59 replies to this topic

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-first

Wherein zombie apocalypse breaks out; and Alistair learns fire=bad

It turns out that Redcliffe has a zombie problem. Every night the walking dead come out of the castle and attack the village. Things are getting desperate. Please Grey Warden Sir would you help us.

We talk to the Arl's brother Bann Teagan first, who is currently defending the village from the back of the local Chantry. You've got to admire people making a last ditch stand, especially when everyone else they have is in the penultimate ditch. He seems rather poltically adept, interested in getting his brother rescued so that there's a better chance of defeating TTW without a civil war. He does seem predisposed to help us because we're Grey Wardens and his enemies are our enemies. He asks us to help with the militia and the few soldiers he is able to muster. I'm fairly sure there's no real choice.

The militia have some problems. They local smith is locked in his forge refusing to repair their armour and weapons. They're also demoralised because the best local fighter, a dwarf, is locked in his home and refuses to help them. I decide to see what I can do. This initially involves kicking in the dwarf's front door and bribing him to fight. With the blacksmith the task is slightly more involved. I persuade him to tell me why he's drunk and refusing to work, and apparently his daughter is missing at the castle. I promise to look for her and he agrees to start work again. Then we loot a cache of supplies, just for the hell of it. I also notice that he's the third person (Bann Teagan, this blacksmith, and some woman in the Chantry) who wants us to go to the castle at some point. This might just be a hint.

We also have a look around the village store, finding several barrels of flammable oil. That sounds like it would be useful to someone. I speak to the mayor about the militia, and he says they are in a much better state with the dwarf and his men to give them confidence and their equipment being repaired, and they'll be ready when the time comes.

I head up the hill towards the mill that a knight and his men are defending, on the way delivering a letter that the mercenary vampires want given to their potential recruits. That's two out of three. The knight is pleased to see us, and he thinks the flaming oil will be useful to burn up zombies on the approaches. He would also like us to get his men some sort of blessing from the Chantry to make them fight better. This doesn't seem like a problem to me, but when I return to the Chantry the priestess is reluctant to do so. Apparently it doesn't work that way. I persuade her that regardless of whether there's any actual effect it will be good for morale, and she agrees to give us some entirely useless amulets to help out. Which is good for approval from Leliana and Alistair, at least.

And once the knight has his amulets, we're ready. It's Zombie Apocalypse time.

The first wave hits the knight and his men up by the mill. With several traps laid and the flaming barrels turning the approach into an inferno, it starts off going really well with nearly dead zombies scrambling the last few yards to our lines and being cut down easily. As more appear and the traps have been cleared it starts to get nastier as more of them get into our position. The real problem comes at the end of the fight as we begin finishing off the last few. Alistair has been watching the pretty flames, and decides that he's always wanted to fight a zombie in the middle of a fire. Someone needs to explain to that boy that while fire is pretty, fire is bad. Fire swoops. Though once the last zombie drops we get him out of the fire and Wynne heals him up.

Then we get interrupted by a messenger, who says that more zombies are attacking the village directly. We rush down the hill and charge into them, and I notice that Mr Dwarf Mercenary doesn't seem to be around. I think next time I see him I'll be asking for my money back. Anyway, we face waves of zombies coming at us from all directions (or maybe it was just two, but that sounds less impressive). Alistair and I concentrate on the tougher ones with the yellow identifiers, while the militia fight the rest. More and more militia drop, including some of the ones who actually have names and are therefore important. In the end it's just the four of us and one last militiaman who's down to almost no health, when suddenly there's no more zombies. I'm just a few experience points short of levelling up, so I start eyeing the back of the new militia commander when we drop into a cut-scene.

It's now time to celebrate our victory, and Bann Teagan gives us a victory speech from the steps of the Chantry. A little too much 'we' in that for my liking, considering he spent the whole fight defending the altar. He has a cunning plan, though, which he'll explain to us if we head up to the mill. Then he teleports up there, leaving us to walk up that hill again.

Once we finally get there, he starts explaining that there's a secret passage into the castle from the mill. Before we can do anything about it we get a visitor, as the Arl's wife appears from the direction of the castle. She starts off asking Teagan to come with her, and when I ask what is happening she manages to be rude to me. I can be rude back, and suggest she's a racist, which rather upsets her. In fact any time someone asks her questions she doesn't want to answer her response is to get upset, so all we're able to learn is things we either already new: such as that the Arl is ill, and there are zombies in the castle: or could deduce, such as that there's something nasty there causing the problems. What a helpful French noblewoman she is not.

What we decide in the end is that the Bann will go back to castle with his sister in law. I expect we'll find his violated corpse later. The soldiers will watch the gates, and if we can open them all eight of them will storm the castle and defeat the zombie hordes. We get to go through the secret tunnel everyone is talking about and sneak in that way, with our initial objective being to get the gates open. Which is a sound enough plan, especially if it means I don't have to get killed doing it.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Second

Wherein we wipe the Zombie Apocalypse out completely; and Alistair gets swooped on

In the Mill, we have a look around for the entrance to the secret tunnel. I find a "love-letter" between two human nobles. She's apparently very cruel to him; and he likes it. With what I've deduced about human sexuality I feel like writing an anthropogical paper, Humans and their Kinky Sexual Practices, although without pictures it might not do so well.

Eventually we do find the trapdoor, and descend into the tunnel. A few zombies are here, which at first I think are ones which broke through our lines in the recent zombie apocalypse. Since I don't think any did, and there was no sign of them in the Mill, I conclude they were part of the attacking force and were unable to take us from behind because they couldn't manage the stairs.

We slaughter them. A little further on, we see some more and prepare for combat. They ignore us. This sort of insult to Elven Ninja honour will not be tolerated, and I charge them.

We slaughter them, too. Apparently they considered the human in the cell more important than me. I dislike him already.

The human in the cell introduces himself as Jowan, a mage. He claims to have been brought here by French Noblewoman, to teach her son how to use magic. I hear Alistair grit his teeth at this, since it's apparently illegal. He admits to being part of the Malevol... the Malliciuflor... the Mellifluo.. a Blood Mage. Alistair grinds his teeth even more. He admits that it was him who poisoned Arl Eamon. I think that was a bit of enamel hit me in the neck. And he claim that he's not responsible for the Zombie Apocalypse and if he says anything else I will personally stuff Alistair's dentist's bill down his throat to shut hiim up.

We discuss what to do with him. Alistair would like to lose the key, Leliana wants to give him another chance, and Wynne is nervous about trusting him. I decide to let him loose to give him a chance to help. Alistair likes me less as a result, Leliana likes me more. If they knew what I was thinking, that he was a nice expendable distraction, that might be reversed.

Once we're in the castle proper we wander around, killling more zombies, looting the armoury (some nice gear in there), and killing some unfortunate doggies that got between my curiosity and a locked chest. We also find the blacksmith's daughter/Arlessa's maid and tell her to scarper via the totally secret secret passage. That's one more quest reward to look forward to.

Trying to find the gate to let our army in isn't quite so easy. I'm certain there's a way through one particular door, but neither I nor Leliana can pick the lock. I'm forced to conclude we'll have to go through the cellar, which I expect to be full of nastiness. We prepare, with poison and flame, to enter the cellars. Which are undefended.

The stairs on the other side let us into the courtyard. We start across and a group of zombies appear to attack us. Dashing for the gate, I press the lever to let our army in.

I have to say I'm not all that impressed by the Zombie Apocalypse's last horde. It's just not very big or horde-like. Perhaps there's a shortage of graveyards locally.

The Revenant that leads it is tougher, and Alistair finds himself pulled towards it while holding aggro on a couple of other zombies. His sacrifice proves valuable, since that lets me get in behind them to perform a thoroughly scientific investigation of zombie kidneys. When we're finished, bits of zombie and revenant litter the courtyard amongst Alistair's blood.

After the fight, the human knight in charge of our army (also not very impressive, it appears to be the case locally that zombie hordes and human armies both struggle to get into double figures) wants to head into the castle immediately. I don't think he was too happy that I suggested waiting, since he very much wants to rescue everyone, but he acknowledges my authority. Really, humans have odd priorities.

We loot everything within sight, although I admit the Revenant was a disappointment. Since I'm expecting more trouble inside, I prepare more poison and we apply it to our blades. Now, Mr Knight, we'r ready to go in.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Third

Wherein someone gets bored; and another visit to the Fade resort

I am beginning to think there might be something wrong with me, since I was slightly disappointed not to be in a fight as soon as we entered the castle. I was expecting to be confronted by the last remnants of the Zombie Apocalypse, but it seems we've finished with that.

What we do face is almost as horrifying, though the smell is rather better. Bann Teagan is performing tricks in front of a young child and the French noblewoman. I suppose if that's the sort of thing he enjoys who am I to object. And he is unexpectedly agile. Though the ending where he flops down at the feet of a fairly young child like a dog is just a little creepy for my tastes.

The child, who is called Connor and is therefore the Arl's son, is creepy in other ways too. He seems to be extremely petulant and self-centred, and to have cowed the adults in the room. Certainly his mother, the Frenchwoman, seems to be scared of him, and her begging makes me think she needs some education in the proper way to apply discipline to children; regular floggings made me the well-adjusted and rational person I am. He's also got a very strange voice, although I shouldn't make fun of this since it's so variable I assume it's breaking.

He claims that the zombies we've been fighting were his, part of the army with which he intended to conquer the world. I don't seem to have a dialogue option to make an alliance, which is a shame since I would have used him against the darkspawn. When he asks why we came I said it was to see the Arl and he babbles on for a bit while I tune him out, knowing that if he says anything important the others will tell me about it afterwards. It's therefore a bit of a surprise when a fight breaks out, though later I found at that it was because the kid got bored. How childish can you get.

Bann Teagan leads the guards, and immediately finds himself fighting Alistair while our guards fight their guards. I try to get Leliana to shoot the child, but he moves rather too fast on those little legs and is out of the room before she can. Which is odd since he's the one who started the fight because he felt bored. Leliana concentrates on shooting guards, hopefully theirs though since the uniform is the same who can be sure. I slip past the fight, incidentally sticking a couple of envenomed weapons into the back of one of our enemies - he tried to hit me, he must be an enemy - and introduce myself to their archers in the corner. They take an instant dislike to me, but being thoroughly stabbed soon cures them of this character flaw.

When I look round, the last of the guards is going down. And Bann Teagan is getting up, claiming to have been cured of the magical compulsion Connor had him under. This from the person who's last ditch defence against the Zombie Apocalypse consisted of hiding in the Chantry.

We have a discussion about what to do with Connor with his French mother, who's name turns out to be Isolde, and Teagan. We're joined by Jowan, who has presumably managed to find a place to wash and do his laundry while slaughtering zombie hordes since he's noticeably clean. He and Isolde don't seem to like each other, which I suspect is a cover for a torrid love affair that is none of my business. They explain that Connor is possessed by a demon which lives in the Fade, those nice islands off to the West, and that we should do something permanent about this.

The conclusion of our discussion is that we have three options. First, kill Connor. Isolde is strongly against this, and no-one seems terribly happy with the option. Second, kill someone else so that Jowan has the power to let another mage go to the Fade and go all Repo-Mage on the demon. Third, that we should get help from the mages of the Circle Tower who can get Repo-Mage into the Fade without the human sacrifice bit. Isolde is down with the second provided she can be the human sacrifice, although both Alistair and Wynne have their doubts about it. Personally I favour the third option, since I have some doubt about how happy Arl Eamon will be if we kill either his only child or his wife - even if she is French and having an affair with a mage. And since we operate on the democratic principle of one woman one vote and I'm the woman with the vote that's what we do. We leave Isolde, Teagan, and Jowan to guard against a recurrence of the Zombie Apocalypse, and head off to the tower.

The only stop on the way is our camp, where I pick up Morrigan as a replacement for Alistair. Her style of homicidal mass destruction is probably more suitable for sending to kill demons than Wynne's healing mixed with minor zapping. At the Tower everyone seems happy to help, with Irving promising to be at Redcliff Castle with some mages when we get back there. Although it would have been nice if he gave us a lift. I head upstairs into the Tower first, since there were some chests we couldn't unlock before and Leliana's lock-picking has got better.

Once we get back to Redcliff we go ahead with the ritual, and Morrigan heads off to the Fade. She claims afterwards that it was trivially easy, since every fight started with her casting Cone of Cold and freezing all available enemies, until the last fight with a demon which kept creating illusionary images of itself. That took rather more subtlety, or to be precise a Fireball. If that's her idea of subtle I wonder how she feels about two bricks in a sock?

