Exploring "What Happens Next" in Morrigan's Saga

Dragon Age Origins Blog Eluvian Impressions: Witch Hunt

Morrigan: whether friend or foe during my many playthroughs of Dragon Age: Origins, she has remained a strong influence on the events of the Blight. To my Wardens, she has been both a powerful force of righteous magic, and an inscrutable villainess who seems to care only for herself. But in the playthrough closest to my heart, Morrigan has been a friend and sister and most important of all, a lifesaver when my Warden’s very soul was on the line. And so, with Witch Hunt’s release this Tuesday I found myself firing up my “canon” Warden and taking the plunge once more to see Morrigan’s story, and her own, finally resolved.

(N.B. As of writing this, I have not played through Origins or the DLC with a Warden who romanced Morrigan. If you have a different take on the events outlined in this article, or in the Walkthrough airing later this week, please drop us a note in the comments section! Also: There may be some spoilers ahead, though I have tried to steer away from major plot points in this DLC)

I was surprised that though Witch Hunt’s ultimate goal is to give us closure with Morrigan, this DLC is a lot more focused on wrapping up the Warden’s story than it us on giving us face time with the witch of the wilds herself. Still, since we’re saying goodbye to our Wardens as Dragon Age 2 launches, Witch Hunt provides a welcome last dance with our characters.

One of the best things about the DLC was getting the chance to revisit old haunts like the Circle Tower to see how things changed after the Blight, and how my Warden’s actions affected them. And my Warden’s origin still affected NPC interactions: upon entering the Circle Tower chambers, various NPCs remarked on the return of my mage Warden (with one even saying it was a shame Cullen wasn’t there to see me).

Though my Warden’s journey ranged all over Ferelden tracking Morrigan’s trail, the Circle Tower was a major stop along the way. Here the DLC reveals both a strength for some Wardens, and a weakness for others. Because we’re tracking Morrigan on her quest to recover ancient elven artifacts stolen by the Tevinter Imperium, the storyline of Witch Hunt focuses heavily on the mage and Dalish locations in the game, and mage and Dalish origin Wardens will probably get the most out of this DLC.

Dragon Age Origins Blog Tower Library Impressions: Witch Hunt

As a mage most NPCs knew me personally, or had heard of my time in the Tower as well as fighting the Blight. Exploring the Tower library felt like a homecoming for my Warden, and provided a fun trip down memory lane, as well as some amusing Easter eggs. And when I did a quick reload on one of my Dalish Wardens, I found that my new party member Ariane and my Dalish were able to form a personal connection the moment we met, because Ariane’s clan had heard of my encounter with the Tevinter mirror in my adventures with Tamlen. Wardens from other origin stories will likely not have the same personal details which flesh out their story.

As for the rest of Ferelden, for the most part the country seems to be recovering well from the Blight, with an improved economy and trade, open borders with the dwarves, and rebuilding efforts at the Circle Tower and Lothering. A few new codex entries, as well as updated location descriptions on the area map confirm this. One of the few downsides was how little the reputation and rights of the Dalish seem to have changed despite Ferelden’s new-found prosperity. Although my Warden was allied with the Dalish of the Brecilian forest, my companion Ariane was slow to trust me. In fact, as we traveled throughout Ferelden I found myself in a most unusual position – as a mage Warden I actually attracted less attention than my Dalish companion, who received an icy reception no matter where we went. If Ariane’s adventures are any indication, it seems that the Dalish have grown even more reclusive than they were during the Blight.

Dragon Age Origins Blog Witch Hunt Companions Impressions: Witch Hunt

Despite the relatively short length of the DLC content, I found party dynamics to be robust in Witch Hunt, and my companions added greatly to my Warden’s adventures. I was thrilled to have Dog rejoin my party, this time with access to the Warrior’s ability tree, which rounded out his battle abilities nicely. The Spirit Healer Finn is a wide-eyed mage out of the tower for the first time in years, and his sense of wonder at the locations we visited, which ranged from the Deep Roads to the Brecilian Forest and Amaranthine, coupled with his natural bookishness and fear of dirt, stains and worst of all, blood, made him an amusing character. The dual-wield warrior Ariane was a bit reserved with any non-Dalish she met, but her open-mindedness and sense of humor will be refreshing to anyone who got sick of Velanna’s abrasiveness in Dragon Age: Awakening.

