#grey wardens | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

1,644 Tumblr posts in 1 second.

notebooks-and-laptops · 6 months

Text

Grey warden joining ritual got me going insane with the symbolism bro. It's a eucharist. It's a deadly horrible Eucharist taken at the alter of darkness. "This is the body, this is the blood of our God" except the God is old and tainted and now you will be tainted too - it will link you body and soul to a God who is uncaring and whose hoards march the earth. You will join us here at this last supper and it may very well be your last. Drink this; in remeberance of all those who died and will die if you don't. Drink this; and become part of the body of something bigger than yourself, but corrupt from the inside out. I'm going insane man

#dao #dragon age #grey wardens

1K notes · View notes

laurelsofhighever · 4 months

Text

A list of potential cures for the Calling, that we know about, that BioWare has apparently forgotten

Andraste's grace: it's not specified whether the flower the kennelmaster has you pick in the Korcari Wilds is Andraste's grace or if the game just needed a one-off asset and decided to reuse one they already had. However, in the dark future in DAI, Leliana is found to have unusual tolerance for the taint, and in DAO she talks about her mother pressing her laundry with dried Andraste's grace flowers, so it makes you wonder. Anyway, the flower stops Barkspawn becoming a ghoul and seems to make them immune to the taint from that point on.

Maric's longsword: he finds it in the Deep Roads and is suprised it isn't covered in the same Blight-rot as everything else - until, that is, he touches the sword to a patch of it and sees it wither away. Whether it's the dragonbone the sword is made of or the runes on the blade is difficult to say, though if it was just the dragonbone then it would make sense for that to be a more well-known property of the material (and would have been an interesting reason for why dragons were hunted to extinction). If Alistair carries it with him, doesit slow the progession of the taint through his body? Does he know its effects, and give it to the HoF to help keep them safer on their journey to find a permanent cure?

That obsidian dagger Duncan finds in The Calling: the dagger belonged to First Enchanter Remille - who also gave the expedition members brooches that accelerated the spread of the taint. iirc the both the dagger and the brooches are made by the Architect with Blight magic, which means the darkspawn magisters have more knowledge of how the Blight works than the Chantry attributes to them.

Whatever the fuck is going on with Avernus: he hasn't managed to cure himself yet, but he's managed to make it to 200 and the Warden can let him continue his experiments if they don't kill him - and he'd be a really useful resource if the Warden later wanted to send him other potential cures for testing.

Dragons: they have an ability to isolate the Blight in their bodies by forming crystaline cysts around the initial infection to stop it spreading. Useful if it can be more widely applied. Also, it's implied that Maric's reaver blood, which Calenhad gained by mixing his blood with a dragon's, is what somehow cured Fiona of the taint, kinda like a reverse STI, BUT in the Deep Roads they went through an area where the walls were coated in a pale, chalky substance suspiciously devoid of Blight-rot and she touched it, so I'm a bit suspicious of that.

Blood magic: makes sense since the taint is a problem that starts with infected blood. There are two major instances in DA canon where blood magic has been used to purge the taint from an object or being (both by elves btw). The first is Isseya using it to draw the taint out of a clutch of unhatched griffon eggs, which she says is only possible because the taint hasn't yet taken over the hatchlings' bodies to the same extent that it had with the adult griffons. The second instance is Merrill purging the Blighted eluvian in DA2. It's insane that Anders - who is a reluctant Warden and who possibly knows the HoF seeks a cure - isn't more excited about this. She literally removed the Blight from a fully tainted object. Since Isseya proved the same can be done with living tissue, it's probably the closest we've come to an actual cure, but since it also took years there's no telling if it could be a practicaly solution for all Wardens

#dragon age #dragon age meta #da meta #i know HOF is looking for a cure 'deep in the west' but really #we all know that was just to get them out of the way so DAI's problems weren't solved in the first five minutes #grey wardens #hero of ferelden

522 notes · View notes

vigilskeep · 1 year

Text

i love grey wardens who are visibly tainted and under a death sentence and dark-veined and hollow-eyed <3 i love grey wardens whose eyes gleam like a predator’s when they sense darkspawn and whose heads snap in that direction like a bloodhound catching the scent <3 i love grey wardens who move too fast and hunger for too much and whose jaws unhinge a little too far <3 i love grey wardens who hum under their breaths a song you don’t know that sends chills up your spine <3 i love grey wardens who move in impossible synchrony and who scream when one of their number is injured without even having to turn to see it <3 i love grey wardens who have forgotten all the loyalties they once had in favour of the hunt <3 i love grey wardens <3

#grey wardens #they can be a little horrifying... as a treat...

