A Whole Lot of Silence and Trousers - Shale Lived in Honnleath, but She Emphatically did not Frolic

Dragon Age Origins [DAO] DLC Content - Story and Character
Content - Massacre, Child Endangerment/Possession, Gratuitous Demons, Animal Cruelty, Slavery

Near Redcliffe, our army if six encounters a merchant menaced by a broken cart and the loss of his mules.  The merchant was on his way to Honnleath, suspiciously south of here, to take possession of a golem, but now he's so soured on the whole business that he's willing to sell its control rod at a deep, deep discount.  Like free.

Ok, so now we have to unpack what golem means to DAO.  Golems are things the dwarves make* out of stone, and lace them up with lyrium so they walk around, follow commands and break things.  They're ten foot tall glowing statues who have some limited executive function and a lot of smash.  They generally aren't good conversationalists.  They are also just the thing Sooney thinks might be good to add to her very low number fighting the horde, so trusting that nothing happens in video games unless there is a protagonist there to react to it**, she turns the party south.

In another long-standing tradition of video games, the Blight has arrived in Honnleath five minutes before our heroes, which means darkspawn to fight, and corpse assets*** all around.  Also Olaf's Cheese Slicer, a pretty cool dagger**** that is fated to be Sooney's best friend for the better part of the game.  The golem, looking somewhat smaller and rougher than the ones pictured in the opening cinematic, is standing in a KAAAAAHN! pose in the middle of a garden scattered with birdseed.  Sooney brandishes the rod and shouts "Klaatu! Berrata! Ni... Ne...  N-something... NECKTIE!  I  said it!  I said the words!  I did!*****"  And does not suffer the fate of our Mr. Williams.******  There are a few more deadites darkspawn, sure, but Sooney's graduated to the chainsaw-for-a-hand level of things at this point, so no big.  But the golem just stands there.  Maybe it smirked a bit.

Ok, so searching the place.  It turns out that there's one house in Honnleath that has the kind of basement of which Jame Gumb would much approve.  Within are some more darkspawn and a group of survivors hiding behind a barrier erected by Local Ponytail Mage.  Upon being freed, he reveals that the owner of the golem was his dad, the magician Willhelm, who was, by all accounts a bit of a Willhelm, if you know what I mean.******* The golem killed Willhelm and PTM's mom******** used the control rod to freeze it in the garden.  Sooney's not all that surprised********* to learn that the activation words aren't right, and he's willing to tell her what they really are, but she needs to do something for him first.

Because video game tradition.

PTM's daughter ran further into the depths of Willhelm's man-cave when the darkspawn came, and no one has been able to get to her.  There's defenses or something.  So Sooney, not having anyone in the party to tell her that they will think less of her if she doesn't just beat the words out of PTM, agrees to go collect the kid.

Now the kid is on the other side of a handful of shades, in a very cave like portion of the man-mage-cave talking to a calico cat that has glowinf purple eyes, who also talks.  Morrigan identifies the cat as a titty demon, and Sooney is not all that surprised.  The demon's trapped on this floor of tiles by Willhelm's magic, but the kid is with her.  Kitty (the titty demon) offers possibly the shittiest bargain ever: let me out and let me possess the girl and I'll behave,********** or I'll just possess her now and destroy her.  Sooney, at this point, has invested fully in telling people what to do, but then she looks up Alistair's copy of the Grey Warden's Guidebook and learns the Warden strategy for dealing with demons: offer them whatever they want and then sword them when the try to collect.  This works literally every time.***********

So one tile-sliding puzzle later, the demon tries to take possession of PTM's daughter, but Sooney tells Kitty tough titty, and Kitty gets mad, and also assumes her traditional form.  The kid gets freaked out and runs off, and Olaf's Cheese Slicer proves to be up to the task of the second part of Warden demonic-relations protocols.  Family is united, "Klaatu! Beratta! Nictu!" is spoken and Shale comes to life, to the extent that life is giving Morrigan a free clinic on how to really condescend and stomping a chicken to death on the way out of town.

We'll talk about Shale, and how using her proper pronouns is a spoiler in the next entry.

* Professor Tolkien, what have you fucking wrought?  I feel like I ought to drink any time someone links dwarves to Jewish stereotype (or a did-not-do-the-homework version of Jewish folklore, to the debatable extent that that's different than stereotype).

** Except when that doesn't happen, and things do take place while you are elsewhere.  Those events only tend to happen once a pattern is established that you have all the time you need to do all the things you need to do, and there is never a cue that this one thing is time-sensitive.  It gets costly, what with the expense of current generation game controllers.

*** Assets being objects created to be put in a setting, in this case.

**** Daggers in video games frequently being 20-24" and what the Romans, who knew a thing or two about war, would have called "swords."

***** http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106308/?ref_=nv_sr_1

****** Ashley Williams is also the name of a character in Mass Effect, where she is a possible love interest that I never actually met, since Mass Effect 1 was until very late, an Xbox exclusive.  When I started Mass Effect 2, she was the one who died in the interactive comic book intro bit.  I have no idea how much personality she shares with her namesake.  The team member I did save, Kaiden, turned out to be kind of a grouchy jerk.

******* I mean penis.  The man was a dick.

******** Who actually might have been an evern bigger dick than her husband, at least from Shale's perspective.

********* Here lies Sooney Cousland, Daughter of Dad and Mom Cousland. 9:09 - 9:32.  She was not all that surprised.

********** A desire demon, combination of lust and greed, behave?  If allowing that thing to inhabit a child's body wasn't already icky beyond comprehension.  Bioware is not always good at protraying subtle, possibly justifiable evil, and they did not take their subtle supplements on the morning when they scripted Kitty.

*********** Billy Dee Williams level smoothness is not attainable by mere mortals, however capable.  Thus the swording part of the protocol.