Once it's done, Connor is certified demon-free, Isolde is happy, Teagan is fairly happy, and I'm rather annoyed since Arl Eamon is still sick. I don't imagine Jowan is too happy, since when we discuss him it's concluded that sticking him back in his cell is for the best. And in the meantime, the Grey Warden to-do list gets longer with Find the Urn of Scared Ashes to cure Alr Eamon added to it. I wonder if I could sub-contract some of this.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Fourth

Wherein we have chatting; looting; and odd jobs

Before leaving Redcliff Castle, we wander around to see if there's any valuable loot. In the Arl's personal study I open the door to his desk and remove Alistair's Mother's Locket. I think I know who that belongs to, considering he told me a story about smashing it when he was younger. Which makes it's current repaired state rather unexpected. Fortunately there's no problem with looting in front of the guards, not that I find much worth taking but even opening a locked chest and then taking nothing is worth some XPs. One nice, scarcely-read book ends up in my backpack to Wynne.

We head down into the village and collect a few rewards for various completed quests. Since the Chantry is back in the quest-giving business I head over their and mark all three quests as taken. For good measure, I find the Blackstone Irregulars agent and take the one he has to offfer. After which with nothing left to steal or kill, and no more leads on things to steal or kill I can head back to camp. Annoyingly, that means climbing the hill again.

At camp, I find Sten engaged in growling at Shep. Apparently there's a sort of mutual admiration society going between these two warriors. I chat to Zevran about the advantages of being an assassin, and ask Leliana about any interesting stories she has which leads her to say she likes my hairstyle. Which she should, because it's awesome, and we preen at each other for a bit.

I give Wynne the book I thought she'd like, and we end up having a conversation that rather puzzles me. She would like to know what I think of Abominations, and since they're in my experience dangerous maniacs I say I don't like them. Then she asks me what I'd think of a mage who was possessed, but who didn't start a campaign of mass murder and mayhem. Honestly, I'm of the opinion that people are defined more by what they do than anything else and I tell her so, which makes her quite pleased with me.

When I give Alistair his locket, he's rather surprised. Not so much by the fact that it's no longer broken, although he remarks that Arl Eamon must have had it repaired for some reason. What really surprises him is that I picked it up and gave it to him, which he thinks means I must have been paying attention at some point when he was talking. He's apparently not used to that. At this point I can't resist asking him if he was saying something. I think it's funny even if he doesn't.

I head off into some new map areas after this, with Wynne, Shep and Zevran, to investigate some of the new Chantry quests. The first is a merchant caravan, and we quite handily slaughter some darkspawn and loot their remains. On the way out, Wynne collapses for a moment. I'm concerned enough to ask her what is hapening, and she says she thought it was the end. And that she'll explain more back at camp.

So we go back to camp, and Wynne tells me that she died fighting a demon in the Tower when it was first invaded. Except that she obviously didn't, since she's standing there talking to me and all the undead I've seen had complexions that were much worse than hers. Apparently she was possessed by a benevolent spirit, in the way an Abomination gets a malevolent spirit. She's not sure how long she's got to live, but it's not as long as it might be. It would be awkward if she keeled over during a fight, and I like the old bat quite a lot so this doesn't make me happy.

We head out for another of the sites, and get ambushed by some darkspawn including a spellcaster. Wynne promptly discovers a new ability that this possessing spirit gives her, and uses it to give our enemies a bad day. Especially the spellcaster, who ends up stunned being stabbed by both me and Zevran. I can't remember seeing a life bar going down that quickly often. Wynne seems a little nervous about this ability since it drains the spirit inside her, but I trust her to use it sensibly.

The last two quests are easily dealt with. The militia battalion has been slaughtered to the last man, and we interrupt a wolf pack that's feeding on their remains. The pelts should be quite profitable. The refugess are being attacked by darkspawn, the attack coincidentally starting just as we arrive. We manage to save most of them, remarkably, since they seem determined to stand around until actively attacked and to then start fighting back while unarmed. Hopefully the Chantry will be happy with what we achieved.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Fifth

Wherein a group of disguised rogues visit Denerim; and people either don't notice, or don't care

So much of what I want to do leads towards Denerim. I'm not enthusiastic about dwarf-land, they don't sound like nice people and they're very short. I'm even less enthusiastic about visiting a bunch of barbarian elves. I have a lot of things to do in Denerim. Yet I'm rather nervous about going there, since it's where TTW Loghain is crawling around and I suspect he's probably got people looking for Grey Wardens - he certainly had an assassin after us, so his army might well be. So I decide to be very careful about who I take with me.

Alistair is out, entirely. Not only is he a target because he's a Grey Warden, but if he's telling the truth about being a child of the last king but one he's also a target for that reason. Neither Sten nor Morrigan really seem like they'll fit in a city like Denerim. In the end I decide to leave Wynne behind and go with a foreign aristocrat, her two elven servants, and a guard dog, i.e. Leliana, Zevran, me, and Shep.

No-one actually seems to care very much. No guards need bluffing at the gates, no informers try to determine who we are, nobofy seems to care that a Grey Warden is walking the streets. If it wasn't so personally convenient I'd be offended.

There is, predictably, a significant Chantry presence in Denerim. I listen quite amused as one Chanter completely mis-speaks a series of verses, making references to food in all of them. Her companion tries to correct her, but it is apparently close to their lunchtime. The older one has some interesting opinions on the subject of the Chant, singing it, and problems with the Lyrium store which make me think if I hear lots of screaming from the area I must cover Zevran's eyes quickly.

I also visit the Chantry board to collect my pay from the previous three quests and to see if there are any more interesting ones available. My conclusion from looking at them is that the guards seem to be barely in control of the city, since many of them seem concerned with dealing with groups of thugs in the alleys. They're probably busy chasing Grey Wardens somewhere. Although I take great pleasure in acceptiing a quest that involves visiting some of TTW Loghain's troops and doing what it asks me to, which is to say treating them as I'd like to treat him. That's going to be fun.

I also have an interesting conversation with a Sister who is curator of the relics. Apparently lots of relics are fake, and it can be hard to tell which are real and which aren't. She does believe the Urn of Scared Ashes I am searching for is real, but isn't able to make any suggestion where to find it.

I also find the local branch of the Mages Collective, pick up one reward from them for persuading a group of adventurers to hand me their slanderous message accusing a member of being bad - while it's quite possible he is, I've seen no evidence. I pick up some more quests from them, which involve looking for things I've never heard of and finding people who don't know where they are. Sometimes I've been like that after a night out, so I know what it feels like. This reminds me that there are some apprentices in the city I need to look for, so I head off to the open air market.

One apprentice is there, and he seems disappointed to be given the message laying him off since now he doesn't know what to do. There are some interesting people present from other countries. The story the Orlesian lady tells me sounds really familiar, about being the target of an aristocratic sexual predator and having to flee her home. And she thinks elves in Orlais have it worse than we do here! I make a mental note not to visit Orlais ever.

Rather cheekily, I decide to approach a guard sergeant. He recognises me as a Grey Warden! But he's not going to do anything about it, since his men are a rabble and he doesn't believe the story coming from the castle about us anyway. I offer to help him out, if he's got any particular tasks that I could help with. Apparently there is one, which involves visting a brothel (Zevran's ears prick up) and chastising a group of mercenaries who are causing trouble there. Next time I'm in the area, I will.

I also think it would be worth heading over to the Alienage and visting friends and family. It's closed. Apparently some particularly nasty elves started a revolt, massacring the son of the former administrator and his friends. The Alienage is closed until order is restored.

I may have heard something about these events myself.

Heading towards one of my main objectives, the home of Brother Genitalli (who apparently knows something about the Urn of Scared Ashes), I am accosted by an armoured human. Despite the fact that he?s hanging around outside an inn, it?s not for the purpose I expect. He does want to get sweaty and personal with me, but that?s in the ?fighting a duel? sense rather than the other, rather more enjoyable one. Talking, I discover that he thinks I killed a friend of his at Ostagar. I suppose the ogre must have had a drinking buddy. We arrange to duel in the alley behind the inn, which is probably a bad idea as I?m a Rogue in leather and he?s a Warrior in rather heavier armour.

Opposite the inn is Brother Genitoni?s house. Inside, I attempt to get the resident to tell me what I need to know, only to find that he?s not Brother Geniituti but is instead a servant. He claims not to know where the Brother is, but his story gets confusing partly I think because he?s only just started making it up. As when when try to go into the back room where the Brother?s records are this supposed servant fireballs us, before we fillet him with our blades and teeth. In the back we find the real servant, dead on the floor, and some information suggesting Genuinti has gone to the village of Haven, wherever that is.

After this, I had into the dark alley for my close and personal encounter with the knight. This could have been a very difficult fight, but my pet assassin Zevran turns out to be skilled at making poison. Effectively the human goes into the fight against a ninja with a pair of poisonous flaming shocking blades, who has the ability to stun quite frequently, who gets extra damage when she can get around behind and stab him from behind, and who?s not above kicking him in the testicles. Since he refused to listen to yet another attempt to persuade him that I didn't kill any of his friends, I feel perfectly justified in killing him.

His friends seem to think he died the way he?d have wanted, honourably. Perhaps they didn?t pay much attention to what I did.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Sixth

Wherein dark alleys are lightened by my radiant presence; and ladies cheat at cards

There's a few other places to visit in the alley. We loot a warehouse, finding most of the parts of a silver service. I knock on a mysterious door, exchanging something I forgot I had for some money. And we visit a shop, the Wonders of Thedas, which Zevran thought sounded like it might be a brothel. It isn't, but I find one more apprentice and give him his dismissal letter. Having given someone the best seven weeks of his life, he is understandably disappointed. While I browse the store, there's nothing that I'm prepared to spend the money on as yet.

Eventually after trying the Alienage gate again and another one which some sort of Templar Commander is loitering near trying to pick up women, I discover the way to move to other parts of the city. You go out the way you came in. Doh!

Once I 've worked this out, we head off towards the Pearl, although there's plenty of dark alleys on the map which I'll need to investigate later. On the way, we get ambushed. By thieves and ruffians. That seems just a touch suicidal, considering we look like a band of heavily armed desperadoes, but it's possible there's a scheme where they only get treasure and XPs from enemies of approximately their level. Their numbers would be more helpful if there wasn't a convenient choke-point nearby where they could outflank us, although the archers prove a bit of a problem. Shep's fearful howling is very helpful against enemies with low resistance, since it stuns enemies and both I and Zev get extra damage against them. The archery is more of a problem, but as their front-line numbers dwindle I pull us back so we can't be seen from their platforms. When they follow, it's just in time for the melee to finish and for Shep to get another Howl off, and much of the rest of their life is spent stunned and bleeding. I'm mildly bemused by how much of the loot is Lyrium potions, considering ho wmuch it sells for.

After this little workout, we reach the Pearl, apparently Denerim's best whorehouse. When we go in, there's a fight going on which I mistakenly assume to involve the mercenaries. Instead, it's a female ship captain called Isabella who has apprently beaten three men at cards and is now having to explain at sword-point that they don't get a refund. She doesn't need my help to drive them off. After the fight I talk to her and it turns out Zevran knows her, and in fact he's the reason she owns a ship because he killed her husband. For a moment I'm worried, but she seems quite pleased with the result.

We talk some more, and it turns out that she has invented her own fighting style as a duellist, and that she's willing to teach it to other people. Provided they play a few rounds of cards with her so she can get to know them. After two rounds, it's apparent that she cheats outrageously. After three, it's apparent that so do I. Which convinces her that I have sufficient agility of mind and deftness of touch for her to teach me. I'm fairly sure that there were hints of other things she might like to teach me too, but for the moment I pass on these.

Armed with my newfound Duellist skills I confront the rather large and obnoxious group on the other side of the tavern, who are the mercenaries I'm looking for. I appeal to their better natures, on the basis that people with reputations as troublemakers probably won't get such good gigs from the nobility, and this convinces them to leave without me having to wreck the room or set any of them on fire.

Leaving, I'm heading back to the Market to report this success to the Watch Sergeant when he turns up in the street. It's not a shakedown as I'm assuming, he just wants to congratulate me. Then the mercenaries turn up, claiming that I don't get to tell them what to do, and starting a fight with both us and the Watchmen.

As it turns out, I do get to tell them what to do. As long as their orders are 'Die'. Since it makes the Sergeant happy to be alive I'm not too bothered, although it occurs to me later that I don't remember him paying me anything. Perhaps looting bodies is the Watch way?

