Dragon Age: Origins Playthrough - Loose Ends

Amastacia is in Arl Eamon's throne room in Redcliffe with Alistair, Leliana and Morrigan as the Arl starts plotting a strategy with Bann Teagan.  Eamon has the right to call a meeting of human nobles called a Landsmeet in order to decide on who will succeed King Cailan as ruler of Ferelden.  The problem is that the strongest contender is Cailan's widow, Queen Anora, who is also Teyrn Loghain's daughter and is not likely to support the Grey Wardens.  Eamon says we need someone who is a stronger candidate than Anora... and points to Alistair.

I know I gave him King Cailan's old armor and it fits him perfectly, but so what? This game lets you equip it on Oghren, too.

It turns out that Alistair is King Maric's illegitimate son and this royal blood makes him more acceptable than Anora as Cailan's successor.  Alistair meant to tell us all of this when we went to Redcliffe, but Amy was gripped by golem fever at the time and he never got around to it after that.  Not that Amy cares one way or another... he just wants Loghain gone somehow so he can start flinging his personal army of elves, templars and golems at the darkspawn while he eats popcorn.  Eamon agrees that the army is impressive enough as it stands and we should waste no time in calling the Landsmeet.  Amy disagrees.  He has to invent popcorn before he can eat it on the battlefield, after all.

The Landsmeet in Denerim is the point of no return before the end of the game, so delaying it presents a final opportunity to wrap up side quests.  The first quest on our agenda, which has been pushed back for quite some time, is finding Sten's sword.  Its last known location was right here in Redcliffe, supposedly in the possession of a dwarf mercenary named Dwyn.  Of course, that was before the undead swarmed in... so when we head to his shack, we find it deserted and the greatsword "Asala" is sitting in a chest he left behind.  Unfortunately, it's an ordinary steel blade and by now, we've found quite a few two-handed swords and axes made from silverite and dragonbone.  Naturally, Amy throws it into Lake Calenhad and moves on.

His equipment glitters so much at this point, I can use it to see in the dark.

Stopping at camp briefly, we also talk to Morrigan who asks us if we remember the grimoire we found at the Circle Tower.  Umm... vaguely, Morrigan.  You can't reasonably expect us to remember every ancient tome we've looted in this game.  The point, according to our witch, is that this grimoire didn't have the spells she expected to find in it.  What she found instead was a detailed account of how Flemeth has kept herself young over several decades: by having daughters and transferring her soul into their bodies.  Morrigan realizes that she's the next host for Flemeth's soul and kindly asks that we kill her before she gets the chance.

Flemeth is an ancient, powerful mage who is likely more than a match for us and Morrigan says destroying her physical body probably won't kill her because she has taken precautions in that regard.  I'm smelling a lot of "maybe" coming off this plan.  Smells like victory.  We tell Alistair, Sten and Shale that we're headed back to the Kocari Wilds.

As soon as we show up at Flemeth's hut, she knows why we're here and is ready with a counter-offer.  She says what Morrigan really wants is her true grimoire with her deadliest spells, which she hands over without hesitation and tells us we can take it as a trophy.  She also promises to leave Morrigan alone... for longer than she intended to, anyway.  All we have to do is walk away and Flemeth will disappear into the Wilds.  Amy likes this plan but he tells Flemeth he's going to make one little change.  He'll take the grimoire, but he won't give it to Morrigan.  He intends to unlock the secrets himself.

"You can't win, Warden. If you strike me down, I shall become more evil-looking and SEXIER than you could possibly imagine."

Flemeth throws back her head and laughs at this idea, saying it's a great twist and she would love to see the look on Morrigan's face when we do it.  However... she's only willing to give up her grimoire for her daughter.  If we want it for ourselves, she'll have to insist that we take it from her the hard way.  At that point, she polymorphs into Andraste.

This is the second high dragon battle of the game, and it's no easier than the last one.  We have an advantage this time, however, in having four meat shields instead of two and the entire party is able to deliver sustained damage to Flemeth.  She also doesn't have as much room to maneuver as the high dragon did in the mountains, so we fight the battle on our terms: Shale, with the most health and highest defenses, takes on the head.  Sten and Alistair go to either side of Flemeth and Amy stabs the hell out of her tail.  Flemeth eventually succumbs to the assault and while we don't get a dragon horde of treasure, we do get the grimoire.

