"We arrived in the dead of night. We had been tracking the maleficar for days, and finally had him cornered... or so we thought.
As we approached, a home on the edge of the town exploded, sending splinters of wood and fist-sized chunks of rocks into our ranks. We had but moments to regroup before fire rained from the sky, the sounds of destruction wrapped in a hideous laughter from the center of the village.
There, perched atop the spire of the village chantry, stood the mage. But he was human no longer.
We shouted prayers to the Maker and deflected what magic we could, but as we fought, the creature fought harder. I saw my comrades fall, burned by the flaming sky or crushed by debris. The monstrous creature, looking as if a demon were wearing a man like a twisted suit of skin, spotted me and grinned. We had forced it to this, I realized; the mage had made this pact, given himself over to the demon to survive our assault."
--Transcribed from a tale told by a former templar in Cumberland, 8:84 Blessed.
It is known that mages are able to walk the Fade while completely aware of their surroundings, unlike most others who may only enter the realm as dreamers and leave it scarcely aware of their experience. Demons are drawn to mages, though whether it is because of this awareness or simply by virtue of their magical power in our world is unknown.
Regardless of the reason, a demon always attempts to possess a mage when it encounters one--by force or by making some kind of deal depending on the strength of the mage. Should the demon get the upper hand, the result is an unholy union known as an abomination. Abominations have been responsible for some of the worst cataclysms in history, and the notion that some mage in a remote tower could turn into such a creature unbeknownst to any was the driving force behind the creation of the Circle of Magi.
Thankfully, abominations are rare. The Circle has methods for weeding out those who are too at risk for demonic possession, and scant few mages would give up their free will to submit to such a bond with a demon. But once an abomination is created, it will do its best to create more. Considering that entire squads of templars have been known to fall at the hands of a single abomination, it is not surprising that the Chantry takes the business of the Circle of Magi very serious indeed.
"Upon ascending to the second floor of the tower, we were greeted by a gruesome sight: a ragged collection of bones wearing the robes of one of the senior enchanters. I had known her for years, watched her raise countless apprentices, and now she was a mere puppet for some demon."
--Transcribed from a tale told by a templar in Antiva City, 7:13 Storm
Demons, of course, have no form in our world. When they enter, either where the Veil is particularly thin or through blood magic summoning, they must take possession of a body.
When a pride demon takes control of the corpse of a mage, an arcane horror is born. Although they appear to be little more than bones, these are fierce creatures, possessing not only all the spellcasting abilities of a living mage, but also the capacity to heal and even command other animated corpses.
"In Darkness eternal they searched,
For those who had goaded them on,
Until at last they found their prize,
Their god, their betrayer:
The sleeping dragon Dumat. Their taint
Twisted even the false-god, and the whisperer
Awoke at last, in pain and horror, and led
Them to wreak havoc upon all the nations of the world:
The first Blight."
--Threnodies 8:7
The false dragon-gods of the Tevinter Imperium lie buried deep within the earth, where they have been imprisoned since the Maker cast them down.
No one knows what it is that drives the darkspawn in their relentless search for the sleeping Old Gods. Perhaps it is instinct, as moths will fly into torch flames. Perhaps there is some remnant of desire for vengeance upon the ones who goaded the magisters to assault heaven. Whatever the reason, when darkspawn find one of these ancient dragons, it is immediately afflicted by the taint. It awakens twisted and corrupted, and leads the darkspawn in a full-scale invasion of the land: a Blight.
Legend has it that when Andrastes Ashes were taken into hiding, some of her closest disciples gave themselves to the fire, that their restless souls might remain to guard her final resting place forever.
Whether they are the spirits of Andrastes disciples or merely Fade spirits, the temple that houses the Sacred Urn is filled with wraiths. Created from a burnt corpse, an ash wraith is a powerful and amorphous opponent able to lash and smother while being immune to most physical attacks. Even if successfully dispersed, it can reform at a later time. Magic is the only real way to fight such a creature, wind and ice attacks being the most useful.
They are capable of creating small whirlwinds that are devastating to anyone unfortunate enough to get close, and their touch leaves a person drained.
"No beast is more beloved by Dirthamen than the bear. When the world was new, Dirthamen gave one secret to each creature to keep. The foxes traded their secrets to Andruil for wings. The hares shouted theirs to the treetops. The birds sold theirs for gold and silver. Only the bears kept Dirthamens gift, deep within their dens, they slept the months away in the company of their secrets and nothing else.
When Dirthamen discovered what had been done with his gifts, he snatched the wings from the foxes, silenced the voices of the hares, and turned the birds into paupers. but the bears he honored for their steadfastness."
--Transcribed from a Dalish tale, 9:8 Dragon.
