[Open] Irregular Mages Ahoy

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Anders and Thor and You!
WHAT: Various adventures and misadventures
WHEN: Early to mid Bloomingtide
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Gonna put up some basic openings here first for either, then specific headers. Hit me up on plurk (Nadat) or Discord (Nadat#4647) if you'd like something for your dude!

Anders 1. The Clinic

There's a pause in the regular flow of traffic, enough that Anders is free to clean some of the slates leftover from an earlier class and straighten chairs and tables, moving steadily through the Clinic and greeting people by name or nod.

Anders 2. The Gallows Herb Garden

He's not alone as he tends to the plants and gathers a few sprigs of what the Infirmary's short on. Sprawled out in the sun, belly-up, is a tuxedo cat that's half-watching everything. A bit more active is a large orange fluff of a cat that's sneaking gathered herbs out of Anders' basket and piling them off to the side whenever Anders isn't looking.

Anders 3. Infirmary

He's here as usual, healing, providing potions and medical advice. Anyone dropping by gets seen to quickly, regardless of how he might feel about them. Any Rifters, though, get an additional question.

"Does your world have equality? Or some semblance of it?"

--

Thor 1. Tavern

Half the taverns in Kirkwall are closed to him, Tevinter, past conflicts, all that, but that just means that he's all the more happy this one is welcoming. Thor is loud and large and in a very good mood as he drinks his ale and chats with anyone who looks like they might tolerate a conversation.

In fact, if someone, some human or dwarf, is sitting alone, Thor will come over to their table, plop down, and order them a drink on him.

Thor 2. Lowtown

"It can't cost that much," Thor says to the shopkeeper, eyes a little narrow. He has a feeling the guy is trying to rob him... but Thor hasn't spent a lot of time handling day-to-day funds and expenses before. It's all been estate stuff that he signs off on. Haggling for a rather nice-looking cloak is a new challenge, and he finds himself glancing around to see if anyone will help weigh in on the topic.

Thor 3. Gallows

Evening is falling as Thor takes a guard post by the Gallows docks, leaning against a handy bit of wall and actively watching the people coming and going.

"Nearly curfew," he calls out to what looks like a Rifter considering getting on the boat. There's no heat to his voice. In fact, it sounds a little curious. He's wondering how the Rifters are taking the recent news and if it's chafing just yet.

--
[Feel free to make your own prompt for Anders or Thor too if you'd like.]

Comments

[justice_is_blond]

He smiles at the kiss, easily letting her help him carry the set to the desk and start setting it out.

"In a moment, thank you." Come--sit isn't something he's greeted with often and he rather likes it. "I've no idea how you got the desk down here, but I'm a little impressed. Being on the move and traveling light means I've never moved furniture." Save for the fancy tent they'd brought from Skyhold, Nate's wedding present to them, but it had been fairly easy.

Not as easy as finishing fixing tea and offering her a cup before taking his own and a chair. "I take it you've heard the latest of the phylactery debacle?" Not that it was a debacle because any of the mages had mishandled it. It's a debacle because the Inquisition can't come to its senses enough to be done with the things.

[ipseite]

“Averesch was kind enough to arrange for assistance,” with a rueful laugh as they both sit—a collection of mages and Melys, carting her personal effects from the central tower to the former Templar one, down and up no end of stairs. It was a kind gesture to make; kindness repaid, she supposes.

As for the phylacteries: she sighs as she stirs her tea, settling, thoughtful.

“To that debacle, I scarcely needed a crystal to hear of it.” She might have done as well to simply lean out her window with a hand cupped around her ear. “I do worry...the phylacteries little change the situation of rifters, in truth, but the principle of the matter is significant. I cannot think the Inquisition itself wishes this, not when our leadership far better understands the risks posed than do those less familiar with the small rifter population,”

namely, that they'll be provoked into running wild and making matters worse for everyone,

“and I worry that treating them as the enemy before us will force their hands into further concessions to those who will point to such behaviour and call their fears justified.”

Some of what she's heard, can they say otherwise? With less and less credibility, should this escalate.

[justice_is_blond]

He sighs as well.

"You have to stay close else the pain increases, I've heard. Putting phylacteries on you is just another display of power and control. Maker, it could all be beyond the point, even. We don't know if phylacteries will work, you've lyrium in your blood somehow, and yet the Chantry wants to flex its muscles and point out that it's not gone. That it still wants control and it's looking for any opportunity it gets."

