Freddy looked over at Cass, then laughed. He grabbed the arcane rogue, and pulled him close, before speaking directly in his face.

"Oooh, naughty fucking language. Better guard our chaste, virginal ears. And hey, I'm glad if you don't recognize me. That's part of why I left Fereldan for a time. Good to see you have testicles, then, fuckwit. Keep that attitude, it'll keep you alive," Freddy said with a grin, "Though, not wise to threaten bodily harm against me. No fucking problems now, but keep in mind that threatening your allies is literally fucking stupid.

And by the way, tattoos aside, I am clearly not dalish."

With that, Freddy let him go and turned back to Gerard, "Fucking played chess? Shit, you have to be pulling my leg. But yeah, might still be wise to ask our fearless leader. Some time getting herbs can save lives, after all."

"And what is it you're doing? All I see is a hypocrite living off a team because he has no where else to go." Cassius said in rather cynical way before pushing Fredrick by the forehead.

"Or perhaps the low educated one armed man comes with me to prove his worth? Your dog seem more intelligent than you." He laughed in a mocking way.

"Or is that 'too good for a hero'? All I " he raised his eyebrows in a challenging way, Cassius had no pride or humility, and Maker knows he'd never have it.

"I was taught to prove worth before making statements. I bake, clean, and stab people in the jugular if need be. So far I've seen more out of others who talked less. So please 'enlighten' me." He went on.

Freddy grabbed Cass's hand when he pushed his forehead. He squeezed, hard enough to bruise, before drawing his face in close.

"Don't. Fucking. Touch me."

He then shoved Cass away, and grinned.

"I don't really have to prove myself to stupid ass mages who have worse anger issues than I do. Good bye, fuckwit. Keep your party alive down there."

He then turned back and continued speaking to Gerard. He regretted his momentary burst of anger, but he didn't like people touching him aggressively. However, he also didn't understand Cass's random argument with him. In Freddy's mind, he had given advice, gone off to do some other shit, and had a member of the group that was currently leaving follow him away to start ranting and raving at him.

Freddy thought he was supposed to be the angry one!

Cassius chuckled. "Now I like this a bit." He smirked.

"Tell you what, I'll bring back you a Dark spawn if you stop saying 'that' word. And maybe I'll give you a treat?" Cassius... admittingly enjoyed the conflict- like a rebel. It was like a breathe of fresh air aside from be the perfect person as you were raised to try to be. No, this wasn't Tevinter, this wasn't slavery, this was a breath taking conversation, not one where he was expected to have a plastered face.

Cassius pulled Fredrick to the side. "Look, sorry I snapped, but I was raised to try to be upstanding... And being a rebel is... kind of fun acctully. No plastered face to try to look impressive... and let me tell you... these scars aren't beauty marks, but I take it you'd disagree there." He chuckled.

"Anyways. I rather be a kid at times, because where I grew up I could not be that... but I suppose that can be different now. All I will say is this sword is a token from someone I killed... my personal trophy. But keep this between us." He said before pulling out a container and handing it to him.

"Share it with the Mabari. I'm sure he will like sweets... I think he's a boy anyways?" Cassius stared at the Mabari, part of him wanted to impulsively pet it, but he had work to do.

@CAS1006

Pressing a button on the arm of her battle harness Henrietta extended a long thin probe which tapped Cassius gently on the shoulder several feet away. "Umm, aren't we supposed to be..?" She asked, her voice trailing off as she gestured down the stone stairway into the darkness below. While the fade-touched mage was distracted the probe quickly darted down and snatched a sweety from the container in Cassius's hand before retreating back towards the dwarf faster than anyone could stop it.

Popping the treat into her mouth the dwarf slowly chewed her prize as she took her first tentative step down the stairs, holding her lightning stave high over her head as she peered into the deep shadows. She'd never admit it to anyone, but as a surface dwarf 'Etta hated being cooped up underground, and as the cold wind blew up from the tunnel mouth she felt a shiver running down her spine. "So... who wants to go first?" She asked, her voice filled with forced joy as her eyes darted between the others, desperate for one of them to volunteer.

