With the Iron Bull firmly on our side and the Qunari firmly not, I decided that it was time to continue my investigation into the disappearance of the Grey Wardens. That meant heading to the Western Approach, a stretch of desert near the Forbidden Oasis. It was everything you’d expect it to be: dry, hot, windy, full of poisonous animals, poisonous plants, poisonous water, poisonous air, and bursting with idiots waiting to try and kill me. But, while the environment and most of its inhabitants were miserable, and poisonous, there were several points of interest to be found amongst the desolation. One fascinating place was an old temple known as the Still Ruins. It had been given that name because Ages ago a group of Tevinter mages had messed with the Veil, the thing that separates our world from the Fade. The Fade rifts I’ve been talking about were effectively tears in the Veil that my glowy hand could sew up. The Tevinter meddling at the Still Ruins had let a horde of demons through, which triggered a time-stopping failsafe the Vints had set in place. And, all these years later, the Vints and the demons were still there, frozen in time. Most people avoided the area, but recently the Venatori had gotten in to try and steal its secrets and treasure. I wasn’t keen on having more time-altering magic landing in the wrong hands, so we waded in to root them out. The whole area was incredibly intriguing, as one rarely got the chance to look at a living demon close up without it trying to claw your face off. That said, it was a little annoying to know that, as we fought our way to the back of the place, that the conclusion to all of this would be us fighting our way back to the front of it. There was a one hundred percent chance that we would somehow cause time to start moving again and the demons would wake up. Which is exactly what happened. Venatori on the way in, demons and a Fade rift on the way out.
I just hope the statues don’t start moving, too.
Another spot that required a thorough cleansing of Venatori was a castle in the area. Griffon Wing Keep is an old Grey Warden outpost that had been abandoned by the original occupants and subsequently taken over by the enemies of the Inquisition. Naturally, I had to kick in the door and reclaim the old place for the forces of not-evil. Though, I have to say that it was very nice of them to start the restoration work for me. That said, they did manage to leave a few messes for me to clean up. The biggest of which was that there were darkspawn wandering around. On the surface. Where they shouldn’t be unless there’s a Blight happening. Since the Grey Wardens were busy being stupid instead of doing their job, it was up to the Inquisition to get rid of the darkspawn. We tracked them to a Tevinter prison named Coracavus, and by “prison” I mean “another ruin.” It’s almost like building a bunch of stuff where people are supposed to live in the middle of an inhospitable desert is a terrible idea. Real estate location issues aside, the blighted bastards had to be stopped. It turns out the Vints of old had built their soon-to-be ruin on top of some Deep Road ruins, which the modern day Venatori had accidentally broken into while recklessly excavating the place. So, we cleared the darkspawn out and plugged the hole. After that, we had to find the idiots responsible for this mess, and after killing a few understandably irate giants they had been using for manual labor, we pursued the Venatori into yet another ruin, of a small fort this time, took them down and captured their leader. After that, there was only one other task to complete before we confronted the Wardens. One big, scaly, flying task.
You’re big. I’ve fought bigger. And uglier.
In between taking care of various ruin-based problems in the Western Approach, I’d also been working on a side project. Early in my explorations of the area, I’d happened upon a dragon researcher named Frederic. He was the last remaining member of a team that had been trying to gather more information on the Abyssal High Dragon that had made its home nearby. Without his team, he needed outside help, which meant I ended up doing all the difficult stuff that required leaving his campsite. I retrieved his lost notes for him, did some investigating on the beast’s hunting and eating habits, gathered the animal-innards-based materials to make dragon bait, translated an ancient dragon-related manuscript I’d found, cleared away the local bandits and their dragon traps, and then placed our bait in the exact same places the bandits had. Then the dragon took the bait, flew in and immediately attacked us. Honestly, I never really knew what Frederic’s goal for luring the dragon down was, or his plan for after it got there. I just assumed that, with us there, it would end in violence. The fight, our fourth with one of the big lizards, was a bit of a letdown, frankly. She went down pretty quickly while barely threatening my party. Don’t get me wrong, it was still fun, just over faster than I was expecting. Frederic didn’t seem to mind, he just wanted information on the methods she used to try and fry us. And since we’d kind of accidentally killed his only research subject, he had nothing left to do there and joined the Inquisition. He got to keep researching dragons, and we got a sharp mind that attracted others via his unique field of study. Everybody wins. Except the dragons, they just die.
This fight took place in a ruin that sat in the shadow of another ruin because of course it did.
Taking out the dragon left only one thing to do in the Western Approach, and that was to find out what the Grey Wardens were up to and sort them out if necessary. They were at a tower that was in ruins, because buildings only exist in one state in the Western Approach, so I met up with Hawke and Stroud nearby before confronting them. I had confidence that whatever was going on with the Grey Wardens, an ancient, honorable order, would be above board and not horrifying at all. And it turned out they were in the middle of sacrificing their own to use blood magic, summon demons and bind them to their will, all under the watchful eye of a definitely-not-evil-at-all member of the Venatori. So, swing and a miss on my part. Erimond, the definitely-not-evil guy, promptly monologued and told me the whole scheme. Corypheus terrified every Orlesian Warden by putting the Calling into their heads, then, when all hope seemed lost and they got desperate, had the Venatori present a solution: use the Warden mages to summon a demon army and march it into the Deep Roads to stop all Blights forever just in case the Wardens did all die. So, yeah, long story short, stupidity that I needed to stop. That was even without considering that when the Wardens bound the demons, they unknowingly bound themselves to Cory. So Cory gained even more demons and a mob of mind-controlled Grey Wardens. A good scheme, all things considered. Until I showed up, of course. Also, there are Wardens in other countries, so it’s not like the order would completely die out if only the ones from Orlais were eliminated. Apparently they had panicked so quickly that they hadn’t had time to send a letter over the border and check on everyone else in their organization. Anyways, only a few of the Wardens were actually in this part of the Western Approach, so after taking care of them and their demons, I went after Eri, who had scarpered, to finish the job.
Desperation is a stinky cologne.
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