The Days That Bind Us 2: Still Bound

[exequy]

WHO: Mages, anyone else who cares
WHAT: Give us liberty or give us potatoes, or: a most noble strike for a most noble purpose, or: pissy mage babies throw a tantrum
WHEN: 14-19 Cloudreach 9:44
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is for consolidating RP regarding the strike. Your character doesn't have to be striking themselves to top-level or tag around, as long as it's tangentially related.

The morning of Cloudreach 14, with minimal fanfare, a significant fraction of the Circle mages working with the Inquisition across Thedas stops showing up for work. On the other hand, a significant fraction doesn't stop. But the not-working fraction is significant enough to cause problems, and for the Inquisition to not delay or prolong the discussions already set to take place at Skyhold with a few representatives of the aggrieved mages and a number of Templar and Chantry representatives.

In the Gallows, most of the mages who are refusing to work relocate—voluntarily, unless being scowled at by Kostos Averesch qualifies as being forced against one's will—to the dusty recruits' quarters in the former Templar tower for an indefinite, politicized slumber party, featuring uncomfortable bunk beds and a lot of unseasoned starches. For a cause.

ooc | Remember that striking characters are generally losing access to confidential information, Inquisition equipment or materials, and any amenities, comforts, or privileges beyond the "plain potatoes for dinner" and "not thrown out into the streets" level.

Comments

[keenly]

"Well, I--" Colin looks slightly uncomfortable, but it's not because of Cyril. Cyril doesn't know about the weird Circle politics that made life terrifying for ten years of Colin's life. "I never learned...specializing, really. I mean sort of, the stuff I've always been good at is telek--um, moving things. What's called the spirit school of magic, which doesn't have very much to do with spirits, it's more the idea that there are magic energies all around us, everywhere, and mages are just able to give those energies a tug--anyway, I can move things with my mind, that's what it mostly means."

And then he rounds back to the original question because he started babbling for fear that Cyril would get freaked out by the talk of spirits, which even mages often do.

"But I'm learning from, um, a friend--" mentioning Anders' name isn't always the smartest move "--how to do that sort of specialized healing, since I wasn't Harrowed till late and never could learn it before."

[samahl]

Cyril doesn't seem freaked out at all. In fact, he seems rather impressed. He turns a bit to give Colin more of his focus and seems to be hanging on his every word. "Is that true? That there are spirit energies all around us? Is that the Veil or something else?"

[keenly]

"It's a school of thought." Colin relaxes a bit. Cyril isn't at all panicking about magic being pervasive in everything. "I mean, you think about it--a mage pulls fire through the Veil, supposedly. Fire, it's a thing. You can see it, touch it (though it's not recommended), you can feel its heat. But when I do this--"

He sets the book down in the air in front of him and leaves it hovering.

"What could I be doing here? Am I pulling a table through the Veil to set it down on?"

The book rises into the air about a meter.

"I could do this before I knew anything about this school of magic. A lot of magic theory is based on what mages observed themselves doing, rather than what mages thought they should be able to do. We look at ourselves floating a book in the air and we think of how we could be doing it. I'm not generating wind here, I'm just thinking about moving the book, and the book moves. Since there's no physical force that's doing this, I must be using a magical force. But it's affecting the physical world, not just the Fade, so it must exist here, on the waking side. So perhaps there are eddies of things, residual forces that move between this world and the Fade. And the Veil itself seems to be one of them--not the source of the magic at all, but maybe a product of it."

[samahl]

Cyril seems delighted by the show of magic more than anything. He is distracted by the book for a moment before returning his attention to Colin as he explained.

He doesn't fully understand a lot about what Colin is saying and will probably think of questions to ask about it later. But, for now, he thinks he gets the jist of it.

"That would mean that everything is far more connected than they teach. There would be some kind of energy connecting you and this book, right? Some thread we can't see or perceive. That makes the Fade less another place and more the same place, like you and this book are totally disconnected. Like you and I, or any other person aren't." He presses his lips together in thought.

"At least... perhaps it's like that." He sighs, forcing himself to not get any more carried away. "I wouldn't know, being disconnected myself. You'll have to tell me how it feels to you."

[keenly]

"You're not disconnected. That's the idea--everything is connected. You just can't see the threads to pull." A shrug, and he lets the book lower to the floor. "Like how dogs hear some sounds we can't, mages can access things other people can't. I could lift you in the air--I won't--but you couldn't do the same to me. So we're connected to each other, but that has nothing to do with which of us can or can't do the lifting. You'd need to ask Enchanter Averesch for more detailed theory. I was Harrowed very late, I didn't manage to learn much advanced theory."

[samahl]

"Wait a second. You could lift me into the air?" he asks. He wants to talk about the rest of what Colin is saying too, of course, but for a moment he is going to be distracted by that thought.

"How would that feel?"