Witch Wife

the disbelief you must feel as aeducan, someone who’s been trained to fight in the deep roads all your life, when you get to ostagar and are informed left and right that darkspawn are the consequence of human sin. actually, your people are an unfortunate footnote in a story that isn’t about you. you’re collateral damage in a moral lesson being taught to somebody else. you live in the last city clinging to life in an apocalypse and meanwhile on the surface they’ve been using their four hundred year break between blights to sit around telling each other how this is all their fault and not once has this inspired them to do anything at all to help you

your people form the backbone of everything their greatest powers have, for better or worse, achieved. you are standing in a ruin that marks the ancient human empire with the largest looming shadow on their world, and yet its towers still had to be built by dwarven hands in order to last. the most elite and admired of their soldiers can only claim their skills descend from your berserkers. the gift of the stone, the lyrium that your miners provide, is all that permits their tranquil enchanters to achieve anything, all that permits their so-called holy templars to keep at bay the magic they fear so much. is that going to stop them from forgetting you exist when they can’t get something from you? is that going to stop them from writing you off as jokes, thinking of you only as the addictions and criminality your people turn to in their desperation, painting you as greedy villains who care only for yourselves? i guess not. it’s cold comfort to know that if orzammar fell, if one day there was no more lyrium and no more warriors between them and the deeps, then they would never be able to forget