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.