Questions: The Amell Warden and Jowan

I never liked Jowan in Dragon Age: Origins. From the very first run I looked on him with distrust. Everything he did proved me right. In part it was that greasy-looking hair; in part it was asking his supposed closest friend to help him do something dangerous and illegal then making her do all the work.

Factor into that his unwillingness to piss or get off the pot as far as the Harrowing was concerned, add that nasal, whining voice, and you get nails on a chalkboard. Jowan was precisely what the ritual of Tranquility was designed to control: a weak-willed mage who would turn to blood magic because he wasn’t talented enough to do anything useful. His only saving grace was that he turned out to know the ritual to get the Warden into the Fade to save little Connor from the demon that was raising the dead all around Redcliffe’s castle. I found him to be a weasel of the highest order.

Thus, I’ve written the sort of conversations my Amell Warden would have had with him, had she been able. This is, of course, tongue in cheek. First, a short conversation during the Templar confrontation at the beginning of the mage origin:

Dragon Age: Asunder, The Masked Empire, and DA3

Recently we’ve gotten news that Patrick Weekes, newly freed by BioWare from his fantastic work in the Mass Effect universe, not only had moved to work on Dragon Age: Inquisition but that he would be writing the next in the series of books based around the games. Speculation on the BioWare Social Network has, naturally run rampant.

As I’d not read any of the books after the horrid mess that was Mass Effect Deception, I thought I’d suck it up and read lead writer David Gaider’s Asunder so that I could form an opinion on whether the projected April, 2014 release date for Dragon Age: The Masked Empire indicated anything about the release date for the next game.

The argument runs thus: The Masked Empire’s plot covers the Orlesian civil war that was just beginning in earnest as Asunder came to an end. Thus it would set the stage for the events of the Inquisition and would be released before the game.

My response, having finished Asunder all of ten minutes ago, is, “Poppycock!” What follows contains some serious ending spoilers so if you don’t want to know, don’t click through. I won’t spill all the gory details though because you really should read the book, particularly if you want to see Wynne and Shale again. It’s exciting, filled with lore tidbits, and it’s from David Gaider so you know it’s well written.