[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's trying to search for other vague ways to allude to it that wouldn't clue in others in the garden when it hits her, and his expression turns a little relieved. Not entirely, there's still the topic at hand, but at least he doesn't have to open himself to commentary from others right at this moment.

"Yes, exactly." Anders glances around before tilting his head. "There's tea in my research room, if that would work for you? I've a couple of stools and it's currently clean and safe." As in there's nothing Blight-contaminated being taken apart at the moment.

[nadasharillen]

"It certainly looks like I could take a break," Nari replies with a nod and a sheepish smile, looking at the certainly unnecessary number of sharpened stakes in a pile next to her as if seeing them for the first time. She gets to her feet and gathers them up to place near the trellises, returning her knife to her belt and brushing off her legs. "Lead on."

[justice_is_blond]

He chuckles quietly, following her glance. He's spent enough time helping out in the garden that he knows they really might not need that many stakes. There's something on her mind as well, it seems. Or she's very bored.

It doesn't take them long to get to the room, and Anders distracts himself in the short term by pouring tea and setting out cream and sugar for her. Unfortunately, it's a very short term because in moments the task is done and then he's left facing Nari. It's a little nerve-wracking.

Anders takes a breath and looks over at her. "I never know where to start with this. You'd think I'd be used to talking about it, but..." He shakes his head. "What do you know of the events in Kirkwall at that time?"

[nadasharillen]

Coffee, when Nari can get it, is taken black as night. Tea, on the other hand, she happily mixes with the cream and sugar Anders provided with a murmur of thanks.

"Next to nothing," she replies, pursing her lips and casting through memory again. "I'd talked to some, at the Hanged Man. Near a year ago now, right after the forest. I think perhaps even you?" Nari chuckles ruefully and stirs her tea. "But I'd been buying rounds all night, and no-one trusts anyone who's buying drinks but not drinking, so the end of the evening gets a bit hazy. I know the Chantry was destroyed, but not by whom or why." Not being overly fond of the institution, her tone says 'it was probably reasonable', although there's also a flash of something akin to guilt across her face. "I know there was fighting, afterwards. That it was terrible. But it's not something most of those who were here for it want to talk about."

[justice_is_blond]

He doesn't hear judgement in her voice when she mentions the Chantry's destruction, though he can't read the way her expression changes for a moment. No matter. She's taking tea with him, which at least means she's not pre-decided he's a lost cause. Anders nods, taking a breath.

"The Kirkwall Circle, the Gallows, was run by Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard and Knight-Captain Cullen Rutherford. You're familiar with the latter." His tone is a little dry there. "It was the bloodiest and cruelest of the Circles, with mages being made Tranquil on a whim, or accused of blood magic and strung up based on no evidence at all. A day with a new dead mage was a day ending in y. I came here seven years before I destroyed the Chantry to try to save a mage, to try to get him free, only to find he'd been made Tranquil because they wanted to do so. He'd not committed any crimes, he'd not broken any rules. And I became... involved. I didn't want to let that happen anymore."

He shrugs, feeling that makes sense. "So for seven years, as Stannard and Rutherford escalated, as mages continued to die, I tried to help my people in both legal and illegal ways. Legally, I was writing to everyone who was supposed to prevent things like this from occurring. Kirkwall leadership. Chantry leadership. Templar leadership. Seeker leadership. Not a one responded. Not a one acted. But while I waited and tried, I was also smuggling out the most at-risk mages. The ones who were innocent but likely to be murdered or made Tranquil soon. It wasn't enough. It was never enough, and no one was stepping in to help mages. Why would they? We're mages."

The frustration there also seems like it would make sense, at least to a Dalish woman. He looks down before continuing, quiet and grim.

"And then I got word that Meredith had sent for the Rite of Annulment, permission to slaughter ever mage in a Circle for being too depraved and lost to be redeemed, too far gone to live. On the night I thought it likely she'd act on it, I did the only thing I could think of to give the thousand-plus mages a chance. I blew up the Chantry, killing the Grand Cleric who could enable Stannard further... and killing somewhere between a hundred and two hundred. By the numbers it... By the numbers it worked. Over a thousand would have died otherwise. But lives aren't just numbers. They're people, and I'd no right to do that but why should anyone have the right to declare a thousand people doomed? There was no good choice. There were only horrible ones left and I..."

He trails off, shaking his head. Inaction or murder had been his choices. Both were awful.

