open: we built this circle on rock and roll

[exequy]

WHO: Open (mostly), targeted toward people who care about mage problems but anybody's welcome.
WHAT: Looting a Circle, fighting some scavengers, and arguing about the ethics of falsifying records of abuse.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Markham
NOTES: This is a sliver of a couple bigger schemes, including a plan to publicize mage mistreatment (which will double as an anti-Gertruda Divine-influencing plot) and a plan to hide some Circle valuables from the Chantry, but your character doesn't have to be aware of those plans to participate in this! They can just be along to help fight bandits and carry heavy stuff. ETA: In some places this log says Ostwick, rather than Markham, because I'm dumb. Ignore them.

Calling an outbreak of enchantment-related deaths and mysterious incidents in Markham convenient would be horribly insensitive to the various burn victims and vanished druffalo involved, but, you know. It is. All of the arguments about whether or not to make formal request for permission to secure the Circle's contents, when it's already their stuff, and if Ostwick says no it might mean the Inquisition won't give them leave to go—those arguments were all for nothing. Markham's response is, essentially, Please do. Hooray!

Comments

[inkindled]

Looking away into the dark, where the light of their fire does not quite reach, Matthias swallows.

"I mean," he says, slowly, "if it's only the building," but Isaac hadn't sounded that convinced of it either. And if it is ghosts, it'd be better to know now rather than later, right, because if they know now, they can act now, rather than later, when they've dropped off to sleep. If they drop off to sleep. Matthias won't. He knows that now.

"If it's only the building," with renewed conviction this time, and he shrugs the blanket off by squaring his shoulders, so he looks less like an idiot, "then we won't lose anything by going off to confirm it's only the building, right." He can't back down, especially now that Isaac is paying attention to him. "And it won't take very long. Right?"

[wythersake]

"Quick as silver."

Death is the more usual phrase. Isaac stretches to his feet — doesn't seem worth shaking anyone else awake for watch. Like as not, the most dangerous things in this ruin are those lying about the fire.

A hand finds his staff, all the same.

"From the left hall, was it?"

Probably not. Deep sounds are down sounds, but he's in no particular hurry to root through a midnight basement, just see the boy doesn't try it alone. Isaac shakes the end of his staff into embers, and flame tints the shade about them low, ruddy; not quite light. It tastes a little like someone else's dream: Waking to find one's house set strange, askew. Down this corridor, there ought to be a staircase — there's nothing at all.

[inkindled]

"Maybe--I think--"

Hastily, Matthias gets to his feet. He'd like to be coordinated. He comes off as scrambled instead, and even when he's up, the pins-and-needles in his legs and his feet make his walk a little more awkward than it ought to be.

But he has his staff as well. There's not really a need to light it up, not when they have Isaac's to go by. He does it anyways--a brighter, cracklier light, more like a lit torch with its edges snatched by an unseen wind. Fire is a comfort. Something real.

"I think it was down," he says, quiet, lest the ghost or whatever else might be around hear them. "Below, I mean. It sounded deep."

There's no staircase down the corridor, and Matthias knows that. He scouted any hallway connecting to the library on the first night, busying himself like he was on a patrol, like someone needed to secure the perimeter. Perhaps someone did. Perhaps that first effort was more necessary than even he had known at the time.

"There's not actually a ghost," he says, as disinterested as he can manage, and spoken entirely to Isaac's back. "You were just fucking with me. Spiders, though. There's loads of spiders."

[wythersake]

"Ate the ghosts. I can't imagine there were enough bandits."

Glanced over his shoulder, squinting approval against the flame.

"I remember your voice," They aren't brimming with Marcher mages — to say nothing of those under twenty, young enough the Circles might have missed them entire. "During that talk of votes."

Isaac taps the end of the wood against stone, listens for the echo of pipes, hollows; some mysterious trapdoor. No such luck. Isaac lingers, not quite yet willing to go search for the steps (to admit he needs searching), turned around despite the past days' work.

Someone else's dream. Still ever a maze.

"We could do with a few more."

Voices, or votes; and never mind, how little their points agreed.

[inkindled]

Matthias, as he walks, is trying to wrap his mind around spiders that eat ghosts, and what sort of powers they might be granted by this act--all those peasant superstitions, drink by moonlight the milk of a sow who birthed a stillborn piglet within the last fortnight for virility--which is actually a rather good distraction from potentially walking blind into the maw of a ghost-eating-spider-that-probably-wouldn't-turn-its-nose-up-at-mage.

Do spiders have noses?

All this is to say that Matthias flushes when Isaac looks at him, as if it might be possible to read all of these stupid thoughts from a mere glance at his face. It hopefully goes unnoticed, in the dimness.

"Oh, yeah?"

Just in case it doesn't go unnoticed, he breaks his own stupid hot-face awkwardness by choosing to step manfully close to the wall. What if a ghost sticks its arms out and grabs him? He's not worried. Watch as he puts his ear against the stone, demonstrating how closely he is listening for echoes. That's probably what Isaac is doing. Or else he hopes it is, or else he'll look doubly stupid.

Anyways, there's nothing, and he leans back again, tugging straight his leather armor.

"Seems like there's loads of talking and voting. Dunno why you'd want more. I don't. I'd rather, you know. Do things." Clearly. That's why he volunteered to get up and go wandering about in the dark. Other than the two of them talking, the corridor is deathly quiet. Like a tomb. It is, sort of, a tomb, isn't it. True, if not precisely the thought Matthias wants. "What about you? 'Cause I remember hearing you as well, and thinking you were hard to get a read on."

Not a compliment.

[wythersake]

"Do you know everyone who heard that conversation?"

