Chapter 9: Forward Momentum
The next six years were intense. After Father's announcement that I would be his heir, there were a number of things to be done. I had to be acknowledged by the Assembly as a formality, I had to undergo a number practical lessons about how to conduct myself as the heir (not that they taught me anything I hadn't already learned from Trian). I also had to attend more meetings which were more pertinent to Orzammar's governance so that I could be aware of everything going with the overall politics in case something happened to Father. I had to be able to at least be the interim leader until the Assembly could vote on the next ruler.
Truth be told, most everyone had been treating me as the heir even before the announcement. Trian's move to Aeducan Thaig had created a shift in political power. It allowed for the unspoken assumption of my overtaking my brother in the eyes of the nobles to be spoken aloud. It surprised me how quickly the change came. Even on the trip back from Aeducan Thaig the nobles had begun trying to curry more favor with me. I was used to the obsequious behavior because I was a Paragon, but now that I was named the heir, that treatment rose to a ridiculous level. Now, whenever I met with a noble for the practical purposes of securing materials, manpower, or assistance in acquiring something they specialized in, they were overly eager to acquiesce and offer more than I needed. While it was helpful, it was also rather irritating. The blatant brown nosing was… off putting.
Two years after the reclamation of Aeducan Thaig, I convinced Father to let me lead another expedition to retake Ortan Thaig. The goal for this expedition was threefold; retake the thaig so that it could become another thriving city, it could help me prove that Orta'sfamily were nobles, and it would get us closer to Cadash Thaig. This expedition went smoother than the effort to retake Aeducan Thaig. There were fewer darkspawn and we'd made sure to scout every step of the thaig itself carefully instead of just marching in with confidence. To be fair, though, the whole marching in with confidence thing was done on Trian's insistence.
While we were there, we found the papers which proved that Orta and her family were actually nobles. Since I knew this would happen, I had been sure to insist on bringing lesser noble Houses who would be keen to help her reestablish her noble House as a favor to me, of course. In the end, Orta ended up as the Deshyr representative of House Ortan in Orzammar while the rest of her family remained in Ortan Thaig to focus on rebuilding it and getting it back into a productive state.
Because they weren't an established House in Orzammar, I allowed Orta to continue staying in House Orodum. I also used the research I'd done on all of Orzammar's families back when I was trying to convince them to establish the Surface Caste to find all of the debts that the families owed to House Ortan. The debts owed could never be defaulted on since they'd been recorded in the Shaperate memories. The amount owed was enough to start work on getting a new house worked on in Orzammar, with a little left over to send to Ortan Thaig. The establishment of the thaig would be slower going than Aeducan Thaig, but over the next few years it would start to flourish. Ortan Thaig had a strong river flowing through it, which meant it was a valuable source of fresh water filled with delicious, healthy minerals.
As thanks for my aid in retaking the thaig and raising her family back into nobility, Orta agreed to take Faren as her husband when they were both of age. Faren agreed to the match so long as he could remain in Orzammar and remain my personal guard. Normally a Warrior Caste member wouldn't be able to marry into a noble family without a great deal of full and payoffs, but when I was named a Paragon and established House Orodum, I chose who would become part of my family. Faren, Rica, and Kalah were all chosen. This made them nobles in the eyes of the Memories, and so they were able to marry up if given the chance.
Not long after we retook Ortan Thaig, Mother began to grow ill. Father began to spend less time in the Assembly and more time with Mother. Trianna tried every healing spell she could muster, but to no avail. We even brought in some mages from the Circle, but they couldn't help either. The Surface Caste was what had come through with us in the end. The contacts and networks of the Surface Caste managed to find a physician who was able to find a treatment for her. Unfortunately, all the physician could do was treat the disease, he was unable to cure her. She was able to hold on for just a few more months than she normally would have been able to and I took full advantage of the time, visiting her every day. The visits took up time I should have been using to prepare for things, but I didn't care. I wanted to have as many memories of her as possible.
Mother died in her sleep three months before my fifteenth birthday. The city mourned her death. She was beloved by the people for her kindness and fair treatment of others. Father, Brehlen and I traveled with a large following of mourners to Aeducan Thaig where she was entombed, a tradition we could practice again now that the thaig had been recovered. Her loss hit father hard and I took over some of his duties for a few months.
Following Mother's loss, I also took Bhelen into my permanent care. Father simply wasn't up to it after Mother passed. I took a different approach with Bhelen than Trian had with me. Instead of just taking me to lessons, I would take Bhelen with me to all of my meetings and everywhere else I went. I taught him his lessons in between meetings as we walked and in the evenings after dinner. I also had Dagna begin teaching him about enchtments. Bhelen would need something to set him apart from myself and Trian, and I thought that if he could learn enchanting, he would bring House Aeducan a unique talent. In truth, I wanted a second enchanter to call upon.
