Corypheus

AKA:
Cory
Red-Head
The Elder One
Sethius Amladaris

The cause of almost all of my troubles, Corypheus was an ancient darkspawn magister that desired godhood and the main antagonist of the Inquisition. And trust me, I thought long and hard about putting this entry in the “Things” category, but ultimately kept it here, because Cory did start off as just a person. Beginning life in the ancient Tevinter Imperium as a magister named Sethius Amladaris, he was the leader of the seven high priests of the Old Gods that physically forced their way into the Maker’s Golden City in the Fade. At this point, the story differs depending on who you ask. The prevailing knowledge, spread by the Chantry, is that the seven despoiled the city when they arrived, blackening it, and the Maker cast them out. Cory himself, however, claimed that the city was already black and empty when they arrived, with no Maker to be found. Whoever you believe, the seven magisters arrived back on Thedas as the first darkspawn, and the First Blight followed after them. Cory and his fellow magisters actually had nothing to do with the blight itself, and while nobody is exactly sure what happened to the rest of them, Corypheus woke up after the First Blight was over and was captured by the Grey Wardens. They trapped him in a tower in the Vimmark Mountains in the southern Free Marches, but Cory’s influence over any being infected by the taint, including the Wardens, made it impossible to really do anything useful with the unique darkspawn, or even kill him. So, they sealed his prison and left him there to rot for hundreds of years. Then, the Champion of Kirkwall came knocking. Hawke was lured to the tower because of a family legacy involving her deceased father, found a newly awoken and confused Corypheus, and killed him. And this is where most stories would end. But, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that little about Cory’s story is normal.

Needless to say, Corypheus had not actually perished by Hawke’s hand, and awoke to a new purpose: attain the godhood he felt he deserved and subjugate all of Thedas. How and why are contained within the book itself, I won’t go through it all here. I first heard about Corypheus from Alexius during the whole time-travel mess in Redcliffe, but those were just vague claims about an “Elder One” that wanted my head. We actually met after I sealed the Breach and Cory assaulted Haven with the Red Templars. The human that he had supposedly been was long gone, replaced by a massive, twisted blend of person, darkspawn, red lyrium and traditional Tevinter spikiness. He was as arrogant as you might expect for someone who saw being a god as a plausible career, and saw everyone and everything else as his lesser. Evil, cunning, ruthless, and exceedingly powerful, Corypheus was everything you would expect from a threat to the entire world. Oddly, though, one thing I never really took him for was a liar. This is important because he made numerous claims that contradicted commonly accepted history and the holy words of the Chantry, and, strange as it sounds, I have no real reason to doubt him. Why would he lie about the state of the Golden City when he arrived there? How would that benefit him, especially when he agreed with the Chantry on both the buildup and outcome? To save face? I really don’t think he cared about anyone else’s opinion of him. With Cory disintegrated, there’s no real way to learn more on this subject, so I suppose it’s best to just leave it for now. It’s not like there was anyone else who went through the same thi- wait, there were six more magisters who went into the city with Cory, weren’t there? Um, considering the scale of the threat posed by just one of them, this might be something I should look into. What I can definitely say is that Corypheus was an evil bastard, but no need to worry about him because he’s definitely dead now.