Branka is a minor villain in Dragon Age Origins.
Overview[]
Branka rose to the status of Paragon a little over a year after her marriage to party member Oghren when she invented a smokeless coal that let the Smith caste increase their output by a third while at the same time decreased deaths from black-lung. This coal could burn in a cave without ventilation and thus was safer and easier for smiths to breathe and work with. As a result, Branka's family was elevated to Noble caste and all members of House Kondrat also voted in favor of being absorbed into the newly-founded noble House Branka. But that wasn't enough for her, she became obsessed with a lost Dwarven Artifact of Doom called the Anvil of the Void, to that end she went traipsing off into the Deep Roads with several hundred members of her household following her. She willingly allows the her entire convoy to be taken by the darkspawn, leading to the men being slaughtered and eaten while the women were repeatedly raped and violated by the darkspawn and force fed the flesh of their families, resulting in them turning into Clotho-esque monstrosities known as Broodmothers. Branka didn't just allow this to happen to her friends and family (and her lover) -- she engineered it because the Broodmothers produce an endless supply of darkspawn, which she uses to test the traps around the Anvil. When you finally meet her, she actually complains that members of her household begged for death and claims that they had no right to protest her decision. At the end of the level the party find the Anvil, and its creator Caridin. he wants to destroy it because creating Golems is a horrific process that involves locking someone in an iron suit, pouring liquid Lyrium (a magical metal) into the suit, and continuing until the screaming stops. Unsurprisingly Brank doesn't care one bit, she still wants the anvil leading to her fighting the party and gets a well deserved death.