DRAGON AGE ORIGINS [DAO] STORY REDCLIFFE CASTLE
Content - Imprisonment, Possession, Blood Magic, Psychic Domination.

The morning after the undead attack, people seem to be in really good spirits.  Bann Teagan, the Arl's brother who is sort of running the defense of the town, in case you forgot, gives a speech.  Revered Mother Principled gives a speech, and everybody cheers like they're certain this isn't going to just happen again the following night.*  Well, at least they have an elf, a dwarf and some flammible liquid helping defend, I guess.

I'm not saying much about the attack itself, because, from a story perspective, it's not that interesting.  Multiple waves of identically dressed and equipped zombies showing up and attacking the barricades and then popping out of the lake and attacking the chantry.  I suspect I made things easier for Sooney by doing all the pre-battle preparations, but it's hard to tell.

Teagan knows a way into the castle itself, via a path that opens to the windmill, and it just so happens that his signet opens the lock on the secret door.** But before he can lead Sooney and the crew down the path, the Arlessa shows up with the shadiest story that ever shaded.  It goes something like this "Teagan, you have to come up to the castle with me right now, and I can't tell you why or anything else about anything."  Teagan is all like "Seems legit" and Sooney's dialogue tree is composed entirely of being rude to the woman for reasons I can kind of understand, but really, Soon, you could tried to empathize and get some information out of the woman.  Well, ok, so Teagan goes with his sister-in-law, but he does leave Sooney with his ring and instructions to come up the secret path anyway.  So that's what they do, after a moment of silence for dear, departed Teagan.

I've seen this a few times in movies, games and other media, and I'm not sure if it exists in real life, but why, for the love of God and all that's holy, do people put the castle-end of their secret passages in the dungeon?  This seems like poor planning to me on multiple levels.  Anyway, Sooney took Morrigan, Sten and Shale with her in case she had to do something awful, since Alistair cares for the family, and Leliana is, frankly, kind of tiresome.  This proves to be a little mistake.  Well, unless you're Jowan, then it proves a death sentence.

Remember Jowan?  He was Harriet Amell's bestest blood-mage buddy in the mage opening, Harriet being the mage I started and may play a little more to refresh my memory of the shit that goes down in places that aren't Orzammar, because I HATE ORZAMMAR.***  Well, he ended up in Redcliffe (starting a little trend for mages on the run, that culminates in the rebels taking the place over in Inquisition), tutoring the Arl's son.  Who is a mage.  A fact the Arlessa has been hiding from everyone because a) she'd lose the boy to the circle and b) having mages in the family is kind of a scandal, and she forgets she's not in fantasy France anymore but fantasy Tennesee.

Anyway, Jowan got contacted by Arl Howe (aka Arl Dr. Evil McFrankenfurter) and strongarmed into poisoning the Arl on behalf of Teyrn Loghain.  The poison hasn't killed the Arl because his son got hisself possessed by a titty demon trying to get the power to save his dad.  And then the dead started rising from the grave.

So, seriously, fuck Loghain.  Literally everything he touches sprouts demons and everything he doesn't touch gets overrun by darkspawn.

Sten and Shale are all about killing this guy, and Morrigan is all like "well, he could be useful, but you should either kill him or let him go."  To Sooney, that sounds like three votes for killing Jowan, and her own is well... what did the chantry say about malificara?  Oh yeah, they'll control your mind if you give them the chance, so kill on sight.

Turns out what Sooney thought was three votes to kill was one vote against and two bloodthirsty abstentions.  Thanks for backing my play, you fucks.

The castle is full of the undead, and also a handful of doggies that no one told about us being the good guys.**** Fighting through it is more of the same we got in the undead attack on the town, only it's also the first appearance of a revenant.

Revenants are bad news.  9 feet tall, black armor, looking like a cross between Darth Vader and Warduke***** with telekinetic powers and big swords.  Expensive where the healing poultices are concerned, and architect of the situation I like to call "Oh fuck, I have to solo this as Morrigan again."  Fortunately, Peacekeeper commando training and winter's grasp manage to carry the day (again), so there's that.

