crystal.

[achievable]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Howard Stark
RECIPIENT: Everyone
NOTES: Nah

[ A snappy American (or dwarven or Qunari) accent, familiar only to anyone Howard has bothered in person over the last couple of weeks while finding his way around and becoming slowly convinced this isn’t a fever dream, breaks the mid-afternoon doldrums with, ]

You people really live like this, huh?

[ The time for acclimation is over. ]

You have kids who can throw electricity out of their fingers. And you’re walking up ten flights of stairs, in this heat? It’s interesting, but I hate it.

[ The time for being an ass has begun. ]

Someone explain lyrium to me. Only the dwarves and the wizards without feelings can handle it—I assume everyone else has tried gloves.

[ But, like, he’s not sure. Please confirm. ]

Comments

[achievable]

Sounds like an insult.

[gentlecountry]

Well, you cans takes it howevers you want and then shoves is right ups your ass.

[This said with extreme mildness. Whether or not Barty is mad, he sounds so not-angry that it's likely someone else is going into a rage just to pay his anger-debts. He's in negative anger!]

Stone sense. Is what separates the surface dwarfs from the kinds what lives undergrounds, where we usuallies do. [Where we ought to.] Some gots is stronger or weaker, some loses it if they moves up here to the surface, but all dwarfs gots the Stone Sense, if they're born undergrounds.

[achievable]

Let me guess: it lets you sense stone.

[gentlecountry]

Good works there, smart guy, you figureds it out. Only took you five minutes and you did it alls by yourself.

[This is less mild. But still; calm.]

Gots any more questions for me there, sport?

[achievable]

[ With the rapid tone of a man ticking off numbers on his fingers: ]

What does it feel like? What are you actually sensing? How does it help with engineering? How quickly is it lost if you go above ground? Do you regain it if you back underground? Does strong or weak stone sense run in families, or does it seem random? Have any humans or—whatever else you have around here, have any of them been born underground in large enough numbers to see if it starts happening to them? Is your accent normal, for a dwarf, or did you make it up yourself?

[gentlecountry]

Huh.

[There is a long, thoughtful silence.]

Well, you're nots too smart or observants, but you gots an enterprising spirit of curiosity and I can appreciates that. [Deep inhale] And as it so happens, my accent is fairly regionals to a particular corner of the undergrounds. I find I'm quite prouds of it, to tell the truth.

The rest of that'll haves to wait for someones with more patience. Maybe you coulds take a trip to skyhold; hear they's gots an artificer ups there who's not half bad.

[achievable]

[ Howard, unlike some people, is so sure that he is smart and so unconcerned with what anyone thinks of him, that this means nothing. Telling him he isn’t smart is like telling him he’s purple. Clearly incorrect.

So: ]

Next time just say uncle. It’s faster.

[gentlecountry]

Ain't gots an uncle.

[He knows exactly what you mean, but is no longer having any of it.]

But facts is, anyones who'd try to turns an honest effort at help intos a competitions for putting a mans off of helping doesn't have the rights to ask for an ah, a efficiencies reductions, there.

[beat]

Haves yourself a nice days now.