"SERIOUSLY, WARDEN?! THE TAIL?! I KNOW I'M AN EVIL WITCH AND ALL, BUT THAT'S JUST MEAN!"

Amy looks over a few pages of it before deciding it's indecipherable gibberish, so he abandons his plan and hands it over to Morrigan.  She seems happy, which is a rare occurance so we relish it while it lasts.  After she returns to her normal mood, we decide to talk to Oghren, who says that since Branka isn't interested in him any more, he'd like to look up a dwarven lass he had a fling with before she left for the surface.  We're more than happy to delay finding a successor to the throne of Ferelden to play wingman to a boorish dwarf in search of unlikely romance!  Off we go to Lake Calenhad!

Something happens along the way, though: Oghren and Amy are traveling with Leliana and Morrigan when we're ambushed by mercenaries, and not Loghain's this time.  We have no problem taking out the group and are about to deliver the death blow to the last survivor when Leliana stops us and says we should question him.  It turns out they were hired to kill her, and they were very surprised to see she was traveling with a Grey Warden.  She demands to know who hired them and where their employer is and the man has no problem giving us the name Marjorlaine and her address in Denerim.  She lets him flee, which is disappointing.  Just for that, Leliana, we're going to put your personal crisis on hold and make you watch Oghren flirt with this dwarf lady instead!

Oghren admits as we approach the tavern near the docks that he and Felsi didn't exactly part on good terms and asks us to lie about how awesome he is.  This is sounding like a better plan all the time.  We find Felsi serving drinks at "The Spoiled Princess" and Oghren immediately starts bragging about how he would have found her sooner, but he was busy killing darkspawn with the Grey Wardens.  We nod and say we saw him feed an ogre its own horns.  Felsi proves that she has a working brain and is thoroughly unimpressed by this bragging.  Oghren doesn't quit however, and continues to boast about his greatness while chiding the woman for being so cold.  Amy has no problem mirroring his clueless bravado.

"I can't decide if I should be disgusted or amazed there's another dwarf here as repulsive as you are."

Eventually Oghren decides it's time to go and Felsi says, "wait! I'm not done insulting you yet!" and suggests they continue the verbal abuse over drinks some time.  So, what looked like a horrible attempt at flirting to any sane person was actually just their version of foreplay?  Amy accidentally succeeded again!  Oghren thanks us for our help and brags again, saying she could barely keep her hands off him.  Glad we could help, Oghren.  Just don't ask us to show up at your date.

Now we finally ask Leliana what was up with her hired killers.  She tells us she was trained as a bard and a spy in Orlais by Marjorlaine until she discovered her mentor was selling secrets to their enemies.  Marjorlaine framed Leliana for the espionage, which led to her fleeing to Ferelden.  Leliana assumed that Marjorlaine was going to leave her alone now that she was in a different kingdom but obviously this is not the case.  We get another polite request to kill someone and when has Amy ever refused one of those?

So we head to Denerim without Arl Eamon and the might of our combined armies behind us, confident in the belief that everything will work out fine for the sake of the plot. We have every intention of finding Marjorlaine, but we're distracted by shiny armor at a place called Wade's Emporium. It happens. The armorsmith in question laments the fact that he doesn't make anything truly extraordinary, so we produce the remains of all the dead dragons we've been carrying around (apparently). Wade responds with girlish enthusiasm while the shopkeeper curses our name as the smith puts all other orders on hold. Wade even says he'll make the armor for free, but we know a clever lie when we hear one. Amy slaps a handful of gold coins on the counter and yells, "you're not cheating me today, SUCKER!"

"I don't... what just happened?"

"Who cares? I have pretty armor to make!"

We make a dramatic exit and walk with Leliana to Marjorlaine's hideout in Denerim. There are a couple of guards who object to us barging in... but not for long. With them dead, Leliana confronts Marjorlaine, who gives us a warm reception and says the hired killers were just her way of saying hello. Makes perfect sense to Amy; he communicates mostly by stabbing people, too. Leliana warns us that she's trying to manipulate us... this would be obvious to most, but she's traveled with us long enough to know we need these little reminders fairly often. She tells Marjorlaine in no uncertain terms that she wants her out of her life forever, then attacks. Marjorlaine had some other guards standing by in the side rooms for this reason, but they can't help her. Leliana stands over the body of her mentor and says she'll need time to process this.

