faderift | points the faith in higher things,

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points the faith in higher things,

WHO: Herian Amsel & open.
WHAT: the party don't start 'til she walks in. (Introducing Herian & her recruitment to the Inquisiton.)
WHEN: mid-July & onwards.
WHERE: Halamshiral & surrounds, maybe some Skyhold later?
NOTES: Prose/brackets are both fine!
Open starters in the main post (more to be added), closed starters in the comments, if we've discussed any plans feel free to barge in with a wildcard or prod me via pm or pp @karmacharging and I'll whip something up. If you'd like some information on this problem child, here is her info post.
WARNINGS: Herian's background includes themes of violence, torture and death, as well as discrimination and her own post traumatic stress disorder. While she will not in general be vocal about some of her own prejudices (against apostates, Dalish and nobles as some examples) it is very likely to come up in narrative and could come up in dialogue depending on interactions. Here is an opt out post if you'd rather certain things be avoided, or if you'd like to opt out of interactions with her in general.

Arriving with the Inquisition ( open. )
Herian Amsel exists in shades of winter, even when the world around her is dusty from heat. Her hair is dark, the black of a tree stripped of leaves and colour and grasping at a grey, unsympathetic sky, her eyes a pale, blue that people might foolishly attribute to ice in a fit of romanticism. For all that she appears to carry winter with her, summer has rolled relentlessly through a country already bearing the scorchmarks of war, making the people and the landscape seem to blur together. It is the dirt, she expects, the clouds of dust that have rolled over them on their journey. Even the grass feels dry and brittle. The closer they have drawn to the estate of Duc Hugues Pelletier, the more she has wondered just what difference there will be between the state of the gardens and the grass the common folk can wander on outside. It seems comical, if not downright insane that she be leading a group of elven refugees to the estate of an Orlesian noble for sanctuary, but she promised them she would bring them to the Inquisiton, and if the Inquisition is in Halamshiral then the group will have access to better food and medicine and more protection than she can afford them if she were to escort them to Skyhold as their sole guard.

Option A.
Herian is on foot, leading a palomino stallion with an elven woman on his back, pregnant and exhausted. Mage as she might be, Herian carries no staff. Instead a sword hangs by her side, and something like twenty refugees follow behind her.

"Inquisition," she starts, and her accent is defiantly and perhaps unexpectedly Starkhaven. "These refugees seek sanctuary amongst your number, and to lend their hands to your cause. To where shall I lead them?"

Option B.
Still on foot, Herian accompanies a smaller number of elves, now, heading towards the makeshift Medical Tents. The pregnant woman from before is with her, Herian leading her so that the woman can rest a hand on her forearm, Herian move slowly and patiently.

"This way. The mages here work under the Inquisiton banner, so if your need is dire then they are well qualified to bring you aid. You need not spend any time in the presence of those that set you ill at ease." Her voice is soft, and she has not yet looked up to the person standing nearby. "Can I have the names of your elven healers, for my friends?"

Other Increasingly Ridiculous Prompts ( open. )
Option C.
There is something singularly satisfying about the burn of muscles after exertion. Usually it comes in the form of training, practicing forms over and over for hours on end. Today, though, Herian is chopping wood, ensuring that those she accompanied who are still tired or injured need not worry should they have need, or perhaps so she can be useful to the Inquisition in some form.

Largely she does it because she likes to work, and the steady routine of grabbing up the heavy slabs of wood and breaking them apart with an axe is steadying. Not quite the meditation technique that she was taught in the Spire, but it sets her in the right frame of mind all the same. Her breath, her mind, and the regular thud and splinter make her feel better. Sweat rolls down her back, the thin material of her shirt sticks to her skin, and the tangled mess of her hair seems wilder even than before.

.... Although it is after noon and she's doing it non-stop for a long time in the summer sun, so perhaps an intervention would be wise.

Wildcard me, bro.

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"Avery," she provides after a moment, brushing past the thanks without comment and finally taking a moment to give this woman a good look-over. The horse, the sword, the posture. Well, well, look at this little knightling and her elvish entourage. There's obviously a story there, but there always is. Especially around here.

