lost myself and I am nowhere to be found

[fightingale]

WHO: catch-all for Leliana, Ruby & Herc
WHAT: all sorts! some open prompts for each, as well as closed starters.
WHEN: throughout Bloomingtide
WHERE: various
NOTES: Depression, discussion of death, alcohol, potential violence, others to be added as necessary. If we're threading and something comes up in a tag, feel free to add a warning to the subject line.

Starters in the comments! If you'd like a personalised thing then just prod me via pp (@karmacharging) or pm and I will whip something up C:

Comments

[fightingale]

A slight smile - very slight, amused, and only a little wry. "I'll underline it again in my notes," she promises. It will happen, and that the mages have aided with other building projects is no small thing.

"That is promising. I will pass it along to the Commander at soon as possible." Noting down the areas of interest, Leliana leafs through the papers. "Thank you. Have you any personal observations you'd like to note?" The things not mentionable at meetings or in notes, the troubles here and there.

[fleurdesel]

"That is all I ask." Smiling a little at, with, Sister Nightingale? is not something she'd have thought possible when she arrived here months ago. Settling into a comfortable working relationship has done a great deal to ease her mind.

"A handful of apprentices that have been having difficulties with the fade training- not so much as to be a danger to themselves or the others but enough to make them hesitant in continuing. Their mentors can reassure only so much. They are all of them faithful Andrastians- is it possible to arrange a singing of uplifting verses of the Chant for them? They may find their strength in faith."

[fightingale]

"I imagine the sisters would be all too delighted." Some of them would be leery of mages, some not, some would be smug that there were mages who needed the Chant so when others wanted to pull away and have their freedom, others would be kind and supportive. "I will not mention the reason why, nor for whom the request has been made. Likely it would invoke tensions of some kind." Quietly murmured, and she makes a mental note. "Tomorrow evening, perhaps, if they are prepared. Otherwise sometime soon."

She frowns a little, then, and looks to Adelaide with a quiet curiosity. "Is there a great correlation between those amongst your students who are Andrastian and those who oppose freedom for mages? Those who would prefer the Circle, and so on."

[fleurdesel]

"Thank you." Those that had been content- those that had been too young to truly grasp the frustrations of the older mages? That had not yet been given time enough to form their own opinions- they needed support more than anyone else. However they found it? Adelaide did no care. So long as they found it.

"None that I have noticed. Some sing the chant and believe we ought to be free to do Andraste's work with our gifts outside of the Circle. Some sing it and are convinced we are better off with the old system. Some never sing and feel either way. I have not taken stock of where faith falls in line with their political views, though I have no doubt they inform them." She makes a mental note to find that pattern.

[fightingale]

Leliana hums a little, thinking, as she leans back in her seat. The motion catches the attention of Varric Feathras, a raven of particularly impression plumage down its chest and belly, who is opting to evade the poor scout trying to put him back in his cage.

Leliana ignores the scout's struggle, and after a moment the bird flaps away from his nearby perch, followed by a scurrying scout.

"I wondered--" She pauses, frowns a little more, and the fingers of her right hand ball into a fist. "The Chantry has so often lead with cruelty. It has invited hatred and disdain, it has punished and degraded all those who not conform to the standards it lays down. I find it impossible to reconcile the love of the Maker with the judgment doled out so generously by the Chantry. It seemed that it must be especially hard for Andrastian mages to feel loved in such circumstances, when the Maker must appear so warped."

[fleurdesel]

Adelaide, unfortunately, cannot quite ignore the poor scout and the rather well feathered raven. Much as she attempts to pay Leliana mind she is somewhat fascinated by the battle of wits.

The Raven wins.

Barely managing to repress a snort, she turns her attention back to Leliana and the matter at hand. "What I found most frustrating- what broke my faith- was that we followed those standards in the Spire. We broke no rules. We met the standards the Chantry put forth for us- and we were killed anyway. If we cannot trust them to keep to their word, how can we have faith in them? When nothing we do is enough- we do not feel loved. The Maker has abandoned the world, that is what we are told. But the blame is placed upon us. The apprentices that still sing the Chant- I do not know how they can find comfort in it."

[fightingale]

The Ravens always win. It is known.

"The Maker has not abandoned us." That has been her belief for the longest time, even as she struggles with her faith each day. Justinia's death pressed a knife at the throat of it, and it has yet to relent. "I think... it is easier for the Chantry to believe that he has, so that if they should truly feel his Grace and presence, truly feel their faith, they can feel special. I think the truth of it is that the Maker loves all of his children. He made us as we are. Flawed, yes, but still his children. Magic is a gift of his creation. If we shame mages for the gifts they are born with, then we shame the Maker himself."

She retrains her focus on Adelaide, and shakes her head. "I apologise. You did not come here to discuss the Chantry, of all things."

