Adventures in Thedas

Wow..I started this blog over a year ago and not much has happened.  Not that I'm going to give up!  A lot has happened in the last year that's prevented me from doing any work, though the thought has been there from time to time.

As I stated last September I had to have surgery on my shoulder and that kept me from doing hardly anything, least of all gaming.  I may be looking at yet a fourth shoulder surgery but that's a bit away for now.

The computer I was limping by on to play DAO with the mods has not been working, I -think- it's a heating problem but I can't seem to find the silver paint I need to fix this (if it fixes it) when I have time to think about fixing it.

My fiancee' and I are, however, in the process of building an actual gaming computer.  As we have three kids we are getting parts when we have the spare money to do so.  I think we're getting close to at least having it operational though so hopefully I can get back to playing again.

I will -most- likely.  Start a new game when that happens, though I still have all the screenshots from last year when I had started this grand adventure. So I will try and at least post what I had gotten up to very soon.  If nothing else there should be some more "mod oopsies" to post before I start up playing again.

I'm always happy to hear feedback, suggestions, wants, demands, ect...

Also I have been playing DAI on our PS4.  I can post some stuff from that if anyone is interested.  I did make a YouTube channel for the blog and for fun posted a glitch I had in that game.

You can check it out and subscribe to that here

Well that's all for now!  Happy Adventures everyone!

~Sway

Just a quick note to let everyone know I had to have major surgery on my shoulder, so I'm one arm/handed for a while.  I'll be back to blogging and gaming as soon as I'm able! 

After escaping from Howe's men Duncan and I traveled south, heading towards Ostagar.  That's where the other grey wardens were, and where everyone had been fighting the darkspawn.  More importantly, to me, my brother was there as well as King Cailan and I had some revenge to exact.

I've been looking for you.

 We had barely arrived when the first person we spotted was Cailan.  I instantly recognized him, I'd seen him a few times in Denerim with my father. We ran up to him so we could inform him of Howe's treachery, but first the king had to talk about grey warden stuff and riding in to battle all glorious and smiting the darkspawn.  He seemed pretty disappointed that an arch demon (whatever that is) hadn't made an appearance yet. Then his attention turned to me, merely to talk about me being a "promising recruit", and wait I looked familiar to him, had we met before. I explained to him that, yes, we had met in Denerim my father was the teryn of Highever.

Finally

 Duncan managed to finally get a word in and described what we had just been through. Cailan was surprisingly sympathetic and promised my family justice.  I had to make sure justice meant that Howe's neck would be in a noose, it did.

My next priority was to find Fergus and tell him what had happened, not something I was looking forward to, but Cailan told me he was out scouting in the Korcari wilds and wouldn't be back until after the next battle.

Man doesn't even let me settle in

 Duncan sent me off to get acquainted with the camp and find the two other recruits that were waiting for our return.  I was also suppose to find a grey warden named Alistair and bring him back as well.

So off I went, looking around camp.  I met a lovely older mage by the name of Wynne. (See mod oopsies!) A couple of sisters of the Chantry were running around, offering prayers to the Maker for soldiers in the upcoming battle.  One was seeing to a very sick soldier who was letting me know we are all going to die. I backed away slowly.  I found Daveth, one of the other recruits, near a vendor trying to pick up a soldier. Then he turned his attention on me,  uggh, he was quite surprised that I was the last recruit they had been waiting for.  Apparently nobody told him that women can carry a sword. Then there were some ash warriors.  They go in to battle with their own mabari hounds, so I had a lot of respect for them.  Maybe if this grey warden thing doesn't work out for me I'll look in to joining their order.

Didn't you look a lot more sickly last time I saw you?

