faderift | Rifts and the Veil/Elven Artifacts Meeting

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Rifts and the Veil/Elven Artifacts Meeting

WHO: All members of the Rifts and the Veil and Elven Artifacts projects are invited to attend.
WHAT: A joint discussion, trying to solve a puzzle together.
WHEN: Early Firstfall, after Satinalia
WHERE: The Elven Artifacts laboratory in the Gallows.
NOTES: A follow-up to the island elven ruins quest. WTF was that map, anyway? Takes place after this announcement.

Tea and refreshments are offered--nothing elaborate, just something for people to gnaw on in case they get peckish while thinking. The mosaic has been drawn and painted as accurately as possible and hung on a wall for examination. It is a map of Thedas, with most of the south broken away and pieces missing, with green slashes--some straight, some curved oddly, all tapered at the ends and thicker in the middle--cutting across here and there. Where the green lines cross, they are bright red.

"All right," Pel says, pointing to one of the intersections. "Our goal for today is to reckon out what these are, or at the very least, come up with a plan for reckoning it all out. This is obviously a map, but what's it a map of?"

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“I would hardly compare my office to your home, my lady,” no, not when he’s far fonder of the room he has in Gwenaëlle’s estate, of the sound of Kieran running down the halls in the morning, of finding Hardie napping outside her door, of Bill, in the gardens. “But it will do.”

He opens the door for her, gestures her in—a very clear invitation, as he gives to anyone who enters here, verbal or physical, and closes the door behind them. He was never as gifted with the craft of Girdling as Melian was, but protecting one room? He could do such things as an elfling.

“I would. It will be kept safe,” he says, and puts weight behind it.

Next to the fireplace is a tapestry—the Inquistion’s symbol, made of woven vines and branches, the background a mimicry of some of the patterns she has seen on his finest clothes, the ones from Arda. There is a small table, and chairs beside it—he pulls one out for her, and then, before taking the other, goes to his desk and comes back with a journal and a map of Thedas. The journal is filled with long scrawls of Tengwar—if she remembers her lessons, she may read on the page several phonetic spellings—Eluvian, which translates quite well, and Cercwal, which does not—which should give her an idea which entry he’s chosen to have at hand while they speak.

Considering, she smiles. "No, you needn't bend your head to step in here." Practicality means you build just enough for planning around the possible growth spurts of what's almost a teenage boy. If he gets some height from her, some from Alistair the Kieran's sure to cut a figure either way.

So she settles, claps her eyes on things as a bird does before it alights upon a branch, head tipped to one side. The sigh could come from deep in her bones

"The eluvians and their true purpose coming to light in such a fashion 'twas not what I intended, let us hope the Inquisition dredges up some discrection from some reserve not yet made public." All this time with the truth sworn to secrecy by the few who did know because of the risks, when they were all comfortably housed in Skyhold of all places--

No longer a simple trip to see it with her own eyes. To step into the mirror, into the Crossroads. To trust the words of others who swear all is well with both. Nodding to the word, she looks to Thranduil as her mouth twists. "The Crossroads, you recall them? The place where we went through to go from my eluvian to Merrill's. That is likely what Corypheus seeks: the ancient elves made it, and though not the Fade? It is close. Close enough for him."

“Are they yet your own, or have the advisers indicated that they are… under the Inquisition’s protection?” he asks, careful phrasing to underscore the truth. It is not so much that he doesn’t trust the Organization, moreso that he doubts the training of several of those involved, those in Kirkwall. Revelations like this ought to be kept under lock and key, advantages guarded. And now—well, they have some notice. Some time to get ahead of loose lips.

“I remember it well,” Thranduil confirms. The oddness of that liminal space, compared to the restoration he had known in the Fade. “What is your desire? To secure the remaining Eluvians, or to fortify the Crossroads as best we are able? If they are a hub, as the name suggests, we might well identify what used to be the central places.”

"My eluvian belongs to me. I forged it alone, in Serault, for the other I wished was beyond my reach. As for Merrill's, I believe that one would fall under the Inquisition's protection. Given that she is Dalish and I was only given her leave to watch over it when other matters called her attention away." Morrigan is deliberate; her eluvian will always be hers, if that comes into question they will be welcome to attempt prying it from her fingers but as for Merrill's she can about imagine the uproar when there has been resistance in the past no matter how she has tried to be open. To ask for aid. To leave the way open that they might learn themselves.

