Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The author seems to have made a point of investing much of the massive word count into both arranging situations of awesome, as well as put them in words in such ways that they aren't easily dismissed once read. The tale being so long, characters should probably be getting their own section.

  • Raonar Aeducan, the dwarven noble protagonist understandably has quite a few.
    • The first would be how, once he learned about Faren Brosca's existence and predicament by half-accident, he gave up on joining his own Glory Proving in favor of investigating 'the brand's' whereabouts, after which he ditches his escorts (shiny ceremonial plate armor and everything), goes to Dust Town with just Gorim to help him, deliberately lets himself be accosted in a back alley by a gang of carta thugs in order to beat the crap out of them and milk the information on the Carta. Soon after, he and Gorim break into the tunnels and, after some fighting, manage to find the cells and spring the guy out. Granted, given the occasion of his feast, and the massive trading going on in the commons, most of the Carta thugs were out thieving and extracting protection at the time, so their resistance wasn't overly great, but still.
    • The way he reacts when Bhelen tries to play him against Trian. Basically, he sees through everything (well, he;d always know of Bhelen;s little ploy) and acts as though he's going to kill Trian, but then, once Bhelen is gone, he heads over to the throne room, practically kicks everyone out (verbally anyway) except King Endrin and Trian (this includes all the remaining nobles and freaking Duncan) then proceeds to lay everything on the table and, after Trian snaps at him and everything is said and done, walks out dramatically, saying that he's going to protect his people "even from their own folly" even if they cast him out and revile him. Not so coincidentally, that's exactly what they do the very next day. All According to Plan, even though it sucked to be him.
    • The way he goes about the expedition. Throughout it all, after failing, as expected, to get Endrin to see reason, he strong-arms him into giving him Baizyl Harrowmont as an officer in his troops. He then proceeds to lead the men through a spider attack, darkspawn and even an ambush planned by a traitor house (where they were outnumbered 2 to 1), with no casualties. His performance was good enough that the men decide to stand by him against his own wishes when he decides to screw the search for the Shield of Aeducan in order to go pull Trian's ass out of the fire. Again.
    • His Big Damn Heroes moment that Trian didn't realize he needed until after Vartag Gavorn tried to literally Backstab him. They end up fighting an army of mercenaries immediately afterwards.
    • Stabbing Trian. True, it's an instant WTF moment when it happens, but its CMOA nature becomes evident at the end of the next chapter, when you realize it was not fatal and actually part of his plan to fake Trian's death, whether he likes it or not. Gorim's death is faked too.
    • Chapter 06. In the following order, he puts Trian out of commission, blackmails Frandlin Ivo into working for him, is baffled at how easily Gorim agrees to "die" along with Trian, sets up their forged death scene by incinerating some of their attackers' corpses (after putting Trian's and Gorim's armors on two of them) with a fire bomb he had saved for just that occasion (thus disfiguring them and ensuring that identification would come hard) and gives Frandlin a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, thus securing his undying loyalty by openly telling him he isn't going to act on any of his earlier threats, since he's not Bhelen. And it's later heavily implied that he had other plans in place in case any of those were to fail, only one of which was revealing the fact that Trian was not dead at all.
      • Basically, he utterly Out-Gambitted Bhelen completely, and it was all mostly because he deliberately chooses to become a pariah, essentially performing an epic Zero-Approval Gambit, a move no one would even dream someone would be able and willing to take, especially in Orzammar.
    • In Ostagar, he plans for the "eventuality" that Loghain might betray them, after their nice heart to heart talk. This ultimately makes sure the treaties make it out of Ostagar. He also gets to know Cailan enough that he's given the key to his chest, enabling him to leave Ostagar with Maric's Blade and the correspondence between Cailan and Empress Celene of Orlais.
    • He survives alone in the Korcari Wilds for weeks.
    • He breaks out of his Fade dream, breaks everyone else out (with Alim's help) and, later, when the demon is beaten (by Faren), he sends him to Justice, the same one from Awakening, as a sentence.
    • He plans the most epic prank Thedas has ever seen, one that is carried out in chapter 34.
    • He goes toe to toe with the Archdemon, twice, on the psychic level. True, he loses both times (and has to be saved by Sten and or Alim and Leliana, via telepathy spells), but it's still after mindscape battles involving flying swords, scenery dicing, flight, blasts of force and pretty much any form of will manifestation he can think of to bash the dragon while trying to throw it out of his head. Like dropping spires on it.
