Early Minrathous

I see a lot of posts on here talking about the Solas/Elgar'nan segment in Blood of Arlathan and how it's one of the best scenes in the game, and they'd be right, but I don't see enough people talking about how comically the whole thing is undercut by quite possibly the most poorly-conceived, terribly-implemented looney-tunes-ass sequence in gaming history that surrounds it.

Like you show up with your friends to this Venatori party, and you're like great, we're sneaking in! Time for disguises. How convenient that these Venatori guys all wear hoods, right? Should be a piece of cake if we're all, you know, wearing hoods that would helpfully hide our identities. But no. We all go waltzing in with our whole-ass faces exposed, you know, the group of guys that have been murdering Venatori left and right and who Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain have definitely all seen in person before. Oh, and don't worry about walking into this notoriously racist elf-sacrificing cult if you happen to be an elf! You're only here in disguise so that you can rescue a GROUP OF ELVES THEY'RE GOING TO SACRIFICE but it's ok because you're dressed as a mercenary and not a dalish so it's all good don't worry about it :) :)

Then you get into this fucking party and oh my fucking god it's like they decided to take all of the most comically over-the-top stereotypes of villainy and put them on display. Because why not! The Venatori are all sickos anyway so of course they'd be out here doing sicko things! There's some guys pulling a halla apart with blood magic! There's other guys using slaves as benches! They're all laughing and joking about how EVIL they are, hahaha, how cool is that? The fucking guy from D'Meta's Crossing is here if you don't let him die, because he's a fucked up evil sicko too! You're supposed to be shocked at this hideous display; recoil in horror, even!

And who do you bring with you to help get through this crowd of absolute lunatics? NEVE FUCKING GALLUS. You know, the person so well-known in Minrathous that a Dalish elf living in Arlathan KNEW HER BY REPUTATION. Yup, Neve Gallus with her INTENSELY RECOGNIZABLE PROSTHETIC just waltzes up to some guy and he just lets her in. Because being EVIL also makes you incapable of coherent thought, apparently.

And then. AND THEN. You walk across the bridge where Elgar'nan makes his thought-sounds at you, and YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING PARTY is already there, just hanging out nbd. Also not wearing hoods or any kind of disguises that couldn't instantly be seen through by a five-year-old with amnesia but ok, cool. Why did we bother walking through all those sickos then when we could've just taken the secret back entrance like the rest of them, idk.

But just when you think you've reached peak stupidity, it keeps going. You're now standing there, at the front of a crowd of about twelve people, approximately five feet away from Elgar'nan himself, inexplicably blending in, when the big guy puts the mind control whammy on everyone. Oh no, you think. We've been found out! Here's the part in the plan where things begin to go wrong! NO. Your mage friends SECRETLY PERFORM MAGICAL GESTURES to block the mind control, and then you LITERALLY FUCKING SIDLE OFF STAGE LEFT without ANYONE NOTICING. I should reiterate that at this point, you are still about FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ELGAR'NAN and his fucking ARCHDEMON.

And to conclude this absolute comedy of idiocy, as soon as you enter back into combat mode, you immediately ditch all of your disguises. And of course then, ONLY THEN, Elgar'nan notices you've been there. Cut to the end of the actual good sequence, this dramatic conversation performed by excellent voice actors and written miles better than most other things in this game, and you reach your final prize: about six guys trapped in a little cube. Cool, you tell yourself. This was definitely worth it. You take your fade-to-black teleporter back to the Lighthouse and they're never heard from again.

This was the quest that broke me. This was the moment that all hope for Veilguard finally snapped. I consider myself to be a very resilient person in the face of camp and goofy writing, but this was too much disbelief for my brain to suspend. The mental gymnastics necessary to make this whole sequence make any kind of sense were simply beyond me. Even Solas's dulcet tones could not salvage it for me after that.

The Formless One is the best boss fight ever put in dragon age, not because of the fight itself (it's actually annoying as hell) but for the fact that the damn thing sends you hate mail after you beat it. That's fucking hilarious.

Weisshaupt mission was insane I still think about it ghghghhg

don't care + running + jumping + skipping + hopping + having fun + playing

Ghilan’nain’s Elvish

People seemed to enjoy the psychic bitchfight post so I figured I’d do one for Ghilan’nain’s lines in the ‘Siege of Weisshaupt’, too. Once again, I'm no expert, all glory goes to to [ FenXshiral ], and remember this is a vibe-based language so results vary with context, inflection, speaker and so on.

