Dragon Age II/WMG

The old god/Archdemon from Origins returns in DA 3 as a freed spirit or possessing a new character

As opposed to most grey wardens believing that an archdemon jumps to a darkspawn after death to prolong the blight, what if the archdemon jumping was really a frantic attempt to cleanse itself? In the final battle, there were plenty of darkspawn littering the field, why seek out the Grey Warden? Why seek out the baby who's farther away? When an archdemon dies, perhaps the old god breaks through the taint temporarily and consciously searches for the closest, cleanest vessel. The taint is also fighting for control and forces the old god to enter only tainted bodies to preserve the blight.

When an Archdemon is killed by a grey warden, the archdemon enters the grey warden's body and regains a slightly-cleaner mind based on how far the taint has gone in the warden. However, the old god senses that the warden is just as tainted as the darkspawn so it decides to leave the vessel by killing itself. This freed purified old god then returns to their resting place or finds a fitting vessel to be reborn. This justifies the shrine to Dumat in Legacy which was still very much active. This also explains why the wardens throw away heavily tainted wardens like Larius who seem to be able to fight just fine despite a haggard appearance. If they're too tainted and the only warden around, the old god's mind after possession would not be clean enough to reject the taint's power.

If the warden chooses Morrigan's ritual, the archdemon is attracted to the less tainted baby and regains and almost pure mind. It already has a clean-enough vessel so it remains where it is. This explains the theory that Flemeth is an old god. However, if they find their vessel unworthy, they will leave the body and search for another vessel. This also explains why a junior grey warden was needed. A grey warden with a deeper taint would cause the old god to avoid the heavily tainted baby or kill it right there.

Ideas around this is that the taint is tied more to the body and only infects the soul after. This is only roughly supported by the fact that we have not seen any spirits or demons who are tainted. That can explain the Archdemon's zombie-look: The Darkspawn probably tore an old god apart and filled it with their own flesh and blood. This will also solve the problem of Morrigan's ritual and the sacrifice causing canon problems. The baby was rejected or a warden killed the archdemon and the old god's soul is now lingering somewhere in Thedas. If Corypheus is the same deal, then it makes sense that he'd possess Janeka or Larius, the old god wants freedom from the taint while Corypheus has accepted it.

Anders will not appear in Dragon age III

• Assuming The Exiled Prince DLC is canon, no matter what you choose to do with Anders in the final act Anders will die. Choosing to spare him after he blows up the Chantry (Either let him stay in the party or run off) will make Sebastian swear to hunt Anders down with the Starkhaven army. Seeing how Anders was willing to "pay with his life" for what he has done, it's unlikely he'd deny Sebastian the revenge he deserves. The other choice, of course, would be to kill him yourself.
  • If you keep Anders in your party then you convince him to fight this revolution he's started. Until said revolution is over, I can see Anders brushing off Sebastian. Plus you might be giving Sebastian too much credit here. He says he wants vengeance and will destroy all of Kirkwall but he says a lot of things.
    • On the other hand you might not be giving Sebastian enough credit, throughout Dragon Age II his main problem is that he is conflicted between his vows as a chantry brother, and what he feels is his duty to reclaim his family's throne, after the events of the endgame where Anders blew up the chantry with Elthina still inside. I can't see him being conflicted at all, in fact I can see him turning into a full on Determinator.
      • Again, there's little reason to think that Anders would just let Sebastian kill him when he has a revolution to fight and this will likely drag on so long that afterwards a lot of people will end up dead and it won't really be the same as his dying post-DA2. And while you're right that Sebastian may not be conflicted, we haven't seen any evidence that when he does finally pull himself together that he can manage to accomplish things.
        • I had a feeling that Anders was prepared to die in order to serve justice for the destruction of the chantry and death of millions to come being possessed by justice/vengeance and all. It'd seem ironic for the spirit of vengeance/justice to deny Sebastian of both. Though, Anders always has been rather bias in his sense of justice.
          • He was but if you let him live and convince him to help you fight, you change his mind. He realizes that he's not done yet and that it would be too easy to just lay down and die because he started the war since now he's needed to fight. His need to fight for the mages now that he's put them all in terrible danger trumps any need Sebastian personally has to avenge Elthina.
            • It's worth noting that at one point in the game, the PC can question Anders about a similar situation. He says that he would kill a lot of innocent people to see justice served, but admits that those people would then deserve justice themselves.
              • Yeah, eventually. Not before the mages' situation is settled.
      • There's also the possibility that Anders and Hawke ran off together at the end of Dragon Age II. If Sebastian wants vengeance, there's a damn good chance he's going to have to go through Hawke first. Good luck with that...
  • Sebastian's kinda pathetic. He never gets anything important done without Hawke's help. Not to mention that even if he could track down Anders I rather suspect that Anders would hand him his arse on a plate. On a side note, it seems unlikely that Sebastian will actually be able to raise the promised army. He hasn't actually created any power base in Starkhaven at all.
    • Nah. Sebastian's badass enough that a fight between him and Anders wouldn't be that one-sided. But more importantly, it's made clear that the reason he hasn't gotten a power base in Starkhaven is because a) he was conflicted between Starkhaven and the Chantry, and b) if you convince him to reclaim his throne, he decides to put it on hold until the mage/templar conflict in Kirkwall is dealt with, since he (correctly) figures that's going to be a bigger problem. And given the events of the ending, I wouldn't be too surprised if he is running Starkhaven by the next time we see him, since he now has nothing to distract him.
      • Sebastian is no templar. If Anders doesn't let him within attack range and makes sure not to get hit by an arrow then it should be a reasonably easy fight for him. And don't forget that while Sebastian kept putting off building up his power base, others have had seven years to do so and Sebastian hasn't even been to Starkhaven since he was basically a male Isabela. It won't be so easy to just say 'hey, my family used to rule even though I'm practically a stranger. Follow me!' Even the likes of the Couslands and the Theirins in Ferelden had a great deal of difficulty once their family was killed off even though the Cousland starts trying to get support almost immediately and the Theirin line is a huge part of Ferelden national identity. 'Building a power base' isn't as easy as just showing up and wanting one.
      • OK, we're getting off topic here with the "Sebastian vs Anders" discussion. The point is this: for a full decade, Sebastian has been distracted from the Starkhaven throne for one reason or another. Now, for the first time in years, there is nothing distracting him from the throne. And if Anders is still alive, he has another reason to get the throne. It's probably not going to be easy, but a driven man is a powerful man. Also, remember that the mage/templar war just started, and a changing political world is inevitable. And Sebastian knows that the current ruler of Starkhaven was installed by a maleficar. If he can prove it (and even if he can't, given the anti-mage attitude likely going around) he gets a lot of allies very quickly.
        • It is far from a given that Sebastian possesses the skills to become the leader of Starkhaven, that the current leader is flawed enough for a coup to work, that Sebastian is loved enough in Starkhaven, that he didn't wait too long to attempt to claim the throne, and that he actually knows what he's doing on the ruling front given that he has zero experience. He could retake Starkhaven but it's just as likely that he doesn't manage it.
        • Also, the prince installed by a maleficar was a member of his own family. Not exactly the kind of thing that improves the family reputation.
      • Sebastian regaining the throne of Starkhaven is not only the crux of his Rivalry storyline, but it's a big part of the climax of the game. While Bioware does Retcon the player's decisions on occasion, they've been pretty consistent about keeping the big, climactic decisions in the player's hands. Sebastian going crazy with vengence and trying to reclaim the throne is such a climactic decision. So, frankly, if Sebastian doesn't get his hands back on the throne under such circumstances, it's going to be a horrific letdown.
      • Going to join in the Anders vs Sebastian Who Would Win debate because honestly, that's the more fun speculation here; my vote is going to Sebastian winning on the grounds that Anders wouldn't realize the fight had started until he saw the arrow sticking out of his chest.
        • Seb's hardly a stealth specialist and has a habit of announcing himself to people he hates before fighting them. Anders tends to do first, think later, so fightwise, gotta be Anders.
        • Also, as another troper mentioned higher on this list, if Sebastian goes anywhere near a romanced Anders while Hawke is around, Sebastian will probably be killed five times before he hits the ground.
        • Considering a romanced Anders, if he knows he's being pursued by the Starkhaven army, it's likely he'd leave Hawke for his/her safety. That way he can protect Hawke and continue fighting for the mages his own way. Storyline-wise, I don't think Anders can defeat Sebastian. Gameplay-wise, he's a powerful mage unit but storyline-wise, he's a healer.
          • The epilogue seems to think he's still with Hawke three years post-Chantry...or at least as far as Varric is aware.
          • Besides, does Hawke really strike you as the type of person who would let him/herself be left behind for the sake of safety?
          • Ahem: "storyline-wise, he's a healer." Sure, but he's also a healer with a powerful demon in him.
          • If anything, being a healer makes the case of Anders winning a fight against Sebastian all that much stronger. Unless Sebastian is able to kill him in one shot (which seems really unlikely) Anders can simply recover from any injuries Sebastian could give him. And let's not forget all the defensive spells Anders could have to help keep Sebastian's arrows away from him in the first place. Sebastian doesn't have either of those luxuries. Anders just needs to hit him with a few good offensive spells (which he DOES canonically have, remember him roasting hurlocks at the beginning of Awakening and Velanna's fireballs size comparison?) and Sebastian is done for.
          • A shot to the heart or the head would be instantly fatal if the cutscenes are anything to go by. At the very least they'd incapacitate him and give Seb a chance to finish him off. Also, romance shouldn't be taken into account; yea, a romanced Anders would have Hawke handy to administer the death, but a romanced Sebastian would have the same; it's fully possible to spare Anders' life only because you need his help in the fight and fully intend on killing him later.
            • Those only happen with cutscenes and unless the point is to have Anders dead in all games so Sebastian hunts down any living Anders and kills him, I doubt it will happen.
            • Also a meta reason why not; Sebastion is DLC and as a rule DLC is not allowed to dictate future games in case the player didn't download it.
            • A reason on why Anders, at least, won't be appearing in DAIII. He's the reason why Thedas is in absolute chaos. Imagine if he were to appear in the game in person. We are standing in front of the world's most wanted man. Why would he show himself to anyone? I'd expect he'd either be dead or in such deep hiding and protection from other mages/Hawke that no one can find him since nearly everyone in the world and their mabari want him dead.
• I think that the confrontation will most likely happen in DAIII with the Player Character meeting with them mid-sparing and will be forced to make a Sadistic Choice. Whether or not Anders will possess any evil qualities will be determineable by his relationship with Hawke.
  • • • • • I'd say we should worry more if Anders will stay dead. Justice kept a dead body moving around for quite a while in Awakenings, it could be that even if Anders wants to die Justice can keep him kicking.

Flemeth is collecting heroes in order to protect the entire world

Both the Hero of Ferelden and the Champion of Kirkwall vanish after their respective games, along with several of their companions. They were both set along their paths to greatness by Flemeth. It's entirely possible that Flemeth is gathering an army of powerful individuals to combat something even worse than the blight-such as the corrupted Golden City coming out of the Fade, and bringing the tainted Maker with it.

• • Or Hawke hasn't vanished and Cassandra simply did a piss poor job of tracking him/her. Considering how little she actually knows about the (wo)man in the beginning, I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case. Thedas is a big continent stuck in Medieval Stasis, so it's not like Hawke has a mugshot on the Internet or anything.
  • If you take her offer of avoiding the fight with her in dragon form in Origins, she tells the Warden that they won't meet again. Flemeth seems to be someone who sticks to these sorts of promises. She may be pulling the strings, but personally gathering an army of Champions that includes the Warden strikes me as doubtful.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The Warden won't see Flemeth again because he/she is probably on Morrigan's side of the equation, whether as an ally or a foil. Whatever's going on, it's not a two-way conflict, unless it's strictly between Morrigan and Flemeth (which seems unlikely). It's a three-way one.

Red Lyrium is artificial

An experiment by the Primeval dwarves, Gone Horribly Wrong. If Sandal's odd bit of prophecy is any indication, then magic was far more common in Thedas long ago, and the consumption of normal lyrium was astronomical. Red Lyrium was devised as an alternative. What's it made of? Well...

Red Lyrium is people.

If Meredith's transformation is any indication, Red Lyrium requires living vessels. Naturally, the process in incredibly painful, and the souls of those who are processed linger in agony inside the material. This explains why anyone in close proximity to the stuff goes insane.

• In DA:O, Caridian could only make living golems by placing a dwarf inside a suit of armor and then filling it with regular lyrium. However, in the final fight with Meredith, she creates living statues merely by zapping them with her red lyrium. Red Lyrium has the ability to fill in the space of the living component so it really could be made of people.

Lyrium is also people

Blue Lyrium is the fossilized remains of the dead, and it takes an incredibly long time for the stuff to be a viable source of mana, hence the creation of Red Lyrium, the production process of which is simply accelerated by several orders of magnitude. The Chantry's practice of burning the dead has left Thedas with too few bodies to fossilize, leaving only animals and dwarves for the natural process, and thus making current-day normal lyrium rarer or poorer quality.

The Warden will be a masked figure in future installments

Whether in a sequel or an expansion pack, the Hero of Ferelden will be an optional party member and will be forced to cover his face due to a grievous, scarring injury. This will dodge the issue of the incompatible facial data between games.

• Alternatively, the Warden will show up masked/hooded/helmed, and as the camera pans to take it off, the game will allow the player to use the character customization on the Warden.
  • That sounds like a pretty terrible idea since it'd break the mood of the game.
    • How, exactly?
    • Not so much the game, but the mood of the scene, and I agree. A more appropriate moment would be encountering a painter/sculptor trying to get the likeness of the Warden just right, and you'll be able to give him tips through the character generator.
    • Well yea, needs proper framing. Still, simply giving the opportunity to use the character customization on the Warden works considerably better than giving them a mask. The Black Emporium dlc even gives an explaination for any differences in appearance; a mirror that lets you edit Hawke's appearance comes with a lore explanation. Could be used on the Warden.
    • Unless the Warden is seen for less than three seconds, I don't think we'll see him or her, masked or otherwise. After all, you're going to want to talk to this person--but the Warden has no canonical voice. They'd have to pick a personality. Wearing a helmet or hood makes more sense than covering up a disfiguration, considering you can make your Warden butt ugly and that doesn't bother him.
    • Assuming the Warden is just an npc instead of a full player character alongside Hawke. See the Dragon Age WMG under future games. Likely? No. Awesome if it actually happens? Hell yeah.
    • What if the Warden was a dwarf? Stilts?
    • Then he's a dwarf, and that's that. What's the problem?
• Alright, so what if Bioware realizes they did a good job with Knights of the Old Republic, and make the player character or one of your companions an amnesiac you wander upon who happens to be the lone survivor of some sort of darkspawn raid on a Warden patrol in the Deep Roads, and one of the main/side quests is finding out who they are
  • That's assuming they do it at all, which they can't since that would involve the exact character you "described" to show up as the "amnesiac". Nobody would be fooled.

The dwarves used to have magic

This is all but stated outright in the Primordial Thaig's codex entry, but I'm putting it here for completionism. Maybe they even intentionally gave it up to protect themselves from abominations. And related...

Sandhal is a dwarf mage

That's why he can enchant with such ease, and how he managed to freeze that ogre. He specifically stated that was "not enchantment," so it has to be something.

• Hawke can even suggest this in-game. Though it is the silly option and it does prompt Bodahn to point out that it's the tranquil that do the enchanting.
  • Non-Tranquil can enchant; Tranquil just do it with greater ease.

Caradin didn't actually invent Golems

Caradin discovered one of those "primordial thaigs", and stole their knowledge, claiming to have invented them himself so he could become a paragon.

• Makes more sense than a guy saving "let's see what happens if I entomb someone in molten lyrium," you've gotta admit.
• Even rediscovering something like that would get Caradin considerable accolades. Maybe even enough for paragonhood in its own right. If this WMG is true, Caradin may even have been honest at the time about how he came about it. But as the years passed, the dwarves forgot that detail and assumed Caradin came up with it himself. The source of his knowledge just didn't come up when he met the Warden.
  • The Golems have Shale's charge attack, which only she had in Origins. Maybe Shale was an attempt to recreate the more powerful golems of ages past, where as the others were easier, mass produced versions.

The first golems were inspired by rock wraiths.

Working with the above WMG, the "naturally" occurring Rock Wraiths got the primeval dwarves to thinking and they duplicated the process to create proto-golems. Alternately, the Profane are the proto-golems and the primeval dwarves were some seriously twisted Mad Scientists.

Qunari do NOT have horns, we're just experiencing a case of Unreliable Narrator

An interview on IGN has stated in the opening levels of Dragon Age 2, Hawke will have high-level gear and abilities. These are then shown to be the exagerations of the dwarf narrator, who is discussing Hawke with a chantry seeker. The reason Qunari have suddenly developed horns is that the seeker's perception of the Qunari as monstrous beings is tainting the dwarfs recollections. You'd have to be mad to retcon in four foot long horns on a species, after all.

• Nope, they have horns. It's canonized and all (besides the articles and direct Word of God, we have the trailer, which doesn't exactly seem like Varric's perspective). Also, it's not exactly a retcon--ogres are tainted qunari, and they all have horns. Rather, we find out that Tal-Vashoth have their horns removed somehow when they leave the Qun, and certain qunari--like Sten--are born without horns, and it is generally accepted that they are marked for something great in life. Most qunari have horns, however. Yes, some of their design has been changed, but the horns thing is not completely out of left field.

Flemeth is the Maker

Going by many examples the most recurring thing is the origin of the blight. The Tevinter Blood Magi/Kings went through the Fade to reach the Golden City, Corrupted it, and as punishment were sent back to Theda as the First Darkspawn. Going by that story you call it's untrue. Why turn them into darkspawn, death is more fitting, or a personel eternal hell in the fade. Looking at all the backstory and the things left out of that story the Old Gods showed magi how to reach the golden city, why? More of the backstory of the Maker is that it created the Fade first and made the spirits, yet abandon them when they were not what the Maker wanted them to be. The Makers here shows its to be an uncaring god. And it shows again as its told multiple times that the Maker has abandoned Theda. Going by this it can be assumed that that once the Maker began to abandon the new creation of Theda the Old Gods started to Notice, by tricking or telling the Magi of what's happening the Magi went through the fade to stop the Maker from possibly Destroying Theda. By fighting the Maker in the Golding City the Anger and Rage from both the Maker and the Magi caused it to turn Black. The Magi almost Defeated the Maker until it forced its final hand to survive, by forcefully pulling itself and the Magi out of Fade. This weakens the Maker into what is now Flemeth, in the process corrupting the magi into the first Darkspawn. Flemeth learns that it cannot go back to the Golden City, Trapped in her own creation. In Revenge she hunted down the Old Gods, Killing some of the weaker ones, but only able to put the seven strongest ones to sleep. Once the Darkspawn grew into a large horde did one find one of the old gods, beginning the First Blight. During the Fourth Blight Flemeth learned of a way return to power, by absorbing the essence of an Old God. Waiting for the Fifth Blight she planned and experimented on how, finally coming up with the plan to (Spoiler) To use a future Host to give birth to an Old God. But unable to find an Old God she had to wait, learning that the soul has to be purified of the corruption she caused. By need of Blood Magic, A Host, and an unborn child of blood of a Grey Warden. Its possible that she tried to do this during Fourth Blight, minus the unborn child used to purify the soul of the Old God. It's also possible that she cannot birth or Kill an Archdemon for the reason she caused and is the source of the Darkspawn, needing others for it. The Warden is need only for a small amount of the Corruption to be used as a beacon for the God's Soul, Destroying the contained Corruption in the process. Learning from that to the events of DA:O. It's also possible that the soul of the God will only have enough power to allow Flemeth into the Golden City, There she can restore her former power. The fact that she cannot die almost adds to theory. If she were a Demon she has the chance to die, but its unlikely so as in Witch Hunt, Morrigan reveals that she is not a Demon, or even a mortal, telling her Lover/Friend/Ally that flemeth is more a danger than herself. During the Events of DA:O there is the option to find Flemeth old Grimore, Killing Flemeths current host and take her real Grimore. This Book possibly revealed more Grimores to other Secrets, Allowing Morrigan to piece together Enough to understand what Flemeth possibly is. It's possible Hawke story is this, revealing the truth, causing the church to ruin and causing the future civil war between those that continue to believe the church to those that believe Hawke. Even if Hawke isn't the Dragon God Baby this theory at least makes his story important to the series. Making the Baby in the Likely third game to be the protagonist, bringing Theda together once more in order for the smallest of chance to Defeat the Maker from Destroying the World.

• ...I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
  • From what I understand, it goes something like this: The Maker was planning to destroy the world, so the Old Gods sent the mages of the Tevinter Imperium into the Fade to fight it. Their attack greatly weakened the Maker, who ran from the Golden City and became Flemeth, and the mages became darkspawn. Flemeth then hunts down and kills a bunch of Old Gods in revenge, but puts the most powerful seven of them(?) to sleep. Later on she discovered that she could gain entry to the Golden City again and restore her power by consuming an Old Gods essence that was free of corruption, which is why she did the whole thing with Morrigan. The next two games are going to be about stopping her before she gets her powers back and destroys the world.
  • God, I hope not. Why can't any mythos with ambiguous religions have them stay ambiguous!?
  • Because we have enough of that in Real Life.

The Maker is a trickster thief of a god who claims the works of all his fellows as his own, and his rival and peer Flemeth is engineering a long-term Xanatos Gambit against him in retaliation.

And freeing an Old God from the Archdemon's blight via Morrigan's baby was her freeing another peer from the Makers's doings.

Sandal's Prophecy

"One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see."

• "He" is Morrigan's son.
  • The bump there is whether or not the Dark Ritual was actually performed. He uses the exact same speech regardless, so he must be referencing someone else in the event that the Old God Baby was not conceived. Not to say that he can't refer to said child if it was performed, though.
• The whole thing is a reference to the end of DA2. The "magic coming back" refers to the resurgence of mage power, freed from the shackles of Chantry oppression; "everyone will be just like they were" implies either a role reversal, back to the old days of Tevinter, or that mages and templars would be just as tyrannical as the other. "Shadows part / sky opens" is the visual description of the Chantry explosion, and the "he" rising refers to Anders as the instigator. Hawke might be a possibility as well if not for gender complications (i.e. Fem!Hawke).
  • Too mundane. Sandal said, specifically, "the magic will come back" not "the mages will come back". Whatever it is he's talking about isn't as simple as a rebellion.

The Amell family is the single most important group in Thedas.

Considering that a human mage Warden is an Amell and Hawke is one as well, we'll be finding some amazing secret behind this group of magical hero-producing Kirkwall nobles.

• Word of God says the filial connection between Human Mage Warden and Hawke is pretty inconsequential. However, Hawke's bloodline produces many powerful mages, including Hawke's father and Hawke's sister. And possibly Hawke.
  • Hawkes father was unrelated to the Amells.

Flemeth is the Old God Razikale.

In the Codex, it states that what Ferelden knows as the 'Old Gods' are actually dragons. As we all know, Flemeth is infamous for transforming into a dragon in your fight with her, but what if she didn't do that simply to provide a challenge? What if that was her real form, or some echo of her real form? The Codex states that five out of the seven Old Gods, including Urthemiel, presumably perished in the First to Fifth Blights, but there are two other Old Gods that are only mentioned by name- Lusacan, the Dragon of Night, and Razikale, the Dragon of Mystery. Needless to say, being the "Dragon of Mystery" would be an appropriate title for Flemeth, and not only would this explain why she's so fond of taking a dragon's form in Origins and the sequel, but also why Morrigan warns you that Flemeth is not an apostate, abomination, or even human. Presumably, the fact that Flemeth indirectly arranged things so Morrigan would be in place to create the Godspawn using Morrigan's Ritual has something to do with the fact that the Godspawn would have Urthemiel's soul.

