faderift | I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots

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I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots

WHO: Asher Hardie; open
WHAT: Asher arrives in Skyhold, John Cena's theme plays in the distance
WHEN: mid-late Wintermarch; feel free to just bump into him later than his arrival
WHERE: Skyhold, by the healing tents and the stables but if you want to wildcard bumping into him then go for it
NOTES: language most likely, if you'd like to assume past CR then hit me up.

The rest of the Boneflayers make for the tavern almost immediately, a collection of rogues and one annoyed mage abandoning their leader with a pouch of coin to leave Asher alone, just through the main gates of Skyhold trying to coax a tired grumpy bronto to the stables, the wagon behind it groaning with supplies. Meat, vegetables, leather, wool, some wheels of cheese, even some home-brewed ale, all packed high and lashed into the wagon, a gift of support from his family they've all been complaining about since they rumbled through the Hinterlands and up. He might be a big guy but he can't do everything himself, not when there's also a grizzled looking mabari plodding along too.

Most of the people he makes eye contact with seem to be looking away quickly, which y'know, rude but unsurprising when you're Asher's height and tend to look half-feral.

"Look if someone will just point me to the bloody kitchens so I can get rid of this I'll be grateful." Only no one is helping, please help him before someone gets punched.

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Well, here's one person who definitely makes eye contact. The taller Vashoth mage grins broadly as she spots the big bear of a human and his mabari companion. Her pace quickens and just in case a huge horned woman doesn't stand out enough, she raises her voice. "Asher! Over here, you big hairy loser. It's about time you showed up! And your better half, of course. Who's a good boy?"

Those last question is of course directed at the mabari, as Korrin has to pet him fondly first. She's still not that interested in getting one of her own, but that's all the more reason to spoil her friends' instead. And Bronson deserves it, for putting up with Asher.

Bronson turns first, his one good eye homing in on Korrin before he bays once and takes off to meet her, loping along, stump of a tail wagging like his life depends on it. Asher takes the chance to tie the bronto up, ineffectual as that'll be if it decides to go on the rampage but it's the thought that counts, right?

"I'm always the better half I'll have you know." Seriously, look at him he is prime steak cooked rare, get it right Korrin. But he's grinning and moving to give her a punch in the arm then a hug once she's done with the hound because he it's damn good to see a friendly face in all this. "S'good to see you Ataash, look at you, mixed up in all of this, some of them must be shitting bricks."

Bronson receives all the affectionate petting and rubbing behind the ears or on his belly if he flops over. She remembers exactly what he likes, so why not reduce him to a contented pile of mush? Once Asher's within range she naturally hugs back, not having to worry about delicacy with this one.

"Oh, yeah. I love it. There's a Templar I send running every time I so much as look at him. And hey, guess what? Mal's here, too. In fact, we just came back from Kirkwall not too long ago. We should get together over drinks and tell you all about it. And then Bronson will have his buddy again."

What's a hug without trying to crush a few ribs in the process? Not a hug at all because that's one thing his family manages to do well. Also he's going to rub his gross beard on her face, it's for luck. No one knows well enough to argue with him on that count.

"Why were you in Kirkwall? Don't you remember that I lived there for years? The place was mad as a sack of cats before the Qunari showed up and everything I heard made it sound like it only got madder still." To think, a place was too crazy for Asher? The end of the world should've been predicted right there and then when they finally loaded up three new crewmembers and set off to less murky pastures. "Do I have to punch dearest Mal for dragging you there?"

He doesn't really need an excuse for that, it'd be a gentle punch. A love tap. If only for the sake of Jayne because Bronson doesn't really meet too many other mabari.

"How many Templars are there? Nasir scouted about, reported back about mages but you lot stick out more than Templars seeing as you've got your staves with you."

Dammit, Asher, she likes to breathe one in a while. With her ribs intact, preferably. She'd try to return the favor, but then that beard-rubbing distracts her and she shoves him back with a disgusted noise. Bad Asher, you know she hates that.

