"I don't know about faith and trust," Alistair says, wrinkling his nose a little. However puppyish he is with the people who've gotten on his good side, he's still a cynic by default. Not a lot of faith in the Maker, here. None in the Chantry. Only as much in people as he thinks they've earned. "But the part about Corypheus and restoring order is good. What I meant is—you can't just offer to take a step back while you still have your arrows pointed at them. That's why whole Circles fall, isn't it? A few mages go bad and the rest get scared because they know you're drawing back to fire."

Metaphors. Rambling. He isn't very good at this.

"There are going to be more abominations. There always have been. If you Harrowed them all tomorrow, there would still be more abominations. Uldred, at Kinloch Hold, he'd been Harrowed. The mage in Kirkwall had been Harrowed, too. He was one of us."

Sorry about that.

"If you're serious, I think you ought to tell them that you're at their disposal if they want to plan for emergencies, because you understand they're going to happen, and then stop talking about blighted Harrowings and abominations. Talk about Corypheus." He glances at the Templars other than Norrington—the ones he feels slightly more entitled to be annoyed with at the moment. Like Nerva. "And don't leave people to their beliefs. When we get Wardens who haven't learned how to treat mages as equals, they learn. We make sure they're ashamed of it."