genessia | One | Video + Action

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One | Video + Action

Video | Early Morning

Oh, how interesting! [Someone has been poking around with her new phone. And accidentally pressed too many buttons, turning on the video function without realizing. Have a very-too-close close-up of her face! Also, like someone read any of the pamphlets or anything. She doesn't even realize one has money in it.]

I guess this is how this works. You know, for all I've spent trying to fix the Eluvian I have back home, I never really gave much thought about how it would work. And there isn't anyone around I can ask either, not like here. Not that there could be, just it would be nice. Still, the surface is so pretty! How does it manage to reflect anything...

[She will finally lean away from the communicator, laughing awkwardly.]

Hah, oops. I'm rambling. I always ramble when I'm nervous. I don't mean to, it just happens. I'll just...stop talking now. Yes.

[She fumbles with the communicator, eventually dropping it and the fall turning it off.]

Action | Throughout the Day

[Why anyone thought it would be a good idea to let Merrill wander around any of the cities unaccompanied or without some string to find her way is anyone's guess. She did pick up a map and she can be found throughout Genessia and other cities staring at it; sometimes it's upside down, sometimes she's not even looking at the map side of it. Yeah.]

How odd. No matter where I go, it always says that I'm "right here". But I know I haven't seen that street a second time. Unless I have and the bushes are moving on me. Can they do that here?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh dear god, there was a random Dalish here. Alleyana stared for a moment from across the street -- pointy ears were one thing, but there was no mistaking vallaslin -- and then she strode over. The one-armed woman was armored, a huge spiky shield at her back and a mace at her hip. Her missing left arm, gone from just below the elbow down, had been replaced with a blackened dragonbone bar with two holes drilled in it.

She wasn't the most welcoming sight. And her expression was... well. Expression or otherwise, her face always looked like it had lost a few fights of its own, between the beak of a broken nose and the scarring.

"You're holding it upside down."

Merrill looked up from her attempts at reading her map to stare at the armored woman standing before her. The look on her face coupled with the armor, and then that powerful gait screamed Aveline at her.

She knew it wasn't Aveline. If Aveline was here then that likely meant that Kirkwall had fallen to pieces. Plus, last she remembered, Aveline didn't have pointy ears. A city elf, then! Even after living in an alienage for years, city elves were still a major source of curiosity for her.

Then she actually heard what she said. Merrill looked back down at her map, and flipped it to its correct orientation.

But no. It still didn't make any more sense to her.

"No. No, I don't think I was. This is still wrong."

"Look, this part of the map is north. We're facing east, the sun came up this morning over those buildings," Alley pointed with her one, gauntleted hand. One sharp finger, not unlike Fenris' gauntlets in that regard, aimed first at the north edge of the map, and then at the buildings in question. "It's not that different from the wilds, if you just keep your bearings. Where are you trying to go?"

Some people could still pick out her accent, somehow, after all the other cultures she'd mingled with. At least, that was the excuse given when someone called her Dalish after her vallaslin had been erased... they could have just known because she was, well, the Inquisitor.

Merrill stared at where she pointed to, but was quickly side-tracked by the look of the armor. It looked so pointy! Just like Fenris', but Fenris would never dare to get that close to her or her to him. Rather prickly, that one.

"Oh, but it is different from the wilds!" Merrill said. "I don't know which wilds you've been in, but all the ones I have have nothing like these buildings. I'm pretty sure I never walked on a proper road either. Unless we're counting ruins in that, too."

"I've been in some with trees as big as these buildings... if a lot taller." Alleyana tilted her head a little to one side, "You're not a hunter, are you, or you'd at least know how to keep your bearings. The directions don't change just because you're in a deep forest, or a giant ruin, or... this place."

The only place cardinal directions hadn't been relevant was in the bloody Fade, and this was not that! Nor was she about to bring up having been there in body... twice.

"Yes, but those are trees," she said. "I haven't come across humans, or elves really for that matter, living in those trees. I think it might be because of the vertigo. If they decided to look out down below, that is." She paused for a long moment, contemplating just how anyone could stand to live that high up. "Even though living in a tree has to be lovely! Unless they were living on a branch, then that would not be as lovely."

She peered a little closer at Alleyana. The ears were definite signs of an elf, but the lack of vallaslin on her face made her think she was a city elf. City elves, in her experience, generally didn't know, or care, about the role of hunters among the Dalish. "And, no, I'm not a hunter," she answered after a second, finally remembering the question.

"We set up platforms in the trees in the Frostback Basin... whole camps. But being high up was the best defense, there." 'We' being the Inquisition, of course. As for the peering... Alleyana weathered the closer examination with one slightly raised, scar-crossed eyebrow.

