faderift | closed. send out the morning birds to sing of the damage,

Entry tags:

closed. send out the morning birds to sing of the damage,

WHO: Martel, Adelaide LeBlanc.
WHAT: Comparative magical theory.
WHEN: Vaguely current/recent.
WHERE: Skyhold Garden.
NOTES: Martel is a warning, but if anything specific comes up, I will edit.

Having returned from his adventure down the Frostbacks with the Orlesian elf girl (and her thrice-damned horse), Martel - does not immediately seek out Adelaide's company. He does not, as a rule, seek out company. Much less immediately. There is enough as needs doing that can or must be done by him that though he has had it in mind to do for a time, it's been...not urgent. While other things - he did not miss the Abomination, no - have been.

Still. He finds her in the garden, unhurried as he descends the steps, observing her. The way that she moves, stiff and deliberate; it is a moment before he announces himself, and not with a greeting--

"It seemed to me that as I have made myself a part of this organisation, I might make myself available to some of the relevant parties as to what uses I can be put to," not quite dryly, just sort of - as Kalten once put it, you know how he is. Martel talks a certain way, it's a problem with his personality.

And as for relevant parties, there are a few, potentially. But the simplest place to start is with the mages, and he and Adelaide are...

...acquainted.

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"I'm aware of it, but not in the way I would've been in Eosia," he says, with a tilt of one hand. "The rules here are different - the way that things work. That I can still do anything here is something of a pleasant surprise, I expect to be adapting for some time. It sounds...further away."

He lacks the connection to Thedas that he had to his own world; as much as he might assimilate, he's never going to be permitted to forget he doesn't belong here.

There are worse things. He will learn to live with it.

"The - preoccupation with spirits and demons is an unusual thing," he observes, after a moment, "in comparison to what I'm accustomed to. Of course we've all summoned a spirit for some task, and there are rumours of necromancers here and there...demon-summoning is forbidden. It isn't something you can do by accident. It isn't a risk that you have to take into account with anything you do that isn't purposeful demon-summoning."

"We've a whole nation of necromancers to the north- Nevarra. Necromancy is their specialty. it ties deeply with their culture of mages." She laces her fingers together in her lap, sitting straight, not quite an orator's posture for she was sitting in the dirt as much as he- but something practiced that held shades of her old authority. "It's not so much a preoccupation as it is a required awareness. Demons can possess mages if we are not strong enough to withstand them. Spirits may offer guidance or, in my case, power by allowing a skilled mage to channel their energy. Demon summoning is taboo and forbidden for more than anything else- what a demon wants is to be on this side of the veil- either conjured over in a body of their own or by possessing a mage. But- being mages in and of itself calls to demons. They are attracted to those with power and to strong emotion. Fear. Grief. Sorrow. Rage. There is a theory that I was researching before all of this, one that had some truth to it- that Demons were corrupted Spirits. Those we fought when you fell through the fade- despair, rage, sloth- they are embodiment of sins. Of the faults and failings of man. Spirits are...more abstract. The biggest difference between the two is that demons, aside from their intent- are far more human than Spirits."

His concession to the correction is easy - it had been a turn of phrase, and given the sensitivity of the subject, a poorly chosen one.

"Of course," he murmurs, at the explanation of which of the two are closer to humanity. Of course it's demons, if there's an option to be taken. Humanity is scarcely better. The Free City of Chyrellos is a badly delivered joke and it is difficult to regret what he did there when he carries so much lingering bitterness from his earliest days in the knighthood. The things they were forced to stand by and allow Aldreas to do, the things that the church's own corruption did not protect her sons and daughters from -

Pandions have always been the black sheep of the church family. Martel was young, once, but he was never so naive about their place in the world or what it meant. How much they could truly achieve.

"I didn't see much of the fight," he says, frankly, recalling how she'd chided him for the participation it had been reasonable to assume he'd had. "I was in no fit state to observe what was going on around me, even after I'd stopped coughing up my own blood. But I've read, and I've heard accounts...it's similar, but a very different sort of thing to the risks you take summoning a demon in Eosia. They're unlikely to possess you. But you'll lose control. Creatures who served the Elder Gods are...the minds of men are not powerful enough for that. You'll go mad, people will get hurt - but not because you were overtaken. Because you made a choice to invite something into the world that you were unable to control, and your mind broke under the force of it."

This sounds like more than just having read about it, back in Eosia.

"It...breaks more than your mind, here." Her lips press together as she glances about the garden rather than Martel. "If conjured in their own form- there is fire and destruction. As articulate and capable as a demon is on the other side of the fade, being pulled across is traumatizing for them. They break and reality breaks with them, leaving them warped and raging. If they possess an unwilling mage- everything breaks. The demon, the mage, the body they inhabit. It creates an abomination."

