milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Varric has been a busy, busy dwarf. Someone's got to run the family financial empire, after all, and someone's got to keep the Tethras seat on the Dwarven Merchants' Guild warm, and Andraste's ass he hates it all so much. He can't even get away from being a responsible businessman in the Hanged Man! They keep finding him there! What's the world coming to?

... well, at least Milliways showed up when he went to use the privy; that's something different. He'll attend to matters before coming back and heading straight for the Bar. "Serah," he says once he's scrambled up onto the human-sized barstool, "whatever you've got in the way of beer that doesn't have a Merchant's Guild seal on it would be absolutely wonderful right now. The last thing I want at the moment is anything that reminds me of those dusters."

He's never going to get over how many people here are just plain human, but hey- beats the dwarves he has to do business with these days.

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"I can spot you something fancy, if you like."

Ysalwen drops into a seat next to him, staff slung across her back and mabari at her feet.

"Something that doesn't have anything to do with swamps. Or merchants."

"Either one of those would be absolutely wonderful," says Varric. "I'm going with the assumption that that excludes lichen brews, too."

"Sadly, yes, this time. Too many days tramping around in mud and rotting things."

Enough is enough.

"What's your feeling about Antivan brandy? It's one of the few non-others I know about that's harder than beer."

"My feeling is that it's grand stuff, the more so when someone else is putting out the coin for it," says Varric. "So what swamp's got hold of your boots this time, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Antivan brandy it is. Two glasses, Bar."

Bar is very obliging, and Ysalwen bestirs herself to pour from the bottle.

Generously.

"The Blackmarsh. Have you heard of it? Because you probably will. Ghost dragons make an excellent tavern story. Less joyous to live through, but there you go."

"Ghost dragons," Varric repeats as he reaches for the glass. "That's a new one on me. Do they breathe fire, or is it some kind of ghostly magic simulation instead? I'm assuming they're still pointy on most of their major ends."

"Imagine horrific lightning attacks in which the blasted dragon is incorporeal. Then add swamp water."

Her mouth twists wryly, and she takes a swallow of brandy.

"A lot like that."

"Ugh." Varric wrinkles his nose. "It's... shit. I was going to say 'it's dead, I hope', but if it's a ghost to begin with..."

"Well, it's discorporated again, and we made a sword out of the only bone that was left. Wade would have killed me otherwise."

Her voice is wry.

"So don't tell anyone about that part and we shouldn't see its like again."

"My lips are sealed," Varric promises. "Sounds like it was a pretty impressive encounter all around, though. Aside from the mud,I mean."

"The mud was pretty overwhelming the whole time, so I think impressive is relative. Clean it up for a story, though, and you'd have something."

She takes another, smaller sip of brandy.

"How have you been keeping yourself busy, these days? Besides wanting to upset the Merchant's Guild so more -- flexible minds can have anything to do with trade at all."

"Just a moment," Varric says, and drains a not inconsiderable portion of his glass. "There, now, that's better- sorry, my brother's not only disappeared ever since Hawke and I made it back from the Deep Roads, but he's stayed disappeared. And it turns out I've actually got a sense of family responsibility, so I've been busy trying to keep the Tethras business concerns going in between everything else in Thedas I'd rather be doing instead."

"Everyone always talks about outsourcing at this point, like it's foolproof, or that there are good candidates for it just waiting to be snapped up. It happens for me with Arling business, too, when I talk to people about it. Damn our senses of responsibility. I'm sorry you lost your brother, though. That's -- hard."

"'Lost' may be a little too kind of a term for it," Varric says dryly. "More like- oh, I don't know, 'was abandoned in the Deep Roads by'. Bartrand took way too much of a liking to an idol made of the purest solid lyrium I've ever seen and decided he didn't feel like sharing."

"If we're quibbling, that's just a different kind of 'lost'. But -- what kind of idol? Please tell me it wasn't dragon-shaped. Or -- no, dragon-shaped is the kind I'm most worried about."

"No, definitely not dragon-shaped," says Varric. "I'd have remembered that. Shaped sort of like something you could see an Orzammar sculptor trying to carve after he got into the special mushrooms. The lyrium was red, though. Weirdest thing."

"Huh. I can safely say I have never run across any of that in all my venturing through the Deep Roads. Is it something to keep an eye out for, or look more into if I ever get the opportunity to visit Weisshaupt? I hear they have a very extensive library there, and if it's in the Deep Roads some Warden or other probably cared about it at some point."

"If you happen to hear about anything to do with red lyrium I'd like to know," says Varric. "We found the idol deeper in the Roads than I think anyone's been in centuries- it was in a dwarven thaig so old that it had what looked like a temple. No sign of anything to do with the Paragons or the Ancestors or anything. If dwarves were messing around with strange versions of lyrium that far in the past, who knows what might've been recorded about it somewhere..."

"You know, now that's going to be what worries me. It's always the scraps of ancient knowledge that turn into disasters. People keep wanting to use it, because it's old, and old is great, even if we don't understand anything about it."

She doesn't sigh.

"Shit. I'll go digging, whenever I get an opportunity. It might be a little while for me, but given Milliways' ridiculous lack of linearity, that may or may not matter."

"If it helps at all, I was only in it for the coin," says Varric. "We did manage to clean up a pretty nice selection of gold and gear that'd been left behind and never recovered while the darkspawn were still close to the surface, and it's been enough to put my friend Hawke and her mother into a house in Hightown. I'm not what you'd call fond of messing around with ancient, creepy lore."

"Well, it's not like any of us ever knows when we're going to stumble over something unfortunately both ancient and incomplete that someone -- probably a magister -- is going to salivate over rumors of until they hunt you down to get it."

Um.

