WHO: Solas, Six, Sidony, Ashen, you! WHAT: General character open post WHEN: Covering this month. WHERE: All over! NOTES: Free for all as I come back from hiatus.
Late afternoon in the library is peak hours for nerds, but even then, there are only so many nerds, and so it's as quiet and peaceful as a library ought to be. For Solas, identifying the one who had introduced himself a few hours back is a process of elimination -- simply find the individual in the room he doesn't recognise.
Tony is situated at a desk. In front of him is a fan of loose leaf parchment pages of various sizes and qualities, with different hands of writing, and different abuses suffered -- water damage, fire damage, hastily-shoved-into-a-bag damage. Fortunately, all legible, but in need of interpretation, which is what he is doing now. Also in front of him: a mostly clean set of parchments and some writing implements, as he labours over the writing of a report.
It's so boring.
Like.
Who has the time.
(It's Tony, he has the time.)
Chin resting on hand, he noncommittally sketches out a few sentences. The hand he's leaning on is wrapped to cover the constant glow of green light, and likewise, he's wearing a closed jerkin that covers well any suspicious blue lyrium glowing that could otherwise be emanating from his chest hole. As he finishes his next sentence, he hastily sets the pen down as if it were itching him, and picks up one of the loose pages filled with notes, eyes flaring wide in the way people do to wake up a little more, before squinting to focus.
Solas has spent enough time in the library that it's true - noting someone new does not come as a shock, especially someone that seems to enjoy being as nose deep in research as he himself does. He pauses for a moment, giving himself time to observe and watch, to see what he might be reading, where his interests lie before he decides to move forward. He still wears no shoes, so his feet are quiet pads as he walks across the library floor.
It's interesting to see a man boring himself to death as well, which Solas can only appreciate with a wry smile.
The shard catches his attention, at least, and Solas makes a mental note to examine it before he leaves; he does like to keep a close eye on all the anchor shards, just to make sure none are going erstwhile as he settles into Riftwatch. He's given up some of his authority, but he is still the most well known of those that know anything about the Anchor - something he is not inclined to let go of.
"Tony." A bow of his head as he pulls out a chair, settling down.
"Hey," is a very immediate greeting, as if latching on any excuse to stop doing what he's doing, sitting upright. Context slides into place, and Tony says, "Oh, hey," as if to reset. "Thanks for coming."
There are a couple of books and scrolls sitting by -- some older volumes on the interactions of certain materials and magic for the purposes of enchantment, and some more recent scrolls on Fade-touched organic matter -- but his desk is mostly covered in field notes, dated and marked as such. To Solas' eye, he would recognise slapdash calculations associated with slightly obscure, very human (and Thedosian) methods of measuring magical energies, but Tony starts stacking pages to clear the space a little.
"You drinking?" he asks as he does so, with a head tip towards a wine pitcher, though Tony clarifies, "Water and rosemary. I've been failing to detox since Easter. I mean, it's technically tea, right."
"Of course. I am always glad to answer questions for those that seek them."
It's interesting to see what questions people ask, what they seek to learn about the magic of Rifts and the nature of them. Solas is the expert, always will be - there is no one in the world that could ever learn more about that magic than him, thanks to his personal experience - but he is content to share, at least to some extent. His eyes glance down to look at the scrolls, the paper, and he almost nods approvingly; at least Tony is making a worthwhile attempt.
"No, thank you." He leans back, wry. "I find tea does not agree with me in any form." He loathes it, if only for the slight tick of caffeine. "How may I help you?"
Tony pours himself a glass. You think you understand elves, and then the next one surprises you, as if maybe they aren't some kind of homogeneous monolith who all love tea, or refreshing tea-adjacent beverages. Who'd have thought. Once this is done, Tony sits back, his expression showing brief complaint at muscles that have locked in to library nerd position.
"I mean, where to begin," he says, on the topic of help. "You gotta get a lot of rifters knocking on your door, asking what the thing in their hand really is. I guess what I wanna know is what it can do."
To start with, anyway. As much as Solas is a known authority, it'll take a minute to see how much common language they're speaking when it comes to expertise.
Solas would likely loathe the comparison, were he able to hear it; he's well aware that he is nothing like any other elf that walks on Thedas, other than perhaps Thranduil and Galadriel, and they are rare exceptions. He is something more, something different in the heart of him. Either way, he seems more than content to sit and wait, patiently, for whatever Tony might ask him.
"I've been asked many things by many Rifters, yes," Solas admits with a nod of his head. It comes from being the one to locate the Rifts, to find the newcomers, to treat their hands should the worst happen. It comes from knowing the source of the power, more than anyone else in the world could possibly imagine.