2K notes · View notes

baejax-the-great · 1 year

Text

I don't think Grey Warden eyes should glow when they sense darkspawn. I think their eyes should go completely black and their faces should turn grayish as they feel the call of their kin underground

Glowing eyes would make them easier targets in the dark of the Deep Roads

Black eyes with ghoulish faces would terrify the bedraste* out of any normies unfortunate enough to witness it

*like bejeezus but for Andraste

#dragon age #grey wardens #you know like geralt when poisoned #they should look like that #just absolutely inhuman and ghoulish

2K notes · View notes

paarthursass · 9 months

Text

not to advocate for MORE sexism in bioware games or anything like that but like...the "gender equality" in DAO is so poorly thought out and by that I am SPECIFICALLY referring to women in the Grey Wardens.

Sure yeah Alistair makes that off-hand comment about how "there aren't many women in the wardens" that's more indicative of the writing team's sexism than anything else, but genuinely speaking I think there's actually a valid reason for women to not be allowed in the Grey Wardens.

You cannot tell me that Alistair and the HoF were the first to discover what Broodmothers were and how they were made. You cannot tell me that Grey Wardens have been fighting back Darkspawn for centuries and they do not know about Broodmothers. And if the Grey Wardens know about Broodmothers, then they must know that sending female Grey Wardens down into the Deep Roads is a bad fucking plan.

I can understand concessions being made during a Blight; hell, being a Grey Warden is such a Shit Job that I can understand the Grey Wardens being willing to take in anyone. But like...the women who join cannot go down into the Deep Roads for their Calling. And I would argue that them going down into the Deep Roads at all is a bad plan unless they've got some equivalent of a suicide pill with them in case of capture by Darkspawn.

It honestly is baffling to me that there's NO mention of protocols for female grey wardens during their Calling or expeditions to the Deep Roads being different AT ALL. All it would take is Alistair saying something along the lines of "So that's why there's so few women in the Wardens" after they discover the Broodmother.

Because a woman joining the Wardens isn't just risking death.

She's risking a horrific, violating transformation that turns her into a creature that endangers everyone.

#sophie.txt #dragon age #dao #dragon age origins #grey wardens #anyways say your gender equality in ur game is performative without substance without saying it's performative and without substance #genuinely the broodmother thing is so viscerally horrifying and female wardens are still expected to go into the deep roads to die??? hello

526 notes · View notes

sapphim · 6 months

Text

Monstrous Wardens Masterpost

A great big collection of text from the Dragon Age games and novels about darkspawn, Grey Wardens, and the Calling, to fuel everyone's monstrous wardens headcanons.

This has actually been sitting in my drafts for like half a year now bc I thought I really should scrounge around for more quotes from Last Flight, Awakening, and Legacy. That... didn't happen, and there's really no sense in holding off longer. If I ever do get around to it, I'll pull more quotes to add. But I consider this complete as is. enjoy~

—

The Song

The Old Gods will call to you, From their ancient prisons they will sing. Dragons with wicked eyes and wicked hearts, On blacken'd wings does deceit take flight, The First of My children, lost to night.

—Canticle of Silence 3:6, Dissonant Verse

“The Old Gods beckon, as they always have.” The Architect turned and paced to the other side of the cell. The shadows cast on the walls by the glowstone danced ominously. “That is what you hear. To my people, it is a call that we cannot ignore. It whispers to our blood and compels us to seek the Old Gods out. We search and search for their prisons, and when we find one, we touch the face of perfection and thus desecrate it forever.”

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6

So close. We nearly reached him. Made it down to what looked like a dwarven thaig where the song was actually audible, real and thrumming through the air, not just in our heads. It rattled through the lyrium pillars and shook the earth beneath our feet to its dreadful tempo.

