The Secret Grotto

Sometimes, there are murmurs that the Grey Wardens acquired their name not by their armor proudly glinting dull silver as they stood proud in their line of duty, but rather, it came from the abysmal rations they're served to this day.

During moments like this, Davrin is inclined to believe them.

Long gone are the days of trays filled with colorful arrays of vegetables. Whatever roots and berries might be in season. Mushrooms expertly foraged. That special sauce his mother would whip up, mashing the ingredients together with a pestle. Mint and onion grass and a type of nut of which he can't quite recall the variety. Maybe it varied. He can't even remember. Just that it tasted like springtime and made any dish, no matter how inedible it might be, a delicacy. 

In the tin bowl before him, he pushes around the thick porridge. An amorphous blob of sustenance (allegedly) sloshes against the metal. Sloughs off the curve of his spoon. It reminds him of the pulp that sat in a pool of cold river water, settling against the stiff netting below. Over and over again it would be smoothed and worked until it no longer was wood pulp but rather pages that would find themselves pressed into books. Bound together and made useful, unlike this fucking slop.

"It ain't getting any prettier staring at it." He blinks, one moment sitting on the riverside beside a girl whose vallaslin was still healing, scabbing against her cheeks, as she smoothed wood pulp into paper. The next, he is back here in the High Anderfels, snowed into this fortress before heading out on his next assignment. The Wandering Hills. Landforms that seem to move about and take cattle and limbs in their wake. Their most recent casualties were followed by a thin vein of Blight, singing, twisting its way into the locals' thoughts and fears. As the pink and oddly chipper Beren—now urging him to eat—explained to him, the hills are said to whisper in the night. A slithering unreal sort of sound. A thing of nightmares. Now, it's potentially tinged with Blight, so it only makes sense the Wardens would be called upon to investigate.

As a boy, he might have shivered at the sentiment, but at this point, he might as well live out his time before his ever ticking expiration date comes to fruition. No better way to spend that than fighting a moving hill, he supposes.

With a sigh, he lifts a chunk of porridge and immediately wonders if too much time has elapsed to go home, at least for a good meal. He dare not close his eyes, nor even blink, for fear that he might see the disappointment in his mother's eyes. The last he saw her was when he said he was leaving. His face still bandaged, he didn't anticipate just how impossible it would be to bandage his heart. Or at the very least, his fingertips as he desperately tried to pick up all the pieces when he departed without even a passing glance from her.

There is a vase of flowers sitting on the nightstand in front of him.

The bouquet stands proudly on the small, wooden surface, as if keeping post over the room. Healthy green stalks uphold brilliant orange petals that nearly shine in the light of the midday sun. Dotted between them and strewn about the table sit smaller, yellow compatriots who are definitely not meant to be there—almost assuredly the addition of the innkeeper’s young daughter wishing to help however she could.

Wyll did not recognize the yellow flowers beyond the fact he saw them blooming in the hills on his way in, but the orange ones…the orange ones had him dropping his bag with a dismayed laugh.

“These were your mother’s favorites.”

Wyll heard the phrase often throughout his childhood, almost as often as the orange swamp lilies adorned the halls of his home. If he didn’t know better, he would swear it was his father’s favorite reminder—or justification. As if Ulder Ravengard needed a reason to have flowers in his home, as if he needed a reason for the reminder of his late wife and the mother of his son.

“They are meant to represent the pride and chivalry of a knight.”

In his youth, Wyll had gobbled that information whole. How could he not? The lilies were—and still remained—one of the only ties he held to a woman he knew only by the marked absence of her presence. One of the only things that remained of a woman he knew—still knows—should be more to him than an abstract ideal based on what others have said.

Perhaps they all had more in common than he ever wished to believe.

Wyll had come to know a lot about the lilies. What they symbolized, yes, but also about their care. The noble orange swamp lilies flourished during the summer months in the wetter areas around Baldur’s Gate. They needed sandy soil, excellent irrigation and sun to survive. In the winter, they went dormant but survived in the ground, waiting for the opportune moment in spring to bloom again.

As he approaches the table—drawn in by the color and the sheer, humorless audacity to be faced with them now—Wyll notes the bouquet before him will not survive much longer than a tenday, ripped from their home as they were and implanted in a flimsy, water-filled vase.

