Duration: 28:26

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We could go right to Irving, but I decide to explore the tower first. There’s a lot of items to pick up, and just as important, a lot of Codex entries to collect. Right now we’re in the apprentice’s quarters, and I take my time checking out the rooms here and collecting loose items. Some of them are only good to be sold later, but we also find some genuinely useful stuff, including two magical staves. Once we’ve finished here, I head through the library to the staircase leading to the next floor. The second floor is where full mages live, and it’s where we can find not just Irving but the other mages. As we get out, we see Owain, a Tranquil in charge of the tower stockroom. When we greet him, he speaks to us in a robotic tone of voice—the Rite of Tranquility really has stripped him of his emotions, and it’s frankly unsettling. Still, he himself doesn’t seem to mind. He tells us he volunteered for the rite because he was afraid of failing the Harrowing, and has no regrets.

After talking to Owain, I head right to the second floor library. There are a lot of Codex entries here, and I take my time reading the available books and even talking to some high-level mages. We learn about the four schools of magic, political factions in the mage community, the Circle’s organizational structure, and more. Eventually, though, it’s time to head to Irving’s chambers and talk to him. As we arrive, Irving’s in the middle of an argument with Greagoir, but once he sees us he greets us warmly and introduces us to Duncan, the Grey Warden leader from the game intro. Duncan’s here on a recruiting mission for the king of Ferelden—darkspawn appear to be on the march and the king’s army needs mages. He’s clearly concerned about the darkspawn threat, but Irving tells him not to worry us on our big day. Now that we’ve passed the Harrowing, we’re a full mage and can take our place in the Circle. He notes that our phylactery has now been shipped to the city of Denerim—in response to Duncan’s question, it’s explained that a phylactery is a blood sample taken when we arrived at the tower for tracking purposes—and we receive a new staff as well as a special ring. Since Duncan’s a guest of the Circle, Irving asks us to escort him to a guest room nearby. We do so to fulfill the next quest of the game.

After we arrive in the guest room, I talk with Duncan a bit to get more information on what’s happening, and he explains his concerns that the darkspawn may be under the command of an archdemon. Despite their name, archdemons are completely unrelated to the evil spirits we battled in the Fade. An archdemon is actually a dragonlike god that the darkspawn have successfully Tainted. According to the in-game lore, prior to the rise of the Chantry and its monotheistic worship of the Maker there were seven prominent gods worshipped by the people of Thedas, and they’re now in hibernation underground. Unfortunately for everyone, the darkspawn are inherently driven to search out these divine dragons, and once they find one they infect it with the Taint to turn it into an archdemon. As soon as this happens, the archdemon establishes cohesive leadership over all the world’s darkspawn and a Blight is promptly launched with the new archdemon as commander in chief. The only way to stop a Blight is to kill the archdemon leading it, at which point the darkspawn retreat to their underground home to start looking for a new one and the cycle restarts. At this point in Thedas history there have been four Blights and four defeated archdemons, so there’s the potential for three more. Duncan’s worried a fifth one is in its early stages, but doesn’t know for sure.