Dragon Age: Warden's Oath - Signup Thread

Oh, Grey Warden,
What have you done?
The oath you have taken
Is all but broken.

All is undone.
Demons have come
To destroy this peace
We have had for so long.

Ally or Foe?
Maker only knows.
Ally or Foe?
The Maker only knows.

The stronghold lives on,
And the army's reborn,
Compelled to forge on.
What will we become?

Can you be forgiven
When the cold grave has come?
Or will you have won,
Or will battle rage on?

Oh, Grey Warden,
What have you done?
The oath you have taken
Is all but broken.

All is undone.
Ash in the sun,
Cast into darkness
The light we had won.

---

It has been eight years since the sealing of the breach, and southern Thedas is still recovering. The Orlesian and Ferelden Wardens have splintered off from Weisshaupt and rebuilt, while all news out of the north ends. This new Order of Grey Wardens is more involved with their neighbors. As a gift to the Wardens, Divine Victoria funded the renovation of Adamant Keep, while Empress Celene, motivated by the successful management of Vigil's Keep, declares the Warden-Commander of Orlais the Duke of the Western Approach and Abyssal Rift. If anyone has a chance of breathing life into the barren, often-blighted lands to the west, it's the Wardens.

While the strongholds of Montsimmard and Jader are now empty, echoes of their former glory, the Wardens at Adamant are rapidly growing their numbers and dealing with the duties of operating a dukedom. Nobles and commoners alike seek their input on judgments, negotiations, and discussions; rumors abound of numerous expeditions into the Deep Roads and the Abyss; researchers and magicians seek out the assistance of their archivists; merchants vie for contracts; and worst of all, invitations flood in for every party hosted by nearly every Duke and Marquis in the west.

For a group of fresh Wardens at Adamant, they will soon learn that sometimes the Darkspawn are the least of their worries.

---

Alright everyone, I decided to make a Dragon Age Inquisition RP with a focus on Orlais and the Wardens. I also would like to channel the spirit of the games, with conversations and decisions playing a big role. To that effect, combat won't be the primary focus of this game. Instead of spending weeks roleplaying out every single round of a battle, you'll have more of a general tactical overview, meaning that most fights can be resolved quickly. That way traveling around the countryside or Deep Roads won't take months of real-world time, either. You'll also get to have your own War Table operations as you recruit new Wardens and things progress.

Instead, the focus will be on your characters, their role in the Wardens, and how things change as time goes on. You'll get the chance to get loot; recruit new Wardens, merchants, and laborers; create (and destroy) political alliances; fund upgrades to Adamant; build new outposts; explore the deep roads and uncover secrets; explore the surface and venture into blighted and uncharted territories; or, of course, go to the tavern and play a round of Wicked Grace.

• Due to the RPG and open-ended nature of the games, I don't want to have to do a whole Dragon Age Keep overview here, so I'll just run through some of the more high-level decisions (Basically, the ones that are needed to have this RP take place, such as a Divine and Empress who are very pro-Warden, more freedom for mages and elves/dwarves to allow for more variety in character backgrounds, and a world that isn't totally wrecked or at war) and then if you guys want any other specific choices I'll add them here. So far what we have is:
  • The Denerim Alienage, Circle of Magi, Anvil of the Void, and Connor were saved by the Hero of Ferelden. Alistair is the lone king of Ferelden, Bhelen now rules Orzammar, Zathrian lifted the curse, and a strange old man named Avernus is a magical researcher at Soldier's Peak, although his work is top secret and no one quite knows what he is researching.
  • Hawke sided with the mages, Bethany is a Warden, and the Dalish elves in Kirkwall weren't exterminated. Most of the rest of Dragon Age 2's don't really matter one way or another, so if you need to have something be one way or another for your backstory, then like I said just let me know and I'll add it.
  • Leliana is the Divine, meaning that the mages are free. The Templar Order is being rebuilt, though they are still quite small, with their goal being to serve and defend the people of Thedas, rather than guard the mages. She is involved with the Hero of Ferelden, leading to her significant interest in the Wardens and willingness to help them rebuild.
    • Celene is the Empress, Gaspard was executed, and she was reunited with Briala. Celene's (rumored) affection for Cailan is a motivation for her to restore and promote the Wardens in Orlais.
    • The Inquisition was "officially" disbanded.
    • The Qunari did not redouble their efforts against the Tevinter Imperium.
    • The Wardens were made part of the Inquisition, rather than banished. After the disbanding of the Inquisition, the Wardens were located at Soldier's Peak and Vigil's Keep. Roughly a year before the start of the RP, Adamant was renovated, and a handful of Wardens were sent there with the goal of building up operations in the west. This included a handful of senior members, and several new recruits. You can either be one of these recruits who went to Orlais from Ferelden, or someone who was recruited by the Wardens at Adamant recently.