Attempt to lay a claim to Merrill's and wait for the howling to come no matter how safe it might be with the person who knows them best. Morrigan forged her own.

Who else can say that?

"The remaining eluvians might not be so easily secured: you will recall that I spoke of them requiring a key? There is more. When the elves fell, they sealed the ways behind them. There are paths through the eluvians that shall remain shut for all time, from what Merrill told me of her clan's misfortune with her eluvian at first I do not doubt such a way was found though to encounter the Blight from it..." The Blight, the Old Gods, Magisters and something so old and very definitely elven? A piece doesn't quite fit but here she has it. "The Crossroads shall not last forever. Eventually they will collapse on themselves. 'Twas but a name I gave to them for their true name has been lost to time itself."

As ever that saddens her. How much have they lost in this world? Ground to dust beneath them? All the wonder stripped away to leave but bare dull rock? A world that so many would call better.

If Morrigan is sure in its safety and the good behavior of the Inquisition, he will not push. She has known more of them for far longer than he could ever lay claim to.

"This... key," Thranduil says, looking at her, head tilted at a slight angle. "It is not a key. Not something one could hold in their hand."

Why would it be? The gates to his Halls needed no keys- they opened by his will, and that alone. The Elvhen would not have been much different. They had been so far similar in enough ways that this was just one more.

"Why would my kin bother with such a thing, when they had the skill at hand," he muses, looking beyond her for a moment, then refocusing.

"Each eluvian is different. I cannot say if that is fortunate or not; you recall when we ventured to Kirkwall through mine? I know the key, the touch of magic required that I might activate it and allow myself or others passage through it. I know another that I have used in the past in the Dragonbone Wastes though it took much effort to learn it. Knowledge and power, as I have said before, is often enough."

His kin, he says, and again she looks at him as she must from time to time for all that they jest, that he's the one her dear Gwenaelle loves he is so impossibly old. Not of this world. Uthenera would be possible for him even now, if there were any who remembered all of it.

"Not all lead back to our world - can you imagine such a thing?" A dare, almost, he can imagine such a thing. Elves able to do it. Of course Thranduil also knows what happened to the elves. He knows the elves that live now, either in the cities, in the Circles, in their clans. "But of course there were the Magisters, the Fall of Arlathan, the Creators locked away from them; a great many things befell the elves and their history is as difficult to piece together as what we speak of now."

"I have seen great feats of Craft before," elves with good teachers, and peacetime enough to learn for joy over necessity. "But none to this extent."

He shakes his head. Two thousand years- a fraction of time, and the Elvhen people were alive and thriving. Nothing, in the grand scope of the whole of the world. No room for could have, should have, may-have-been. Only now, and the scraps they work through.

"We-- you, I should say-- will recover what can be recovered. Perhaps I might be of some assistance, should you think our histories and manner were of like kind." If she needs someone to think as they had. If she needs anything. She, who he would name elf-friend.

"So much has been lost, I cannot measure how little we know now. Of anyone I have met, you might be able to truly imagine the wonders of Arlathan beyond the stories one tells a child." Live the truth, not the tale, and you have less patience for how a person oohs and aahs yet Thranduil is so much older than any of them that he can understand what it is to have been as the ancient elves were, to have been ageless, to have shaped a world and lived in it when it was everything it was meant to be. The Dalish split apart, come together but once every ten years, speaking fragments of a language that a tiny handful of them can even read.

"Would you be of a mind to take a trip to Skyhold again some day? You had so little time before, from one place to the next." If I am ever gone, she thinks, who else might have a chance of understanding them at all enough to be trusted with them. "You might yet be here the day the Crossroads gutters out at last."

“Whenever you have need of me,” he says, “—and duty permits.”

He would like to see Skyhold again. It is true his time there was sparse, but good memories lingered. “If I should witness it,” Thranduil notes. “I felt so queer when we traveled those roads.”

Odd. Out of place, physically and mentally. Tumbling into Kirkwall had almost been a relief. He pauses, briefly turning to where he would normally have a cup resting. There is none, and he would have her comfortable before he continues this line of questioning.

“I fear I have been a poor host,” he says. “May I fetch you something to drink? To make you comfortable, before we speak of uncomfortable things.”

She is hard to grasp, this one, but he intends to fit her into his plans as she may well have accounted for him and his in her own, and—it is only polite.

