As posed by the incomparably talented, inexhaustibly creative Arsinoe de Blassenville: 9. Don't hit me, but Alistair is secretly evil, and taking Orlesian gold. Plotting to kill Cailan in battle, which is why he's furious about being sent to the Tower of Ishal. Delays lighting the beacon deliberately and attacks PC when ogre killed. The PC can (a.) Die (b.) Crawl out and report to Loghain
The Second Son
Duran's first impression of the human kingdom is one of precarious balance.
For every Loghain, there is a Cailan. For every Duncan, an Alistair. The humans constantly struggle amongst themselves in a complex web of rank, seniority, nobility, ambition and a score of nameless other qualities that make it nigh-impossible to come to any sort of simple solution.
It's like he never left Orzammar. The thought sours him. He comes to a different conclusion about Alistair in time, but that may have been wishful thinking just as much as anything else. Anything to put the betrayal pains of the past behind him.
Eventually, Duran decides the comparison between young King and Warden is unfair. He took the young Warden for just another green recruit who had yet to accept the gravity of his situation. He was like so many of the barely bearded noble's sons who marched off to the Deep Roads in search of glory and came limping back to the city gates with their dignity shredded as badly as their regiment—assuming they returned at all. But, no, Alistair is not quite like them. Alistair knows how to carry himself when there is bloodletting to be done. How he handled himself in the Wilds is proof enough of that.
Ah, but now he sees more of that entitled petulance he's come to expect of the high castes. Alistair doesn't take kindly to being swaddled in an errand boy's assignment at the Tower of Ishal. He's upset, incensed even. The boy should thank the Stone that he'll not be pitted against the bulk of the horde this day. Yet with the disproportionately affronted way Alistair is carrying on, fists clenching and face screwing up in a reddened scowl, Duran would presume Duncan had just insulted his mother. Duran resists the temptation to roll his eyes at the stupidity of such a thing. The one good thing the intrigue of the dwarven court has taught him, he supposes.
So, no, Alistair is no great leader of men, his only redeeming feature being that his sword and shield are not strictly ornamental. Alistair is too simple for the greater tactical and political visions unfurling around him, Duran thinks. The young Warden has neither the brains nor the stones for machination. Duran takes comfort in that fact. Perhaps this 'Ferelden' is not so much like Orzammar after all.
Duran silently praises his ancestors for Lord Harrowmont, who had the decency to consign him to the Deep Roads with such a fine sword. It has made quick work of the beasts swarming through the Tower. Already, he and his ragtag band of Wardens, soldiers and mages have carved a path to the second floor, where he circles a hurlock.
The creature misreads him, lunging with a blow meant to split him from helm to groin. Duran weaves out of the way with a practiced maneuver—how could he not, with the best of the warrior caste as his masters?—and leaps forward with a stoke just behind the left knee, where the armor is especially weak. The leathers are thin enough here, and the darkspawn taint has turned it to rot. Duran's pulse hums with the familiar, visceral jolt of sword through flesh.
The creature collapses in a crippled heap, disoriented with pain and dizziness long enough for Duran to all but tackle it. He pins it with his weight, which is not inconsiderable with the heavy armors his powerful frame affords him, and goes about hacking at its exposed skull with the edge of his shield. He's not entirely sure why he's doing this. Oh, that's right. He's not holding his sword anymore. Why is he not holding his sword? Duran can't remember, but he remembers that this moment is his existence. The adrenaline and the scrape of metal on bone and the cracking of skulls and the black bile-blood in his eyes, mouth, nose.
He had already drunk their blood once for his Joining. By the time his Warden career comes to an end, he thinks, he would have swallowed enough to perform the Joining a hundred times over.
This is what it means to be a Grey Warden. There are no niceties and no sense of decorum. It's fast. It's ugly. It's brutal. It's everything Duran could have wanted.
Duran likes this Warden business very much. If he sees a problem, he need only point his sword (or shield) in the right direction. No more smoke and mirrors for Duran Aeducan. He's free to be the berserker his father and his birthright forbade.
He only realizes he's very nearly screamed himself hoarse during the escapade when he calls out to his companions—Alistair, a soldier shaking in his boots and a mage who is young enough that Duran would very much doubt he's known a woman, assuming the mage-knights haven't already made him useless for such a task. (Duran knows little enough of magic and its trappings. After meeting the Tranquil, emasculation of the magical man strikes him as not out of the question for the Chantry.)
The others have come through their ordeals mostly unharmed, and Alistair is already giving the soldier a pep talk. Duran finds it irritating. He knows the value of morale, but Alistair can't afford to coddle these men in a time of crisis. They need to keep moving.
