In the twentieth year of the Glory Age, the Kingdom of the Dales fell.
With the majority of elven kind choosing to submit to human rule and convert to the worship of the
Maker, the Chantry’s mission of spreading the Chant of Light to all four corners of the earth
was closer than ever to being complete and surely, just as the Lady Redeemer had promised, the Maker
would soon return to make the world a paradise. Yet, the tides of history are a fickle thing.
Soon, a race of indomitable horned giants would arrive on Thedosian shores,
bringing with them a new world order and an uncompromising ambition to spread it through
the right of conquest. In this latest video in our series on the world of Dragon Age, the
Chantry will get a taste of its own medicine as we cover the invasions of the great Qunari host.
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Before we move on to the next chapter in the story of Thedas, let us briefly dial
back the clock to the time before the rise of the darkspawn and the birth of Andraste.
In the ancient age, 410 years before the founding of the Chantry, a mysterious race of ashen-skinned
giant folk from a faraway northern continent made landfall in the southern Korcari Wilds,
where they established a colony. Virtually nothing is known about this horned race,
except for their name, secretly preserved in the records of the Tamassrans: Kossith.
During the first blight, the Darkspawn overran the Kossith colony. Thereafter, memory of the
giant folk would fade amongst men, elves and dwarves, but their twisted, blighted descendants,
the Ogres within the darkspawn horde, would terrify the peoples of Thedas for centuries.
Let us now leap back to where we left off on the timeline: the era of glory, the second age in the
Chantry calendar, and the Kingdom of the Dales has just fallen, leaving humanity and the Andrastian
faith as the monopolistic overlord over the entirety of Thedas, at least above the surface.
The next three ages, the towers, black, and exalted age, respectively, would be dominated
by two major themes: holy war between the rival branches of the Chantry in Orlais and Tevinter
and the continuation of the blights. Over the centuries, the armies of Thedas had become
increasingly efficient at containing the Darkspawn threat. Whereas the First Blight lasted nearly two
centuries and the second one nearly one century, the third and fourth blights, which occurred
in the Towers and Exalted ages, lasted barely more than a decade. During the fourth blight,
the armies of the Archdemon Andoral were defeated by a pan-Thedosian army united
and led by the most unlikely of leaders: Gray Warden Garahel, an elf born in an alienage slum.
However, these triumphs came at a cost, for after the fourth blight’s conclusion,
the famous Griffons, which the Gray Wardens had traditionally rode into battle, went extinct.
In the sixth Chantry epoch, the Steel Age, a new people introduced themselves to Thedas.
In 6:30 Steel, a race of ashen-skinned giants, sailing from their mysterious homeland far in
the northern hemisphere, landed on the tropical island of Par Vollen, where they conquered the
isles’ indigenous human population. These invaders were most likely the descendants
of the horned Kossith who founded the doomed colony in the Korcari wilds in the ancient age,
but in the millennia since their last appearance on Thedosian soil, the horned
behemoths had rebranded. Their old culture, old gods, and even their old name had been abolished.
They now called themselves Qunari, followers of the Qun. Founded by the philosopher
Ashkaari Koslun in their far-off homeland at an uncertain date, the Qun was not a religion, for
it worshipped no gods. Instead, it was a form of social architecture that governed Qunari society,
implementing an extreme form of complete and total conformity upon all its followers.
To a Qunari, individualism is the greatest of sins.
The Qun teaches that their entire civilization is a single organism and that each individual is
a single cell responsible for fulfilling whatever role it has been given to make the body function.
This belief is reflected in the tripartite nature of Qunari civilization, which divides
society into three segments: the military, which represents the organism’s body, the workers,
which represents the organism’s mind, and the priesthood, which represents the organism’s soul.
Consequently, Qunari leadership is a governing body of three individuals, with an Arishok
representing the body, an Arigena representing the mind, and an Ariqun representing the soul.
Under the Qun, no social mobility or freedom of choice exists. Nor does the concept of love
or nuclear family exist. Procreation is strictly controlled through a selective breeding program,
and all children are raised communally by the Tamassrans: an all-female branch of
the Ariqun priesthood. When children come of age, the Tamassrans assign them a social role,
which they must then serve for the rest of their lives. So complete is this conformity
that the Qunari do not even have personal names but are instead referred to by their title.
For example, in the Dragon Age, a Qunari warrior was found in the Ferelden town of
Lothering who called himself ‘Sten,’ which in the Qunlat language simply meant ‘Infantry Platoon
Commander.’ In the Qun, a person’s identity was their role in society and nothing more.