Eventually our heroes make it to the great hall, where Teagan is doing his best Captain Kangaroo at the behest of the Arl's son (Connor, I think, because this game was made in the early millenium, so OF COURSE the kid's name was Connor), as ridden by the titty demon.****** There's a brief and incredibly awkward conversation where the demon does the demon version of not realizing they EVEN MADE WOMEN (Grey Wardens).  One day, I'm going to wring some one old and not conventionally attractive******* out of the character generator to make those conversations really odd.  The upshot is that the demon thinks Sooney is much prettier than the Arlessa, I imagine mostly to hurt the poor woman further, but fucking still, Bioware.  No one has time for this.

Also, Morrigan's just sitting back there going "What about me?  Am I not a woman?  Have you been talking to Sten, because he's got weird ideas about gender performativity and... You know what, I don't care, let's kill these motherfuckers.  If it unsexes me, at least I'll be unsexed without all these annoyances around"

This is also Sooney's vote, and anyway, the demon sends the possessed guardsmen (and possessed Captain KangaTeagan) to rush them.  Somehow, they manage to not kill Teagan.  Apparently, beating the HP out of him gets the demon out.  All the commotion fatigues the demon, and it lets go of Connor a bit.

And comes the discussion about whether or not we should murder a little boy (spoiler alert, we don't).  There's a general consensus that possessed is possessed and death is the only solution, but then, at the end Morrigan chimes in with "well, there is something else we could do.  It just requires a bunch of mages and lyrium or just one blood mage like the ONE YOU MURDERED IN THE BASEMENT."

"You told me to muder him!" Sooney says.

"I told you to murder him," says Shale.

"Mmm," says Sten, which we can all assume means "I did, too."

"Well, you could have let him go, then we could have had him sacrifice the Arlessa to get the power to send me into the fade to fight the titty demon and liberate the boy," says Morrigan.  "It only would have upset Alistair a little."

"Hey, I'm still planning to hit that!" Says Sooney.

"The Arlessa?"

"Me?" Says the Arlessa.

"No!  Fucking Alistair!  Andraste's g-spot, do try and keep up."

"Well, we could still go to the Circle and convince Shady Dumbledore to give us some lyrium and a couple of mages.  Maybe you could make that schoolmarm we'll be picking up there go into the fade instead of me."

"Oh no, Morrigan, you still get the titty demon."

I'd like to make it clear that swearing on Andraste's g-spot or the Maker's p-spot is not in the dialogue tree options.  Though both should be.  Anyway, this makes the quest point straight at the Circle, which happens to be geographically pretty close.  Until we end up marching all the way around the northern end of the lake, for ...reasons.

But first, Sooney makes a detour back through the basement of the castle to yell at a traumatized woman (the smith's daughter) and send her back to town, as promised.

* I guess all they needed was a honkey Sooney.  Still, it's weird that everyone acts like this is the last night the dead are going to attack, though there is no indication that is the case.

** You would think, if the passage is meant to help the important people escape from the castle when it's under siege, you'd want something that only opened from the inside, but whatever.

*** This turns out to be a pretty common opinion.

**** I have no idea what I was going to say about this, except that Mabari, as you remember, look like they are half rottie and half grizzly bear and are far more formidible than anything in the castle other than the Revenant.

***** The D&D Darth Vader Expy.  A guy that I like a lot more than he ever deserved.

****** Somehow, up until this moment, I never thought of how creepy that arrangement is.  Now, I can't stop thinking about it.

******* To the extent that Bioware's character creation can make conventionally attractive.  It's very easy and also impossible to make. But, I enjoy how these games allow you to make older looking characters but assume you never will, because no one ever has.  It does better than Dragon's Dogma, though, since that game assumes you are making a man, no matter what.  It makes no assumptions about your sexuality unless you rescue the duchess, at which point it assumes you are duchess-sexual.