The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age)

[cliffc999]

"Go! I'll cover you!" I shouted, as the towering demon-spider, at least five times the height of a man, that was the current form of the demon Nightmare confidently advanced towards us.

"No, you were right!" Loghain protested. "The Wardens made this mistake! A Warden must-"

I bit off my immediate reply, almost choking to death on the temptation to accept his offer. The former Teryn Loghain, now a Grey Warden, had once almost doomed Thedas to death at the hands of the Fifth Blight when he'd chosen the middle of a Maker-be-damned war against the darkspawn to betray and murder his king and try to steal a throne. He'd done everything he could to stop the Hero of Ferelden from defeating that Blight anyway in his stubborn refusal to believe it was actually a Blight, he'd only allowed himself to be drafted Grey Warden at the very end of that mess as an alternative to being executed, and he'd labored away in obscurity and shadows ever since until he'd joined the Inquisitor and myself on a mission to stop this be-damned king demon from corrupting all the surviving Grey Wardens with blood magic. More than almost any other man in Thedas, Loghain mac Tir could fairly be called a perennial screw-up and human disaster area who'd brought ruin to practically everything he touched, and who would entirely deserve to die even just to partially make up for his sins.

However-

"A Warden must help them rebuild!" I gasped out, knowing that with all of the senior Grey Wardens who had already died or been irreversibly tainted by Tevinter-spawned madness the former marshal of Ferelden was one of the very few Grey Wardens left with the command experience and leadership skills to have any hope of rebuilding the order, especially with the current crisis facing all of Thedas I turned and snarled at the demon Nightmare, the otherworldly partner of the undying Tevinter lord who'd caused this entire mess and the sole thing keeping the majority of his demon army yoked to his will. "That's your job! Corypheus is mine!"

"Hawke-" Inquisitor Lavellan sighed softly, sadly, as our eyes met and we nodded to each other. Both of us knew the weight of too many decisions, of always being the right person in the right place at the wrong time, of being responsible for everyone... just as we both knew which one of us had to carry on the fight elsewhere and which one of us was going to end their fight today. I felt all the weight, all the weariness, leave my shoulders and leave behind nothing but a strange peace as I reached out to clasp the leader of Thedas on her shoulder and give her a firm grip, an acknowledgement, a wordless reassurance that she would be the one to succeed where I had failed.

"Say goodbye to Varric for me." I quietly requested, and she gave a slight nod. And then I turned away again and readied my greatsword, charging out to meet the demon's rush and forcing it to turn and defend against me, allowing the other two their chance to run past it and into the portal that would let them escape-

"Failure of a man." the Nightmare sneered as its counterblow hammered me to my knees. "Failure of a Champion. And failure even in this."

I grinned back at it through bloody teeth as I saw the silouhettes of my two comrades leap into the portal back to the material realm and it closed behind them. "Really? Looks like a success to me!" I pretended to gather my strength for a mighty shove, then deliberately went limp and rolled away and under its belly as the Nightmare slightly overbalanced against my lack of resistance. I converted my roll into a kneeling, rising slash into that very same underbelly as the giant spider roared in pain.

"Stay or flee, the end is the same! Doom at either my hands or his!"

The spider lifted a tree-trunk of a leg and smashed it down, splintering the stone on which I was no longer standing.

"You know she's going to close that rift." I mocked it. "You'll be cut off from Corypheus, from Thedas, from all the demons he's summoned there. He won't be able to control them, and that entire part of his plans will fail. And even if you get back in contact with him later-"

"You will not be here to see it." the Nightmare snarled at me as I resumed my stance and stared at it over a gap of a dozen paces, slowly circling around...

"Tell me something I don't know." I eye-rolled.

"You will not die today." it replied levelly.

"... all right, that is a surprise." I raised my eyebrows. "But not a welcome one, I'm sure! Up for a spot of torture, then?"

"Do you know what your greatest fear is, Champion?" it mocked me.

"I damn well should, seeing as how you've been reciting our fears to all of us throughout the entire trip here!"

"Oh, mortals are so deliciously full of fears, all of you. Great fears, trivial fears, large and small I know them all." the Nightmare gloated. "But at this particular instant two fears rise the greatest in your mind, and your death is neither of them. At this moment you welcome your end, not fear it, for it represents a final end to your pain."

"You said two fears," I tried to draw it out, reflexively continuing the conversation as I had so many many times before. After all, the longer you kept them talking, the less you kept them fighting. And seeing as how we'd already discussed that one of my fears is that it would take its own sweet time killing me-

"And you fear never seeing your friends again." it finished.

"Considering how many of them are already dead, you're going to have a tricky time arranging for that." I said. "Even in this Maker-damned dream realm I'll die eventually after you finish with me. And then at least-"

"Such a small imagination for such a small being." the Nightmare laughed. "There are many, many realms beyond your little world of Thedas and the Fade, little man. Even I have never seen them. Even I am a tiny thing basking on the shore of a great eternal ocean, when considered against the scope of all reality. But you are less than a tiny thing, you insignificant little mayfly speck. How will you fare, I wonder, if I cast you into the depths that lay beyond even the Fade, beyond even my knowing? What will await you there? It will be a puzzle I will never solve, that I can only wonder at." it continued calmly, as my blood chilled further and further. "But one thing will be certain; whatever awaits you out there, you will never see anyone you loved ever again. Not even in your hoped-for afterlife."

"Dear Andraste." I involuntarily gasped, paralyzed with shock at the revelations I had just-

"Ahhhhhhh, there we are!" the Nightmare's hollow laughter filled the entire world. "That moment when all defiance is lost, when all heroism eventually fails! That I could bring you to this state before I banished you is revenge enough, even with all that you have cost me!"

"Well, at least never seeing anyone in Thedas ever again means I'll be rid of you too, you overgrown carrion-feeder!" I mocked it. "And that'll be enough to make up for all the rest!"

"Insolent little- Begone!" the demon shouted petulantly, and with a primal shout and a burst of power that taxed it to its very bones I was catapulted away from it, flying helplessly away with the breath knocked from my body as if by the club of a giant. I rocketed away from the Nightmare, away from the rocky platform drifting in the Fade that we'd been fighting on, away from even the distant sight of the Black City that was always visible from anywhere in the-

And as everything turned to silver, I blacked out.

---

Fire!