After gathering up our two sets of drakeskin and one set of dragonscale armor, we head back to camp and Leliana tells us she's not sure what to think. On the one hand, she enjoyed being a deceptive killer under Marjorlaine's tutilege but she left that life behind when she joined the Chantry and had her vision. She asks us if we think she was just running away from who she really was, and Amy decides to belittle her religion and tell her she enjoys killing as much as he does. Surprisingly, she says Amy might be right about that.

...I knew we'd turn this innocent lay sister into a jaded killer if she spent enough time with us.

Of course, if you want an outfit to match her new personality, you'll need to get some DLC....

At this point, there are other quests you can do that involve your party. However, Alistair doesn't like Amy enough to trust him with information about his half-sister and Shale has been grouchy ever since we killed Caridin, so we're not doing the golem any favors, either. Zevran is indifferent to us as well, but there's no way that could possibly affect us later.

Dragon Age: Origins Playthrough - Urning the Ashes

Now that Amastacia has wasted as much time as possible, we take Morrigan, Leliana and Oghren with us to Brother Genitivi's last known location: a town called Haven. The gate guard is decidedly unhappy to see visitors but we reassure him with the convincing excuse, "we just want to see what your town looks like." He grumbles that we can trade at the store if we must, then we should leave. This is still warmer than the reception we got in Orzammar though, so Amy happily strolls in.

The village is a collection of small wooden cabins with nothing very remarkable except a large church. We do stop in at the store though, and the shopkeeper is relatively friendly... until we decide we want to see what the back room looks like. This NPC is only the second in the game to object to the main character barging into whatever room he pleases. Clearly, he didn't hear about what happened to the last one. We insist that the ability to root through private property unquestioned is an important trope of the RPG genre, and he attacks us for breaking his fourth wall.

Truly, this is the visage of a formidable warrior! No blade can pierce his dirt-stained tunic!

Turns out, he did have something to hide: the body of one of Arl Eamon's knights lays on the floor of the back room. We loot the body and, our work here being done, we head outside to discover that the other villagers are well-armed and have surprisingly good hearing when it comes to the dying screams of their neighbor. Weird... they seemed so nice earlier. We decorate the village with blood stains before continuing to their church.

Amy wanders in as the priest is giving a secretive-looking sermon to a circle of worshippers, and he's not happy that we're interrupting. We tell him we're just exploring the village and he tells us we should have done that without killing people along the way. That thought honestly never occurred to Amy. At this point, the priest directs the villagers to slay their new enemy. Since most of them aren't wearing armor, it's about as effective as throwing a sheep into a pit full of spikes and expecting it to hold its own.

"I'll have you know, outsider, that those sheep disarmed a poison dart trap quite handily last week!"

We pluck the priest's cool-looking amulet off his body and head into a side room where we find Brother Genitivi laying on the floor, battered but not dead. We ask if he's okay. He tells us he's been tortured for days without food or water, so he's never felt better. That's a relief. I guess he doesn't need our help. At that point, Genitivi apologizes and says he was just kidding. He's one stiff breeze away from falling over dead, but he believes the villagers are hiding the resting place of the Urn of Sacred Ashes and a little broken leg won't stop him from getting there.

We head into the mountains and find a door with a complex lock. After Genitivi messes with the priest's amulet a little, it changes shape and fits perfectly into the keyhole. By now he's pretty tired, and says he'll study the carvings in this entrance hall while we explore the ruin. He says it doesn't look like there are cultists here, but what he really meant to say was, "there are TOTALLY cultists about a hundred feet away." This seems like an awfully high cultist population for such a small village, but Amy stabs first and asks questions never.

The ruins' walls are riddled with holes that lead to winding underground passages, because we didn't get enough of that scenery in Orzammar. Here we discover what the cultists have repurposed the ruin for: a dragon breeding ground. There are eggs in clutches in caves, eggs being studied by mages on altars, but no omelettes or even scrambled eggs. Seems like a waste to Amy. After carving through cultists and young dragons alike, we arrive at the final room before the exit, where their leader, Kolgrim, is waiting.

"Yes, I want to parley after you killed all my disciples! It worked for the werewolves, didn't it?"

He warns us, with suppressed crazy, that we have spilled enough blood for today. We apologize for that, insisting again that we were simply "exploring". He goes on to say that Andraste will smell the blood of her children on us and will be displeased. Huh. That's confusing. Well, thank you nice cult leader! We'll keep that in mind! We're off to explore some more now. Buh-bye!

