Grey Wardens

Becoming a Warden

“You will guard them and they will hate you for it. Whenever there is not a Blight actively crawling over the surface, humanity will do its best to forget how much they need you. And that's good. We need to stand apart from them, even if they have to push us away to make us do it. That is the only way we can ever make the hard decisions.” ―Kristoff, Commander of the Grey of Orlais during the Blessed Age

The joining, a secret ritual that entails members of the order drinking tainted darkspawn blood and either mastering it and becoming tainted themselves or succumbing to the taint and dying on the spot. How this ritual is prepared and what it entails is a jealously guarded secret by the wardens, to the point where any man, woman, or child who undergoes the ritual must complete it one way or another. Refusal to drink the darkspawn blood once the ritual begins ends in a swift death for the one refusing to make sure the secret is kept. None but the wardens know that this is where the warden’s ability to sense the darkspawn come from.

The calling, the extrasensory ability to sense the darkspawn is just the tainted blood reaching out to each other. Through this, wardens are drawn to the darkspawn and they to the warden, in times of blight they can hear the same song the darkspawn can from an archdemon which is how they know when one is coming. It is said that with time all wardens succumb to the tainted blood within them and in times of blight this happens even faster with some surviving a mere 5 years as a member of the wardens. Each warden handles this differently with the most common way to celebrate as much as possible in whatever way preferred before heading into the deep roads, the home of the darkspawn, and slaughtering as many as possible before being ultimately killed.

Each warden puts their duty above all else, even the order itself. To a warden nothing is more important than the eradication of the darkspawn by any means necessary. to this end all walks of life are allowed, from the most righteous who simply aims to help people to the most dubious of character who wants to escape their criminal past to become a grey warden for they all are painfully aware that should nothing be done about the horde, all life will be consumed. Wardens are united in this sole purpose but otherwise live their lives how they see fit knowing tomorrow may not come for the only way to end a blight is to make the greatest sacrifice, a sacrifice that each and every warden sees as the highest honor to be granted.