---

Sign up sheet:

• Name:
• Race: Just like in the games, Human/Dorf/Elf/Qunari.
• Sex:
• Age: The Wardens don't recruit children, and there's a certain practical upper limit, so somewhere between 20-50 is the ideal range.
• Class: Warrior, Rogue, or Mage. Depending on your class you get weapon proficiency in warrior/rogue/mage weapons, and the ability to bash/lockpick/energize things. Your class also affects the armor you start with, and the type you can wear. Warriors start with heavy armor, rogues with medium, and mages with light.
• Starting Weapon(s): In case you need a quick reference instead of looking at the wiki: If you're a warrior, choose from shield and a one handed weapon, or a two-handed weapon. Rogue, choose from twin daggers or a bow. Or you can carry both sets of weapons if you feel like it, just keep in mind that it means you can't carry as much loot. Mages, pick an element for your staff (fire, ice, lightning). These are all really basic starting weapons, you'll get opportunities to loot better ones. Also, everyone is implied to have a carving dagger on their person.
• Appearance:
  • Armor Appearance: Just like with weapons, you're starting out with the lowest-tier armor depending on your class, but if you don't want standard-looking Grey Warden armor you can customize what your starting armor looks like. Also just like weapons, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to loot new stuff, so don't worry that it's permanent.
• Personality:
• Skill Tree(s): Pick either one multiplayer class's skill tree, or two single-player skill trees. This defines your "sub-class", effectively. There will be opportunities for you to change them when you return to Adamant, such as if you're a warrior who picked things from the two-handed tree and want to change to sword and shield, for example. So don't worry about being locked into a certain set of abilities forever.
  • Abilities: You get four points to spend on abilities (DAI class skill trees, in case it wasn't clear). Just like in the game you need to unlock previous abilities in a chain. You'll get more in the future as the game progresses.
• Potion: Pick a potion, tonic, or grenade from this list to carry. You are assumed to carry 5/4/3 of your selected potion/tonic/grenade, and you restock them when you return to base, or other indicated areas.
• Personal Skills: You also get to choose three personal skills. These preferably aren't combat-oriented skills or abilities, but rather skills that are a reflection of your character's background. Things like smithing, cooking, alchemy, writing trashy novels, medicine, horseback riding, trap construction, barter, speech, a scientific field of study, runesmithing, performance, swimming, etc. Try not to be too broad in this case, as the more general a skill, the less effective it is compared to a specialist. One skill is considered "great", where you could be considered a journeyman. "Good" is like a seasoned apprentice, and "Okay" is more like a novice apprentice. I'll try to have situations in the game where these skills can come into play, even if you choose somewhat niche skills.
  • Great:
  • Good:
  • Okay:
• Backstory: Just give me a good understanding of where your Warden is coming from. The details of your joining are up to you, but it should have taken place within a year or two of the RP's start date (9:50, Year 50 of the Dragon Age). Feel free to work with other players if you want to have the same joining.

edited 14th Sep '15 6:32:13 PM by nman

Character List

---

(None so far, but you can fix that!)

