Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.
A/N: I finally have the DLCs! Thanks to word from DjinnGenie, who let me in on the fact that Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition contains all the additional premium content packs on-disc, I was able to pick up a used copy on Amazon (when it first came out I saw it but thought it was only Origins + Awakening, and I had those)! So I am catching up now to everyone who knew all this canon I didn't. I've played everything so far except Amgarrak and Witch Hunt, which I am saving for when I get through Awakenings with my Loghain/Lighting City Elf build. Don't worry, I am a multi-tasker par excellence, and the only reason this would slow me down is because I'm thinking how to integrate the material into my tale.
No Bull From the Big Bull, Volume One, by Varric Tethras, a Humble Storyteller
Excerpt: Spider in the Outlaw Camp
"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE EEEEEE!"
He could hear the triple-exclamation points in the shriek, loud and terrifying enough to bring up every head in the camp, even the ones that made "keeping down" into an art form. Given the very precarious nature of their position here on the edges of the Wilds, far too close to the village of Lothering, the sound instantly triggered a fight-or-flight response in him. The voice was Sister Ailis's, and it came from the little hut they'd built for her. He put down his half-strung bow and grabbed his skinning knife.
His father barreled up from elsewhere in camp at about the same time he made it to the door of the hut and they burst through together, weapons in hand, and momentarily stuck there like peanuts jammed together in the mouth of a green-glass bottle.
"Ailis! What's happened?" Gareth shouted. In answer, the Chantry sister pointed a finger that shook with the depth of her terror at the floor beside her narrow cot.
"Andraste's ass - all this fuss over a bloody spider?" Loghain said, and collapsed into the twig-back rocker in an attitude equal parts relief and disdain.
Gareth, too, seemed torn between irritation and amusement at the Sister's reaction to the creature. It was a large spider, true - a Red-Knee Korcari Crawler, roughly the size of a man's hand, with long, hairy legs and proportionally enormous fangs - but it was not particularly dangerous to humans. The big man stepped forward and raised his enormous boot over it. The spider reared up and raised its front two pair of legs before it threateningly.
"Gareth, no, stop!" Ailis cried out. He hesitated with his foot in midair and raised a questioning brow at her. "Don't kill it, just…get it out of here."
Gareth sighed. Loghain understood that sigh perfectly. "Pup, could you take care of it, please?" Gareth asked. Loghain got up out of the chair and laid his hand down on the dirt floor in front of the creature, palm-up, and gently persuaded the spider to walk onto it. The spider didn't even realize it was held. He picked it up and Ailis cringed away from the sight.
"Please, be careful, just…get that horrible creature out of here," she pleaded.
Loghain and the spider preceded Gareth out of the hut, and his father put a hand to his face and shook his head, which said all he wanted to say in the wake of the matter.
"What a lot of foolishness over so little a thing," Loghain said, and kept the bewildered spider walking from hand to hand as it thought all the while that it was getting somewhere. "Mother was never scared of spiders."
"Your mother feared nothing," Gareth said. "A trait I'm sorry to say she passed on to her son. Look, I don't really care what you do with that thing, pup, but whatever you do - do it well away from the camp and Ailis. Don't want her going 'weak sister' on us again, and she's already got our people on edge over this. I'll see if I can't calm things down."
Gareth left him then, and Loghain took the spider some little way into the line of trees that marked the start of the Korcari Wilds, a dangerous place of old myths and very real monsters, not that he'd ever seen anything worse than a few snakes and a bear or two. It was said that some of the bears grew to the size of houses, and that ogres stalked the mists in roving hunting bands, but he doubted those tales.
He took a moment to examine the creature, and brought it up close to his face. Evidently just smart enough to recognize him as a threat even if it did not seem able to grasp the full scope of him, the creature reared up again in its threat display. He wondered if he could be so brave in the face of something so very much greater than himself. But then again, was this courage or stupidity? Was there even a difference?
He wondered if he looked half as ugly to the spider as it looked to him. The Maker created all things, according to Sister Ailis and the other Chantry-types, but it was hard to imagine exactly what sort of mindset He was in on the day He created such creatures as this. Suddenly, Loghain didn't particularly feel like touching the disgusting thing anymore. He put the creature down by some leaf litter and watched it scurry for the cover it provided. He wiped his hands off on his leathers and headed back to the camp, glad that spiders didn't come any larger than that.
Dannon met him near the campfire and held Loghain's restrung bow out to him. "Your father told me to take you hunting with me tonight," the big man said.
Loghain stared him down. "You mean my father told you to go hunting with me," Loghain corrected. "You're useless for anything but cartage, Dannon."
Dannon grimaced, but didn't attempt to deny it. The impudent brat was a lot of things, but foremost on the list was dangerous. He held out the bow and Loghain took it from him. "I should tell you - I've heard word that Bann Ceorlic's out tonight with a large troop of his men. We'll have to be careful in avoiding them."
"We'll steer clear," Loghain said. "Come on. Let's hope luck is with us - the camp would benefit if we managed to bring in something bigger than a quail tonight."