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Dragon Age: Prelude to Chaos


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"What a cesspool of a city." Lianna thought as she made her way through the streets of Lowtown. The city guards had been allerted by the death of some minor noble. 'Killed by the Blooming Rose worker' she heard people saying but oh how wrong they were.

 

Everything from the start till the very end of her mission was done sloppily but she was more concerned about the bounty on her head rather than a well executed kill. Nevertheless, the job was done and so far no one suspected a certain red haired elf from Antiva who was casually looking for a place to stay.

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Alaila was walking down the streets of Lowtown, having just returned from the outskirts of the city where she had been gathering healing herbs. The humans payed no attention to the little ginger woman with a basket full of herbs, but every few elves nodded in her direction or gave her a smile. Her staff she left at her old home, not wanting to draw any attention to herself - still, the dagger hung from her belt, just a basic offence in case anyone tried something fishy. Thought she'd rather allowed herself to get hurt than to expose her magic.

 

"Hey, lass!" The ginger looked over her shoulder to see and older elf walking in her way, giving him a shy smile.

 

"I don't know yer back in town. Got tired livin' with those wild elves, did ya?" The mage shook her head lightly, walking towards the alienage with the elf accompanying her.

 

"No, I'm actually looking for my mother. Have you seen her?"

 

"Sorry, lass. Nobody seen 'er for a long time. I thought she left to see ya." The other elf replied, watching the ginger carefully.

 

"Yer not alone in that ol' house, are ya?" She smiled, seeing how the elf was about to walk off in the other direction.

 

"Dont' worry about me. I can take care of myself." Alaila said with a reassuing smile, though she tripped over a rock and almost fell on her face, caught in the last second by the elf walking beside her.

 

"I can see that, lass. Take care, would ya?" he said again before waving her goodbye and walking off, leaving the ginger to her slow walk down the streets.

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A gloomful figure snaked through the Alienage of lowtown with striding steps and a fast pace, deducing that whomever the movement belonged to they were in something of a hurry to leave. As she passed the huge, gnarled tree at the centre of the Alienage, Isadora rolled her eyes and continued on through the gates with a face of damnable expression, her thin eyebrows in a deep scowl, nostrils flared and her mouth tightly clamped shut.

 

After making her way out of the large iron gates that enclosed the elves within their grasp come nightfall, the winding streets passed quickly as she brusquely stormed down the narrow alley ways, most of the slow traipsing commoners moving out of the way as she certainly had no intention of stopping.

 

Seeing a flame-haired elf almost fall flat on her face enticed the blood mage's attention for a moment but she quickly ignored the little incident as the elf carried on walking towards her. Glaring at the red haired woman she didn't slow down as she passed, rather twisted her body sidewards to move past the woman without losing any momentum, an unnerving scowl upon her face as she did so. She had never seen that woman before she was sure of it, from what Isadora could muster. But did she care in even the slightest? No. She cared about getting her hands around the neck of the certain someone who tipped off the elven mage who had just refused her access to his books, that she was not on good standing with the Templars, to put it simply.

 

Her incredibly speedy jaunt had her crossing paths with yet another elf, a red haired woman clad in leather armour was casually perusing the streets for what was likely a place to stay. Already in a bad mood her near collision with the woman didn't help matters in the slightest. "Watch where you are going!" Isadora snapped as she lightly collided with the woman as she stepped into the same alley, barging past with the same regard she gave the ginger elf... which was to say none at all.

 

After shoving past she continued on down the winding streets until she descended yet more steps which lead to what was a small convocation of superannuated stone huts, a step up perhaps from darktown, but still a good few paces bellow the quality of living in the Alienage. It was run by a congregation of two-bit gangmembers who thought they amounted to something worthy of note by stealing from the poor in an attempt to fill their pockets. Pockets that were so worm-eaten they couldn't fit change.

 

The pathetic excuse for defenders the area employed were simply pushed aside by Isadora as they attempted to block her path after which she veered off towards the left of the little settlment, heading for a soot-stained building with shattered windows and boarded up holes from where the stone had simply crumbled away.

 

Scraping open the remnant of what once may have been a door, Isadora vented her rage into a slash of her staff across the unsuspecting thigh of her prey, who was stood on his tiptoes as he reached into the top shelf of a large set of moth bitten drawers. Screaming in both shock and pain he toppled to the ground panting heavily as the tip of the spear head dug into the flesh on his neck.

