Tales of the Blight: The Price of War

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

With 50 Redcliffe Soldiers, 50 Dalish elf archers, 50 Dwarven Warriors and 16 Templars behind me I decide to try clear as much of the city as I can before chasing down the archdemon. The darkspawn on the firey streets are all pretty tough, numerous and later on well entrenched, but we persevere - slaying two enemy commanders before marching up to Fort Drakon, the top of which was where the archdemon was last spotted crash landing after Riordan managed to wound the creature. Alas, the Grey Warden himself did not survive the attempt.

Somehow Leliana managed to squirrel herself back to the entry gate too, just as darkspawn reinforcements were coming in but between her, the handful of Denerim soldiers and Quickly, who had transformed into a mighty beast during his long down time, they are no match and are easily driven back. Leliana then magically made it back to the rest of us in time to storm the fort itself, fighting our way past elite darkspawn until finally reaching the roof.

The archdemon was a beast to combat, but thanks to Arl Eamon, Knight-Commander Greagoir, my archers and emplaced ballista it was brought down easily enough even with darkspawn reinforcements coming to its aid. King Alistair, being the "older" Grey Warden and not actually wanting to be king anyway opted to end the beast by stabbing it in the face. An effective move against pretty much everything! With a big explosion, he and the archdemon died and the remaining darkspawn - now leaderless - fled the city. Victory was ours!

Everyone else up there somehow survived.

Friendly losses incurred were: Riordan, King Alistair, 13 of his Templar brothers, 28 elves, 28 dwarves and all the soldiers from Redcliffe.

*Sorry Rakuno: That was a very short summary to eat popcorn to. :P

Tales of the Blight: Beginning of the End

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

Riordan shares with Alistair and myself why Grey Wardens are needed to stop the blight. It is specifically because to ultimately kill an archdemon, the last blow must be struck by a Grey Warden or the fiend will simply reform itself elsewhere. Ultimately, whoever does that also dies due to some absurd magical reason. Morrigan claims that she knows of a blood ritual spell that can save one of us from dying, it just requires sex. Man that sounds like an awesome spell.

However it also turns out that this will result in an "old god" being reborn so I'm not keen on it. Especially the "blood magic" part. Despite my best negotiation attempts, Morrigan gets upset by me not letting her do her ritual and leaves on the eve of the battle. Oh well. It's not like mages are a necessity anyway.

Not willing to be making any more "old gods" thank you very much!

The next day sees the army march forth to Denerim which is already in flames. After rushing the gates and defeating the outer most of the darkspawn horde it is clear the army is badly out numbered. Riordan suggests the only way to win is to go after the archdemon directly and advises I take a small team with me to try do so.

It falls upon Quickly to defend the gates, though Leliana claims she can command the defense there to prevent darkspawn reinforcements from appearing while at the same time joining me deeper in the city. That will be an interesting feat!

Tales of the Blight: Not so Simple

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

The only thing left between us and the Urn of Andraste's Sacred ashes is a gauntlet meant to test pilgrims who have come to pay tribute, and boy what scummy tests they are. The first room is one of riddles which is solved easily enough if you listen to the question enough times. Then there's a part where you fight your doppelganger (because Andraste is a sadist I guess) followed by an irritating bridge building puzzle that took me ages to solve.

I hate you, logic puzzle!

Only after all of that do we finally get to our objective, and with a pinch of the sacred ashes in hand we return immediately to Redcliffe and cure Arl Eamon who is brought up to speed rather quickly about all the events that transpired while he was in his coma. He's a pretty cool dude, and is not too upset about me hacking up his demon possessed kid earlier. He even suggests calling a Landsmeet at Denerim to get all the lords to rally together and put an end to Loghain's civil war, as well as putting Alistair forward as king.

I say that's all well and good and to go call it, but he refuses until I use up all the treaties I'm carrying to get more allies. Damn, he means the dwarves doesn't he? Oh well. Without any choice we head back to Orzammar, dealing with random darkspawn forces on the road AND in camp on the way. Looks like the archdemon is starting to think we're a threat if he's sending monstrous assassins after us.

Tales of the Blight: Sod the Dwarves

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

Kinda getting sick of all these tunnels and darkspawn now, and as we come across the great bridge of the Dead Trenches where we assist a handful of Dead Legion dwarves cross into the enemy line we see the staggering number of darkspawn marching below - following the call of the "archdemon" dragon (who luckily doesn't notice us despite having some sort of psychic link). The dwarves aren't that keen on helping us find Branka, whose trail leads deeper into enemy territory so it's soon just my squad again making slow progress through the irritating zig zag path.

The design also lends itself to cheap traps like spawning enemies out of thin air to flank you. Fortunately all are triggered harmlessly by my solo stealth scouting. After a lot of effort we finally reach the end and find a crazed dwarf (second crazy one we meet down here) who is going loony from not just eating darkspawn but also her fellow kin. She blames all of this on paragon Branka whose trail leads deeper still. Only one problem, there's a hideous tentacled broodmother boss in the way.

Come to mamma!

Try as we might, we simply don't have the firepower or health potions to shave off the last 5% of her life. Eventually I simply throw my hands up in the air and yell "Sod the dwarves!" and take my team not just back to Orzammar, but elsewhere entirely. I'll just let the short folk vote for their next king and force him to acknowledge the treaty, surely that would be less work.