therookery | everyone gets a terrible lullaby

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Iorveth
RECIPIENT: All errybody
WHAT: Iorveth has some nostalgia, then """sings""" everyone a song.
WHEN: Mid-Cloudreach
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: cw: mentions of torture/death camps??? Will mark in thread headers if anything more crops up.

This place reminds me of Drakenborg. [ Iorveth’s voice comes from the sending crystals, almost up-beat, and if you’ve spoken to Iorveth for all of five seconds before, you should know that’s Not Quite Right. But he seems casual and chilled out enough, so all well. ] It was a castle once, under a different name and a different people, then a fortress, likely named by nobles that wouldn't know a dragon if it bit them on the ass, then it endured as a shelter through two gruesome wars. Then, finally, a death camp.

[ yeah, so maybe not a cheerful talk, but his tone is even and relaxed enough. Still, you might start to guess that he isn’t complimenting the Gallows here. He goes on like it’s idle chit-chat, just swapping cute stories. ] ‘Subversive elements’, they’d say, but it was mostly Scoia’tael, and any other elves or nonhumans that breathed the wrong way at the wrong time.

[ The crunch of something that’s probably an apple sounds, and it’s followed by a stuttered laugh, muffled slightly because he’s definitely talking with his mouth full. ] Kind of a funny place, really. At night, you’d hear the prisoners in the death cell singing ‘The Hymn of the Joyful’, and they'd pick it up, all through the rest of the dungeon. You could almost bloody dance to it, if you weren’t chained to the walls, starved, half your bones broken and half your blood missing. We sung it in our own tongue, of course, but translated, it's... [ A pause, Iorveth’s voice trailing off pensively while he’s thinking of the best way to translate it to Common. He doesn’t sing it, because no one wants to hear his singing voice, it belongs in a freaking dungeon. Rather, he recites it like a poem: ]

"The hanged people dance on the ropes, rhythmically writhing in spasms. Sing your song with melancholic emotion, to amuse the joyful. Each of the dead remember, when their feet left the stool, and their eyes popped out of their sockets. Dance on the hanging ropes, happily writhe in spasms. And the wind carries their songs, the ringing chorus all around." [ It really doesn’t sound that joyful when it's not being sung. Or when one actually know what the words mean. ]

Good song, better with the tune to it. Too bad the man who wrote it was set aflame and quartered. Would’ve made a great bard. [ A short, sigh, lamenting opportunities lost. That’s rough, buddy. Humming, he takes a short pause, before adding on like an afterthought - ] Makes me wonder if your alienages here have any ditties like it.

[ Is he suggesting the alienages are glorified death camps? Maaaybe. Let’s talk morbid songs, friends. Or whatever, he's not picky, just shooting the shit, but Iorveth is allergic to small talk, so you end up with crap like this. If you happen to be looking for him, he’ll be sat or crouched up on top of a building somewhere, probably, or on a wall, munching at some fruit and peering over the courtyard, looking like an overgrown monkey-child. ]

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Mine have a saying as well. "Push humans back into the sea". We aren't kind enough to give reminders for things that should never have been forgotten. [ Maybe he shouldn't be surprised by the city elves dispositions here. It's very similar to those in his world, thinking they're doing some huge work of rebellion by not letting a human pass through a door first, or price gouging them on items, cornering a single drunk in a dark alley, oh ho ho, take that, humans. He'd heard of the revolt in Halamshiral, read of it in the library, and while it's a sad thing, the worse part of it, in his opinion, is that they stopped there.

who gives a fuck about some houses and a tree? humans are more dependent on their eyesore cities than elves have ever needed to be, the Dalish of this world prove that enough. Iorveth would've had them burn their mansions, docks and courtyards to ash. lock celene in her palace and listen to her scream as the flames ate away her skin. trap them in the towers they love so much. But, Iorveth is a fucking crazy person, even if it does get shit done. ]

I was a pissed off orphan. Now, I'm a Scoia'tael commander. [ picking on herbalists and weavers in the ghettos is one thing. when a scoia'tael unit moves into a nearby forest, humans learn to keep inside their walls. ] Nonhumans are allowed weapons, mostly as we're the only ones that craft them worth a damn, but using them against a human means death. Between my father, the local dwarven smith, and others my age, I learned enough to take revenge on some drunk bandits. The rest I learned from the Scoia'tael that took me in outside the city.

[ drunk bandits that kill the first of the people on that list. setting the barracks alight was retribution for the guards that did nothing about the bandits to begin with. ]

I'm sorry to hear that, of your people. You, though, seem capable of more. Perhaps you can do your race better justice. [ at least for the sake of realizing what bullshit there is in that mentality. intelligence is a far better step than knowing how to swing a sword. one of those comes with simple training and the other does not. ] What would you call your profession?

