Varric's Version: The Hangover

Though you may not know it with how the Champion can drink these days - and drink she does - but there was time when Hawke frequented the Hanged Man any spare evening she could. She was willing to take any drink offered, but rarely able to hold it - before we'd made our fortune in the Deep Roads, before the qunari rose in the streets. Not sure I would believe it myself, if I hadn't seen her through those years.

The particulars of what led to that evening don't matter much, but what happened would stay with Hawke for years to come. Locked in my suite upstairs were no less than three apostates, two elves, a pair from the Blooming Rose, and a pirate. The Champion and I proposed a game of skill and wit - the contest of who is better continues to this day.

Through the rounds, we stayed neck and neck, lock picking, drinking poisons - liquor and otherwise - fire eating, and diversions of literary merit: Harem awakin, Awake in harm, something about hair tracts... Nevermind, it doesn't matter.

Of course, being the debonair dwarf I am, none were my parallel - except for Hawke. The games of diamondback and blindman's bluff left our compatriots stripped to their smalls, and our challenges grew more ludicrous by the pint.

I bet Hawke that I could shoot an apple off of Daisy's head from across the room, and no sooner was it said, than a bolt form my beloved Bianca's rack was pinning one to the wall. Hawke countered, and another unfortunate fruit was tossed in the air, only to be cleaved neatly in two with a flick of my friend's wrist, embedding her dagger in the far wall. We howled in turn as we did shots of Golden Scythe from my private stock, and a bit Blondie called Lava Burst, brought over from Ferelden. The ancestors would have been proud.

It came as no surprise when floating and burning amidst the liquor, Hawke's mind took a turn for the worse.

"I'm not certain there is more that I can be better at than you," Hawke said, raising the stakes yet again.

"Oh?" I replied, still able to keep a modicum of composure as I drank. "I'm sure you'll think of somewhere else you come up short."

"I think that's your job, dwarf," she said, smacking the lady pirate beside her awake. "You must know how to properly do piercing," she said.

"Of course I do, my slippery nipple," the buxom, dark-haired Rivaini replied. "Let me get my things." And the lush staggered down the hall to her room.

So I asked Hawke what she had in mind, reclining further in my chair. By now, the rest of our companions had lost the war, and were strewn about my suite in various stages of disarray and drunkard dream. I tapped my ear, "I'm already up on you for piercings."

"Then I'll get my brow pierced," she said.

I said it didn't sound so bad.

Hawke leant forward on the table, a glint in her eye. She tapped her chin, "My lip."

"Please, beautiful," I replied with a laugh. "That's child's play."

"My nipple then," Hawke countered, and I could only smirk.

"Hardly threatening."

Rivaini was in the doorway again, brandishing a flame and a needle. Hawke narrowed her eyes at me, leaning close. "Lower then," she said with seductive intent.

Needless to say, I let Hawke win that round, and walk away with a new gem between her thighs.