Cadash Thaig and the Lights of Arlathan

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Sina, Velanna, Morrigan, Shale, Katniss, and Pel
WHAT: Finding an ancient elven magic and the history of a dwarven thaig.
WHEN: Forward-dated to the 17th
WHERE: Cadash Thaig
NOTES: Some violence, but only against darkspawn. Well. Darkspawn are a warning too.

The journey to the thaig provides few encounters with darkspawn, which are handily dealt with. That's the best thing to be said about it. Pel has never been in the Deep Roads before. It's actually sort of nice, she thinks. In the Deep Roads, there are usually only two directions from which you can be attacked. There's something reassuring and secure about that. It's also missing sounds of life, aside from life that wants to kill you. Fewer guessing games to be played about what caused that sound. Other than that, it's a bleak, dead place with occasional breathtaking architecture. Modern elves don't really have architecture. It's fascinating to see it, when she can.

They arrive at the thaig and it's...surprisingly green. How in the world a place that has never seen the sun can have this much green, she has no idea. There's no mistaking it for the surface, of course, but it's a comforting color to see.

Comments

Katniss - Camp

[the_effect_she_has]

Of all the places Katniss thought she would travel in her life, the Deep Roads were never one of them. She is clearly on edge, in the days that they spend deep underground camping, her grey eyes sharp on the shadows as they look for darkspawn. It was like traveling to the home of her nightmares - oh wait, already did that.

Well, living nightmares, at any rate. So while she was in camp, she was sharpening her arrows and daggers, and making sure the fires were kept just high enough to see by but not enough to bounce all around the caverns to attract more darkspawn while they slept.

[mythalenaste]

Pel sits beside Katniss and touches shoulders with her. "Everything all right?"

[the_effect_she_has]

She looked over at her, sharply, before she eased herself down. "Yeah ... just. Haven't felt this wary since the Blight."

One corner of her mouth twisted. "Except you know, underground."

[mythalenaste]

"That's why we have a Warden." A fleeting smile. "We'll be fine."

[the_effect_she_has]

She exhaled slowly, before she offered a tight smile at Pel. "Right ... of course we will. We've got a Warden here, after all."

[mythalenaste]

"We'll know if anything's coming, and how to avoid it. Though I didn't expect the Deep Roads would be this...spacious."

[the_effect_she_has]

"... I sort of thought there would be a lot more muck." Katniss admits, putting her arrows away.

[mythalenaste]

"And less...architecture. Though I suppose that was a foolish assumption, since. Dwarves."

[the_effect_she_has]

"Heh. I've only ever been in the outside of Orzammar before this. I knew they could build -- I just never knew they built like this." She looks around, wistful. "Do you know how long we could have held out against the darkspawn if we had these kind of constructions?"

[mythalenaste]

"You're well-travelled, for city folk."

Yes, Katniss is from the country. But everyone is city folk to Pel.

[the_effect_she_has]

Katniss is going to arch an eyebrow at that, but, well yeah. Dalish.

"I only went twice. Once as a birthday treat for myself and Prim, before my father passed. It allowed him to do a fair bit of trading as well - they pay a lot for furs in Orzammar. The other time ... well the other time was during the worst of the fighting in the mage and templar war in the Hinterlands. We had no food, no healing herbs. Orzammar was the only place you could trade without being attacked by either side."

No one was going to mess with the dwarves on their front step, after all.

[mythalenaste]

"I'd think surface dwarves might have been just as well. They'd've been selling lyrium to both sides anyway."

[the_effect_she_has]

"... that. Is an excellent point. Maker's breath, what war profiteers they are."