Write clear and hard about what hurts - Ernst H.

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa, Bastien
WHAT: Rescuing or retrieving an informant
WHEN: Post-Monster Mayhem
WHERE: Free Marches (Hasmal and the Silent Plains)
NOTES: Athessa and Bastien go on a sad field trip and have a great time.

“You know, I seem to recall having a conversation not too long ago,” Athessa is saying as she inspects the tear in her shirt. Luckily the blade that did the tearing caught only shirt, and not flesh with it. Barely even a scrape. The bandits can’t boast as much, unconscious or worse here on the side of the road to Tantervale. “About how looking for humans was a dangerous prospect.”

Technically speaking, they’re looking for an elf, but they seem to be finding the right sort of humans to enforce their little joke. Athessa is, at least, true to her word that she takes protecting Bastien very seriously.

The road from Kirkwall to Tantervale is a long one, and it’s looking to be just as sweltering as staying in the Gallows has been. Sweltering, tedious, treacherous, a veritable grab bag of unpleasant adjectives stacked like pancakes. But necessary all the same. Word is, an informant was making their escape from Tevinter and hit a snag. (The mission briefing was not brief, and Athessa is not a great reader and only skimmed it.) They didn’t make it to the rendezvous, so now it’s up to intrepid adventurers Athessa Sulahnan and Bastien Last Name to rescue...The Informant.

Look, nobody’s going to hire this particular elf for virtues such as reading or name remembering, anyway.

Comments

[sulahnan]

She snorts, like, actually snorts with laughter because even if she didn't get him that time, it's funny. But then she looks at him askance and thinks about it.

"Hmm...You don't look much like a Wallace, though," she muses, "Maybe an Edgar, or...Earnest. Or Justice McKinnon."

[cozen]

Bastien considers these options and decides: “I have never been so insulted in my life.”

Like.

“Edgar.”

[sulahnan]

"Wallace."

Of course the truth of the matter is that, to her, Bastien can only ever look like a Bastien. Not helpful when they, the two least suited to venture into Tevinter incognito, need cover stories.

"I guess with the hat you could be a Wallace."

[cozen]

“Thank you,” Bastien says with prim airiness, like that’s all he wants in life, to be able to be a Wallace—but of course it isn’t. It isn’t even all he wants from this conversation. He lets the horses’ hooves fill a few seconds alone before he says, “We probably won’t find her, you know.”

[sulahnan]

Whether or not he sees it, she shrugs. "Gotta try though, don't we? What do you reckon the chances are that they keep records like Waverly said?"

[cozen]

"I'm sure they keep something," Bastien says. "Valuable goods. People always keep records. Whether they keep them in a way that will let us track one person down by name or vague description, mmm."

Mmm means he isn't sure.

"And whether we can get to them—mmmmm."

Guess what mmmmm means.

[sulahnan]

“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” she says. Then she looks at him with a wry, side long glance. “Mmm doesn’t sound like something a Wallace would say.”

—

Whether or not Bastien’s Wallafication is believable to Athessa matters not; both of their disguises and accompanying personas (she let him choose hers, as an olive branch) see them dutifully into Solas without incident. Being that they don’t want to draw enough attention to out Athessa as an elf, Bastien is left to do all the talking, asking for directions, navigating, and so on.

There’s one easy way for Athessa to find the slaver’s guild, and they’ve already established: no fucking way.