“Warden? Your dog is lecturing me again.” – Ariane

And the fun, familiar party banter is back, making even mundane travel interesting as Dog, Ariane and Finn get to know one another, and even reveal stories about other characters we know and love in the Dragon Age world, like Anders, Jowan and others.

Ariane: Why would anyone worship a dragon?
Finn: Dragons are big, powerful, and they breathe fire! Some people are easily impressed.

As is to be expected in a DA module, Dragons make their appearance here as our Wardens return to the Dragonbone Wastes environment of Awakening. But along with them is a powerful new monster, the Varterral, a creature of Dalish legend. Though pitting us against an ancient elven elemental certainly fits with the overall plotline of the DLC, there have been some rumblings from BioWare which hint that there’s a bigger reason for the Varterral’s inclusion in Witch Hunt. In a recent panel at PAX Prime, lead writer David Gaider revealed that the Dalish will “feature prominently” in Dragon Age 2. If that’s the case, then we should get ready to fight new monsters like the Varterral as well.

“The ritual was but a means to an end, a herald for what is to come.” – Morrigan

Confronting Morrigan herself is likely to raise more questions than we can answer. As we have come to expect from her, Morrigan is not eager to divulge her plans in their entirety. Despite the fact that we parted on good terms, she gave my Warden only the barest of hints about her future, and that of her god-child. Instead, Morrigan’s true purpose for speaking with me was to give a warning about Flemeth, making a strange prediction about unprecedented change coming to Thedas, a change which Flemeth herself is orchestrating. If Morrigan is to be believed, the Dark Ritual itself was a small part of a much larger plan on Flemeth’s part, with repercussions which will likely span from this conclusion to our Wardens’ stories across the length and breadth of the Free Marches in Dragon Age 2. I didn’t really get closure with Morrigan, but then, knowing her, I wasn’t expecting it.

Dragon Age Origins Blog Morrigan Impressions: Witch Hunt

If we have learned anything from Dragon Age, it is that stories differ according to who tells them, and that stories themselves can take on lives of their own. When our Wardens meet Morrigan, we’re told that she is a neutral party, and that as a witch of the wilds, she is a complete outsider to the Blight raging across Ferelden, or to the political battles Loghain and Cailan’s last supporters are fighting out in Denerim. When events at Ostagar turn sour, and our Wardens are tasked with taking down the entire Horde and an Archdemon on their own, Morrigan’s appearance seems a timely intervention.

But when the Archdemon is marching on Denerim, and we learn why the Wardens are needed to defeat the Blight, Morrigan’s involvement becomes far more personal. To a neutral or even slightly hostile Warden, her offer to perform the Dark Ritual seems self-serving at best, if not overtly malicious. It is here that Morrigan reveals that the ritual was Flemeth’s plan for her all along: to create a child with the soul of an Old God. Any Warden who has been at odds with Morrigan during their adventures would be blindsided by her request.

“I will never understand you, and you will never understand me.”

- Morrigan

To a friendly or romantically-involved Warden, however, Morrigan’s offer to deflect the otherwise fatal blow is made out of more than a hunger for power. Morrigan offers the Warden a chance to save their life, and to preserve the important relationship between the Warden and Morrigan herself. In a BioWare blog entry from March, David Gaider and popular fan artist Aimo teamed up to create a comic interlude of what else happened the night before the siege on Denerim. In this brief scene, which Gaider said was originally slated to be included in the release of Origins, but was ultimately cut from the game, Morrigan reveals that she cherishes the Warden’s friendship, and that she too is caught between the pain of losing a friend, and the anguish of proposing the Dark Ritual. Now, with Morrigan’s fate bound to a puzzle too large for us to see, it is our turn to watch with difficulty as she goes off to confront the unknown.

Besides tying up the loose ends in our Wardens’ Dragon Age: Origins adventures, it seems Morrigan’s reappearance serves another purpose as well: setting the stage for future adventures in Thedas. At PAX Prime, David Gaider hinted that Morrigan and her mother Flemeth are both “very significant” characters in the Dragon Age universe. And while Witch Hunt has certainly answered the question of “what happened next” to our Wardens, we can hold out hope that there is more to tell of Morrigan’s tale.

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