[nadasharillen]

The teacup Nari holds moves very infrequently during Anders's recitation of a story he must have rolled around and around in his mind for years, although she doesn't know how often it's come out of his mouth like this. It's one that despite the tumbling has never lost all its sharp edges. He moves past "before I destroyed the Chantry" like it's an afterthought, and although her eyes widen and she sucks a quick breath through her nose, she doesn't interrupt.

The rest is horror she can only imagine, tinged red by the cruelties she had seen, the friends she had lost. The very idea of mass slaughter being something that one could calmly write and request permission for... and then something that a commander could turn and order their soldiers to carry out. What does it do to you, to have to live always in fear of that? Or to have to choose between repudiation of everything you've ever known, have trained and been molded your entire life for and taking a blade to people you're theoretically meant to be protecting?

The latter is not something she would have given a single thought to a bare half-year ago. Its expression would have earned a derisive snort. Outright dismissal. Impossible now, having been changed alchemy-like by a heart turned traitor.

Anders was right though. No good choices. Innocents die either way. People mourn either way. Lives are shattered either way. And he was a mage. Those were his people. People who had to band together fiercely and draw their strength from that or else have nothing. She finally takes a sip of tea; its sweetness is incongruous with the words in the air.

It does make sense, to a Dalish woman.

"...even had it been a thousand traded for the lives of two hundred of my people, I would have done it," Nari says finally, slowly, "and with less agonizing even than you speak of." She sets the cup down, picks absently at a fingernail. "We are all we have. We have been all we have for hundreds of years. They weep and rage at their losses, and ours are like dust to them. Less. Yours as well, I imagine."

[justice_is_blond]

"No notice would have been taken of the Annulment," he confirms quietly. "One happened recently, 9:40, and there was no outcry. Our lives are seen as worthless to them, much as yours are. We have a small amount of value for being useful, but if we're not easy to use..."

He trails off. The conclusion to his sentence seems clear. If the tools don't behave as required, they're disposable. And if they don't like to be used, they're even more disposable.

"I took the lives of people who mattered," he says with a little bitterness. "A handful of them. It was still murder. I will carry that weight. But they're only outraged because of the couple they see as having value and they'd not have cared if it were mages. Or like you said, if they were Dalish or elves. It, it was one of the events that helped break the Circles, I can be thankful for that, but I don't know how to turn this change into something that lasts, because they want us all caged again. I don't know how to make it worth it. Especially not when they point to me as the example of what mages can do."

There has to be some way to turn matters around, to help their peoples be seen as people. But Anders doesn't know what the magic solution is there.

[nadasharillen]

She thins her lips, at an equal loss. Stares into her tea.

"If anyone knew how to make such things worth it, it would have happened. Or, perhaps it already has. We want now, we all want now, but real lasting change is like a river cutting rock. Wind wearing a mountain," she lifts her shoulders with a small sad smile. "We didn't lose our language over night. Not over a year. Not over ten. You may never see what truly comes of Kirkwall. Whether history will make of you a hero, a villain, or lose you entirely.

But you've not lost a friend for it today."

[justice_is_blond]

He sighs sadly, before offering out his hand. He'll be a villain, he's fairly certain. The shape's already set. But the Circles are broken, in part because of him, and that's something he'll need to hold on to.

"Thank you, Nahariel." It means a lot when someone finds out about him and chooses to still be his friend. Or finds out about him and then gives him a chance. "Maybe your language can be recovered, and maybe our freedom can last. I'm not an optimist, but not everything goes poorly."

[nadasharillen]

Nari takes the offered hand and squeezes it reassuringly before withdrawing back to the mug. "Maybe," she says. She doesn't sound in the least convinced, but Anders hadn't meant to be convincing. It's more of a shared 'here we are, choosing again to allow for hope'.

She's not sure what else needs saying on the subject, but she finds as she looks into the lees of her tea, the leaves swaying in the remaining water gently, that something is tapping insistently from inside her chest. She thinks instead about Herian Amsel, about the humans who'd strayed too close, so that when she speaks it can be about herself.

"My People have done things too. Things that perhaps can one day be accepted, but never forgiven. Things that perhaps shouldn't be forgiven." She swirls the mug, watches the leaves dance. "There are children with no fathers in this world because I was hurt and angry."

Nari looks at him, her gaze level and serious and somewhere in between empathy and entreaty. "We must try to be kind. To the ones that can't forgive us. To the ones who can't forgive even those who are like us. Even when it's hard. That's part of the price."