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[ShadowLordXII]

This has already been talked about in past topics like this one: http://social.biowar...index/6874082/1 and I believe that it's worth bringing up again. I'm going through another playthrough of Origins and have just entered the Deep Roads which I consider to be both one of the most well-made and fun parts of the game in addition to being the most tedious and long-winded. All to come to a mostly flawless moral dilemna at the end with the Anvil of the Void.

 

Why do I say mostly flawless? Because you can't preserve the Anvil without siding with the crazy psycho Paragon!

 

Branka is a brilliant antagonistic character whom even if you side with her for the greater good, you still feel like a bit of a horrible person. (Unless you're RP'ing a horrible person anyway.) You could potentially even persuade her as to how far she's fallen and convince her to destroy the Anvil. Then with nothing left but hopelessness and regret, Branka casts herself into the molten river and ends her life before it becomes any worst.

 

Caridin on the other hand, I really like his design, his story and his voice work. My problem is that we don't have as much freedom concerning siding with Caridin as we did with Branka. We can't persuade him that though the Anvil has a terrible cost inherent within it, his people are literally down to only two thaigs. The Anvil of the Void could be the last hope that the dwarven people have to keep from being utterly brought to extinction by the Darkspawn.

 

And we can't convince Caridin to stop sitting on it.

 

Furthermore, what's actually forcing the player to go along with Caridin's wishes? What's stopping the player from deciding not to destroy the Anvil? Caridin can't do it himself and he needs the player to do it, but attempting to force us would either lead to his destruction or make us less willing to comply with his demands. Why not have the option to just backstab Caridin (if you're that kind of character) and give the Anvil's location to whoever is made king of Orzammar? Then they can send a team of smiths there to figure out how the Anvil works and use it to make golems.

 

That's not to say that the Anvil doesn't have inherent detriments with the cost of creating golems requiring the practical torture of dwarves who are being "remade". But I fail to see how we cannot persuade Caridin that at this very moment, his people are on the verge of destruction and bringing out the Anvil might just save them.

 

The lack of this option leads to another problem. It railroads "pragmatic/rational" good characters into siding with "evil" Branka. In order to achieve the maximum possible good for both the situation and the dwarven people, we have to side with an fallen paragon. A character whose so dead-set on finding the Anvil that she sacrificed her entire house (which is actually 2 houses combined into 1) and gave up her house's females to be turned into Broodmothers (A process which involves forced cannibalism, rape, and biological mutilation and mutation which has to be painful) just so she'd have darkspawn to throw at Cariden's traps.

 

Branka simply cannot be trusted with the Anvil or with the dwarven people. In fact, she actually ends up hording the Anvil to herself and closing off all access to the other dwarves after sending a few golems to Orzammar(If Bhelen is chosen) or she'll recruit men to raid the surface to find elves and humans to force into becoming golems and sparking a brief war between Ferelden and Orzammar.

 

So a pragmatic/rational good character who wants to achieve maximum good is now trapped on Mortan's fork. Siding with Caridin without any option to persuade him to preserve the Anvil means that the Anvil will be lost. Forever destroying the only means of creating Golems and potentially dooming the dwarven kingdom to it's steady decline and destruction regardless of who is made king. Siding with Branka means entrusting the dwarf kingdom's only hope to an obsessed mad woman who just wasted her whole house for her goals and will eventually withhold said last hope from her people or outright misuse it to propogate more conflict with other potential allies.

 

Being able persuade Caridin to preserve the Anvil not only evens out the plate, but also allows for a pragmatic/rational good character to try to actually achieve the maximum amount of "good". They'll be siding with the noble character who isn't insane and didn't sacrifice his whole house; they'll be able to recruit golems for the final battle; and the Anvil will be trusted in the hands of someone who knows exactly what it's capable of and knows better than to misuse it or horde it. As an ancient Paragon, he'll even have the full authority to ensure that only volunteers can use the Anvil and can/will cut-off golem creation if even one non-volunteer is sent to him. Furthermore, he'd likely make less golems, but with his hundreds of years of experience would be able to make them stronger than in the past with heavier metal and etc.

 

Just like with a Dwarf Noble Warden becoming King, the potential and rationale of persuading Caridin to preserve the Anvil is there and would have made the Deep Roads/Orzammar Arc much more satisfying than it already is. Not to say that this arc wasn't good, because it was really great. It's just that the lack of this option takes it down a notch from excellent like with other quests.

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Is it 'good' to preserve the Anvil at all though, no matter who is in control of it?

