WHO: Adrasteia, Erik, others WHAT: a catch-all with starters in the comments; will match format WHEN: early Bloomingtide WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall NOTES: Erik comes with a built-in language warning
Adrasteia is someone that Ellie's been introduced to in passing, and then once she'd more definitively joined the Scouting division and expressed an interest in learning to ride the griffons (which may or may not have involved being caught sneaking up to see them at odd hours and giving them snacks) she'd been pointed out as someone who could teach her.
The most Ellie knows about Adrasteia is that she's a friend of Ellis, and he's all good in her book. So she's shown up for riding dressed in appropriate but plain clothes, the kind she had to have borrowed piecemeal from the armory. Her hair's tied back in a simple twist, just barely long enough for it.
Ellie pulls on the leather gloves, fumbling a bit with her left hand. It's both where the anchor is and where she's missing two fingers so it takes a little wriggling to get things in the right spot.
"Nope," she answers, while she fiddles with them, clenching and unclenching her fists. "Horses, sure, but griffons are supposed to be a myth, like dragons."
"Interesting." This is not the first time she's heard of something being 'mythic' in that same sense, and she wonders suddenly if any other Thedosians (or Rifters, for that matter) has considered putting together a selection of stories from their native worlds. A question for the crystals, later, she supposes.
Right now, there's flight training. And trying not to worry about how a girl Ellie's age manages to lose fingers. She can think of too many ways for that to have happened, easily, and it's frankly none of her business.
"Well, griffons are much like any other rideable creature, in my experience, which is to say: each one has their own personality and proclivities, but responds well to food and positive reinforcement. Have you ridden before? A horse, I mean, or anything."
"That's one word for it. We've got a bunch of other bullshit to make up for it."
Ellie gives a light shrug, like it's no big deal, and reaches into her pocket, where she's secreted away some jerky treats. Easier to carry around than a sack of dead rats, which she's also found that some of the griffons really like.
"Sounds fair. And yeah, I had my own horse for a while back home. We used them for all our patrols in the mountainside." She shrugs a little. "And I rode double on Aenor's dracolisk for a while, if that counts?"
"You'll have to tell me about it sometime. Maybe we can exchange stories."
She sees that affectation of 'it doesn't matter' and raises you an honest, listening ear Ellie. But no pressure.
"That's perfect, and definitely counts. Have you had much of a chance to get used to the griffons, figure out which one you'd like to try riding first? I usually ride Potato," she explains, pointing the griffon out, "because she's sweet and cuddly and I like that sort of thing."
"Uh. Yeah. I'd like to hear about the stuff you've seen," Ellie answers, awkward but sincere. It's a little gruff; she's still not completely used to people actually giving a fuck right off the bat. (Stop. Perceiving her. Stop that.)
Ellie has a visible flicker in her expression at the name Potato, but it's quickly gone, and she manages a soft smile.
"I've snuck up here a few times, so I've said hi, but I didn't know their names. She's a real nice one." Less aggressive with her cuddling and less free with her beak.
Ellie lifts her chin towards a big, grey griffon, one that looks very muscled, particularly rough and tough. She flashes a wider smile as he spots her and ruffles his wings, clearly intent on coming over to investigate.
"That big softie right there."
(Who is Artichoke, though she doesn't know it yet.)
"I could teach you..." Adrasteia looks around, counting in her head, "all of them, I think. That one is Artichoke, the one you've picked out; quite the sweetheart, but he'll chew your hair if you're not careful."
Artichoke does come over, pressing his beak into first Adrasteia's outstretched (but empty) hand before investigating Ellie with a happy little trill. Once he moves away from her, Adrasteia starts unpacking one of the grooming kits that are hanging up around the roost.
