piratejournal | [Handwritten] Request for Ingredients

[Written with modern ballpoint pen in a casual, simple, Celtic-style calligraphic script.]

Request for Ingredients

Please collect samples of these plants during your island explorations and I will gladly trade coin or other goods for them.

[Small, crude sketches of each herb are painstakingly placed by each entry.]

Heatherum and Foxite - both of these herbs are common in my homeland of Ferelden and are used to make herbal agents.

Deathroot - despite the name, this plant is innocuous when handled. I require the leaves rather than the flowers.

Also useful to me would be any venom extracted from a poisonous creature. It is easiest to find and obtain from giant spiders, though I have not yet seen such spiders in this world. If you happen to face and defeat a spider, please take the time to collect its venom or to inform me of where such spiders can be located.

[She writes nothing else except her usual signature and a quick sketch of a griffon segreant - the symbol of the Grey Wardens.]

-EC

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I had no idea deathroot and spider venom could be combined into beneficial herbal agents.

The things one does learn when traveling.

[The sarcasm would prooooobably carry over better if he was using voice, but he's not, so this is where we're at.]

They can be extremely beneficial to me when they are properly combined with the right concentrator agent. Honestly, it has saved my life more times than I can count.

That's always how I've used such things, myself. Very sensible of you, I must say.

Thank you.

Now tell me - who is this that knows of deathroot? I never realized that posting an ingredient list would turn up so many people that are actually familiar with its usage.

I'm another transplant from Ferelden, it sounds like. Your ingredient list made me very nostalgic, which is not - I must point out - something I ever expected to feel from reading such a list.

[Nostalgia and deathroot. It almost sounded like the title of an adventure story or a mystery book.]

Let me guess.

Since I have written to Anders and spoken with Isabela, you must be the one she referred to as Hawk. Am I correct?

[An adventure mystery sex book, yes, good.]

Curses, my cover's blown. I will have to have words with those two, honestly!

Garrett Hawke, at your service, milady. It is a pleasure to have this correspondence.

[About a Crow who falls in love with his mark, obviously.]

Garrett Hawke. I shall remember the final 'e' from now on, I assure you. My apologies for the error. You need not worry, I have heard nothing ill about you.

Yet.

I am Elissa Cousland.

[Perfect.]

"Yet" is the key word, there.

[And...wow, um, that sure is a thing, isn't it? How to put this delicately...uh.]

Cousland? Any relation to the Teyrn of Highever?

[He asks, knowing perfectly well that the name she has given him is the name of the Teyrn's youngest....welp.]

The second child and only daughter of Bryce and Eleanor Cousland. Maker rest their souls.

[Oh. Well. Stranger things have happened...!]

I had heard that the entire family had been killed - I am very pleased to find those rumors to be false. You have my deepest sympathies for your loss.

[Elissa takes a moment after that news, though it really wasn't unexpected.]

Even Fergus, then? I knew it was a vain hope that he could survive the Blight, but I held that hope nonetheless.

Thank you for your sympathy, ser.

As far as I know. I admit, news from Ferelden has been sparse since the end of the Blight, and I've spent the four years since living in Kirkwall, so I wouldn't doubt that has some effect on the quality of my information. If you managed to survive, perhaps your brother made it as well.

[ALWAYS HOLD OUT HOPE, COUSLAND.]

That is a valid point. Kirkwall would have little reason to care about news of Fereldan nobility even if Highever is likely the closest Fereldan city to it. The distance across the Waking Sea can seem so small upon a map, but that gap is much larger than it seems.

Kirkwall was none too thrilled with the number of Ferelden refugees taking shelter there from the Blight. I wouldn't be surprised at all if news was kept out on purpose, since they were unable to keep out the people.

I hope many of them returned home once the Blight was ended. Did they? I am currently here instead of home to aid in chasing down the retreating darkspawn and helping to rebuild which can be frustrating. I was stolen away at an inopportune time, but at least it was after I killed the Archdemon. Things could always be worse, I suppose.

[Handwritten] Request for Ingredients

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