[Spoilers] [Dragon Age] What did you do in Redcliffe Castle?

[Tuxedo Mask]

OK, so I'm not very far through my first playthrough, playing a male dwarven commoner rogue, got to the point where the world opened up and you needed to start gathering an army, and decided to go speak to the Arl in Redcliffe first.

And, well, undead army, poisoned Arl, boy summoned demon, etc, etc, etc.

What did you do? From the conversations I had, there seemed to be 3 options:

1) Kill the boy
2) Let the mother sacrifice herself in a blood magic ritual to allow you to enter the Vale (or whatever it's called) to kill the demon possessing her son
3) Go and ask the Circle Mages for advice/help.

I dismissed option 3 as taking too long. The Village had just barely been holding out against the undead attacks until I'd got there and 'saved' them, if I left the boy possessed and went off for a few days, the death toll would be too high. Many lives > One Life, no matter if he's a noble (hell, as a dwarf casteless, that almost changes into 'especially if he's a noble')

So it seemed I had to make a choice as to who had to die. In the end I dismissed emotion and went for a purely logical decision - Assuming the Arl recovers, him and his wife can have another son, possibly more than 1, but without the wife, no more children, and there was no guarantee that if we did the whole wifey-sacrifice thing that we wouldn't end up having to kill the boy anyway, leaving the Arl without both.

So the boy had to die.

Of course wifey ran in at the last minute to plead for his life and wouldn't see reason, so I was forced to punch her out and then slit the boy's throat.

I'm really curious what choices other people made, and what their reasons were.

TM

[Wizdoc]

Went to the Circle of Mages, but possibly due to some bad dialog choices, I managed to fuck up that mission royally and get the circle killed.

So, the option was to kill the boy or choose one mage character to go into Fade and deal with the demon there. That sounded like too much effort (and my mages were pretty terrible then), so the kid had to go. He was an annoying sounding little brat anyway, so no harm, no foul.

Of course, Alistair had to get all whiny about it later on.

[Temrek]

I too, dismissed going to the circle as taking to long. But I could not kill the boy either, and the arlissa (That was her title, IIRC) voluntered so I let the blood mage sacrifice her to send Morrigan (as she was the only mage I had) where she dueled the demon and won.

Alistair later got deeply troubled with this decision, mainly due to a deep rooted hatred of blood magic (with good reason, I'll assume) though with a decent cunning score my character managed to make the ex-templar accept that the decision was the right thing to do, mostly.

[JustJo]

Also with a dwarf commoner rogue, so all this magic stuff sounded a bit hand wavey to me, especially when we knew for sure that the demon had killed loads of people and that killing the boy would definitely stop it.

I did feel bad about knocking the arlessa out so I could kill her son, but I did save her life (kind of) and stop her from committing suicide via dorky blood mage. I was hoping that when/if the arl woke up later, he'd at least see that I'd saved his wife and would be glad someone sensible had been around to do the necessary.

He was surprisingly OK about the whole thing.

[DogMeat]

As, for this particular playthrough, I'm trying to play a morally-upright 'Neutral Good' Human Noble, I pretty much told the Blood Mage to fuck off and never return when I encountered him in the dungeons. So no Option 2 for me. Luckily, I had managed to save the Circle in the tower quest, so it was really a no-brainer. What can I say...I'm a sucker for impassioned pleading.

There didn't really seem to be many visible consequences for the delay, and Aleister actually approved of the decision.

[ResplendentScorpion]

I went to the circle, because, well, Jowan is a moron. I wouldn't trust him to cast a cantrip straight, much less a powerful blood ritual. Also, blood magic is not to be trusted, as everything else in the game clearly showed my mage.

[Kevin Mowery]

Left the Blood Mage alive so he could suggest the ritual. Went to the Circle of Mages (which I'd already cleaned up) because I figured I'd either upset no one in my party or everyone, and if I could pull it off, it would be a great Dr. Who "Nobody dies--not today" moment.

Sent Morrigan into the Fade after the demon because I didn't trust the Blood Mage, I didn't want to risk the First Enchanter after I'd already secured his help, and between Morrigan and Wynne, if I need something killed dead, I'm sending Morrigan after it.

Discovered that we're going to push for Alistair to be the new King of Ferelden, and decided that this has to happen since who will stop the King when he says that he wants to make his hot elf girlfriend, who is also one of the most badass warriors in the land, his Queen? And then I'll be in a good position to help my people.

[Menchi]

I went to the Circle because it fit my character, and because there weren't likely to be anymore undead for a while - the kid took a while to turn everyone and with the knights returning, I knew that the castle could be managed for a period before I needed to worry.

My character is very much the "Nobody dies" type as much as he can possibly muster. He has even stayed Jowan's execution by saying that his fate will be decided by the Circle rather than Bann Teagan.

Conan

[Korror]

I too dismissed the option of obtaining the circle's help as taking too long. The daemon boy was free in the castle and who knows what he could have done in the 2 days or so it would take me to bring the circle back. This meant killing either the boy or allowing his mother to sacrifice herself and I went with the sacrifice. Either way, there wasn't a clean option though I think I was supposed to go with the circle for the "good" end.

She was a willing sacrifice and partly responsible for the whole mess in the first place so it felt fitting to let her sacrifice herself for her son. The earl can remarry and at least he still has an heir this way. Allistair chewed me out for this and I decided to drop him for Shale as a consequence. If he disapproves of blood magic, he can keep his narrowminded opinions to himself while I focus on the more important job of stopping the blight from killing us all. I also tried to get the bloodmage off the hook but the arl didn't see my point of view. The guy seemed repentant and smart enough to avoid the "I give my soul to a daemon and get twisted into an abomination" part of blood magic. My Dalish elf doesn't see why the chantry or the circle should get to say what forms of magic should and should not be practiced. The humans have a history of oppressing people for the sake of oppressing people so I'm not sure I trust their value judgments.

[Tuxedo Mask]

I think it's great that different people (or characters, perhaps) took different choices - it's a sign of a great moral dilemma that different people, all trying to do the 'right' thing, took different routes to achieve it.

Does seem to be a trend towards the circle mage route, though.

And also interesting that the only other one so far who killed the boy was also a dwarf commoner rogue

TM