"That would be me lass. Don't know about you but I would rather not see act two of the 'fuck you, no fuck you' chronicles." Paxton said with a slight chuckle as he stepped towards the massive stone doorway. He took in a deep breath, enjoying the smell of fresh air for a moment longer before he started down the stairs. "Did I ever tell you all the story of the last time I was in the deep roads? Had to spend about five weeks down here living off of Deepstalker meat and what little water I could find. I was hiding out from some rather persistent Templars, the blighters tracked me for months. I have to say it was not that bad of a stay honestly, well the beds were a bit lumpy then again they were made of rocks." The mage rattled off in a jolly tone as he continued down the steps, becoming more and more engulfed in the darkness of the Deeproads. "Anytime you want to bring that light of yours lass would be simply grand." He called back eventually.

Lian followed Paxton. "Paxton if you're going to telling stories as we scout this I will smack you." She said annoyed. She carefully made her way down the stairs as fast as her leg would allow her without falling. She pushed her hair back behind her ears to remove it from her face and give her a clear view of anything that may come at them. She wouldn't hide if they were attacked, she would fight with them. She gained her bad leg thirteen years ago and she's learned in that time how to fight effectively even with her leg as a hindrance.

"Anytime you want to bring that light of yours lass would be simply grand."

"Paxton if you're going to telling stories as we scout this I will smack you."

"You shouldn't make him promises like that, unless you're willing to pay up later." Henrietta smirked as she stepped down the steps past Lian, giving the elf's pert backside a playful slap in the process.

Not bothering to look back as she laughed merrily at her little joke 'Etta suddenly stopped, her voice lowering to a dim mutter as her mind went to work. "...some sort of pulley system, _{and a set of paddles...} ...a water wheel? _{Nice and public, but I'm not sure the guards would agree...}"

Just as she was about to stumble into a stone pillar the dwarf stopped dead, her eyes tracing up the smooth masonry until her head was tilted back, gazing at the ceiling in awe. "Wow... I mean, Wow! My parents told me stories, but until you actually see something with your own eyes..." So close to the entrance the stonework was lit from the dying light from above, and Henrietta's flickering green flame did little more than highlight the carvings and etchings spread across the walls.

Further down the tunnel became pitch black and gazing around Henrietta noticed a black metal brazier bolted firmly into the wall. Moving over to it she examined it carefully. It certainly wasn't dwarven in design, and there seemed to be a strange buzz in the air around it. "Hey, I think I need a mage over here. This might be one of theose veilfire things Martin mentioned."

Paxton let out a little chuckle at Lian's threat concerning his story telling. "You know, you remind me of this mage I use to bunk with back in the circle. Poor fellow always hated me telling stories, I guess he just preferred silence. The story he hated me telling the most had to be the one of when I caught him 'shacking' up with one of the Templars. He would turn the most interesting shade of red whenever I brought the topic up." The mage said with a laugh as he continued down the stairs.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the hyperactive Dwarf's ramblings, her little rants were always quite interesting. He was making his way further down the stairs when 'Etta suddenly called for the need for a mage. Making his way over to her he spotted the wall mounted contraption she was observing. "You would be right about that lass, this is a Veilfire torch, or rather could be one." He said before he out stretched his hand. A moment later a flash of eerie green light engulfed Paxton's hand, the brazier in response sparked a flame of the same color. Paxton took the liberty of grabbing his own torch and lighting it with the Veilfire. "Good old Veilfire, brings me back to my long nights of.." He cut himself off after he realized what company he was in. "Er uh long nights of studying. Yeah that's it." He finished with a slight nervous laugh before he continued down the steps. "Hop to all, we have some dangerous to find and respectively stomp into the ground."

@CAS1006@Genni@Saarebas@booksmusicanime

As Paxton lit the brazier a quiet hissing could be heard behind the tunnel wall, almost like a gas pipe springing a leak. A moment later a second veilfire lantern some way off down the tunnel suddenly sprung to life, followed by a third, and a fourth. Soon the entrance chamber was aglow with the eerie green light of the ethereal flames, which seemed to cast strange and inexplicable shadows on the walls which danced and capered as the party watched.

