Dragon Age 2
Hawke is the player-controlled protagonist of Dragon Age II. Hawke can be a mage, warrior or rogue. The default given name for Hawke is Garrett for a male, and Marian for a female.
Hawke was born around 9:06-9:07 Dragon in a small village near Amaranthine. Hawke’s father Malcolm was an apostate mage who died three years before the beginning of the game, while their mother Leandra Amell is a noble from Kirkwall. Hawke has two younger twin siblings—the mage Bethany and the warrior Carver—who are mutually exclusive potential companions.
The family was forced to move to Lothering when Bethany’s magic manifested when she was nine. They’d been living in Lothering for ten years when the Fifth Blight started in Ferelden. If Hawke is a warrior or rogue, they enlisted into King Cailan’s army and fought during the Battle of Ostagar. If Hawke is a mage, they stayed in Lothering to safeguard Leandra and Bethany. After the defeat at Ostagar, the family escaped the darkspawn attack by fleeing north to the Free Marches.
In 9:30 Dragon, the Fifth Blight has just begun and, following their victory at Ostagar, the darkspawn fall upon the village of Lothering. The Hawke family is among the last to escape alive. Hawke’s mother Leandra suggests that they flee to Kirkwall, where her younger brother Gamlen holds the Amell estate. On the road they stumble into Aveline and her templar husband, Wesley, also survivors of the massacre. During their escape, they run into further bands of darkspawn. Though the party defeats many of these creatures, victory comes at a cruel price: Aveline’s husband contracts the darkspawn taint and one of Hawke’s siblings is slain by an ogre. Surrounded by darkspawn and on the verge of death, Hawke’s party is rescued by an attacking high dragon. The dragon turns out to be Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds. Flemeth offers them safe passage to Gwaren in exchange for a favor. Hawke has no choice but to agree.
Hawke’s party boards a ship to Kirkwall but finds that the city is filled with an influx of Fereldan refugees, all fleeing the Blight. The city guard has been turning them away and banning them from the city. Worse, they discover that Gamlen has gambled away the Amell estate and fortune. Gamlen has contacts who bribe Hawke’s party into the city, but only if they agree to work off a tremendous debt as indentured servants. Hawke has no choice but to agree to be under the contact’s employ.
One year later, Hawke has managed to work off the debt but still lacks the funds needed to properly care for the entire family. Hawke is persuaded by an associate, Varric, to become a business partner in his and Bartrand’s Deep Roads Expedition. Though Bartrand betrays both Hawke and Varric during the expedition, the treasures found within the Deep Roads have brought Hawke both fame and fortune. However, if Hawke’s surviving sibling accompanied Hawke into the Deep Roads, he/she was tainted by the Blight. If accompanied by Anders, the sibling can be offered a choice: death or joining the Grey Wardens. If the sibling did not accompany Hawke into the Deep Roads then the surviving sibling will either be inducted into the Circle of Magi or the templars depending on the sibling’s class.
Three years later, Hawke’s status in Kirkwall has improved substantially since they assumed their role as scion of the aggrandized Amell family. Hawke is asked by the templar Emeric to investigate the mystery of the missing women in Kirkwall. Hawke’s mother, Leandra, is abducted by the white-lily serial killer while on her way to visit Gamlen. Following the killer’s trail, Hawke finds that Leandra has been murdered and pieced together with parts of other women. Her killer and the instigator of all the serial killings is a blood mage named Quentin. Keeping Leandra alive with his magic, Quentin aspires to recreate the image of his dead wife. Hawke battles Quentin and his demon and undead forces. After Quentin dies, Leandra also dies. Her last words are to tell Hawke how proud she is of them. Hawke mourns the loss of their mother while being comforted by friends.
