Penny Arcade Creates a Dragon Age II Item and Motion Comic

BioWare and Penny Arcade have resumed their collaborative efforts for Dragon Age II, the result of which is a magical belt called Hindsight with quite the backstory and a two-and-a-half minute full motion comic that covers it appropriately.

There are more famous swords than you could count, there are helms beyond numbering, and there are breastplates, daggers, and even mystical footwear that roll immediately off the tongue. There are storied rings, gloves, and even bags invoked around a camp’s common fire. But belts? There are very few noteworthy belts.

It was here that the dwarf Thaulid Hammerspur decided he would make his mark. Here, he thought, between the tunic and the trousers, I will stake my claim.

He was familiar with the state of the art, of course; as an artificer making a name for himself in Orzimmar, he had access to the typically robust record-keeping of the forges. He knew of the Drunkard’s Cinch and the Pouchpaw. But there was no poetry to them, no lineage. They were parlor tricks, the domain of hawkers and pawns. He wanted a belt whose buckle gleamed with purpose, but what purpose? He worked on it from time to time, waiting for inspiration to strike. In the meantime, he needed something to keep his pants above the knee; he might as well wear the damned thing.

And he did so, until (after an especially memorable night at Tapster’s Tavern) he managed to fall into his own forge. Shoveling out his remains, they found among the grey ashes his belt, somehow mercifully preserved.

Hindsight is a belt possessed of a strange, slow intellect. Whatever would have killed the wearer, does. At that very moment, the belt develops a resistance that would have saved them. No one knows how Thaulid managed this, and at this point, it would be difficult to ask him. When the belt is held in the light just so, the leather reveals a grisly catalogue, etched in glinting lyrium:

“Thaulid Hammerspur, fire.
Gorgut The Wizened, poison.
Vil Arak, stabbed forty-three times.
Haliath Baronet, witches.”

It went on like this for many years, until it fell into your possession. Your temporary, temporary possession.