(continuing speculation from the "Favorite Companion" thread)(I do not know if the Old God's soul "kills" the soul of the one-day-old unborn baby - that confuses me. But it seems that it's the developers intent to make us believe there's only one soul involved: a soul of an Old God; and an one-day-old child does not have a soul - in that world, at least).
Well, I'm not going to gross out anyone with the details, but from what I know of physiology, there's even a good chance that there would be no "baby" to speak of (it can take from 12 hours to 3 days for the whole migration and fertilization process to take place), which kind of puts the whole ritual into question, in my opinion... And that's from a purely biological point of view, because we could argue til trumpets sound and angels sing about whether or not a two-cell embryo has a soul or not.
To me Morrigan's deal seems rather noble: it is, in fact, saving a soul. Saving a soul of an Old God. An Old God may decide to become a great healer or a great villain - it would, however, be his choice.
I was under the impression, from the Codex and the explanations from other characters, that the Old Gods themselves are not tainted - but they become corrupt the instant the darkspawn find them, as the Old Gods, even uncorrupted, call to the darkspawn, given how intimately the Old Gods and darkspawn are connected.
Presumably, if all the Old Gods are destroyed, the darkspawn will be defeated, or at least forever crippled (I think... depends on what all we learn in Awakening). The price to destroy an Old God is the willing sacrifice of a tainted soul. Grey Wardens are supposed to leave their names and lives behind when they become Grey Wardens - they are not supposed to do things like marry a king or queen. From the beginning, a Grey Warden's life is sacrifice. To attempt to escape that obligation and necessity is cowardice and selfishness - and it's as merciful an end as a Grey Warden could ask for, especially for a woman.
Funny how a single act can be perceived completely differently by different people, that's what I love about these kinds of debates. As for the Old Gods, I completely agree that we're talking about corrupted Old Gods, in the sense that they're not the original Old Gods, and that those gods may very well have been your run-of-the-mill gods, if we can call them thus (all I'm saying is that they weren't necessarily good or evil to start out). The point I was trying to make is that if you account for one corrupted Old God per Blight, and assume that the archdemon was dispatched in the traditional way, well, that would still leave for two more potential archdemon lying dormant somewhere in the Deep Roads, which would leave room for two sequels, one per Blight. But like I said, I'm also waiting to see what Awakening and other expansions will bring, as they will probably bring us more answers to our questions.
Then again, perhaps the folks at Bioware haven't started plotting out the sequels...
Edited by Eleima, 19 January 2010 - 02:01 PM.