Tensions between the Qunari, who have been stranded in Kirkwall for several years and refuse to leave without their missing relic, and the city’s denizens have also been escalating. Hawke has been asked to intervene with Qunari affairs several times but the discord reaches a boiling point when Aveline, now captain of the guard, enlists Hawke’s aid in trying to arrest some criminal elves who have been granted religious sanctuary in the Qunari Compound. The Arishok, who has had to endure a series of provocations from Kirkwall’s anti-Qunari sect, takes a final offense to the attempted arrest of his new converts and counterattacks; marshaling his forces to conquer the city and convert it to the Qun. Hawke is able to rally the templars and Circle mages and fight back against the Qunari. They reach the Viscount’s Keep where Hawke either defeats the Arishok or is able to bargain with him to leave the city peacefully. Having saved the city, Hawke is crowned the new Champion of Kirkwall.
Another three years pass. Knight-Commander Meredith has taken control of the city and prevented the election of a new viscount. Meredith’s stance against the mages has become harsher and much more cruel. After several more mages escape the Circle, Meredith orders more raids, crackdowns, and unwarranted incarcerations. Meanwhile, tales of insurrection from the Mage Underground have become more frequent but have steadily declined to the point of almost utter annihilation due to Meredith’s harsh tactics. First Enchanter Orsino accuses Meredith of being a tyrant and urges the citizens of Kirkwall to revolt against her. The citizens of Kirkwall look to Hawke to keep the peace between the Templars and the Circle. Meanwhile, Hawke is also requested to protect the city from maleficarum. After one of their loved ones is kidnapped by insurgents, Hawke becomes embroiled in a conflict with rebel mage-templar conspirators seeking to overthrow Meredith.
Things reach a boiling point when Anders blows up the Kirkwall Chantry in order to remove the chance of peaceful compromise. Meredith immediately orders the Right of Annulment and demands that the Champion stand with her and her templars in executing every mage in the city. First Enchanter Orsino pleads with the Champion to defend them against the templars, citing that the Circle had nothing to do with the attack on the Chantry. Hawke will have to choose to support either First Enchanter Orsino and the mage cause, or the knight-commander and her templars.
The final battle ends in the Gallows. Desperate to defeat the knight-commander’s forces, Orsino uses Blood Magic to become a harvester. Meredith, driven insane and paranoid by her Red Lyrium-forged sword, also turns on Hawke. Both are eventually defeated by Hawke.
The Champion supports templars in exterminating the mage threat. Gaining the respect of the Order, Hawke is appointed the new Viscount of Kirkwall. Hawke’s name becomes a reminder of templar oppression for mages everywhere.
Varric later recalls that Hawke has mysteriously disappeared. Hawke’s whereabouts are currently unknown, but Varric doubts that Hawke is dead.
Between 9:31 and 9:37 Dragon, Hawke enters a secret Warden prison in the Vimmark Mountains searching for a sect of the Carta who are after “the blood of the Hawke”. After investigating the deranged Carta members, Hawke and company discover that they sought to bring Hawke’s blood to a creature called Corypheus in order to wake him from slumber. After getting to the bowels of the prison, Hawke chooses a side between two Grey Wardens: Janeka or Larius. Janeka wants to control Corypheus and Larius believes he should be destroyed. Corypheus proves too powerful and Hawke is forced to destroy him regardless. The Seekers of Truth attempt to investigate some time later, but the prison has been destroyed and they are turned away by Grey Wardens
Between 9:31 and 9:37 Dragon, Hawke also joins a mysterious elf assassin, Tallis, in infiltrating Chateau Haine and stealing a precious relic. Hawke and party take part in a traditional Orlesian wyvern hunt, after which they fail an attempt at stealing the relic and are captured. Tallis then reveals the truth about the relic The Heart of the Many. After escaping, Hawke chooses between helping Tallis pursue the relic or not. Their undertaking leads to a fight with Tal-Vashoth and Duke Prosper de Montfort which ends in Montfort’s death. Though his death at Hawke’s hands would have normally warranted retribution from Orlais, Prosper’s dealings with the Tal-Vashoth against the Qunari, if revealed, would have embroiled Orlais in an impolitic scandal. Hawke then lets Tallis leave with the true prize or can try to stop her. At some point after returning to the Hawke Estate, Hawke writes a journal passage regarding their relationship with Tallis and whether they’ll meet again.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Eventually, Hawke contacted Stroud, Alistair, or Loghain Mac Tir to help with the investigation into Red Lyrium. However, the Grey Warden contact was concerned about corruption in the Grey Warden ranks and went into hiding.
