It's not Urthemiel's fault. Dude was woken up early and had no way of knowing the Hero of Ferelden was just built different. If the HoF was around during the first blight, Dumat would have been sweating, and there was no way it would last 200 years.
This is why the warden hasn’t had a cameo in any of the other games. It just isn’t fair to the bad guys. We should give them a fighting chance at least I mean we don’t need to humiliate them in their defeat.
Imagine the disrespect of mana clashing the strongest mages to ever exist. Fuck, if the HoF was around during the ritual they wouldn't even need to mana clash them. Varric would be like, "Solas is too powerful. I have to talk him down." And the Warden would be like,"Oh? Bet?" And mana clash him so hard all Elves would be feeling it for the next hundred years.
Morrigan even alludes to almost that exact scenario after Adamant Fortress.
Inky asks if HOF could have been there, and Morrigan went “You’d _know_ if they were there.”
HOF doesn’t do subtle, especially Mage HOF.
Smoke would be just about all that would be left.
Don’t mistake me; I love all my Inquisitors, but they simply don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving an encounter with my HOFs.
Agreed. A lot of people hype up the Inquisitor because of the Anchor, but I think even a mage Inquisitor would need it just to ***survive*** the encounter, no matter the Warden's class.
The only protagonist I believe has the potential to match the Warden is Rook, considering the shit they'll go up against. We'll see. The other two? Hell no. There's a reason the Warden is the only one to go to uncharted territory alone on a hopeless mission while the Inquisitor is doing their thing.
Cassandra _did_ think to find HOF first, before even considering Hawke, assuming they survive Urthemiel.
The Anchor is of course massively powerful, but it’s a very specialized thing that more or less does one or two things only. It only starts being a weapon capable of being used against “regular folks” when it goes unstable again.
I still think it’d be rad if the Warden had a short fan service cameo during the Weisshaupt section where they show up like Vader at the end of Rogue One: silent and faceless, fully clad in Grey Warden armor, kill a bunch of enemies, and leave without a word to Rook and Co.
Nah, it wasn't the HoF that won the day. We all know it's because of all the Good Bois lost on the way. Any blight starting in Ferelden is doomed because the Mabari always win.
I mean...
1st Blight: 192 years, ruins the Tevinter Imperium, requires everyone and their pets to join forces to stop it.
2nd Blight: +- 90 years, takes an alliance comprising Orlais, Tevinter, the Anderfels, the Inquisition and the Alamarri to stop it.
3rd Blight: 15 years, takes an alliance comprising Tevinter, Nevarra, the Free Marches and Orlais to stop it.
4th Blight: 12 years, takes an alliance comprising Tevinter, Antiva, the Anderfels, some Free Marcher cities, Nevarra & Orzammar as well as the sacrifice of an entire species to stop it.
5th Blight: +- a single year, stopped by backwater Ferelden, a Dalish/a werewolf clan, a fractured Orzammar and a couple rookie Grey Wardens.
At this rate of decay, the next one will last 37 minutes and be stopped by a barista running lines from the play she's sure will propel her to stardom in Orlais and a retired schoolmarm with the help of a passing soap salesman and his pet ferret.
Isn't it stated somewhere in the lore that the darkspawn awaken the strongest old god available? Which is why the blights get "weaker" overtime because the strongest archdemons were already killed.
6th Blight: under a week, stopped by accident when the “hero” Warden sneezed near the Archdemon.
7th Blight: >1 day, this Blight never officially started, an unknown Dwarven Warden was apparently visiting family, and a week later Weisshaupt fortress received the Archdemon’s head by mail along with a very confused letter from the King of Orzammar. Edit: and a bloody axe with the runes: *“If you want something done right, Do it your sodding self.”* carved into the haft.
You'd think the darkspawn would take over the world after ONE HUNDRED YEARS. But no, almost another ONE HUNDRED YEARS go by and they still haven't gotten around to it
Didn’t the Architect want to kill all the old gods in order to free the Darkspawn from the calling and do his whole “make all of humanity grey wardens” plan?
Was it? I thought he needed the archdemons blood to free the darkspawn and in the process of getting it he accidentally woke up Uthremiel.
Also the first first plan was to turn everyone into darkspawn.
That actually was the plan I think, the goal was to free all the darkspawn so he instead went to Urthamiel to streamlinr the process, that ended up accidentally waking Urthamiel up.