—[DAI] Note: Ancient Warden Logbook

There were creatures in that land. Dark things that lurked in the corners. Cole couldn’t see them, and didn’t want to. He worried that they could see him, however. […] And worse, there was the music. He didn’t know what it was, but it seemed to come from far, far oﬀ. It called to him, but not in a pleasant way— it had an urgency that sped his heart and made his blood burn. The dark creatures, the lurkers, they listened to it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he could feel them out there, craning their necks, raising taloned hands toward that call.

—Dragon Age: Asunder, chapter 9

As the griffon began to climb through the clouds that followed the Blight, Isseya heard a faint, strange melody seep into her mind. She had no sense of it as actual sound; rather, it seemed to come from within, almost as if she were humming the tune to herself. She could never have imagined such a song, though. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. Aching and ethereal, it seemed to pull her toward a memory of nostalgic bliss that she had somehow lost—but that she would do anything to recover. Anything at all. […] “What was it?” the elf asked, shaken. […] “The Archdemon.” […] For the rest of their ride back to Antiva City, Isseya sat small and quiet on Blacktalon’s back, unable to reconcile the horrors of the darkspawn with the sweetness of their song.

—Dragon Age: Last Flight, chapter 3

The Chorus

The faint sounds of movement ahead got more frequent, and along with them, they began to hear a strange humming. It was deep and alien, a reverberating sound that they felt in their chests and that made their skin crawl. […] The deep humming was coming from [the creature. It] was moaning softly, almost chanting, and this moan built upon the sounds of many others behind it in the shadows. They hummed in unison, a hushed and deadly whisper the creatures spoke as one. […] All of them walked as calmly as the first, shambling toward them while moaning and hissing softly. The sound was loud now, reverberating around them like a physical force. […] They watched the darkspawn advance, their weapons held at the ready. Even with their prey cornered, the creatures did not accelerate. Their hum became louder, reached a hungry, fever pitch.

—Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, chapter 14

Were they digging? He had the impression that the masses of them were all engaged in some sort of industry, all united in moving great portions of the rock out of the cavern and expanding it even further. Yet there were no sounds of tools crashing against stone, no hammering sounds or grunts of exertion. All he could hear was a rhythmic groan, a keening pitch that it seemed each of the darkspawn contributed to. The sound of it made his skin crawl, and he realized that the chorus in the distance responded to it. Like a cat that arched its back to meet a brushing hand it became ecstatic; it surged and almost overwhelmed his senses.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6

The Senses

They were more than simply skilled at fighting darkspawn; they knew them intimately. They sensed their presence, sometimes even gleaned their intent.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 4

He could feel the darkspawn out there now. Genevieve was right. It just took some time to become acclimated. They were at the edge of his consciousness, lurking in the shadows far out of sight. It was that same feeling when someone was standing behind you, and you didn’t hear them or sense them in any way; you just knew.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 5

Bregan closed his eyes and carefully reached out with his senses. There were darkspawn all around him. Not in the same room, perhaps, but nearby. He could feel them tickling at the edge of his mind. As always, the sensation came with a feeling of foulness, as if a poison had seeped under his skin.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 2

“There is a taint that is within the darkspawn […] A darkness that pervades us, compels us, drives us to rail against the light. It is in our blood and corrupts the very world around us.” The creature gestured toward Bregan with a withered, taloned hand. “It is also within your blood. It is what makes you what you are, what you sense in us and we in you.”

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 2

Anders: Hmm. Hawke: What's wrong? Anders: I think [the Grey Wardens are] nearby. Anders: Or it could be darkspawn.

—Dragon Age II

The hunter had a sensitivity to the taint that went far beyond any tracking ability he might have learned during his time with the Ash Warriors. He was always the first to sense the approach of darkspawn, and he could discern between the various breeds by their scent alone. Some of the Grey Wardens even used to claim that Kell could do the same with them, sense who was who from afar just as if they were darkspawn. If so, the hunter never commented on it.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 11

She felt Bregan out there, felt him just the same as she felt the darkspawn. Every now and again she would turn a corner in the tunnels and would feel her brother’s presence on the edge of her senses, almost as if his scent had been carried to her somehow on an invisible wind.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 15

The Dreams

Alistair: Oh… and then there were the nightmares. Duncan said it was part of how we sense the darkspawn. We tap into their… well, I don't know what you'd call it. Their “group mind.” Alistair: And when we sleep, it's even worse. You learn to block it out after a while, but at first it's hard. It's supposed to be worse for those who Join during a Blight. How is it for you? Warden: Nightmares… yes, I know what you mean. Alistair: Some people never have much trouble, but that's rare. Others have trouble sleeping their entire life. They're just more sensitive, I suppose. Alistair: Everyone ends up the same, though. Once you reach a certain age, the real nightmares come. That's how a Grey Warden knows his time has come.