After Corypheus’ identity as the Elder One is revealed, Hawke is contacted by Varric, who introduces them to the Inquisitor. After answering the Inquisitor’s questions about Corypheus and how he may be related to missing Grey Wardens, Hawke and the Inquisitor rendezvous with the Warden contact in a smuggler’s cave in Crestwood to see what his investigation uncovered.
The Warden contact explains that he was investigating whether Corypheus could have survived fatal wounds just like an Archdemon can. When every Grey Warden in Orlais began to hear the Calling, the Warden contact suspected that Coreypheus was the cause. Believing that their end is near, Warden-Commander Clarel planned on using a blood magic ritual that would end all Blights before they all perished. The Warden contact was branded a traitor for protesting Clarel’s plan and went into hiding. The Warden contact, Hawke, and the Inquisitor scout the ancient Tevinter ritual tower in the Western Approach to investigate a Grey Warden congregation.
At the tower, the party witnesses Grey Warden mages sacrificing their fellow Wardens to summon demons. They are being led by Lord Livius Erimond, a Venatori Magister who convinced Clarel to use his blood magic techniques to raise a demon army to invade the Deep Roads and kill the Old Gods before they wake. The demon binding rituals Erimond taught the Grey Warden mages, however, has the side effect of enslaving them to Corypheus, who will use them and their army of demon to conquer Thedas. Erimond escapes to Adamant Fortress while the Inquisitor’s party confronts the enslaved Wardens of the tower.
Hawke and the Warden contact join the Inquisition as they lay siege to Adamant Fortress. They confront Erimond and Clarel about the truth of the demon binding ritual and attempt to sway the Wardens against Erimond. When Erimond summons Corypheus’ dragon to deal with the Inquisition, Clarel has a change of heart and attacks both Erimond and the dragon. After dealing with the other Wardens, the Inquisition pursues Clarel. She inflicts her wrath on Erimond but is fatally wounded by the dragon. Clarel’s last act is casting a spell that subdues the dragon, but its crash causes the ground beneath them to crumble, resulting in the party falling off the ramparts. The Inquisitor uses their mark to open a rift that takes them all physically into the Fade.
The Inquisitor finds a spirit that poses as Divine Justinia V who briefs the Inquisitor that they are in the realm of a Nightmare demon and that the Inquisitor must recover the memories it took from them. As the Inquisitor recovers these memories, they remember how the mortal Divine was bound by Grey Warden mages and sacrificed to power an orb—an orb which the Inquisitor picked up and which gave them the mark— and how the spirit in the Divine’s form was the one who led the Inquisitor out of the Fade after the creation of the Breach. Once Hawke realizes that the Grey Wardens had a hand in sacrificing the Divine to further Corypheus’ schemes, they become incensed and accuse the Grey Wardens of being out of control and needing to be checked. The Warden contact is defensive, argues that the Wardens were most likely mind controlled by Corypheus and that Hawke themself has caused much chaos by causing the mage rebellion.
Hawke makes this sacrifice to atone for freeing Corypheus.
The spirit leads the Inquisitor’s party to a rift but the Nightmare is preventing their escape. The spirit sacrifices itself to weaken the Nightmare, and the Inquisitor’s party defeats the Aspect of the Nightmare blocking their escape. Hawke stays behind to distract the Nightmare for the party to leave. Hawke makes this sacrifice to atone for freeing Corypheus.