The centuries-long apocalypse of the First Blight was over,
and although civilization on Thedas had survived, it was left deeply scarred.
In a world where the lacerations the Archdemon had cleaved across the land were still raw,
the stage was set for the humbling of the greatest Empire humanity had ever known and the spread of
the Chant of Light across the land. Welcome to our third episode on the history of the world
of the Dragon Age, where we will cover the exalted march of Andraste: the Lady of Restitution,
the Bride of the Maker, and the founding mother of the most dominant religion on Thedas.
After suffering the inter-generational ravages of the First Blight, the Tevinter Imperium was
not the juggernaut it had once been. While the Darkspawn had been driven back underground,
the environmental devastation they had left on the land was still causing droughts, landslides,
wildfires and famine. As supply lines buckled, the Imperium was forced to abandon many of its
furthest outposts, reducing its ability to project power onto the Barbarian tribes on their borders.
In the heartland, people lashed out over the betrayal of their Old God, Dumat,
causing massive social unrest between the general population and the Empire’s ruling Magisters.
As the Empire fractured from within, the aforementioned Barbarians on society’s
fringes were on the up and up. While the Blight had hit them too, it had not been as hard,
and in its wake, they had begun to consolidate their small, squabbling tribes into political
units capable of challenging Imperial might. One example of this occurred when Elderath,
a powerful Alamarri chief who ruled lands in what is now northern Ferelden, married a Ciriane clan
leader named Brona, allying with the tribes of what is now central Orlais. In the year 203
before the founding of the chantry, the joining of Elderath and Brona produced a daughter, Andraste:
the girl destined to become the martyred prophet of, by far, the most dominant religion on Thedas.
In the modern day, the most comprehensive account of Andraste’s life is found in the Chant of Light,
the religious liturgy of the Chantry. Like all holy scripture, the Chant has been remolded
several times over the centuries, with the true story of its Prophetess touched up and snipped
at to present a narrative that inspires conformity and obedience in its believers.
As such, we should be careful not to take the Chant of Light at face value as a religious
document, but neither will we ignore its usefulness in piecing together Andraste’s saga.
Tragedy befell the young Andraste early in life. The girl had grown up with her half-sister,
Halliserre, who Elderath had sired with a concubine. According to later historical
testimony, when both girls were children, Andraste noticed Halliserre wandering into the forest,
entranced by a flashing of mysterious lights. Andraste followed her sister into the trees;
what happened next has been lost to time. All that is known is that, when the pair were found,
Halliserre lay dead amidst a clearing scorched by fire, with Andraste nearly still alive but
shaken and unsure of what she had seen. After this incident, Andraste would be plagued, or blessed,
depending on your point of view, by fits and seizures, in which she would go into
a stupor and receive strange, unearthly visions. Upon maturing into young adulthood, Andraste was
betrothed to Maferath, another powerful chieftain of the Alemarri who controlled much of what is now
eastern Ferelden. Their marriage precipitated the largest alliance of Barbarian tribes ever seen,
forging a confederacy which stretched across most of southern Thedas south of the Waking Sea.
The pair would not enjoy marital bliss for long. Sometime after -187 Ancient, a Tevinter raiding
party thundered into Andraste’s home village with spell and steel borne, killing her father,
Elderath, and taking her as a slave. Following this, Maferath became the most powerful Barbarian
leader in southern Thedas, assuming control of the confederacy forged by his late father-in-law.
However, Elderath had been an extremely popular leader, and as such, the loyalties of many of
the subchiefs under Maferath's command were contingent on his ability to return the old
Chieftain’s legacy, his daughter back to her rightful place among her people.
It is unclear how long Andraste languished under the chain of the Tevinters, but eventually,
her husband was able to negotiate her release, presumably for a Queen’s ransom in tribute. Back
among her people, Andraste reflected upon her time in slavery, languishing in sorrow for those she
had left behind: the countless enslaved peoples, be they of the Alemarri, the other tribes of men,
and Elves, who still suffered under the bitter sting of the Magister’s whip. Seeking guidance
in how she might bring salvation to these tortured souls, Andraste turned to the traditional animist
Gods of her people, the spirits of the trees and the waters, but found only silence as her reply.
During these mournful days, Andraste’s visions intensified, and in them, a divine voice began
to sing to her: “Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing, An ocean of sorrow does
nobody drown. You have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr. Within My creation, none are alone.”
Indeed, if the Chant of Light is to be believed, then it is here that Andraste received her first
conclave with the Maker of the World, the speaker of the first word, the one true God of Thedas.
