Soon after the ball at Halamshiral, I was included in a conversation between Josephine and a Revered Mother in Skyhold’s courtyard. Mum Not-Giselle (I never caught her name) wanted to take Leliana and Cassandra, the Left and Right Hands of the late Divine Justinia, away with her so they could help figure out who the next Divine would be. And, apparently, they were both candidates for the position as well. Since they were needed for important inquisiting, we shelved that until a more convenient time. After his scheme with Florianne failed, Corypheus had started gathering what was left of his forces and heading south, into a place called the Arbor Wilds. He was probably after yet another set of elven ruins, which he’d constantly been poking around, but my people weren’t sure why. Fortunately, my new guest had an idea. Morrigan showed me an ancient elven mirror she had brought along, called an eluvian, which was actually a gateway.
Aaaaand open!
It led to a misty place full of eluvians, which had been used by my ancestors as a means of fast travel. You see, we used to have an empire. A big one that stretched all across Thedas. But we don’t anymore. Hence the plight of most modern elves, either stuck in lowly positions in human-dominated cities or wandering the wilds of the world with tattoos on their faces, mistrusted and feared by most. Hopefully one of us saving the world helps with that. Anyways, back to the magic mirrors. Most of them didn’t work anymore, but they all led to that place, which Morrigan called the Crossroads. The Crossroads was basically a small pocket dimension that wasn’t in our world or the Fade. It was somewhere between them, but since it was much closer to the Fade, Cory might not need my glowy-hand power to break into that realm of dreams physically and complete his attempted ascension to godhood. Naturally, that couldn’t happen, so it was up to me to marshal all the forces at my command, march to the Arbor Wilds and put a stop to Cory’s plans. As soon as I was done with the rest of my inquisiting.
If I hear a great knife being dragged along the ground, I am running for the hills.
As usual, some of that inquisiting was done on behalf of my companions. Vivienne requested that I hunt down a snowy wyvern and bring her its heart. She needed it for a potion she was making and few in the world were equal to the beast. Leliana, meanwhile, had received a letter from Divine Justinia. Despite the fact that her holiness was dead. There was no ghost story or being lured to a haunted town here, just a contingency plan that had been enacted upon Justinia’s death. It told Leliana to go to a chantry where Justinia had served in her youth, and she wanted me to go with her. Also, she was wondering about the possibility of becoming the next Divine, as was Cassandra. I always know Cassandra has something on her mind when she isn’t hacking away at a training dummy in the yard. Sera was shooting arrows into her door, pretending it was the nobles we’d just dealt with. Next, I visited the Inquisition’s newest member and was surprised when a heretofore unknown boy greeted me. Kieran, who turned out to be Morrigan’s son, was an odd, but polite, young man. I just hadn’t known before that point that Morg and son came as a package deal. When I asked about the boy’s father, Morg revealed that it was actually the Hero of Ferelden, who was off trying to end the Calling for good. If you’re not familiar with the HoF, he and his companions, which notably included Leliana, Morrigan, and the future king, Alistair, had rallied the disparate factions of Ferelden and stopped the Fifth Blight almost as soon as it started. Finally, Blackwall and I had a drink together, he told me a depressing story about a stray dog, and then disappeared altogether. He’d left a note about a disgraced Orlesian soldier named Mornay being captured and sentenced to death in Val Royeaux, so I figured that would be a good place to look for him.
I told you already that I don’t particularly like Val Royeaux. Well, this trip did nothing to change that. Neither the city nor its inhabitants had anything to do with that this time, but it was just another bad memory to associate with the place. We arrived as Mornay, the aforementioned soldier, was about to be hung for participating in the killing of a general. Not something that would cause a stir during wartime, but when this incident happened, it wasn’t. It was essentially a mercenary hit that went horribly wrong. The soldiers were under orders to kill the general and everyone else with him. The problem was, the general wasn’t just traveling with aides or guards. So, instead of killing the general, the soldiers killed him and his unarmed servants. And his wife. And their children. Mornay and the rest of his men were only following the orders of their captain, who had taken gold from a noble to do the job. And when it went wrong, he ran, leaving his men, who had been left in the dark about the mission, to be caught and executed for treason and murder. The captain’s name? Thom Rainier. But he had fled after the massacre and later assumed the mantle of a dead Grey Warden named Blackwall.
I guess the other three nooses are there for the intimidation factor.
Yep, the man we had come to know as Blackwall wasn’t actually Blackwall. After he’d run, Rainier had been picked up by the real Blackwall to become a Grey Warden. Blackwall died taking a blow meant for Rainier when they were ambushed by darkspawn, and Rainier took his name in an effort to keep the legacy of a better man alive. This, of course, explains why our resident Grey Warden hadn’t been affected by the Calling that every member of the order in the region had heard: he wasn’t a Grey Warden. After the original Blackwall’s death, Rainier had kept recruiting for the Wardens, a mission one performs by themselves, going without contact with other Wardens for years at a time, until he ran into us in the Hinterlands. The whole time, he considered himself a monster and wallowed in guilt over the deaths of the men who had blindly listened to him. This all culminated with the report of Mornay’s capture and planned execution, which Rainier found. Then he left Skyhold, went to Val Royeaux, interrupted the execution, revealed his true identity, and took the fall instead of Mornay. After all we’d been through, I wanted to deal with him personally, so I used the influence of the Inquisition to have him remanded to our custody.
