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

[wythersake]

"Nothing so dreadful."

Isaac maintains a marked distance from the dog, brows tipping upwards into a smile (Fiddly -- reminded, abruptly, of Anders. Wardens. As though nation is ever the first thing he thinks of elves)

"Five years does fly,"

Since that Circle. It's a question, for what little it's spoken like one; if she was taken before the Rebellion, she isn't so old it can have been long. A sharp left at the end of the hall. A distraction: he'll know one when he sees it.

[circleprodigy]

If Inessa had known Isaac better, she would have probably made a quip about singing Andraste's Mabari to compensate. The song was sappy and obnoxious, but it held the entertainment value of annoying non-Fereldans/dog-people and that alone was worth the time spent. But she maintained her polite reserve, keeping Garahel close to her despite the war hound's curiosity.

In response to the comment (well, question), Inessa nods. "It does indeed. I remembered little else but the Circle, when that life ended and a new course was necessary. If someone had told me how those five years would pass, I would have thought them mad. The parts that were my own choosing, I do not regret." Mostly. Her gaze flits over to him, curious. "Do you miss any of it, or were you glad to shed the system, as were so many others?"

[wythersake]

The parts that were my own choosing,

It doesn't shift the pleasant distance of his expression. Even so, he can spy the handholds, imagines anyone might. The places another might grip and tear loose argument: The freedom to choose; the cost in doing so. Hasn't that always been the fumble?

Isaac didn't choose war, more than any mage might have once chosen recruitment. One was not plucked from stones for only the cost of asking.

"I fear the two not much exclusive —" He misses certainty, or what will pass for it. What will pass for it was too often a shadow. "— Or we'd all have an easier time of it."