There are no steps of this battle that are won. The Inquisition is telling them it will make quiet motions for mage rights, but there's nothing public. It's all things they can take back. And it's frustrating, to say the least.

"Our leadership, the leadership in Skyhold, is beholden to the Chantry and the Templars even as it claims to be something different. And we've a Templar in command here as well. They can say they want progress, that they understand the struggles of Rifters, but they've failed to understand the struggles of mages for nine hundred years, and elves just as long. It's words, empty words. And it's an attempt to sew division between mages and Rifters so that we'll go after each other rather than presenting a united front."

It's hard for him to be optimistic. It's especially hard with the most recent news.

[ipseite]

“Done very easily,” she notes, “each time. We are not without culpability—all of us, no one group—for the weakness of the Inquisition's position. If the Inquisition is beholden to such outside forces, and we know that it is, let us also understand that our every misstep has led us here.”

How quick and how easy it is still rifters and mages and elves. Divisions. Us, them. For every voice that has spoken unity, a hundred others refuse it. It was true in Skyhold, it's true here, and she has no doubt that other Inquisition outposts reflect the same; they are not whole, they are a series of patchwork uneasy truces, and she is terribly afraid it will not hold much longer.

“On these crystals, all are so quick to speak of 'the Inquisition' as if it's some separate, terrible thing of which we're not ourselves a part. If the Inquisition has no cohesion in its own ranks, how can we expect it to be what it must be? Little wonder it hasn't the strength not to give way when concessions are forced upon it. The business with the phylacteries—I understand the mistake they made, with the mages. The perceived safety of status quo. But while our leaders may be many things, 'a Templar' among them, they are not fools. No, this was forced on them as much as us.”

She isn't afraid of the Inquisition. She's afraid that the voices of the frightened will cling to rage instead of reason, and tear apart what might have protected them if they would only hold a moment, and think.

[justice_is_blond]

He raises an eyebrow, a little amused, before shrugging.

"For me, it is separate. I participate in a Division and on two projects, but I'm with the Grey Wardens. We're not a part of the Inquisition. Allies, yes. But separate. Forced literally out of Skyhold when the Wardens chose to support my continued breathing and existing. I believe the Inquisition necessary to defeat Corypheus, I believe defeating Corypheus should be the primary concern of everyone, but I do not have faith in the Inquisition beyond that. I'm sorry. It was founded by people who are very much affiliated with the Chantry, people who benefitted from the power gained by having mages leashed. People who in the end will benefit from a show of control over the new group the common people fear - Rifters - if and when they rejoin the Chantry. Perhaps it was forced... but it was forced only as much as the door was opened for it. They invited the Templars and Chantry to the negotiating table. They did not treat with the mages as if with an independent power; they acted as if we were still tied to Templars and Chantry both, and then had too many matters on their plate to be able to settle it all."

He's less afraid of the Inquisition than he is of what comes after. Precedents are being set here, mage prisoners guarded by Templars, talks with mages also involving the other two groups, and what's being set will not easily be undone.

"They had the chance to destroy the phylacteries right away, as you're aware. They did not choose to make a stand and this is what came of it. Not strength or unity, but weakness and division. And they will remain a 'they' until they stop seeing mages and Rifters as potential threats and view them instead as actual allies."

Every phylactery could have been destroyed at the fortress. They could have been destroyed in the store room as soon as the mages in Kirkwall had a chance to get theirs out of there if wanted. Instead of leading, though, the Inquisition chose to follow.

Anders exhales, stirring his tea before taking a sip.

"There have been no native mages appointed Division head here or in Skyhold. If they replace you with a mage I'll be shocked. Until it is inclusive, until minority groups are represented in its leaders, it is choosing to be separate, I feel. And with the declaration about only Loyalist mages leading efforts it's being even more clear."

[ipseite]

The subject leaves her cold, and there is no answering smile; she stirs her tea mindlessly, looking at nothing in particular. There are points she might argue with, but the purpose of arguing all these points is...what? It all amounts to the same thing, in the end, and she says,

“And that is why we'll fail.”

And there will be no 'after'.

“The Inquisition misstepped, badly, with the mages. They believed they were upholding status quo—and they were. They believed it wouldn't matter, but it did. That was about mages. About the war. This, though; this is not about rifters. It is explicitly political, and it is about the Inquisition. Whatever factions within the Chantry, they saw what they achieved and in it they saw opportunity. Rifter phylacteries hold no practical benefit for the Inquisition. What it does to the Inquisition is exactly what we have seen, what has been threatened—they know rifters. They are not strangers, our leaders. It isn't to the Inquisition's benefit that rifters run the Gallows with blood refusing to give their own. It's to the benefit of those who would see the Inquisition destroyed. As long as each separate faction of the Inquisition sits in each separate corner, we will be vulnerable to this kind of exploitation. And whether it is this or another attempt, one day, it will work.”