Somewhere off in the darkness a creature, disturbed by the sudden brightness, could be heard scuttling off down the passageway, its claws skittering over the age-worn flagstones.

Not long after Cassius was following the rest of the group after deciding to be rebellious a bit; but now he was composed.
The small banter was nice to listen to for the most part, and he found it funny how much of a womanizer Paxton was consider he was talking about a girl he had a night with. It was refreshing to hear simple and short stories.

The architecture of the inside was quite brilliant. The Veil fire was even awe striking. Green fire... he thought to himself.

It wasn't long before he found himself smiling. "I might have a humorous story or two about my experiences in a market."

"Eee!" Squealed Henrietta with excitement as she watched the braziers burst into life around the chamber. "BytheMakerbytheMakerbytheMaker! A real life, working Veilfire channelling system!" She continued, her voice high-pitched and almost ear shattering as it echoed around the stone walls. "I've read about these thing, but I never, NEVER dreamt I'd get to actually see one for real... _{well, I don't dream anyway, but you get the point.}"

Scuttling from one wall to the other, zigzagging across the room like some sort of rubber ball bouncing from surface to surface, Henrietta started to examine the braziers with her magnifying goggles, her hand pulling her sketch pad from her pack as she began to make rough and scribbled notes on the metalwork and the visible piping. It was clear they were a more recent fixture than the original stonework, but the layers of rust and grime still showed the magical lighting system was many centuries old.

"_{...if we could somehow channel the fire into some sort of ejection system...}" She was muttering to herself as she set her sketchpad aside and reached for her toolbelt, pulling out a large set of plyers and an even larger wrench. "Don't mind me, I'll only be a few minutes," She called back over her shoulder, hudging her headpiece to slip a higher strength magnifying lens into place as she leaned forwards to make a more detailed, intrusive examination of the magical masterpiece.

Not particularly caring for the conversation at hand between the three stooges Gerald simply kept looking around for something, anything, that may come out of the bushes to hurt them. Whatever the case may be he felt...wrong. The spirits had warned him of places like this. Places where dark things laid and when things were denounced by spirits he knew that things were bound to go wrong. Gerald smelt something funny...or gross depending on your point of view. He smelt the smell of death...a corpse probably some dead rotting animal nearby. Maybe some wolves had come by. Nothing he couldn't handle. But he didn't say anything just yet in case something wasn't wrong and he was just anxious.

Freddy watched Cass walk off.

Mangy barked a few times, and Freddy rolled his eyes.

"Shut up Mangy."

Mangy barked again.

"Mangy shut the fuck up! He's not cute!"

Freddy sighed, before opening the container. Huh, two tiny brownies. Homemade. Freddy passed one to Mangy. With most dogs, you had to be somewhat careful about what they ate. Mabaris were ridiculously durable. Freddy wouldn't trust the mabari to fight, say, Paxton's pet fucking LION, but he'd seen the dog fight a Drake and win before, and Mangy seemed to love eating chocolate just to freak non-Fereldans out.

Mangy devoured the sweet, and Freddy followed suit on his own. Immediately, he blinked, and smiled despite himself.

"...That fucking dicklicker better survive. I need to know this fucking recipe."

Mangy barked in approval.

Freddy looked over at Gerald. Little known fact, Freddy was good at reading people. He used to lead men into battle himself, and had been a field commander for the Inquisition in a few fights. Despite his temper and such, he was a surprisingly competent leader. Mostly because he noticed people's emotions. He could tell when one of his troops needed encouragement or a drink.

So he had no difficulty noticing Gerald was nervous.

"You okay, Mage? You look like you're about to piss your fucking dress."

Lian looked at Etta for a moment before turning away to make sure things were safe. She glanced around, keeping her hands near her blades in case she had to fight at a moments notice. Her icy eyes scanned the walls for any cracks where anything could be hiding at. "Nothing yet?" She asked, hoping there would be noes instead of yeses. She wasn't in the best mood to fight but she would if she had to.

As the dwarven tinkerer began to dismantle the veilfire piping her screwdriver slipped in her hand, catching on the ancient metal tubing and piercing it through. Leaping back Etta was just in time to avoid setting herself ablaze as a jet of green fire shot across the tunnel, almost catching Lian from behind.