In the lead-up to the boss battle, First Warden Jowin will show up to take Davrin’s place as final sacrifice, only to be snatched up by Ghilan’nain before he can deliver the blow. After remarking on the quality of his blood, Ghil rips out his heart, turns it into an archdemon strength buff, then drops the used-up Warden like hot garbage. A moment later Wyrm!Razikale emerges from the moat to start the fight.

Ghilan’nain has two lines in this cutscene:

“Lasa hedallin ghellara”

(Spoken either to or about the First Warden as she manipulates his blood/heart).

Lasa = grant/allow/give

hedallin = blood of a noble kill/sacrifice; blood of [your] defeat

1. hel/hell (adj. noble, moral, just) + dala (v. kill, destroy) + lin (n. blood, person m.)

or 2. [hela (v. contest, oppose, fight) + dala (v. kill, destroy)] + lin (n. blood, person m.)

The use of ‘noble kill’/‘blood of your defeat’/‘sacrificial blood’ feels very deliberate here. Just before Ghilan’nain grabs him, Jowin recites the Grey Warden motto, “In war, victory! In peace, vigilance! In death, sacrifice!” . She’s throwing his words back at him, saying his ‘sacrifice’ would’ve been a waste... she'll put it to better use. She even taunts Rook with this later in the fight: “Witness! A Warden’s blood to birth your own destruction.”

ghellara = [my] beast more strong

ghe (n. monster, beast, creature) + elvara (v. to make difficult, hardy, sturdy, complex; from adj. elvar) + el (more, much, many. Used as a superlative) + ara (pron. sb. poss. my)

= “The blood from your sacrifice will strengthen my beast.”

"fenathra mellas”

(Spoken as Razikale’s transformation completes)

The natural assumption is fen = wolf, which would result in: fen (wolf) + ath (embodiment of) + ra (prn. it) or ara (my, possessive), making it, ‘the wolf’ in a kinda roundabout way. More like, “that wolf guy” or even, "my wolf guy" instead of a name or title. But I don’t think Ghilan’nain is invoking Solas or "the wolf” here. He isn’t an opponent at this point in the game, and neither her nor Elgar’nan see him as a real threat anyway. Additionally, the way she says the word ‘fenathra’ is quite soft — almost wistful — especially by comparison to the deep, guttural, delivery of, “mellas”. I think the root word she’s using here is actually ‘fenor’.

She calls Razikale her greatest creation. She mourns her death; pitifully telling Elgar’nan that Rook took her away. Razikale is more than just important to her — she is the very embodiment of the word 'precious'.

fenathra = My Precious One

fenor (precious) + athe (used to change the meaning of an existing word into, ‘physical manifestation of’, or ‘embodiment of’, eg. “the dead” from death) + ara (my)

Mellas = Allow now / Go!

melana (adv. now, in relation to ‘time’ or ‘when’) + lasa (v. grant, allow, give, let - imperative verb form)

= “Go, My Precious One!”

I've been working on her remaining lines for several days now and am currently tearing my hair out about it, but I will add them to this post as a reblog once I finish!

As a bonus I'll throw in Solas' dialogue to Davrin when he briefly joins your party at the end of the game.

Dialogue source: Solas Interaction with All Companions [ x ]

"Mala shivanas ar athim"

mala (your) shivana (to do one’s duty, conjugated) ar (I) athim (humble, humility)

The Elvish scans in Solas’ Hallelujah cadence, so I preserved it for the translation.

= “I am humbled by your duty," or, "Your sense of duty humbles me"

it's all so tiresome

Bright and brilliant, he wanders the ways, walking unwaking, searching for wisdom…

'in all thedas i never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the fade'

gurl he was saying he's glad he's not a spirit so he can be with you in this way. the man who never wanted to be a person, who was traumatised and twisted from the process of becoming and experience of living as one, is glad, for the first time, that he has a body, because it's how he can have you

forever thinking about the role of ellipses when talk about each other. two normally eloquent people who suddenly cant finish a single sentence when the other is on their mind. not only do they share a cadence and rhythm to their speech but they share in the dissolution of it. the overwhelming-ness of their feelings for each other is conveyed through literal punctuation; always trailing off, an inability to focus

its giving "if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more"