ooc: inbox/plot with me

[hlif]

There's a board outside Asher's tent by Boneflayer Camp City with daggers in it so you can tack a note onto it.  Or feel free to grab him in person or via the sending crystal.

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Note: I work Mon-Fri and I'm basically away 11 hours a day but I do tags in gdocs and I try to do a round a night.  Timezone is GMT.

Comments

[hlif]

[A man is dying.

A man has time to get deep when he realises he's not getting better.]

Halla have been around magic for a long time, same as the mabari since the Tevinters were involved in breeding them before they said fuck you and defected to us barbarians, and they were with your people through all your struggles. Maybe that means something, or maybe it only matters what you think here. [Leaning forward, he presses a finger to her forehead and then her heart, reclining back easily with his usual grin as Bronson lumbers over to headbutt him and lick his face.]

[serannas]

[ Ellana beams and bites her lip to keep her face from hurting with how bright her smile is. ]

Do you know the tale of Ghilan'nain, the mother of the halla?

[hlif]

No, only know her name, same as the rest of the Creators.

[Ellana that is adorable, somewhere he has a cavity forming.]

[serannas]

Ghilan'nain was once one of the People, and especially loved by Andruil. One day, she came across a hunter who had killed a sacred animal of Andruil's, so she asked the gods to curse him. They did, and he found he could no longer kill. Since he was a hunter, he couldn't do his work, so he sought out Ghilan'nain for revenged. He blinded her and left her for dead since he couldn't kill her, and she prayed to the gods for help. Andruil changed her into the first halla, so you see, the halla are our brothers and sisters.

[hlif]

[Asher listens as quietly as he did when he was a boy learning the stories of his gods from his grandfather, not quite smiling but it's close. This has always made more sense than anything about the Maker. Gods that were real. That did things. That were bloodied and moved and touched the world. Andraste might have lived and died but that was different again to what Ellana's telling him now.]

Thank you, for sharing that. I've only ever passed clans on the road and I tend to let them have a wide berth just so nothing ever happens that doesn't need to happen. [Melisende's history is her own, same as Liadan's. Asher doesn't pry.] Plenty of things I know better than to believe books about.

[serannas]

It's a wonderful tale, but sad too. And it's sad that our gods can no longer help us that way. We still pray to them, invoke their names, and I hope they can hear us from where they are, but they're trapped; locked away from us, and they can't answer our calls.

[hlif]

Trust me, it's not always so good when they're watching all the time. The Maker does a lot of shunning but my gods are there, so when I dragged my feet on something a few months back about training another warrior, one of mine saw fit to punish me for that. They can't answer but there's other stuff they can't do too.

[serannas]

Oh, no! What did they do to you?

[hlif]

Let me get burned by an abomination we ended up fighting on a job, one of the worst injuries I've ever had on a job. Probably because I agreed to train someone up as a Reaver but left Skyhold before I got around to taking him through the final stage of it. Suffer a wound, you realise you've sleighted Haakon, I knew what I had to make amends for as soon as I was up and walking about. [One shoulder rises and falls in a shrug; he's made it right, the gods should be appeased.] They live in all things.

[serannas]

Do you mean that ordinarily, the gods would protect you from flames?

[ She's not exactly sure how that works. ]

[hlif]

Not from flames, but serious harm in battle? Absolutely. Same as how when I go out hunting I never come back empty-handed because I know to make the proper offerings. I've picked up a lot of wounds but that's the closest I've ever come to dying.

[Especially when he'd been up in the Frostbacks, he should've known better.]

[serannas]

It sounds amazing to have gods that can answer you.

[ She sounds a little in awe. ]

Though I still wish you hadn't been hurt.