If Lyrium is a bridge to the fade and reality, is red lyrium a bridge to the void and reality? And is that is what gives it a living quality?

I think I go with the Lyrium = Blood, because I like the inherent irony, that all the chantry's ranting about spirits/demons, and blood magic, and the whole circle is built upon it, from the phylactery to harrowings, to the Seekers, to the templar system

This is a fantastic video! I feel like the game really should come clean and straighten out what lyrium is and what it does. Especially since we are going to Tevinter, where magic rules. So a clearer understanding of what we are working with and what it's real limitations are will be necessary, and hopefully part of the plot.

So, I think there might be one thing that's different from your theory. When talking to Varric, Cole asks: "Do you write to reach across, to hear the song that was sundered?" and you said it was the titans that were sundered. I think he might be talking about the fade. Earlier, Cole says "No dreams with the cord cut. You sell it", when talking about the dwarfs. What if the dwarfs actually disconnected their souls from the fade to get a closer connection to the lyrium? They sold out their connection to the fade to have more of a connection to the earth. We know that the elves were extremely powerful when the veil didn't exist. Maybe the dwarfs sold their souls to the lyrium because their connection to it gave them a power to rival the elves? More than that, the lyrium seems to mess with the fade and reality, but what was it like when there was no veil? Back then, it could have been much stronger. If this is the case, then it seems the dwarfs literally sold their souls to a blue cocaine to make them more powerful.

Love it, @TheKingdom, and thank you for another well-done video. I love your dry humor. Thanks for the smiles. That raw lyrium that sits around always puzzled me because you could click it, and I wondered if you click it enough and hang out around it enough in the game would your Playing Character go flakey, only they didn't seem to, but that's sort of what I kept in the back of my mind [since the codex seems to say it would]. Now we're looking to the future and the possibility that Solas will bring the Fade down to the land connection again by destroying the Veil. What will that mean besides the spirits being all over the place [and less 'demony', apparently, since Solas indicates that being pulled across against their will causes more demons]. The sky and air will be that pukey green color instead of the blue we love, so, ...there's that. When the magic is stronger everywhere though, and it isn't Corypheus' future full of just ripped rifts and red lyrium nasty piles of hunger, what will we see? The Titans should all wake up and earthquakes will abound until they find their dwarves. Will the Children of the Stone become hive-minded again, and what will that mean? How will our world be destroyed in flames and chaos simply by the Fade being connected with the Waking World as it once was? Will all the buildings built with magic [like in Tevinter] fall down, or be reinforced? Will the darkspawn be impacted at all? They have been in the Fade in past games, after all, and their magic isn't Fade magic. What's with that green pool of magic like a lake down in the Deep Roads [The Calling, etc.] anyway? Dragon Age keeps it interesting, don't they?

Lyrium in a sense is blood magic in the manner that you’re using a fragment of a titan’s essence and it’s connection to the fade to amplify your own mana.

Making sense of the plot that different people were making and changing throughout three games - a very hard and ungrateful work. Thank for you thoughts and I hope all you hard work will be rewarded in DA4... if it comes out.

Oh Lyrium why can’t you be simple

It sounds like the titans enslaved the dwarves on Thedas (with hive mind control, all Borg & whatnot), while the Elven "gods" enslaved elvenkind over in the Fade. Nice! Perhaps that makes the Titans the Forgotten Ones.

Super interesting! Thanks for gathering all of this and trying to find some sense in this mess ^^. I wouldn't pay too much attention to gameplay ( I know I don't when I'm searching for infos). In inquisition, you are asked to destroy red lyrium by just hitting it and breaking it into tiny pieces, and you can jump on it everywhere (especially in Emprise du Lion), even though it's supposed to be even more dangerous than regular lyrium. No one cares if a shard get into their skin or if they breath in some red lyrium dust during the process, and they just leave it there...