"It is part of an Anchor, something that was given to the Inquisitor before the formation of the Inquisition. It has the power to seal Rifts, to protect the person carrying it and to perform feats of power, should it grow stronger."
It would have been remiss of Tony by now to not ask around about the Herald and her abbreviated rise to local legend, so if Solas is feeling generous, he can assume a lack of questions as to the Lady Trevelyan is on account of Tony having done the readings. At least, he's read the public record.
Given the topic at hand (badum-chh), Tony idly unwraps the cloth he has concealing his anchor-shard, the glow a little washed out by the proximity of his lamp, but there. No aberrations, though it contains within it the ability to do a couple of the things Solas has described.
"I heard about the elf that died after she took one of these to the heart," he says. Can't say he doesn't sympathise. "Another local that kicked it after the arm was removed. Proximity and-- I don't know what happened with that second thing, data's thin on the ground."
Solas does not quite understand the meaning, but he can guess from context; there's no reason to ask.
Trevelyan was someone that Solas was beginning to respect, before the untimely struggle that she went through. There's a part of him that is quite glad to see what had happened to her, considering the source of her power, but seeing what had happened to the anchor and all the shards... That's a new frustration he is beginning to manage. It won't end, not while they continue to get Rifters.
Eyes dropping down, Solas hesitates. He doesn't reach out to touch the shard - if it was causing Tony pain the man would have suggested it already - but he keeps a good eye on it, just to make sure. This is his area, after all; this is his.
"Sina, yes." Something he is still blamed for, but Solas ignores that. "I imagine the removal was a mixture of shock and disconnect. I cannot say for certain, having not investigated it personally. I can only share what I know for certain. Sina was a painful case for the community here in Riftwatch."
That's one of those cognitively weird moments where someone puts a human (elven?) touch to what had previously been a cold fact. Her name was Sina. This is paused over and swept aside as Tony drops his attention back down to his own shard, nestled safely in the heel of his hand, a decent distance from a heart that's got its own problems to deal with.
"Mhm," he says. He splays his fingers, flexes them back in, pulls his hand back to lean into his chair, arms folding. "Any clue on how it went from one person's anchor to a whole lot of people's shards?"
He's not sure any of this stuff matters, but he's not sure what doesn't matter either. There is one particular question nagging at him, the more Solas speaks, but it's one of those he has to work up to.
Solas had known her, but not well. There had been nothing he could do to save her life, no matter what power he had when it came to the shards; it was too close to her heart and he was too far, assigned to Skyhold at the time. Perhaps he might have prolonged her life a little more, but at what cost? No one could predict the pain she may have suffered.
"Not currently," Solas frowns, leaning back a little. "The Anchor itself was something of a mystery. It links to the power that Corypheus was seeking for himself, to strengthen himself into godhood, but I am uncertain how it broke into so many pieces - or how it began to bring people through the Rifts."
There is more that could be said, but Solas is wise enough not to tell everything the first time he meets someone.
There it is. The little cue that Tony was both not looking for but anticipating all the same. His mouth twitches as if suppressing some kind of smile, but otherwise occupies himself in absorbing the-- stuff, that Solas is saying. His mind hasn't circled all the way around to comprehending the Bad Guy stationed somewhere nebulously north.
Not his problem is what echoes around the interior of his head, every time. Lately, that's come with a qualifier: Yet.
"People, huh?" he says, then looks down at-- his nails, instead of his shard, though it glows merrily behind folded fingers. "Word around the block says we're lyrium dream demon mage spirits. Or something."
"Those are the words of people with limited understanding of the nature of the Rifts and what the Breach means to Thedas, devoting themselves to the worship of a god that they preach has not visited them nor spoken for centuries." Not that Solas has anything against the Chantry, of course.
He pauses for a moment, lifting a hand to touch his forehead, pensive and frustrated before he speaks again. While he may himself struggle with the idea of people in this world being real, rather than dreamlike, he can at least muster the thought that Rifters cannot be too dissimilar to the natives of Thedas.
"I know spirits and I know people. I would be able to tell if a Rifter was more akin to one than the other."
On the back of the part where Solas goes off about gods and stuff, muttered into Tony's rosemary water as he brings it up to drink. Watching all the while, intent and interested in the unsettlingly focused way he can conjure sometimes. He wipes a little moisture off the rim of his cup.
That doesn't make any sense to him, especially since he loathes tea. Hm.
