Falon'Din {Lore - Spoilers All}

Welcome, welcome! Are you scared of the dark? Like Owls? Maybe you went thought that awkward phase as a teen and you really liked death? Then come and listen to what is known~
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This video does contain major story spoilers for the Dragon Age games and other related media.
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[@thestitchwithsami]

In a way I do get how Falon'Din could be represented as a god of death in both mythos but in one he's a terrifying figure and in another he's a literal Friend of the Dead. For ancient Elvhen, where immortality is all they've ever known, death is a terrifying thing. Someone taking you so deep in the fade that even another god couldn't find you is frightening. How do you fight against that? How do you deal with that? You don't, you just bow or die. But for modern dalish elves, who have been surrounded by death as long as they can remember, and most often that death comes at the hands of foreign beings who have harassed, enslaved, and tortured you, stories of a god who takes you off deep into the Fade seem like a kindness. His nature doesn't have to change, just the lens through which it is interpreted.

[@Aidan_Brink]

"Shadow" as in "always close by/following". Food for thought.

[@ikaemos]

"There's a lot of ideas here that don't connect with one another." Well, DA has always been very good at following real-world anthropological trends in that regard. This is pretty much what you get when a mythological figure has been passed around different cultures and had their story repurposed and reinterpreted countless times to fit with the biases of a certain time or place. Especially true if the method of transmission is oral (which it is with the Dalish), because then you have no primary sources. You can, at best, try to chart how a legend changed through the ages, and that's mostly guesswork. For example, any mention of the Tuatha Dé Danann after the low middle ages is likely to refer to them as magical (but distinctly mortal) fairies or spirits, when it's speculated that they were quite clearly treated as deities before the christianization of Ireland. The missionaries left the stories more or less intact (because their new converts liked them), removed the deific elements (because they were competition), and added a few distinctly christian flourishes (like church bells driving fairies away). We can, at best, assume when those additions were made and try to reverse-engineer what the stories were like before them, but it will never be a complete picture.

[@johnbosquez9781]

Thank you @Ghil Dirhalen for making washing my dishes bearable.

[@Avenray19]

This is so Relatable. I listen to these while I clean 😂

[@LingeringFlower]

I completely forget that conversation on Falon'din with Solas! Man I'm glad for these videos, they help me keep me updated on DA lore before DA4 comes out.

[@alejandrocamachorios2212]

If, it comes out And that's a big if

[@Avenray19]

@@alejandrocamachorios2212 it's been confirmed for awhile now that it's the next main project being worked on.

[@Scottx125Productions]

@@Avenray19 If it comes out isn't the issue. The state it comes out in and how good it is, is...

[@sveipr]

"The blood of those who wouldn't follow filled lakes as wide as oceans" Funny how in both cases of ancient elves and the dalish, Falon'din is both viewed as the god of death, but in drastically different ways. Falon'din was viewed as violent and power hungry, enough to encroach upon Elgarnan's land and was most likely had a role to play in starting the civil war that killed Mythal that forced Solas to create the veil. Thus to the ancient elves he is the god of death for killing so many elves and possibly being the catalyst for the fall of Arlathan. While the Dalish also view him as the god of death, but interpret him as a benevolent guide to the dead. I wonder what other gods, if not all of them were misinterpreted since we know the Dalish misunderstood Falon'din, Fen'harel, and even Mythal to a point.

[@abraxis260482]

Perhaps it's just me, but "Shapeless worlds and airless skies" sounds an awful lot like the fade. "The dark that lies" and "Whose shadows hunger" could be references to demons (pride/desire & hunger?) or maybe have some link to the "Shadow Warriors" encountered around elven ruins in DA2. Put all of this together and it sounds somewhat akin to the dreamers that could kill through the fade, but using demons as assassins or even armies. That latter makes more sense in a world before the veil when the elven civilisation existed as much in the fade as in the physical world. "Master scryer" seems to make sense in this context too since as we saw in 'Witch Hunt', scrying is used to locate things like eluvian using the "Lights or Arlathan". All of this seems to point towards navigating the deep fade, which is something a master of dream assassins & warriors should probably be good at. Alternatively, the scrying could just refer to the real world meaning, which is basically foretelling the future which is something specifically credited to Falon'Din as you noted. As for the connection between Falon'Din and Dirthamen; they way they're referred to kinda makes me wonder if they're kinda/sorta the same person, but not really. Think something akin to multiple personalities, or two souls born into a single body. It would certainly explain the unusual relationship and why their traits seem so inexorably intertwined. One aspect that interests me is the question of how the blight came to infect the eluvian from the Dalish Warden origin in the first place. It could just be an extension of the effect we see in lyrium, going on the assumption that lyrium is used to build/grow eluvian in the first place. On the other hand if this is Falon'Din's eluvian and he & Dirthamen are known for going deep into the "beyond", perhaps this eluvian leads to the void; the place the blight seems to have originated from based on a few codex entries. That would also explain why Merrill could never purify the fragment she kept since it was always directly connected to that place. Might also explain why the frame grew all twisted and "darkspawny" when she tried to re-grow it.

