This is Matthias. I'm with the team that went after the missing party. They were on an assignment, looking into these elven ruins at Baron Deshaies' estate, and they--

They're dead. [He doesn't sound sad, precisely. It's the calm of someone that's gotten used to this.] We confirmed it with an Inquisition contact. Their capture from Deshaies' was purposeful but their deaths, they were-- The whole thing was the work of these mercenaries. They had a Tevinter mage with them, he was there on an assignment of his own. Somewhere on the way back, our party tried an escape. That mage, he's dead now as well, from their attempt. So they must've come close. Not that it matters now. Sometimes it's a comfort, is all.

We've made our report to the Division Heads and we're coming back, to the Gallows. We've got some of their things, that were recovered. The bodies were burned. But we thought everyone ought to know, now. Instead of waiting.

[That's the script. Matthias hesitates, and in a break from what he'd prepared to say--speaking now with more conviction, speaking in half a rush, as if he might regret what he's going to say and so has to get it all out--]

Their names were Merrill, Kitty, Anders, Sorrell, Teren, Wysteria, Bastien, Gwenaëlle [a name he's practiced saying; he stumbles on just a little], Ilias, Kain, Darras, Iorveth, John Silver, Loki, Sidony, and Magni. Saying their names, it's important. There's nothing we can do to change it or bring them back, but--they ought not to be forgotten.

We have lost one in five.

[ there's not much more to say. he has, at least, collected himself beyond the briefly visible if profound despair that had caught him at the announcement by the rescue team. ]