Set six months after the events of Dragon Age: Origins in the land of Amaranthine, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening places the player in the role of a Grey Warden trying to rebuild the order while also dealing with political matters as the Arl of Amaranthine. However, the keep is discovered to have been assaulted by Darkspawn, and something amiss is noticed as such an organized attack would have taken an intelligent leader to direct, something thought impossible without the presence of an Archdemon.
The player has the option to either import their character from the main game or start over as a Warden from Orlais, starting a new origin story. If a new character is created, the story from the main game is set to a default ending. If the character is imported, the story in Awakening will continue from that determined by the player in Origins and the character will retain their attributes, skills, spells etc. as well as certain equipment.
Source: Wikipedia, "Dragon_Age:_Origins_–_Awakening," available under the CC-BY-SA License.
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