The question does make him pause, though, and he watches Tony for a long moment, considering. It would be rather unjust of him to declare all Rifters something altogether different from people, given his rather complicated relationship (romantic and otherwise) with some of them, but he still has his doubts.
He still struggles to imagine that half the people in this Thedas are real.
In spite of himself, the innate existential crisis they are discussing, amusement forces a smile to twitch to life.
"Awesome."
He eases back into his chair. "Doesn't help that we got a habit of disappearing tracelessly into the void at random. Is that a thing I should want to prevent from happening or do you think we wake up nice and warm in our beds back in Kansas?"
"To some, like many members here. To others, such as the Chantry, it is simply 'demon' or 'not demon'."
Solas is far too aware of the greyness between the lines, of what could be and what isn't. He's lived with it long enough, in a very literal sense: he is the grey between black and white.
At least Tony is a distraction for now.
"I don't know what Kansas is," he admits, frowning. "But I have no understanding of how and why it happens yet. It simply is."
Tony is silent, like maybe he is giving Solas permission to say 'just kidding' and expand on is answer. When this doesn't happen, he sniffs, looks aside at his notes, and pulls some of the loose leafs of paper more into focus between them.
"I'm conducting some studies," he says, switching track. "Ongoing. Observational, data gathering, probably a lot of reinterpretation that you'd find redundant." He's come around to forcing himself to think of this place as being more laterally situated to his home turf than olden timesy and quaint, in the same way Asgard has its own rules -- he's not here to colonise, preach sophisticated scientific methodology, tell them what they're about.
But he does seek to understand. And then maybe later tell them what they're about. "Anchor-shard interactions with rifts in different active or dormant states. There's some established methodology around measuring energy output of spell casting that I'm applying for want of better tools. If you're interested, I can sling some of the paperwork across your desk sometime. We're going out there on the regular, anyway, whenever a rift opens up locally, so, open invitation."
Solas does, of course, have a far deeper understanding than he might ever be willing to admit to; he knows more about the Fade than anyone due to personal experience, due to how deeply connected he is to the Veil, due to the fact that he feels it in his bones more often than not. He is not willing to share this, however; not with this man, not with anyone, other than those that had stolen his heart so terrifyingly.
"That is the most apt way." He does it himself, with artefacts and his study of Thedas and the Veil, learning more of this world that he had found himself in. He's the one who finds the Rifters, after all - he is beginning to understand the process better, beginning to wrap his mind around it and understand it properly, in a way he might never have had before.
"I would enjoy that," Solas admits, after a brief pause. "My understanding of the Fade and the Veil is deep, of course, but I have not had much time to investigate the shards and Rifters properly. I am, however, the best equipped to recognise the nature of them and to ease the pain and suffering of the Anchor shards, should that become necessary."
"They sting," Tony admits. Not very seriously, even if it's true. "And you have to wear a glove at night if you got-- you know, sensitivities. I'm a light sleeper. But, you know, our burden to bear."
The mental image of this man coming along to one of their excursions -- Tony yelling numbers, Wysteria yelling instructions, Ellis politely making polite inquiries while he smashes demons with a mace -- strikes him as funny enough that the corner of his mouth quirks up. Unexplained.
"But they can do some cool stuff. Guess a valid question is, the more cool stuff they can do, maybe the hungrier they get."
"I've heard it said," Solas admits, voice quiet. "I can soothe the ache and stop the damage from overtaking the body, but anything else is too dangerous to attempt at this point. We do require further study."
He thinks of the people that had suffered and died for their shards, people like Sina, who had hers too close to her heart. It's a dangerous thing, this game they're playing, and he knows that more damage will be done before Corypheus is killed and the Rifters are able to return to their own worlds - should they even have control over it.
Solas simply wants what is his back. This is a very long-winded way of achieving that.
"That may be the case. Overuse of the shard could have negative side effects."
Tony thinks to his little project he's working on, the lens contraption designed to augment the output of his shard to be used in combat. Of routine practicing and pushing the abilities its granted him, of the dozens of rifts he has closed and will close, and of the fact it is the only thing that snapped him out of his own fugue state enough to participate in the culture.
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dear solas. with love, tony.
Tony is situated at a desk. In front of him is a fan of loose leaf parchment pages of various sizes and qualities, with different hands of writing, and different abuses suffered -- water damage, fire damage, hastily-shoved-into-a-bag damage. Fortunately, all legible, but in need of interpretation, which is what he is doing now. Also in front of him: a mostly clean set of parchments and some writing implements, as he labours over the writing of a report.
It's so boring.
Like.
Who has the time.
(It's Tony, he has the time.)