 

"I'm not too sure why you've decided to get involved in my business by telling Veyryn I'm not well liked by the Templars, but you are going to scream, gargle a little as you choke on your own blood, and then expire. I do hope that was clear enough." She proceeded to boil the very blood within his veins with her potent magic, before leaving him to die with an incurable haemorrhage that would take him within the hour. Justice.

Edited by mythicdawnmaster
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Wind grasped the ladder-ropes along the mast to the Ilana as she sped alongside a Antivan spice ship that was homebound. His crew waited at the ready with crossbows and cutlasses, five of the ten large heavy repeating bolt-throwers were trained on the three masted vessel that had slacked sails and currently was sailing under the rowing power of it's slaves. The Sloop quickly closed it's distance and came within range of the powerful siege ballista.

 

'Load chain bolts!' He commanded, the order echoed throughout the crew and five chain-bolts were loaded. A Chain-Bolt was a standard bolt that had been cut in half and during travel it would split and begin to spin with enough force to cut through rigging and people alike like a sawblade.

 

A burly dwarf with fading red hair and encroaching grey hair turned the massive wheel to level out their pursuit. Of the fifty men aboard the Ilana all of them were prepared to lay down their lives in pursuit of gold and adventure aswell as their Captain.

 

Wind raised his hand to steady the men and watched with a hunters eye as they came close enough, he dropped his hand and the large bolts flew from the ballista with a loud clang that sent them high into the rigging, the chains tore through rope and sail effortlessly and the heavy weighted metal chain broke and destroyed the wooden mast. The loud groan of the wood protested as it was severed and refused to fall but after a long few moments it finally topped onto the deck with an ear shattering crash.

 

'Boarding Hooks!' Wind commanded and the deckhands quickly gathered the wicked five prong hooks the size of dogs and tied off the accompanying ropes to the mast. When their ships were side to side crossbow bolts sped through the air as they exchanged close quarters fire. 'Over the side men!' He yelled as he drew one of his twin one-handed crossbows and fired.

 

The bolt struck a deckhand fumbling with a small repeater mounted on a swivel in the neck and he went down clutching the quarrel. Wind tightly grasped the rope he was holding onto and drew one of his Crow-Blades and cut it free of the anchor-rig and swung across the gap along with the many boarders hidden in the folds of their sails. They dropped onto the deckhouse and took the captain and his command crew by complete surprise. The second his boots hit wood he drew his daggers mate and took at the Marines like a torrent, in a heartbeat the first two marines clad in metal armor and wielding halberds were down.

 

A spindly man wearing a broad hat moved his hands in a mockery of a dance and began to speak and incantation but Wind silenced him with a throwing star to the forehead that caused his robed body to go limp. Before the ships Captain could react Wind was on him with one of his Crow-Blades to his neck and the other to his manhood.

 

'Sound the surrender amigo' He said in a heavy Antivan accent, the man wore the standard of House Dres of Antiva, a well known spice trading empire that required many slaves to function. He raided only slaving ships and as such he had become known as the Sea Crow.

 

The deep brown skinned Captain glared at Wind and nodded to his trumpeter which raised his bugle and played the tune that stopped the massive fight aboard the slave-ships deck. With the battle over he slid the pair of blades into the sheathes on his shoulder blades and extended his hand.

 

'I accept your surrender Capitan' He said politely as his crew began to free the malnourished slaves from the depths of the ship and cart them over to the Ilana shortly before the fortune in spices and gold had begun to trickle up from her stores. A bulky Qunari carrying a massive curved scimitar-like greatsword approached. He had several fresh cuts on his exposed torso and countless more that had become scars.

 

"Captain... we need to hurry, we should finish up now and turn towards Kirkwall. If we race we can beat the coming storm." Called the First Mate as he pointed towards the distant clouds. Wind looked and noted them with a nod, after a long minute he returned his eyes to Ven. 'You are right Mr. Ven, have the men carry all that they can and put the crew of this ship in longboats with a weeks worth of rations and fresh water.' Wind commanded, the Qunari gave him a salute and began relaying his orders.

 

Wind smiled and turned to the Captain, he pulled a tightly wrapped cigar from inside his armor chest piece and struck a match on the wooden railing. After a long moment of puffing on it he turned his eyes back to the Captain, 'So tell me senor, Do you know what it is like to row all day with a massive oar?' He asked with a wicked smile as two of his crewmen grabbed the protesting noblemen and drug him below decks and locked him into the restraints used by the slaves to row the fifty foot long oar.