• Flemeth is an Old God, but Toth, not Razikale, and current Flemeth is the daughter of the original, legendary Flemeth. In the timeline provided at the end of the Origins Prima Guide, Flemeth (the legend) is born on year 0 of Towers. Toth's Blight (the third) occurs Towers 10-25. This means when Toth dies, Flemeth is about 25. It also specifies that Cormac was involved in the Blight, dying at the last battle. Cormac is also associated in the legends with Flemeth (though the actual events of the legend doesn't seem to work out chronologically). So a reasonably likely scenario is that Cormac and Flemeth were somehow involved, and Flemeth-the-legend was pregnant - leading accidentally to the conditions of the ritual. The current Flemeth is actually the legendary Flemeth's daughter, who also happens to be carrying the soul of the Old God Toth. The legends surrounding Flemeth and Cormac are the corrupted myth originating from that set of events. This is also how Morrigan and Flemeth know about the ritual.

A DLC will let us hear Varric's story in full, if he wasn't being forced by Cassandra to tell the truth.

According to what we've heard so far, the opening levels will have Varric wildly exagerating Hawke's adventures, only for Cassandra to force him to tell the truth. While he may continue to exxagerate at certain points in the game to annoy her, or maybe lie to her outright for some big Keyser Soze-like reveal, the main game will, for the most part tell the truth of Hawke's rise to power. In the DLC, Varric will be telling the story to someone naive enough to believe him (say, a barmaid he's trying to get into bed). He'll condense the story to about 3-4 hours of gameplay with all the benefits of the opening segment (but still challenging for players) and all the glorious, glorious ham. It will eventually devolve into a parade of Crazy Awesome like something out of Axe Cop. The DLC will end with Varric's version of the final battle, as Hawke, his party members, the friendly NPCs, the Warden from the first game and Commander Shepard, all riding griffins, charge the Big Bad and his army of Archdemons, also riding griffins.

• I'd buy it.
• I'd buy it twice, that's how awesome that sounds. (Except for dragons Archdemons riding griffins, which sounds awkward.)
• Just to further bump up the awesomeness of this WMG, Varric is telling the story to an increasingly awestruck, yellow eyed, raven haired 10 year old boy, whereupon Varric being finished the boy has to run off to his mother, Morrigan, who scolds him for listening to such foolish stories, considering they've probably been brought up with the reality of the situation, making this a chance for the child to connect with normal youth, such as outlandish Folk Hero stories, albeit momentarily as they have to come to terms with...whatever it is that they have to do, as well as to keep the Sequel Hook of the OGS and Morrigan alive and connected with the two games.
• Does it have to be a DLC? I'd rather it be a full 40-hour game. Also, throw in some Qunari somewhere. Maybe that female Qunari love interest people were clamoring for during development.

The book that Flemeth has you deliver at the beginning of the game is the same one Morrigan steals in The Witch Hunt DLC

It's been revealed the game will open with Hawke and his/her siblings being tasked with bringing a book to a Dalish clan. In the Witch Hunt DLC, Morrigan steals a book of importance from a Dalish clan and they attempt to retrive it.... By asking Flemeth for help. This all means that Flemeth planned on Morrigan finding and stealing the book, so everything is still working as she has expected.

• Seems unlikely. On this troper's playthrough of Witch Hunt, non-romance and letting her go, she left behind the Dalish book along with a mystery book, the DLC ending just as the Warden leaned down to read it. I assume that even if you end it differently, the Dalish and mystery books would still be left behind in the cave, albeit unmentioned.
  • Now seems severely unlikely, as Flemeth has Hawke deliver an amulet to the Dalish elves, not a book.

Flemeth is behind everything in the DA World

Continuing this from the DA:O page, really. In the demo, Flemeth saves your sorry ass from an ogre, because the same happened in Origins, this suggests that she's orchestrating the entirety of Thedas. She saved the PC Warden and Alistair in DA:O, and seems to clearly have an agenda in II when she makes a very suspicious comment about fate vs destiny vs happenstance. Putting aside the fact that you're the PC, why on earth would an extremely powerful, shown-to-be-cold-hearted possibly-dragon witch save both the Warden and Hawke, if not to further some idea of how the future of Thedas needs to play out in order for her Xanatos Gambit to work?

• And The Architect, and to a greater extent the Darkspawn as a whole, are the Spanner in the Works for her plan as Avernus (From Warden's Keep) has said that the Taint is the one thing that Demons/Abominations/Blood Mages CANNOT influence at all.

Flemeth is behind the Warden and Hawke's disappearances. As part of her plan.

I mean...who else has cause, ability, and would do it?

• Flemeth is grooming a dream team of the best Thedas has to offer to do... something. It probably involves a lot of asskicking and snarky comments, so Varric will naturally be a member of the team.
  • So Flemeth is the Illusive Man?
    • Not a bad comparison and the "Reapers" Flemeth is dealing with may be either the Archdemons or some other threat that's only been hinted at in the games.

The Divine has been the same person over generations, and the same kind of 'being' as Flemeth.

The series is all about the power game between the two, with the Divine representing Order and Stability while Flemeth represents Chaos and Change. Also, the Divine has been using the same method of life extension that Flemeth uses, the original person that she was at the start? Andraste.

Dragon Age 3 is going to take place in Orlais.

After all, that's where Bohdan and Sandal are going. And, well, since all of the Seekers from the Chantry that we've heard speak with a Orlesian accent. And the fact that the Grey Wardens show up during the Qunari assault on Kirkwall and talk about "The Situation in Orlais".

• Was just coming here to post this. It would make sense, there's some signifigant talk of Orlais in-game, and in all likelyhood Bioware would need to change the placement of the game for sake of coding and planning of the game. However, Cassandra is from Nevarra, not Orlais. Also, with the Divine based in Orlais, and the final shot of her order of Seekers could set them up for an undefined role in Dragon Age III.
• Another reference to Orlais; The Golem Shopkeeper in the "Hidden Dungeon" at Sundermount says something along the lines of "The Stone is beneath Orlais." He then goes on to say something in what I imagine is dwarven.
  • That’s an interesting quote. Because Tug’s axe in Leliana’s Song has an inscription saying "The Stone lives beneath Orlais."
• Plus, Morrigan goes to Orlais if you didn't romance her and refused her ritual, and is seen in the Frostback Mountains, i.e. en route to Orlais, if you did. (I should also say I haven't played Witch Hunt, but my understanding is that at the end she goes through the mirror to a unspecified place)
• Given the nature of the conflict going on, this makes perfect sense, given that Orlais is the home of Val Royeaux, which is in turn the home of the Divine and the Chantry.
• Plus, the Divine? We've already met her. In the Leliana's Song DLC, Leliana is rescued from a dungeon by Revered Mother Dorothea, who also inspires the Orlesian bard to dedicate her life to the Maker. Years later in Act III, Leliana is serving as Sister Nightingale, the Divine's "Left Hand." And during the (also DLC) quest "Faith," we discover a Codex page stating that in the time between DAO and DA II, the former Divine died and was replaced by Dorothea, now Divine Justinia V. And knowing Bioware, you can be sure this is going to come back around...
• The new Dragon Age novel - Asunder is going to be set in Orlais.
• Creative Director Mike Laidlaw all but confirmed this at PAX East.

Flemeth is Fen'Harel.

While "Flemeth is _____" is overplayed, I've seen this posted elsewhere and I kinda agree with it. Both Morrigan and Fenris say that Flemeth is no simple abomination. Her true grimoire has a leafless tree on the front, something likely to be connected to a people close to nature. The song Merrill sings to draw her from the amulet is "In Uthenera" (the song referring to the Arlathan elves mystical sleep cycle thing and sung by Leliana after Nature of the Beast in Origins), reinforcing the "elven" connection. Also, Flemeth's general snarkiness fits with the motif of a trickster god.

Furthermore, the story of the Old Gods closely matches the story of the Forgotten Ones in Fen'Harel's legend, what with the being imprisoned in a deep abyss (the earth) and in maybe a bit of a stretch, the Creators could of been locked in the Golden City, the heaven of the myth. Look at that codex entry again. The Tevinter magisters entrance into the Golden City may have been a kink in those plans, and the resultant breach was used as a means of continuing their eternal war, by unleashing the darkspawn on the prisons of their enemies or by the F Os themselves to circumvent their imprisonment. Kind of dickish in either case, but hey, they're gods. The Maker (a pissed Fen'Harel in this case) would certainly chastise those responsible for screwing with his plans.

I could use the mythology to try and reinforce my argument further, but in the interests of brevity, I'll state that BioWare doesn't generally throw out fluff without it appearing in their games in some meaningful fashion. The Fen'Harel myth was told outright by Merrill in something that could of been restricted to a codex entry (which it already was). And my experience in playing western RPGS, particularly ones that embody the essence of D&D, leads me to believe that eventually down the line you'll fight an actual "god" (not just a crusty dragon) of the mythology. In true Munchkin fashion, "If it has stats, it's there to be killed." Now how Andraste and the Old God Baby fits into this I have no frakking clue.

• • Or the Maker is the Dread Wolf

If you joined Morrigan in Witch Hunt, The Warden returned to Ferelden not too long after.

During the "King Alistair" quest, Alistair mentions the Warden is back in Denirim, even if the Warden went with Morrigan into the mirror. Therefore, something must have happened that allowed the Warden to return at some point. This also means that the Warden's dissappearance is unrelated to Morrigan.

• He does say that they "should be" back in Denerim, and he wouldn't know for certain where they are from Kirkwall.
  • True, but according to the timeline, Witch Hunt and that particular part of the game are seperated by about seven years. If the Warden stayed in the mirror, Alistair would have probably heard about it.
  • Alternatively, they returned only shortly before their return to Denirim. Also possibly a bug, a retcon/rewrite(similar to Zevran, Leliana, and Anders all being alive again if you import a save where they all died), or a cover-up(the hero of Fereldan disappearing would be a big wound to morale). All possible.

The Nature of Red Lyrium

Red and blue lyrium are both sources of magical power and they can both cause insanity with prolonged exposure. Blue lyrium gives resistance to its effects and by extension the Fade. Red lyrium has the opposite effect; exposure increases sensitivity to the Fade. It could even restore someone's connection to the Fade after it's been severed entirely. That's how Sandal became a Dwarven mage(see corresponding WMG above); Bohdan found him wandering the Deep Roads after he came in contact with red lyrium. Even Dwarves that don't have the potential to become mages are opened to the Fade and recover their lost ability to dream. When Bartrand went nuts, Anders said that if Bartrand were anything besides a dwarf he would have suspected demonic involvment. He could easily have been wrong. Someone as greedy as Bartrand and newly exposed to the Fade would be a perfect target for a Desire Demon. Look at Meredith. Even before she got ahold of the lyrium idol she was stuck up and nearly completely convinced she was doing the right thing no matter how horrible it was. Once she become more sensitive to the Fade, even though she had not yet become a mage herself, she became a perfect target for a Pride Demon. The reason Sandal didn't become possesed was because the awakening of his magic severely impacted his mental facilities, leaving him much less desirable to any demons when there were so many mentally fit mages to take advantage of. He may even have effectively shut down his mind on purpose so the demons would leave him alone.

Lyrium is the Life Force of the planet.

Yes, just like Final Fantasy VII. It's the physical manifestation of the soul of the planet that Thedas is on and is the "Maker" that Andrastre charmed with her singing: the lyrium veins in II look very much like actual blood veins for a visual connection. The Fade is the mind/spirit of the planet with the Golden City housing its brain equivalent. The tainting of the City caused the Planet to go into shock and before it slipped into a coma it used its prophet to start a religion to unite its Children against the Darkspawn, which are symbolic of the damage inflicted by the Magisters and a "symptom" of the true disease. The final game in the series will be an incursion into the Black City to cure the Maker/Planet and eradicate the Darkspawn Taint forever.

• Note that at least one codex entry mentions that the dwarves believe lyrium is alive. Which would mean using lyrium is just a slightly different kind of blood magic...
  • Those codex entries inspired the idea and IIRC the dwarves claimed the Stone told them how to collapse tunnels to stop a Darkspawn incursion. The Maker and the Stone may just be different names for the same thing. The Elves' Gods may be manifestations of the Planet like the Weapons. And, strange to even think it, Flemeth could be an expy of Sephiroth (long white hair, changes forms...) depending on what her final goal is if it involves destroying Thedas.
• Heck, the Darkspawn Taint itself could be an alien Virus that infects entire worlds, not unlike Jenova. The Tevinter mages weren't responsible for the Taint, they just the bad luck of being in the Golden City at the same time it was infected by the Taint, and they brought it back with them as the first Darkspawn.

Sandal has some connection to Flemeth.

During Act 3, Bodhan mentions that Sandal has had a recurring nightmare of a old lady laughing at the foot of his bed. Who do we know that fits that description.

• Fenris on a bad hair day? No, seriously, it may be that Sandal is a Seer in addition to enchantment and that one day day Flemeth is going to be very happy. And that will probably be very bad for everyone else. The main page's Obfuscating Stupidity entry mentions that Sandal says some incredibly deep phrases on occasion.
  • Sandal mentions the "scary old lady" in act 3. Who is the final boss of act 3? A scary old lady with a magic sword. He's quite obviously talking about Meredith.
    • Except Meredith could hardly be considered "old". She's early middle-aged at most.
    • Not to mention that Sandal mentions a scary old lady laughing. Meredith is way too stern and strict to laugh at anything, never mind the chaos that's going on by the time Sandal makes the comment. Flemeth on the other hand almost certainly indulges in a mad cackle every now and then, judging from her general hamminess.

Each game in the main Dragon Age line will have a "quirk."

Origins was the six origins, of course, and the sequel had Varric's story-telling, both of which are different from the standard linear RPG experience. A hypothetical format for the third game would be a series of timelines where playing a certain event in a previous location and time would affect events in a location further down the timelines, ex. the events of one group of characters during a hostage crisis would affect a war involving other characters. The story would be told in the format of a novel or history book only the player is not one character like Hawke or the Warden but several in a narrative. Other entries would take the Fable or Fallout 3 route and begin during childhood or place the player as the storyteller that chooses how much to exaggerate and what to be accurate about. The storyteller? Bodahn, since he's always where the action's at and the narrative could stretch Origins to the sequel to the future games. Alternately, the player could control a party of characters in the future of Thedas discovering the past through documents and locations with te actions of the characters in the past affecting the future.

• And Now for Someone Completely Different. Of course, Leaked Experience could make this work.
• Could avoid And Now for Someone Completely Different by making the characters all badass.
• Another possibility would be for Bioware to make a Wide Open Sandbox RPG. It may not be a full-on quirk, but it would be something Bioware hasn't done before (their games tend to be more, well, linear)...

All lyrium comes from the same source.

The source is:

• An alien spaceship deep underneath Thedas.
• The remains of the Maker.
• A portal to another world.

The lyrium idol is connected to the Darkspawn and the remaining Archdemons/Old Gods.

Both the Mother in Dragon Age: Awakening and Bartrand kept raving about how they wanted to hear "the song" again. That can't be a coincidence.

• Even normal lyrium seems to have this effect as seen when Justice is given the Lyrium ring in Awakening.
  • Pure lyrium sings. Literally. That's how the dwarves find it.
  • The same thing is mentioned by Rhys and Cole in Asunder.

Red Lyrium created the Darkspawn.

As related to the above post. The Tevinter Magisters created/found Red Lyrium in a A God Am I attempt and it went very very badly.

• Note that the darkspawn aren't connected to the Fade, however. That doesn't invalidate this, I'm just pointing back to the "red lyrium increases connections to the Fade" theory. It's mentioned in lyrium's codex entry that prolonged exposure can cause mutations, and that the magister-lords of Tevinter didn't even look human anymore.
• The red lyrium idol caused hallucinations of a song and music, to the point of madness. The darkspawn hear the call of the old gods as a song that compels them to search for said gods. Possible connection.
• Worth noting is that red lyrium has only been found in a thaig that remains untouched by the darkspawn. What this means is anyone's guess.
  • There could be a somewhat more mundane answer there; the lost thaig was home to the profane and the rock wraith, along with several demons. It's possible they've just fought off all darkspawn that would encroach on their territory. There's something of a precedent for this; the Calling shows a dragon keeping darkspawn out of its lair.

Meredith is madly in love with Anders.

No logic behind this, I just find the idea amusing.

• Presumably she didn't kill him herself because she couldn't bring herself to slay her one true love.
• Also explains why she wants Hawke dead so badly at the end. Not matter who is romanced, it's always hinted that Anders is in love with Hawke. Meredith was just eliminating the competition!

Miscellaneous guesses on what party members will be doing in later installments.

• If spared, Anders will appear in DA 3 again. Either he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by doing something very cruel, ( perhaps killing orphans of the Chantry who could become future templars) or he has a My God, What Have I Done? moment after seeing all the chaos he caused.
  • I posit that this may change based on his interaction with Hawke. If a Rival, or not sufficiently friendly, he's going to be more antagonistic, but if a Friend, especially if a LI, he'll be seeking to do good to pay back for the wrong things he did.
  • He was showing signs of The Atoner even before he did that.
  • Depends, as a Rival, Anders believed that Vengeance simply has went too far and will at one point take control of his mind completely. He will either join Hawke in fighting for the Mages freedom or to fight to stop the Tevinter Imperium and maleficars who is taking advantage of this war.
• If not turned over to the Arishok, and if romanced, Isabela will be traveling with Hawke on her new ship, adventuring around the world and solving mysteries. If Merrill was also romanced, she's coming along too.
• Varric reminds Cassandra that even the Templars are revolting from the Chantry. If Carver lived and became a Templar, he'll turn out to be the one leading that charge.
• Fenris will be an anti-slavery freedom fighter of some sort who tracks rumors of Tevinter slavers operating outside the Empire.
• If she was romanced by Hawke then Merrill will have created a settlement where humans, elves, and mages live in relative safety.

There will be various DLC exploring the fates of your party members

To expand upon the above WMG, and taking into account the considerable ambiguity in the epilogue as to what happens to Hawke and co. Multiple DLCs may be released with each of the party members as the "main" character (ala Leliena's Song). Depending on your relationships and choices, the story will change. The only issue may be certain storylines may be complicated to program, especially if its just for a DLC. For example, Isabela could potentially be with Hawke, be on the run from the Quanari if she took the relic and didn't return or who knows what else. Thats ONE character...out of 8 possible companions (if all are left alive/still with you end game). Names could be stuff along the lines of -

• Varric - The Storyteller
• Carver and Bethany - The Younger Hawke
• Aveline - The Guard of Kirkwall
• Isabela - The Captain's Voyage
• Fenris - The Slave's Tale
• Merril - The Last Keeper
• Sebastian - The Princely Priest
• Anders - The Price of Vengeance
• It would help if the DLC happened before or during the main storyline, much like Leliana's Song with Guest Star Party Members. All the names would still work. Similar to Legacy each of the Tales could be accessed by interacting with an item in Hawke's home to keep from having too many saves.
  • Isabela's could show her stealing the Relic with some of her old crew and ending with her shipwreck in Kirkwall.
  • Fenris' could detail his final escape from Danarius.
    • Any chance we could get a cameo from Sten in there?
      • If I had my way, yes. Sten would probably object to Fenris being enslaved and would make for a good party member. The conversations those two could have...
  • Merril's would be set in Ferelden as she fights to protect her clan from the Blight during the events of Origins. During the quest she could encounter elves that are giving up on their heritage which would motivate her to fix the pieces of the Eluvian she smuggled with her from the Dalish Elf Origin.
  • Sebastian's could happen after the post-game as he returns to Starkhaven to take control of his lands. He really doesn't have a choice. Flora Harriman could be a potential part member as well as Hawke if the player chose to kill Anders at the end of the game.
    • Unless the plot is to kill all the enemy soldiers in the castle and his pawn of a cousin, I doubt that taking control of the kingdom he's ignored for seven years and hasn't been to for longer than that would be the kind of thing a DLC could be based around. Maybe a whole game but DLCs are too short.
      • Isn't killing a lot of people how we got through the game? There could be some quiet moments where Sebastian remembers his family and even if it's the length of Legacy that's still enough time to have some decent story lines. To save time Sebastian could arrive in the middle of the revolution and fights against his cousin's mercenaries with those that remain loyal to his family-or just hate his cousin a lot.
  • Bethany/Carver could have two stories: a story set in the Gallows with either Carver as a Templar or Bethany as a Circle Mage trying to figure out why mages keep disappearing and a Grey Warden story that works for both of them. Alistair (if a Grey Warden) could make a special appearance and maybe some of the Wardens from Awakening for the fans.
    • Maybe Loghain too, seeing as he's apparently still knocking about by Act 3.
  • Aveline dealing with a mysterious crime wave affecting Kirkwall, helped by her husband Donnic and Guardsman Brennan. Complete with a First-Person Smartass monologue by Aveline in the style of a noir film.
  • Varric telling the true story of his meeting Bianca and showing his reliance on a crappy crossbow before meeting the love of his life. In Legacy we meet Bianca's inventor Gerav so he could be a party member and Dougal Gavorn from the "Friends In Low Places" quest also worked with Varric in the past.
  • Anders on the run from the Grey Wardens and his struggles with Vengeance in his mind. Alternately, his last mission with the Grey Wardens and what convinces to begin his crusade for mage liberation. Nathaniel already has a character model in the game and it's another chance to use the other Awakening Wardens. A major Tear Jerker could be giving away Ser Pounce-A-Lot at one point of the story.
  • Word of God is while they're not against showing more of the companions, right now they're focusing on Hawke's story, since that's what the fans seem to want.

The Grand Cleric is Meredith's mother

I just finished my first playthrough last night and got to thinking. As far as I know we only see Elthina and Meredith in one scene together (Act 3 with Orsino's public protest) but IMO the two did look to have quite a resemblence. Now Elthina does look old but perhaps not old enough to be Meredith's mother, but she mentions at one point having presided over some Chantry ceremony for Hawke's mother (I can't remember the name but Leandra was a baby so I'm assuming some sort of baptism) which given the age of Leandra makes Elthina a fair bit older than she might look.

I also noticed that when the Chantry gets blown up by Anders while Sebastian goes into instant grief Meredith (being a Knight Templar and more than a little unhinged at this point) goes straight for the aggressive kill all mages option. Perhaps a little bit more understandable if her mother has just been killed by a mage. Elthina seemed to know Hawke's grandparents quite well. If Meredith truly was Elthina's daughter, Meredith and Leandra might have been childhood friends, or at least known each other from a young age.

• Sounds better than the Psycho Lesbian vibes this troper got.
  • Meredith mentions her entire family was killed and she was only survivor by an errant mage so highly doubt this is the case.
  • This was actually something I had considered myself, but it was mainly because Elthina literally sends Meredith and Orsino to their rooms to think about what asses they're being. She certainly acts like she's their mother, but then, she acts like she's everyone's mother.
  • Of course Meredith would give a story like that about her family. Someone in the Chantry like Elthina wouldn't be allowed to have children after taking vows, the birth was covered up obviously. Meredith has had that cover story drummed into her since childhood. The only people who know would be Elthina, Meredith and perhaps someone higher ranked (probably deceased by the time of DA2) in the Chantry. Additional thought about this, perhaps it's not a cover story. Since Elthina likely couldn't raise Meredith herself, she'd be given to a family somewhere that could raise her. Then, the mage kills that family with Meredith surviving. Elthina uses her pull to have Meredith brought to a Chantry orphanage in Kirkwall so she can keep an eye on her secret daughter. Ok, so I'm totally making up my own story now but I'd like to see more development for Meredith.
  • I think having Elthina as basically Meredith's surrogate mother, similar to how she acts for Sebastian, explains the reaction well enough. Meredith witnessed her family get slaughtered by her own sister, and then her maternal substitute for the last several decades is blown up. We can chalk up the different reaction than Sebastian to the longer time Meredith's known Elthina, the more horrific manner in which Meredith's family was killed creating deeper emotional scars and in turn, a deeper bond to Elthina, or, just maybe, the fact that Meredith was being driven batshit insane by the lyrium idol.

