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WHO: Iorveth + Sorrelean Ashara
WHAT: just some new best friends drinking wine and talking shit idk
WHEN: Cloudreach 1
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: Racist ass elves. Continued from here.

[ After a few hours, it isn't difficult to find the Elven Artifacts office, even with the stroll around the tower the offices are held in, snooping around. Once night's fallen for a while, he wanders into the right office, shoulder leaning against the door frame, eye wandering the walls of the room, taking the look of Sorrelean's set up, nodding in vague approval. He's a picture that stands out from the other elves in this world, really. not only is the glowing shard in his hand one thing, but he stands at around 6'2", a good head taller than most any male elves native to this world are, and there's the bandana covering half his face, a nasty scar snaking down from under it to intersect his lips. No tattoos on his face, like the Dalish, but there's black ink depicting branches and leaves sprawling out from his right shoulder onto his neck, past his collar. ]

Look at you. Elf with a desk. [ Iorveth snorts, but with a smirk on his lips. The novelty of it is precious, and Iorveth wonders how long sights like this will last once this issue with Corypheus is resolved. Sighing, he paces his way in, flopping down heavily in the first chair available. ]

Had any humans have to report to you as of yet? Make them bow and kiss the ring? [ He might've done it. Maybe if it were choice humans he knew from home. Perhaps not these ones. ]

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Perhaps the Dalish should join each clan together, if being scattered is what's whittling at your numbers. [ they have something the scoia'tael will never have - a relatively safe place to raise children, and the ability to have them. just the fact sorrel and beleth exist proves that, and he mutters this distractedly while inspecting the ink on his skin. ] Loathe as I am to say it, if you wish to save your people from fading out, you'll likely have to give up your fighting. Run, find safety, salvage what remains, and defend.

[ That had been the idea of the Pontar Valley, in some form. Perhaps not the 'running', as it took a battle to secure it for them, but a truly safe haven, with an agreement between all races for a ceasefire. A century of war has taught him that vengeance is satisfying, but only making fucking babies saves a species from extinction. While he and the other Scoia'tael may forever be too angry and too scarred to be able to settle into a peaceful life, there are still plenty of harassed elves in cities that would leap for a safe place for their families.

He's also maybe starting to get on the tipsy side, pouring another glass while he leans back, out of Sorrel's face once he's had a good look at the elegant tattoos. ] Why this god in particular? Not that they don't seem worth the reverence, just curious of the personal connection.

You wouldn't be the first to think that. But the Dalish aren't a nation-- we don't have a homeland anymore, and wherever we gather in any numbers, they send armies to get rid of us. [Well, first they send militias and then mercenaries, but it's hardly prudent to say. A clan's worth of skilled hunters can handily dispatch the fighting population of a typical town in rural orlais, but soldiers have no children to protect, and all they'd really have to do to win, would be to get rid of the halla.] We might have an army's numbers, but half of those aren't people who can fight. It'd be the end of The People.

[Sorrel shrugs. It's an old daydream, well-worn by any angry young Dalish elf with a yen for familiar paths and a house with stone walls. Who wouldn't want to know their home as intimately as only a permanent resident can? Who wouldn't want to have a home to know? He drinks and answers the second question with a question of his own.]

You know I have a twin?

If you had the elves of each alienage, and the dwarves. If they were taught how to fight... How would the army compare? [ the number of elves here, at least so far as what Iorveth's seen, isn't so diminished as his world's. It's possible they could still have a chance, if they were able to organize outside of what humans could learn. But getting so many people to work together would take a miracle, or a damn charismatic martyr. more so, it's just idle pondering for him.

leave it to iorveth to make a fun night of drinking into a strategy session. the question, though, piques his interest, and his gaze turns from the red in his glass to Sorrel once more. ]

Do you? Are they in the Inquisition?

[Sorrel makes a quiet, scoffing sound.]

Well, maybe if Fen'Harel himself decided to rain the void down on everyone, but not before.

[Or to put it another way; when nugs fly. But he laughs again.]

I'd say so! You have to have met her; Beleth Ashara, the Scoutmaster.

Not for that attitude, he won't.