The Maker revealed that all men, elves and dwarves were his children,
but they had since turned their backs on him, prostrating themselves before dragons and demons.
He elucidated that the world had once been a paradise, and the Golden City had been made for
mankind to take their place by his side one day. However, when the endless greed of the Magisters
Sidereal had sought to usurp heaven from him, spurred on by the whispers of their heathenous
dragon overlords, he had been forced to turn his back on beloved children, abandoning man to their
false idols, and letting them waste away in a world polluted by corruption, misery and blight.
So it was that Andraste realized the truth and spoke with a heavy heart:
“I saw the Black City, towers all stain'd, Gates once bright golden forever shut. Heav'n
filled with silence, then did I know all And cross'd my heart with unbearable shame.”
Burning with compassion for her people, Andraste begged the Maker to give mankind
a second chance. Reluctantly, God agreed, charging Andraste to be her prophet.
Only once all peoples across all four corners of the earth had welcomed He back into their
hearts as their one true deity would the Maker return unto the earth and turn it
into the paradise that was promised: “For you, song-weaver, once more I will try. To
My children venture, carrying wisdom. If they but listen, I shall return.”
Thus charged with a new divine purpose, Andraste began preaching to her people.
Through her as its conduit, the cult of the Maker began to spread like wildfire among the Alemarri,
who latched on enthusiastically to one of the holy tenets Andraste preached:
that magic should serve man rather than rule over him, a particularly appealing dictate
for the men and women who had languished for centuries after the tyranny of Tevinter sorcery.
Soon, Andraste’s ambitions expanded beyond her own people. After all, the Maker had declared
that only when his Chant of Light had spread across all the world would paradise be restored,
and much of the world was still under a rule of an Empire where magic still ruled over man,
where thousands spent their lives in chains, and where worship of the blighted Old Gods persisted.
So it was that Andraste beseeched her husband to be the spear point of a holy crusade to bring the
light unto those wicked lands. Thus, the exalted march aga/inst the Tevinter Imperium began.
In -180 Ancient, Maferath and Andraste crossed the waking sea at the head of a massive horde
of Alemarri warriors. With the bitter rage of centuries of Imperial oppression in their hearts
and the spiritual fervor of the Chant of Light invigorating their souls, these tribal marauders
cleaved northwards through what is now the Free Marches with ease. During these initial stages of
the invasion, the Empire offered little meaningful resistance. Still dealing with caustic political
turmoil in their northern heartland while continuing to suffer immensely from post-blight
natural disasters, they could not bear the full might of their armies to the southern front. As
such, Maferath’s dynamic military leadership dismantled whatever piecemeal Tevinter forces
they encountered, while Andraste’s preachings kept their soldiers inspired by holy purpose,
determined to drive deeper into Imperial lands. One internal turmoil that prevented Tevinter
from contesting Andraste’s advance was a rising epidemic of slave rebellions in its major cities.
Long had the children of Arlathan, the once-immortal dreamer peoples of Thedas,
endured the indignity of Magister chains and watched as their wives and children were put
to the knife for idolatrous blood sacrifices. The Elves had lost much of their language,
culture and identity during their centuries of bondage, but they had never lost their
pride- and with that in their hearts, they rose up en masse against their masters.
According to the Chant of Light, the Elven revolt in Tevinter was led by a man named Shartan,
who spearheaded a successful uprising in the city of Vol Dorma, and then ambushed
and annihilated the Imperial Legion, which had been sent to quash it. Shartan then rallied any
elf in the Empire who would come to his banner and marched south to join forces with Andraste.
This united coalition continued their northward grind for the next ten years, but the further they
fought into the Empire’s heartland, the more stiff resistance became. What started as a blinding
blitzkrieg soon turned into a nearly ten-year slog. Up until this point, individual Tevinter
magisters had been too concerned with putting out the fires in their own provinces within the Empire
to pool their manpower against the holy horde at their gates. However, as Andraste, Maferath,
and Shartan began closing in upon Minrathous in -171 Ancient, the Sorcerer-Lords finally
put up a united front, forming a massive host of legionnaires and battlemages, then meeting the
invaders in the hinterlands outside the Imperial Capital, a place called the Valarian Fields.
Like with everything else in this era of history, the story of the epoch-making Battle of Valarian
fields is shrouded in religious myth-making. What is known is that the contest took many days,
transitioned from a field battle into a siege and then back into open melee, and drenched the sunny
fields of Northern Thedas in an ocean of blood. Then, after a long struggle which claimed the
lives of tens of thousands, the Tevinter lines broke, and the Maker’s faithful were triumphant.