Perhaps the most unenvious role to be assigned in Qun society was ‘Saarebas,’ which means ‘dangerous
thing.’ The Qunari, like men and elves, are a race capable of magic, and much like the chantry,
the Qun uses draconian methods to regulate magic use. However, a sorcerer in a sequestered
yet comfortable Chantry circle tower lives like royalty compared to how their Qunari counterparts
are treated. ‘Saarebas’ are kept masked, collared, and weighed down by chains their entire lives.
Their every moment is spent under the watch of a keeper called an Arvaarad.
Saarebas are essentially treated like organic heavy artillery, with the immense firepower
they wield kept under lock and key so it can be churned out against the enemies of the Qun.
Despite the almost comically draconian nature of Qunari society, there was a paradoxical sort
of egalitarianism to it as well. The Qun teaches that all beings are equal and that
there is no fundamental difference between the highest Arishok and the lowest labourer,
for they are both simply fulfilling their designated role for the organism's wellbeing.
Whatever one's opinion on mandatory conformity, it cannot be argued that Qunari society is highly
efficient. What it lacks in freedom, it makes up for in order and security,
with its adherents finding comfort in having every difficult life decision already made for them.
Indeed, wherever Qunari armies conquered, the local population was efficiently converted to the
Qun through willing conversion or by herding the natives into less-than-voluntary ‘learning camps.’
For example, within a single generation, the native human population of Par Vollen had been
almost entirely assimilated. Nowadays, their ancient culture, whatever it was, has been
entirely forgotten, preserved only by the ruins of ancient Pyramids, long swallowed by the jungle.
In 6:32 Steel, a host of massive Qunari dreadnoughts crested over the horizon
in the coastal waters of Antiva and the isle of Seheron. Soon, their ground forces made landfall.
Thus began the war to conquer the lands of people who they saw not as their enemy, per se,
but as purposeless souls who needed to be sternly guided to the Qun. Through conventional warfare,
the Qunari horde was already an extremely formidable host, through the sheer size of their
giant shock troopers or the arcane destruction their muzzled Saarebas were capable of.
However, the invaders also possessed an advanced military technology thus far unseen by the people
of Thedas: gaatlok, an explosive black powder which powered their ship-mounted cannon, or adaar.
Initially, the nations of northern Thedas were completely blindsided by this sudden invasion,
and their defences melted like a snowbank in spring before the horned host.
Within a decade of landing, the Qunari had overrun all of Rivain and Antiva and
trampled through most of the Tevinter Imperium, with only the ancient and
magically warded capital of Minrathous holding out against the foreign tide.
After stabilizing their hold on a conquered territory, the Qunari worked to convert its
populace. Learning camps were set up, and the locals were rounded up and re-educated.
Many poor Tevinters converted willingly, seeing the conformist but equal society of
the Qun as a preferable alternative to Magister cruelty. Indeed, wherever the Qunari conquered,
they found willing converts among the lowest castes of Thedas’ hierarchical,
feudalistic societies. Elves, either living as second-class citizens in Alienage ghettos or as
slaves to Tevinter Mages, were particularly susceptible to the call of the Qun.
Despite this, overall resentment against the horned conquerors was still strong,
and by 6:55 Steel, massive, widespread rebellions against Qunari rule had erupted all over the
Tevinter Imperium. Taking advantage of this, Tevinter forces rallied and, with the help
of a coalition of allies from all across the Andrastian nations, liberated the Imperium.
The invaders retreated back to Antiva, Rivain and Seheron. There, the Qunari entrenched themselves,
and a decades-long stalemate would ensue. Fourty years later, the Steel Age came to an end.
Divine Renata, predicting the seventh of the Chantry epochs would be defined by turmoil
and bloodshed, declared that it would be named the Storm Age. She was right. In 7:25 Storm,
the impossible happened: the Orlesian and Tevinter Chantries, who had been slaughtering one another
in endless holy wars for four ages now, agreed to band together against their common enemy.
Yet, even with their forces combined, the united armies of humanity were hard-pressed to dislodge
the horned colossi from their northern holdings. Three exalted marches were launched against the
Qunari. The first was successful, with Andrastian forces pushing deep into occupied Antiva.
The gains made in this campaign were largely due to the efforts of the mages of the circle of Magi,
whose spellcraft proved an effective counter to both gaatlok cannon and Saarebas magic.