    • After the first psychic problem starts, he let out his stored magic energy and uses Razor Wind to bisect a Hurlock Omega vertically. Said Razor Wind had, coincidentally, done something similar to an enemy that happened to be in the way.
    • He duels a Pride Demon alone. True, he loses, even after cheating like crazy (lures it into a trap field and collapses a building on top of it, with Alim's helpful trap wards, among other things), but he'd prepared for it.
  • Faren Brosca is the runner up for awesome moments.
    • He duels the protagonist on equal footing, even though he was dual wielding a sword and dagger, a weapon combination he isn't that used to (he usually employs dual daggers, chained together even). It should be mentioned that the DN was using a sword and shield, the same sort of getup he's used on every other occasion so far. And Faren had been in a cell for days and was probably starving. Yeah.
    • He has a Big Damn Heroes moment in chapter 4, when he turns out to be one of the Carta assassins sent after Trian and the others. He turns on them instantly (he'd planned to use them to find the guys, which he did), kills them all in about five seconds and then provides a healing potion to get the DN back to consciousness.
    • During the Ostagar battle, when all but Gwenith Cousland and Alistair are on the front lines, he throws two daggers into the eyes of the Ogre that was crushing Cailan to death. Yes, he threw the knives through pouring rain, when it was dark and they still perfectly whisked past the king's ears and into the monster's eye sockets. Too bad it's not enough to avert Doomed by Canon.
    • He uses a fairly flashy way to expose himself in the Lothering Tavern, when Gwen and Alistair get into a bar fight. He is not pleased with them, no sir.
    • When trapped in the Fade, even though he'd suffered the most horrible Mind Rape out of everyone and was more or less catatonic, still standing, when the protagonist came along, he curbstomps the sloth demon's strongest form, even though said demon had been, in turn, curbstomping everyone else at once up to that point.
    • After the Fade, he becomes more or less immune to magic, something that comes into play often.
    • During the Ferelden National Prank, he basically becomes a fusion of James Bond and Altaïr ibn La-Ahad(he even has wrist blades by this point). And, even as he scales walls, breaks into estates, jumps off or runs along said walls and from rooftop to rooftop, he wears the Dark Wolf's attire proudly (black cloak, headband/mask and scarf billowing magnificently in the air behind him).
    • He wins the Grand Proving in Orzammar, wearing the same Dark Wolf attire, and only at the end exposes himself, at which point he dedicates his win to the memory of the second son of the late King Endrin. Cue slack-jawed audience. Two of his fights are curbstomps too.
  • Alim Surana, since he's practically the strongest character in the story, has quite a few of his own too.
    • During the joining, he follows Raonar into the Fade and confronts two spirits in turn. One of them teaches him to fade shift into a Griffon. Yeah.
    • He does a few things before this, but his first real spotlight, and the one that he has yet to top, is his performance during the battle of Ostagar. On the frontlines with everyone else (only Alistair and Gwen went to the Tower of Ishal), just when things are about to get bad, Alim starts to use heavyweight blood magic. And the whole field was covered in fresh blood spilled by various men and creatures. The elf practically becomes a One-Man Army when he calls upon all of it, pushing back the horde by himself for a while. Granted, it doesn't ultimately get victory, but if a giant tornado of blood blades, the ground freezing or going into earthquakes all over the place, rains of blood needles and a blood griffon soaring above the battliefied and shooting volleys of sharp blood feathers everywhere, and roaring in tune with the thunder and lighting, isn't badass, I don't know what is. And it should be noted that a stupid human shoots the "malefikar" with an arrow through the back... which he shrugs off, heals from, and then sets aside in order to call upon the Thunderstorm of the Century. This was supposedly his attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice, since he was burning off his life force, but he didn't get off that easy because of certain factors. He's still alive after all.
    • He is too strong-willed and aware of things when the Sloth Demon pulls them into the Fade that he never ends up trapped in any nightmare at all.
    • When dealing with Connor, he exorcizes him by impersonating the Grim Reaper when executing the desire demon tormenting him. He had the whole getup, black robes and hood that let just his emerald eyes gleam balefully, black clothes smoldering and tattered by the fight, and an energy scythe he created out of fade stuff.
    • Pretty much everything else he does in any fight after that, although his real next spotlight was in the Deep Roads, when fighting the Rock Wraith that the Fade Beast Pride Demon turned into. He throws lots of spells around, but uses his ethereal scythe and the power of an orb made out of the demon's own blood to defeat the thing.
    • The way he manages to contact two certain parties in order to gain the power and knowledge to save the protagonist from his Heroic RROD episodes no doubt qualify.