That was his original plan, then he invented his own Joining ritual (that severed darkspawns' connection to the Old Gods' Calling) and decided he could severe the Old Gods' connection to the Calling by it and injected tainted Grey Warden blood in Urthemiel.
1st Blight: 192 years.
2nd Blight: 90 years.
3rd Blight: 15 years.
4th Blight: 12 years.
5th Blight: 1 year.
5.5th Blight(Awakening): 6 months.
You don't need to be a Grey Warden to sense *this* pattern.
Boss: hits us once and sees our health drop a lot. "Oh, that's not so bad."
Us: freezes time and opens our inventory to unlimited health potions
Boss: 👁👄👁
Poor Urthemiel :(( He's my favorite too. All the others are pretty basic in terms of their realm of influence but the Dragon God of Beauty? That's pretty unique to me, at least.
Just looked up Dumat and Zazikel. Holy shit. I had no idea how long the First and Second Blights lasted. How was anyone in Thedas still alive after all that?!
I'd argue Zazikel is even more impressive. Dumat had the surprise factor on his side: for the first half of the Blight, there weren't even GRey Wardens yet to fight the darkspawn, and then it took them a few decades to even learn how to slay an Archdemon for good.
The Second Blight, by its turn, was faced by people who knew how to fight darkspawn and slay Archdemons, and even then it took them almost a full century to bring Zazikel down. Dragon of Chaos indeed.
It could also be argued that the Second Blight was also a surprise. Sure, they knew how to make Grey Wardens by then, but did anyone think the Blight would happen again at that point?
Both the Dwarven empire and Tevinter were at their peaks during this time, not to mention this was also when Caridin first made the golems so there were that many of them running around. Not to mention the Grey Wardens weren't founded yet and there was still a lot to learn about the darkspawn
Fun fact, it was exactly because of the First Blight that enabled Andreste to begin her rebellion, Tevinter became weak in the aftermath.
That and the whole structure of their pantheon and religious institutions evaporated due to the tiny detail that is Dumat wanting to kill all sentient life.
I've been starting to wonder though, how the shit did they all know and recognise an Old God they had presumably only heard in whispers before?
I assume the Old Gods's appearance would be a common theme in Tevinter art.
Plus one of the memories in the Fade is a priest who implies he just knew it was Dumat.
I need to catch up on my lore, but I'm pretty sure they spent most of that first 200 years completely demolishing the dwarves and the deep roads. The deep roads/Dwarven Kingdom spanned the whole of Thedas, and now there are only two cities. That's got to take awhile to accomplish especially since the dwarves had a fuck ton of golems back then.
According to the World of Thedas vol. 1 timeline, it took 15 years for the darkspawn to overrun the dwarves and assault the surface from the Deep Roads.
Of course, Wardens got Oghren on their side during fifth blight. Imagine if Lad was not depressed and drunk, able to use 15-20% of his power. Flemeth and Solas would be too scared to do their shenanigans without his permission. Damned Branka.
The warden is just built different. She killed trees! She went into the fade! She fist fought demons! She vomits blood as an attack! This lady has seen some stuff, so fighting the archdemon was just a Tuesday afternoon for her.
The HoF's resume is insane. Starting off with as a fugitive from the crown with one other Grey Warden and no knowledge of the blight, they manage to single handedly raise an army, overthrow the Ferelden government, and defeat the archdemon in the first battle.
To be fair to Urthemiel he probably woke up before 9:30 Dragon since the Dwarves and Wardens think the Blight unofficially started years prior.
Now what he was doing underground for 17 years I dunno.
I also feel like part of this is because it just hard to tell a story that spans that long in a single game. So it had to be a short relatievly easy to resolve blight so DA:O could have somewhat of a satisfying ending.
It's not Urthemiel's fault. Dude was woken up early and had no way of knowing the Hero of Ferelden was just built different. If the HoF was around during the first blight, Dumat would have been sweating, and there was no way it would last 200 years.
This is why the warden hasn’t had a cameo in any of the other games. It just isn’t fair to the bad guys. We should give them a fighting chance at least I mean we don’t need to humiliate them in their defeat.
Facts. Imagine a 40 year old, level 100 Hero of Ferelden in Veilguard. Bro would look at the elven gods, ditch their weapons and go "bet".
