This van labeled HAZARDOUS MATERIALS is also on its way to school.
The van hits a patch of black ice. It goes spinning, it turns over, it slices itself open on a wrought-iron fence with spikes, and it disgorges boxes which smash open on the pavement. Some of them skitter clear into the slush.
Some of them - along with most of the van - land on Annie.
There is a whirl of bewildering pain and confusion -
- and she falls to the ground, injured and in more kinds of discomfort beyond that and moaning.
She slowly starts to heal before the eyes of her sole witness.
"So," says Stalas, when they have arrived at a nice eavesdropper-free place to have a conversation. "Are you going to tell us that all Grey Wardens are slightly ghoulish and that's how you can sense darkspawn?"
"I used to be slightly ghoulish and able to sense darkspawn, and now I'm not and can't. Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn, you're slightly ghoulish, it doesn't take a genius."
"I'm more interested in the lyrium thing. You're not a templar or something, are you...?"
"My lyrium problem is speculated to be among the reasons why I'm so small for a dwarf; does yours by any chance have something to do with why you are so large for an elf?"
"...There is actually one I don't much want to explain, but I will explain five of them and why I have them, if that will still count."
"So, I'm from another world. It's really different in a bunch of ways but the relevant one is that all the magic we have is artifacts. Artifacts happen sometimes when somebody dies; their favorite possession might become an artifact. And if you touch one you get a benefit and a drawback. I was in an accident and six of them - or maybe seven one of which is really discreet, that's still possible - fell on me. One of them sent me here and let me copy to other people any pair of effects, touch to put on and touch to take off. One of them killed all my senses that work at range so I'm blind and deaf and anosmic and gave me a different one, which is sort of a where-stuff-is-and-what-it-is which works for a couple hundred feet in all directions. One of them lets me speak and understand and read and write all languages and fortunately it overrides the deafness and blindness - for language only; and if I could see, I'd be unable to distinguish faces visually. One of them lets me disintegrate spiders and darkspawn and darkspawn substances on contact, maybe other things too, haven't lined up a lot of unpleasant creatures and patted them all on the head or anything; and it makes me really warm, hence the frost amulet. One of them lets me regenerate and makes it incapacitatingly painful to be around music even though I'm deaf. And there's an advantage I haven't discovered to match a drawback I don't want to discuss."
"...Okay," says Tev. "Well, one day I was grabbed off the street by some crazy blood mages who were trying to make a golem-person or something, and they killed a few dozen people and infused me with lyrium, and now everyone I meet wants to tell me I'm tall for an elf, like I somehow haven't noticed."
"Fair enough. I don't know, I'm no expert, I couldn't have even told you they were blood mages if they hadn't made it obvious by flinging blood everywhere."