open; Give me a field, give me a big sky

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli, Morrigan, Asher and you
WHAT: Catch-all for Bloomingtide
WHEN: Bloomingtide (post-5th Bloomingtide for Araceli)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: A proper catch-up for all three characters below with specific starters and some open headers, if you'd like something specific feel free to hit me up! If you'd like a backdated thing for Araceli or Morrigan, let me know and I'll sort that too, I know I've been gone for a fair bit sorry!
Araceli's threads will all be post 5th Bloomingtide when she gets back from her mission in Antiva!
For some ooc details on Morrigan things, please see here, a rookery post will go up shortly for research helpers!
Warnings for talk of violence, blood and language in Asher's threads.

Comments

closed; asher & kaisa

[hlif]

Once he's able to leave the healer's tents, that's when he bothers to send word to folk outside Korrin and Mal, Sam and Christine that he's back proper though word has likely filtered back already given that it's Asher, he came back in a state, and that he came back with several wagons groaning with supplies for the Inquisition.

It's a young man that comes to find Kaisa first though since Asher isn't really in any condition to go to the Warden camp, not when the healers already made sure he didn't have to see Anders either. Asher was good enough to provide the name and description so there's not too much asking about, and Bronson recognises her anyway, the hound ambling over ahead of someone who could be the double of one of Zevran's kestrels.

"Asher's askin' for you," he explains, Rivaini accent still strong after years away. "Name's Nasir, he sent me to come fetch you or Christine'll have his arse, no skin off my nose if you don't but he's back at his tent and we're clearing off. Go or don't, I'm just the messenger."

Should she decide to follow Nasir back or head along after, she will indeed find Asher, still bandaged, still looking like death chewed on him and decided he was a little too tough but shit ended badly last time and well he's back. So he should probably talk to her seeing as he's not entirely a bastard.

[unbrokenoath]

Kaisa wasn't sure if she was more startled or relieved that Asher went and sent for her. It's true that they had parted on poor terms, and she wasn't sure how things were going to stand between them or not. But what she is sure about is that she's going to follow Nasir on along to where Asher was waiting. If for no other reason than to make sure the damn fool was, in fact, alive, and looking to stay that way.

When she finally lays eyes on her fellow warrior, Kaisa looks over him appraisingly, a frown on her face. She still tries to sound flippant when she speaks, but she can't keep the disgruntled worry out of her voice. "Damn it all, Asher, I told you not t' die, and it looks like you didn't, but you gave it a shot, didn't you? Stubborn bastard." She pauses, then walks on over, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"Glad to see you're still kicking around, anyway."

[hlif]

Clapping Asher on the shoulder, a slender blonde emerges from one of the new tents that have sprouted around Asher's since Kaisa last came to his section of the camp. A few mutters are exchanged, typical shrugs then Nasir and the blonde head off, both of them waving to Asher on their way to Skyhold. Only Bronson gets up, butting his head against Kaisa because Asher's stiff beneath the bandages, the skin still pink and healing, tender to the touch, and this was how it was last time anyway, more or less.

"S'called having a proper job Kaisa." Not much of a greeting but then they've spoken on the crystal since he's been away, although that was before Asher kind of went to shit but he doesn't really feel the need to stand on ceremony with her in any sort of way. "You know, someone asks you to go do something for payment, you go do that for that payment? There's a bit of haggling and doing the deed in the middle of it?"

Since you know, Asher is here to make his living by bolstering the reputation of the company although apparently there are always going to be shady dicks out there.

"It'd be nice if employers tell you what the smugglers are smuggling, but they're on the blacklist to everyone, crew put the word out to every company we know, and they'll put it out in turn. See you're not dead either, so nicely done on that one too. What've I missed?"

[unbrokenoath]

There's an awkward silence as Kaisa watches Asher talk to his crew and they wander off. Should she acknowledge them? Wave? But in the end, Bronson saved her by letting her focus on him. She gives the dog a warm smile, plopping on the ground and patting his big, scarred head. She continues to focus on the mabari while Asher speaks, ignoring what she suspects are digs at her for not having a proper job.

"I have a proper job. It's called killing darkspawn. And stopping blights, if blights happen. Which may happen yet, since there's a Maker-damned archdemon running around." She wrinkles her nose at that. Fucking archdemon. She never thought she'd live to see it. She never thought she'd live to see another Blight, really. Yet here they were.

"But I gotta say, if your proper jobs involve doing the deed in the middle of haggling, maybe I ought to reconsider."

She laughed, and went back to petting the mabari as she thought over just what had gone on since Asher had been gone. "I think the biggest thing of note was that we got to much rain, and the mountain had a landslide. Caught a caravan, and I guess it messed up the water in the well. Ton of people got sick, and we were all stuck here with our thumbs up our asses. I managed pretty well, ended up taking care of the people that got sick. And I guess the people that got sick started being able to see spirits or something...?" That would have been a good thing to start off with, probably.

"Like, the Veil wasn't broken, it was just see through? Damned if I know, I'm not a mage and I didn't see shit. I heard they stuck that jumpy little Templar guy down the well and got whatever was making people sick cleared out."

[hlif]

Better to leave the Boneflayers to themselves in all honesty since Bronson is the least likely to cause any sort of trouble when Nasir and Amalia are off to catch up with the slowly becoming infamous ex-Carta shits running around causing problems for all parties.

