Tev draws his greatsword.

And Ambrose draws his sword, and then they're close enough to the ruins for the darkspawn to attack. Five charging, two more shooting from cover.

Make that one shooting from cover.

Fireball before any of them get close enough to risk friendly fire--probably won't kill them, or at least not all of them, but it should slow them down--and then some kind of glyph.

Picking off the archers seems like an efficient thing to do. Acara will check to see if Shiral appears to be going for that; if not, Acara will, if so, she'll engage with one of the formerly-charging now singed and getting to their feet again ones.

Shiral is indeed headed for the second archer, having already shot the first.

Another darkspawn pops up from behind a broken pillar and lunges for her as she passes. She puts a dagger in its eye without breaking stride.

Shiral is kind of intimidatingly competent. Acara will just. Slit this one's throat before it can finish standing up.

"Thanks for leaving some for the rest of us," Tev calls after Shiral. The darkspawn are mobbing him, apparently seeing him as the biggest available threat; he knocks their swords aside with his. Daveth stabs one in the back and Tev decapitates another. It's kind of gross.

At least they're not going to have any trouble filling their vials.

Carlos vaporizes a chunk of one's torso.

Ambrose needn't have bothered drawing his sword; he never has to use it.

"Good work, all of you," he says when the fight is over. "Here are your vials."

Yep, he was right; filling the vial gets less blood on her than the initial arterial spray did.

When all six recruits have filled their vials, and Ambrose has filled the two extra, he says, "Wouldn't it be nice if the darkspawn left us alone all the way to the cache and back?"

Tev laughs. "Maybe we should carry a sign. 'Already killed enough darkspawn today. Please come back tomorrow.'"

"Are darkspawn even smart enough to read? They're smart enough to operate complex weapons..."

"I've never heard of darkspawn reading, but I don't know everything," says Ambrose.

"They don't seem to have motives more complex than an animal's, but their ability to use complex tools to achieve their simplistic goals--worries me."

"I think regardless of their intelligence they're far too malicious to worry about the ethics of killing them."

"Killing people in self-defense is--necessary unfortunately often, and entirely justifiable. But it's still worth regretting."

"I don't especially regret it."

"You might find life as a Grey Warden difficult if you mourn every darkspawn you kill," says Ambrose. "But if that's how you choose to think of it, I won't tell you you're wrong. The legends do tell us that the first darkspawn were people once."

"I know. I don't think I can--mourn each one, individually. But--as a whole--I hope they're less intelligent than my fears tell me."

"I'm not sure intelligence is the thing that matters," he says thoughtfully.

"I suppose if anyone had run into darkspawn spirits wandering the Fade, I would probably have heard about it."

"What exactly is the point of worrying about this? We can't confirm it and it wouldn't make it less necessary to kill them."