I head off next to one of the dark alleys that are on my map as places to find lurking bands of thugs. They're handled the same way as the last one, although in this case I also employed some traps to break up the initial rush into a more manageable size. Looting again finds Lyrium and on this occasion four pairs of leather boots - though no armour. Good footwear is obviously important.

After this, I start thinking a little harder. While we handled two groups of thugs quite handily we used most of our supply of healing poultices doing so. There are two more groups to deal with before there's any reward to claim. We also obtained the information I wanted about Brother Genevievre. So I decide that for now we shall depart Denerim's decrepit alleys, and head back to our camp in the woods.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Seventh

Wherein we clean out up the streets of Ostagar; and teach tactics to a blood mage

On second, or perhaps third, thoughts I'm going to finish of the gangs in Ostagar now rather than later. If I don't I'll probably never get it done. So rather than heading for Haven or treating some of TTW's troops the way I'd like to treat him - I'm sure Zevran has a poker and fires are easy to start - I go back to Ostagar. This time though it's not with my merry band of rogues, as despite our ability to deal with groups of enemies we're not entirely efficient about it. Instead, I go with Sten for heavy hitting, Morrigan for magical blasting, and Wynne as a healer and additional magical firepower.

Tactics are, well, rather simple. Morrigan blasts an area with her blizzard spell, Wynne stuns anything that staggers out of it, and then Sten and I chop or stab things until they die. Three fights go the same way, as we get ambushed in the streets on one occasion, but both remaining locations get cleared of gang members in short order. In the last one I get a real shock, as one of the gang leaders claims they're happy to see me. It means they don't have to send their boys out after me. I suppose that's a good explanation for why so much of the loot comes in the form of high-quality boots, none of these people like walking anywhere so there's no wear on them. It does all seem like a slightly lazy effort, and I will recommend that my father take over the gangs in this part of the city and impose a proper work ethic.

In the last area, somebody has dumped the body of a Templar. I wonder for a moment about looting it, but an injury kit soon takes of that by curing the brain damage I must be suffering to have any doubts at all. Apparently he was investigating rumours of a group of blood mages. He did find them, but they noticed his investigations. As he tried to escape he decided it was a good time to write a long note about this, since finding a pen and an ink-well never slows anybody down when they're running away. Since they're likely to have some quite decent loot, I decide to investigate the not-as-deserted-as-they-try-to-pretend house.

It has blood mages in it. And mercenaries. And mercenary archers. And Qunari mercenaries. And plenty of traps, which must make walking around rather hard most of the time. And rather a lot of locked chests which I'm ashamed to admit I lack the ability to break into. We'll come back later with someone who's fingers are nimbler. We go from room to room methodically wiping them out one group at a time. Apart from a few moments when archers using Scattershot stun us, we deal with them with few problems. This is the area where I pick up the Tactician achievement for killing 250 enemies without them doing any damage.

The only significant problem I find is with Wynne. Calm, sensible, Wynne has apparently decided that being dead already means she's a lot harder to kill again, and is of the opinion that being in the front line is a good idea. Being in advance of the front line is apparently an even better one, and she keep rushing through doors and going round corners in front of everyone else if there are any enemies on the other side. Which is more than a little annoying when I'm trying to disarm a trap and she rushes straight through it. If she's going to continue acting like this I'll have to see about weight-training classes for her and getting her into heavy armour.

We slaughter our way through most of the building, although one room has such a large contingent of blood mages and mercenaries in it that I decide to pull back slightly after opening the door. This encourages couple to come after us, and their chances on their own weren't ever going to be good. Morrigan then casts another blizzard into the room, and Wynne an earthquake spell, before we pull back again. A few more come after us, and they too lack sufficient numbers to be a real problem. Repeated, this tactic gets one more small group to indulge my desire for backstabbing and Sten's for chopping things to bits.

The last room holds the leading blood mage, along with his boyfriend, another Qunari, and the Captain of the Mercenaries. The leader sneers at us, saying that he doesn't know how we got past the rest of his men but we certainly won't be any problem for him. Considering that we've faced much larger groups than the four of them, this confidence seems a little misplaced. While I'd understand his willingness to make a last-ditch stand (he's apparently related to Bann Teagan in this) if there was no other way out, he had two much better options. One was to join the fight himself while some of his fellows were still upright, and the other involves the door to the street that's just across the room from him. Perhaps he thought the first was unnecessary, but running while no-one can have seen you and starting over is hardly a disastrous idea.

I kill him, a lot. The two warriors get stunned by Wynne and chopped down by Sten, Morrigan shows the second blood mage who the better spellcaster is, and I politely explain to the leader that melee combat with an elven ninja might not be what he's best at. He doesn't agree, but that might be because he spends most of the fight stunned, poisoned and backstabbed. Sten complains afterwards that we shouldn't have taken so long, but since his enemy was the last one standing, though only just, we all know who's fault that is don't we.

Looting the bodies gets a key, which opens the bedroom, which gets access to some more loot. We take the door out, and head back to the market district to see whether there's any more work available from my Watch Sergeant and incidentally to visit the Chantry and collect our reward . I'll think twice about taking on complicated and dangerous tasks for them if that's what they pay, though if things they want done come up anyway I'll complete them. Cheapskates. Or... are they paying me less because I'm an elf?

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Eighth

Wherein the hospitality of Haven is found to be wanting; and we find Father Geniusknowsnobounds anyway

Ah, Haven, population not many. It's probably very pretty at some times of year, up in the mountains with forests all around and next to a lake. Carefully constructed log cabins, defensive fortifications, plenty of pretty flowers (both Deathroot which I loot for poison and Elfroot which Wynne takes for healing poultices), and all sorts of other things that some people pay significant amounts of money so they can enjoy the 'real rural experience'.

Sadly there are a number of reasons why I don't feel inclined to regard Haven as my favourite vacation spot. Firstly, I'm a cosmpolitan city girl ninja, and all these trees make me nervous. There could be anything lurking out there, waiting to get it's paws on me. There are bloodsucking insects, and strange smells, and unexpected noises at all times of day and night, and...

Come to think of it, it sounds rather like Denerim after all.

I'm also not too pleased about the staff. They're a surly bunch, not at all welcoming to outsiders. The main guard at the entrance outright says we aren't welcome here. I put on my winningest smile and try to charm him, but this is unsuccessful. I consider trying something with Alistair's charms, but since Alistair is being his normal self - sarcastic - I don't imagine that will be too effective. He appears to represent the idea of a surly inbred yokel as interpreted by the people of Ferelden. He does give us permission to spend money in the shop since we'll need supplies for our trip home, which he makes clear is imminent.

I'll admit to being a little annoyed with this conversation. I wander off in the direction of the lake thinking that when I kill the guard I will enjoy doing so. It's nearly certain that I'll get the chance, as if he's being rude to me for no apparent reason it means he's evil, and evil people exist to be killed with extreme prejudice.

My feelings about this village are confirmed by a small boy who's playing near the lake, singing what I assume to be a children's rhyme until it ends with a suitably horrifying image of the child being laid in a grave rather than to bed. His favourite toy/lucky charm is a finger bone he found near the Chantry.

Down by the lake, I hear a rather unexpected conversation between Alistair and Wynne. Wynne is mildly amused by the way Alistair keeps watching me, which he attempts to excuse by claiming that as the leader he's watching me for indications of what he should do. She pretends to accept this, but then asks him what messages he gets from watching my swaying hips! Is she implying that I've put on weight? Anyway, he denies everything and since I'm well aware of his sexual preferences I pay very little heed to this little bit of banter.

After a little looting, we head up the hill to the store. The storekeeper is very slightly friendlier than the guard, but not by much. He's another one who'll get a dagger between the shoulder blades as soon as they give me an excuse. I do buy a few things from him in the meantime, some nice recipes that Wynne will be using as soon as her alchemy improves.

At the top of the hill, and frankly this doesn't make me happy, is the Chantry where I assume we'll find Brother Gendernotspecified. It's rather a nice building, all things considered, but it appears there are several oddities in the services held there. All three of my companions seem puzzled at various things, such as the presence of a Father, unusual rites, and other things. When the priest sends away his congreation before he can complete the sacrifice but keeps his guards around, it's only going to be a matter of time until he orders us attacked either for capture and later sacrifice or some planned 'fate-worse-than-death'.

Unfortunately for him, his few bully-boys might be enough against an individual if they can attack them with surprise, but against an armed and fairly competent group they don't have much chance even with his magic in support. After we kill them, searching the bodies and a few chests reveals some unusual religious artefacts. Searching the building we find, behind a concealed door. Brother Genitivetense. At Last!

He claims that the people passing as Chantry priests are in fact members of a cult. He also confirms that yes, he does think the Urn of Scared Ashes is here. Apparently there's a temple devoted to securing it at the top of the hill, which implies to me more climbing. He would like to go there immediately, but I suggest a delay so we can deal with any more cultists and take revenge on that guard. He remains in the Chantry, since he's injured and has trouble walking, and the rest of us go outside.

There's a lot more people around now than there were before. They appear to have taken a dislike to us for some reason, and we face some charging cultists reavers, some archers,a nd even a few mages permanently. Haven, population less than before, is the end result. Haven will also get an entry in 100 Places not to Bother with if you're a Barbarian Raider. I hope the survivors remember to thank me.

[Bluenose]

Part the Twenty-Ninth

Wherein we explore the Temple on the Mountain; it's old and snowy

Brother Genuinerolexwatches takes us up the hill, apparently with me supporting him - at least he asked me to help him since his leg is injured. He must also have shown unusual restraint in not groping me, since there aren't any more holes in him when we get to the top. Unusual, for a human.

Apparently the ritual to get into the temple is simpler than I expected. We have the medallion we need, ripped from round the neck of the fake priest in the Chantry of Haven, Brother Generalstrike has apparently observed the ritual - when, he doesn't say - and a virgin sacrifice is unnecessary so Alistair is safe.

Once we're inside, everyone seems impressed by the building. It's certainly big, but what really impresses people are the carvings. They date from the time of Andraste herself, and tell stories that aren't necessarily known to the modern Chantry. Brother Genealogicaltree would be jumping up and down with excitement if it wasn't for the fact that he'd fall over. he decides to stay near the entrance and record everything, since he'd be rather a liability if he tried to follow us around on one leg. He feels that it should be safe enough since there are no cultists about.

Rather later I get a similar reaction from Wynne when we discover the library, which she'd love to stay in for a few days to read what was there. She does continue with us though. Leliana, who I rather thought might feel the same, seems instead to be focused on finding the Urn itself.

As we move further into the temple, I'm somewhat less impressed. A roof would be nice, and even in the side chambers there's a fair bit of snow on the ground We run into some cultists including mad axemen, sneaky archers, and a few mages. They're sometimes accompanied by some sort of lizard-thing, which surprises me. I wouldn't expect lizards to be quite so active in the cold. One gets killed by a firebomb. It tastes like chicken - charred chicken, to be precise.

We clear out the area, including one rather large fight involving a couple of mages and a room full of cultists. One thing you can say about cultists, they do like charging through areas where traps are laid. Both mages end up blasted by shrapnel traps and skewered by arrows before they manage to get any spells off, and afterwards the high number and low quality of the cultists rather works against them in the confined space of the corridors.

After this, there's a bit of a problem. I've still got two doors that I can't open no matter how I try. Retracing our steps, I'm also a little worried to run into a group of cultists coming from a direction we've already cleared. I hope they didn't run into Brother Gentlegiant, but if they did there's nothing I can do about it now. If they didn't, the obvious solution is just to kill everything we come across and hope for the best. I think that's the most ethically sound solution to a cultist infestation.

I am forced to conclude that the red on my cheeks is caused by the cold wind. I'm certainly not embarrassed, despite that fact that we find the key to open one of the doors on the body of a cultist we killed earlier. Someone must have forgotten to loot all the corpses. Once we've opened that one, we find the key that opens the other.

Past the second door, we engage another cult mage and his supporting archers. As we rush them, two Ash Wraiths appear out of nowhere and engage us. This requires a quick readjustment of tactics, Wynne hits the archers with a sleep spell to disable them temporarily, Leliana turns her bow on the mage, and Alistair and I take on the wraiths one after the other. Once they and the mage are down, the archers don't present much of a problem. We find here a book that explains where Ash Wraiths come from. Apparently people voluntarily immolate themselves on an altar and with a little bit of magic involved become immortal wraiths. I light the altar, but there are no takers.

The corridor splits after this. I flip a coin mentally and go right, and after one more fight we find ourselves outside a door that leads further into the mountain. So this seems like a good place to halt, take stock of our nearly full inventory, and use the great quantitities of ingredients I have hanging around to make more healing poultices, poisons, traps, and lyrium potions. And I also take the time to optimise everyone's armour and weapons too. Still, heading into a proper underground should be good practice for dwarf-land when we go there.

