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

Hanako Ikezawa What it boils down to, and you keep saying it as well in support of your own arguments, is that "Every villain is the hero of your own story." Your interpretation of Solas decidedly puts him in the evil spectrum. Mine is that he's some shade of grey - a complicated character who exhibits a mix of good and evil, like a real person. So yes, some of the things he says can be interpreted to support either your argument that Solas is the Worst Person Ever, or mine that he might not be. And I believe that the "hero" we play could be one very bad decision away from becoming the villain themselves. (Which could actually make a pretty interesting game to play through.)

What I am trying to express to you (clearly not well) is that... Thedas has been fighting the Blight for hundreds of years. In all that time, no one we're aware of in-universe has come any closer to truly understanding what it is or how to stop it once and for all. The closest they've come is to have Grey Wardens put off the inevitable for a while. I believe Solas knows what the Blight is and probably has a much better understanding of how to stop it once and for all than our heroes can hope for, because he knows how it all started. While I might disagree with his assessment that he can't trust *anyone* with this information, for fear they, too would use it for evil as the Evanuris likely did, I can imagine that he might omit the truth and perhaps even lie about his plans to the Inquisitor to put them off the trail. The last thing he wants is for anyone to become Evanuris 2.0 if they had the knowledge. It makes a certain twisted sense to me that falls in line with what I do know about Solas' manipulations from having spent 460+ hours with him in game.

If we use the analogy of the Blight being a disease like cancer, then Solas seems to me to be like a doctor saying "It's bad, but with surgery, a course of chemotherapy, and radiation treatment - which, by the way, has its own risks and will make you feel very, very sick - we might be able to cure it." A "hero" who kills Solas before we know what is actually going on, and thinks they'll somehow magically come up with a cure on their own and without any understanding of the disease they're actually fighting would be like a priest telling someone with cancer to just pray it away.

I would put my money on the doctor rather than the priest.

But who knows where BioWare is actually going to take us in DA4? Both you and I could be completely off base. I try to frame my thoughts as "this is possible" rather than "this is absolutely 100% certain" because I think it's foolish to assume anyone can know how Solas' story will end before we've actually played it. The fans, including you and I, are divided and that's a result of his character purposefully being written as ambiguously as it was.

midnight tea We know the lyrium idol gets into peoples' heads - it did with Bartrand and Meredith.

gervaise21 We can actually trace the path the idol took if we cross-reference various sources including games, comics, and books:

• It sat in the Primeval Thaig for untold centuries until Hawke and Varric found it. (DAII)
• Bartrand had it in his possession for a while, then he sold it to Meredith. (DAII)
• A Carta dwarf took it from Meredith's remains. (Tevinter Nights; The Dread Wolf Take You)
• Templars took it from the Carta dwarf and gave it to a Tevinter mage from House Qintara. (Tevinter Nights; The Dread Wolf Take You)
• Gaius, an agent of Solas masquerading as Magister Qintara, sold it to House Danarius in exchange for information. (Dragon Age: Deception; this act, by the way, was confirmed by Nunzio deFelippis right here on this board as something that would NOT have met with Solas' approval - this supports the idea that his agents act on their own accord, not always on his orders.)
• A mage from House Danarius asked the Mortalitasi to help with a ritual involving the idol. The encounter with the Dread Wolf and the spirits was chaotic and although it happened both in the Fade and then in the real world, they were busy fighting angry mages. A Mortalitasi took advantage of the chaos to steal the idol out from under them. (Tevinter Nights; The Dread Wolf Take You)
• The Mortalitasi then reportedly took it to Tevinter. (Tevinter Nights; The Dread Wolf Take You)
• It may or may not have then ended up at an auction house in Llomerryn, where Solas (possibly telling the truth, possibly not) finally got his paws on it. (Tevinter Nights; The Dread Wolf Take You)

Until you get to the Llomerryn part of the story, which is of course told by Solas disguised as The Bard, the facts match up with information we have received from multiple sources  who hadn't likely met before the meeting Charter attended. Therefore they probably did not corroborate their stories/contaminate each other as witnesses. The part of the story that The Bard/Solas tells is possibly a red herring, but everything up to then rings true.

He didn't lose track of his orb until after the explosion. He deliberately had his agent give it to the Venatori specifically so Cory could unlock it. He knew where he had taken it because he was on hand in Haven ready to recover it, but far enough away not to get caught in the blast. He clearly knew that things had not gone to plan because an unconscious person was recovered from the ruins with the anchor embedded in their palm but the orb was gone. At this point he realised that Corypheus must have survived the explosion, so now he had to hang around and look after the person with the other half of the set, waiting for Cory to show up again, as he no doubt guessed he would. Note that whilst he allowed his agent to give the orb to Corypheus, he trusted none but himself to recover it.