The dwarves of the Primeval Thaig were the ones who really created the Darkspawn

The Tevinter Magisters were either their partners in crime or a convenient patsy.

Cullen has an important role to play in the next Dragon Age game

It seems like Cullen just about always survives the events of the game. He even stands up to the final boss and isn't instantly splattered to show the direness of the situation. Bioware is probably keeping him around for a reason.

• • At this point it would be surprising if he's not a playable character/party member in the next installment.
  • SO incredibly happy someone else pointed this out/feels the same way. He seems to be having almost a bit of his own rise to power story, playing on the sidelines to both the Warden and Hawke. Stands to reason he's being set up to be a compaion. Possibly the writers testing out if he's well-received enough by fans. Also, if made a companion in the next sequel, it might be interesting to have him be romanceable. Especially given his infatuation with the female Mage!Warden.
    • I support the romanceable part *swoons*

Sandal is a member of Primeval thaig

All things considered, including his ability to actually handle a shard of the lyrium idol, which is inside the Primeval thaig, point out that he might be one of its member, and probably a dwarven mage too.

• ...Except the Primeval Thaig has been abandoned since before the Blights. The only living things who have lived there since then are the Profane and various other monsters inhabiting it. Sandal might have been there once before (that could have been what fratzed his mind and gave him his enchanting abilities), or maybe he's descended from whatever dwarves once lived there (assuming the Primeval Thaig was built by dwarves), but he's definitely not a "member" of the Primeval Thaig.
  • "Definately" nothing! This is a fantasy game with some immortal creatures in it. Suspended animation is a possibility, among other things. The Primeval Thaig is built in dwarven architecture even though it lacks the statues of the Paragons and other important details, so it's highly unlikely that anyone else could be behind it, unless they are some forgotten people who taught the dwarves all they know.

Bodahn works for Flemeth

This would explain his way of always turning up in a place and time where he's able to help people Flemeth has personally taken an interest in (The Warden and Hawke). Flemeth has arranged this deliberately to ensure the success of her chosen champions in accomplishing her mysterious goals. His presence in Kirkwall could also serve a double purpose; if Hawke sold Flemeth's amulet as she half-expected him/her to (She comments on this when revived) then Bodahn would be there to buy it back and deliver it as Flemeth intended. This means he will likely return in Dragon Age 3.

• It follows that whatever Sandahl is, its her creation and likely a part of her Plan.

Bodahn works for the Warden

• He appears in DA2 when a big expedition far in the deep roads is being organized, a subject of great interrest for the Wardens. Chances are that the Warden herself sent him to Kirkwall to have an agent in the expedition so she can have first hand account of what is found there. After the expedition, among Bodahn's repports are notes about Hawke which awake the interrest of the Warden who then order Bodahn to stay close to Hawke. This explains why Gray Wardens turn up during the Qunari Crisis and why the sibling comes back if a Grey warden at the end of Act 3: Bodahn was warning his boss of the looming crisis each time, who reacted by dispatching available troops to aid Hawke. That would also explain why Bodahn says that he's going to leave Hawke soon: after the current crisis, the Warden is going to send him on another assignment. Finally, it makes sense from Bodahn viewpoint: he specializes in rare, costly, lost artifacts, and Wardens have a knack at finding those, plus, he knows he's not getting younger and he needs someone to take care of Sandal, and the Wardens would have a big vested interest in taking care of a master enchanter who can kill single handedly Darkspawns by dozens.
  • But Bodahn is leaving not to go with the Wardens but to have a place in Celene's court. And why is this particular Deep Roads expedition of more interest than the countless ones that take place in Orzammar but the Wardens don't see fit to spy on? It's not like anyone expects them to find what they find. And just how long was it being planned that the Warden has time to hear about it and send Bodhan over from Ferelden which, if Hawke's journey is any indication, takes two months? And why in the world would they be particularly interested in Hawke of all people? At the end of Act 1, Hawke is just an immigrant who managed to get rich in an expedition and who can fight well. Hardly a person of interest. Also, there are no Grey Wardens stationed in Kirkwall and though things had continued to deteriorate, the Qunari invasion and the Rite of Annulment really took people by surprise. And considering that the Grey Wardens basically ignored the invasion and only your sibling would help with the Rite of Annulment, why would they bother to make sure to be present if they aren't actually going to do anything?
    • Bodahn is leaving not to go with the Wardens but to have a place in Celene's court Bodahn is going to Celene's court to spy for the Wardens: even if he is getting older, this does not means that he is retiring yet
    • why in the world would they be particularly interested in Hawke of all people? The Warden was not interested in Hawke, s/he was interested in putting someone in the Dwarven merchant guild of Kirkwall: Kirkwall and Amaranthine being rivals in the Waking Sea trade; even if Dwarves do not directly take part in the seafaring business, they do have vested interest in a lot of the city's activity, which probably includes its merchant fleet as well, and the First Warden made it clear in Awakening that he wanted Amaranthine to prosper as much as possible since such a success would create a precedent usefull for the order political clout.
    • At the end of Act 1, Hawke is just an immigrant who managed to get rich in an expedition and who can fight well At the end of Act 1, Hawke is in good terms with the captain of the city guard, with Varric who took over his brother business after his betrayal and disappearance and became an influencial member of the merchant guild, the Viscount and his son as well as with fellow Warden and former comrade in arm Anders: there is plenty of reasons for the Wardens to consider Hawke a person worthy of their attentions by the end of the first act.
    • And just how long was it being planned that the Warden has time to hear about it and send Bodhan over from Ferelden which, if Hawke's journey is any indication, takes two months? Hawke takes a boat in Gwaren, at the southern tip of Ferelden and his boat was delayed by storms; Bodhan would have taken a boat at Amaranthine, which is a the opposite shore of the same narrow sea than Kirkwall, with probably no more than a week of travel. Plus, Hawke spent one full year working as a mercenary/smuggler before trying to become part of Bartrand expedition, wich means that he would have met Bodahn at least 14 months after Ostagar, and probably more, in you take into account the trip between Lothering and Gwaren and the Blight lasted less than a year and the Warden arrived in Amaranthine 6 months after the Batlle of Denerim, so it is coherent with the timeline: The Warden might have proposed Bodahn to keep working for the Wardens right after the last battle, and sending him to Kirkwall would have been one of her first decision as the Arl of Amaranthine, with those event not shown in Origin and Awakening because they were not relevant those two games plots.
    • why is this particular Deep Roads expedition of more interest than the countless ones that take place in Orzammar but the Wardens don't see fit to spy on? Who said the Warden did not spy on those as well? s/he already has plenty of allies in Orzammar, and as said earlier, Bodahn main task might be to inform her of what happens in Kirkwall as a whole, and uppon arriving, he find that a prominent member of the merchant guild is trying to organize an expedition that would go in part of the Deep Roads that have remained unexplored since the Darkspawn conquered them, which makes it interesting to the Wardens even before the discovery of the primeval Thaig.
    • Also, there are no Grey Wardens stationed in Kirkwall and though things had continued to deteriorate, the Qunari invasion and the Rite of Annulment really took people by surprise Bodahn is sent in Kirkwall because there are no Grey Wardens in the city: his acting as their proxy. Plus Wardens are close enough to save Hawke's sibling during the expedition in act one, they lend a hand to Hawke during the invasion and i s/he joined the Wardens, the sibling comes back to Hawke's side for the end of Act 3, so there is plenty of Warden involvement in Kirkwall. As for why they don't get directly involved, well, the order wants to keep its appearance of neutrality, and Bodahn might have spent the six years he spent with Hawke sending repports telling the Warden that Hawke was enough to deal with wathever crisis was coming. This does not mean that there was no more Grey Warden close back: their plan A being letting Hawke do the heavy lifting and remaining in the shadows, the plan B being going at full strenght in Kirkwall should Hawke fail. Hawke was successful, allowing the Wardens to remain in the shadows, which fit them just fine.

In the Mage ending, Hawke turned on Orsino, not the other way around.

Orsino never actually says he's going to attack Hawke, and right before his transformation he lets slip that he  helped Quentin. Hawke realizes this and immeadietly turns on him, which is why the boss fight triggers. Because no matter how you play him/her, it's pretty clear that Hawke loves his/her mama.

• Alright, then try standing still without allowing your party to make a move. Orsino still attacks.
  • It still causes Hawke and co. to switch to battle mode. Though admittedly, it very well could have been a combination of Orsino attacking and Orsino's role in Leandra's murder.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. Assuming the OP's theory is true, even if the player didn't move forward to attack Orsino, the character still did, and that's what started the fight.

Feast Day Part Deux.

Feast Day for Origins was fun enough, so why not have them give us another for the sequel? What to get everyone as an insult present:

• Bethany: A book that examines Sten's part in the Warden's journey, and frames him in a good light.
  • Okay...why would Bethany be insulted by this?
    • She was friends with the family Sten killed.
      • I actually find this to be in worst taste than the taxidermy cat necklace. Give her a book on how bad apostates are or something.
      • And when was it stated that Bethany was friends with the family Sten killed?
        • Bring her to the Qunari Compound and she'll make a comment that a qunari killed one of her friends. Given Sten location and backstory it was almost certainly him.
• Carver: A ring with "I'm #2" carved into it.
• Aveline: A large sign that says "Don't" on it that becomes a sword for her. As per Varric's suggestion.
• Varric: A red doll that glows in the dark and has a sarcastic pull-string with creepy sayings and sings. Really, to see Varric give a Dude, Not Funny would be hilarious.
• Merril: A Tevinter staff called Elfroute.
• Fenris: A tiny violin.
• Isabela: Yeah, no, the return of the chastity belt is pretty apropos.
• Sebastian: A book called Demon Worship in the Free Marches: A Study.
• Anders: A small taxidermy cat attached to a necklace. Okay, even I found that in poor taste.
• I don't think anything similar to the Feast Day DLC is likely to happen with DA2. Feast Day was built to exploit the gift giving system in Origins, but in the sequel there isn't really a gift giving system. You just find stuff occasionally and deliver it to your companion's home base. And IIRC the gift itself doesn't affect their friendship/rivalry meter one way or the other, the dialogue you choose in the conversation does.

Alternate Version of Soul Edge

The lyrium idol glows red, twists the minds of those who are near it for too long (even if just a tiny fragment), and Meredith turned it into a sword. If lyrium is made up of souls, then that adds another connection point since Soul Edge feeds off of souls. The tiny fragment part is up for debate, considering how Varric appears fine in contact with a small piece, but the other points stand. Perhaps the lyrium idol will have a blue counterpart that feeds on positive emotions rather than negative ones.

The Warden's former companions know where he/she is.

Not just wishful thinking. At the end of Awakening if you are married to Alistair it mentions your character vanishing, but also that Alistair isn't worried and is sure that his wife will be back. Several of the other endings hint at the same attitude with Leliana and Zevran. Plus neither looked too broken up when we saw them in game. So I'm thinking they know where he/she went or at least have a general idea of what he/she's up to. But they it's something important enough that they can't tell anyone else.

• This is highly likely, at least for some of them. If you're not married to Alistair but have a relationship with him, the Awakening epilogue says that you both disappeared. Obviously, he shows up again in DAII, but that just seems to imply that you're both off the grid, at least except for the vaguely-described work with the Wardens. Leliana may or may not know - I guess it depends on the nature of her own secret service activities.
• There's also a particularly suss line Anders gives - if the Warden was Dalish, Merrill will ask him if he has any news about him/her. Anders tells her she shouldn't wait for any news; 'The Warden likes his/her privacy.'

In a similar vein, Varric does know where the Champion is

In the very end, when Cassandra asks him about Hawke's whereabouts for the final time, he says "Is that what it's all about? In that case, I wish I could help you." while looking very contemplative. It's as if he was made to promise not to disclose the Champion's location but considered breaking the promise in this case, finally deciding against it because Cassandra said something wrong.

"The Maker" who Andraste met was a Spirit of Justice, possibly the same one that merged with Anders

There are a few parallels between the stories of the two characters - In Andraste's time the mages of the Tevinter Imperium were all powerful, Andraste was a slave who escaped, met with and married the Maker, and led a rebellion to overthrow the Imperium. Anders on the other hand lived in a time when the Chantry and the Templars were the most powerful force in Thedas, he escaped from the Circle where he was imprisoned, merged with Justice, and began a rebellion that may well overthrow the Chantry.

Dragon Age has made a point of never explicitly saying how much of the Chantry's mythology is true, and there has been at least one in-universe suggestion that Andraste may have been a mage herself. Combine this with a codex entry from the first game that says inexperienced people sometimes mistake spirits for religious experiences and the MO of the two entities starts to look very similar. The Spirit of Justice favours the oppressed, but given enough time they can become the oppressors themselves requiring Justice to push in the opposite direction.

• Just a note, it probably wouldn't be that particular Justice. When met in awakening he says he'd never so much as thought of merging with a mage before, having no interest or experience with the waking world.
• Also, if the Maker is indeed a Fade spirit, then he would be far more likely a spirit of Faith rather than Justice.

Sandal is the Maker.

An age of change is coming. The Maker is yet again testing whether or not the races of man are still unworthy. So the Maker incarnates himself as a mentally disabled dwarf with a highly valuable skill, lets himself be found by Bodahn, and goes forth to see how and if he's exploited. In the process, he's mysteriously become a part of the life of every great world-changing hero so far at the dawn of the Dragon Age. Also, actually being the Maker would explain the ridiculously large piles of corpses, and the always teleporting ahead of you to be present and setting up his store at the final battle.

• So why is the scary lady laughing at him in his sleep? Well, see the Fen'Harel WMG above.
• And remember what Sandal's main skill is! Artifice! He makes things!

The Warden or Oghren gave Anders the idea for being possessed by Justice.

Not directly, you understand. But one day either the Warden or Oghren if the Warden is dead was telling war stories to Anders and Justice. And he happened to mention Wynne and her deal with the spirit of Faith. So Anders and Justice think, hmm, we could do that. Sadly it would appear Wynne is a far more centered individual than Anders. Then again Wynne is a more centred individual than whole nations...

• It seems more likely that Justice got the idea from Nathaniel Howe. They have a multi-part discussion about the prospect of Justice possessing another body if and when Kristoff's gives out, concluding with Nathaniel telling Justice that if he were to possess a willing living host for positive reasons - giving instead of taking - Nathaniel would not consider him a demon.

The Idol was corrupted by the Darkspawn Taint.

It used to be benign or at least not make-you-go-off-your-damn-rocker bad. But centuries of Darkspawn corruption, intentional or not, has bred the taint in at the routes. So it connects to the Fade and infects the user with the Taint. Bartrands yelling about a Song was very like the Mother's ravings and we already know the Taint drives people to violence and depravity.

• The Primeval Thaig is the only known thaig to be untouched by the darkspawn.
  • Is it? Because I seem to remember fighting a lot of darkspawn during the Deep Roads expedition.
    • But you stop fighting them once you get to the thaig. What this means is anyone's guess.
      • Could be they consider that Thaig holy ground and won't fight there.
      • The Darkspawn are soulless and mostly mindless creatures. The only thing they consider remotely "holy" are the Old Gods who whose song eternally becons them, and compels them to seek them at any cost, even though it leads to their corruption. If the Darkspawn saw the Primeval Thaig as similarly "holy", they would have corrupted it long ago. It seems more likely that either the defenses of the Thaig are too strong for them, especially as their efforts aren't very concentrated on the Deep Roads, as they are too obsessed with seeking the Old Gods, or else there's something in the Thaig that prevents them from even noticing it, or entering it that doesn't affect ordinary mortals. Maybe they can't stand red lyrium? Who knows?
      • In one of the books they discover an emerald lake that is similarly untouched by darkspawn corruption. Obviously there are places in the deep roads that darkspawn can’t touch, though why is still a mystery.

The events of Dragon Age II were not the "change" coming to the world mentioned by Morrigan and Flemeth. They were just the prelude to something larger.

The real change is outlined in Sandal’s prophecy:

• “One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were.”
  • This means that everyone will become mages. The elves claim that all of them once possessed magic and there are hints that dwarves once possessed magic, so it’s entirely possible that there was a time when everyone of every race could use magic, but for various reasons became rarer (and totally extinct among the dwarves). However, the codex entry on Mana and the Use of Magic states that the potential to use magic exists in everyone (due to their connection to the Fade), but only manifests in some. This means that, in theory at least, if that potential was forced to manifest in everyone, everyone could become a mage. Furthermore, those severed from the Fade (Dwarves and the Tranquil) apparently CAN be (re)connected to it, as evidenced by Oghren’s ability to dream after becoming a Grey Warden and the scene with Karl during Anders’ first personal quest in DA2 (although the latter was only temporary, but it’s a start).
    • The mechanism for this? Think about what’s going on in Thedas: death on a huge scale due to the mage/templar conflict and desperate mages turning to blood magic and demons. Both of these thing would severely weaken the Veil all over Thedas, likely having huge repercussions for the physical world.
• ” The shadows will part and the skies will open wide.”
  • This one seems to relate to Eleni Zinovia’s “The prison is breached. I see the encroaching darkness. The... the shadow will consume all...” Eleni seems to be foretelling some great evil to come to the world (apparently one much more dangerous than the Blight, which she expresses no concern over in the Mage origin). However, Sandal seems to be saying that this “shadow” will be defeated, though whether “the skies will open wide” is supposed to be good or ominous is unclear.
    • The "shadow" could be a reference to the blights ending for good. Especially since the last Archdemon will most likely be Lusacan, the Old God of Night. It's pretty much a given that something is going to happen when the seventh blight ends.
• “When he rises, everyone will see.”
  • This one is very ambiguous, but I can think of a few possibilities of who “he” might be and what everyone will see.
    • The Maker-Perhaps the end of the “shadow” will signal the Maker’s return to the world and everyone will see that he really exists (and perhaps that the Chantry hasn’t exactly been going about spreading his word as they should). Or perhaps what everyone will see is that the Maker is really evil and he himself is the “shadow” come to bring destruction to Thedas.
    • The Formless One-This entity is mentioned as being among the Forbidden Ones, four extremely powerful demons who taught mankind blood magic. The other three (Xebenkeck, Imshael, Gaxkang the Unbound) have names, while the Formless one does not. You know something is bad news when it is so powerful and evil that it doesn’t even have a name or a form. This one would fit with “The prison is breached” in that one could assume that the Formless One cannot leave the Fade until the Veil has been severely weakened (as by the aforementioned mage/templar conflict).
    • Fen’Harel-The events of Witch Hunt seem to indicate that elven folklore could play a big part in the future of Thedas. Obviously he could be the Big Bad or perhaps “everyone will see” that his locking of the elven gods was necessary and that their releasing (“The prison is breached”) was the cause of the “shadow.”
    • A Greater Pride Demon-Probably the least likely and least interesting possibility, but the codex does mention that a single Greater Pride Demon that crossed the Veil would be a threat to all of Thedas. As with the Formless One, the weakening of the Veil due to the mage/templar war would be what allowed him to cross the Veil and what everyone see would be that pride preventing everyone from reaching a compromise (particularly Anders’ arrogance in taking it upon himself to remove the possibility of compromise which led to the war which led to the Veil being weakened which led to the Greater Pride Demon bringing even more destruction to Thedas).
    • Morrigan's son. There's been a lot of build up on him, so he's gotta come up some how.
    • Corypheus. Fits with the whole 'prison is breached' thing and he's totally not dead.

Carver's rivalry stems from Hawke's Mabari.

Because Hawke is able to summon and unsummon his mabari at will, he had this exchange (first clip only) with Carver after initially obtaining it, resulting in a massive rivalry boost that has continued ever since.

• • Actually has some basis in the game. Bathany can have a conversation with Hawke about how jealous Carver was when the Mabari chose Hawke.

The next Dragon Age game will not be Dragon Age 3, but rather a follow-up to Dragon Age 2, similar to Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Dragon Age: Origins wrapped up its storyline quite nicely. However Dragon Age 2 didn't resolve the whole "Chantry falling to pieces, world on the brink of war" element, and it would feel like a cop-out for that story, which was hanging over our heads from the first scene, to be resolved in DLC or an expansion. The better solution would be for Dragon Age 2 to be part 1 of a 2-part game. A possible title for the second part would be Dragon Age: Rise to Power.

Dragon Age 2 was the original project.

As noted on the main page, the main piece of evidence is that Dragon Age 2 came out less than two years after Origins. BioWare had planned Dragon Age to focus on Hawke, with the Blight merely serving as a backstory. However, they decided that defeating the Blight was worthy of its own game, and would also nicely introduce the setting, so they made Origins first. The basic storyline of Dragon Age 2 was complete when work began on Dragon Age: Origins. In their mind, Dragon Age 2 is really Dragon Age 1, and Origins is Dragon Age 0.

• The obvious objection to this is that parts of the game seem very rushed compared to Origins, especially the re-use of the same levels over and over with occasional different enemies. It also faces the problem that the Darkspawn and Wardens are so peripheral to this story that if it was originally the main project there would be no reason for them to be so developed and central to the setting. Running from a Templar crackdown would have worked just as well as an opening.
  • No, that wouldn't have worked because then they'd have to explain don't come after mage!Hawke when he arrives in Kirkwall or why they didn't alert the Kirkwall templars to be on the lookout for mage!Hawke (presumably different templar orders talk to each other). If DAII was the original project, it's likely they came up with a story about Hawke and co. fleeing to Kirkwall and playing a key role in a massive Mage vs. Templar civil war, but when they came up with a reason for Hawke to flee Lothering (The Blight) they realized they'd need a whole other game to set up the story and environment for the players. So they reassigned most of their Dragon Age writers and developers to Origins and left a skeleton crew to work on what would become DAII. After DA:O was released maybe they had planned to put the writers and devs back on Hawke's story but got sidetracked by Awakenings and the Origins DLC packs. Then I guess they just...decided to release DAII early and hoped no one would mind the recycled levels. Go figure why.
    Now admittedly this is pure speculation on my part, but I can think of no other reason why they named their first game "Dragon Age: Origins" rather than just "Dragon Age". It sounds way too prequel-esque.
    • What about the fact that a huge draw of the game is the six different origins? DA2 only lets you be mage Hawke or non-mage Hawke.
    • Eh, that seemed like basic RPG fodder to me. Plus, the six different origins only come into play a few times. One would think that if the multiple origins were the point of the game they would come up more often than they do. But like I said, I admit this is pure speculation. Maybe I just don't want to believe Bioware is that lazy and desperate for a quick buck.
• If you look back at the earliest screenshots of Dragon Age (ie. 2004) the architecture and general design looks a lot closer to Kirkwall than the stoic, sturdiness of Ferelden.
• I always thought "Origins" sounded like the name of a prequel. Indeed, after watching the Sacred Ashes trailer, I assumed that there was a preexisting game called Dragon Age that I hadn't heard of.

Knight-Commander Meredith is a Templar.

Apart from the Templar pun, she has similar ideological goals - namely, order at all costs. Oh, and that idol? A Piece of Eden.

Alain and Keran will be possible party members in the future.

Both are minor but notable characters, both are pretty well fleshed-out and have interesting stories to tell, and both seem to fit important party roles (Alain a nuke mage like Merrill, Keran a tank like Aveline). The fact that you have the option to kill them doesn't matter, since you have this option with several other characters in DA:O that reappear in DAII (Anders, Zevran, Leliana). It could even be that if you sided with the Templars as Hawke, Keran joins your party, but if you sided with the mages, Alain joins.