Great video dude

Oh, good, not only am I commenting 3 years after the fact, but I'm making comment 69. Nice. With regard to gameplay and lore around lyrium I think that lore always has to trump gameplay. Depending on the team, the people writing the lore may never see the level design, and even with department head meetings and directors overseeing everything, and even having "lore masters" possibly in the design room, it's way more likely that things are going to get overlooked. Hell, continuity staff on movies can't even catch a backpack disappearing between one cut and the next. However, Dragon Age does like to basically allow for retconning that fits within their world. Basically everything is written by someone in the world. It's not fact from the outside source. It's not Bioware telling us the truth. It's always from a person in the game, or in the history of the game. Merrill says X, The Chant of Light says Y, Brother Genitivi says Z. All we can do is cross reference and weigh what we know and guess. I personally love this for a lot of reasons, but it does make it rather impossible to really pin down truth. Saying that, who is to say that the entries about mages and lyrium aren't misleading on purpose, or wrong? Are those pieces of information from a primary source who had tested raw lyrium exposure on mages? Like, we've seen what they do in this world, so they would have tested it. Or, is it written by someone 600 years later, based on teachings that mages should never have access to lyrium, not because it will kill them, but because it makes them more powerful. If you were a mage child of 8 and you read that going near raw lyrium would kill you would you ever dare go near it? And we also have the fact that it says raw lyrium and unprocessed lyrium, not lyrium veins. Is this semantics? Oh, very likely. But when have we ever stopped at using specific words to make our theories work? XD Lyrium is alive, right? Clearly it's solid because it's processed and ore and ground down to dusts of various sizes. But, veins, when it comes to say blood are a casing. If Lyrium is alive, regardless of whether it's like stone or not, could it not also have a casing? Could those broken bits not have healed closed? Could what holds the lyrium "in" those beautiful structures also prevent actual exposure or contact with mages? Now, it's very likely just "pretty cave" trumps "two entries in codices". I mean, they can't even decide to keep data coherent in pokemon and those dex entries are not only pokemon specific and recorded in about 100 different places. So, as much as it likely is just an oversight, I think you can definitely play with what they tell you in the codices to make the gameplay still logical within the "rules".

Maybe the issue with lyrium and being dangerous to mages has to do with the form of matter it is in. Perhaps in crystalized form there, it is safe. But lyrium inhaled as a dust, which is what you might experience in a mine, can be problematic?

The sundering that Cole mentions.. would that be the creation of the veil? It would explain the seperation from the titans and the "hole." Maybe the dwarves were at one point connected to the fade, but differently than elves, so that's why now they're completely barred from it? Also the titans have massive amounts of lyrium, so they would have the power to shape the world, not through earthquakes, but through using the fade to shape reality

Red lyrium is blighted lyrium. Meaning it’s alive.

Could the Fade be inside the titans? Maybe that is why the dwarves cannot access the fade. Due to the lack of connection to the fade. And what the titans stand on is the void and the void is where the blight comes from which is why the red lyrium is starting to appear as the red lyrium is showing up in what we as the player perceive as the world. I mean there was a whole sky in the titan after all?

What if lyrium is only a tool? As in, it merely is. Its use is entirely dictated by will. A hammer, for example, is most often thought of as a tool to build. It can pound nails into lumber, to make them hold a particular geometry. But a hammer can also break things, or kill people. Would we say that the hammer’s nature is creation, or destruction? Or would we say the hammer just is, and its use is entirely dictated by the person holding it? Lyrium appears no different. To a mage it can serve one purpose, while a Templar, another. In this way, red lyrium is a corruption because it takes away the will of the person using it. It still can create. We see Meredith create, but also Bartrand. Even people unknowingly create with red lyrium, as was the case in Bartrand’s mansion. Obviously, it destroys as well. Yet Hawke and Varric found the red lyrium idol and were not immediately under its influence.

My theory based on solas and other info we gathered in the games is that lyrium is in fact titan blood or source of power that is why gave power even to human and dwarfs but is a power from this world because Titans created Thedas ,the mages use power drawn from the Fade and I think that is because they have ancient elven blood in their lineage ,the Fade is the source of power of Elvehen and this two powers are opposite to each other. That s why is lethal for mages ,spirits born in the fade like Justice or Cole see the difference and are drawn to mages because they seem more elvish ,if i m right Solas used the Veil using both type of magic from our side created of fade magic from their side by lyrium or Titan magic probably trying to stop the war by sealing the big powers and leaving the world to free elves and other races going in slumber but in time the races of Thedas learn how to use lyrium to surpass the Veil safeguard

What i find weird is when you compare lyrium to Vhenadal the elf tree of the people. It might sound strange but after they put the Titans to sleep. The elfs seem to have encouraged the lyrium to grow out of the heart and theough the deep roads. There is a giant sigil over the titans heart. I assume that is how they make it grow i do t know how they get it to connect to the fade because the titans heart has no traces of the fade about it. There is lots of codex entries and even lots of elf artworks in game that supports this.

Im a bit confused. I thought before the veil, the fade and the real world were one until solas created the veil, separating the two. And when he did, all the magic of the world and spirits? Went into the fade... So why did the elves need titan blood to enhance their magic if magic was everywhere and everything(?)Before the veil? And while we're at it, why dont the dwarves wage war on the elves for them outright murdering their gods(?) Ancestors (?) Hive collective(?).

