"Yes, yes I am. Want to go have that conversation with Metella about my bizarre magical properties?"

"Yes."

"Let's do that, then. See you, Elissa."

And off they go through the arl's estate. There's Hesta and Kador, playing some kind of game with a flat stone board and stone pieces. There's Clare, fletching arrows. There's a blond elf with a facial tattoo, reading a book and idly spinning a dagger in one hand.

It's certainly a varied collection of people they've got here.

Yes it is.

Metella's room is all the way at the back of the building. Stalas knocks.

She opens the door, papers in hand. "Found my notes!"

"We were just coming to inquire."

"Come on in. Has he got around to explaining why he has lyrium in his blood?"

"No, I just made a joke about Orzammar politics and left it at that. I can give you the whole story if you think it would be useful background information; up to you how much politics I include."

"My background knowledge of dwarven politics is that you have a King and an Assembly, roughly similar to the Archon and the Magisterium. The King is chosen by the Assembly, same as the Archon."

"True as far as it goes. But in practice the Assembly almost always elects a son of the previous King. The politics that made my life so interesting weren't primarily royal, though. See, dwarves have trouble having children, and nobles like to have heirs. So if a woman of any caste bears the son of a male noble, she and her child and her immediate family all get to join his household as nobles themselves, and there's an entire industry in finding girls who don't have better prospects and getting them set up to go seduce nobles, then pretending to be their uncle or whatever if they succeed. The girls are called noble hunters; my mother was one. When she got pregnant with me, her sponsor's rival had her poisoned. Really nastily - there was darkspawn taint involved. She tried all kinds of crazy things to cure it, the exact details of which are lost to history because she died giving birth to me and didn't take notes; but there was definitely lyrium involved, because here I am."

"I wouldn't naively expect lyrium to react well to the taint. But I suppose you are a dwarf, that complicates things. Do you know anything else about what may have been tried?"

He shakes his head. "All I know is the results, and even those occasionally still turn up surprises. I didn't know I could sense darkspawn until the first time I was near one."

"Hm. Can I look at those notes?"

"Certainly."

Notes! There are a fair few pages here. Metella's handwriting is very neat, and her notes are very well organized.

"These are very thorough, for a layperson. Now, I know you wouldn't be familiar with these studies, but," and then she compares the power profile of pure blood of various species at different dilutions, and the way that compares to regular lyrium potions, and what implications that might have for the uses of Stalas's blood.

Metella's notes compare the power profile of Stalas's blood to several varieties of lyrium potion, and also to Stalas's blood at different dates. She has concluded that his blood isn't just infused with lyrium but self-renewing with it; otherwise, at the estimated concentration of lyrium originally in Stalas's blood and estimated volume of blood normally in Stalas's body, they would already have noticed a decline in power from how much blood he has lost in assorted fights. His blood is not quite as good as a very low-quality lyrium potion, but that still puts it in an entirely different class from normal blood as far as raw power. Not being familiar with blood magic, she of course couldn't speculate about more specific possible uses.

There's also a study on the way he can subsist on lyrium fumes or by wearing the golem suit: descriptions of the effects of each, approximate measurements of how many lungfuls of lyrium fumes translate to how long spent without the need to eat or drink or sleep. An attempt to quantify the strength of the nightmares, which mostly concludes that they don't meaningfully vary in strength, then preserves some of Stalas's colourful descriptions for posterity.

And then the last section has tests on how well he can sense darkspawn and how this compares to the three available Grey Wardens; his range is not much worse than theirs, but he's almost completely unable to tell direction, which Wardens easily can.

Metella is interested to hear Eliana's perspective on all this!

There have been cases where blood magic and lyrium potions where used together, when something truly impressive needed to be achieved. Done correctly, the effect of the combination is closer to multiplicative than additive. She suspects that having the lyrium mixed into the blood and biologically generated from the same source will produce similar results. (She wants to try it.)

The lyrium fumes thing seems to imply that he can somehow convert mana directly to life energy. Which would be a real breakthrough, if they could replicate it. Investigate how, if at all, that interacts with conventional magic healing and dwarf resistance to same. Not her area of expertise. Neither are dreams, one of the books she rescued from Caladrius has a small section on the subject, may or may not turn up anything of use there.

It's not obvious to her where the darkspawn sense comes from, do they know anything about why the Wardens can do it?

"Becoming a Grey Warden involves controlled exposure to the darkspawn taint. It kills about a quarter of everyone who tries, but in those who live, the result is someone who can sense darkspawn and kill Archdemons."

"So it's likely to do with the taint present in you. Come to think of it, that may make working directly with your blood tricky. I wonder if there is a way to- isolate it somehow. Separate it from the rest."

"Isolate what, the darkspawn taint out of Stalas's blood? If you had a way to remove the taint from things, that would be enormously useful for more than just interesting theoretical research. Much as I love interesting theoretical research."

"Mm, I suppose it would. I'd need Warden blood to experiment with, and likely darkspawn samples as well."

"I bet we can manage that. Stalas? How do you feel about more experiments?"

"Sure, why not."