The Ferelden Scrolls: A Dragon Age Diary, Part 1

Beginning a new diary series for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Yes, I'm mostly doing this so I have an excuse to play Dragon Age: Inquisition during work hours. There will be spoilers and there will be presumed knowledge, but there probably won't be much taking anything seriously.

If there's one thing I know, it's that everyone in Thedas hates:

1) Mages, because they keep getting possessed by demons and recently got into a big, catastrophic fight with the Templars.
2) The Qunari, because they look like demons and some of them occasionally kill people for no good reason.
3) The Blight, seeing as the last one very nearly destroyed the world.

So, my being a Qunari Mage named Blight is probably starting things off on the wrong foot.

I am very tall. I am broad shouldered but have just a hint of a waist. I have two enormous obsidian horns sticking out of my forehead. I am calm and dutiful, but refuse glory and am gently snarky towards the over-earnest. I throw lightning from my hands and have jet-black lips. Basically, if Brienne of Tarth and Tim Curry from Legend had a lovechild, it would be me, only to the best of my knowledge I've yet to entrap any of the cast of Ferris Bueller's Day Off in synthesiser-hell. I might have done, though. When all this starts I seem to be in my 30s, so anything might have happened before now. Sorry, Mia Sara.

Anyway, I'm a nobody, but then one day I get killed by an explosion which births a mysterious big green thing in the sky, only for it to chuck me back out, alive again, and with a much smaller green thing stuck to my hand. At first, everyone wants to kill me again because of this, but then a very serious French lady decides I'm going to save the world instead (this sentiment is endorsed by a Sex Dwarf and Richard Elf'Brian, but I'll get to them another time). With the hand-thing. I don't know, it looks like a dollar store LED flashlight to me, but because it's green and the big sky-thing is also green, she thinks it's the answer.

So I wave the hand-thing at the big green thing in the sky, and it turns out La Femme Grave is bang on the money. The world, ravaged by conflicts with the Qunari, the mages and the Blight, has just been saved by a Qunari mage named Blight. Deal with it, plebs.

They really do deal with it, as it happens. Waving my little green thing at the big green thing knocked me out, but when I wake up I'm greeted by this:

No, folks, really, I'm not a hero. Right place, right time, right LED flashlight stuck to my hand, that's all.

I should be delighted by the fact that they love me, they really love me. Instead, I'm motivated partly by the memory that, not so long ago, most of them wanted me dead because I happened to be in the same place as the big green thing, and partly by the sight of houses with unlocked doors. As the crowds cheer and wave, I brazenly walk into their homes and take anything that isn't nailed down. No, folks, really, I'm not a hero.

Even daylight robbery can't dissuade them. I'm praised wherever I go, and ushered off to a reception with La Femme Grave. Also in attendance is a moaning bloke wearing a box on his head:

And another very serious French lady, who I have a funny feeling I've seen somewhere before:

They're not getting along too well. Box-head is pretty sure that my flashlight marks me as cause of rather than solution to our ongoing Big Green Sky-Thing problem, but everyone else is all You're Our Only hope. There are more Big Green Sky-Things cropping up, and they're spitting monsters all over the place.

I'm not entirely unconvinced that Box-head has a point, but the decision is made that a) I'm definitely a hero b) I'm going to save the world a whole lot more c) everyone here is essentially seceding from the church in favour of refounding The Inquistion. This is basically because everything's gone to hell and someone who isn't a fanatic needs to sort it all out. I don't know, 'Inquisition' doesn't have entirely positive connotations, does it? You people are sure we're not the bad guys here?

Anyway, there are epic speeches, a whole lot of earnestness, Box-head is sent packing, I'm sworn in as an Inquisitor, and there are glimpses of what's going on in far-off lands. It's all very exciting. Then when it's all over I find myself here.

Must have been quite a party.