[@HumanElemental]

There is a theory, I think it might be mentioned in a video on this channel, that the ancient elves were the ones to first find the blight. Andruil was known to hunt in the void and come back mad, even bringing a plague to her lands. “Darkness whose shadows hunger” could be referring to this. It would certainly explain why some of the Eluvians are tainted.

[@jaspr1999]

Depending on how how far the writers used modern myths and legends from today in the story the word scryer or one who performs the act generally uses still water or a mirror to see what lies beyond. This could be anything from a means to contact the dead, see a living person, or a place. In the context of what is written Lethanavir would be someone who uses one or more of these methods to 'see' whatever he/she was meditating on. Also, "Shapeless Worlds and Airless Skies" is what some cultures and religions refer to as the beyond or the world where imagination is made real. Going by the entry itself, Falon'Din would be the guide via Lethanavirs' efforts. Going by the scrying reference it would seem that some type of mantra was sung by the faithful and the collective singing fed the shadows on the other side. I apologize as it has been a very long time since I was studying all this in school and I've slept since then. If this sounds like the right track, I can look more detailed information up on the subject.

[@mattrichard3383]

A doppelgänger (/ˈdɒpəlɡɛŋər, -ɡæŋər/; German: [ˈdɔpl̩ˌɡɛŋɐ] (listen), literally "double-goer") is a non-biologically related look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelgänger with an evil twin. In modern times, the term twin stranger is occasionally used.[1] The word "doppelgänger" is often used in a more general and neutral sense, and in slang, to describe any person who physically resembles another person. My theory is that Dirthamen wanted to save a deer, which is probably a metaphor for someone he loved ( Ghilan,nan? ) but could not on his own. He made a deal with his Shadow ( demon ). The Shadow fulfilled Dirthamen's wish, but then they became entangled, or Doppelgänger.. I'm probably wrong, but it's fun to spin theories.

[@stevenhayes7910]

I feel like the two of them being described as each other's reflection/shadow could hint at a similar relationship as Wynne and the Spirit of Fate that empowers her. It especially seems to line up given their connections to the Fade. It's a theory I really like.

[@periwinkle1136]

I think that Falon'Din and Dirthamen have the same kind of relationship as spirit Cole and real Cole. This explains why in one sense they are inseparable twins, in another kind of the same person, and would explain why one is a reflection and the other the shadow. Falon'Din found a spirit in the fade and imprinted his being on it creating a 'twin' soul which would be later called Dirthamen.

[@TheCaptainConway]

I just noticed the similarity between the statue from origins and the fear demons you fight in Inquisition.

[@NRV0]

Like she said, DAO reused a lot of their models in that game. It's a old game.

[@pavan5able]

Us: damn, he thicc as hell! Ancient elves: damn, he thicc as night!

[@aleckaizer884]

Perhaps the Blight was a part of his power. The Wings/Shadow of Death and the insatiable hunger for more followers does sound similar to me

[@grimsha9399]

The constellation "Tenebrium" is based on Latin "tenebra, tenebrae", meaning "darkness, shadow, gloom...". So there's another instance of shadows connected to Falon'Din.

[@bigbadwolf0047]

*caugh* Zevran *caugh* Ogrhen Btw love your videos 😉

[@Formoka]

Maybe the tainted Eluvian was supposed to lead into the Void… maybe that was why it was tainted.

[@reddskair9523]

Having a video with over 2k views and no down votes is amazing. Congratulations!

[@exalted1155]

Great video as always. Just wanted to throw in a little real world mythology since it seems relevant. The Greek gods of the underworld and death were frequently referenced with euphemisms, like “kind one” similar to how Fallon’din is referred to as “merciful one.” This was done out of fear of death and ward it off. Given Falon’din’s apparently gruesome nature according to Solas, this may have been something passed down from Elvhenan that carried over. Similarly, a winged figure guiding the souls of elves into the Fade is analogous to the real world concept of a psychopomp, a god or other divine figure who would guide the dead to the underworld. In Ancient Greece, this was frequently Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Now, the Orlesian study referring to Falon’din and Dhirthamin as “twin souls.” Again, in Greek religion, many gods took on aspects outside their usual purview or being worshipped as part of a group while having domain over the same thing, (Zeus being a god of the sky but having an underworld aspect, for example, the Muses representing the arts in general with each Muse representing a particular form of art), so perhaps “twin souls” could imply that Falon’din and Dhirthamin were either aspects of the same god or perhaps they were worshipped as a Diad. Secrets and the dead went hand in hand in mythology (especially the secret to conquering death), so I don’t know. I just see so many real world analogues in DA that at least some of what I mentioned may be possible, but it’s also a fantasy game and I could be reading waaaay too into things (let’s go with this theory for now lol).

