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[DA: Awakening]Moment Worth A New Plurk: Darkspawn surround Anders. Anders casts Repulsion Field. Katherine's cast prep for Mass Paralyze finishes. There is now a ring of darkspawn suspended in midair.
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I WISH THE PS3 WERE MORE SCREENSHOT FRIENDLY because seriously
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this is beautiful.
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oh hello! New person!
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uh. Three ranged + one melee has worked well so far. Oghren, you're out. We'll just say he was sent back to let the keep know about the nest shit in case the four of them fail.
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that makes sense.
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...glyph of neutralization: when the templars can't handle spellcasters on their own
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well, we no longer have a templar in the active party constantly so.
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returning now to the campaign of Helping My Boyfriend Dodge a Crown Doesn't Mean I Wanted One
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Katherine is currently doing the proper Warden thing and going after darkspawn instead of making decisions for a society she wasn't really part of most of her life.
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namely, a nest! Sigrun has been recruited and retained in the party because she knows the right way to go.
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maybe "dodge a throne" would have been better wording, the only crowns are on the monarchs here
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or monarch, singular, for this worldstate
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...why is there a perfect line of darkspawn up ahead
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if I death cloud into it, will they stay in formation too?
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nvm they initiated battle first
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ngl, she hoped she'd never see a broodmother again. of course, that meant they promptly started becoming the stars of nightmares not coming from the archdemon for the rest of the entire basegame.
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and now, apparently, there's an active nest with multiple broodmothers.
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she's not looking forward to this
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I love how we keep collecting injury kits but never use them
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because we have two spirit healers with cleansing aura on almost all the time
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super secret hidden switch
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foiled by the radial menu highlighting it
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oops I accidentally a spell combination
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she just wanted to set two glyphs as traps one right after the other
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but their edges overlapped a little
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I did not know that made a difference but it does! very cool.
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getting a workout on disarming all these traps, Nathaniel?
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yes, Nathaniel, darkspawn corruption is gross.
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let's see. Inert golem + control rod = ally!
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she'd like to talk to this one though
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doesn't seem like that's been allowed for.
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I imagine her being very polite when activating it haha
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Politely asks it to help them with the darkspawn up ahead. Follows it back to its alcove and thanks it when it deactivates.
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...um
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I somehow managed to put my casting radius on the ceiling
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that's better, it fixed itself thanks to naturally drifting
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Please imagine Katherine's response of "We remain vigilant" to the question of what the Wardens do without darkspawn around coming after she looks at the motto inscribed on Duncan's dagger
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...no approval change means either her dialogue options perfectly canceled one another out or ended in a net gain
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since there's no more room for Anders's approval to rise
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it doesn't tell you when you overshoot the cap, which confused the hell out of me in Return to Ostagar.
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"what do you mean respecting Cailan's body was worth only one point for Alistair??"
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"...oh. there was only one point left."
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relatedly, it can't be safe for a pair of mages to stand over a bucket of lyrium like that
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~ominous autosave~ I assume there are broodmothers ahead?
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watch out, I have mass paralyze this time!
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puzzle bullshit
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why would you lock your tomb with a puzzle?
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that's a weird security measure
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I mean it's a RPG staple but it's still weird.
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also third specialization: battlemage
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since she's using a dagger instead of a staff for the foreseeable future
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you'd think arcane warrior but
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nah
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she's found decent staves both in the field and in stores! It's just that this dagger belonged to the person who recruited her and she kind of used it in a Landsmeet duel so it's one part sentiment one part-
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-reminder to...whatever party needs one.
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sometimes it's herself
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and sometimes it's a reminder for different things
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BROODMOTHER TENTACLES. BEFORE WE EVER SEE THE OWNER. those are some long-reaching things.
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"Darkspawn up ahead!" up ahead of you, maybe
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your leader, on the other hand, is surrounded
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course, it works just as well
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"people have described broodmothers to me" who? how many people have gone deep enough to see one? Or did it just travel by word of mouth via the Origins party?
