Ch. 13: In Which Dwarven Politics Get in the Way
When they finally reached Orzammar after weeks of tedious traveling across the entire continent from the Brecillian Forest, the first sign that something was wrong came at the gates, where the guards were loudly arguing with a small group of men that the city was closed and no, they didn't care who they were or who sent them, nobody was getting in to Orzammar.
Olivia walked up to them. "I know this must be really annoying to have even more people show up like this, but we really need to get into the city, too." One of the guards groaned. "We need to see your king."
"Well, that would be wonderful if there was a king," said the other guard, "but there isn't. The king died a few weeks ago and the Assembly hasn't been able to agree on a replacement."
Of course. Because, once again, nothing could be simple. Olivia noticed money changing hands behind her. Apparently the others had been betting on what would be wrong this time. Leliana seemed to have won. "We're Grey Wardens," said Olivia. The leader of the men who had been arguing with the guards made an angry noise. "Orzammar is obligated to help us during a Blight. Like this one."
The guard looked at her. "I suppose I should let you in, then."
The man the guards had been arguing with looked furious. "You're letting them in and not us? They're traitors! We're official messengers of King Loghain!"
"Oh, it's King now, is it," said Olivia irritably.
"You know what," said the guard, cutting in. "I don't care. The Wardens can go in, you annoying humans just go away."
The messenger looked sullen. Olivia smirked smugly at him as the guards opened the gate and allowed her party through.
"Now what?" asked Alistair.
"Now we find out whoever is currently in charge and go talk to them, I suppose," answered Olivia, starting through the antechamber that the gates opened into.
Orzammar was located in a vast cavern, lit and heated by magma, buildings and streets carved out of the rock along the sides. "Wow," said Olivia quietly.
Their attention was swiftly drawn away from the architecture by the two opposing groups of armored dwarves standing right inside the gates, shouting at one another.
"Prince Behlen should be king!"
"No, Lord Harrowmont should be king!"
"Prince Pince Behlen is King Endrion's son!"
"King Endrion liked Lord Harrowmont better!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
One of the dwarves drew a sword and stabbed one of the others, who collapsed, obviously dead. "Hey!" a guard ran over. "Break it up!" The two groups stalked off in separate directions. "Welcome to Orzammar," said the guard sarcastically to Olivia.
"And that is why you shouldn't carry weapons while talking politics," commented Zevran.
The violent argument at least gave them some idea of who to talk to. "So. Should we go see this Behlen person or this Harrowmont person?"
"Behlen," said Bethany after a moment.
Olivia looked back at her companions. "Did you just flip a coin to decide that?"
"No…" said Bethany unconvincingly.
"Right." Olivia decided to let the matter drop. "We should go to the palace."
On the way over to the palace, Morrigan stopped and stared wistfully at a mirror sitting on one of the merchant's stalls. "Morrigan?"
"It looks exactly like the one I used to have." She turned to look at Olivia. "When I was younger, one of the times I snuck out of the Wilds I saw a mirror just like that one in a lady's carriage- I took it. When I got back, Mother found the mirror and smashed it." She looked sad for a moment, before her expression hardened. "It made me stronger." She returned to walking toward the palace.
Olivia went over to the merchant. "How much for the mirror?"
They went to find Prince Behlen, who wasn't particularly helpful. "I can't do anything to help you unless I'm king. Of course, if the Grey Wardens were to complete a few tasks in my name…"
Olivia sighed. Typical. "What do you need?"
That was how they found themselves running around Orzammar, showing various neutral lords that they had been conned and dealing with Orzammar's organized crime problem.
"This isn't quite enough," said Behlen. Olivia, standing disheveled and lightly injured in bloody clothing, almost swore. "What I really need," he continued, "is the support of a Paragon. Nobody would be able to argue with that. Unfortunately, the only living Paragon, Brankha, left for the Deep Roads on a quest to find the Anvil of the Void, an artifact created by Paragon Carridin to make golems."
Olivia took the hint. She sighed. "How about if we go find Paragon Brankha for you?"