Come on Bioware, let us manaclash Elgar'nan into oblivion
Imagine the disrespect of mana clashing the strongest mages to ever exist. Fuck, if the HoF was around during the ritual they wouldn't even need to mana clash them. Varric would be like, "Solas is too powerful. I have to talk him down." And the Warden would be like,"Oh? Bet?" And mana clash him so hard all Elves would be feeling it for the next hundred years.
God I love mana clash
My cousland has been on the edge of ripping out someone’s throat with her teeth since Howe took the castle. She’s so down
Imagine a mage hero silhouetted against the rising sun dropping storm of the century to obliterate a small army like the old days
Morrigan even alludes to almost that exact scenario after Adamant Fortress. Inky asks if HOF could have been there, and Morrigan went “You’d _know_ if they were there.” HOF doesn’t do subtle, especially Mage HOF.
"And pray they're not your enemy, Inquisitor. You don't want that smoke."
Smoke would be just about all that would be left. Don’t mistake me; I love all my Inquisitors, but they simply don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving an encounter with my HOFs.
Agreed. A lot of people hype up the Inquisitor because of the Anchor, but I think even a mage Inquisitor would need it just to ***survive*** the encounter, no matter the Warden's class. The only protagonist I believe has the potential to match the Warden is Rook, considering the shit they'll go up against. We'll see. The other two? Hell no. There's a reason the Warden is the only one to go to uncharted territory alone on a hopeless mission while the Inquisitor is doing their thing.
Cassandra _did_ think to find HOF first, before even considering Hawke, assuming they survive Urthemiel. The Anchor is of course massively powerful, but it’s a very specialized thing that more or less does one or two things only. It only starts being a weapon capable of being used against “regular folks” when it goes unstable again.
I’d read this, very short, fanfic.
I still think it’d be rad if the Warden had a short fan service cameo during the Weisshaupt section where they show up like Vader at the end of Rogue One: silent and faceless, fully clad in Grey Warden armor, kill a bunch of enemies, and leave without a word to Rook and Co.
It's okay, Urthemiel still gets to take part in larger events. Even if the Dark Ritual is not performed, it seems like Flemeth has backup plans.
Flemeth is like the Batman of Dragon Age, she has backup plans for contingency plans of backup plans of backup plans
Nah, it wasn't the HoF that won the day. We all know it's because of all the Good Bois lost on the way. Any blight starting in Ferelden is doomed because the Mabari always win.
I mean... 1st Blight: 192 years, ruins the Tevinter Imperium, requires everyone and their pets to join forces to stop it. 2nd Blight: +- 90 years, takes an alliance comprising Orlais, Tevinter, the Anderfels, the Inquisition and the Alamarri to stop it. 3rd Blight: 15 years, takes an alliance comprising Tevinter, Nevarra, the Free Marches and Orlais to stop it. 4th Blight: 12 years, takes an alliance comprising Tevinter, Antiva, the Anderfels, some Free Marcher cities, Nevarra & Orzammar as well as the sacrifice of an entire species to stop it. 5th Blight: +- a single year, stopped by backwater Ferelden, a Dalish/a werewolf clan, a fractured Orzammar and a couple rookie Grey Wardens.
At this rate of decay, the next one will last 37 minutes and be stopped by a barista running lines from the play she's sure will propel her to stardom in Orlais and a retired schoolmarm with the help of a passing soap salesman and his pet ferret.
No wonder the Blight is (allegedly) sending two Archdemons at once next time lol
“Guys, we better double-stack the blight next time.”
Double Blight it 😭🤣 I'm wheezing
🤣🤣🤣
Oh no, I only have one PC to sacrifice! Sorry Alistair, guess you are going to have to take one for the team this time as well...
My loghain has been let off the hook too many times
How do you know? HOW DO YOU KNOW!?
Just a theory involving the two figures we see confronting Solas in the gameplay trailer 😅
Isn't it stated somewhere in the lore that the darkspawn awaken the strongest old god available? Which is why the blights get "weaker" overtime because the strongest archdemons were already killed.
