Dragon Age: Origins #3 - Fereldan Village Life

[andraste]

Wulfric was pleasantly surprised to wake up alive, but hearing that Morrigan's mother turned into a giant bird to rescue him did not make him any more inclined to trust her or her daughter. Even though he'd never heard of a Witch of the Wilds before Daveth started babbling about them. Still, he didn't argue when Flemeth asked him to take Morrigan along - trying to defeat the Blight with only Alistair along seemed like an even worse plan than taking the dubious apostate with him.

Fortunately, at that point a party member he actually wanted around showed up! Wulfric wasn't too sure about this whole dog thing at first, but it only took watching him rip out a few darkspawn throats to bring him around to the wonders of pet ownership. (I wonder what noble dwarves keep as pets? I mean, other than brontos which seem impractically large for most people.) He named the dog 'Urtok' because calling your dog Dragon is just cool.

Wulfric did his best to hide it, but he was at least as freaked out by the battle of Ostagar and all the Grey Wardens being killed as Alistair was. Not because he was especially attached to Duncan - although he thought he was a cool guy and was sorry about what happened to him - but because the idea of having to fix a whole Blight by himself was daunting even for someone normally confidant in their abilities. (I always think roleplaying is as much about the things you don't say as about the things you do. Wulfric didn't even bother asking Alistair why he was being left in charge, it was very obvious to him that this was the correct order of things.)

Fortunately he got to warm up a bit by helping a few humans around town. He took money from the merchant to drive off the Chantry sister but also from Allison and Elder Miriam and Ser Bryant for driving the bandits away. 'Always help people who have money' is a thing he's already learned. Also '... and then pick their pockets in case they have more money.' Well, at least he didn't steal from any refugees?

While he was in town he met a crazy human girl who wanted to follow him and said yes on the principle that he still needed all the help he could get. He picked the lock on Sten's cage and recruited the first Qunari he had ever seen. (I know there are Tal'Vashoth mercenaries around Orzammar but I can't imagine they mix with royalty much. Wulfric wasn't even clear on what a Qunari actually was.)

After completing various side quests, he left the village and met a merchant on the road who sold him a golem control rod. (I am a shameless meta-gamer when I repeatedly play anything, and hey, it make sense that a dwarf who had grown up hearing about how incredible golems were would want to go get one ASAP. So one adventure with some darkspawn and a very questionable cat later, he saved a little girl and made a new friend! Who turned out to be rather different from what he was expecting but mostly in a good way. (He doesn't really like birds either. Never trust anything that falls into the sky on purpose.)