So instead of asking about any of it, Avery simply shrugs and says, with matching dryness, "And nobody said he wasn't welcome. Just might have some trouble with the stairs."

Herian turns the thought over in her mind, carefully inspecting it the way one might a polished stone plucked from a river bed, a new and curious thing that demanding fingers be run over it, all angles investigated.

"So, then." A pause, as she tries to deduce if the comparison is foolish, before offering it anyway. "Your field of study might consider how dragons and lizards might be connected, then?"

Something troubles at her, though. "There was an academic at the White Spire, Enchanter Vauquelin." Her expression flickers for a moment, gaze dropping. "He has - had - an interest in the bloodlines of elves and humans and their mixing. Would that be part of it, as well?"

"More the dragon-lizard thing," Cosima says, considering that reaction. "For one thing, we don't have elves where I'm from and we have some pretty scary cautionary tales about people who take too much of an interest in, say, variations in skin color." To put it extremely mildly, but she doesn't really want to get into slavery, genocide and the history of modern eugenics at the moment.

Instead, she says, "I don't want to influence; I want to understand. A problem I'd work on is, um. You'd think a lizard and a snake are more alike the a lizard and a dragon, right? Size is a more important factor than number of limbs. But using tools I have at home, I can compare how they develop. A lizard may be more like a small dragon than it is like a snake with legs, once you have more information."

The point on skin colour leaves her bewildered for a moment, brows furrowing more than she means them too. Not quite guarded enough, it seems, as she chews the inside of her cheek and stores the information away for later contemplation. No elves? It seemed a sorry state for any world, though something in Cosima's tone makes her suspect that it is not necessarily a world that lost or destroyed all their elves. She might suspect that was what the people of Thedas desired, if not for elves being so convenient as slaves or servants or as the ones all others could beat without reprise.

"Our world possesses cautionary tales of its own," she finally replies, and though there's no smile to speak of, no shadow of one, Herian's expression is a little gentler. More understanding, at least.

It isn't so much that Herian was tense, but that there was a certain element of caution in her, fascination and faint edges of concern mixed together. That concern eases away when Cosima says, outright, that she has no desire to influence. Just as the tension was a subtle thing so too is its easing, though not imperceptible.

"I think I understand. It sounds fascinating. Complex," she admits, "but fascinating. How do you better grasp their development? Observation?"

"She was not twisted." That's snapped out, showing his temper. She died doing good and he won't see her memory tarnished. He won't see the memory of any of his network tarnished; they'd paid the ultimate price for the failure of every Chantry person in authority, every Knight Commander and higher, every First Enchanter, and every Seeker of rank enough to have sway.

"As far as the rest, you can stop being condescending. I've judged no mages save First Enchanters for not assisting with Kirkwall, I've already admitted what I've done so there's no need to 'ask' for that, and you're the one trying to act like your aunt had fallen in some way to shame me. You acknowledge you heard of the wrongs of Kirkwall while acting like everyone was as powerless as you to verify it. They weren't. They knew. I don't need to assume anything about their thoughts when they sent Leliana to Kirkwall to protect Elthina, when the Seekers didn't bother to come until afterward despite countless letters to everyone whose name I could find. Their action, inaction, says everything. And finally, you can cease presuming to know what lives I value. Fewer died that night, total. All. Human, elf, half-elf, dwarf."

He knows what rumor has said. He knows how stories have spread. They've grown a thousandfold in the retelling.

"Rumors in this case have become more extreme than the truth. There was fighting in the streets, but this wasn't new to Kirkwall. Night had fallen, and people knew of the regular roaming bandits about the place. The common person was not going to be on the streets. Especially with the memory of the recent qunari invasion still fresh. There was chaos, and there were clashes, and fewer died that night than otherwise would have."

"And," his arms cross, "I knew there would be repercussions. I knew there would be echoes. I did not know how far they would extend. I did not know what would come. It was far more likely that the rebellion would be shut down and ignored than anything spread."

