a rather run-down village and two companions to join them

"And we already ran into a bunch of scummy highwaymen" Aedan found himself speaking, annoyed as just outside the village of Lothering that Aedan, Alistair, Morrigan and Dane were standing amidst the ground littered with the corpses of poorly trained thieves who had met their ends by. "Why do I get the sneaking suspicion this is going to become the norm?"

Alistair spoke up "you're the one who attacked them"

Aedan turned to Alistair "they were a bunch of criminal's" he snorted "entrance fee to get into Lothering my ass, now nobody will be able to harass anymore traveler's coming here"

Alistair held up his hand's "hey, I wasn't complaining about killing these idiot's. Just pointing it out is all"

"And finding ways to continue whining whenever possible" Morrigan snorted at the blonde Warden.

"Ah well, might as well see if they had anything good on em" Aedan shrugged as he, Alistair and Morrigan searched the bodies of the highwaymen and sure enough found a generous amount of coin from each of the dead criminal's coinpurses, coin no doubt swindled from innocent traveler's.

Once the trio were done checking for valubles from the slain highwaymen did the three human's and mabari enter the town of Lothering.

Lothering was certainly a rather run-down and poorly maintained village as far as Aedan was concerned. Then again he knew that the only place he had ever really visited outside of Castle Cousland was Denerim and he supposed comparing a small village in the middle of nowhere to the capital of Fereldan was rather unfair.

As he and his compatriot's wandered through the town Aedan heard a voice call out "hey, do you have any coin to spare, messere?" to which Aedan turned towards where the voice came from and he saw two elves; male and female and a small elven child looking to him.

"Uh yeah, I've got a little bit I can spare" he proceeded to drop six silver coin's into the elven man's hand.

"Thank you, messere" the female elf said graciously. "nobody ever cares about elves like us" she smiled "its nice to know not all human's are asses"

Aedan chuckled "no, not all of us"

The male elf spoke up "did you find a wooden toy lamb up there? we saw you coming from there" he pointed to the entrance of Lothering where the highwaymen lay dead. "our little girl had it stolen by a bunch of no good criminal's" said little girl hiding behind the legs of her mother, no doubt intimidated.

"You mean those highwaymen assho-" Aedan quickly cut himself off as he remembered the prescence of the child hiding behind her mother "those highwayman scumbag's? they're suffering a mild case of death right now"

The elven man and woman's eye's lit up something fierce "they are" the male elf grinned "perhaps our thing's are still there. Wait here, honey, I'll go and check" the elf quickly ran up to where Aedan had just come from as he and his companions took their leave of the elven mother and child.

"You profit from their misfortune! the Maker's judgement shall be fierece and swift you piece of...of shit!" Aedan's eyebrow raised as he heard a Chantry priestess actually swear? didn't they have to take an oath against that kind of stuff? which caused Aedan to wander over to where the priestess was and saw her arguing with a merchant.

"You, Warden's, over here" the Chantry priestess called out to him and Alistair to which the duo wandered over to see what was happening along with Morrigan and Dane "Please, talk some sense into this swindler!"

"Oh for the love of, now you're dragging Grey Warden's into this?" the so-called 'swindler' groaned "am I going to hav

e to hear your endless prattling like hers?" he groaned, pointing at the clearly irate Chantry priestess.

"Whats going on, here?" Alistair asked curiously.

"He is charging outrageous prices for item's these people desperately need!" the priestess declared "their blood is filling his pocket!"

Morrigan scoffed "tis only survival of the fittest. All of these cretins would do the same, given the chance"

Aedan pinched the bridge of his nose "seriously? don't you have better things to do than overcharge people on basic shit that they clearly don't have nearly enough coin for?"

The merchant was clearly agitated "look stranger, I'll give you one sovreign and a discount on my goods. Starting with that damned priestess over there" he pointed to the Chantry priestess who he had wound up making her swear.

