Rifts and the Veil/Elven Artifacts Meeting

[mythalenaste]

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?"

Comments

[arcaneadvisor]

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."

[rowancrowned]

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?”

[arcaneadvisor]

"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."

[rowancrowned]

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.”

[arcaneadvisor]

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?

[rowancrowned]

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.”

[arcaneadvisor]

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.