Oghren played by eightertrek
Oghren of House Kondrat was once a promising member of the Warrior Caste. His house was not especially high-ranked, but many of its members, Oghren included, had won notable victories in the Provings and were considered to be rising in prestige.
―CodexOghren, I will love you until I’m old and grey. Even though he was often over the top in Awakening (especially with Sigrun), I still really enjoy his humor and the way he deflects and copes with the whole Warden business.
And then he takes the Joining and is like “cool story, bro, so when are we getting the real stuff.” Man, Oghren. Let me love you down.
loveyoutwiceanight replied to your post: *burp*
I thought we were friends. Get ‘em away from me!!The eyeballs are fake! It’s just a puppet! *waves it around*
Want to go scare some guards with me?Hmmm. I still don’t trust ‘em. Coulda taken the eyes from the last victim.
YES. Especially the drunk ones.
Let’s go terrorize Hightown~
Waaaaay ahead of you.
I thought we were friends. Get ‘em away from me!!The eyeballs are fake! It’s just a puppet! *waves it around*
Want to go scare some guards with me?
Hmmm. I still don’t trust ‘em. Coulda taken the eyes from the last victim. YES. Especially the drunk ones.
loveyoutwiceanight replied to your post: *burp*
I thought we were friends. Get ‘em away from me!!
*burp*
I can’t find my sodding pants. And I think I’ve been knocked out for a while. Miss me?
Maker take you Oghren
That last round of Oghrenaid has had me in a coma for months. Maker, I am afraid to ask, but what have I missed?
I’ll go back to the stone when I’m good and sodding ready!
Nice to see you could handle it after all, kinda. Eheheheh.
Let’s bring this sucker DOWN
“So that means I can’t kick their asses?” Oghren asked, angry and a tad disappointed, before lowering his weapon. He watched the spawn carefully, making sure none of them were actively approaching before talking. “So what? We just fight ‘em with our good looks?” The dwarf shook his head. “I knew we should have left Nate home.”
True to form, the typically stoic archer ignored the jab at his appearance and remained silent, eyes narrowing as he surveyed the situation. They had to kill it. There was no debating that fact. Even if these darkspawn planned on just…hovering there all day, they couldn’t turn their backs and allow them to thrive. The broodmother might have been twisted beyond any semblance of humanity now, but once in life she might have been a mage. Feeding off the lyrium as she was, she could produce children that were strengthened by it.
She…Maker, if there was ever to be another Blight, and these creatures were to rally around an archdemon…
“Oghren. Cut it,” he nodded to the glowing red vein at their feet. “We need to cut her off from this…sever the vein.”
“Yeah… good luck with that,” Day muttered, mostly under his breath. He was eyeing the broodmother with a decided unnerved expression - of the three of them, he’d had the least exposure to these creatures, and she’d locked her sights directly on him - at least so it felt. And the pressure in his head was getting harder to ignored, pushing to the point that he was finding it harder and harder to stay focused on the current situation.
“Aye aye.” Oghren grinned once more as he picked up his axe and swung hard and fast, breaking through the strange vein a bit more with each swing. The air felt somehow different as he worked at it, something didn’t seem right but he couldn’t tell exactly focus on what it was over the noise of all the shuffling spawn.
Something was wrong. Daylen’s lack of focus became apparent to Nathaniel moments before Oghren’s last swing, the one that finally broke the lyrium strand apart. Before he could ask the mage what was happening, the splintered lyrium glowed brightly as it died, and the portion of the vein that had snaked underneath the broodmother grew dull and, eventually, the light faded. The scream the erupted from the ‘spawn, however, ensured that any feelings of victory were short-lived.
She writhed, tentacles flailing out around her, connecting with the tight walls of the tunnel. It seemed to shake as she screeched, and her children moved forward in harmony, red eyes burning in the dark of the tunnel. Nathaniel drew back his arm once again, this time sending the arrow into the skull of the closest advancing emissary.
“Day, stay back!” he called out, finding it hard to hear even himself over the ruckus that the broodmother was causing. He didn’t know what she was doing to his fellow warden, but there was obviously something very wrong. He needed to make sure that the mage was going to be away from the battle, if he couldn’t focus. The ground where Oghren had split the vein began to crack, and he could only imagine that she was none too happy to have her source of power cut off from her body.
Attack the hive and out comes the drones, Nate thought with a ghost of a smirk on his lips. This wasn’t unusual for eliminating broodmothers…provided she didn’t try to bring this whole damn tunnel down on them, they could handle this…
…Hopefully.
“Bugger that…” Daylen muttered, though it was all the protest he could really muster. The buzzing had turned into a high-pitched whistling noise in his head, at points sounding almost like words - he hadn’t joined the order until after the defeat of the fifth archdemon; was this what she had sounded like? He sincerely hoped not. Strange that his fellow Wardens didn’t seem affected by it… maybe she only could control those of magical persuasion? It’d explain the unnerving number of emissaries in the cavern…
That the broodmother was attempting to tap into his own taint was disturbing. Even with her power source cut, it didn’t seem to sever her control over the darkspawn, or whatever it was she was trying to achieve with him. Something was tickling his nose…
…his hand came away with blood when he went to rub at it. Okay, this bitch is going down now. His companions wouldn’t last long against this many magic casters, once they started attacking in earnest. Why they hadn’t, that was a mystery he didn’t care to solve just now. Day put his hand on the cave wall for balance, and startled at a burning tingle of energy under his fingertips. Part of the lyrium vein was running up the side of the cave there, branching away from the portion that Oghren had cut.
