Dregs in the Vial
Or,
Why There Were Only Two Dozen Wardens in Ferelden
In Defense of Duncan. Before Ostagar, Dragon 9:30
Strike up, strike up for Wingate's tune,
Strike up for Sally Dupré!
Strike up, strike up for the April moon,
And the rain on the lilac spray!
For Wingate Hall in its pride once more,
For the branch of myrtle over the door,
Because the men are back from the war;
For the clean bed waiting the dusty rider
And the punchbowl cooling for thirsty throttles,
For the hot cooks boiling the hams in cider
And Cudjo grinning at cobwebbed bottles—
The last of the wine, the last of the wine,
The last of the '12 and the '29!
—Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown's Body, Book 4
Duncan watched his young companion sleeping, her delicate face illuminated by the campfire's embers. In repose, no one could have guessed that she had an extraordinary capacity for violence. She looked more like a bedraggled kitten.
She had claws, though. No doubt about it.
But was she strong enough for the Joining? Pickings had been slim. Duncan had hoped to make a final, desperate sweep for recruits, but there was no time to seek more. He had planned to go north and conscript the younger Cousland; he had expected to pick up a Dalish elf on his way to Ostagar; and above all, he wanted a mage.
It was too late. The nightmares made plain that a massive attack was imminent. He would have barely enough time to reach Ostagar and the King's army… if he was lucky. He would have to make do with this tattered, unpromising little elf, picked up by fatal chance in the Denerim Alienage. Another condemned prisoner, her execution postponed for thirty years... or possibly only a few days.
He had sent the other two recruits south earlier, with the rest of the Wardens. Of Daveth, he had great hopes. The young man reminded him poignantly of another sneak-thief, rootless and aimless, needing purpose to change his life. Being a Warden had made a man of Duncan; Duncan hoped it would do likewise for Daveth, who had tried to snatch his purse in the market.
Ser Jory? An impressive warrior, and deeply respectful of Wardens. It might be enough. He had won the tournament, and the opportunity was his by right. The Wardens needed all the strong arms they could get.
Three. If only all of them would live. If only he could squeeze three new Wardens from that last trembling drop of Archdemon's blood in his vial. If only the contents of the Joining chalice would not be wasted.
The vial, carefully cushioned, was in his belt. It—and another, nearly empty one like it in the secret Denerim cache—contained the last of the Archdemon's blood allotted to the Fereldan Wardens. He had considered taking the vial in the cache, too; but then left it where it was, a final resource in case of absolute disaster.
Gregor had brought a dozen of the little vials from the Anderfels, twenty years before. The First Warden, in his letter, advised Warden-Commander Duncan to use them wisely—and sparingly.
"Nothing remains of the blood of the Archdemons Dumat and Zazikel. Only a few vials remain from the Archdemon Toth, and that must be kept for archival and research purposes only. The supply of the blood of the Archdemon Andoral must be carefully rationed: for once it is gone, the Grey Wardens are finished."
No one had expected four hundred years to pass since the last Blight, since the previous intervals had lasted no more than two ages. The preservation charms on the Archdemon blood, thank the Maker, seem to be holding, or the Joining potion would be ineffective. Duncan had done his best to make the blood last, since it would be madness to recruit a great number of Wardens at any one time. Such a Joining would all go to the same Calling together, leaving no one to carry on the tradition. He had thus, over the years, not recruited a number of people who seemed to him good prospects; the limited, shrinking supply of Archdemon blood his great stumbling block.
Small groups of three or four each year were all he could provide for; and of those groups, not half had survived to serve. The last group had included Alistair, who Duncan hoped would be the leader the Fereldan Grey Wardens needed once Duncan himself took his last journey to the Deep Roads. Who would come after? How would they make Wardens, once the the dregs in the vials were gone?
He had written for more, but had been refused. Weisshaupt was unwilling to release what they had left. Other nations had supplies from the last Blight, though even Orlais was recruiting only a handful a year now. Ferelden had not existed at the time the Fourth Blight ended, and the Wardens in these lands had been exterminated and their fortress destroyed two hundred years ago. Riordan in Jader had promised him what he could spare, as soon as the Orlesian Wardens were cleared to come over the border to their aid.
Despite Riordan's generosity, Weisshaupt's refusal had rankled. There was no doubt that a Blight was coming. Duncan had known it twenty years ago, during that horrific adventure in the Deep Roads with King Maric, when they had faced the foul creature that called itself the Architect. It had abducted Warden-Commander Bregan, wanting the location of the last Old Gods, and Bregan had broken and given him eveything. Warden-Commanders were no longer permitted that vital piece of intelligence, but that was closing the stable door after the horses were gone. Duncan had been on the scene, and he knew the truth.
