Dun-Dun-DUN

The lion’s ships were Denerim bound Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him! Let the true king’s call for aid resound Just drop him, Lady, drop him! A soldier lad from the army came Oh, drop him, Lady, drop him! Leading thirty souls in Maric’s name. Just drop him, Lady, drop him! Turn him loose and let him go Down to the rocks and waves below The depths can have that scurvy knave Just drop him, Lady, drop him! When the soldier met the Mistral’s crew Not a word of their great deeds he knew And the Seawolf he took for a servant lass Great Andraste, what an ass! ‘Fore the Seawolf’s ire, no man could stand Soldier felt his death was close at hand Two great steps back did he retreat And the cliff side crumbled ‘neath his feet.

- Oriana Cousland is Antivan and teases about being knowledgeable of poison comfortably with her husband. I've always HC'd her family was Crow-adjacent if not straight up Crows and "Wealthy Antivan Trader" is the polite cover the family maintains because brazenly admitting to being powerful and wealthy due to assassinations would be uncouth.

- The reason a Crow house is actively working against Rendon Howe and Loghain is because of her and Oren being murdered. Most Fereldan nobles wouldn't jump to using Antivan crows when a free lancer is probably cheaper and more available in Ferelden. That house is also actively opposing Arainai interests because Crow politics.

- Lucanis gets very shifty when discussing the Fereldan Crow activity and how many Talons ended up dead because of it.

- The timing works out for Oriana to be one of Caterina's dead children.

zevran just invite your friends to brunch or smt you can't keep using assassination attempts as good excuses to visit them

Feel free to reroll repeats. Most are companions, but there are also a few companion-adjacent possibilities. You can assume that you as the protagonist have a basic level of combat competency even if you don't in real life, so don't worry about yourself

But she SHOULD HAVE been a Soporati. DATV does VERY little in the form of interesting mage lore, and so her being a mage doesn't really add much at all. But her being a Soporati does!!

For one, Neve has the personality of someone who would look at docktown and be like 'the mages are doing absolutely nothing to help this place, and people say you have to be a mage or a Templar to make a difference but FUCK THAT'.

Secondly, it would be a way to really contextualise the poverty of docktown. Docktown is seen as 'poor' in the game but it doesn't really explain WHY or the systematic problems which might lead to this area in particular being poor. but Krem did! Back in DAI Krem talks about how the practice of slavery makes Soporati poorer; Soporati have to compete with mages who can do things quicker and slaves who can do things cheaper which means that they rarely stand a chance when it comes to work they could be doing. So they either a) live in poverty scraping by or b) sell themselves into slavery! It's systematic oppression! It seeps all the way down!

Neve as a Soporati could have talked about that, and how she saw that affecting docktown. Maybe it could even be something which led to some kind of riot pre-game that stopped slaves being brought in as regularly to the docks (because like. Docktown as Tevinters literal dock really should be crawling with visible signs of the slave trade coming from the boats; especially because we know from the comics/da2 that a lot of slaves are transported to Tevinter by sea). The riot itself would then be justification for why there is a political *cough* venatori *cough* presence in docktown at the moment to 'keep the peace'. This could ALSO highlight the stark differences between the templars in Tevinter as they would not be the ones relied upon to enforce order because they're viewed as kind of useless.

And that way, instead of the shadow dragons feeling very much like a white saviour-y, run by powerful, privileged people organisation we could see them as a more grassroots organisation in and of themselves; built up of Soporati who also have a high stake in abolishing slavery not just for moral reasons but because it's affecting them too! And Neve could have been the face of that!

Okay, so. There’s already a teenager down in Commander Muttonchop’s brig. This fact is so far past concerning it’s wrapped around to let’s-not-think-too-hard-about-this hilarity, and Sokka finds himself grinning, and offering the guy a good ol’ fashioned Water Tribe wrist shake through the bars. They’re neighbors, after all.

“Hello, Fellow Prisoner. What are you in for?”

“I, uh,” says Fellow Prisoner, who is clearly undersocialized from his time in here. He’s looking a little grimy around the edges of his all-black outfit, and the bruises on him have had time to get newer, fresher bruises on top, which is just. That is all kinds of reassuring. Oh, and the giant fiery facial scar. Also reassuring. Though at least that one’s a few years old. So… inflicted when he was, what, Aang’s age?

So reassured, is feeling Sokka, for the Fire Nation’s upcoming hospitality.  

“Uh,” repeats Fellow Prisoner, who is uncoiling a little in the direction of Sokka’s offered hand. As if Sokka was trying to coax him out, and hadn’t just sort of forgotten he was holding it there while his thoughts were doing their downward spiral. But hey, one man’s desperate attempts to keep his cool were another man’s offer of friendship. Fellow Prisoner grasped his wrist and shook it, in both the most technically correct and least experienced Water Tribe wrist clasp Sokka has ever experienced. 

