Expectations of Dragon Age Inquisitions

The Black City-it is at the core of Dragon Age Origins.  It is the reason for the Blight's occurrence and it is the reason why mages are kept guarded both from the outside world and from themselves.  Is the Blight truly a punishment from the Maker, or something out of the Maker's control?  The Maker has been absent from Thedas after the Golden City fell to corruption, but I wonder if it was by choice, out of anger at having his paradise ruined, or another reason altogether.  I wonder if there isn't a battle in the heavens themselves since the fall of the Golden City and that the Blight is somehow tied to that.  Maybe the Blight happens in Thedas only if the Maker fails to hold back the horde attacking the heavens.  His retreating a little, or conceding a battle to win the greater war allows the horde to find a way to enter Thedas and start its cycle of corruption there.  If the Golden City was the Maker's seat of power and it became corrupted, maybe he also lost some of his power and now that there is corruption there, it is easier for demons and abominations to gain access to and assault continually.  If the Maker is constantly fighting these creatures, then it would explain why he seems absent to his people, for he is not able to do anything more than to protect himself and his home from being completely lost.  If he lost the Golden City, and it was his seat of power, then the Tevinter magisters usurped him by effectively tainting it.  No longer able to stay in such corruption, the Maker is now forced to flee his home and is trying to survive the constant onslaught of the demons and abominations that hunt him down.  Again, this would explain his absence since he would be more concerned over self preservation rather than have the time to pay attention to those who follow his teachings.  I know the people of Thedas believe that the Blight is something that the Maker allows to happen to punish people with.  Bearing this in mind, if the Maker is truly vengeful and angry at having had his paradise ruined, then maybe that wrath has corrupted him to the point where he no longer watches over the safety of his followers, but instead uses it to decimate them.  Or, maybe the Maker wasn't vengeful, maybe by corrupting the Golden City, the Magisters corrupted the Maker himself and now he is no longer the creator but the destroyer and uses the Blight as a way to wipe out everything.  I am truly excited to get a better understanding behind the theology of Dragon Age.

The other thing I am truly looking forward to in Dragon Age is the dichotomy between the mages and the Templars.  I have been completely fascinated by these two groups of people ever since Lena Amell learned a little more of the Templars from Alistair.  Alistair mentions that unless he is facing a mage, that he is just a man in armor with a sword.  I found that fact interesting because Templars have a way to nullify a mage's abilities and yet, rather than share the wisdom to all people to learn how to combat a mage if needed, the Chantry closely guards the Templar's training.  It makes me more curious when I am denied knowing something.  Why is the Chantry so secretive of the Templars' training?  With religion, the most jealously guarded things, knowledge for one, would be deemed too shocking or upsetting if the general population were to find out.  The Chantry of course has the knowledge and sees to use it as it sees fit, but my thoughts were that there is something about the Templars themselves that is worth keeping secret.  What if the truth behind why the Templars have the ability to affect mages so effectively was truly shocking.  So shocking that even the Templars themselves are kept away from the whole truth of it.  What if the reason why the Templars are so effective against mages and magic is because they in fact have magical abilities themselves?  Not to cast spells, but to nullify magic?  What if there is a school of magic out there that was kept secret?  I mean, the Tevinter Magisters if they were powerful and knowing could have had that knowledge kept to themselves knowing that they would have adversaries and so wouldn't allow anyone to study or discover those abilities.  What if, when the Chantry rose to power, as their Exalted March turned up this evidence from the Dalish?  What if that is one of the reasons they keep the Dalish from coming together and why they utterly destroyed their homeland?  So that the Chantry to keep this knowledge to themselves and use the Templars, a type of mage, effectively against their own kind.  They had to build in a way to control Templars-and so, they used lyrium as a way to maintain authority and order over their knights.  The reason Templars are kept addicted to lyrium and are controlled by the Chantry is because a select few within the hierarchy of the Chantry knows this-this I base off the Catholic church.  They keep the Templars from learning the truth about where their abilities come from claiming it is their specialized hush hush training that they must not reveal to outsiders, but in truth it is the Chantry nurturing their magic affecting abilities without suspicion.  I found it interesting that some Templars abuse their powers over the mages while others feel some sympathy towards them.  Like any person of power, some use their powers to help others, while other abuse it and their authority to do whatever they want.  I wonder what would happen if the Templars realized that rather than being two halves of the same coin, that they instead discover that they were a type of mage that is taught fighting skills (think arcane warrior) and were by the Chantry used to keep their brothers in check.  That the Chantry, the very institution that they served kept them enslaved to lyrium so that they could keep control over their good little soldiers in case any of them stepped out of line.  Why do you think the Lyrium trade is also regulated by the Chantry-they must have control over everything to do with their Templars to keep outsiders or anyone else from discovering the truth.  I can just imagine if the Templars were to find out the truth-that the Chantry had been lying to them, been leashing them more completely than the mages they guarded because the Chantry feared these two groups coming together.  The mages would then be truly unstoppable if there were to be an uprising without their carefully controlled checks and balances in place.  I imagine that it would be a day of reckoning for the Chantry who has kept the two factions opposing one another and allowed hate and fear to fester between them.  The Chantry went to such great lengths since it was the only way to control all the mages effectively.  Brother against brother, who better to guard mages than their own kind?  And who better to keep this secret than the Chantry itself?

Whatever Dragon Age Inquisitions may end up being about, whatever secrets it will reveal, I just hope that some of these questions will be answered.  I hope that the truth revealed in Dragon Age Inquisition is completely astonishing and shakes each one of us to our core making us stare in amazement to what we have all just been a part of.