Normally, it is almost unheard of for bears to attack travelers. They are, in fact, so shy and so inactive during the day that most people never encounter a bear at all. However, should a bear be provoked, they are remarkably dangerous. The normally placid-seeming creatures become enraged, and can strike massive blows with their paws, capable of knocking a man off his feet.
"Theres only two things a noble will step aside for: Paragons and angry brontos."
--Dwarven saying.
This hulking beast was originally bred by the dwarven Shaperate as a beast of burden and food source, the rough equivalent to surface oxen and cows. Some versions of bronto have even been developed as dwarven mounts, valued far more for their sure-footedness and stamina than for their speed. While present within Orzammar in large numbers, some bronto still exist in packs within the Deep Roads, having returned to a wild state after the fall of the dwarven kingdoms. They require remarkably little sustenance, consuming organic material from water, fungus and even rocks (hence the "rock-licker" appellation used by many dwarves to describe bronto), and exist in primarily dormant states until provoked. An angry, charging bronto is considered to be a rather dangerous opponent.
It is well-known that darkspawn carry off those captured in their raids to underground lairs. most assume that the prisoners are eaten, or somehow tainted and turned into darkspawn themselves, though this could never account for the sheer numbers of the horde. Forays made by Grey Wardens into the underground have uncovered the answer.
When exposed to the darkspawn taint, men are driven mad and eventually die. Women, however, undergo great pain and gross mutations that cause most of them to perish. Those that survive, however, become the grotesque broodmothers. These giant, twisted behemoths birth many darkspawn at a time; a single broodmother can create thousands of darkspawn over the course of her lifetime. Each type of darkspawn is born from a different broodmother: Humans produce hurlocks, dwarves produce genlocks, elves give birth to shrieks, and from qunari are born the ogres.
"To anyone who doubts the wickedness of blood magic, I say: With your own hands, strike down the corpses of your own brothers who have fallen in battle to a maleficar, then we may discuss morality."
--Knight-Commander Benedictus, in a letter to the Divine, 5:46 Exalted.
The walking dead are not, as the superstitious are wont to believe, the living come back for revenge. They are, rather, corpses possessed by demons.
The shambling corpse, controlled by a demon of sloth, causes its enemies to become weak and fatigued. Corpses possessed by rage demons go berserk and simply wade into their opponents mindlessly. Devouring corpses are held by hunger demons and feed upon the living. The more powerful demons rarely deign to possess a dead host.
"A fool trusts his eyes. A wise man fears every rock is a deepstalker"
--
Possibly the strangest of all the creatures found in the Deep Roads is the deepstalker. Tezpadam, as the dwarves call them, hunt in packs, generally by burrowing underground and then striking when their prey is in their midst.
Stalkers come in several types. Spitters have venom glands and can spit secretions that slow or injure their prey. Jumpers hurl themselves at their targets, knocking them down and making the kill easier. The most common variety scares its prey, leaving the unfortunate victim helpless against the rest of the pack.
"In all my studies, I must say that the most intriguing was my interview with the desire demon. That the creature was willing to speak with me was a sign that this was no mere monster, mindlessly driven by its nature, but rather a rational being as interested in me as I was in it. It took a form that I would call female, though I had no doubt that it could appear otherwise. I wondered if it appeared as it did because I wanted it to or because I expected it to. She... and, indeed, I could only think of her as such now... smiled warmly at me and laughed a musical sound that seemed to thrill my old heart.
So frightened was I of this creatures legendary abilities to twist the hearts of men, and so relieved was I when I looked across the table into her dark eyes. This was a fearsome creature of the Fade, but as I spoke with her I slowly came to realize that this demon was merely as misunderstood as we mages are, ourselves."
--From the journal of former Senior Enchanter Maleus, once of the Circle of Rivain, Declared apostate in 9:20 Dragon.
Of all the threats from beyond the Veil, few are more insidious and deceptively deadly than the desire demon, In folklore, such demons are characterized as peddlers of lust, luring their prey into a sexual encounter only to be slain at the culmination. While a desire demon can indeed deal in pleasure, in truth they deal with any manner of desire that humans can possess: wealth, power, and beauty, to name a few.
Far more intelligent than the bestial hunger and rage demons, and more ambitious than the demons of sloth, these dark spirits are among the most skilled at tempting mages into possession. Many who serve the whims of a desire demon never realize it. They are manipulated by illusions and deceit if not outright mind control, although these demons are reluctant to resort to such crude measures. Instead, they seem to take great pleasure in corruption. The greater the deceit, the greater their victory.
Only demos of pride prove more fearsome opponents when roused. Their abilities to affect the mind allow them to assume disguises and even alter the environment to their purposes, not to mention the great strength and speed they possess if they should have to resort to more physical means. Most often a desire demon will attempt to bargain its way to freedom if overpowered--many stories exist that depict mages defeating desire demons to the point where a wish can be wrested from them. It should be noted that in such stories the demon almost always gets the upper hand even when the mage thinks his wish has been granted.
