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

[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.