In the waning years of the Blessed Age, reptilian wings blanketed the sun. Dragons,
thought to have been hunted to extinction centuries earlier, reappeared in the skies
above the world of men and devastated the countryside of Orlais and Nevarra.
Reading this as an epochal omen, Faustine II, Divine of the Chantry, declared a new age:
the Dragon Age, which in her holy wisdom, she predicted would be a time of violence,
upheaval, and dramatic change. Thus begins the period in which the titularly named Dragon Age
games take place, yet this is not where the history of its world begins. Welcome to our
first video on the vibrant and tumultuous continent of Thedas, where we will explore
the immortal hubris of ancient Elvhenan, and the rise of the Blood Mages of Tevinter.
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For over 10,000 years, the continent of Thedas has been home to advanced civilizations capable
of wondrous marvels. However, the race of humans, although nowadays the dominant species of Thedas,
are relatively newer arrivals to its shores. As far back as 7,600 years
before the founding of the Chantry, the elves were immortal and inherently magical people.
They called themselves “Elvhen,” which in their tongue meant “the people,” and ruled a massive
Empire they called Elvhenan. Elvhenan was a place of arcane miracles, encompassing
not only the whole of Thedas, but extending beyond the physical realm itself: the Fade.
The Fade is the dimension from which all magic stems, where the consciousness of
mortals travels when they dream and where beings of pure magic, like spirits and demons, reside.
In the modern Dragon Age, Elves and Humans enter the Fade mentally when they dream.
Still, they can rarely travel there physically due to a magical barrier known as the veil, which
separates the mortal world from the metaphysical. However, in the Ancient Age, no such barrier
existed, and the Elvhen not only walked freely in the land of dreams and built entire cities that
transcended dimensions. However, few in the modern age remember the splendors of the metropolises of
Elvhenan, those who do describe them as a place of surreal beauty. One particular dreamer asks
us to “imagine spires of crystal twining through the branches, palaces floating among the clouds,”
and to “imagine beings who lived forever, for whom magic was as natural as breathing.”
Much like all roads led to Rome in our world, in Ancient Thedas, all Eluvians led to Arlathan,
a name meaning “this place of love,” and the beating heart of the Elven civilization of Thedas.
While the children of Arlathan built spires that reached the heavens, the hardy,
industrious Dwarva mastered the land beneath the surface. The Dwarves literally carved an
Empire for themselves out of stone, building massive cavernous cities known as Thaigs,
connected by a network of enormous underground highways called the Deep Roads. Dwarves are a race
incapable of magic. Having no mental connection to the fade, they also do not dream. However,
what the Dwarva lacked in arcane aptitude, they made up for in ingenious engineering and industry.
In contrast, their non-magical status made them the race best suited for mining and
refining crafting with the magically volatile but extremely precious element of lyrium.
While the children of the stone thrived, the ethereal empire above them was changing. Over
time, certain powerful mages in Elvhenan had grown more and more influential, beginning
as revered war generals, to elders treated with ritualistic veneration before eventually becoming
seen by their people as living gods. In total, nine Elves became powerful enough to be seen
as divinities. They were Elgar’nan, the god of vengeance and fatherhood, Mythal, the goddess of
love and motherhood, Falon’din, the god of death, Dirthamen, the keeper of secrets, Andruil, the
goddess of the Hunt, Sylaise, the hearthkeeper, June, the god of the craft, Ghilan’nain,
the goddess of navigation, and Fen’harel, the maverick of the bunch, who history remembers as
“the Dread wolf.” The Evanuris were not benevolent gods, but fickle, spiteful, and tyrannical.
Under their despotic rule, Elvhen society became more stratified, as a caste of nobles
and high priests who showed complete devotion to the Evanuris were rewarded with the power to
enslave vast swathes of the Elven population. These slaves were branded with facial tattoos
known as Vallaslin, whose varying designs showed which of the Evanuris their noble owners favoured.
Over the centuries the Evanuris warred among themselves, siccing their sycophants and their
slaves against one another in an unending, narcissistic hunger to gain more worshippers.
