What did you do today in DA? [Spoilers]

...in which Ciara "Racist Scumbag" Amell visits the knife-ears:

Ciara hated the outdoors. Hated them. So she was already in a foul mood by the time she found the Dalish clan camped out in the Brecilian Forest, and she was decidedly not pleased to be greeted with anything less than adoration. Why, the knife-ear guarding the camp actually dared question her, a Grey Warden! The clan's leader (Zarthan? Zathrin? Zarthian?) was only marginally more respectful, but still had excuse after excuse for why he couldn't provide Ciara with darkspawn fodder troops. Something about werewolves? Well, Ciara would go kill some werewolves if that's what these deadbeats needed in order to fulfill their end of the agreement. Ciara was a giver, after all, and good at killing things.

Ciara was especially good at killing things that were easy to kill, and these werewolves were no exception. She found herself shocked at how much trouble the elves had had with them, but she shouldn't have been shocked. After all, elves were savages who lived out in the wilderness with their livestock. One of them admitted to her, freely and proudly, that they let their halla decide where the clan should go next. Ciara had never heard anything so ridiculous, including everything she'd heard in Orzammar. Halla were extremely dumb animals, as many prey animals tended to be, and certainly inferior in intelligence to elv--...well, actually, maybe the halla were smarter than the elves, and that was why they were allowed to lead the clan around.

She was forced to kill an elf injured by...something. A werewolf or darkspawn, Ciara didn't know and didn't care. Leliana was very offended by the whole ordeal, but she shouldn't have been. The elf had seemed to be suffering -- at least, Ciara supposed that elves felt pain -- and Ciara had ended that pain. Leliana had, unbelievably, wanted to carry the elf back to camp for treatment! What a notion! There wasn't time for that. They had werewolves to hunt.

Ciara eventually worked her way through the forest and into a ruined temple, where she and her minions fought a dragon that Zerthan (Zernath? Zinrath?) had failed to warn them about. There was also a ghost wandering around and calling for its mother, who was clearly no longer around. Ciara told it so, and it disappeared in a puff of despair.

Witherfang turned out to be a tree...spirit...wolf...thing. Some sort of abomination, really, Ciara supposed. Unfortunately for Zinthrian (Zorthran?) it came to light that he had lied to Ciara about the whole thing, and nobody survived lying to Ciara. He went down easily enough, taking the curse and the tree-wolf-abomination with him. The werewolves morphed back into people -- poor people, with nothing to offer Ciara except a worthless shield -- and Ciara returned to the elven camp to force them to finally honor their treaty. Their new leader had little to say about Zonthrain (Zathorian?) and offered Ciara a songbook as thanks, which Leliana insisted on singing from.

That book was going to roast on the campfire that night.

Love this way of describing it, though now I feel the urge to start up DAI and go defend that poor dog...

Today I started a new archer playthrough. Made another mage yesterday, but just wasn't feeling it today. Archer is just too much fun and the last characters I played have been mages, so another rogue it is.



Aeran Lavellan was in for a rude awakening today and then made her way with Cassandra and the others towards the rift in an attempt to close it. I think I will play her as someone very pragmatic and practical, with no real believe in gods. She didn't really connect to the people in her clan, hence no vallaslin and always felt more kinship towards the humans she traded with when her clan passed towns and settlements. Going to be fun to play her, I think.

Over the weekend I decided to start another dwarf play through (after reading through the IB romance thread I just couldn't help myself).

Tess is a two-handed warrior enforcer for the Carta. Josie is having a hard time spinning that into a positive for the inquisition. Tess's truth is the steel she wields. It is her constant. It is cold. It is real. It is something she can truly embrace. Her goal? Keep the lyrium trade flowing. The Cadash clan depended on her to make sure business went smoothly before the d**ned mark and she is not about to fail them now. First, Tess stabilized the Hinterlands. Now that she has taken care of the rogue templars and mages the Kings Road is safer for shipments. The lyrium will flow.

Second, stabilize the demand. After chatting with the mages and finding they had allied with Teveinter, she thought her best bet was to support the Templars. They would bring the mages of Thedas back in line and help reestablish the circles. They lyrium will flow.

One big problem. A huge darkspawn with visions of grandeur is introducing a new red lyrium. Sh*t! And, he has a weird f*cked-up dragon. Sh*t!!! Corypheus must die. The lyrium will flow.

The battle almost cost Tess her life. She survived, just barely. The one thing that truly bugs Tess about this whole thing is the human's obsession with a dead woman named "Andraste". The humans have decided that she is Andraste's herald. She could tolerate that. A little deference is kind of nice. But, after Haven fell something strange happened. The inquisition was camped in the middle of no where with no idea of where to go next. Mother Giselle was no help. All she could talk about was faith. Faith is nothing but a ghost of thought. It is not real. Faith did not kill the rogue mages or the templars. Faith did not defeat the envy demon. Faith did not close the breach. She did. And now Tess needed to kill Corypheus. Tess's thoughts were on her constant, her cold blade and the killing blow that would end this nightmare when the singing began. Just one voice, then two, then the whole camp joined in and people started kneeling at her feet. "No. No. This is not right.", Tess thought as she stepped back. "I am a dwarf. My life is my blade. I make people pay in blood. I am no one's savior."


So, I am either going to really hate Tess by the end of this play through or she will become be my favorite character.