"It's spring, so most of them are molting — losing feathers more often than usual — and that means they end up with a lot of loose feathers in strange places. The fastest way to their hearts that I've found is doing a little grooming every time you see them. Works even better with food." She nods, and passes Ellie a brush. "So we'll do that, and then we'll get him set up for riding today." Both of them on one griffon, which should be easily done; Adrasteia is small, even for an elf, and Ellie is young. Besides no one in their right mind would put someone on a flying mount solo for their first ride out.
"Callus would do that if I gave him half a chance," Ellie says with half a smile, but her eyes warm at the name. She greets Artichoke softly, giving him a little scritch through his headfeathers and offering him a treat (careful of her fingers) before following over to where Adrasteia's handling the tools. Most of the tools are familiar to her, though the griffon's fur is a bit different from horsehair.
Palming the brush with familiarity, she works over the fur, freeing up the shedding undercoat and the fuzzy underfluff from feathers. For particular itchy places she rubs deeply with her fingers, raking it up before she brushes it properly out.
"Food and scratches," she agrees with a knowing nod, hesitating for a second, before she pushes on the long-buried impulse.
"When they first took us in at Jackson," she said, skimming over what Jackson is, or why she had to be taken in, "I helped out in the stables. I'd always take it over farming rotation."
There's another smile at the realization that Adrasteia won't have to train Ellie on the basics; like the brush, she already has them well in hand. "The first horse I ever met was named Tarron. He was a workhorse but proud." She hums at the memory, using her own hands to start culling Artichoke's loose feathers. A particularly pristine one she presents to Ellie like a gift. "I think he'd been a warhorse before the Blight."
The beast shakes out his head and makes a contented sound in Ellie's ear. "Personally I'm terrible at working the land, so I can't say I blame your choices." One of the other griffons opens its wings in one of the tower windows before flapping and soaring out into the sky. "Griffons were extinct, or believed to be, until just a few years ago. It's quite the blessing to get to work so closely with them."
Ellie pauses her brushing to give Artichoke's cheek a rub, sleeking back his feathers and finding the itchy places -- then pausing to accept the lovely feather. The smile that breaks over her face makes her look even younger than she is, a glimpse of something she might have been years past.
She murmurs a thank you, and holds it up for Artichoke to inspect, turning it slowly so he can admire it too, before she slips it into a shirt pocket. She'll find a place for it later, when she's not busy listening to the sound of Andrasteia's voice, the contented little trills near her ear, the rustling of feathers all around them.
Who knew she'd ever find the company of griffons restful?
"I heard," she says, thinking back to the Blights, the Wardens, the things she still feels she barely understands. She's in this war effort now, for better or for worse. But she still feels upended, knowing so little.
"How'd you guys ever figure out how to ride them again? Or were there people who still knew?"
A soft chuckle from the elven woman at Ellie's question. It's a good one, though; her expression is one of pride at the query before it turns thoughtful.
"I think, perhaps, too much time had passed for direct, hands-on learning to be passed down through generations, but I don't know for certain." She hadn't thought to ask. "Wardens keep... well, I'm not sure I'd call them very good records, as so many of them are closed to those who aren't Wardens," and isn't that the opposite of a useful record? "But detailed ones, at the very least. I think the methods were preserved in that way, and these were raised from eggs to hatchlings, which makes it easier.
There are wild ones in the nearby mountain range now, too. For the most part, if a griffon likes you, they have no intention of dropping you." If you're kind to a creature it tends to be kind back. People, on the other hand, are much more complicated beings.
"I'm certain it's been difficult adjusting to coming to a new world, at war, with such a strange and varied history. But if you have any questions, about the war, about Thedas... I can do my best to answer them."
Nodding, Ellie works from fur to feathers, pressing her fingers in deep to find and pluck out the loose down, combing it slowly free. She's used to fur, but feathers are another matter, though they're softer. Probably a good thing she's not allergic. There seems to be infinite depth to them, and she imagines the itchy neck feathers would be harder to get to.
"I'll make sure to stay on their good side, then," Ellie says with a little smile, giving Artichoke a little scratch. She's finding some really good itchy places up in here.