The Chant of Light speaks thus: “At Shartan’s word, the sky grew black with
arrows. At our Lady’s, ten thousand swords rang from their sheaths. A great hymn rose
over Valarian fields gladly, proclaiming: Those who had been slaves were now free.”
This was Andraste’s greatest triumph, but as it would have it, it would precipitate
her betrayal and downfall. After the victory at Valarian Fields, Maferath travelled secretly to
Minrathous to speak with Hessarian, the Archon and supreme leader of the Tevinter Imperium.
There, he brokered a peace treaty that favored him greatly, with the Empire agreeing to acknowledge
the full independence of southern Thedas as a state under Maferath’s rule. However, the price
the Tribal Chieftain paid for this was heavy. Archon Hessarian could accept the cessation of
Southern Barbarian lands which had always been the squalid backward of the Empire anyways. What
he could not tolerate was the rapid spread of the Cult of the Maker among his people.
Indeed, as Andraste’s armies cleaved northwards, the religion she preached had been quickly adopted
by large swaths of the Tevinter commoners, who saw it as a new beginning after their own
Draconic pantheon had abandoned them and become Archdemons. The rapid spread of a religion that
preached the subservience of magic undermined the very foundations of Tevinter society, where the
Archon and his Magisters utilized their boundless arcane talents to exert control over their people.
Shortly after this meeting, Tevinter battlemages disguised in plain
clothes were allowed to enter Andraste’s provisional stronghold in Nevarra City.
Taking the prophetess completely by surprise, the infiltrators accosted and captured her,
carting her back to Tevinter. To secure peace and independence, Maferath sold out his own wife.
In Chantry teachings, Maferath is traditionally reviled as a petty wretch who, believing the
victories won should be accredited to him and not the Maker and his ordained prophetess,
conspired to eliminate his wife so that he may claim sole credit and glory.
Historians have since disputed this narrative, claiming that Maferath’s actions, while no doubt
brutal, were ultimately pragmatic. After Valerian fields, while the Tevinter military had suffered
heavily, the Alemarri war effort had also begun to flag hard. Many of their most experienced war
captains had perished in Valerian fields, and before that, in the interest of a lightning
advance, they had left most of the fortresses they had captured ungarrisoned as they marched north.
This had allowed Tevinter forces to reclaim those positions, from which they posed a serious threat
to the Alemarri rear. Finally, with the Alemarri coalition having wreaked so much havoc in the
Empire’s heartland, Maferath must have known it was possible that the Archon would use the
external threat posed by the Barbarian Horde to unite his people, end the civil unrest which had
been so critical to the invaders’ success thus far, and bring the full might of the Empire to
bear on an exhausted Alemarri expedition. Carted to Minrathous, then paraded before
the crowds of the Imperial capital, Andraste’s execution was to be a cruel one. Bound to a stake,
and set atop a wooden pyre, the spiritual bride of the Maker was to be burned alive as a brutal
example of what happened to those who defied the Imperium and the supremacy of its Mages.
However, as the flames beneath the prophet’s feet were lit, a foreign sensation overcame
Archon Hessarian: guilt, and moreso, pity. As the flames slowly consumed the Lady Redeemer,
the Archon who had ordered her slow and agonizing death now stepped forth with a blade drawn,
piercing her heart and bringing a quick end to her suffering. Andraste’s holy war
was brought to a close with this act of mercy. After the hostilities, Maferath retreated south
to administer his new independent tribal domains, which he split amongst his sons. His eldest child,
Isorath, was given the lands which now constitute Orlais, the middle child, Evrion was given what is
now the Free Marches, and the youngest, Gerald, was given the city of Nevarra. Maferath himself
returned to his eastern homeland, ruling over the Alemarri tribes of what is now Ferelden.
For their part in the war effort, Maferath granted the followers of Shartan a new homeland.
For the first time in nearly a millennium, the Elvhen had their freedom and a homeland to call
their own. Tens and thousands of them would make the long and perilous walk to their new country,
which they called the Dales. There, they labored to restore the eons of knowledge which had been
lost to them since the fall of Arlathan. All the while, from the arid deserts of
the Anderfels to the swamps of Ferelden, the cult of the Maker continued to spread, for the death
of Andraste had served only to turn her into a martyr who the faithful claimed had now taken her
place by the Maker’s side in Paradise. In our next episode on the history of the world of the Dragon
Age, we will explore the events which led to the founding of the Chantry, the process of
how Andrastianism became the dominant religion on Thedas, and the collision course of the growing
juggernaut of religion and its predominantly human followers were set on when tensions began to rise
with their old allies: the Elves of the Dales. If you don’t want to miss the next episodes,
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