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]

If there was ever anyone listening for pride, it's Matthias. He's fine-tuned toward it, poised to pick apart even the shortest sentence to find the evidence. His shoulders lift--self-consciously, first, hitched up around his ears--and then to a more manful position, settled comfortably under the mantle of approval.

That's how he remains as they set off, out of the storage room. "Step," he cautions, without looking behind him, in case the bandit has forgotten the two short stairs that lead to the hall. Watch your step.

It's a curious sort of parade that they make, with a prisoner between them. They're doing the right thing. There's a little spring in Matthias' step, born of his confidence in their judgement and their mercy. All that uncertainty is ebbing away. This is all going to tie up neatly, and it will be thanks to the two of them that it happened.