He'd hoped. But he'd also been blocked from most thoughts of what would come after by Justice. They were going to die, what did it matter? Everything, but he hadn't known that at the time.

"I don't want your thanks, and I've never sought the position of hero. All I ask is that if you're insistent on returning to your cage, don't drag everyone else with you. Some of us had to escape multiple times before it stuck, and some never made it out despite desperately wanting to see the sky again. We deserve the same freedom as everyone else has, to give away or embrace as we choose. You might protest that I've chosen for everyone. I haven't. You can go back after Corypheus is dealt with. There will be plenty of Templars looking to control mages again. All that's happened is a respite has been bought, and mages have a choice for the first time in thousands of years."

Cosima is quite certain the world she comes from doesn't have a corner on bigotry. She wonders if she wants to know what Thedas' cautionary tales are, just yet. (So far, no one seems to have bated an eye at her confession on the network that she romantically prefers women; she isn't sure if this is because it's common here or because rifters are so odd that nothing they do is worth remarking on.)

"Observation a lot, yeah. We have very powerful ways to magnify things, so we can observer stuff we wouldn't otherwise be able to see. A lot of it has to do with genes, which are sort of the blueprints for a new organism that come from your parents. Some things about you are there before you're even born, but lots of them come from your environment and your experiences. It's sometimes hard to tell which is which just by looking. And sometimes it's a mix, like... how tall you are comes partly from genes, but also has to do with how well-fed you are in childhood."

Blueprint. She is not familiar with the term. "Blueprint is... akin to a design? Or a map, something of that sort?" She is no cartographer, either, though she would be hard pressed to find the person in Thedas who did not understand what a map was for. Herian hopes, at any rate, that for the sake of Thedas its people understand the mechanics of a map.

Herian muses on that, for a moment. She had not necessarily considered, but it seemed a reasonable enough conclusion to draw, when presented so. "I am taller than a good many from alienages. I presumed that such stemmed from being an elf-blooded human, rather than fully elven, but... by your reasoning, then, being taken from the alienage and fed better food was just as like a factor."

She cants her head slightly to the side, trying to remember just how tall the elven mages in the Spire had been, if she had been surprised when first she encountered those from outside the Spire after so many years removed from the alienage.

"You'd be surprised what that beast is capable of, when there are carrot to be had."

No, really. There are tales to be told, though the very dryness of her tone makes it sound as if they will never be shared.

Herian inhales, watches Avery a moment, and bows her head slightly. "Herian Amsel, of the White Spire." A Circle lost to rumours of murder and blood magic and Templars and Seekers running rampant and mages out of control. "Are you the Inquisition's official welcoming committee?"

She does not seem a diplomat, though Herian hardly minds. It is simply... curious.

She waits for him to stop with the patience that has carried her through all of this.

“I spoke of possibilities regarding my aunt. She is blood of my blood. She was most beloved by a man dear to my heart and I take no joy in questioning what became of her, but it is not beyond reproach to wonder when all accounts I have heard are so conflicting. You say that there was hardly any deaths, others have said that the very city was burning and that violence spilled from the Gallows into the street. You speak of possibility and change and claim that I love to be imprisoned, but to many of us the Circles were the first places where we knew we would be fed, and clothed, and where fate held more potential to us then dying forgotten in a gutter, or murdered by those to whom we were the first inconvenience. We did not walk free of our own choice. Our homes were torn down about our very ears.”

Still, she has not raised her voice, and still her tone remains calm, as it has thoughout. Can condescension seep into a tone that seeks so hard to be without bias? Perhaps she is not so well schooled in control as she had hoped. The coals burning into her skin were testimony enough, but when others notice as well it is all to unfortunate. He asks her not to speak with condescension, but she doubts he has taken even a moment to listen to his own tone.

Herian looks back to the tent, and sighs. “Cerise matters more than our grievances. Whatever judgments you would make of me can wait.”

There is nothing to be done for the dead, mage or Templar, human or elven. It is not done, this, and she knows it well, but there is a living woman who has been left waiting alone, and Herian will not leave her overlong; she turns, and returns through the tent flap.

