faderift | [OPEN] You were my direction and my roots.

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[OPEN] You were my direction and my roots.

WHO: (open) Myr and everyone; (closed) Myr, Vandelin, and Kit
WHAT: Some days in the life of a busy blind mage as he settles in.
WHEN: First part of August
WHERE: All around the Gallows.
NOTES: no one here but us elves

i.

Myrobalan had hardly put his request in to Casoferrazza before the harried seneschal had given him his approval and chased him off again. The man's haste to get the mage out of his hair had been a little alarming, but Myr isn't about to question what small blessings the Maker dealt out to him.

He places the first of his glyphs on the door to his double room and builds outward, weaving a network of sound and magic he can follow like a spider does the strands of its web. One glyph by every room he needs to know, a matching pair at the end of every major hallway. They're only active when he's close, glowing green and chiming softly in an assortment of different tones; otherwise, they fade to near-transparency and fall silent.

Still, they're a fairly obvious indicator of where he's been and where he hasn't in the three days it takes him to map the length and breadth of the Gallows, measuring his steps and marking what he needs to find again.

[OOC: Myr will be everywhere but the inside of the templar quarters and the upper levels of the mage quarters; feel free to encounter him anywhere but the dungeon.]

ii.

It's been no more than two weeks since the Hasmal contingent arrived and Myr's already out of sync with the waking life of the Gallows.

It isn't something that troubles him much any longer. His gutted Circle had grown used to him being awake all hours of the night and asleep much of the day, or elsewise--he contributed as much as they all did to their survival, so what of it?--so there had been little reason try and repair his schedule.

Besides, it's afforded him certain opportunities for peace and quiet he couldn't have otherwise. He'd marked how some of the more dedicated templars (and at least one knight-enchanter) were up well before dawn to attend to their own conditioning in the courtyard; how it rang with blades or hurried activity at all other hours of the day and into the torchlit evening.

The second hour after midnight, however, sees it standing empty, and Myr slips out into the darkness as gladly as a man going to meet a lover. He takes a moment to stand without the door of the mage tower, muting the glyph there so he can enjoy the velvet silence of the night. Then he begins to pace the courtyard in a regular grid, marking obstructions as he finds them. It isn't so hard like that to locate the space others have cleared for their own practice and bound it in his mind.

Only once he's sure it will be large enough for his own needs does he strip to the waist, folding up his light robe and laying it aside outside one corner of the practice area. Then he retreats back across cleared space, staff in-hand, counting his steps to the center where he stops and crisply salutes an imaginary opponent. The ritual gesture flows easily into the first of the forms, the patterns of attack graven into his muscle-memory.

Out here, unwatched, in the predawn darkness, he becomes for a little while the creature he was meant to be.

iii. (closed)

While they're harder to notice when Myr's not nearby, the locator glyphs aren't invisible at rest. They won't be so hard to follow back to their source at his room in the mage tower, where the glyph on the door gleams faintly in mute indication of the mage's presence.

Threaded | Flat

The Inquisition, lightly staffed though the Kirkwall outpost is, does not actually require its templars to do patrol duty, let alone the graveyard shift. But it's strange to live in an empty room for the first time in his life, just off-kilter enough to make him feel like the old barracks are too damn quiet even if Cade's presence hadn't made them much louder when he was there--and as long as he can't quite get himself to sleep, he thinks he might as well ride the high of the Venatori capture by making himself feel useful for a little longer.

How useful he'll actually be without armor or sword is debatable, but he leaves them behind anyway, willing to risk the roving nocturnal gangs. Inquisition space is safe enough, or should be.

Should be. He isn't expecting any other wanderers, nor sounds of combat, nor the unearthly swish of a spirit blade slicing the air, and he zeroes in on it promptly, though he ought to be more careful without his breastplate--

Oh. It's only the blind elf from the forest, displaying skills Simon certainly would never have expected of him (and a physique he might not have imagined either, were he inclined to imagine such things of tangential mage acquaintances.) He watches for a moment, eyebrows raised, analyzing Myr's form as he practices. It's clear he's anything but a novice, blind or no.

He doesn't have a reason to ambush him this time, nor does he want to. He calls out from a safe distance. "You've really got to stop doing suspicious-looking things, mate. It's not always going to be me who finds you at it."

Edited 2017-08-02 07:49 (UTC)

He'd never tell Myr this lest he hurt his new friend's feelings, but the glyphs are creepy, and they weird him out. For that reason, Kit is more than happy to let Vandelin take the lead in navigating from the Gallows' library back to the mages' quarters, so that he doesn't have to look at the glyphs longer than necessary.

Once they reach the closed door with the final glyph on it, he glances at Vandelin. "I'm guessing this is it?" he asks, and starts forward to knock unless he's stopped.

Inessa's out and about with her mabari when the chiming gets her attention. She glances around as Garahel inspects something glowing and green, coming to stand beside him. "Ah, the marker glyphs...." She's only passed them when they were near-transparent and silent, so of course she has to take a moment to inspect it as is right now. Upon spotting the one responsible, she turns to face him better. "I see someone's been busy. Hello, serah."

Garahel pads over, sniffing and curious. "This is my mabari, Garahel. Garahel, be nice." There's a soft whine in response. He's always nice.

Someone didn't get the message.