I've flirted with the idea of mostly non-combat character for a while now. If combat's not going to be the focus here, how does a bureaucrat/middle manager type char sounds?

"The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself." Albert Camus

That could work, to an extent. Bear in mind though, the Wardens are described as an order of warriors against the darkspawn. Also combat won't be the focus in the sense that we aren't going to spend a lot of time elaborating on every detail of a fight, but you'll still have to deal with traveling the deep roads, fighting bandits or other assorted roughnecks, and wild animals. So even though I'll try to avoid having us get stuck in combat sections, character abilities are what let you progress further. For example, the better you guys are at certain combat skills, the deeper you can push into an expedition in the deep roads, the more you can shine when trying to convince a noble you're better than a regular mercenary band, and you can camp in increasingly unsafer areas of the overland.

So to be a Warden a character has to be able to defend themselves, which means at the very least you would have to choose a class and have basic combat proficiency. But if you want to, you can forego choosing any skill tree abilities, and put those points into personal skills instead. If we say that great/good/okay correspond to 3/2/1 ability points, then you could start with an extra great skill, and then either have another okay skill or bump up the proficiency of an existing good/okay skill.

edited 15th Sep '15 12:45:19 PM by nman

I am so down for this, I've been kinda craving a Dragon Age RP ever since I finished Trespasser. I'll work on filling out the sheet as soon as I get time, but I've been throwing around the idea of an ex-rebel mage warden character.

edited 20th Sep '15 6:20:37 AM by Gaunt88

Good to hear. Most of the high-level choices are conducive for being able to make a mage character with a good deal of flexibility. Let me know if your background requires certain outcomes and I'll add them. (Such as Alexius's fate or what-have-you)

I don't think anything like that is needed, my idea for her backstory doesn't have her in Redcliff for Alexius's shenanigans.

Also, I'm still working on that sheet, I've just had less time than I thought to sit down and type it up.

Otherwise known as the MURDER KNIFE

Also, I haven't been on this site in ages. I'm not 100% sure what my avatar is.

Anyway here's Blackwall

Kiri, long time no see.

Also for the avatar, Google image search says it's a penguin... drum?

Name: Lisbeth Becke

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Age: 24

Class: Mage

Starting Weapon(s): Ice staff

Appearance: A tall, willowy young woman with long, curly red hair, blue eyes, and a narrow freckle-spotted face.◊

Armor Appearance: Standard issue Warden mage armour.◊

Personality: Polite and friendly, albeit a little distant at times. Lisbeth is shrewd and sometimes quite calculating, with a developing tactician’s eye for advantage and weakness. She also has a pragmatic, almost fatalistic streak: experience has taught her that all stability is fleeting. Everything goes to hell eventually, she knows, and she lives by the philosophy that complacency is synonymous with death.

Skill Tree(s): Spirit and Winter

Abilities:

• Barrier
• Guardian Spirit
• Winter’s Grasp
• Fade Step

Potion: 5 lyrium potions

Personal Skills:

• Great: Wilderness survival and fieldcraft
• Good: Magical theory
• Okay: Singing

Backstory:

• Lisbeth was born in 9:25 to a Fereldan peasant family. Her father was a soldier and her mother was a baker in a village just north of Lothering. However, both of her parents died during the Fifth Blight, and she was taken in by the Chantry as an orphan for a time. Her magic manifested when she was 8, and she was sent to a newly-recovered Ferelden Circle, where she was considered by most to be a promising apprentice, although she had a bubbling undercurrent of resentment to her demeanour that made some of her templar watchers suspicious.
• She was 12 when the Kirkwall rebellion started, and when the Circles eventually disbanded she fell in with a group of apostates in the Redcliff hinterlands, scrambling to survive during the chaos of the mage-templar war. The Breach opened when she 16 years old, and by this time she and her group were fighting templars, local villagers, and eventually Inquisition forces moving into the area. When the Inquisition crushed the apostates in the hinterlands, she escaped and spent some time surviving off the land on her own, unwilling to join the main force of rebel mages once they joined the Inquisition for fear of reprisal.
• After the Breach was closed her life settled down - somewhat. She joined the College of Enchanters for a while, but found she wasn’t comfortable putting down roots in one place for so long. Several restless years later she crossed paths with the resurgent Grey Wardens, and their philosophies and lifestyle struck a chord with her. Eventually she volunteered for service, and successfully survived her Joining three years ago.

