Tales of the Blight: Aftermath

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

With no one on the throne again, Queen Anora quickly claimed it as her own and held a celebration to honor our victory. I also convince her to strip all lands and titles from the Howe family and give them all to the restored Cousland line, namely to Lord Ferghus Cousland. Yup, my big brother somehow survived and sat out of everything but is a-ok now. I bid him and Oghren, who decided to become a general in the Queen's army, farewell to continue my travels elsewhere with Quickly and Leliana.

In the months that followed the Queen proved to be a good ruler for the people, even providing the Dalish with new lands to settle in but the untrusting elves remained restless there. King Harrowmont didn't fare as well, isolating the dwarves further from the surface. He tried rebuild the Anvil of the Void to catastrophic results and was under threat of an exalted march by the Templars for harbouring free mages. Eventually he was killed by poisoning.

Knight-Commander Greagoir retired and died of old age while Arl Eamon had another gifted child. This one he gave to the newly built Circle of Mages as his wife Isolde died during the birth. As for Ferghus I heard he didn't make such a good lord at all, hitting the drink pretty hard and breaking things left and right. Eventually he left for a different land to become a blacksmith of all things! Well it's been awhile since I've seen him. Maybe I should go pay him a visit?

90%(?) chance of repairs! :P

Here ends the Tales of this Blight. Maybe it will continue it one day.

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: Cleansed

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

Continuing up the mages tower we ran into some dragonlings that needed to be put down and a few more abominations before reaching the top. There the "boss" blood mage fellow was busy changing other mages into more abominations. Needless to say I had to put an end to that. Niall's magic scroll came in handy as a canceller to the boss's "turn captive into abomination add" technique and eventually we wore him down and killed him.

With the task complete we took the survivors back downstairs to talk to Knight-Commander Greagoir. While all were grateful for the assistance my team provided I couldn't help but suggest that the remaining mages might have been tainted by all the residual evil magic in the tower. The Knight-Commander agreed and invoked the Right of Annulment which "is the right to purge a Circle of Magi that is ruled irredeemable by ordering the templars to kill all the mages within a Circle".

With no more mages left to guard, Knight-Commander Greagoir accepted my proposal of joining the collective army to fight the darkspawn blight and promised his troops for when the time came. Woohoo, one ally acquired! Next stop, Redcliffe - since Alistair keeps whining about it. Well, not as much as being sad whenever someone mentions "Duncan".

Tales of the Blight: I've got the Magic Magic Magic

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

On the road to Lake Calenhad we come across an abomination, a mage tampering with illegal magics, and destroy it. Seems that was the theme of the day as upon arrival at the lake we learn that something is up with the Circle of Magi who live in the tower in the middle of it. After killing some random cultists we rowed out there and were met with the templar guards in a panic, and learn from Knight-Commander Greagoir that the tower has been infested by abominations thanks to the infiltration of blood mages. I offer to help and load up on supplies before the team is locked in with the rest of the horrors.

Not as scary as this.

Surprisingly the next area is quite clear, with some mages having managed to barricade themselves with magic. I recognize their leader, Wynne, as someone I talked to at Ostagar but she recognizes Morrigan to be an "apostate" - a mage outside the Circle of Magi which is almost like an abomination to them. She refuses to let Morrigan exist and while I was keen to see who had the stronger magic her first attack was on -me-. This led to the slaughter of the Wynne and the remaining mages.

With them out of the way we managed to progress higher fighting the true enemies, the explosive abominations, demons (some sexy ones), undead, mind controlled knights (who I had to kill) and blood mages. One defeated blood mage spilled the beans that Loghain promised to help them in their schemes before I executed her. All is going swimmingly well after I learned Morrigan's cool combo of Cone of Cold followed by Stone Fist to shatter enemies. That is until we run into a Sloth Demon who manages to put the entire party to sleep through cut scene magic!