A mini adventure with Ciara "what violent tendencies?" Amell:

Ciara grumbled to herself as she entered Orzammar once again, accompanied by Shale, Oghren, dog, and of course, the enchanting Morrigan. Shale had asked to return to investigate something or other in its past, and Ciara supposed they could afford to spend an afternoon pillaging an abandoned thaig (undoubtedly full of treasure), and so she acquiesced.

The dwarves whispered as she passed -- at least, what passed for whispering among dwarves -- about Oghren, about the golem, about the witch. But mostly, they whispered about her. Not just about how she had saved them from themselves, nor about how she was going to save the entire world, but about the fact that they let a woman be a Grey Warden.

Ciara rounded on the nearest group of bearded midgets and groused, "the next idiot to act surprised that I am a woman is getting my staff to their groin!"

They cringed, and they eyed her staff, and they harrumphed and walked away. And Ciara, feeling quite pleased with herself, continued on into the city.

Until she heard the conversation behind her.

"The swamp witch desires something from it," Shale said suspiciously to Morrigan, calling Ciara "it" in its usual fashion.

And Morrigan paused, a dangerous smile on her face, and she answered, "From what? Ah... you mean from him, the Grey Warden? What of it?"

And then Morrigan laughed. Laughed at Ciara, a confident laugh, issuing a challenge she knew Ciara would never accept. She knew Ciara would not carry through with her threat to hit her.

At least not there.

Well! Morrigan would just see how it felt to be left behind, then, when Ciara went to Denerim with Wynne instead! It was high time the old crone started pulling her weight anyway. Ciara had allowed her to "rest" for far too long.



********

Soo...this came about because the mod I use to allow my female warden to romance Morrigan forces Morrigan to see the warden as a male. And yet, in every area, it seems someone comments about the warden being female. I thought it made for a bizarre and somewhat amusing contrast.

After talking to everyone in Haven, I headed to the Hinterlands and started my usual route pre-Val Royeaux. Surprisingly enough the beginning in the Hinterlands with taking care of the Apostates and Templars, talking to Dennett and securing his farmstead is still really enjoyable. Once everything I usually do on my first trip to the Hinterlands was taken care of, I headed to Val Royeaux and then picked up Sera and Vivienne. After a quick detour to meet with Blackwall, I'll finish up the Hinterlands and then head to the Storm Coast.



Really not looking forward to finishing up the Fallow Mire and the Forbidden Oasis after allying with the Templars. Really not a big fan of those maps, but a completionist has to do what a completionist has to do.

Here I go again.

Finished up the Storm Coast and the Hinterlands. Barely managed to kill the Fereldan Frostback before it killed me. Then I went off to build an alliance with the templars. Still hate the part of the quest with the timer. Timed missions are no fun, especially if you want to make sure you've looted every nook and cranny. After talking to everyone back in Haven, I went off to the Fallow Mire and killed the Avvar leader.



Everything is all set up for the Forbidden Oasis tomorrow and then finally time to go to Skyhold! Armor tinting can't come soon enough.

I had finished my all-archer game for DAO. It actually turned out pretty decently with 2 warriors (Sten, Warden) and two rogues (Leliana and Zevran) so we had 2 Rallies and 2 SoC's. With Suppressing Fire hardly anything could hit the group. I would point out that if you don't use respec potions for warriors (Alistair or Sten) then it would take a while before they contribute decently since you want Master Archer for them so they can wear heavy armor w/o speed penalty and tank a bit. Leliana and Zev don't really need Master Archer since they won't be using Aim or heavy armor. Aim lowers DPS unless you can get ~1.3s of Rapid Aim stacked and that isn't realistic for anybody but the Warden since I was hogging the Repeater Gloves and Sorrows of Arlathan.  I didn't bother to respec Zev to make him a better archer faster, since he is "ok" at auto-attacking with just melee archer.

Anyway I decided to try a "fast" run through DAI and took DW rogue (also wanted to give Tempest another shot). I am getting disgruntled though. I need to relearn the idiocy of this game, especially wrt squad tactics settings since I don't feel like microing all their powers.* Also pissed that I couldn't Parry all the swings of the 2H idiot in Caer Bronach... Last summer when fooling around with Sera I was able to get her to consistently block all the 2H swings from a darkspawn in Valammar when I manually controlled her (she can't do it if AI controlled). Required some canceling to get the block stance fast enough back to back. Don't know why I couldn't do it with any consistency today.

*I play DAI with FF on and that sort of screws with the ability to make non-completely-stupid mages that do more than just spam barrier if left to AI. Especially given the "baby's first tactics" system that it has.  I don't have the DLC so no toggles for me either.

Yesterday evening I had the odd feeling that I REALLY want to play DAI again (7th playthrough I think). The only thing that stood in my way was the character creator. So I created my character as fast as I could. It took me under 15 minutes (that's fast for me!) to get something that looked remotely decent in the CC.. but now that I look at my char again I think that I will spend a LOT of time correcting basically everything in the black emporium..

Today I finished up in the Forbidden Oasis and then it was time to head to Skyhold. And once the quest was over, the real fun began. All in all, a lot of hours spent talking to companions, doing the first personal quests and crafting, now including armor tinting. Have to finish up Bull's personal quest tomorrow, get started on Josephine's and start digging into Calpernia's motives. Should be fun.



And the most important thing, of course. Lots of kissing Cullen on the battlements.