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]

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.