Wren stands stock-still in place, staring at the glyph with an expression of utter puzzlement — really, it's a lucky thing Myr can't see it, it's pretty stupid.

She'd thought to be imagining them at first, these little marks so easy to miss among all the rest, but they'd been placed far too methodically for that. An unfamiliar make: Perhaps some project of the researchers? She leans in to inspect,

It chimes at her in a flash of green noise, and despite herself, she startles. Instinct draws her back sharply and suddenly into Myr's path.

It's not tackling the blind, but it sure is close.

Edited 2017-08-03 08:19 (UTC)

Though she spent little time in this area of Kirkwall, she still felt it was a place she needed to be familiar with in order to be part of the Inquisition. It was for that reason that she went at night when she felt she might not run into so many who she wasn't sure of. Especially given the fact that there were plenty in this city not so comfortable with her Avvar background.

Still, she didn't let that stop her from walking around until she noted what looked like an elf mage. A Circle one if she were to guess. Still, she wasn't about to judge one for that and she watched in silence for a short while.

At least until the fennec at her side moved closer.

"I apologize for interrupting you. My small companion seems to be curious about you though."

She hadn't quite gotten a good look at his face just yet to know that she should explain that her companion was that of a small animal.

Diwaniya has been here for three months, and he still would like to say he doesn't hold with this weird "Fade" bullshit when it comes to magic. What kind of a world is it where power comes from intangible dreams, things you can't grasp, things that slip away as soon as you wake?

But his dreams are different now. He can't deny that.

And while he can still reliably summon up a gout of flame or a blast of frozen wind by thinking about it and demanding that it be so, it's nothing like what he's seen from the native mages. Next to them, he's a child annoying the grownups with silly parlor tricks. (And those, those are only the Circle-trained mages. Next to the Dalish--it doesn't bear thinking about. It still makes his chest ache to look at Sina now, and not with empathy.) He can't call down lightning, or crush a thing with invisible force, or summon a shield, no matter how he trains his mind--

--but if there were some tangible component to the magic, maybe it would be another matter. He watches this man in his vaguely-familiar robes (he must be from a Circle; Diwa can tell that much, but perhaps a further-afield one than he's heard of yet) inscribe these little flashing sigils on the walls, tilting his head with fascination as they chime. It's the sort of utility magic his people would have liked. He comes closer, not meaning to sneak up on a blind man, but not exactly thinking of the consequences of failing to announce his presence, either.

"That's really very clever," he says. "Are they only for finding your way, or are they multi-purpose?"

Edited 2017-08-05 07:02 (UTC)

There was now magic everywhere.

For a mage it is a natural state of being - they are born of magic, they live and breath it. For a Templar - for a Knight Commander no less - it is ... odd. James would be the first to admit that he was distracted lately, and honestly it felt so much like Ostwick that he didn't even consider the consequences of such a thing until he finally had his head somewhat clear from the whole Cade fiasco.

Right now - as he was mentally composing a letter to all the damned Seekers, he felt the magic go - ping, ping, ping against his inner senses, and he stopped. dead in his tracks. There were glyphs. Glyphs everywhere. He stared at them, the faint outline of magic on his senses, and frowned, moving to follow them, papers in hand.

To say that Korrin doesn't like the Gallows is a vast understatement. It may be purged of red lyrium and Veil tears at least, but its past still makes her skin crawl. Even without the slave statues and murals, she can't bring herself to stomach the site of such abuse for very long. The only reason she enters is for official business, or to use the communal baths.

The latter is what draws her to the Gallows this evening, as she's been missing the hot springs under Skyhold something fierce. Since hot water's available for only a few hours in the evening, she makes the best of it after a long shift. Soaking for a while is just she she needs to unwind, and it works, at least until she's ready to haul herself out. She's still robed and drying off her hair when the chiming reaches her ears.

Frowning in confusion, she lifts her head. "...the hell?" She hasn't heard that noise before or realizes what it means, so she stands to her full height and glances around for it.

"What are you doing?" Pel asks warily.

"Ih?" a baby asks similarly.

Pel came upon the peculiar mage while heading back to the room she shares with her cousin. The baby cranes her neck, trying to peer further out of the sling Pel has her in, curious and fearless. This mage-boy clearly has something he's going for, and it is shiny enough to attract attention from them both.

The night is not just the home of blind mages, it's the haunt of those who require stealth and guile. Spies and scouts and everyone who deals in the less conspicuous dealings within the Inquisition--and as such, is well known by the one running those clandestine operations in Kirkwall.

Beleth is actually heading to bed at the moment, on her way from her office, eyes cast anxiously towards the sky. If the sun hasn't risen yet, she's not technically that late to bed, right? That's the rule.

Movement catches her eye, and curious, Beleth's eyes dart down. To her surprise, it's not another of her people up at this unholy hour, it's someone she's never seen before--a mage, if she had to guess by the staff that he was twirling around. That only furthers her curiosity, and she veers her path to get closer to the elf in question. Maintaining a respectful distance, she pauses to watch for a few moments. She knows that staves can be used as weapons, and has seen others use it as such. But not quite like this.

Then, she realizes that she's standing around in the middle of the night, watching this random guy twirling a staff around. He's probably going to think that's weird. Or worse--that she's weird.

"That's very impressive." There, a compliment. Weird people don't give compliments, right? Wait--damn it.

Threaded | Flat

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we're just going for the hat trick here okay

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