Random Musing

[zute]

“Who was the first guy that look at a cow and said," I think that I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them?”
 Calvin & Hobbes

That quote got me to thinking about who was the first guy who decided to drink darkspawn blood. Then I thought, wait... it also takes archdemon blood. So how could the first Grey Wardens have been created before they had slain their first archdemon? 

Comments

[elysium_fic]

I believe this is true. The First Blight was nearly two centuries long.

It looks like perhaps the first Grey Wardens didn't actually drink archdemon blood? Wiki says they somehow mingled darkspawn blood and lyrium.

Becoming a Grey Warden requires a dose of the darkspawn corruption in sufficient potency to have an immediate effect, rather than slowly corrupt the consumer into a ghoul. While archdemon blood is typically used, blood of other darkspawn creatures can also be magically treated to make it function in the ritual. However, the average darkspawn doesn't have enough of the corruption within it for this to work. [2]


Anyway, I guess this appears in the codices after Riordan tells how the Grey Wardens kill the archdemon:

After Riordan reveals the truth about the Archdemon: When the first Blight began, many brave men and women threw themselves at Dumat, the first archdemon, trying to strike him down. But no matter the numbers, no matter their strength, he would always return. This was proof, some said, of his divine power.

But the Grey Wardens soon learned otherwise. Their tainted blood bound them to the archdemon, and they could hear it, feel it, as it died and was born anew, its spirit drawn to possess the nearest tainted creature. The darkspawn were mindless, soulless, empty shells of flesh that could be bent and remade in the dragon's image. But a man... a man's soul was not so malleable. When a Warden's hand struck a fatal blow against Dumat, the Old God's spirit was drawn not to a darkspawn but to the man who had slain him. In that moment, the souls of both the Warden and the archdemon were utterly destroyed. And the dragon rose no more. The Blight was over.

[zute]

A very spooky thing about that codex entry is that it says the Grey Warden's soul is destroyed, not that they just died. For people who believed in some sort of afterlife that would be rather terrifying I should think.

[elysium_fic]

I agree, it's a rather grim prospect.

[scarylady]

How do they know?

[zute]

Ah! Excellent question. :)

[aithne]

I can think of several alternative explanations for what happens to the Warden/archdemon pair. None of them are pleasant, at all. Possibly the "destroyed" thing is a less bitter pill to swallow than the other possibilities.