He stops before them and sighs, breath fluttering over the petals. They are in the prime of their life, beautiful, healthy, vibrant, and do not know they will soon be gone from this world. Dead, far from their home, not even aware of the purpose they served.

Without thought, Wyll reaches a trembling hand towards the flowers. Just before the tips of his fingers brush along the soft petals of the nearest flower, he snatches his hand back as if burned. He knows it is an old wives’ tale that flowers wither quicker if one touches their petals too often, but something about how different his own touch is now gives him pause.

They are his mother’s favorites, and they are already dying. He wants to honor them, not speed the process along.

He sighs again, hands going lax at his sides in defeat and thoughts grudgingly racing. Emotions unwillingly churning. He should be able to handle this, but as his eyes trace the flowers, cataloguing the hues of oranges, reds, and yellows blending together towards the starry center, he silently acknowledges he cannot.

Wyll ascribed some of his own meaning to the flowers once as well. The colors often reminded him of a sunrise, the promising start to a beautiful day. The promising start to a beautiful life. The promise his mother would have wanted for him.

Sunrise was his mother’s favorite time of day, if he were to believe his father.

The colors blurring together now though spoke of a different story. Staring down at them, all Wyll could feel was heat. All he could feel was the burning sensation of flames lapping at his face and the choking bind of a collar.

“Would they still be your favorite, now?” he asks softly. What he wishes to ask is ‘was this what you would have wanted for me?’

The lilies were his favorite flowers once, just as they were hers. All he ever wished was to be everything they symbolized.

“Would…” He swallows, hating how his voice trembles. Hating the wetness he feels upon his cheeks and spilling onto the petals below. Hating the weakness of it all. “Would you still love them now?”

Could she? Could she understand what transpired? Would she still be able to see the sunrise in them? Could she still see the chivalrous knight worthy of pride?

For the first time in a tenday since he was exiled from Baldur’s Gate, Wyll Ravengard sits alone in a distant inn and allows himself to cry.

***

There is a vase of flowers sitting on a nightstand in the far corner of the room they all share at the Elfsong Tavern.

The bouquet stands proudly but almost invisibly in the corner of the room, as if acting as a silent guardian. Vibrant orange petals glow warmly in the candlelight, standing firm with the support of healthy, green stems. Sprouting from the mouth of the vase rest several sprigs of small, white flowers, as soft and pure as the fallen snow before a campfire.

Wyll recognizes them – both of them. Orange lilies and edelweiss, an arrangement commonly seen in his childhood home. That didn’t explain what they were doing here, in the tavern room he’s been sharing with his fellow tadpoled adventurers.

“Hey, soldier!” Karlach’s voice greets him from the side, but whatever else she was going to say trails off into nothing. Instead, she follows his line of sight towards the flowers. “Oh, yeah. Your dad brought those up earlier.” She shrugs. “Muttered something about needing to brighten up the room…or something. We figured you’d know what that was about when you got back.”

It’s an apology, Wyll knows.

“They were my mother’s favorite flowers,” he says.

He walks over to them slowly, Karlach following behind. “There is a portrait of her on their wedding day with her bouquet arranged quite similarly.”

“Your mother was a woman of refined taste, then,” Gale remarks from his cot. “Edelweiss is a common choice in wedding arrangements. The lilies less so, but they are a striking and subtly matching companion.”

“Do you know what they mean, Gale?”

The wizard hums in thought. “I’m far more equipped to speak on their alchemical properties, but if I recall, edelweiss is for love and courage while the lilies are for chivalry. Excellent desires for the future of a marriage.”

“They were your mom’s favorite?” Karlach asks. Of course, she is the one to recognize the heart of the matter.

Wyll nods, a claw brushing over the orange petals of the lilies. “Mine too, at one point.”

Karlach frowns. “At one point?”

“They…” He hesitates, uncertain how to explain his loss of appreciation. The pressure they represented, the fires they looked like, the failure they reminded him of. “I have not found them suitable for some time.”

Truly, the issue had been that he was not suitable for them.

