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As many criminals and lowlifes search to join the Wardens for a new chance at life, so do runaway slaves from the Imperium. We have standing agreements with Tevinter in these matters; the magistrate would not be pleased for us to use the Right of Conscription on every slave that shows promise, as much as some of our recruits have wished to. We take no more than ten slaves into Weisshaupt and the Tevinter branch in a year, looking for accomplished bodyguards and warriors amongst them. Trying to take a magister's favorite into the Wardens, however, has proven to create much too political upheaval and bloodshed on previous occassions. Please use your best judgment on what slaves will not be dearly missed by their masters and bring them to our ranks.
— From a letter from the First Warden to Warden Antek, 9:39 Dragon
Davrin hummed in consideration as they sat across from one another in his spot in the Lighthouse, Assan scratching behind his ear as he flit from one place to the other with his back paws.
"How'd you join the Wardens?" he asked. "I don't think I ever asked."
Ime managed a smile. "We do try not to ask in Weisshaupt."
"Well, it's not like we're there anymore," Davrin replied. "You can keep it to yourself if you'd like. Just curious."
"No, it's…fine."
Ime was a big man, bigger than Davrin by an order of magnitude, though not all that much taller. Perhaps five inches, when many Qunari would tower a foot over him. His width and breadth were his main source of power, and how he best carried around his heavy greatswords. And perhaps why he'd been called for by the Wardens in the first place.
"I was born in Tevinter, as you know," he said. Davrin nodded. "My mother was a prisoner of war. She'd been pregnant when she was taken. Part of the breeding program in the Qun, not meant to be out in the battlefield."
Davrin grimaced. "They attacked somewhere civilian?"
"Nowhere in Seheron is civilian," he said. "It's all fair game. But yes. They took her and she gave birth to me. Her jailers insisted I got a name, even though people do not really have names in the Qun."
"It's all job titles, Taash said."
"You get nicknames when you're a kid, then when they choose what you do that's your name." Ime swallowed and drank a long swig of ale, something Davrin had brewed with Lucanis' help. It wasn't very good, but he'd had much worse in Weisshaupt. "So, anyway, she just named me what I was. Imekari. Child, in Qunlat."
Davrin's nose twitched and he snorted. "Sorry. It's your name, I shouldn't laugh."
"It is funny to most I tell it to," he said, waving him off. "Like naming Assan Griffon."
Assan cawed, and it just made Davrin laugh more.
"Anyway." Ime tilted his head towards the ceiling, long curled horns shining under the chandelier overheard. "I was taken in as a slave when I was old enough to work. I did manual labor and then started being trained as a warrior. I had a natural talent for it. Good with swords and at taking hits without complaining."
He rubbed his hand over his knee, pressing his palm over his trousers for the sensation. Keeping himself there and not far, in the Imperium, in training courtyards and miserable slabs of stone, poked and prodded by magisters curious about having an oxman in close proximity.
"I was nineteen when the Wardens came to training. That had to be… ugh, they use another calendar there. But it was thirteen years ago."
"9:39, then," Davrin supplied.
"Sounds right," Ime said, never one for maths—never had he any need for it, or instruction. "They saw I had promise, and conscripted me. I didn't really think much of it; I knew the Wardens existed, vaguely, but to me it was like I was just given away to a different, weirder magister."
Davrin considered this for a long moment, his brows furrowed. "I didn't think they respected the Right of Conscription over there."
Ime snorted. "Right? I asked around many years later, and there's standing agreements to take a maximum of ten slaves a year. In theory it's to stop 'em from recruiting runaway slaves if they come to the Wardens, but you know that still happens."
"Oh yeah," Davrin nodded. Ime had known a good handful—warrior slaves who had ran away right before they were meant to go to Seheron, spooked by the tales older men would tell them; manual laborers who snuck away during protests and factory fires and found nowhere else to go but Weisshaupt. With the Wardens' well-known disregard for race and class, it was one of the few places safe for enslaved men and women. "Glad the Wardens don't respect that. Least we could do, really."
Ime nodded. "Indeed. Any other questions?"
Davrin considered this for a moment, looking up at him.
"When did you stop thinking of the Wardens as, well, another slavery?"
That gave Ime pause. He grunted out and gripped at his pant leg harder before shrugging.
"It's not that different, is it? You aren't supposed to leave and you do what you are told, for little reward."
Davrin scoffed at that, scowling a little before crossing his arms. "We're heroes. We stop the Blight. It's nothing like—"
"I'm not saying we don't do that," Ime interrupted him. "But there's no reward for all the hard work, beyond any sense of self-satisfaction. Or being remembered, if you kill an archdemon." Ime waved a hand around vaguely. "There's plenty of slaves who find satisfaction in their work, who are happy to be led around and told what to do. Who can't imagine anything else."
Davrin stood from his chair then, pacing as Assan yipped and followed him, noting his change in mood. There was a long moment of silence, only offset by Davrin's boots hitting wood.
"It's not—" he insisted, before sighing and rubbing his hand over his face. "It's. It's your point of view. I guess it's a bit similar. Eugh. I don't like thinking of it like that."
Ime tsked. "You asked me. I answered."
"So you… don't like being in the Wardens?"
"No, I do," he said. "It's a fine job, and I am treated with respect. I suppose that's the real difference."
"Quite a big one," Davrin deadpanned.
Ime chuckled. "I suppose it is." He stood and nodded. "Thank you for the chat, Davrin. I try not to dwell in the past, but it's good to remember, now and then."
Davrin nodded heavily as he left.
I cannot believe these Wardens can get away with such atrocities; it is truly an infrigement against the pride and freedom of the magistrate. I had one of my most promising warrior slaves, meant to go to Seheron this autumn, end up conscripted. The last Blight was merely a blip on the other side of the continent—what could they need an oxman in Weisshaupt for? He would be much better off killing his kin in the island jungle, rather than in that dreary desert.
Nonetheless, there is nothing I could do about it. We were in the midst of a training round when the Wardens came and picked some of the most promising men we had; Magister Arimond's wife, who has family in Ferelden, insisted that it is their right, and it would have been a terrible social issue if I insisted on my property being my own and that not even these so-called heroes could take it away from me.
Our offense may be crippled, but only by half a dozen men. We will still make a good stand in the jungle in the coming months. I will make sure of that.
— From a letter from Magister Matius to his wife, 9:39 Dragon