Dragon Age II Playthrough - Fear and Lothering

The game begins, oddly enough, with a dwarf being dragged down a hallway by two well-armored men before being rudely deposited in a chair.  A woman in armor emerges from the shadows, who tells the dwarf she is Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry.  She's brought him here to tell her everything he knows about "the Champion," a man who apparently set off a series of events that has caused big problems for the Chantry.  Once the dwarf realizes she's not taking 'no' for an answer, he begins to talk....

Watch yourself, dwarf. This inquisitor looks like she's going to throw the book at you.

We switch to Hawke (looking like Gerard Butler for the time being) fighting alongside a man with a greatsword.  Hawke has some serious magic in the form of fireballs, walls of icicles and mind blasts.  He and his companion are tearing apart waves of darkspawn and while the warrior seems worried, Hawke continues slinging spells and says he's ready to kill as many as he needs to.  Eventually an ogre shows up, but Mr. Mighty Mage is no less determined.  After a short battle, Hawke charges the ogre's body with magical energy and literally rips it apart.  More darkspawn show up to surround the two humans and just when it looks like the scene can't get any worse, the camera pans over to show a High Dragon atop a nearby cliff.  It plunges downward breathing fire and--That's about the time Cassandra tells the dwarf he's full of it.  He implies that he was just telling her what she wanted to hear, and she sternly tells him that she wants the truth.  The dwarf resists the urge to repeat Jack Nicholson's line from A Few Good Men and retcons the beginning of the game.  Gerard Butler is fired from playing the lead role and we create our balding mage named Chickene Hawke instead.

"It's called 'creative license', Seeker. How was I supposed to know the Chantry didn't have room in the budget for an A-list actor?"

Chickene, as it turns out, is not a mighty wizard at this point.  He and his family are among the citizens of Lothering who didn't get out of town fast enough when the darkspawn showed up and now they're literally running for their lives.  In addition to Chickene, we're traveling with his brother Carver, his sister Bethany and their mother Leandra.  They stop briefly after killing some stray darkspawn to try to figure out what to do.  Chickene yells at everyone to point out that we're wasting time, then tactfully suggests that we should decide on a course of action quickly.  Leandra says that her family in Kirkwall does pretty well for themselves, and would be the best option if we can just make our way to the nearby port of Gwaren.  For now though, the group decides that "away from the darkspawn" is as good a direction to travel as any.

Moving further along, the Hawke family finds more darkspawn and a married couple fighting them. The husband is wearing Templar armor but it does little good against a sword strike that nearly cuts his arm off. Fortunately, the wife has plenty of fight in her. She tackles the darkspawn that wounded him to the ground, beats it to death, then prepares to defend herself with her sword and her husband's shield. I'm honestly not sure why he didn't just let her do all the fighting to begin with. At any rate, we catch up to the action and make short work of the blighters together.

"Oh. 'Blighters'. Yeah, we see what you did there. We just wish we hadn't."

The templar isn't exactly grateful, since Chickene and Bethany are slinging spells without a license and he's supposed to kill such "apostates". His wife talks him down, introducing herself as Aveline and her husband as Wesley. Chickene just growls at the Templar. Everyone agrees to not kill each other for the time being though, so Chickene offers to treat Wesley's wound. The templar refuses, writing off his sword arm as useless without even trying our healing magic. Aveline tells us the way north is blocked by darkspawn but south takes us straight into the Kocari Wilds. Chickene gets angry again and says wilds are better than certain death any day.

We continue forward, stopping only to kill darkspawn now and then, until we come over a familiar-looking rise and see an equally familiar-looking ogre. It turns its gaze on Bethany and Leandra. Our mage sister charges up her spells to defend our mother, but the ogre responds by grabbing Bethany and slamming her into the ground a few times. Sadly, this is not just a misunderstood ogre handshake. Chickene, Carver and Aveline move in and kill the ogre but it's too late for Bethany. Chickene shouts at his traumatized mother to get moving before something uglier shows up, but she shouts right back. I guess we see where Chickene gets it from.

"oGre onLY waNt giVe fRienDLy hUG. whY huMAn mAge so sQUisHy?" 