"Don't see many darkspawn running around here though, and not everyone's been calling it an archdemon either." Red lyrium he's heard more about, and red lyrium he's seen both out in the Emprise and even when he made his way through Ferelden, shit that shouldn't be in his home, so close to where his siblings are, where his nephews and nieces are, hell, even where his mother and father are.

"Remember that bit when I said abominations put a dampener on things?" There's another shrug, this time for Kaisa as he points to himself; life got blurry, brief moments of him being very lucid and then worryingly not. It's what happens when you take an abomination to the gut. But it sounds like he'd have been just as bad off if he'd stayed, all things considered, maybe worse since well, at least part of him feels better on the inside, the very deep inside. "Give me a list of names so I can send my condolences at being on the receiving end of your tender mercies, how many people got sick that you got promoted from Warden to healer? Unless it's like the hold. Dagger for the dying stuff. I hope the spirits were warning them about you, 'this one shares tents with women that'll drag you out so you nearly freeze your bollocks off'."

Can a man not dip his wick Kaisa? Can a man not do that? Clearly fucking not.

"Wait, Cade? They put Cade down a well?" He can't help it, he's leaning forward even when it makes his ribs ache enough that he can't help but grunt but he's smiling, that real Asher smile. She knows the one. The one that comes before he says something terrible. "Did they leave him there? I would've."

[unbrokenoath]

She hesitates as Asher speaks about whether or not it's an archdemon. She's pretty sure that talking about the Calling is Not Allowed, so she can't straight up tell Asher why she's so damn sure that it's an archdemon. She's silent as she tries to think about how to phrase that without mentioning any Wardeny Secrets.

"It's got the blight, it's a dragon. It's missing a lot of darkspawn, but if Corypheus controls it..." She shrugged, letting Asher puzzle out the rest. Archdemons control darkspawn, and if Corypheus controls it, then he controls darkspawn. Pretty simple logic there. "Not a lot of checkmarks needed for that shit, you know?" No, Asher probably doesn't know, but take her word for it.

"Hey! Hey. Rude. You're a rude fucker, Asher. I'm two steps down from a Maker-damned surgeon, with all my tender healing mercies and that shit." She laughs, though, stretching out and getting comfortable. "Nah, I mostly just followed Teren around and did whatever she told me to. You ever met that woman? Swear to the Maker hisself, people got better just because they didn't want to be contrary to her. That woman could probably make Corypheus feel bad about himself enough t' make him retire." She pauses for a moment, then pouts at Asher, puffing her cheeks out. "And I can guarantee you, I don't share a tent with women that do that anymore! Learned my lesson. That crazy ass elf had a mean right hook."

Not the first time, or the last, that Kaisa's been in a fistfight with an elf. First time the elf's been taller, though. Or won.

That smile is nice, though. More proper. More terrible, but more proper on his face, and Kaisa can't help but give her own wicked grin in retaliation. "Is Cade his name? I figure they pulled him out, or we'd have to deal with more water getting all tainted again, and have to send another person down. Vicious cycle, yeah?"

[hlif]

When the Blight hit Ferelden, Asher had already been thrown out of the house and knew how to make his own living killing things, off in the Free Marches to see them stumbling off ships with nothing more than the clothes on their backs being treated as if they were nothing, as if they had the plague, as if they carried it with them; seeing Wardens here in Skyhold, just sitting around, sheltering someone that brought more pain to Kirkwall again? It stirs up more of that same anger in Asher, because Anders might have helped those people but he threw them to the side same as the Kirkwallers did when he blew up the Chantry. Not something to think about right now though, not when he's recovering, so he watches her with hooded eyes.

"Except there's a bunch of you here and then the rest of you definitely not here." Asher lets it hang because well, not his job, not exactly his business but Asher does have a job and he does it; he gets paid to kill things, to fight, to chase them down or hunt them or lure them or do whatever thing someone needs or wants a mercenary to do that the Boneflayers will do for the right amount of coin. Wardens tend not to sit on mountains building camps. "No one exactly has proof though do they? I don't think anyone bothered to stop him and ask."

If that person did, they're dead, and Skyhold is squeamish enough around spirits thanks to everything going on since it's stuffed full of lowlanders stuffed full of the Chantry who don't know what they're doing, or the Dalish who don't consult with spirits in the first place. (A man knows when he travels as far and wide through Thedas as Asher has.)

"In cutting limbs off then yes, I'm sure people were begging for that right before the end when they were too weak to chew them off and hope they bled out before you could come back to 'help'." Bronson ambles over, head on Asher's legs, one hen poking out of the coop to come peck at Kaisa's leg since she's new and she needs to be shown her place in the ranks. "Never even heard of her til just now. Make a point of avoiding women like my mother." And something about his smile slides sideways off his face just enough that means he doesn't really want to get into it right now when he's not himself, because there are just some sorts of people you avoid in life and she already sounds like one of them. She's probably disappointed he's not dead, that he still continues to carry on as if to spite her.

Maybe he does. Who knows, maybe a spirit of one flew into him in that fight without him knowing and that's why he's still here talking shit.

"Herc and I went out to rescue a dog in Emprise du Lion with him, said about three words but he liked dogs, fidgety for a Templar but I know the family name from Kirkwall. Lot of shame attached to that name let me tell you." Lot of weird shit attached to that name too now, but it came through the Coterie and the Carta and the Tale of the Champion but Asher had run jobs for families like that, people with money are always weird. "Well dead body taint works itself out quicker, I've done that a few times before, body rots and you poison some bandits and then it gets washed away or it'll rot and end up as bones and get washed away then the water runs clean again. Doesn't involve spirits then."