Silence settles over the room. Wyll cannot bring himself to look up at his companions, but it is Astarion that walks over to inspect the flowers. “Orange is quite suitable for your pallet, you know,” he says after a moment.

Karlach reaches over and plucks the flower he was tracing with his claw out from under him. Wyll finally looks at her while she inspects it, holding it close to his face. “Fangs is right,” she decides, handing the flower to him. “I think they fit you just fine. Your dad does, too, by the look of it.”

Wyll’s fingers delicately curl around the stem, taking the flower from her. There is something about it being handed to him that has him examining the flower closer than he has been able to bear for years. He appreciates the way the colors, the oranges and the yellows and the reds, bleed together more than usual.

Indeed, it still looks like the flames that once chained him. But it also is starting to look like a sunrise again, and if he can see the sunrise again, maybe she would have been able to as well.

Perhaps this is what his mother would have wanted for him all along. More importantly, it is what he has wanted for himself all along.

“I…”

He hesitates, floundering with the flower before deciding to delicately tuck it into the breast pocket of his shirt. The soft petals brushing against his chest reignites something deep within him. Something he had long believed lost.

the background:

first, here's the viper's letter about the job:

so right away, note how weird it is that the viper's writing mercar's letter. i say this is weird because, with the other factions, the person writing rook's letter is someone they're familiar with, usually in a position of leadership. antoine and evka are the notable leadership exceptions here, having actually been involved in thorne's backstory actions.

here's the rub: mercar doesn't know the viper. they've heard of him, certainly, but when that little popup telling you that you've worked with these faction agents before appears, mercar doesn't have the option to act like they know the viper.

the lines mercar gets are:

it's an honor to stand beside a legend

i know he likes to make an entrance

i know he gets things done

now, i will grant you that some of the responses to mercar's comment indicate tarquin is familiar with both rook and ashur (his response to the honor line is 'well, that'll go straight to his head' while the entrance line earns the viper's comment 'no one watches the rooftops' and tarquin's exasperated 'sure, that's what he says') but the point is, for a character mercar is "supposed" to be very familiar with, neve still tells them about the name ashur. like, seriously, it's the same dialogue tag every rook gets.

which is weird because veilguard is actually pretty good at keeping track of rook's faction and seamlessly changing up the conversation while still getting across the relevant information.

but it doesn't stop there, oh no.

during mercar's unpacking scene, we get these default shadow dragon lines:

now, these right here ping for the following reasons:

varric isn't the "visiting dignitary" that rook was guarding, given that rook had to get to nessus before meeting varric

the fact that rook's backstory happens dao style, where all events are true but only one has duncan varric available to pluck rook out of the immediate consequences

minrathous slaves, specifically, are mentioned as being freed here, even though we're supposed to be in nessus. now i'm not saying that minrathous citizens can't be enslaved and sent elsewhere, i'm just pointing out the phrasing here

the magisters who were financially benefiting from the nessus ring (aka venatori and their backers) knew enough about rook to put a name and a face on them. the structure of the sentence here is that everyone knows who is "too much trouble" to keep around and that is fucking wild kids. no, seriously, that is wild. there is so much wild here, put a pin in it.

no, seriously, this matters and matches the backstory blurb that the job "brought Rook to the Venatori's attention." put a fucking pin in it.

whatever rook's feelings, they always take pride in freeing those slaves- impulsive rook just dislikes that it comes at the cost of putting the shadow dragons in danger (put a pin in it), righteous rook thinks that the shadows should have used the crackdown to start a full out war with the venatori and their magister backers mind you while finally stoic rook just hopes that the shadow dragons weathered the storm safely.

okay, so ready for more batshit mercar?

the next solas conversation is the one where rook tells solas why they're going to stop the gods and here's what mercar has to say about that operation:

i just want y'all to marinate in that little gem of a line for a sec.

done screaming yet? it's cool, take another minute. no one's doing it like mercar.

okay, so finally a fuller picture of mercar's backstory comes into focus, if you ignore the weird bits. like the fact that the shadows made a plan with varric to rescue a friend, which does not appear to be the original nessus job, mind you.

