There's also a visitor who has been around for a while, but I haven't mentioned him yet: Levi Dryden, a man who claims that Duncan promised to do him a favor before he died at Ostagar. Amastacia tries to get dead people's friends to honor their promises too, so we get along nicely. He says there's a fortress called Soldier's Peak that used to be a Grey Warden stronghold and we'd be welcome to use it again if we go with him to find evidence that his family used to be nobility.
(INTERLUDE: I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this, but I should mention at this point that if you haven't purchased the Soldier's Peak downloadable content, this conversation will lead you directly to a storefront page to pay real-world money for it. This character stays in your camp until the quest is completed, effectively making him a pop-up ad in human form that you can't get rid of. I generally don't complain about extra content for a game-- if you don't want to pay more money, you can just ignore it-- but I hate the way that Electronic Arts implemented it in this case.)
"I know it's annoying, but my family name is dirt right now and I have to pay the bills somehow. Buy my DLC!"
Naturally, Amy is willing to put the whole quest to build an army and fight the darkspawn on hold to do this completely unverifiable favor. We take Morrigan, Leliana and Shale on the road north... but in order to get to Soldier's Peak, we have to pass through Loghain's stronghold: the city of Denerim. That's not a problem! It's a big city. I'm sure there are plenty of hideous-looking dwarves with face tattoos there and I won't get recognized.
Before Amy even reaches the city of Denerim, however, a woman runs up to him on the road and says her wagon is being attacked by bandits. We run up the road to see if there's any good loot left, but instead we see a group of armed men, along with a handsome blonde-haired elven man. He gives a signal, and a henchman on a hill nearly crushes us with a log. They then draw their weapons, only to have their ambush routed by Amy, his personal golem and his two lady friends.
"Crap... I changed my mind. You never seeing me again after that cut scene was a much better idea."
Our dwarf finds the elf laying on the ground, barely breathing, his fine-looking blades beside him... and immediately decides this poor guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We wake him up and, surprised to be alive, he asks what we intend to do with him. We tell him we're going to torture him because that's a funny joke as far as Amy is concerned. The elf assumes we want information and decides to save us the trouble by admitting he is Zevran, an Antivan Crow hired by Teyrn Loghain to hunt down and kill Grey Wardens. Having failed, his order will kill him if they find him alive so he asks to fight alongside us instead.
This comes as something as a shock to Amy. Firstly because apparently hideous tattooed dwarves are less common than he thought, and secondly because there was no way he could have known this elf was an assassin! Regardless, he appreciates someone whose loyalties shift as rapidly as his own and welcomes Zevran to the team. Morrigan points out the obvious possibility that Zevran is just trying to buy himself another opportunity to finish the job but that thought hadn't crossed Amy's mind. Leliana welcomes him however, and Zevran decides that means he can flirt with her now. Shifting loyalties and questionable social skills, huh? I think he'll fit right in.
We'll travel with Zevran eventually but for now, Amy is headed to Denerim with his golem in tow because that will certainly help him blend in with the crowd. You would think we would be stopped at the city gate, or at least soon after entering the market district, but the guards don't appear to be interested. We decide to tempt fate by walking up to a sergeant, pointing at him and warning, "don't even try to arrest me."
"Uh... I'm pretty sure you broke at least one law just now, but... you know, I really don't care."
"Are you kidding?" he replies, "Even if I gave the order, my men would wet their breeches and leave me by lonesome! As long as you don't cause trouble in the market district, we don't have a problem."
The only part of that sentence we heard was "cause trouble in the market district." So, we approach a shady-looking individual named Slim Couldry who recognizes us from our wanted poster (again, HOW??) and asks us if we're interested in working with him. Sounds like a great way to avoid suspicion. We slip him a bribe of 50 silver coins and he tells us he saw a courtier in a green dress in the main square with a hefty bag of gemstones. Amy's not a rogue, but his time in Dust Town taught him a thing or two about cutting purses and we easily liberate this woman from her gems.
"Stick with me, master dwarf! I'm as good at picking victims as I am picking nicknames for myself!"
It turns out there's plenty of paying work in Denerim if you're not too picky about who you're dealing with. A man with a funny hat is hanging out in one of the many back alleys, with a bag full of requests from mages who have left the Circle for various reasons. Among the many tasks is a job that requires us to smear ox blood on a few doors. Like Amy needs a reason to do that. We take the ox blood and head off.
Having completely forgot about his quest to vanquish the darkspawn and mad with a lust for gold, Amy accidentally enters a house that he's not supposed to paint with ox blood (or was he just supposed to smear it on the door? Doesn't matter). Undaunted, he decides to root through the valuables for treasure before the occupant tells him that the back room of the house is off-limits because Brother Genitivi is a very private person. I feel like we've heard that name before... oh well. We reassure whats-his-name that we're just exploring and won't mess anything up. The man attacks when we try to force our way through the door and we leave him in a pool of his own blood.
NPCs in this kind of video game rarely object when the main character wanders into their house and starts looking for treasure.
This one objected. Now he's dead. Are you learning an important lesson, NPCs??
Upon entering the back room, Amy sees a dead body-- and the weird part is, it's not one he's responsible for. It turns out that the guy we just stabbed was impersonating Brother Genitivi's assistant in order to hide the fact that Genitivi found a solid lead on where to find the Urn of Sacred Ashes. Oh! That thing Teagan wanted! If anyone asks, we totally meant to do all this. We're good like that.
Denerim is so large that it has its own map and we have to pass through some bad sections of town in order to get to the houses that need to be marked with ox blood. We inevitably run afoul of bandits as a result, but that's okay because the Chantry was looking for someone to clean up the streets anyway. Our definition of "clean up" apparently involves getting blood, ox and otherwise, everywhere... but the Chant of Light isn't literal, right? You need priests to interpret it. We assume the same is true for the jobs they give out.
While heading back to the market district to collect some gold, another shocking twist occurs: the city guard, who weren't supposed to be riled up unless we caused trouble, have heard that we're stealing things and decide to arrest us. Amy doesn't see the problem. It's not like he was caught! In any case, this goes about as well as you'd expect for the guards and the streets are a whole lot "cleaner" by the time we're done.
Truly, this slum is a thing of beauty now that I've killed everyone in it.
So, Amy gets to collect gold from both the Mages' Collective and the Chantry for his ox blood-fueled destruction and wonders to himself why the hell he didn't come here sooner. Unfortunately, he's wasted the better part of a day showing his face aroud roughly half of the city... and we're no closer to accomplishing our recruitment goals for the Grey Warden army, let alone doing that favor that put us on this road in the first place. Happy with his gold for now, Amy decides he's better look into this fortress of questionable value called Soldier's Peak.
...Right after he visits an establishment called The Pearl.
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