[OPEN] lets say its like the sunrise

[esquive]

WHO: Flint, Wysteria, Marcoulf + YOU
WHAT: Guardian Catch-all
WHEN: Right Now
WHERE: Kirkwall, unless otherwise noted
NOTES: Hit me up if you want a specific starter!

FLINT

I. BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Somewhere in the Gallows, there is a narrow interior courtyard. It's shielded by much of the weather if not the chill by the high walls surrounding it which makes it more conducive to loitering than most. In this courtyard, a minor noblewoman from Ostwick and a merchant of some middling means are carrying on a conversation while the noblelady tosses a ball down the length of the narrow yard. Her dog, long-legged and mad from hours locked away in a Gallows apartment, races after it - digs up the winter bare planters - rolls in the ice - while his mistress is saying:

"--It could be done, of course. But the price would be astronomical."

The shape of the conversation wanders upward, carried by the cold air and the narrow walls of the courtyard to where on the balcony above, a man in a dark coat is taking some air. Flint stands far enough from the balcony's wall that it would be difficult to see him from the courtyard below. He's nursing a steaming cup of something and is absolutely not eavesdropping.

WYSTERIA

I. INDEPENDENT STUDY
There's a young woman with possession of an entire table in the library. Frankly speaking? That's rude and unfair to the six dozen other scholars jockeying for any available study space to be found in the Gallows. And yet Wysteria Poppell persists with her charts and papers and open books sprawled about her in every direction.

For the most part they're awfully boring sorts of books - natural history and long, dry examinations of the Fade. But one of the books - in fact the one that sits open over top of everything else - is at least interesting for the fact that it's so comically massive and seems to be all but crumbling under its own weight. Wysteria's isolated a section in the back and seems to be studying this book very carefully indeed, pausing frequently to make chicken scratch notes in the sheaf of papers at her right hand.

(Yes, she is technically avoiding her work for Base Operations by hiding out here. No, she'd rather not discuss it.)

MARCOULF

I. WICKED GRACE
The weather's miserable to the point that they're no point in spending any more of it than necessary out in that cutting harbor wind or through the rain and sleet slick the plagues the higher reaches of the city. Between patrol assignments along the Inquisition's harbor space and work in the Gallows, Marcoulf spends any spare scrap of time available near whatever fire is most convenient.

Translation: he's in a tavern, nursing something warm to drink with a hot plate of doesn't-really-matter-as-long-as-it's-warm while losing hands of Wicked Grace. Hemorrhaging the coin this way should bother him (it does); he shouldn't be spending it in the first place (he is).

"Ah," He makes a low noise, then turns the card he's just draw face up on the table. There she is: Lady Death. Time for a show of hands.

II. MUD WRASSLIN'
Kirkwall is no city for a horse in the best of weather. It's all miserable stone roadways and twisting stairwells, made incalculably worse by the rain and the freeze and the melt and the rain and-- All the sand and dirt pulled down into the Inquisition's stables compound and training yards have only turned to mud in winter. The creatures there - exercising fighters and unused mounts - are the worst combination of restless and caked with filth. Trying to keep anything clean and happy is a fool's errand.

But here Marcoulf is, religiously making an attempt anyway. The little roan mare keeps shifting around and stamping her feet, mud-clumped tail thrashing irritably while he scrubs at her mud-caked haunch with a stiff bristled brush. He keeps having to raise an arm to fend off the WHACK! as she swings it like a mace.

[[...or wildcard whatever you want/shoot me a PM for a starter. I'm not the boss of you.]]

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

Oh, no, now you're stuck with him in expository mode forever.

He flashes her a quick smile at that. "Well, say on if it's ever overwhelming--this is ordinarily the sort of thing I'd keep for Thursdays and the discussion group.

"And not--well," he catches himself, "--there are cults that believe He didn't, for whatever varied reasons they give. But it's less whether or not He knew Maferath's heart for what it was and more He expected better. Our Lady set out to prove to Him that the world and mankind could be redeemed, and Maferath foiled that. Saying the Maker blessed that because it sent Her back to His side is as much as saying He wanted Her to fail from the start. Wanted all of us to fail."

[heirring]

With faux horror: oooh nooo.

If he thought she was a bright, attentive student a moment ago, she disproves that entirely by now leaning slightly forward and setting her chin thoughtfully on an enraptured upturned hand. "Is that not typical? The inevitability of failure? How charmingly optimistic!"

[faithlikeaseed]

This is how they get you!!

"That's--" Wait, what? Myr's nose-scrunched look of puzzlement only lasts the briefest of moments, but it's there all the same. Congratulations, Wysteria, that is not where he thought that was going.

"Optimistic, huh? That He figured we'd do better when we're prone to failing by our nature?" At least he recovers adroitly enough.

[heirring]

"That He had so much faith in you to begin with! It's a very generous sentiment, even if it went rather poorly. Where I come from, everything's all been decided already. Every spirit is just an-- well in something like an endless rotation, I suppose. We're doing the same thing over and over again and we always go back to the same places, and nothing you or I do would rather make a difference. Theologically speaking. So yes. I think it's very nice that there is some uncertainty. It makes things so much for interesting."