She didn't assume this random Dalish was a mage, however. There were a lot of roles in a Clan besides hunter, Keeper, and the Keeper's students, and many of them didn't go roaming the country-side alone. Not that she'd be worried about it anyway.

"Look, it's not that complicated. A map is just a drawing of the area from above. See, we're here," she tapped one pointy finger where they were on the map. "If you wanted to go, I don't know, here," another tap, "you'd go two blocks -- that's the clusters of buildings between the roads -- ahead, and then go left one block. See how that works?"

"That makes sense, I suppose. Being high up does give you the high ground, as it were."

Merrill looked back down at the map when Alleyana continued. She nodded along with the explanation; it seemed so very straight-forward in theory. In practice...

"Yes, yes... That makes sense too. But how do you remember the directions after they've been given? I think that's where my problem's always been," she said. "But it could also be because there's so many things to see and do. Especially in cities!" If it wasn't battle or her studies, keeping on track and not getting side-tracked were the hardest things.

"Well, the streets have names, see. We're on Cherry Street. Right there," a gesture, this time with the bar that made up her left forearm, "is Main Street. So you look on the map and you find where those two intersect, and that's where you are. The names are on the map, and they're on the little signs at the intersections, see them? So when you're done wandering around gaping at everything, you can find where you are then. I'd mark where you live on the map, to make finding that easier, so you can find your way back at the end of the day."

Alleyana paused, and frowned slightly as something occurred to her, "You do have somewhere to live, right? You can't just pitch a tent in a city." Not that she seemed to be carrying one.

She stared at the bar for longer than was probably polite, and even opened her mouth to apologize for that. But she had also been scolded before for apologizing too much. Instead she dragged her sight to where Alleyana was pointing, finally noticing the street signs.

"Oh... So that's what those are for. Kirkwall would have been much easier to navigate with those," she said. At least there had been Varric and the ball of twine he gave her when she first arrived there. This place seemed bigger than Kirkwall though, and she didn't think a single ball of twine would be enough for her to find her way.

"And," she paused and scratched her head. "I think so? I woke up with a key, but I don't know where it goes."

Alleyana rubbed her forehead with her existing hand, muttering a quiet curse in something suspiciously like ancient elvhen under her breath in exasperation.

"--Fine," she added at a normal volume, dropping her hand, "you can stay with me, then. I have more than one room anyway, and I can't let one of the People sleep in the gutters. What's your name and what'd you do in your Clan? Maybe I can help you find a job." If she was a crafter, for example, surely there were opportunities for that sort of work.

"That's rather kind of you," she said. Really, she had been so graced to always find someone willing to take her in whenever she needed it. Lucky, some might say. "Oh, and I'm Merrill!"

But, for the first time, Merrill seemed to quiet. Thinking on her clan often did that. She was proud of her previous position, but if only everything hadn't gone so bad...

"And I am... Or should I say, was? Hmmm." She shrugged after a moment of thinking on that. "I was the First to Keeper Marethari."

After another moment of silence, she dared to ask, "So I take it you're not a city elf. Or weren't always one, I'd guess."

"That's what I do... take in strays," Alleyana sighed, thinking of the inner circle of the Inquisition. While Clan Lavellan was still alive and well, helping to run Wycome, the people she'd dealt with most during the fight against Corypheus had become something of a second Clan for her.

"So, a mage then," the scarred warrior considered a moment, "depending on the type of mage... I mean, if you're a Healer, I'm sure there's work. Otherwise, I'm doing mercenary work myself and I'm sure I could use some ranged firepower for some jobs."

Alleyana eyed Merrill for a moment at the guess. "You're right, I'm part of Clan Lavellan, of the northern Free Marches. Well, of Wycome now, but that came after my mission took me down South. I go by Alley." Then, it was time for her own question. The Inquisition had gone everywhere... "The symbols on my armor don't mean anything to you, do they?"

Not only did Merrill not seem to know she was the Inquisitor, which so many strangers did on sight, but she hadn't once mentioned the Inquisition at all. And while it was officially disbanded now...

Merrill blinked. "No?" she said, well, asking more than saying. "I don't think I've come across it at all. But I'm not originally from the Free Marches. We were only settled there a year before I left."

For good measure, she looked at the symbol again. But no. No, it was foreign to her.

"And I'm no healer. Not really. I prefer attacking things before they can cause damage."

After being thrown forward a year with Dorian that one time, the concept of time travel -- of being from different times -- wasn't a far-fetched one. "...When are you from?" Alley asked next, frowning slightly. "Had the mage-templar war started yet? Conclave been called? You're clearly not from much after that, or you'd know what this is."

