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#wardenposting
sapphim · 6 months
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Monstrous Wardens Masterpost
A great big collection of text from the Dragon Age games and novels about darkspawn, Grey Wardens, and the Calling, to fuel everyone's monstrous wardens headcanons.
This has actually been sitting in my drafts for like half a year now bc I thought I really should scrounge around for more quotes from Last Flight, Awakening, and Legacy. That... didn't happen, and there's really no sense in holding off longer. If I ever do get around to it, I'll pull more quotes to add. But I consider this complete as is. enjoy~
The Song
The Old Gods will call to you, From their ancient prisons they will sing. Dragons with wicked eyes and wicked hearts, On blacken'd wings does deceit take flight, The First of My children, lost to night.
—Canticle of Silence 3:6, Dissonant Verse
     “The Old Gods beckon, as they always have.” The Architect turned and paced to the other side of the cell. The shadows cast on the walls by the glowstone danced ominously. “That is what you hear. To my people, it is a call that we cannot ignore. It whispers to our blood and compels us to seek the Old Gods out. We search and search for their prisons, and when we find one, we touch the face of perfection and thus desecrate it forever.”
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6
     So close. We nearly reached him. Made it down to what looked like a dwarven thaig where the song was actually audible, real and thrumming through the air, not just in our heads. It rattled through the lyrium pillars and shook the earth beneath our feet to its dreadful tempo.
—[DAI] Note: Ancient Warden Logbook
     There were creatures in that land. Dark things that lurked in the corners. Cole couldn’t see them, and didn’t want to. He worried that they could see him, however. […]      And worse, there was the music. He didn’t know what it was, but it seemed to come from far, far off. It called to him, but not in a pleasant way— it had an urgency that sped his heart and made his blood burn. The dark creatures, the lurkers, they listened to it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he could feel them out there, craning their necks, raising taloned hands toward that call.
—Dragon Age: Asunder, chapter 9
     As the griffon began to climb through the clouds that followed the Blight, Isseya heard a faint, strange melody seep into her mind. She had no sense of it as actual sound; rather, it seemed to come from within, almost as if she were humming the tune to herself.      She could never have imagined such a song, though. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. Aching and ethereal, it seemed to pull her toward a memory of nostalgic bliss that she had somehow lost—but that she would do anything to recover. Anything at all. […]      “What was it?” the elf asked, shaken. […]      “The Archdemon.” […]      For the rest of their ride back to Antiva City, Isseya sat small and quiet on Blacktalon’s back, unable to reconcile the horrors of the darkspawn with the sweetness of their song.
—Dragon Age: Last Flight, chapter 3
The Chorus
     The faint sounds of movement ahead got more frequent, and along with them, they began to hear a strange humming. It was deep and alien, a reverberating sound that they felt in their chests and that made their skin crawl. […]      The deep humming was coming from [the creature. It] was moaning softly, almost chanting, and this moan built upon the sounds of many others behind it in the shadows. They hummed in unison, a hushed and deadly whisper the creatures spoke as one. […]      All of them walked as calmly as the first, shambling toward them while moaning and hissing softly. The sound was loud now, reverberating around them like a physical force. […]      They watched the darkspawn advance, their weapons held at the ready. Even with their prey cornered, the creatures did not accelerate. Their hum became louder, reached a hungry, fever pitch.
—Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, chapter 14
     Were they digging? He had the impression that the masses of them were all engaged in some sort of industry, all united in moving great portions of the rock out of the cavern and expanding it even further. Yet there were no sounds of tools crashing against stone, no hammering sounds or grunts of exertion. All he could hear was a rhythmic groan, a keening pitch that it seemed each of the darkspawn contributed to. The sound of it made his skin crawl, and he realized that the chorus in the distance responded to it. Like a cat that arched its back to meet a brushing hand it became ecstatic; it surged and almost overwhelmed his senses.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6
The Senses
     They were more than simply skilled at fighting darkspawn; they knew them intimately. They sensed their presence, sometimes even gleaned their intent.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 4
     He could feel the darkspawn out there now. Genevieve was right. It just took some time to become acclimated. They were at the edge of his consciousness, lurking in the shadows far out of sight. It was that same feeling when someone was standing behind you, and you didn’t hear them or sense them in any way; you just knew.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 5
     Bregan closed his eyes and carefully reached out with his senses. There were darkspawn all around him. Not in the same room, perhaps, but nearby. He could feel them tickling at the edge of his mind. As always, the sensation came with a feeling of foulness, as if a poison had seeped under his skin.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 2
     “There is a taint that is within the darkspawn […] A darkness that pervades us, compels us, drives us to rail against the light. It is in our blood and corrupts the very world around us.” The creature gestured toward Bregan with a withered, taloned hand. “It is also within your blood. It is what makes you what you are, what you sense in us and we in you.”
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 2
Anders: Hmm. Hawke: What's wrong? Anders: I think [the Grey Wardens are] nearby. Anders: Or it could be darkspawn.
—Dragon Age II
     The hunter had a sensitivity to the taint that went far beyond any tracking ability he might have learned during his time with the Ash Warriors. He was always the first to sense the approach of darkspawn, and he could discern between the various breeds by their scent alone. Some of the Grey Wardens even used to claim that Kell could do the same with them, sense who was who from afar just as if they were darkspawn. If so, the hunter never commented on it.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 11
     She felt Bregan out there, felt him just the same as she felt the darkspawn. Every now and again she would turn a corner in the tunnels and would feel her brother’s presence on the edge of her senses, almost as if his scent had been carried to her somehow on an invisible wind.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 15
The Dreams
Alistair: Oh… and then there were the nightmares. Duncan said it was part of how we sense the darkspawn. We tap into their… well, I don't know what you'd call it. Their “group mind.” Alistair: And when we sleep, it's even worse. You learn to block it out after a while, but at first it's hard. It's supposed to be worse for those who Join during a Blight. How is it for you? Warden: Nightmares… yes, I know what you mean. Alistair: Some people never have much trouble, but that's rare. Others have trouble sleeping their entire life. They're just more sensitive, I suppose. Alistair: Everyone ends up the same, though. Once you reach a certain age, the real nightmares come. That's how a Grey Warden knows his time has come.
—Dragon Age: Origins
     The dream, when it came, was similar to the hundreds of dreams Fiona had suffered since she’d become a Grey Warden. Before, however, it had always felt as if she was looking on the dream from afar, hazy and easy to forget. Now it was crystal clear.      Fiona stood on a battlefield littered with dead men. All of them were soldiers in heavy armor, knights wearing the griffon standard of the order. Each had been brutally slaughtered. The smell of blood and decay hung thick and cloying in the air, the buzzing sound of flies nipping at her senses.      Overhead, the sky filled with an endless, roiling black cloud. It looked like ink spreading slowly in water, a great stain that blotted out the horizon. She had been told about this. The first sign of the Blight, said the Grey Wardens, is found in the clouds. When the mighty dragon rises, its corruption touches the world and spreads.      She was alone on that field of corpses. All alone. The wind picked up, a sickly breeze that carried with it the stench of carrion. A gloom fell upon her, and she stumbled as she watched something rise from out of the field of bodies nearby. It was enormous. A great, black thing that was as cold and terrible as anything she could have imagined.      Fear pulsed through her. Her heart raced, and she looked away. She didn’t want to see it. She threw her hands up in front of her eyes not to see it. Yet still she felt it coming. Her foot caught between two corpses and made her fall back on top of them. Dead flesh pressed against her and still she covered her eyes. Still she felt the darkness surging ever closer to her.      It was coming. And it was coming for her.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 14
The Calling
Hawke: You don't look well, Bethany. Are you injured? Bethany: Injured? I have the darkspawn taint forever in my veins, barely held in check by the Wardens' rituals. Bethany: I will never be well again.