The Temple of Sacred Ashes is a case in point where he is perfectly prepared to sacrifice hundred of lives if it furthers his aims. He deliberately gave Cory the orb to unlock it because he knew it would result in a massive explosion. He let Cory walk into a gathering of many hundreds of people with the orb, so I think he probably guessed that Cory was intending unlocking it there but he did nothing to prevent this or try and warn people of the danger they were in.

Plus the civilians of Kont'aar were Qunari and the Qun does not see them as individuals but as part of one big organism. The Qun offends him so he would have no qualms about attacking a part of it. His attitude towards members of the Qun is summed up in his words to Iron Bull if you sacrifice the Chargers: "The truth is, Iron Bull, you are Qunari. I cannot be disappointed in your decisions. As a mindless, soulless drone, you could never make any." This is why killing them does not conflict with his belief in "the inherent right of all free willed people to exist", because they have no free will.

Nope, we actually don't know for sure what he has known - and whether he was in vicinity of Temple of Sacred Ashes because he knew with certainty the Orb was there, or has just managed to track the approximate location of it, because him or his agent were tracking Cory movements or something, or were like 'boss, something is going on there, you may want to check it in person'.

This was simply not something solidly established anywhere. So the fact that he deliberately had his agent give it to Venatori agents =/= not losing track of the Orb after that's happened, especially that Corypheus at the time already has abilities that helped him obscure himself and his actions. 
Everything mentioned in this quote happens AFTER the explosion, where he could reasonably determine that the thing responsible for the explosion was the Orb he was already tracking.

HOWEVER - up until Haven attack he didn't know Cory has survived the explosion! Why would he be mentioning the Orb to anyone (and he did to both Leliana and Herald) if he didn't think there may be a chance to find it under the rubble, because he thought those who have caused the explosion have likely died, save for the Herald, protected by the Anchor (who he still had to save anyway).

He's stayed to search for the Orb he thought may still be in the vicinity and observe Inquisition, but he didn't wait for Cory to show up, because he had little reason to assume Corypheus would return to Haven - that has only happened after Inquisition and the Herald had (largely unwittingly) messed with his plans regarding either Mages or Templars, and Cory himself has realized the Anchor has survived and is still functional.

What's more, Solas might have had suspicions about the Elder One, but his approvals in "In Hushed Whispers" suggest that he didn't know who the Elder One was, or that it is Corypheus - in fact, given that his agent has given the orb to VENATORI, and not Corypheus himself, it is pretty apparent he has assumed that the leader of those Venatori is probably dangerous, but it is still a pompous and over-confident human and not Nightmare Fuel Humanoid that was responsible for releasing the Blight. Which is why he thought he could use him.

His lack of knowledge of that is further supported by his shock when he sees the Red Lyrium dragon (he exclaims in disbelief "That is not possible!" if you have him in the party) and is noticeably upset at Cory being alive, which is pretty apparent when you talk about Corypheus and his attack on Haven in Skyhold, just from the tone of his voice - he is FAR more measured when he mentions the Orb in Heaven, which suggests at the time that he's thought that this threat has already been eliminated.

I mean... never mind that we don't even know the whole story of handing the orb to the Venatori. Who were these agents of Solas who were responsible for this? What if the agent that handed orb to Venatori is either a double-agent for someone else, or has decided to disobey and steer things in a different direction for their own reasons, similar to how Felassan did?
That would ALSO explain why Solas has decided that he'd get involved directly from that moment - because he may have lost confidence in reliability of his people, including some of the agents he thought he could trust.
Again - this is not something you can determine with any dose of certainty. In fact, we know from Solas himself that he was pretty darn sure Cory wasn't capable of much anything he was doing, so there's no reason to assume that he expected for the explosion to be that massive. In the last fight with Cory, after disrupting the body-jumping ability, our Inquisitor has to barely open a tiny rift to suck Corypheus' body in - so the result Solas has expected may have had been as small as that final Corypheus-sucking rift.

Like... that explosion at the Conclave was so strong it has created the Breach in the sky and that was, 100%, NOT something Solas wanted, given how quickly he has risked everything to join Inquisition and help close it, instead of being like 'whoppeee, Cory, you did it man, thanks!'. That fact alone speaks against him being 'perfectly prepared' to sacrifice hundreds of lives by opening his Orb that way.

In fact, the explosion being as strong as it was may have actually been the result of our own PC interfering with the ritual, because that was neither something Solas or Corypheus seem to have anticipated.
...But those were words he spoke to Iron Bull after he's committed himself to the Qun and forsaken his free will for sure. BEFORE that happens he has conversations with IB where it's obvious that he questions the Qun vehemently, he argues with Iron Bull about it, but clearly thinks of him as an individual that is worth arguing with and perhaps swaying.

And after the other choice is made, Solas basically openly declares friendship with IB and makes gestures showing that he cares about him and his state of mind.

He also has a story for us in which he mentions a Qunari baker - and from the tone in his voice you can tell that these tiny acts of rebellion the baker has risked while baking bread are touching and very precious to him.

