points the faith in higher things,

[dashing]

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.

Comments

[dashing]

The Gallows.

The words are as the roar of the tide, the echo of the sea in seacaves as she throws herself against the cliffs. Kirkwall. It was not a reality she had left unconsidered, whether one of the Amsels, her blood, were there. It was practically an inevitability, when so many from Starkhaven had been taken to Kirkwall while Herian was travelled to the White Spire. She exhales a single shaky breath. Kirkwall. Home of suffering and abuse and blood magics, of Templars with no honour and mages who had been so abused as to become twisted.

A network and a man getting people out, and when she looks at him now there is the light of recognition. Anders.

Anders was here. Anders and the Dalish and Maker only knows what other monstrosities. But Liliwen had helped him? Had been one of his network, while— did he say she was a healer, before? That much seemed to fit with the kindness that her father always mentioned when he spoke of Lily. Liliwen was gentleness incarnate, Seren was rather more wild, but they had both been so young. How well could her father have known either of them? (That, she would admit, was a tragedy of the Circles.)

"Anders." Her voice feels very, very distant. Calm, perhaps, but the very distance in it might betray it for what it is, and if that is the case then Herian would much appreciate some guidance as to just what, exactly, it is. Men like Anders were responsible for so much bloodshed. If Kirkwall had not happened, the Spire would never have fallen. The Lord Seeker would not have been so venomous.

She does not know it beyond doubt, but it seems to make so much sense. The man before her cost so many lives, thrust Thedas into chaos, but he had known her family. Honour demands she slay him. Honour demands she at least try to learn about her kin, when so many of them are lost. She will not cut him down when Cerise is there to hear the wet splatter of his blood against the tent canvas when she tears out his tongue.

Her breath is not ragged; neither is it calm. Embers flare under her skin for a brief moment before she closes them into fists, a faint glow disappearing and the only evidence that they happened at all is the curl of smoke around Herian's wrists. At least in fists her hands will not shake or tremor. How stand the laws on offence when faced with such a man? What part of herself does she sacrifice by standing here and watching, blade stayed?

"You are a murderer," she says simply. Flat. Not calm. Hollowed out. "Why would my aunt ally herself with you? Why would she ever have allied herself with what you did?"

[justice_is_blond]

Fire. She tamps it down so quickly, but it's there, under the surface. He watches her with seeming calm. It's rare that someone actually asks after details rather than simply judging. Details, conversation, are risky. One could learn something they're not comfortable with. Throwing a fit is easy.

"Because for most of my life I was no murderer." He won't deny what he is. It's true. "Because we exhausted every peaceful option until she and the rest were slaughtered. Letters, favors, connections, help, rescuing, bribery, we tried everything. And still the murder by Templars continued. Spread, even outside the Circle itself to strike down non-mages who simply wished to help people who were hurting. She cared and could see how much harm the Circle was doing. That's why."

His heart is beating a little fast in his chest. This isn't a talk he's had with many people at all. He's not used to it.

"I'll not deny what I've become. But I will forever deny that is all that I am, and that I did what I did absent other actions. Your aunt was partnered with Love and could not sit idly by, unlike the whole city that knew death was a regular occurrence in the Gallows, unlike every Chantry and Circle official who knew how bad things were getting. Your White Spire was complicit as they turned a closed eye to what was going on. Those with power have a responsibility to those who have none, and not a single person with power cared to help."

[dashing]

She lets his words wash over her, thinking, careful, trying to pick out fragments and make sense of them, to grasp onto broken pieces of glass hard and piece them back together so she can understand, never mind the way they tear into her. Those wounds can wait; her hands stay steady. Herian considers his words, weighing each before she opens her mouth to reply.

"What do you truly know of the White Spire?" Calm, still. Not yet sharpening her tongue, nor taking an insulting tone. If not for the painful hollowness in her, it might be mistaken for simple, genuine interest. "Did you have any notion of the harm your actions would do? Aye, you claim to have acted with a love of mages in your heart, but what of all others? The lives of innocent mages are no more valuable than those of other innocents. Who do you suppose the powerful struck out at in their grief and their rage? The poor and the weak. Elves in alienages suffered for your actions. The downtrod always suffered first, but unlike elves, mages can burn down half a village with nothing but their will if they set their minds to it."

And then, "If those at the Spire knew— if they did, then the dishonour rampant in their ranks was beyond my knowing of it. If you believe that Kirkwall did not go to considerable lengths to conceal from other Circles, and if that is true, then the weight of that lies upon those who held that knowledge. But innocent mages died for your actions, as well. The slaughter of children and elderly and those who had no chance to defend themselves when Templars and Seekers turned on us with tempers riled from your actions is not easily overlooked."

Still, she is even and steady. Somehow. She is not entirely certain how and she feels it is largely because Cerise is so near and she has no desire to bring her pain or unhappiness, and because she has no idea how to respond to all of these factors and how to implement her code, and so calmness is all she has to try and keep from doing something that cannot be undone.

"Those with power abandoned their honour in the White Spire, and well can I imagine that in Kirkwall, but I cannot believe it is as simple as you claim. You would make yourself and mages wholly the victims."

[justice_is_blond]

"I am not wholly a victim. There was a time when I was, and then I fought back. I used their tool, murder, against them, and that changed."

Rhetoric. It's easy to hide behind, to make him simply a murderer, or accuse him of playing a victim. What is she hiding from, though? Fear? Weakness? The unknown that the world presents to those who don't understand freedom?