"Perfect! Here's a map of the Deep Roads showing her planned route," said Prince Behlen, holding out a large sheaf of parchment. Because of course he already had it on hand.
"Great," said Olivia, with much less enthusiasm, taking the map. "We'll go find Paragon Brankha."
At the entrance to the Deep Roads, they were accosted by a brilliantly redheaded dwarf who smelled strongly of alcohol. "You're going to find Paragon Brankha. I'm coming with you."
Olivia blinked. "Who are you?"
"Oghren. Brankha's my wife. I know her better than anyone. If you want to find her, you'll need me."
Olivia gave him a look. "If we refuse to let you come, you're going to just follow along behind us, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
Olivia kind of hated the Deep Roads. They were dark, smelly, and dirty and the parts of them that didn't have darkspawn were infested with giant spiders instead, and by 'giant spiders', she didn't just mean 'big', she meant 'larger than her dog'. The only redeeming characteristic of the Deep Roads was that she wasn't getting claustrophobic in them, mainly because their lights didn't light up enough area to actually see the walls. "I really hate this place," she commented after about a week of fighting their way through various caverns and chambers. "That seems like kind of a failing in a Grey Warden. Seriously, it's dark and rank and I'm pretty sure we've only gotten somewhere around five miles or so in a week because of all the darkspawn we've had to fight."
"Does anyone else hear a really creepy whispery voice?" asked Alistair nervously.
Everyone stopped and listened. There was, indeed, a creepy, whispery voice speaking. They slowed, walking more cautiously, to find a dwarven woman, face mottled with the Blight, kneeling and gibbering about women being transformed into something she referred to as a 'broodmother'. She didn't seem to really notice their presence. They slowly continued down the cave.
In a few minutes, they found out exactly what the woman had meant by 'broodmother'- a huge, gray tentacled creature. The ground beneath their feet shifted from stone squishy, disgusting flesh.
The broodmother shrieked and a tentacle erupted from the fleshy substance covering the ground, knocking Alistair backwards. "Get back!" Olivia grabbed Bethany's arm and pulled her backward off the flesh and onto the rock.
"How are we supposed to kill this thing?" asked Alistair, looking at what was now a waving mass of tentacles surrounding the rocks they had taken refuge on. "We won't be able to get close to it!"
"You keep watch in case any other darkspawn show up!" shouted Olivia. "We're going to have to snipe at it!"
"Well, I feel useless," muttered Alistair as Olivia, Bethany, Morrigan, and Wynn began firing spells at the broodmother, Leliana backing them up with arrows.
The short-range fighters did eventually get something to do, as a few darkspawn came out of the openings in the cavern to attack the party. The broodmother was hard to kill. Not only did arrows stuck in its thick flesh and spells did mostly superficial damage, it was difficult to aim due to the waving tentacles between them and the broodmother. Eventually, Leliana managed to get in a clear shot and send an arrow through one of the broodmother's eyes, killing it.
"Ugh. That was… horrible," she said, stepping over one of the now limp tentacles that had ceased waving and fallen to the… ground when the broodmother died.
"Agreed," said Olivia.
Up on one of the ledges above where the broodmother had sat, the dwarven woman from earlier appeared. She mumbled a garbled description of what had apparently happened to her in the same whispery voice as before, then turned and walked away, head bowed. From what Olivia could gather, the monster they had just fought had previously been one of the other dwarven women from the expedition, who Brankha had left behind to her fate along with the others that had been with them.
"I have a very bad feeling about Brankha's state of mind," muttered Olivia.
It was a few more days before they found the thaig that had been Brankha's destination. As they entered the area, a crudely-wrought metal gate slammed closed behind them. "That can't be good."
A heavily-armored dwarven woman appeared on a ledge above them. "Brankha!" Cried Oghren excitedly.
"Oh. Oghren. Figures you'd find your way here. Hopefully you can find your way back, as well." She seemed a bit put out to see him. "Let me be blunt with you. After all this time, I don't really care much about manners anymore. I hope that doesn't bother you. So, who are you?" she asked Olivia. "A hired sword of whoever wants to find me this time? Or the only one who didn't mind Oghren's drunken company."