Dwarfland. Does that sound like a theme park? It might be fun to go there next, we could do with a break from slaughtering monsters and cultists.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirtieth

Wherein I make a deal; Alistair trusts me; and we suffer an outbreak of near nudity

So we've got more rooms and corridors, featuring groups of cultists. Followed by tunnels, featuring groups of cultists. I'm beginning to think there's a theme here. We kill them and take their things until the inventory is full. Which doesn't take all that long, since it was nearly full anyway. Leliana levels up, becoming even more shooty and cunning. One encounter later Alistair levels up, and a little prompting makes him stronger - strong enough to wear the Blood Dragon armour! Someone seems to have spilled paint on it. I'll make enquiries back at camp, but it was probably Shep looking for chew toys.

Since the tunnels keep split, I follow the normal process for finding your way through a maze. It's tedious, and I don't think that in this case it was the most efficient given the way some of the tunnels seem to join up later, but we do eventually get through to a room where there's a larger group of cultists. They are the first group who don't attack me on sight, so I think I can assume there's something special about them.

The group contains the leader of the cult, one Kolgrim. He wants to know why we've come. I answer truthfully, that we're looking for the Urn of Scared Ashes. He then tells me that they are worshippers of Andraste, who is alive again. This sounds a little unlikely to me, but he's convinced and he is familiar with the situation. Apparently she's back from the dead in a new and more glorious form. However, she's not yet back to her best. The Ashes are apparently draining some of her power, and he'd like us to defile them by adding some of the new Andraste's blood to the Urn. After which he adds a speech about the power of blood and it's important for life and things like that. It might impress some of the locals, but as a Grey Warden I've a little bit of experience with blood drinking myself.

Leliana thinks defiling holy relics is a bad idea, and decides that mentioning this in front of the person who wants us to do it is a good idea. Wynne also thinks defiling holy relics is a bad idea and that saying so in front of someone who wants it done is a good idea. Alistair also thinks defiling holy relics is a bad idea, and you can probably predict what he says.

I ignore them. A little more chat with Kolgrim, and apparently in exchange for defiling the relics I'll gain special powers - and there's something about blood again, but I don't bother listening since it's the same spiel he spouted before. He also believes that getting here proves we're worthy to perform the task, since we were able to massacre the rest of his little cult. Eventually, I agree to perform his little task. At which point Alistair interjects that this is a bad idea, and I tell him to trust me as I know what I'm doing.

And he does.

I mean he qualifies it by claiming the right to go na-na afterwards since he did warn me, but he actually says outright that he thinks I know what I'm doing.

This might be the funniest thing I've ever heard. .

Once we've made our agreement, Kolgrim goes ahead of us. He has to appease Andraste to let us into the main shrine. We follow out through the tunnel onto the top of the mountain. All that climbing was obviously good for something. On the opposite side is the main shrine. And there's Andraste.

Swooping over our heads, because apparently Andy is back from the dead as a dragon. We'd better not have to fight her. For now, Kolgrim does quite a lot of grovelling and manages to persuade her to get out of the way. Which lets us go on as a party of four.

Once we're into the main shrine, we get a visitation from the rather solid ghost of one of Andraste's followers. He tells us a good deal about the cult, how they used to follow Andraste in the proper fashion but slipped away until they're just another bunch of Dragon worshippers like the old Tevinter Imperium. There's some philosophy involved, which I don't entirely understand but apparently Wynne does as she corrects me on it. He also says we will need to pass several tests if we want to reach the Ashes. We don't even get to revise first!

He asks each of us questions about our pasts. He wants to know if I think I failed Shianni when we were taken from the Alienage. It's a stupid question, since I certainly could have done things a lot better if I'd only been a little smarter. He asks Alistair if he thinks he could have made a difference at Ostagar if he'd stayed with Duncan, and Alistair claims that if he had things would be going better with Duncan alive. When he asks Wynne about things she might regret, she's perfectly prepared to tell him he knows the answer already from reading our minds and she's now old and sensible enough to understand both the concept of regret and the problems with it. He asks Leliana whether she made up her claims about the Maker talking to her because she wanted to stand out and be special, which she denies. And then he lets us go through into what he calls the Gauntlet.

The first challenge is to answer riddles set by various ghosts of people who knew Andraste. If you pay attention they're pretty easy, and I only have to ask for them to be repeated once in most cases before I can answer correctly. This opens the door at the far end of the chamber, which is where we are after I spoke to the ghosts in order.

Then, we bump into Shianni. I don't think she's a ghost, and if she is someone will pick up a bad case of daggers in the kidneys in response. She tells me that what happened to her wasn't my fault, which is an outright lie, and then gives me something (I may not have got anything, because my inventory is full) and vanishes.

The next door takes us into a room where we have a fight with ourselves. And I thought everyone liked me. Except that this is a bunch of dopplegangers, and we're still us. Recognising the most dangerous enemy I make sure that we concentrate on dropping false-Wynne as fast as possible. Even when false-me is stabbing me from behind and false-Alistair is whacking me to try to stop this, I keep the pressure up until false-Wynne drops. After which the fight gets a lot easier, since Alistair, Leliana and I can take on our opposites and beat the hell out of them while Wynne heals us.

And then it's a bridge, and I hate it. The bridge is made of four blocks, which appear in two stages. If people stand on particular platforms next to it, the block appears, and if someone stands on another platform it becomes material enough to support a person's weight. There are ten platforms, and they all provide different blocks. In the end, I have Leliana hop from platform to platform testing them to see which ones make a block appear, and then plan my path through accordingly. Which doesn't mean I don't end up teleporting off it a couple of times when I move the wrong person around. Elf Ninja Grey Warden would very much like to stab the person responsible for this test.

Finally past that, we enter the room where the Urn is kept. It's at the far side, on a dais. Alistair seems amazed that we've found it, but we haven't actually go tthere yet. In between we have an altar (not much of a problem) and a wall of flame (rather more of a problem, since I've forgotten my useful Burning Man transformation). I approach the altar to see if there are any hints as to how to get by, and the ghost from the start of the shrine appears. Apparently the only way to get through the flames is through faith, which means walking through the fire with no protection and trusting in Andraste. I take my armour off so I'm standing there in my underwear, and in the background I notice Leliana, Alistair and Wynne have copied me. Then I walk through the wall of fire. I'm sure that was a very spiritual experience.

Before grabbing the Ashes, I take advantage of the location to loot the body of a previous, less successful adventurer, that is lying nearby. Then I approach the Ashes, faced with the difficuly decision of whether to upset my companions by violating their sanctity or to face a fight with an angry cult leader and possibly his pet dragon. I take the pinch of Ashes needed to cure Arl Eamon and...

cue roll of drums and suspenseful music track in background

throw the vial of blood into the corner, where it explodes in pool of liquid that eats away at the stone before evaporating in a cloud of vile pink vapour.

Well, not really, but that's what I wanted to happen when I decided to take my changes with cult-guy and dragon. I would have liked some compliments form my companions, but I suppose they took it for granted that I'd do the right thing. I make a mental note to be less predictable.

Rather annoyingly, there's a short-cut out of the shrine. It would have saved a lot of time if it had been there to get in, but I suppose that without all the tests pilgrims wouldn't have felt properly awed. Anyway, we use it to return to the mountain-top. Mr Kolgrim doesn?t seem pleased to see us. After he accuses me of being a traitor, which I think is wrong because I never actually promised outright to do anything for him, he and a couple of cronies commit ritual suicide by the currently preferred method of attacking us. We also kill a cultist mage who is lurking nearby but who doesn?t seem too enthusiastic about taking part in the fight with his boss, and a baby dragon. Looting the bodies, I gain a quest as apparently dragon scales can be used to make nice armour. I also get a horn off Kolgrim, which when blown summons the dragon. It?s so tempting. So very, very tempting. I wonder if we could tackle a dragon. I bet it?d have lots of loot.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-First

Wherein looting is no fun when you've nothing to keep stuff in; and I learn more about how horrible Orlais is

Really, fighting a dragon just for the sake of it would be pretty silly. Now that on it's own might not stop the city elf ninja-duellist Grey Warden; but having nothing to keep the loot in does make her pause. Perhaps if I'd realised that I'd have to walk all the way through those caverns and the ruined temple beyond to get to the exist I'd have considered doing it now, but for now we head back down to the entrance with our backpacks full of loot and an unmolested dragon behind us. It's not as if we can't come back later, climb all the way back up again, and then fight the dragon.

Eventually we get to the bottom, after a minor detour to clear out one wing of the temple on the way. You can never tell what might be lurking in such a plce, after all. Brother Genuflection is very happy to see us, having apparently been completely ignored by all the cultists as he drew the various carvings. When we tell him that we found the Urn, he wants to take a look. I pull out the bag which both amazes him and makes him feel unworthy. Apparently there's some significant, obeservable difference between ordinary dust and the Scared Ashes I picked out of the Urn.

His immediate reaction is that he's got to tell the Chantry about this. He wants to arrange for groups of the faithful to come up here on pilgrimage to see the Ashes. I'm somewhat doubtful about this, considering the difficulties. There were the cultists, now admittedly mostly dead but we didn't turn over all the stones they might have been hiding under. There's the young dragons, which sometimes appeared out of nowhere to attack us and could presumably still do so. There's that series of tests at the end which we had to get through, and perhaps most importantly there's the dragon. I suspect they'd take a heavy toll of any groups of pilgrims less heavily armed than we are.

All my companions have there own viewpoint on this. Leliana thinks it would be unfair to deprive other believers of the chance to visit. Alistair wonders what would happen if everyone was allowed to take some of the Scared Ashes, unless the Urn has the ability to replenish them. Wynne thinks there's some value to such a pilgrimage even if it fails.

Personally, I'm not willing to kill someone to stop them talking about things they've seen. Since that appears to be the only way to stop Brother Gensonbutton, I tell him to go ahead and tell the Chantry. As a consolation, once they realise how dangerous it is some Templars may be assigned as guards up here. Maybe they can spend time playing with the dragon.

We head back to the village, mostly because I was stupid enough not to recognise that I could go anywhere on the map I wanted to. And it turns out that the guard who was so rude the first time I came through is still here! We must have missed him before somehow, and he's obviously so determined to stay at his post that he didn't come after us. Apparently now he's allowed to, and since discretion against people who he must have seen slaughtering large groups of his friends would be cowardice in his book, he launches a ferocious one man assault on us. Several stunning attacks later he is dead without managing to do any damage at all. Let that be a lesson about picking when it's a bad time to fight, dead guard guy.

There's a burial service for the dead cultists going on,which I rudely interrupt. They recognise me but apparently my reputation for homicidal bloodshed makes them less willing to engage in combat - although nasty remarks behind my back are another matter. Satisfies, I head back to camp.

Where I have deploy a variety of gifts to various party members, taking all of them except Sten well past +50 on their approval rating. I'm really not finding Sten very easy to get to talk to me, unlike some of the others, and I'm hope I can find some paintings soon to warm him up. Zevran perhaps needs some discouraging with most of his discussions turning to the subject of sex, specifically sex between me and him. He regales me with one of his early adventures, where he was hired to kill a female mage and instead spent most of coach journey having sex with her. It worked out very well, as she fell out of the coach and broke her neck when he kissed her goodbye, and everyone thought he was beign amazingly clever rather than unable to distinguish between business and pleasure. I have the benefit of being a mix of the two, apparently.

Wynne also wants to talk about sex, since she's a little worried about the relationship she thinks is developing between me and Alistair. She thinks it's a bad idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Grey Wardens we have responsibilities that are hard to combine with being in love with just one person. Secondly, there's the possibility that he's going to be the next king and will therefore have to marry a human noblewoman regardless of his wishes. While I stil am surprised that she doesn't realise Alistair is gay, I have to admit that her views aren't entriely irrational.