Before we can politely excuse ourselves, he orders his cultists to attack. Apparently he was threatening us, not giving us helpful advice on how to avoid being slaughtered by a dragon. Amy always gets those two things mixed up. Regardless, the cult leader has a shiny axe that we take off his body and hand to Oghren because we think the cult leader would want it to be wielded by another crazy person.

Upon heading out the exit and onto a mountain pass... we see Andraste.

I wasn't expecting Andraste to be... so purple.

Well, the cultists thought this was Andraste and Amy thinks now is a good time to respect the beliefs of the people he just killed. As we head down the path, a random party member will remind you that dragons are death incarnate but Amy's already made up his mind. The cultists probably expect to meet their god in the afterlife and they can't very well do that if it's alive. Dragandraste must be slain to honor those poor cultists' memories.

This fight makes the Broodmother look like a helpless octopus in comparison. If you take the dragon head-on, it will apply fire directly to your forehead and then bite you. If you try attacking its rear, expect a tail slap or a kick from a hind leg. If you surround it, it will fly straight up and land in a more advantageous position. Mages and rogues are especially vulnerable to its high damage attacks and sure enough, Morrigan gets knocked unconscious before a third of its hitpoints are gone. Oghren and Amy keep it distracted well enough to allow Leliana to retreat, but they're drinking healing potions like they're chocolate-flavored stout. At one point, the dragon picks up Amy in its jaws and swings him around like a toy. He survives with a sliver of life thanks to the fact that he tastes pretty awful.

"I'M BREATHING FIRE BUT I CAN STILL TASTE THE DWARF-SWEAT! I ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO KILL ME NOW!"

An ordinary human would probably be vomiting for hours after drinking as many healing potions as Oghren and Amy did, but luckily they're two dwarves who have spent their lives making bad decisions about what they drink. They're able to bring the High Dragon down and unlike the little dragon we fought in the Brecilian Forest, this one has a proper treasure horde. We'll be able to buy Morrigan some new internal organs with the gold we'll get from selling this stuff, but for now we're off to the underground shrine on the other side of this mountain pass.

Once there, we are greeted by a pale figure in bright silver armor, who is here on loan from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He is the guardian of the Urn of Sacred Ashes and he will judge whether or not we are worthy to take a pinch of ashes. To judge our character, the Guardian asks Amy if he should have done more for his family before leaving Orzammar. Amy just laughs and says they'd be miserable with or without him. The Guardian seems satisfied with that, proving he's not very good at his job. He then turns to our companions: he accuses Leliana of lying about speaking to the Maker, Oghren tells him his life story, and Morrigan is having none of his crap. His methods don't seem very consistent, but he lets us pass for whatever reason.

"'You have chosen... wisely.' There, I said it. Will you shut up now?"

The rest of this temple is no less confusing for Amy, who never really understood the Chantry's teachings before he came here. He definitely doesn't get the point of the next room, where Andraste will sic an Ash Wraith on you if you can't answer a riddle about her life. It just seems excessive... furthermore, wasn't Andraste that dragon we just killed? Head hurts so much. Leliana, you're the Andraste fangirl, why can't you just take over?

The other rooms include a bridge puzzle where you're supposed to "put your faith in your friends" but really involves random button pressing. You also have to fight a shadowy version of your own party. Morrigan kills shadow Amy almost immediately, which must have been very cathartic for her. There's also a hallway where you encounter a vision of someone from your past... in Amy's case, it's Leske. He acts like our friend once again, at which point we mention that he totally betrayed us and we killed him.

CALL ME "SALROKA" ONE MORE TIME! I DARE YOU!

"Yeah, I know," Leske replies, "but you were supposed to play this part of the game a lot sooner than now."Fair point, Leske. He gives us a trinket and we proceed to the final room, where we have to strip naked and walk through fire. After that, the Guardian re-appears and proclaims us worthy. Damn, man. If getting naked and running through flames was what made you worthy of the sacred ashes, you should know we passed that particular test after a really drunken stupor back in Dust Town a few years back.