"We knew in Kinloch Hold that Kirkwall was the place you didn't want to be taken. We, the mages, the ones who were denied even the opportunity to go outside, were aware. Which means leadership knew. And Kinloch Hold is in the middle of a lake in the middle of nowhere. It was far from the best informed Circle. The White Spire knew, because Kirkwall never bothered to hide what it was. It never needed to."

She wants to deny that White Spire knew, but he can see no way they didn't. He sees no reason to allow her false shields to hide behind, not with all she's saying.

"I did not know what harm would come from my actions. No one could have. What I knew was that the whole of the Circle was to be annulled, murdered, because Meredith had lost control of herself and her fear. It had been building for years, including the seven that I spent in Kirkwall previous, helping the poor and the weak, the downtrodden, the people lost in Darktown and the elves in the alienage. I did not help mages alone. I was the Darktown Healer, the one who offered help to those who couldn't afford it. I lived with them, I tended to them. But I could not stand idly by and watch every mage in Kirkwall aside from myself die. Not when the Templars had already slaughtered my friends, my network, your aunt, everyone."

A breath. She can appear to be calm, even though the fire has given her away. He cannot match that ability. There is a passion in his voice and his veins. Justice is gone. Anders cannot feel the same determination that what he did was right as he used to, he can no longer say it was the only way even if he doesn't know what other options there could have been. He's lost his certainty. But he can argue about the facts, the numbers, and he will.

"That night, in total, fewer died than would have if I hadn't acted. Further, when you were turned upon it was some time later. It was after votes, after other actions. I had a part in the war, I will not deny it, but you and everyone who seeks to pin it all on me is seeking the easy way out. One name, one mage, because it's so much easier to focus the hatred of everyone upon a simple, single target rather than a highly complex issue. When the White Spire fell, how long had passed? One year? Two? They were not purely riled up by me."

A beat as he takes his breath.

"The mages in Kirkwall who would have died that night were wholly victims. Meredith was ready to call for the Rite of Annulment, and I did not stand idly by. Seven years of peaceful work failed, and I became a murderer to try to stop a slaughter, to try to stop future slaughters. The world is not a simple place, and you try too hard to make it one by blaming me for all of what's come."

[dashing]

Murder. That was true. She would so love to open her mouth and say not all Templars, but there would be little good in it. Not all Templars needed to murder for ill to be done. Enough acting so, and it seemed all would fall into line, whether it was the corrosion of their honour, the loss of their faith, in the name of orders, or simply because they relished it. She had encountered more than a couple in her travels that seemed to bear little resemblance to knights at all. They held to no code that defined them.

“Aye, fewer mages died. But from all I have heard, there was fighting in the streets and chaos, even in the immediate aftermath. If you weigh lives valued as only those mages in the Gallows, then so be it, but we will not see eye to eye on it. And if you did not imagine there would be repercussions then it cannot be that you truly thought on them.”

At best such a line of reasoning was naive, and she had little inclination to give the likes of him such an excuse, if indeed it could be counted as one. Certainly it was not one she would allow of herself.

She sighs a little at his words, though the breath is close to silent. It is just the slight exaggeration of the rise and fall of her chest that gives her away. He speaks so passionately, and yet she wonders if he truly listens, when he speaks with such fire, or if he is more eager to simply paint words onto the mouths of others and proclaim that they are what is truly known and felt and spoken.

Her tone is not gentle, but there is a strange kind of patience in it, one that she forces herself to hold into, even though her fingertips are embers burning into her palms.

“You cannot presume to know our minds. I know I did not listen to the idle gossip that circulated the Spire. There were all manner of things that mages insisted they heard the Templars say, and most of them were ludicrous. Kirkwall was noted to be terrible, but amongst the Orlesians of our Circle,” and there are many, given that the Circle was in Val Royeaux, “they would say terrible things of any Circle that was not our own simply to assert our own superiority, especially over Ferelden and the Free Marches. I acknowledge I did not grasp the value of gossip, at the time, but I do not believe that the mages of the White Spire should be judged for choosing not to listen to alarming words coming from the same mouth that claimed to know the preferred underthings of Ser Dabney and insisted that there was a mage in our midst that was lost Antivan royalty.”

At the time is a wilful admission that there is some value in it. Not all of it, she still doesn’t want to know about the preferred underthings of Ser Dabney or the supposed Antivan royalty.

“I offer you my word as a Knight Enchanter, and as one bound by codes of honour and chivalry and truth that I knew not what Kirkwall was, and that the rumours I heard were so extreme that they hardly seemed possible.” He is not a man that deserves any oaths, nor words of promise, but he cuts at her honour and at that of those she loved well, and that is a vicious wound.

“Nor do I pin all on you.” She is not so stupid as that, though her tone suggests no offence, only that same stillness. “I simply ask that you own the responsibility of what you have done and not deny your hand in the repercussions. No matter of time can dull that kind of fear that came from that night. Do not expect me to be grateful, nor to thank you for your actions, nor consider you some saviour of mages.”

A pause, and she is about to turn back to the tent when she makes herself stop. “Liliwen must have seen good in you, if my father’s words are to be trusted. Or perhaps in the decades between her leaving Starkhaven and her death she became twisted in some manner. I know not, but I cannot believe that a woman that served Love would have favoured the suffering that came before Kirkwall, nor after. Pray do not invoke her in some means to shame me.”

[justice_is_blond]

"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."

[dashing]

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.