Tevinter Nights - Spoiler Thread

Wardens Ramesh and Lesha have set on a mission to find Senior Warden Jovis's group which left on a mining expedition. Ramesh had been unwilling to wait for the reinforcements because he and Jovis go way back. They enter a Nevarran forest and Lesha is apprehensive, the whole place feels broken to her. The forest air has acrid quality to it that burns the lungs of the person breathing it. Then Lesha's horse throws her off and runs off. When Ramesh goes searching for it, a liquid roar fills the forest - followed by a terrified whinny of a horse that gets cut off. Trees have been snapped vertically from below at the clearing where the roar and whinny originated. It smells like the sea, salty, and there are signs that something faster than darkspawn has dragged the horse underground.

When Ramesh returns to Lesha, there's a third person. One of Jovis's Wardens, Warden-Recruit Friedl, had stumbled out of the woods wounded - and raving mad. Lesha's attempts help her have been unsuccessful, whatever toxin in her system doesn't respond to Lesha's magic. "We went too far. Too deep. Something's down there, something bad. We thought it was darkspawn but it's worse. Because it's different, you see? Not the same at all. Not twisted but made -- created." Three of Friedl's companions have died and the experience has caused her to claw her eyes out. "Don't make me go back. Not there, not where they are. I will not. I cannot. We must leave. This place to her, to them! [...] They build it to her! They wait for her! I am free -- I paid the price!"

Ramesh and Lesha decide to take Friedl with them because she'll die if left on her own. They set up a camp and tie Friedl to a makeshift litter to keep her from harming herself. Next morning a scream wakes Ramesh up. Friedl has chewed though her restraints. A greyish fluid marks her path. Ramesh finds her dead at the edge of the clearing. "Her mouth -- mixed with the blood, a trickle of something else. That same thin, greyish fluid that traced her path from the litter. The reek of brine, of the ocean, was stronger." Ramesh forces Friedl's mouth open using a branch and out comes lots and lots of grey fluid.

For additional bad luck the screams have caused their remaining horses to panic and run away taking most of their supplies with them. Ramesh and Lesha decide to continue the path to the mine, located on a mountain with three asymmetrical peaks that surround each other. "Yet still that oppressive feeling, that smell of decay, remained, and seemed to grow stronger as they left the forest -- not weaker. And over it all, that faint hint of brine. [...] There was one other thing that Ramesh noted, though he did not mention it to his companion. Large mounds of dirt, similar to the one he'd seen upon the disappearance of Lesha's horse, were scattered throughout."

At the base of the mountain they come across a scene of a big fight. There is blood that didn't originate from darkspawn everywhere, dozens of darkspawn corpses but no Warden bodies. Trying to figure out if there are still Wardens alive for them to go after Ramesh and Leshe search the site. "But there was something different about these darkspawn. The mutations that gave rise to their mindless hordes were far from consistent. Yet here he saw variance unlike any he'd previously known. Hurlocks with extra arms, shrieks with the powerful legs of a genlock, and an emissary with a second head." Lesha finds bloody human foot prints in front of a large hole in the earth. The smell of brine seems to be coming from it. Inside a flight of stairs descends into a carved antechamber with a doorway at its end. Above the door is written in dwarven runes 'Hormok.' A name of a dwarven thaig that fell centuries ago.

The doorway leads to a second staircase that is lit by the glow lyrium. At the end of this second staircase is a larger and grander door to an enormous chamber where Ramesh and Lesha find both a recently abandoned Warden camp and signs of a smaller battle. There's also ancient lyrium charges bearing an unknown dwarven mark and Ramesh and Lesha wonder about their purpose here. "There's a reason we don't come to this part of the Deep Roads much. Whole place is unstable -- Dumat really did a number on it."

Except for the route they came in, all the other entrances to the chamber seem to be blocked. As they search the chamber more thoroughly Lesha notices markings on its massive stone pillars. Ramesh recognizes them as marks used by Senior Wardens of Ferelden. The marks on the first pillar tell when they have left, the marks on the second their number (six Wardens in this case), and the third pillar's markings their return day. However, the scratch marks on the third pillar are a warning, the Wardens don't want anyone coming after them.

Despite the warning Ramesh and Lesha are both unwilling to give up their pursuit. Their discussion is cut short by the arrival of darkspawn that are markedly different: they are eerily silent and changed in appearance. One hurlock has a scorpion tail, another sports a genlock head - but the head is longer, thinner, more avian. There's an emissary with wings and a genlock with a narrow, thin head and an elongated jaw. One has a snapping serpent's head where normally there would be a fist. After the battle the duo finds a secret door and manages open it.

The stench of brine and decay is gets stronger in the opened passageway. It leads deeper into darkness. They come across carvings; one image has largely survived. The painting reminds of Leshe of Avvar cave paintings and it depicts a supplicant, a priestess, and a monster. Ramesh thinks the people in it look more elven. The same image repeats with slight variations, the figure and the creature changing a bit each time, "but it seemed to him the priestess's smile grew a little wider, and a little crueler, with each subsequent image." As they continue down the passageway, the walls grow smoother and larger. Delicate carvings start to appear, then flowers and creatures Ramesh doesn't recognize. At the end of the passageway are two huge doors that are partly open.