In the end, Trian would begin seeing me more like a mother than a sister. He was only four years old when mother died and those memories of her would quickly fade. To avoid them from disappearing completely, I had several dozen portraits of her commissioned before her death. The portraits were of various sizes, some small enough to fit into lockets, others large enough to hang on the walls.
I took advantage of the time that I filled in for Father to prepare for another expedition. This time we would be focused on retaking Cadash Thaig. This was something I wanted to do for Shale. It would also put us much closer to the Anvil of the Void. There were some who questioned who would take control of the thaig once it was retaken, but I had no illusions that it would be Shale.
Each time we marched to retake a thaig, the city would bustle with excitement and wish us well. Our tactics were refined each time as well. With the way things were going, Orzammar's warriors were getting better and better at fighting the darkspawn. This time, however, we took back Shale's home. There were more darkspawn in Cadash Thaig than there had been in Ortan Thaig, likely because it was further south, which is the direction most of the darkspawn were headed as the time of the Blight closed in. We encountered another small horde similar to the one we'd fought in Aeducan Thaig, but this time losses were a mere fraction of what they had been that first time. We had learned from our mistakes, adapted our strategies, and improved our combat skills against the darkspawn.
Once we'd taken the thaig, the nobles who had joined us in the effort began to petition me to name them as the new rulers of Cadash Thaig. I called a meeting of the nobles that were present and informed them that Shale was actually Shale Cadash of House Cadash, and was the rightful heir to Cadash Thaig. Since she was the only remaining member of her House, Shale was granted special dispensation to choose members of her House as if she were a Paragon.
At first, Shale could care less about the matter until I showed her the monument to the dwarves that volunteered to become golems for the sake of all dwarves. When she saw her name on the monument, something inside her struck home. Her investment in seeing the place brought back to its prime solidified, and she worked diligently with me to pick members for her House from the nobles present. We discussed the golem monument together for some time as well. I tried to convey to her that the creation of a golem was a precious and noble gift; that every volunteer that became a golem gave their life to ensure the preservation of dwarven society; they were the physical manifestation of dwarven honor and duty. Without the golems, there might not even be a dwarven society left.
Shale remained in Cadash Thaig after it was retaken, intent on turning the place into a living monument to the sacrifice of the dwarves. The nobles and other families from the various castes who stayed with her had to swear their loyalty to Shale before the remaining Houses who hadn't been chosen, as well as myself. If they ever tried to betray Shale, they knew that House Orodum and the others would march on Cadash for a far more sinister reason. In the end, Cadash Thaig had a healthy starting population with the right people to get things up and running.
I considered trying to push through to Caradin and the Anvil of the Void, but I figured that trying to convince Caradin not to destroy the anvil wouldn't be as effective as it would be after the Blight. Caradin just wanted the anvil destroyed and to have the chance to finally die himself. I needed him alive and the anvil functioning, at least for the foreseeable future. My thought process was that I could convince him to help us if we proved we could handle the Blight. After all, if we could do that, we would obviously be capable enough to hunt down the remaining old gods and kill them before they were able to be used to start more Blights.
I believed that using that reasoning, I could convince Caradin to help us… at least until after the old gods were handled. It was true that there were other threats out there other than the old gods, but the dwarves were particularly suited for dealing with this problem.
When I returned to Orzammar after helping Shale settle in, I made it my purpose to prepare to leave for Ostagar. I sent scouts to Ostagar to get its actual layout, building plans, and detailed maps of the topography in a 30 mile radius of the fort, with an emphasis on cave systems. I began to bring in engineers and military strategists. I needed to get an idea of how we could fortify the fort and strike at the darkspawn. I remembered that the fort had underground tunnels, so we would need to secure those against darkspawn tunnelers. We'd also need a way to quickly flank the monsters so that they couldn't retreat. Last but not least, we needed a way to bring the Archdemon to the ground so that the Grey Wardens would be able to kill it.
It's true that the archdemon didn't show itself at Ostagar in the game, but I had a theory about why that was.
Stone, metal, wood and more were needed. I wanted to have basically everything we would need for the plans we were making by the time we left Orzammar. House Orodum would bring everything we could to aid against the Blight, and everything we needed to do the work we had planned. I insisted that the engineers work out how efficiently they could get the work done. This meant that they needed to have work schedules set out for round-the-clock building, places to set materials with efficient routes to get them to where the work is being done. We planned on which places to reinforce, which places to build new fortifications, and where to dig to allow our forces to pop up behind the darkspawn lines.
The military leaders helped me plan how to defend the fort and flank the darkspawn. I insisted we make the plans with the assumption that we would not receive any assistance other than a handful of Grey Wardens. This way we could be sure of our success when we were joined by the human forces. Every plan we made was with the assumption that there would be sixty thousand darkspawn on the field as well as the Archdemon. We ran military exercises with these numbers in mind. We refined the plans over and over, and tested them again and again.
By the time my seventeenth birthday was coming up, we could have waged the battle in our sleep.