A thoughtful pause, a flashing smile. She leans forward conspiratorially. "You know, I'd expect that to make people less happy to scrap with one another, but you're all very industrious with that as well."

[faithlikeaseed]

Well that's horrifying.

Thankfully Myr's more diplomatic than to let that show on his face, though that he's got a lot of questions clearly does. "Then--you don't mean day in and day out, do you? More on the span of lives? D'you all know what'll happen to you before it happens, then?"

Oh no it's just getting more horrifying the longer he thinks of it, especially because it neatly answers questions like why don't you just kill yourselves to get out of it? from the jump.

He's going to have nightmares about this if he doesn't get it off his mind. He gives a rapid shake of his head as if it could dispel the imaginings before they take root (TOO LATE) and clears his throat. "Ah--well, I s'pose that's because most people don't really realize we've got a choice in the matter. Or believe it in a way that makes a change in their lives; it's easy to imagine that you're not making yourself and how you respond to things but that you're just--fashioned out of your upbringing and can only act the way you learned to. That it's not your fault if you choose wrong; you were pushed into it."

[heirring]

"How fascinating. Though it makes a kind of backward sense, I suppose. If your potential for what becomes of you after all this really is in question, then I guess the things that you do here matter in a way that's more... I don't know. Tangiblle? I don't know. I imagine it's very different to have faith in a thing that you know exists in some form. I mean, we see evidence of the Fade and you know that Andraste was alive at some point. It's all very real."

Unfortunately for her company, Wysteria is more than happy to veer back to his earlier questions. At least in part: "Where I'm from, the things you do in life are supposedly indications of the eventual destination of your spirit. But that destination is already decided before you're born. There's no way to know for certain until you die and your spirit goes off, but the idea is that the more easily you find it to lead a virtuous life then the more likely it is that you're fated to end up somewhere pleasant in the end."

[faithlikeaseed]

Myr rests his elbows on the table, chin on his laced fingers and a thoughtful frown on his face as he listens to this theological tidbit. It's enough unlike anything he's used to he can't even come up with a ready analogy--there's a thousand and one heresies among the Cults of the Maker and surely one of them has something like, but--

Or, well. It really wasn't all so different from their own homegrown spirits, was it? If one looked at a slant angle on it--they hadn't been able to create for themselves, only echo, and if creating a life instead of mimicking one required a volition they lacked... He chews at his lower lip. "How do you know it's all doomed to work out one way?" he asks at length. "If you haven't got something as tangible as the Black City for evidence--do you see the dying go off to their rewards? Or--what if someone seems to be destined for goodness all along but then does something truly awful, some hideous crime--"

He's groping around to find a hold on the idea, frown deepening as it eludes him. "--Even that would be exactly what he was meant to do?"

[heirring]

"That's right." She seems pleased that he's grasping the concept, flashing a cheery grin. "I don't know that it invalidates the goodness that came before it exactly - after all, imagine all the people whose lives were touched by the good, who may very well be living righteously. But it certainly changes things for the individual in question. And maybe for whoever was affected by his dreadful actions, of course. But it could also simply be that the person who did the terrible thing is just acting as an instrument of Gods to punish a person who's soul is already damned. They do that sometimes too, apparently.

"The point is that nothing is definitive one way or another, and that technically speaking nothing you do in life will change your fate. Your spirit's place was decided long before you were ever born. As for proof--"

Here, Wysteria clucks her tongue. It would be a strange question to ask in Kalvad, but here? In Thedas, where there is such a strange certainty about the truth of some things? She can see how it might warrant questioning. "Well, because the Gods told people a long time ago that it was true. There were all kinds of miracles to back it up, of course, but it was a very long time ago. But I suppose that's not much different from Andraste or the Maker, is it? I mean, you haven't exactly been to the Black City, have you?"

[faithlikeaseed]

Now that Myr's gotten his mind wrapped around the idea--sort of--it isn't so awful to contemplate. It doesn't sound as if they'd any more certainty that the world really was that way than anyone on Thedas did that-- Ah. He makes an amused noise in the back of his throat as she calls him on that. "No, I've not," he replies, "and truth be told I'd count the question unfair if someone asked me how I knew Holy Andraste really had marched on Tevinter if I hadn't been there myself to witness it, so asking you the same about your Gods' decrees is hardly sporting. There's got to be room for faith, after all."

He unfolds from being hunched over his hands, head a little to one side as he studies her from across the table. "I think," he says at length, "it's that I can't figure out how it would feel any different from inside, to know the Gods had decreed I didn't really have any choice in the matter. Do you think--now that you're on Thedas--you're still bound for whatever was declared for you from the start?"

Maybe that's rude, over-intimate, for all they don't know each other that well. But--periodic frivolity or not--she comes across enough like his old Circlemates to invite the idle prying, all in the name of philosophy.