The offer is generous, and Ellie grows quiet, trying to turn things over in her mind. There's so much of the culture she knows so little about, and history, and magic, and all the races and the tensions between them. Everything she knows is the barest of basics, and though she's been given primers and is studying hard, she hasn't re-learned how to read as fluidly as she'd like.
"What is a Warden?" she asks. "And Darkspawn? I can't get a clear answer."
"A Warden is someone who has gone through a ritual called the Joining. It changes you, but not in a way you can see. Grey Wardens are the only ones who can kill an Archdemon, which is what lead the Blights when they're above ground." And underground as well, presumably, but that gets complicated. "It costs, being a Grey Warden. The one who kills the Archdemon dies as a result. Plus we have shorter lifespans in general, and can't have children.
Darkspawn are... corrupted beings. The story from the Chantry is this: magisters who worshipped the Old Gods used blood magic to enter the Golden City, which could be seen in the Fade, in dreams... but they entered it as walking men. For this, the Golden City turned black, and they were corrupted, and cast out."
The terms she uses are things that Ellie has only a loose understanding of; though she knows by the hushed tones people use when they speak about them that they're nothing lighthearted. The world has survived several Blights, and the last one wasn't so long ago that anyone's forgotten what it was like.
Ellie guesses there could've been shittier times to have been dropped into Thedas for sure.
"But all the Darkspawn can't be corrupted magisters," she says with a frown, tugging out a little more fluff, brushing off her fingers. "They'd have all been killed by now, right? As many Blights as there have been?"
"No, just the strong-and-very-hard-to-kill sorts are probably corrupted magisters, honestly."
Adrasteia, for one, is glad that they're not dealing with a Blight on top of the war now. She remembers what the sky was like, during the Blight, and has no particular wish to return to that life.
More feathers are worked out with her slim, ring-covered fingers. "There have been five Blights. The first one was almost two hundred years long." It's a bit a miracle, in her mind, that anyone survived that First Blight. "Darkspawn don't have children. They make these creatures called Broodmothers, which are, frankly, terrifying and disgusting all at once. That's how they make more of themselves."
"Well." Adrasteia makes a face. "I wouldn't let them bite you, honestly. You can still catch the Blight, and then your only option is to become a Grey Warden or... wait. Until it kills you."
Already pulling a face, Ellie pulls a more severe one, then shakes her head, resigned to the idea.
"We had something kinda like that, back where I'm from. So I've had some practice."
She presses her lips together. "No Grey Wardens, though. If you're bit, you're done. It doesn't sound like being a Warden's a walk in the park, but at least it's an option."
It speaks volumes, actually, that people come from worlds with common troubles. Upsetting volumes, but volumes nonetheless.
"I probably wasn't too much removed from your age when I Joined," she considers aloud. "While not everyone survives the Joining, everyone who makes the attempt is a Warden nonetheless. Hopefully it won't be necessary either way."
Ellie gives a shrug, a little awkward -- accepting sympathy for the state of her world has never been something she's good at. It's just reality, like the fact that she's never had parents. If you don't have something in the first place there's nothing to feel like you're missing out on. It's just what it is.
"Hopefully," she agrees, then pauses.
"... uh, if this is too personal, you can tell me to fuck off," she says awkwardly. "But is that why you joined? Because you got bit?"
"It's not," Adrasteia says by way of promise but them it's difficult to get the rest of the words out. Her fingers work free tufts of down and loose feathers across the griffon's wings. "Too personal, I mean. I don't tend to mind personal questions, in general.
I joined because my husband was dead, and I hoped I could do some good in Thedas if I didn't immediately follow him. Dying slowly of the Blight was not something I was prepared to do."
Ellie's face does something she doesn't realize it does when Adrasteia relays her husband's loss. She loses animation, and it brings a familiar, quiet bottomlessness to her eyes that doesn't leave her entirely present. Empathetic, yes. Grief, yes. But more than anything it's a recognition of pain.
