After doing all we could in the Exalted Plains, I decided it was time to find Hawke’s Grey Warden friend and see how much he knew about Corypheus and what was going on with his fellow fighters. He was hiding out near a small village called Crestwood in northern Ferelden and there was a double whammy waiting for me when I arrived there. First, a rift had opened up near the village. “Not a problem, you deal with those all the time,” you say? Well, this one was beneath the surface in the middle of a very large lake. And undead were crawling out of said body of water at an alarming rate.
Well, there’s your problem.
Second, and despite being many miles away from… That Place, there was a persistent thunderstorm in Crestwood, too. I was, as you can imagine, delighted. The path to peace in the area was pretty straightforward, though. After rebuffing an attack on the village by a few corpses, I found out it was possible, quite conveniently, to use a dam to drain the lake and get at the rift. To reach the dam, I had to clear out a fortress that had been occupied by bandits. Not only were they in my way, but they had holed up in the most defensible place in the area, leaving the villagers to die in their homes. They were going down hard and on fire. When that was done, I discovered the mayor of the town had lied about the dam being damaged by darkspawn ten years ago. Something had happened, resulting in Old Crestwood being flooded during the Fifth Blight and creating the very corpses that were crawling out of the lake, but I had bigger fish than a potentially corrupt politician to fry before I confronted him. With the fort under Inquisition control, I sought out Stroud, Hawke’s Warden contact.
Two facial tattoos meet a magnificent mustache.
It turns out there were no Grey Wardens wandering Orlais because all of them had starting hearing the Calling and been ordered to assemble together. The process of becoming a Warden effectively puts a ticking clock on an individual’s lifespan, and the Calling is a Warden’s tainted body telling them their time is almost up, basically. On a possibly important note, this all started happening right around the time when Corypheus came back. Funny timing, that. So, all of the Orlesian Wardens thought they were dying at the same time and were going to do something stupid and blood magicky to try and light their darkest hour in a desert called the Western Approach. I figured drying out in the sun after being rained on for days on end would be nice, but I wanted to finish helping the people of Crestwood first. Without all the water in the way, I could head down into caves near the ruins of Old Crestwood and get rid of the rift. Along the way, I had an entertaining encounter with a Spirit of Command, who was frustrated that the rocks and sky weren’t following her orders. Which does actually work in the Fade, where she should have been, by the way. She was stuck in our world until her nature could be fulfilled, meaning someone (read: me) had to fulfill her commands. Fortunately, all she wanted was the death of a particularly large rage demon that had chased her across the lake. Doubly fortunately, the demon was in the caves. So, I didn’t even have to go out of my way to fulfill this request. Thus, I descended into the caverns, which fed into some dwarven ruins, and cleared Crestwood of its undead problem. Upon returning to the village to give the mayor the good news, I discovered that he had fled, leaving a confession in his home. Ten years ago, he had intentionally flooded Old Crestwood to stop the darkspawn and wipe out the taint-stricken townsfolk and refugees he had forced into the caves. As soon as I got back to Skyhold, I sent agents to track him down so he could face true Inquisitorial justice. On a more positive note, by the time I got out of the caves, it had stopped raining. Without the oppressive darkness, frequent thunderclaps and lightning strikes, and rain bucketing down constantly, Crestwood was actually quite a nice place. Aside from the dragon that had taken up residence nearby, which, naturally, I took care of on my way out of town.
Wow, the wyvern statues are good, but that dragon statue is incredi- oh gods, it moved! It’s alive!
While we’d been inquisiting in Crestwood, Leliana had been looking into something for Cassandra. Before she got in on the ground floor of the Inquisition, Cass worked for a special-forces branch of the Chantry called the Seekers of Truth. We’d actually seen the leader of the organization, Lucius, back in Val Royeaux when one of his men punched that Revered Mother and he rambled about how bad the Inquisition was. Since then, all Cassandra’s former comrades had gone missing and she wanted to know why. Leliana eventually tracked them to a castle in Ferelden called Caer Oswin. The place was infested with a group of cultists called the Order of the Fiery Promise, longtime enemies of the Seekers who wanted to end the world, because that was the only way to end all evil. Since they were very stupid and wanted to be fiery, I figured the least I could do was oblige them. Which I did, in large numbers, as we pressed through the castle. Deeper in, we found Cassandra’s former apprentice, Daniel, looking less than healthy.
Oh, Danny boy, that... that is not going to heal properly.
Daniel said the Lucius we had met was a demon imposter, and that the real Lucius had sold the Seekers out. And who was behind it all? Yup, it was Corypheus. How did you guess? After relieving Dan of his pain, we found Luc waiting to monologue. He told Cassandra the Seekers had some serious skeletons in their closet, gave her a secret book that proved it, then died swiftly while attempting to offer resistance. Back at Skyhold, Cassandra read the super-secret Seeker tome and we discussed whether or not the order could, or even should, be rebuilt. That conundrum would have to wait, however, as there was still plenty of urgent inquisiting for us to attend to.
