|| heroics || Aeliana & Tavis
@tavis-of-bannorn
Aeliana could only describe West Hill as the dumping ground of the Waking Sea. Nestled at the tail end of that stretch of land known as the Storm Coast, its waters were littered with the wreckage of ships. Teams of men assembled at the water’s edge each night to embark on salvage attempts, pulling up rusted weaponry, chain, fixtures, and the occasional forgotten body. Many of the wrecks had been picked clean and lingered like skeletal ghosts dotting the coastline.
The village proper was no different. People drifted to West Hill when Denerim rejected them or in the hopes that Ferelden might prove friendlier than the ancient rattling shackles of the Free Marches. The townspeople had slumped shoulders, bent from the forced acceptance of the rabble that filled their once-prosperous home. The Arl’s fortress loomed over them, once a lookout for raiding corsairs but now a symbol of his iron rule over those people who sought a life in his land.
The worst went to the elves of the city.
West Hill’s alienage was unlike any that Aeliana had ever seen. Coated in a layer of filth and perched precariously against the crumbling docks, it was too small to hold the numbers within. The cramped row houses -- seemingly buckling under the weight of their own iron fixings -- each held two or three families from what she could tell. Children wrestled in the sludge that masqueraded as a proper street while their weary-looking parents watched from the warped doorways.
(Easy pickings for slaving scum.)
Aeliana slipped silently along the rooftops, careful not to put a boot through the rotting wood. Her eyes darted from window to window, searching intently for the men she’d been tracking since Kirkwall. She knew they were here and at the Arl’s bidding. Was it possible that he would permit them to...?
She growled her breath and shook her head, perching lightly on the lip of a rooftop to survey the alienage. Dog-lords had long spurned trade of living souls - even if they were ‘knife-ears’. These men were here without official sanction and it was only a matter of time before they made off with many among the town’s most vulnerable population. If they hadn’t already.
(But where in Andraste’s name were they?!)