"We were sent to retrieve something. More than that, and we should have Mal with us, though no punching. I agreed to come along for his sake, he needed someone familiar having his back in that shithole. Besides, I'm here and intact, aren't I? Proof that a Vashoth can survive Kirkwall even after what the Qunari did."

At mention of Templars, Korrin snorts and crosses her arms as she glances around. "We outnumber the Templars, but there's still too fucking many for my taste. They're reorganizing, too, which I'm not yet convinced isn't meant to undermine the mage council. By the way, I'm in that. I was too loud with my opinions, which they took as volunteering for a seat."

Wow Korrin he's not a mabari.

"'Retrieve something'." He snorts, rolling his eyes as he leans back against the wagon, ignoring the way it creaks in protest. "Right, I expect that from my Carta boys, I hope it was worth it at least. Has it- has it actually recovered from the whole explosion thing?"

Also are there demons in the street because fuck that shit he is having absolutely none of that crap.

Of course, Templars are going to be Templars, he doesn't know why he's surprised. "Got sticks rammed so far up their arses they can't use their brains anymore," he complains, dragging a hand down his face and to his chin where he scratches beneath his beard. "Wait, wait, wait. You? Korrin Ataash on a council? Oh this I have to see, do you have to pretend to be diplomatic and do they take suggestives of suplexing Templars as serious action items?"

"It's recovered as much as it can, as far as I can tell. I didn't exactly tour Hightown, as you can imagine, and my time there was very much in-and-out. More than that could have compromised things, and I wanted to return with my head intact."

Ah, suplexing Templars. Your ideas are always gold, Asher. Korrin allows herself to imagine that for a moment, a grin forming. "I wish. Sadly enough, they'd see that as 'Templar baiting' and a negative. And me, diplomatic? Hell, no. Mostly I just remind them -loudly- that apostates like me exist and we're not bowing to Templars or Templar ass-kissers. But you can see that for yourself, the meetings are open to all."

"Suppose demons can't be much worse than nobles, they're honest in wanting to fuck you." Not like that. Well, desire demons maybe but in general they just want to get all up inside you. Again not always like that, and now he's going to distract himself if he doesn't forcibly pay attention to how much he hates Templars, pretty easy given he hates them like burning.

"But see, I'm a free agent. A soldier of fortune and I'm guessing there's a fortune to be found in offering to punch Templars or suplex them or do any number of things. It's not baiting if it's a third party who just happens to know someone right? I can be charming, you know that."

Look, he's even bringing out that smile. Korrin knows the one. The smile that means Asher is about to say something terrible without shame or the one that signals him about to flip a table on someone before he punches their teeth down their throats.

Yeah, Korrin knows that smile well. In some moods it makes her sigh; in others, she grins right back at him. At the moment, her lips twitch and she can't hide the amusement in her gaze, because the Templars could use some shaking up. If Asher wants to be the one to do it, who is she to hold them back?

"Oh, no doubt you'd find some interested parties. Especially when Templars presume authority even when they have none, which I've seen happen recently. A friend 'over-heard' their super-secret first meeting, and one of them dared to punish her for it. I'd say your work is cut out for you, Asher."

Korrin...is honestly one of the few who could hold him back if the Reaver part of him doesn't decide to kick in right at that moment and have him getting blinded by the red mist. Even then, he'd just go do it later when he'd had time to settle into the tranquil fury that involves much more serious injuries. Only he hasn't come here to do that but broken noses, black eyes, a few missing teeth? Well that's normal for soldiers confined in relatively close quarters.

"They did what!" His voice climbs, loud and rough, and Bronson's hackles rise in response until he bends down to rub his back and get him to relax again. Nostrils flaring, he inhales, holds the breathe and blows out slowly but she knows him, she knows this doesn't actually mean he's calm. "They're punishing people for listening in on them making plans that I'll guess are going to have an impact on people here whether any of us like it or not because they're Templars and even if the Chantry is washing all the dirty linen in public right now, they're still the Chantry and they still have the Templars by the short and curlies so of course their plans should be known. Fucking typical. You ever fancied a cup made from a Templar skull Korrin?"

