Character Oghren
Race:	Dwarf
Gender:	Male
Class:	Warrior
Specialization:	Berserker
Quests:	Oghren's Old Flame Oghren the Family Man
Family:	Branka (Estranged wife) Felsi (Wife) Oghren's child
Voice:	Steve Blum
Appearances:	Dragon Age: Origins Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Dragon Age II (mentioned) Dragon Age: Asunder (mentioned)

Oghren is a crude dwarven berserker fond of all things alcoholic. He is a companion to the Warden in Dragon Age: Origins and a possible one in Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening.

Background Edit

Oghren used to be one of the best warriors of his generation and member of House Kondrat in Orzammar. He married a smith caste girl named Branka, who would later become a Paragon. Soon after founding House Branka it absorbed the entire House Kondrat. Branka soon took her household, with the sole exception of her husband, into the Deep Roads in search of the secrets of the legendary smith Caridin. They were not heard from again. Oghren, left behind, became a laughing stock. He started drinking, making his situation worse as one day the youngest son of Lord Meino mentioned that it is impossible for Branka and her house to have survived for that long in the Deep Roads. Oghren considered this as an insult to the Paragon and challenged his honor and killed him in a first-blood match while drunk. Oghren was stripped of his house name and barred from bearing weapons within the city, a punishment considered worse than exile for a warrior. Oghren has spent the last two years trying to convince the Assembly, or anyone else who will listen to him, to look for Branka in the Deep Roads.^[1]

Involvement Edit

Dragon Age: Origins Edit

Click here to reveal spoilers for Dragon Age: Origins.

After the Warden has spoken to either Bhelen or Harrowmont's representatives and given a task, Oghren appears, arguing with Loilinar Ivo in the entrance of the Diamond Quarter. Loilinar can be questioned about Oghren and Branka after Oghren leaves. He can be found again at Tapster's Tavern in the Orzammar Commons. The Warden can talk to him there, and learn more about Branka. However, he is aware that the Warden is working for one of the candidates for the throne, which makes him think that any concern expressed about Branka is not genuine. If the Warden attempts to talk to Oghren at Tapster's again, no matter how the conversation is structured, Oghren will tell the Warden to "sod off".

Note: If Oghren does not appear at the Tapster's tavern, he will approach the party when trying to venture forth into the Deep Roads volunteering to help find Branka.

Oghren will only become a member of the party when the Warden is sent into the Deep Roads by Bhelen or Harrowmont to find Branka and secure her support for their ascension to the throne. He can leave Orzammar and the Deep Roads at this point, but he will not talk until A Paragon of Her Kind has been completed.

He is eager to reunite with his wife, but when the truth is revealed, he is shocked at what she has done in her quest for the Anvil of the Void, including causing the death of most of her House. Yet, despite this he is willing to offer her a second chance, and he disapproves if the Warden chooses to side with Caridin and destroy the Anvil. After a new king has been chosen, Oghren then throws his lot in with that of the Warden's and leaves Orzammar to help fight the Blight.

Once Oghren's approval is high enough, he can teach the warrior specialization, Berserker.

Dragon Age: Awakening Edit

“I do not seek to rule my brethren. I only seek to release them from their chains.” — The Architect This article contains spoilers for Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. Click here to reveal them.

After the archdemon was defeated, Oghren settled down with his old flame Felsi and had a child. Those who know him say that he was truly happy, at least for a time. But Oghren is a warrior born and bred, and, as he is fond of saying, "you can take a warrior out of the fight, but you can never take the fight out of the warrior". Oghren is now eager to become a Grey Warden. Should he be put through the Joining he will survive to become one. Eventually Felsi will return and ask about what he intends to do with his family. Once his approval is high enough, he will talk to the Warden-Commander about his feelings and he can be persuaded to take a more active role or not.

The Darkspawn Chronicles Edit

“A human lord hunts us, Vanguard. Show him what we know of death.” — The Archdemon This article contains spoilers for Darkspawn Chronicles. Click here to reveal them.

In The Darkspawn Chronicles campaign, Oghren—like the other heroes—appears as a boss, and will be encountered in the Denerim Market District. He differs little from his role in Origins and Awakening, using a two handed maul to crush the darkspawn along with a small entourage of drunkards. Killing him results in the continuation of the campaign. You can also loot the Forge Master's Hammer from his corpse, which makes a fine weapon for a Hurlock Thrall trained in the usage of two-handed arms.

Quests Edit

Origins

Awakening

Gifts Edit

Dragon Age: Origins Edit

Oghren's approval will increase when you give him any alcohol, especially Ale. The one exception is Wine, which is preferred by Wynne.