Aedan merely rolled his eye's "do you honestly expect these people have the coin to buy your overpriced goods?" he questioned "this isn't Denerim in case you haven't realized"

The merchant frowned "I'm simply an honest merchant trying to make a living" he cast an irate glance at the Chantry priestess "which is hard to do when I'm being harassed by people like this old biddy"

Aedan laughed "yeah, charging more coin than you should be for basic supplies is real honest of you" he added sarcastically "unless you want to sell your good's for what they're actually worth then why don't you head to Denerim to overcharge people for your good's? the people here obviously can't afford"

"Fine!" the merchant relented "I'll charge these people what my good's are worth"

The Chantry priestess smiled "that is all I ask. So long as these prices do not beggar the needy"

Aedan nodded "good, and as it so happens I need to purchase some good's of yours"

The merchant sighed "fine, buy what you need and get out of my sight"

Aedan did buy what he needed which included some food, a waterskin for himself, Alistair and Morrigan along with two sleeping roll's, a portable tent for him and Alistair as currently Morrigan was the only one with who already had both to sleep in at night.

The three human's and mabari much to Morrigan's chagrin did what little they could to help the town of Lothering which would no doubt be overrun with Darkspawn soon and did a few requests for aid that were pinned to the Chanters board which included killing spider's larger than Aedan had ever seen before. He only ever had to deal with the smaller arachnids that could be dealt with a quick stomp pn from a shoe, he had no idea spider's could grow so large to the point it required actual weapon's to kill.

After a hard day of running from darkspawn and helping Lothering to get back on its feet before it inevitably got infested with darkspawn and in Aedan's case fucking a certain Witch of the Wilds it was decided that he and his companions earned a drink or two at the local inn and wound up encountering a few of Loghain's men who at the beshest of a rather attractive redhead Chantry sister who looked to be near Aedan's age if not a little older who had introduced herself as Leliana who requested to come along, although being hesitant to have a seemingly defenceless Chantry sister assist them in what would be a long fight against the darkspawn she assured them she had some fighting gear stashed away to help her fight thanks to her apparently having the Maker tell her to aid him in his fight.

Much to Alistair and Morrigan's amusement of the rather deluded Chantry sister Aedan had agreed to let her come along, while she may be a little...strange in her reasoning to join he certainly wouldn't turn down another companion to help fight the Blight, and a rather attractive one at that.

She promised she would meet them again when she had adorned herself in her fighting gear instead of the standard Chantry robes she currently wore.

Aedan had also run across a rather tall individual locked in a cage; a qunari. One of the natives of the land of Par Vollen. A qunari would be a big help tin the fight against the darkspawn.

After convincing the local Chantries Revered Mother to give him the key to free the towering qunari to which after freeing him Aedan bought a greatsword from the greedy merchant for the one known as Sten to wield, it seemed the merchant didn't have any armour to sell that would fit Sten but as it turned out Sten revealed that his kind among the Qun do not wear full on armour for some reason. So as it turned out a greatsword was all the large qunari warrior needed along with some basic supplies that Aedan had bought for himself and Alistair too.

As they were about to leave Lothering it turned out Leliana had found them just in time before they left and standing in front of him was certainly not what Aedan would assume was a Chantry priest if she had greeted him as she was now.

And the armour Leliana wore certainly did not look like the standard poorly made kind of armour that the greedy merchant no doubt sold, it looked finely crafted and designed to fit the young redhead's form perfectly, it almost looked like the kind of armour a rich person would have commissioned. And the bow upon her back certainly looked far better crafted than most regular bow's did. Two dagger's rested upon her hips. With the rather finely made armour and bow it certainly made Aedan curious about how a Chantry sister got access to such fine weapon's and armour.

"Wow, if you had met us like this then I certainly wouldn't have pegged you as a Chantry sister" Aedan noted.

Alistair chuckled "Same here"

Leliana smiled graciously "what can I say. Some of us Chantry sisters had more...colourful lives before we joined the Chantry"

"Be careful of this one" Sten warned as he studied Leliana, not with the eye of appreciation as Aedan was but more of the eye of someone being cautious.

"Are you done, gawking?" Morrigan snapped as Aedan was busy checking out Leliana's figure.

"Yes, yes" Aedan relented as he scratched Dane behind the ear as his mabari began licking at his greaves, clearly needing more attention from his master.

it was getting closer to night as the group of adventurer's left Lothering. "We should get a bit further away from Lothering before we set up camp" Aedan suggested "I don't want darkspawn ambushing us in the middle of the night"

Alistair nodded "good idea"

A/N: I know it got a little bit short/bluntly summarised near the end but lets be honest, Lothering only exists really so you can recruit Sten and Leliana and seeing as how its canon that Sten becomes the Arishok by the time Inquisition rolls around and seeing as how Leliana comments on the HoF in Inquisition its canon she gets recruited so thered be no point giving options between recruiting or not recruiting those 2