The way I see it, regular magic connects to the fade but with restraint, a fireball can be thrown but it follows the rules of reality. Blood magic is less about the blood and more of the sense that you’re amplifying your connection to the fade through your essence, though connecting your essence to the fade leaves it vulnerable to change since it is a place of chaotic reality.

Can dwarves use blood magic then? If it doesn't touch the fade, then why not?

I like the idea of the Elves representing the Fade/Aether/beyond reality and the Dwarves repesenting the Titans/hard stone/reality. Like a yin and yang. So I guess the war happened and the elves drove the dwarves underground and killled a titan or two. Then Solas put up the veil. Then humans arrived. But like where were the humsans before this? did the early humans know about the fade too? or is it just a Thedas thing? also didnt the elves know about the veil? why would they blame humans if they did? Maybe it is just a Thedas thing and that explains why no ones been able to travel across the ocean. or maybe its a one way system, which is why the humans and qunari could come to thedas but not leave.

I think that, lyrium is like water from the Titan, which just flows. So, i dont exactly know where lyrium does come from, but i think its so that when a dwarf dies he returns to the stone, and then becomes Lyrium because they are and are not connected? I dont know... Thanks for the video, great theorys.

Here’s my suggestion. Lyrium is a raw magical medium. You have to be born with magic in order to become a Mage. If one is not born a Mage then they cannot perform or use magic unaided. Lyrium brings out the natural connection between an individual’s relationship with the Fade or the Stone. Since Templars are not Mages the. Lyrium enhances their natural connection to the Stone. For Mages Lyrium enhances their natural ability to draw upon the power of the Fade to alter reality. Thus, Lyrium is similar to blood and Templars plus Mages are similar to arteries and veins with Lyrium as the medium. Mages are like arteries that bring oxygen/magic from the Fade to the physical world. Templars are like veins carrying the magic of the Fade away from physical reality thus reinforcing it. Lyrium acts as the medium just like blood acts the medium between arteries and veins

I think that maybe the mages use lyrium to weaken reality and therefore allowing “more” mana. Basically making each spell seem like it’s less taxing. Also very unrelated idea (and very tin-foily) but I thought that what if elves and spirits were one and the same. So when elves were in the fade the became spirits and vice versa for spirits in the physical realm.

2k subs FTW

The relationship of the dwarves and titans reminds me of falon'din and dirthamen. Spirit separated from the material world. Or from the Dwarves pov the material world separated from the spiritual.

I don't believe the effects of raw lyrium were retconned just the severity of it was lessened at least for mages anyways as there is a codex entry in the Red Templar quarries, should you side with the Templars in Inquistion, mentioning that raw lyrium hitting mages hard and red lyrium being infinitely worse for them. The problem though as you said is having the lore translate over into gameplay, but how exactly could they go about doing that? Mages simply take damage over time while they're near it? Have them receive injuries or negative status effects? At the very least though I wish that they had you hear voices from the red lyrium you're basically walking right next to or forging runes out of, but that's just me.

Pure speculation here since I don't know if there's anything to support this assumption: I'd image the process for Refining Lyrium may be different depending on how it will be used. Whether by Templars or by Mages. For consumption or a preprepared supply for rituals. There's also the process of creating Golems, which if I'm not mistaken involves pouring molten lyrium onto a subject encased in pre-made stone armor (I'm sure it's waaaaay more complicated that just that though). My theory is that Golems are essentially imitations of what Titans used to be. Except smaller, artificial, more crude and containing only one dwarf soul. Whereas Titans are huuuuge stone constructs that contained the consciousness of all Dwarves. The Sha-brytol may be a more advanced version of golems (technically speaking), but still nowhere near how a Titan worked. Although I'm not sure if Dwarves used to have individual bodies before the sundering. i'd assume they did, but were connected to their corresponsing Titan through a hivemind. It's also possible that all Dwarves used to be like the Sha-brytol.

I'm afraid it will be as usual: the whole lyrium concept is just being stuck everywhere the scripters want it to fill the plot holes. Piano in the bushes. And only after they do this, they create some peace of lore post factum. Or even don't, just leave it as it is =)

Hi Cole, really love the video. There is a codex entry related to lyrium and possibly the titans in the Western Approach that I suspect you missed or at least don't refer to (or if you did, I missed it). You can find it here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a55ddMel0MrciWw.html at 2:34. I hope you find it interesting. I remember you mentioning this particular user in one of your earlier videos...

All magic is blood magic, but that doesn't mean different kinds of blood bring the same result, here we are talking mountain like beings from the ages before the fade was sealed by Solas with the veil, of course lyrium is not going hold the same properties as the rest of the races. Think about why ancient magisters used elven blood instead of human blood.