Suddenly ahead of them in the darkness a pack of deepstalkers, five or six in number, who had been carefully sneaking closer to the explorers under cover of the shadows were lit up by the bright green flare, their gleaming under the magical illumination. Giving a loud hiss the beasts leapt forwards to attack the advanced party.

---

Meanwhile, on the surface the wolves were drawing closer to the group of humans, carefully skulking through the undergrowth as they stalked the outlying guards. With over a dozen in their pack the wolves usually struggled to feed themselves on the sparse game they could catch beneath the ancient trees, but today they'd been presented with an entire buffet of meat to choose from.

Closing within a few feet of the absentminded militiaman the alpha took a de4ep breath, tasting the flavour of the man's sweat on the breeze before pouncing forwards. Hearing the snort of air the guard turned, raising his crossbow, but he was too late. As the wolf's jaws closed around his throat all the man could do was cry out in shameful agony.

---

Hearing the cry Martin tossed his pipe aside, his sword and shield in hand before the ivory bowl had hit the floor. "You, you and you, with me!" He called out, gesturing to three of the party members at random as he quickly made his way over in the direction of the scream, not even bothering to note who it was her'd asked to follow him.

As he approached the brushline Martin slowed his pace, eyes darting over the bushes as he tried to pierce their dense cover to see what was happening. Just as he did the wolf leap up out at him, barely giving the warrior time to raise his shield and batter the beast aside as the pack descended on the party.


"To Arms! To Arms!" Martin called out as he was knocked back by the force of the impact, stumbling for a second before turning to face the beast. Shifting his fingers Martin gripped his sword more tightly before swinging it down hard towards the rabid animal, while all around him the pack began to rip into the militia with tooth and claw. At the last moment the beast he was facing darted aside, and rather than slicing into the wolf's neck as he'd planned Martin watched as his blade cut a long, shallow bloody gash in the hound's shoulder.

The yelp quickly turned into an angry growl as the beast began to pace around Martin, slowly trying to work its way towards the soldier's flank. Narrowing his eyes Martin immediately recognised what the pack hunter was doing and turning away he swung his sword up high, catching the second beast across the underbelly as it tried to leap at Martin from out of the forest cover.

"For fuck's sake, you fucking maggots," Martin called out, realising he'd been spending far too much time with Fredrick over the last couple of days, "Fight, Maker damn you!"

"Fight, Maker damn you!" Martin shouted out. The wolves came through with well over a dozen and were giving the militia a run for their money as they fought on against the agile beast. Some the ferocious wolves engaged in groups of two, using the natural tactic of overtaking bigger prey in numbers.

Karras set his sight on those wolves first, dwindling down the chances of losing more people quicker. He raised his bow with the arrow knocked in already and let it sore through the air at the first of his targets. The arrow hit right in behind the wolf's shoulder blade digging deep into it's flesh and hindering it's movements momentarily as it was preparing to pounce on the unsuspecting shields-man. The wolf's pained whine was cut short immediately soon after another arrow pierced it's neck and landing with a lifeless thud. He let loose another onto on that had pinned down a militia warrior with his face to the ground and his back turned to the wolves.

Acting in quick response, Karras dropped onto one knee and braced himself on his other and fully drew back on the bow. Once he felt the right tension on the string as he pulled it back, he let the full drawn arrow go, hitting a two for one hit as the power behind the soaring arrow pierced through the first wolf's skull and then into the second's ribcage knocking them completely off of the warrior. Though as soon as he fired it Karras was caught off guard as a smaller more agile wolf manged to bury it's hind leg claws into his back as it bury it's maw into his left shoulder.

Karras dropped his bow as he clenched his teeth behind his bandanna and grunted from the pain. He grabbed a loose arrow that fell from his leather quiver with his right and stabbed at the wolfs left side. It's jaw unhinged from his shoulder for a second from the pain, but that lead to it's down fall as he then grabbed onto it's front legs and yanked the beast of his shoulder as it landed hard into the dirt packed ground. Before the creature could have a chance to recover from it's dazed stupor, Karras grabbed his bow and brought the metal point down onto its skull ending its life.