—Dragon Age II
     At first, it was just a whisper. A creak in the door hinge I could put off oiling. But soon, all I could hear was the music. It was there when I swung my staff and wiped the sweat from my brow. It lingered in Lyam's laughter and stalked my dreams. I can't explain the sound—the song—but I knew. It's a poison that grows in the mind, then consumes the body.
—[DAI: The Descent] Codex Entry: Warden Ailsa's Diary
     It scratches at my thoughts, the music almost a voice, at once unearthly and beautiful. I found myself humming it aloud a few days past. Where once it intruded, it now feels a natural part of my mind's course. It coils around memories I hold dear—training with Ser Keller, riding in the moonlight, my mother's face the last time I saw her—and inserts itself into them, so that I could almost swear that music, that sense of a presence watching and calling, had always been a part of what I remember.
—[DAI] Codex Entry: Regarding the Calling
     She had seen enough of the corruption to last a lifetime, and somewhere off in the far distance was that strange sound, the beautiful whispering.      She didn’t want to listen to it, but couldn’t help herself. She closed her eyes and tried to pick out what the whisper was saying. Was it a song? Was it a name? It almost seemed that it was calling out to her, stroking her soul ever so softly. . . .
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 14
     The humming sound, however, was stronger even than before. It was no longer something muted and distant; it was everywhere. It was behind the walls and under the floor; it filled the shadows and caressed his skin. There was a terrible beauty to it now, an awful yearning that pulsated within the sound, a tugging that pulled at the edge of his consciousness and yet frightened and nauseated him at the same time.      The humming had eclipsed any sense he had of the darkspawn. Any attempt he made to reach out with his mind to sense where the creatures were found only a wall of beautiful sound instead. Like a weed, it had insinuated itself into his consciousness, blocking out anything useful.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6
     The far-off chorus had become a powerful symphony, a great swell of beautiful music that no longer pounded to get inside his head but instead tickled at the edges of his thoughts. It was far easier to ignore, but now he found it distracting. He found himself losing his train of thought whenever he listened.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 10
     The taint fogged her thoughts a little more with each passing morning. Her diary, once a detailed chronicle of every day’s thoughts, went neglected for weeks, sometimes months. She was losing her mind.      She wasn’t the only one, of course. It had gotten harder to tell the reality of the Blight from the horrors of her dreams. Sometimes she wasn’t sure which one she walked through, or which one she fought in. The elf had learned to recognize the confusion that sometimes passed over other senior Wardens’ faces. They, too, heard the Archdemon’s song echoing through their heads, a trifle louder every night. They, too, fought to block it out and to hide the signs from their comrades…
—Dragon Age: Last Flight, chapter 21
     My body is breaking down. The fingernails were the first to go. I started to itch all over, and when I scratched, they peeled back. Clumps of hair fell away. Then clumps of flesh.      I hear a song in my head. It's deafening. The most beautiful thing I've ever heard. But I don't hear it with my ears. It's in my brain. A blissful sound. This must be the call for which the darkspawn yearn, what causes them to dig so feverishly.      I'd still rather die. Suppose that's something.
—[DAI] Codex Entry: To Be Corrupted
     His skin itched terribly underneath those bandages, but he resisted the urge to peel them off. The pain throughout his body was dull but insistent, as if his body protested against this unfamiliar movement. The sluggishness made him wary. There was a thickness to his blood, a deliberateness to his heartbeat that made him feel like something alien was crawling inside of him and sapping his strength.      […His arms] were half covered in dark blotches. At first, he wondered if that was some kind of injury, or perhaps a bloodstain. But then he noticed the texture of the skin within those discolored areas: rough and withered, just as darkspawn flesh was. […]      Every part of his skin that wasn’t covered by the greyed cloth bandages was corrupted. It was like a network of black mold working its way across his entire body, and everywhere it touched he could feel a hot buzzing underneath the flesh. It was difficult to look at.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6
     The Architect stared into Utha’s eyes and nothing happened at first. Then black veins began to appear along her hand where the darkspawn touched her. They became darker and darker, the veins branching until her entire hand was criss-crossed with them. […]      Her flesh withered and curled, the air filling with the foul stench of decay. […]      The stain on her skin spread, crawling up her neck and covering her face. Her coppery hair began to grey, and then it became white. Her long braid twisted and curled behind her, like a match that was burning itself into a cinder. Her eyes shot open, blood red, and she opened her mouth in a soundless scream... and what wisps remained of her hair simply fell out.      And then it was done.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 16
Bonus entry that made me go "hey what the fuck"
     What I remember most is its tongue flapping against a row of spiky teeth. I'd heard emissaries possessed the ability to speak, but the words were unnatural. They twisted and lurched as they left the creature's mouth, accompanied with a spray of saliva.      "Have you ever experienced living flesh ground between your teeth?" it asked Mila before biting through her throat.