[ Iorveth scoffs back, though clearly joking. But, after taking another swig from the wine, he adds on - ] Hypothetically, though. If a miracle occurred, what would the numbers for nonhumans be? Add in Qunari, for the hell of it.

[ Impossible, yeah, but he wants to know the actual numbers here. How much of a majority are humans over nonhumans? Iorveth is utterly incapable of refraining from seeking out information when the thought of it occurs. Beleth, however, rings familiar. ]

Ah - yes, we've met. She was with the unit that came to the Sunless Lands to make sure the rifters weren't frozen to death yet.

Her Vallaslin is for Sylaise, the hearthmother. But you know, she rarely keeps to home.

[Her position in the Inquisition is proof enough of that.]

We keep each other's secrets. We are each other's home. So. [He downs the last of his most recent glass. He doesn't want to talk about this, it's too raw and private and real.]

I'd sooner take the humans than the Qunari. Things are bad enough, but at least some people are free, this way. What they do to their mages... Nah. Nah.

[ Iorveth never had siblings, and the fondness Sorrel speaks of his twin with is something touching but foreign to him. A small, warm smile touches his lips, thinking it seems accurate that Beleth would carry beloved family with her. While 'hearthmother' may not be entirely accurate, she seems like the kind to want to keep her loved ones close and protected. ]

It's fortunate you have someone so dear and trusted. Family is a precious thing. [ we are each other's home. then kirkwall, skyhold or their dalish clan, home could never be far for them. part of him envies that, but he's glad they're able to have something so valuable kept safe while the world around is in such ruin. ]

Admittedly, I haven't read much on the Qunari. There doesn't seem to be many of them here. [ Humans, elves and even dwarves are relatively frequent, but Qunari seem to be few and far between. He's yet to figure out why that is. ]

What's done with their mages?

I'm not talking about the big horned people, most of those with the Inquisition are just... they look the same, but they're not the same. The Qun, that's where most Qunari come from.

[He waves a hand toward the window, privately reveling in that fact-- an elf with an office! with a window!]

There was a great crowd of them here in Kirkwall, for years and years, until they suddenly started killing people and burning the city down. Those are proper Qunari. I've never seen it, but what I've always heard is, they do with their mages is they sew their mouths shut and keep them in chains so heavy they can barely walk. They don't like magic, and they don't want it. I also heard that of course anyone can join them, if they like, but you have to live their way, and give up everything you were before.

[ Iorveth's lips curl in disgust as it's described, teeth bared like a hissing animal, because that's the way most of his mannerisms come off these days. less the elegant elven boy, more the territorial forest creature. ]

Fucking sickening. [ it isn't often Iorveth curses in Common, but 'fuck' is really one of those words that should just be universal for how well they fit a mood. like cultists mutilating innocent people for traits they were born into. ] They don't want magic, and yet, they make pets out of their mages.

[ clearly they want it enough to keep it around, rather than just shipping them off to the Dalish or drowning them at sea. what a load of bullshit. ]

Right. Best they stay in their insane corner of the world. At least humans have the decency to simply kill what they don't like, rather than make it suffer for a lifetime.

Who knows why they do it?

[Sorrel can't help but smile at Iorveth's snarl. It's comforting, somehow, that even a Rifter can seem so... so normal. So completely able to understand. Elegance is all well and good, but it doesn't get work done, most places.]

Most of the people called qunari in the Inquisition call themselves other things, if you ask them, and they don't seem to do too different than the Dalish, in their own way. They seem alright, or at least Korrin's nice.

[He tops off Iorveth's cup and then his own, by way of a reccomendation.]

You know, I'm glad we met.

I can understand the want to separate themselves from the proper Qunari. I'd not want to be associated with it either.

[ and maybe that's a bit of hypocrisy, given how severely he judges city elves for wanting to be separate from the elves like the Scoia'tael, but they aren't sewing mouths shut and chaining people up. Just murder. Reasons, okay!!

He'll happily take a newly filled cup, despite how the drink is starting to go to his senses, making him more chatty than he'd normally be. ]

As am I, my friend. It's one thing being in a ruthless land with 100 commandos at your back, and quite another being in a new one by yourself. [ not that he wouldn't still brave it and continue as he has, refusing to change himself to fit this place, but it makes it much more comfortable with company. ]

[A hundred commandos. Sorrel sits quiet and thinks about that-- an entire clan of just fighters. And not just hunters turned to hunting humans instead of meat, but real fighters. The kind of people who might call themselves soldiers, people with decades of experience, with tight bonds and long histories and more skill at the work of war than all but the best of the Dalish. A hundred elites.]