—Dragon Age: Origins

The dream, when it came, was similar to the hundreds of dreams Fiona had suffered since she’d become a Grey Warden. Before, however, it had always felt as if she was looking on the dream from afar, hazy and easy to forget. Now it was crystal clear. Fiona stood on a battlefield littered with dead men. All of them were soldiers in heavy armor, knights wearing the griffon standard of the order. Each had been brutally slaughtered. The smell of blood and decay hung thick and cloying in the air, the buzzing sound of flies nipping at her senses. Overhead, the sky filled with an endless, roiling black cloud. It looked like ink spreading slowly in water, a great stain that blotted out the horizon. She had been told about this. The first sign of the Blight, said the Grey Wardens, is found in the clouds. When the mighty dragon rises, its corruption touches the world and spreads. She was alone on that field of corpses. All alone. The wind picked up, a sickly breeze that carried with it the stench of carrion. A gloom fell upon her, and she stumbled as she watched something rise from out of the field of bodies nearby. It was enormous. A great, black thing that was as cold and terrible as anything she could have imagined. Fear pulsed through her. Her heart raced, and she looked away. She didn’t want to see it. She threw her hands up in front of her eyes not to see it. Yet still she felt it coming. Her foot caught between two corpses and made her fall back on top of them. Dead flesh pressed against her and still she covered her eyes. Still she felt the darkness surging ever closer to her. It was coming. And it was coming for her.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 14

The Calling

Hawke: You don't look well, Bethany. Are you injured? Bethany: Injured? I have the darkspawn taint forever in my veins, barely held in check by the Wardens' rituals. Bethany: I will never be well again.

—Dragon Age II

At first, it was just a whisper. A creak in the door hinge I could put off oiling. But soon, all I could hear was the music. It was there when I swung my staff and wiped the sweat from my brow. It lingered in Lyam's laughter and stalked my dreams. I can't explain the sound—the song—but I knew. It's a poison that grows in the mind, then consumes the body.

—[DAI: The Descent] Codex Entry: Warden Ailsa's Diary

It scratches at my thoughts, the music almost a voice, at once unearthly and beautiful. I found myself humming it aloud a few days past. Where once it intruded, it now feels a natural part of my mind's course. It coils around memories I hold dear—training with Ser Keller, riding in the moonlight, my mother's face the last time I saw her—and inserts itself into them, so that I could almost swear that music, that sense of a presence watching and calling, had always been a part of what I remember.

—[DAI] Codex Entry: Regarding the Calling

She had seen enough of the corruption to last a lifetime, and somewhere off in the far distance was that strange sound, the beautiful whispering. She didn’t want to listen to it, but couldn’t help herself. She closed her eyes and tried to pick out what the whisper was saying. Was it a song? Was it a name? It almost seemed that it was calling out to her, stroking her soul ever so softly. . . .

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 14

The humming sound, however, was stronger even than before. It was no longer something muted and distant; it was everywhere. It was behind the walls and under the floor; it filled the shadows and caressed his skin. There was a terrible beauty to it now, an awful yearning that pulsated within the sound, a tugging that pulled at the edge of his consciousness and yet frightened and nauseated him at the same time. The humming had eclipsed any sense he had of the darkspawn. Any attempt he made to reach out with his mind to sense where the creatures were found only a wall of beautiful sound instead. Like a weed, it had insinuated itself into his consciousness, blocking out anything useful.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6

The far-off chorus had become a powerful symphony, a great swell of beautiful music that no longer pounded to get inside his head but instead tickled at the edges of his thoughts. It was far easier to ignore, but now he found it distracting. He found himself losing his train of thought whenever he listened.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 10

