Saraya, as ever, was unimpressed.
Vesryn often felt he had to overcompensate for the cynicism, to combat the foreign opinions and often negative emotions that entered his head. He'd long since learned how to force them away from becoming his own. And he'd always been an upbeat, incessantly light-hearted elf. Saraya's grumblings, for lack of a better term, weren't going to change that. If anything, it just made him glad she was stuck with him. He could only imagine how dreary her experience would've been if she were forced into the head of some moody elf, full of dark emotions, or Gods forbid, a human.
Still, Vesryn had been elvhen'alas, a dirt elf, when they had first met, and in the eyes of many of the Dalish, that was halfway or more to shemlen. Thankfully, Saraya was not Dalish. Eventually Vesryn had even come to believe that it was better that he wasn't Dalish. Fewer false notions already ingrained into his mind, or some such. That he'd been so unconcerned with the legacy of his people perhaps made him the best, most open-minded candidate for learning about them.
The Inquisition did not know what to make of him. There was the other notable elf, that darling redheaded one, Khari he thought he'd heard, but her condition had an explanation. Sometimes Dalish just didn't like being Dalish. It wasn't impossible to believe. Not everyone wanted to live in a wagon on wheels. But Vesryn lacked the tattoo, something he was thankful for; he found his face quite pleasing just the way it was. What he did have was a very unique suit of armor, a powerful build not common at all among his people, and an air of confidence unheard of among the city elves, and different from that of the Dalish. He felt threatened by nothing, and furthermore, felt there was nothing he had to prove.
It was unsurprising to him, then, when he was called to meet with the army commander, Leon something-or-other. Clearly he was wasted on the front lines, not that he wouldn't absolutely excel there, but his talents and backgrounds were beyond the average recruit. He was special, and he walked like he knew it when he entered the Chantry at Haven's highest point. He was garbed in armor, lion's pelt cloak and all, as he planned to train on the ice following the meeting, and vastly preferred to train in the same gear that he would fight in.
Vesryn found a guard standing outside the commander's door, and offered him a charming smile, before pressing a fist to his chest and bowing shortly. "Vesryn Cormyth, here to see the commander."
The guard’s expression was best classed as skeptical, but in a weary sort of way, like he’d seen one too many things stranger than Vesryn by this point to be all that surprised by an elf in shining armor, so to speak. “Right. He said he was expecting you.” With very little ceremony, he turned, walked a couple paces, and knocked on the door. “Sir, it’s the new fellow.” There was a short pause, and a reply that was a little too low for Vesryn to make out through the door, but the guard seemed to have heard it, because he nodded and opened the door, gesturing in clear invitation.
The office itself was exceedingly spartan in nature, and likely not the largest such space the Chantry had to offer—it had about enough room for a bookshelf, a writing desk with a smaller table next to it for parchment overflow, and not much else. The one concession to comfort was a thick rug underfoot, but even that was comparatively plain. Several maps lined the walls, many with pushpins stuck in various places, a few having lines of variously-colored string between them.
It was almost comically small for the size of the man who occupied it, hunched over the desk in a slightly-ungainly way, which was only reinforced when he stood from his chair at Vesryn’s entrance and promptly knocked his head into the light fixture over the spot, which had clearly been put there with someone much shorter in mind. It might have been smarter to place the desk elsewhere, but from the size of the room, there wasn’t really any other option. A rueful sigh followed, and the commander stepped out from behind the furniture, extricating himself from potential hazards in so doing.
Vesryn, meanwhile, had burst into laughter, his grin spread across his face, and he threatened to bend over, almost needing to support himself with hands on knees. "I'm sorry," he managed, slowly composing himself. "Really though, that was... how many times have you done that to yourself?"
“Far too many to count.” The reply was immediate, dry, and slightly self-effacing. The commander rubbed at a spot near one of his temples, his own smile considerably milder, but still present. “Laugh now, but the moment someone needs something from the top shelf, I’m a bloody hero.” He dropped his hand, appeared to reconsider that slightly, and then shrugged. “Well, to shorter people than you, at least.”
He pushed back an errant piece of hair dislodged by his collision, resetting the damage without being fazed much by it, apparently. “Anyway, welcome. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that you must be Vesryn. I’d tell you to make yourself comfortable, but alas, I really don’t think anything in here will be of any assistance with that.” The commander put forward a hand, currently gloved in some kind of thin leather, by the look of it, though whether that was for warmth or something else wasn’t clear.
“It’s good to meet you. I’m Leonhardt Albrecht, but Leon’s quite sufficient, if you don’t mind.”