For a moment, Korrin almost regrets saying aloud what she just did, giving all that much more fodder for Asher's eternal grudge against Templars. She shares it, but Asher's fuse is far shorter than hers, however much he smiles or appears to be calm, and he doesn't have a council to answer to. Unfettered as he is, her fellow mercenary has little to restrain him from lashing out as he pleases against the Order.

But his grudge is her own, despite differing reasons, and what happened to Beleth rankles at her. Someone else ought to know about the Templars taking liberty with their authority yet again. Maybe a giant angry bear of a man breathing down their necks is just what the need. Crossing her arms, her lips twitch slightly. "And what, give them even more reason to think my people savages? I'd rather have them alive and in angry tears, shackled by the knowledge that they have no more authority to imprison and abuse anyone. Let them watch as mages walk free and know they can't do a damn thing about it. That's what I truly fancy.

...but I won't speak for every other mage out there. Some might be interested in hiring your hairy Avvar self for protection."

Korth how he would love to hit something right now but the wagon is the closest thing and the bronto would go straight through the wall, forcing him to kiss his damn contract goodbye before they'd even finalised these things. Melisende would gut him and leave him for the birds. So a deep breath, more fuel for the fire for later when he can actually do something about it.

Like maybe knocking some of them off a cliff. So steep, so few people with actual experience up here.

"Doubt they'll paint part of me in a much friendlier light, we both know that, but it's less skin off my nose." Avvar have been around from the start, even Andraste was one of them, so Asher has only ever played up to his grandfather's side, pride even while his mother hotly denies. The things you do to live a life, denials were probably easier with him out of the house. "You might get more than angry tears when the lyrium runs out. That's a Chantry thing and I know that the dead Divine started it but, strictly speaking, it's not Chantry now is it? Maybe if they want to impose restrictions on mages, you lot ask for serious restrictions on their lyrium.

Because you know I'll be here. If they go a bit mad. As they're bloody prone to do. And that's offensive Korrin, you should know better, we can't help that we were built to survive this world better than everyone else with our good thick pelts."

That last statement gets an eye-roll from Korrin. "You're one to lecture, when you offend almost as often as you draw breath. Not that I don't love that about you, it's entertaining as hell." And some people need or deserve to be riled up, so why not have Asher do it?

"The lyrium thing isn't a bad idea, though I doubt the Inquisition will support it when we need every able-bodied person we can get. Deliberately crippling soliders? Not going to happen. Though it should; what that shit does to them in the end...I don't know why anyone would deliberately put themselves through that. At least the red sort is fast."

Edited 2016-01-28 00:14 (UTC)

All Asher can do is offer yet another one of his smiles, scratching at his beard almost as if he's sheepish. Which couldn't be further from the truth but Korrin's right and Asher is definitely going to be looking to take on a few small petty revenge jobs. Starting with the one that got punished and finding the one who did the punishing.

"Crippling in the short-term, maybe making sure they're not about to shoot themselves in the arse later, besides, character building. You lot are expected to go about your days with the Templars just roaming around casually and still probably spying because they can't do anything but that. I'm going to need to know more about the red stuff though, we heard about what went down in Kirkwall, even saw some of it making our way through the Hinterlands - are the stories as bad as the truth?"

Korrin's lips form a thin line as she nods. "Worse, actually. Let's go to the Herald's Rest and claim a table. If I have to recount that mess, it'd better be over drinks."

Asher would doubtless have steered them towards that sooner or later, so Korrin's just going to ease them over now. And ask for something to spoil Bronson with, naturally. Don't worry, elderly mabari, she won't forget you.

