[Closed] A very cold place

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Anders, Janzik
WHAT: Janzik is sick, who the heck knows where it might go from there.
WHEN: Around now
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: None atm.

"Honestly, it's a wonder more didn't catch ill considering how brutally cold it was," Anders says, bringing over an herb infused broth. "I don't know how anyone manages to live in places where it's always snow, long-term."

He takes a seat and offers out the bowl.

Comments

[lightninginabottle]

It's hard to imagine humans coming from anywhere but colder climates, wherever they might spread thereafter. His mind has always associated them with chilly deciduous forests (and war crimes, but that's neither here nor there.) Then again, he supposes, when a world has so little diversity in the way of sentient species, the few that do exist can settle wherever they like.

"Depends on your definition of 'your,' by now," he says. "Lot of islands in the South Seas, but ours was called Kezan. Whatever's left of it under all the lava now is still technically ours, but we've moved on to cooler and more life-sustaining pastures, like the filthy slums our warchief graciously lets us chill in as long as we keep providing the army with things that go boom. It's a living." He turns his head aside to cough.

"How patriotic were your folks that they named you after a country, anyway? Mine loved the island, rest their souls et cetera, but they didn't call any of us kids 'Kezanders.'"

[justice_is_blond]

He chuckles at the question, though there's not a lot of humor to the noise. It's more self-conscious than anything.

"I... Mm." The thoughtful noise is accompanied by a little shifting in his seat. "When you love a country very, very much..." Anders gives Janzik a smile as leans back against his desk. His voice sounds like he's delivering a long joke. "It's complicated and boring story that boils down to me being hauled away from my homeland for being a mage, winding up somewhere I didn't know the language, and, well, sometime in the endless days of answering to The Anders Boy my actual name got a little lost. But my father was very, very patriotic. He's the one that made sure my magic was reported."

The smile hasn't faded, and his voice hasn't changed. Anders is trying very hard to make it seem like not a big deal in the end, despite how it is.

[lightninginabottle]

"Shit." The smile does not set Janzik sufficiently at ease. One does not spend three months in Thedas without picking up on at least the barest bones of the mage quandary, but the rest of his exposure to it has been more abstract.

"Well, that just seems like a poor bureaucratic model all around. No points for efficiency at all."

[justice_is_blond]

"It was rather efficient, actually. Round them up, beat them down, and then you can control mages. But a people can only be held down for so long before they rise up."

He stands up to come closer and check the bowl. "We're going to have to see what happens when Corypheus is defeated, if anyone will recognize our freedom and independence, or if they'll try to cage us again. In the meantime, we're here, needed, and..." Anders shakes his head.

[lightninginabottle]

The bowl is still largely full; Janzik has not been multitasking well, but he takes another gulp of the broth as Anders comes closer.

"That still doesn't sound efficient to me. I mean, what's the cost-benefit workup on the whole rounding-up and beating-down thing? These Circles I keep hearing about seem like a money pit. Why were they a thing? I'm hearing talk about demons, something about demons, but those are literally falling out of the sky right now, so I don't know how it connects."

[justice_is_blond]

"Cost-benefit workup?" he echoes. In theory he knows what the words mean, but said together like that it feels like a bigger thing. ...Not like he gives Janzik time to answer, waving his own question off a beat later.

"The Chantry wants to hold power over a great many countries. By caging up the mages it has achieved that on two fronts. One, it keeps the mages to itself, to rent out their services to people who can pay for them. Two, it has told the people that it is protecting them from us, so the people then give it trust and funding and support." Anders leans against the wall closer to Janzik than the desk had been. His voice is a bit hard despite the calm he'd been trying to convey. Working up patients was never a good idea, but they're on a topic that he's very attached to.

"We can give into temptation and be possessed by demons. We are tempted regularly by them, and they do know what we want so they can offer things that have appeal. When a mage gives in, the damage is... devastating. It's much like the roaming demons you've run into here, only it happens in the middle of a town. But we're still people. And the threat of the Circles has made plenty of mages feel they've no hope and no other resort, so the Chantry has been the root of devastation as well."

[lightninginabottle]

"All right," he muses, "okay, I can see where they're coming from now." Trying to harness, weaponize and monopolize a fighting force at all costs is unfortunately not going to be a foreign concept on most worlds, and Azeroth is not an exception.

"Can't anyone get possessed by a demon, though? I feel like that's where their argument kinda falls apart. That's just, you know, what demons do, isn't it? Why say it's a mage thing in particular?"

[justice_is_blond]

For a brief moment he stiffens, thinking that Janzik is saying the Chantry is justified. The follow-up questions make it clear Janzik means something else, though, so he relaxes slightly even though he doesn't know what Janzik might mean.

"Anyone can, yes. Their argument is that since we're closest to the Fade and hear the demons more often than the rest of the population, we're the only ones truly at risk. No one talks about Templars turning abomination or so on. It's... not as easy for it to happen, to be sure. Mages are more vulnerable. But that isn't truly helped by the Circles. They kill or destroy more mages out of their own fears of abominations than actually would go abomination, and again, drive people to it as well. They're another disease, not a cure."