Why did they create the Crossroads?

That would suggest that the Crossroads network was separate from Thedas and the Fade even before the Veil. Also there were spirits shown interacting with the elves in the Vir Dirthara. Where was this? If it was in the one of the inter-dimensional structures, how did they keep the other spirits out? Just how many enemies did they really have that they couldn't cope with on the Thedas side? After they dealt with the Titans I'd have thought anything else would have seemed easy. I had wondered if the surface of Thedas was somehow hostile and that is why they had so many structures underground, but we saw ruins that were on the surface so that seems more just a matter of taste or perhaps which god they followed.

However, from things Solas says and even the lore of the Dalish, it would seem that the real city of Arlathan was part of this network and only certain favoured individuals were allowed access. Keeper Gisharel says how "at the center of the world stood the great city of Arlathan, a place of knowledge and debate, where the best of the ancient elves would go to trade knowledge, greet old friends, and settle disputes that had gone on for millennia". That sounds like the city we see in the memories. So I wonder if instead of being created to keep enemies out, it was simply something the Evanuris created to keep the lower ranks out. So the whole thing was the realm of the gods and their chosen. Those tombs I mentioned were said to be those of nobles, not ordinary elves, so that would fit with it being some sort of elite domain to which only certain privileged individuals were granted entry.

In trespasser did they cut out the crossroads or those eluvians separate?
They also seem very different from the previous games

Yes, they changed the design entirely from DAI to Trespasser but I assume they could argue that what Morrigan showed us was the central hub, whereas what we were running around in Trespasser was one of the branches.



I think they hand-waved that bit of detail from Masked Empire. After all none of our companions seemed to have a problem with the Crossroads in Trespasser, just saw it differently from elves. Having the modern elves in Masked Empire have no ill effects from the Crossroads, yet regarded as totally different by ancient ones did seem something of a contradiction. Also Morrigan is probably a special case having been the offspring of Flemeth/Mythal, so probably does have something special to her physique not shared by other elf bloods. Mind you, considering Flemeth apparently had her own pocket realm in the Fade, it is odd that it took drinking from the Well of Sorrows for her to detect Morrigan when surely it should have been possible for her to know someone had managed to get into the Crossroads.



This is not really the same thing. No, you can't just teleport by ordinary magic, which is why they needed the eluvians at all. However, there is another problem with how things are depicted in DAI and that is how Kieran is able to change the destination of the eluvian from the Crossroads to the Fade. Now Morrigan suggested it might be easier to move from the Crossroads to the Fade but this was implied to be because being nearer in relation to it, it would be easier to break through, which is why it would be dangerous to give Corypheus access to the network. However, she never suggested you could simply use one of the eluvians to get directly to the Fade. Okay, so Morrigan doesn't know everything but it seemed like each eluvian was either a doorway to the Crossroads or a doorway from the Crossroads. According to your theory it should have been impossible to simply teleport from Thedas to the Fade without passing through the Crossroads and yet that is what Kieran did. Also back in DAO the eluvian was a portal to what looked like a dark city and through which darkspawn were escaping. So unless that eluvian was an entry to the Black City in the Fade, it would seem you could teleport through the eluvian to another part of Thedas without passing through the Crossroads.

Of course you can enter the Fade from anywhere in the continent and since it is meant to be constantly shifting there should be no way of determining where in the Fade you will appear. However, the events in "Into the Abyss" would seem to disprove this. When we entered the Fade physically (something that was previously impossible unless it is the Black City which is the only constant in the Fade) we arrived in the Nightmare Demon's realm and had to move through it in order to reach the rift that would return us to Thedas.

Actually that whole business was odd. The anchor apparently opened a rift to let us into the Fade but we couldn't simply open another to let us out. Why did we end up in the Nightmare Demon's realm and not some random area? Why did we traverse an area that was totally unlike the world we had come from, when if it was matching the distance we travelled in the real world, the terrain ought to have matched it in appearance? Why was the demon's realm solid and unchanging when we have previously been told that the domains of even the most powerful demons are ever shifting?

Then the visit with Kieran and Flemeth was even more at odds with what we had been told about the Fade. What was this pocket realm that Flemeth seemed to have maintained? Where did she get the power from to do this? Bear in mind that Mythal is just a "wisp", a fragment of what she was before, yet is able to maintain this place to which presumably she lured Kieran.

I have to admit that previously I totally understood the idea of the "land of dreams" being a shifting place and anything we see within it that looks familiar is merely a reflection of what spirits "see" in our world. Dreamers who can enter the Fade in their minds at will do so because they have the ability to shift their perspective when conscious without the aid of lyrium. However, the two Fade realms we enter in DAI, allowing for re-use of resources by the programmers, do not conform to what has been true previously as they reflect nothing of the real world we have just left.

As I understand, the thoughts of mortals and physical space of the real world influences the corresponding space in the Fade. IE the Inquisitor opened a rift while in midair to let him/herself and their companions into the Fade as it related to that specific point in space, and trying to open another one in roughly the same area in the Fade would have dumped them back into that free-fall and "rocks fall everyone dies."

So they had to climb to where the Nightmare demon was in the Fade because that was a "guaranteed safe exit point" (in geographical terms anyway) since that is where Clarel was trying to summon it.