Leliana also has things to say when I talk to her. I ask her again that brought her to Ferelden and what she was before she came here, since I've heard that bards in Orlais often work as spies and even assassins. Eventually she tells me about her bard-teacher, Margarine. Apparently it was Margarine who taught Leliana her skills and gave her a series of jobs. Nobles in Orlais compete with each other as much as they can, but they can't do so openly without incurring the wrath of the Empress. So they do so quietly through spying, assaination, sabotage and other tricks. This is the sort of think Leliana did. Eventually she killed a courier and then investigated the documents he was carrying, which proved.that Margarine wasn't just selling information to and about various nobles, but was also doing so to other countries. This is apparently very serious, as it's defined as treason. Leliana's response was to reseal the documents and hand them over to Margarine, who she liked, to dispose of. It was therefore a big surprise when she was arrested a little while later by the Orlais Guard and shown the same documents, slightly altered to prove that it was Leliana who was the traitor. She was tortured to confess and incriminate her collaborators, the second task being probably beyond her abilities. Eventually she managed to escape (and she's evasive about how, but I have some guesses) and made her way to Ferelden where she took shelter in the Chantry in Lothering, found a certain amount of peace with herself, and got her hotline to god. I rather expect this to have consequences later. But since I'm nice about it, that's good for quite a lot of approval, more than I got for my most recent gift.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-Second

Wherein it takes very little time for Leliana's past to catch and overtake us; Alistair is proposed; and there's an outbreak of stealing in Denerim

Now that we have some Scared Ashes, it seems like a sensible time to return to Redcliffe and cure Arl Eamon. As soon as we leave camp, though, we get ambushed. We're heading along a narrow trail next to a stream when on higher ground opposite an assassin appears and orders his men/women to kill us. He then spends some time frozen next to a female mage, as Morrigan lets loose with a blizzard spell.

We're meanwhile rushed on our side of the stream by a Qunari mercenary and a warhound. Alistair takes on the Qunari while I do some horrid things to the unfortunate puppy, finishing it off with a kick below the waist. Since Alistair has the Qunari almost finished, I rush an archer and spend some time explaining to him that I don't like people shooting at me when I'm engaged in pest control work. Meanwhile Alistair decides that with the blizzard having blown out, he doesn't like being shot and magicked from across the stream and he's going to charge across the bridge and express his dislike face-to-face.

This might not have been his best idea ever. A fireball trap blows him off his feet, and he's then attacked by another Qunari and others. If there's one positive development in this it is that Morrigan and Leliana have dropped the enemy mage with a combination of magic and archery. It doesn't save Alistair, but my opponent drops and with their help I manage to finish off the Qunari and his mates before they can do much damage. We're still faced by the assassin leader, but he's at a disadvantage against three opponents all able to stun him.

Just like with Zevran he surrenders. Talking with him it becomes apparent that he was hired to kill Leliana and any of her companions, and we deduce that this must be the work of Margarine. I let Leliana decide his fate, and she lets him leave once we learn where to contact his employer in Denerim.

Now we head on on the Redcliffe Castle, and tell Bann Teagan that we have the cure for his brother. He takes us upstairs, and after the Arl has snorted the Ashes he makes a miraculous, drug-enhanced, recovery. Once he's caught up on what's happening we get down to the business of deciding what to do about TTW Loghain.

Arl Eamon sensibly believes that the middle of a Darkspawn invasion would be a bad time to fight a civil war. At the same time, he's very much in favour of getting TTW out of the picture. His idea is to remove him through political means. Apparently he has the prestige to call a Landsmeet, where all the nobles get together and make decisions about the future of Ferelden. In this event he will propose Alistair, as an illegitimate son of Kang Marek, should becoem king. Alistair objects, and I find that sadly there's no option to tell him to suck it up and be a man. It seems to me that this is a possible strategy, but until we have more idea about who is supporting each side we should be careful about making plans that are too rigid. Eamon agrees to start making the arrangements, and to try to prepare the opinion of the nobles for a move against TTW. He insists on giving us a reward, which I rarely say no to. Meanwhile we should carry on with our recruitment efforts using the Grey Warden treaties.

Which I do by heading off to Denerim. There are after all several quests blinking at me in my log telling me to go there and collect the reward for completing them, and it's quite likely that others will turn up in due course. So with Leliana, Wynne and Zevran in tow we visit our marvellous capital city.

There, we wander around dealing with a few things that I've picked up along the way in the last few quests. At the Chantry, there's a completed quest to get the reward for. I also visit the archivist and show her some very old writings we found in the shrine, which she's very excited by as they're some very early Chantry writings that haven't been known before. That proves to be worth a sizeable reward. We also visit Brother Genitivii's home, partly to check that he got back safely. He also rewards us, after saying that the Chantry wants him to lead an expedition to the shrine once the current troubles are over. My recommendation would be to take several Templars, since they useful both as defenders and to put on the fire on cold mountain nights.

We also eventually find the door which our assassin friend described. Inside, we deal easily with two guards, before entering the back room to find Margarine. She's an Orlesian lady, not as young and pretty as I think she'd like to believe, and rather dismissive of Ferelden. She thinks it smells of wet dogs. Which is probably true, but it's not something she is really in a good position to point out.

In the conversation that follows Marge makes it plain just how self-obsessed she is. She isn't at all sorry that she delivered Leliana to the guards with faked charges of treason, and is also quite sure that Leliana has been plotting against her since. This is proved by the fact that Leliana didn't stay in her sanctuary in the Chantry but left it to travel with a Grey Warden. Apparently trivial things like the Blight and a possible civil war don't mean very much to her and shouldn't to Leliana. In the end Leliana tells Marge to leave Ferelden, but I rather suspect her parting words suggest she won't go along with that request.

To cheer us up, I head over to a man I spoke to on our last visit, who has a number of profitable if somewhat illegal jobs available. As a Grey Warden I am of course entitled to conscript people and presumably to do the same thing with their property, so that makes it all perfectly acceptable. Some involve picking pockets, while others require stealth. He does expect you to pay for the information about who the mark is but all of them more profitable.

The first pickpocket one involves lifting a purse from a servant girl in the market, which was easily accomplished by Leliana. The second involved stealing a rather ornamental sword from a woman in the Wonders of Thedas shop. This is slightly harder, but eventually Zevran manages to sneak up to her and lift it without attracting attention. I found that the dwarf merchant in the market plae was very happy to buy things, no questions asked. The third, and most involved, required getting a key off a jewel merchant who is accompanied by two guards and using it to rob his chests in the marketplace. I do this by persuading the guards that I know him, and using a convincing line of blather about a party 'we' attended, where we apparently became intimate. A hug at the end gives me the perfect opportunity to lify his strongbox key. The chests hold some valuable gems as well as coin.

The first stealth one is something that I've apparently already done on my own initiative, breaking into the back rooms of the Gnawed Noble Inn. Apparently the things I stole from there earlier belonged to a mistress of the local lord. Although I don't remember and kinky underwear - Zevran probably took that before I saw it. The second involves rather more violence. Apparently the lord also uses a warehouse to store silver before shipping it out of the city, and if we can kill his guards we should be able to take it. I'm not entirely sure about this, and I don't think my contact particularly likes violence, but since this is something that helps TTW I decide to go ahead. Without a front line warrior in the group it's a very tough fight, which we eventually win in a very mobile combat. Wynne lurks in one corner throwing out healing and sometimes stun spells while being ignored by the guards. Meanwhile I, Zevran and Leliana move around using my patented 'Stun-and-Run' tactics where an enemy gets stabbed, stunned, and we move on to another. Eventually they start dropping through attrition, while we're still upright and healthy since few attacks are coming our way. I then make the mistake of trying to take the last two head on, and it turns out that three rogues against two tough warriors is not a great fight for the rogues. Without Wynne's magic, helped by looting a Lyrium potion off one of the bodies, this could have been embarrassing.

After this, there are no more jobs immediately available. I do visit an armourer who I checked the stock of earlier, since he'd commented that the material he had to work with was so poor. He's absolutely delighted to find that we have drake scales, and promises to make a suit of armour for free, although I pay ten sovereigns for a quicker service. And then, we head back to camp.

Here, I talk to all the party memebers as usual. Zevran is his normal suggestive self, Wynne is worried about me and claims that if she should die and I don't complete this she'll come back and haunt me. Alistair is interested to know what I think of our other companions, and is rather paranoid about Morrigan. Leliana is worried about something Marge said about her and Marge being very similar, both paranoid and dangerous. She seems to feel some regret for leaving the Chantry since it's making her fall back into her older, nastier habits. I point out that people who are really nasty tend not to worry about it the way she does, which seems to reassure her. Although if she tries to sell me a bridge I might get rather worried about her trustworthiness.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-third

Wherein It gets lost; and It finds someone who calls it It

I was intending to head to Dwarfland next, but while trying to find the way and getting that wrong we ran into a merchant. When we found him he was looking for his elf, who he'd sent to look for his mule, who was probably looking for some thistles if I know anything about mules. He didn't have anything to trade with us, but he did have something that, after a little persuasion, he was willing to give us.

My paranoia bone was tingling at this point. Merchants giving things away is very unusual. As it turned out, it was something he couldn't use himself and thought that we might be able to. He had a control rod for a golem, which are apparently dwarven fighting machines that they made when they couldn't get any proper warriors. He also had the activation code although the rest of the instruction manual wasn't available, which doesn't really matter since it would have been written in dwarvish and the translation never goes well.

Apparently this golem is located in a small village to the south, in what it appears from my map is an area very close to where the Blight is spreading. That suggests a degree of urgency in the task, which means I should probably drop the idea of going to Dwarfland now in favour of collecting the golem. I suppose it's possible that possessing a golem will impress the dwarves as well, though it could prove inconvenient if we get involved in legal battles over ownership. I'll let Morrigan handle any dwarven lawyers, which should be fun to watch assuming they haven't got injunctions against people turning into spiders and eating them.

Off we go on a jolly jaunt down south, only running into one random encounter involving a childless couple finding a child that has crashed to earth in a meteorite. They wander off with the child, and I'm sure he'll be a Super kid. I investigate the hole, and pick up a large lump of metal which apparently if we can find a really good smith (Wade in Denerim instantly comes to mind, since he made the drake scales into my current armour) could be made into really good armour/weapons.

When we reach the village, they've put up decorations. There's something hanging from the gate posts, which I assumed would indicate they're aware of my status as a Grey Warden Ninja and Ferelden's Last Hope. It is slightly disappointing that they've sacrificed humans, but perhaps in small villages they're rather short of other ideas.

As we approach, two villagers come running towards us screaming. Clearly they are great fans here. My smile fades a little when they run straight past, but the explanation soon becomes apparent. They're being chased by a mighty horde of... three Genlocks?

This is just slightly insulting of the Darkspawn. I kill ogres, spellcasters, the really nasty alpha ones and now they're sending three genlocks after me. I refuse to take them seriously, and wander off to pick flowers while Alistair, Wynne and Sten deal with them in short order. If the Darkspawn are going to behave like this I won't take them seriously any more.

Fortunately the next group is a little more formidable. One spellcaster, admittedly not a very good one, who Wynne turns to stone, several hurlocks and some archers. They aren't the hardest fight, but at least it indicates the Darkspawn are taking us seriously again. There's a chest which needs a key to open just past them, so I remind myself to check all the human corpses until we find it.

We head around the path towards what seems to be the centre of the village, and soon we can see what I assume to be the golem posing in the middle of a patch of grass. It's quite large, and made of stone. It also has an accompanying band of darkspawn, who make a serious attempt to kill us. I do find it annoying when you're fighting some large formidable enemy to have archers plinking away at you at the same time, so I suppose having Leliana along does the same for our enemies. Not one of the darkspawn survives very long in combat with Alistair and Sten, who make a formidable combination.

When we approach the golem, Wynne tells us what it is. I had noticed, dearie. Trying the rod and the activation word, nothing happens. I suppose we'll need to find someone who knows what it is, which probably means finding one of the villagers. Looking around I pick up the key to the chest and loot that, before finally finding a door we can open just past the golem.

It appears we're in a brewery. There's a fairly sizeable infestation of darkspawn, and our merry band of pest exterminators gets to do what we're best at. And I take some ale, since it's got Gift carefully scrawled across it in my inventory. Though as yet, I haven't found any alcoholic companions unless Wynne is keeping secrets from me.

Eventually we exterminate the last darkspawn, not without Alistair managing to get himself shot through with holes and nearly dead as is not all that uncommon. I'm already considering replacing him as party tank with something made of stone - there'll be less blood to mop up afterwards. There's a group of humans behind a magic barrier, who seem very pleased to see us.

The brewmaster, who seems to be the one who activates the magic barrier, talks to us. He doesn't seem to like the golem much as it killed his father, who was the mage that owned the golem. However, he's willing to give us the command word to activate it and take it away, provided we do a little task for him. Nothig is ever quite as easy as you think it should be.

Apparently his daughter got scared when the darkspawn arrived, and ran away into the laboaratory the mage used before he picked up that bad case of squashed by a golem. We need to get her out before he'll help us, although there do seem to be some intimidation options which might make that unnecessary. Unfortunately City Elf Ninjas are notoriously soft-hearted when t comes to children, so I agree to find her.