edited 27th Sep '15 12:51:21 AM by Gaunt88

• Name: Laisa Dalinev
• Race: Elf, of the city variety
• Sex: Female
• Age: 25 - born in 9:24 Dragon
• Class: Rogue
• Starting Weapons: A pair of daggers, which she habitually keeps hidden somewhere on her person. Where? Who knows!
• Appearance: Short and slight, as elves tend to be, with a round face and long brown curls. She tries to keep her hair under control by braiding it and then pinning it to her head, which usually results in a fuzzy halo any time the humidity picks up. Good thing she's off to the desert.
  • Armour appearance: Standard Warden rogue armour, with a dark blue cloak. The cloak is probably standard issue given that Wardens need to stay warm, too, but she'd wear it more often than you'd think would be really necessary.
• Personality: A restless person at heart, which might express itself either through over-the-top exuberance or sullen impatience, depending on the circumstances. Bold and outspoken, Laisa makes both friends and enemies easily. She has something of a maternal, protective streak, which she is prone to inflict on anyone who manages to earn her trust.
• Skill trees: Subterfuge and Sabotage
  • Abilities:
    • Stealth
    • Evasion
    • Easy to Miss
    • Poisoned Weapons
• Potion: Jar of Bees x 3, because why would you use any other grenade in this game
• Personal Skills:
  • Great: Probably best described as "parkour" - running, jumping, generally moving like a cross between a spider and a caffeinated monkey. But with much less noise.
  • Good: Haggling - both determining the value of an item, and trying to get the best price for it. She does not. Give. Up.
  • Okay: She's interested in history, and although her situation in life hasn't allowed her much opportunity to pursue that interest, she does own (or at least, possess) a couple of books on Chantry history, as well as a copy of the Chant itself.
• Backstory: Born and raised in the Denerim alienage, one of Laisa's earliest memories is of the Archdemon's attack on Denerim at the end of the Fifth Blight. Laisa was six years old at the time, and the attack was a formative experience, leading her to idolise the brave Wardens and soldiers who saved her home and her family. Over time, this gave way to an interst in the outside world more generally, and the walls of the alienage made her feel trapped.

As she grew older, Laisa began to secretly wander outside the alienage, taking to hiding in the shadows so she wouldn't be found and "returned" by an overzealous guard. Eventually, a man by the name of Slim Couldry noticed her penchant for appearing and disappearing in strange places, and recruited the young Laisa as a burglar. Eager for adventure, and not particularly put off by the prospect of redistributing shem wealth, Laisa agreed, and became a burglar.

Over time, Laisa grew more and more involved in Denerim's criminal underground, and became a sought-out burglar. Even after her marriage was arranged, she continued taking on ever more difficult and dangerous jobs, justifying to herself that her husband and future children would need the extra income. She began stealing documents as well as material items, and unbeknownst to her, the net of the law slowly closed around her.

By the time Laisa was caught, she had been married for six years, and had two children with her husband. All of that was taken away from her as she was stuffed into the prison at Fort Drakon, trapped between four walls for the remainder of her presumably short life.

Her escape came in the form of a Grey Warden, who recruited Laisa and a couple of other able-bodied prisoners. Grateful for her freedom, but resenting the loss of her old life and the prospect of fighting darkspawn, Laisa undertook the Joining.