Vesryn clapped his own leather and plate gloved hand with Leon's, his grin never fading, his eyes now wandering up to the commander's hair. "That really is magnificent, well done. A striking shade, as well, if I'm any judge. Truly, this must be the most dashing Inquisition in history." Of course, it had only recently become even more so.
Leon appeared to give that some thought, and an eyebrow arched upwards. “And I’m sure Lady Marceline is already planning to take advantage of that somehow,” he mused, releasing Vesryn’s and chuckling good-naturedly. “You ought to be careful, though, or you’ll find yourself being asked to give our Heralds outfitting advice.” He gestured vaguely to his shoulder, probably to indicate the lion pelt that rested over the elf’s own.
“I, however, am engaged in the rather more mundane task of trying to keep them alive, and I daresay I’d rather have your skills on that end of things. I hear tell that you’re quite something, on a battlefield.” He didn’t indicate who he’d heard from, but the options were fairly limited; most likely, it had been someone in the group that had initially met him in the Mire. The words seemed to be just as much an invitation for elaboration as they were a statement, however.
"My reputation precedes me," Vesryn replied, bowing slightly. He'd always wanted to say that. Straightening, he finally appeared to become at least a little more serious. "I'd have done more of the fighting in the swamp, but sadly your Herald insisting on doing the most dangerous job herself. She handled herself well enough, though." It was hardly all that he thought about that particular encounter, but those thoughts were for Estella, when he could find a moment with her. She was proving to be quite popular.
"I spent some years with a mercenary company in Orlais, a small outfit called the Stormbreakers. Fun bunch, even if they didn't have the prestige of a certain group of Lions. Beyond that... roughly a decade of constant training and experience on the road." He wasn't trying to hide the fact that he wasn't divulging everything, for Vesryn had learned by now that he wasn't a very good liar. It wasn't that he didn't want to let them in on his little secret. He just knew that there would be unavoidable dangers if certain types learned of his condition. The Inquisition was, to some degree, a Chantry based organization, and there was a chance some among them would simply see him as being possessed, without bothering to fully understand. Not that Vesryn could make them.
Saraya, meanwhile, regarded Leon with what Vesryn could recognize as an alert wariness, sizing him up for any potential threat, while affording him a high level of respect for his obvious physical prowess.
Leon seemed to accept this all with a great deal of sanguinity, however, and nodded with an air of contemplativeness. “Much of what we do is… surprisingly ordinary, in truth,” he confessed, folding his hands behind him. “At this point, the regulars are mostly responsible for holding regions we’ve already pressed into, and of course many more will be mobilized as their training periods end and if we should need a more traditional army at some point.” He didn’t seem to be a person of much excess movement, and where others might have fidgeted just from habit, he was quite still.
“Where the work really is at this point is on two fronts: the organizational one, which is mostly myself, Lady Marceline, and Rilien, our intelligence man, and then of course out on the frontiers, so to speak, with the Heralds themselves. Closing the rifts, establishing base camps in new areas, meeting with potential allies where it is necessary, that sort of thing. The occasional rescue mission, though with luck we won’t need many more of those.” He inclined his head in Vesryn’s direction. “There’s need for people everywhere, but I think it rather apparent what you’re most suited to. That said… you are a volunteer; it seems only appropriate to give you the majority say in what you do.”
There was a certain... anxiousness, was really the only way to describe it, when Vesryn had seen the Breach on his way in. Not from himself, either. It was Saraya, that made him feel it, and it was the same feeling that she'd given him when they first had heard about the events at the Conclave from a traveler. Having spent a decade and a half with her in the company of his mind, Vesryn had become attuned well enough to her reactions. This was not fear, for if they truly feared the Breach, they could simply go the other way. No, Saraya was made anxious by the Breach for some other reason, and Vesryn wanted to know what it was. She never objected to his investigation. He, admittedly, had felt some nerves upon seeing the thing, and how it seemed to exude the Fade, but there was no noticeable difference in his head.
"I will admit, I have some interest in elven and magical history. I know, I know, not a mage, not a Dalish, but the Inquisition seems poised to go quite far, if it gets some support, and this Breach is unlike anything we've seen. I'd love to accompany your advance teams, in the event they need a shield or just someone always in good spirits. It's a good cause too, what the Inquisition is doing. Makes my decision easy."
Leon smiled at that, a quick flash of teeth, then nodded. “No one here is really typical or what one might first suppose,” he pointed out simply, then shrugged. “Though most of them could benefit from a shield and even more from good spirits, I expect. Thanks for coming by—I’ll make sure to start sending you out with the Heralds.”