Most of the lab is quite easy to work through, but in the final room we find the girl and a talking cat. Apparently the cat would like to get out, has the girl charmed, and we can only get her free if we solve the puzzle that the mage uses to confine her. Since it's a simple sliding blocks puzzle I agree to let kitty free.

I spend a little time sliding blocks around and watching Alistair walking into fires - bad Alistair, we've talked about this - before finally getting everything right. Kitty seems very pleased with herself, before I point out that free is one thing, alive is a separate matter. This makes her angry, which scares the child, and with the little girl having run away Kitty ends up summoning some minor demons and trying to fight us. As I pointed out, free and alive were not entirely compatible states.

Returning, we receive the well merited congratulations of the brewer and his daughter, and get the command word off him. Using it is simple enough.

The golem has apparently forgotten most of it's history, with no memories of a time before it was stood in this village. It, or Shale as it's name is, doesn't really seem to like the villagers much, although it also doesn't like the darkspawn as it finds them boring. The control rod doesn't seem to work except to get the golem moving, so this is apparently the worlds first free-willed golem. For the moment, Shale will accompany me since it's got nothing better to do. And it will call me "It" as well, at least until something better comes along.

I've been promoted to "It" by a lump of animated rock. This makes me so happy.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-fourth

Wherein we already killed someone; we kill someone else; and we take their stuff

A quick trip to Denerim next allows me to order a second set of drake-skin armour from Wade, which pleases him a lot more than it does his shopkeeper. Considering I've spent thirty gold in there, I don't see why he's so bothered. I am now thoroughly impoverished in coin, but rich in virtue.

Which makes it practical to go visit the Antivan Crows, who gave me a contact point in the Neutered Noble Tavern earlier. Especially since for some reason I don't have my normal, slightly squeamish companions with me. I don't imagine Sten or Morrigan will have a problem with killing random strangers for money, and I'm certain Zevran will be useful in dealing with the Crows.

Not entirely unexpectedly, the person we meet is the senior of the two Antivan merchants from the market-place. He and Zevran exchange words, with Zevran rather suspicious about the Crows interest and Master Ignacio dismissive of him since having failed in a task he's already dead as far as the Crows are concerned. Apparently the current turmoil in Ferelden - the Blight, a potential civil war, various scores being settled - makes it a profitable area for assassins. Since the Crows are short in number in the area he's willing to accept freelance help, especially from people who've shown the ability to survive Crow ambushes in the past.

He won't however give us any tasks directly, since there is still at least one group of Crows trying to kill the last Grey Wardens in Ferelden. Apparently it would offend against the groups honour, and most importantly would lead to him picking up a nasty case of dead. He is however willing to show interesting documents to his acquantainces, and if those documents happen to include the name of people who he would is being paid to see dead that is an interesting coincidence. While if someone should happen to look in the chest behind him while he's distracted after one of these people turned up dead, he could hardly be expected to notice if they took something from it. It's all a very civilised way to do business.

Sadly, his first target is already dead. I ask if there's an extra reward for speedy delivery, but in this case there isn't. Since the person in question was engaged in ambushing Grey Wardens who responded to a poster in the market-place, and I'd already seen that poster and investigated, the reward comes quickly enough to surprise him. Two more operations are immediately available, one involving finding (and killing) a group of Qunari mercenaries in the countryside and the other involving an ambassador in Dwarfland. The second will have to wait, but the first will get me out of town long enough for Wade to finish the armour.

The Qunari don't prove much of a problem. Morrigan drops a blizzard spell over part of the group, and the others aren't a match for Sten's ferocity, Zevran's sneakiness, more of Morrigan's magic, and my general ninja awesomeness. Once they're down, the others have recovered from the blizzard just in time to charge us and die in turn. A quick task, and a quick reward, with a bonus that Wade's second and superior set of drake-scale armour is ready when we get back.

Meanwhile, I've been mulling it over and I decide that this is the right time to pay a visit to Flemmeth. Morrigan wants her dead and I've agreed to try it, so if I'm going to I think now is the right time. I head back to camp, chat to Zevran and Leliana a little more (she does like fashion, doesn't she, and I'm rather disappointed that she doesn't wear those shoes I gave her even if they are impractical), and with Wynne, Alistair and Shale in tow we head down into the Wilds. One ambush later, where Shale looks really impressive and some darkspawn get impressed to death, and we're at Flemmeth's hut.

She's rather a talkative old lady, really. We almost come to an agreement, since she is willing to disappear and let us have her grimoire, but I can't help thinking this would be a bad idea. She says at one point that she'd find it very amusing to turn up suddenly and surprise Morrigan, and if she did that while we're fighting another group of enemies I don't think that would turn out too well for us. Even though it would be funny to see Morrigan's face when it happened.

So with some regrets I turn Flemmeth down and say we'll have to kill her. I was expecting this to be a tough fight, but then she turns into a dragon.

Right.

This could be harder than I thought.

I quick trawl through inventories later, Shale has several crystals embedded that provide fire resistance, Alistair has slathered on some sort of sunscreen that protects against being burnt which given his habit of walking into flames seems like a good idea to have on permanently, I've noticed that Wade's armour gives me hefty fire resistance, and we're heading in to fight dragon-Flemmeth. Rather disgustingly she spits on us, which I suppose should have been expected with her name even after it's original spelling has been altered.

Sadly, being not particularly flammable doesn't provide much protection when a dragon is smashing you around physically. Even with Wynne activating her dangerous Vessel of the Spirit ability to regain mana faster and throwing healing around as if it's confetti at a wedding she can't keep up with the damage dragon-Flemmeth can put out. Alistair is enormously good since he can stay upright and not be pushed back, so he is able to stay right on Flemmeth except when he's stunned or being used as a chew toy. Shale has a lovely Quake trick which actually knocks dragon-Flemmeth back on one occasion, and does plenty of damage to her. I make a discovery that I'd rather have avoided, that backstabbing a dragon is not an entirely safe proposition. That's what the tail is for, and I spend significant parts of the fight picking myself out of the bushes and moving in again. We're slathering on healing poultices with increasing frequency, and then Alistair goes down, Shale is on his last legs, Wynne is injured and on fire with nearly all her mana gone, and then time starts to slow done.

It turns out, White Elves Can Jump! I'm up, there's a dragon's head in front of me, and there I am showing one of my weapons into the brain via the right nostril, while the other goes in through the soft bit just behind the left ear. And that was our first dragon kill. A few minutes looting later, we have a grimoire and a new set of robes for Morrigan and set off back to camp.

I can?t help looking at the carcass and worrying. We?re going to have to buy an awful lot of stuffing, find a really big oven, and I'll have to consult with Zevran and Leliana when we get back as I don't know what wine to serve with roast dragon.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-fifth

Wherein the obvious conclusion makes TTW even more revolting; we clear trash off the porch; and the choices don't look good

Morrigan is delighted when we get back. She's going to spend her time studying her mother's grimoire, in the hope that it will give her enough magic to stand up to her mother when she eventually has to fight her. It appears that she is still certain that being dead won't be more than a temporary problem for Flemmeth. Maybe we needed to stab her harder? Sadly, her new robes still look like her old ones, and I'm forced to accept that if I travel around with her everyone will assume we're a troupe of exotic dancers. Except for Sten.

I'm rather looking forward to Dwarfland. Theme parks are fun, and I should have no trouble with the minimum height requirement on most of the rides. Sadly, it involves a long trip into the mountains. When we get close, there's a rather annoying ambush by a small party of bounty hunters. There are better ways to earn cash than this, boys and girls, but I suspect that with Shale smashing your heads in, Leliana shooting you, Wynne keeping us healed, and me wandering around stabbing people when their back is turned this is a lesson that the people in question will not get to apply.

Outside the gates is a rather ramshackle camp of dwarfs and others. To my delight, we find the last renegade mercenary and kill him. That should help improve our current impoverished state when I can claim the reward. Hopefully there'll be someone inside to get it from.

It seems that there's a problem in Dwarfland, and they've closed the gates. Plenty of people have things to say about it, but as surface living dwarfs they don't have much knowledge or any say. When we go up to the gate, there are representatives of TTW 'King' Loghain demanding entrance. This is confusing. As far as I'm aware he was only claiming to be Regent for his perfectly adult daughter, and yet here are his diplomats being insulting and claiming that he's the king. The only sensible conclusion is that he's since got married to the Queen. Since she's his daughter, and he is already married, the squick factor in this is enormous.

The dwarfs aren't letting these ambassadors in despite their claims, but although at first they refuse to allow me in once I present the Grey Warden treaties and identify myself as a Grey Warden the door guard decides to let me in. This infuriates TTW's men, who insist that I killed the previous king and I am a traitor who needs arresting. When they insist on a fight we're told to take it off the porch.

Which I'm perfectly happy to do. We're very evenly matched, with two front line fighters, an archer, and a mage on each side. Unfortunately for them, they just aren't as good is my battle-hardened desperadoes. The leader is the last to fall, rather futilely bashing himself against Shale who has a force-field up courtesy of Wynne and is therefore immune to damage. When we're done, the dwarf doorwarden thanks us for taking the trash off his doorstep and lets us in.

Inside is very impressive. High vaulted ceilings, columns, armoured guards standing around looking impressive, carvings, etc. There are also some statues of dwarves which according to a mother who's busily berating her daughter for lack of sufficient application are incredibly lifelike statues of the paragons, and if the daughter ever wants to be a paragon herself she will need to sculpt that well. I take a careful look, and conclude that apprently becoming a dwarf paragon involves becoming exceptionally tall. Some might be as big as Sten. This presumably means that dwarfs respect height, and while I am not tall for an elf I'm still taller that most dwarfs and should get a lot of respect here.

As we move further in, there's a confrontation between two groups of dwarves. They appear to be supporters of rival factions trying to make their leader the next dwarf king. After a few accusations, one of Prince Baylin's men takes matters into his own hands and strikes a supporter of Lord Harrowmound with his axe, whereupon the others flee and his group retires in triumph.

The local Watch Captain isn't too happy that we've seen this, since it gives a bad impression of what dwarfs are like. I suspect he'd be horrified by the civil war in Ferelden, and even more so by the things that pass for normal in Orlais and Antiva given the stories I've heard about those places from Leliana and Zevran. It seems I won't be getting my army of dwarfs until the matter of the kingship is settled once and for all.

By now I've realised that the best way to deal with problems like this is to settle them myself, so I invite myself into the middle of a disagreement between two people I know nothing about on a matter which I don't understand. We wander around this area, admiring the architecture, though Wynne is sensibly doubtful about the benefits of building a city around streams of molten lava. Certainly the fumes they give off can't be beneficial to people's health.

We do find a dwarf dressed in Chantry robes, who addresses us in the manner of the clerics. It seems that he's interested in starting a branch of the chantry in Orzammar, but needs the permission of the Shaperate. Since I need information I ask him a few questions, learning that the Shaperate is a group of what I'd call historians and genealogists who keep Dwarfland records with even more vigour than the Chantry does in human lands. I promise to speak to the head Chanter about it. which pleases Leliana and Wynne.

I then make the mistake of heading into the bad part of town, which the dwarfs call Dust-Town, and there I get ambushed by a group of thugs. Annoyingly after I think they're all dead there's still one hiding in a corner sniping us with his crossbow, who gets finished off by Leliana and Wynne. Except for this bit of violence, in many ways this reminds me of home in the Alienage, and it makes me rather nostalgic. I have a short chat with one dwarf woman who doesn't have the facial tattoos that the others sport, and it turns out that she's been thrown out by her family because she had a child with one of the locals. She won't be allowed back until she abandons the child in the Deep Roads where it will be eaten by darkspawn or other creatures. I promise to speak to her father about this, who can apparently be found in a tavern back in the Commons.

Heading back to the Commons, we visit the tavern. While looking for the father I get into a conversation with a dwarf noble who is a member of the Assembly, and who has rather radical ideas about restructuring their society. While I'm coming to the conclusion that he's right and something needs to be done, I'm not sure how to start going about it.

We do find the father, and I guilt-trip him into taking back both his daughter and her child. After all, he can't forget his daughter so how can he expect her to forget her son? I head back to Dust-town to give her the happy news.

Afterwards we go to the Diamond Quarter where the dwarf nobles live. For the moment I ignore the places where the two competing factions are based, and go round to the Shaperate. There, a junior Shaper complains that someone had stolen a book, and with a little persuasion he tells me that it was someone from Dust-town and gives me a description. I'll look into that later.

