Exactly What's Wrong With Orzammar

Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age.

Note: For those who don't remember who Loilinar Ivo is, he's the noble arguing with Oghren at the entrance to the Diamond Quarter and who won't talk to you if you have him in your party.

Loilinar Ivo knew that Oghren Kondrat was the personification of what was wrong with Orzammar. He had once been a well-respected warrior who married a smith girl so talented that she became the first Paragon in four generations. Oghren, as difficult as it was for Loilinar to remember at times, had once been honorable, had once had pride and dignity, had once been looked upon as a shining example of what a warrior should be.

Now…now he was an embarrassment and a disgrace. It was almost sad to see him fallen so far but it was his own sodding fault. While no one really knew why Branka had decided to take everyone in her house down to the Deep Roads with her searching for some ancient artifact, the fact that she had neglected to take Oghren was quite telling. Just what had Oghren done to warrant Branka not even wanting to take him along with her on a suicide quest? Granted, Loilinar himself wouldn't ever want Oghren around no matter what he was doing but the Oghren of two years ago had been a man worthy of respect and things hadn't started to go downhill until Branka had left so that couldn't be it. Or maybe Branka had seen the start of his decline and wanted nothing more to do with him?

Loilinar wasn't sure. What he did know was that Branka was dead. She had to be dead. The Deep Roads were dangerous and it didn't matter if she had had taken roughly three hundred dwarves with her. Maybe if someone had gone after her right away they could have saved her but after two years Oghren was just fooling himself. How much longer was he going to insist that she was still down there alive? Five more years? Ten? Twenty? Frankly, he couldn't even see Oghren managing to live that long at the rate that he was going.

Regardless of whether or not Oghren played a part in his abandonment or even in Branka's decision to go down to the Deep Roads – because, face it, Paragon or not she'd never seemed particularly happy to living in the Diamond Quarter – his behavior since then was appalling. Most warriors drank but Oghren had long since crossed the line from normal to excessive and then further crossed it into obsessive. Not only was he giving his fellow warriors a bad name and embarrassing himself and anyone who had happened to come across him but he also acted downright indecently! Oghren had always had a questionable sense of you and not much of an sense for what was appropriate and what wasn't (he had become so prominent in his family through skill with a blade alone and not through any sort of political maneuvering as that was really not his strong suit) but when he got drunk it was ten times worse. When he got Oghren-smashed – and yes, a new term had to be coined for the new ways Oghren had pioneered for getting wasted – then anyone from a barstool to the King of Orzammar himself was at risk for his attempting to hit on them. It was one of the reasons the late King Endrin hadn't let his daughter anywhere near him and Loilinar really couldn't blame the man. Had he a daughter, he wouldn't want her to be anywhere near the likes of Oghren either.

Oghren's drunken behavior, while not liked by any means, was tolerated for a time. Every week, without fail, Oghren came to the Diamond Quarter he had once lived and now was no longer welcome in order to beg for someone to go and track down their Paragon and his house and every week his request was denied. Why he seemed to think that irritating persistence alone would convince someone to actually acquiesce to his foolish request as more and more time passed was beyond him. Perhaps that simple logic had yet to permeate Oghren's drunken little brain. It had gotten to the point where the guards usually chased him away before he got an opportunity to harass the King.

What really made Oghren such a laughing-stock was his lack of ability to carry a weapon within Orzammar (if he wanted to leave them and join the Surface then he was no longer their problem and the Assembly allowed criminals far worse than he to carry a weapon in the Deep Roads). Loilinar hadn't really known the youngest son of Lord Meino but he still felt bad for the kid sometimes. All he had said was what everyone was thinking: there was no way that three hundred dwarves – half of them smiths – would come back safely after all that time in the Deep Roads.

Even if Oghren was totally overreacting to the perceived slight that no one else, not even the most thin-skinned of nobles, actually thought was in any way an insult, it was still his right to call an Honor Proving. It was to be until first blood. Technically, it was although most people had the sense to know that having the first blood spilled when your opponent was run through was not acceptable. Young Meino was a noble and the clear victim while Oghren was but a disgraced Warrior left by a Paragon and drunk out of his mind. What should have happened was clear; Oghren should have been executed. His once-great record was a saving grace, however, and so the Assembly went easy on him. He was barely even a warrior if he couldn't bear arms but he was still allowed to live and to remain in Orzammar.