[@Lady_Eleven]

Tinfoil time! "The Dark that Lies" is mostly gobbledygook, but if I had to guess (and I do, my blabbermouth compels me), I'd say it might refer to Uthenera itself. "Dark" is often a euphemism for death, and Uthenera is like a false death, and we know Falon'Din is strongly connected to the concepts of Death and Uthenera. Perhaps it seems too sinister to refer to the relatively-peaceful-seeming Uthenera, but I've long suspected there is something about Uthenera that is not good and that we don't understand quite yet. But the image we get from Solas (and he has no specific reason to just make stuff up about Falon'Din, as far as I see) is that Falon'Din wasn't nearly the merciful, helpful psychopomp the Dalish remember him as. He comes off definitively power-hungry and even bloodthirsty. So I wonder - perhaps Uthenera was a common practice among all the ancient elves, no matter who their patron god, but since Falon'Din held particular control over navigating the Fade and "guiding" souls - perhaps he somehow bound or took control over *all* the ancient elves who entered Uthenera? Or tried to? If he began an attack on the other gods by using the elves who'd been in Uthenera within their own domains, it's easy to see how he might have nearly gotten the better of the rest of them, until he himself was wounded (and that part is very interesting - what side was Dirthamen on while all this was happening? He's not even mentioned - which seems like fodder for the theory that maybe one of them was a spirit inhabiting the others' body - most likely Falon'Din being the spirit, since he seemed to know the Fade better than Dirthamen).

[@bleepbloopbloop-h5y]

I always took it that the strange temple felt evil because of the blight, or the blighted eluvian's influence within it

[@alpharius1015]

U rlly had to bring up that freaky slenderman statue didnt u, it's so creepy I'm gonna have nightmares now

[@MRVAANY87]

Another perfectly perfect af video and that siren voice what if he is from the void or he was spending great time there or in some other realm and the shadow just represent that or maybe he is master of entropy magic drain life horror etc

[@raerae1518]

Listening to this ... again ... and it occurred to me that Twin souls seems to be the equivalent of twin flames/mirror souls in modern spirituality. One interpretation of twin flames is that they are created when one soul is split between two physical bodies. They don't complete each other as they are complete people in their own right (ie not the missing part of each other) but rather show each other their deepest insecurities/fears/weaknesses ... or shadows. There is always a strong spiritual link. This can be both challenging and healing as mirroring/shadowing encourages spiritual growth (because seeing your flaws allows you to rise bove them). Each twin flame has a deep spiritual impact on the other. That said ... they don't have to like each other. Anyway .. just thought I'd share

[@sarahhutchinson1644]

So, random not in any way backed theory. You know the idol from DA2? What if it’s representing Falon’din and Dirthamin? At least the two figures on the “opposite” sides of the fade portal thing. If the central figure is Mythal it might fit with the idea she was Falon’din’s mother (the way the figure embraces the others). It could be a representation of the twin souls. And we do know the Stone has offered a hiding place for elven artifacts.

[@jhaycraft3980]

6:31 "The Theroy"

[@unbelievablytrash9458]

7:11 "But doesn't confuse us because we know the elven gods are evil" Remember when morality was a complex thing in DA?

[@unbelievablytrash9458]

@@AulisVaara I hope that's the case. The way they've handled every religion other than the Chantry makes me think otherwise though.

[@unbelievablytrash9458]

@@AulisVaara You should.

[@ryanhernandez5632]

Mybe they share a soul. Mybe it's a "what was once 1 is now 2" kinda thing. If so it would more than likely have happend during the pregnancy or after birth if one died and part of the soul of one brother was used to revive the other.

[@prieatknight]

Awesome!

[@urubissoldat5452]

Another great video, I'm going to go play DAO now

[@patrickschulz2193]

Hm. Random brainfart. The Blight is described as "alien" to the spirits. So maybe it has its origins somewhere beyond the Fade if it did not originate in Thedas. And with the Crossroads, we know there are places other than Thedas and the Fade. Perhaps the "tainted" Eluvian of Falon'Din really just connects to the Blight's point of origin.

