
Sword and shield
Solas: Is there at least a movement to reunite Orzammar and Kal-Sharok?
Varric: What is it with you, Chuckles? Why do you care so much about the dwarves?
Solas: Once, in the Fade, I saw the memory of a man who lived alone on an island. Most of his tribe had fallen to beasts or disease. His wife had died in childbirth. He was the only one left. He could have struck out on his own to find a new land, new people. But he stayed. He spent every day catching fish in a little boat, every night drinking fermented fruit juice and watching the stars.
Varric: I can think of worse lives.
Solas: How can you be happy surrendering, knowing it will all end with you? How can you not fight?
Varric: I suppose it depends on the quality of the fermented fruit juice.
Solas: So it seems.And
Varric: What’s with you and the doom stuff? Are you always this cheery or is the hole in the sky getting to you?
Solas: I’ve no idea what you mean.
Varric: All the “fallen empire” crap you go on about. What’s so great about empires anyway?
Varric: So we lost the Deep Roads, and Orzammar’s too proud to ask for help. So what? We’re not Orzammar and we’re not our empire.
Varric: There are tens of thousands of us living up here in the sunlight now, and it’s not that bad.
Varric: Life goes on. It’s just different than it used to be.
Solas: And you have no concept of what that difference cost you.
Varric: Oh I know what it didn’t cost me. I’m still here, even after all those thaigs fell.
Solas: You truly are content to sit in the sun, never wondering what you could’ve been, never fighting back?
Varric: Ha, you’ve got it all wrong, Chuckles. This is fighting back.
Solas: How does passively accepting your fate constitute a fight?
Varric: In that story of yours—the fisherman watching the stars, dying alone—you thought he gave up right?
Solas: Yes.
Varric: But he went on living. He lost everyone, but he still got up every morning. He made a life, even if it was alone.
Varric: That’s the world. Everything you build, it tears down. Everything you’ve got, it takes—and it’s gone forever.
Varric: The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. He kept going. That’s as close to beating the world as anyone gets.
Solas: Well said. Perhaps I was mistaken.Maybe I can’t change the world, but I can keep living.
The message is too important to keep within the fandom

hauntedhouse meme
varric is probably seeing the grim future when his publishing house publishes a posthumous “newly discovered lost manuscript” of his, which just turns out to be the first draft to Hard in Hardtown
hard in hightown spoilers I cannot BELIEVE I am typing that
“She stared at Donnen, her jewel-colored eyes wide. But in a heartbeat, maybe two passed, and she again became the perfect picture of noble grace.”
“Her black gown only made her eyes more otherworldly. Even in mourning garb, she was dressed to kill. He felt lightheaded and wasn’t sure if it was the magic, the lack of sleep, or something else.”
“Marielle laughed – like chantry bells ringing – as though he’d just made a joke.”
“Donnen forced himself to look away from the lady. ‘For you? I’ll pay him a visit.’”
VARRIC IS SO IN LOVE WITH HAWKE GODDAMN
“She wore leathers this time, still black for mourning, and a pair of daggers hung at her sides. And somehow, she still looked like she could be at the center of a ballroom.”
YOUVE GOTTA BE FCKING KIDDING ME
IF YOU LEAVE FEMALE HAWKE IN THE FADE VARRIC’S MYSTERY CHAPTER IN INQUISITION THAT HE ~NEVER WROTE~ HAS MARIELLE FINDING DONNEN IN THE FUTURE SO VARRIC FINDS A WAY TO GROW OLD WITH HAWKE IN HIS TAVERN BY THE SEA