• • Word of God says that it's a bug, that Zevran is alive if you killed him in DA:O. As for Anders: He only dies in one epilogue. However, they aren’t 100% canon and the developers just ignore them if they don’t fit into the story. So the only characters who can come back from the dead are Leliana and Oghren (Yes, there seems to be a way to kill him if he wants to leave the group in Origins.).
    • While Anders only dies in the epilogue and the epilogues are subject to change at any time, it is possible to hand Anders over to the Templars at the start of Awakening instead of recruiting him. This action makes his appearance in DA2 impossible; while he could have escaped, he wouldn't be a grey warden(the only reason he was sought out) and he wouldn't have met Justice. So the retconning of this possibility, while it doesn't involve a characters death, still shows they're willing to select a hard canon.
    • It's entirely possible that Anders escaped from Rylock's custody or escaped again from the Circle and met another Grey Warden. This Warden would be interested in a desperate mage with no strong ties and could conscript him. He could meet Justice if he ever served in Amaranthine or while Justice is off trying to right various injustices he comes across in the world. It may be unlikely but it's not necessarily a retcon.
      • As far as we know, the Warden-Commander, that is, the PC, was the only Warden in Ferelden with recruiting rights at the time, and really one of only four grey wardens total in Fereldan at the time (along with Alistair, Loghain if he was spared, and that one bloke who's still alive but crippled in the Architect's base). For this to happen Anders would have to have been recruited after Awakening, which pushes the timeline to restrictively short levels, and likely would have a bigger grudge against the Wardens for one selling him out to the circle. Not to mention Anders referencing the Hero of Ferelden to Merrill and telling Varric stories about Awakening.
      • Why in the world would the Wardens limit themselves by only having the guy in charge be allowed to recruit people? Similarly, it seems unlikely that all of Thedas would agree to allow the Wardens to recruit literally anybody they want (though not without consequences)...as long as only the one guy did it.
        • By that time, I'm gussing wardens from other parts of Thedas would be coming into Fereldan to replace the old ones. One of the replacements would most likely be a warden with conscription rights
          • But if only the WC can conscript someone then even if a Warden used to be WC of somewhere else, they'd lose that power when coming into Ferelden.
        • Ok, to be clear. At the start of awakening, the only grey wardens in Ferelden are the PC and Loghain, assuming Loghain was spared(and Alistair, but he's not part of the order so he can't recruit). There were about a dozen Orlisian wardens who had just come to Fereldan, but they've all been killed/captured by the dark spawn literally hours before you have the option of recruiting Anders or handing him over to the templars. There aren't any reinforcements being sent. They've shown up and gotten themselves slaughtered. Awakening takes place over the course of a couple months with the only wardens being the ones the WC recruits, and the only supplies for the Joining at Vigil's Keep.

The Third game may have race option.

Do you ever think a third would have the race option like the first game since the second one only has a human main character

The Third game will have a pre-set race, but it won't be human.

As an alternate to the above WMG, Dragon Age 3 will feature either a dwarven or elven protagonist. And Dragon Age 4 will have whichever one wasn't used for Dragon Age 3...

• Unless something big happens to restore the Dwarves connection to the Fade and allows existing Dwarves to suddenly become mages, a Dwarven protagonist without the option to be a Human or an Elf instead is not going to happen.
  • Take a gander up at the WMG regarding Sandal's 'prophecy', particularly the parts about everyone getting magical ability. There have also been hints of Dwarves gaining ground with magic (like the gal you can send to the Circle in Origins, and Sandal's odd talents) so Dwarven mages may in fact become a development later on.
    • Dagna just read a lot about magic and studied it with actual mages. She didn't have any magical ability of her own. There's still no evidence of any Dwarves besides Sandal having the ability to use real magic.
      • Obviously if there were a lot of dwarves who used magic, there would be dwarven mages. Dagna's not a mage, no, but the hints that dwarves have an increasing interest in the subject could be foreshadowing on its own. It would certainly have an interesting impact on the politics in Thedas, particularly since dwarves control most lyrium supplies at their source.
• Playing as an Elf could make a lot of sense though. Dragon Age II ends with the mages rising up against opression so the question of what the other major opressed group is going to do in response is likely to come up. It also explains why a mage PC isn't already caught up in the conflict since the Dalish Elves have their own mages seperate from the Circle.
• And then they'll all team up when Gondor Calls for Aid?
• Qunari. Only option that hasn't been playable yet; even darkspawn got the Chronicles dlc. Could be either an orphan raised by humans, or a child of a tal'vashoth defector. Qunari can be mages, and for anyone saying they can't be rogues, well, no one noticed the qunari that snuck into the chantry and killed Mother Patrice until they saw the arrow sticking out of her, and that's only because he let them see him to send a message. So qunari can be stealthy.

The Tevinter magisters physically entered the Fade by misusing an Eluvian they captured from Arlathan. Somehow while inside, they inadvertently caused the Blight.

This could be evidenced by the Eluvian's apparent ability to directly cause the Darkspawn Taint as seen in the Dalish origin in DA:O

Justice wasn't corrupted by Anders anger.

Apart from anything else Awakening-Anders never seemed that angry. More to the point, never in the games or the Codex is there a record of something similar happening. Abominations sometimes have more of the person and usually more of the demon, but they remain driven by the same urge that the demon represents. Wynne never mentioned a change in her spirit post reviving/bonding either. It seems odd that it's only Anders until one thinks: what does Anders have that the others lack? The Darkspawn Taint! Since the defining personality change in non-Wardens infected with the Taint seems to be unreasoning rage it's not a huge jump to think that it was the Taint that turned Justice into Vengance. And before anyone brings up Kristoff or Spohia Dryden, they were dead for while before being possessed, it was unlikely to work the same way.

• Pay more attention to Anders' Awakening dialouge. He was plenty angry. He just handled it differently than he does now.
  • Fine, fine, but that wasn't my main point. My main point was that no-one else that we've seen who got possessed changed the nature of the possessing spirit. And Anders is the only living Grey Warden we've seen possessed.
    • We've also only seen one other person get possesed by a benevolent spirit, and she's exceptionally level-headed and accepting of her fate.
• The change may not have entirely been on Anders part. Justice reciveved the Lyrium Ring, remember, which he described as "different from the Lyrium he's used to" and producing a "song" that only he can hear- something similar to how Darkspawn experience their Taint. Its possible that that Song is what changed him to Vengeance just as the Song of the Elder Gods changes the Darkspawn.
• Another piece of evidence that the Darkspawn Taint does weird things to spirits: there are no Darkspawn abominations. Two games, one swimming with Darkspawn, not one shows up. Given that Darkspawn have little to no self preservation instinct, a complete dedication to the Blight and no problem with Blood Magic/Demon Summoning you'd expect to see a few take the Abomination route. Perhaps they can't, because the demons don't want in. Further supported by Avernus in Warden's Keep, who said that the Darkspawn Taint is alien to spirits. Demons know the taint will do strange things to them and so avoid Darkspawn. Justice, being less experienced with the physical world than Demons, didn't know that.
• Here's a possibility - what if Justice was already a demon by the time he merged with Anders? Thinking about it, one of the chief complaints about DA2 is that Anders just doesn't act like Anders. He's severe, obsessive, humorless, easily frustrated, bitter... in fact, he is much more like Justice than he is like Anders. What if Justice's removal from the Fade and exposure to the 'real' world had already begun his downward spiral into becoming a demonic entity? The Anders we meet in DA2 is predominantly Justice; he can't hide himself as well in the Fade, or when he loses his temper, so he plays the 'split-personality' card, which explains the inconsistencies in just how cohesive their symobiosis is. They're mostly Justice, but Justice knows from what happened to him before that people react badly to a spirit in a human's body, and so he downplays it. So, really, Anders didn't corrupt Justice. Justice corrupted Anders, and those little flashes of humor and charm he has every now and then are all that remain of him, in the same way that Kristoff's memories lingered in his dead body, and could affect Justice's outlook.
  • As an addition to the above, the reason why both of them are still around if Anders died in Awakening is that Justice is actually in Anders' dead body, using his memories and previous experiences to pass himself off as Anders, and manipulating his magic to keep his body from decaying. Though that wouldn't explain Nathaniel's lack of shock at seeing him again, it would explain a lot of the awkwardness which seems to color his social interactions. He took on the issue of the mages' plight because, as a spirit of Justice (or demon of Vengeance) he needed a cause, and he figured that it was a way to repay Anders for hijacking his remains.
    • It wouldn't explain the romances either. Passing himself off as Anders by mimicking his passion for mages and cats is one thing, but the soap-operaish passion he gets for Hawke and Karl? There's no reason for it, in fact it distracts from the cause.
      • IIRC, Justice had a strangely overwrought relationship with Christophe's wife while he was inhabiting his dead body. The conflict between his duty, his fascination with relationships, and his host's recalled emotions may very well be entirely his own. His freak-outs, likewise, could actually be a result of Justice vs Vengeance rather than Anders vs Justice.
    • Actually, Nathaniel is shocked to see Anders if he died in the epilogue. Anders makes some vague comment about how they just assumed a burned corpse was his.

Dragon Age and Warhammer Fantasy share a universe.

This actually makes almost perfect sense if you divorced it from the fact that neither party would ever let the crossover happen. Thedas is simply a part of the world slightly less insane than the rest of the world. The Fade and The Warp are practically Expies of eachother with almost all of the demons fulfilling similar or the same roles, for instance like many things claiming to be the creator of the universe The Maker is Tzeentch. The elven gods are also almost all the same characters as their Warhammer counterparts besides Asuryan, hell Ulthuan could have founded Arlathan as a colony that was unfortunately taken over by the Tevinter Imperium. The only major difference between the two settings is that the old world has been steadily averting Medieval Stasis having invented gunpowder steam engines and going into an industrial revolution while Thedas has essentially gone unchanged since Andraste.

Anders isn't actually possessed

Justice and Vengeance are actually split personalities, born from Anders' hatred of the Templars. The blue glowy thing that happens is his magic going into overdrive.

• That is a...disturbing thought, but plausible. He'd be pretty damn bat shit though to be deluded into thinking he's an abomination.
  • There's a precedent, though. The guy who kept kidnapping elf girls thought that demons were telling him to do it, but he was (or at least appeared to this troper to be) merely insane.
• Or maybe the glow is just Varric embellishing again. Maybe he says that Anders' eyes get bright and piercing when he's angry, but Cassandra chooses to believe Anders' story about being possessed and thus imagines the eyes as actually glowing. That would explain why Meredith and Orsino don't immediately freak out when he puts on his abomination-face just before leveling the Chantry. Do the other party members comment on the glowing?
  • Hawke does.

Anders was possessed and became Vengeance. I would agree that "Anders" and "Justice" are actually mental constructs of the composite being he is today, however, rather than the "original" Anders or Justice at war in one body. Vengeance can call himself Anders, he can pretend to be Anders... but he's kidding himself. He's Vengeance.

General guesses about Dragon Age 3

Going off the 'quirk' theory, DA 3 will feature an entirely new protagonist who can be any race. Their parents will be merchants or something else equally race-opportune. The game will take place in Orlais, 15-20 years after DA2, or have the hero growing up the midst of the mage-templar conflict in Val Royeaux. Possible party members include:

• The OGS, but only if you did the ritual. He will be either a mage or some kind of warrior with magical abilities, like Fenris, only with a different source. His name will be Modred or a variant of.
  • An Arcane Warrior would work.
  • And he will be voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.
    • Or Michael Fassbender.
• Sandal
• A relative of the Hawkes/Amells.
  • Charade or one of her descendents to really link the games together.
• A grey warden, for exposition regarding darkspawn/etc.
  • Maybe Carver/Bethany, for a combination of this and the above Amell connection. If they're just in as a templer/mage, then the Warden member is Stroud.
• An animal companion. In a twist, this will not be a mabari, but an Orlesian hunting dog with abilities similar to a rogue, or perhaps a cat-abomination that serves as the Token Evil Teammate.
  • Or a griffon...
• A Qunari/Tal-Vashoth.
  • If this doesn't happen I for one will be storming the Bioware offices with my torch and pitchfork. And I don't think I'll be alone, either.
  • A Qunari Protagonist sounds good since there mages have mask
  • Maraas could work as a tal'vashoth companion. Easy going, laid back, pure mercenary. Gives a good explanation as to why he's in the party and has considerable potential for character growth.
    • He'd be quite old by the estimated time frame, but Loghain had to be in his 50's guessing by Anora's age. And maybe you have to convince him to stay once the scope of your quest gets too large, like how you had to convince Sten to stay in Haven.
    • More to support that - if you try to hire him as Hawke, he says he doesn't like to fight for causes, just simple things. I reckon he'd count 'mage/templar war' as a 'cause'.
• Oghren and Felsi's child.
• Sketch. He’s the only DLC companion of DA: O who reappears in DA 2. In his side quest Hawke has to kill assassins from every corner of Thedas, who are after his head because of some bad rumors. You never learn what kind of rumors set up some many different people and who placed them. Maybe this is a hint of his companion quest in DA 3. Future more he’s a former bard who once worked with Leliana. Given the hints of Orlais as locations for DA 3, he may play the "tour guide" who gives the player some insight in the Great Game of the orlaisian nobles. And a meeting between Seeker Leliana and her former friend - and perhaps Marjolaine if you import a save were she’s alive - would be interesting.
• Rhys. It's pretty much a given that the third game will take place in Orlais, and Rhys was involved in something big in the Templar's seat of power just one year after the battle at the Gallows. If he inherited his mother's affinity toward healing and the Fade, that covers the healer position.
  • If not him, then Evangeline or Cole. Their unique situations are just begging to be explored.

Cassandra will be a party member in DA 3.

She'll be able to get in on the ground floor of a player-character's story... but still manage to lose them when they disappear at the end.

The Tevinter Magisters didn't unleash the darkspawn.

They did muck around with things like the lyrium idol in the Deep Roads, however, which mutated them horribly and caused no end of trouble for the dwarves. After the appearance of the darkspawn, the two stories merged and became one over time, with confused and frightened people ascribing the existence of darkspawn to the meddling of mages. The real source of the darkspawn taint has more to do with the old gods, as Morrigan's child will eventually demonstrate.

• Alternatively, the true origin of the Darkspawn actually relates directly to the Primeval Thaig and its red lyrium, and the Tevinter Magisters got the blame on political and religious grounds alone.

Cullen will be an party member in the next game

The writers seem to like him enough, and there's definitely basis for a character arc there. If the game is roughly around same time as the second he may even be an LI, complete with a crazy rivalmance with a mage. If it takes place later on, he might be mentor character of sorts, like Wynne.

Anders isn't actually Anders.

Anders is in fact Crazy Steve, having knocked out Anders and assumed his identity. The real Anders is either dead, in templar custody(having been turned over to them by the warden and therefore never having been conscripted to begin with, and never meeting justice)), or back in Vigil's keep after a two month hiatus.

Kirkwall was designed by the Magisters to be a giant human sacrifice to create a philosopher's stone or it's equivalent

The Mystery of Kirkwall as discovered by the Band of Three comments on how Kirkwall's streets wind, twist, and make no sense (design), how the entire place is built upon an ocean of blood from slaves (sacrifices) and that the Veil to the Fade was so damaged as to the point that it seemed deliberate (power). Along with spells and background effects that heavily encourage everyone in the city to kill each other. (Why kill everyone when you can have it done for you?) Kirkwall was never meant to be a city, it was designed to be the biggest Blood Magic spell ever.

• It would certainly explain all the maleficars and abominations that spring up around the place.

Dragon Age 4 will take place in the Tevinter Empire

It's pretty obvious that Dragon Age 3 will revolve around the Mage-Templar war and will most likely center in Orlais, but when that's over and done with, it's time to turn to the often mentioned Magisters and their practices, as well as the impending Qunari invasion foreshadowed by the Arishok.

Red Jenny is Flemeth

That is all.

Hawke doesn't exist.

S/he is just a character in Varric's story. One conversation with Varric even has him point out how perfect a protagnist Hawke is.

• Or maye s/he did exist but Varric is the true hero of the story and the leader of the group who got things done and made all the decisions, but Varric subordinates himself as The Lancer in the story because he's uncertain as to how Cassandra would react.
• Or maybe all in the group pulled their weight equally and Hawke just got the glory because he/she was technically nobility with family ties to the city, and Varric played along because a good story has a proper main character.

Ser Pounce-a-lot was given away under Rolan's orders.

In Ander's short story, there is a Grey Warden named Rolan who was a former templar (a fully fledged templar, unlike Alistair). He's shown to give Anders a hard time, so it wouldn't surprise me if he was the one who pushed to have Anders get rid of his precious kitty.

• Way to go, Rolan.
• I'd say Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, but 'hero' doesn't really suit Rolan. Nice job breaking it Jerkass?

The Jade Empire exists on a continent to the east of Thedas beyond the 'Glass Sea'

But contact between the two lands has been virtually non-existent, and most people in both are unaware of the others' existence. We know that other continents must exist in the Dragon Age world besides Thedas, because the qunari arrived from across the sea. Sir (Or actually 'Ser') Roderick was an Orlesian (or possibly even a native of Kirkwall) who somehow managed to gain a Qunari black powder weapon before he ended up in the Empire. The Spirit Monks were the Imperial equivalent of Mages, and the Celestial Bureaucracy and demons are both made up of Fade spirits from a different part of the Fade that focus their attentions on the Empire, not Thedas. It would explain why Varric knew that he couldn't name his crossbow 'Mirabelle' and why creating golems in both Dragon Age and Jade Empire is so similar. Or they could exist for the sole purpose of being shout-outs, but it's an idea I've been entertaining for awhile now.

• Neat idea, but with one snag. If the player character is female, Roderick will balk at the idea, since in his homeland "a woman knows her place... unless she's queen." The problem is the use of the term "queen"; Orlais has an empress, so he can't be Orlesian. Individual Free March states have their own terminology (Kirkwall with "Viscount/Viscountess", Starkhaven with "Prince/Princess", etc.), so there might possibly be a "King/Queen" combo. Alternatively, he might be from Antiva or Fereldan... actually, Fereldan seems more likely, given his accent.
  • Ooh, here's an idea. Maybe Roderick was a Fereldan refugee who got on a completely wrong ship and just decided to wing it when he got to strange new lands.
  • Or, if we want to bring this out into the metagame, perhaps way back when the writers were designing the Jade Empire they had a different idea for Thedas. Explains everything.
    • I highly doubt it's Ferelden. Ferelden seems to be the most progressive country with regards to the equality of women and they're the one that the other countries marvel at for allowing women to fight. Accent aside, I'd say Antiva seems a better bet.
    • I actually vote for Orlais. Remember Roderick was speaking the Empire's tongue, so he was using the terms that were close enough for him if not the exact ones.

Dragon Age II Reuses So Many Levels Because It's The Seeker's Imagination

Varric is probably saying... "so Hawke and the rest walked into a cave" or "so Hawke and the rest walked into a warehouse". What we are seeing in the game is a Cave/Warehouse/Mansion that the Seeker is personally familiar with. It only seems like the same Cave/Warehouse/Mansion because she's not making up a new one every time Varric says they enter yet another cave, she's just projecting Hawke and Company onto a location she knows.

The Templars will embrace blackpowder weaponry.

The tech already existed for a while, the Arishok has confirmed that Javaris was not the only one seeking it, grenades have already existed, and the dwarf that accompanied Nathaniel also used it, albeit still in the form of explosives instead of firearms. Even with their anti magic the templars are disadvantaged in terms of firepower against the mages, so it wouldn't be surprising for them to look for alternatives: fantasy counterpart hand cannons, abus guns, field guns, the whole package.

Flemeth is an Old God, most likely Dumat.

Dumat simply because he's the most powerful. Why kill off the strongest first? But it could be any of the three that were killed except the fourth or fifth Blight one.

• She suggests that she's not an old woman, but a dragon.
• Morrigan says she's not a human nor abomination.
• She asks Merrill if she's being so reverent merely because she's Flemeth or if she knows something more about her, and when she answers yes says that that alone is not enough to bow to her for.
• She's the one that gave the ritual to Morrigan.
  • Such a ritual was most likely performed before. Quite possibly for Flemeth herself.
• Her hair resembles dragon horns.
• This could be why she's so worried about the Darkspawn in the first game - They corrupted many of the Old Gods, perhaps she's worried about becoming an Archdemon as well?

So while she may not be Dumat, she's almost certainly an Old God. Really, pretty obvious WMG but it had to be said.

• Or perhaps one of the elven gods as other WMG have suggested

Both the Warden and Hawke will be playable characters in DA 3

What do I mean? Well, Hawke and his/her love interest (if he/she has one) run into the Warden in Orlais. If the Da:O Warden is dead, the Knight-Commander from Awakenings takes his/her place. The Warden reveals why he/she's disappeared for so long (something to do with the Divine, no doubt), and then the two join forces. When choosing your party, you have a choice of either the Warden or Hawke (or both). Whoever takes control of the mission is the one you're controlling at that time, or the one who has most to gain for the completion of that mission. Naturally, the two will commit mass amounts of badassery that would send Commanders Shepard running back to the Normandy in tears.

• More probably, given strengths involved and what they've done so far, they'll be party members, possibly late game party members, and the main character will be new.
  • Consider that Anders was at least a level 18 mage at the start of awakening, and consider how powerful he could be at the end of the game you decide to import. Also Isabela had quite the adventuring history before the first game started, enough that one expects her to be a little higher level than what she shows up in game. So call it gameplay and story segregation, call it bag of spilling, or let the next game simply up the level ante.
• Probability aside, I'm hoping this turns out to be true. I think they're better off starting a third game with an established character than creating a new one from scratch and making us get invested all over again; we're invested in the Warden and Hawke. Let us stick with one of them.
• I also hope this turns out to be true - for Hawke, mostly. I've become incredibly invested in my Hawke and would be disappointed not to continue his story. I never really felt a real connection with the Warden, Hawke's another story, however...
• This troper had a connection to the Warden and Hawke, and would love for them to meet.

Hawke: Shouldn't you be ten feet tall?
Warden: Shouldn't you have lightning shooting out of your arse?
Hawke: Well aren't we a disappointing pair?

• Can we throw in The Spirit Monk too?

The fight with the High Dragon never happened.

The Bone Pit was attacked again by bandits, darkspawn or regular dragonlings again, but by then Varric knew that Cassandra was believing every word that he said so he...exaggerated a little. I mean what hero worth their salt hasn't brought down a High Dragon?

In Dragon Age III, the reluctant Mage love interest won't betray you.

In the first game we had Morrigan who told the player over and over again that getting into a romantic relationship with her was a bad idea. Most of us ignored this and were completely blindsided when she offered up her God Baby ultimatum. Then we had Anders, who told the player over and over again that getting into a romantic relationship with him was a bad idea. Most of us ignored this and were again blindsided when he blew up the Chantry. For the third game, Bioware will instead make the traitor the love interest that actively pursues a relationship with the player. Whether or not this will still be a mage is up in the air.

• • Merrill does not not betray Hawke so there is already one.
    • Does Merrill repeatedly tell you getting involved with her is a bad idea for you?
      • Nope, she is hesitant to pursue a relationship with you because any child from the union would be human, and she feels it is her duty to have elven children. But Hawke can persuade her out of this pretty early on, and once your in a relationship the nearest thing she has to doubts about it is the possibility that Hawke will have to kill her if she turns into an abomination.

The manifestation of Vengeance is actually Anders' dissociative identity disorder.

Anders completely melded with Justice, who no longer exists as a distinct entity, corrupt or otherwise. There is no separate entity called Vengeance, Anders is simply insane.

We're never going to see the Warden again.

Considering the absurd number of permutations the character can go through, programming him/her into another game would be a nightmare Bioware will probably want to avoid. The best we can hope for is that the Warden gets referenced as the Hero of Another Story (Someone says: "Don't worry Dragon Age III protagonist, the Warden is handling the vaguely plot-important problem in the land of Not-Appearing-In-This-Game).

• • It's depressing how likely this is. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find a seat somewhere on the shinier side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
  • (sits in the corner and covers ears) Not listening! Not listening! Lalala!
  • Not quite jossed, but Bioware has stated that it is "completely possible" that we'll see Both the Warden and Hawke again.

There's something strange going on with Dwarven History.

The first hint of this really comes with the Witch Hunt DLC, when the Warden can point out that Cadash Thaig isn't supposed to be old enough to have taken in refugees from Arlathan. Then Dragon Age II drops the Primeval Thaig on us, complete with Golems that date before Caridin, with the Codex commenting on the strangeness. Plus there's the ominous murmurings about something 'underneath' Orlais. Dragon Age III is probably going to drop some big revelations about the secret history of the Dwarves, probably relating to lyrium, the Fade, and the Dwarven resistance to magic.

