Shale

"The darkspawn are an evil that must be destroyed, it's true. Though not as evil as the birds... damnable feathered fiends!"

Shale is a stone golem and potential companion in Dragon Age: Origins. It can be recruited from the town of Honnleath through The Stone Prisoner DLC.

Background
Shale is one of the war golems created by Paragon Caridin to defend the dwarven thaigs against the darkspawn during the First Blight. As such, it has been a golem for almost 1000 years. However, Shale seems able to remember only the events of approximately the last 30 years, and its knowledge of what it did prior to that is mainly based on what it has heard from others.



Eventually, in the latter part of the Blessed Age, a deactivated Shale and its control rod were found by Wilhelm, a mage who was exploring various abandoned thaigs in the Deep Roads. Wilhelm reactivated the golem and, for many years, used it to his own ends: Shale became an object of study, a trophy, and a weapon during the Fereldan Rebellion, for both Moira Theirin's and later Maric Theirin's rebel forces.

After the war, Wilhelm settled in the village of Honnleath, taking Shale with him and continuing his study of the golem. While under Wilhelm's control, Shale was experimented on, paraded around the village like a pet, and even chiseled down to a smaller size so that it might more easily fit through the doorways in Wilhelm’s home.

Wilhelm was eventually found dead outside his tower, with a deactivated Shale standing frozen over his body. Though there were no witnesses to the event, Shale was believed to have killed him. In response to the mage's seeming death at the golem's hands, Shale's control rod was sold to a merchant by Wilhelm's wife, in the hopes that Shale would never be activated again.

But, though it was deactivated, the golem was still aware of its surroundings. Shale remained that way for decades, awake but unable to move.

Gifts
Shale has a preference for "remarkable" gemstones. There is an issue with the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions which causes Shale to not give the standard for the first gem; instead you receive, which decreases as usual, so that after receiving four of the gems, Shale seems uninterested in the others ("So I'm to keep this then, am I? Fine."), giving only  for the rest, giving a measly 18 approval for giving them all to Shale. Therefore, you have to rely on conversation and your actions to get higher approval.

If you have the Feastday Gifts and Pranks DLC, however, you might also compensate for this bug with the thoughtful gifts and sugar cakes available from Bodahn Feddic. No matter how many are given, a Thoughtful Gift is always worth, while a Sugar Cake is worth.



Initial statistics
Relative attribute weightings on auto-level: strength 1.4, dexterity 0.25, willpower 0.5, magic 0, cunning 0.145, constitution 1.9

Starting abilities:

Warrior: Powerful, Threaten, Precise Striking, Taunt

Shale: Pulverizing Blows, Slam, Quake, Stoneheart, Bellow, Stone Roar, (level 12) Rock Mastery (level 8), Hurl Rock (level 9), Stone Aura (level 10), Inner Reserves (level 11)

Equipment
Shale does not use conventional weapons or armor. Instead, much like Dog, the golem has two slots for specialized equipment:


 * Small Crystals, which act as weapons and appear on Shale's wrists; they grant a bonus to the corresponding elemental attack damage, convert all damage to the crystal's element type, and can (depending on their quality and type) grant bonuses to various attacks, attributes, and health/stamina regeneration.
 * Large Crystals, which act as armor and appear on Shale's shoulders and legs; they grant a bonus to the corresponding elemental resistance and can (depending on their quality and type) grant bonuses to various defenses, attributes, and health/stamina regeneration.

There are a total of 50 different crystals: 25 small crystals, 25 large crystals. Both sizes of crystals come in each of the five elemental types and in five varying degrees of quality.

Equipping Shale with a small and large crystal of the same elemental type will grant an additional set bonus of +10% to the corresponding resistance.

Plot skills
As you befriend Shale and gain its approval, it will gain additional skills:

Quotes



 * (If removed from party) "Pigeon crap."
 * "The darkspawn are an evil that must be destroyed, it's true. Though not as evil as the birds... damnable feathered fiends!"
 * "I wonder what it is like to float...or drown."
 * (Battle cry) "Death to all pigeons!"
 * (If given one of the Remarkable Gems) "Oooh, Shiny!"
 * (When heavily injured after battle) "Oh look! I think I got chipped after that last fight!"
 * "I would appreciate it if it didn't spread around that I said anything. Humans might start to get the wrong idea. They might start thinking their race is not completely hopeless."
 * "Now, let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?"
 * (While conversing with Sten about the Qun) "Does sound like a delightful place where it comes from. Mages on leashes. What will they think of next?"

Dialogue

 * Shale: "I see it found some augmentation crystals. I was not even aware it knew about them... well done! So? What does it think? They don't make me look any wider, do they? I find I am already too wide as it is."
 * The Warden: "No, no, they're quite slimming"
 * Shale: "They are, aren't they? I so adore them! I think it should find some more as soon as possible. I want to glitter from ear to ear... so to speak!"


 * Leliana: "You aren't all stone, Shale. There is a person inside of you."
 * Shale: "If so, it is because I ate him."

Trivia

 * Shale, the Golem Control Rod, and Wilhelm's Cottage were originally intended to be found in Redcliffe Village.
 * Like Dog, Shale uses no weapons. So, when Frost Weapons, Flaming Weapons, or Telekinetic Weapons is enabled, its visual effect is applied to Shale's entire body.
 * Shale mentions being chiseled down to a smaller size by Wilhelm at the behest of his wife, who complained that the golem couldn't fit through the doors of their home. This refers to difficulties the developers had with getting Shale to fit through many of the game's doorways when they used the original golem graphical model for it. (You can see a full-sized version of Shale during its nightmare in the Fade.)
 * At Soldier's Peak (after Levi has set up shop), birds will migrate towards Shale and follow it around.
 * To capture the ambiguity of Shale's gender, the voice actress's already gravelly voice was pitch-shifted down to sound deeper and more masculine.
 * Shale is referenced twice in Dragon Age II:
 * Corff the Bartender indirectly references Shale when he mentions that “the pigeon population has taken a nose dive in Ferelden.”
 * During the epilogue, a picture of Shale chasing some chickens appears on one of the flipping pages of Cassandra's book.
 * If you complete its personal quest, Shale's codex entry says it became a golem “300 years earlier,” presumably 300 years earlier than the current events in the game. However, if Shale was made by Caridin, this cannot be the case.
 * Shale was to appear in the cut plot "Finding Shale" for Dragon Age II. The plot was replaced with Finding Nathaniel.