Nowhere else in Thedas could give her that. But she knew she didn’t want to die fighting templars, and she knew the Grey Wardens, even more than the Circle of Magi, offered a place where an elf could stand equal to any human. It was a noble and ancient order, its tales sung by bards across Thedas…and no one, absolutely no one save the truly heroic or the truly desperate, wanted to become a member. Becoming a Grey Warden meant a hard life and a sure death, one way or another. The Wardens’ Right of Conscription was inviolate-and that meant its promise of sanctuary was too.Įven so, few had chosen to accept the Wardens’ invitation. No such mage was to be troubled by the templars. Any mage who wished to join the Grey Wardens was welcome. When the first rumors reached their Circle, the Senior Enchanter had sent a swift message to Weisshaupt, and within days the Wardens’ reply had come back. Here in the Anderfels, men and women remembered the true dangers of the world, and they did not waste precious lives fighting one another. Other Circles were said to have risen up in rebellion and joined an army of mages massing somewhere around Andoral’s Reach.īut that was elsewhere. Their towers had been pulled to the ground, and every mage and apprentice inside had been slaughtered-even the little children-for no crime beyond being born with the gift of magic.
Elsewhere, she’d heard, entire Circles of Magi had been destroyed. What she did know was that Weisshaupt, and the Grey Wardens, represented sanctuary.Įlsewhere in Thedas, the world might have gone mad. How and why it had happened, Valya wasn’t sure she’d been only an apprentice until a few weeks ago, so no one had told her much of anything, and the rumors were impossibly confusing. The Templar Order, supposedly their protector and defender, had turned against them.
Violently.īeginning in Kirkwall and spreading swiftly through Orlais, the mages of Thedas had found themselves hunted and hounded on all sides. By tradition, the Wardens took only one recruit from each Circle of Magi in Thedas.īut that tradition had been broken. All of them were mages, which was another extraordinary thing. They ranged in age from sixteen to nineteen, except for Senior Enchanter Eilfas, whose scraggly beard was more white than brown. There were four of them besides Valya-an extraordinary number of recruits to be taken at once, she’d been told.
The fear was there, though, despite their best efforts to mask it.
None of that excitement was reflected on her companions’ faces. The thought made her shiver with fearful delight. Ancient stronghold of the Grey Wardens, final resting place for the heroes of ages, first and last bulwark against the horrors of the Blights…and now her home, too. Brother Genitivi had written in his histories that it was wide enough for three horses to pass abreast, but from where Valya stood, it was so dwarfed by Weisshaupt’s stony bulk that it seemed tiny as her thumbnail.įor weeks she’d dreamed of this place. Beneath them stood a single gate of thick wood and steel. Silver-fringed banners flapped from its towers, their emblems indistinct at this distance, but Valya knew that they showed a steely gray griffon upon a field of blue. Read an extended excerpt of Dragon Age: Last Flight, by Liane Merciel.īacked by the great ivory butte of Broken Tooth, the faraway fortress rose before Valya’s awed eyes. Dragon Age: Inquisition is here! And, just in case that isn’t enough Dragon Age for you, we wanted to give you a chance to immerse yourself further in the world of Thedas.