She shook her head. "No, I'm pretty sure I've never heard about a Conclave. Whatever that is."

But she quieted again upon hearing about the war. That was such terrible business... And she still wasn't all too sure how she felt about having known the person who started it all. "And yes. The war had started, but only just."

He'd made it more volatile, but the war had been coming soon enough with the votes for the Circles rebelling...

"You're from years before me, then," Alley didn't find it as weird as she should have, thanks to having been stranded in time before. "In my time, the war has been over for two years now. It didn't last long. The mages allied with the Inquisition, which granted them freedom in exchange for assisting with... well, demons raining out of the sky. There was a lot happening. The Veil was ripped wide open for a while."

Alley had honestly been more inclined to go for the templars for help, originally, but seeing all the Redcliffe mages enslave themselves to a Magister... she couldn't let that stand!

"Oh." That was all she could offer up at the moment. Realistically, she knew the war couldn't go on forever. Not with the nature of the two groups involved. She just figured it might end with one side completely killing the other. That seemed to happen quite often with humans.

"It's good to know that everything ends peacefully. Mostly. That whole demons raining for the sky thing doesn't sound peaceful at all.

"I take that to mean you're with this... Inquisition business then. Or know of them. Or... Well, something with them."

"Nothing about it was peaceful," Alleyana sighed, "the templars... we couldn't get to them in time after saving the mages from Alexius. Their superiors force-fed them red lyrium. They became a force that had to be wiped out. Not every templar fell to that fate, of course, but the bulk of the order..."

She still regretted not being able to save both sides from their respective fates.

"Everyone knew of the Inquisition by the time it had saved the world a few times. But you're right, I was involved. By the time everything was over, the Inquisition was a force that could have invaded Ferelden and Orlais -- a lot of people were involved."

But, may as well come out and say it now...

"I'm the Inquisitor."

Having had befriended and followed around with the Champion of Kirkwall for years, her awe at Alleyana being the Inquisitor was muted compared to what it would have been had she not.

And the knowledge of red lyrium still being around in the world and willing used by certain people took most of her surprise. "Red lyrium! After what happened in Kirkwall, I thought that would never come up again. Since it was just the one idol. Unless someone broke apart the knight commander... That didn't happen, did it?"

Because the knight commander, despite all she did under the influence of red lyrium, didn't deserve to have that happen to her. For the most part.

"Corypheus didn't stay dead when Hawke killed him. It turns out he can jump into any near-by Wardens. He... so far as we know, he's who raised the red lyrium up out of the ground. He got hold of Fen'Harel's original, ancient foci and used it as a power source. He's also who ripped open the veil. The red templars became part of his army..."

Alley rubbed her forehead with her remaining hand. "Orlais was in a three-way civil war, the Divine was dead, a crazy cult of Tevinters rose up under Corypheus' banner... high dragons were everywhere, and one of the Titans woke up below the Deep Roads... there was a lot for us to handle. But we did."

"Corypheus? Corypheus..." Merrill repeated, trying to jog her memory. They defeated so many demons and other weird creatures, it was hard to keep track of at times. Plus with everything that went down in their last few days in Kirkwall..

"Oh! That Corypheus! He was strange." And she would know strange. "And I never knew demons could do that. That sounds more like an arch-demon, with the host jumping." She paused after that, almost jealous that Alleyana seemed to have met Fen'Harel. Even if he wasn't exactly a favored god or anything.

"Fen'Harel? The Fen'Harel?"

"Yes, the Fen'Harel," Alleyana was immediately on guard, wondering where this was going. Especially with a relative stranger among the Dalish... especially a First.

"If you try to scold me about him, I'm walking away and I'm not stopping."

"Oh, no. No, no," Merrill said as she waved her hands in front of her face. "Well, maybe. Not now, but maybe. It's just... Does that mean the rest of the Evanuris are alive as well?"

This was an interesting concept for her. She had learned and read that they all turned away from the Elvhen, so for even one such as Fen'Harel to be around and alive... She didn't entirely know how to feel about that.

"Not now, and not ever, I won't stand for it," Alleyana's warning was stern, and completely honest. "I'm at least twice your age, I know all the stories and probably more concerning 'the great betrayer', and I've dealt with the man himself. You're not my First, and I wouldn't tolerate it even if you were."

As for the other question, Alley paused. "Mythal is around, last I saw. The other Evanuris murdered her, and she fled into a human host. We know her as Asha'bellanar, Flemeth. Fen'Harel avenged her by sealing the rest away, among other reasons. He created the Veil. That's why his power, his orb, was so perfectly-tuned to rip into it when Corypheus got his claws on it."

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