"Filth." Karras lowly snapped out as turned back to the skirmish ignoring the wounds on his back and shoulder.

As the flame leapt out Henrietta quickly tilted her body aside and let herself roll clear from the blast. This was nowhere near the first time something she'd been tinkering with had tried to kill her, but at least this time it didn't have venom dripping fangs. Although as she peered through the flames she caught a very definite glimpse of fangs bearing down on her.

"Eek! Beasties!" She hollered and panicking she slammed her hand down on her suit control panel, immediately launching her caltraps over the jet of flame to trap the deepstalkers, preventing them from escaping as the rest of her party closed in on the monsters. Another press of a button sent a long cable with a sharp hook on the end rocketing through the flames to bury itself in the leading beast's hide.

Bracing herself carefully Henrietta pressed the recall button and the cable quickly began to retract, pulling the deepstalker towards the gout of green flame as its claws skittered over the worn flagstones beneath it. With a gleeful smile on her lips Henrietta watched as the beast was pulled into the veilfire, its skin popping and crackling as it fought against the hook line, but the weapon was too deeply buried in the creature's flesh to let it escape, and after a second it stopped moving altogether.

Lian darted back as fast as her leg let her. As she moved her drew her two blades. "Maker help us." She muttered as her hair fell in her face as she studied the creatures for a moment before moving at one of them. She slashed at it, trying to take it down and hoping nothing else tries to attack her.

Freddy turned to face the wolves, a frown on his face. He briefly wondered why wolves would randomly attack their camp, but brushed the thoughts away. There'd be time to deal with the why later. For the moment, Fredrick had to deal with a wolf bearing down on him.

Fredrick drew his axe, lightning fast, and swung it in a wide arc. The wolf was forced to dart back, snarling in fury at the elf. Freddy moved to press the attack, before an odd feeling caused him to turn, bringing his axe down vertically. He moved in time to stop two charging wolves, who pushed against the flat of his axe blade. He heard Mangy bark and leap behind him, and knew that he didn't have to worry about that wolf. Meanwhile, the two before him were still a threat.

Before they could separate and flank him, Freddy braced himself, flat of his axe still pressing against both wolves. He then threw himself forward, swinging his axe upward as he did so. The sheer force caused one wolf to be launched a few feet, while the other was better off and was merely knocked over. Freddy quickly pressed the attack, swinging his axe diagonally and upward to cut the wolf on his right, scoring a deep gash on its side, before charging forward to cleave through the skull of the wolf he'd launched, and then into the ground. The wolf he'd wounded attempted to leap at him, but Freddy let go of his axe to swing his fist at it in a powerful backhand. The wolf yelped and was knocked back, giving Freddy ample time to grasp his axe and attack again. He heaved and pulled his axe through the dirt, to swing it upward in a deadly uppercut. Dirt and rock spilled in front and around Freddy, obscuring him, but the loud deathcries of his wolfish opponent gave anyone watching a clear idea of the results.

Mangy ran up next to his sidekick, covered in gore and blood. Freddy blinked, before looking at the trail of wolf bodies Mangy had left.

"What the shrieking barkspawn fuck, Mangy! I kill two, and you have to upstage me by killing three! Fucking shit in a dickbasket. You ruin my life."

Mangy merely barked happily.

Freddy deigned to continue fighting rather than argue with his dog further, and ran at a pair of wolves that were moving toward Gerard. He decided to shout some tactics at the mage as he charged forward.

"Mage! Do some fucking crowd control! If you know how to fucking mass paralyze, now would be the prime shitfucking time to do so!" Freddy roared out, before swinging his axe behind him and through the dirt in an uppercut, spraying the wolves with rocks and dirt. The two wolves were momentarily stunned, allowing Freddy to swing his axe down on one as Mangy pounced on the other.

"Those were mine you four-legged shitmonkey!" Freddy yelled at his dog. Any points in favor of his intelligence gained through his combat tactics, knowledge of magic and battle knowhow were likely invalidated by the fact that he was arguing with a dog that was likely smarter than him.