So, with Leliana in awe and Morrigan dripping with sarcasm, we take a pinch of ashes and head back to Genitivi. Upon seeing that we reached the ashes, he says that we need to let the world know about this place so any pilgrim can come here. Amy disagrees, saying we should keep it for ourselves and threatens that Genitivi should keep his mouth shut. He replies he would give his life to tell the world about this discovery. We briefly consider stabbing him but Amy ultimately decides that this death threat was another one of his hilarious jokes.

HA HA HA! He would ridiculous with a knife sticking out of his head!
...Come on guys, I'm not the only one who was thinking that, right?

At long last, we return to Redcliffe Castle and a healer performs a ritual with the ashes over Arl Eamon's body. He awakens, and is dismayed when Bann Teagan tells him he's been asleep for almost the entire game now. Teagan gets him caught up on all the boring details: demonically possessed son, village slaughtered by undead, blood magic, dead wife, etc. For some reason, Arl Eamon thinks we're worthy of the title "Champion of Redcliffe" anyway. Shortly thereafter, he brings us to his throne room and lays out his plan for how we're going to deal with Teyrn Loghain....

Dragon Age: Origins Playthrough - Orzammar, Part Two

Amastacia heads toward certain death, also known as the entrance to the Deep Roads, but he's stopped by a dwarf in bright red armor and even brighter red hair. He's heard that we're going to try to find Branka, which interests him because she was his wife before she and her entire house went on this suicide expedition. We're not sure why she left her husband behind, but it might have something to do with the fact that he smells like a cross between a distillery and an outhouse that caught fire.

Drunk, vulgar and shunned by society are three things that Amy would use to describe "my kind of dwarf". So, we tell Oghren that we're happy to have him along before he even gets a chance to extort us with valuable information on Branka's whereabouts. Our party now consists of two boorish dwarf warriors named Amy and Oghren, and two thoroughly unimpressed human women named Morrigan and Leliana.
 

And yes, he does make vulgar comments about the two ladies during the entire trip to the Deep Roads.

The Deep Roads are a long combat section with a proportionately low amount of dialogue, and can be a little tedious if you're not in love with the combat in this game. We start in a place called Caridin's Cross, and it's not long before we run headlong into darkspawn. This sets the tone for the rest of this gameplay section: you will fight darkspawn in underground areas. Plow headlong through them and try to like it, 'kay?

Caridin's Cross leads us to Ortan Thaig, one of several lost dwarven cities, which is inhabited not only by darkspawn but angry dwarven spirits and their pet golems.  You can also find little dinosaur-like critters down here called deepstalkers, along with giant spiders, because apparently an army of darkspawn isn't deadly enough on its own.  Even in such large numbers, these enemies aren't particularly difficult; it just makes the fights feel overly long.  Also, by the time we clear out all hostile critters in Ortan Thaig's main area, we're not even half-finished with the Deep Roads yet.

Were the darkspawn merciless killing machines BEFORE they got stuck living here? Because I'm feeling homicidal, myself.
 

We do find a clue about Branka's whereabouts here, though.  Once the dwarf spirits are vanquished, we run across one dwarf who still has flesh on him.  He retreats and we follow him into a hidey-hole that used to be one of Branka's camps.  The dwarf squatter has lost his mind, having come here on a different expedition months ago and has been eating darkspawn corpses to survive.  He doesn't want to help us, but Amy yells at him as loudly as possible and it actually works this time.  He tells us his name is Ruck, and after giving us some info about Branka, he asks us to tell his mother he's dead.  Ruck looks remarkably alive for a dead dwarf, but we've never argued with corpses before and we're not about to start now.

Branka's trail leads us to the gates of Bowzammar, a dwarven city that appears to have been even greater than Orzammar before getting overrun by darkspawn.  A large stone bridge leads to the city gates and in the canyon below, we can see thousands of darkspawn in formation, ready to march for the surface.  Amy is getting ready to spit over the side on their heads when the archdemon itself shows up.  Bravely hiding, our party hears it give a horrific, screeching roar that the darkspawn take as a sign to march for the surface.  Amy is jealous.  His own screeching and roaring rarely gets people to listen.

"It's not the screeching that does it, stupid. It's my lovely smile that makes the darkspawn obey!"

We have to fight past some darkspawn to get across the bridge but for once, we're not doing it alone.  A few members of an organization of dwarven warriors called the Legion of the Dead, whose members track and fight the darkspawn, happen to be here at the same time as us and the darkspawn are no match for our combined muscle.  Unfortunately, the head legionnaire doesn't care about politics or Paragons and has no idea where Branka is or what she's after.  He's not interested in walking into Bowzammar either, so the four of us enter the city alone once again.