Loss is universal, cavernous.
"How long's it been?" Ellie asks, skipping over the usual condolences, the sympathetic noises that people make, the ones she never quite knows how to take. She rubs her thumb next to Artichoke's beak, letting him nip softly at her fingers. He's gentle, like he knows.
She's seen that expression before when some memory causes a person to leave their body and live in the past instead, as Adrasteia understands it within herself; she's never seen it in a mirror, mind, but she knows the look in the eyes all the same.
Wardens see a lot of suffering especially if they do the work.
"It'll be eleven years, in Kingsway." Long enough to miss him, and for that missing to hurt a little less. Long enough to live another life, and wonder what it means to move on when so little is promised in the first place. "I think I've done alright, all things considered."
"... looks like it," Ellie says softly, and means it. Every story of loss is different, and every person reacts to it differently. Some, better than others. Ellie digs her fingers into the deep, soft feathering of Artichoke's neck and rubs, raking up more down and making him trill happily.
"This seems like a good place for it," she says, without thinking.
"Doing all right, I mean."
Or getting to that point.
It hasn't escaped her notice that the souls here are almost universally wounded ones, seeking direction. Maybe this is the right place for her to be.
"I hope so," comes the soft answer, and another smile, fleeting but no less true, crosses her face. "I've only been here since the new year, or thereabouts, but I think Riftwatch has... a lot of potential, to do good for the people here. And elsewhere, in Thedas."
Since Ellie has the 'scratching the griffon until he's content' part of this exercise well in hand, Adrasteia fetches a broom and dustpan to keep the floor clean and her hands busy. "I hope you'll find it to be the same."
It's nice to have it be understood, even if it's not said out loud.
Why d'you think we're here? she'd asked, once upon a time, in a place far beyond the Fade. The answer's never left her.
To do good.
So the wording hits her deeply, because there's no way she knows, but sometimes the universe just shakes out that way. Ellie reaches up to scratch again at Artichoke's withers and shoulder joints, where his wings meet his body, and gives him some good rubs and scratches, almost massaging out the loose down and molting feathers.
"Handsome boy," she murmurs under her breath, because her chest feels too tight to answer Adrasteia right away.
"Guess I'll just have to see, right?" she asks, lifting her face. "Might've fallen ass-first into Thedas but I don't have to stay sitting on it."
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The most Ellie knows about Adrasteia is that she's a friend of Ellis, and he's all good in her book. So she's shown up for riding dressed in appropriate but plain clothes, the kind she had to have borrowed piecemeal from the armory. Her hair's tied back in a simple twist, just barely long enough for it.
Ellie pulls on the leather gloves, fumbling a bit with her left hand. It's both where the anchor is and where she's missing two fingers so it takes a little wriggling to get things in the right spot.
"Nope," she answers, while she fiddles with them, clenching and unclenching her fists. "Horses, sure, but griffons are supposed to be a myth, like dragons."
... though those are apparently real here too.
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Right now, there's flight training. And trying not to worry about how a girl Ellie's age manages to lose fingers. She can think of too many ways for that to have happened, easily, and it's frankly none of her business.
"Well, griffons are much like any other rideable creature, in my experience, which is to say: each one has their own personality and proclivities, but responds well to food and positive reinforcement. Have you ridden before? A horse, I mean, or anything."
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Ellie gives a light shrug, like it's no big deal, and reaches into her pocket, where she's secreted away some jerky treats. Easier to carry around than a sack of dead rats, which she's also found that some of the griffons really like.
"Sounds fair. And yeah, I had my own horse for a while back home. We used them for all our patrols in the mountainside." She shrugs a little. "And I rode double on Aenor's dracolisk for a while, if that counts?"
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She sees that affectation of 'it doesn't matter' and raises you an honest, listening ear Ellie. But no pressure.
