[Spoilers all] Thedas in the Mass Effect Galaxy theory - feedback requested

Lore & Theories

I made a pretty much identical post to this over at r/masseffect yesterday, but I'd like to get the perspective from the Thedosian side of things.

I'd like to explore what would happen if the Normandy at the end of ME3 crash-lands on Thedas, and for that I'd like to wrap my head around the fact that there is a hitherto isolated planet which just so happens to have human beings that parallel Earth cultures to a remarkable degree.

As with many theories in that verse, I'd like to invoke the Protheans.

Presupposing that the Fade, with all of its spirits, etc., along with the Titans and lyrium in particular, are phenomena unique to Thedas, and those four-eyed bastards have had a history of observing and experimenting on prehistoric human beings as seen on Eletania, what if they came to the same conclusion as Harbinger and figured that human genetic potential made them ideal (space) guinea pigs for testing the Fade's properties?

Ergo, some Protheans abduct a population of Cro-Magnons 50,000+ years ago, transport them to Thedas and fiddle with their genetics to test out variations on the same theme. Elves would be those engineered for greater affinity with the Fade, dwarves less so, humans as a "control group" and kossith the product of some deviant Prothean scientists who like horns idk.

That's the genetics part down, anyway - with a long enough timespan, humans were able to diverge into H. sapiens and the H. floresensis "hobbits", after all.

With regards to how human culture winds up influencing Thedas, the orb on Eletania and the various Prothean beacons indicate that the Protheans have technology able to collect data straight from people's heads and also to beam it directly into them too (plus or minus a Prothean cipher or two.) To allow for efficient data-gathering, maybe the Protheans use quantum entanglement devices connected to beacons and orbs to compare how things are going on in Thedas vis-a-via Terra.

So when the Protheans die out and their technology is also abandoned, and the Thedas beacon starts transmitting indiscriminately, filtering into the Fade and subconsciously communicating human cultural mores and thoughts into Thedosian brains, leading to multiple non-coincidental cultural parallelisms over the course of (at a minimum) 50,000 years.

Does this work for getting this issue out of the way without (to TV Tropes it up) doing in the wizard too much as to the Fade and the Titans and all that, and still keeping the Dragon Age setting unique whilst permitting the Normandy's crew to interact with them sensibly?

Posted Jul 3, 2018, 9:08 AM UTC

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