In this part we arrived to Vigil's Keep( former home of traitor Howe that now belongs to the wardends. and and fought with darkspawn.
After we slew the archdemon darkspawn were supposed to become a minor threat. But somehow they were able to attack Vigil's keep by surprise and defeat all grey wardens who were present at the fortress. It seems that something is still controlling the darkspawn. Guts arrived with another grey warden recruit just in time to defend Vigil and save few remaining survivors. Cleary Guts is a different beast from the other grey wardens. We already defeated multiple dragons and various abominations so a few darkspawn were not going to stop us. But even Guts could use some friends and companions for funny banter even if they are not needed in battle...
Luckily we met some companions quite soon. Starting with the mage Anders who was brought here by templars. He recommended himself by defeating a few darkspawn and telling some jokes. Perhaps he is not completely useless after all.
After that we met with an old friend. Our favorite drunk dwarf Oghren. He missed our darkspawn fighting days and wanted to join the grey wardens.
After that we found out something unexpected. The leader of darkspawn who attacked the fortress was capable of speech. During our previous adventures we never met a talking darkspawn. But Guts was not surprised by this discovery for long. Like most of the time he solved this problem with the blade of his sword. Quickly, effectively...and permanently. Soon talking darkspawn became a silent corpse.
After we defeated the darkspawn invasion king Alistair showed up to congratulate us. He wanted to join us but his kingly duties did not allow that. Too bad for him. It seems that this time he will miss all the fighting. Have fun being a king, fool. So we conscripted Anders to the grey wardens and then Alistair went his way.
After that we had to replenish numbers of the grey wardens because Guts was the only active warden in entire Kingdom. So we began the Joining- a dangerous ritual that kills many people who attempt to take it. This time drinking darkspawn blood also killed one recruit. Anders survived and Oghren not only survived but also...enjoyed it.
Later we had to calm Oghren. He is a strange dwarf who is not afraid of the Joining or the dragons but gets easily frightened by stories about monsters who look like pants...
After that we found out that local grey wardens were really low level. Not only did they fail to defend Vigil from darkspawn but it also took four wardens to capture a thief. The thief was no other than Nathaniel Howe, son of the traitor who killed our family. We could have killed him or spared him. Guts took a third option. He conscripted Nathaniel to grey wardens. This meant that he will either die or become another of our followers. Howe survived this trial and became a grey warden.