The Blanketfort (crying and throwing up) - The Official Solas Thread [Spoilers]

Is there any particular reason why Solas gave the Orb to Corypheus?
I've read the in game explanations but I don't belive them.
Solas said he was too weak to unlock the Orb and for my impression so was Corypheus as he used the power generated by a blood sacrifice to unlock it.
Why wasn't Solas able to sacrifice a person or some animals to do the same via blood magic?

I had the impression Solas didn't want to follow this path for ethical reasons only but if he avoided it because it would have caused him the side effect of being more detached from the fade and to avoid the explosion then it can be explanatory.
The Combined powers of his allies should have been enough to activate the Orb(Corypheus also uses multiple mages),but there was the explosion issue... that's why maybe he avoided it.

I don't see any reason to think Solas didn't know the explosion when the orb was opened would be large. Yes, the Inquisitor interrupted the ritual and Justinia smacked the orb around. But even if that hadn't happened, I'd wager Solas was still expecting an explosion, at least to some extent, b/c he allowed Cory to go ahead with opening the orb in the first place. If Solas was weak enough not to be able to open the orb, he'd certainly be too weak to overpower the person who managed to do so. And yet he let the crazy darkspawn magister go ahead and do it. Therefore, he must have been expecting the opening of the orb to kill Corypheus for him. A significant explosion, as far as I can tell, was expected. The only surprise was the orb's gift of the anchor being transferred to someone who then lived through it, which was what Justinia instigated by knocking it out of Corypheus' hands.

Though I've tried to find another explanation b/c I don't like the conclusion, I can't see any way Solas wasn't expecting the explosion of energy at the temple. And his choice to remain a good distance away from the ritual itself, by staying down the valley in Haven as it occurred, implies he knew just how big it would be. He didn't expect it to rip a hole in the veil (at least not one that would be uncontrolled due to his lack of the Anchor). But he did expect the deaths of innocents to be involved with Corypheus' orb opening attempt and willfully accepted them.

Basically, Maker help him if he ever ends up in a room alone with Leliana again...

The very line from me that you quoted states pretty clearly that he has obviously expected for *some* explosion to happen, while in earlier comment I've speculated about additional motivation for killing Cory. So why are we discussing it as if I've suggested that he expected no explosion or tried not to kill Cory? 

Basically, there's a difference between large and 'large enough to poke a hole through the Veil'. And we know that Corypheus (or his body) can be offed with something smaller, because he basically melted when he activated ToM defenses.


And while it was a sizable explosion, it wasn't anywhere close to the one that caused the Breach.

There's no reason to think that there could be either no explosion or explosion large enough to cause the Breach, or destroy the Temple. The fact that Solas stayed some ways away from the Conclave is expected, considering the amount of Templars or Seekers in the vicinity (though if we assume that the DAI trailer is canonical, he actually wasn't far, given that we see him in the same tavern Varric was in and the place was close enough to be shaken by explosion).

In fact, Solas approaching Inquisition to seal the hole in the Veil despite all the risk is an indicator enough that the explosion was way bigger/devastating than what he anticipated and we can't rule out the fact that the reason why explosion was this powerful in the first place may be because of disrupted ritual.

I wouldn't be surprised if Solas was actually too weak to unlock the power of the orb himself. I mean, when we meet him he's only level 1, just like our character!

LOL! Doing a new playthrough now, well two simultaneous ones for my female Qunari and male Human, and I've never heard that banter in my two previous pt's. I'll need to take Viv into the field more with Solas, I suppose.

*edit* I can't ever tell if I'm going to end up as top post, because on the PC some previous ones that had once been top are not, so just in case...

Me too.  That way I can go through the banter at my own speed.  I kind of liked the idea of mounts in DAI but I avoided using them b/c I didn't want to miss out on party banter.

That trailer's canon to me. lol

It looks like Solas has nothing in his right hand the first shot, but when Varric shoots the guy and Solas actually looks up, is it just me or does he now have a quill or something in that hand? Maybe he was meant to be in the middle of writing something?

Also, wow that black outfit looks way more intimidating than what he shows up in to us.

Oh, top post. Cool.

Honestly, my first impression of that scene was Solas is busy eating and had a spoon in his hand.

The orb building up power was probably why he couldn't unlock it and gave it to Corypheus in the first place.

Still... Solas was unable to localize it after the explosion. So we don't really know how Cory's own powers interfered with Solas's ability to track the orb. Corypheus wields Blight magic and there's probably a lot of blood magic happening around him too - nevermind a giant Fear demon that steals people's memories; we even have some evidence of some sort of masking effect in the vision we see in ruined Temple. Only Herald and Justinia are recognizable, but Corypheus is just this big, looming shadow with a voice and we don't see the Wardens at all. We also don't see the Orb.

So we can't really tell how well he's able to sense his own artifact when there are many things happening to it that may, at the very least, keep the item untraceable.

On one hand, his presence near the Temple may have had been because of the orb - or it may have been because of the Conclave. Who knows? It's also possible that the orb was tracked in more conventional ways - maybe one of his spies was keeping an eye on Vints and has tipped Solas about the strange presence of Venatori?

Here's something I don't recall seeing discussed. During the Fade Haven scene, Solas makes this comment:



"No ordinary magic would affect them..."

What could he mean by that? We know there are distinctions between certain schools or types of magic, but I don't think I've heard any type of magic described as 'ordinary'.

I wouldn't be surprised if Solas indeed sacrificed some sort of unique power of his to deal with Evanuris, or whatever other threat he was fighting at the time - in Trespasser, one of Cole's cryptic comments makes it quite apparent: "He broke the dreams to stop the old dreams from waking. The wolf chews its leg off to escape the trap."

And since Solas doesn't appear to be maimed physically (unless we count his hair, lol) the maiming itself is probably of the magical sort.

It may even be the reason he was so weakened or unable to unlock his orb despite millennia-old nap, regardless of whatever prowess with any type of 'ordinary' magic he retained. Still, that leaves the question of what makes certain magic so extraordinary, and whether there is more than one type of special magic that exists. 

So far there are three, potentially four, types I see as contenders for extraordinary magic. First is the Blight magic - if I recall correctly the source of this magic is thought to be separate from the Fade. The other one though seems to be all about the Fade, and it's the green magic the Anchor or orb emanates (and seems to be just the right type of magic to close rifts and the Breach itself). The third one is the mysterious blue/purplish magic we see Flemeth or OGB Kieran use, which is also somehow connected with Well of Sorrows - though we also see Solas emanate the same type of wisps of blue light even before we venture to Temple of Mythal.


Apparently, it's either a finite type of magic or there's some secret of using it that Solas seems to have mostly lost, given that he later stole/was given the reservoir of Mythal's power.