Bowzammar is another impressive dwarven ruin full of darkspawn and strange as it is to say, they're getting repetitive at this point.  This one is chanting a creepy poem though.  Upon further investigation, the poem is being recited by a very unhealthy-looking dwarven woman named Hespith.  She, like Ruck, thinks we're hallucinations.  Amy has been accused of being that a lot lately, and he's starting to think it might be true.  She mentions some cryptic details about Branka before getting freaked out and running off, but we hear her talking as we progress through the ruin.

 

"Eighty-seventh day: can I please just order Chinese?"
 

Amy zones out as the crazy dwarf woman details how the darkspawn violated the other women and twisted their minds and bodies to resemble their own.  His mom used to tell him bedtime stories that sounded a lot like this after her nightly gallon of ale.  As we round a corner, however, we find out that there's actually a point to this story: she's describing a monstrosity called a Broodmother and we just stumbled into its den.

The Broodmother is probably one of the top five most difficult fights in this game.  She has a huge amount of hit points, summons masses of tentacles or squads of darkspawn to protect herself, and has a grab attack that can completely lock down one of your party members.  Fortunately, Leliana and Morrigan aren't in too much danger at long range, while Oghren and Amy are hardy enough themselves to withstand all the punishment as long as they quaff a healing potion every now and then.  This would be a satisfying final boss fight but there's just one problem: we're STILL not done with the Deep Roads.

"What the hell?! I was promised final boss credit when I signed on for this game! Get my agent on the phone!"

After defeating the Broodmother, we head to the resting place of the Anvil of the Void where we finally meet Branka.  Oghren is happy to see her, but she immediately insults him for risking his life to find her, saying he's going soft.  She then demands that we help her get past the lethal traps that the paragon Caridin placed in these caves so she can reach the anvil.  That's right.  We just had a brutal fight with a hideous mother of monsters and our final confrontation is going to be... fighting some old traps.  You could say that I find this pacing questionable.

Anyway, Branka shouts some nonsense about how it was necessary to allow the darkspawn to turn her handmaiden into a Broodmother so she could create more darkspawn to throw at the traps.  That way, she wouldn't have to throw dwarven lives away!  Luckily for her, that argument makes perfect sense to Amy.  We make our way to the Anvil of the Void and find an iron golem standing guard over it.  He introduces himself as Caridin and tells us that creating golems comes at a terrible price: they're made out of living dwarves.  Caridin was turned into an iron golem when he objected, but his will was strong enough to resist the control rod.  He drove away the dwarves who abused its power and has been waiting for someone who would help him destroy the Anvil ever since.

"I tried to tell them... 'these pauldrons are too damn big!' I said. 'Also, sacrificing dwarves is bad! I guess.'"

At that point, Branka runs in and screams that the Anvil is hers.  Caridin pleads with us to stop her, but Branka promises that she'll give us an army of golems if we side with her.  Amy has a history of being susceptible to the promise of personal golems.  We destroy Caridin and tell Branka we'll be happy to collect our golem army after she helps us settle this silly little succession fight back in Orzammar.  Branka responds by crafting a golden crown on the Anvil of the Void and telling us to give it to whoever we damn well feel like.

Fast forward to the Chamber of the Assembly, where Bhelen and Harrowmont are present among the dwarven lords having yet another unproductive debate on who should be king.  We walk in with the crown and Oghren proudly announces that Branka is alive and their paragon has told them who she supports for the throne.  Amy scratches his head and says, "no, Oghren, she told us to give it to whoever we want."

Everyone in the assembly chamber, including our party, is exasperated with Amy at this point and they tell him to shut up and name the successor.  We look at Harrowmont, the dwarf we have supported this whole time, smile... and hand the crown to Prince Bhelen.

"I don't know how or why that just happened, but umm... don't look a gift crown in the mouth! Or something."

So, our return to Orzammar ends with Bhelen happy with his shiny new hat, Rica happy that her son is officially a prince and Oghren happy because Branka is still alive!  Everyone wins!  Except for Harrowmont, I guess, since he's scheduled to be executed.  Oh, and Shale, because we killed the golem who could have answered questions about its existence.  Amy stops thinking about it at this point, figuring it's best to quit while he's ahead.