Varric wants to meet us at the Hanged Man, and he tells us with suppressed, murderous glee that his sources say Bartrand is back in Kirkwall. His treacherous brother is holed up in a Hightown mansion and receiving secret deliveries for unknown purposes. Chickene is still annoyed about being left to die in the Deep Roads and agrees it's time for a little family reunion. So Fenris' bloodlust is superceded by Varric's as Hawke accompanies him to Hightown along with Merrill and Aveline.
"Ha! I told Broody that Hawke would do my favor first! That elf owes me a drink."
Finding the mansion isn't difficult, but it appears to be completely abandoned when we get there. Our narrator is confused but confident in his information, so Hawke says the least we can do is ransack this manor since we've come all this way. Varric leads us inside and is immediately confronted by half a dozen guards. Confidently drawing his crossbow, he invites the guards to dance with him and starts killing everything in the room with a single shot. He eventually finds three guards standing in a doorway and fires a bolt that kills all three of them, in a row. Clearly bested, Bartrand begs Varric for mercy and confesses that mother always loved him best.
We cut back to Varric telling the story to the Chantry Seeker, who looks thoroughly unimpressed. The dwarf tries to weasel his way out of telling what is sure to be an uncomfortable story, but she's not having it. So we return to the mansion, and this time Hawke is leading the charge. There are still plenty of guards, along with plenty of crates, broken decorations and other junk. Occasionally, we find a chest with actual valuables inside, but there's no sign of Bartrand... until we clear all the guards out of the main hall and an unarmed dwarf comes out of hiding.
A statue that sings? Maybe it should be on American Idol.
Varric recognizes him as Bartrand's steward and asks Chickene not to flay his soul just yet. The steward tells us the idol was driving Bartrand mad and sold it in the hope it would stop "singing" to him. Unfortunately, he slipped further into insanity once the idol was gone and he hasn't been seen since he locked himself in a room with all his servants about a week ago. Tired of fighting through waves of crazed mercenaries, Chickene says he's going to put an end to this and he and Varric kick down the door in question.
Bartrand seems to have gained significant fighting abilities, as well as teleportation since last we saw him. He summons even more guards to defend him but Hawke's healing aura keeps everyone healthy as the guards are dispatched and Bartrand is beaten into submission. While no longer aggressive, Bartrand is no saner than before and asks Varric to help him find the idol, completely unaware of the fact that he left us to die over it. Varric realizes that his brother is too far gone to tell him why he did it and decides death would be a mercy at this point. Hawke suggests that maybe Varric doesn't want that blood on his hands but he replies that too many people have died already because of Bartrand's madness, so Chickene tells him to make it quick.
Ooh, is this a guessing game? I'm gonna say... 27!
Varric hasn't found much peace by dealing with his brother, but he's in a better mood than Fenris is about to be in. Hawke is heading to Lowtown's alienage to hear what Merrill has to say when Hadriana shows up along with her slaver buddies to attack us again. Fenris refuses to submit, as usual, and Hadriana retreats while we execute her minions. Our elf warrior yells at Hawke immediately after the last of them are defeated, asking us, what part of "immediately" did we not understand? Chickene apologizes, saying he didn't realize that this quest was time-sensitive because so far, it's been the only one in the game that actually is. Fenris chastises us for not trusting the game developers and says if we don't take him seriously, he's going to leave. So, we head back to the Wounded Coast to prevent that from happening.
The path to the Tevinter slavers' hideout is short but thick with enemies, and Fenris stops us at the entrance to the cave to tell us we need to be careful because mages are dangerous and stuff. Chickene is sick of Fenris' attitude and says we're just going to kill everything inside like we always do. Shrugging, he follows us as we navigate twisting, trap-filled corridors with slavers waiting in ambush positions. Some lesser mages lead the groups and keep themselves protected with spells, but Hawke has just upgraded his dispel magic ability and can damage enemy casters by removing their beneficial spells. Mages who have been knocked down and stripped of their best defenses don't last long against Aveline and Fenris. Our bloody march continues until we find an unarmed elf surrounded by slavers in a large antechamber.
I was tempted to say this to him just because of his poor attitude during the whole quest.
Once the slavers are dead, the elf girl, Orana, tells us that she and her fellow slaves were reasonably well-treated until recently, when Hadriana started killing them with blood magic to gain power for an upcoming fight. She's the last of her group and has nowhere to go, so Chickene tells her to go to his manor in Hightown and he'll help her out. Fenris remarks, in an icy tone, that he didn't know we were in the market for a slave. We tell him we have no intention of actually keeping her a slave, and he apologizes. Then we move on to Hadriana herself, who has plenty of guards and the ability to summon undead and lesser demons. All things considered though, her tactics aren't much better than the mages we just eliminated, so defeating her isn't difficult.