They tried that here y'know? When the doglords all showed up during the Blight but it was humans doing it to humans, because they came here and there wasn't room, still they stuck around and the place went to shit after. [Is that fair of him? No, probably not, but when you're a very small dwarf even by dwarf standards stuck in the dark and damp of Darktown suddenly packed full of resentful, hungry, angry humans where even the children are far bigger and stronger than you, life becomes a much harder place. Sharper. Food taken out of your mouth.

Because that's sort of the thing: humans push around everyone including each other, and Yngvi is used to watching it, to navigating through it, to playing his part where his mouthful is bitter to swallow.]

I've got...eight fathers, six mothers at last count, comes and goes a bit. Uncles, aunts, the old ones, siblings what I didn't eat. [And faintly, after that is Yngvi's thick Kirkwall mangling of Scoia'tel, attempting to ask the question of: the fuck is that mate but mostly tripping over the word, half sounding like squawk each time.] When Liadan - she's the second for the company I'm in - wanted to take revenge on people in the Coterie who did her dirty she had to hire out, and she looks human, she's elf on one side. Still couldn't do it all herself or she'd have been strung up.

[It makes him angry, saying that. Thinking about Liadan. People like her. Friends and near-family, his lady-- (No, don't think about that now, she'll be okay, she'll say if she wants them to come.)]

Me? I'm a mercenary, Boneflayers company; I'm the one here while the rest are off elsewhere, we signed a contract a couple of years back to do with the Inquistion. Born Carta though, cheating, thieving, swindling, taking out kneecaps because dwarves are the right height for all your knees. [The cheerfulness at that isn't faked or forced because there's nothing quite like the look on someone's face when they come to realise that no, that dwarf really is going to roll right into them before the axes come out.] Traps though, that's what I'm best with.

By 'push into the sea' I meant drown. The dead don't tend to take up space above the ground for long. [ or take food out of your mouth. it isn't a territory war thing, it's a please die thing, because you've taken over half the lives of the peaceful elder races that welcomed you onto this continent, and you've well over-stayed your hospitality. even the dwarves have been cut down to just the Mahakaman Foothills, despite how much better they mesh with human society than the elves.

however, proud as the war cry is, it's too little too late. the best they can do is rain unholy terror to be sure their people go out with a roar rather than a whimper. that part, at least, iorveth is exceedingly good at. ]

...I hadn't realized birthing a single child could be such a group project. [ eight fathers, six mothers, dude, what even? the mispronunciation he isn't bothered by, and frankly even surprised the dwarf attempted it at all. but the woman he mentions strikes something more familiar in him, and Iorveth listens quietly, before swapping this to private. ] Smart of her to acquire allies outside herself. Have the mercenaries you've joined with ever considered unifying beyond that? For more than lucrative pay?

[ for a home and some margin of safe-living and self-respect? there's so many nonhuman groups to Thedas with still so many numbers to them, not dwindled like the Continent. they could easily carve out their own place were they all willing to join together for it. ]

Though, being the right height for kneecaps - that you bloody are, tiny little bastards. [ Said with a laugh, clearly joking and not meaning real insult. He's known plenty enough dwarves in his time, and Zoltan Chivay in particular loved to point out the disadvantage in being a tall ass elf. ]

Bit more of a Raider thing here, better not to go stepping on their turf when we're next to the Wounded Coast. [There's the Carta, the Coterie, the Raiders, various mercenary companies, whatever else there might be that Yngvi's forgetting at the moment that all overlap with everyone. All the old loyalties, the old guard.

Even if bodies got tossed in the water because well it's convenient, and no one cares too much. Same as how the Kirkwall guard that Yngvi remembers from being younger didn't care to look too hard into whatever or whoever got washed back up with the tides.]

Who said anything about birthing? You humans and elves, don't know enough about Qunari but I reckon some sort of weird bee grub baby thing, you're the vulgar ones doing all that. Dwarves got other ways of making babies that don't get all messy. Disgusting how you lot do it. [Iorveth's not going to know and whatever, Yngvi's a bloody pedigreed dwarf so anyone who wants to come dispute these stone cold dwarf facts can come meet him in the pit.] Well we usually do jobs for nobles, they pay well. Bigger jobs a few companies all join up but signing on with the Inquisition's the biggest thing we've ever done, it's more that when it's just us being a crew of us we get to decide our lives on our terms. It works. Took a bit to get the roster right but everyone likes it now and we can travel at a good speed, swap the watches, take on the high pay jobs comfortably.

[Plus they can still go to parties with the nobles who have to be nice to the people enabling them to live their lives which is fun, really, when it's two dwarves, an elf, an elfblood, an apostate, and a Rivaini all hanging out. More fun when there was a great dirty part-Avvar and his dog there too. But Yngvi misses that life, is aching to get back to it now.]

Y'know we're not tiny, you're all lanky streaks of piss. S'alarming. Seeing some of you nude. First time I saw a naked elf I screamed, that much arm? That much leg? Someone put things together wrong when they were making the people up.

everyone gets a terrible lullaby

sshiiiittttt i thought i tagged this back, i am the worst

no worries, it happens

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