Walking around I find a lot of information about Dwarfland and it's people, and more and more I think that a revolution is likely to happen whatever they want. I'm even more convinced of this after I talk with the head Shaper, who treats any dwarfs who go to the surface or who come from Dust-town as if they barely exist and are little more than animals. And I also learn something of dwarf history, a bit of background about golems, and that there's a living paragon who has been missing in the deep roads for a couple of years. I do persuade him to allow the Chantry to open, suggesting that they'll help with charity for widows and children when their families fail to.

On the way back to the Chantry dwarf to give him the happy news, I interrupt a group of thugs shaking down a merchant for protection money. They aren't very good at it, and when I follow the inside they try to shake me down. Apparently I'm wearing fancy armour and have other good gear, and if I want protection from having an accident I can pay them 10 sovereigns.

Which I haven't got at the moment. My counter offer is that if they clear off I won't inflict grevious bodily harm on them, and they accept that this is a very good offer, much better than theirs, and scarper. This makes the merchant happy, and he offers me a discount on his rather nice range of goods.

Eventually I get back to Chantry-dwarf, and give him the good news. He has a building lined up for temporary use as a chapel, since he's already converted a local merchant, and we're invited to his first service. Until that's ready though, it's back to Dust-town to track down the book-thief. And explain to him how hard they are to fence, and how limited the market is. Believe me, if Wynne doesn't want the books, I rarely find a good selling price.

I've also got a serious decision to make. I have enough information about the two candidates for the throne to have an idea what they're like. Lord Whatshisname is a traditionalist, who thinks everything is fine as it is and there's no need for changes. This seems to overlook a lot of things that are happening in Dwarfland, which are going to make things happen anyway. Prince Thingy stands for change, but the people he's attracted seem to be a rather nasty bunch of thugs and malcontents who are going to cause unnecessary trouble. And I'm not sure of his ethics. I'd really like to find a candidate who isn't as nasty as one or as hide-bound as the other. Maybe this Paragon I've heard about?

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-Sixth

Wherein people just don't stop to listen; and dwarf politics is all about killing things

In Dust-Town, we find the dwarf who we're looking for. As soon as the subject is brought up, he attacks us. I'm not sure whether he thinks this is important enough to die for, whether he just doesn't care if he lives or dies, or whether he's actually so stupid that he thinks he can win the fight. Whichever it is, this was probably the stupidest and certainly the last decision of his life. Searching his body, we find a losing betting slip from an arena fight, which suggests where he's been recently.

Before going to the arena, I decide to visit Lord Whatsits' estate and start working for him. It's not that I particularly agree with his conservative viewpoint. It's possible that I'm looking at things in the wrong way, but I don't think it's possible for the situation in Dwarfland to stay as it is forever. Yet his opponent, who seems to want changes, is going about it in a way that will cause a lot of instability. I'd rather have an army from a kingdom that's stable than one from a kingdom that's unstable. Since there's no really preferable candidate, I'll do what I can to support the one who seems most likely to give me what the world needs more.

The Lords' estate is in the Diamond Quarter, and that's where we go. His agent has some work for us when we get there. Apparently the Prince has sponsored a series of games in the Proving to commemorate his father, and they'd like me to enter to show that the Grey Wardens support the Lord. We should also try to find out why some of the other fighters who they'd sent to take part have withdrawn suddenly.

Outside, we're leaving the area when we observe a confrontation between a drunk-sounding dwarf and a nobleman. When the drunk leaves, we approach and find out that he, Oghren, was the husband of the only living dwarf Paragon, who went into the Deep Roads a couple of years ago. Oghren wants another search organised for her, which since all the others have failed is not something people are willing to do. Given the status paragons have I'm a little surprised by this, but since the Deep Roads are thoroughly overrun by darkspawn and other monsters her survival seems extremely unlikely. This seems like yet another hint that at some point we'll have to go into the Deep Roads and look for her.

When we get to the arena, I decide that rather than start the fights immediately I'll deal with the two reluctant dwarfs who would also have been fighting for Whatdoyoucallhim. The first is in the main room as we go in, and is quick to explain that he's withdrawn for the good of his health. Apparently he was involved in an affair with a member of the royal house, and now some of the letters have fallen into the hands of the Prince's supporters. Since they'd give people an excuse to exile or kill him, he isn't going to do anything to upset the opposition. Although learning that the person who has them is in a nearby room sets my and Leliana's pickpocketing fingers twitching. We wander off to find the woman in question, and then set to work taking everything she hasn't got fastened to her body. Sadly, no letters. Then I notice a room that belongs to her. Locks are a minor obstacle to Leliana, and soon there's an open door, an open chest, and some love letters. We return them in triumph to the dwarf warrior, and he heads off to enter the lists.

The other dwarf we're trying to get to join the fight is in the opposite direction. He has pulled out simply because he's been told that Lord Thingamy isn't really interested in becoming king any more. When I tell him, untruthfully, that the Lord is still in the running he finds himself angry enough to, as I suggest, go into the Proving and crack a few heads.

We find a group of people who are probably rather nasty, at least their names include Thug, so I approach them thinking they might know something about book-theft. Before we can talk things out, they attack! And Die! And the book is one of the bodies. The person they are talking to would be willing to pay me for it rather than them, but I'm an honourable Grey Warden and would never do such a thing; unless he offered rather more money than he is.

I also approach a Proving Armsman who I thought might be selling things. Instead, it turns out that he'll arrange some fights which are outside the main series of arena battles with money prizes. This seems like a profitable enterprise, and it so proves. In a series of four fights, we beat some of Orzammar's younger fighters and earn the approval of the Armsman who believes they will learn valuable lessons from fights against unfamiliar opponents. In addition to the small amount of money, he gives us a ring that belonged to a blood-mage and which enhances blood-magic - how incredibly useful.

I've already talked to most of the opposing fighters and learnt something about them, so now I start the sequences of battles. The first is with a fighter who seemed very enthusiastic about helping the Grey Wardens, and perhaps even becoming one himself. I'm a little sorry that defeating him reduced his enthusiasm, but with a little charm he decides to work harder and become a better fighter. The second involves me fighting on my own against a pair of dwarven twins. I concentrate on the rogue, stunning him and moving round to finish him off before worrying about the fighter, as I'm well aware of how dangerous rogues can be when left to do their own thing.

For the third fight, I go alone against one of the Silent Sisters, and her defeat is apparently a blow to the Prince as the support of the Sisters is valuable. The next involves two opponents, but this time I get to fight with an ally and the fight is easier than the earlier two-against-one fight, with my dwarf companion taking the brunt of the attacks while I stun one opponent and backstab the other.

The last fight is the toughest, involving me and the two dwarfs against a noble from house Aeducan and his warband, who have been undeated in the Proving. Every winning streak comes to an end eventually, and today just happens to be their day. On this occasion I delay slightly till I've seen what fights start, then move in to stun one of our opponents to make the fights more even, do some very aggressive stabbing into the kidneys of one of our opponents, and help finish of the second. By this stage the noble and one archer are the only opponents still up, although one of my companions has just dropped. We set on the noble, finish him off with a flurry, and the two of us are more than a match for one missile specialist. As the Proving Master announces today's victor, I stand there looking noble, supporting Lord Whoeveritis and hoping that everything will be done before I need to visit the bathroom.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-seventh

Wherein we get another task that involves dealing with people who don't listen; and we're going for a trip

They're not very generous, dwarf shapers. The reward for returning their lost book was a thank you and that seems to be it. Perhaps they assume that elves enjoy killing things and don't need any other reward. Although we did get something out of the shaper involved, after a little pick-pocketing, so it wasn't a waste of time.

Meanwhile, we went back to Lord For-thirty-generations estate, where this time he was willing to talk to us - though at first not look at us, since he talked without turning round. He now wanted us to perform another task for him. There's a criminal group, the Carta, some of whose members I actually interrupted earlier when they were performing a shakedown rather badly. With Dwarfland somewhat disordered at the moment they are starting to interfere with people who really matter. While they confined their activities to the people of Dust-town they could be ignored, but now something has to be done about them. Preferably by people associated with this Lord, since he can then use it as a weapon in his political struggles. Having burnt my boats with Prince Thingy, I don't imagine there's any real alternative to going in and cleaning them out.

We head back to Dust-town, where I eventually find someone willing to talk to me about the Carta. The only way to get into their buildings is to have the necessary token, which is a finger-bone with a particular carving on it pushed through a slot in the door. Now all we need is a gang to beat the hell out of and take their finger bone and of course any other valuables they have.

We wander around for a while without success till eventually I get bored and decide a little breaking and entering would pass the time. If people leave their doors inadequately locked it's clearly a Grey Warden's duty to ensure a building that might have Darkspawn in is secured, and if we're foing all this work for people we should be entitled to a reward. In this case, there's no Darkspawn but we do find part of the gang. Yet again, some dwarfs decide that their honour requires fighting rather than negotiation, although in this case they do have us slightly outnumbered. Remarkably this time their leader surrenders when he's seriously wounded. We get the required token off him and I politely suggest that being present when we storm the headquarters could be a bad career move.

Across the street there's an entrance to the underground lair. We push the finger bone through the slot, opening the door. Inside, we quickly run into a party of guards. From their reaction, 'Run off home and I won't kill you' is not the correct password. I didn't think it was too likely. The fight is short and vicious, rather like the dwarfs involved, and the loot is quite decent.

Most of the rest of the base is a mix of tunnels and occupied rooms where we have a series of nasty fights. There is a rather bizarre sequence where someone has rigged a chest with traps that can only be disarmed if you take the cheapest item from three other chests before opening it. Once we've done this, it's perfectly possible to head back and take everything else from the three chests, and noticeably more profitable. We also find a dwarf prisoner in a cell block, whose friend died only a day or so before. I wonder if they hadn't paid their protection money, or if they were being held for ransom, but the survivor darts off without saying.

Eventually we clear the rest of the headquarters out, and find the leader of the Carta. I hadn't realised from the name, but it turns out to be a woman. We have a rather futile conversation, since she's convinced that she and her group is perfectly capable of beating the people who've killed the rest of her gang. She is confident enough to order them to leave the pretty one alive, which I suspect rather confuses her followers since it's hard for them to know which of us she means. Anyway it makes them fight badly, and it's only after she falls and Shale makes a dash straight through a tripwire attached to a fireball trap that we have any problems. The loot is exceptionally good, which makes me happy, except for the fact that there's so much of it we have to come back to pick the remainder up.

An exit nearby takes us into a smith's shop, who is appalled that we've broken a hole in his wall. Once we point out that the tunnel leads to the Carta base he stops complaining, as while he claims to know nothing about it he does acknowledge that the guards are rather likely not to believe him. With this act of minor vandalism forgiven, we make two trips to a local merchant to offload the poorer goods and head back to Lord Himself's estate to see what else he wants us to do.

Joyously, he wants us to head into the Deep Roads. The place where the Darkspawn lurk when that aren't invading the surface. In search of the Paragon who disappeared two years ago, who he hopes will support his candidacy for King.

This is certain to work.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-Eighth

Wherein we go where claustrophobes won't; find body parts; and come across bits of a sword

Our first stop in the Deep Roads is a merry little place called Caridin's Cross. I'm not sure what he's cross about, but I feel the same way. Before we can get very far we run across a group of thugs who work for the Prince and who want to take out a little frustration on us. That makes three groups in total. If they'd combined their efforts they might even have had some success, but not this way. We kill them, rather easily.

Unfortunately passing on along the main route is impossible as it has collapsed. That means the side tunnels, where I have been placing traps in case enemies come out, will have to be used. Optimistically I try to believe that we're not walking into a maze full of horrible darkspawn who want to eat my face. This belief turns out to be false.

Not that it really matters. I'm absolutely astonished at one point, where we get surprised by some Shrieks, a group of Genlocks, and an Ogre. Leliana has a close encounter with a Shriek and has drawn her blades to stab away, and Wynne is concentrating on keeping Shale up as he methodically ploughs his way through the genlocks that are mobbing him. That leaves me going alone against the ogre. I'm just hoping to keep it occupied long enough for the others to pile in and finish it, and have a series of healing poultices ready. Eventually it dies, and I turn around and stab the last genlock.

Then it hits me. I just killed an ogre. Myself, with no help. I'm not even badly hurt.

Go City Elf Ninja Duellist Grey Wardens!

Wandering further through the area, once we're back on the main road section we come across a group of Genlocks. They've even prepared for us by setting up a ballista. Sadly for them, it points the wrong way for fighting us. On the other hand, it's great for shooting the other group from behind. That was fun.

