Remy LeBeau wrote...
Valentia X wrote...
Remy LeBeau wrote...
Valentia X wrote...
The First Warden, to me, seems... fishy.
With regards to Amaranthine, in my playthrough (mistress/chancellor to Alistair) she went to Amaranthine solely to spare Alistair trouble with the Wardens. I, personally, don't trust the First Warden as far as I can throw him. I agree that it seems like a set up for internal warring in the Wardens, and should that come to pass, I know my mage will be the first to sign up for the opposition against the First Warden.
There seems to be two viewpoints on what a Warden does, as according to the Calling: To end the Blight, or to protect people from the Blight (with the endgame being stopping it, obviously). I like Duncan a lot, but not all people- and I suspect, not all Wardens- are that pragmatic. Letting Ferelden fall is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. The dwarves, bless their stout little hearts, are a prime example of what happens if you don't, or in their case, can't shore up the strength needed to fight off a Blight immediately- their numbers are reduced, their civilisation slowly crumbling as thaig after thaig fell. Letting Ferelden burn only gives the darkspawn more fodder for ghouls and broodmothers and their numbers would grow immensely since there would be few able to head off their numbers, and not enough skilled soldiers to make a dent in their population.
The DS numbers would grow in numbers, but you have to remember stoping the Ad is all the really mattered. After we kill the Ad the Ds becomes mindless.
In a sense, that's why it's even a worse idea to abandon Ferelden.
Let's put it as an equation, keeping in mind that I am, of course, pulling the numbers out of the air.
Let's say there are around 2,000 Wardens in all of Thedas when the Blight starts off. Say maybe 150 of them are at Ostagar (since we know at least one came from the Anderfels, and Riordan was at Alistair's joining, there are some foreign Wardens on top of Ferelden's roughly 2 dozen), and we lose all but two, Alistair and our Warden. That leaves around 1,850.
For tactical reasons, you can't send out all the Wardens at once. They're scattered, it takes a while for orders to be sent, and it's imprudent to send out your entire force and leave the rest of Thedas undefended, since darkspawn can pop up everywhere. So say that half the remaining forces are sent out. That's 925 Wardens to defeat the Blight.
In the meanwhile, Ferelden has been overrun. Assume that Alistair and the Warden- the only two people in all of Thedas who have the ability to fight off the darkspawn in anything resembling an effective manner- are either a) dead or 
have been pulled by Duncan, had he survived. Ferelden has no way of knowing the proper way to really fight or track darkspawn. What you end up with is fractured battalions of bann's armies trying to hold off something they don't understand, so Ferelden is overrun in, say, a year, it takes roughly that long (at the least) for the Archdemon to appear.
In that timeframe, the darkspawn now have access to a population of over one million from which they can draw ghouls and broodmothers from. Say your average Warden has a shelf-life of 200 darkspawn before they bite it- this accounts from crap fighters at the low end, and amazing, PC-level Wardens on the other, who probably have a much higher body count. One broodmother can spawn thousands of darkspawn. On top of this, we're no longer dealing with a darkspawn army that is mindless and mainly comprised of genlocks. They have a much better chance of having a human or elven broodmother, thus enhancing the risk of a higher number of hurlocks and shrieks than is normal. If they can take 50 elven women and 100 human women as broodmothers, Ferelden will fall much, much faster, as the hurlocks and shrieks will pop up even faster. And should the dwarves be taken from both sides, then the genlock population increases as well. The number of darkspawn that come out will completely overwhelm the amount of Wardens avaliable to fight, and because nothing was done to stop the production of broodmothers, it will be that much more difficult to enter Ferelden and shut off that spigot, so to speak. Production ramps up as our numbers whittle down.
Tactically, you don't want to take your Wardens and have them sit at the border, waiting for an ungodly horde that has had a year to build up resources and is now organised to come and throw them at you. You need to constantly whittle their numbers down and prevent them from overrunning the surface, or it turns into Orzammar 2.0- now with 250% moar genocide. Knocking the Blight out in Ferelden is the fastest way to ensure that when the AD shows itself, your forces aren't going to be overwhelmed when the dirty thing shows up and end up dying before you can kill it.
I was not talking about abandoning Ferelden just for the hell of it. I know that will be a bad plan. I was talking about abandoning it , because nobody was listening to Duncan's advice. They thought he was guessing about the Archdemon being behind the blight. As a matter of fact they didn't even believe it was a blight. Duncan knew that the Grey Wardens,and Cailan and Loghain's troops was going to be out numbered. From a convo option we get after thet meeting with Cailan and Loghain. We get the feeling that Duncan didn't really believe in Loghain's battle plan. And he was right for it. It was a big disaster. He was killed, and the Pc and, Alistair would have been killed if it was not for Flemeth.
The point of my arguement is, he should had left Ostager. Not out of malice, but for him and the Grey Wardens to live and fight another day. After that, he could had took the Wardens to Orzammer, and asked for aid form the Legion of the dead. At that time I don't think King Endrin would have been dead, so it would be a great plan. Because it was a blight it would not have been the many Dark Spawn in the deep roads so it would have been easy to track the Archdemon and kill it. Now keep in mind, we know the Archdemon is still in the Deep roads from the cut scene, when we happen to get real close to it, and it didn't notice the Pc. Now in my opinion, this would have been a good plan B.
I'm not arguing that it would be done with the intention of malice. I'm arguing that from a tactical point of view, it's setting yourself up for failure. With so few Wardens avaliable, giving your enemy time to build itself up is a recipe for disaster.
As for the Legion of the Dead, there is absolutely no reason as to why they would offer you aid. The Warden has to be amazing in order for them to even countenance the idea- they respect the Wardens, but they're not
the Wardens. As for tracking the Archdemon? It's happenstance that we see it when we do. Circumstances are arranged that you see the Archdemon when you do. Had things gone differently, chances are you wouldn't have seen it when you did. Additionally, the darkspawn are already starting to mass on the surface. Fighting the tail end of the horde from the bottom would do little to help. They're already starting to pour out en masse onto the surface lands; you would, at best, be fighting the end troops instead of the main army. So you're left stomping through the Dark Roads, hoping to run into the Archdemon. Meanwhile, the darkspawn on the surface are ravaging Ferelden and leaving Thedas in general in a weakened state.
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