Asher absolutely would have headed that way - he needs to see just how drunk his crew are and how many of them he's going to have to literally scrape off the floor or peel off the bar. He can keep pace with Korrin easily enough, Bronson sandwiched between them because somewhere this new with as much going on when you've got one good eye means a possible paw treading incident.

The drinks are on Asher because he was taught a few manners in life if she's going to spoil his furry son. Dropping into his seat with enough force to make the chair protest, he takes a drink before clearing his throat. "Right, this red lyrium and Templar shit - what sort of mess have I managed to get myself balls deep in this time?"

Plopping down after ordering a turkey leg from the kitchen for her favorite mabari, Korrin sighs. "That red lyrium shit is all over Emprise du Lion, Asher. There are huge, huge spikes of it jutting out from the landscape...and that's just what we can see on the surface. Below ground, who knows how far it's spread? As for what it does to people, the Red Templars are proof enough of that. Most of them don't even resemble humans anymore or do only vaguely. The Behemoths are nothing but a huge mass of red lyrium crystals. And of them seem to have this ability to accelerate red lyrium growth in others of their kind, taking away whatever humanity they had and turning them into beasts before our eyes."

"You're going to make him get fat," he mutters when he spots Bronson's treat, as if he's not just as bad himself around his faithful hound.

Korrin's story though, well that's not what he wants to hear and he scratches the mabari behind the ears as he listens, the frown growing. He got out of Kirkwall long before the Chantry explosion, before the Knight-Commander became a statue, but he still had friends and contacts limping out of it after. People he'd fought with, drank with, and plenty of Fereldan refugees finally making lives for themselves after years of hardship running from the Blight.

When his fist slams down on the table, Bronson doesn't jump but a lot of other patrons do, the din dropping for a few minutes as everyone waits but he lays his palm flat, taking another drink.

"No one deserves that. Not even Templars." For Asher, that's saying something when Korrin knows that he can't stand the Templars, even if it's not for the same reason as her. "How did this even happen? I know Carta, I know how the lyrium trade works and how smuggling it goes as well, but lyrium was always blue, and it just rotted their heads instead of making monsters out of them. And this shit...it's in the Hinterlands too. It's where my family is."

Korrin just gives him an unrepentant grin about Bronson, but the subject matter after that is serious enough that her smile doesn't reappear. That fist slamming doesn't surprise her -Asher and restraint never go together- but feeling sorry for Templars gets a raised eyebrow out of her. At least he understands the gravity of it all, and she doesn't exactly disagree...though images of the quarry will forever haunt her mind.

"After what the Red Templars did to the villagers here, I don't have much pity left over for them myself. Whatever agony they've gone through, it'll never justify caging people and working them to death, exposing them to that shit. Knowing we couldn't free them on that scouting mission without Red Templars swarming us, that they'd have to wait until we were able to return...that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I'll never forgive them for that."

But she takes a steadying breath, trying to answer his question even as she has little to share. "No one knows how it spread. Even Varric is baffled, and he was the one to first encounter it in the Deep Roads. What I do know is that after the explosion at the Conclave, the area where the temple once stood was covered in it. Massive, mystical spikes of 'fuck you' to everyone who tried keeping the peace...including those of my company."

"Why couldn't you free them?"

There have been jobs that have seen Asher technically renege on a contract, usually when something has been kept from him. And usually if there have been prisoners kept in dreadful conditions, people little better than slaves escaping instead of the prisoners. Even when the contracts are bad he's taken the money only to turn the people free and the idea of just leaving people--

Well he growls, low in the back of his throat, enough that the hound whines until Asher pets him roughly.

"Wait, your company?" And he leans forward clumsily, grabbing for her arm, glancing over at his team helpless with laughter in a corner, faces flushed from wine. "I'm sorry, Lady of the Skies I'm sorry Korrin."

Korrin's lips curve in a small but grateful smile, still pained at the loss though time has dulled it slightly. "Not the whole company, not Shokrakar and our resident poet and such, but a few familiar faces. Like Asaara, who suggested Avvar-tossing, remember? And Ashaad Two, so now we're down to just one Ashaad. And a half-dozen others, all lost with the rest of them. Such a damn waste."

