Time passed differently in the Deep Roads. No sun or stars to mark the passage of time, endlessly plodding through dark, dank passage after dark, dank passage, the echoes and ambient noise enough to set your teeth to grinding. It was easy for Lucille to understand why dwarves were so disoriented upon first seeing the open sky above them. Down here you could feel the weight of the earth above in your bones and when it was quiet you could hear it shift around you. Oppressive. That was the right word for it, and for her it was the worst part about the Deep Roads.
"Well," Lucille thought to herself, "so long as I'm ignoring the darkness, the heat, and the constant threat of being hacked to bits by Darkspawn."
Not that she'd have to worry about the hacked to bits part of it. No, she knew full well what happened to the women of any race when the Darkspawn fell upon them. It had been one of the first lessons imparted to her after she'd survived her Joining. It had been over a year ago, her first time in the Deep Roads. Lucille was chatting with a jolly dwarven girl while they set up camp. She was a veteran Warden who had served in Fereldan after the Blight.
"So you still haven't even seen one," the dwarf asked incredulously.
"No," Lucille said with a shy smirk, almost like the two were talking about a boy she liked. "I'm starting to worry I'll drop dead from fright when it finally happens."
"Well," the dwarf said pulling a small potted plan out of her pack, "there are worse things that can happen."
"What's worse than dying," she had asked naively.
Lucille could still remember how the brand on the dwarf's face had darkened, how her voice went deathly quiet, as if speaking to loudly breathed more life into the stories. She remembered even single word the dwarf told her about the vile Broodmothers, stories that those on the surface would scarcely believe. She remembered the ornate carvings of the Dalish dagger the dwarf had given her, a gift from a friend in Fereldan, a gift that Lucille kept tied to the inside of her thigh, just in case. She remembered the hurlock that cleaved the dwaven girl's skull in two and how good it felt when she crushed the hurlocks head with her steel boot.
She wished she could remember the dwarf's name.
Lucille and her companions had left Weisshaupt almost three months ago, eastward bound, towards Rivain. They had numbered five: Auguste and herself, Templars who had joined the Grey Wardens together after fleeing the order, Hagan, a dwarf who's bushy black mustache had long ago started to grey, Hollow, a Qunari who frequently reminded Lucille that she was no longer Qunari, and their leader, Senior Warden Nathaniel Howe. Their orders were no different than normal, go and investigate reports of erratic Darkspawn behavior. She guessed that it was the sort of thing Grey Warden's do when there wasn't a Blight to occupy them, but there was something off about it too. Not anything she could put her finger on, but she had heard "intelligent Darkspawn," and "missing Wardens," uttered in angry whispers since before she had passed her Joining, and the First Warden had, as of late, been uncharacteristically interested in the goings-on of his own order.
Their journey had been unassuming enough. Senior Warden Howe had taken them south first, riding hard to Hunter Fell. There they took ship, if one could call the pole boat that, and taken the Minanter River east, past Nevarra and through the Free Marches. When they finally reached Wycome they boarded a proper ship and sailed north across the Rialto Bay where they finally found solid ground beneath them again at Ayesleigh.
Lucille found there welcome there peculiar. Hagan, when he wasn't busy retching over the side of their boat, had regaled her with stories of how beloved the Wardens were in Rivain. Granted he mostly talked about swarthy Rivani girls spreading their legs, but she got the gist of what he was saying and it certainly made sense. Afterall, Ayseleigh was where the hero Garahel has slain the Archdemon Andoral and ended the Fourth Blight. They even had a statue of him astride his noble griffon, wrought from pure silverite, standing larger than life in their harbor. Yet their Warden heraldry was met with more sideways glances than grateful smiles, and there were certainly no lusty Rivaini girls much to Hagan's disappointment. Even in the Griffon's Roost, an obvious homage to the Warden's where they had arrangements to lodge until meeting up with Rivain counterparts, their welcome was less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly.
For three days they waited, Lucille rarely leaving, opting instead to sharpen her weapons or read up on Grey Warden history while listening to Hagan drunkenly ramble about this or that victory he had won in the Proving in his younger days. On the fourth day the other Wardens finally arrived. They were three in number, but their faces hinted that when they had set out more had been amongst them. Nicoletto was the Warden-Commander of Rivain, a slight man from Dairsmuid. Ruglin, a dwarf who bore the brand of the casteless flanked him to the right and to his left an elvish mage named Spot. Lucille could tell by the way the girl looked at her and Auguste that Spot had been a member of the Circle of Magi, though which one she dare not guess.
"Nathaniel," the Waren-Commander said, contempt plain despite a thick accent.
"Nicoletto," her leader replied, "What exactly should we be expecting? The locals have been…less than forthcoming."
"To you," the Rivaini said in mock astonishment, "To the man who let the talking Darkspawn disappear back into the Deep Roads? I can not imagine."
She looked at Auguste who simply shrugged, not having any more idea what they were talking about than she did.
"It wasn't my call…you kn..."
"Are these all you've brought," Nicoletto said gesturing to Lucille and her companions.
"Yes," the Senior Warden had replied, keeping his annoyance at being interrupted hidden as best he could. "Your report was rather scant on details."
"It is good you brought a Tal-Vashoth…she may prove useful," was all Nicoletto had said before heading into a backroom. The rest of them had followed and once inside any petty grievances had been set aside to focus on the task at hand.
Their mission would take them northeast, into Rivain's mountains. Farmers and ploughshares had observed Darkspawn on the surface which is, in and of itself, troubling. But these Darkspawn seemed to acting with a purpose not normally seen. At least that was what the initial reports that had caused Nicoletto to write Weisshaupt for aid had said. He had decided to investigate for himself while aid made the long journey east, taking five Wardens. He understood why the peasants had mistaken what they had seen for purpose. The Darkspawn walked this way and that as if they were on patrol. But the trained eyes of a Grey Warden recognized it as some sort of madness. The Darkspawn, who shun sunlight with every fiber of their being, were doing all of this in the blaze of day. Their movement was lethargic, almost as if they were in a trance or under the hold of some mage. But the most troubling thing, and the reason only three Wardens had met Lucille and her companions in Ayeslegh, was what happened when Nicoletto sent two of his best Wardens to get a closer look.
The Taint that every Warden takes into their bodies when they undergo the Joining, the power that lets them sense the Darkspawn and at times makes them invisible to their foes, acted as a beacon. The entranced Darkspawn knew exactly where Nicoletto's Wardens were the moment they came to close, attacking with the reckless hate Darkspawn are known for. But they didn't stop to feast on the corpse or defile it like they normally did, they simply retreated back to the Deep Roads, through an entrance the Wardens were previously unaware of.
So north they headed, and down they went, and here they found themselves. The Deep Roads.