OPEN: this will be a better year

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

Comments

[fleurdesel]

"We are raised communally, more or less. Some children require more attention than others- to be honest I was not often given charge of students quite so young." A beat passes as her lips twist into a wry smile. "I did not have the appropriate temperament for minding children. When they came to be thirteen or fourteen, depending upon their level of skill, then they came into my care."

And yet in time since the Spire fell, she's come to care for them as though they were her own blood, as though she'd been marked as their protector from the start. These apprentices are hers and she guards them fiercely. "Their usual minders did not make it in the chaos. I have done the best I can. I think it may be enough."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Be thankful that they do not come to you when they are truly young." Early months, even that whole first year with Kieran were a shock to the system, though it almost amuses her to imagine a Circle, what with the way noise travels in such a place, ringing out with the cries of children and waking every mage within. At least she's learning more here without having to actually fully attend the councils and even with her lurking and listening, things have been so fraught that there's no way imaginable that she's grasped the full picture and gained her measure of those within.

Best not to dwell on the fall of the Circles though, better to steer the conversation further along because her opinions on the vote are what they are. Tonight is the start of a new year after all. "What did you teach in the Circle? A woman of your age would have chosen a path to follow if apprentices were involved."

[fleurdesel]

"Creation, Spirit, and Cold spells of the Primal School. Predominantly my focus was on Spirits and the Fade and using them to heal; though I never found anyone with that aptitude in my tutelage until I came here. Potions, poultices, how not to be tricked by demons and the like. I had many papers and lectures published within the Spire but when you are fleeing for your life and those you are minding, you don't stop for paperwork." Rewriting them is a goal- filling out the library with useful tracts for the use of the Inquisition's mages is a cause near and dear to her heart.

[arcaneadvisor]

"Is there one in particular you work with? There was an Enchanter of Kinloch Hold's Circle with us, she went by Wynne, I had no inclination to ask much of how she was respected outwith her own Circle. She worked with a spirit of faith, twas something, I will admit, to be healed by her in battle." Though 'worked with' isn't quite right but she had been quiet enough about it with them until the day she had collapsed. "The Templars are not squeamish about that? It takes very little with such...tensions in the air, to turn a spirit into something worse."

The Abomination is testament to that, as it was to the reaction she received from more than one Templar since arriving.

"There are things I would have stopped for though they are not so easily rewritten if lost; when you are down to but fragments and dust stretching back Ages, there is much you would sacrifice." It's why her rooms here are kept under such a tight lock and key because while she has her own notes, she found these things and she would keep them for as long as she can, perhaps until she can put together a whole picture with them.

[fleurdesel]

"Compassion." But that- Wynne- that twists her lips into a frown readily enough. She meant well, that mage. She had the best of intentions. And she had far more privileges than any other mage Adelaide had ever heard of aside those in the Imperium. "I know of her, she spoke at the Spire while everything was coming unwound. 'Patience' she bid us. As though being patient would solve the problems laid at our feet, or would keep us safe from what was killing us."

Patience. What good had it done them?

"We were all watched carefully- the risks of possession, of becoming an abomination are high. I wasn't permitted anywhere without a Templar in the Spire or when I was sent out to assist in times of discord or plague." The rest, well. "So long as they were not burned in the chaos; should the Inquisition return to the Spire for any reason I might recover them. Getting out alive with my students was a bit more pressing at the time. Words can almost always be rewritten. Children cannot always be recovered. Even with my skills."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Wynne had a way of treating near all of us as if we were unruly and oft exasperating grandchildren, for all her protestations that she was not an old lady. But those who commune so very closely with faith seem to see things from so very far away." Yet how would Wynne have been treated had her predicament been much more common knowledge, knowing just how delicate a climate it was, and the stories out of Kirkwall of that single apostate. And indeed, how often was faith of any sort used as the justification for a great many deeds?

"No temptation to do away with your escort?" She asks, happier to steer the conversation from children when Kieran is still so close and likely to be awake most of the night, burbling away and asking questions. Somewhere deep in the Korcari Wilds there may still be rusting helms, armour and weapons from Templars, if the Chasind and passing Darkspawn haven't scavenged them all. "To fight in a Circle is a trial, and that was in and up, not down and out."

[fleurdesel]

"I never minded them. Aside from being present they were not so terrible- of course- until they were." More the fool her for not being more aware of the tensions winding tighter and tighter until they were fit to snap. "Here at least I may go my way with my students without fear of hovering. It is something of a relief- and I've skills enough in dispelling magic should anything get out of hand. Thusfar I've had no need to do so. Aside from summoning enough snow to cover our section of the garden when all she meant was enough for a single ball the once,lessons have been unremarkable."

It is the best one can hope for- to be unremarkable.

"...so you are that Morrigan- the one who fought in the Blight?"