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

I mean... I've already sacrificed Hawke, in theory I could probably sacrifice the Inquisitor with the right circumstances. T^T

Also, could you imagine having a canon playthrough where you do the ultimate sacrifice in DAO, and then sacrificing both Hawke and Inky? No protagonist is safe.

Yeah, I'm a bit worried about my canon Lavellan who drank from the well. Especially now that Morrigan is confirmed as returning.

It's a geas, I don't think you can counter it but Mythal could have waived her control if she wanted to.

Not their fault if you were stupid enough to drink. My Lavellan was lucky. She had the arcane knowledge perk so figured out the geas part and had Cole in her party who definitely advised against it. Since Solas also seemed reluctant, she could take a hint. Then my next male Lavellan had his lover Dorian with him and he thought it a bad idea and said he "didn't want to lose him to the Well". That seemed a pretty emphatic negative against drinking.

Depends on the wording of the command as well. A geas is a very nasty form of magic, like using a True Name to command a being to do what you want, you have to be very specific on your orders and commands or someone clever can find a loophole to subvert the order or only follow the spirit of the command and not the letter.

Not just Mythal but her priesthood. That is what Cole was warning against: "You don't want all those voices in your head." It is the priesthood that will hold you to the service of Mythal unless she chooses to release them all from their oath to her. Since they are spirits, it is likely she can communicate with them without you being aware of it. Hence Solas saying that from the moment you drank from the Well "whatever you do, whether you know it or not, you do it for her." That's pretty scary stuff and not easily overcome.

I would actually be quite disappointed if the writers simply waived it away with some ritual or magical doodad. That decision should have been more impactful than it was. You don't even realise how much if Kieran is not an OGB from what I recall. Or does Morrigan still attack her at the shrine? It is so long since I played I find it hard to remember. Anyway, the sum total of the knowledge gained was confined to telling you the trick to defeating Corypheus (and then we didn't actually kill him as such according to WoT2 but merely sent him to the Fade), reading a few ancient texts and knowing the password at the shrine. There is meant to be the combined wisdom of the ancient priesthood of Mythal in there, so I hope they make that significant this time round. Considering they are definitely bringing back Morrigan and the Inquisitor, the chances of that being the case have greatly improved. No doubt there will be a twist in the tail though, whoever drank. May be it will be a case of killing either Morrigan or the Inquisitor eventually to prevent them fulfilling Mythal's ultimate purpose or may be they will be the reason we can defeat the gods, after which the duty to Mythal will have been fulfilled and they will be free of her influence.

I wouldn't mind betting Solas figures into that outcome somewhere along the line.   After all, he absorbed  at least something of Mythal too, which was strange in view of his previous strictures about drinking from the Well.    Perhaps he was already bound by a different geas so he appreciated the danger and the burden it places on you.

I really, really don't think Solas is under any compulsion. That'd pretty effectively destroy his story by destroying his agency. 

I mean, at least in case of Inquisitor, they CHOOSE to drink from the Well (and do so at the end of Inquisition's story). Never mind that we don't really know the effects of drinking, or what happens later.

IMO, if he is compelled to act in Mythal's name, then he's compelled by more mundane things - like guilt and regret.

Well, if Cole's cryptic comments are indeed about Solas and Mythal, then we do know that Solas had a relationship with her is long and complex - that he's known her potentially before he manifested in physical form, that he was probably her loyal guard/spymaster (?), that apparently he's helped her defeat the Titans and that he carried her vallaslin and that he's later burned it away.

IMO Solas may be a bit too old and too knowledgeable about Fade and magic to just become someone's servant, either witting or unwitting. If he was ever compelled by Mythal to do anything, it was more than likely a straightforward emotional thing: friendship, loyalty, Solas believing in Mythal's cause (and maybe, for a time at least, believing that the Evanuris project was a well-meaning one), etc.
At this point in time I believe that Solas regrets things that happened before the Veil more than the Veil itself.

Oh, I'm sure that creating the Veil broke him in many ways, and I'm also quite sure he hates its effect on the world, but it's more that he beats himself - justifiably or not - for failing to prevent events that led to a situation where lifting the Veil was the only way out the crisis.

After all, we do know that he tried other options before that: he roused the people against the god-kings; instigated an Empire-wide rebellion, worked with people to prevent the worst, but ultimately that worst thing became reality, and it left Mythal dead and everyone else without any better option to save whatever could be saved.

You mean, like when they both said at different times "I had done nothing - the actions were yours" and I remember how we basically all went 'ohhhhh, there are obvious narrative parallels between characters"?

I'm all for finding clues for this puzzle - that's basically what we've been entertaining ourselves for the past years - but some things just aren't meant to be taken so literally. IMO the major things that compel Solas are his trauma, his sense of responsibility and his roiling emotions. IMO magical compulsion is simply wholly unnecessary here, if not actively damaging to the story.

But he speaks those words differently to Flemythal, who isn't soft when she speaks of reckoning - in fact she speaks of 'the reckoning that will shake the very heavens' and is very firm and authoritative, while Solas almost whispers, like he's letting Nadia and Elio in on a half-mumbled secret. I really don't hear similarities here.

Also, I think the more interesting sentence out of the two is "I seek regeneration". 

Solas wants to grow his hair back.

I am increasingly thinking there is more to his plan than we have been told. Well, actually, we know there is because he admitted as much to the Inquisitor and wouldn't say more because they might figure it out. I'm sure that went beyond simply how he was going to deal with the problem of the gods. In fact, I revisited the Missing because not did that have another item in it that the Venatori were after and Solas prevented them from getting it but there was also the note he left Varric:
"What can be done will be done cautiously and I will limit the damage the best I can. I have not wish to be a villain in one of your stories but interfering in matters you do not understand can only make things worse."

That was true enough by what happens at the beginning of Veilguard but why didn't he take more steps to ensure people didn't interfere? Why did he leave the eluvian network open? Was that part of the damage limitation?

I also think Mythal is playing her own game in all this. Not only did Flemeth state she wanted to aid her in gaining justice that was previously denied to her (by Solas imprisoning them instead of leaving them free?), which would shake the very heavens (which surely necessitated freeing the gods to confront them) but also when challenged why she didn't do more for the elves when they had actively prayed to her down the years she replied cryptically: "What was could not be changed." What did she mean by that? That once she had been murdered she was no longer bound by her relationship to them? That her justice was more important than revealing herself?

One reason I am so excited for the game is that the narrative would seem to be far more complicated from what it appeared to be at the end of Trespasser and the revelations in associated media have only added to the complexities rather than reduced them.