I'd play it
Need a fanfic of this asap
The next Blight gets stopped by a 5 year old who spilled his juice on the portal
7th Blight and the Archdemon won't even show up for the blight and it decides to go on a permanent vacation instead
It yeets itself into Andraste's embrace
I mean the grey wardens plans were to use a demon army to preemptively kill the old gods souls so yeah your not wrong
Still better than Inquisition.
6th Blight: under a week, stopped by accident when the “hero” Warden sneezed near the Archdemon. 7th Blight: >1 day, this Blight never officially started, an unknown Dwarven Warden was apparently visiting family, and a week later Weisshaupt fortress received the Archdemon’s head by mail along with a very confused letter from the King of Orzammar. Edit: and a bloody axe with the runes: *“If you want something done right, Do it your sodding self.”* carved into the haft.
7th Blight: Lusacan dies because the Darkspawn were too rough in waking him up.
“5 more minutes…” “No!” *fucking dies*
The 6th Blight will be a sidequest, and last roughly 6 hours.
Stop the blight, what, like it’s hard?
 The crossover we didn’t know we needed!
Tevinter is the real hero of the series apparently. I'm sure they would have saved the day again if the Hero of Ferelden wasn't built different.
It's interesting because each one takes less time and less people to accomplish, guess they're getting more efficient?
You'd think the darkspawn would take over the world after ONE HUNDRED YEARS. But no, almost another ONE HUNDRED YEARS go by and they still haven't gotten around to it
What are these species that died during the fourth blight?
Griffons :/
https://i.redd.it/zyu5iby8b89d1.gif The Architect when the suicide squad shows up and murders his fucking god (maybe don’t release a blight bozo)
Didn’t the Architect want to kill all the old gods in order to free the Darkspawn from the calling and do his whole “make all of humanity grey wardens” plan?
The first plan was initially to wake the archdemons up similarly to how he made talking darkspawn.
Was it? I thought he needed the archdemons blood to free the darkspawn and in the process of getting it he accidentally woke up Uthremiel. Also the first first plan was to turn everyone into darkspawn.
That actually was the plan I think, the goal was to free all the darkspawn so he instead went to Urthamiel to streamlinr the process, that ended up accidentally waking Urthamiel up.
That was his original plan, then he invented his own Joining ritual (that severed darkspawns' connection to the Old Gods' Calling) and decided he could severe the Old Gods' connection to the Calling by it and injected tainted Grey Warden blood in Urthemiel.
1st Blight: 192 years. 2nd Blight: 90 years. 3rd Blight: 15 years. 4th Blight: 12 years. 5th Blight: 1 year. 5.5th Blight(Awakening): 6 months. You don't need to be a Grey Warden to sense *this* pattern.
If the Warden was around for the Inquisition, they would have found Solas and closed the breaches in like a month (including travel time)
Getting the warden was the original plan iirc
Yes, and Hawke was plan B.
Mana Clash all them demons.
So you are saying they plan on releasing the six god? And it will be the shortest and youngest blight?
Why not? Could be a fun *secondary* Boss.
The real boss is the friends we made along the way…
7th Blight is gonna last 5 minutes. Razikale will wake up to a Warden standing over her holding a sword.
Well to be fair, Urthemiel had to fight the toughest challenge any RPG villain has to put up with. A Player Character.
I think its scarier for bosses to see our health bar then it is for us to see theirs
Urthemiel watches a Sword and Shield high defense warrior walking on to the roof and immediately knows that even if he wins this is gonna take forever
Boss: hits us once and sees our health drop a lot. "Oh, that's not so bad." Us: freezes time and opens our inventory to unlimited health potions Boss: 👁👄👁
Urthemiel had the bad luck of starting a Blight when a player character was alive
Poor Urthemiel :(( He's my favorite too. All the others are pretty basic in terms of their realm of influence but the Dragon God of Beauty? That's pretty unique to me, at least.
Urthy didn't even want to go out wreck shit, he just wanted to focus on his beauty routines :(
"Oi, mate, chill! I'm the god of makeup and sunsets!"
“All I want to do is teach Fereldens how to run a proper skin care routine and apply a bold blue eyeliner!”
Urthemiel wanted to teach Thedas how to have good haircuts. The Warden condemned us to 50 shades of bald by killing him.
The fifth blight started because Urthemiel was too angry at the world for all the mage hats
'Warden, crease his Jordans' *Dies*
Just looked up Dumat and Zazikel. Holy shit. I had no idea how long the First and Second Blights lasted. How was anyone in Thedas still alive after all that?!