• • The Memories (the records of Dwarven civilization) are accepted as the Gospel Truth as much as the Chant of Light is to the human world and the Lore of the Dalish elves. If it was altered in the distant past there may not be any dwarves left that know the real history of their race and no one would dare question the authenticity of the Memories. And something really bad would have had to happen to justify the altering of an entire race's historical records. Since the only other known thaig is Kal Sharok the key to the truth may be located there in a future game or expansion. Bartrand's observations during the expedition and the codex entry for the Primeval Thaig gives strong credence to this. To take it even further, every race's view of history is wrong with the Chant and the elves' Lore being misremembered (or deliberately falsified) accounts of the real history of Thedas.

Meredith isn't dead.

Instead, her attempt to go One-Winged Angel (at least, I think that's what she was trying to do) put her in an And I Must Scream situation. Of course, this means that a particularly skilled Mage (or just someone who knew what they were doing) could likely restore her mind, turning her into a stone-skinned, magic-resistant killing machine. Prime boss fight material.

• • Or she could be left out as a poorly kept statue in the Gallows for years with sadistic mages throwing out birdseed around her. When she is eventually freed her hatred of mages will only be intensified and coupled with a newfound hatred of pigeons.

Ferelden may be relatively untouched by the Mage/Templar war.

Depending on the actions taken by the Warden, Ferelden may have a very Mage-friendly government, or even have granted the Circle freedom outright. It doesn't take a great leap to imagine that things would be better there than in certain areas traditionally more Templar-friendly (Orlais, for instance). This might even play into the arguments certain Orlesian nobles are using to try and restart the conflict with Ferelden - as the home of Val Royeaux, it's the duty of Orlais to bring to heel a country so obviously flouting the will of the Chantry.

• Wasn't the Chantry not really willing to declare war against the Mages, though? I thought that was why the Templars needed to defy the Chantry in order to go fight the Circles.
  • The Chantry breaks away for some reason though considering that the Chantry was preparing for an Exalted March at the beginning of Act 3 and their uncompromising stance on mages, I can't imagine they'd be willing to let the mages be completely free and police themselves. Also, the Chantry isn't about to just let Alistair or Anora free the Circle. It's not up to them. In the wake of the war, the Chantry may have more pressing issues but before Kirkwall erupted, teh Chantry didn't have to just let the Circle go free and we didn't hear anything about violence erupting over the issue. Most likely, Alistair or Anora didn't force the issue and kept trying to convince the Chantry while working to improve the Circle.
• Something to support this Wild Mass Guess: the majority of the Fereldan Circle given to open rebellion and probably almost all given to Blood Magic would have died with Uldred. The remaining mages, rallied around Irving, would be more likely to try and come to some agreement and Gregior is reasonable man and would probably be willing to at least listen.
• Also, given the fact that the Arl of Amaranthine is a Grey Warden position, it's entirely possible that the nobility of Ferelden do not have the same reactionary fear of mages immediately becoming puppy-kicking magisters if given even a smidgen of power, as the Warden-Commander could be a mage. Cultural standards do a lot to inform one's perception, and Fereldans are very different from Free Marchers.
  • Human nature being what it is, I think it's much more likely that a mage WC would be seen as an exception to the rule. Garahel was an elf and everyone acknowledges that he saved the world and yet...four centuries later elves are still treated like second-class citizens. Plus, while I know that it's possible to have an Orlesian elf or dwarf (or mage) WC in Awakening that's not canonical and I think that realistically the Wardens want to avoid pissing people off and losing their Arling so they won't really send elves, dwarves, or (known) mages to try and rule when they can just send a human and avoid any problems.
  • Perhaps, but that implies that Wardens have unsurpassed political savvy compared to all other groups, purely by design. Very few characters act completely pragmatically, and no one is entirely omniscient. The Grey Wardens could have appointed a mage WC after the Hero left, but before things really went to hell in Kirkwall, as there are ten years separating DA:O from the end of DA2. Also, Grey Wardens as a whole don't really seem like born politicians. After all, their Right of Conscription allows them to conscript anyone, including politically valuable noblemen, thereby, ironically, destabilizing the very countries they seek to protect. I could see them being less concerned about having a politically acceptable representative and more concerned about a.) fighting darkspawn and b.) keeping Warden recruitment up. If a mage or an elf did those, everything else is secondary.
    • They don't need unsurprassed political savvy. Ask any idiot in Thedas (and outside of Tevinter in the last case) if an elf, dwarf, or mage can be a noble. They will say no because it's not some secret that nobles are humans and mages can't even live free, let alone inherit anything. Take the common people of Ferelden. They are superstitious enough to whisper about Anora being barren because the Maker was angry that they put a 'commoner' on the throne and they know that they can treat elves like crap and no one will care. If your average villager knows that, the G Ws can be trusted to be aware of these same basic facts. I can see the GW risking a human mage if they keep the mage part a secret but they wouldn't be obvious about it. If the G Ws are sensitive enough about Ferelden's feelings about Orlesians to keep the Orlesian Wardens to a minimum (as Mistress Woolsey insists that they are) then they're going to be smart enough to realize that hatred and prejudice would follow any openly mage or non-human WC. They might be able to pull it off and if there is literally nobody else then I can see how they would do that but I have a difficult time believing that the Wardens would not have a single human non-mage or secret mage that could kill darkspawn and recruit people to send to lead Amaranthine. The mages, elves, and dwarves could also be sent over and do a lot of the work, the WC just can't be an open mage, a dwarf, or an elf because the WC is now also the Arl/Arlessa. Now, while it is always in the best interest of the Wardens to play nice with the local authorities when they can afford to, normally if the people hate them it's not the end of the world. In Amaranthine, if the Wardens don't make an effort they stand the very real risk of losing Amaranthine and their precious precedent for holding land.

The Grey Wardens are trying to prevent future Blights from occurring.

They're taking advantage of the extremely short Blight in the first game to deal major blows to the darkspawn. Throughout Dragon Age II the Wardens are seen furthering their experiments with tainted blood (Avernus from the Soldier's Peak DLC). working with the Architect (depending on the outcome of Awakenings) and investigating areas close to the Primeval Thaig. It seems odd that they would be consolidating their strength and moving with such urgency when the end of Blight usually means decades or centuries of down-time. It may be that the next Old God is close to being excavated by the Darkspawn and they're racing to beat them to the punch. A Blight during the Mage-Templar War? Not good at all. Hawke and the Warden disappeared because they're leading the charge.

• Or they are tracking the remaining Old Gods with a view to killing them before they can arise as Archdemons.

Bethany is a lesbian, bi-sexual or at least confused

Her interactions with Isabela seem awfully focused on female sexuality (but I suppose with Isabela that's not hard). Keep in mind she specifically starts a conversation with "So...you've been with women? In bed?" You also receive a letter for Bethany, discussing a close friend. It could have just been simple friendship but in the interest of Wild Mass Guessing I'm going to speculate it might have been more.

• In the main, entirely possible, but as for the friend, probably not. She tells Isabela she's virgin and of all the people to lie to, Isabela would be the last.
• She has exactly one conversation with Isabela about lesbianism, and its more about Isabela doing Everything That Moves, rather than simply women. Bethany is a virgin, devout, and probably quite sheltered prior to the events of the games. I think it was more her shock at meeting someone so sexually open, rather than any indication of her own interests.
• Just a thought, Isabella and Bethany are having this conversation in front of Hawke, who is portrayed as a bit of a Knight Templar Big Brother /Sister. Hawke even tells Isabella to stop at the end of one of Isabella and Bethany's banters. Wouldn't you claim to be a virgin in front of your overprotective sibling?
• I could easily see Bethany turning out to be bi-curious if nothing else. Also, she's a virgin in act 1 where she's 18/19. In act 2 & 3, she's been with the circle or the wardens for a few years, two organizations that aren't exactly known for strict codes of sexual conduct. There's nothing to say her virginity held up through those years(though that's largely speculation either way).
  • True but there is a definite culture clash. The Circle may have a very free love environment but Bethany is pretty prudish in her talk with Isabela and is a virgin despite Carver not being one. Being thrust into an environment like the Circle so late in her life probably isn't going to make her see sex like they do. If Anders is right about no mage ever falling in love and it all just being about sexual gratification than I can't see Bethany getting involved much there.
  • Also, the Circle in question is one under Meredith. I doubt Bethany would have the opportunity. If anything, being in such a tense environment, where any mage nearby is possibly a blood mage (which she is firmly against) and the Templars are becoming more and more vicious would likely sour her to the whole deal. If she appears in an expansion, I could see Circle!Bethany being nervous about love because of how isolated she was in the Circle. Likely she wrote to Hawke so often because s/he was the only emotional outlet she had left.
    • Bet she gets laid in the Wardens though. Everyone gets laid in the Wardens.
      • Except Alistair.
        • That's a good point. Bethany doesn't seem the type to want meaningless sex (as evidenced by the fact that she's a virgin when Carver isn't and it would probably be easier for a woman to find someone to sleep with than a man given the double standard about sex and the fact that the man doesn't risk pregnancy and the conversation with Isabela) so if she's going to sleep with anyone, she'll be in a relationship with them first or a long time will have had to pass to change her views.
          • I disagree. First letter I got from her after shipping her to the wardens was a bitter tale of isolation, feeling betrayed coupled with the torment of the taint nightmare's. When met alongside Nathanial, and later during the qunari invasion, she's cold and emptionally distant. I can easily see her turning to meaningless sex as a coping mechanism; easy, physical relief from the high stress of her enviroment. Healthy? Not particularly, and it doesn't seem to be working, but that'd be truth in television. As for the circle; Meredith isn't trying to keep the mages from getting laid, she's trying to keep them from turning into abominations. While she's likely much more strict than the ferelden circle, so long as every single mage isn't kept in solitary confinement(which they aren't), it'd be impossible to completely stop them from fucking.
          • Meredith was so strict, she was having mages whipped for even talking to civilians. I think that falls outside simply trying to prevent abominations. With that kind of attitude, she'd probably have a mage flayed for trying to get laid.
            • And the Qunari would kill people for mages doing that. She's trying to stop the mages from influencing people or coming off as too sympathetic.
          • That was during act 3. Again, the game takes place(and Bethany would have been in the circle) over several years with Meredith getting progressively worse. Moreover, I don't see any point in Meredith imposing strict rules over mages shacking up. She has them locked up, and sex happens in even the strictest prisons(again, outside of total solitary confinement).
          • The last thing Meredith would want is for the mages to be making more mages. A prohibition on boning would not be out of character at all.
          • Possibly Jossed. Bethany shows signs of attraction to Sebastian in Legacy and Mark of the Assassin.
          • Doesn't rule out Bethany being bi, only shows that Sebastian is the only one in the group who's her type. Not impossible; a lot of people were put off by the other LI's.

Leliana was saved by the Ashes, or at least the environment.

If you kill Leliana after defiling the Ashes in Origins, she nonetheless comes back perfectly fine in DAII. Perhaps the spirit of Andraste, sensing Leliana's devotion to the Ashes, brought her back from the very brink of death. Alternatively, it could just have something to do with the fact that you were on top of a mountain full of lyrium.

The Mage-Templar War will be simply the spark of a much larger conflict.

The various countries in Thedas will use this conflict as an excuse to start warring against each other for unrelated reasons. Knight-Commanders will usurp power and set themselves up as warlords. Blood mages will act as generals for Tevinter and the Imperium's war with the Qunari will heat up again. Ferelden and Orlais will again go to war, the Free Marcher city states will start fighting, the Anderfels will turn into the Chantry's battleground, Nevarra will become a wild-card split between Chantry loyalists and those who want to conquer Orlesian territory. Basically, it will become an epic Gambit Pileup, and despite the Divine's best efforts, there will be no averting the conflict.

• Definately possible, but Maker, I hope not. Would make the later games a tad repetative, what with war, war and more war. Although I find it unlikely the Anderfels will become the Chantry's battleground at least. That's the Warden's home territory and some Codex entries in Awakening suggest that the First Warden is the power behind the throne/s there.
• According to the Codex, the Anderfels also have the most pious Andrastians in all of Thedas. So, Kirkwall, Orlais? They're small time compared to these hardcore motherfuckers. I could see them being Meredith taken Up to Eleven, like the Order's answer to Tevinter, trying to oust the Grey Wardens, turned the region into a hodge-podge of warring satraps led by Knight-Commanders who each have a different view on mages, the Chantry, etc. or who simply want power. Also, because Antiva has no army and Zevran (should he live) is positively assfucking (hehe) the Crows (Antiva's one defense), this region will turn into an international gangbang as every nation starts looting the place for everything it has. Sebastian will take over Starkhaven, Aveline and Cullen will be fighting an urban war in the streets of Kirkwall, Isabela will be fighting a pirate war off the Rivaini coast, Fenris will be organizing a slave rebellion in southern Tevinter, the Archon will have to deal with Dark Is Not Evil types threatening his (or, even better, her) rule. Thedas will become one massive charnel house.
  • Weisshaupt is in the Anderfels, though, and surely if they were having any problems they'd relocate their headquarters. And I think the pirates would be smart enough to not fight each other but to instead take advantage of all the other fighting to make a killing. Pirates don't usually stand for anything, after all, so what's there to fight over when business is so good?
  • I'd see nationalistic sentiments forcing the Wardens to retreat from a lot of areas they were once allowed in. For example, I could see Ferelden backpedaling on their Warden love, as the war leads to an uptick of Fereldan nationalism. That means anything, anything that does not answer directly to Denerim is the enemy. The Grey Wardens, the Chantry, the Templars, they are all enemies because they are either from the Anderfels or Orlais. The mages see this as an opportunity to establish themselves in Ferelden, so I could see a number of different mage factions each vying for royal influence: a light-grey Collective, the dark grey Libertarians, the black Resolutionists, and the blacker-than-black Tevinters. As for the Chantry, I could see them suffering a second schism in Ferelden. And the pirates and mercenaries will find a reason to fight. Basically, no side, not even Tevinter or the Qunari will be united. It will be Civil Warcraft to the nth power.
  • Also, Ferelden will prove to Orlais that they most certainly have taken a few levels in badass since the Fifth Blight, contrary to how Alistair describes the Orlesian view of Ferelden military readiness. In fact, DA 3 might be about the steady destruction of the Orlesian Empire. Think about it. Codex entries say that Nevarra wants Orlesian lands, the Chantry is falling to pieces and based out of Orlais, Ferelden and Orlais are rivals, Tevinter and Orlais are enemies. The last known settlement of the Dalish (Halamshiral) is on Orlesian territory. Everyone has a vested interest in taking Orlais down.
  • Riordan mentions that many in the Anderfels see the Wardens as stronger and more fit to rule than the local king and some Wardens agree with them. If the Templars did make a move for power while trying to bring the Wardens to heel, it might result in the Wardens themselves making a bid for power, which would cause all sorts of problems. There might even be a bit of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero as the power-hungry Wardens use the Hero of Ferelden's intervention in political matters as a precedent for justifying abandoning the non-interference policy the Wardens have used for centuries. And speaking of Ferelden, if Alistair is king then there is no way he will allow the Wardens to be seen as the enemy. He has first-hand experience with the results of that kind of thinking. In fact, depending on the outcome of Awakening, the Wardens might view Ferelden as a viable place to relocate their HQ in the event Weisshaupt does get overrun by Templars, since the people of Amaranthine look to the Wardens for leadership and protection.
    • The King does not have a monopoly on public opinion and how things are viewed. If that were the case, he would have much less difficulty trying to improve the lot of the elves.
    • Most of the endings of Awakening have at least some nobles skittish of foreign influences such as the Wardens. Also, Alistair, as king, is either an uninvolved figurehead who spends most of his time with his people, or a hardened talented ruler. In the former case, ministers and advisers would do the real ruling in his stead. In both scenarios, Alistair - whose throne is guaranteed only by placating the Bannorn - will have to sacrifice the Wardens' agenda for political stability if the two interests come in conflict. Those lords won't like Wardens - especially Orlesians - encroaching on their territory. I can see Wardens trying to exploit the Right of Conscription to destabilize areas where they lack support, for instance. I can also see Alistair's shortened life and potential infertility becoming an issue, as nobles jockey for power or find a figurehead to rally around in anticipation of his death.
    • Also, keep in mind that the Wardens are not unambiguous heroes. The Dwarven Warden-Commander preset was a total dick. Just as the Hero of Ferelden could be A Father to His Men, Wardens can also be The Neidermeyer or a Smug Snake. A possible conflict could be between radical Wardens who, driven out of the Anderfels, are trying to move into Ferelden under the leadership of a Type V Anti-Hero Warden Commander by assassinating anti-Warden noblemen, using the Hero's political actions as precedent. On the other side would be Ferelden nationalists who, despite engaging in acts of blatant terrorism against Warden targets, are actually right in saying that the Wardens are attempting to subvert Ferelden's monarchy.
    • The Wardens would have to be morons to undermine a monarchy that was friendly to them, just as most of the Ferelden nobility would have to be morons to actively antagonize the Wardens so soon after a Blight. And as for Alistair - he knows how to put his foot down on matters that are important to him, as we all learned in the Landsmeet. He's going to support the Wardens and if some nobles move against him it would mean civil war. Again. It's incredibly doubtful Ferelden would want to risk such a thing when the Orlesians are rattling sabers. Plus, Wardens in general are still incredibly admired by most people (remember Wynne's story?) and the only reason some people doubted them during the Blight was because no less than a national hero denounced them. And even then there were plenty of doubters.
    • I think it was The Calling where Loghain was actually right about the Wardens trying to undermine Ferelden's monarchy with a possible plan to kill Maric when they felt Fereldan interests ran contrary to Warden interests. Granted, Genevieve wasn't all there and they never tried to go through with it, but the precedent for it is there. Again, we don't know how the Wardens have been treating their subjects in the ten years since the Blight and since the Hero (who might have been a good leader) is now gone, it's entirely possible that a Replacement Scrappy could be at the helm.
      • Also, ordinary people are sheeple, which seems to be reinforced by the second game. All it really takes is a particularly charismatic and influential demagogue.
      • Expecting people in DA not to do things because doing them is stupid is just going to leave you disappointed. It makes far more sense to have a civil war when the threat is just Orlais conquering them again (not that they don't have their own problems) than to have one when a Blight is going to kill everybody and yet it took a freaking miracle to end that civil war. Would Alistair start a civil war if all of the nobles are against the Wardens and he still wants them recognized? The king isn't all-powerful and if the Landsmeet votes against him he can either abuse his power or accept the outcome. People have short memories sometimes and it's been at least ten years since the end of the Blight already. If the Wardens' actions since the Blight have been unsatisfactory, they can't expect the fact that they ended a Blight to carry them through. Wynne happens to be a big fan of the Wardens and I wouldn't put her beliefs down as the beliefs of the common man. The Wardens wouldn't even have to be purposefully antagonizing Ferelden but just have different goals than everyone else and they always feel that their goals come first. While a Warden may look pretty indispensible during a Blight, afterwards people won't see them as nearly as important and in fact they are NEVER as important as they are than when an Archdemon is active.
        • It's more than just Wynne. Pretty much everyone you meet who isn't a crony of Loghain (and even some of them) basicly says "I know what Loghain said, but I don't believe the Wardens would do that." Even when publicly denounced by a national hero the Wardens remain popular in Fereldan. Add to that being saved by them and maybe having one as a popular king and I'd say that Fereldan is likely to back the Wardens, particularly if the Hero was a nice guy, but even if he wasn't.
        • Times change, and the Warden-Commander is now an Arl. The Hero is gone and, in all honestly, probably never coming back. Knowing BioWare, the new WC could be an incompetent administrator. If the people of Amaranthine are suffering with empty stomachs and living in ramshackle, crime-ridden streets while all the arling's resources are going into fighting the darkspawn, they aren't going to be happy. These are townspeople and peasants - groups that care about being fed first, second, and third. A worthy goal, yes, but it would also highlight an important theme that being an asskicker doesn't always translate well to good governance. And don't say, "well, if a Warden-Commander is not a good administrator, he would be replaced immediately." That's not a guarantee. The First Warden is separated from Ferelden by hundreds of miles of territory currently serving as a battleground for the war, and being a Warden doesn't prevent one from having damaging character flaws or, for that matter, failing to see them in others. Just like we shouldn't judge every mage, warrior, or rogue based on Hawke, we shouldn't assume every Warden will be like the Warden.
        • A lot of people do believe in the Wardens and a lot more just don't care if you're on the right side or not or feel that the Wardens are obsolete. Even now that they've stopped a Blight, people will probably begin to look at them as unnecessary again because the Blight is gone. Ferelden had no problem with Arland kicking Wardens out for two centuries, it wasn't easy for them to convince Maric to let them back in, and at the start of the game everyone who isn't dwarven feels Wardens are largely obsolete and the PCs can ask why they should care about darkspawn since they are a dwarven problem. Maybe a lot of the people you meet during a Blight will value the Wardens but once that's over...Loghain was a big hero, too, and yet he couldn't do whatever he wanted and expect not to be turned on and neither can the Wardens. If it comes down to a fight, you can't assume that regardless of circumstances Ferelden will have the Wardens' backs.
        • No, but you also can't assume they won't. The poster above the one directly above is basing his argument on the assumption that the next Warden-Commander will be incompetant, which is just that: an assumption. Hell, chances are one of the characters from Awakening, most likely Nathaniel, will be put in charge and that could go very well. Arland was able to kick out the Wardens because they had rebelled against him. Not the same situation. And don't forget Alistair. If you left him in charge then either way he goes he's a popular king and a Grey Warden. It's far from a given that Fereldan will support the Wardens, but there's enough in place that it's a damn good possibility.
        • It's far from a given, but the series pretty much is set on eliminating any competent or reasonable authority figures simply for the sake of creating conflict. Why should the Wardens be spared from incompetence? Anders is either a fugitive or dead. Same with Justice. Nathaniel is doing something in the Free Marches. Sigrun is probably still a Death Seeker, Oghren a boisterous drunk, Velanna a largely vengeful and taciturn elf. And some of them may have died in the endgame. Can you seriously see competent, temperate leadership coming from any of them? As for Alistair, he has little power in promoting the Grey Wardens if the banns start to dislike them. There are plenty of codex entries which make them seem extremely petty and willing to fight over anything.
          • We do hear a little bit about the WC that takes over after the Warden leaves. The new WC is willing to allow a templar clearly still loyal to the Chantry into the G Ws in order to harass Anders before he merged with Justice. This not only risks the Chantry learning GW secrets (which would be disastrous given how unpleasant and outright blooc magic-y they are) but it threatens the precious autonomy the Wardens have since they have never allowed the templars or anybody else to police their Wardens. The one thing that makes up for how awful being a Warden can be for mages is freedom from the Chantry as long as they stay with the Wardens and now there is a precedent for a templar to keep watch on mages even within the Wardens. That's pretty much all we know of the new WC but it really does hint of either corruption or incompetence.
          • Well, fine. But one bad move doesn't by itself preclude the possibility of Fereldan backing the Wardens.
            • No but which is more likely: the WC only makes noe disastrously and pointlessly stupid decision during his reign or he has a habit of ruling poorly? Even Alistair at the beginning of DA:O when he's very new, has barely gotten any darkspawn experience, and hasn't even been told about the sacrifice required to end a Blight realizes that G Ws can't take orders from the Chantry and that mage Wardens need to be left alone.
  • Adding to this through the Mage-Templar War Ferelden will become an Empire. Since the mages helped during the Blight they may not be seen as bad as in the rest of the world so the revolutionaries may not find many supporters there leaving it relatively together unlike Orlais and the Free Marches. Orlais would be struck first to impede an attack and once Orlais has been defeated Ferelden would turn around and conquer the relatively weak Free Marches.

The Maker is Fen'Harel, the "Dread Wolf" of Elven lore.

