Solas, the Dread Wolf

I might change my avatar to that third picture. I've been looking for a new Solas pic

I'm gonna post coldchrome 's meme for him

cant stand the guy

Eggpai noticed me *doki doki* (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄

Then he dumped me

I’m going to go on a little musing about Solas and his similarity to a dear, dear part of my cultural upbringing. I grew up on a reservation in the Pacific North West of the USA. Not going to be too specific cause I’ve actually had people figure out who I am IRL if I give out too many details, but I will get into specifics about legends of interest.

Coyote is arguably the most important figure in tribal stories from the PNW. White anthropologists debate wether he is a god, an ancestral spirit, a person, or an animistic spirit, and I think that ambiguity is similar to the Evanuris and Solas. To me, Coyote’s ontology is not important because I think to my ancestors western/biblical ideas of an infallible/omniscient/all powerful god were uninteresting and unimportant. While there were plenty of my friends/family who cared about what these “experts” thought and there was a syncretic Christian tradition of believing Coyote is equatable to Jesus. To me, I think answering what Coyote is is pretty ridiculously pedantic. Yet, I think the ambiguity is an interesting parallel to Solas. But let’s look at the deeds of Coyote and compare them to Solas.

I will explore four legends. The first is about the friendship of Coyote to an other spirit, Badger, and the origin of death and how it relates to Coyote’s pride. The second is how Coyote fed the people. The third is how Coyote stuck it to the rich and championed the rights of the poor. The last is how Coyote came to warn the stubborn Chiefs that they must change to prepare for the White Men.

I won’t go into too much oration, I advise anyone who is interested in the complete stories to message me and I will hook you up with audio or written full stories. But stories say that Badger and Coyote were friends, their children played games but Coyote wanted his children to win. So they played a game of ball by stealing a ball from a group of people (in native languages we do not differentiate between spirit and human, they are all people just some people have more spirit-powers) and while Coyote’s children won, on their way home they were killed by these people. Coyote was sad, his pride in wanting to win killed them, so he put them in a basket and began a walking ritual to revive them. But as he walked he was insulted by a bug, and each insult hurt his pride and so to yell at the bug he had to drop the basket, spilling the remains of his children, each time they decayed more. After the fifth time, they were just bones. Because of Coyote’s pride he could not circumvent death and death became permanent and because there was no difference to us between entities like Coyote and us, we became doomed to die as well. Similarly, Solas’ pride led him to create the veil, ending elven immortality.

In the early days of human people, we did not know what we could eat and so we starved. Coyote took pity on us and asked the non human people (plants and animals) who would volunteer to be eaten. Various peoples volunteered, including one of Coyote’s immaculately conceived children/sisters (Coyote is a queer icon imo), and these became known as the “first foods” and are sacred to this day. What is important here is that Coyote, like Solas, took pity on the down trodden and needy. It also shows Coyote like Solas was willing to change the status quo for the benefit of relatively weak people (some people are blessed with powerful spirit-powers (misunderstood as spirit-animals) but people are not as powerful as the main powers (Coyote, bear, eagle, etc)).

After humans had been around a while they started having hierarchies. During the salmon harvests (a first flood) the rich would hog the best places to fish. Coyote, being inherently rebellious, sided with the disenfranchised and jumped upon the river creating coyote’s Fishing hole (in the original languages it is a double entendre about butt holes, because Coyote is a queer icon). At this new sacred hole, status was not considered, and all could fish equally. Solas was a rebel against the hierarchies of the ancient elves and detested the lies of the powerful to take advantage of the common folk.

The last is a sad story. Pre arrival of the Europeans, it is said my people had female chiefs. Coyote appeared before the most powerful female chief in the region and warne us that the white men are coming, and there will be no more female chiefs (the way it is told implies their entire way of life will change and we must change our entire way of life to survive). This chief thought Coyote was full of shit and refused to change (it is implied she was a bit power hungry and prideful). Coyote, recognizing that yet again a powerful human was about to jeopardize the survival of the other humans told her if she would not change he would help her and transformed her into a rock, her face to stare out, immovable as her people changed unrecognizable to survive in the white man’s world. Doesn’t this sound kind of like Fellassan? Doesn’t the idea of a leader trapped sound like what Solas did to the Evanuris? Doesn’t Solas turn people to stone in Trespasser?

Anyways. Thought maybe someone would find this interesting.