ongaku88:

TUK: Do Grey Wardens still do the Calling, now that they know about Broodmothers? That was a really terrifying revelation in the first game “Oh my god, any women who are down here in the Deep Roads get taken off to spawn horrible monsters!”

DG: They always knew about Broodmothers, but they didn’t know where Broodmothers came from. Knowing that…wow, I hadn’t really considered whether they’d stop doing the Calling. I think if anything it makes it more problematic for female Wardens to do the Calling. That may be something we could incorporate into the future. It’d be an interesting question. Let’s say a female Grey Warden starts to hear her Calling and says “Well, my time has come” and the rest of the Wardens say no, you can’t go. You’re a woman. You don’t deserve to take part in what has been long, for many centuries, held as an honorable tradition, as a way for the Grey Wardens to go out in a way where they retain…I don’t know if you read The Calling, the novel. The reason they do the Calling is because there’s a tipping point at which the corruption in them starts to affect them physically, so rather than become some kind of ghoul they want to die while they still have their humanity, doing what they’ve spent the majority of their life dedicated to, killing darkspawn, one last hurrah. To go to a woman and say “No, you can’t have this honorable ending because of what might happen to you.” I think that would be an interesting story. I think in the end it might be up to the individual Warden. I could definitely see a female Warden who would rather kill herself than allow for the possibility that she could be transformed into a Broodmother.

TUK: Yeah, lots of women nodding in this room…

DG: That might be something we could bring up in the future, for sure.

I rushed through my Origins playthrough so I hadn’t even considered this.  I am both curious and horrified.

I SUDDENLY FEEL SO VINDICATED IN MY HEADCANON.

Although frankly, I think they’d be like “Soooo you know the broodmothers… yeah, this is where they come from… yeaaaaah… if you still want to do that…” And not “btws, you can’t do this.”

See, this is why Elissa doesn’t want to go back to the Deep Roads for her Calling, this right here. Who knows - maybe a female Grey Warden is twisted up inside from the taint, and so she’d be a bit different as a Broodmother, too (though I doubt that, it’s just rampant speculation and epileptic trees), and then you’d have SUPERSPAWN. :| Who wants that?