She sighs, shaking her head and glancing at Asher's people. For a moment, she's a bit envious. He has his people with him and all of them are alive and well. And here she is, the lone Valo-Kas.

"And we couldn't free them all because we were a small scouting crew with not nearly enough manpower to overcome the amount of Red Templars in the quarry. It would've been a suicide mission. We were able to free a few cages on the fringes, but the heart of it all...well, that's what we're heading back for."

"If you know where they are I can have the others go check in, spend some time with them and get them into some fights, shit, I always liked Asaara, knew how to have fun that one." It's a hazard of the job, every mercenary knows that but it doesn't make it easier for the ones left behind. When you fight alongside someone you get to know them better than anyone else ever will, slogging through some of the worst shit life could ever throw at you and Asher's lost people before, but the thought of losing any of his crew now that they've been together this long? It hurts, hurts worse than pretty much every beating he's ever lived thorugh.

"One more reason to rip the bastard involved a new arsehole," he mutters darkly, with that look in his eye that promises hurt and blood, the one he's sported each and every time an insult or blow has been hurled at the people he regards as his.

There's something to be said for poor impulse control. Sometimes. "But you had to leave them there. They expected you to see that and just walk away? I couldn't have done that."

"Believe me, I nearly didn't. It took the others with me to stop me from doing anything foolish...that and the sweet voice of a rifter woman who would have been upset if I'd gotten myself killed. I could never let her down." Korrin smiles fondly as her thoughts turn to Araceli, but she doesn't really expect Asher to understand any of that. As far as she's aware, he enjoys a good tumble but feelings never enter into it. Good for him, but she wants -needs- more.

"The rest of the Valo-Kas aren't anywhere close, not now. They were in Gwaren for a time, but are now on their way to the Anderfels. I told them they better not get tangled up in Grey Warden business over there thanks to all the weirdness with the Wardens lately, but who knows if they got my last letter before leaving."

“Oh don’t tell me you’ve gone and lost your head for someone, am I going to be the only one that knows how to do this? Wild, free and untamed until something finally lops my head off? That’s disgusting, people settling down like this, but that’s war for you, it happened plenty during and after the occupation.” Seriously Korrin, do not speak of mooning over anyone to him unless it’s going to be crude because you’ll make him sick to his stomach with that kind of talk. If there’s someone that can change Asher’s mind, he’s yet to meet them, he’s grew up too attached to the Avvar idea of non-permanence, especially when his mother threw him out. One brave soul tried to broach ‘abandonment issues’ and promptly got thrown out of the bed. Asher is Asher, no one is going to tame him for more than a few nights if they’re particularly talented at it and that’s all there is to it.

“The Anderfels is just weird, the end. We went up there a few times and I’m pretty sure even Amalia lost the will to do anything. You know, miss ‘I’ll set anything on fire, I’ll set myself on fire’? I hauled us out sharpish. Still, I’ll get the word spread, my mother needs other big loud people to shout at in my absence if they want meals and beds in exchange for doing some manual labour.”

"I wouldn't mind having them closer, of course. They wouldn't want to be tied down to Skyhold, but given some heads-up and they'd be around if we need them. Your would would get her fill of yelling, that's for sure. Some of them are almost as bad as you." Korrin grins at that, still thinking Asher an honorary member in terms of that. He's as loud and crazy as any of them, and has the same skill for surviving situations he really, really shouldn't.

So she takes another sip, getting lazy with her drinking pace. "Do what you want in your own bed Asher, don't tell me what to do in mine. Go ahead and shag half of Skyhold; some of them definitely need it. But I'm wild enough without doing it your way. Having that woman's regard is worth any price; if I end up disgustingly saccharine, so be it." If Asher can't stomach that, well, it's all in good fun. He rags on her, she dishes it out in return, the cycle continues ever onward.

I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots

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