Put your trust in the Maker. Your ass belongs to me.
Or I would have, if everybody hadn’t been busy. Since I’d started them on other projects before heading to Val Royeaux, I needed to kill time so my advisors could clear their schedules. This meant taking care of the other problems I’d been given to solve. They were both quick trips, and kind of on the way back to Skyhold, so I didn’t feel too bad about letting Rainier sit in his Orlesian cell while I took care of the people who had told me their real names. First was finding Vivienne’s snowy wyvern. After the revelations about Blackwall, I was in a foul mood, and I thought tearing a dangerous monster’s heart out might be cathartic. The beast was in the swamp that I’d found in the middle of the Exalted Plains. Not much to tell, really, we found a big white lizard, killed it, and took its heart back to Skyhold. Second was visiting Justinia’s old chantry with Leliana. We were met by Natalie, an old associate of Leliana’s who just coincidentally happened to be there and was completely trustworthy, honest, forthright with her motives and who am I kidding, of course she was lying. Natalie had been sent by a Grand Cleric who wanted to be the next Divine to find out what Justinia had hidden there. A Grand Cleric who didn’t like the Inquisition. We sent Natalie scurrying back to her master before opening Justinia’s gift, which was hidden behind a secret door. It was an empty box with a message etched in the top that released Leliana from her duties as Left Hand of the Divine, past, present and future. Justinia had been concerned she was using Leliana and wanted to take the burden off of her friend. Very sweet, all things considered.
What’s in the box!?
By the time I’d finished dealing with those tasks, my advisors were ready to bring Thom Rainier back to Skyhold. Usually, when I talk about sitting in my big chair and deciding the fates of those brought before me, it’s funny. This wasn’t funny. This was a man who had shielded me from harm countless times, a warrior who had faced dragons and demons to further my cause, and a friend being dragged in chains into my presence. In the end, my decision was simple, though the reasoning behind it was not. Rainier’s crimes were horrible, there was no denying that. And if he was the same man, the same monster he’d been back then, killing him would have been the right thing to do. But he wasn’t that monster anymore. That monster wouldn’t have continued Blackwall’s work after the Warden had sacrificed himself. That monster wouldn’t have given his all to the Inquisition and its mission to restore order to Thedas and help those in need. And that monster wouldn’t have revealed his true identity to the world to save the life of an innocent man at the expense of his own. As monstrous as he had been, the man I knew was worth saving. So, I set him free to do what he would. And, in turn, he chose to stay with the Inquisition. He could continue to try and atone for his sins, and the Inquisition kept a good man in its ranks. Fair trade.
After that, I really needed some enjoyment. Fortunately, we had one more prisoner awaiting Inquisitorial justice. Florianne, still wearing the ridiculous dress and mask she’d had on at her ill-fated party, was next up. There were a few legitimate ways she could have been useful to the Inquisition, but I went a different route: court jester. No clever misdirection or fake reasons here, I did it because it was funny.
Somehow, this outfit is either just as or slightly less ridiculous than her old one.
After that depressing-then-hilarious sequence, it was time to talk to Vivienne and Leliana about the tasks I’d performed for them. Vivienne used the Snowy Wyvern heart to create her potion, then took me with her to visit her longtime lover, Bastien. He was dying, and it turned out that the potion was an attempt to save him. Though it gave him enough strength to speak a final goodbye to Viv, it couldn’t stop the inevitable. I couldn’t do much other than offer my sympathy and whatever help Viv might require. She and I might not always see eye to eye, but losing someone you love is the most painful experience most of us will go through, and even I wouldn’t joke about that. Leliana, meanwhile, had gotten news that Natalie had returned to her master and actually convinced her that the Inquisition was not an enemy. So, score one for not always slicing throats. Lel had also come to that conclusion and decided to live and behave how she wanted, letting her heart dictate her actions, not the wishes of people from her past. So, score two for not always slicing throats. Then, of course, I had to talk to the man formerly known as Thom Rainier, then Blackwall, and at this point Rainier again. So, I jumped off of the rookery tower and had a chat with him. He still wanted to be called Blackwall, as an ideal to aspire to. Which made my life much easier, seeing as how I’d been calling him that for months and changing it would have been annoying. Other than that, he just confirmed most of what I already knew about him not being a Warden. I have to admit, after all that admittedly important drama, I was ready to get back to some good old-fashioned inquisiting.
I will defend myself by saying I didn’t know where we were going at the time, but in hindsight, the staff topped with a skull was less than appropriate for this visit.
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