(Untitled)

[igetthatalot]

Varric wasn't expecting Milliways today. As a matter of fact, he was expecting his room in the back of the Hanged Man- all he was planning on was putting his feet up before going over tomorrow's obligations. Clearly, the Landlord had other ideas

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[never_b_free]

"You should be careful of offers like that, there are people here who can handle both very nasty and very expensive drinks." Says the woman who approaches the bar.

"I take it you are a dwarf?" He's about the right size and shape for one, but he has the skin of a surface dweller, not someone who spends the majority of his time underground. Huh.

[igetthatalot]

"It's not my bar and I don't get paid," says Varric, "so I'm not too worried.
And it's just nasty beer, anyway."

"As a matter of fact I am. Varric Tethras, of noble house Tethras, at your service." He sketches a little bow. "Not that we're considered anything but casteless by the Assembly, but what can you do."

[never_b_free]

"Sarah Black, just a merchant," she bows in return, "and probably not noble at all," she says with a grin. "So I take it the dwarves of your world recently moved away from the concept of governance by kings and queens recently?"

That could by why he's not pale. Maybe he was thrown into the adventuring life by changes in politics?

[igetthatalot]

"Oh, no, there's still a King in Orzammar," Varric says. "The Assembly crowned the old king's son Bhelen a while back, after his oldest son Trian was murdered and his other child exiled for it. The Assembly's a tradition as old as Orzammar, and so are the kings."

[never_b_free]

"Ha! I thought that by Assembly you might have meant something different. The dwarves I am familiar with haven't been ruled by a King in a long while. Not since King Alvis let the Consortium turn him into a figurehead."

The Consortium, unlike the Assembly, is a fairly recent thing. Well, 500 years recent.

[igetthatalot]

"I don't think that would ever happen in Orzammar," Varric says. "Even with the way King Bhelen's been turning the caste system inside out and granting rights to the casteless. Not as long as there's a Shaperate keeping the Memories, anyway, and whatever else you care to say about King Bhelen, he's not about to dismantle that."

[never_b_free]

"Sounds like the beginning of something interesting," she says, "Who knows what the next King will do? He could reverse the current king's policies, or continue the trend. Either way, some dwarves are going to end up unhappy. It could even lead to a revolt."

Happy happy fun times.

"Well, I think that as long as all dwarves from Orzammar are flesh and blood like you, the beer can't be that bad." Not throw up on a tree and kill it bad.

[igetthatalot]

"I don't know about that. Revolutions don't really happen when you've got darkspawn knocking at the doors, and with the Blight over on the surface..." Varric shrugs. "Then again, that's Orzammar. I've never set foot there, myself, and I'm perfectly happy with that."

"As far as the beer goes, it's about what you'd expect from alcohol made from lichens, mosses, deep mushrooms, and other things scraped off rock. I tried some once. Never again, if I can help it."

[never_b_free]

"No barley? No hops?" Maybe back in the third age when all hell broke loose on the surface (another fun fun happy time), the dwarves on her world drank such brew, but… "Don't tell me you are the only dwarf in your world that ever comes out of the underground."

But then, there is the more important topic of conversation. "Ooo. What are darkspawn?"

[igetthatalot]

"Some formulas use 'em, but real traditionalists don't go in for surface frippery like that," says Varric, rolling his eyes. "Their loss. No, I'm far from the only surfacer. There's a whole provision in dwarven law for stripping dwarves who visit the surface of their caste and standing in Orzammar. Doesn't stop the city from making use of the surfacers to trade with the humans and elves and everyone else up topside, of course. They might be casteless scum, but their coin's the same metal as everyone else's."

"As for darkspawn... well. Nasty, vile, corrupted creatures that dwell in the lowest tunnels, below the Deep Roads. The humans have a religious legend about how they caused them to exist, but you won't catch a dwarf coming up with that kind of nonsense. All we know is, one day they were there, and we've been up against their attempts at devouring and destroying everything decent we've ever tried to build since."

[never_b_free]

"Have you encountered one yourself?"

Learning about new creatures is an activity that is guaranteed to hold her attention for a long time. What better way to find out how to kill it? Other than actually going out and attempting to kill it yourself, of course.

Going in blind can be problematic, though.

[igetthatalot]

"Can't say I have," Varric admits. "I was born and raised on the surface, and the darkspawn don't come up much unless it's a Blight. The most recent Blight never got out of Ferelden, on the other side of the Waking Sea."

[never_b_free]

There's visible disappointment. The best the dwarf can offer is secondhand experience. But still she asks, "And Blight? What is that?"

[igetthatalot]

"That's when one of the oldest, most dangerous, most powerful dragons around gets corrupted," Varric says, "and leads an almost endless horde of darkspawn out of the Deep Roads to ravage everything in their path on the surface. Kind of a breather for the dwarves and the near-total destruction of nations for everyone else."

[never_b_free]

"Corrupted?" To her, the concept is strange. Dragons don't get corrupted, dragons just are. "How?"

But the Kin, poor enslaved Kin, who caused much of the destruction of the Third Age, who were enslaved by a being much more powerful than herself, more powerful than any of the current gods, even surpassing the Empty One. There lay weakness, there lay the fear of mortality that led them to create the dragons. There lay the possibility.

Fear not the Dragons, fear their Kin.

[igetthatalot]

"Honestly? I don't know," says Varric. "Probably contact with darkspawn blood, since that stuff's poisonous even to my people. You'd have to ask a Gray Warden. I just know that the dragons in question used to be the Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium, and they're Archdemons when they wind up at the head of the darkspawn hordes."