I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots

[hlif]

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.

Comments

[gatheringstorm]

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."

[hlif]

"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."

[gatheringstorm]

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."

[hlif]

"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."

[gatheringstorm]

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."

[hlif]

"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."

[gatheringstorm]

"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."

[hlif]

“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.”

[gatheringstorm]

"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.

[hlif]

"You still have the worst with the poetry. What would be better - cutting his head off so we don't have to listen to it, or cutting all our heads off so he never has an audience ever again?" He'll take ex-Carta bullshit, Nasir still playing coy about his past, and Amalia being one bad day away from marrying a rage demon over someone fancying themselves to be a poet.

Korrin speed up, you need to match Asher so it's more fair when they both have to stagger out at the end of the night. "I don't need a bed," and Korrin knows that because caves aren't beds, well not to most people but Asher can sleep anywhere that's vaguely horizontal and not entirely covered in hornets. "I'll shag everyone but the Templars, don't let it be said that I don't have some standards but we're mercenaries, steady doesn't actually figure into that life beyond how you hope the work comes in."

[gatheringstorm]

"Ugh, Kaariss. You have to give him just the right among of hooch to knock him out; give him too much or too little and you'll get drunken poetry, which is too bad to even be 'so bad it's good'. I don't miss that part, at all." Korrin will drink as fast or slow as she wants, Asher. One of them has to be steadier than the other anyway, or it'll end badly.

"Well, there's more than enough work to go around right now and it's all leading back to here sooner or later. I'm content to live in the now; the future will take care of itself, if we even have one and Corypheus doesn't kill us all first. Cheerful thought, hm?"

[hlif]

"Next time try using the thing the hooch comes in to knock him out." If Asher had ever had someone inclined to such a thing, they wouldn't have lasted long in his merry little band. Nothing violent but one can only be subjected to attack from the combined forces of two dwarves and a mage before they realise they are utterly unwelcome and would do well to make themselves scarce while they can.

Still, it'd be funny to inflict that on other people if they could pretend they didn't know him.

"Well unless they pay me extra I'll grab an ale and watch everyone punching down a god, that part definitely was not in the contract I signed."