 

As far as we know, at its most basic level, the Anvil creates golems by enslaving the living soul of another creature. Dwarfs were literally sacrificed upon it by immolating them in molten lyrium while they were still  breathing.

 

Sure, you could have volunteers who know exactly what's going to happen to them, but does that make it a good idea? Should people be allowed to do something like that to themselves?

 

This is when we get into the whole debate of:

a) People can do whatever they like with their own bodies! 
Sometimes people should be stopped from doing a certain thing to themselves, even if they think it's for a very good reason.

 

[ShadowLordXII]

Is it 'good' to preserve the Anvil at all though, no matter who is in control of it?

 

As far as we know, at its most basic level, the Anvil creates golems by enslaving the living soul of another creature. Dwarfs were literally sacrificed upon it by immolating them in molten lyrium while they were still  breathing.

 

Sure, you could have volunteers who know exactly what's going to happen to them, but does that make it a good idea? Should people be allowed to do something like that to themselves?

 

This is true and the player can still choose to destroy it if they decide that the sacrifices aren't worth the risk. But what about those of us who think that the Anvil has great merit despite it's heavy risk?

 

My point is that pragmatic good characters shouldn't be railroaded into siding with the psycho fallen paragon in order to preserve the Anvil. Siding with Branka has two potential outcomes (Destroy or preserve the Anvil) while siding with Caridin only has the one option to destroy the Anvil.

 

Whether or not you think the Anvil is good or not, the option to preserve it without siding with the insane paragon should be there for those who subscribe to the thought: "The Needs of the Many outweigh the Needs of the Few."

 

In short, an option that Spock (Good guy who operates almost solely on logic with decisions) would pick.

[metatheurgist]

The anvil is really problematic. To control the golems you need control rods. That means turning formerly living souls into slaves, who knows how else I could abuse that? Maybe I don't even need to turn someone into a golem. The other option would be to let the golems be free-willed. How many people can you trust with that kind of power? I also get the vibe that bashing someone living into a golem is dehumanising for the creator.

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

 

My point is that pragmatic good characters shouldn't be railroaded into siding with the psycho fallen paragon in order to preserve the Anvil. Siding with Branka has two potential outcomes (Destroy or preserve the Anvil) while siding with Caridin only has the one option to destroy the Anvil.

 

 

Ah, I see. Well, in that case, I'd suggest people not see it as railroading. It's impractical to think that a character representing every possible POV is going to be available to choose from so that we can get someone who meets our ideals.

 

And if you think about it, Caridin was that guy. He was the non-crazy Branka, a normal dwarf who did what he thought was right for the good of the kingdom, until they got a dwarf king who wanted more and Caridin himself went under the hammer. There's the implication that if you get a 'responsible, practical' person to be in charge of the Anvil, history will eventually repeat itself.

Doesn't Branka even seal herself off from Orzammar, eventually?

[Corker]

 

The lack of this option leads to another problem. It railroads "pragmatic/rational" good characters into siding with "evil" Branka. In order to achieve the maximum possible good for both the situation and the dwarven people, we have to side with an fallen paragon. A character whose so dead-set on finding the Anvil that she sacrificed her entire house (which is actually 2 houses combined into 1) and gave up her house's females to be turned into Broodmothers (A process which involves forced cannibalism, rape, and biological mutilation and mutation which has to be painful) just so she'd have darkspawn to throw at Cariden's traps.

 

Why is sacrificing dwarves in the pursuit of the Anvil mad and bad, but sacrificing dwarves to the Anvil an acceptable loss?

 

Branka's following the same logic chain: Dwarves are going extinct, so any loss is acceptable to reclaim the Anvil.  Any loss to find it, any loss to use it.  If a 'good' Warden agrees, then why be squeamish about allying with her?

 

Caridin once did hold the Anvil, and did speak up against its misuse.  They turned him into a golem for that.  I'm guessing he doesn't see why things would be any different now.

[DarthGizka]

The crux of the matter is choice - the choice that the volunteers had made in the past, and which is denied by the destruction of the Anvil. To trade one's human body for the safety of one's family.

 

With choice comes the possibility of abuse. People getting deceived or pressured into becoming golems, the Anvil's guardian being deceived about the true status of presumed volunteers. C'est la vie. It's a reason to be careful, to implement checks and balances.

 

The Grey Wardens accept jailbirds and give them a chance at redemption, why shouldn't the dwarves do so with a Legion of Steel? Control rods render the latter much safer than the former.