"I'm just saying. Anyway. Hightown's a good place in -- Kirkwall, was it? It's not one of those ironic district names that the wealthy make themselves feel better with?"

She's asking for a friend.

"No, it's the nice part of town," Varric assures her. "Hightown's the good part. It's Lowtown and Darktown you have to watch out for. They weren't what you'd call creative with names."

Wow.

They really weren't.

"Is Lowtown at exactly ground level, or down in a valley, and Darktown is underground? Because otherwise I'll start thinking they're keeping that last one under a blanket of eternal night, and that's -- pretty ridiculous, honestly. I mean, nobles are pretty ridiculous, too, but."

"Would you believe Darktown used to be mining tunnels?" says Varric. "Seriously. Back when the city was part of Tevinter they ran mine tunnels underneath it. The place is a stinking pit."

Never mind the gigantic size of all the tunnels, or the brightly lit braziers hanging from the ceilings, or the total lack of squishy noises underfoot, or that one point in the tunnels where they have openings overlooking the Waking Sea that any architect worth his salt would call 'breathtaking panoramas'.

"Lowtown's just the part of town that used to be an open-pit quarry, from what I've been able to find out about our history."

Maybe Hawke and Varric can convince the nobility that underground living is the next great taste in Kirkwall for the fall!

They could print a magazine.

"Ah. I'd almost forgotten about the former Tevinter city part. It explains so much."

Edited 2015-06-16 17:39 (UTC)

"Yep," says Varric dryly. "They don't call it the City of Chains for nothing."

"They should really, really stop calling it that. Has no one ever told them? And by them I mean the governing body, of course. They have a -- is that one of the ones with a Count?"

"In all fairness the chains part probably got started back when Tevinter was doing the slave thing all over the place, and then got kept because they have a huge set of 'em that they use to close off the harbor narrows in time of war," Varric says. "We've got a Viscount, but the Templars pull most of the strings around him, and you know how fond they are of change."

"Don't I just. Greagoir was fairly decent, as far as Templars go, and even he -- well. There's a lot the man in charge just doesn't need to know about, right? And when the one in charge is one of the bad ones -- "

Sweet Maker. Let that rarely be the case.

"So. What you're saying is that chains in the harbor or no, it's a really nice way of emphasizing what's what to some segments of the population. And those coming in from elsewhere. Ah, poetry."

"That's about the size of it," says Varric. "Home sweet home, eh?"

"It takes all kinds. At least most places have some population of non-shits. It keeps things from falling completely apart, most of the time."

But not always.

Just look at Denerim not that long ago.

"True. Which is how I keep my head above water," says Varric. "As long as I stay out of politics and politics stays out of my face, I'm generally pretty good- at least until the Merchants' Guild shows up." He wrinkles his nose. "I'm thinking of sending them my cousin Elmand's name as the owner of the family businesses. He has the advantage of not actually existing."

"Can you buy a couple of years that way, or is it more like a couple of months? Those who deal with files in triplicate for a living are -- very tenacious, I've found."

"If Elmand pays his dues and doesn't make too much of a stink about proposed regulations? It'll last a good while," says Varric. "I'd be in a little more trouble with the city if I got found out, since they usually see nonexistent business owners as a tax dodge, but there are ways of avoiding the worst of that. Mostly involving paying some amount of tax."

"Taxes on the books or off? This is purely intellectual curiosity, you understand. Because it's not as if Amaranthine is a major trade city or anything."

So about that bridge . . .

Varric chuckles. "A little bit of both," he says. "It's amazing how many errors the accounting scribes make in terms of recording a business's annual income if they have a good reason to. The trick is finding the error-prone ones first, of course. Some of them take a revolting amount of pride in their work."

She grins, small and crooked.

"And how much would you say is too much? I don't want to be an economic hard-ass, because that's a really quick way to begin brewing dissent, but there's enough going on that I don't want to be completely fleeced, either. It's a delicate balance, I'm beginning to see."

"Depends on a couple of factors, most of them being how many other people are having trouble with their taxes that year," says Varric. "Clerks get greedy under the weirdest circumstances. I'll show you some of the family records when I get the chance- it's easier to get a grasp on if you have the actual numbers in front of you."

"That would really be much appreciated, Varric. I'm reasonably sure I'll be having this problem for quite some time to come, so."

There's no real rush, exactly. It's not as if she'll ever be responsible for collecting taxes just once.

"Sure thing," says Varric. "How's the whole running an arling thing going for you, anyway?"

"Well, I'm still alive, most of my nobles did not participate in a conspiracy against me, and we have an actual increase in trade in the city. And I think I managed to smack the smugglers' knuckles hard enough that they'll stop throwing their weight around while still providing illicit goods. That one was tricky."

Nobles -- eh. Once you catch them conspiring to kill you, they're generally pretty easy to deal with. For a given value of 'easy' which is actually 'straightforward'.

Edited 2015-06-16 21:43 (UTC)

"Smugglers can be a funny bunch to work with," says Varric. "Good luck with that. Human and elven, or do you have a Carta presence on your hands?"

"No Carta that I've been able to find. Maybe the occasional surface dwarf that's disaffected with everything. Actually all those sightings may be the same dwarf. But mostly elves and humans. A lot of humans. Shockingly."

"Thank the Maker for small mercies," says Varric, shaking his head. "They're anything but an easy bunch to deal with. Humans, now, they're all over the place, but you knew that when you signed up, I imagine."

"Don't get me started with Jarvia. She's the only major Carta player I've ever had a run in with, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Sweet Maker.

"I'm more used to being surrounded by humans than anything else. But I will say it's a refreshing change to have them mostly less terrified of me and more really glad I'm between them and the rest of the world."

A year or two ago, who knew?

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