[fleurdesel]

"How fortunate that we have already been decried as heretics." For that faith, while kind and rather incongruous with what she's come to see as how Sister Nightingale portrays herself, is in and of itself a touch heretical. And yet it holds its own appeal.

"It is fascinating to me, academically, that they lash out all the more in the name of a god they consider absent." To feel faith is one thing. To look at the logic behind it, to look at it from a historical and social perspective- to consider it research. That much she can still do without rubbing salt in a half healed wound. "I...have not sung the chant myself for some time. Other things needed doing and I considered my work- teaching the apprentices, researching new ways to help with my gifts- to be as good a sign of my devotion. To consider the Circles is to consider the Chantry, to consider magic is to consider faith. There is a certainty in what we do when we impose our will and change the world with our magic. But there is just as much faith that we are right to so, for whatever reason."

[fightingale]

A smirk, at that. "The Chant of Light is an attempt at mortal men and women to capture the spirit and will of the Maker and commit it to paper. Beautiful, flawed, and deliberately incomplete."

RENATA, WHAT'S GOOD?

Leliana shrugs. "I have never been very good at conforming to an idea simply because the Chantry said it was so. If I were, then I might never have joined with the Hero of Ferelden." She would never have met some of the people in her life who are the most important to her.

"I was told once that magic and faith had nothing in common. That mages can feel their magic, know it, understand how it works and how it interacts with the world and the Fade, where faith is more abstract." Morrigan had said it rather more cruelly and with a healthy dose of ridicule, but you know.

[fleurdesel]

"If three mages cannot come to a consensus on the right way to call a wisp- how can several nations come to a consensus on the right way to believe? In both instances there is too much room for interpretation." Faith in and of itself is....no something she has felt in the Maker, in the Chantry for some time.

But in this Inquisition? In the people that lead it- her faith has taken root. "As much as a mage can feel their power and the fade- we cast as we are taught and what we are taught has been proven to be true. You reach, you cast, there is fire. There is ice. But when you are attempting something without that framework? When you are doing something new? You have your will and you have what you wish to be done, but no path there. You have to have faith that what you wish to be done can be done, and that you are capable of making it happen."

[fightingale]

"True. That is why the Divine is so important. She leads." Her mouth flickers with a slight smile, a touch of nostalgia, thinking back to something she had told Evelyn. "The Divine is the heart of the faithful. The guidance the Divine offers can do great things for Thedas. Unity is not easy, but it can be done, I think. If the Divine were to lead with... with love and mercy instead of with condemnation, then I think Thedas could become a kinder place."

Leliana shakes her head at hesrself.

"That is the very nature of what the Inquisition must do, no? We are trying to achieve something with no template for it."

[fleurdesel]

"It would take a singularly unique woman to choose the harder course- for it would be just that." Change that drastic? The Chantry was in upheaval, this is true, but something so fundamentally different from the current doctrine...it'd be worthwhile. "The odds of such a person coming forward would have been low before all of this. Now? If they exist, they have a solid chance of being backed by the people. I know I would put my faith in someone that considered me and mine people rather than monsters in need of tending."

[fightingale]

Leliana's brow flickers a little with that, the suggestion of a thoughtful frown denied its chance.

"The Herald's choice to embrace mage and Templar alike certainly set something in motion. Mages trusted on equal platform with Templars in her eyes, even if the practicalities of it remain a work in progress. Change takes time, dedication."

And how many people oppose change? How many in the Chantry are utterly self-absorbed, too used to having grown up within its walls? "Justinia's ascension to the Sunburst Throne was considered incredibly controversial, merely for her having lived a worldly life before joining the Chantry. Change can hardly be expected to come from those who have grown up knowing little else. Indeed, I suspect the Chantry has done itself great harm, looking only within and never beyond itself for wisdom."

[fleurdesel]

"The more I hear of her, the more I wish I could have known her." A singularly remarkable woman who did remarkable things- and gave her life to protect others. They ought to all look to her for an example in how to move forward; but it is difficult. The void she has left behind is a keen ache still.

"One would think a worldly life would be of more use rather than less. To understand the world you are shaping, ought you not have lived in it yourself? Struggled as the people do, bled with them, wept with them?" It only seems proper.

[fightingale]

At that, Leliana's expression softened into a smile, a thing that brightens her for a moment, unbidden and unbridled, lacking the restrictions she sets on many of her expressions. "She was the very best of people. I believed that working at her side I was performing the Maker's will." She shakes her head, then. "She saved my life, once." In another life, when she had been Revered Mother Dorothea and the Nightingale had not even been imagined.

Leliana blinks, then, and the smile is gone. "When so many are born into it or given to the Chantry so young, they are raised in one perspective, in one view. To question is to doubt the Maker, I think, to the truly devout. Others use the Chantry as it is to play a different sort of Game. I agree with you, however. There is so much you can live without knowing." She had been ignorant enough, had it not?