Edited 2016-07-31 14:22 (UTC)

Oh, she can imagine. Still, the stairways and doorframes might be a bit short for him.

As for the woman, Avery isn't sure what to make of the bit about the White Spire. She's heard those rumors of course, as well as many others that are even more outlandish, but she knows next to nothing about the Circles that she's certain is the truth. Especially ones outside of Ferelden, so instead of excogitating profusely on what this might mean, she focuses on the question and lets out a small, darkly amused huff of breath. "Definitely not. Just a cook who needed a minute out of the kitchen. Thought I might as well make myself useful while I was at it."

She nods further into the Keep. "I'm sure someone more important will be down to give you some sort of speech soon. Show you where to set up and all that."

"Oh, yeah. A blueprint is like a plan for how to build something. A building or a bridge or whatever. It tells the builder how to make the thing the designer had in mind."

She considers Herian's example, and nods. "But yeah. I mean, it's very possibly both? Say you and someone with different parents were fed the same diet - they may never be able to get as tall as you. But if you went hungry a lot as a kid, you might not reach your full potential height, either."

Cosima shrugs a little. "So my field - one of its practical uses - is trying to pinpoint what causes people who are born sick to be that way, so maybe we can develop ways to help them."

The moment Agathe reaches, he offers her the bowl—her bowl—and her soup, and his respect. But she has had that since he met her, and she will have it far past when he leaves. He watches her go, with regret, but soothes himself with the promise that he has time, time enough to make a difference.

(Savior, master, benevolent watcher, human guardian, protector- it all boils down to the same thing, in the end, a rhetoric the humans profit from, and the elves still find themselves worse off at the end of. He wonders why they cannot see-- but they will.)

“Peredhil,” he notes, easily. Half-Elven. More common here, though it means less for his purposes. He will not dispute the worthiness of Beren or any of his kin, nor is he reluctant to allow her the title, despite the location. But she glares at him, and he laughs, for if she imagines him of the same sort she may do as she wishes, but he knows what he is, even here, sitting perched on a stump so far from home.

How easily she tars all the Dalish with the same brush, wraps them together as one entity and condemns them. All the Clans, under one name, one ban—

But she is far from unique in this, and it only serves to remind him of what he will fight. Not her, not the people like her, but the elves exposed to such words, again and again, until they believe it. Calls the elves of Thedas her heart, but pushes the Dalish from the dignity of even that and condemns them as animals.

He can hear her heartbeat, a bird beating against the cage of her ribs. “What clan?” Plainly, only interest. “The one that hurt your mother’s cousin, and your father, and the one that attacked you coming here. If you have no names, a sigil would do.”

"From my understanding, children go hungry no matter how much food they are given." Good humoured, but quiet. It is a more vicious hunger in alienages though, she thinks. The likes of nobles never have that edge of starvation in them.

Herian's mouth twinges a little, the slight edge of a smile. "So you are a healer, then. Of a fashion. You help them better their craft." She rubs her knuckles along her jaw ruefully, two slow, hard swipes as she thinks. "It sounds very complicated."

Far beyond her own understanding. Herian's own healing skills were limited to elfroot is useful and following whatever strict instructions the healers gave her, and bits and pieces of memories that she'd almost sooner forget. Her nose wrinkles as she inhales the scent of another herb before dropping it - unpleasant memories tied to that one.

"Your work is to be admired, I think."

If the Herian that stood before Avery now were the same woman that roamed the halls of the Spire, she might have asked something along the lines of and do you not make yourself useful in the kitchens? with a gentle smile that strayed into the territory of a smirk. Instead Avery is met simply with the slight quirk of an eyebrow, a gaze that is cool as much as it is curious.

"I'm sure we're grateful for your efforts, Miss Avery. Thank you for the kindness. I've no need or desire for speeches, myself."

Avery responds to the thanks as she usually does. With discomfort. This time in the form of a small, stiff smile and nod.

"That's too bad," she finally says after a moment. "You'll likely find no shortage of those here. Wordy, most of this lot. There was one who went on for hours non-stop not too long ago."