Just that brief brush was enough to spark a startling amount of magical energy in the mage. He’d handled lyrium before - anyone who passed their Harrowing had to. The feeling this red mutation gave off was familiar, but had a dizzying effect, like having the floor move out from underneath you.
Floor moving… that gave him an idea. “Nate, Oghren… get b-back into the tunnel.”
Oghren backed up, hearing the urgency in Daylen’s voice. From the way the mage was acting he could tell not following his order would cost them dearly. “Hope you know what you’re doing.” He gripped his axe firmly even as he stood back, eager to kill anything that stepped even a hair out of line.
“So that means I can’t kick their asses?” Oghren asked, angry and a tad disappointed, before lowering his weapon. He watched the spawn carefully, making sure none of them were actively approaching before talking. “So what? We just fight ‘em with our good looks?” The dwarf shook his head. “I knew we should have left Nate home.”
True to form, the typically stoic archer ignored the jab at his appearance and remained silent, eyes narrowing as he surveyed the situation. They had to kill it. There was no debating that fact. Even if these darkspawn planned on just…hovering there all day, they couldn’t turn their backs and allow them to thrive. The broodmother might have been twisted beyond any semblance of humanity now, but once in life she might have been a mage. Feeding off the lyrium as she was, she could produce children that were strengthened by it.
She…Maker, if there was ever to be another Blight, and these creatures were to rally around an archdemon…
“Oghren. Cut it,” he nodded to the glowing red vein at their feet. “We need to cut her off from this…sever the vein.”
“Yeah… good luck with that,” Day muttered, mostly under his breath. He was eyeing the broodmother with a decided unnerved expression - of the three of them, he’d had the least exposure to these creatures, and she’d locked her sights directly on him - at least so it felt. And the pressure in his head was getting harder to ignored, pushing to the point that he was finding it harder and harder to stay focused on the current situation.
“Aye aye.” Oghren grinned once more as he picked up his axe and swung hard and fast, breaking through the strange vein a bit more with each swing. The air felt somehow different as he worked at it, something didn’t seem right but he couldn’t tell exactly focus on what it was over the noise of all the shuffling spawn.
The feeling was unmistakable. For a Grey Warden, it could be compared to a scent or sound, though it clearly overpowered both of those senses. Sensing the darkspawn came as second nature to the well-trained Wardens, and that alone would not have been enough to set this particular band on edge. The sound, however, was unusual. It reverberated through the walls, it seemed, growing louder and louder as the trio closed in. The red light – there shouldn’t have been lights like that down here – ahead of them began as a soft glow, but as the humming grew louder, so too did the light.
And then, when the light glowed the brightest, she came into view. A writhing mass of tentacles, situated firmly atop the glowing red vein of lyrium that should not have been there. There had been plenty of blue veins – natural veins – along the way, but nothing like this, and she was nothing like the broodmothers that had come before her. Her eyes glowed red and her wail echoed off the stone when she sensed the Wardens approaching. Her children, red-eyed from the same source that fed their mother, peeled away from her side to defend her.
If this had been what Weisshaupt had hoped to investigate…they should have probably sent more than three Wardens. But, then again, these three had plenty of experience when it came to facing broodmothers that had broken the mold…“Red…?” Daylen murmured, clutching the
polearmbladed-staff that he’d come to favor over the years and glowering in the direction of the approaching darkspawn. Their eyes were unnerving, and they moved with a rhythm that was almost synchronized in its motion. “… that’s creepy as hell. What is that, hive mind?”“Heh, if it’s a hive mind then we’ll just have to take out the queen.” Oghren smiled wildly as his berserker tendencies kicked in and he could feel his blood running hot through his veins. He clutched his axe in a ready position, daring any of the mindless drones to approach him.
I’ve never seen anything like this before…
Nathaniel didn’t bother to voice that particular observation as he drew his bowstring back. He very much doubted than any Warden had, or if they had before today, he’d never heard of it. Red lyrium? Darkspawn moving like puppets? It was the exact opposite of the Mother: where her children had achieved sentience, these beasts seemed bound to their mother’s unspoken will.
Oghren was right, though. If they were drones, then taking out the one directing them was the way to go.
He raised his bow, preparing to fire his first arrow towards the broodmother’s neck, but at once the closest three darkspawn turned in the same movement, hurling bolts of twisted arcane force at him. He narrowly avoided a direct hit, though one bolt seared his arm.
“Emissaries. All of them,” he hissed. “Of course they are…”
Magic-casting darkspawn puppets…Weisshaupt would likely want a specimen.
Weisshaupt could just go to the Void. He wasn’t dying down here for this.
Daylen would have let out a string of curses if there was time to vocalize. He was starting to get a vague notion of why his head was buzzing like a nest of hornets had somehow lodged themselves in his skull. Between the corrupted lyrium veins and more emissaries than he’d ever seen in one place even in the worst of his nightmares, he was getting a magical feedback overload.
Luckily, instinct and his Warden training kicked in, giving him enough forethought to switch from battle to a more defensive mode as Day drew his spirit channeling forward. He managed to raise a shield around Nate before another bolt could reach him.
“Th-they’re reacting to… to aggression.” Day observed out loud. Otherwise, they would have been buried in a torrent of magical attacks by now. “…. she hasn’t ordered them to kill us yet.” Why, though… that was the question. Not one he particularly cared enough to find out about just now.
“So that means I can’t kick their asses?” Oghren asked, angry and a tad disappointed, before lowering his weapon. He watched the spawn carefully, making sure none of them were actively approaching before talking. “So what? We just fight ‘em with our good looks?” The dwarf shook his head. “I knew we should have left Nate home.”