Every time Loilinar saw him, his blood boiled. Oghren was exactly what was wrong with Orzammar.

Oghren Kondrat knew that Loilinar Ivo was the personification of what was wrong with Orzammar. He was born a noble and so thought that he was entitled to whatever came his way, that he was automatically better than anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to be born into the highest caste. Honestly, Oghren had no use for the noble caste. All of them just sat on their sodding rumps and waited for everyone else to solve all of their problems. The minute someone did something to prove once and for all that they were better than their so-called social betters, the nobles greedily snatched them up for fear of people realizing the truth. That had been the way it happened with Branka at least.

Branka, Branka, Branka…he hadn't even particularly liked her when they'd first gotten married and now she was the cause of all of his problems, directly or indirectly. It had been two sodding years since she had disappeared down into the Deep Roads with his entire family, everyone closest to him…except him. He hadn't been allowed to go. He knew that he should have followed her down there anyway but she was a Paragon and so not only had it taken him a little while to talk himself into defying her but the men that guarded the entrance to the Deep Roads wouldn't hear of it. 'The Paragon' had apparently left express orders to keep him out for a full month. The minute he had been allowed down there, he had raced off alone to search for her. He hadn't found anything. That didn't mean that there wasn't anything to find, however! Just that he hadn't been able to go far enough by himself.

Two years…Everyone was always reminding him that it had been two years since Branka had taken his house – her house, really, as she was the Paragon – into the Deep Roads and that each passing day lessened the chances that any of them were still alive. Oghren knew that two years didn't look good and that three years, four years, five years, however many years it took to find somebody else willing to go didn't look good! What everybody seemed to forget, however, was that he had been after them to go after Branka since before she'd even left.

"Sorry, Oghren, no can do," they had said at first, "we cannot defy a Paragon." Then it was, "I don't know, she's been down there for quite some time and we don't even know where she is." And finally it was, "She's dead, Oghren. They're all dead. Just accept it."

She was not dead! She had three hundred dwarves with her and she was mad and brilliant as the Stone itself. No, Branka was still alive all right. He didn't know how much longer she would be, though, and every day saw even less faith in his wife and scorn for him in the eyes of the common folk. Not like they, mattered, of course. Only a deshyr could get people into the Deep Roads. He wasn't quite a deshyr but the guards always let him in anyway as they considered him the next best thing. He doubted they'd let an expedition he formed in without a real deshyr agreeing, though. And how was he supposed to gather an expedition, anyway? House Branka had been a new House and so they weren't obscenely wealthy like some of the other houses – House Aeducan in particular – and what wealth it did have was all spent by Branka to ready the rest of the house for the expedition he wasn't permitted to go on.

Then, of course, there was the fact that he was a laughingstock. So what if he drank a lot? None of their sodding business, really. And as for the no-weapons prohibition? Please. He didn't need a weapon. That thing with Lord Meino's son…

But back to Loilinar. He was always so quick to find him whenever he went to the Diamond Quarter – he'd used to live there – and to berate him as he waited for a guard to notice and throw him out. He wasn't even let into the palace anymore now that Gorim was no longer there to throw him out. He vaguely wondered whatever happened to him after Aunn was exiled then decided he really didn't care. Loilinar was the type to mock him for his lack of ability to carry a weapon in Orzammar and for Branka leaving him but at least he was willing to fight!

Whenever Loilinar was called upon to do something to defend his home – and if a lowly warrior like himself could do it then surely a mighty noble such as Loilinar should have been able to – then he always had an excuse. He had bad knees. And a bad back. His arm wouldn't move properly. He had difficulty breathing. He often felt lightheaded. He had a limp. Loilinar always had an excuse. It was pathetic, really, that Oghren was down in the Deep Roads as often as he could searching desperately for Branka and the others and killing everything in his way – and doing Orzammar a favor as they needed all the help they could get – and the likes of Loilinar Ivo with his bad everything could look down on him.

Every time Oghren saw him, his blood boiled. Loilinar was exactly what was wrong with Orzammar.

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