Merrill tells a tale of the Dread Wolf, and how he was a god that both the Creators and Forgotten Ones considered their own. One day he apparently got sick of their squabbling and told them of a great weapon the other was making; he told the Forgotten Ones that it was deep underground in "the abyss" and the Creators that it was far up in the heavens. Ultimately, it was a trap, and the Dread Wolf was left to mind his own business.

The Maker is the Dread Wolf. The one that the Forgotten Ones went after was actually the Lyrium Idol. And Flemeth is one of the other gods, rather irked by what "The Maker" had done. Whether she's a "good" or "evil" god is unknown.

• • The legend is actually the story of a war between two Precursor races. The Old Gods of the Imperium are the Forgotten Ones and the Creators are another group of powerful beings that were sealed in the place beyond the Fade that's been mentioned but never seen. The Magisters were tricked by the Old Gods into entering the Golden City in order to free them and the Darkspawn Taint is a security measure left by the Maker to destroy whoever tries to enter the city; it was designed to affect the Old Gods specifically and destroy their followers by causing the Blights.

The Search for the True Prophet

The book from DA:O which suggests Andraste was actually a very powerful mage will become a major plot point. The mage underground will find it, make copies of it, and distribute it. The Chantry will try to destroy the copies, but the harder they ban the text, the more popular it will become, and the ideas within will cause even more religious upheaval in the Chantry, causing a Reformation-like schism with dozens of splinter Chantries forming in Ferelden and in eastern Thedas.

• The Mages will search for evidence that Andraste was a Mage to help their cause and discover unsettling truth abouts the Prophet that the player will decide if they should go public with.

Vigilance will return in a DLC

Another theory: If the Warden ever returns, s/he will be wielding Vigilance, and will make a vague comment about having to fight through a small army of Antivan Crows to get it back.

• Interestingly Vigilance exists in the Dragon Age 2 game files...
• A variant of this hypothesis: taking back Vigilance will be the object of a DLC in which the Warden and Zevran will be playable characters and shamelessly overpowered

Vigilance contains the soul of an unborn dragon.

One of the ingridients in the construction of the sword is the egg of a dragon and part of what makes Vigilance the Infinity+1 Sword is the power of the dragon's soul within it. The epilogue card for the sword states it seemingly has a will of its own. When it does show up again, it will be an Empathic Weapon that changes its stats depending on the wielder's stats and what character is wielding it. It may not be too happy to have given its life to make the sword, however, and at one point the player will have to decide to free its soul by destroying the sword or keeping it. If s/he keeps Vigilance the sword will slowly drain his/her health while she uses it and may change into an Unholy Holy Sword in later games; if the sword is destroyed the dragon's soul gratefully grants a permanent passive ability called, "Dragon's Blessing" that has multiple benefits such as protection from fire damage. The releasing of the soul will also be a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.

A cure for the Blight will eventually be found

With the possibility of several characters working on researching the effects of the taint (i.e. The Architect and Avernus) it is not unreasonable to think a cure could come up as a plot point eventually.

• A cure for the Blight will also be a bio-weapon against Darkspawn. You can be sure that the Wardens will want to weaponize it and you can be damn sure the Architect isn't going to be happy about that.

Justice becomes a demon over the course of the game, and Anders is Only Mostly Dead.

When Justice merged with Anders, his feelings about the mages overwhelmed those of his friend's (remember that Anders was more about avoiding the Templars than actively battling them in Awakening), and the "Anders" we know in Dragon Age II is actually Justice with some of Anders' traits rather than, as we were led to believe, Anders with some of Justice's traits. "Vengeance" is Justice's demon side starting to develop, and Justice is trying to prevent his desires from transforming him into one. By the time of Act III, however, he has failed and Justice is a full demon. "Anders" states that "(he) and Justice are one", which could imply that "Vengeance" has finally taken over. Anders' personality has, by this point, been almost completely eradicated.

The Old God Child is a gigantic Red Herring.

Think about it. While a vital part of the endgame plot, the choice to go through with the ritual is still just that - a choice for the player to accept or refuse. This means that Bioware has to plan for the likely possibility that players decided not to go through with the ritual in any way. Following from this, they can't make the Old God Child a vital part of the plot because that would mean substantially overwriting player decisions, a huge betrayal of the Bioware RPG experience. Therefore, when the Old God Child does get referenced, it will be in a rather shallow way (similar to the way they handled the Council's survival in Mass Effect 2). What does this mean for Morrigan? Well, who's to say that Flemeth really expected her to get pregnant and wasn't just stringing her along for other reasons...

• Not all decisions you can make in game are canon. Take Mass Effect 2, for instance. If Joker is the only survivor besides Shepard, Shepard falls to her death and yet (despite the likely probability that some games have a lone Shepard) there is a sequel starring Shepard. That choice is invalid. Just because there has not been much of a canon set yet doesn't mean that it won't change. We already know that, regardless of what the Warden decided to do at the end of DA:O, they were forced to go to Amaranthine and promptly disappeared a little while after Awakening.
• I agree that the old god child is actually not as important as people think. If the old god child was important then that would isolate all the players who didn't choose to do the ritual. Rather, I believe the fact that Flemeth knows a ritual like this and knows that it will work against an archdemon is the important information. This isn't a ritual you could just look up in books after all.
  • The problem with that, though, is that if the OGB is just a minor thing then that means that all of those Wardens who chose to die to end the Blight instead of sleeping with Morrigan basically died for nothing.
    • Conversely, perhaps Morrigan found a way to do the Ritual even if the Warden refused.
      • If the ritual is done then why would Alistair/Loghain/the Warden still die?
      • Not necessarily. The warden had no idea whether to trust Morrigan or not. Going through the warden's mind, and our minds, was probably 'if I do this, I could've made an even bigger catastrophe just because I wanted to live'. It'd be true the warden died for nothing if the old god child was minor but the thinking is still justified and the ending isn't ruined.
        • Sure, the Warden has no way of knowing but unless the Warden is suicidal or thinks that it would be kinder to let someone die than to help Morrigan become a mother because she'd be so terrible at it, the Warden (or Alistair or Loghain) sacrifices themself because they believe it is the only way to end the Blight without risking an even worse threat. Having the OGB be good or irrelavent means that they died because they were just being paranoid and should have trusted Morrigan.
          • In hindsight, it'd just be the warden being paranoid since the Witch Hunt DLC and a canon-comic shows that Morrigan truly did care for the warden. At that moment, Morrigan and Flemeth were mysterious since the beginning of the game. There was more than enough reason not to trust either of them.
            • Sure the Warden has plenty of reason to distrust them both at the time but in the future if things work out then the story will be that the Hero of Ferelden (or their associate) chose to die pointlessly because they refused to trust the perfectly legitimate offer to save the day without their death being necessary.
  • This one's tricky. Make the OGB canon, and all the players who chose not to do the ritual feel cheated. Make the sacrifice canon, and the same applies to everyone who chose to preform the ritual. In the past, BioWare generally has gone with the choice that offers greater dramatic possibilities in the future and it's hard to argue with the fact that the OGB presents much more opportunity, but then BioWare generally chooses a hard canon only with minor things, and this is arguably the biggest choice in Origins.
    • It's possible that there are other tainted magisters out there besides Corypheus. Corypheus can also clearly body-hop to a non-darkspawn without killing it and maybe he could even do it to a non-Warden so it stands to reason than another magister could do that. They could have the OGB in games where that happened and the second magister in games where it didn't (to explain it, the OGB tracked down and killed the magister). They'd have to fulfill a similar role plot-wise in what makes them so special but I think that being one of the original tainted magisters that were the chosen of Dumas and who were the first darkspawn makes them nearly as special as someone with the soul of an old god. There would have to be some differences in personality, plot, powers, ect. and I think that the OGB should be stronger but it would work.

[WMG: Morrigan joined the grey wardens]]

• I swear to god that is Claudia Black's voice in the Legacy trailer.

Anders and Elthina where in leage

Elthina knew Anders was going to blow up the chantry and Helped him if you did not

• Anders wouldn't have needed any help planting the bomb if you don't help him and Elthina is in on it. For that matter, if you WILL help him then you won't be needed to distract someone who is in on it. And Elthina certainly cannot help collect the bomb material.

The ruler of Ferelden was in league with the mage underground and made it more effective than Ander believed

Imported from the Fridge: why are blood mages and abominations so over-represented among the mage population of Kirkwall? Because the more harmless apostates who did not dabble in blood magic and demon summoning have already fled to Ferelden. The ruler of Ferelden (Alistair, Anora, or even the Warden him/herself) was helping the mage underground behind the scene. Sure, during the time-skip between Act II and III, Meredith's crackdown on the underground led to its collapse in Kirkwall, but not before it helped a lot of mages to escape to the more mage-friendly Ferelden (either because all its local mages were killed during the rite of annulment creating a big demand for mages and therefore an incentive to be softer toward mages than Meredith, or because after being saved by the Warden and taking part of the Battle of Denerim, the Mages became more popular and well liked in Ferelden). If Alistair is king and comes to Kirkwall, the real reason of his visit is to exfiltrate the last free members of the underground, including Anders. Since Meredith got wind of Alistair's visit, she moved fast to stop him from acting, forcing him to leave Anders and the Hawke team to their fate. Anders pessimism would be in this case less despair caused by his "failure", but the sign that he cannot read the situation clearly: most harmless apostates successfully fled to Ferelden, but, seeing only Kirkwall and the situation in the Gallows, Anders started to believe that the underground had failed, paving his way toward more extreme methods.

• Perhaps some of them end up in the completely pro-mage Tevinter.
  • Tevinter Magisters are not above enslaving their fellow mages, according to Fenris, and Feynriel saw a magister killing another one in duel. Tevinter values magic, not mages, and except perhaps for the most powerful among them, Tevinter does not seem to be the safest place for mages. Ferelden, on the other hand, would be a much safer place: the local circle is less a prison than the Gallows and its monarch is willing to lend a hand to apostates. Actually, assuming that one's Warden maintained a very pro-mage attitude during Origins and Awkening and pushed for as much as autonomy as possible, It would not be hard to imagine Alistair inventing more and more preposterous excuses regarding Fereldan mages: «Six apostates were seen in Denerim? Nononononono: They're legitimate Circle mages who requested they're transfer to Ferelden to help with the rebuilding of our nation. No one approved their transfer? I'm sure someone did: the paperwork must have been lost, or burned down, or something... Three templars hunting down a dangerous apostate were found beheaded in a house in Amaranthine? Of course the Warden Commander is not involved: it's... probably Darkspawns: you know, post-Blight mayhem and all that... Apprentice Connor Guerrin was seen in Redcliffe without supervision? Did I approve him leaving the Tower? Why, yes, it was, hum... for Field Training, it'sa, haa... new, experimental, educational method that aim to... make mages more wordly and... give the general public a better opinion of mages, I MEAN: give the mages a better opinion of the general public, so that they can... you know... have non-mage friends and acquaintances and become less tempted to rule over them and all that, its... most definitely NOT me indulging in nepotism»

The apostates who fled to Ferelden will make it the center of the Mage faction

As a result of the previous WMG, instead of being spared, Ferelden will become the main bastion for mages in the mage-templar conflict, which will push Ferelden and Orlais to war, once again.

Hawke is Biff the Understudy

In the first Baldur's Gate game, when a character had to make an appearance and say his or her lines but, for some reason (death or otherwise incapacitated), couldn't appear, the game would substitute Biff the Understudy. Biff would say the lines, mark all the necessary flags and, on occasion, even join the party.

When Thedas needed the new Champion of Kirkwall to make an appearance, the Maker realized that the person who was supposed to become the Champion had died during the Blight. In a moment of improvisation, the Maker substituted Hawke. Manipulating events so that Hawke and his/her family would end up in Kirkwall, the Maker tried to fix what could be fixed and thus ensure the rise of the Champion. However, since Hawke wasn't meant to become the Champion, he was destined to be unprepared for the events that would unfold. And that's why the game ends as it does.

Ferelden is on its way to becoming the most powerful nation in Thedas.

(This goes along with the “The ruler of Ferelden was in league with the mage underground” and “The apostates who fled to Ferelden will make it the center of the Mage faction” theories above).

Ultimately, this began with Ferelden’s gaining independence from Orlais, but was spurred on by the Blight. It had already proven strong enough to force out the Orlesian Empire, probably the strongest nation in Thedas. The Blight and civil war may have weakened Ferelden, but they also ultimately led to the nobility being forced to put aside their differences and work together for survival. This sense of unity and identity as a single nation which defeated a Blight in only two years (a feat that normally takes at least several decades) could have led to an upswing in Fereldan nationalism and a sense of camaraderie among Fereldans, strengthened by a popular and effective monarch regardless of who was put on the throne. This would be a stark contrast to the petty and squabbling Orlesian nobles, a significant number of whom seem to be at odds with Empress Celene as of Act 3.

Now introduce the mage/Templar conflict. All of the more radical Fereldan Libertarians would have allied themselves with Uldred and ultimately been slaughtered by the Warden, even if s/he didn’t annul the Circle. Those who survived and didn’t side with Uldred would probably be too scared to even think of turning to demons and blood magic even for fighting for their freedom. Now add in an influx of apostates from the Free Marches. The crazies would have remained in Kirkwall to fight Meredith while the sane ones ended up in Ferelden, no doubt indebted to the monarch for saving them and ultimately adding to Ferelden’s military strength. Following the events of the second game, this pattern repeats itself all over Thedas, with those mages willing to turn to darker means staying to fight and those unwilling to do so fleeing to the only two places in Thedas they’ll be safe, Tevinter or Ferelden, the latter being a more desirable destination due to centuries of anti-Tevinter propaganda.

The Divine will not be happy about this and could call an Exalted March against Ferelden. Around the same time, Celene could be killed, deposed or persuaded to attempt to reconquer Ferelden. However, the Divine’s armies seem to have been largely depleted by Templars defecting to hunt mages on their own and the various nations of Thedas will be in no position to lend her soldiers while they deal with their internal mage problems. Likewise, the Orlesians will have access to very few mages (if any) and won’t be getting any help from the neighbors it has conquered in the past. In fact, this might even lead to countries like Nevarra (anti-Orlesian) and Tevinter (anti-Chantry) forming alliances with Ferelden. Regardless, in this scenario Ferelden will have a lot of magical firepower and its enemies will have much less or none at all and will even have much less access to anti-magic capabilities than normal. This will be supplemented by the highly nationalistic and united soldiers and nobility fighting to prevent the atrocities of the Orlesian occupation from happening again. It also doesn’t hurt that two of the strongest and most important people of the Dragon Age, the Warden and Hawke, are both Fereldan. (The two dwarven and Dalish elf origins may not have been Fereldan by birth, but are certainly at least de facto Fereldan by the end of Origins).

As a result, Ferelden thoroughly trounces both Orlais and the Chantry, rising as the dominant power in Thedas, possibly with its own Chantry centered around its monarch (like real world England under Henry VIII).

• There are a lot of issues with this theory. For one, the Stolen Throne shows that Orlais didn't have much of a vested interest in Ferelden and the emperor sent someone he disliked and was trying to get rid of to govern it and allowed him to do as he pleased, which is hardly how one would treat a valued property. They lost the rebellion but that really seems more like a lack of commitment to really retaking Ferelden than Orlais literally being unable to hold it. Remember, Orlais is constantly at war with its neighbors and so it really didn't need another war going on with Ferelden. That doesn't make Ferelden stronger militarily than Orlais. Ferelden defeating the Blight in two years does not mean that they are more amazing than other nations. In fact, given the civil war and general anarchy, they were probably less prepared for the Blight than any nation except the Anderfels when the first Blight broke out. It was a fluke that the Archdemon chose to reveal itself so early in the game and that a GW managed to kill it instead of someone else (if someone else had killed the Archdemon and it possessed a genlock, more than likely you'd have a genlock-shaped Archdemon that would be impossible to track). You're right that this will bring forth a new wave of nationalism but the other nations aren't lacking for nationalism either so that's not a Ferelden advantage. The Ferelden nobility is rarely united about anything. It's canon that they've fought a war over an apple tree before. The Bannorn will never get along. Temporarily unite in order to face external threats, possibly (though it's not assured). This might help if they were invaded again but it won't keep them a unified and strong nation. And the Orlesian nobles petty bickering is actually one of the nations' strengths. A previous emperor created 'the Game' that all of the nobles are embroiled in while stripping them of any real power so Celene is the one making all the decisions instead of trying to get a coalition to agree to what's important. There also isn't much reason to think that all these apostates will flee to Ferelden who, while wanting to make life better for mages, hasn't advocated letting mages live freely anywhere which is what many apostates want. Their struggle with the Chantry also isn't exactly common knowledge and Hawke only finds out by chance. Ferelden is considered the backwater of Thedas so between that and the mage paradise that is Tevinter, most mages are probably going to choose Tevinter. Sure, there's anti-Tevinter propaganda that the Chantry spouts but they also hate apostates and the apostates are likely to take Chantry word with a grain of salt. It's also important to note that, mages or no, Ferelden is a tiny and poor land and that, game mechanics aside, a few mages can't stand up to an army and hope to win and the mages will always be greatly outnumbered by other troops (and so will the Ferelden troops). Ferelden has a long way to go before it becomes any sort of superpower. And while the Warden and Hawkes' nationalities might not hurt Ferelden, they really won't help it, either. Hawke especially since, despite being called the most important person ever, events would have largely played out the same way if she hadn't been there.
  • Yea, I'm not seeing it. If nothing else, Ferelden's hurt too badly by lack of numbers alone. Nearly half the nation fled to the free marches and most of them never came back, either because they had nothing to come back to or because they couldn't afford to. The half that stayed...well, between the darkspawn, the civil war, and the warden carving through anyone who got in his way, that population's got hit pretty hard and that isn't even taking into account the fammine and disease that comes with warfare. Which brings up another point; a good bit of Ferelden's blight lands now. That corruption doesn't go away easy; that's fields that no longer grow crops, herds that have been slaughtered, and a lot of people without a lot to eat.

Alternative version of the previous WMG: The Grand Finale will include a Battle Royale With Cheese, and Ferelden will end up on top by virtue of being slightly less exhausted than its neighbours.

• The Qunari will take advantage of the Mage-Templar war to invade Tevinter: last time they invaded, it took the strengh of all of Thedas to push them back: this time, the Mage-Templar war will makes the rest of Thedas unwilling/unable to help Tevinter, and the old empire will fall, mirroring the real world fall of Constantinople.
• The Qun will spread like wildfire in the former imperium, as slaves fed up with the magisters cruelty and corruption will embrace the new philoshophy.
• Still too busy to fight their civil war, the rest of Thedas will not -at first- present an united front, and will start to be conquered by Qunari who finally decided to fight seriously.
• The only countries to be avoided will be the Anderfels -because Sten from Origins told his superiors that messing with the Grey Wardens stronghold is a bad idea- and Ferelden because of distance.
  • Sten knows a few Grey Wardens and only possibly has respect for you. Take Alistair, for instance. He's a Grey Warden and yet when Sten returns home he says he met one worthy person, not that the Grey Warden order is one full of worthy individuals. It makes no more sense that Sten or his Arishok would back away from the Wardens because they met one awesome Warden than it would that they'd stay away from every other group, including nationality, that the Warden is a part of. And the Qunari won't be deterred by difficulty since their ultimate goal is to convert everybody as instructed by the Qun. Ferelden might be spared at first but eventually if the Qunari are successful they would go there. And since Ferelden has been thoroughly researched by Sten, I don't see them letting that go to waste.
    • Sten met two novice Wardens, and Alistair may be an immature manchild, he's still a formidable warrior; the Anderfells have thousands of experienced Wardens: it makes sense for the Qunari to go first after easier targets, like the already decadent Tevinter and keep an harder to conquer country for after they get a strong footing on Thedosian mainland. The Anderfels and Ferelden would not be spared by the Qunari, they would merely be saved for last., for different strategic reasons (the Wardens guarding the northern nation, the difficulties to have a reliable supply line to attack the southern one directly from Par Volen)
      • Decadent or not, Tevinter still has far more mages than any other nation and in a one-on-one fight, a mage usually beats a non-mage. Mages are all that's stopped the Qunari from beating the Tevinter before (though Sten, I think, implied that they weren't really trying) or the entire rest of Thedas (including the super-devout Anderfels) from completing their Exalted March. Wardens are very good at killing darkspawn and they're generally stronger than your average warrior but they're not exactly unstoppable killing machines and the fact that they're Wardens don't give them any advantage over non-darkspawn any more than templars have an advantage over non-mages.
      • Remember Sophia Dryden's rebellion? a few dozen Wardens nearly deafeted all of Ferelden armies. Wardens are nigh-unstoppable killing machines, that's their order entire raison d'être
        • You mean Sophia Dryden's rebellion that we know virtually nothing about but involved a very difficult to siege fortress and a veritable army of demons? You can't just say that all Wardens are nigh-unstoppable killing machines. Becoming a Warden doesn't make you any stronger than you were before, it just makes you better able to sense darkspawn and capable of killing an Archdemon. Sure, the Wardens like to recruit only the best but this doesn't make them one-man armies. They are just elite fighters, not superhuman. Remember how all of Duncan's Wardens died at Ostagar and the Warden and Alistair would have been killed if not for Flemeth? Remember Nathaniel getting overpowered by a few guards? Remember every Warden at Vigi's Keep being slaughtered by darkspawn? Nigh-unstoppable killing machines would have been fine, particularly in the last case.
        • Fridge Brilliance: Dryden's rebellion happened when the Fereldan Wardens were at the peak of their power: strong enough to challenge a full standing army. During most of Origins and Awakening, the Wardens are weakened and disorganized after two centuries of banishment and the slaughter at Ostagar: The real goal of Awkening is to bring back the lost power and influence of the order in Ferelden: sure, the conflict between the Architect and the Mother is what catches most players attention, but plotwise Awakening is as much about the Warden learning to govern a province (taming the restless nobles, gaining the support of the commoners, maintaining the rule of law, etc...) and if s/he plays their cards right, the Golden Ending describes a Warden-ruled arling of Amaranthine as rebuilding itself fast from the damage done during Awakening and becoming home of no less than two (if not three if you count Alec's knights) powerfull millitary formations (the Silver Order and Vigil Keep's Wardens). in DA2, Act 1 quest Secret Rendezvous shows that Amaranthine is, at most mere months afters the end of Awakening, able to challenge Kirkwall's merchant fleet, which implies that the Golden Ending is mostly the canon one. In other words: in Origin and the begining of Awakening, we see Grey Wardens in an abnormally weakened state, Awakening shows the order rebuilding itself and becoming once again a force to be reckoned with, and by Act 2 of DA2, they treat the Qunari invasion of a neighboring city-state as a skirmish of secondary importance, not even business-as-usual material.
• The other thedosian nations, weakened by civil war will keep on fighting a loosing war against the technologically superior Qunari.
• Ferelden may not be superpower material, but will be the last mage-friendly nation after the fall of Tevinter, and also have the only non-Qunari black powder.
• In desperation, the chantry will call Ferelden for help: their few advantages (mages, powder, proximity of Orzammar, lots of Mabari descended from Origin's dog, The Warden -who will conveniently reappear at the nick of time-) will give Southern Thedas dwindling forces the second wind needed to turn the tides of war.
• Lots of events meant to make the players pump their fists, cheer, cry, curse the name "david Gaider" will happen
• By the end of those events, the power structure in Theda will be mirroring Europe at the end of the Renaissance:
  • Tevinter, Rivain, maybe Nevara, and most definitely the northern isles will be Qunari, mirroring the Ottoman Empire at its maximum extent
  • The Anderfels will become like Russia: a country at the edges of the continent, big enough to stand on its own.
  • Southern Thedas will become like Western Europe: divided but still independant and with opportunities to move the cogs of history in the future.
• Ferelden may not become the one and only master of southern Thedas, but its prestige will affect the culture of the rest of southern Thedas (Mabari everywhere, a more non-possessed-mage-friendly attitude, talks about following the "Fereldan model" among the learned of Southern Thedas, etc...)