"That's perfect, and definitely counts. Have you had much of a chance to get used to the griffons, figure out which one you'd like to try riding first? I usually ride Potato," she explains, pointing the griffon out, "because she's sweet and cuddly and I like that sort of thing."
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Ellie has a visible flicker in her expression at the name Potato, but it's quickly gone, and she manages a soft smile.
"I've snuck up here a few times, so I've said hi, but I didn't know their names. She's a real nice one." Less aggressive with her cuddling and less free with her beak.
Ellie lifts her chin towards a big, grey griffon, one that looks very muscled, particularly rough and tough. She flashes a wider smile as he spots her and ruffles his wings, clearly intent on coming over to investigate.
"That big softie right there."
(Who is Artichoke, though she doesn't know it yet.)
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Artichoke does come over, pressing his beak into first Adrasteia's outstretched (but empty) hand before investigating Ellie with a happy little trill. Once he moves away from her, Adrasteia starts unpacking one of the grooming kits that are hanging up around the roost.
"It's spring, so most of them are molting — losing feathers more often than usual — and that means they end up with a lot of loose feathers in strange places. The fastest way to their hearts that I've found is doing a little grooming every time you see them. Works even better with food." She nods, and passes Ellie a brush. "So we'll do that, and then we'll get him set up for riding today." Both of them on one griffon, which should be easily done; Adrasteia is small, even for an elf, and Ellie is young. Besides no one in their right mind would put someone on a flying mount solo for their first ride out.
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Palming the brush with familiarity, she works over the fur, freeing up the shedding undercoat and the fuzzy underfluff from feathers. For particular itchy places she rubs deeply with her fingers, raking it up before she brushes it properly out.
"Food and scratches," she agrees with a knowing nod, hesitating for a second, before she pushes on the long-buried impulse.
"When they first took us in at Jackson," she said, skimming over what Jackson is, or why she had to be taken in, "I helped out in the stables. I'd always take it over farming rotation."
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The beast shakes out his head and makes a contented sound in Ellie's ear. "Personally I'm terrible at working the land, so I can't say I blame your choices." One of the other griffons opens its wings in one of the tower windows before flapping and soaring out into the sky. "Griffons were extinct, or believed to be, until just a few years ago. It's quite the blessing to get to work so closely with them."
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She murmurs a thank you, and holds it up for Artichoke to inspect, turning it slowly so he can admire it too, before she slips it into a shirt pocket. She'll find a place for it later, when she's not busy listening to the sound of Andrasteia's voice, the contented little trills near her ear, the rustling of feathers all around them.
Who knew she'd ever find the company of griffons restful?
"I heard," she says, thinking back to the Blights, the Wardens, the things she still feels she barely understands. She's in this war effort now, for better or for worse. But she still feels upended, knowing so little.
"How'd you guys ever figure out how to ride them again? Or were there people who still knew?"
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"I think, perhaps, too much time had passed for direct, hands-on learning to be passed down through generations, but I don't know for certain." She hadn't thought to ask. "Wardens keep... well, I'm not sure I'd call them very good records, as so many of them are closed to those who aren't Wardens," and isn't that the opposite of a useful record? "But detailed ones, at the very least. I think the methods were preserved in that way, and these were raised from eggs to hatchlings, which makes it easier.
There are wild ones in the nearby mountain range now, too. For the most part, if a griffon likes you, they have no intention of dropping you." If you're kind to a creature it tends to be kind back. People, on the other hand, are much more complicated beings.
"I'm certain it's been difficult adjusting to coming to a new world, at war, with such a strange and varied history. But if you have any questions, about the war, about Thedas... I can do my best to answer them."
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"I'll make sure to stay on their good side, then," Ellie says with a little smile, giving Artichoke a little scratch. She's finding some really good itchy places up in here.
The offer is generous, and Ellie grows quiet, trying to turn things over in her mind. There's so much of the culture she knows so little about, and history, and magic, and all the races and the tensions between them. Everything she knows is the barest of basics, and though she's been given primers and is studying hard, she hasn't re-learned how to read as fluidly as she'd like.