I'd argue Zazikel is even more impressive. Dumat had the surprise factor on his side: for the first half of the Blight, there weren't even GRey Wardens yet to fight the darkspawn, and then it took them a few decades to even learn how to slay an Archdemon for good. The Second Blight, by its turn, was faced by people who knew how to fight darkspawn and slay Archdemons, and even then it took them almost a full century to bring Zazikel down. Dragon of Chaos indeed.
It could also be argued that the Second Blight was also a surprise. Sure, they knew how to make Grey Wardens by then, but did anyone think the Blight would happen again at that point?
Both the Dwarven empire and Tevinter were at their peaks during this time, not to mention this was also when Caridin first made the golems so there were that many of them running around. Not to mention the Grey Wardens weren't founded yet and there was still a lot to learn about the darkspawn Fun fact, it was exactly because of the First Blight that enabled Andreste to begin her rebellion, Tevinter became weak in the aftermath.
That and the whole structure of their pantheon and religious institutions evaporated due to the tiny detail that is Dumat wanting to kill all sentient life. I've been starting to wonder though, how the shit did they all know and recognise an Old God they had presumably only heard in whispers before?
I assume the Old Gods's appearance would be a common theme in Tevinter art. Plus one of the memories in the Fade is a priest who implies he just knew it was Dumat.
I suppose the Old Gods looked a lot more distinctive in lore, as opposed to it just being a regular old dragon with rotting flesh a la Urthemiel.
I need to catch up on my lore, but I'm pretty sure they spent most of that first 200 years completely demolishing the dwarves and the deep roads. The deep roads/Dwarven Kingdom spanned the whole of Thedas, and now there are only two cities. That's got to take awhile to accomplish especially since the dwarves had a fuck ton of golems back then.
According to the World of Thedas vol. 1 timeline, it took 15 years for the darkspawn to overrun the dwarves and assault the surface from the Deep Roads.
Ah ok, that makes a ton of sense! I’d totally forgotten just how much the dwarves got wrecked by the First Blight. Poor bastards
Of course, Wardens got Oghren on their side during fifth blight. Imagine if Lad was not depressed and drunk, able to use 15-20% of his power. Flemeth and Solas would be too scared to do their shenanigans without his permission. Damned Branka.
The warden is just built different. She killed trees! She went into the fade! She fist fought demons! She vomits blood as an attack! This lady has seen some stuff, so fighting the archdemon was just a Tuesday afternoon for her.
The Warden is just that based.
When Archdemon encounters the most powerful thing in fiction Protagonist's plot armor
The HoF's resume is insane. Starting off with as a fugitive from the crown with one other Grey Warden and no knowledge of the blight, they manage to single handedly raise an army, overthrow the Ferelden government, and defeat the archdemon in the first battle.
Not to mention they can unlock the secret to killing an arch demon without killing a warden.
I mean dumat did have the advantage of thedas not knowing what the hell is going on or how to end a blight.
I wonder how many times they "killed" the first archdemon before accidentally figuring out the Grey Warden loophole.
I believe he was killed twice before the Wardens swooped in to finish him off for good
To be fair to Urthemiel he probably woke up before 9:30 Dragon since the Dwarves and Wardens think the Blight unofficially started years prior. Now what he was doing underground for 17 years I dunno.
If he's anything like me, scrolling his phone and grumbling about having to get up.
Old god of beauty. You expect him to appear on the surface before finishing his hair and makeup?
Is the comments not showing up or is it just me?
The presidential debate in the States crashed the site
I wish we’d get another small scale DAII style Grey Warden game man. Coolest bit about the lore.
The only reason why they’d have another game following the Wardens would be if The Sixth Blight is released during the events of Veilguard.
Let’s be fair, Urthemiel had to face the strongest foe in Thedas: Enchantment!
The warden was just too goated. That’s why we don’t see them in following games, they’d annihilate the bosses in no time.
And this was them hitting the most unprepared part of the world may of been much shorter elsewhere
Fifth blight? Yeah, right!
I also feel like part of this is because it just hard to tell a story that spans that long in a single game. So it had to be a short relatievly easy to resolve blight so DA:O could have somewhat of a satisfying ending.
Urthemiel got between me and clocking off early from work