I was lying facedown on a strange warm floor, made of some odd substance that felt like carved horn, only wet. But that wasn't what had brought me snapping awake, the sulfurous stench in my nostrils was. I weakly scrambled to my knees, then my feet, feeling oddly dizzy and weak-

A searching glance around the room brought me no answers. I was in a dimly-lit space, a large oval room with a rounded vaulting roof, and a wide shelf running around the perimeter of three-fourths of the room halfway between the floor and the ceiling. The architecture was like nothing I'd ever seen before - parts of it looked alive, and all of it was built to odd angles and rounded corners with menacing spikes, out of materials that were neither stone nor wood nor metal or anything else I could identify. This was certainly no work of men or elves or dwarves, or even qunari. The Nightmare had promised to cast me into realms unknown and beyond the world or even the Fade, and it certainly had-

The floor rocked side to side beneath my feet, almost sending me scrambling, as a muffled inhuman roar sounded from somewhere outside the room. Even after the pitching subsided, now that I was alerted to it faint tremors of movement came to my feet, and a- through a small gap torn in one wall I could see clouds rushing past outside, or billows of smoke. And with that clue all the subliminal impressions came together for me- we were moving, the entire structure. I wasn't in a room, but a compartment. This was a ship of some kind, although certainly not sailing on any water I was familiar with-

I stepped carefully towards the opening torn in the wall - the bulkhead - noting with absent horror the corpse of a strange purple tentacle-faced demon of some kind, its bluish-purple ichor staining the deck. A glimpse outside brought me no sight of land or water, just billowing gray smoke-clouds that this skyship was somehow flying over, with a distant angry red glow coming through from beneath the clouds as if we were flying over a volcanic region-

I shook my head and deliberately drew a deep breath into my lungs, trying my best to shake off this damnable weariness and weakness. And yes, I'd been fighting a pitched battle for the past several hours, then lost a fight to a demon lord and been tossed into what sounded like another universe entirely, and been beat all to hell throughout, but I shouldn't be this weak-

First things first. I was still wearing my armor, but all my weapons and equipment were gone. There were empty black pods, made of the strange alien material, evenly spaced all around the rim of most of the room - a broken-open one, apparently jarred open by whatever impacts had been striking this vessel, stood right behind where I'd woken up to tell me that I had been in one of these pods but had been freed by that impact. A quick search of the room revealed that all the other pods were empty, some strange carved gray tablets on a nearby workbench I couldn't even begin to understand, several bottles of what I hoped were healing potions in a nearby chest, and several more corpses like the purple demon I'd just stepped over. There'd been a battle fought in this ship very recently - one that was still ongoing if the occasional distant sounds I could hear and thudding impacts against the hull I could sense were telling me the truth - and several dropped weapons littering the floor from that battle. I scooped up the serviceable-looking steel greatsword as the weapon I was most familiar with, idly noting that it looked so ordinary in its construction that I could have bought its twin from any blacksmith in the marketplace, and hoped that its familiarity meant I would find other familiar things here too.

"Right." I spoke aloud, comforting myself with the sound of my own voice. "If this is a ship, hopefully it'll have lifeboats. And if anybody's still alive, they'll be rushing for them. So, follow the noise-" I turned towards the room's only door and, bared blade in hand, set out. "I wonder who'll try to kill me first, the crew or the boarders?" I sardonically mused.

Although this place felt solid in the way that the material realm did, not having any of the subliminal sense of being in a dream that being in the Fade always possessed, the very next room made me feel like I was still stuck in a mad dream. The next room looked like some insane mage had been using it for a dissection laboratory - it disturbingly reminded me of things I'd seen in Quentin's lair - but I almost jumped out of my skin when the one vivisected corpse laying strapped to the surgical chair began moving and talking to me in my head.

"Help us! We are trapped!" the disembodied voice called.

"What in the Maker are you?" I demanded, staring at the corpse of a male elf the top of whose skull had been cut off just above the ears, and whose exposed brain was still pulsing as the corpse itself twitched-

"Yes! You've come to save us from this place, from this place you'll free us!" it chanted.

"First you tell me what 'this place' is." I demanded.

"We are in Avernus, the first of the Nine Hells." it replied matter-of-factly, and my blood turned to ice.

"This is a demon ship?!?" I screamed.

"No!" it protested. "We do not belong here, we are trapped here! The devils are our enemies!"

"Then how-" I began, and decided to focus on more immediate priorities. "Is there a way out of here?"

"The helm!" it chanted desperately. "The helm controls the ship! We must go to the helm!"

"And whose ship is this?" I pressed.

"You must free us!" it demanded. "Before they return! We must go to the helm!"

"And what are you?" I tried to refocus it.

"A newborn. Born from this husk." it said placatingly. "Free us!"

So whatever this thing was- the things that ran this ship were- they consumed people to hatch their children?

I raised my blade and cleaved downward, chopping the exposed brain in half vertically and listening to it squeal and die. Whatever these things were, them and the devils who populated this hell could devour each other for eternity for all I cared. I'd just try to find this ship's helm myself and get out of here.

The exit at the far end of the laboratory led to a curving corridor that led around the outside of the ship, on what was the port side judging from our direction of movement. However, the ongoing battle had torn a large piece of the entire outer hull away, leaving the walkway almost entirely exposed on one side. My stomach churned as I looked out and down over a vast, wide expanse of red and glowing terrain, covered by clouds of sulfurous smoke, as this impossible skyship soared rapidly above them. Lots of little moving specks in the distance barely showed the outline of bat-wings as they wheeled around menacingly in the distant sky. Truly this was a vista worthy of the 'Nine Hell's indeed-

A glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye brought me instantly to combat readiness as a slim, feminine figure in silvered half-plate leapt down from a perch above to land about ten feet in front of me. She was humanoid but clearly not human, with a narrow greenish-yellow face, almost reptilian except with an entirely human-appearing little snub nose instead of a snout, and pointed ears. I had no idea who or what she was, but her agility and the ready stance she immediately fell into when she landed showed her to be an expertly trained warrior, and the bared longsword she menaced me with showed that-

"Abomination!" she hissed as she coiled to strike at me. "This is your-"

I gathered my energy and focused it into one of the earliest maneuvers I'd learned, a leaping overhand smash, and closed the gap between us before she could begin to react and brought my greatsword down with both hands to batter her weapon aside and send her sprawling flat on her ass.

"Perhaps not the best choice of words." I said wearily to her as she stared cross-eyed at my sword tip, held steadily a foot in front of her throat as she lay there on the deck. Her sword had been knocked several feet out of her reach, she had no other weapon that I could see, and- wait a minute.

"You're not wearing a scabbard for that blade." I noted. "You snatched it up off the ground, just as I did with this one. This isn't your ship, then?"

"Pah!" the strange lizard-woman spat. "How ignorant of my people can you be, to even suggest such a thing? The ghaik are our mortal enemies, and have been for all of time!"

"But you're not a devil, either." I guessed out loud. "Wonderful, we're not only in the middle of a battle on a burning ship, but it has at least three sides-"

And then a strange twisting burst loose inside my head as my vision blurred. Her eyes and mine met, and a series of disjointed mental images flickered irresistibly through my vision- myself drifting through a silver void, a large horrifying-looking vessel with its profile like a giant version of those purple tentacle-faced demons - the ghaik, she called them? - scooping me up, myself helpless in a pod, suddenly seeing myself through her eyes as she lay trapped in the pod adjacent to mine, one of the ghaik floating into the room to study us dispassionately, and it reaching into a small nearby tank to withdraw two horrible little tadpoles that it-

I flinched and looked away as the pain of being stabbed in the eye suddenly flared in both my memory and hers, and we both sensed each other's thoughts as if it were our own.

"Skva'al!" I heard her curse. "You are no thrall of the ghaik! Together, we might survive!"

"What did they put in our heads?!?" I demanded, as I stepped back unsteadily and lowered my sword. She rapidly got back to her feet and recovered her own.

"Parasites." she spat. "The tadpoles are how the ghaik reproduce. If left in our heads long enough our skulls will warp, our mouths will split, our faces burst open-"

"And our minds will be gone forever and their spirits will be possessing our bodies." I said resignedly. "In our world we called such things 'abominations'."

"A fitting name for such foulness." she agreed. "But if we can escape this realm and return to my people quickly enough, there may still be a cure!"

