Dragon Age
Dragon Age is a media franchise centered on a series of fantasy role-playing video games created and developed by BioWare, which have seen releases on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The franchise takes place on the fictional continent Thedas, and follows the experiences of its various inhabitants.
The first game in the series, Dragon Age: Origins, follows the story of a recent recruit to a legendary order of warriors known as the Grey Wardens. Their mission is to save the kingdom of Ferelden from being overrun by the Darkspawn, a monstrous race of subterranean-dwelling beings who swarm the surface world every few hundred years in a movement known as a Blight. A Blight begins when the darkspawn track down and awaken an Archdemon, a powerful dragon that controls the Darkspawn hordes. Its sequel, Dragon Age II, is centered around the eldest child of the Hawke family, a Blight refugee who moves their family to their mother's home city of Kirkwall in The Free Marches. There, over the course of approximately seven years, they begin as a criminal and work their way up the city's power structure to eventually become the Champion of Kirkwall. As such, in the midst of crisis and political unrest, they go on to help make decisions that influence all of Thedas.
The third installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, centers on the Inquisition, an organization tasked with restoring peace and order to Thedas, which is suffering from multiple wars and being ravaged by a demonic invasion from beyond the mortal realm over a decade after the events of the first game. The Herald of Andraste, who later becomes the Inquisitor, is the only individual who can seal the rifts that bring demons to Thedas, due to a mysterious magical mark on their hand. They also help to bring peace to the political landscape. A fourth installment, Dragon Age: The Veilguard , was released on October 31, 2024. It centers on Rook who was recruited by Varric Tethras to help him stop Solas, also known as the elven trickster god Fen'Harel, from bringing down the Veil. While disrupting Solas' ritual, they accidentally unleash two imprisoned elven gods – Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain – who then wreak havoc across Thedas with the Blight in an attempt to conquer the world. Rook, supported by companions and various factions, sets out to stop these members of the elven pantheon from achieving their goals.
The first three games have all met with commercial success as well as positive acclaim for their narrative, universe lore, character development, voice acting, and emphasis on player choices affecting the experience while the latest game in the series will be the end and fall of Dragon Age series. The first three main series games have also been joined by a variety of expansions and downloadable content add-ons. In addition to video games, the franchise has expanded to other media and which includes spin-off games, novels, graphic novels, comic books, a web series, an animated film, an animated television series, as well as other licensed products and merchandise.
Premise
The Dragon Age franchise is set in the world of Thedas, with events from the main series games taking place primarily in its southern regions. Thedas is the only continent of the known world and consists of various clans, nations and states inhabited by multiple humanoid peoples. Several kingdoms and countries have emerged over nine centuries of a calendar era based on the traditionally reckoned year of the founding of The Chantry, the dominant religious organization in the Dragon Age series, and each century is referred to as a separate "Age". Three out of several human nations play a prominent role in the series: the kingdom of Ferelden to the southeast of Thedas, which is politically organized in a similar manner to the English peerage system; the Orlesian Empire to the west of Ferelden, where its nobility is notorious for undermining each other with intrigue and subterfuge in their jostling for favor and patronage with its absolutist ruler; and the Tevinter Imperium in the northern region of Thedas, which once subjugated southern Thedas during ancient times, and is governed by a powerful magocracy of magic-wielding magisters led by an Imperial Archon. Other noteworthy civilizations explored in the main series games include the Free Marches, a human-dominated confederation of politically independent territorial entities to the north of Ferelden, and the Kingdom of Orzammar, one of the few remaining dwarven city states scattered throughout the Deep Roads, an underground highway system beneath the surface of Thedas created by the dwarves millennia ago.Race, class, and heritage combine to determine social class and political dynamics in Thedas. A recurring theme in the series consists of power struggles and internal conflicts play out between and within various factions. Tevinter society practices slavery, which is outlawed and stigmatized in other human societies. Human nobility are treated with deference and respect across Thedas, whereas elves are often viewed as second-class citizens who live within overpopulated ghettos in human cities called alienages, or kept as slaves in the Tevinter Imperium. A significant portion of the elven population of Thedas call themselves the Dalish after the Dales region in eastern Orlais where an elven polity once stood. They proudly live a nomadic lifestyle away from the urban settlements of their city elf counterparts in an attempt to preserve and reclaim their cultural heritage, which was mostly wiped out millennia ago when the ancient elven empire of Elvhenan, which spanned most of Thedas, mysteriously collapsed. Dwarven society is organized around a rigid caste system and a form of ancestor worship. While the dwarves cannot wield magic themselves, their economic activity primarily revolves around the mining of lyrium, a mineral substance which powers the practice of magic, which they trade with the surface world. Some dwarves live on the surface, voluntarily or otherwise: they are considered "casteless" and are usually unwelcome within dwarven societies in the Deep Roads.