mercar met varric, something went screwy, and mercar and varric decided the only way they had a chance was to start an armed rebellion in the city of nessus. the slavery ring is busted, said rebellion is (apparently) put down, the venatori and the magisters know who to blame for it all, and mercar hightails it out of the country with varric. simple and straightforward, right?

wrong, we have so much to work through.

the fallout:

like why the fuck are ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in dock town, exactly? tarquin lives there but those three surely have a high town shadow dragon cell they can go bug, right? and why is ashur the only one of the three making any cell decisions? i mean, points to mae for being a decent house guest, i guess, but what exactly is going on here? why are the venatori breathing down the shop's neck, to the point that they knew its location well enough to deliberately target it in the save treviso route?

remember those pins? it's time to pull them.

i repeat: this is real fucking bad for the shadow dragons. unlike the rest of the origins, the shadows are a covert operation. they don't want anyone knowing who their members are, who their backers are, any of it. the people in power being able to identify shadow dragons is how you lose shadow dragons: to arrests, targeted killings, beatings, destruction of their livelihoods, etc. ya know, like the viper mentions in his letter.

the fact that the first warden can not only link rook's face and name to the shadow dragons but to very specific crimes, crimes for which rook can absolutely be arrested, should set off all the alarm bells. as dorian says, the man is more politician than warden and as charter's letter from marnas pell states, "Assume every noble Tevinter family not with Shadow Dragons has Venatori pulling strings." this is extremely bad.

after nessus, the venatori had rook's identity as mercar and what did they do? they started looking into every single person mercar had known contact with, every path they took, their home, their family, the bar they stopped in for breakfast that one time. that's how resistance cells die, by the way. including, potentially, mercar's. this is why the shadows were more than happy to see mercar out of the way for a while where they couldn't cause any more trouble; so long as they're not around, they can't compromise more of the various cells' activities and members. it's the safest move for literally everyone involved.

because the damage has been done:

mae's related to varric via marriage, by the way, if the full picture hasn't come into focus yet.

mercar and varric were id'ed in that rebellion, the venatori were pissed at the lost revenue streams and suddenly mae's knocked out of the magisterium?

yeah.

my guess is that there is no high town cell anymore because of the nessus job. for all that mae worked to ensure that dorian was out of the line of fire and squeaky clean, the shadows and their backers couldn't stop the venatori crackdown after nessus, as mentioned by ashur's letter. ashur and mae are here specifically because there is no other cell to go to.

this is why tarquin is snippy, by the by. mercar and the highbloods are drawing attention to him and endangering all of his people just by being there.

hang on, it gets worse.

because the venatori are obsessed with the viper and proving that he's the divine (he is the divine, for the record, there are too many ambient dialogues, codices, and missions pointing in that direction). and to that obsession, i say, what the fuck? how did they come to that conclusion, exactly? what trail did the divine leave behind that first got the venatori on his tail?

well, he's related to and has close ties with mae's family. secondly, the divine is known for being quietly supportive of slave liberation. but the real reason, i think, is the original nessus job.

because again, why were the shadows in nessus originally? why was mercar in nessus to meet varric in the first place? who was the "visiting dignitary" that mercar was guarding?

yeah, i think the dignitary was the divine. and i think he was there in his official capacity. it would handily explain the discrepancy that ashur knows mercar but mercar doesn't know ashur. while the divine might not have a lot of actual power, the power of the press and drawing attention to issues and plights should never be discounted. especially when it's a plausible excuse to get several minrathous shadows in place to shut down the nessus slaver ring.

the divine being guarded by a now known shadow dragon (the viper likely made an appearance, ashur is known to pop up when slave rebellions start) combined with his anti-slavery views and ties to anti-slavery politicians turned the venatori's eye on ashur's night job.

remember, the shadow dragons are officially labeled as insurgents; if the venatori can tie the divine and all his people to them? that would be a death knell for any political support for liberation. the checkmate for the anti-slavery cause for the next age.

tldr: mercar exposed their ties to the shadows (and possibly the divine's) by starting an armed rebellion with varric to free slaves and shut down a slaver hub. in response, the venatori sniped several cells using mercar and varric's likely contacts, which led to ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in the dock town shadow dragon cell instead of some high town cell.

lucky the gods show up to cause trouble, huh?