"Be respectful!" snapped Oghren. "You're talking to a Grey Warden!" Personally, Olivia felt Oghren should be concerned about how Brankha was talking about him.
"Oh, an important mercenary, then. I suppose something serious has gone wrong. Is Endrion dead? That seems the most likely problem."
Olivia shrugged. "Yeah. And they can't decide on who to replace him, which is kind of a problem because there's a Blight going on and someone needs to be in charge."
Brankha looked disdainful. "A king won't defeat a Blight. Only the Anvil of the Void, our greatest invention, can help!" She continued on about how wonderful and amazing and completely necessary for dwarven existence the Anvil of the Void was, despite the fact that they had done just fine without it for years.
Now she was ranting. Lovely. "Uh, huh. Let me guess. You can't get at it."
"The Anvil lies on the other side of a gauntlet of traps designed by Carridin." Gauntlet instead of gantlet again. Olivia had given up on trying to correct people's vocabulary. "The Anvil is what we need!" she began ranting again. "If you want me to help you with your stupid election or even let you leave, you have to get me the Anvil."
Oghren looked horrified. "What has this place done to you? You aren't the woman I remember marrying!"
"I am your Paragon," said Brankha coldly, turning and walking away.
So now they were trapped in the Deep Roads by a crazy, obsessed woman on a power trip and the only way out was through a maze of traps. Hooray.
"I think I hate golems," announced Olivia, clutching her side as they left the room containing the final trap. "Not as much as Templars, but seriously, I'm pretty sure that thing cracked my ribs when it hit me."
"Let me see." Wynne came up to her and cast a healing spell.
"And now they're just bruised. It is a sad day when that is considered an improvement."
The doorway led them to a wide rock ledge in a vast cavern. On the highest point of the ledge, overlooking a river of magma, stood a gigantic grey anvil covered in faintly glowing blue veins of lyrium. The view was pretty dramatic, but Olivia would have liked it a lot more if she hadn't been tired and injured. And if the ledge hadn't contained several more golems.
The largest golem, one made of ornate metal, turned as they came closer. "So. You have found your way through my traps."
Olivia raised her eyebrow. "Your traps?"
"Yes. For I… am the Paragon Carridin."
That was unexpected. "What?"
The golem, Carridin, began to explain. Apparently, the way that the Anvil of the Void was used required sacrificing dwarves and using their spirits to animate the golems, which were then controlled by rods. At first, they had only used volunteers- which was bad enough, in Olivia's opinion- but had progressed to taking unwilling sacrifices from among the casteless. Because apparently the casteless were so far below the other dwarves that there was nothing wrong with killing them and forcibly enslaving their souls. Then, when Carridin had proven to be an actually decent person and objected to this, they had turned him into a golem, as well, though Carridin, having created the Anvil, was able to avoid being controlled by it, despite, as a golem, being unable to destroy it, and he took it away into the Deep Roads where no one would be able to get at it. This speech was followed up by a plea to Olivia to destroy the Anvil herself, since he could not.
Olivia stared at Carridin. "Why would you even build something like that in the first place?" she asked incredulously.
Carridin looked a bit shifty, or at least as shifty as a giant metal golem could look. "Will you help?"
"Well, yeah."
"NO!" Brankha ran up, flanked by more golems. "The Anvil of the Void is our greatest treasure! It will make Orzammar great again!"
"Sure, it's really great," said Olivia sarcastically. "If you ignore the fact that it's also kind of, well, completely evil. The Anvil has to go."
"No!" shouted Brankha again, pulling out her sword. "Attack!"
Olivia readied an ice spell as the golems that Brankha had brought with her moved to the offensive, the other mages in her party attacking as well, while the others, whose ordinary weapons didn't do much good against solid rock, swiftly got out of the way, engaging with Brankha herself. There were more golems than had attacked them before in the maze and Olivia was honestly worried until Carridin and his golems got involved in the fight, going toe to toe with Brankha's.
