"Virtue of necessity, I think. Gives us opportunities the Inquisition didn't have, certainly." A beat. "My parents were glad to see me, but they don't understand anything that's happened since I left Cumberland. Not really. Don't really want to, I think; they've got their own troubles, and my life is complicated in a way it wasn't, years ago. And it's representative, maybe. I think there's a lot of the world who haven't heard of us, and still more who don't really know what we are besides an offshoot of where we came from."

A challenge, sometimes, but a freedom too. He's had so little of his adult life not carrying the sword emblem that everyone south of Tevinter feels the weight of instinctively, on his shield, on his plate. Even in uniform for Riftwatch, he still sometimes feels incognito.

"What have you been thinking? About our influence." Quiet, focused on a spot on the ceiling he surely can't see much of in the dim.