The Maker didn't want to turn His back on the Spirits, but he had to because they were batshit insane.

Merrill states that there is no such thing as a "good spirit", and that there never has been as they are all dangerous, which presumably includes ones of noble emotions such as Faith and Justice. We know that they turn into demons when their desires poison them enough.

The Maker was disappointed with His first children not because He was an uncaring deity, but because He knew that they were too dangerous and powerful to be left unchecked. He also realised that they all have the potential to become extremely powerful and horrific demons.

He didn't have the heart to genocide the crap out of them or Mind Rape them into perfect submission however, so He created mortals instead.

Which leads us to...

• We already know that even the spirit of Justice that had just arrived in the mortal world was already completely fanatical about his chosen virtue and couldn't comprehend the idea of extenuating circumstances.

Demons are the real masterminds behind the First Darkspawn.

The whole "demons are jealous of the Maker's favour" thing either a cover-up or an idealistic misconception. The reality is that demons are so tainted by their wishes that they've become an Exclusively Evil race of For the Evulz Complete Monsters.

The demons were the ones who really got the Tevinter magisters to corrupt the Golden City in a bid to make the mortals overthrow the Maker. The whole thing was a Xanatos Gambit: if the magisters were successful in destroying the Maker, worship of demons would spread worldwide and they would rule the world. If they were cast out, they come back as tainted monstrosities that the demons could then guide to the so-called "Old Gods" (who were really just very powerful dragons) to continually destroy the mortal world. In their desperation, more people would turn to means such as blood magic or consorting with the demons to gain power... which has the side-effect of creating abominations in many circumstances.

Alternatively, the First Darkspawn were a kind of Abomination, but the plot and result were the same.

In either event, the demons didn't predict the Grey Wardens.

The Architect is still alive regardless of what the Warden chose to do with him at the end of Awakening.

At the end of the Legacy DLC, it's implied that Corypheus survives by body hopping into the hopelessly tainted Larius. The Architect could do (and probably did) the exact same thing with Seranni.

The Architect is related distantly to one of the Original Magisters.

Not exactly sure how Darkspawn genetics work, but he had enough of the Magister's Original Soul/Spirit/DNA in him to form a sense of self-awareness. He was like Corypheus in reverse.

• • Or perhaps he is another of the Original Magisters rather than being just related to them. He just has no recollection of it. After all, Corypheus' mind seemed quite a bit hazy when he woke... Perhaps it's something similar? I can't quite remember what else there is to the Architect, so I might have mixed something up there, though.
  • He claimed that he simply awoke with sentience, and quickly realised he was different from the others. He considered himself a simple mutation, but there's no reason why he can't just be rationalising his own beliefs. He doesn't seem as powerful as Corypheus, but that could just be simple game mechanics or differences in rank and skill.

Finn will appear in Dragon Age III

Possibly the only mage we've met that comfortably lives in the Mage Circle, is close with his family, and prefers the tower over freedom unless he gets the opportunity to research. There could be a lot of potential for him, a bookworm pacifist being forced into the battlefield because of his rebelling companions. He's practically an anti-Anders mage character.

• And he'll be married to fellow Witch Hunt party member Arianne. Talk about an Odd Couple.

The Golden City was already tainted when the magisters got there.

When questioned about the Black City, Corypheus replies that "it was supposed to be golden." While one possible interpretation is that it became tainted so quickly that the magisters never saw it as golden, it seems like an odd line to include if it doesn't mean something more.

• Adding to this, Corypheus claimed the Golden/Black City held the power of the Gods. Plural gods. Now, this is understandable, given the Tevinters had no idea who the Maker was, but the fact that they believed that it held power for their own gods likely means it was not "The Maker's House," more like a constant place in the Fade. Moreover, he calls for the First Acolyte, likely a high priest similar to the Divine. If they needed a priest, perhaps the First Acolyte was not savvy about Light Is Not Good and assumed the City was a font of power they could simply tap into. Perhaps the Old Gods are simply extremely powerful dragons and the real reason was that their priests make some rather drastic religious assumptions.
• Or the Golden City is tainted because it is the home of demons. The Blight and Demon infestation have similar physical effects. Perhaps going into a place of such concentrated evil brought the Blight back.
• Avernus of Warden's Peak claims that whatever the darkspawn taint is, it's completely foreign to the spirits of the Fade. Demons spoken to about the Black City know of it, but don't show any intimate knowledge that would suggest that they've ever been there and returned. What that means about the Taint is up in the air, but it does suggest that it's part of something worse than "mere" demons.

As an extension of the above theory, the Golden City was the home of the elven gods, NOT the Maker, and whatever tainted it is the real reason they disappeared.

Corypheus' statement that the magisters sought to steal the power of the gods (plural) clashes with the official Chantry version of the story which states that they were trying to take the Maker's power. It seems unlikely that he, as a devotee of Dumat, meant they were trying to take the power of the Old Gods. Taking the power of the elven gods, however, makes perfect sense as the ultimate act of oppression of the elves. Unfortunately for the magisters, things didn't quite go according to plan.

The third game will have the Veil nearly destroyed.

By the beginning of this game's story, the Mage/Templar war has spread continent wide. Mages would be using their powers both without regulation and at a greater rate than ever before and the rogue Templars will be using their more lyrim at an incredible rate to counter them without any oversight. Add so much conflicting magical power to the massive loss of life from a near world-wide war and the Veil will become about as sturdy as rice paper. It's just a matter of time before something finally tips the balance and the full force of the Fade is let loose. Just as Sandal predicted.

The darkspawn and their taint are part of an Eldritch Abomination infesting the Black City.

The darkspawn taint is unaffected by nearly all magic. Nobody, mortal or spirit, has any understanding of the darkspawn's power despite their 1200 year of assaulting the world. All anybody knows is that they came from the Black City. Despite the Chantry's canon, the only witness of the event that spawned the darkspawn we've seen claims that the City was corrupted before they even got there. That, alongside Sandal's disturbing "prophecies" implies that there is at least one entity in that city who could be the cause of it who, for one reason or another, doesn't react. The coming catastrophe will unleash this entity and its power on both worlds. Which is probably exactly what Morrigan and Flemeth have been preparing for.

DA 3 will have the Warden as the player character, with Hawke as a companion

Isn't it strange how, all of a sudden, the Player has a voice? With everyone who's met the Warden Lampshading the fact that the Warden doesn't have much of a voice, it seems like Bioware won't be giving him/her one. The Warden appearing is prett much a given - but how do you put him/her in-game without taking away the crucial element of customization? Easy - make him/her the Player Character! But then what's the point of Hawke? Well, the reason he/she got a voice wasn't due to popular demand - it's because he/she is going to be a companion. Prove me wrong.

• Seems more likely than the other way around like other people are saying--after all, Hawke's personality is way easier to track then the Warden's. Hell, it probably would even be possible to track his/her stance on mages/templars, by recording who they were aggressive/diplomatic to.
  • Seems to me that's backwards logic. The warden's personality being harder to track should make him an easier player character; one who's choices are in our hands, than an npc(who's decisions are set). As for events in previous games; consider what Bioware's doing with mass effect and it's interactive comic lead ins; they can do something similar(technically they already did) with Dragon Age, letting you choose the decisions made in previous installments.

When the Darkspawn are finally defeated the Grey Wardens will become the next big threat to Thedas

I was thinking recently that if and when the Blights are finally ended once and for all, the nations of Thedas are going to have a major political problem on their hands. They have allowed an elite paramilitary force to establish multiple footholds all over the continent, and they have granted this extra-judicial organization major privileges. Grey Wardens can mostly go where they please and they have the power to draft anyone into their ranks without the consent of the draftee or the nation he/she is a citizen of. (And they aren't too fussy about the character of the recruit, just that the recruit is a good fighter.) That kind of power is not easily given up.

When the Darkspawn are finally defeated for good, tensions will flare between the Grey Wardens and the people of Thedas as the Wardens struggle to adapt to a world that no longer needs them. The nobler Wardens will happily give it all up and settle down, but the rest won't want to give up the power and prestige they've grown accustomed to. They will eventually start demanding compensation for the centuries of work they did fighting the Darkspawn, which the nations of Thedas will probably not want to give them (the accumulated interest alone would make them turn white as a sheet). From there things will spiral out of control until the Grey Wardens become an imminent threat to Thedas.

Now you might think that that won't happen since all the Grey Wardens will eventually succumb to the taint. But will they? Dragon Age: The Calling hits us with the revelation that if a Grey Warden is strong enough the taint will turn them into a ghoul rather than killing them. And of course Avernus proved that it's possible to extend a Warden's lifespan long after the taint should have killed them, perhaps even indefinitely. Not to mention if all the Archdemons are dead, the Grey Wardens would no longer hear the Calling that pushes them to go down and fight the Darkspawn in the Deep Roads.

• • If this does happen it won't last for more than a couple of generations. If the Darkspawn are all dead then there is no more blood to make Grey wardens.

The Wardens regaining power is not a good thing

Everyone knows that the Wardens are essential for darkspawn fighting and Blight-ending due to being the only ones to be able to kill a darkspawn, being able to sense darkspawn, and being already tainted. However, giving them actual political power and lands of their own is a terrible idea. The Wardens are constantly keeping dark secrets from even their fellow Wardens, sometimes dipping into the crazy. And when the Wardens have other considerations besides fighting darkspawn, it takes away from their purpose of fighting darkspawn. Even if there aren't any signs of darkspawn in the nation they happen to be assigned doesn't mean that their job should be over. There are ALWAYS darkspawn in the Deep Roads to be dealt with and yet they rarely go down there unless they're on their Calling. Similarly, once given that power they won't give it up easily and we'll have another Dryden's rebellion on our hands.

• Eh. On the other hand, one could say that without some degree of power they lose the ability to do their duties effectively. In Ferelden they barely had the clout to impose the right of conscription prior to the fifth blight, and they were largely cut off from their supplies after Ostagar. Them having strong bases of power (soldier's peak, vigil's keep) gives them places to train, supply, recruit, centralize and sort out intelligence reports, and better stage attacks against the dark spawn. Giving them so much power that they're more focused on ruling than their mission is bad, but then giving anyone too much power is bad. They need enough power and autonomy as to remain independent and self-governing, so they don't become slaves to the whims of the nobility, nor mere arms of a given country's military.
  • This isn't a dichotomy. It's not giving them an Arling, letting them be a noble, letting them have a great deal of political power to distract them from doing their job (especially in places not in Ferelden where Darkspawn sightings are considerably rarer) or rendering them completely powerless. Soldier's Peak is a good idea. It's a nice, solid fortress for them to use. Vigil's Keep is not because that's an entire Arling and we haven't seen anything good come from Wardens in positions of political power. They only need enough power to do their job and have the power to conscript people and fight darkspawn unmolested.
  • "They only need enough power to do their job and have the power to conscript people and fight darkspawn unmolested."
    The question is, how much power is that exactly? How much authority and autonomy do the Grey Wardens need to do their job effectively? That's the point of this WMG. We know there are Grey Wardens who aren't exactly saints. In fact I'm pretty sure it says somewhere in the codex that when looking for new recruits the Wardens consider fighting prowess first and a strong moral compass a distant second. And we've certainly seen some individual Wardens do some downright villainous things in the name of their cause. There will probably always be Wardens who will argue that if they only had a little more power they could do much more good. And as long as there are still darkspawn making sporadic surface raids there will always be Grey Warden sympathizers who will want to give them more power.
    • Their job is to fight darkspawn and end Blights. They aren't the only people who can fight darkspawn but because they can sense them and don't risk becoming tainted in the process they are by far the best. They are the only people who can end Blights. The world needs them doing their job. By Awakening, we have a GW Arl and a possible GW King (perhaps even a GW Queen as well). That kind of thing never happens but now it's a foot in the door. Maybe the effects won't be immediate but it's a precedent and the First Warden admits that that's what he's going for. He wants more political power and I really can't see how this is supposed to be a good thing. Surely they can do their jobs without being nobles. If anything, being tied to a land and noble obligations will less their autonomy.
    • Origins' plot happened, in part, because everybody competent in Fereldan completely ignored the Wardens' advice until the Blight was on top of them. The backstory implies that this isn't an unusual thing. If anybody less capable than the near-unstoppable Origins' Warden were around, the Blight would have lasted for decades after the 'spawn got Fereldan's resources. The Warden's provide a valuable service and do benefit from autonomy, but without any real, direct power, all they can do without going completely renegade is nag people until they remember that they're sitting on top of an endless army of evil monsters. If they kept real political titles, then they'd be much more effective at rapidly responding to the darkspawn and have less need for extreme measures like assassination. There are enormous risks, but the benefits would probably be enough for the First Warden to risk it.
      • It was never a question of the First Warden not wanting to risk it; it's whether it's in the best interest of the non-Wardens to do this. A Blight only comes along so often (and when it does and we don't have someone like Loghain refusing to believe it because of his personal issues with Flemeth and the Orlesians then the Wardens would quickly be given power again like they always do) and the rest of the time the Wardens' history of horrible decisions and abuse of power make giving them more power a horrible idea.
    • The only notable abuse of power not directly related to stopping or preventing a Blight was Sophia Dryden's rebellion, which was pretty well justified considering how terrible a king was ruling at the time. I admit that the Wardens' policy of "anything to stop the Blight" is more than a bit worrying, but the sheer scale of the darkspawn threat does justify it. Outside of a Blight, everybody above ground seems to completely forget about the Darkspawn horde beneath their feet. All it takes is one bit of intelligence to turn the 'spawn into the most deadly force in the world. The previous Blights took decades to resolve, leaving innumerable casualties and wide swaths of land completely uninhabitable. All five of them were beaten by the narrowest of margins. There's still two (well, two-and-a-half) Old Gods waiting to be turned. Even if they were both killed, the darkspawn wouldn't just disappear. Maker knows what'll happen when they don't have the calling to distract them. If it Wardens had some actual political power, they might be able to get the resources to at least understand what the 'spawn are and how to beat them. If they had more proper channels to work through, maybe the Wardens wouldn't need to resort to dangerous, morally questionable measures so often. I have no doubt that abuses would occur (not every Warden Commander will be as nice or effective as you could make yours), but at least it'd get the people of Thedas out of their false sense of security and realize how much danger they face. The biggest risk would probably be potential backlash against the Wardens from either the Chantry or commoners.
    • Governing takes a lot more than sitting in a fortress training soldiers or running through the Deep Roads killing Darkspawn. Roads have to be maintained, farms have to produce grain, coffers have to be filled with gold, people have to be bread & circused and nobles have to have their egos stroked. Wardens are good at one thing and one thing only: killing darkspawn. Some of them are former prisoners, some of them are thieves, or mages, or common grunts, but none of them are consummate politicians by trade. Also, Ferelden is a rather insular country that looks suspiciously at foreigners as potential interlopers. Loghain is merely this attitude turned Up to Eleven. Having Wardens, who may be Free Marchers, Anders, or even Orlesians, come in to run an arling will simply not sit well with the nobility in the short term. Also, the First Warden likes to send in personnel from his personal circle, distrusting local men (Mistress Woolsey is one). All it takes is for that to turn into cronyism, and the entire arling becomes packed with toadies who answer to the first warden ahead of the King or the Landsmeet. Add in the possibility that the new WC could end up being a General Ripper, and its a recipe for disaster. With the Mage-Templar war under way, times are going to be tough. It might be the case that the WC will have to choose between devoting resources to the arling or to the deep roads. Also, the Right of Conscription is ripe for abuse. A noble bothering you? Conscript him and send him to the Deep Roads. A guard captain too by the book for you? Conscript him and send him to the Deep Roads. A running theme in DA is that unchecked power can and will be abused.

Larius was a thrall of Corypheus all along.

We know that Corypheus can control the tainted, sometimes overtly (like the Carta) and sometimes covertly (like Janeka). Larius was very, very tainted, and isn't it rather conveinient that the only way for Hawke to kill Corypheus is to free him from the seal first? Like Janeka, Larius was covertly controlled by Corypheus, rationalizing his desire to free Corypheus into a desire to kill him.

• While I wouldn't put it past the Wardens to just be that stupid, this sounds plausible. The reason that Larius and Janeka were apparently on opposite sides was in case the Warden suspected one of the two sides of being under Corypheus' control. This way, they can side with the other side and wouldn't suspect the opposing sides of both working for Corypheus.
• I was actually thinking this exact same thing as I played through Legacy. I sided with Larius the first time because it seemed like the more heroic option (and I always take the good option on a first playthrough). Then all of a sudden he starts telling me I need to set Corypheus free before I can kill him. Ex-squeeze me? I need to free the world-devouring all-powerful darkspawn in order to kill him? Is there some reason I can't just run him through or chop his body into croutons while he's still asleep?

Fenris is a mage.

Or at least had some magical potential that Danarius chose him for. His sister is a mage and his memory is shot all to hell so he doesn't remember possessing magic. The lyrium tattoos aren't the source of his power, they channel the power of the Fade away from his mind (preventing possession and involuntary use of regular magic, similar to the resistance of Dwarves to magic) while keeping his intangibility and other powers at his disposal. Danarius was trying to recreate the elven Arcane Warriors of Arlathan when he infused the lyrium onto Fenris and got something else entirely. When Fenris finds out about this he will find it ironically and darkly funny.

• Funny? I think he'd more likely find it horrifying. He practically breaks down in tears when he finds out he actually volunteered to get the lyrium tattoos. If he suddenly found out he was a mage all along I think he might try to cut his own throat.
  • Fenris might have reacted better if the mother he freed weren't dead and the sister he freed weren't so bitter and insisting that he did her no favor while trying to return him to slavery. He basically finds out that all of his misery is something he signed up for and that it was ultimately for nothing.
• Okay, "funny" may not have been the right word... more like Laughing Mad. Or he may not even care, differentiating himself from other mages because he can't be possessed. The reveal of his past as a mage will make him a target for both Templars and Mages as well as other parties, whether to destroy him to keep the process from being recreated or to make more of him to win the war.
  • Fenris can't be possessed? And either way, possession is not Fenris' sole fear. Danarius was never possessed nor was Hadriana. He thinks that those with magic will inevitably abuse it and very possibly knows just how easily he would give into a demon depending on if he was there when you helped Feynriel.
• He can't be possessed easily, though it's not impossible. Throughout the game Fenris criticizes Mages for their easily abused powers without realizing his own powers could be just as easily abused if he chose to. The factions do realise this and that's why they're chasing him.
• Fenris a mage, huh? Oh, the irony runs deep indeed! I love this idea! I can already picture the poor guy having a Heroic BSOD after the revelation.
  • His response after that will most likely be determined by his relationship with Hawke and his/her choices and class.

Andraste was The Ladette

She's usually depicted as Incorruptible Pure Pureness and Too Good for This Sinful Earth, so it would be hilarious to discover she could out-drink her soldiers and swore like a sailor. The real reason her husband betrayed her? He felt threatened by any woman could belch out the Chant of Light with a straight face. Her reaction to having a religion built around her would be along the lines of, "Stupid blighters would worship a half-drunk genlock if someone lit him on fire!"

• Presumably, being 'one of the guys' is how she managed to get legions of barbarians following her.
• Oh, and her singing voice? Terrible. Everyone was too scared of her to say otherwise. She was actually killed by excessive drinking combined with falling off a cliff in a drunken stupor. The woman mercy-killed by the Archon was an impersonator whose lyrium-enhanced remains became the Sacred Ashes. Take that, Wizard!

Dragonage III will be about a Half Elf who will be destined to change the world..

He or she will be half Elf half human to allow a lot of customization . His default look will be half elf , half Rivani to allow him to have dark features. Options include Archer, Rogue or Mage due to his more slender build. And will take place in Tevinter where your character will change the world by not only freeing the elves, but returning their immortality . By bringing the old gods of the Elves back into the world...

• There are no half-elves. There are only humans with one elf parents and maybe some elven features. And they are hated by everybody so that would certainly make things interesting. The elves would have a stroke if their gods were saved by a human whose elf parent 'betrayed' them.

The Architect and Corypheus will team up to invade the Black City.

The Architect will do so believing that he can destroy the taint at its source, allowing darkspawn to truly be free of it. Corypheus will pretend to go along with this while secretly plotting to do what he failed to do the last time and take the power of the gods for himself. Inevitably this will go very wrong for both of them.

For Dragon Age 3, advertising will prominently feature the Rogue Protagonist.

The first game used warrior, and the second game used mage. It's only fair.

• Related theory: the most prominent love interest will be a female warrior. Consider that the most heavily advertised love interests of the previous games were Morrigan (female mage) and Isabela (female rogue)
  • Considering the trend of the last two love interests, the female warrior will be wearing strangely revealing armor.

Neither the Maker nor the elven pantheon exist.

At least not as either mythology presents them. Instead they are both interpretations of the same divine force which is different from either race's idea.

• Or else there are no real deities

We'll get a DLC where Hawke and co. participate in the Grand Tourney.

It's a good way to show off the other cities in the Free Marches, and hey, Inevitable Tournament.

• Or it could be a spin-off for a multiplayer Dragon Age game, either one would be great. Sandal will be a secret character that yells "Enchantment!" which causes a bright flash to defeat his opponents.

Freeing Corypheus was the best possible outcome for Legacy.

• If Hawke hadn't killed Corypheus' original body he would have escaped with his original powers intact instead of "merely" possessing the body of a Grey Warden. He's still a threat, sure, but it's the lesser of two evils.
  • Corypheus can only escape if the blood of Hawke is used to lift the seal. He never could have escaped on his own or without it.
    • Malcolm Hawke was forced to restore the seals holding Corypheus using blood magic some thirty years prior to the DLC as they were failing. Once Hawke was trapped within the only real choice was destroy Corypheus before one of the groups involved (the Carta, Darkspawn, Janeka) used his/her blood to free their master. Yeah, Hawke could have lived out the rest of his/her life in there, but would anyone have picked that option?
    • I wouldn't say it was the best possible outcome but more like the only reasonable outcome. It was either live in the deep roads, die, or free Corypheus. We also don't know if possessing a grey warden makes him any weaker. Its akin to how an archdemon posesses a darkspawn if killed. Assumingly they still retain the majority of their power or find a way to regain all their power since the blight continues.
  • Except that if Hawke sides with Janeka it could be just as if Corypheus kept his original body. Janeka seems to be reasonably powerful mage and Corypheus's knowledge and experience are probably just as dangerous as his raw power.
  • Considering he's almost a Physical God in his first body, it's probably still good he's in a regular human's body after Legacy, even if it is a mage. Also keep in mind that the ability of Archdemons to Body Surf through Taint-bearing individuals isn't common knowledge, so as far as Hawke knew killing Corypheus was the best option.

There will be a Darkspawn Chronicles like DLC starring Bethany and Carver

• Varric will come up with a hypothetical tale of what would have happened if the elder Hawke had thrown themselves infront of an Ogre instead of one of his younger siblings. Carver and Bethany end up making the trip to Kirkwall together, and are constantly being torn apart by the mage-templar politics of the city. We explore their ten years in Kirkwall in fast forward, and how events would have unfolded around them.
  • Holy Hell, that's good. Bioware designers: Read This Page.
    • Darkspawn Chronicles wasn't much loved given that it was impossible to figure out how things must have gone down to give Alistair the allies he had and why would anyone in-game want to hear about what Varric thinks may have happened if Hawke had died? Besides, if Bethany didn't get dragged to the Circle or Carver joined the templars, they would have died or become Grey Wardens down in the Deep Roads. And then a few more people might have died before the Arishok could be brought down by Meredith and Orsino's forces but it would have been done and Meredith's forces would have slaughtered Orsino's during the Rite of Annulment pretty much the same way it goes down if Hawke is there so there wouldn't really be much of a change from canon.
    • When I said Darkspawn Chronicles, I simply meant a hypothetical, non canon situation. If Carver and Bethany were the protagonists, things may have unfolded differently, and they may not have contracted the taint in the deep roads. Hawke got the ball rolling in a specific way in Dragon Age 2 when he impressed the Arishok with his abilities. Bethany, Carver, and the rest of the party might not have been good enough to draw that attention. The Qunari issue may have gone over completely differently. As would the Mage-Templar issue.