"The darkspawn wait for no man," Duran rumbles, yanking his sword free of its place lodged in the hurlock's leg. "Our aim is upward and onward."
"Upward?" Alistair's eyes are alight with dark amusement. "Am I hearing that right? A dwarf is telling us to go up?"
"Ah, yes, dwarves only ever walk downhill because we live underground. Your wit is as sharp as your blade, I see," Duran glares at him pointedly, sheathing his sword and shield. He knows he'll need to draw them again soon enough, but it encumbers him to walk fully drawn. He had hoped that Alistair would see this and follow suit—His sword remains naked aside from the fresh coat of war. "But something in my gut tells me we'll all be better off if you put the sword to work instead of your tongue."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Alistair says conversationally. Duran privately seethes. This is no time for conversation. "Have you seen what I can do with my tongue? Let's just say I drive the ladies wild when I eat cherry stems."
The remark throws Duran. He had taken Alistair for a good Chantry boy—self-righteous, self-sacrificing and overwhelmingly fearful of the flesh. Then again, he hadn't taken someone so dedicated to the Warden cause to be the type to stand about, forsaking his duty to waste time. Perhaps he had misjudged the young Warden.
"You can eat all the cherries the surface has to offer once we've won this battle," Duran is already stocking off toward the staircase. "But that can only be done by telling Loghain to drop his hammer upon the king's anvil."
"Sounds like a good way to commit regicide," Alistair's voice is such that Duran can hear the grin. It gives the dwarf pause, but he discards it as another oddity. There's more to Alistair than he first thought, but he doesn't have time to contemplate it right now.
Duran's blood is still burning as brightly as his weapon (he had very nearly dropped it in surprise before the mage explained his witchcraft) when Alistair taps him on the shoulder. It very nearly earns him a shattered shin bone, but Duran stops himself before his shield can make contact. The human's face is a mixture of dull surprise and gallows amusement.
"We may smell like them, but that doesn't make me one of them, now does it?"
Duran pauses again. Wasn't this the man who was dedicated to the order and its secrecy?
"What are you doing?" Duran hisses, drawing close. "Do you want the others to hear?"
"What, them?" Alistair swipes his arm in the direction of the nameless mage and soldier. The former is tending to the latter's shoulder wound. "I doubt they can hear us."
"And if they can?"
"They won't live long enough to tell anyone about it." Now it is Alistair's turn to pause. "These are darkspawn we're dealing with. They're lucky to have made it this far."
Duran can't help but showboat. Slaying darkspawn is his new profession, but his latest exploit is something he thought he would need years to achieve. An ogre lies dead at his hand, pierced and scorched in a dozen different places before Duran finally stabbed it first in the heart then in the vein-rich neck for good measure. The stories of ogre revivals sang strong in his ears. He lifts his voice in a cry of exultation.
"Glory to House Aeducan!"
And just like that, the glory goes out of the moment. He sobers instantly. He's no longer in Orzammar, no longer an Aeducan in any way that counts. The thought turns him bitter, but it is what he needs. He has new priorities now.
Light the beacon. Yes, light it.
But his bones ache, and the ogre bent and bashed his armor in such a way as to make it more of a hindrance than a help at this point. He is loathe to do it, but he calls out to Alistair—
Who is in the midst of running through the mage who made the climb with them. The human looks up from his task, for the mage is not quite dead, with dismissive disdain.
"Yes, I'll be with you in just a moment," Alistair says, his voice flat, as he kicks the mage in the thigh to force him off of his sword. His time as a Warden has taught him to be thorough, if nothing else, so he makes sure to finish his job by stabbing the throat just as Duran had done to the ogre.
The similarities are not lost on Duran. That makes it all the worse.
"By the Stone, man! What are you doing!" Duran is already drawing himself up into a defensive stance, quickly scanning the room for any other nasty surprises. The mage is freshly slain and the soldier, dashed near to death by the ogre, sits in the corner with his throat slit. The Wardens are alone.
"What I was paid to do," Alistair's voice still holds that unnatural timbre, the voice of a man forcing himself into placidity. Yes, it is very much the voice of a mercenary.
"I'll give you credit for having taken your assignment so seriously. To think, an assassin who would go so far as to risk the Joining as to kill his target? You flatter me, Crow!" Duran chastised himself, the fool who thought the treachery of Orzammar would not extend beyond its gates. Of course Bhelen would tie up the loose end of an exile.