There is more than fire and destruction- there is blood and loss and death. And the political fallout- her awareness of that leaves Adelaide still for a moment before she clears her throat and returns her gaze to Martel. It hadn't sounded like something he'd read.

Academia is never quite so visceral in it's descriptions. She'd think it to be the same across worlds. "Intent is everything in the fade. Bring a creature made of intent, good or ill, across the world where things are subjective and nuanced and real, where will alone does not alter the fabric of reality- it hurts them. Changes them. Spirits when pulled through can become demons if they are not strong enough. Most are not. This side is too real. They don't understand it. Older demons- named demons. They can be summoned and they are likely much like those of your world. Too powerful to control."

A Damork is abomination enough without any further bells and whistles; a lesson Martel ought to have grasped without the practical. He regrets, fleetingly, pursuing this particular avenue of conversation about sorcery, but ... it's done, now, so here they are.

"For us - demons are a remnant of the old world. The world as it was, before, when the Elder Gods yet had dominion over it. They were banished with their masters, locked away - their power is beyond what a human mind is capable of comprehending. Much less wielding."

The fact he can string a sentence together, much less do literally anything else, is astonishing enough. Even to Martel, occasionally, when he allows himself to think honestly about what he did and what its consequences should have been.

"But you've no Spirits- only the demons?" That is slightly worrying. Much as demons are a problem the presence of them and demons grants a little credence to the idea of balance in the natural order. What is done with that balance by the human element is wide and varied but- demons and no spirits?

What manner of world is that?

"Oh, no," with an easy laugh. "We've spirits - most young knights with any aptitude will play with them, summon them for little tasks. Playful things, usually, like the little bee spirits. Fairies of a kind. But they aren't any kin to what might claim your soul for its master, they don't come from the same place or the same cloth. They belong to the world, not its darkest reaches."

"...bee spirits." Were Compassion a being that felt offense on an existential level- that would be a thing about now. As they aren't, Adelaide feels it on their behalf. "Fairies."

Fairies aren't real, she thinks, living in a world with dragons and dwarves and elves. It's absurd.

"The lesser of them," he says, amused at her expression. Martel has never cared much for fairies, or had a great deal of time for them, but he is unfortunately obliged to accept that they exist whether he approves or not.

"Your spirits, your demons - they're a part of this world, they're connected. Demons, in my world - they're relics of a time we were playthings of the gods.The lush excesses of incomprehensible monstrosities that early humans worshipped because doing so might mean being spared. They can't be made from anything because they were created before our recorded history. Spirits in the world are natural parts of it, they don't come from anywhere else, as demons now do."

After a moment, thoughtful, "And now you know how I felt when told the intriguing small people were creatures invented by bad Thalesian writers to sell bodice-rippers to fishwives."

"...I- what?" Context. Context is important. Context is also cultural and while learning more of Martel's world is fascinating they would likely lose months to explaining the terms they use to explain other terms.

And yet she finds herself in no way despairing of the idea. It's engaging in a way few things have been since the Spire fell.

"Intriguing small- do you mean dwarves or elves?"

Edited 2015-12-22 01:37 (UTC)

"Elves," he says, laughing - a rich, deep sound that is perhaps the most handsome thing about him when it comes so genuinely and without malice. It's easier to imagine him young and courtly in fleeting moments like this, brushing aside the shadows and the weight of years.

"Elves are just stories. Dwarves, too, actually. But my loose understanding of what we call spirits is that there is, in a manner, a spirit in everything. We see a little bee. She sees herself differently. A spell might show you how. Spirits of various things might be summoned, coaxed and bargained with. It's...frowned upon to call on the dead, but not impossible or as terrible as all that. The dead don't care, any more. They're beyond us."

Reflectively, "Little of these things are ever seen by most people. Your average Elene will never know of them and the superstitions they do have are usually only that. Old stories."

If it weren't for the sheer absurdity of the discussion from their mutual points of view- Adelaide might be moved to find him terribly attractive. The warmth that comes from him, the way the harshness drops away for a few moments as his humor mellows out the rough edges. He is handsome, he can be charming- But they'd had their rough beginning and he is laughing instead of explaining which she finds tiresome, though not so much to hold against him. Were she in better spirits, she might have laughed as well.

"Little spirits like that, fairies- those are stories here. Things told to children to help them sleep at night- or to frighten them into good behavior. It depends upon the tale. Calling Spirits here is a delicate task, they are fickle, difficult to understand, and do not deign to speak to anyone- making such a call is more likely to result in a demon answering in a spirit's guise if one isn't careful. The dead are dead. There is no calling them, here. Now and then there are rumors of ghosts haunting places but- more often than not it is a demon. Most things come back to demons, unfortunately." Though it might be interesting to speak with her peers.