I stumbled upon the king's tent, he hadn't made it back there yet but I sweet talked the guard into letting me talk to Teryn Loghain.  He came out and talked with me for a few minutes.  I figured he's Cailan's advisor I may as well make sure everyone that's helpful knows about what happened to my family.  Loghain didn't seem all that upset about what Howe had done.  He did tell me that he was sure Cailan meant everything he said.  There was just something about the way he said it that made me uneasy, like Cailan wasn't actually going to follow through.  Loghain has always given me the creeps, I'd seen him the few times I'd been in Denerim.  Though he did have a slightly more healthy glow to him than he had in the past.

Next up was Ser Jory who all-in-all was pretty damn whiny and skittish for a grey warden recruit.  Him and Daveth had both mentioned to me about some ritual we were going to have to go through, but it was all hush-hush until we actually did it. Jory wasn't much for chit chat so after learning I was the person they were waiting on he rushed off to find Duncan.

He's awfully happy to be in a cage. . .

Well all that was left was to find this guy Alistair, but I spied a guy sitting in a cage so I went up to see what his story was.  I was instantly a bit uncomfortable.  The least they could have done was give him a loin cloth. . . 
 After averting my noble born eyes I found out that he had been caught sneaking around camp in the middle of the night and figured him a deserter so they tossed him in the cage until somebody could figure out what to do with him.  In his defense he wasn't deserting he was sneaking around to steal stuff, in the army's defense he was sneaking around to steal stuff so he could desert.  He hadn't eaten in a couple of days so he promised to give me a key to a chest near the mages.  I didn't want to know how he had kept that smuggled from the guards, but I did get him so food from his jailer and he handed over the key, which I promptly washed before sticking in my pack.

Mages get harassed if you look at them wrong, surely you know that templar.

Finally!  There was Alistair, but when I arrived he was sassing a mage.  To be fair the mage started it, biting off the poor guy's head for merely telling him that the revered mother wanted to see him. I don't see what's so bad about that, but then I'm not a mage so nobody's trying to kill me...except for Howe.



I instantly liked this guy though, he had a great since of humor.

Can darkspawn talk? And if they could would it be about us holding hands?

yup that's me

And then of course he should have 'instantly recognized' me.  Why does everyone in this camp know me?  I could understand them all knowing Fergus, he was the next Teyrn of Highever.  I'm just the second born who's decent with a bow.  I wonder if Fergus got all this when he first got here.

Like what? Like you're incredibly adorable? Sorry not going to happen.

Then it hit him, "Hey you're a girl!".  I've been getting that ever since I got here too, but at least he was just remarking on how few grey wardens are women. Then he said he wish there were more and then he was afraid that I would think him some awful lecher.  It was kind of cute seeing him stumble over himself.  I told him I looked forward to working with him and that caught him off guard too.  Is everyone mean to this poor boy?  Here I figured it was just mages since he use to be a templar. 

Put her and my mom on the front lines and the darkspawn would scurry back to their hole.

Then back to Duncan finally to get this ritual under way.  I came here to be a grey warden so let's get on with it.  I've got some darkspawn to slay and some revenge to see to.  The faster the blight is over, the faster Cailan gets back to Denerim and hangs Howe.  First Duncan had to chastise Alistair for 'sassing' the mage.  I thought his sassing was completely called for, that mage was a jerk, but, alas, I'm not in charge here so I wisely kept my mouth shut less Duncan decide I'm not grey warden material. 

So the first thing we had to do was go out in to the Korcari wilds and kill some darkspawn and get 3 vials of their blood. Meh easy enough, killing darkspawn is what wardens do!  Secondly we had to go find some treaties of long ago and bring them back.  If this was a true blight we may need to call in some allies.  Fair enough , off to the wilds then!

Action time!

Uggh Arl Howe is always trying to pawn his son off on me.

Well everything has a beginning, and this is Elaina Cousland's.

I was called in by my father, the Teryn of Highever.  Annoyingly Arl Howe was there and he's just creepy, but a grey warden was there too, Duncan, so hey take the good with the bad right?

Ser Gilmore is good people

Hey that is a pretty good idea!

