A Giant Among Men [Amaranthine]

((OOC: Canus/Saarebas RP. If you really want to join this thread, just let me know)).

Canus of Tevinter wandered about the crowded Amaranthine marketplace. The smell was a definite improvement from Minrathous, but Tantervale had smelled better and looked better. He sort of missed both of them, but what could he do? He was a vagabond. And he hardly knew anything about the world that he was going into. Thankfully, though, thieves weren't foreign to him. He felt something brush against him; his fast Rogue reflexes allowed him to whip around in a flash, and grab the man by the collar, lifting him up. Sure enough, he found his coinpurse clutched in the thief's greedy fingers. Only, that was no coinpurse.

"You bold, but a poor thief," he said, his Common lacking as Arcanum was his main tongue. There was an odd joy to his tone, no anger, but he looked down upon the man with a bit of contempt. "Could do better than you. If I wanted." He pulled his purse from the thief's grimy fingers, slipping it back onto his belt where it fit nicely, and dropped the thief to the ground with a dull thud. The man would probably be feeling that for a while. He then spat on him. "Begone, make something of you!"

The kossith stepped over the thief, walking up to the stalls. He proceeded to look closely at everything, fascinated with what they sold. There were animals in cages; he felt sorry for them. He loathed the idea of being in a cage. Or a tower, for that matter. He had spent time in the Circle of Minrathous, but the Circle here was different. They did not let you leave the tower. And they'd kill someone like him, though he'd gleamed this from Tevinter mages who spoke of the excess of southern fear of mages. He could not resist Ferelden, or the rest of the world for that matter. He saw that poor pink creature, and felt for it. It looked as though it wanted to go for a run. "How much for?" he asked the dwarven merchant.

The dwarf stared up, wide-eyed at the giant towering over him. "He's not fer sale."

Language barriers frustrated Canus. He did not know the last word the dwarf had spoken. "Not for what?" he replied.

"Sale. Not selling him. If you want some nug, though, I can refer you to someone who sells them. Yeh like nug stew?"

"You eat this?" Canus demanded.

"Of course. What else would a Nug before?"

Canus leaned by the cage. "Cutie! You're so cute! Aren't you, little guy?" The Nug squeaked. "Who's a cutie? You are! Yes you are!" Several people stopped to stare at the large, horned guy who was cooing a small animal as a child might, in a foreign tongue. Including the dwarf, stunned silent by the display.

Canus rose to his feet. "If you make him into stew, Iwill make you into stew," he snorted jokingly, finishing the statement off with a joking lick of his chops. Of course, he didn't eat people. As he left, he intended to return whenever the dwarf turned his back, so the poor, cute Nug could be freed.

Nothing that cute deserved to be stew.

[o.o.c. Just for mod clarification, this RP takes place before Saarebas comes to Denerim and meets Nygozy for the first time. As such, she is still under the care of her Arvaarad.]

The procession of Qunari cut through the crowded streets, the passerbys stepping away to give them a large berth. None of them was interested in getting in the way of such an imposing group, but they couldn't quite help themselves from stopping to stare. Few of them had seen a Qunari before, and those that had had usually only seen them in pictures drawn up by traveling warriors. Pictures, however, could not at all accurately depict the staggering height and almost frightening visages - and with the helmeted and armed behemoth at the head of the group, and the masked and chained followers behind, they did indeed make for an almost nightmarish picture.

The smallest and last in the procession let her eyes flicker around from behind her mask, taking in the faces of the crowd around them, ever alert for threats to her Arvaarad. These people were so strange to her. They were small and afraid - even she, a runt among her kind, stood above some of the tallest men in the crowd. Not for the first time, the question of how these people had held back the Qunari for so long crossed her mind, but she quickly banished it. Things were not supposed to think such thoughts, after all.

Suddenly, the Arvaarad stopped and, as if on some invisible cue, the Saarebas behind him stopped as well, in perfect unison. They dared not look away from facing front, but they each could hear their Arvaarad step away, approaching one of the stalls lining the small and dirty path. With the masks obscuring her vision, the last Saarebas could not even see from the side of her eye, but the voice of her Arvaarad speaking was unmistakable in the now-silent marketplace. Every human eye seemed to be on him and the man he addressed.

"Speak your name," she could hear him say, in the smooth language of her home in Seheron. Could he be addressing another Qunari, then? For so long, she had become accustomed to the clumsy language that these humans spoke, unless she was being commanded - it was like a relief to hear it addressed to another once more. "Why are you in this place, when no Command has been posted here?" The disdain in his voice was familiar to her - it sounded like that when he spoke to them, when he commanded them. But for them, it was right. They were unworthy. Not a Qunari, then. Tal'Vashoth, perhaps. There would be blood, then. She and the others tensed for battle, unsure if he would call on them, or if he would end the other life himself.

Canus wasn't easily intimidated.

He had been glared at by magisters and slavers. Charged by a bronto. Laughed at, ridiculed. Beaten into submission by a woman. He was good at not showing fear, but it was amazement -- and interest -- as he saw the procession of Qunari. And a bit of disgust, seeing how their mages were chained up worse than any Tevinter slave would be. The Qunari made the Chantry look like sweethearts when it came to the treatment of mages, at least, that is the lesson that Epicurus had hammered into him. And now, he saw that it was true. "Maker's breath..." he muttered under his breath in Arcanum at the sight. The next question burning in his mind was, what were they doing there? He scrambled to find the word for such a group, and recalled it. Karataam.

