#i dooooo think that Veilguard is in many ways more of a direct sequel to DA: Inquisition

[songofsaraneth]

Hello! What's the deal with the gryphon in the new dragon age game? I'm tempted to play it only for it

hehe YEAH! So the Lore about griffons (<- this is the spelling they use in the games so im just goin with it) in Dragon Age is that there's a specific group of knights who used to ride/raise them. They're called the Grey Wardens, and they are an order dedicated to watching for/preventing a special type of magical plague that occasionally breaks out called a blight. Each blight ends up with hordes of infected creatures ("darkspawn") accompanied by a "archdemon" which is essentially a giant dragon corrupted by this plague who proceeds to try to destroy the world, and the Grey Wardens job is to stop it from doing that. During one such miserable period they found out they infected their griffons with the blight, they became REALLY VIOLENTLY GOOD at killing the darkspawn, but then the griffons would die after within a few months :(

To be fair, all the Wardens are also infected with the blight too, just in a way that it takes them really really slowly compared to everyone else. so they're "immune" in the sense of already having it, and will die from it eventually but not lose their minds like if a general person got infected. So it was kind of a natural thing to be like "well what if we try putting the griffons through this" rather than just like animal abuse for fun or anything. They were all really sad their friends the griffons died but at the time it was viewed as the only way to stop that current archdemon from destroying the world, which it did, and then the order tried to rebuild itself without having any of the griffons left.

HOWEVER there was a SECRET CLUCTH OF GRIFFON EGGS that were not infected, and were put into suspended animation to protect them. Eventually (during the timeline we get to in the games) they were found, and raised in secret away from everyone else. So while we don't see them in the first 3 games, from the DA tie-in novels we know they're slowly growing up. So in the new game Veilguard, one of your companions, Davrin, belongs to the Grey Warden order, and discovers one of these baby griffons. He adopts it and names him Assan (arrow in elvish)! So if you go out with Davrin, Assan will come along, and has his own attacks, moves, etc :) I do hope we get more griffon lore in the game to go with him but I've been avoiding spoilers so can't say how deep it'll go. But yeah the assumption is you get Assan fairly early and so he can come around with you for a lot of the game, though I think only while you also have Davrin out with you too (<-might be wrong though someone can correct me there if so).