 Duncan came to look at Ser Gilmore for the grey wardens.  Hey he's an able bodied warrior, why not?

Then Duncan looked at me.  Heck yeah!  Get me out of this dress, I'm the second born let me go kick evil's ass!

Daaaaad

Dad wasn't too thrilled about that.  Just because Fergus is off to war doesn't mean I should have to stay at home and guard the castle. Uggh over protective parents!

After that I guess Dad wanted me as far away from Duncan as possible until he left.  So I was sent off on an errand to find my older brother and tell him to get his butt off to war. Don't we have servants for that kind of stuff?





The great thing about the opening scene is that it shows off some of the mods already.  The major one is called Dragon Age Redesigned and it is just amazing. Basically it tweaks a huge amount of the npcs in the game nothing that is overtly obvious (except for the companions, more on that in another post), but it gives an overall improvement to your experience. The second one is the one that sticks out the most, the fact that my human noble is dressed like an actual noble. I didn't have armor until I was woken up to Howe's men trying to bust down my door and I had to bare fist punch the rats in the larder. Of course the hair is also another mod, and though you can't see it in the above image I installed a mod that made teeth a pretty white and not falling out brown.

Nice portrait dad.

So I dallied around the hall for a bit trying to see if I could catch any interesting tidbits and then decided I better go find Fergus.  I hadn't gone more than 20 feet when I ran right in to Ser Gilmore.

Hello good looking.

Apparently my Mabari was terrorizing Nan in the larder again and he wasn't going to leave my side until I collected the hound.  Though first he had to ask about Duncan and we both agreed being Grey Wardens was awesome.  Well maybe he'll get to be one and I can sit at home and watch my brother come home from war.

Good Boy

So off we went and Nan was in an uproar about my dog in her larder. Well she changed her tune when she found out that Legion was hunting huge rats. Though he was able to cajole a nice bit of scraps from her for his trouble.  That dog is such a sweet talker.

With that done Ser Gilmore left to attend to his other duties and Legion and I went off to find my brother.

Why are these people obsessed with marrying me off?

Though we ran into my mother first with her friend.  Instantly the talk turned to trying to get me to marry Lady Landra's son, Dairrien. He's okay, but I've always had a crush on Ser Gilmore and these foppy lord's sons just really don't do anything for me. Then I made the mistake of mentioning Duncan to mother and she let me know in no uncertain terms that I am not to join them. Being the baby of the family has it's downsides.

I don't care what Oriana says, I'm teaching Oren how to use a "sward".

I found Fergus and told him to get his butt downstairs and off to war, since Howe's men are apparently walking backwards and won't be here until tomorrow.  Though it hadn't been more than 30 seconds after I delivered the message that both our parents came in.  I knew father was just getting me out of there!  He could have delivered the message himself and then we all go sent off to bed. I was going to need all my energy to look after the castle. Hmmph.

Then in the middle of the night Legion wakes me up growling and barking at the door. I got up to check what was going on and these men just comes bursting in my room! And me in just my undies! 

Rude

Who do they think they are?! Well I wasn't about to just let them get away with this nonsense. I snatched up my bow, sic'd my mabari on them and we brought down some Cousland justice.  Once they were dead I grabbed my armor and ran out in to the hall to see just what the hell was going on.

My mom's a badass.

That's when I ran in to my mom, fully armored and wielding a long sword. Howe's men were attacking the castle and my father had never came to bed.  Well shit I wanted war and adventure, looks like it came to find me. I told her we needed to look in on my sister-in-law and nephew first.  Their room is right across from mine.



We shouldn't have looked. . .

Oh it's on now.

Seriously Howe? My sister-in-law and nephew? What did they do to you?  You're just going to slaughter my whole family? We dried our eyes and headed downstairs.  We needed to find father.  I was hell bent on killing every single one of Howe's men, but my mother convinced me that was a suicide mission.  Instead we went in search of my father and I sated my blood lust on every single soldier I came across in the process.