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"You watch where you're going!" Lianna shouted to the rude woman when they bumped into each other. This was her first time in Kirkwall and already she disliked pretty much everything: from the way the city itself looked, to her people.

 

By wandering around for some more, Lianna had finally discovered a building that sort of looked like a tavern. From the two patrons that entered the tavern before her, she overheard that before the battle this place was called The Hanged Man. She was half tempted to go back outside to see if anyone was hanging above the entrance but decided not to.

 

The inside of the Hanged Man looked almost exactly like she imagined it would. Dirty floor with a few missing floorboards here and there. The chairs looked like they've been made out of pieces of shipwrecked ships and some tables were replaced with barrels. Yet, as bad as it looked Lianna noticed a lot of patrons and no except her seemed to care about the shabby interior.

 

"Maybe it's not so bad after all." She thought as she approached the counter and paid for the room for tonight as well as ordered something to eat and drink. Unlike the common room of the tavern, her meal smelled and looked good. The elf found an unoccupied table by the fireplace and was about to start eating when she noticed two well dressed humans walking into the tavern. They were absolutely horrified by everything they saw but strangely enough neither of them looked like they were about to leave. Instead, they seated themselves at the table not too far from Lianna's and started talking.

 

"Have you hear?" One of the nobles, dressed in purple said. "Heard what?" The second asked. "When the templars were escorting mages from the Starkhaven circle to Kirkwall, they've left a lot of precious artifacts behind."

 

"Nonsense!" The second noble said. "Someone burnt down the tower to the ground the same year when the Hero of Ferelden ended the Blight. Even if they had some sort of artifacts, all of them would have perished in the fire." The first noble dressed in purple snorted. "You're the one who's talking nonsense." He said, neither of them were aware of the redhead elf listening to their conversation. "We're talking about mages. Surely they had some magical protection to protect their artifacts. Image what kind of riches those artifacts could bring."

 

The other noble laughed as he looked at his friend. "And impending doom. There are probably demons guarding them. One would be a fool to venture there, even for riches."

 

Little did they knew that Lianna who heard their entire conversation was one of those fools willing to go there and uncover whatever riches she might find.

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Alaila's eyes widened a bit at the pissed off elf that crossed her way, holding her basket with herbs a bit tighter as the woman stormed by. Creators, somebody got up on a wrong foot this morning. The ginger looked once again at the woman after she had passed by, watching her almost run into a red-headed elf. She really was pissed.

 

Looking again straight, the elf continued on her way to the alienage, greeting few of the acquaintances as she proceeded to her old house. Opening the old, creaking door, she walked in and closed them before her, looking around. She attempted to clean up the shack, but it only seemed the more she tried to clean, the dirtier it got. So the woman finally gave up, tidying up only a part where she had a few pots of hearbs she grew herself.

 

She's only been in Kirwall for a few days, hoping to see her mother return, but she knew she wasn't coming back. The elf couldn't help but to wonder what had happened to her, and the empty house didn't gave any of its secrets away. With another sigh, she put the basket on the table next to the herbs pots, pondering while she was looking at her herbs.

 

The ginger couldn't stay here. Kirkwall, of all the places, was currently the worse location possible for a mage, and it was obvious her mother was no longer here. She needed to find a way out of the city without drawing any attention to herself. A lone elf was much more suspicious than a group of travelers or mercenaries or whatever. Anything would do, she just needed to find the best option.

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Cold, hungry, sore, bruised, filthy, and tired. Ranek's usual state these days. The fact that he had survived for so long on his own was nothing short of a miracle or a curse. The recent beating he had received made him wonder if Kirkwall was going to be any different from everywhere else. He had tried asking for a job but ended up just standing in the doorway of the store stammering and mumbling like some sort of mentally challenged person, and so he was treated like one with extreme prejudice.

 

He had spent the past day curled up in the alleyway in Lowtown that he was dragged into, recuperating from his many wounds knowing full well that a few of them were broken ribs. When he came to the few coins in his pockets were taken as well as his shoes, leaving him with just the tattered rags he was wearing, and even those had been attempted to be taken off of him until they noticed the state they were in.