[Xilizhra]

This is true and the player can still choose to destroy it if they decide that the sacrifices aren't worth the risk. But what about those of us who think that the Anvil has great merit despite it's heavy risk?

 

My point is that pragmatic good characters shouldn't be railroaded into siding with the psycho fallen paragon in order to preserve the Anvil. Siding with Branka has two potential outcomes (Destroy or preserve the Anvil) while siding with Caridin only has the one option to destroy the Anvil.

 

Whether or not you think the Anvil is good or not, the option to preserve it without siding with the insane paragon should be there for those who subscribe to the thought: "The Needs of the Many outweigh the Needs of the Few."

 

In short, an option that Spock (Good guy who operates almost solely on logic with decisions) would pick.

What's wrong with this? It just makes the decision for the pragmatists that much more difficult, and it seemed like a challenge that they'd enjoy.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

I guess it boils down to your long view... does it surpass the blight? Do you want to see a better future after the blight? Or do you just want to make sure you win at any cost and damn how you leave things beyond that? In which case, you probably wouldn't care much about who you put on the throne at the landsmeet either. Are you a grey warden who only sees ending the blight as your duty, or do you see your duty as ending the blight and also not leaving ferelden in a crappy way when you are done, sacrificing souls to win when you can win without doing that.

There's a legitimacy to the "win at any cost" view. The Blight is an attempted apocalypse, and it's not quite so out there that this apocalypse might succeed. It turns out that you can win without doing anything evil, but the Warden can't really know that at the time. And at any rate, giving the dwarves new golems means they're less screwed between the Blights.

 

As for preserving the Anvil with Bhelen in power, he provides her as many "volunteers" as she wants (some of who can only be referred to by that word if it's placed in quotation marks) but then eventually decides to insist that she acknowledge his authority over her. This doesn't go well, and Branka's fortress apparently becomes a state unto itself. Though at least that's better than Harrowmont's outcome, where he insists that no further dwarven souls be used and then lets Branka raid the surface for non-dwarves, leading to Orzammar becoming a full-blown rogue state.

[Mike3207]

Well, keep in mind down the road that Branka will turn from using dwarves for her golems to random strangers that get too close to Orzammar. There are no good outcomes if you choose to save the Anvil.

 

NM, see that only happens with Harrowmont.

[Blazomancer]

There should have been an option to persuade Branka and Caridin to collaborate and come up with a way to use Nugs instead of people. Nugs are also 'living' and have 'souls', don't they? First one to go should be Schmooples.

In all seriousness, I agree that the option to backstab Caridin could have been implemented. But it's the successfully persuading him option that I don't quite see the feasibility of. I mean, if Caridin were a person to be persuaded into the 'anything for survival or the greater good' philosophy, he wouldn't have gotten the hammer on his head in the first place.

[Cobra's_back]

"So a pragmatic/rational good character who wants to achieve maximum good is now trapped on Mortan's fork. Siding with Caridin without any option to persuade him to preserve the Anvil means that the Anvil will be lost. "

 

Trapping souls is never a good thing. I say find another way. Power will always be abused. Caridin learned that the hard way.

[congokong]

Ah, the anvil of the void. One of the toughest moral dilemmas in the game. By itself the anvil is evil; no question. But the circumstances dictate that it's a necessary evil. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Caridin's decision to hide the anvil led to the fall of the dwarven empire. They have so little left and it doesn't look to be getting any better. Branka is nutty, sure, but she was correct that the anvil could help restore their glory. Also remember the blight. "Win at any cost", right? That's the whole Grey Warden thing.

 

Enslaving any soul is cruel but it could bring use to criminals who would be executed for example.

[Cobra's_back]

Ah, the anvil of the void. One of the toughest moral dilemmas in the game. By itself the anvil is evil; no question. But the circumstances dictate that it's a necessary evil. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Caridin's decision to hide the anvil led to the fall of the dwarven empire. They have so little left and it doesn't look to be getting any better. Branka is nutty, sure, but she was correct that the anvil could help restore their glory. Also remember the blight. "Win at any cost", right? That's the whole Grey Warden thing.

 

Enslaving any soul is cruel but it could bring use to criminals who would be executed for example.

 

The anvil is a bandage to a bigger problem. They are destroying themselves by not promoting the best warriors. It is a caste system. I'm sure they are plagued with inbreeding problems. If you play the common Dwarf you win the Proving and they want to send you to jail. This is the real reason they are an epic fail. 

 

As for criminals being used to make golems, let's define a prisoner. A prisoner could be anyone who disagrees with the current ruler. The nobles in Orzammar are anything but noble. 

