"Possibly. Or - how would you translate it into Tevinter or dwarvish? Dwarvish doesn't have a single word for demon, since they didn't have much direct contact with them when the language was still in common use; they called them 'Fade-monsters', which you certainly aren't."

"...Dwarvish suggests maker?" says Cam. "So there's that."

"Much less alarming. How would I go about summoning you in dwarvish, then?"

Cam thinks about it, then makes a piece of paper with a circle surrounded by the Dwarvish words I summon the maker and then Cam's full name in English. "I could transliterate my name but that's sometimes iffy and you know this alphabet, so. Draw this on a floor with enough room for me in it, close the circle only after you write all of the words."

"Easy enough to remember," she says. "All right. And how do I dismiss you?"

"Concentrate on wanting me shooed for about a minute. When should I expect to be recalled?"

"I can't really say. It depends on how easily I can get out of the tower to somewhere less closely supervised. Not more than a month, I hope."

"Okay. In that case I might not answer immediately, if you catch me in the shower or something, but I shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

"Reasonable."

"I like to think I am that."

"It's a good quality to have. Anything else I should know before I try to dismiss you?"

"Mm - that's the basics all covered, I think."

He stands there, swishing his tail, until he is sent home. Poof.

"Not a thing. They do not sound fun."

"Darkspawn are horrible creatures that come from deep underground and kill anyone they see. My country is currently being invaded by them, and it looks like it might turn out to be a Blight, which is when a darkspawn-tainted dragon called an 'archdemon' leads an army of darkspawn to try to take over the world and destroy all life."

"...Not at all fun. Are they killable?"

"Yes. Well, ordinary darkspawn are. I get the impression that archdemons are more difficult, and not necessarily just because they're enormous dragons. But I'm not a Grey Warden - the people whose job it specifically is to deal with darkspawn and darkspawn-related things - so I don't know the details."

"Can the enormous dragons be restrained? Or, just as a for instance, launched into space, I can get you boilerplate summons for fairies."

"I'm not sure launching one into space would particularly help. Their ability to control darkspawn doesn't seem to be substantially limited by distance, although from what I can gather they prefer to personally accompany their armies at least most of the time. The same problems apply to restraining one."

"And how are darkspawn in general killable?"

"In the ordinary ways any person or animal can be killed. But their blood and bodies carry the taint, so don't get any on you. I would not like to find out by experiment whether or not apsels can become ghouls."

"What are ghouls, and how exactly is taint passed?"

"It's known to happen if you eat darkspawn, or get their blood in your blood. I think certain magical artifacts can also spread it, but that's much rarer and may only be a baseless rumour. A ghoul is a tainted person; they lose their minds, become obsessed with darkspawn, and eventually run away to serve them. Or die. Many tainted people just die."