Vesryn often felt he had to overcompensate for the cynicism, to combat the foreign opinions and often negative emotions that entered his head. He'd long since learned how to force them away from becoming his own. And he'd always been an upbeat, incessantly light-hearted elf. Saraya's grumblings, for lack of a better term, weren't going to change that. If anything, it just made him glad she was stuck with him. He could only imagine how dreary her experience would've been if she were forced into the head of some moody elf, full of dark emotions, or Gods forbid, a human.
Still, Vesryn had been elvhen'alas, a dirt elf, when they had first met, and in the eyes of many of the Dalish, that was halfway or more to shemlen. Thankfully, Saraya was not Dalish. Eventually Vesryn had even come to believe that it was better that he wasn't Dalish. Fewer false notions already ingrained into his mind, or some such. That he'd been so unconcerned with the legacy of his people perhaps made him the best, most open-minded candidate for learning about them.
The Inquisition did not know what to make of him. There was the other notable elf, that darling redheaded one, Khari he thought he'd heard, but her condition had an explanation. Sometimes Dalish just didn't like being Dalish. It wasn't impossible to believe. Not everyone wanted to live in a wagon on wheels. But Vesryn lacked the tattoo, something he was thankful for; he found his face quite pleasing just the way it was. What he did have was a very unique suit of armor, a powerful build not common at all among his people, and an air of confidence unheard of among the city elves, and different from that of the Dalish. He felt threatened by nothing, and furthermore, felt there was nothing he had to prove.
It was unsurprising to him, then, when he was called to meet with the army commander, Leon something-or-other. Clearly he was wasted on the front lines, not that he wouldn't absolutely excel there, but his talents and backgrounds were beyond the average recruit. He was special, and he walked like he knew it when he entered the Chantry at Haven's highest point. He was garbed in armor, lion's pelt cloak and all, as he planned to train on the ice following the meeting, and vastly preferred to train in the same gear that he would fight in.
Vesryn found a guard standing outside the commander's door, and offered him a charming smile, before pressing a fist to his chest and bowing shortly. "Vesryn Cormyth, here to see the commander."
The guard’s expression was best classed as skeptical, but in a weary sort of way, like he’d seen one too many things stranger than Vesryn by this point to be all that surprised by an elf in shining armor, so to speak. “Right. He said he was expecting you.” With very little ceremony, he turned, walked a couple paces, and knocked on the door. “Sir, it’s the new fellow.” There was a short pause, and a reply that was a little too low for Vesryn to make out through the door, but the guard seemed to have heard it, because he nodded and opened the door, gesturing in clear invitation.
The office itself was exceedingly spartan in nature, and likely not the largest such space the Chantry had to offer—it had about enough room for a bookshelf, a writing desk with a smaller table next to it for parchment overflow, and not much else. The one concession to comfort was a thick rug underfoot, but even that was comparatively plain. Several maps lined the walls, many with pushpins stuck in various places, a few having lines of variously-colored string between them.
It was almost comically small for the size of the man who occupied it, hunched over the desk in a slightly-ungainly way, which was only reinforced when he stood from his chair at Vesryn’s entrance and promptly knocked his head into the light fixture over the spot, which had clearly been put there with someone much shorter in mind. It might have been smarter to place the desk elsewhere, but from the size of the room, there wasn’t really any other option. A rueful sigh followed, and the commander stepped out from behind the furniture, extricating himself from potential hazards in so doing.
Vesryn, meanwhile, had burst into laughter, his grin spread across his face, and he threatened to bend over, almost needing to support himself with hands on knees. "I'm sorry," he managed, slowly composing himself. "Really though, that was... how many times have you done that to yourself?"
“Far too many to count.” The reply was immediate, dry, and slightly self-effacing. The commander rubbed at a spot near one of his temples, his own smile considerably milder, but still present. “Laugh now, but the moment someone needs something from the top shelf, I’m a bloody hero.” He dropped his hand, appeared to reconsider that slightly, and then shrugged. “Well, to shorter people than you, at least.”
He pushed back an errant piece of hair dislodged by his collision, resetting the damage without being fazed much by it, apparently. “Anyway, welcome. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that you must be Vesryn. I’d tell you to make yourself comfortable, but alas, I really don’t think anything in here will be of any assistance with that.” The commander put forward a hand, currently gloved in some kind of thin leather, by the look of it, though whether that was for warmth or something else wasn’t clear.
“It’s good to meet you. I’m Leonhardt Albrecht, but Leon’s quite sufficient, if you don’t mind.”