Each clan. [He's answering a question Iorveth asked earlier, drawing down a clean page and drawing on it with drink-dampened fingers. The illustration will evaporate and fade, but the description will live on in Iorveth's memory.] As around, maybe a hundred elves. Smaller clans, closer to fifty, or less. The biggest I've ever heard of was a hundred-eighty, but that's not all fighters. That's mostly children and young hunters and crafters and things. Real fighters, the kind who give us all these savage reputations, aren't so many to a clan-- maybe a dozen. Hunters can kill or threaten, mages are always dangerous, but if I've learned one thing here with the Inquisition... it's not the same.

[His fingertips have been moving over the paper as he's spoken, trailing damp lines, dots to represent the people, enclosed by a circle of defenders-- many could by guarded by few. A den of wolves was still wolves, and you'd be a fool to challenge them, but there was no use confusing the facts: the people were not an army, though one might exist within their ranks. But without those fighters where they already were, that for which they fought would be lost. And then, what purpose the war?]

The People need a homeland, somewhere to retreat to, somewhere to defend. We've been living on the run for so long, we don't remember how else to live. The Dwarves have Orzammar, the Qunari have their Qun, sometimes it seems like the Humans have fucking everything... [He's not bitter, he said, bitterly.] ...But that's my opinion: if someone could give the Dalish a home, one they could believe wasn't a trap, that would be the price for them to walk under a banner together. The city elves too, if I were going to gamble.

[ tight bonds and long histories, yes, which made it all the more painful when one was lost, but such was the way of their war. they went into the forests and fields to fight and attempt to win back freedom for their people so those with families and elders wouldn't have to. and iorveth's unit was only one of many. survived well under his command, but still only a fraction of what they'd once been, before the northern wars and their betrayals. ]

A people is not a people with only warriors to speak of. It's well you have all then rest - children, hunters, crafters. They're needed. Homes are not homes if occupied only by warriors. They're barracks. [ he has no delusion about that, and never has. what iorveth fights for - a free, safe land for his people - he does not intend to be a part of. it's for them, and he's here to be the wall that surrounds them, keeps their vulnerable but pure lives from harm.

After Sorrel's explanation, Iorveth watching his illustrate, he nods for a moment, taking a thoughtful drink, before answering. ] You'll need the city elves. Regardless of differences in cultures, you suffer the same persecutions, and neither of you have enough resources or skilled fighters to make a peaceful home. Strengthen in - add in the dwarves, circle mages willing to agree to a law of no discrimination, the Qunari not of the Qun. Go to the mountains, find a defensible position, build your fortress and organize in ways no human in this realm expects you to.

That is how you win a home. The Dalish alone will never have the means to do so by themselves.

"That's not the first time you've mentioned the dwarves," Sorrel points out, confused, "Why would they help us? They've got money, guilds, laws, plenty of status. The lyrium trade alone..."

He doesn't mean to laugh at Iorveth-- but he does spread his hands with a helpless, breathy sort of a sound, halfway between a laugh and a scoff.

"...Why would they even care?"

Those above ground, I mean. [ Yngvi has told him enough about the ones still in Orzammar that he doubts they'll care much about the status of social affairs outside their city. It's the top-siders he's referencing when he says dwarves. ]

For now, they're regarded as useful, but should they wish to ask for anything more than they have now, I doubt they'll be treated much better than elves and Qunari.

Once your people are finished, they'll come for them as well. Humanity cannot suffer peace for long. [ and are never satisfied with just what they have. ]

They don't usually ask. Carta's dangerous and they have plenty of gold.

[Because, as much as everyone likes to pretend Orzammar's leadership controls the whole of the lyrium trade, from the surface perspective much of that comes through the Carta and other smugglers, not merely the merchant's guild. Everyone takes their cut. Everybody gets rich and vicious and full of secrets.]

I don't think we're likely to be finished with anytime soon. They've only been trying for two-thousand years, after all.

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