Chin resting on hand, he noncommittally sketches out a few sentences. The hand he's leaning on is wrapped to cover the constant glow of green light, and likewise, he's wearing a closed jerkin that covers well any suspicious blue lyrium glowing that could otherwise be emanating from his chest hole. As he finishes his next sentence, he hastily sets the pen down as if it were itching him, and picks up one of the loose pages filled with notes, eyes flaring wide in the way people do to wake up a little more, before squinting to focus.
no subject
It's interesting to see a man boring himself to death as well, which Solas can only appreciate with a wry smile.
The shard catches his attention, at least, and Solas makes a mental note to examine it before he leaves; he does like to keep a close eye on all the anchor shards, just to make sure none are going erstwhile as he settles into Riftwatch. He's given up some of his authority, but he is still the most well known of those that know anything about the Anchor - something he is not inclined to let go of.
"Tony." A bow of his head as he pulls out a chair, settling down.
no subject
There are a couple of books and scrolls sitting by -- some older volumes on the interactions of certain materials and magic for the purposes of enchantment, and some more recent scrolls on Fade-touched organic matter -- but his desk is mostly covered in field notes, dated and marked as such. To Solas' eye, he would recognise slapdash calculations associated with slightly obscure, very human (and Thedosian) methods of measuring magical energies, but Tony starts stacking pages to clear the space a little.
"You drinking?" he asks as he does so, with a head tip towards a wine pitcher, though Tony clarifies, "Water and rosemary. I've been failing to detox since Easter. I mean, it's technically tea, right."
no subject
It's interesting to see what questions people ask, what they seek to learn about the magic of Rifts and the nature of them. Solas is the expert, always will be - there is no one in the world that could ever learn more about that magic than him, thanks to his personal experience - but he is content to share, at least to some extent. His eyes glance down to look at the scrolls, the paper, and he almost nods approvingly; at least Tony is making a worthwhile attempt.
"No, thank you." He leans back, wry. "I find tea does not agree with me in any form." He loathes it, if only for the slight tick of caffeine. "How may I help you?"
no subject
"I mean, where to begin," he says, on the topic of help. "You gotta get a lot of rifters knocking on your door, asking what the thing in their hand really is. I guess what I wanna know is what it can do."
To start with, anyway. As much as Solas is a known authority, it'll take a minute to see how much common language they're speaking when it comes to expertise.
no subject
"I've been asked many things by many Rifters, yes," Solas admits with a nod of his head. It comes from being the one to locate the Rifts, to find the newcomers, to treat their hands should the worst happen. It comes from knowing the source of the power, more than anyone else in the world could possibly imagine.
"It is part of an Anchor, something that was given to the Inquisitor before the formation of the Inquisition. It has the power to seal Rifts, to protect the person carrying it and to perform feats of power, should it grow stronger."
no subject
It would have been remiss of Tony by now to not ask around about the Herald and her abbreviated rise to local legend, so if Solas is feeling generous, he can assume a lack of questions as to the Lady Trevelyan is on account of Tony having done the readings. At least, he's read the public record.
Given the topic at hand (badum-chh), Tony idly unwraps the cloth he has concealing his anchor-shard, the glow a little washed out by the proximity of his lamp, but there. No aberrations, though it contains within it the ability to do a couple of the things Solas has described.
"I heard about the elf that died after she took one of these to the heart," he says. Can't say he doesn't sympathise. "Another local that kicked it after the arm was removed. Proximity and-- I don't know what happened with that second thing, data's thin on the ground."
no subject
Trevelyan was someone that Solas was beginning to respect, before the untimely struggle that she went through. There's a part of him that is quite glad to see what had happened to her, considering the source of her power, but seeing what had happened to the anchor and all the shards... That's a new frustration he is beginning to manage. It won't end, not while they continue to get Rifters.
Eyes dropping down, Solas hesitates. He doesn't reach out to touch the shard - if it was causing Tony pain the man would have suggested it already - but he keeps a good eye on it, just to make sure. This is his area, after all; this is his.
"Sina, yes." Something he is still blamed for, but Solas ignores that. "I imagine the removal was a mixture of shock and disconnect. I cannot say for certain, having not investigated it personally. I can only share what I know for certain. Sina was a painful case for the community here in Riftwatch."
no subject
"Mhm," he says. He splays his fingers, flexes them back in, pulls his hand back to lean into his chair, arms folding. "Any clue on how it went from one person's anchor to a whole lot of people's shards?"