Ask what it was like on the other side. How much of what they knew was right, what was wrong, what was absurd.

"Coaxing a spirit such as I know them is more like bargaining with a child - do this chore and have a sweet. One needs to handle them carefully, certainly, but more for the sake of their pride than anything else; all things have risk, but the risk there is far more minor than what you contend with."

Or what he would, if he were to try it here - but Martel was never one for playing games with spirits. No; he had skipped over silly things like that and gone straight to summoning fucking Damorks. With so much distance between him and his life, now, he is almost -

But it's done, it's over. It doesn't matter what he might've done. Only what he does next.

"I've always found the theology of sorcery more interesting than some of its practical applications," he admits, after a thoughtful pause. "The philosophy of it, the...the implications of my ability to channel my own power, I wish I could discuss it with Lady Sephrenia." More than anything, he wishes that - for more reasons than the obvious. "What that means for everything we understand about what we do and how it works."

"Here it depends. From what I was told and what I experienced- spirits choose mages that they will speak to often before their magic ever manifests. I've been hearing them for as long as I can remember. Calling one and convincing it to partner with you varies from spirit to spirit, mage to mage. My mentor charmed a spirit of faith into working with him. For me it was simpler and more specific. Compassion has been speaking to me for most of my life. In the interest of knowing precisely to what extent they would aid me, we made a contract and I keep it in return for their power." Rules she must follow, guidelines for how she might live.

It limits her in combat, to be certain, but she doesn't mind it overmuch.

"It does beg the question- if your sorcery has simply shifted into something that follows the rules of magic as established in Thedas- or if you would have been able to channel without the guidance of your patron gods in your world."

"It seems to me I bend those rules a little too much as it is for it to be the whole of the explanation, but," with a hint of genuine dissatisfaction, "I suppose I will never know."

There's no one to debate it with - there's only one way to find out, and that's going home, as they've firmly established he wouldn't choose to if he could. He has spoken of his death with, by and large, equanimity; a little bleak, but not truly regretful. He has spoken of his world with an absent-minded distance, some fleeting hints of affection but as if it is a place he has been gone from a long time, a place he has accepted is the past.

No; the first and only moment it seems he might regret anything, it's to have such a question raised and be forced to accept he'll never truly know the answer. Martel's never been good at accepting 'no' at all.

"In Eosia...the Younger Gods of Styricum are a thousand, and the relationship one has with one's god is something profoundly personal. The means by which patronage and worship are defined for a person are - intimate. It isn't polite to ask a Styric who it is they worship. To be perfectly honest, I don't know how such things are determined in the ordinary way of things."

But he's not known that for longer, enough to be more at ease with it. For a long time, it didn't matter: "For the knights, we don't choose. There is a patron god of each knighthood, through whom we practise our craft - for all that they are clergymen, of a kind, to be a knight of the Church of Chyrellos is to have an intimate relationship with a the god of another people. And the church turns a blind eye to all of these armored heathens lifting their swords in her name." There's a wryness that's almost kind. Ah, the hypocrisy and nonsensical nature of church life.

"It isn't," he adds, scrupulously fair, "that they are not faithful servants of their own god." To whom he self-evidently feels less connection; perhaps that crisis of faith he mentioned. "Knighthoods are a religious order, for all that a tavern the night of a battle might give you a rather different impression. But we are no longer obliged to simply have faith. We know that our god is real. We know that the gods of Styricum are real. And while one lets us to our own devices, a remote father represented by corrupt churchmen who send us to our deaths and abandon us to the follies of mortal kings, the other is a guiding hand and familiar voice each and every day of our lives, a god who is strengthened by our love and strengthens us in turn to survive."

(He doesn't notice when he stops saying they. Or that, perhaps, he is not so reconciled to their absence as he's asserted.)

"Would a lack of faith not upset the very balance of an organized religion? Knowing something to be true, for it not to be the subject of speculation and a matter of fact would reshape the entire basis of any chantry here. It would end academic debate on the whims or intent of said deity if you don't have to guess at it or meditate on it or refer back to a document centuries old and attempt to divine their obscure scrawling as something relevant and concrete. Why bother when you can ask them?" Certainty in religion. If she could stir up the spirit of Andraste or call to the maker and ask what in their name they meant by magic, why they had it, why demons were a thing, what did they want for and from mages in the first place-

Quite a few of her mentors might yet live. The war might not have happened. The abuse many mages endured may never have been. Circles may never have been created.

And what of those that disagreed with divine decree when goes are not speculative, but fact? Where did free will come into play when such beings existed and took an active role in the lives of those around them-

Were these beings gods at all or merely something that defied rational explanation and thus were given such a title out of man's inherent superstitious nature?