Elves did not age, but they could be wounded and killed, and thousands perished in the Evanuris’
senseless wars. However, not all the Evanuris were tyrants: Mythal regularly sought to temper
the more depraved inclinations of her peers, while Fen’harel took things one step further,
becoming a champion of the enslaved, lifting the Vallaslin off their faces, and leading
them in a crusade against the False Gods. As the flames of revolutions ravaged Elvhenan,
the Evanuris began to panic. As Fen’harel continued to elude them, they instead set
their wrathful eyes upon his dear friend, Mythal. In an act of treachery, the Goddess of Love was
slain at their hands. Consumed by grief, Fen’harel created the veil, the barrier which would forever
separate the mortal world from the fade. As a result, the Evanuris were permanently locked
away into the realm of dreams. However, the cost of achieving this had been catastrophic. Many of
Elvenhan’s cities had been intrinsically tied to the fade, and with that connection severed,
they began to collapse in on themselves, while the paths between them crumbled,
destroying eons of knowledge, killing many elvhen and even fracturing spirits. Moreover,
after their connection to the world of dreams was snapped, the Elves lost their immortality,
and for the first time in their history, began to age. The Glory days of the Elves were now over.
Around 3100 years before the founding of the Chantry, the first human migrants arrived
from the North. Over time, a diversity of primitive human tribes inhabited the land.
Of the men who migrated south, the Alamarri, Clayne, Chasind, and Avvar peoples became
masters of what is now Ferelden, while the lands which now make up modern Orlais and Nevarra were
the domain of the Ciriane, Inghirsh, and Planasene. Of the men who remained north,
four tribes, the Qarinus, Barindur, Neromenians, and Tevinters created Kingdoms for themselves.
In their earliest days on the continent, mankind inevitably came into contact with the Elvhen. It
seems that in some regions, these relations were precipitated by cooperation and cohabitation,
while in others, such as in the lands of the Neromenians, contact between the two races
brought about violence. Either way, not long after first contact, the Elves began withdrawing into
the forests of Arlathan, where their last great city of the same name was located.
Later legends would claim that it was contact with humans which caused Elfkind to begin aging for the
first time, but as we know, they had already lost their immortality when Fen’harel created the veil,
making it all the more mysterious as to why they decided to abandon the majority of Thedas and
let mankind become the master of the continent. Originally, these early humans lived relatively
primitive lives as nomads, pastoralists, or simple agriculturalists, holding to an eclectic
variety of animist faiths. This status quo persisted for centuries, until the Neromenians,
the oldest of the human tribes, made a discovery that would change the face of Thedas forever.
Around 1595 years before the founding of the Chantry, legend has it that a
Neromenian oracle named Thalsian mastered the ability of lucid dreaming, allowing him to pass
his consciousness into the fade at will. While roaming the dreamworld of demons and spirits,
he encountered a being known as ‘Dumat’, one of the Old Gods. It is unknown exactly what
the Old Gods were, only that they were beings of unfathomable power who took the form of massive
dragons and inhabited a spectral metropolis at the heart of the Fade, known as the Golden City.
Whatever they were, it is said that they imparted the secrets of Blood Magic to Thalsian.
Humans had likely already discovered various forms of hedge magic by this point, but blood magic
stood apart. Most mages cast spells by drawing on their mana, metaphysical energy within themselves
which allows them to pull energy across the veil from the Fade into the Physical world.
Blood mages, however, titularly use the blood of living beings to cast their spells. Using
blood as fuel gives blood mages a level of sheer power that normal sorcerers simply cannot achieve,
yet it comes at a high cost, for the more power a Blood Mage desires, the more blood must be shed,
resulting in Blood Magic’s grisly association with grotesque, ritualistic human or elven sacrifice.
Because of his discovery, Thalsian was able to become King of the Neromenians.
During his reign, the worship of the Old Gods became the predominant faith of his people:
a pantheon of seven great wyrms known as Dumat, the Dragon of Silence, Zazikel,
the Dragon of Chaos, Toth, the Dragon of Fire, Andoral, the Dragon of Slaves, Urthemiel,
the Dragon of Beauty, Razikale, the Dragon of Mystery, and Lusacan, the Dragon of Night.
1195 years before the founding of the Chantry, Darinius,
High King of the Neromenians and descendant of Thalsian, had united the Nerominians,
Qarinians, and Tevinters under his rule. In so doing, Darinius became the first Archon of an
Empire known as the Tevinter Imperium, the most historically impactful nation in human history.
The Tevinter Imperium was a magocracy, with those who held magic powers being held in higher regard
than those who did not, and blood mages occupying the highest positions in Imperial society.