Her smile is warm, a little sheepish but proud all the same. "Thanks. I think so. I mean, I'm more like... if the healer's a knight, I'm the person who figures out how to make them a better sword. Sorry, is that a dumb analogy? I haven't known many knights."

Or... any before coming to Thedas.

"But yeah, I just... don't know what to do with myself here. My work there was based on a foundation you guys don't have and tools that don't exist. Thus the clumsy attempt at plants."

"It is not." A quiet reassurance, that. "Without smiths to forge our blades our sbility to protect is greatly limited."

For a moment Herian turns her gaze to the sky, pensive.

"We are all clumsy in our beginning attempts. Is it the healing element that most concerns you? I'm sure there are ma t fields where you skills would be greatly valued."

Cosima glances up too, thoughtful. "I mean... it's a nice side effect. Helping people. But if I'm honest, I really got into the field because I want to understand the world. You know? Find out things no one else has figured out before."

Which is significantly less noble, but at least has the distinction of being honest.

"Better allow them more breath and time, then. They'll not need my manipulation of either."

Somehow she makes it sound very polite and very calm, rather than dry and faintly amused. Herian is curious, not eager to be rude or unpolite, and her general level of low-key (not that low-key) cautious.

"And yourself? Do you consider yourself a great orator?" Herman starts to walk, then, watching to see if Avery of the Kitchens will go with her.

"Understanding the world keeps people safe in other ways." Which, actually, gives her a thought. "Forgive the presumption, I... have no place or qualification to make recommendations, least of all to a near stranger. For the understanding of our world, those that study magic and the Fade may hold some interest. It is not solely the vocation of mages, but—"

Herian hesitates, frowns, and considers. "Mayhaps understanding your world will help give some understanding to ours. And studying Rifts and magic, even from the perspective of one without ties to it, could be more rewarding a thing for one so curious than plants."

Finally there is a smile. Or, a not-smile, but less on the former and more on the latter than previously witnessed. "This world is more wondrous than it is terrible. You need not resign yourself to something hastily, Lady Cosima."

Herian, for her part, is sorry about Agathe taking his soup, and unhappy that such an action was taken on her behalf, and uncertain if it would be somehow an insult to offer her own soup to the stranger - an insult to him, but more importantly to Agathe, who had taken decisive action. She sits with the soup bowl cupped in her hands, and it seems an ill-done thing to eat when his food has been taken from him, and to set aside what Agathe has given her.

There are times when Herian wished the code could be a bit more specific to certain scenarios, instead of simply instilling in her the desire not to cause offence wantonly. Oh, what she would do in this present moment, for soup etiquette.

She allows her quiet displeasure to be swayed by her curiosity, though she makes no rush to repeat a word that she knows not the meaning of. "May I ask what that means?"

Shemlen, she assumes. Human. A word not always meant to cut, but that feels like a wound she cannot escape.

His question makes her brow raise a little, faintly surprised by his interest. "Clan Neirysa," she replies, easily, though tension inches up her spine, her shoulders drawing back and her entire body braced as her heart hammers painfully with it, and her lungs protest. The crisis remains entirely internal, a response of fear and horror and anger, as Herian thinks. "We either fell foul of the same clan on three separate occasions, or different clans. Never did they make themselves know through insignia nor introduction."

She hesitates for a moment, glancing around, before following with a scoff. "What do you think?"

"Hey, it's not presumptuous at all. It's pretty evident that I'm not much of a botanist," she adds, with a shake of the head. "I mean, I don't know how much people will want my insight, but if they did, I'd love to learn more about the Fade. If nothing else, it's evidently how I got here."

And maybe a way home, one day, if she can figure out how.

"I think they'll want your questions. There are things taken for granted through familiarity."

Ah, she grabs up a blue and white flower, considering it before admitting, "I've no notion what this might do."

Cosima smiles. "It's pretty, which means you probably shouldn't eat it, if your world works anything like mine." Pretty was a more than even chance of being poisonous, generally. "Or it could just be nice," she adds, after a brief pause.

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