[@NehnBellanaris]

@Ghil Dirthalen Something I just thought of. In DA:I (including the Tresspaser dlc) we've been to four Elven temples. One is the temple of Dirthamen. The second is (of course) The Temple of Mythal. The third is the temple is Sylaise. (That one is up the river from the Dalish camp in the Dales.) And the fourth one is the temple of Fen'Harel. (You have to go through that one in order to get to...... well Fen'Harel.) Do you think that there's any possibility that we'll see any of the others in DA4?

[@SaVanityVan]

It's very likely. The ancient elves had settlements all over Thedas, but Tevinter has a huge forest called 'Arlathan Forest' that is believed to be the place Arlathan used to be before it disappeared, so not only are there likely some major elven ruins in and around that forest, but Tevinter itself is probably full of them since it seems to have been the heart of the elves' civilization. Tevinter is also filled with ancient Old God temples and ruins, and with the Old Gods being heavily tied to the Evanuris, some of those ruins likely belonged to the elves before the vints took over, so we'll likely learn more about them there too.

[@jamesmartel8381]

what about the blight? tamlen is infected by the eluvian in the ruins. blight is certianly a form of death and recent lore seems to hint the blight has a tie in with the fade. maybe thats what he did to the deer that he ran off into the fade with. idk just thoughts!

[@rodanechristie2458]

No one ever mentions solas comments on the gods in the temple of mythal.

[@xskippysticky5092]

Could you do video about Cassandra?

[@briarrosegael2015]

Does anyone else notice the similarities between the evanuris and the Tuatha de Dedanen?

[@mysticonthehill]

Like what I am quite curious to know. I have only heard of the Tuatha de Dedanen in passing.

[@briarrosegael2015]

@@mysticonthehill My understanding is that either because of the Christendom slowly turning every god to a saint or like wise. They might have said the Tuatha de Dedanen were tribes of early people, so like the warlord tribe angle reminds me of the evanuris. Mortals later apotheosed through myths and legends, though in the case of the Tuatha de Dedanen it might be because of Christianity

[@allenmira1037]

Lmao it brings up Skyrim?? In the "Browse Game"

[@johnsullivan1838]

Hence the bow falon dins reach in dao

[@NRV0]

I'm leaning more on a theory that Dirthamen is Falon'Din other half, like he split his own soul. Also he sounds like the biggest cunt outta the Evanuris but given how Elgan'nan is described in some of the games codexs I'll reserve judgment.

[@elizabethoffenborn3272]

1:54 stop the fade is only cut when the veil was created. before that the fade was everywere. so the story make no sense.

[@elizabethoffenborn3272]

elven mythology but not the trues

[@darraghward6910]

Can you do a video on the forgot ones

[@LissiLysbeth]

Darragh Ward she’s done one with the Forgotten/Forbidden ones already

[@darraghward6910]

Melissa Anderson sorry I must have missed it thank you for your insight

[@ThebSayraduka]

Random thought about Falon'Din because of a quote Solas said in the Temple of Mythal: he had a great bloodlust so much so that he started wars just to try & satisfy that bloodlust, and that made me think what if Falon'Din was a very early - if not the very first - Reaver? Especially since fans like to think his "shepard's crook" is often interpreted as a scythe? As in a REAPER'S scythe since he's associated with DEATH? Refresher for anybody reading: a Reaver in the Dragon Age series is a Specialization of the Warrior class that use blood or bloodshed to make themselves stronger & a good example of a "Reaver" as mentioned by the Qunari is King Calenhad (Alistair's ancestor) since he drank the blood of dragons & it gave him power. Hell, Cassandra mentions the same thing that happens in her family but a bit different if you take up being a Reaver as a Specialization in DA:Inquisition. I theorized the same as a possibility for Falon'Din because of a simple quote from Solas. Again, random thought, but I found it interesting to ponder X'D

[@SakikoSenpai]

my theory is that Dirthamen and Falon'Din weren't twins but lovers and that the in-world historians got it a little wrong

[@weaponier4301]

Does it bother anyone else that the Dalish are so wrong with what they believe on Falondin? Like "he guides should through the veil" ... ummmm when he was a "god" THE VEIL DID NOT EXIST

[@johnkisir1456]

I feel sorry for him his job was going to the fade and now his stuck in the fade. He would be sick of the fade.😔

[@unbelievablytrash9458]

I'm beginning to hate what Bioware did to the elven pantheon more and more.

[@Avenray19]

That sucks. I love what they did.

[@unbelievablytrash9458]

@@Avenray19 I'm just getting the awful feeling that they'll just end up as "We're the Magister cliche but waaaaaaaaay worse"