Around the same time as its founding, the Empire came into contact with the great Thaig of
Kal-Sharok, whose King, Endrin Stonehammer, forged an alliance with Archon Darinius. This partnership
was predicated on trade, for the Dwarva were the continent’s principal supplier of Lyrium,
which was an essential resource the Tevinters needed to fuel their magic-based society.
This bond of friendship between the Empire and the Dwarves exists to this day, making
it the longest lasting diplomatic treaty in the history of Thedas. However, for the next non-human
species the Tevinter Imperium encountered, things would not go quite as smoothly.
Around 1000 years before the founding of the Chantry, as the Imperium grew eastwards,
its pioneers began building settlements on the borders of the Arlathan Forest,
a dense, primeval woodland they thought to be [un?]inhabitable. There in the trees,
they encountered scouts of strange, lithe, and sharp-eared people who they had never seen before.
At this point in time, it had been millenia since the Elves had withdrawn from the wider world, and
as such, it is very possible that this generation of Imperial humans had, up until this point,
been unaware of their existence, with memories the first contact their distant ancestors made with
the Elvhen over 2,000 years ago having been lost to time. During the reign of Archon Thalasian,
the Imperium sent several emissaries into the forests, but none returned alive. This did little
to endear the Magisters to their pointy-eared neighbours, and in the ensuing decades,
border skirmishes between the two nations became more and more frequent, while Tevinter settlers
were sent into the Arlathan forest to colonize the woodland. These settlements disappeared overnight,
no doubt having been consumed by the forest at the coaxing of Elvish magic.
981 years before the counting of the Chantry, tensions between Tevinter and the Elves erupted
into open war, and the Imperium unleashed the full wrath of its armies and mages upon
Thedas’ oldest people, cleaving a bloody path through the forest, and laying siege to the
Elven capital of Arlathan, which previously had remained hidden at the heart of the woods.
While still valiant warriors and powerful mages to a degree, the Elves were ultimately a shadow
of their former selves, their magics a pale shadow of what their immortal ancestors had
been capable of before the Dread Wolf created the veil. Thus, they were ultimately unable
to overcome the powerful blood rites of Tevinter, whose magisters allegedly were powerful enough to
enthrall dragons and demons to aid in their war effort. After a six year siege, Arlathan fell,
and the magisters used blood magic to sink Thedas’ most ancient and beautiful city into the earth,
wiping it off the face of the world forever. Some Elves managed to escape
this devastation and flee to the very fringes of the continent, but most others were enslaved.
For centuries thereafter, the descendants of once mighty Elvhenan would be reduced to nothing
more than a slave caste, losing much of their language, culture, and identity in the process.
The lucky ones got to toil away under Tevinter overlordship their whole lives, and the unlucky
ones became grisly sacrifices in the rituals which empowered the Magister’s blood magics.
After the conquest of Arlathan, the Tevinter Imperium went into expansionist overdrive,
as their new caste of enslaved elven provided free labour, which drove their industry,
and blood to empower their mages. Within the next two centuries, the Empire expanded across nearly
all of Thedas. Wherever the Tevinters went, they enslaved people, and soon,
many humans suffered the same fate as the Elves, becoming thralls to despotic occultist masters.
Minrathous, the capital of the Empire, became the beating heart of civilization on Thedas,
and far-flung provinces were connected to it by an Imperial Highway of stone and magic
that sprawled across the continent. With all that said, Tevinter control over their newly conquered
lands was often not absolute, as tribes like the Ciriane and Alamarri, despite having much
of their lands occupied by the Magisters, never stopped fighting back against Imperial occupation.
Moreover, Tevinter itself was rarely a stable polity, with powerful and insidious factions
of ambitious mages in its magisterium scheming against one another for power,
resulting in eras where civil war could rage across the country for decades at a time.
Nevertheless, the Tevinter Imperium had become the undisputed rulers of the world,
and as its Magisters became ever more powerful, their ambitions evolved from the domination of the
mortal plane to the domination of the divine. 395 years before the founding of the Chantry,
a conclave of the Empire’s most powerful mages engaged in an attempt to breach the veil,
physically enter the Fade, and step foot in the Golden City, the seat of the Gods,
to become unto Gods themselves. The end result of their hubris would bring about not only the
downfall of their empire but the greatest calamity to ever befall the land of Thedas. In our next
video on the history of the world of Dragon Age, we are going to cover the rise of the Darkspawn,
the First Blight, and the rebellion of Andraste, so make sure you have subscribed and pressed the
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