Friends, Vints, Countrymen

[flamen_turbulentum]

WHO: Vergil and Dorian
WHAT: A meeting of two countrymen
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Skyhold's Library
NOTES: N/A

Skyhold is a small enough place. All you have to do is ask around. Especially when it comes to a figure as distinctive as a mustachioed mage from distant Tevinter. There is no real point concealing where he is from, so Vergil has made no such effort. Indeed, avowing his nationality has made it that much easier to claim he knows the man he seeks. I mean, don't all 'vints know each other? And really, what is he going to do- put on a Fereldan accent? Ew. No thank you.

This may not have won him any new friends, but best to get the bad impression over with- and best to know from the beginning who is truly prejudiced, and who is merely leery. The most successful inquiries - ones that did not end with instructions on where else he ought to stick his nose - all name the same place: a cozy little nook of in the keep's library.

So it is there that Vergil waits, reclining in the chair, a lean man with dark skin and dark eyes, dressed in a well-worn velvet suit of understated clerical black. A book lies open in his lap, propped up by one bent knee. The text is bound in burgundy-dyed drake leather, its vellum pages adorned with particularly gorgeous illumination in Orlesian. While it is doubtless centuries old and rich with Theodosian insights, Vergil flips through it with an air of idleness, sparing each page a fraction of the time that would be necessary to really read it. And this even if he could actually read Orlesian.

Comments

[liberalum]

It's a nice chair. There aren't a lot of nice chairs about, even if it's not the only one -- donations from across Thedas, of different eras, tastes, and quality. This one's Orlesian, and lush enough to be faintly ridiculous, and so of course, Dorian had claimed it for himself, or rather, the corner of the library he most often frequented, with its good light and better view. The evidence of his existence can be seen in the stacks of books he's currently working through, an unfurled curl of parchment left on a low table and a pen negligently left behind.

And now there's a man in black at his usual spot. He is dressed too distinctly for Dorian to simply resign himself to some less than ideal corner of the library.

It should be said that Leliana works quickly, and had already put a name passed Dorian in hope of insight (and was rewarded with an I haven't the faintest idea, we don't all know each other, I hope you realise). He attempts to recall it as he approaches, distinct in his own right; leathers of an ordinary brown but an excess of buckle and strap, with metal that catches the light dazzlingly. The cut is straight from the Imperium, gaudy and suggestive and well-fitted, a mark of difference in the sea of scuffed metal and shapeless, fraying wool, that makes up the rest of the rabble.

"Would you like me to get you one with pictures?" he says, as wry as he is warm, charming by default. He can see you're not reading, friend.

[flamen_turbulentum]

Up comes a finger, begging a moment, as Vergil finishes not-reading the page. Once done, he ceremoniously closes the book with a gravity suggesting a weight of newly acquired wisdom. He sets it among the detritus of Dorian's studies, and then, only then, does he slowly raise his eyes to the mage.

A smile appears, as swift and luminous as lightning, though far longer-lasting.

"Oh- don't trouble yourself. This-" he lifts his hands, thumb and forefinger framing Dorian from colorful shoulders to impeccably groomed head, "is the only spectacle I desire."

Hands come down, arms circling bent leg, as he rests his chin on his knee and beams up at Dorian.

"So it's true. The Pavus scion, run off to join fanatics in Fereldan. This- is Fereldan, isn't it? I know they sometimes have trouble sorting out what belongs to whom." Which is certainly one way to describe the tensions that arise in the wake of an invasion and a rebellion.

"It's drugged honey to the lower houses, this sort of thing. Speculation rages as to why, though. My favorite, least sensible notion is that you came all this way to-" a careful choosing of words here, "-sew wild oats in barren furrows. As if you couldn't get plenty of that in Antiva..."

[liberalum]

"You can get plenty from the lower houses, Maker knows."

The words are issued confidently, but a low-key aggression that conveys an acknowledgement of harassment to begin with, Dorian's arms settling into a defensive fold across his chest. He hasn't an awful lot of friends in the Imperium, and those he has are ones he knows and has cultivated himself. "Skyhold considers itself geographically neutral, and as for fanaticism-- well. There are those who feel passionately about saving the world from destruction, what can be said? Novel, I know."

Rather than hover at the border of the little space, Dorian steps within it, taking an easy lean against the thick bookshelves across from the other man, dusty tombs looming as his backdrop. "Which doesn't explain you, unless you've come to spread the good news of the Imperial Chantry. They do have their own, dead Divine or no."

[flamen_turbulentum]

Dorian's show of verbal force, his subtle lean onto the realities of their status difference, earns a wheezy snigger from Vergil, a laugh suppressed to library-safe levels. "Too true. Better than knocking one of us up, certainly. I don't envy you the task of keeping your vital fluids pure. Every drop of decent stock can only improve on my origins. You have to be careful of who you swap spit with."