Name	Notes	Description
Ale	Located: Sold by Bartenders	A mug of watered-down ale.
Alley King's Flagon	Located: Orzammar Commons	A monument to the pot-valiant in appropriately hammered gold. Lack of lid allows for a quick pour and, more importantly, refill. Never a stale brew when you facilitate swift consumption.
Chasind Sack Mead	Located: Ruined Temple	A brutishly strong honey liquor, reminiscent of warm summer days, apple blossoms on the wind with an unexpected aftertaste of father going off to war, never to return. Bitter, to say the least.
Garbolg's Backcountry Reserve	Found by Dog	Likely dropped to avoid seizure by authorities, or because of seizure due to drinking it. Garbolg only brewed from 8:74 to 8:92 Blessed, killed when the vapors in his beard spontaneously combusted.
Golden Scythe 4:90 Black	Located: Lothering	This battlefield spirit maintains a chill even in direct sunlight, which it appears to absorb. Optimal serving is by the drop. Contact with exposed flesh is discouraged, but likely inevitable.
Legacy White Shear	Located: East Brecilian Forest	Peculiar and rare, a single run of this spirit took color and what has been optimistically been called flavor from lyrium in the cask's bilge hoop. A sipping whisky if you value your innards. Circa 790 T.E.
Sun Blonde Vint-1	Located: Circle Tower	Tevinter-brewed for a very discreet clientèle, and strong enough to fluster a tranquil. An almost weightless spirit best served with a powdering of catsbane as a flavor-enhancer and antidote.
Wilhelm's Special Brew	Located: Honnleath Requires: The Stone Prisoner	This dark-colored ale gives off a thick, oaky smell. Swirling it in the tankard, you notice it takes on an unexpected glow.

Dragon Age: Awakening Edit

Oghren continues to enjoy alcoholic gifts in the Awakening expansion.

Name	Notes	Description
Aqua Magus	Located: City of Amaranthine - Abandoned Warehouse	Fine spirits infused with a bit of refined lyrium. Potentially fatal if ingested in quantity.
"Dragon Piss"	Located: Amaranthine - Hubert's Den	The name is probably figurative, but no one knows for sure.
Hirol's Lava Burst	Located:Knotwood Hills	"It tastes like burning." Brewed exclusively in Kal'Hirol.
Mackay's Epic Single Malt	Located: City of Amaranthine	This whiskey is older than the Maker and smoother than elven baby-butt.
Toy Horse	Located: Blackmarsh Plot Item	A child might appreciate the simple toy.
West Hill Brandy	Located: Vigil's Keep	Notes of blackcurrant with a honeysuckle finish. Also, tastes like brandy.

Bug! If you export a character from Origins, the game remembers the number of gifts you gave Oghren during the Origins campaign, even though his approval is reset when he is recruited. This means that the initial gifts given to him during Awakening will already suffer from the diminishing returns on approval gain based on number of gifts given.

Initial statistics Edit

Relative attribute weightings on auto-level: strength 1.4, dexterity 0.25

Class: Warrior

Specialization: Berserker

Starting talents:

• Warrior: Powerful, Threaten, Bravery, Death Blow

• Berserker: Berserk, Resilience, Constraint

• Two-Handed: Pommel Strike, Indomitable, Stunning Blows, Sunder Arms, Shattering Blows, Sunder Armor, Mighty Blow, Powerful Swings, Two-Handed Strength, Two-Handed Sweep

Bug! When Oghren is imported into Awakening, his statistics are reset and repopulated with new defaults, regardless of your decisions and specializations in Origins. Note: if you played as a mage in Origins and had Oghren read the warrior/rogue Tomes in Origins, those attribute, skill, and talent points will be wasted in Awakening. If you want Oghren to use those tomes, you must hold them until Awakening.

Gear Edit

Initial gear (Origins) Edit

Initial gear (Awakening) Edit

Darkspawn Ravager

---

Battleaxe
Silverite (Tier 6)
Requires: 34 strength

Damage: 15.00
Critical chance: 4.50%
Armor penetration: 5.25
Strength modifier: 1.10

+2% melee critical chance
+4 attack
+10 damage vs. darkspawn

Armor of the Legion

---

Massive chestpiece
Dragonbone (Tier 7)
Requires: 42 strength

Armor: 21.88
Fatigue: 27.30%

+3 willpower

Oghren specific gear Edit

Plot skills Edit

As you befriend Oghren and gain his approval, he will gain additional skills:

Dialogue points Edit

For an approval guide, see Oghren/Approval.

Below are the spots where you can initiate dialogue with Oghren in Awakening. On the PC version, it can be hard to find the correct spot to click; make sure to hit "tab" and rotate the camera if it's not letting you click on it. Within Vigil's keep, if dialogue doesn't initiate when clicking on Oghren, try clicking the cask behind him.

• City of Amaranthine: Billboard by the stairs to the Chantry.
• City of Amaranthine: The table of the weapon-smith in the market district (when talking to Sigrun).
• Kal'Hirol - Trade Quarter: The anvil in the prison room.
• Kal'Hirol: Cliff by the entrance of the Thaig, just if Sigrun not joined the party.
• The Blackmarsh Undying: boat in the area you wake up in. There is an alternative dialogue if the Warden is imported and Oghren was trapped in the Fade in the Circle of Magi.
• Vigil's Keep: The cask behind Oghren in the throne room, which can be used to initiate several conversations.