He's not sure any of this stuff matters, but he's not sure what doesn't matter either. There is one particular question nagging at him, the more Solas speaks, but it's one of those he has to work up to.
no subject
"Not currently," Solas frowns, leaning back a little. "The Anchor itself was something of a mystery. It links to the power that Corypheus was seeking for himself, to strengthen himself into godhood, but I am uncertain how it broke into so many pieces - or how it began to bring people through the Rifts."
There is more that could be said, but Solas is wise enough not to tell everything the first time he meets someone.
no subject
Not his problem is what echoes around the interior of his head, every time. Lately, that's come with a qualifier: Yet.
"People, huh?" he says, then looks down at-- his nails, instead of his shard, though it glows merrily behind folded fingers. "Word around the block says we're lyrium dream demon mage spirits. Or something."
no subject
He pauses for a moment, lifting a hand to touch his forehead, pensive and frustrated before he speaks again. While he may himself struggle with the idea of people in this world being real, rather than dreamlike, he can at least muster the thought that Rifters cannot be too dissimilar to the natives of Thedas.
"I know spirits and I know people. I would be able to tell if a Rifter was more akin to one than the other."
no subject
On the back of the part where Solas goes off about gods and stuff, muttered into Tony's rosemary water as he brings it up to drink. Watching all the while, intent and interested in the unsettlingly focused way he can conjure sometimes. He wipes a little moisture off the rim of his cup.
"And we fall into the people category?"
no subject
The question does make him pause, though, and he watches Tony for a long moment, considering. It would be rather unjust of him to declare all Rifters something altogether different from people, given his rather complicated relationship (romantic and otherwise) with some of them, but he still has his doubts.
He still struggles to imagine that half the people in this Thedas are real.
"More than you do demon, yes."
no subject
In spite of himself, the innate existential crisis they are discussing, amusement forces a smile to twitch to life.
"Awesome."
He eases back into his chair. "Doesn't help that we got a habit of disappearing tracelessly into the void at random. Is that a thing I should want to prevent from happening or do you think we wake up nice and warm in our beds back in Kansas?"
no subject
Solas is far too aware of the greyness between the lines, of what could be and what isn't. He's lived with it long enough, in a very literal sense: he is the grey between black and white.
At least Tony is a distraction for now.
"I don't know what Kansas is," he admits, frowning. "But I have no understanding of how and why it happens yet. It simply is."
no subject
"I'm conducting some studies," he says, switching track. "Ongoing. Observational, data gathering, probably a lot of reinterpretation that you'd find redundant." He's come around to forcing himself to think of this place as being more laterally situated to his home turf than olden timesy and quaint, in the same way Asgard has its own rules -- he's not here to colonise, preach sophisticated scientific methodology, tell them what they're about.
But he does seek to understand. And then maybe later tell them what they're about. "Anchor-shard interactions with rifts in different active or dormant states. There's some established methodology around measuring energy output of spell casting that I'm applying for want of better tools. If you're interested, I can sling some of the paperwork across your desk sometime. We're going out there on the regular, anyway, whenever a rift opens up locally, so, open invitation."
no subject
"That is the most apt way." He does it himself, with artefacts and his study of Thedas and the Veil, learning more of this world that he had found himself in. He's the one who finds the Rifters, after all - he is beginning to understand the process better, beginning to wrap his mind around it and understand it properly, in a way he might never have had before.
"I would enjoy that," Solas admits, after a brief pause. "My understanding of the Fade and the Veil is deep, of course, but I have not had much time to investigate the shards and Rifters properly. I am, however, the best equipped to recognise the nature of them and to ease the pain and suffering of the Anchor shards, should that become necessary."
no subject
The mental image of this man coming along to one of their excursions -- Tony yelling numbers, Wysteria yelling instructions, Ellis politely making polite inquiries while he smashes demons with a mace -- strikes him as funny enough that the corner of his mouth quirks up. Unexplained.
"But they can do some cool stuff. Guess a valid question is, the more cool stuff they can do, maybe the hungrier they get."
no subject
He thinks of the people that had suffered and died for their shards, people like Sina, who had hers too close to her heart. It's a dangerous thing, this game they're playing, and he knows that more damage will be done before Corypheus is killed and the Rifters are able to return to their own worlds - should they even have control over it.
Solas simply wants what is his back. This is a very long-winded way of achieving that.
"That may be the case. Overuse of the shard could have negative side effects."
no subject
Tony thinks to his little project he's working on, the lens contraption designed to augment the output of his shard to be used in combat. Of routine practicing and pushing the abilities its granted him, of the dozens of rifts he has closed and will close, and of the fact it is the only thing that snapped him out of his own fugue state enough to participate in the culture.
He raps his fingers against the table.
"Can't wait to find out."