How did Martel's world function?

"How would having that many-" No, that's not the right question- and it's impolitic. "...Ce qui la baise?"

He can't understand that.

"I have no frame of reference for this. I suppose this is what you feel like when we go on about Andraste, the Maker, and everything else you've fallen into."

Martel is wry at her questions, though his amusement sharpens at what he can well guess is not a polite thing she just said to him - a little gently,

"Are your religious institutions well known for being satisfied with the word of soldiers? Even soldiers of your Maker? Chyrellos isn't going to set aside centuries of theological debate and accepted truths because a soldier says the Styric gods are real. The people of Elenia have faith or don't off their own back - the church is all the things a church apparently feels it ought be. And for all that we have that knowledge...our god is no less remote. Not all knights are devout, or remain so, but many serve because what they have faith in is that their faith matters."

(And he did, once, for that same reason - but if you were to put the question to him again, if you were to ask him now... if it mattered, how could he have done all that he did? It doesn't matter. It can't.)

"An Elene churchman would kindly tell you that the Younger Gods are likely demons. That the knights are moral men who can be trusted to stand proof against their temptation and wield their power to the greater good of our own faith, that our faith is such proof. It's an argument that struggles somewhat if you've met many knights, but frankly, most don't. Rendors, across the sea to the south," in a faint sigh, "warn their children that the church knights will come if they are not good. That they are eight feet tall, summon demons with a snap of their fingers and wear the skulls of Rendor babies as belts. I believe there was something in there about horns, as well. Does the knowledge you have about yourself stop superstitions and assumptions and argument about what a mage is?"

His shrug is loose.

"I know lots of things. You know lots of things. The world doesn't turn on what you and I might know. I served a degenerate king for years - knowing what he was meant nothing. Meant no more than knowing the truth of my god, which in whole part, I never did. No one ever does. The gods are not so easily understood. You can ask. You shouldn't assume your question will be answered, or that you will understand the answer you're given if you get one."

He doesn't sound bitter.

After a moment -

"And no church knight is going to walk into the Free City and make such a declaration. They're not all idiots." Just most of them. Pisshead bastards.

Edited 2015-12-26 05:35 (UTC)

"So you've a multitude more gods and kings and knights and religion and they are all still useless bastards." Is what she is taking away from this. The basis of knowledge and faith and politics and religion and while it is not quit so few or so bloody as far as she has heard of Thedas; it is not all that much better.

Somehow that is bizarrely comforting.

"Yes," he says, a bit arch, without needing to consider it in much depth. "And all still convinced of their own faith's superiority. We haven't recently tried to convert Rendor by the sword, but, well."

Eight foot tall demon summoners that wear Rendorish baby skulls as belts. It wasn't a pretty part of the church's storied history.

"I don't particularly miss it."

"It does not sound much like it was worth missing." Alright. Setting that aside, setting cultural differences and questions of faith and kings aside- teaching. Learning. Making use of Martel's skills in a way that he does not mind offering them. "There are many mages on the Council. Why come to me?"

His shrug is one-shouldered, easy.

"Why not you?" by way of perfectly reasonable counterpoint. "There are many mages on the Council, but the number of mages in Skyhold with whom I'm acquainted is a short list and on your Council, you are the whole of it."

He could've gone to Dorian Pavus, but that probably wouldn't have endeared him to anyone. Maybe Pavus.

"I'd recommend becoming better acquainted with more of them but I would hate to inflict your humor on most." He can be charming, yes, he can be reasonable, yes, but there is a bite to him a fair many would find either vexing or frightening. Adelaide merely finds it reasonable.

Vexing or frightening is more the reaction he's accustomed to, at this point in his life, but he sees little point to courting it in Thedas. His options here are limited; he must be reasonable. Sometimes being reasonable means mitigating his own personality through intermediaries.

Like Adelaide, who will never take him seriously. It's refreshing.

"Well, if there's anyone you think I ought to inflict myself on, do let me know."

"Dorian Pavus." She says without missing a beat- though she does allow one to pass before continuing. "And Madame Le Fer."

What they will make of him, if anything, is worth whatever vexation she might earn at pointing him in their direction. Dorian might be well pleased with Martel's attention. Vivienne, like her, may not have the patience for his ego.

"Pavus I've met," he supplies, contemplative. "He makes an able instructor."

It doesn't sound like much, but Martel is hardly known for being effusive in his praise - that there is any, the sparseness of the remark is compliment in itself, no backhand on the back end of it, for all that he says it like an afterthought. He found little to object to in Dorian.

Probably there are those who'd take that as something to object to in him, but they'd likely have to work through the long list of his other flaws, first.

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