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]

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?"