Anyway here's Blackwall

Looks good you two, welcome aboard.

How many people do you want to get before this thing starts?

Anyway here's Blackwall

Probably five.

Alright guys, I'm sorry but it doesn't look like the fish are biting. Unless a few people show up all of a sudden, the three of us just aren't enough.

I'll join, if this is not dead.

Name: Sagrell Slash

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Age: 20

Class:Rogue

Starting Weapon: 2 tranning daggers and a bow

Appearance: brown hair, blue eyes, and light skinned Armor Appearance: basic brown leather armour.

Personality: Perky, sometimes a little bit of a Deadpan Snarker

Skill Tree:Archery and Sabotage Abilities: Poisoned Weapons Death from Above Explosive Toxin First Blood

Potion: 1 Healing Potion, 1 Tears of the Dead, and 1 Pitch Grenade.

Personal Skills: Great:lock picking Good: sneaking Okay: persuasion

Backstory: Sagrell Slash is a orphan who turned to thievery for survival as a child. After he grew up he decided to join the Grey Wardens to make up for his past life of crime.

Is this okay?

edited 29th Oct '15 1:40:16 PM by watdakstomp

The man of a million outdated references

Hello all. Mad fan of the game, the series. Looking at joining up if this is still on the cards and working on a character sheet. How is this looking so far?

• Name: Amanda Logan

• Race: Human

• Sex: Female

• Age: 37

• Class: Mage, she primarily works as a healer.

• Starting Weapon(s): Lightning staff.

• Appearance:
  

• Armor Appearance:

• Personality: Somewhat quiet and reserved, Amanda harbors a keen intellect and insight that she shares to those willing to listen. Politically motivated her loyalty to The Divine and Feraldan is absolute and is happy to serve wherever she is needed.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Before The Wardens her home town in The Highlands had her meet out punishment on those judged where she would beat the guilty half to death. She remembers it with a mixture of shame and I Did What I Had to Do.
  • Genius Bruiser: As well as the intelligence for being a make Amanda studies history, the Hero of Feraldan and Kirkwall as well as The Inquisition, The Seekers, The Nightingale and The Game.
  • Hidden Depths: Her appearance of a large and brutish mage is offset by a keen interest in politics and history, intrigue and the cloak and dagger methods the ruling classes use on each other. Knowledge of them leads her to think she wants no part of it.
  • Spiders Are Scary: Much like The Inquisitor and Hawke Amanda really doesn't like them, having fought Giant Spiders before.

—> Oh no no no keep those things away from me or I'll lose my mind.

• It goes From Bad to Worse for the poisonous kind.

—> I don't believe it, there's poison versions of them now. My Warden position for a torch to mess with their senses, or The Divine's chocolates to distract them.

• Even just hearing stories about them is enough.

—>Too many eyes...too many legs...just don't, please.

• What the Hell, Hero?: Amanda is genuinely scared of the kingdom's methods to remain in power. As she puts it:

—>I have one word on this. Escalation. You make the threat of assassination, your foes follow through on the threat. You kidnap a rival's children to force their compliance and they retaliate by killing an ally's family.

• Skill Tree(s):

• Abilities:

• Potion:

• Personal Skills:

• Backstory: Amanda Logan serves as one of the Divine's Praetorian Honor Guard, Tier Two (Tier One are considered the best of the best, Tier Two more rank and file soldiers,) a lofty title that basically means she is presented as a face for the Wardens, skill or standing irrelevant. In actuality Amanda is essentially a grunt, a gun for hire who had shown promise as a mage but at the temple was set up to fail, make others look good. The harsh lessons learned there motivated her to apply the same style of thinking to the Wardens, that such a imposing looking and supposedly skilled mage is mere parade fodder implying that the actual fighters are truly powerful.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

This thread's been dead for over a month, sorry.

edited 13th Nov '15 6:33:46 PM by nman