He even looks good covered in blood

After slaughtering our way to the hall we found Ser Gilmore barricading the door against more of the invading forces. He let us know that my father had refused to leave until we were located and he promised to keep the enemy at bay as long as he could to buy us time to get away.


I wasn't going to miss what was most likely my last chance, I thanked him, grabbed him, and kissed him like my life depended on it. Hell maybe it did.

I should have done this years ago

After saying our goodbyes we ran in to the larder to find my father...who has been mortally wounded.  Then in strolls Duncan and offers to get us all to safety, but father is dying and my mother refuses to leave his side.  There's a catch though, Duncan came to Highever looking for a Grey Warden recruit and he isn't leaving without one.  Well umm Ser Gilmore is in the other room, snatch him up too!  But nope it's got to be me. I was his first choice anyway.  Well as long as Duncan will let me slice Howe open when I get the chance I'll gladly become a Grey Warden. So mom started killing any guy that walked through the door and Duncan pulled me down the secret entrance and off to Ostagar.

I will dad I will

So one of the appeals of playing a game you love on a pc is the modding community, and the modding community for this game is pretty large.  At last count I had over 130 mods, about 80 of them are 'active' according to my Nexus Mod Manager.  If you're interested in modding I highly suggest you check it out here.

Modding is a learning process and I had my fair share of humorous consequences. The nice thing about the community on Nexus Mods is the fact that many of the modders will tell you what mods you need to make their mods work (it's a whole infrastructure going on in your game!) and what mods, to their knowledge, won't work with it.

I didn't catch all the needed mods sometimes and ended up with some interesting results. Such as..

'my..my glorious red hair..what have you done?'

That's suppose to be Ser Gilmore.  You meet him in the human noble origins story.  He seems just as shocked as I am that I forgot to give him hair.  The mod overall was chosen to improve his looks...I'm pretty sure he disagrees with me on that.

*Note* I also have another Ser Gilmore mod but more on that in another post.**

She didn't age as well as I remembered.

My next "oh crap what did I do?" moment was after I got to Ostagar.  I ran up to see Wynne.  She looked a bit different. . .

After blinking confusedly at the senior mage I backed away cautiously and pulled up the mod to  find out what I did wrong this time.  Turns out I needed seven additional mods to make it work.  I ended up just changing Wynne as I couldn't get her eyes to ever look right.

Another mod change I made was to get out of those ugly loin cloth undies first I grabbed a mod that made the undies just pretty, and they look pretty good but then I realized I didn't want my 'romance' scenes to have undies I wanted the full adult version, so back to mods I went.




This had unexpected side effects.  Such as running in to a prisoner in a cage at Ostagar. . .

He's really happy I was able to get him a meal.

Awkward second meeting. . .

And when I woke up in Morrigan's bed after the battle of Ostagar....












I also modded the 'commoner' clothes.  I hadn't realized that's what Flemeth wears.

Always trying to one-up her daughter.

Morrigan is wearing a modded robe based on her outfit from the "Sacred Ashes" trailer.  I'll probably touch on that in another post as well.

All in all I'm loving playing Dragon Age on the PC the mods are giving it a whole new element that I didn't get to experience on my 360.  Plus my little snafus add all kinds of hilarity to my experience.

Until next time- Sway

-Side note.  I did add one more 'horrifying' mod to terrify a friend of mine who is following my mod experience.  I added a very NSFW ogre mod in and recorded my character's first encounter with an ogre (Tower of Ishtar).  If you are interested comment below and I'll link you to the video.  He found it both horrifying and amusing.

I'm a huge fan of the Dragon Age series (yes even two!).  I've been playing them for years (2009) on our Xbox 360 and recently I decided to give them a try on the PC and blog about the experience and what I do.  I've installed mods on it, but they're adding new content and enhancing looks.  Nothing like "God mode" or anything like that.  So welcome and I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures in Thedas!