So, best news first, I’m not dead! I was truly not expecting to come back from the encounter with the Viddasala and Solas, but, fortunately, I was wrong for the first time, I think, ever. Which is fine by me, since I like being alive much more than being right. Bad news now, I did have to say goodbye to someone. Someone who had been with me since the beginning. Someone who, aside from Cassandra {make sure that stays in, I just expressed how much I like living -Sam}, was the truest, best companion anyone could ask for. It pains me to say, and makes it much harder to write this, that the glowy hand is no more. I shall give you all a moment to compose yourselves. Gods know I needed one.
The new me, sans glowy hand.
The glowy hand doing what it did best.
Gone, but never forgotten. This is the last one, I promise.
I’ll give you details on how exactly that happened in a moment, but now that we’ve gotten through the important parts, let me sum up the rest of what happened. I went through the final eluvian, which took me to a spot that overlooked the ruins we had just fought through. It also sealed behind me, meaning my companions were stranded on the other side. I was expecting to have to fight it out with at least the Viddasala, if not both her and Solas. But, that didn’t happen. Instead, I found a veritable statue garden of stone Qunari on the other side of the mirror, and Solas telling the Viddasala she could, and probably should, just leave. She decided that trying to impale him was a better option, so she was stoned as well. After that, it was just the two elves. Sorry to disappoint you, but there was no epic final battle, no dragon fight, no nemesis confrontation or “it ends here” kind of thing. Hey, wait, don’t close the book, what happened was still very interesting! And probably directly relevant to your future. In the end, Solas and I simply had a chat about everything that had happened, why those things had happened, and what was going to happen. There’s quite a bit to chew on, but I’ll try to be brief.
“The time has come,” the Dread Wolf said, “to talk of many things.”
The first piece of information that Solas provided was actually the confirmation of a suspicion that had been growing in me for a while. During the whole mad scramble through the eluvians after the dead Qunari appeared in the Winter Palace, I’d found several clues and hints that all pointed to the same conclusion: Solas isn’t a follower of the Dread Wolf, as the Viddasala had thought, some sleeper agent enacting the will of an ancient master. He is Fen’Harel. After this initial bolt of truth, the revelations came flying fast and thick. He confirmed that he and his fellow Evanuris were merely overwhelmingly powerful mages who had ruled over my ancestors, that the other members of the non-divine group had killed Mythal thousands of years ago, and that he had created the Veil to both banish them for eternity for this heinous crime and keep them from destroying the world through infighting and hubris. Severing our world from the Fade also had the effect of destroying elven culture, as most of it was intrinsically tied to the spirit part of the realm, like the ruined library where I’d first encountered the Viddasala, and took away my people’s immortality. His current goal is to recreate his ancient world, knowing full well that doing so will shatter ours. He was reluctant to share anything more than vagaries, which is actually a point in his favor, because truly evil people always monologue their entire diabolical plan. To this end, after he had awoken around a year before we first encountered each other, back on the mountain path between Haven and the Temple of Sacred Ashes, he surreptitiously guided Corypheus to the Orb of Destruction. Cory was powerful enough to unlock the artifact after it had accrued magical power for thousands of years and Fen’Harel himself was too weak to open it, despite it belonging to him in the first place. His mistake came in assuming that Cory would die in the ensuing explosion, as he had no knowledge of the ancient magister’s abnormal ability to resurrect himself. The erstwhile god then joined and aided the Inquisition as Solas, which had been his name before receiving the Dread Wolf epithet, in a legitimate attempt to stop Corypheus from ending the world, but only so he could end it once we had succeeded. He admitted that I had shown him our world was not entirely devoid of merit, and that there were still worthy people in it, but that it wouldn’t stop him from enacting his plan, it would only make it more difficult for him to go through with it. A similar sentiment was also the reason why he had helped stop Dragon’s Breath, as his plot would take time and he preferred that the world not suffer under the yoke of the Qun in the meantime. The eluvians would make executing his vision simpler, and he had wrested control of the entire network from Briala and the Qunari, overriding the magic that locked them. It was this takeover, along with his spies and the Qunari’s that were implanted in the Inquisition encountering one another, that had led to the conflict we had just been embroiled in. The general outline of his plan remained unchanged from the time before Cory’s unexpected revival had disrupted it: enter the Fade, destroy the Veil, and rebuild his world from the ashes of ours. He would deal with the returning elven gods in some way, but our world and everything in it would be gone, consumed by the elemental chaos caused by smashing our world and the Fade back together. At this point our conversation was cut short by the Anchor acting up again, and he explained that its power would eventually kill anyone but him. As a final token of friendship and respect, he solved my glowy-hand problem in the only way possible, by severing my left arm at the elbow, thus removing the magical infection from my body and allowing me to live out the rest of our world’s days without pain. Of course, I told him that I would continue to try and convince him that we were still worth saving, and he claimed that he would be glad to be proven wrong again. With all that said, he departed through an eluvian. To where, I do not know. After gathering myself, I found my companions and we made our way back to the Exalted Council. There, I interrupted the repetitive, pointless, bickering that had supposedly persisted the entire time we had been gone, and determined the fate of the Inquisition for myself, rather than leave it for others to decide for us. We would hold fast to our original mission and remain as a peacekeeping force under the eye of Divine Victoria, acting as her honor guard and working to keep the order we had fought so hard for. Our numbers would shrink, but we would still have the power to challenge threats to Thedas when they inevitably arose.
My only regret is that I was in that ridiculous outfit.
And, with that declaration, this story comes to an end. Yes, the Inquisition is still around, with me at the helm, but I have someone in charge of me now. My companions and advisors, the heart, brain, and pointy end of the Inquisition, have almost all scattered to the winds, completing their own goals and pursuing their own dreams now that our duty has been fulfilled. We are fundamentally different than the upstart group we formed what seems like forever, but was actually only a few years, ago. So, while my story might not be entirely finished, the tale of the rise of the second Inquisition and its glowy-handed leader is. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I did living it and recounting it for you here. And what a long, strange journey it’s been. Full of highs and lows, action and intrigue, comedy and tragedy, love and betrayal. I tried not to shy away from the many potentially troubling or disruptive discoveries I made in my travels. I’m sure there will be those who say that none of this can be true, and some of the more controversial ideas that I’ve chronicled here are the ravings of a madman, broken by his labors or desperate to cling to some form of relevance. Their opinions are not my concern, however. All I can tell you is that everything contained within this book happened the way I said it did. Whether or not you believe me and how you react are entirely up to you. What I hope you will take from what I’ve written here is inspiration from the admittedly bizarre tale of a silly, sarcastic Dalish elf rising from virtually nothing to helm one of the most powerful organizations on Thedas. A force for good that accepted anyone, regardless of race, background, gender, religious beliefs, magical ability or any other potentially divisive trait. The only requirement was a desire to help others and restore order to a world on the edge of collapse. Our goal was, and still is, to be a light in the darkness, a bastion of hope in a dangerous world. Corypheus, the Breach, the Jaws of Hakkon, Dragon’s Breath, none of these dangers that we dealt with were the first threat to Thedas and they will not be the last. However, I have a feeling that, whatever role the Inquisition plays in this inevitable future, even if I’m still around to participate, it won’t be my story to tell anymore. Don’t think this is the end for me, though. While I wouldn’t mind a bit of a break, there are always more evils to fight, history-shattering revelations to uncover, and RaMOs to find. So while this may not be my last adventure, this is the end of...
The Adventures of Inquisitor Sam the Glowy-Handed
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