Quotes Edit

Main article: Oghren/Dialogue

Dragon Age: Origins Edit

• "If you've ever heard of me before, it's probably all been about how I piss ale and murder little boys who look at me wrong. And that's mostly true..."
• "Misery, vomit and malt liquor. Ah, reminds me of home."
• "This is it, Warden. 'When from the blood of battle the Stone has fed, let the heroes prevail and the blighters lie dead.' As one of the blighters, I sodding salute you. Let us show them our hearts, and then show them theirs."
• "Upset? *Scoffs* I don't get upset, I get drunk!"
• "By the tits of my ancestors!"
• "Shave my back and call me an elf!"
• "That pot-bellied son-of-a-whore Teagan said I can't drink a whole barrel of pickle juice without passing out first. I aim to prove him wrong."
• "Fart me a lullaby!"
• "Aye. I've tried twenty-seven different types of ale and learned I'm just the right height to give a human girl a good time. That doesn't make me a good person." (Dialogue at camp)
• "My family is dead, my honor as a warrior long gone. I've lost my caste and my house and I have nothing else to lose. "
• "I wish people wanted to share me more often. Especially the ladies. I want more ladies to share me."

Dragon Age: Awakening Edit

• "Hey, look at me - I'm an elf! 'Trees are pretty! Tra-la-la!' "
• "Aye. I've tried twenty-seven different types of ale and learned I'm just the right height to give a human girl a good time. That doesn't make me a good man."
• "No one touches Oghren's junk and lives!"
• "Well paint me green and call me a turnip!"
• (Upon seeing the Mother) "That's a lot of nipples."

Bugs Edit

• Infinite approval exploit: Take Oghren with you when you are confronting Dwyn before the The Attack at Nightfall. When trying to persuade Dwyn to fight for the village, choose "You're a coward," followed by "Stay in here, then, if you prefer." This will end the conversation, and you can start it again as many times as needed. Oghren will gain (+1) .
• If you have used the console command runscript selectparty before meeting Oghren for the first time in the Orzammar Diamond Quarter, he will not spawn at Tapster's Tavern and will be missing for the rest of the game. To fix this, go to Tapster's (preferably after acquiring the quest A Paragon of Her Kind), leave, and then enter runscript selectparty into the console again. Oghren should appear on the screen and remain there from that point on.

Trivia Edit

• Oghren was mostly written by Jay Turner, but Sheryl Chee also had a hand in writing him.^[2] Mary Kirby wrote his personal quest.^[3]
• Although Oghren is barred from bearing arms in the city, nothing happens if you equip him with weapons in Orzammar. He even joins your party with an axe equipped.
• Oghren's battle cry, "Let's see what your innards look like!", may be a reference to the dwarven companion of a very chaotic nature, Korgan Bloodaxe in the Bioware video game Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn who shouts "Let's see what yer guts be lookin' like!" during combat. Korgan is also a berserker and has an insatiable bloodlust. ^[4]
• When selected to defend the Keep in Awakening, his codex entry states he died when the darkspawn attacked. However with a fully upgraded Keep, the epilogue says he survived.
• Many of Zevran and Oghren's party banter include references to Legolas and Gimli from The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, Oghren's personality does sometimes appear to be similar to Gimli's in the movie.
• Oghren's reply, "No dwarf tossing!", when the Warden gives Shale the order to throw Oghren as far as Shale can, it is a reference to The Lord of the Rings movie by Peter Jackson, when Gimli claims, "No one tosses a dwarf!", which refers to the "sport" of dwarf tossing.
• The card game Diamondback mentioned in Oghren's conversation with Alistair is a reference to a game of the same name in Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark.
• Oghren's "Asschabs" was added as a joke between the writers of Dragon Age: Origins. David Gaider would, "[a]t least once or twice a week, [...] come in [their offices] groaning about having "chair butt", which is essentially when your butt goes numb from sitting in your chair for too long". Someone then coined the name "Association of Chair Butt Sufferers"; its abbreviation, ASSCHABS, was then written on their whiteboard. At that time, Jay Turner was writing Oghren, and the word "would be staring at him. So since it sounds like something Oghren would say, he decided to make Oghren say it, to make sure ASSCHABS was never forgotten."^[5]
• Oghren named his Child after the Warden.
• When he talks about his Child, he call it 'the Nugget'
• In a dialogue with the Warden he mentioned that he feels bad about leaving Felsi and the Child alone.
• In Dragon Age II, a painting of Oghren's concept art can be seen near the bar at the Hanged Man.

See also Edit

• Codex entry: Oghren

References Edit

1. ↑ Based on the discussion with Loilinar Ivo.
2. ↑ Kristjanson, Lukas (2012). "Ask-A-BioWare - Older game Q&A?" . BioWare Social Network. Retrieved on January 2, 2012.
3. ↑ Kirby, Mary (2010). "Writers of Dragon Age" . BioWare Social Network. Retrieved on January 2, 2013.
4. ↑ Baldur's Gate Wiki http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Korgan_Bloodaxe
5. ↑ Chee, Sheryl. "Asschabs?". 2009-11-11. Retrieved 2011-01-07.