He can, reasonably, determine that most Ben-Hassrath are pretty hardcore zealots inn majority of cases - or that they are, at the very least, soldiers on the battlefield in this shadow war. So he probably won't look twice when eliminating them, like he didn't when he's turned them to stone or let Inquisition decimate forces invading remains of Elvenhan and the eluvian network.
But it's super-unlikely he thinks of civilians in Kont-arr in the same category as Ben-Hassrath or Antaam.

Claiming otherwise - that he'd sacrifice ALL the Qun, regardless who they are in their rigid society, in a textbook display of black-and-white thinking, IS in conflict with a character that continuously shows that he is capable of nuanced thinking and understands context and complexities of situations (even if, eventually, he determines that he has to take some actions that he himself is not a fan of).

He could be, but I doubt it. I don't think he faked his approval whenever the Inquisitor did something kind for people, like taking flowers to a grave, etc. He's also definitely conflicted about what he's doing. I don't think an evil person would care.

To each their own.  I think he looks quite nice, myself. 

When he speaks to a non-friendly Inquisitor he states that "the Qun offend me". Not the Antaam or the Ben'Hassrath but the Qun. The reason he tries so hard with Iron Bull before his fateful decision is because he sees that he is beginning to waver and of course he befriends him if he rejects the Qun but if he sacrifices the Chargers and consolidates his loyalty to the Qun, Solas has utter contempt for him. The civilians in Kon'taar are loyal to the Qun. If they were not, they would have run away, which would be easy enough considering they are on the mainland and not on Par Vollen. Regardless, so long as they are part of the Qun, they offend him and are effectively non people. Remember up until he spent time with the Inquisition he felt pretty much the same about all the modern races. He admits that had his original plan worked he would have entered the Fade and torn down the Veil regardless of the consequences for millions, so I hardly think he is going to baulk at the population of Kon'taar if it helps his cause.

I have to admit I don't understand the logic train here. In what way Solas stating that 'the Qun offends him' implies that he's ready to sacrifice all of the Qunari or people stuck under the Qun indiscriminately? It doesn't even make much sense in the context.

Like... the QUN offends him - as in: the IDEOLOGY. Not necessarily people all stuck under the Qun. It's the stated reason for taking action (which we KNOW isn't all) in preventing the spread of the ideology he dislikes, and it being done via surprise attacks and brutal conquest. That is it.

Also - he considers all of modern Thedosians as either non-people or not fully people, and he keeps wavering on this throughout Inquisition, as demonstrated by many of his dialogues and comments that DO refer to modern Thedosians as people. It's the same with the Qunari - he has utter contempt predominantly to those who do indeed seem to abandon their humanity, like IB did when we have sacrificed the Chargers and which as been proven in Trespasser to be true. I don't understand why you'd think that he tries to reach IB - a spy and Ben Hassrath AND a loyal Qunari when we meet him - but wouldn't have same sympathy to people less involved in plan to invade the South, like civilians in Kont-arr.

In fact, he has more sympathy towards Tal Vashoth than Bull (who really doesn't think of Tal Vashoth as people at the time) - and I mean those Tal Vashoth who eventually turn to crime and so on - and argues about them being conditioned by the Qun to being unable to escape its principles later on, which - by the way - is about the same thing he's said about blood mages or Vints. His anecdote about the Qunari baker also shows perfectly that he is ready to humanize them, even if all they do is rebel against the system in tiny ways that may or may not result with the baker eventually leaving the Qun.

Thus - the fact that he despises the ideology doesn't mean that he doesn't have sympathy for people who are stuck under the Qun, civilians especially, even if they don't or can't run away from the Qun, at least immediately. He demonstrates multiple times in the story that he understands there's more to societal pressures and systems that in many ways prevent people from running away from abusive communities or ideologies, like Qun or Circle or whatever - so why he'd think of civilians in Kont-arr as the same as Ben-Hassrath or Antaam? It makes no sense.

Besides - I think that comment about the Qun offending him doesn't really speak much of his contempt of all of the Qunari, but what the Qun may be. Since people have seen some similarities between his view on things to that of Koslun's it's possible that the Qun may be based on a perverted version of his own philosophy. Regardless whether it's true or not, he dislikes it and that is enough of a reason to prevent its spread on the South, which was the context of the entire exchange.

I was lamenting on Twitter last night that we'll probably never get to hear Gareth David Lloyd as Solas being The Bard. Then someone told me he had read a couple lines from The Dread Wolf Take You for a Cameo request from a fan. So of course I had to track it down. Here it is:

Popping out of uthenera to respond to this too. XD

I respectfully disagree that he isn't sexy. Sexy isn't just looks, facial features, body structure, or whether or not a person has hair. There are so many more layers to sexy. He may not be what some would consider conventionally attractive, but then I never cared for convention, or what "other people might think" 

Oh don't get me wrong. The cadence of his voice, his scholarly attributes, his compassion for spirits and the impoverished, and even his bouts of snarkyness absolutely attribute to his appeal. But in terms of physical appearance? Not so much.