In the end, Brankha was dead and her golems were smashed to pieces. Oghren looked miserable. Nobody seemed to know what to say to him.
"Will you destroy the Anvil for me now?" asked Carridin hopefully.
Olivia nodded. "Wait- we still need a paragon to break the deadlock in the assembly and choose a king." With everything that had happened, she had almost forgotten about the original mission.
"I can do that," said Carridin. "It is the least I can do for you in return for your help. I'll forge a crown for whatever king you choose on the Anvil of the Void. That should be impressive enough to make everyone go along with it."
Well, that was something, at least. Nobody was going to be arguing with Carridin.
Olivia and the others sat on the ledge, fixing themselves up after the fight, while Carridin worked on the Anvil, hammering gold into shape to create what Olivia had to admit was a very nice-looking crown, which he handed to her as soon as the metal had cooled. Olivia resisted the urge to try it on, instead putting it in her backpack before walking up to the Anvil with the hammer Carridin had given her. "Are you sure this will work?" she asked, looking dubiously between the hammer and the Anvil. "Because it seems like the Anvil would have broken already if a single blow of a tiny hammer could destroy it."
"A single blow from this particular hammer can," said Carridin. "The hammer is magic too. I made it after I came here with the Anvil."
Olivia shrugged. Still a bit skeptical, she raised the hammer and brought it down on the Anvil. Light spread from where the hammer hit, causing a thousand cracks to appear in the Anvil, shattering it. It seemed that the hammer was magic after all. Cool. Olivia wondered if she could keep it. "Thank you," said Carridin. "Now I can safely rest."
"What?"
Carridin walked up to the edge of the ledge and stepped off into thin air, falling into the magma far below.
"Did he just kill himself? Why does it seem like everyone we meet ends up killing themselves? The Lady of the Forest and Zathrian, Carridin… When are we going to meet someone who doesn't want to die?" At least there was no one to stop her from keeping the cool magic hammer now.
The trip back to Orzammar was relatively uneventful. When they arrived, Behlen called a session of the assembly where Olivia dramatically announced what had happened in the Deep Roads and that Carridin had given them a crown to present to his chosen king- Behlen. As predicted, nobody seemed to want to disagree with Carridin.
The party, including Oghren, who decided to come along with them, left Orzammar after Behlen promised honor the treaty and send troops to help them stop the Blight. Olivia was extremely happy to be outside.
That night, in camp, Olivia remembered the mirror that she had bought back in Orzammar. Pulling it out of where it had migrated to the bottom of her backpack, she headed over to Morrigan. "I've got something for you."
"Oh?" Morrian raised her eyebrows and Olivia held out the mirror. "This is…" slowly, Morrigan took it. "The mirror we saw in Orzammar. It's exactly like the one Mother smashed." Morrigan held the mirror disbelievingly. "Thank you."
"That was kind," said Bethany, when Olivia had gotten back over to the fire.
"Speaking of gifts," said Zevran, sitting down next to Oliva. "I've got something you might like."
"What?" asked Olivia curiously.
He pulled a small gold object out of his pocket. "I got this on my very first mission. Okay, technically I stole it, but the owner wasn't alive to complain. It's not like the Crows actually paid me anyway, so that's really the only way I had to get money. I've kept it ever since. I'd like you to have it."
"You're giving me something that you've carried around with you for years just because?"
"I…" he stumbled over his words. "Just take it. Feel free to sell it or wear it or whatever you feel like. It means a lot to me but so have y… so has what you've done. You know, getting me away from the Crows and, yeah."
Olivia got the feeling that he had been about to say something else there. "Zevran," she said. "I'm not going to take your prized possession because you're grateful you aren't with the Crows anymore." She closed his hand over the earring. "If you ever have another reason- ask me again."
She got up, smiling faintly, and walked away from the fire.
Alistair looked sad. "I will never understand what she sees in him."
Bethany laid her head down on his shoulder. "Does it matter?"
Alistair looked much happier. "Nope."
