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If Alyx were aware of certain recent happenings in Milliways, she might not be here now. She certainly wouldn't be here with her children.

But she doesn't know, and so we find her out by the lake with Hope and Eli. The twins are chasing each other in circles around the lawn, playing a game that vaguely resembles tag. D0G watches the two of them from a respectable distance, ready to intervene should either of them get hurt or wander off. Alyx, in the meantime, is doing her evening yoga exercises under a shady tree nearby.

It's a charming little tableau, isn't it?

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"Would you believe," says the slightly gravelly but good-natured voice of a nearby dwarf who was out for a stroll, "that there are people here who've never heard of crime stories? And here I thought it was as universal as the urge to produce romances."

A pause.

"Not to interrupt all the bending going on, but I felt like it needed saying."

"Is that so," says Alyx flatly as she shifts poses.

"It is indeed," says Varric. "It most definitely is."

There's a pause.

"That's quite the golem you've got keeping guard over there, by the by."

"He's not a golem, he's a robot. His name's D0G."

Mwerp, says D0G, giving Varric a little wave.

Varric returns the gesture before looking back to the woman. "Interesting word," he says politely. "What's a... 'robot'?"

"An autonomous machine with human-like intelligence," says Alyx, switching poses again. "My dad built him to be my bodyguard when I was a kid, and I've been upgrading him ever since."

"Huh. Well, that's smarter than the golems I'm told we used to make," says Varric. "They mostly just took orders, from what I hear. Never met one myself. How does a human build something like that, anyway?"

"The same way you build any other machine," says Alyx. "Which is to say that there's no one way to do it."

"Which I suppose makes as much sense as anything else," says Varric. "What makes it move, if I might ask? If that thing's got lyrium anywhere in its makeup, I'll be a blue-nosed nug."

"I... don't know what that is," says Alyx. "He's got a battery that charges from a 240-volt electrical outlet. He's also got solar panels but they're less efficient."

"I got as far as 'battery', unfortunately," says Varric. "Somehow I don't think you're talking about an installation of fortified ballistas aimed at a particular stretch of seacoast."

"Yeahh, no. It's a specialized container of chemicals that will react together to produce energy," says Alyx. "So what's 'lyrium'?"

"A mineral you find in veins under some of the mountain ranges of Thedas," says Varric. "Usually blue and luminescent. Mages and Templars swear by potions that infuse the stuff into drinkable form, but mostly what dwarves use it for is runemaking. If you fold metal properly with the stuff in the right patterns it produces all kinds of interesting improvements."

"Such as...?" Alyx stretches out on the mat.

"Better accuracy, a tendency to leave messier wounds, greater ability to punch through armor, searing your enemy's flesh with arcane fires on impact- things like that," says Varric. "I'm not an enchanter myself, you understand. I just buy what I can use to improve my chances with Bianca."

"Ohhhhh, so it's a magic thing," says Alyx with an understanding nod.

"Pretty much," says Varric. "Lyrium's about the only form a dwarf can use magic in. We can't cast spells, we don't have a connection to the Fade, none of that stuff. We just know how to make that shiny little rock do exactly what we tell it to do."

"What's a Fade?"

"I thought this place was part of it at first when Hawke and I found ourselves here," says Varric. "It's the realm spirits come from. Humans and elves go there when they dream. I hear Qunari do, too, but they don't talk to me and I don't talk to them, so who knows. Not the kind of place you can travel to physically. The Chantry's got a whole origin story for the darkspawn that amounts to 'humans tried to walk into the Fade and now look what happened'."

"...okayyyy, I don't know what any of those proper nouns are."

"Fair enough," says Varric. "The Qunari are a big grey-skinned race of people from somewhere north of Thedas. I think their empire's based in Seheron, but don't quote me on that. They're seven or eight feet tall, and nearly all of them have horns and not a single one of them seems to have anything like a sense of humor. There's an enclave of them in the city of Kirkwall but they won't tell anyone why they're there in the first place. The Chantry's... well, all the priests and holy buildings and whatnot that worship the Maker and his 'mortal bride' Andraste- don't look at me, it's not a dwarven religion, I just use it for swearing. And the darkspawn are pretty much every kind of ravening, shambling, horrific mutation of the sentient races of Thedas you could think of all packed into a single monstrous horde that just keeps coming and coming."

Alyx grimaces at that last description. "How long has this been going on?"

Varric has to think about that. "At least... hm. Sorry, the stories are pretty old, but there've been darkspawn since before humans started the Chantry calendar, I know that much. At least a few centuries before, and the Chantry calendar is nine centuries long so far."

Alyx lets out a low whistle. "Yikes. My sympathies. We've only had to deal with zombies for a little over twenty years and that's more than enough."

"Thanks," says Varric. "I take it you didn't get yours by some kind of legendary means burrowing out of the bowels of the Stone, did you?"

"No. Try 'ripped open the barrier between realities and let in a bunch of extradimensional fauna, some of which are parasitic.'"

(The twins, meanwhile, play on, oblivious to the conversation.)

"Sounds like what happens when demons manifest in Thedas instead of the Fade," says Varric. "Nasty business all around."

"Thedas?" echoes Alyx.

"The continent the various human kingdoms and empires occupy," says Varric. "There used to be an elven empire, too, but that was so long ago they don't even have records any more. The dwarven territories are under it, mostly in the Frostback Mountains."

"And... you have actual demons manifesting there. On top of the weird mutants."

"Well, to tell you the truth the demons mostly only show up when some mage's gone completely off their rocker," says Varric, wiggling one hand in midair. "It's one of the reasons the Chantry's so hostile towards mages. They're people, same as any other humans or elves, but they make mighty tempting targets for the more ambitious demonic types, and the're pretty good at presenting an appealing face to people who aren't happy with their lot in life. Which happens more often when you've got the Chantry breathing down your neck waiting for something to go wrong, surprisingly enough. An ugly, self-reinforcing cycle, if you ask me."

"Y'know, I'm no expert, but since when has been making deals with demons ever been a good idea?"

"Search me." Varric spreads his hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. "Some people just have skewed priorities, I guess."

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