Wesley says a prayer, Chickene acts nicer and Leandra reluctantly gets up... but sure enough, the darkspawn have caught up to us by then. They start to overwhelm us, but the Plot Device Dragon appears on time again and roasts every darkspawn in sight with its fire breath. It lands, clutching a dead darkspawn in its talons, and a swirling magical field surrounds it. The dragon changes its shape to reveal Flemeth, sporting a sexy evil outfit that was at the dry cleaners during Origins, I guess.Chickene immediately decides to threaten this powerful woman, which Flemeth scoffs at. She says she was just curious to see who killed the ogre and she'll be on her way now. Chickene goes back to nice mode and admits they'll die without her help. She doesn't seem to care until we tell her we're headed for Kirkwall. Changing her tone, Flemeth says she'll get us to Gwaren if we make a simple delivery once we reach the Free Marches. Chickene rudely tells her he'll makes no such guarantee. Flemeth ignores his bravado again since the others seem agreeable. She says there's one matter to attend to before we go, however.

"You may have noticed my dragon horns also look different from how they did in Origins.
In which case: shut up. They were at the dry cleaners' too."

Wesley has been looking more sickly as time goes on and Flemeth informs Aveline that he's beyond saving. Chickene compassionately suggests there must be something we can do. Flemeth says becoming a Grey Warden would work, but we do NOT want to deal with the new guy in charge of them. So, Wesley asks Aveline to show him mercy and stab him. Suddenly feeling grumpy, Chickene tells her to hurry up and decide. Aveline does the deed and Cassandra interrupts the dwarf's story again.

The Seeker is skeptical about Flemeth's involvement, but the dwarf shows her Kate Mulgrew's name in the voice acting credits, so Cassandra decides he's telling the truth. He continues, saying the Hawke family made it to Gwaren, boarded a ship and had a long, uncomfortable ride to the "free" city of Kirkwall. When we get there, we see that a bunch of other people from Ferelden decided to climb aboard something that floats and make for Kirkwall, too. The viscount and the knight-commander of the city's templars have already decided to close the gates to refugees. Leandra thinks we have a better chance of getting in since we actually have family here, so she tells Chickene to start acting belligerent again so we can speak to someone in charge.

We eventually meet guard captain Ewald and tell him we have an uncle Gamlen, who's a nobleman in Kirkwall. Ewald says he knows a Gamlen, but he sure as hell isn't noble and mentions something about rubbing coins. The less we know about that, the better. He promises to let us know if he shows up, which doesn't go over well with a group of well-armed refugees who have been trying to get in for days. They decide to assault the gate and we wind up fighting alongside the guards to stop them. Grateful for our assistance, Ewald says he'll track down Gamlen personally and bring him here.

We make sure to thank the bodies of the conveniently idiotic deserters before proceeding to the next scene.

It takes a few days, but Gamlen shows up. Leandra is initially happy to see him, until he says he essentially lost the family estate in a poker game and if we want to get into the city, we'll have to work off the debt for a year. Chickene grumbles that Gamlen should have found a better way, then kindly says he's only concerned with making sure his mom is safe. Leandra's not going anywhere without her two remaining children though, and Carver says a year's a small price to pay for our lives. So, Chickene decides to talk to Gamlen's mercenary contact, Meeran.

The leader of the Red Iron mercenaries is blunt and straightforward, which Carver seems to like. He says he'll pay our way into the city and let us work for him for a year if we deal with someone who cheated him first. Specifically, a refugee named Friedrich who has surrounded himself with bodyguards and will flee if he sees anyone in a Red Iron uniform. Since we're unknowns, we can get closer. It's good thing for Meeran that Chickene's not feeling nice, as we inform Friedrich he's a dead man and let Carver live up to his name.

"I approve of your methods, and your receding hairline. Maybe now the men will make fewer jokes about mine."

Meeran is satisfied with our results, and we finalize the deal. We tell Gamlen and Leandra the news, which gets a lukewarm response. Our mother's not happy that the family estate is gone, and our uncle's not happy that she and her two sons will be moving in with him. Chickene is just glad to be out of the tutorial level. The dwarf's narration cuts in again, saying that trouble started brewing with the mages and the Qunari during our first year... but more importantly, it's when we finally find out who in the hell our narrator is.