"You are needed here rather more than that," for the sake of a theory it's a long journey (he might go by sea but-- the thought turns her stomach, the skin on her arms prickling enough that she has to rub them away - Lady Morrigan, does she even notice the cold) and selfishly he's good security in Kirkwall. Off-putting for all that he's an elf. An elf too tall. An elf with manners people don't know what to do with. If they whisper demon or whatever nonsense of the rifters it should keep them from the door where her son and Gwenaëlle sleep.

Now that's something they never did get the chance to speak on since she was snarling everyone to secrecy. It lasted longer than expected, she can give them a grudging modicum of pride at that. "How so? One cannot remain between forever but I wonder if it is that anchor or you being from elsewhere, or if they're too entwined to know for certain."

She smiles at that, comfortable enough to look at him fondly; she's done well, has Gwenaëlle. "Tea or wine, wine would perhaps be best." And quicker. She's not the sort of mage to go using her magic just to boil up water.

He nods, and stands, making for his desk to pull glasses and bottle both out of a hutch behind it. It is only table wine of middling quality, but he pours it for her like it is a fine vintage and defers to her as guest by not sitting until she’s taken a sip and indicated that all is well. The bottle he leaves uncorked and on the table while he settles back into his chair.

“Both,” he says. “Or I suspect so. Perhaps you have become accustomed to a silver tongue from me, but the best metaphor I can summon to explain the Quendi and the elvhen is that of horses and ponies, like our dear Bill and Gwenaëlle’s Persistance.”

(Our Bill.)

Wryly: “I assume the image is clearly fixed in your head, and I needn’t elaborate. The elvhen did not consider the needs of the Quendi when they built, just as perhaps the elvhen would struggle with some of our tools. I felt—apart from myself. We are not made to feel fatigued, but yet. There are things that cause elves to Fade, for the thing that binds flesh and spirit together to falter. Perhaps this was like that, but it ended once we were in Kirkwall proper.”

As if Morrigan knew anything about wine until late in her life, the only vintage she can lay claim to isn't even truly wine at all since the Chasind don't have the means for it but who would argue with the Chasind for the name of a thing? It's welcome. More than welcome. After that debacle she takes a sip, presses finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose hard enough to feel the sting that might ward the headache off a while yet.

Spare her dealing with anything like this again.

(Your Bill, she doesn't need a secondhand lawnmower and certainly not one that leaves more mess and requires more upkeep than the grass itself.)

A memory stirs, and who else would think to tell him of a meddling old woman who might at last do some good. "There are few who have not heard of Anders but I knew another who joined with a spirit as he did, though she never allowed herself to become what he has." And Wynne is dead, so we can all prove that a mage can live that way without corrupting what resides in them. "A spirit of faith came to her in death, she said, and then she found herself alive to meddle, to fight the Blight alongside Cousland, Alistair, those of us who were there for it. But there were things that left her-- fatigued. Beyond that of an old woman. A spell in particular that once she used then collapsed."

Funny, the things you recall when someone brings them up as if seeing them for the first time again. They're not talking about the bones of another madwoman though. "Skyhold had magic so ancient that it had seeped into the stones itself, some part of me was surprised so few commented upon it, then I recall what makes up the Inquisition and the surprises vanishes. The Veil is thin here in Kirkwall, it could be that."

He spins the stem slowly between two pinches fingers, and he watches how the liquid leaps at the walls of the class in a thin stream.

“Overinvested,” Thranduil suggests, for the matter of Anders. Sloppy. No moderating restraint, no grasp of the nature of the spirit he took into himself. His accounting of the man is based thinly upon Tethras’ book and his own shallow knowledge of him, but even-handed is not a word he’d think applicable in the least.

He considers both her explanations, and nods. “We are not meant to be held apart, but the effects do not seem to be worsening. Should I keep free of Templars, I suspect I shall endure.”

For as long as needed.

Curious, he does pause, wine and fingers stilling. “What spell affected her so?”

"Once before he revealed his true name to all, when I met him as Detlef," that name curls her mouth, not even the wine washes out the taste of it, "he asked of being a shapeshifter. I made certain those who need know of it knew when the truth came out. 'Twas not a thing I would abide, whether or not he learned from me. To copy the soul of a thing? From him?" Anders has trouble enough with souls after all, certainly had them then before whatever was done to split him from the spirit inside him, she can scarce imagine the creatures that might have been.

The trouble there might have been had he accomplished it.

Anders who came believing she would be one to help teach mages who behave as if born in fields.