One Old God lay deep beneath the bed of the Amaranthine Ocean; untouchable by any tunneling of dwarf or darkspawn until the very shape of the world changed. Another was buried in ice, too cold for darkspawn to function effectively. The third...
Ah, Maker help them! The third was under the Korcari Wilds, south of Ferelden. The Architect, seeking, ever seeking an Old God in his schemes to "save" his kind, had no doubt made contact; and in making contact, had Tainted the Old God, transforming it into an Archdemon. Duncan prayed that the Archdemon's first act had been to roast that smug, unnatural monster.
His dreams were chaotic and terrifying, but this he knew: the Archdemon was the Old God Urthemiel. It was always going to be Urthemiel, and Duncan had warned his superiors at Weisshaupt: warned them for years and years, but they were blind and deaf to anything coming from a backwater like Ferelden. Much of it was their foolish vanity, thinking that the Blight must strike somewhere "important," such as their own homelands.
The elf girl stirred in her sleep, and then jerked awake, staring at him wildly before she recognized him. She wiped her nose with her forearm in an uncouth fashion and lay back on her bedroll.
"Is it dawn?"
"Not for hours. Go back to sleep."
"I had a bad dream," she told him, her voice childlike in the stillness. "I suppose you think it's silly to be scared by dreams."
"No," he replied. "I don't."
Note: I have puzzled from the first over the fact that after twenty years as Warden-Commander, Duncan has only some two dozen Wardens. He had to know a Blight was coming. He had months of warning just before Ostagar. Both Maric and Cailan were well-disposed to the Wardens, and there are certainly lots of unemployed sellswords, thugs, and criminals to make up the numbers. Why not go on a recruiting orgy? Based on a discussion with Granoc and others, this is the best reason I can come up with. Nobody expected the interval between two Blights to last so long. The Wardens were running out of Archdemon blood. Thanks to Granoc for raising the issue again.
More questions surround Loghain's Joining. if Loghain had the Warden Compound despoiled, how are they able to put together his Joining potion? By game developer fiat, of course, but one assumes there was something in the hidden Warden cache for emergencies. The Warden PC would not have recognized it for what it was, presuming that the game developers are correct, and Riordan could not bestir himself to give the Warden the whole story when they were all staying at Eamon's estate in Denerim (the logical time to tell them, since Riordan was going off alone on a scouting mission!) The developers, of course, wanted to spring the awful news at the last possible moment, which makes the senior Wardens look like reckless idiots.
But the source of Loghain's Joining potion does remain somewhat of a mystery. Either some supplies remained in the cache (though why did not the Wardens then recruit a few more?), or Riordan himself had brought something. However, since he was captured and all his belongings taken, it seems unlikely. So it must be the cache, unless the Warden amulets given to recruits is really an emergency potion-portion-for-one, which seems like not such a bad idea. For purposes of the story, I'm going with the cache for my head canon.
OK. That takes care of the Archdemon blood. Where did the necessary darkspawn blood come from? We'll have to take a leap of faith and say that they had that at the cache too, which seems bizarre. And lyrium, too. All right, all right... Loghain's Joining is something of a headbanger, though I find the event one of the most satisfying twists in the story line.
In game Riordan discounts recruiting more Wardens, saying there is no time to train them, but we know that the PC Warden got no real training of any kind. Fanfiction must come to the rescue! Maybe there really was only enough for one more.
As to the location of the Old Gods, I vaguely remember reading about the other two, but basically I made it up. It's not hard to believe that the two remaining are in places extraordinarily difficult to access. For that matter, Urthemiel must have been hard to get to, since it took four hundred years and the intellect of the Architect to make contact. The reason given in canon is that Garahel and the Warden killed so many at the Battle of Ayesleigh that it took four hundred years to rebuild their numbers. Given the mechanics of darkspawn breeding, I don't actually believe that. A few darkspawn could produce hundreds... thousands of offspring. My own thought is that it really was extremely difficult to get to Urthemiel. Maybe the Old God was buried under miles of a very hard stone, like granite, and it was inconveniently located far from the Deep Roads and required extensive, independent tunneling and actual engineering.
Next: A Woman Scorned, Or,The Paragon's Choice. Warden Aeducan, the Dark Ritual, and the outcome of the final battle. Dragon 9:31.