[KaiserShep]

I always considered destroying it and killing Branka a pretty easy choice because of all this. Dwarven society is jacked up the wazoo as it is. I wouldn't want nutcases like Branka with that damn anvil jacking it up even more.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

So saving the anvil really doesn't help with the blights? Do they even address that or is it just about how it was treated. Seems like saving it is not worth the risk it entails. Both sides screw it up as I figured they would.

They do address the use of the golems. Harrowmont manages to completely crush the disaffected dwarves who still think Bhelen should have been king, and doesn't die less than a decade into his rule. I think he also manages to take back some thaigs (which otherwise only Bhelen can do) but I'm not sure. Bhelen manages to build an army of golems, which you can't tell me isn't conducive to quieting the Deep Roads, and the fortress Branka ends up building in the Deep Roads is described as impregnable. Though I'm still not left with any clear sense of whether any of this makes the Anvil worth preserving. (Or, more relevantly, worth giving to Branka.)

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

The crux of the matter is choice - the choice that the volunteers had made in the past, and which is denied by the destruction of the Anvil. To trade one's human body for the safety of one's family.

 

Don't forget though that the volunteers know absolutely nothing about what becoming a golem entails, except it involves the Anvil of the Void in some vague, unspecified way. Caridin writes in his journal that they are kept ignorant of the process. Furthermore, there's the control rods. If a golem wants to leave the Legion of Steel one day, perhaps to experience the world above, well...sucks to be them. They have no choice at all at that point.

 

 

The Grey Wardens accept jailbirds and give them a chance at redemption, why shouldn't the dwarves do so with a Legion of Steel? Control rods render the latter much safer than the former.

 

Heh...first off, I doubt you'd get the Grey Wardens claiming you'll find redemption in their ranks. For characters like Loghain it's poetic justice, but they don't recruit criminals to save their souls. Hell, Duncan is recruited in the hopes the Joining will kill him!

 

Second, we're presented with information claiming that Grey Wardens are a necessity in the task of slaying archdemons. Golems, while powerful creatures, are merely a convenience.

 

Third...just because the GW have an edict allowing them to be morally abhorrent bastards doesn't mean everyone should.

 

 

I always find it hard to believe that they can only make golems using the soul of a living being... I wonder about that.

 

The Golems of Amgarrak DLC explores this somewhat. The characters in this story were seeking to duplicate and improve on Caridin's methods, and attempted to use a Fade Spirit instead.

 

Spoiler: 

 

(It goes nuts and killed everyone.)

[DarthGizka]

With people like Branka, Bhelen or Duncan in charge, bad consequences are pretty much inevitable.

Even a sufficiently autonomous Guardian of the Anvil - e.g. Caridin, if you could persuade him - cannot prevent things like families being held hostage in order to make the men 'volunteer'. The existence of control rods is a bad thing in that regard, because it gives the perpetrators an additional safeguard against being squished into a fine paste. So you'd want criminals to be 'roddable' but volunteers not (like Shale).

Without the Legion of Steel, the dwarves have been losing the war of attrition against the darkspawn between Blights for centuries. Most of the dwarven kingdoms are lost already, and while single individuals may be able to emigrate to the surface, for the dwarven people as a whole that is simply not an option. Assuming they'd even want it.

Grey Wardens are doomed even if they survive the Joining, since the Calling will inevitably get them in the end. For a golem the outlook is nowhere near as bleak.

The Grey Wardens may not list redemption in their sales brochure, but it is essentially the reason why society lets them snatch crooks out of the hangman's noose.

Last but not least, you don't need all that many Grey Wardens to detonate one über darkspawn every couple of centuries.

[congokong]

The anvil is a bandage to a bigger problem. They are destroying themselves by not promoting the best warriors. It is a caste system. I'm sure they are plagued with inbreeding problems. If you play the common Dwarf you win the Proving and they want to send you to jail. This is the real reason they are an epic fail. 

 

As for criminals being used to make golems, let's define a prisoner. A prisoner could be anyone who disagrees with the current ruler. The nobles in Orzammar are anything but noble. 

 

Their caste system is retarded for sure. A remedy to their culture could certainly help but would it get back their lost lands? Regardless, such a change wouldn't happen overnight unlike the use of the anvil. Sure, you could say "no" to the anvil out of principle and spite because the dwarves are too stubborn to reform their society. Or you can accept that change won't happen quickly, like it or not, and use the anvil bandage because the darkspawn are a threat that's not going away.

