A conversation About the Joining.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SECRET SHIT! Mostly about the Joining cause I have many words about this.

To become a Grey Warden, one must go through a ritual called the Joining. That part is somewhat commonplace. People in and out of the Wardens know that there is something of a “WELCOME!” to recruits. What isn’t explained is everything else that happens within and after the Joining.

It is blood magic despite anyone’s aversion to… well, blood magic.Very few survive consuming the mixture of darkspawn blood, lyrium, and a dribble of blood from the Archdemon. And very few survive trying to bail out after witnessing what may be their downfall. But what happens to the body after consumption?

Too much really.

Let’s say it’s kind of like a poison creeping through the body. Like poison, depending on the ingested amount, it can bring severe vomiting, a disruption of the blood and circulation, damage the nervous system, and bring eventual death. Though we don’t see recruits dry heaving and screeching in pain (because let’s be real, that harsh surge of all of that magic in a foreign body destroying cells to forcibly remake nerves and cells itself has to be excruciatingly painful), it must have happened somewhere within the groups.

Vomiting and collapsing must be extremely common within the Joining. They give the person some time to gather themselves before announcing that they still breathe, but just feel a bit ill. It’s a normal feeling… especially after consuming blood. More specifically tainted blood. The Darkspawn are brothers, mothers, sisters, fathers, etc of all races corrupted—what’s lukring in that foul (sticky) liquid is way beyond anything we could think of.

Side note: you’re probably also sorta dead by this too. So much is happening to the body in such a short amount of time, the heart probably stopped briefly because there’s so much strain happening. MOSTdon’t make it through, others get a really painful, harsh restart. Wardens are mostly shaken up and exhausted by the end of it.

But alas, it makes sense for DA:O to simply have the Warden drink, have a bit of a violent shake, then cough and be “All right. I’m good! I’m fine!” for game progress reasons, but shit happens. However, thinking about it, either way, a warden is going to be sick as a dog after the first stages die off. It’d probably be like a tame stomach flu—probably both nausea and vomiting, a fever of some sort, muscle pains and light to heavy headaches, and abdominal cramps and pain. It’ll make things hard to keep down. The smell of foods is probably going to disgust them for a little while, but hey!—you’re alive!

originally posted to tumblr: here