—[DAI: The Descent] Codex Entry: Darkspawn Emissary
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cwilbah · 1 year
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‘half elves look human they dont have pointed ears their phenotype is Human!’ well i think half elves looking Half Elf is cooler goodbye canon
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dolores-slay · 1 year
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Nanders is a ship that will always slay for me. It's anime it's sweet inside sour outside and the reverse it's tropey it's lovely it's guy who doesn't know he's queer but when he does he's so chill and earnest with it and guy who knew but keeps it under seventy eight layers of emotional distancing intimacy issues and self loathing because he was told all his life everything about him is shameful and the one time he did dare to get close how did that end up for him. What I'm saying is they fucked and are still the bestest of friends. Even with ship goggles off I'm glad they had each other even if it was brief and ultimately didn't change anything. Anders had a life and freedom and friends. Wardens are a family Alistair was so right actually.
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caffeinatedrogue · 3 years
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commissionposting & also wardenposting!
Aloisa Tabris // Marras Cousland for my dear @debbyalo <3
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sapphim · 11 months
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the normalcy meter for grey wardens is so fucking broken. they see and do the most wild shit all day every day and have no clue how the rest of us live. anders in a cut DA2 quest runs into some more of the architect's talking darkspawn just slumming it in kirkwall's undercity and he's just like "huh! I don't think you're supposed to be here! aren't you supposed to be elsewhere!" and from the perspective of any rational person with a reasonable worldview it's like hey anders what the fuck. do darkspawn talk now? what the fuck. is this normal to you? what's going on please explain. hey anders what did you mean by elsewhere??? where elsewhere??? how about nowhere. I think these things belong nowhere actually. anders??? anders have you noticed the darkspawn fucking talks???
like he's got the warden brainrot for sure.
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sapphim · 10 months
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I cannot overstate the degree to which a bear would be the most unhinged possible thing I, as a normal fereldan citizen, could encounter alongside the grey wardens. I'd be EXPECTING spooky blight bullshit. if I was like "hey that guy over there is giving me the heebie jeebies what's his deal" and the answer was "oh he's a darkspawn. he talks. his name is the messenger. and he's our friend" I would be like "cool! okay! fine! why not!" (← sweating profusely) I would not actually be fine with it, but it would MAKE SENSE.
learning that a senior warden is a disney princess who frolicks in the woods with wild animals and has a pet bear would deeply unsettle me to my core. it would be LESS upsetting if it were a spookyweird blighted bear or if he summoned the spirit of a bear from the fade or some shit than if it were just a perfectly normal-looking bear he trained to eat darkspawn. I know what a bear is! I've seen fucking bears, preferably from as far away as possible! what sort of maniac has a bear!!!
it would be akin to witnessing the inquisitor charging in to battle on a fucking moose. the hand glowing and crackling with all the incredible power of the fade is one thing. I am not prepared to emotionally process that thing. but christ, fuck off with the moose!!!