Dragonlings
Newly-hatched dragons are roughly the size of a deer and voraciously hungry. They live for a short time in their mothers lair before venturing out on their own. The slender, wingless creatures are born in vast numbers, as only a few ever make it to adulthood.
Drakes
Male dragons never develop into the winged monsters of myth. At most, their forelegs grow vestigial spurs where wing membrane might have been.
Once they have fully matured, males immediately seek out the lairs of adult females. When they find one, they move into her lair and spend the rest of their lives there, hunting for her and defending her young. They will aggressively defend her nest, and many would-be dragon hunters have been lost to their fiery breath and crushing blows from their tails.
Dragons
High Dragons
A fully mature adult female dragon is the high dragon: the great monster of legend, the rarest of all dragonkind. These dragons hollow out massive lairs for themselves, for they need the space to house their harem of drakes as well as their eggs and the dragonlings.
High dragons are seldom seen. They spend most of their time sleeping and mating, living off the prey their drakes bring back. But once every hundred tears or so, the high dragon prepares for clutching my emerging from her lair and taking wing. She will fly far and wide, eating hundreds of animals, most often livestock, over a course of a few weeks and leaving smoldering devastation in her wake. She then returns to her lair to lay her eggs and will not appear in the skies again for another century.
Codex Entry 12: Genlock
These are the most common darkspawn in the underground. Stocky and tough, genlocks are notoriously difficult to kill, even by magic.
Alphas
In any group of genlocks, there is usually one who is dominant. As the tallest, strongest, and smartest of their kind, alphas serve as a sort of commander, directing or bullying the others in combat.
Emissaries
The most intelligent of the alphas become gifted sorcerers, with many abilities akin to blood magics. These are the emissaries and they usually only appear during a Blights.
What the Blight does not destroy, it corrupts.
Any creature infected with the darkspawn taint that does not have the good fortune to die outright becomes a ghoul: a twisted shadow of itself.
The name originally comes from men--whether human, dwarven, or elven--who became tainted, usually while being held as a captive food source by the darkspawn. They would turn cannibal, preying on other captives, slaves to the will of the archdemon, driven mad by pain.
During a Blight, the corruption of the darkspawn spreads through the wilder areas of thedas and infects the animals found there. This produces grotesque, enraged bears called bereskarn as well as blight wolves.
Fortunately, ghouls rarely survive their corruption for long.
Once a crucial part of Orzammars defenses, golems have all but vanished as the secret to their manufacture was lost over a thousand years ago. What few golems remain are guarded closely by the Shaperate, brought out when the battle with the darkspawn grows desperate enough to risk their loss. No one now would sell a golem for any price, but in ancient times, dwarves sold many golems to the magister lords of Tevinter.
They are devastating weapons in war, living siege engines, capable of hurling boulders like a catapult or plowing through enemy lines like an earth quake.
No creature is more revered by the Dalish than the halla. No other animal has a god of its own. These white stags are much larger than ordinary deer, and the Dalish halla keepers carve their antlers as they grow, making them curve into intricate designs. In ancient times, these stags bore elven knights into combat, but since the fall of the Dales, they are used less as mounts and more to pull the aravels.
Taller than their genlock cousins, the hurlocks are roughly of human-size but are possessed of considerable strength and constitution. The shock troop of the darkspawns, a single berserking hurlock can often be a match for numerous opponents at once. They are known to adorn themselves with roughly-carved tattoos to keep track of their kills and deeds, though it is unknown whether or not there is a uniform standard to these markings.
Alphas
Alphas hurlocks are more intelligent and more skilled fighters, often serving as commanders or even generals.
Emissaries
Hurlock emissaries have also been known to appear during a Blight. These darkspawn are the only ones recorded as being capable of human speech and are often capable of employing magic.
Dogs are an essential part of Fereldan culture, and no dog is more prized that the maribi. The breed is as old as myth, said to have been bred from the wolves who served Dane.Prized for their intelligence and loyalty, these dogs are more than mere weapons or status symbols: The hounds choose their masters, and pair with them for life. To be the master of a mabari anywhere in Ferelden is to be recognized instantly as a person of worth.
The mabari are an essential part of Fereldan military strategy. Trained hounds can easily pull knights from horseback or break lines of pikemen, and the sight and sound of a wave of war dogs, howling and snarling, has been known to cause panic among even the most hardened infantry soldiers.
"Hip deep in mad nugs.
Our screams deafen their keen ears.
We will be nug poop."
--From Songs That Only Nugs can Hear by Paragon Ebryan, 5:84 Exalted
The nug is an omnivore common to the Deep Road