Vesryn clapped his own leather and plate gloved hand with Leon's, his grin never fading, his eyes now wandering up to the commander's hair. "That really is magnificent, well done. A striking shade, as well, if I'm any judge. Truly, this must be the most dashing Inquisition in history." Of course, it had only recently become even more so.
Leon appeared to give that some thought, and an eyebrow arched upwards. “And I’m sure Lady Marceline is already planning to take advantage of that somehow,” he mused, releasing Vesryn’s and chuckling good-naturedly. “You ought to be careful, though, or you’ll find yourself being asked to give our Heralds outfitting advice.” He gestured vaguely to his shoulder, probably to indicate the lion pelt that rested over the elf’s own.
“I, however, am engaged in the rather more mundane task of trying to keep them alive, and I daresay I’d rather have your skills on that end of things. I hear tell that you’re quite something, on a battlefield.” He didn’t indicate who he’d heard from, but the options were fairly limited; most likely, it had been someone in the group that had initially met him in the Mire. The words seemed to be just as much an invitation for elaboration as they were a statement, however.
"My reputation precedes me," Vesryn replied, bowing slightly. He'd always wanted to say that. Straightening, he finally appeared to become at least a little more serious. "I'd have done more of the fighting in the swamp, but sadly your Herald insisting on doing the most dangerous job herself. She handled herself well enough, though." It was hardly all that he thought about that particular encounter, but those thoughts were for Estella, when he could find a moment with her. She was proving to be quite popular.
"I spent some years with a mercenary company in Orlais, a small outfit called the Stormbreakers. Fun bunch, even if they didn't have the prestige of a certain group of Lions. Beyond that... roughly a decade of constant training and experience on the road." He wasn't trying to hide the fact that he wasn't divulging everything, for Vesryn had learned by now that he wasn't a very good liar. It wasn't that he didn't want to let them in on his little secret. He just knew that there would be unavoidable dangers if certain types learned of his condition. The Inquisition was, to some degree, a Chantry based organization, and there was a chance some among them would simply see him as being possessed, without bothering to fully understand. Not that Vesryn could make them.
Saraya, meanwhile, regarded Leon with what Vesryn could recognize as an alert wariness, sizing him up for any potential threat, while affording him a high level of respect for his obvious physical prowess.
Leon seemed to accept this all with a great deal of sanguinity, however, and nodded with an air of contemplativeness. “Much of what we do is… surprisingly ordinary, in truth,” he confessed, folding his hands behind him. “At this point, the regulars are mostly responsible for holding regions we’ve already pressed into, and of course many more will be mobilized as their training periods end and if we should need a more traditional army at some point.” He didn’t seem to be a person of much excess movement, and where others might have fidgeted just from habit, he was quite still.
“Where the work really is at this point is on two fronts: the organizational one, which is mostly myself, Lady Marceline, and Rilien, our intelligence man, and then of course out on the frontiers, so to speak, with the Heralds themselves. Closing the rifts, establishing base camps in new areas, meeting with potential allies where it is necessary, that sort of thing. The occasional rescue mission, though with luck we won’t need many more of those.” He inclined his head in Vesryn’s direction. “There’s need for people everywhere, but I think it rather apparent what you’re most suited to. That said… you are a volunteer; it seems only appropriate to give you the majority say in what you do.”
There was a certain... anxiousness, was really the only way to describe it, when Vesryn had seen the Breach on his way in. Not from himself, either. It was Saraya, that made him feel it, and it was the same feeling that she'd given him when they first had heard about the events at the Conclave from a traveler. Having spent a decade and a half with her in the company of his mind, Vesryn had become attuned well enough to her reactions. This was not fear, for if they truly feared the Breach, they could simply go the other way. No, Saraya was made anxious by the Breach for some other reason, and Vesryn wanted to know what it was. She never objected to his investigation. He, admittedly, had felt some nerves upon seeing the thing, and how it seemed to exude the Fade, but there was no noticeable difference in his head.
"I will admit, I have some interest in elven and magical history. I know, I know, not a mage, not a Dalish, but the Inquisition seems poised to go quite far, if it gets some support, and this Breach is unlike anything we've seen. I'd love to accompany your advance teams, in the event they need a shield or just someone always in good spirits. It's a good cause too, what the Inquisition is doing. Makes my decision easy."
Leon smiled at that, a quick flash of teeth, then nodded. “No one here is really typical or what one might first suppose,” he pointed out simply, then shrugged. “Though most of them could benefit from a shield and even more from good spirits, I expect. Thanks for coming by—I’ll make sure to start sending you out with the Heralds.”