They arrive in a vast cave where every surface is covered with finely fashioned carvings. Ramesh is sure the ruins are elven. Massive bas-reliefs are carved in exquisite detail on the walls and "what he had first thought to be some kind of paint or pigmentation was, in fact, millions of tiny gemstones set into the stone. The images engraved into the stone seemed almost alive". The topmost carvings depict elven kings and queens with their people kneeling before them in respectful supplication. The middle ones have scenes of healing: disease and injury are being drawn forth from the sick and dying by elven mages. The bottom band of carvings feature splendid aravels pulled by halla toward distant mountains, one of which Ramesh and Lesha recognize as the same mountain they are currently beneath.

The more Ramesh stares the pictures, the more disquieting they become. There is something slightly off. The striations on the columns begin to form patterns: the same horns of a halla symbol repeats on each column. As he keeps looking the bottommost carvings the halla pulling the aravel are off, different, wrong. They have too many horns, and a harder more rounded look. They look almost insect like. The horns are longer and ridged, organic. The aravels have barred windows and resemble a prisonship. On the carvings in the middle band it seems as though mages were forcing corruption and disease in bodies of wounded and infirm. On the topmost band the expressions of elven rulers betray a contempt, their smiles edged with disgust and disdain for the creatures at their feet. The subjects seem to be covering in terror instead.

Both Ramesh and Leshe start to feel the urge to turn back, " but a strangely rhythmic hum was growing louder and seemed to be coming from the other end of the cavernous space." They reach the opposite end of the chamber where huge doors, at least a hundred feet wide, are set into the wall. “But to the side, where the path shows signs of greater wear than anywhere else in the chamber,” there's a door the size of a single person. The stench is almost overpowering there. They step through the door.

Twisted horrors that look like they’ve been assembled of body parts at random fill the cave. There’s a creature which has a serpent’s head, the neck of a halla, and the limbs of a varterral. A massive spider has had its many eyes replaced with the heads of a dozen serpents. At the centre of the cave is a massive pool filled with viscous grey fluid. The scent of brine wafts forth from it. Above it hangs suspended a massive lyrium crystal. The crystal glows with sickly light, tinged with yellow and green. Streamers of energy flow from it into the pool, sending it bubbling wherever it touches. The Warden duo takes shelter behind a smooth onyx boulder, several of them lined uniformly at the upper part of the chamber.

A hurlock walks into the pool, and the grey ichor reacts instantly and flows around it. It ends up submerged and out of the murk rises a cocoon, iridescent and pulsing with green light. Out of the cocoon comes a hurlock's head attached to a body of a drake. Ramesh and Lesha decide to leave, but Lesha stumbles because her wound from the earlier fight and drops her staff. Instantly the chamber is filled with sounds and then a loud screech cuts through it all. "And then the stone they sheltered behind moved." The onyx boulders Ramesh and Leshe have hidden behind is in reality a massive centipede, each segment the size of a horse. The centipede surrounds the Wardens and cuts off their escape. Ramesh slashes one of the segments with his daggers and white, corrosive substance splashes out. The dagger's blade is useless now.

When the Wardens ready themselves for their last stand, the centipede twitches and starts to fight itself. After resolving its internal conflict, the creature turns face-to-face with them. Where the creature’s head should be the twisted and broken upper torso of Warden Jovis is fused. He is bloated and grotesque, his eyes unseeing. His mouth is lipless and too wide. At first there's an insect like buzz to the creature’s voice but then Jovis's eyes focus and he answers Ramesh’s question of what happened to him: "We drank. Works differently for us. Can't just touch it, we need it inside. Takes a while. They turned us. Two halves, two wholes. Trying to be two ones. But I stayed me, and it hates that."

"'Can't let this out. Got to... bury it. Bury me.' The words came even more slowly, each one being forced through whatever will battled Jovis's for control of the creature. 'She cannot have it. Not again. Locked for a reason.'" Jovis tells Ramesh to take the lyrium charges and blow the place up, collapse the entrance, to "Stop me. Stop us."

Lesha creates a wall of green light to hold off the centipede (which has now suppressed the consciousness that was Jovis) and urges Ramesh to leave her behind and escape to warn the wardens. But Ramesh doesn’t want to leave her behind. To make matter’s worse, the rest of the monstrosities in the room begin to wake up. There’s a bat with the tail of a scorpion and a hurlock that breathes fire. Battered by the centipede Lesha's magic shield crumbles. Her magic reserves nearly depleted she decides to direct her remaining spell power at the lyrium crystal which causes it to explode. The ceiling starts to fracture and then gives way, burying the chamber underneath it.

The centipede, however, is unhurt and pursues Ramesh who arrives in the room with the lyrium casks. He rolls them toward the secret door and uses a string from a note he carries in his boot as a fuse. Ramesh runs and manages to get near the hole they entered the mountain. The tremors caused by the exploding lyrium give him the final push out. "Behind him, the earth shifted, the hill collapsing inward, downward, burying the creature with not just the roof, not just the cave, but the entire mountain."

It starts to rain: "He'd made it out. He'd survived -- and more important he could tell the other wardens. Warn them about the horror. Warn them what lurked beneath Hormok, and maybe, probably, elsewhere as well. Because he remembered something. Something about the bas-relief that he'd dismissed at the time, but which now loomed large in his memory. The mountain he'd brought down, the one that buried that nightmare under thousands of tons of rock, was not the only one to which the aravels brought their prey. There had been, before the image repeated, eleven other.”