On Leandra's Last Words
Warnings: discussion of the events of "All That Remains" in DA2, including murder, gore, body horror, and the death of a parent.
So, in the past year I've played Dragon Age II, uh… four times, and in the hindsight of Inquisition, something about a certain quest stands out to me.
In the Act II main quest "All That Remains," the protagonist's mother Leandra Hawke is murdered by a serial killer, a man named Quentin who targets women with features resembling his late wife over the course of several years, and attempts to use blood magic to stitch their dismembered body parts together to recreate her. Leandra's face is the final piece, and poor Hawke has to see their mother's head with another women's eyes attached to this re-animated Frankenstein's monster. Quentin's death breaks the spell, and Leandra dies in Hawke's arms. Before she dies, Leandra comforts Hawke, telling them that she'll get to see their dead father and sibling again, and that she is proud of them.
How exactly Quentin performs this gruesome ritual isn't detailed, and for story purposes, we do not need to know. We know that he uses blood magic, that he calls demons to possess the bodies of the murdered women. This is likely how he is able to reanimate the patchwork body he reconstructs. In the battle that ensues, Hawke and their party have to kill three desire demons called "Possession of Alessa," "Possession of Ninette," and "Possession of Leandra."
What matters for the purposes of the game is that what Quentin does is unusual but basically plausible within the parameters of the universe, and a gruesome example of the more sinister capabilities of magic.