"What is a Warden?" she asks. "And Darkspawn? I can't get a clear answer."
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Darkspawn are... corrupted beings. The story from the Chantry is this: magisters who worshipped the Old Gods used blood magic to enter the Golden City, which could be seen in the Fade, in dreams... but they entered it as walking men. For this, the Golden City turned black, and they were corrupted, and cast out."
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Ellie guesses there could've been shittier times to have been dropped into Thedas for sure.
"But all the Darkspawn can't be corrupted magisters," she says with a frown, tugging out a little more fluff, brushing off her fingers. "They'd have all been killed by now, right? As many Blights as there have been?"
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Adrasteia, for one, is glad that they're not dealing with a Blight on top of the war now. She remembers what the sky was like, during the Blight, and has no particular wish to return to that life.
More feathers are worked out with her slim, ring-covered fingers. "There have been five Blights. The first one was almost two hundred years long." It's a bit a miracle, in her mind, that anyone survived that First Blight. "Darkspawn don't have children. They make these creatures called Broodmothers, which are, frankly, terrifying and disgusting all at once. That's how they make more of themselves."
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"Ugh, nasty. At least they can't bite you and turn you into one of them."
So far as she's read, anyway. But if they're that numerous even without turning the living to their side, it doesn't matter much.
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Since it's incurable, and all.
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"We had something kinda like that, back where I'm from. So I've had some practice."
She presses her lips together. "No Grey Wardens, though. If you're bit, you're done. It doesn't sound like being a Warden's a walk in the park, but at least it's an option."
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It speaks volumes, actually, that people come from worlds with common troubles. Upsetting volumes, but volumes nonetheless.
"I probably wasn't too much removed from your age when I Joined," she considers aloud. "While not everyone survives the Joining, everyone who makes the attempt is a Warden nonetheless. Hopefully it won't be necessary either way."
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"Hopefully," she agrees, then pauses.
"... uh, if this is too personal, you can tell me to fuck off," she says awkwardly. "But is that why you joined? Because you got bit?"
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I joined because my husband was dead, and I hoped I could do some good in Thedas if I didn't immediately follow him. Dying slowly of the Blight was not something I was prepared to do."
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Loss is universal, cavernous.
"How long's it been?" Ellie asks, skipping over the usual condolences, the sympathetic noises that people make, the ones she never quite knows how to take. She rubs her thumb next to Artichoke's beak, letting him nip softly at her fingers. He's gentle, like he knows.
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Wardens see a lot of suffering especially if they do the work.
"It'll be eleven years, in Kingsway." Long enough to miss him, and for that missing to hurt a little less. Long enough to live another life, and wonder what it means to move on when so little is promised in the first place. "I think I've done alright, all things considered."
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"This seems like a good place for it," she says, without thinking.
"Doing all right, I mean."
Or getting to that point.
It hasn't escaped her notice that the souls here are almost universally wounded ones, seeking direction. Maybe this is the right place for her to be.
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Since Ellie has the 'scratching the griffon until he's content' part of this exercise well in hand, Adrasteia fetches a broom and dustpan to keep the floor clean and her hands busy. "I hope you'll find it to be the same."
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Why d'you think we're here? she'd asked, once upon a time, in a place far beyond the Fade. The answer's never left her.
To do good.
So the wording hits her deeply, because there's no way she knows, but sometimes the universe just shakes out that way. Ellie reaches up to scratch again at Artichoke's withers and shoulder joints, where his wings meet his body, and gives him some good rubs and scratches, almost massaging out the loose down and molting feathers.
"Handsome boy," she murmurs under her breath, because her chest feels too tight to answer Adrasteia right away.
"Guess I'll just have to see, right?" she asks, lifting her face. "Might've fallen ass-first into Thedas but I don't have to stay sitting on it."
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I'm making this shit up as I go, also sorry for losing the notif!
it's the dw life rn