I doubted that, seeing as how there had never been any cure for demonic possession in the history of Thedas that I'd ever heard of. Then again, I was no longer anywhere near Thedas-

"One of the little brain-creatures that I met said that it needed to get to 'the helm', so it could steer the ship out of here." I told her. "I'm hoping you know where that is?"

"Yes." she agreed. "A ghaik vessel of this type can travel between realms, between planes. That it has not already left Avernus means there is no one left alive on the bridge to direct its flight. But If we can get there-" She cut herself off. "The bridge of this vessel is on top of the hull. We are currently on the lower left side."

"Then we have a lot of climbing to do." I said. "Come on, forward looks to be this way." I took charge and began heading down the walkway, in the same direction that the ship was heading. It took only a few steps to bring us around a curve of the corridor and into a large chamber-

"I'm assuming those are the devils." I said, as we saw the several little bat-winged horrors with glowing eyes stop feeding on the dead and dying - I noted in passing that the dead included people as recognizably human as myself as well as the tentacled ghaik - and turn to face us, screeching in anger.

"Imps!" she agreed, raising her blade. "Now fight, warrior! They are upon us!"

Apparently even in the Nine Hells there had to be junior devils to do the scut-work, because the strange woman and I scythed through them pretty quickly. This strange weakness - possibly a result of the infection currently jammed in my head - kept me from utilizing some of my more powerful maneuvers, but I was still able to draw multiple imps in close and then cleave them all with a single whirlwind attack. The warrior-woman I was partnered with seemed to favor a more sword-and-shield style, and was thus handicapped by not having a shield available right now, but still proved entirely competent enough with her blade to bring down two imps of her own.

"Grab one of those crossbows." I ordered her as I followed my own advice, and then did a hasty check of the fallen looking for anything else useful. Another potion and some loose gold coins - after all, assuming I escaped this hell dimension alive then I'd still need to be able to afford my next meal wherever I landed, it had been hours since lunchtime - entered my pockets, and after a lot of strenuous climbing up a pair of ladders we reached the top deck and continued our journey forward. We came out of the corridor into a room with multiple of those strange reclining chair-benches each holding an unconscious person hooked up to some kind of machine, and another pod like the one I'd been trapped in off in the corner next to a low table.-

A scream of terror from inside the pod brought my examination to a halt and had me running over there to see who needed help. I peered in through the transparent window in the front of the pod and my breath left my lungs as if I'd been gut-punched by an ogre at the sight of those delicate ladylike features, that short black hair, those pointed ears- how on Thedas had she gotten here-?!?

"Let me out!" the strange elven woman begged, and the complete lack of a Dalish accent in her voice shook me free of my shock as I realized that this was not Merrill. Still, the resemblance was uncanny - on a second glance I could see that even though her hair was an identical jet-black and in almost exactly the same cut, her beautiful face was more slightly rounded in the cheeks and entirely free of the Dalish vallaslin tattoos and her ears less pointed.

"Hold on!" I reassured her, and looked at the sides of the pod for anything resembling a catch or a latch. After nothing turned up there, I tried pressing on the control panel on the nearby table, but nothing happened.

"Leave her! We have no time for stragglers!" my companion said ruthlessly.

I turned to look at her incredulously. "You didn't fancy your chances of taking the bridge alone, but now you want to turn down help?" I tried to reason with her.

"You were already free and armed, a proven warrior! She is a helpless burden and delays us when we have no time to spare! Would you wish to remain on this vessel until it crashes?" the alien woman replied.

"Go on ahead if you like your odds better that way, or wait for us here." I firmly ignored her heartless argument and turned back to the elven woman. "I can't find the latch. Did you see how they sealed you into this pod?"

"There's a key!" she said breathlessly. "It goes in the panel over there- one of them must have it!"

"Wait here, I'll be right back!" I promised her, and after a hasty search of the bodies in this room and the adjacent one I finally found a likely-looking object - a strange carved stone that looked to be the exact same size as the empty socket I'd seen on the control panel. My warrior-companion visibly fumed with impatience but still waited for me to be finished with my 'fool's errand' rather than risk her chances alone in this place.

As soon as I placed the carved stone in the socket the parasite in my brain twisted again, and I felt a wordless connection snap to in my brain as my mind linked with the alien machinery that controlled the pod. I floundered for an instant before I realized that I needed to will the pod open, and as soon as the intention formed in my brain I felt something in the parasite - or beyond the parasite? - respond to that intention. A demanding, imperious presence. An Authority.

I/we commanded, and the machines obeyed.

"At last." the young elven woman gasped, as the pod opened and she fell forward out of it to land on her knees. "Thought... I was done for..."

"Here, let me help you up." I said, reaching down. She reached up and gripped my forearm firmly in her warm little hand, and I let her hoist herself back to her feet as she did a little pull-up on me. She was rather heavy for such a petite elven woman, with a fair amount of dense muscle on her slim frame, although some of that was certainly the weight of her finely-made black-and-silver breastplate-and-chain.

"Thank you." she said politely, before turning away to search for the rest of her belongings. A strange polygonal artifact with silver runes was eagerly snatched up off the table to be hurriedly stuffed in her backpack, and then the well-worn mace lying next to it was picked up and placed back in the sling clearly intended for it on her belt. I was more than a little curious as to what that artifact was, but decided that now was not the best time to raise the subject.

"Our impatient friend says that she knows the way out of here." I greeted our new elven friend. "Care to join the party, at least for the duration?"

"If you've got a way out, then absolutely." she agreed quickly, and and stuck out her hand in greeting. "Shadowheart." she introduced herself.

I smiled at her and shook her hand. "Hawke."

---

Author's Note: I have no plan for this one, I never have any plans for any of mine, I just write when an idea actually sparks the muse. Which nothing has in a long, long time. So hopefully I'll be able to go the distance, or at least a good long way, on this one.

And yes, this is default appearance Male Two-Handed Warrior Hawke. As for his personality... well, you've already seen the intro to it, the rest you'll get to know as the story progresses. But yeah, the story is 'He did the sacrifice/stay-behind in Inquisition, and then we go non-canon as the Nightmare demon decided to blow him into the deep Astral plane beyond the Fade because that's how I'm going to handle the DA/BG3 crossover element.' As far as exact crossover mechanics, like any other TTRPG fanfic I write exact game mechanics will be a thing I only pay attention to when they help make my plot work and the rest of the time it's fudge factor city.

 

[DivyanshKundu]

The chapter's good though I legit have no idea about both the settings.

Also, general advice Cliffc - best to just post your stories in the NSFW forum. I have seen stories that remain completely SFW till the end be in that side of the forum simply because that's the portion where all the readers reside. Best just repost it there or ask some Mod to transfer it.

 

[Gregory Crey]

Bold of you to post a Dragon Age story right after Veilguard flopped, I wish you luck!

Can't say I care for Hawk, as I consider DA2 to be fairly garbage and I never got around to playing DA3. That said, I will watch and see where this goes, I certainly trust you a lot more than the hacks that have taken over Bioware.

 

[cliffc999]

Bold of you to post a Dragon Age story right after Veilguard flopped, I wish you luck!

Click to shrink...

Veilguard was kinda the last straw that spurred me on here. If nobody can get an ending worth a shit in canon then fine, I'll do it myself.

 

[Velk]

Veilguard was kinda the last straw that spurred me on here. If nobody can get an ending worth a shit in canon then fine, I'll do it myself.

Click to shrink...

Best way to handle things.

Not too knowledgeable about Dragon Age, but I feel like I know DnD enough that I will enjoy the story.

 

[cliffc999]

The only Dragon Age crossover element is going to be that I'm using the main character of DA2 in the place of Tav in BG3, so it should not be too hard to follow.

 

[Velk]

The only Dragon Age crossover element is going to be that I'm using the main character of DA2 in the place of Tav in BG3, so it should not be too hard to follow.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, and what little I know about Hawke is mostly positive.

 

[mpbjunkie]

Great to see you writing here again. I'll echo the advice to post on NSFW if your concerned about the number of readers. Most people don't check the other forum and NSFW basically functions as the default fic forum.

 

[Faralis]

I liked Hawke, he was one of my favourite protagonists in Origin, with the dwarf prince.
EDIT: Brainfart, Hawke is the protagonist of the 2nd game. Also one of the few not a complete asshole in that game, with Varrick.

And I got BG3 for my birthday, but I haven't played it yet, but the 2 older BG are some of my all time favourite RPGs

So I will read this ... enthusiastically! ^^

 

[nobodez]

do enjoy your work, cliff, and while i've not played DA, I have played some BG3 (not a lot, just a dozen or so hours in Act 1 across a couple of Tavs).

 

[lancelot]

"Ahhhhhhh, there we are!" the Nightmare's hollow laughter filled the entire world. "That moment when all defiance is lost, when all heroism eventually fails! That I could bring you to this state before I banished you is revenge enough, even with all that you have cost me!"

Click to shrink...

*Glances over at Veilguard*
I'm pretty sure every character from the first three games would beg for this mercy.

 

[cliffc999]

*Glances over at Veilguard*
I'm pretty sure every character from the first three games would beg for this mercy.

Click to shrink...

The irony was not lost on me, no.

 

[EJH]

Good to see you back in the saddle, Cliff. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this.

 

[cliffc999]

"Be careful." Shadowheart leaned over to whisper softly in my ear as our companion strode ahead of us down the corridor. "Githyanki often make very uncertain allies."

"She said that the masters of this ship had been her people's enemies since time immemorial." I reassured Shadowheart, noting in passing that 'githyanki' was apparently the name of the alien warrior's people or tribe. "That will have to do for now."

"At least that much was true." Shadowheart agreed. "How much further?" she quickly called out to our still-nameless ally as they stopped to look back at us suspiciously.

"The helm chamber should be just beyond this hatch." she replied curtly, her eyes narrowing at how closely Shadowheart and I were standing to each other. "I would suggest that our strongest warrior take the lead."

"Wise choice." Shadowheart agreed with her immediately. "After you!"

"I believe she meant me." I gently corrected Shadowheart, and at our companion's curt nod I stepped into the lead position. I swung my shoulders back and forth to loosen up a bit and shifted my grip on my greatsword as we stood just outside the still-closed hatch. "What can we expect in there?"

"If any of the ghaik still live, then this is where they will be." the warrior replied. "Have you ever fought one before?"

"Never even heard of them before today." I replied matter-of-factly. Shadowheart remained silent.

"Then know that they are terrible foes indeed." she continued passionately. "A single glance is all it takes for them to unleash a mental blast that can stagger even the strongest warrior, and one that fills an entire cone of space for a dozen paces in front of them. A clutch of their tentacles around your head is immediate death, as your skull is split open and your very brain tissue devoured. If they have a chance to concentrate their powers of the mind then they can deceive your senses or dominate your very will. They are intelligent, manipulative, and utterly merciless."

"They have a weakness, I hope?" I sighed.

"They are slow and lack agility." she matter-of-factly replied. "And they tend to practice physical combat far less than mental, as they prefer to have enslaved thralls fight for them. To fight ghaik, one must get past their slaves, close the distance quickly, and attack relentlessly and without fear!"

"Berserker charge and hope for the best. Got it." I husked out frustratedly.

The ship suddenly lurched and the deck tilted beneath our feet.

"Oh, what now?" Shadowheart shouted frustratedly.

"We are crashing!" our mysterious companion replied in a panic. "Something has damaged the drive!"

"Inside! Now!" I barked, slamming a fist into the hatch controls and charging inside as soon as it began to open.

The scene that greeted our eyes as we charged into the helm chamber was a more phantasmagoric nightmare than anything I'd seen in the Fade. Several large red devils, looking vaguely like red-skinned qunari only with giant bat-wings, were locked in combat with a pair of the tentacled purple ghaik. As we drew to a shocked halt, the warning we'd been given about how deadly the ghaik's mouth-tentacles were as proven as one of them managed to draw close up behind one of the devil-men as they turned to watch us enter the room, and with a single horrible clutch the wet squelch of their skull being holed through in multiple places and their very brain tissue pulped reached our ears. The ghaik that had killed them took one step towards us, only to suddenly turn around and face the screeching, flying charge of several imps as they flew around and past it, buffeting its head and drawing blood with their claws. One of them managed a lucky strike to the ghaik's neck and it went down in a gush of purple blood, while it's companion behind it knocked two more devil-men sprawling with that 'mental blast' that we'd had described to us. The victorious ghaik then turned to look at us, and I felt the parasite in my head briefly twitch as its eyes met mine.

Thrall. the arrogant-sounding voice boomed hollowly in our minds. Connect the nerves of the transponder. it ordered us, apparently not realizing that our parasites did not yet dominate our thoughts and we were not yet slaves. An imperious wave of its hand towards an eldritch device set at the far end of the room, several tentacle-cables hanging loosely from it where they'd been torn loose from their sockets, showed us what he meant by 'the transponder'. We must escape. Now.

"Do it!" our companion's voice whispered hatefully from behind us. "We will deal with the ghaik after we escape!"

"Behind you!" I called out to the remaining ghaik as one of the devil-men it had knocked down rose to its feet behind it and drew it's flaming greatsword back for a cruel blow. Warned just in time, the ghaik dashed forward out of reach and turned around to face it's opponent, resuming their duel.

"Go! Go!" Shadowheart cried, and the three of us broke into a dead run. The few remaining imps all screeched and flew to block our path, but I cleaved through the two in the lead with a single sweeping blow and that put enough hesitation into the rest that the women flanking me on either side cut their own opponents down while barely breaking stride. We carefully stepped wide around the two battling menaces and advanced towards the front of the chamber, pausing briefly to deal with a second line of imps standing between us and the transponder.

The sound of a body hitting the deck behind us told me that one of the two murderous abominations we'd just bypassed was no longer among the living to distract the other one. The warrior kept running towards the transponder without breaking stride, but Shadowheart stopped as soon as she realized I was no longer moving forward and had instead turned around to guard are rear. The glowing, eldritch eyes of the surviving ghaik met mine as I raised my blade, anticipating the words that were about to leave it's 'mouth' even before they were spoke.

You are no longer required. it announced pitilessly, and it stepped forward to kill.

"Hyaaah!" I yelled, powering through another one of the flying leaps that two-handed weapon wielders on Thedas had long since mastered as part of the common style and taking the ghaik off-guard - people in this world didn't seem to know this maneuver - as I closed the distance between us far more rapidly than it expected and bringing my blade down in a single flashing cut. The ghaik barely raised one of its armored forearms in time to block my blow, and then forced me back a step with a terrible strength of limb that our new friend hadn't had time to warn me about. I recovered almost instantly and began a series of quick, sweeping slashes-

The distant clang of my sword hitting the deck brought me back to my senses, as I shook off the momentary blackout that the damnable ghaik's mental blast had knocked me into. Although it had no recognizable mouth, merely that damnable tooth-lined hole surrounded by all those deadly tentacles, I could swear the filthy thing was grinning at me as it leaned over to-

"Back off!" Shadowheart cried, and the ghaik staggered back as her mace tagged the side of its head. I used its vulnerable moment to roll away and to the side as quickly as I could, abandoning my dropped weapon as I frantically looked around for-

I spotted what I was searching for - the magical flaming greatsword that the devil-man who the ghaik had just been fighting had dropped as he died. My new greatsword's magic flames sprang into being as soon as my hand grasped the hilt, and as I came hurriedly to my feet I saw that Shadowheart had not rushed in recklessly, but had instead stepped back out just as quickly as she'd gone in and was now keeping just enough separation to remain a threat-in-being while not drawing close enough to be vulnerable. And her cunning distraction worked, because the ghaik had to fatally split its attention between the two opponents flanking it on either side for just long enough-

I split its spine with over four feet of fiery eldritch steel before it could finish turning away from her to face me again, and as we exchanged a wordless nod of thanks we both quickly looked around for any remaining enemies - none, thank goodness - and then resumed our frantic dash towards the front of the helm chamber.

"Can you get it working again?" I urgently asked the nameless warrior as she cursed in alien tongues and hurriedly struggled to grab and reconnect the flailing tentacles.

"If I am not further delayed with asinine questions!" she spat frustratedly. "Is the ghaik dead, at least?"

"Not unless they can live without backbones." I reassured her. "We haven't got very long before we hit the ground-"

"Almost there!" she reassured us, and then a sudden massive lurch of the crashing nautiloid sent me to my knees and sent her sprawling away from the transponder entirely as she was flung into Shadowheart and knocked them both down. A flicker of movement drew my eye up, up towards the top of the panaromic viewport that let the normal helmsman of this ship see where he was steering, as - dear Maker, that was a dragon!

The dragon's head peering balefully down through the gap high up in the window was only about half the size of the High Dragon we'd fought in that damned quarry once, but it was still large enough to be downright terrifying. But the really frightening thing was the rider that I could see, sitting securely in a saddle high up on the dragon's neck just behind the head - a male knight in elaborate plate armor, with a flat pseudo-reptilian face. A 'githyanki', the same as our new if uncertain ally, but-

My attempt to cry out that we had one of his fellow soldiers with us, that we weren't with the ghaik, fell silent in my throat as the rider's face firmed with a hateful mask of decision that I'd seen many a time back in Kirkwall. That was the expression of a templar, and a fanatic one at that; a man who had decided that his opponents were not humans to be fought but filth to be cleansed, that it was better to slay a hundred innocents rather than risk one guilty man escaping. His dragon responded to whatever wordless command he gave it, and I saw it's nostrils flare as it drew a deep breath to inhale-

The hell with that! I decided, and shook off my shock to lurch forward towards the transponder, grab the last pair of loose tentacles that I could see, and with a horrid lurch ram the two ends together as solidly as I could and hope for the best.

The instant the transponder's reconnection was complete the crashing, diving nautiloid immediately surged up and forwards with a blare of power as the engines resumed operation. The sudden change in our thrust was enough to knock the dragon loose from the hull, and before they could circle around for another attack I felt the nautiloid wrench as the engines surged even harder and the entire view outside the window suddenly changed in a brilliant, searing flash of energy. Whatever mysterious engine let these ships jump between the worlds had just engaged, and the glaring red sky of the Nine Hells faded from our view to be replaced by a glimpse of a starry sky and a bright, peaceful-looking moon-

And then something further back towards the aft of the ship exploded, and our level flight ceased and we resumed crashing.

As my feet left the deck and I floated horribly in mid-air before slamming off the ceiling, the ship now descending so violently that we were in freefall, I lost track of the two women. The lurching, spinning, crashing nautiloid slammed me around like a pea inside a tin can that was itself rolling down a steep staircase, and I frantically reached out with flailing arms to grab anything I possibly could. One of my hands managed to snag one fo the tentacle-cables that had been connected to the transponder, now torn loose again by the latest impacts, and I desperately tried to pull myself along the cable hand-over-hand so that I could reconnect it and stop our-

I turned my head just in time to avoid being knocked unconscious by a flying piece of debris, but the impact still caught me enough to loosen my grip and send me flying out the side of the ship and into the empty air. I very briefly marveled at the sight of a green, pleasant countryside from an altitude high enough that no man on Thedas had ever seen such a height before unless they'd been a mythical dragon-rider, and then bitterly laughed at the sheer irony involved. I'd been cast out of my very world by a vindictive demon lord who wanted to condemn me to live forever exiled from everyone I'd ever known, and now I'd die as helplessly as a baby bird falling out of its nest before so much as an hour had passed for me in this new realm. And just to be the perfect icing on this latest bitter cake, I was going to die doing what I'd done so many weary times before in my life - promising to lead others to safety, and then leading them only to their their deaths.

I kept my eyes open, resolute, refusing to flinch, as the distant ground beneath me expanded rapidly. The darkness on the distant horizon gave way to moonlight reflecting off a river almost directly beneath me and the fires of a large encampment some miles away, with a forest and some low bluffs just adjacent to the river. I briefly thought about trying to angle my fall so that I'd hit the water, then gave it up as a futile thought given that with a fall from this great height my death was certain whether I hit a mountain of rock or a mountain of pudding. I determinedly refused to flinch as the ground rushed towards my gaze as I fell headfirst to earth, and-

-with a glow of magic around me I instantly stopped short in mid-air, impossibly without the slightest jar or shock, as I hung only several bare feet above the ground. A desperate look around for what the hell was going on now had me incredulously spot the glowing purple eyes of a ghaik, imperiously looking around as it silently floated several feet above the sand of the beach some thirty feet away from me. I scrabbled desperately for a weapon, any weapon-

And then the magic suspending me cut out, and I fell to the beach and collapsed.

---

I woke to bright sunlight in my eyes, the smell of fresh air, and the gentle murmur of the waves.

"My head," I moaned, feeling like an eighty-year-old man with the swollen joint disease. I'd been beaten, battered, stabbed, knocked about, and fought multiple battles any of which would have exhausted the average warrior - and then I'd been exiled from Thedas to do it all over again. And then I'd been in a crashing-

I hurriedly reached up to grasp my head and make certain that I still had an unperforated skull. One of those horrid ghaik had... saved my life? And then simply walked away from me, despite my lying helpless and unconscious before it? When I'd already seen how quick they were to mercilessly turn on even who they believed to be their own loyal slaves the instant they needed to jettison some baggage? How did that even make sense? How did any of this make sense?

I slumped back down onto the sand and remained sitting there cross-legged for I don't even know how long, trying to think of a single damn reason to not just lie back down and wait for the inevitable. I was alone in the middle of a wilderness on a world I had no knowledge of, with a parasite stuck in my head that would turn me into an abomination in Maker only knows how soon, and with the only person who'd even hinted at a cure for it lost and certainly dead in the nautiloid's crash. I could see large chunks of wreckage from the ship scattered down the beach and a pillar of smoke rising up over a low bluff from perhaps a mile ahead to mark where the main crash site had been and bespeak as to just how violent it had been. The Nightmare's threat had come horribly true - I was adrift in a world with absolutely no one and nothing. The people who'd trusted me to lead them, however briefly, were both-

I was just so damn tired. Lothering, Kirkwall, Ferelden, the Free Marches- Maker, even Skyhold, however briefly that had been. So many places had promised me a new home to replace one that I'd lost, and so many had been lost to me in turn. My name was a byword for persisting against all odds in at least three kingdoms, but that persistence hadn't earned me a single lasting victory in any one of them. Would it really be so sinful to just-

I could almost imagine a pair of faint, teasing voices on the wind as Bethany and Carver wordlessly asked me if they'd ever given up trying. And if they could manage that, then why couldn't their big brother?

Because you're not here. I mournfully reminded their ghosts, and then with a muttered curse forced myself to an unsteady pair of feet anyway. My new greatsword was lying impossibly close to me for something I'd lost while I was falling, as if someone had found it and then left it laying barely half a dozen feet away. There was also some flotsam and jetsam laying around not from thecrashing nautiloid but apparently fallen or thrown overboard from passing ships - and I managed to find a few useful supplies in amongst all the odds and sods and miscellaneous junk. A quick taste of the water - fresh, not salt - confirmed what I'd glimpsed in my fall. This was a river, not a sea, even if the river was wide enough here that I could barely see the other side. The lay of the terrain only gave me one direction to walk in, as I hit a low cliff wall or water in any other direction, so I yielded to the inevitable and began trudging slowly through the sand. As I ducked underneath an outcropping of rock and came out the other side, the beach widened in front of me. I startled as I saw a corpse, miraculously intact with no visible wounds or pool of blood, lying in the sand a short way in front of me - a corpse dressed in black-and-silver armor-

I scrambled forwards, stumbling and getting to my feet several times, to arrive at her and be confronted by the impossible sight of Shadowheart lying peacefully on her back in the sand, her mace laid in the sand alongside her just as neatly as my sword had been. The slow rise and fall of her chest made me burst out in an incredulous laugh of delight as I realized she was alive, that some mysterious magic must have caught and broken her fall just as it had mine. I barely restrained myself from grasping her by her shoulders and pummelling her awake, choosing instead to prudently remain just out of reach and slap one palm hard against the sole of her foot.

"What-" she startled awake, as the old soldier's trick for waking up a sleeping man in the barracks without getting yourself punched worked yet again. Her hand frantically reached down for a weapon that wasn't there as she scrambled back and up on her knees, to halt our eyes met and her mouth twitched in a shock as elated as mine.

"You're alive!" she gasped. "I'm alive! How- how is this possible?" she begged me.

I hurriedly brought her up to speed on everything that had happened since we'd been separated in the crash, including my brief glimpse of the mysterious rescuing ghaik, as I helped her to her feet and we then recovered her mace and searched the wreckage - and the several human corpses, whether of unlucky locals or dead ghaik-thralls from the nautiloid we didn't know yet - for anything useful.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" I asked her. "Because I don't."

"I didn't see enough on the way down to have more than the vaguest notion." she replied. "But the label on one of those shipping crates we found adrift in the tide line said that the intended destination was Elturel, and that's a name I recognize. It's a city on the Chionthar River, a couple hundred miles inland from the river mouth. So if that's the Chionthar-" she nodded towards the river we were walking alongside. "Then at least the nautiloid made it back home to Toril before we crashed."

"Your home, perhaps." I acknowledged her with a matter-of-fact nod. "Because unless you've heard of a continent called Thedas, or kingdoms called Orlais, Ferelden, or Tevinter, then it's not mine."

"Oh." she realized. "The nautiloid ships of the mind flayers sail on the Silver Sea, the astral realm that touches countless worlds. You're not from my homeworld at all." She blinked in puzzlement. "Wait, if that's true then how are we speaking to each other?"

"Good question." I realized, not having had the leisure at any earlier point to actually stop and wonder at the sheer implausibility of meeting people from another universe entirely that still spoke recognizable Common Tongue. "And I'm not even going to try and guess at the answer until we're somewhere much more conducive to leisurely philosophizing than here."

"That's a very practical attitude." Shadowheart agreed readily. "Especially given the little monsters we've got in our heads that are slowly killing us from the inside out. First things first - we've found some supplies but we still need shelter, and most of all a healer."

"We?" I smiled at her welcomingly. "Not that I have any objections, but-"

Shadowheart quirked a brief smile back at me. "We need each other, and we both know what's at stake. I can't think of better company." she trailed off cheekily.

"Can't argue with that reasoning." I agreed with her. "Do you know how long we've got left? Or anything about curing them?"

"Powerful healing magic, which I certainly can't cast." she answered me. "As for how long we've got- it's anything but my particular field of study, but if I remember the lore correctly then we're talking only days, not weeks."

"And the only person who said she knew where we could get a cure is either dead in the crash or left us both behind on the beach without a backward glance." I groused.

"Yes." Shadowheart agreed. "Githyanki are almost as cold and ruthless as the mind flayers they fight. They haven't got any patience with other races, and once you're no longer of immediate use to them then they haven't got any mercy with you either."

"So it would seem." I nodded. "How far do you think it is to the nearest city?"

"My home city of Baldur's Gate is at the mouth of the Chionthar, on the seacoast." she said. "And given how wide the river is here, we're certainly not upstream of Elturel..." she mused. "But I've no idea which one we're closer to right now."

"Two hundred miles is slightly over eight days' march for soldiers in good condition on good roads." I thought out loud. "Cut that in half - because neither city was easily visible from the air as we fell, so we're clearly in the middle distance between them - that's an estimate of four days' march. Know enough about the local geography to guess what might be nearby?"

"Good deduction." she complimented me. "Especially since if I recall correctly the only forested terrain on the Chionthar is almost halfway between the two cities." she continued.

"Then we'd better get started." I said, looking at the river and marking the direction of the flow. "Downstream is that way, so that's west to this Baldur's Gate. Let's go."

"Wait." Shadowheart said, briefly reaching out to clasp my forearm and stop me. "Before we go-" She drew a deep breath and continued softly. "I wanted to thank you again. For freeing me." She paused awkwardly and continued even more softly. "It would have been all too easy for you to just leave me in my pod, but you didn't. I'll remember that."

"Any time." I reassured her, and we set out on our way.

As we drew towards the far end of the beach we spotted a couple of freshly dead corpses laying in the sand, with still-red blood spattered around them to testify that they'd died here, and recently. Both of them were dressed like villagers, not soldiers, and had no weapons or armor. A fishing pole still clutched in one dead fist testified as to what they'd been doing here-

"These were just fishermen!" Shadowheart said, kneeling down to professionally examine the bodies. "And these are claw marks, but not normal ones."

"What sort of animal goes only for the throat and leaves no wounds on their arms or legs?" I agreed with her. "That's not an animal attack but from some kind of intelligent beast. A magical one."

"Probably one of those horrible little brain creatures the mind flayers kept on their ship." Shadowheart agreed. "They had claws just about this size. These poor folk were just out here trying to catch some food when the crash occurred-"

"This tells us two important things." I realized. "First off, if this attack really was done by one of those brains then the main part of the ship hit the ground softly enough that there could still be survivors from it. And second-"

"There's some kind of village or settlement nearby, within walking distance." Shadowheart realized. "Well, that gives us somewhere to go."

"As well as something to watch out for." I agreed grimly. "Keep alert on the march."

The cliff at the far end of the beach turned out to be the wall of some type of small fortress, with a tiny battlement dozens of feet above our head and a small archway with an ancient and weathered door built into the cliff face. The door was locked when we tried it, and we were already on an urgent errand, so we simply left it behind and took the pathway leading up off the beach and into the first major clump of wreckage from the crashed nautiloid. Sure enough, several of the little brain creatures - which turned out to have four long clawed legs they ran around on, when they weren't busy being stuck in a dead elf's skull - tried to ambush us, and I needed some fast sword work to keep the first couple from landing on our heads. But as the last one turned and fled from us, Shadowheart made my hair stand on end when she burned it down as it fled with a hastily muttered spell and a golden energy bolt flung from one hand.

"You're a mage!" I said, startled. "And just when were you going to mention that?" I pressed her suspiciously. Not that I really had anything against apostate mages, my own father and younger sister had been apostates after all, but a man liked to have a bit of warning!

"Cleric." she corrected me, looking confused at my obvious suspicions. "And why, is that a problem?" she challenged.

"Magic is magic, Church-sanctioned or not." I replied. "And while I don't necessarily agree it has to be sanctioned by the church, I still acknowledge it's always something to be cautious with."

"I'm thinking were having more than a bit of a cultural clash here." Shadowheart said. "There's nothing unsafe about magic - oh, there's certainly a lot of unsafe things you can do with magic, but the same applies for any other type of weapon. But so long as a spellcaster has proper training, it's as safe as anything."

"Even the best-trained mages in Thedas are still occasionaly taken by the Fade." I said. "That's why the Mage Circles are always guarded so heavily by the templars. And even apostate mages have to be very careful to regulate themselves, or that's how abominations happen."

"Magic... is something inherently unsafe in your world? Is that what you're saying?" Shadowheart tried to puzzle out. "Even when it's cast under strict religious supervision?"

My hurried explanation of exactly how magic and the Fade worked in Thedas left her shocked to her core, as she'd never even heard of any conditions such as that. The idea that the barrier between the material and astral realms could be so weak as to make involuntary demonic possession an always-possible risk for any magically-capable person was as far outside her mental universe as the abolition of slavery would have been for a Tevinter Magister.

But on my part, I was ten times as shocked to find out that in this world the gods would actually answer prayers. Despite the strict monotheism of the Chantry it's not as if the concept of a pantheon of different gods for different spheres of life was entirely unknown to me - after all, that was how the Dalish elves of Thedas did it - but no elf had ever actually received an otherworldly answer to their most impassioned worship any more than any Chantry priestess ever had. The Chantry taught that the Maker had long since turned away his face from the world, their patience finally exhausted at the incorrigible sins of mankind, but-

"The idea that you can call on your gods for aid, and they will answer." I said, as full of wonder as a small child. "That- that's absolutely inconceivable to anyone from Thedas. Do you have any idea how very privileged, how blessed you are to know this joy?"

"Actually yes." Shadowheart blushed briefly. "I've been a priestess my entire life, and my goddess has always been the greatest comfort to me. Often the only one, at times." she trailed off diffidently. "There must be something very different about the astral space near your particular plane of existence, that not only warps it's relationship with magic but also cuts it off from the outer planes and the divine."

"The Veil." I realized. "But that must mean-"

"I'm thinking it's time for a bit more of that practical attitude right now." Shadowheart chided me. "We are burning daylight, after all."

"You're right." I agreed embarassedly. "But it is still a practical question to ask if your goddess is willing to give us a bit of help right now."

"I've already asked her, and no answer." she admitted with her own bit of embarassment. "Not that that's very surprising, seeing as how I'm still quite a junior priestess after all. Mother Superior might be able to call for divine intervention and actually get it, but I'd be shocked to the tips of my toes if I ever managed to. And my own healing spells are far too minor to deal with something like what we've got in our heads right now."

"So we're still back at hopefully finding this nearby settlement and some shelter there, and a more powerful healer - or at least some directions to where we can find one." I agreed.

"The crash has wiped out any tracks we could possibly follow." Shadowheart groused.

"That old building or whatever we glimpsed from the beach - whether or not it's still in use, someone used it once. Which means that there'll be a path of some kind leading to it from wherever the nearest settlement was. If we take that path we'll head back towards the river and probably up around to the top of that bluff - we check out whatever's there and where it might lead us." I decided, and we resumed our march.

---

Author's Note: I think I'm going to be getting quite a bit of mileage out of Hawke's culture shock at going from Dragon Age to Dungeons & Dragons.

Hawke's super-moves are actually a standard part of the warrior's kit in Dragon Age - he hasn't even used any high-level ones yet. Yes, what's normal for fighters in DA is basically medium to high-level kensai monk bullshit in 5e. That's going to be fun for me to carry over, even in a loose adaptation.

And yes, I am dealing with the question of 'how the hell can Hawke even talk to anybody without translation magic if he's from a completely different alternate Prime?' by just ignoring it. I've got a story to be getting on with it so heck with it, we'll just D&D right over the whole thing. *g*

And damn, it's amazing how incredibly long a video game can stretch out to if you actually try to narrate it in text. I may have to start skipping over minor encounters.

 

[Prince Chrom]

Because you're not here. I mournfully reminded their ghosts,

Click to shrink...

He lost both his siblings? Ouch.

Hawke's super-moves are actually a standard part of the warrior's kit in Dragon Age - he hasn't even used any high-level ones yet. Yes, what's normal for fighters in DA is basically medium to high-level kensai monk bullshit in 5e. That's going to be fun for me to carry over, even in a loose adaptation.

Click to shrink...

Isn't everything he's used level 1 stuff at this point? Or am I misremembering due to preferring Mage Hawke?

 

[cliffc999]

He lost both his siblings? Ouch.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. Carver died in the DA2 prologue as he always does for a Warrior or Rogue Hawke (just as Bethany always dies for Mage Hawke, so that you don't double up on classes), and then he lost Bethany in the Deep Roads at the end of Act One because Anders wasn't along with the party to take her to the Grey Wardens for a taint cure and he didn't want to risk leaving her behind in Kirkwall for the templars to discover. Which is an event that can actually happen in the DA2 game if you make those choices.

 

[Prince Chrom]

Which is an event that can actually happen in the DA2 game if you make those choices.

Click to shrink...

I knew it was possible, I just wasn't expecting it to have happened.

 

[DIT_grue]

Spoiler: If you're interested in suggestions?

"Go! Go!" Shadowheart cried, and the three of us broke into a dead run. The few remaining imps all screeched and flew to block our bath, but I cleaved through the two in the lead with a single sweeping blow and that put enough hesitation into the rest that the women flanking me on either side cut their own opponents down while barely breaking stride. We carefully stepped wide around the two battling menaces and advanced towards the front of the chamber, pausing briefly to deal with a second line of imps standing between us and the transponder.

Click to shrink...

path

The sound of a body hitting the deck behind us told me that one of the two murderous abominations we'd just bypassed was no longer among the living to distract the other one. The warrior kept running towards the transponder without breaking stride, but Shadowheart stopped as soon as she realized I was no longer moving forward and had instead turned around to guard are rear. The glowing, eldritch eyes of the surviving ghaik met mine as I raised my blade, anticipating the words that were about to leave it's 'mouth' even before they were spoke.

Click to shrink...

its'
spoken

"If I am not further delayed with asinine questions!" she spat frustratedly. "Is the ghaik dead, at least?"

"Not unless they can live without backbones." I reassured her. "We haven't got very long before we hit the ground-"

Click to shrink...

Unless

Because you're not here. I mournfully reminded their ghosts, and then with a muttered curse forced myself to an unsteady pair of feet anyway. My new greatsword was lying impossibly close to me for something I'd lost while I was falling, as if someone had found it and then left it laying barely half a dozen feet away. There was also some flotsam and jetsam laying around not from thecrashing nautiloid but apparently fallen or thrown overboard from passing ships - and I managed to find a few useful supplies in amongst all the odds and sods and miscellaneous junk. A quick taste of the water - fresh, not salt - confirmed what I'd glimpsed in my fall This was a river, not a sea, even if the river was wide enough here that I could barely see the other side. The lay of the terrain only gave me one direction to walk in, as I hit a low cliff wall or water in any other direction, so I yielded to the inevitable and began trudging slowly through the sand. As I ducked underneath an outcropping of rock and came out the other side, the beach widened in front of me. I startled as I saw a corpse, miraculously intact with no visible wounds or pool of blood, lying in the sand a short way in front of me - a corpse dressed in black-and-silver armor-

Click to shrink...

fall.

"So it would seem." I agreed. "Well, we're certainly not reaching Baldur's Gate today. How far do you think we've got to go?"

"My home city of Baldur's Gate is at the mouth of the Chionthar, on the seacoast." she said. "And given how wide the river is here, we're certainly not upstream of Elturel..." she mused.

Click to shrink...

Hawke asks about Baldur's Gate before Shadowheart mentions it.

The cliff at the far end of the beach turned out to be the wall of some type of small fortress, with a tiny battlement dozens of feet above our head and a doorway with an ancient and weathered doorway built into the cliff face. The door was locked when we tried it, and we were already on an urgent errand, so we simply left it behind and took the pathway leading up off the beach and into the first major clump of wreckage from the crashed nautiloid. Sure enough, several of the little brain creatures - which turned out to have four long clawed legs they ran around on, when they weren't busy being stuck in a dead elf's skull - tried to ambush us, and I needed some fast sword work to keep the first couple from landing on our heads. But as the last one turned and fled from us, Shadowheart made my hair stand on end when she burned it down as it fled with a hastily muttered spell and a golden energy bolt flung from one hand.

Click to shrink...

door (Or else delete the earlier and a doorway if that's redundant.)

 

[Frankfawn43]

Honestly, I forgot you could even get Bethany killed in the Deep Roads. Varric and Anders where my favorites so I never had to worry about not having the Grey Warden choice.

 

[cliffc999]

Given that Bethany is actually happier in the Circle than as a Grey Warden I usually leave her behind when I go to the Deep Roads, but that's with metaknowledge.

 

[Yacov]

Hawke's super-moves are actually a standard part of the warrior's kit in Dragon Age - he hasn't even used any high-level ones yet. Yes, what's normal for fighters in DA is basically medium to high-level kensai monk bullshit in 5e. That's going to be fun for me to carry over, even in a loose adaptation.

Click to shrink...

Fun fact: the skill tree for Warriors in DA is for two handed, not specifically two handed swords. Which means Warriors can swing around two handed mauls, axes, or other weapons with the same physics defying moves. With Faerûn having more Large sized sentients than Thedas, that means there are probably more extra large weapons for Hawke to wield and showcase the ridiculously high strength stat Warriors can get up to.

Warriors in Dragon Age can basically become one man armies when they start snowballing. Two handed Warriors just becoming spinning balls of death that attract all the hate that somehow keep not dying despite all the enemies' attempts to crowd control, swarm, or debuff them.

 

[noobody77]

I mean couldn't you just hand wave that the parasite connection downloaded/translates the languages for him? I mean the Illithid are inter-dimensional slavers so that's gotta be common practice for them anyway right?

 

[Gregory Crey]

Author's Note: I think I'm going to be getting quite a bit of mileage out of Hawke's culture shock at going from Dragon Age to Dungeons & Dragons.

Hawke's super-moves are actually a standard part of the warrior's kit in Dragon Age - he hasn't even used any high-level ones yet. Yes, what's normal for fighters in DA is basically medium to high-level kensai monk bullshit in 5e. That's going to be fun for me to carry over, even in a loose adaptation.

And yes, I am dealing with the question of 'how the hell can Hawke even talk to anybody without translation magic if he's from a completely different alternate Prime?' by just ignoring it. I've got a story to be getting on with it so heck with it, we'll just D&D right over the whole thing. *g*

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I have heard (but cannot confirm) that Dragon Age started as someone's custom tabletop setting for Dungeons and Dragons, and by how everything works in Origins, I can easily believe it was converted from D&D. Of course, future additions to the series strayed from that, but Origins was rather reminicent of Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 as well as Icewind Dale to me. Throw in some planar fuckery somewhat like you can see in Darksun and convert magic from spell slots to mana bar, and it mostly works.

Though, I imagine the Warrior and Rogue stuff were adapted from the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords in 3.5 Edition rather than 5th Edition, but I could be wrong.

 

[Hmmaster]

I have heard (but cannot confirm) that Dragon Age started as someone's custom tabletop setting for Dungeons and Dragons, and by how everything works in Origins, I can easily believe it was converted from D&D. Of course, future additions to the series strayed from that, but Origins was rather reminicent of Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 as well as Icewind Dale to me. Throw in some planar fuckery somewhat like you can see in Darksun and convert magic from spell slots to mana bar, and it mostly works.

Though, I imagine the Warrior and Rogue stuff were adapted from the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords in 3.5 Edition rather than 5th Edition, but I could be wrong.

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Yeah this was explicitly intended.

DA was going to BE BG3. Everyone expected that it would take after Neverwinter Nights. Slowly they filed the serial numbers off.

 

[Golgotha]

Really enjoying this. Thanks for the chapter

 

[Gregory Crey]

Yeah this was explicitly intended.

DA was going to BE BG3. Everyone expected that it would take after Neverwinter Nights. Slowly they filed the serial numbers off.

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All of my post, that it was a D&D custom setting before being converted into its own IP, or that Warriors and Rogue use things converted from Book of Nine Swords?

I said multiple things earlier, but you quoted my whole post when replying. Context implies you are just talking about the 'used to be a D&D setting' aspect, but I could be wrong.

 

[Ragnarokasgard67]

Nice to see some more writing from you Cliff, and I definitely want to see Hawke's first reaction to Karlach

 

[Yacov]

Nice to see some more writing from you Cliff, and I definitely want to see Hawke's first reaction to Karlach

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It's going to be extra whiplash if Hawke meets Wyll first. If a Cleric draws Hawke's Magic paranoia, Wyll's revelation about his class and especially his questgiver/patron is going give Hawke a conniption.

 

[cliffc999]

Hawke does not have magic paranoia, Hawke is merely trying to get used to the idea of a universe where mages are at the same basically nonexistent risk from being possessed by demons as that random dwarf fighter over there.

 

[NuclearBirb]

Hawke does not have magic paranoia, Hawke is merely trying to get used to the idea of a universe where mages are at the same basically nonexistent risk from being possessed by demons as that random dwarf fighter over there.

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Personally I'd have magic paranoia. Because it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.