A fourth sapient humanoid species unique to the setting are the Qunari, meaning "People of the Qun" in their language. Qunari is an umbrella term used to describe both the race of large horned humanoids who hail from settlements in the far north of mainland Thedas, in particular the island states of Par Vollen and Seheron, as well as converts from other races to their civil religion known as "The Qun", which guides the Qunari's egalitarian yet strictly regimented society. The Qunari government is a totalitarian regime ruled by a triumvirate of leaders who represent the body, the soul, and the mind of their people. Individuals who are born outside of Qunari society are known as Vashoth, while those who abandon the Qun's fundamentalist teachings become known as Tal-Vashoth and are considered traitors or enemies to Qunari society. Renowned as formidable warriors, the Qunari are taller, larger, and more physically robust than other humanoid races in Thedas. They usually have skin of varying metallic colors, white or light-coloured hair, pointed ears, and eyes with colors like violet, red, silver, or yellow. Unlike other races, Qunari do not adorn themselves with tattoos or wear helmets, instead making use of war paint called Vitaar which provides a ceremonial purpose as well as practical benefits. The Qunari are locked in a perpetual conflict with the Tevinter Imperium and often seek to spread their influence throughout Thedas via covert agents or military offensives.
Magic-wielding characters known as mages, are born with an uncommon gift for magic that is identified early in their lives, but they are not always in control of their own power. Mages have access to the Fade, a mysterious parallel dimension that is linked to the physical world and home to various spirit beings. It is a metaphysical realm that is normally accessible only to sapient beings when they dream: individuals who have the potential for magic have direct access to the Fade unlike most people, and conversely the Fade's inhabitants have direct access to these aforementioned individuals. A lapse in judgment or vigilance may result in the mage being unwittingly possessed by demonic spirits and utilized as vessels to come out of the Fade. Lyrium is critical to magic use as it enables the channeling of magical energy from the Fade; it is blue in color, though another more dangerous variety known as red lyrium is introduced in Dragon Age II. Some mages practice a form of forbidden magic known as "blood magic", which is powered by the blood of living beings instead, and sometimes use their power to deliberately summon demons to do their bidding.
Mages in southern Thedas are cloistered into training facilities called Circles of Magi by The Chantry, which teaches that "magic must serve man, not rule over him". The Chantry is a monotheistic religion who worship a personal god known as the Maker and venerates the prophet Andraste, a former slave who led an uprising against the Tevinter Imperium in a movement called an "Exalted March". The Chantry is led by the Divine, who is exclusively female and considered one of the world's most powerful people because of her extensive cultural, diplomatic, political, and spiritual influence over the peoples of Thedas. Mages who live outside the Chantry's control, which includes the Dalish clan chieftains known as Keepers, are considered to be extremely dangerous by many societies in Thedas. The Chantry has a military wing, the Templar Order, who are specially trained to seek out and subdue wayward "apostate" mages by any means necessary. This is in contrast to a tolerant view of mages in Tevinter society due to influence from the Imperial Chantry denomination, which historically broke away from the mainline Andrastian Chantry and utilize Imperial Templars as law enforcement under the authority of the magisters instead. While Tevinter mages practice their talent for magic without sanction in their homeland, on the other extreme the Qunari physically shackle their mages due to their deep distrust of the practice of magic.
The Darkspawn and their recurring Blights are considered to be the single biggest threat to the civilizations of Thedas. The dwarves in particular have a specialized group of warriors known as the Legion of the Dead to fight the Darkspawn, though their civilization is a shadow of what it once was due to an unceasing war of attrition against the constant threat. The rest of Thedas rely on the Grey Wardens to disperse the Darkspawn hordes whenever they arrive on the surface during a Blight: the Wardens’ goal is to slay the Archdemons, the corrupted Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium, heralding each Blight. The first game in the series, Dragon Age: Origins, begins on the eve of the fifth Blight. Other major threats faced by the peoples of Thedas include cults and paramilitary groups corrupted by dark magic, such as the Venatori and the Red Templars; demons from the Fade, unleashed as part of a massive inter dimensional invasion during the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition; and dragons, long thought to have been extinct for many centuries, until their reemergence by the end of the Blessed Age caused the then-ruling Divine to name the next Age as the Dragon Age, the century in which the vast majority of the Dragon Age series takes place.