Staggering through the snow after Corypheus' aborted, but still devastating, attack on Haven, I knew that the rest of the Inquisition was out there, somewhere through the howling blizzard. So, I did the only thing I could and just kept trudging forward, following whatever meager signs I could find, until, by some miracle, I stumbled onto their camp. Then, it was dark for a while, like when this had all started, until Cassandra, Leliana, Cullen and Josephine woke me up with their arguing. Mother Giselle was with me, and we talked about what had happened, and what the people thought had happened. Mum started singing “The Dawn Will Come” as I got out of bed, the rest of the camp joined in, and before I knew it, people were kneeling before me. Near the start of this tale, I said how odd it was to have people bow to you. Well, let me tell you, having people kneel before you is even stranger. When I escaped the crowd, Solas pulled me aside and gave me a few important tidbits of information. One, the engraved ball that Corypheus had used to attempt to remove my glowy hand was actually an ancient elven artifact called the Orb of Destruction, an item my ancestors had once used to boost their magical powers or commune with our gods, or both. And, something of more immediate use, he knew of a place, relatively close by, where we could make a new home for the Inquisition. An old, empty castle called Skyhold.
I mean, if no one else wants it.
Once we’d made it to the long-abandoned but startlingly well-maintained castle, the leaders of the Inquisition basically tricked me into getting on the walls with everyone gathered below, looking at me. They wanted to make me the actual Inquisitor, a job I’d been doing up to this point in everything but name, truth be told. Because of the events leading to the sealing of the Breach, then me stopping Cory and coming out of the blizzard, people believed in me. And I mean belief in every sense of that word, including the holy kind. Look, I have never claimed and will never claim to be any sort of messiah, a messenger of Andraste or the Maker or the elven gods or anyone else. If people want to believe that of me, fine, far be it from me to tell them what to think, but I will not claim some holy right to power. I have worked hard for and earned everything I have received since my former First sent me to Haven for the Conclave all that time ago. I’m proud to be the Inquisitor, but I do not believe that I got there through divine intervention. With my own skill, the strength of my companions and a lot of luck, I somehow managed to get the Inquisition through Corypheus’ attack on Haven and into Skyhold. Okay, with that clarification off of my chest, let’s get back to the story. After my official appointment as Inquisitor, we got down to the business of stopping Cory’s next plan. The otherwise horrific jaunt to the future in Redcliffe had taught us something very useful: that Cory’s first move was to try and assassinate Celene, the Empress of Orlais, in an attempt to weaken and conquer that country and subsequently the whole continent. So, we needed to learn everything we could about Cory and stop him. Strangely enough, Varric, the dwarf with the best chest-hair in the business, said he knew someone who had first-hand experience with our new foe: his old friend and partner in adventuring, Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall.
It’s hard to tell where the straps end and the shirt begins.
Remember when I mentioned that one of the flashpoints that sparked the Mage-Templar war had been an explosive incident in Kirkwall? Well, Hawke had been right at the center of it. It’s a long story {fully chronicled in Varric Tethras’ thrilling work The Tale of the Champion, available now!}, but here’s a quick summary to get everyone up to speed: Hawke had fled from Ferelden and returned to her ancestral home at the beginning of the Fifth Blight, had many exciting escapades, going from a lowly smuggler to the honored Champion of Kirkwall by killing the Qunari Arishok, their chief military commander, and stopping the bull-men’s occupation of the city, lost one sibling and her mother along the way, kept visiting the same places over and over, and eventually had one of her companions go insanely rogue and blow up a Chantry. I knew most of this information before Hawke’s visit, thanks to Varric, but one of the weird details that I learned was that Hawke and Varric had already fought Corypheus. And weirder still, they’d killed him. Considering the respective body counts, in both number and type of thing, those two individuals have racked up, I have no doubt that they know a corpse when they see one, so how exactly Cory came back was still a mystery. Talking with Hawke did confirm a few things, however. Cory claimed to be a magister of Tevinter, and not one of the modern versions. No, he claimed that he was one of the original magisters, specifically one of the seven that broke into the Maker’s Golden City and consequently cursed mankind with the darkspawn for their transgression. The Champion also heard Cory make these claims during their encounter, so, he was definitely that. And/or he was just a very powerful crazy person that needed to be put down permanently. Either way, that chat with Hawke gave me a new lead to follow, a Grey Warden hanging around a village in Ferelden called Crestwood.
Furthermore, during my talk with Hawke I discovered what I had already suspected, that the Inquisition’s method of gathering supplies, also known as me grabbing everything I could find whilst inquisiting, was horrifically inefficient. Hawke, during her Champion days, had simply located a rich supply of whatever she needed, then had her people claim it and use it as a source. She didn’t spend all day plucking Spindleweed or tearing Drakestone from the rocks to make things out of, she had other people do it for her. Apparently, my first task as Inquisitor needed to be learning how to stop wasting my time and delegate more efficiently.