During this time, the Tome of Koslun, the written testimony of the founder Ashkaari and
the most sacred book in Qun society, was taken by Orlesian forces as a spoil of war. 27 years later,
a second exalted march was launched and was met with almost immediate disaster, with the Qunari
crushing the expedition force and retaking most of Antiva in the process. Following this, the antaam
pushed southwards, threatening the Free Marcher cities of Ostwick, Starkhaven and Kirkwall.
In 7:55 Storm, a third Exalted March was launched. This time, Chantry forces made
an unlikely alliance with the free port of Llomeryn: a notorious hub of pirates.
These buccaneers had little love for the Kingdoms of Thedas, whose ships they had long preyed upon
for booty, but they certainly had no desire to be conquered by the gray skins and forced to
surrender their rugged, freedom-loving lifestyle they so cherished in favour of rigid conformity.
Thus, the freebooters united into a massive vagabond fleet, the Felicisima Armada, and
raised the black flag against the Qunari host. The pirates made a critical impact on the war
effort, blunting the power of the mighty Qunari navy and disrupting the enemy’s naval supply
lines, thereby allowing Chantry forces to push back into Antiva and Rivain steadily.
In 7:78 Storm, the raiders even managed to defeat the Qunari in a massive naval
battle and take the strategically crucial island of Estwatch from them.
Despite this, the struggle was still long, gruelling, and devastating.
Years of fighting stretched out into decades, and bodies piled up on both sides. The worst
sufferers in this prolonged slug match were the natives of Antiva and Rivain, whose homelands
had been turned into desolate, burnt-out husks as Qunari and Chantry armies fought over every
hill and village, condemning thousands to die of exposure, starvation, or as collateral damage.
Before long, the resources of every nation in Thedas were nearly completely completed, with
their treasuries empty and populations at threat of demographic collapse due to wartime casualties.
Meanwhile, despite the countless horned giants cut down by Andrastian blades,
it seemed as if the Qunari were under no such socioeconomic strain.
Indeed, it stands to reason that a borderline hivemind society would be capable of endlessly
churning out soldiers in much the same way a beehive produces worker drones.
Contemporary Thedosian historians often comment that, in the end, it was not the military setbacks
which forced the Arishok’s forces to pull back from continental Thedas but their concern for
the mass destruction and death they had brought to the realm. After all, their sacred objective
was conversion, not extermination. Their goal was to bring the purposeless Bas into the teachings
of the Qun, much like a strict father would teach selflessness and responsibility to a wastrel son.
This could not be achieved by waging a war of annihilation, which the Chantry
seemed determined to make them do if they were ever to conquer the whole of Thedas.
In 7:84, envoys of the Andrastian nations of the Orlesian Chantry and the Qunari Triumvirate
gathered in the pirate isle of Llomeryn and began forging the path to peace. In the titular Llomeryn
accords, the Andrastian nations recognized the Qunari’s rightful dominion over the northern
Archipelago of Par Vollen, while the Qunari agreed to depart from Antiva and Rivain. One nation not
present at these peace talks was the Tevinter Imperium, which had suffered the most during the
initial wave of Qunari invasions. Driven by bitter vengeance, the Imperial Magisters refused to sign
the Llomeryn accords. To this day, the war still rages between them and the Qunari, particularly
over control of the isle of Seheron. In Northern Thedas, much of which was under Qunari occupation
for over a century, the invaders' impact on the land is still observable today. When the Chantry
regained control of those territories, they found the thousands of men and elves who had converted
to the Qun hard to bring back to the Andrastian faith. Eventually, the Church decided that what
it could not accomplish through proselytization, it would achieve through fire and sword.
Thousands of Qun converts, especially in Rivain, were slaughtered en masse and dumped into mass
graves. However, even this did not permanently root out the ideology. Even today, the Qun has
a firm stronghold among the humans of Northern Rivain, especially in the port city of Kont-aar.
Thus, the philosophy of the Qunari retained its foothold on Thedosian soil.
At the beginning of the modern Dragon Age, the Qunari have not yet attempted to invade again,
but it seems only a matter of time before iron dreadnoughts appear before the coasts of Tevinter
and Antiva once more, bringing gaatlok, saarebas, and a new world order to Thedas once more.
Since the story of the Qunari does not yet have an ending, our next video will tack to the alpine
southeast, back to the sacred homeland of the Lady Redeemer herself, as we explore the full history
behind the foundation of the Kingdom of Ferelden and its struggle against Orlesian occupation.
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