How to Train Your Draconology Expert (closed)

[overharrowed]

WHO: Julius, Fitcher
WHAT: Reading draconologist resumes, being disappointed mostly
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: somewhere in the Free Marches, Starkhaven-adjacent
NOTES: OOC info

Ydalla de Vittoria had been disappointing, but straightforward enough. He knew enough to be able to understand dense academic text, and his writing was engaging; if it hadn't been for all the lying, he might even have carved out a place for himself explaining the research to laypeople openly. But a need to feel heroic interfered. Annoying, but straightforward. They'd still gotten some usable information about dragons out of the work, at least.

Brochard had been something else again. The end of the interview, while abrupt, could hardly have been fast enough for Julius' taste. However, he gives no hint of anything other than sympathetic interest until they're safely in the carriage and underway. His expression melts to something franker and more rueful almost immediately.

"Maker. What a sorry state of affairs."

Comments

[overharrowed]

"Hardly a wild guess," he says, amused. "Certainly, once. Though the first time I was out of Kinloch Hold at length was to fight Darkspawn, so it wasn't an especially auspicious introduction to the outside world. I suppose it was inevitable that later travel would improve by comparison."

[unshut]

Her smile is pleasant, her laugh quite easy and low.

"And now? Simply an old hand with the whole affair with no horizons left to conquer, I trust. Why, after all this excitement I suppose you will want nothing more than to retire quietly to a life in the country once the war is finished."

[overharrowed]

"What an optimistic view of the future of mage relations you hold," mildly. "Being allowed to retire quietly to a life in the country could constitute a major victory, in many people's eyes."

And now they're playing a different game, though his smile is no more forced than hers.

[unshut]

"A pessimistic view of this business in the North, I should think. I imagine you future, as is everyone's, is very much dependent on how deeply the Divine is forced to invest in this war with Corypheus. Should the Exalted March sweep through the Imperium as she no doubt means it to do and still have some marching left in its legs, I have very little doubt that the head of that hungry beast will turn back around to herd mages back into some approximation of their Circles. But should Beatrix spend the bulk of her reserves in Tevinter?

"Well," a tip of the head. She shrugs at him. "I expect after this long many of your colleagues have become acclimated to their freedoms and would hardly walk quietly back to the lives they led before the war."

[overharrowed]

"Regardless of whether the Circles return," Julius says, arch, "I can't imagine whatever happens next with mages in the South will be quiet. That's not a political opinion, it's a simple observation."

"For me," as that was what she'd ostensibly been asking about, after all, "I think it's too early to make plans." Or only one plan, possibly more accurately. "We have to survive Corypheus first, after all. I'll enjoy the travel opportunities Riftwatch affords in the meantime as best I can. This one, while frustrating in outcome, at least involved relatively comfortable transit, so it may ultimately make the top five when all is said and done."

[unshut]

That makes her smile, and when she laughs there can be no doubt that her humor is quite genuine. "Then we must find reasons to get you into more carriages, Enchanter. This one is terribly sprung. Unless,"—as if something has just occurred to her—"The problem is entirely on my side. I don't suppose I could convince you to trade seats with me?"

And while she is still bright, her smile still lopsided from laughing: "I'm curious. Did you fight in the rebellion?"

[overharrowed]

He gestures, accepting her request to change seats; he doubts it will make much difference, but it doesn't bother him.

"It's no great secret in the Gallows that I didn't, though perhaps easier to miss now that Anders isn't here to yell it angrily over the crystals now and then." Perhaps unkind, though the tone is not entirely without fondness; it's easier for him to take Anders at a distance, and that has always been true. "I was, I think, not the only mage to be distressed that it came to war. Though it's not as if those who volunteered to work with the Inquisition and then Riftwatch are a randomized sample."

[unshut]

She waves him off - thank you, but no Enchanter. Despite all lighthearted suggestions to the contrary, she will stay where she is. Shuffling seats in a moving carriage feels light asking to bump heads either together or on the roof of the compartment.

"I'm sorry to say I have very little sense of the mages who work with the Inquisition. The split occurred just before I arrived. But," she allows. "I have noticed that we have something of an abundance of reprobates. Though I use the term with all affection and wouldn't limit its application to the mages in our company."

Given their capacity for criminals and bards and rogue Fereldens masquerading as Ambassadors and so on.

"I ask only as it would seem a very long time to be fighting wars with no thought for the future which comes after it. But I suppose there is quite a difference between fighting for a decade rather than half of that."

[overharrowed]

"There is. And I am afraid the Inquisition was going to label me a reprobate the moment I agreed to be a part of the group that wished to weigh in on the disposition of a cache of phylacteries, regardless of my position on the question, so your assessment isn't far wrong, I suspect. Deciding whether to stay with the Inquisition or with Riftwatch after the split wasn't straightforward. I thought I could do more good here." A shrug. "What drew you here, rather than to Skyhold? When I joined up, there was one major option for the organized opposition of Corypheus, but that is no longer true."

[unshut]

"Candidly? Poor timing. I was en route to Kirkwall already and didn't hear of the split until I'd arrived at the Gallows. And by then it was nearly August and I had no real urge to brave the Waking Sea's late summer storms just to crawl to either Skyhold or Orlais where they'd make me sleep on the ground. And then winter came, and who travels during winter? And now it seems," she says, cavalier and cheerful. Fitcher shrugs. "I've grown attached."