 

He slowly began to lose consciousness again, Noises from the street grew dimmer and dimmer as a ringing began in his ears. "Maybe I'll get lucky." He thought as his eyes began to roll and his vision faded.

"Maybe I won't ever wake up again."

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The Ilana raced across the sea with a storm at her heels, the ship cut through waves with explosive bursts of sea water that shook the ship and forced every man to grasp onto the sturdiest thing nearby, only Wind stood at the bow with one hand on a rope and the other holding a telescope to his eye. The sea began to get rougher as the storm began to catch them and Wind's fears began to grow, if that storm caught them they would be tossed about until they capsized and all her crew would likely perish, He would not allow that for as long as he was Captain.

 

After a few minutes checking his course a young dwarf with large crystal spectacles and a casteless tattoo approached and saluted, "C-Captain, our c-c-course is good b-but the storm is faster then we are, should we deploy the kite-sail?" He asked, Wind thought for a long moment and nodded. A minute after the command was given one of the large siege ballista that usually belonged on a Qunari Dreadnought fired a massive bolt into the air that exploded into a large sail double the size of their own when a strong enough wind caught it and the Ilana was lurched forward hard enough to send any unmounted objects spilling to the floor and her crew to fall on their faces.

 

The quick jerk of the ship sent the young dwarf stumbling for the railing but Winds quick hands and feet allowed him to move for a length of rope coiled on the deck, he quickly whipped the rope around the dwarfs midsection and caught the other end of it to abruptly stop the navigator from going over the side, with a heavy heave he pulled the dwarf onto his rump and rushed to his side.

 

'Careful Mr. Stoneshield... I recommend you get below decks!' He yelled over the storm, the gale force winds were loud enough that it felt like being deaf at times. The red-haired dwarf nodded and obeyed his Captain command without question. Only a handful of men remained on the decks during the storm out of necessity.

 

After twelve hard hours the Storm had turned west to leave the Ilana sailing happily south towards Kirkwall. In celebration of their survival Wind ordered a pair of casks cracked open and a meal prepared much to their Orlesian cook's pleasure, the burly chef came up from the galley. LeFleur was a large man from too many years of eating his own cooking but he was the favored cook of an Orlesian Prince, Wind spent a fortune to aquire his exclusive services and every time he enjoyed on of LeFleur's meals he silently admitted it was the best investment he had ever made.

 

The next morning the Ilana drifted into Kirkwall's harbor and docked, Wind had ordered shore-leave for his crew and the sea-rogues happily departed, many for the Blooming Rose. Wind stayed behind, it had been sometime since he had last seen Kirkwall, the battle between the Circle and the Chantry had decimated most of the High Town area, the relative peace it once had now a long distant memory. After a good while he threw his Sea Hydra cloak on and slid his Crow-Blades into his belt and left his ship for The Hanged Man.

Edited by Macman253
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Ruth was crawling out of bed, feeling like a dozen nails had been driven through her head. Her tongue felt thick and heavy and her eyes still had a hard time focusing on stuff.

She shuffled to what passed as a bathroom in the hanged man, which in reality was not more than a small basin and a big basket of cold water. It would have to do.

After she had dunked her face in the cold water a few times she felt a little better and managed to comb her hair and put on her dark brown pants, a black shirt along with light chainmail over it and her usual light black leather jacket over it. She looked out the crooked, small and fragile window of her room and rubbed her eyes once more. "Wow, guess it was more rum last night than I thought ... " she mumbled to herself and out some casual, simple eye make up on before she finally headed down to the bar.

She guessed it was around noon and as usual the Hanged Man was getting full that time a day. Shabby, dirty and filthy as the place might be, it did serve good food.

Ruthalia sat down next to a red haired elf in - so she thought - very decent outfit/armor and ordered some tea and a light breakfast of eggs and some bacon.

"Just got up once again, huh?" one of the waiters behind the bar asked with an aware grin. Ruth just lifted one hand in defence instead of an answer and waited for her breakfast ... lunch, whatever. While she waited she couldn't help but glance at the elf next to her every few seconds. She noticed that she was carefully watching the two nobles close to her a lot and Ruth wondered what they were talking about or why they were so interesting. Checking the elf out further she could tell that she was not just an ordinary alienage elf. She had origin. Probably tragic like all the elve's but also ... exciting. She had a certain aura about her that drew Ruth's attention. "You new here?" she finally asked.

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