Fade In Dragon Age, Explained

The Fade is a dangerous and confusing realm in the Dragon Age series. The Fade takes center stage Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This is the first game where your actual camps are inside the Fade itself. But what exactly is Fade?

The Fade is this terrifying, looming realm that is mentioned a thousand times in the Dragon Age series. It's loosely depicted as a “realm of dreams” – suggesting that where we go when we dream is real and tangible with the right magic. This article will go into detail about what Fade actually is.

What is Fade?

The Fade is a mystical place hotspot for magic. It can only be visited inside your own head or dying.

As tradition goes, people can enter the Fade by sleeping. Ghosts are found in the Fade. The Fade can be thought of as a “veil” that separates the living from the dead, where only those with magic can enter.

When the veil is thin or broken, ghosts and demons begin to enter into what we know as reality.

The World of Thedas Volume 1 has a chapter on Fade on page 130.

How do you enter Fade?

Most people they enter the Fade every time they close their eyes at nightbut they have no control and immediately return to the living.

Dreamers are unaware that they are in the Fade and soon forget. You have to be lucid dreaming to actually walk and remember.

The people of Thedas will consume lyriuma powerful and magical mineral that allows them to lucid dream on a whim.

Dwarves are special in that they cannot dream and therefore cannot enter the Fade. In addition to being unable to dream, they are immune to the effects of lyria, which allows lucid dreaming.

Can you die in the fade?

Not many living people roam the Fade, and for good reason. If you are lucid while dreaming, if you face the dangers of the Fade head on, you will die both in the Fade and in real life.

If they occur to you in a fading way while dreaming regularly, you get back to your normal body. A spell used to lucid dream prevents that person from returning to their body after death in the Fade.

Even if you lucid dream and are able to pass the Fade, you will have no control over what you see and what happens. Only ghosts and Fade demons have control.

What's it like inside The Fade?

They exist wandering spirits with their unfinished stories. There are demons hungry for blood and spirits waiting for an opportunity to possess the living. There are even gods, locked away in a very special place.

Visually, it is Fade constantly changing. Spirits can turn your dreams into various human desires. The only thing that remains the same is the view Black city in the heart of Fade.

Dragon Age: The World of Thedas Volume 1 explains that there are different
regions
from Fade. These areas influence the type of dream the dreamer will have. Fear is one of them.

Only one group of people attempted to physically enter the Fade and map it. This was the Tevinter Imperium. Legend has it that Tevinter's attempt to map the Fade caused the Blight.

What is a black city?

While inside the Fade and lucid dreaming, it is said that you can see a large city looming in the distance. People call it the heart of the Fade. The the elves call it the Eternal City. There are different cultural interpretations of this city, but no one has ever been there.

Followers of the Chantry believe that the city used to be called golden city. Their experience of heaven where the Creator would be.

As history goes, one of the Creator's children started worshiping the 'Old Gods' causing the Creator to abandon them all. That would be when the Golden City turned into a Black City.

“Old Gods” are ancient beings who are no more. They are depicted as dragons.

To the elves, theirs the trickster god Fen'Harel imprisoned the elven gods in the Black City imprison them. Elves are torn from their gods because of this.

Fade in relation to games

Fade them introduced in the first Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Origins.

If you play as a mage in the first game, you will experience what The Harrowing was really like. Harrowing is when young mages are forced into the Fade to fight a demon to prove that they have control over their magic.

The first two games are mainly about Blight. The cultures around Thedas believe this The Blight and the monsters that come with it are a direct result of corruption in the heart of Fade.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the veil between the living and the Fade is thinning and enemies behind the scenes are working to merge the two empires into one.

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it's a similar case. When the veil is thin in a certain area, this it allows demons and spirits to enter our world.