She sips her tea.

With a hint of restrained pity, “They imagine themselves still connected to their homes. And will not see that this is the only home we will have. If rifters would fight half so hard for the lives they have instead of the lives they wish they had, perhaps we wouldn't be in such a bind.”

[justice_is_blond]

He doesn't believe they'll fail... because he can't. There are so many times in his life when he's been fine with giving up and having things be at an end. No more. He's found a family. The world will be saved for them, and he'll find a cure for Nate too. Somehow. He's not ready to give up.

"I can see why they think themselves still connected. Many vanish, ostensibly returning to home, and most of the rest hope to return home. Though I don't know that we've any proof they, you, do go back. Especially as you've now lyrium in your blood somehow. I don't know how that happened, if..." Anders trails off, shaking his head. He doesn't even have any educated guesses.

[ipseite]

“I don't think we came from anywhere, at all,” she says, quietly. “Late last year, I spoke with the Provost on the subject—before any of that business with our blood. But I can't avoid minding it, knowing what else—that we were forgotten. The quality of our blood. That bodies are not what they were, that magic is not what it was. What we do and do not bring. That we all of us were dreaming, before Thedas.”

She spreads her hands, helplessly— “I cannot but agree with him that we are more akin to spirits. The Fade is a place touched by minds, not by hands—think for a moment of what some rifters have said, of their new memories. The lives that we left behind are yet lived.”

It is a chilling thought. How can you return to something if the you that you are never left it?

(It's a chilling thought, that somewhere in all of possibility there is Petrana still shackled to Marius—)

“Thedas dreamed us into being. We've no reason to think we return to aught but the Fade.”

[justice_is_blond]

He has to get up at hearing that, has to pace because he can't quite process it sitting still. It makes a sort of sense: part of the cure had been found due to thinking about Cole and how he was forgotten, that they had lyrium to them, the rumors of new memories coming to some, but it also doesn't feel like it should make sense.

"The Rifters are... shaped from the Fade. You're... echoes, of a sort, from another world, rather than pulled through?" Anders looks to her for confirmation, if she can give it. "Maker."

They're people, echoes or not. That's the easy part. The rest of it?

"...So every Rifter that's gone, they're gone gone?" No. That's a personal weight and pain to carry, not something to put on her shoulders. "At least that means I've no idea at all how any phylactery would work. Tracking the Fade, parts of the Fade, should be impossible. It's everywhere. A small consolation. If any."

[ipseite]

He receives a short, tired nod; perhaps she's wrong, but she thinks...with all that they know, how can she believe anything else? They've dreamed themselves into being, or been dreamed into being, and it doesn't make them any the less, but it changes them. They have changed. They can feel it.

It means different things. It can't not—

but she hadn't considered the phylactery matter in that light, and it gives her a moment's pause.

“Perhaps not,” she says, after a moment, of it being small. “God, I should take any consolation at all if it might stem the tide of anger.”

And then, quieter, “If to be as we are might be some protection, perhaps that is worthwhile to know and better understand. For those who will struggle. I can't think it will go unknown so much longer.”

[justice_is_blond]

"There's some risk to it," he admits. "You're all far more complex than spirits, so those who want to call you demons already will feel it more justified."

She looks tired, sounds tired, and he can't blame her. So many will see this as more reason to fear them. But it may be worth it to avoid tests and research. The rifters are people, and no one deserves to be treated like a test subject.

"But you're right. Sooner or later people will do the math and come to the solution themselves, and if you can control the release then it may go better for you. Maybe. You know how skilled I am at politics."

How unskilled, really.

[ipseite]

“I will be obliged to speak further on the matter with Provost Thranduil, I think.” And it chafes at her to do, but Anders is right—controlling this information isn't going to mean keeping it a secret, and Petrana is no longer in a position to direct efforts as she once was. The new diplomacy head, when one is announced, will be another to speak with...

“And whoever it is replaces me,” aloud, carefully containing any bitterness that might linger.

Though her lips had thinned when she spoke of Thranduil. She's not unwilling to work with her former colleagues, but she hasn't forgotten which of them stood where.