Worse: Their friends, their roommates, their — whatever they're calling De Cedoux today. The glance he casts back toward the library is measured, instruction and not instinct.

"We know a deal more than when it began," So it's we now. "What they'll stomach."

Another twist of hallway; a supply closet. He'd be willing to bet (not a great deal, mind you),

The door swings open onto dim shelves, a disarray of empty bottles, rags; nothing of value. The whole Circle stinks of disuse, the decay that settles into still places. In here, something heavier lingers, smoke and kohl.

"Try the back wall."

Worth a shot.

[inkindled]

That inclusiveness freezes a small measure of Matthias' critical skepticism. Perhaps a dram's worth. He's staring narrow-eyed at Isaac's back when the door to the cupboard swings open, so he misses much of disappointing reveal.

Trickery isn't what he's good at. Playing both sides of the fence, holding back some part of the truth--he's shit at cards, at any game that requires deliberate deception, because it all somehow ends up showing on his face. And he likes honesty, besides. You should know where you stand with somewhere, and where they stand on what matters to you.

"And that's s'pposed to make it easier, for me to get a read on you?" Oh, wait. The wall. Obediently, before he's thought anything like why-don't-you-try-it-if-you're-so-keen, and still narrow-eyed, Matthias ducks past Isaac to step inside. The smell is a bit manky, nothing horrific. He's smelled worse. He puts a hand out, tentatively, to touch his fingers against the wall to his right--a light pressure, first, and then more firmly. Nothing happens. "You'd have to say for certain your opinion at some point. If you're saying you actually agree."

He tries the left wall, next. Same treatment: light touch, and then a proper push. Two this time, for good measure. Nothing happens. Now there's just the back wall left, which is what he was told to go for originally, but he's got to put up at least some small resistance.

[wythersake]

"What would be the point of that?" A lot of talking. "You want action."

Someone carved their initials into this shelf. Or someone's initials. Could be it's just a squiggle that looks like a B and —

"I don't think anyone needs to tell you how to read." Not an admitted liar, here in the manky closet where some dead mage, or dead knight, or plain dead body went to skive off. All the dreadful things that secret passages are used for, suffocated into routine. His chin tips toward the wall again, arms crossed. "But some of them,"

Those people. He shakes his head.

"I fought with Voss." Not often, happily, or for long. Details. To which end: "The loud Nevarran."

[inkindled]

The wall, the wall, the wall. Managing to convey yeah all right keep your hair on with his body, Matthias turns with some reluctance toward the back wall and gives it a long look.

"I remember hearing her, yeah." Voss, by voice, and before that Voss, a chance glimpse: red hair, striking, striding across the dining hall and not looking at Matthias, laughing at whatever the man she was walking with was saying. Not that Matthias had blamed her; the man she was with had been striking in his own way as well. The Inquisition is rather unfair in that regard. "So what did you have to argue about with her, if you're not actually anti fair chances and hang the Circles and generally everything good and decent. 'Cause to me that's what it sounded like, right. Whatever your secret intentions were or weren't."

The wall: with nothing else for it, Matthias at last puts his fingertips against the stone. Nothing here, nothing there, and then with his last push, there's a quiet ch-thunk that sounds like a very, very large lever being moved. Matthias moves his hands, quickly, ready to dodge any trap.

The next sound is a ponderous scraping, slow and deep. Matthias takes five steps back--or would, if his retreat hadn't backed him straight into Isaac.

"You were," he says, and then, "right," because the whole back wall is moving, "how did you bloody know--"

[wythersake]

"Luck," He admits. "But I'll thank you to pretend it was an air of mystery."

And not scorched mothballs. He waits a moment before nudging Matthias' shoulder (I'm moving); steps around toward the cavernous dim. It seems wider in the dark. Instinct skitters at the back of his neck -- Out after curfew. Isaac likes spiders. He's seen enough ghosts. And he's taken night shift every evening for years straight,

That doesn't make the prospect of surprise any more appealing.

"Arguing with the people you agree with is how you better their arguments." Cool, damp air wafts from the passage; rat droppings crunch underfoot. That deep groan again from below. "What do you think will happen if the Circles return?"

He knows what will happen to Nell. Prefers his own head attached.

[inkindled]

Glad to make wide-eyed space, Matthias shrinks to the side of the closet to allow Isaac all the room he needs to get to the passage that's suddenly opened before them. Then he's right behind him again, close enough to nearly be walking down the back of Isaac's boots, close enough that maybe he's the source of any neck-prickling.

Or not. The smell of the passage reminds Matthias of something he can't place, or maybe even something he's never smelled before. Like a memory inherited, maybe. Is that possible? Is he being weird? He's definitely being weird. Not afraid of the wild dark, Matthias is finding the enclosed dark to be definitely creepy. It's the fault of the Circles, he reckons to himself. He's not been in these sorts of confines in Maker knows how long. The Gallows don't properly count.

Thusly preoccupied, the wisdom of what Isaac says first is lost on him. Matthias marks the tail end of it, decides it is maybe worth committing to memory, tries to trap the words, and immediately gets distracted by the Circles again.

"Dunno," he says, trying to ignore the muffling effect the enclosed passage has on his voice. "'Cause I wouldn't stay, would I. I'd get out before they got their hands on me. I'd not letting myself get put back, and I'd definitely not let them do me in. Like to see them try."

Them, the nebulous them. The faceless Chantry, Templars with helms that hide their faces. The stuff of nightmares, but Matthias would still take them over this sodding damp darkness. He scowls.

"But they won't come back. Will they? They can't. Not after everything. No matter what comes next, we've come this far, won all this freedom and independence and all. I mean, Maker, the Inquisition backed us, more or less. Half the reason I'm even here, is that. How does anyone reverse everything we've done?"