This is my first posted work, and actually came about as a writing exercise. I was writing background information for another story I plan to begin soon, and I felt like I needed to get to know my Solas a bit more. To do that I needed to know where he came from. While this will probably not make it into the final cut of my bigger story, this was me imagining Solas as he regaled the Inquisitor with "memories he found in the Fade" about the Elvhen Pantheon.
While I have written in some dialogue-type comments it is more for my sake than anything, to keep him in touch with my Inquisitor and to keep it (hopefully) from sounding like an unending codex entry. This is meant to be a complete short story on its own, a mythos that is now firmly and fully established as part of my own head-cannon, and as such there isn't any actual conversation. Sorry if that is distracting, I'm just imagining my inquisitor sitting here listening to him with rapt attention.
Therefore, without further ado:
The Rise and Fall of the Elvhenan
In the earliest memories of the oldest of the Elvhen I have been able to find in the fade, the Veil was not. The people were still young then, and knew nothing of magic as we know it now, nor as the elves of Arlathan came to know it. The Fade was not even a breath away at any given moment, and often received no more thought than a tree giving shade overhead. The earliest elves did not even know they drew on the Fade when they did so. This made magic as easy as breathing to them, but it also meant they never used it to its fullest potential, often barely able to survive cold winter nights with too little food.
The Creators and the Forgotten Ones are those first among the People to truly and consciously shape the fade, and with it they unlocked the drive to do more in all of those they taught and who followed after them. Each of the gods came from different tribes or clans, and so were raised with different beliefs, for the empire had not yet been dreamed of at that point.
Elgar'nan and his bride Mythal came from a larger tribe, it seems, which taught its children to above all things value truth and righteousness. Thus they became Vengeance and Protection.
Dirthamin came from a small clan which valued family and close kinship, almost to the exclusion of all else. Outsiders were never welcomed and never trusted. When the clan became too large to be called one kin, many of the younger adults broke off and began a new journey somewhere else, making a new clan together. Thus he grew to become the keeper of secrets – for who outside one's own family could be trusted with ones deepest truths?
In Falon'Din however, he met a brother. Falon'Din came from a tribe governed by the wisdom of their elders, who were given great respect and reverence, and whose sleeping bodies were always greatly mourned once they became lost in uthenara. Thus, Falon'Din grew to seek the beyond, to continue learning from them, and in time to guide new elders in into the beyond.
Sylaise and Andruil seem to have come from a small family who had kept to themselves since time unremembered, though in time their parents were both taken by savage animals, or perhaps demons. The spirits remember it both ways, perhaps reflecting the feelings of each sister separately. Either way, they were close to one another both out of love and need. With only the two of them, I would imagine each had a vital role to play in keeping each other alive. Andruil provided food for her younger sister, and in time became the Huntress. Sylaise stayed home while her sister was out seeing to their needs, and made sure all was well when her last and dearest family member returned, tending to comforts and when needed her wounds. She was the Goddess of the Hearth, and Healing.
Eventually she met June, who had been cast from his clan for the dangers his inquisitive mind brought into being, as he drew without knowing on the Fade. He saw in Sylaise something worth loving, and as they grew to love one another and began learning magic side by side he became a master of crafts. The fade often shows him looking on his wife's magic with interest, and I have seen that while Sylaise bent her mind towards simple things that were needed for everyday life, June appears to have taken her simple works and envisioned new ways to build on them. Thus he bent his mind and magics.
As Andruil learned the ways of magic with her sister and her husband, she eventually came upon the woman Ghilan'nain and became fond of her, though at the time the younger had not yet begun to learn of her own potential for magic. As she travelled with Andruil, she began to learn of her ways and as her own magic took shape, she began to create many wonderful creatures from the world and the fade together. Some of these she made for Andruil, to challenge her in her hunts. Others she made for Sylaise, to bring her joy in her home since she never ranged so far away from civilization as her sister. Some she made only because they were beautiful in her mind and she could not stand to not make them. Though she was not truly deified until much later, this was her introduction to what became the pantheon. I believe you are familiar with her transformation into the first Halla, are you not? So far as I can tell, this is mostly a true retelling. The greatest difference I could tell from the memories is that it was in fact Ghilan'nain's magic responding to Andruil's clumsy healing that caused her to change shape, not any desire on Andruil's part. An uncontrolled burst of new magic, only used to creating the beautiful creatures in her mind that none the less made her the first shapeshifter. Thus, the moment elves today consider her apotheosis.
Fen'Harel's tribe was one who came closer than many others to mastering their magics alone. They in all things sought balance, and had some small grasp on the line they walked between the real world and the fade, and sought to maintain the balance of power in both realms, although of course their scope was very limited. Still, wherever they saw imbalance, they sought to correct it. When this correction was directed towards other tribes or clans, it was often seen as a threat. Thus, Fen'Harel was the restorer of balance to some, the trickster to many (for he seems to have had a rather odd sense of humor, not unlike your own), the rebel to most, and later, as the world swung far, far out of balance and he sought to correct its course, the Dread Wolf.