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sapphim · 9 months
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given zevran's penchant for referring to the player character as "my dear warden" (and given that zevran frequently "my dear"s other people in dialogue as well) the only conclusion I can draw is that zevran will "my dear" just about anyone (any friends, most neutral-positive acquaintances, every bartender, all children, most elderly) and that he will specifically "my dear warden" just about any grey warden is his acquaintance, especially those who are, after all, his dear warden's dear wardens
he's making the rounds at vigil's keep daily like "greetings, my dear warden! ah, and my dear warden, you're looking especially lovely this morning. if you'll excuse me, I need to go find my dear warden." this is real to me
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sapphim · 10 months
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I have a lot of opinions about wardens but anyway I imagine it would be desirable for warden keeps to be self-sufficient communities, and if that's the case than the vast majority of the population of the keep and surrounding support community would not be wardens. like, they need to eat to live, and if they're not buying that food they'd be growing it themselves, and that means they'd need people to tend the farms and gardens. they'd need craftspeople to make and repair armor, weapons, and other essential goods. they'd need people to clean. cleaning, maintenance, and sanitation work is as essential for life as food. do they have animals? do they have an apothecary? a brewery? you can't expect to put everyone in a community through the joining—that kills people!—and if you don't have a self-sufficient community then where are you getting the money to pay for the necessities of life, let alone the necessities of the job? I'm sure you can hire a few wardens to unofficially perform mercenary work, but officially? are they subsidized by the government of their locality? by weisshaupt? or do they make do.
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sapphim · 6 months
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we should talk about wardens putting dogs through joining. ever since I've read it in Last Flight I can't stop thinking about it.
Mabari war hounds could be put through the Joining with no worse effect than humans experienced. Some died, some survived and gained the immunities and attunements that Grey Wardens shared. It was believed that if they lived long enough, such hounds might also suffer the Calling, but if any dog had lived that long, Isseya had never heard of it. The lives of dogs were short, and war dogs’ even more so.
—Dragon Age: Last Flight, chapter 13
Hafter was the only one of them who’d slept well. Almost as soon as they’d set up the fire, the hound had curled up at his master’s feet and was snoring within minutes. Duncan liked how the dog’s feet twitched, and how he would occasionally huff like he was about to bark in his sleep. A dog’s dreams were probably about running through sunny meadows and barking at squirrels, which was the sort of dream that Duncan wouldn’t mind having himself. Then he remembered that Hafter was tainted just the same as the rest of the Grey Wardens. Perhaps his dreams were just as dark, and when he ran, he ran away from the frightening shadows that always lurked at the edges of a Grey Warden’s mind. He hoped he was wrong, for the dog’s sake.
—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 11
bro hey I had thought they were playing it just a touch coy about ~exactly~ how tainted the mabari was in the calling. I didn't realize last flight had Explicitly Confirmed Dog Joinings
it's a really interesting reflection of how wardens—geographically distant and granted near complete leeway in how they choose to operate—will use any tool available in the pursuit of their duty. even a perversion of an honored cultural tradition? sure, why not. the grey wardens have been banished from Ferelden for 200 years (Kell in the calling was an Avvar Ash Warrior before joining the Orlesian wardens) but what on earth did they get up to prior to that? aside from figuring out that prized war dogs could survive the joining ofc
I have long hc'd that goodest boy Barkspawn was not so much completely cured as... in a similar twilight-tainted state to the wardens. not cured, not a ghoul; secret third thing. (ofc the wardens add a pinch of blood magic to their transformation for that extra oomph. that little get-up-and-go juice)
the devs had apparently meant, in an earlier stage of development, for the player to be able to put more companions through the joining than just Loghain. awakening-style, I guess. nothing really gets explained in the base game until Riordan shows up, but yk. Soldier's Peak is right there. dog warden? dog warden.
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sapphim · 1 year
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that minor retcon/revision of alistair's "30 years" line. that 30 years from your joining to your calling is the best possible case one might hope for, but worst case a warden joined during a prolonged active blight might only make it five. surely the best possible prognosis would require abstaining from warden activity entirely. certainly spending one's life surrounded by taint and death, regularly fighting darkspawn, would slowly but surely progress one's march toward death, or worse.
perhaps five, ten years down the line, anders, or an alistair whose time is occupied by his duties as king, might not seem altogether that much different from when they were joined. when compared to their former compatriots, still serving all those years on the front lines against the darkspawn, well...