"Templars may have had their day, though they cling on, some far more doggedly than others. I kept free of them all my life though I am far from most mages," she says it carefully - how often has she ever called herself a mage after all - "and you have means that most do not. Namely a mind entirely your own, and no lack of wit or ambition, tempered correctly." Always in the balance, too much of one without the other and watch how quickly it goes awry.

There's the anchor though. The Dalish girl dying. That's she's lasted this long…

But speaking of the dead-- "Vessel of the Spirit, she called it. She was a spirit healer prior to her death and possession," like someone else they talked of, "it disoriented those around us, restored both health and mana, but left her stunned after."

Thranduil scoffs—at least now, Anders seems occupied enough with his small things. What more could there be to live for in a mortal’s life after that sort of finale? His death may well have been more useful, seeing that he chooses not to leverage his life for anything worth the effort of the Inquisition having him here. Healers are worth something, but not that much.

“What a compliment, my lady. I will cherish it forever.” He sets the glass down. “So her own choice, and nothing detrimental, assuming she had one of you at her back and able to mind her. And she was older, and wiser—

I am considering something similar,” he notes, casually. “Doubtless, it will take time to do correctly, but if it strengthens the connection between my—spirit and my flesh, it will be well worth it. And the companionship could not be discounted either.”

Edited 2018-01-15 17:07 (UTC)

Healers having the bloodiest hands is a concept taken rather too literally in the case of Anders. Given what cascaded down and out from one explosion; a rebellion, a war, other smaller instances visited upon those caught between both. And he doesn't wish to hear if it's rude or to provoke though willing to do the same towards others?

(So easy for him to be lost, who would truly weep?)

"I will say this or Wynne for all that she was the interfering old woman despite insisting that she was no grandmother; she was more than capable of taking care of herself, right to the end. I had word that she finally met her end in Orlais when the Mages and Templars fought, the spirit might not have been enough in the end with such violence…" Morrigan doesn't know the full details, only that word came to her through the Court. Sanitised no doubt.

"Though rare, there is the spirit that taught of the Arcane Warriors from the Brecilian Ruins, that or the tales of Spirit Warriors though they are rarer still, I cannot say I have ever encountered one knowingly. If there is anything I might turn up that would be suitable in the hunt for my mother, you shall have word of it first." Rare as that may be, she'd have Thranduil here, though not if all Flemeth's secrets are dark trickery. Which they are but all the past that's been dredged up this far, what else might she find?

There are two bodies in the harbor that are his fault—out late at night, a mistake, and two necks broken and the bodies disposed of, an easier solution than either fighting back and leaving an injured Man to complain or allowing himself to be bruised and battered—and if he has his thoughts that the Inquisition would be better served by the removal of one or two, he keeps them to himself. This is an outpost. The Rifters are placed here to separate Skyhold from them, to give them little missions they might do. If they succeed, congratulations, if they fail—well, they are only Rifters, and Dalish, and a few known faces and nobles to boost the reputation of the whole.

“Thank you—and perhaps such a thing would be useful aside, for the gathering of knowledge. I would not invite so intimate a connection without being sure of a partner, and I will need an old one, lest I feel—” he gestures. “—unstable. And perhaps it will help with the Eluvians.”

What a boon, to know and to invite home one who remembered Elvhenan, the old ways, the secret Craft and the history that would aid them now in settling everything to rights. He sets the thought aside.

“I am sorry for the loss of Wynne,” he says. “It sounds nearly as if you found her worthy. At the very least, she kept her secrets well.”

The Wardens might be better held to account. Independent allies who drag disaster after crisis with them, who garb themselves in all their secrets and wield their past deeds to deflect scrutiny. After everything. There are choices to be made with them but none seem to want to make it; no one likes to peel a thing back to find what lies beneath is full of rotting pulp same as all else.

That is the truth though. That many things are rotten, and some far more than any other.

"A pity Merrill is beyond our reach, of the Dalish I have met she had a knowledge beyond compare. What you propose is-" she takes a sip, then another, "I would not want you to fade but it might test or resolve some theories about the reach of things."

Long kept to herself, certainly with Leliana in Skyhold but the idea of the Fade's reach or the Crossroads. Where they might lead. The overlaps. Old notes to check again in the cold dark nights.

"Oh she would have driven everyone mad. She would have acted as your</> grandmother." She appreciates it Thranduil, they could use that sense Morrigan hated in her youth.

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