Having Duncan recruit both Brosca and Aeducan as wardens has a lot of potential for interesting social dynamics. Although I see your point about length because the Orzammar+Deep Roads quests alone could become a 20k word story.
One possibility is to select a single quest such as Orzammar+Deep Roads or Landsmeet+Denerim and organize the whole story around that quest. Start the first scene with the inciting incident that sets up the story problem (getting Orzammar's help with the Blight; or getting Landsmeet settled), then sprinkle some of the backstory into the next few scenes (why Brosca and Aeducan are working together, how they have/haven't been getting along so far in recent months), and then spend the rest of the story ramping up the tension, resolve the main story question (Orzammar has a king; or Ferelden has a ruler), and end with Brosca and Aeducan coming to a new understanding of each other (either worse or better). That can fit into 20-25k easily and it has a nice juxtaposition of outer conflict (a ruler for Orzammar or Ferelden) and inner-local conflict (Brosca vs Aeducan).
Obviously, the other possibility is to cover the Blight in a selective manner. This is something I've been thinking about a lot. I have two completely separate 5th Blight stories I want to tell (neither are for DABB, both conceived quite a while ago). In both cases, I don't want to write doorstopper sized novels that detail the entire 5th blight from end to end. My solutions are still in flux but here's what I'm thinking about in both cases.
Alistair's epic: This is being written in 1st POV memoir style and Alistair's telling is non-linear. As the narrator, he's highlighting the one thing that is most important to him: belonging and being recognized for who he is. Given that Alistair is telling a story that happened in the past, he knows the outcome (Anora queen, Alistair renouncing all claim to the throne and remaining a warden with Surana). Thus, the text is really about him coming to terms with decisions he made during the Blight. The only thing that matters to him about the Dalish "nature of the beast" quest is that he gave The Rose to Neria and started to consider their relationship more seriously. The Orzammar+Deep Roads quests are being whittled down to Alistair remembering himself silently comparing Orzammar's situation with Ferelden's and the macabre romantic weirdness of being in a relationship with a warden while in the deep roads. Redcliffe, Kinloch Hold, and Denerim figure in far more, as does his OGB sex with Morrigan. But, since it is a memoir that is about his feelings and decisions, time in the story can compress and expand as needed, and one event can be used mostly to foreshadow or frame another. I don't know what the final length will be but I don't want it to become very long. (But it is longer than a DABB story.)
The other case is an alt-canon/au-canon DAO where the warden springs Cullen from the tower and takes him along. I've changed the warden to a Dalish just to make it a little different (serious rare pair!!) and offbeat. Last spring I mapped out a 17-stage hero's journey/monomyth for Cullen where he discovers something important about himself as his relationship with the Andrastian Chantry and the Templar Order. I need to update that hero's journey map to work with a Dalish warden, but, if I am disciplined, I can write the entire story in 12 to 17 chapters (depending on how I write/collapse the monomyth's structure) and while the story covers the length of the 5th Blight, some parts will hopefully pass in the blink of an eye. Instead, the story will focus on Cullen's story problem: confronting the lies that the Chantry/Order told him.
So, I guess the overall theme in all of these is picking out the story problem and then scoping the blight events to fit the problem that the character(s) are trying to resolve?
no subject
One possibility is to select a single quest such as Orzammar+Deep Roads or Landsmeet+Denerim and organize the whole story around that quest. Start the first scene with the inciting incident that sets up the story problem (getting Orzammar's help with the Blight; or getting Landsmeet settled), then sprinkle some of the backstory into the next few scenes (why Brosca and Aeducan are working together, how they have/haven't been getting along so far in recent months), and then spend the rest of the story ramping up the tension, resolve the main story question (Orzammar has a king; or Ferelden has a ruler), and end with Brosca and Aeducan coming to a new understanding of each other (either worse or better). That can fit into 20-25k easily and it has a nice juxtaposition of outer conflict (a ruler for Orzammar or Ferelden) and inner-local conflict (Brosca vs Aeducan).
Obviously, the other possibility is to cover the Blight in a selective manner. This is something I've been thinking about a lot. I have two completely separate 5th Blight stories I want to tell (neither are for DABB, both conceived quite a while ago). In both cases, I don't want to write doorstopper sized novels that detail the entire 5th blight from end to end. My solutions are still in flux but here's what I'm thinking about in both cases.
Alistair's epic: This is being written in 1st POV memoir style and Alistair's telling is non-linear. As the narrator, he's highlighting the one thing that is most important to him: belonging and being recognized for who he is. Given that Alistair is telling a story that happened in the past, he knows the outcome (Anora queen, Alistair renouncing all claim to the throne and remaining a warden with Surana). Thus, the text is really about him coming to terms with decisions he made during the Blight. The only thing that matters to him about the Dalish "nature of the beast" quest is that he gave The Rose to Neria and started to consider their relationship more seriously. The Orzammar+Deep Roads quests are being whittled down to Alistair remembering himself silently comparing Orzammar's situation with Ferelden's and the macabre romantic weirdness of being in a relationship with a warden while in the deep roads. Redcliffe, Kinloch Hold, and Denerim figure in far more, as does his OGB sex with Morrigan. But, since it is a memoir that is about his feelings and decisions, time in the story can compress and expand as needed, and one event can be used mostly to foreshadow or frame another. I don't know what the final length will be but I don't want it to become very long. (But it is longer than a DABB story.)
The other case is an alt-canon/au-canon DAO where the warden springs Cullen from the tower and takes him along. I've changed the warden to a Dalish just to make it a little different (serious rare pair!!) and offbeat. Last spring I mapped out a 17-stage hero's journey/monomyth for Cullen where he discovers something important about himself as his relationship with the Andrastian Chantry and the Templar Order. I need to update that hero's journey map to work with a Dalish warden, but, if I am disciplined, I can write the entire story in 12 to 17 chapters (depending on how I write/collapse the monomyth's structure) and while the story covers the length of the 5th Blight, some parts will hopefully pass in the blink of an eye. Instead, the story will focus on Cullen's story problem: confronting the lies that the Chantry/Order told him.
So, I guess the overall theme in all of these is picking out the story problem and then scoping the blight events to fit the problem that the character(s) are trying to resolve?