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sapphim · 11 months
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I feel like the messenger deserves an honorary warden commission. I don't know what his job would be but I feel like someone should say to him, hey man, great job, we uhh really appreciate what you're trying to do here, but we would like to minimize the number of random travelers on the road who mysteriously turn into ghouls so we would love to uhhh give you a job, with us, if you would like. love u.
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sapphim · 1 year
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grey warden work songs sung in time with the call of the old gods... ough
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sapphim · 1 year
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#my FAVORITE thing about the deep roads that REALLY doesn't come across in gameplay is that you head in #and then nobody sees nor hears hide nor hair from you for like a MONTH
i said this on the other post but it's TRUE it's rife for DRAMA. this is no longer my canon timeline but at one point I had it that my wardens did the landsmeet before paragon of her kind, at which point alistair left the party to stay in denerim and act as king because he was upset about being overruled on the decision to recruit loghain and refused to travel with him, and then they popped off to quickly kick in the doors of orzammar and wrangle them into submission (eydis aeducan was a bit over-optimistic there) which resulted in the party just disappearing off the face of the planet and it was like A MONTH AND A HALF of radio silence before they were able to get word of their success back to denerim and the entire time alistair was shaking crying throwing up tearing his hair out because his very dearest friends in the world were all DEAD FOREVER and the last thing he'd said to them was I HATE YOUR STUPID FACES AND NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN. god. iconic worst month of alistair's entire life. like I said this is no longer remotely anything like my canon timeline but I still think about it often.
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sapphim · 1 year
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just realized that having warden alistair makes it funnier when nate shows up later and is like "hey anders didn't you die six years ago tf" bc alistair could have literally been there staring right past anders without acknowledging him in the previous act and then I guess went back to ferelden and continued to never say a single word about it? "hey that guy you know who died? faked his death." it would have been so simple to just give the man a heads up alistair. I don't expect the twins to rat out a comrade like that but alistair could have. (that's not true I expect carver to rat out the comrade the very first chance he gets.) but alistair was there for awakening, after all, you just didn't see him because he was slightly out of frame the entire time. not even a "hello" or a "hey anders didn't you die three years ago tf" out of him. smh it's basic decency
the only good thing about the seams between the origins crew interacting with the exodus crew is that it's ripe fodder for deciding that everything is an inside joke, actually. "hey anders I thought you were dead" is just the standard anders greeting now. you fake your death one time and your old college buddies never let you live it down.
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sapphim · 1 year
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she shadow of the colussuses that bitch btw. sulina mahariel. while everyone else is harrying it, she manages to climb up onto its back like it's the world's biggest, angriest mechanical bull, wedging her knives underneath its scales for improved holds. when it's flagging and faltering at last, she clambers precariously up the neck to the head, drives a blade into its eye and then punches it through directly into its brain. killing it instantly.
(she then gets YEETED through the air, very nearly off the tower, with the force of the concussive blast as the archdemon's soul leaves its body. if there hadn't been two spirit healers atop that tower she might not have made it. she survives the fight with extensive, necrotic scarring across her arms and upper torso, and after extensive physical recovery requires joint braces/other mobility aids for the rest of her life.)
(the extent of the physical trauma ties into my alternate headcanon for the dark ritual, that it requires a blood sacrifice from every participating warden in order to work. the archdemon's soul isn't captured until it enters the warden's body, and then the blood magic pulls it out before it can destruct them both, but the process is not untraumatic.)
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sapphim · 11 months
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tag directory ☆
☆ mods & tutorials
↳ mine
#mod download
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↳ DA2 project tags
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#kidnappapalooza → Best Served Cold Redux
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#timeskip framework
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#zevran romance dialogue fix
↳ other project tags
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↳ general modding
#faq
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↳ see also: Mod Recs
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☆ misc
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#hawkeposting
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☆ original characters
↳ see: character directory ☆
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