#warden aeducan

[mooreaux]

Endrin Aeducan’s children, heirs to Orzammar

I got origins to run for about ten mins before it crashed on my pc, enough to remake Tyne as an Aeducan for that fresh playthru feel.

[nohr-selphias]

"I love you, Zevran. I hope you know that."

"Yes... Yes, I know that."

— commission art by @sinizade, posted with permission

[effelants]

omg harding why are you out for aeducan's and brosca's blood like this

[momochanners]

"It's so cute that you think I'm giving you a choice."

That's the Warden-Commander Aeducan welcome to the order for ya! XD

---

Just felt nostalgic about the Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Expansion and Nathaniel Howe, and I thought I'd add a more character-accurate touch to his recruitment cutscene in the game :D

Thanks to my patrons for the support and encouragement, making comics and artworks like this possible ;w;

[nikiferous]

the grey warden magdha, an exile from the house of aeducan

[fieiram]

my newest warden, Tanya Aeducan ⚔️

[feeshies]

The people's pint-sized princess, Kozda Aeducan

I don't think I'm going to have her romance everyone because my heart belongs to the doomed bodyguard romance from the prologue

[eliphasgraham]

I absolutely love playing an Aeducan warden because. What are the odds seriously. Not only two very young warden managed to survive Ostagar and end the Blight but they just happened to be the heirs to the thrones of Orzammar and Ferelden. The rich are actually saving the world it makes no sense

[artist-rat]

aeducan tarot commission for @notlizzofficial 🌟

[abyssal-ilk]

for those who've played dao, ive got a question: do you have your own custom "dream" the sloth demon puts your warden into instead of the one with duncan? my tabris ranni was put back into the alienage with her family instead of dreaming of duncan, and i was curious if anyone had something similar!

[paranoiajustified]

I get it if you're heartbroken that you can't marry King Alistair, but the amount of people I have seen blaming Alistair for dumping them after they pushed him into a position he never asked for or wanted makes my blood boil. You made this bed, motherfuckers, now sleep alone in it.

[haharuspex]

shout out to, like, 5 other people in the entire dragon age community who main aeducans + kill their stupid ass brother trian

anyway my floki aeducan :) she's an ass a rogue and a bastard (literally)

[momoconteng]

Sometimes you just gotta laugh that Grey Warden Angst off

[krakenlackn]

I commissioned the amazing @spindlewit for these portraits of my Aeducan and Hawke! Aren't they beautiful?

[momochanners]

Overcoming casual sketch block by indulging in drawing memes, featuring Warden Aeducan and Ranger Tav.

[invinciblerodent]

These days I kind of can't stop thinking about how much I enjoyed the possibility of being from Orzammar in Origins, specifically because just being who you are put so much of the early game in a wholly different context.

Like, a dwarf from Orzammar has, by definition, lived literally under a rock their whole lives!! They've never left the underground, and yes, while that also makes their ignorance of surface squabbles (the mage issue, the Ferelden/Orlais conflict, everything with the city elves and the Dalish, etc.) make a lot of sense, it also comes with so many interesting new angles that I'm honestly so surprised still that I've never really seen it mentioned very often, if at all. (Even though we even get an explicit moment to reflect on it, when leaving with Oghren.)

In Origins, the moment a dwarf first steps out through the gates of Orzammar and begins the game, is a profoundly life-altering experience. Dare I say, even more so than it is for an elf or a human. Because stepping out, for the first time, they are entering an entirely new world, and for the first time, in front of them is a vast expanse of nothing but air.

The end of the prologue, it's not just a fundamental personal change that awaits you, it's also a displacement so complete, that it's absolutely dizzying to even think about.

That first time a dwarf feels the sun on their skin, they are made sun-touched, a surfacer: stripped not only from caste and kin, of identity, but also faith and memory, any favor their ancestors may have still held for them, and any possibility of ever returning, as far as they know. (Aeducan may even have a bitter little chuckle over the irony of how they could very well have just one day before shrugged off the concerns of their surface brethren completely, only to be made one of them now.)

Their whole lives, they had always been able to see the opposite wall of the cave, or at least to know for sure that it's there, along with the miles and miles of unchanging, crystal-littered rock stretching protectively over their heads-- now all of that is gone. There's nothing between them, and the infinite and ever-changing blue, grey, orange, black of the open sky they've never seen, and in the distance, there's no wall-- just glorious, humongous mounds and spires of rock jutting up into the belly of the sky, the likes of which they've only ever seen from the inside.

Orzammar, despite no sunlight ever penetrating that far, is always lit bright, and it's heated by the lava streams and pools below. A dwarf has never known anything colder or warmer, brighter or darker, never seen seasons change... the biting winds and the frequent rains in Ferelden are completely new to them, not to mention the terrifying cracks of thunder that sound like the very Stone over them cracking in two, the bright flashes of lightning illuminating the night for but a moment, or waking in the middle of the night to what sounds like countless fingers pat-pat-patting the tarp of their tent, or the fact that animals -which are varied and plentiful and wholly alien- sometimes just randomly fall into the sky, like the rumors say! They might know academically that with birds, that just sort of tends to happen, but they've never seen one take off!!

Hell, all of surface flora and fauna are completely new to them-- it's likely they've only ever seen a tree or a dog in a picture book. Flowers, they've likely only ever seen as an expensive and frivolous luxury few can afford to have for a while, and even then, they are by necessity brought in removed from their roots, dead, wilting, taken from their natural place... while here, blooms just spring up underfoot willy-nilly, not entirely unlike mushrooms at the home which is not theirs anymore.

And... there must be something organic, something comfortingly animal to the scent of hundreds of warm bodies crammed into a sealed hole in the ground-- which is just gone now. The air is fresh, clean... empty, cold, lonely. No smell of spilled ale, piss, and vomit, no thick scent of the combined breaths and bodies of all their people... no scent of belonging, the air that moves their lungs now is no longer that which has moved those of all they've ever known, and every breath washes more, and more, and more of who they once were from inside their very body.

Being on the surface, it's like being thrust into an alien world, with which all just expects you to be intimately familiar. What do you mean the grass, the bugs, the birds, the leaves are strange? What do you mean you've never eaten leaves from this plant, fruit from this tree, the flesh of this creature you've only ever heard about? They laugh when you avert your eyes from the sky and try not to think about falling into it, or when you startle at the feeling of falling water suddenly hitting your skin, as if that was somehow funny, charming.

The night, which you've never before seen fall, is a comfort from all that endless, boundless seeing- but after the Joining, not even that is a relief.

Because if you're a dwarven Warden, all the dreams you've had in your life have been nightmares.

So you cope. You learn, and adapt, and endure.

Strong and immutable, like the Stone from which you were rent.