above two WMG about Ander's parentage. This also explians why Wynne seems so personally offended by Ostagar.

The Races

Elves are just a subspecies of humans, while dwarves and qunari are different species of the same genus.

When one compares the four races, humans and elves are the most similar physically, and when a human and an elf breed, their offspring is a human. When a human and a dwarf breed, their offspring a half-dwarf, which is difficult to conceive, just like when real world animals of different species interbreed. What happens when a human and a qunari interbreed has never been stated, but qunari are physically very different than humans. The only real problem with this theory is that Shrieks are so vastly different than Hurlocks, though that could just be a strange effect of the taint.

• Elves come from a completely different continent than the humans—they are the original inhabitants of Thedas; humans came from elsewhere. The fact that human-elf offspring is human is probably connected to the fact that the lives of elves shorten when they're around humans.
  • Elves are the descendants of humans who arrived in Thedas in prehistoric times. They remained isolated for long enough to start looking different from the "normal" humans, but not to become two different species. The clash between Elvhenan and Tevinter, then the subsequent enslavement of Elves produced so much hatred and prejudice that Humans and Elves ended up considering each other as a very different race, kinda like enslavement caused black and white people see each other as very different races for a long time while biologically, they were for all intent and purpose nearly identical.
    • Given that the Elves predate the humans significantly it is far more likely that it's the other way around: Humans are a subspecies of Elf. That would actually fit the reproduction thing too, since the mutations that created humans are the dominant traits, which is why the kids are always elfy-looking humans.

Dwarves used to be connected to the Fade, but intentionally cut themselves off from it.

It seems rather odd that only one race is cut off from the Fade. But dwarves have one very good reason to deliberately do this: lyrium. The entire race was living underground, constantly exposed to raw lyrium. This would have been especially hard on their mages, but it couldn't have been healthy for the race in general. Cutting themselves off from the Fade would have drastically reduced the effects of exposure to lyrium, allowed them to start using lyrium in crafting weapons, and (as another bonus) given them a defense against the magic-using Tevinter Imperium that the elves didn't have.

• I believe it's said somewhere in the game that this was a side-effect of lyrium, or at least supposed to be. They developed a resistance to magic, and therefore a resistance to the magical realm.
• Makes sense, considering that the Genlocks born from a dwarf-turned-Broodmother, which is just a really mutated variant of a ghoul, have a few magic using emissaries among their number. Also note that none of them share the dwarves' resistance to magic.

The Eluvian

The Eluvian is a portal to where the Elven gods are imprisoned.

In Witch Hunt, Morrigan tells the Warden that the Eluvian is portal to a world beyond the Fade. No references to such a place exist, except possibly in the Elven legends of how their gods were tricked by Fen'Harel and trapped in their own realm. This would explain why the Tevinters were only ever able to use the mirrors for communication; their purpose was originally to allow the Elves to communicate with their gods. This would also explain the presence of the Varterral; it wasn't there for the Warden and co., it was there to prevent Morrigan from using the Eluvian. And Morrigan has a very good reason to seek out the Elven gods, either to form an alliance with them or to attempt to steal their power: to destroy Flemeth once and for all.

• Actually in Awakening Justice mentions that there something beyond the fade but he doesn't know what it is.

The Varterral is an ancient drake.

• In Witch Hunt, the end boss is a creature called a Varterral. It's supposedly linked to the elves, being a guardian of the gods sent to protect their children. Of course, you have a Dalish with you, and that doesn't stop it from attacking. However, you encounter it in the Dragonbone Wastes. If you have high enough Survival, it's classified as a "level 33 Dragon". It has six legs (drakes have four legs, and the oldest have spurs on their shoulders that would have become wings had they been female). It even summons winged (i.e. female) dragons to attack you when it needs a breather. Drakes live to great old age even more rarely than dragons do, so varterral are even rarer than high dragons.
  • Also, the ridiculous AI gap where it cannot deal with anyone who stays far enough back and uses ranged weaponry may be deliberate, as going by the book The Elven Varterral which can be found on the shelves in the Apprentice Quarters library during Witch Hunt. This could be reflective of an ancient elven legend twisted over time: elves weren't in fact protected by it, but their preferred combat choice of archery makes them much more suited to fighting it, meaning they had a much higher rate of survival than other groups when they fought the varterral.

The Eluvian was used to enter the Golden City

Plain and simple, the Eluvians were used by the magisters as portals in their ritual to enter the Golden City. Red lyrium was also heavily involved, playing a part in creating the "song" of the old gods.

Flemeth actually was originally Captain Janeway

Captain Janeway went insane and became trapped in the Holodeck. Given Voyagers safety record, this is a definite possibility.

The Eluvian in the Witch Hunt DLC leads to Nirn

Because the Dragonborn and Morrigan's child from the Ritual are essentially the same thing, mortals with the soul of Dragons.

• • Except that in the Elder Scrolls, Dragons are Aedric Sons of Akatosh, literally time wrought into flesh. Not oversized magical animals. Also, being Dragonborn has nothing to do with parentage, but is rather the result of direct intervention from Akatosh. Secondly, we never see any Dragons in DA use the Thu'um, so...