It wasn't surprising to him that the leader of this group of Qunari approached him. He did stand out in a crowd, after all, and not always in a good way. The magister told him the Tal'Vashoth were Qunari that did not want to follow the Qun, and that, like the barbarians Epicurus had painted them to be, Qunari killed them on sight. Tevinters killed them, but only because they fought against them as well. They would welcome anyone to aid them against the Qunari, but the Tal'Vashoth never gave them a chance.

Canus was a mage. He thought of himself -- in these lands, because in Tevinter, magic was revered -- as a duelist first, a mage second. He would fight with his blades if it came down to that, hopefully one-on-one as he couldn't see how he could face them all at once. His greatest fear was a demon taking over him, but he was prepared for them and would not let his guard down. But he hoped it did not come to it. Deep down, he was still curious about the Qunari and the Qun. It wasn't a curiosity that could be quelled.

He was not Tal'Vashoth, and he did not appear to be, or so he hoped. He flexed one of his hands, hoping the helmed Qunari -- he really liked that helm, wishing he could have one of his own! He'd have to get something similar made, sometime. It looked protective and comfortable -- would see his trimmed fingernails, and the fact that his hair was styled different. He had no warpaint, and wore Tevinter leather armours complete with feathered pauldrons. Oh, but Tevinters were enemies of the Qunari...he hadn't taken that into account. A fight might be inevitable.

"Not Qunari," he replied, in his extremely limited Qunari. "Not Tal'Vashoth. Was slaved, by Tevinters. Escaped." He pointed to himself. "Canus." He hoped that would tell the Qunari...otherwise, well, he was in for a duel.

The spotty words in the Qunari tongue made the last of the Saarebas in the lineup pause, and a brief wish to turn her head to look at the mysterious stranger passed across her mind before she stamped it down. To speak the words of the Qunari was an honor reserved only for those who followed the Qun or, in more extreme and only barely tolerated instances, for the merchants who absolutely had to trade deeper into the Qunari-controlled lands. Very few knew it casually, but the way the voice spoke made it sound like a little child only just learning their first words.

Then, she could feel it. She knew that her fellow Saarebas could feel it now, too, now that their guards had been put on edge. A familiar pulse of energy and a twist of untempered magic swirled at the edge of her mind, and she didn't have to look to recognize the feel of another mage. But how was such a thing possible? A mage with no handler, a thing with no master to control its demonic impulses. The thought struck something inside of her that was almost fear, as if, for just a moment, she'd been pushed into some dark place, blindfolded and alone. Like a child without their parent.

The Arvaarad had other thoughts as he sized up the notQunari in front of him. He had heard stories from his elders, but he had never met one such a this before, one would was not Qunari and was not Tal'Vashoth because they had never been Qunari to begin with. A kossith, simple and untouched by the Qun. He was almost confused by it, but disgust quickly washed the feeling away. He couldn't manage the righteous anger he felt when he met a Tal'Vashoth on the field of battle, but it still felt inherently wrong to see something like this.

"You are not Qunari, one called Canus, and neither are you Tal'Vashoth. By your armor, I would think you Tevinter," his hand clenched around his sword instinctively. "Is that so?"

((Wow, Canus is really putting on the Qunari hate. O_o))

He looked at the saarebas, how they were chained, collared like dogs. No, it was worse than that, much, much worse. Here in Ferelden, dogs were held in high esteem. No-one would treat a dog like that. And these were people -- sentient, intelligent. Did they realise the bondage they were in, or were they like he had been, a slave to their masters, done what he willed them to? This was atrocious, and it made Canus hate the Qunari. There was a bit of fear, yes, but moreso he would rather die than become like that. Freedom was precious, and he had earned his.

He did not like being threatened, and he interpretted the body language -- particularly the touching of his sword -- as nearing hostile. If it was a fight this Qunari wanted, he'd get it, hopefully a long, bloody one that would show the people of this nation just how barbaric these heathens were. A simple scratch on his person, and Canus could harness the power the demon gave him, to make their blood boil. In Ferelden, it was said crime was a allowed, and no-one would care for his kind unless they were rampaging the streets. In return for attacking him, for trying to take his freedom from him. And it wasn't certain whether they'd do that or not;

Honestly, though? He hoped it didn't come to that. It wasn't his place to question their customs or do anything about them. If anything,

His grasp of Qunari was only from books, and he was sure he had not gotten the pronunciations correct, had probably botched them up horribly. He'd reached its limits, in truth, and paused to think on what the Qunari man said, trying to form the words of response in Qunari. "Yes," he replied. "Slave. Once slave. From Tevinter." He struggled to say the next phrase in Qunari, and it ended up coming out in Common. "Not a Tevinter slave anymore," he replied. "Free. Do I assume right, that we do not have quarrel?"

Now the Arvaarad was looking at the Tevinter kossith as if he were mentally deficient, speaking in such a broken way even out of the Qunari tongue. He was a proud man, and a learned one, and it was disgusting to know the tongues of the inferior people, but know them he did, because it made him more efficient at his work. He knew the Common tongue almost as well as he knew his own, and even the botching of those inherently inferior words put his teeth on edge.

Perhaps he should speak slowly, as if to a child. By the Qun, even the saarabas at his heels had more brains in their head than this one. "We have no quarrel," he replied evenly, his hand drifting away from the blade at his hip, "if you have no intention of interfering in my work." He spoke in smooth, clear Common. He hated the sound of it, but even his pride was forced to give in the interest of his mission. Perhaps this non-Tal'Vashoth had expressed no intent to interfere, but he was experienced enough to know that such an intent might change with time. Humans barely registered on his 'threat' scale, but a kossith at least merited a warning.