Fenris moves in for the killing blow, but Hadriana says she'll trade her life for information. Our elf isn't interested, until she says she can help him find his sister, who he doesn't even remember. Hawke asks if she can prove she isn't lying, but she just laughs and says she can't. So, we let Fenris decide what he wants to do. He kneels down and politely asks for the information, which Hadriana provides. Then Fenris punches a hole straight through her chest, killing her. Chickene nods in approval and says he would have done the same, but Fenris isn't amused. He rants about how this is probably a trap and that magic ruins everything. We tell him not to forget he's talking to a mage, and he says he hasn't before storming out of the hideout.
Fenris forgets, however, that Hawke was going to give him a ride back to Kirkwall. Here he is waiting for a bus.
After Chickene is finished taking the valuables off of the slavers' bodies, he returns to his manor to find an apologetic Fenris, who says seeing Hadriana again filled him with a hate that she bred into him, and lost control. Chickene's no stranger to irrationality and says Fenris doesn't need to apologize. We then ask him if he's going to follow up on this information about a sister, but Fenris hasn't decided yet. After he leaves, Bodahn informs us that Orana is here and, as promised, we tell her that she can stay in the manor as a paid servant, not a slave. Hawke's mother is still not particularly impressed by this idea.
Regardless, it's time to get back to that rendezvous with Merrill we had planned earlier. Our Dalish blood mage says she has something to show us and points us to an ornate, but broken mirror. Chickene kindly points out that there are no reflections and Merrill explains it's an ancient Dalish mirror called an eluvian, which the clans used to communicate with each other over long distances. She found it while trying to find a missing Dalish scout... his trail ended at the mirror and she never found a body. Chickene pounces on this and calls her a fool for bringing a killer mirror into her house. Merrill insists it's not evil, but wants our help in getting a magic knife from her old clan because Keeper Marethari still has this crazy idea that Merrill's flippant attitude toward demons is a bad thing. Hawke reluctantly agrees to help.
"Andaran Atish'an. Here's generic RPG quest #6. Now get moving. It's cold out here, and this outfit doesn't help."
The two of them head to Sundermount along with Aveline and Varric. Marethari is happy to see Merrill and assumes she has finally given up her foolish notion that demons are better than Dalish. Merrill disappoints her by invoking a Dalish rite entitling her to a favor of her choice if we perform a task of the Keeper's choosing. Marethari wearily admits that Merrill is allowed to do this and asks us to exterminate a menacing creature called a Varterrel that has killed a few of her hunters recently. Hawke accepts this task and heads into a nearby cave where the Varterrel and an embarassment of spiders lay in wait.
The cave is littered not only with spider ambushes, but also the bodies of Dalish hunters who have ventured here before us. Chickene remarks on the fact that the Keeper seems to have sent these elves to their deaths, but Merrill says the Varterrel isn't normally hostile and something must have provoked it. We're unconcerned with that mystery though, since our quest is to kill the beastie, not negotiate peace with it. Eventually, we find a surviving Dalish hunter among the bodies of his clan members but as soon as he sees that Merrill is with us, he tells us to stay back. Chickene yells at him at him for being foolish, and he runs off... right into the waiting pincers of the Varterrel.
"What? My name's not Pol! ...Oh, you're talking to my lunch. This is awkward."
This giant arachnid looks imposing and can summon plenty of spider allies to distract us, so Chickene stays close to his allies and keeps his Healing Aura active. Varric and Merrill need a little extra healing despite that, but Aveline absorbs most of the damage and the Varterrel finally falls. Merrill is distraught to find that her Dalish kinsman died trying to get away from her. Chickene tries to calm her, saying there was nothing she could have done, but Merrill is convinced that someone is spreading rumors that she's dangerous. So, we head back down to the camp to talk to the Keeper.
Merrill respectfully presents Marethari with the amulets of the fallen Dalish, but gets hostile when she mentions that one of them seemed to think she was a bigger threat than the Varterrel. Marethari says that the eluvian is dangerous and it was her duty as Keeper to tell the clan this. She then says that it's not too late for Merrill to change her mind. Merrill tells her she has upheld her end of the bargain and expects the Keeper to do the same. So, Marethari presents us with the Arulin'Holm (a fancy elven word for 'magic knife') and asks us on behalf of the Dalish to keep it away from Merrill.
"Shall I ask it who the fairest of them all is? ...No, I'd best not. Don't want to get sued, now."
Back at Merrill's house in Kirkwall, we find her sitting in front of her mirror, admiring it. We press her for information about it and she says that the shards were corrupted when she first found them. She found a "spirit" who helped her "purify" them... using blood magic. Chickene goes on another tirade about how blood magic is dangerous and could never possibly purify anything. Merrill insists that blood magic isn't inherently evil and asks us whether or not we're going to give her the magic knife. Chickene opts to stay on her good side and gives her the Dalish artifact.
With that, three more of our companions are relatively happy with us. There are a couple of other companion quests we could perform, but one of them is for Anders and since Chickene is the primary healer, I'm not too concerned about him. Isabela rarely gets invited to our party either, since Varric is our rogue of choice. So, Chickene decides that he's probably put off the Qunari crisis for long enough and resolves to fix that next. Easier said than done? Probably, but just how badly is it going to go for Hawke? We'll find out soon enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment