In the age of Dragons, I was a Mage

Dear fellow travellers,

For the first twenty five years of my life I was not allowed to venture outside the Magician school that I had been raised in. I never saw a forrest up close, I never met a real life darkspawn or encountered any real danger. I did learn many tricks of the Mage's circle though. I studied hard, reading all the available texts and collectable items, learning the history of the land, the divides between the peoples of the world and the warnings of something big coming.

Using my big stick I can make glowing lights appear, followed by
a whole host of crazy stuff, that's how us Mage's roll.

I thought for many years that all this advertising about the upcoming mega event was merely a campaign being run to scare the bejesus out of the peoples of the land, that was, until the day I met a Grey Warden. He told me all about the upcoming dangers from the perspective of someone who had actually been out there, had seen the destruction, had fought the creatures and survived to tell me all about them in lengthy dialogue sections.

I was being groomed, I realise that now, how unaware I was back then. I had just graduated magic school and wanted to go out adventuring, I didn't realise that I was going to be implicit in an event. I was given a choice, one of my friends from the school wanted to run away with his girlfriend. She was of an unworthy class or something, so it was a big deal that no one find out about them. As a foolish trigger happy monkey I went straight to the headmaster and told him all about my friends plan. I was instructed to help entrap him and his girlfriend, and I went along with the whole thing.

Spontanious finger combustion is a real problem in
the lands of Dragon Age, leading to over twenty
thousand cases of finger burns to hospitals all over the land.

I had never been so devious in my whole life, it was deliciously enjoyable. I helped my friend to break into the secret vault place that we were all forbidden from entering because it contained some weird test tubes of blood that held all of our destinies or something, I kinda zoned out when my friend explained it, I was more interested in the excellent design work that had been done on my Mage robes. Anyway, we managed to break in (because I had been given the key by the headmaster), and my friend managed to find the tube with his blood in and smash it. He got all excited, something about being free now or some jive like that.

As we left the secret vault there was a party of armed Magicians and the Grey Warden bloke waiting to great us. My friend went a bit crazy, showing that he had been studying blood magic (which is forbidden in these lands). Causing a big old fight my friend blamed me for selling him out before escaping out the front door (they should have locked it).

This naked woman looked after the werewolf people,
She really liked hairy men, very very hairy men.

I was rewarded for my actions, but I didn't deserve it. I had sold out a friend, and for what? So he could escape without his partner and forever be on the run. I felt like a bad Mage, I needed to redeem myself. So I joined the Grey Wardens, went on an initiation thing, collected some ancient contracts that the Grey Wardens use to have with all the different peoples of the land, drank some blood from the darkspawn monsters that we were fighting, had some weird visions and then went to fight alongside the King against an army of darkspawn. The battle was very reminiscent of Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings, but I didn't have time to sit and ponder these similarities as I had a mission to perform. I had to go and light the tower light, which was reminiscent of the Minas Tirith battle in Lord of the Rings, but again I had no time to ponder these coincidences, I had to light the beacon. I just managed to light it before being knocked unconscious by some big creature with teeth.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the swamp, having been saved from the doomed battle by Flemeth, a witch of the wild, who sounded suspiciously like Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager. Thankfully, her beautiful witchy daughter sounded like Aeryn Sun from Farscape, and it would be her that would come on my journey to unite the world against the impending darkspawn attack rather then the gruff voiced old Captain Janeway-a-like.

Morrigan, a sexy pixilated version of Aeryn from Farscape.

So after many lengthy conversations with different people all over the map, after performing several weird tasks for people to get them on my side, I had built an army of support. The journey had been a lengthy one, almost a hundred hours were poured into it. I did all the side quests, except for the downloadable content ones, I wasn't paying any more money, I am a cheapskate Mage. I had relationships with the people in my party, as many of them as I could. This did cause some weird conflicts, and eventually I sold out the first man I slept with because I didn't think he really had what it took to be king. He was lousy in the sack, and this land needed a leader that knew their way around a woman, so I backed Alastair's sister instead, she had way more balls and if it had been possible in the game to get sexy with her, I would have been having the lesbian pixilated time of my life.

Dragon's are notoriously difficult to defeat, this is
because they are big and scary and breath fire ffs!

The final battle with the big daddy lord of the darkspawn was a bit of a pain, it took a few attempts to take him down, and I died several times in the process, thank god for save points hey! Once the great evil was defeated there was a ceremony celebrating how great my team and I were for having saved the world. We were all pretty stoked about it. I had spent many hours listening to the complaints and grumblings of the people of the world, and I was now done. It was time to move onto another world and face another challenge.

Dragon Age: Origins was released ages ago, years and years ago, but I only got around to playing it this year. It was an enjoyable experience, if a little wordy. I give it a 7 out of 10. There was a follow up, Dragon Age: Awakening as well as a sequel Dragon Age 2, but I haven't been bothered to play either of them. I recon the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition might be pretty good though.

Peace and infinite love
Mr Jackson (Andy Jackson, [adj]) (in the game I was a woman btw)