[Cobra's_back]

Their caste system is retarded for sure. A remedy to their culture could certainly help but would it get back their lost lands? Regardless, such a change wouldn't happen overnight unlike the use of the anvil. Sure, you could say "no" to the anvil out of principle and spite because the dwarves are too stubborn to reform their society. Or you can accept that change won't happen quickly, like it or not, and use the anvil bandage because the darkspawn are a threat that's not going away.

 

Never out of spite. The real reason is because I know it will be used incorrectly. I also firmly believe if you start going down the wrong path then there may not be a clear way to get back. People are capable of great things when they all pull together. I would love to give that a shot first. They have never taken that path. I'm not surprised that their best fighters are the Legion of the Dead. Just maybe they should try to regroup and pull everyone together.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Never out of spite. The real reason is because I know it will be used incorrectly. I also firmly believe if you start going down the wrong path then there may not be a clear way to get back. People are capable of great things when they all pull together. I would love to give that a shot first. They have never taken that path. I'm not surprised that their best fighters are the Legion of the Dead. Just maybe they should try to regroup and pull everyone together.

Closest to that would be Bhelen's epilogue, I think. Though Word Of Gaider is that the epilogue is treated as rumor, which might result in Bhelen turning out to be far worse than Harrowmont. (Plus or minus Harrowmont not being as bad as the epilogue for his rule states.)

[KaiserShep]

Their caste system is retarded for sure. A remedy to their culture could certainly help but would it get back their lost lands? Regardless, such a change wouldn't happen overnight unlike the use of the anvil. Sure, you could say "no" to the anvil out of principle and spite because the dwarves are too stubborn to reform their society. Or you can accept that change won't happen quickly, like it or not, and use the anvil bandage because the darkspawn are a threat that's not going away.

 

Nothing about the Anvil instills me with a great deal of confidence. Consider this: the Anvil was, at one point, actively being used by the dwarves on willing volunteers and then escalated to forcing captives into becoming golems to fight the darkspawn. Despite all of this, the darkspawn took the thaigs anyway. If the Anvil failed to help against the darkspawn the first time around, why should I trust it now? At the same time, keeping the anvil also requires me to side with a crazy ass evil dwarf who let her entire house be killed, eaten and turned into broodmothers just so she can have darkspawn to trip Caridin's traps. It's bad enough that it will very likely be used on people against their will, effectively turning them into immortal slaves. I'd fully expect them to basically sweep Dust town of its casteless and turn them all into golems, and once they were spent, they'd have to search elsewhere up the food chain, and onto the surface to snag other people. Problem is, even if the darkspawn threat was eradicated, they wouldn't stop using it either. After all, golems with control rods are a great military asset.

 

Frankly, I think the Deep Roads is completely doomed until the darkspawn are really truly eradicated, and I don't believe that the Anvil in any way would really help to make that happen.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Nothing about the Anvil instills me with a great deal of confidence. Consider this: the Anvil was, at one point, actively being used by the dwarves on willing volunteers and then escalated to forcing captives into becoming golems to fight the darkspawn. Despite all of this, the darkspawn took the thaigs anyway. If the Anvil failed to help against the darkspawn the first time around, why should I trust it now? At the same time, keeping the anvil also requires me to side with a crazy ass evil dwarf who let her entire house be killed, eaten and turned into broodmothers just so she can have darkspawn to trip Caridin's traps. It's bad enough that it will very likely be used on people against their will, effectively turning them into immortal slaves. I'd fully expect them to basically sweep Dust town of its casteless and turn them all into golems, and once they were spent, they'd have to search elsewhere up the food chain, and onto the surface to snag other people. Problem is, even if the darkspawn threat was eradicated, they wouldn't stop using it either. After all, golems with control rods are a great military asset.

They wouldn't wipe out the casteless entirely. The casteless are used to do the work that no caste dwarf can legally do. They need the Casteless for precisely that reason. The Assembly knows and acknowledges this, though never where a brand may discover it. Not to mention that the noble males want there to be new casteless women.

 

As for the previous failure of the Anvil, they only had it for an unspecified fraction of a lifetime, between its creation and Caridin's enslavement/execution. And the golems they made still make a difference. The only difficulty is that they're essentially too awesome to use: they can't make any more, and ever since they lost a small army of these one-man armies trying to recover the Anvil they've kept them under lock and key as a Godzilla Threshold option, to be used only when things get bad enough that potentially sacrificing an irreplaceable golem is small potatoes next to the stakes.

 

The rest I agree with you on.