A little way round the corner, I notice a glass phelycatry... phlyatecry... phylcatery.. fancy bottle thingy. There have been a lot of others around, which I've never really felt like investigating. Now, inspired by shooting a big monster up the backside with a ballista and taking an ogre on solo, I pull it out. The stupid thing promptly breaks.

I think I know why investigating them was a bad idea. It lets out a revenant, which promptly decides to reward us for releasing it. It will give us a quick death, while the rest of the world suffers. Or at least that seems to be the sadly mistaken idea in Mr Revenant's head. He gets rather heavily beaten around the head by me and Shale, but while Leliana is shooting arrows into him he uses a bit of magic that pulls her towards him, at which he gives her a good stabbing. I get her back out of the melee, but he manages to repeat the trick a little later. If that had happened to Wynne and we'd been without her healing, I don't think this fight would have gone anywhere near as well as that much damage might have dropped her. Fortunately one of Shale's niftier tricks knocks the Revenant down, and while it's standing up we pile on enough damage to finish it off. But that was a tough fight. We'll have to go and find the other bottles and kick them around for the XP and treasure when this is done.

Wandering around some of the side tunnels, mostly because we're very close to levelling up and they are a good source of experience, we find a sack which holds part of a demon. Apparently it was divided into pieces and the pieces were scattered around the Deep Roads. It seems that this was because it couldn't be killed and had to be split apart to stop it rampaging about. We also find evidence of a group of dwarf prospectors operating in the area, who may or may not be missing presumed dead, but who might have left some valuable stuff lying around. And there's a piece from a sword, belonging to a surface warrior who came to the tunnels after the last Blight and seems to have rather annoyed at least one dwarf from the message we found with it. Sadly, what we don't find is quite enough darkspawn or those rather horrid looking rat creatures to level up. Instead, we go back to the area exit and having found the next area we should head for (Ortan Thaig) I decide to make a quick trip back to Dwarfland to sell the piles of junk that we've picked up on this little excursion.

I also have a chat with Leliana while there, and rather disturbing it is too. She thinks I'm leading Alistair on. She mustn't be as observant as I am, in not recognising his preferences. And since he's likely to be the next King of Ferelden if we succeed, there's no way at all that I'm going to start sleeping with him. He can't marry me, and I'd certainly spoil him for other women. I try to reassure her, with some success, although I am surprised to discover that we're in a relationship. I thought I was just being friendly. I'll have to be careful what I say to Morrigan, since she's my best friend apart from Shep. And perhaps Wynne, though she seems not to be as interested in my love life any more - though she does tell me about an apprentice of hers, and when the quest appears in my book I can guarantee we'll be running into him. Meanwhile Shale thinks I'm rather cool, for a meatbag, and we should find some Darkspawn to kill to cheer ourselves up.

Oh, and Leliana wants a Nug. So I get her one. But it's only one pet each, people. I only get Shep, and we're not a travelling circus. Although thinking about it we've got some people who belong in one.

[Bluenose]

Part the Thirty-Ninth

Wherein we put a demon back together; and then kill it; which is pretty pointless when you think about it

Ortan Thaig is rather a mess. The road is broken, again, but fortunately the Darkspawn tunnels There's some rather ferocious fighting between darkspawn and spiders here, which in general the darkspawn sem to be getting the worst of. I decide not to break it up, but rather than get too close we stand back and use ranged weaponry in support of whichever is currently losing the fight, until almost nothing remains of our enemies. Then we wander over and stab the survivors. The only awkward moment comes when our clean-up is interrupted by an unusually powerful shriek, but since it is on it's own after the last spider falls we deal with it effectively. Shrieks remind me of rogues in some ways, dealing a lot of damage but rather fragile in combat once you start hitting them. Nearby is the grave of the surfacer, though we still haven't found all the bits of his sword - although since he was an elf, it's going to be done no matter how long it takes.

Further on we reach the settlement area, and find ourselves fighting not only the expected darkspawn but also spirits and even stone golems. The golems are rather nasty since while they don't do huge amounts of damage it's hard to take them down, so I find it's better to clear everything else away before seriously attacking them. Lot's of loot around here, and I've got a fairly clear inventory to pick it up. We also recover the last demon part, so probably there's something to do with it around here.

Then, we run into a rather unexpected dwarf. Back in dwarfland a mother asked me to look for her missing son, and although I expected to find a corpse I promised to do so. Unfortunately he's got a bad case of crazy going on, and also insists that this is his claim and we can't share it. Then he runs away, leaving us to be attacked by a sizeable group of spiders. On a roll, we pursue into another group of enemies, and then over a bridge into yet another, and another, and it's time to break out the healing poultices because we're all pretty messed up. Looking around afterwards, we seem to have provoked every enemy in the area to attack us in waves, and to have dealt with them. I don't think I want to do it this way again, even if we did survive.

While wandering around looting corpses, we find an interesting altar with a book talking about a dangerous demon that got dismembered here. I've got a good idea, let's put some demon body parts on it and see what happens. The answer is, the demon appears. It actually takes a moment to talk to us but I'm not interested in a reward, and we chop it back up; this time, for real. Afterwards I start to worry that the darkspawn juice Grey Wardens drink is affecting my mind, since I've just refused a reward. Perhaps Wynne could keep an eye on me, since she's got a sensible head on her. It sometimes has me wondering why she's travelling with this bunch.

We track down the missing mad dwarf, and he's rather unhappy to see us. When I try to persuade him otherwise he's adamant that he doesn't want his mother to know that he's still alive, and eventually I see his point that insane darskpawnpophagi aren't people you want in your family tree and agree to lie about him being dead. After which he calms down somewhat and agrees to trade with us, selling a rather nice variety of gems in exchange for a pile of darkspawn weapons and other cheap tat that we've picked up here and there. It's certainly better than returning to Dwarfland. On the way out, Leliana lifts a rather nice gem from his pockets, which makes it an even better deal, although we probably shouldn't come back this way in a hurry.

Further on, we run into more spiders. And even more spiders. With a couple of Genlock spellcasters. And some more spiders. And Branka's Journal. And that's a very very big spider standing near it, which summons yet more spiders. As we damage the spider queen, every so often she webs all of us and vanishes, while the spiders continue chomping on us. Eventually Wynne runs out of mana, and while I'm not paying proper attention Shale gets dropped by the persistent damage. Which leaves me tanking mama spider, which is not a particularly pleasant situation for someone as fragile as a ninja-duellist. For a moment when she goes down I'm delighted, but that leaves a bunuch more spiders coming in after revenge. It's pretty apparent that they're going to overwhelm me, so I take a desperate gamble. Once they're on top of me, I'm ground zero for two acid flasks, one of mine and one from Leliana. This drops me, but it also hurts the spiders, and when Leliana follows up with a shot that stuns and damages the whole group it gives her time to throw another acid flask and finish them off. The best thing is, being drenched in acid hasn't affected my perfect complexion.

Reading Branka's journal afterwards, it appears that what she was looking for wasn't in Ortan Thaig. She's pressing on to find the Anvil of the Void, which is beyond some place called the Dead Trenches. Sounds pretty ominous.

On the way, we get interrupted slightly. W're just approaching a bridge when we see a darskpawn horde marching beneath it. There's a lot of them, genlocks, hurlocks and ogres together. Oh look, they've also got air support. Hello, Mr Archdemon Dragon Sir. If you don't mind, that's the bridge we want to use, so if you don't mind finishing your little pep talk, breathing glitter on your followers, and flying off through the cavern roof I'd be very obliged. Thank you.

I'm fairly sure my expression at this point says something like how am I supposed to kill that thing. I guess we'll work something out.

[Bluenose]

Part the Fortieth

Where the Dead Trenches aren't as dead as all that; and we find out what happens to bad dwarfs

Somewhat shaken after that little encounter with the Archdemon, we move on to the Dead Trenches. So called, as we quickly discover, because they're defended by a group of dwarves known as the Dead Legion. Joining the Dead Legion is equivalent to a declaring yourself dead, as the knowledge we find in the form of statues, diaries, and lost letters informs us. As we enter the area, there's a group lounging around at one end of a bridge.

Before we can talk very much, a wave of darkspawn come across the bridge. We and the legionaires engage them, and they fall fairly quickly. Another wave follows, and another, and at some point our party has advanced most of the way across the bridge. The Legion hasn't. At this point I could care less, since we/ve handled everything so far. The ogre backed up by Genlock archers and invisible Shrieks on the far side does become a bit of a problem, mostly because Shale gets busy with the archers when I'd prefer him to be tanking the ogre. Fortunately it's no tougher than the other ogres, and I can't believe I can write that, and the shrieks are always pretty quick to die once you can concentrate on them.

Once we've cleared the bridge and the far side of darkspawn, guess what group of dwarf heroes turn up. Yes, the Dead Legion have yet again driven back a darkspawn incursion to prove their general awesomeness, or so I'm sure they'll report it. I suppose they were following us, but when you're dead it's hard to move as fast as a lump of stone like Shale. Anyway, their leader is of the opinion that searching for Branka is a fools errand, since she's gone even beyond this area into places even the dead Legion don't go any more. Perhaps even across a bridge.

We carry on anyway, and find ourselves wandering through a series of darkspawn dug tunnels which intersect with and connect parts of the Deep Roads. With the maintenance budget having been cut, the Roads are in a bad state of repair and I think the darkspawn are performing a useful public service in making connections around gaps such as cave-ins and broken bridges. Although I don't think I'd make that point to a dwarf. We cut down all sorts of darkspawn, some of them quite tough. There are a large number of sarcophagi around here, which I'm initially mildly reluctant to loot having had some interesting - in the Qunari sense - experiences with interfering with graves. When no horrible monsters turn up trying to eat my face after I experiment with emptying one, I start looting with abandon. Among the things we find are a full set of Legion armour, which looks and is rather impressive for a heavily armoured fighter. That's none of us, mind you, with only Shale being in that general 'heavy' style and she not needing it due to being made of rock.

And yes, I called Shale 'she'. It feels like the right thing to do, mostly because of some things she has been saying. I've been of that belief for a while, since the conversation about crystals that Shale embeds turned into a question of whether they make her look wider.

Eventually we find a rather ceazy female dwarf. She doesn't think we're real, or affects not to think that. In her ramblings we learn that she's a survivor of Branka's expedition; that we're close to our objective; and that some horrible things are being done to female dwarfs which change them, including making them eat bits of darkspawn. Having drunk darkspawn blood, the physical changes which she describes make me wonder if that's going to happen to me. Before we can try to get more information from her, she runs off.

Our next fight involves two ogres at once, and isn't too difficult. There's an exit we can't open without the key, but fortunately there's another room at the end of this one which seems to have been a shrine for the Legion of the Dead, and which their spirits have defended from the darkspawn. We go through without them bothering us, and approach the altar at the far end. This lets us get a key, which opens the door we couldn't manage before. Before we can approach that though we have a fight with the dwarf spirits. They're rather tough, and take longer to defeat than the ogres, though in retrospect if they've been preventing darkspawn defiling the shrine for years they would have to be. Still, now they'll have to reform if they're to continue doing so.

Passing on, we find a sarcophagus which holds information about the history of the 'Dead Caste' which should be of interest to the Shaperate. We're also finding more blobby sacks of flesh, some of which hold treasure. At the end of the passage, we find their source. This is what happens to women who ingest darkspawn and have various other things done to them. They become breeding machines for the next generation of darkspawn, too large to move with layers of blubber, tentacles, and a series of blows from the ugly stick.They're known as Broodmothers, and apparently the Grey Wardens know all about this, which makes me wonder why I don't. I suspect that this will be my eventual fate if I don't die first, which means my children will be Shrieks - that's what elf broodmothers produce, dwarfs do genlocks, humans have hurlocks, and Qunari make ogres.

I would sooner die, and probably will. We attack, with Shale closing on the broodmother while Leliana and Wynne support him with missile fire. I hang back, dealing with the tentacles as they attack with a mind of their own and also with a few darkspawn that return to defend mommy. Eventually Shale is injured enough to need withdrawing temporarily, and I move in on the already gravely injured broodmother. And then, as a climactic moment, I climb up several layers of blubber onto flabby's shoulders, cut her throat, and drive my blades into the top of her head for emphasis. One broodmother, no careful owners, free if you arrange to ship it away.

Strange mad dwarf then turns up on a ledge above us, claiming that Branka allowed this to happen. I'm not entirely sure where she went next, but the river of molten lava flowing below seems like a good way to stop this happening to you. I'm beginning to think Branka might not be a good person to have supporting you in a political contest, considering how she treats people.