“Zhao thinks I was stealing military correspondence,” the guy says.

“Were you stealing military correspondence?” asks Sokka.

“Only his,” scowls Fellow Prisoner, to whom Sokka takes an immediate liking. “...What did you do? To get arrested. But not killed. He doesn’t usually…”

So, so reassured.

“Oh, you know,” Sokka says, continuing to shake wrists, because it is becoming clear that Fellow Prisoner has no idea how long this is supposed to last and Sokka isn't going to be the one to stop him. “The usual. Found the Avatar. Became traveling companions. Got captured doing something definitely heroic that did not in anyway involve excessive screaming of an unmanly pitch.”

“...The Avatar?” says Fellow Prisoner, who clearly knows how to focus on the important points.

“I’m bait,” says Sokka.

“For the Avatar.”

To be fair, Sokka is still a little stuck on that point, too. It’s been a few weeks, but he still wakes up too-hot in the night and wondering why the stars above him aren’t quite right.

“Yep,” he confirms.

Fellow Prisoner’s face does a thing. A sort of processing, processing, processing thing that involves progressively more scowling. “The Avatar left you? I knew the old man must be a coward.”

“So,” Sokka says, “about that.”

Fellow Prisoner drinks up Sokka’s story like a man who’s spent three years in a desert searching for water. 

- - -

(It’s been two and half years.)

- - - 

Their escape involves a significantly higher swords-to-escapees ratio than Sokka had anticipated, which is distractingly epic. 

Also, the last-minute bison save is both the stupidest thing his little sister could have possibly done and very welcome, which means that Sokka is going to catch his breath and let some of his adrenaline fade before channeling his inner Gran-Gran for a lecture. 

Fellow Prisoner sheaths both his swords. And kind of stares, rather than sitting down, so Sokka pulls him over before the bison turbulence (read: catapult dodging) can do the job. This does nothing to interrupt the staring. 

“Hi,” says Aang, looking back from Appa’s head. “I’m Aang! What’s your name?”

“...Li?”

Under the sunlight, Fellow Prisoner’s eyes glint gold. He is… very Fire Nation-y looking, now that there is enough light to see him. And he is warmer against Sokka’s side than anyone not feverish should be, even in the ridiculous heat these northerners call ‘winter’.

“Are you a firebender?” asks Aang, like that question hasn’t spent decades earning its status as an insult.

“Uh,” says Li.

“Great!” says Aang, who has already figured out Li-speak. “I need a teacher!”

On the deck below them, Zhao has gone from shouting to laughing. 

In Sokka’s defense: following the coastline was the only way he could tell at a glance that, yes, they were going north, and not towards more giant koi and/or sea serpents of questionable ridability, Aang.

In Li’s defense: catapults. So many catapults. They’d flown out over a bay that had looked really small on their map, but felt much larger when filled with an actively shooting naval fleet. 

“On your left!” Sokka shouted. “Your left! Are you blind?”

Li growled something unintelligible yet uncomplimentary, and jerked the bison’s reigns. Aang was not steering, because Aang kept leaping in the air to blow giant fiery boulders of death off course. Katara was not steering, because she was wiggling her hands and trying to magic up some thicker cloud cover for them, with mixed success. Sokka was not steering, because someone needed to be hanging over the side of the saddle to yell where the next projectile was coming from, because he was really starting to think that Li couldn’t see well up there.

“What happened to them?” asked his dear sister.

And yeah, that ship was… kind of on a collision course with another ship. Multiple other ships, given how nicely they’d lined up this ambush-blockade. Said ship was smoking from the back, and was also distinctly smaller and frumpier than all the newer models it was barreling towards. Had some out-of-favor captain pushed their rust bucket too fast, trying to get in on the glory of shooting an endangered bison and a group of children from the sky?

Suddenly, the fleet below was a lot more concerned with scattering than with shooting. 

Aang floated back down to the saddle, breathing hard, and joined Sokka in the leaning-over-the-side crew. He stared down at the smoking ship. A portly old man on deck stared up. Aang waved. Sokka whapped his hand, but not before the old man waved back. 

“We do not—” Sokka started, only to notice that Li was tentatively raising his arm, too. “We do not wave to the enemy!” 

Li tucked his hand back at his side, and did not meet Sokka’s gaze. They kept flying. 

* * *

“Getting a little far out to sea, bud,” Sokka said, through a yawn. “So unless you’re trying to steer us straight to the Fire Lord…”

Li tugged at the reins, face flushed. 

The third time it happened, Sokka dragged him back to the Team Avatar Sleepy-Time Pile and took over.