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I can see Oghren sharing that tale actually
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...are there three of them down there?
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...let's not ask how a dagger cut through a huge-ass chain
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/places where a staff would make so much more sense
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She has officially recruited Sigrun and, somehow, despite not being in the active party to see it, Oghren is aware and approves.
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minor update: she feels like shit again!
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guess who had to stand by and watch her party defend her from an attacking peasant mob! (her only contribution to the fight was an attempt to put everyone involved to sleep to end it. it failed, of course.)
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she absolutely would have just given them some grain
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if she didn't have five newly-Joined Wardens under her wing
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she has no idea how they're eating because not all of them are going to be up-front about it.
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and therefore no idea what her resources are
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and it's not like soldiers where if she orders something that can't be done there are leaders out in the field that can mitigate that into something that works, no matter how much they scoff at her shitty-ass
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leadership skills
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and she doesn't want to go "okay sure here's some food!" and deprive the keep's staff (who have to be overworked, seriously) by mistake because there's no way to accommodate that like there is with a-
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resource that is made up of people who can think on their own. Grain can't decide who needs it most for itself! It belongs to whoever happens to hold it.
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soooo she attempted to stall her way out
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and the riot leader totally called her bluff
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and once again her forced involvement has brought unnecessary death. hooray!
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...on the upside apparently I have fully upgraded the Keep?
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I got the trophy, at least
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mistake number I've-Lost-Count: thinking she would be the only one in danger with this conspiracy to kill her
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now her seneschal's taken a crossbow bolt to the arm because she was confident the conspiracy was small enough to crush on her own. It...kind of is, actually. She could manage it with aoe work
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but she sure as hell wasn't the only one in the room when it went down
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like she thought she'd be
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AND THEN SHE CAUGHT HERSELF IN HER OWN PARALYSIS TRAP, good job Katherine
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(my fault on this end of the controller but it is a thing she'd underestimate - she's used to AOE paralysis being from Mass Paralyze, which can't hit its own caster.)
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(Paralysis Explosion does not work the same way)
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(the glyph spells are her newest and traps - the kind a rogue detects - aren't tactics she's personally employed before.)
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If you'd have told Katherine back in basegame that she'd have higher approval from a Howe than she ended the game with from Leliana, she'd have been insulted.
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And yet, here we are.
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It wouldn't have been true if I'd remembered that last Andraste's Grace
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it's a close lead Nathaniel's got, but Leliana's not here to gain more so.
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The whole "how well can I trust them" thing is mitigated in this expansion by rank and also "these people have all agreed to something that might kill them outright and will kill them eventually for me"
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also because she's just plain grown as a person since the start of basegame and settled nicely into normal society (that is, not the Circle; a whole lot of issues in basegame came from the way she sees the
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world and her place in it changing dramatically too quickly to catch up)
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(and yes, she warns people the Joining may be immediately fatal outright. fuck secrecy on that front)
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(she is convinced the keep's chalice is a good luck charm though - five successes out of six!)
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(like holy shit those are great odds)
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...gentlemen, if you must comment on how spooky this place is, your commander politely requests you don't do it while breathing down her neck
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especially you, Nathaniel, you have this really whispery voice that's just fucking eerie on this subject stop it
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(I do love how every moment a companion has had something to say on the Blackmarsh, it's A: never been Oghren and B: always been the person who stops immediately behind her when I stop to listen)
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I also love how the Warden voicesets are...command responses.
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who's commanding?
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most of the other characters respond as if the Warden is commanding them
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All Wardens are secretly fourthwallers
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(this brought to you by attempting to examine a tear in the Veil and Katherine's response of "Oh, please do rethink that..."
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smart mage. stay away from the veil tear.
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to save my brain I'm going to assume reactions to player commands are in fact responses to suggestions from other party members. Maybe her spirit healer sponsor if she's alone idk
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I mean I love fourthwalling
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but hahahaha....
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I love that line though
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gonna use it somewhere one day.