"You think this is all about you?" Alistair's emotions flare up again. It's shocked, angered, condescending in an outraged sort of way. "You're wrong! Wrong! Wrong in so many ways! I'm not a Crow, and I couldn't give two licks about you!"
Duran is off balance, both physically and mentally. What was this all about? He shifts, easing himself off of the ogre's corpse to get better footing while he poses a stalling question.
"Do explain, ser murderer! It would do my heart good to hear how it is that I've come to be in a tower overlooking a war with the darkspawn while a human kills his fellows!"
"You wouldn't understand," Alistair steps forward, and Duran realizes he's still not ready.
"I've seen more than my years might suggest," Duran braces in the event Alistair doesn't take the bait. He silently praises the ancestors yet again to see the loosening in Alistair's shoulders. Duran reckons himself the better fight, but he's also much worse for wear. Alistair was clever to let the dwarf take the lead in any given charge. Duran had taken him for the cowardly, cagey sort.
He sees now that he was wrong. He was wrong about so many things—Trian, Bhelen, Alistair, the surface.
"Alright, then, I'll tell you, not that it makes much difference," Alistair snorts. "Maybe you would understand. After all, you're the second son, just like me."
"You're trying to build rapport with the man you intend to kill?"
"No! You asked! So I'm telling you!" Alistair is petulant again, and Duran knows now more than ever that this isn't the fire-forged Crow he suspected. "I just…Look, you grew up with kings and arls or whatever it is you have in Orzammar, didn't you? You know how those noble types are, always looking for a way to make it good for themselves and hard on everyone else."
"Truer words were never spoken," Duran smiles darkly, even while subtly edging toward the torch. Maybe, just maybe, if he can lull the halfwit into a sense of security, he can light the beacon and salvage something out of this mess. Doing so will almost certainly put his back to the traitor long enough to be run through, but Duran considers it a fairly noble sacrifice.
It's not as if he has much choice. He can die by back stab very soon or let the horde overrun both army and fortress and kill him a bit later. The trick right now is to keep Alistair in his least murderous mind set.
"Right, well, I've had enough of it," Alistair sets his eyes and shoulders firm, and Duran's heart nearly stops. Fortunately, it is the gesture of a resolute man rather than the one who is about to charge. "Cailan is running Ferelden into the ground. You know. You've met him. He's a flighty fool. He's treating the Blight like his own play date with destiny. Ferelden needs someone strong and sure, someone who knows a thing or two about actually running a country. Celene gave him the chance once already, and Arl Eamon did his best to make sure it happened, but he backed out at the last minute because he would rather let the Loghain's daughter rule from the bedchamber."
It's so much to process that Duran doesn't even try to make sense of it all. Some things come through. He knows Loghain is Cailan's general and father-in-law. That explains the crack about bedchamber. 'Celene' means very little to him. 'Eamon' means even less. Except. No, that's right. She's a queen of the surface. (Or was it Empress? Duchess, perhaps?)
So, a game of thrones is afoot? He's traded an Orzammar beneath the surface for one above it.
"I had you all wrong, Alistair," Duran's voice oozes mock sincerity. "I took you for one type of killer, one who does it for a love of money like a whore, but you're just another old hand at the killing game. You're doing it for rank and what I'm guessing is a nice sack of sovereigns at the end of the day when Celene sweeps in to change the pieces sitting on the board."
"That's…I mean, there is gold involved, but that's not what this is about!" And the words are spilling out of Alistair's mouth because he's thought about doing the deed for weeks, but it's the first time he's ever played assassin. "Eamon negotiated the payment because it was the least he could do for me because I would be the one actually putting this all into motion. But that's just a show of good faith on Celene's part! She'll do whatever she can to help us. She'll help all of Ferelden!"
"I'm sure." Duran is so tantalizingly close he can almost taste the smoke on the air. "Of course, one must wonder how exactly she'll help. Cailan may be a fool, but he has brains (or luck) enough to be surrounded by men like Duncan and Loghain. What has been done to this land that it needs a new backside upon the throne? Why do you hate Cailan so much?"
The pointed question, meant to bait Alistair even further into his justifying stupor, falls horribly flat. Alistair doesn't go even deeper into his tirade, too focused on defending his moral superiority to realize what's playing out right in front of him. No, that doesn't happen at all. It's just the opposite. He's very calm, almost smug.
Duran's muscles coil. The moment of truth is at hand. Alistair is near the end of the rope. It's a question of how many people he hangs with it. And that question is predicated on whether or not Duran can light the torch before it snares him.
"Now that's the part I knew you'd understand. You're just like me, Duran. We could have had it all. We were just born too late to get it. We're both the second son."