Vergil manages to remain unremittingly, unrepentantly relaxed, or at least to appear so. This is worlds easier to accomplish while sprawled in such a comfortably chair. Easy to lean back, propping an elbow on an arm, a head on a hand.

"Isn't that the nature of fanaticism- believing that your cause is the only one worth supporting? That anything is permitted, because of the consequences should you fail?" Purely rhetorical, of course, and entirely reversible. And Vergil owns to this fact.

"I personally do believe the world is in peril- has been since the Maker turned His back on us. And while I don't know that this Breach business is as disastrous as the southerners like to think, the misfortune at the Conclave - and all the unpleasantness that led up to it - could well serve as a lesson in just how thoroughly the Southern Schismatics have buggered the nug, if you'll forgive the turn of phrase.

"And please, Dorian-" Vergil adds, the impudence of using an altus' first name without honoraria tickling him visibly, "don't pretend the Orlesian Chantry of Kordillus Drakon isn't just as Imperial as the Chantry in Tevinter."

[liberalum]

Dorian's gaze wanders, up to the back of the chair, as if wondering how much heft he'd have to put into turning the cleric out of his chair. Probably not a lot.

"The hats aren't as good."

His voice is dry as the Hissing Wastes, and about as nurturing with regarding to the conversation. If it withered and blew away, his affect is that of not minding. Still, he pursues, looking down his nose at the man who has stolen his seat. "What good is a lesson if you don't intend to learn anything? This isn't Ferelden and Orlais having a bit of a spat -- it's two nations, swimming in demons, and we happen to share a landmass.

"Besides all that, Vergil, you can thank an ancient Tevinter darkspawn for the hole in the sky, and our fellow countrymen for thinking he has interesting things to say about it."

[flamen_turbulentum]

"That old smear? Maker's breath- they really have gotten to you."

Vergil's brow is furrowed in what looks like sincere, fear-for-Dorian's-soul concern, his gaze fixed on the mage's, searching his eyes, hoping to find a glimmer of reason past what he can only assume is Inquisitorial fanaticism.

"If we really want to play the sins-of-our-parents game, might I suggest that the Imperium has enough history to answer for, without assuming national responsibility for fatally wounding the world? Twice, according to you."

And quickly enough, he's back to argumentation. The show of concern might well have been rhetorical, always and already. This is all part of the game Vergil prefers to play, has been playing since he found out about the Corypheus contestation, has been practicing ever since conceiving of this journey. He just didn't think he'd have to deploy it against a countryman.

"And even if we had - 'we' in a sense loose enough to extend back generation upon generation - upon whose shoulders should it fall to mend that damage?"

He's shifted again, now to the edge of his seat, kinetic even while speaking from a repose. Wait long enough, and he might vacate the chair himself, springing to his feet to grip a pulpit that is not there.

"Political slander like that which you're parroting only serves divide us. I am here to unite, not to divide. That is what the Chant of Light is for. The Maker knows no nations; His seat is lofty, His back is turned."

[liberalum]

There's a crease developing between Dorian's eyebrows, and though it's produced by irritation, certainly, he's also thinking. Thinking about what this man knows, and also, what he doesn't know.

According to Dorian, indeed.

"His name is Corypheus," he says, after a delicate pause has settled between them. "The one who put the hole in the sky. He seeks to raise the Tevinter Imperium out of the shadows and into its allegedly rightful glory, masters of the mortal realm. The Venatori are of our countrymen -- I should know, I've killed several of them -- and are devoted to this Elder One. This Elder One, who believes the Throne gathers dust in the Black City."

He shrugs shapely shoulders. "I know we're all very good at putting words in each others mouths, but I'll leave who did what about the First Blight to the scholars, and your good self. What's happening in this point in time is what informs my slander.

"But please, enlighten me -- I know you're dying to. What does unity look like, to you?"

[flamen_turbulentum]

At some point during the bit about alleged rightful glory and mortal mastery, Vergil raises a hand and begins to flap it, a child pantomime of empty words. He's heard this song and dance as well, and is less inclined towards it than even Dorian might have been, had his rearing worked out that way. As a laetan, any talk of the glory days of the Imperium invariably means 'a time before you and yours were even citizens'. It also means an even purer magocracy, which for fair obvious personal reasons is hard for Vergil to get behind.

"But this is nothing new-" he complains, "just another form of Old God worship, rearing its scaly head. That this so-called Elder One seems keen to lift from the Southern smear shouldn't make us hasten to believe him, no more than we should believe any of his blasphemy. Enough that he is an abomination, enough that he must be stopped. There is no need to turn the nations of men against each other, or perpetuate political lies, to suit the whims of some usurper."

He sets his hands together, then spreads them apart, smiling above the expansive gesture, inviting Dorian to turn away from this dark talk towards illumination- the enlightenment Dorian requested, however sardonically.

"Why, the Chant of Light, sung from all corners of the earth. What other unity could there be?"

This is a sincere priest, apparently. A true believer.