Sandal's Prophecy redux

"One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see." Everyone seems to be interpreting Sandal's words as a prediction of positive/neutral events. In reality this is a prophecy of doom. All the magic coming back and everyone becoming like they once were (whatever that means) would be a world-shattering disaster. And "He" (whoever "He" is) will bring great destruction to the world of Thedas. As such the protagonist(s) of DAIII will spend the entire game trying to prevent this prophecy from coming to pass.

• The prophecy also has a double meaning featured somewhere else on this WMG. Sandal's Prophecy can be viewed as a premonition of the final act. "one day the magic will come back, everyone will be just like they were" refers to the world returning to when the Tevinter ruled and mages were free. "The sky opens wide..." refers to when Anders blows up the chantry, his bomb splits the sky above Kirkwall. And "He" is Anders since when he rose to stand up to Meredith and Orsino, the Chantry exploded. "Everyone will see" can refer to the literal meaning that everyone saw the bomb(Pretty hard to miss) or that everyone now sees what oppressing mages will lead to

Dumat's role in a future game

Corypheus revealed that Dumat promised him and the other Magisters the Golden City, but was "betrayed" and returned as one of the first Darkspawn. Further more Corypheus frequently commands "Dumat, grant me your powers!" during battle to which a power is always granted. The quest Altar of Dumat can result in an amulet if sacrifices are made. Both of these events suggest that Dumat still has some form of presence in the world despite being slain

• • "Even a dead god can dream..."

DAIII will be more templar-centric

In both games, our main companions are mages and we learn a lot about the mage side of life and how they are hunted and oppressed. DAII was completely mage-centric (Other than the qunari storyline, almost every other big storyline was about mages). This painted templars in a fairly-bad light but we know there are good templars out there and the fault isn't entirely on them. Having a templar-centric DAIII adds another viewpoint for us.

• To be fair it did a good job of painting the mages that don't happen to be related to you in a pretty poor light, as well.
  • It was a more understandable poor light for the mages. We learn that they're being oppressed, abused, and sentenced to tranquility. It doesn't explain all their actions but it does explain why many turn to blood magic because they're tired of the way they are treated. We know little about the templar's life. Are they constantly in fear of the mages they guard? Does being 'trapped' in the mage circle affect them in any way? Does their lyrium addiction leave them in crippling states like some real life drugs?
    • The first and third questions about Templars are sort of answered. Cullen for one is understandably terrified of Blood Magic after the events of Dragon Age Origins and claims that the Templars fight a losing battle against maleficarum everyday. Meredith is a Knight Templar because of a traumatic experience with magic that killed her entire family. You also meet an ex-Templar named Samuel who is suffering from lyrium withdrawal symptoms so bad that he is reduced to begging on the streets for another pinch of "dwarven dust". And before that in Origins you meet another Templar in Arl Howe's dungeon who is suffering lyrium withdrawal and is barely coherent as a result. A templar-centric game would still be pretty interesting.

The messenger never goes to the Hawke estate when Hawke is at home because he is terrified of the Mabari

Every owner of a big dog knows that it does'nt matter if your furball is the friendliest mammal on the planet: there are people who are deadly afraid of big dogs. Hawke's Mabari may be a Big Friendly Dog to anyone who's not one of Hawke's ennemy, he still is a huge wardog with enough strength in the jaw to crush a grown man chest: so it's understandable that the messenger always come to give letters to Hawke when Hawke is outside since s/he takes the dog with him/her: while Hawke (and the player) understands that the dog is merely happily, playfully, offering a friendly bark to greet the visitors, the messenger may be thinking "Oh Maker, please, this dog is going to eat me alive"

• It could also be a case of cultural dissonance rather than the messenger simply being cynophobic. Kirkwallers live close enough to Ferelden that they've no doubt heard stories about how powerful and dangerous mabaris are, but since they aren't actually Fereldan and thus don't understand they're actually more complex than that.

In the original Mage ending, Orsino and Meredith would have had a duel to the death.

Apparently, the Orsino boss fight in the mage endgame was not originally part of the story, and only added for the sake of gameplay. (Which I have no problem with, since both endings should be around the same level of difficulty.) The original plan would have had Orsino's rivalry with Meredith going another step further. During The Siege, Orsino would've sought out Meredith and tried to kill her, going into his Harvester form. The battle would have taken place mostly offscreen, but Meredith would ultimately kill Orsino by using the power of the idol.

The First Warden will turn out to be Fiona

Think about it: at the end of The Calling Fiona has been cured of the taint, proven herself a capable warden alongside Duncan, and been recalled to Weisshaupt Fortress, forcing her to leave her son (presumably Alistair) behind. With her taint cured, it is very likely she's still alive, and it's quite possible she's risen in the Grey Warden ranks since the events of The Calling. I would not be surprised at all if she appeared later as the leader of the order, or at least a very high-ranking Warden. That would be the perfect time for the truth about Alistair's parentage to come out. True, the First Warden is referred to as 'he' in DA 2, but remember that the Grey Wardens are a very secretive order. The specific identity of their leader might be kept secret except among their commanders. I imagine that the First Warden turning out to be an elven mage might not go over well with some groups, especially the Chantry.

• More on the gender issue: she might just replace the current male First Warden at some point, since First Wardens are generally pretty close to their Calling, so they don't stay First for long.
• Jossed: She's not a Grey Warden anymore and the Grand Enchanter of the Circle: basically the leader of Thedas mages, oh, and she harbor some sympathies for Anders' ways... yeah, Thedas is toast

"I'm not calling you a liar" is based on the entire party cast and Hawke family

A more subjective interpretation of the song: "I'm not Calling you a liar" refers to everyone in the party in the first few lines by dives into an Anders and Hawke romance later on. The "liar" is referring to Varric who lies but is obviously much more than just a person who makes up hero stories. The "thief" is of course Isabela for stealing the tome of koslum and starting the whole mess of act III but being much more than a thief for returning out of loyalty. The "ghost" is Fenris who has powers which are like a ghost (Going through people) and reinforcing this is his personal skill "Lyrium ghost". "I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me" refers to both Aveline and Merrill. As in Merril's companion quests The keeper loved her so much that she took the demon into her body just to save her and for Aveline's husband who was infected by the taint early on.

"There's a ghost in my lungs...and it talk in my sleep...etc" is quite obviously Anders who is possessed by Justice who has completley changed him. The rest of the song is shared by the Hawke family. One-by-one the family falls, Malcolm Hawke is already dead, one sibling dies in the beginning, the other possibly dies or disappears from Hawke's life (There's no ending that your siblings followed you after all). And of course, Hawke's mother dies as well, and Gamlen most likely ran off for safety at the end. Hawke as implied in the epilogue, disappears as well

• The main flaw with this theory is that the song predates the game.
• It may just be that the song was picked for being so coincidental in regards to the characters and plot, it happens.

Flemeth did look like a total crone when Hawke met her the first time.

When Hawke first encountered Flemeth, she looked like the Flemeth whom the Warden encountered as well. It was only after the ritual to resurrect her was done that she got her fancier, spikier digs. But she appears that way consistently in Varric's accounting of the tale because the ritual is the only reference he has for describing her, either because he was there himself, or because he asked Merrill or someone else who was. Hawke never brought it up because Flemeth's stylistic changes would be the least of his/her worries over that situation, and less dramatic than transforming into a dragon besides.

• Alternatively, Varric didn't describe her at all, and Flemeth's DA2 appearance is simply what Cassandra assumes such a legendary figure would look like.

The third story-based DLC will be warrior-based.

I confess that I took this idea from someone else, though I can't remember who. Legacy was mage-based (final boss is a powerful mage and the entire plot revolves around the use of magic in some form) and Mark of the Assassin was rogue-based (extra rogue party member, rogue final boss, has a Stealth-Based Mission, and the plot revolves around deception). The third DLC will involve something more warrior-oriented, like say, Hawke and company getting involved in a Big Badass Battle Sequence.

Tallis will return as a full party member in Dragon Age 3.

And she'll be a possible Love Interest for Hawke.

• Main issue with that is that most of the talk out of Bioware is that DA 3 will have a new protagonist. Could still see Tallis being a party member and a love interest, similar to Isabela's role expansion from Origins to DA 2.
• It's certainly possible and it'd fit into the whole "Party Members who hate each other" theme of the games.

Sebastian's Vocal Devotion

While I was listening to the banter in Mark of the Assassin there was a part where two party members are searching for Hawke and the majority of Sebastian and another party member was mainly him praying and the other being annoyed/exasperated. Except the people he actually likes. Admittedly he doesn't say anything to Bethany but with Fenris he says that he's praying into himself so it occurred to me perhaps he plays up the praying around other part members because he knows it annoys them (Anders) or because it makes him feel better and he isn't as particular about not annoying them?

Kirkwall is where the Tevinter Magisters performed the ritual to enter the Fade

The Enigma of Kirkwall codex entry mentions a "civilization of slaves" that went missing, perhaps they were being raised for one huge ritual.

• It also handily explains why one of them was found nearby.

Empress Celene is dead meat

She's implied to be a reasonable, peace-seeking individual, and she's in a position of power. Is there any way she could possibly make it out of this half of the Dragon Age alive?

• Then again, she DID try to negotiate with Tal-Vashoth to get what she thought was some super-powerful Qunari weapon through an intermediary who was basically a personification of everything bad about Orlesian nobility and I think there is some merit to Loghain's belief that she was trying to reclaim Ferelden through a marriage to Cailan. I get the impression she isn't nearly as peace-seeking as she would like everyone to believe, she's just much more subtle than her predecessor.
• Orlais is a land filled with Smug Snake types. Celene is likely surrounded by them, whether she herself is one or not. And the item that Prosper was searching for was immensely valuable. Whether it was the recipe for blackpowder, a map of Qunandar, or what it actually was, a NOC list of every Qunari deep cover agent in Thedas, a ruler would have to be idiotic beyond belief not to jump at the chance to snatch something like that. It's basic Realpolitik. But she will probably die. Any bets on who'll kill her? I say she'll go down in a palace coup orchestrated by a cadre of noblemen with backing from the Knight-Vigilant, who will likely need chevaliers to fight mages.
• I'm betting we(as in, the player character for DA 3) will kill her. Haven't gotten to kill an empress yet.

The Black City is the Fade manifestation of the Red Lyrium and the magisters intent was to exploit it to preserve their empire

We know that a lot of the Fade are actually variations of objects which exist in the physical world (Weishaupt fortress, the Gallows, the Circle tower in Ferelden, etc...). So we can suppose that the black city is actually the manifestation of something huge in the physical world: something like huge veins of red lyrium. Now we know that the Dwarven kingdoms were in good term with the Tevinter imperium of old AND that Dwarves found red lyrium. Now remember that the first succesfull rebelions against the imperium started 300 years before the magisters tried to enter the Golden City and that Tevinter had been on a steady decline ever since. The powerful blood magic of the magisters did not suffice to keep the imperium lower class from rebelling, and the near-constant state of quasi-civil war was weakening the imperium even more. So the magisters tried to find a way to reverse this decline before it gained too much momentum: and here arrives red lyrium, found by the dwarven allies, which is way more potent than ordinary lyrium: wanting to exploit this new ressource in order to save their crumbling empire, the magisters went after the Fade manifestation of red lyrium: except that instead of merely giving them more power, it overwhelmed them like it would overwhelm Bartrand and Meredith more than 1.000 years later.

Sandal overdosed on red lyrium, but unlike everyone else who spent to long with the substance, it did not taint him

Pretty self-explanatory. Also, Sandal is not a savant: he's perfectly sane and cognitively apt, and is pretending to be a retarded enchanter in order to hide the fact that he is in fact a dwarven archmage: which explains the scenes when he is found alone on top of a mountain of bodies: every time he is attacked by Darkspawns/templars/maleficars in places where there are no witnesses and therefore no reasons to hold back, he doesn't hold back

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...

• You're probably absolutely right, considering where Bodhan and Sandal plan to go after the end game.

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: 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.

• ...And if the Warden didn't romance anyone?
• If the Warden was in a hetero relationship, then the PC would be his/her only biological child and Morrigan's child would be a secondary antagonist depending on who you romanced. Then you wouldn't be able to downright choose the race and the "dwarf" would be a half-breed if you romanced a human as a dwarf.

Flemeth will make an appearance in the game's final DLC.

It's just a nice book-end for Hawke's story.

Both of the siblings were alive in the story. You know Varric, right?

Varric probably left out one of them due to trying to simplify it and/or because he liked the Anyone Can Die trope. Bethany said that Carver "would" have been arrested (most likely due to being more reckless while working in the underworld from not having as much mage siblings in the family). Also, Bethany (if she was taken to the Circle) would have either been killed during the Annulment by Meredith regardless of Hawke's reply and/or went thier willingly during the Deep Roads Expedition because both she and Hawke wanted Carver to be able to leave a normal life. Hawke would not be able to go after the Expedition due to Carver being infected with the taint. If Bethany was brought along, then she would have either died whether or not she joined the Wardens or she simply decided to avoid Kirkwall to make sure that Hawke would not be captured him/herself due to other citizens possibly taking him/her the wrong way.

• There's a conversation Varric might have with Merrill in act three where he mentions he has "friends in the circle and drinking buddies in the templars"; both can be a reference to either sibling if Bethany is taken to the circle or Carver joins the templars, though he doesn't mention anything about a warden friend.

Depending on your relationship with him, Sebastian will or will not go after Anders if you spare him.

Depending on your Friendship/Rivalry/romance with Sebastian and the choices you made, their is a chance that he will decide to realize that what you did may have actually been a good moral reason. If you were to spare Anders after siding with the TemplarOrder, then he would be most likely to understand the reason why stabbing Anders in the back in that case would be unwise. You would need a little bit stronger relationship with him if you were to spare Anders while siding with the Circle because if you were to do that, then you would be showing that you were siding against the Chantry, regardless of whether you intended it or not since killing Anders while siding with the Circle would have less of a consequence.

He may also abandon the notion after seeing the war that followed after Orsino and Meredith died.

Finally, considering the fact that Varric did not like Sebastian, it's very possible that Sebastian decided to come back to Hawke (even more so if Hawke romanced him and sided with the Order) and decided to let Anders take his penance since it's what Andraste would have done.

• Given how devoted he is to the Chantry and how Anders's bomb was religious terrorism of the worse kind, it doesn't seem likely that he'd let Anders walk free no matter what his friendship is. On top of that, Elthina was a mother to him. Not only is his promise to kill Anders backed by religious fury, It's Personal
  • It's not unreasonable to assume that Sebastian might back off if you get Anders to side with the Templars at the end where it is implied he'll be made tranquil afterwards.

Canon Hawke is a female.

In the game, Anders' orientation is dependent on Hawke's gender and because almost all the romances are bisexual, it's pretty much clear what that means. When the player approaches him and is male after killing the tranquil Karl, he mentions that he not only loved Karl but he also was also his first love interest. Since there would inevitable be romance in the Circle (and he probably had a girlfriend who helped him with their escapes and she got hanged afterwards in order to teach him a lesson, thus motivating his behavior) and he mentions that in Awakening that he wanted a " pretty girl", this means Karl could not have been a Closet Key and this determining his orientation already when it was already predetermined is more of an example of Fridge Logic.

• • Considering Word of God strongly, strongly implies that none of the love interests' sexual orientations change based on Hawke's sex and also implies that Anders and Karl were more than friends whether he mentions this fact to Hawke in-game or not, and the fact that Bioware rarely makes a cannon gender for their main characters this is probably Jossed. He also implies in both Awakening and DAII that he had few friends in the Circle and almost no one actually had a relationship with another mage, just sex. Karl was the exception for him.
  • A fairly reasonable exception, too, given that he mentions Karl was his "first". He probably wasn't as jaded about love back then, or at least he let his feelings get the better of him because it was new and exciting. That, and Ferelden is mentioned several times as being a pretty homophobic place (it's mentioned a couple of times in DA:O), so maybe Anders just doesn't want to bring it up with the Warden or with female!Hawke. Plus, although Anders talks mainly about women in Awakening, he does take on a mildly flirtatious tone in at least one banter with Nathaniel ("not when I'm naked, I don't").
    
    As for whether Karl is "canon" in the case of Female!Hawke, I note that there is a remarkable similarity between Aveline's "they will not take you!" and Anders' "they will never take another mage!" speeches in Act One.
  • An interesting idea though. It would follow the pattern already set by Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 where the canon Revan was male and the canon Exile was female. The preset games you can pick from when making a new DAII playthrough also mention that the 'canon' playthrough is a male human noble, so 'canon' Hawke may very well be female to keep things equal. Now if only a female Player Character could be used in the marketing every once in awhile! Come on, Bioware!

Hawke isn't the only one who knows about the Enigma of Kirkwall.

The Chantry is aware of it as well. Because of this, Meredith is given some leeway, since she has to police a city with an extremely thin veil. The information is given out on a strict "need-to-know" basis.

Dragon Age 3 will have an entirely new take

The first game was about Wardens, and the Wardens come from all walks of life. The second game was about the Champion, and the Champion was a scion of the Hawke family. The third game will almost certainly be very mage-centred. The PC will be an Orlesian, either elf or human, mage, with some additional background options. (They've done "open" choice, and restricted race. All that's left is restricting class.)

• Restricting race didn't detract from gameplay. Restricting class does. Bioware will guarantee vicious backlash if they restrict class.

Dragon Age 3 will begin by asking the player which side the Warden will choose in the Mage-Templar War

Given that the Warden is the player's avatar, it makes sense to make the Warden's side the player's choice: it could be done in an action prologue: start the prologue with demons and abominations roaming around, give the player the control of the Warden dispatching them, at the middle of the prologue have the Warden crossing path with a bunch of templars and mages about to jump at each other throats, then give the player a choice between the Templars, the Mages and Neither. The choice will then affect the second half of the action prologue as well as the rest of the game (things like whether the Warden and Hawke end up becoming allies or ennemies which factions and which zones will be friendly or hostile, or which NPC will be joinable: for instance, a playable Cullen may joing a neutral or pro-templars Warden but not a purely pro-mage one while a playable Feynriel may join a neutral or pro-mages Warden but not a purely pro-templars one)

---

The Mage-Templar War is not going to be the large-scale, devastating conflict it's made out to be.

Somewhere, I can’t quite remember where, the number of Circles in all of Thedas is said to be 18. After the events of Origins, I think the Fereldan Circle can be written off. Even under the Mage ending, barely any of the mages survived. Even ten years later, it’s unlikely that they’ve recovered enough strength to make a meaningful contribution to the mage’s efforts. Ditto for the Kirkwall Circle. The Starkhaven Circle was destroyed, and any survivors merged with the Kirkwall Circle, so see above. While we haven’t actually seen the Circle in Val Royeaux, it’s described to be even more draconian than the Fereldan Circle. It’s also in the capital city of the Andrastian Chantry, a.k.a. Templar Central. Draconian measures plus a huge complement of hostile guards trained specifically to defeat you? I think you can safely be written off. That leaves 14 other Circles, scattered all across Thedas. Additionally, both Orlais and Fereldan only have one Circle for the entire kingdom, and the Kirkwall and Starkhaven Circles are said to be the only ones in the Free Marches. Basically, all of the mages in southern Thedas have been defeated before the war even begins.

Where is this conflict going to come from? Are there that many apostates wandering the countryside, ready to jump into a war for the freedom of other people? Are the Tevinters going to open up another war to sap strength away from their losing struggle against the Qunari? Do the Tevinters even care what happens to “White” Andrastian mages? The Dalish might step in to fight the Chantry, as there’s a long and ugly history there. But the Dalish have so few people and are so scattered it’s unlikely that they could turn the tide on their own, even if they were interested.

Now, the mages might have allies outside the groups outlined above, like a non-mage Hawke. However, given the amount of suspicion and prejudice we’ve seen mages suffer through in two games already, how much of an impact do you think those allies are going to make? We all love Hawke and the Warden, and we know they’re both badasses, but can they really turn the tide of a war that has the entire continent arrayed against a small, scattered group? And what will keep the game from being a total cakewalk if Hawke and the Warden side with the Templars?

I think it’s much more likely that the Mage-Templar War will play out as an underground, cloak-and-dagger type thing, with mages sneaking around, trying to smuggle people out of Circles and striking at any exposed Templars while keeping the Templars at bay. This is the kind of war that Hawke, the Warden or the New Guy from DA 3 could excel at. New Guy versus an army of ten thousand Templars in an open field? New Guy loses. New Guy versus ten or twenty Templars in a small room? Advantage, New Guy. And this is the kind of war that plays out better under the Dragon Age gametype anyway.

• That would be the height of anti-climax, and make Dragon Age II sound like an even more pointless game. This is the conflict that has supposedly brought the Chantry to the brink of collapse, remember? Also, the Ferelden circle still had plenty of mages. Did you not see the army marching past Lake Calenhad during the intro to the Final Battle? Honestly, if this turns out to be a "shadow war" when its played up as a war that could set Thedas ablaze, it would probably be the death knell of the franchise.

• Somewhere, I can’t quite remember where, the number of Circles in all of Thedas is said to be 18 & both Orlais and Fereldan only have one Circle for the entire kingdom, and the Kirkwall and Starkhaven Circles are said to be the only ones in the Free Marches
  • Ferelden has at least two identified circles; The Free Marches had at least Five of them. According to the Dragon Age wiki, there are 18 identified circles in Thedas, but this does not mean that it's their total numbers: if Ferelden can have more than one circle, huge countries like the Anderfells or Orlais may also have several yet un-named: it may be that a lot more circles exist but have yet to be the focus of any story and/or codex entry. Also, Bioware's staff of writers have prudently avoided giving too much information about Thedosian and Mages' demographics. So there could be a lot more mages than shown in the games.
• After the events of Origins, I think the Fereldan Circle can be written off. Even under the Mage ending, barely any of the mages survived
  • If you take into account the cutscene before the Battle of Denerim, random encounters on the map with circle mages fighting the Dark Spawn, and the fact that the Tower has been rebuilt, cleaned up and is lively again in Witch Hunt, it is probable that quite a few mages survived the ordeal and were not shown during most of the game because of technical limitations, not because they were not there "plotwise"
• Even ten years later, it’s unlikely that they’ve recovered enough strength to make a meaningful contribution to the mage’s efforts
  • If King, Alistair is shown angering Meredith because he is taking in runaway mages: so Ferelden Circles might actually be quite prosperous and populated by all the mages who did manage to escape the Free Marches

Sooooo, no, it's definitely not certain that "all of the mages in southern Thedas have been defeated before the war even begins."... Although, if pulled well, it would make a great twist.

• Are the Tevinters going to open up another war to sap strength away from their losing struggle against the Qunari
  • The Tevinter may think that taking this opportunity to finally defeat the Andrastian Chantry, and regaining all the lost territories, not counting the increase in slaves and in mages is well worth the effort. In fact, it would be perfectly believable to show Magisters saying "If only we had been at our pre-blight peak when the Qunari came: Then we'd have shown them what the wrath of Tevinter really is" and jumping at the opportunity of rebuilding the old imperium.
• The Dalish might step in to fight the Chantry, as there’s a long and ugly history there. But the Dalish have so few people and are so scattered it’s unlikely that they could turn the tide on their own, even if they were interested.
  • It would depend on the reaction of the more numerous Alienage Elves: would they remain loyal to the chantry and the human kingdoms they become part of? would the longing for the glorious old days be rekindled by the apparent weakening of the Chantry? Also would they gain the support from the Warden and/or Hawke: the Warden may be an Elf, and Hawke may be living with one
• I think it’s much more likely that the Mage-Templar War will play out as an underground, cloak-and-dagger type thing
  • Well, they could do both: with the player characters being involved in the cloak-and-dagger side of the conflict while bigger battles are shown as the background.