The forgotten ones were similarly among the first to truly understand the magic of the fade, though the tribes and clans they rose from were often of a darker nature. Though their names are lost even in the deepest memories of the fade, other small things are remembered. One came from a tribe which experienced ill luck for ages, and so became a cautious and wary people. From them came the god of terror.
From another clan came a warrior, the greatest of his kind who mastered all types of warfare. He became destruction.
Another rose from a desperate, dying people, and became hunger.
Still others became aspects of spite and disease and pain and sorrow and hatred.
Fen'Harel alone walked among both clans, for he saw the uses and the needs of each magic. He saw that while children needed to be protected, they also needed to learn caution, and sometimes fear was healthy. He saw that the bringing of new life brought joy, but he also saw the seeds that only sprouted after the destruction of a wildfire. He saw that while mercy was good and noble, some things deserved to be hated. He saw that though people avidly sought joy, they never truly appreciated it until they understood sorrow. They never knew what they had, until they didn't. So he alone walked among both clans of what had-over centuries and millennia- become the Pantheon. As the empire of Elvhenan rose he walked easily between both groups, counseling patience and tolerance and boundaries. At the start, all of them knew that they were needed. All served a purpose in the lives of the people.
As the people flourished however, they began to forget the need for less pleasant things. They no longer roamed, and so felt safe letting go of the fear of the unknown. They had so much joy that they were reluctant to come to understand sorrow. Healing of both body and mind became so simple and easy that they forgot the lessons that could only be learned by embracing pain. One by one, as the empire grew and the balance tipped, one of the clans fell out of favor. Eventually their names became curses instead of blessings, before becoming ill luck to speak at all. And because the people forgot the lessons taught by their unfavored gods they were doomed to fall, as the pendulum began to swing the other way.
The creators themselves began to fall first. So high were they placed above their people that they began to feel they deserved all they had and more. They began to forget that once they had been week, powerless children in small bands whose parents could not always bring home enough food. They began to forget the misery that was fighting for survival and as they forgot, they also forgot to pay heed to the needs of their own people. Wars were started from petty insults. Lives of even the most devout followers were traded away to settle simple debts- the first slaves. Where June had taught them to brand their cattle in order to know whose property belonged to whom, they now branded the lowest and least favored of their followers in the same way. It instantly marked them for all to see as less than true Elvhen. The first elves. They became cold and arrogant, poor shadows of who and what they had once been, and their cruelty only grew.
The forgotten ones, too, no longer remembered that they had once been much loved, that the people had needed them as much as they had the creators and could not see that they still did, now more than ever. Instead they began to think only on how they had been scorned and wronged. They took the misguided and disillusioned who had begun to doubt the sanity of the creators and turned them instead to their own ways, now also twisted as they threw away the lessons of the creators. In the end the people were divided. Slaves or freemen. Followers of the creators or the forgotten ones. Good or bad. Nearly all leaned to one side or the other.
In the end the people nearly tore apart their own empire, making way for the shemlens to enter into a land that had once held firm against them. Only in Arlathan was life still peacefull, and even then it was a carefully maintained façade kept in place by the unceasing efforts of Fen'Harel, who sought desperately to stop the chaotic whirlwind that the Empire had become.. He knew that in a land full of darkness the only slim hope was for the light of Arlathan to shine so brightly it touched even the far corners of the kingdom and drew her people back from the shadows. His hope was that by keeping peace and hope alive in this one small area, others would see it and remember the sanity that had long fled. That they would desire simpler times and simpler ways. He believed –or perhaps only wanted to believe, it is hard to tell- that if he could just help people remember the times before the centuries-long wars and hideous atrocities, they would long for it again, and find a way to put aside their madness.
And then Mythal was murdered, in the heart of her grand temple in Arlathan. Alone among the pantheon, she had tried her best to head his advice whenever possible. Although she often seemed to disagree with him and was not ashamed to enjoy her divine status in the eyes of the people, she honestly thought on the things he said, the points he made for the other gods, and against them. Until the very end she spoke to her husband and her kinsman of the potential folly of their actions, though at times her own need for what she saw as justice ruled her passions and she was as deadly as any of them. Often more so. Mythal was his last friend, and her death was the death of Fen'Harel's hope.
His last chance was to allow the pendulum to stop swinging slowly, of its own accord He had to prevent it from being drawn one way or another by either clan of gods, or from being forcefully held still by his own efforts. He trapped them all away, the Creators in their arrogant, palatial Eternal City, and the forgotten ones in the dark and hidden Abyss where they went to plot against their counterparts, who had once been their brethren. He tricked them each, and when they had all gone to their places he raised the veil, trapping them physically in the fade.
He then sent himself to sleep, knowing that he would not be able to bring balance when he himself felt so torn by the loss of those he had loved like family despite the horrors they had committed. He slept knowing they would be hurt and angered by his betrayal, and that should they ever escape again there would be hell to pay. But he slept believing that the people would ride out the waves of war and strife swiftly without higher hands to goad them. He slept and dreamed of waking to a world that once more made sense. He slept, not realizing that the people were so much a part of the Fade that they could not truly even begin to live without it. He slept not understanding that the people had followed the pantheon blindly for so long, they had forgotten how to live without divine direction.
He slept, and he woke to a world gone mad.
All constructive criticism is both welcome and appreciated.