The taint fogged her thoughts a little more with each passing morning. Her diary, once a detailed chronicle of every day’s thoughts, went neglected for weeks, sometimes months. She was losing her mind. She wasn’t the only one, of course. It had gotten harder to tell the reality of the Blight from the horrors of her dreams. Sometimes she wasn’t sure which one she walked through, or which one she fought in. The elf had learned to recognize the confusion that sometimes passed over other senior Wardens’ faces. They, too, heard the Archdemon’s song echoing through their heads, a trifle louder every night. They, too, fought to block it out and to hide the signs from their comrades…

—Dragon Age: Last Flight, chapter 21

My body is breaking down. The fingernails were the first to go. I started to itch all over, and when I scratched, they peeled back. Clumps of hair fell away. Then clumps of flesh. I hear a song in my head. It's deafening. The most beautiful thing I've ever heard. But I don't hear it with my ears. It's in my brain. A blissful sound. This must be the call for which the darkspawn yearn, what causes them to dig so feverishly. I'd still rather die. Suppose that's something.

—[DAI] Codex Entry: To Be Corrupted

His skin itched terribly underneath those bandages, but he resisted the urge to peel them off. The pain throughout his body was dull but insistent, as if his body protested against this unfamiliar movement. The sluggishness made him wary. There was a thickness to his blood, a deliberateness to his heartbeat that made him feel like something alien was crawling inside of him and sapping his strength. […His arms] were half covered in dark blotches. At first, he wondered if that was some kind of injury, or perhaps a bloodstain. But then he noticed the texture of the skin within those discolored areas: rough and withered, just as darkspawn flesh was. […] Every part of his skin that wasn’t covered by the greyed cloth bandages was corrupted. It was like a network of black mold working its way across his entire body, and everywhere it touched he could feel a hot buzzing underneath the flesh. It was difficult to look at.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 6

The Architect stared into Utha’s eyes and nothing happened at first. Then black veins began to appear along her hand where the darkspawn touched her. They became darker and darker, the veins branching until her entire hand was criss-crossed with them. […] Her flesh withered and curled, the air filling with the foul stench of decay. […] The stain on her skin spread, crawling up her neck and covering her face. Her coppery hair began to grey, and then it became white. Her long braid twisted and curled behind her, like a match that was burning itself into a cinder. Her eyes shot open, blood red, and she opened her mouth in a soundless scream... and what wisps remained of her hair simply fell out. And then it was done.

—Dragon Age: The Calling, chapter 16

Bonus entry that made me go "hey what the fuck"

What I remember most is its tongue flapping against a row of spiky teeth. I'd heard emissaries possessed the ability to speak, but the words were unnatural. They twisted and lurched as they left the creature's mouth, accompanied with a spray of saliva. "Have you ever experienced living flesh ground between your teeth?" it asked Mila before biting through her throat.

—[DAI: The Descent] Codex Entry: Darkspawn Emissary

#dragon age #grey wardens #darkspawn #wardenposting #canonical texts

399 notes · View notes

samzikei · 1 year

Text

Corvyn Surana & Leliana

My Elf Mage Warden with her love Leliana~ I drew this as a companion piece to a playlist I made for them!

Listen on Spotify Here!

I think I would define their relationship as two people who love each other very much, despite their different ideals and their duties keeping them apart a lot of the time, they are each other's safe harbour, each other's anchor.

A follow up drawing of them in Post-Trespasser can be found here!

Also I had a lot of fun redesigning Leliana's DAO armor! I wanted to keep it close to the original but make it more intricate/practical

Songlist under cut!

723 notes · View notes

alenseress · 5 months

Text

Made a reference for myself maybe more dao to come

#dragon age origins #dragon age #dao revna #dao #dao alistair #grey wardens #hero of ferelden

133 notes · View notes

miraculan-draws · 10 months

Text

If darkspawn drank warden blood to become immune to "the song" and therefore gain sentience,...could a grey warden...prolong their lifespan/delay their calling....by drinking the blood of younger grey wardens.....? This is not an entirely logistic question if I'm being honest. There is horny ulterior motives. It's weird to have a fantasy universe with werewolves and zombies but not vampires is what I'm getting at. And my first thought was Grey Warden Blood Mages/Reavers probably have come up with some grim experiments. (and that several amongst the wardens would be like absolutely you can bite me in fact I'm taking off all my clothes so they don't get dirty)

#grey wardens

270 notes · View notes

larkoneironaut · 2 years

Text