[OPEN] Interview With A Mage

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa and you!
WHAT: Talking to Magefriends about Magic and Abominations
WHEN: August; Post-Abomination, Pre-Modplot
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: none yet

i. colin

It's one of the days that sees Athessa helping out in the apothecary, which means busy hands but a mind free to wander. She's separating the buds from dried, woody stems to place each into jars for their individual uses when she speaks:

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened..."

ii. kostos

This isn't a conversation that is going to happen organically. After reading through some esoteric writings on magic in the library, she gives up for a time and stalks off to find Kostos.

"Oi," she calls to him, jogging to catch up with him. "Got a minute?"

iii. isaac

[ Some late night crystal call when Athessa's eyes get tired of reading ]

Isaac, can I pick your brain a bit?

iv. derrica

[ They've had their fair share of difficult conversations of late, and this one bodes no different. The kicker, of course, is that it's far more personal to Derrica than it is to Athessa, so when the latter seeks out the former, she comes bearing gifts. Little spiced cookies and coffee over ice - does Derrica drink coffee? ]

It's not spice cake, but the flavor is pretty close.

v. wildcard/bring out your mage

[ either hmu on disco or plurk and i'll make a starter for you or wildcard me, whichever! ]

Comments

[sulahnan]

"The abomination thing," she says, also not diverting her attention. Her handwriting has improved enough that she can label the jars and Colin will be able to read them, rather than relying on being able to identify everything by unique characteristics. "I wasn't in the hall when it happened."

[keenly]

Now he stops working, a gleam of uncertainty coming to his eye. Is Athessa afraid of him now?

"What have you been thinking?"

[sulahnan]

She pauses, smelling the floral contents of the jar in her hand before plugging it with the cork.

"Mostly? Wondering why there isn't a way to...stop that from happening. Or reverse it, maybe."

[keenly]

He looks at her, trying to gauge how much this has changed between them.

"Training helps," he says cautiously. "Training counts for a lot. The better trained the mage, the more she knows, the less likely she is to succumb to that. Unless you make her very, very desperate."

His gaze falls away again. "And I don't know why there's not a way to reverse it. It happens sometimes, but only under very specific circumstances. We're taught that by the time a mage becomes an abomination, the demon has claimed its first victim. That mage is the first death caused by the abomination."

[sulahnan]

Athessa frowns. It just doesn't seem fair, which might be a childish sentiment but it's how she feels.

"But not everyone has access to that training," she says, though it's more question than confident statement. "And Circles are...well, here they're like prisons, aren't they? You lose everything and everyone from your life when you go into one?"

[keenly]

"Yes." Colin sets aside his work and turns to lean back against the table. "Most possessions happen outside the Circle, which the Chantry has used as proof the Circles work. Thing is, those abominations happen because families didn't want to get ripped apart, so they hid their mages. The whole thing is just an incentive for people not to seek help. I wasn't even allowed to say goodbye to my family, they took me away so fast."

If there is pain in that admission, it's built well into a wall of acceptance of what happened. He's not sorry for himself anymore, not for this. This was well over half his lifetime ago.

[sulahnan]

"There has to be a better way," said soft enough that it might be to herself, as if she's been trying to solve a puzzle and speaking it out loud might shake some revelation loose.

Another jar, another label, another place on the shelf. "The Chantry shouldn't be in charge of Circles."

[altusimperius]

It's been several days since Benedict borrowed the coffee pot, but he's returning it now, getting things organized in his personal sphere as if that will help offset how alarming the abomination's presence was to him and everyone else.

He glances over to Colin when he enters, and is only slightly surprised to see Athessa there as well.
"H'llo," he says pleasantly enough, returning the pot to where he'd seen Colin pick it up the other day.

[keenly]

"You won't hear me argue with that," Colin agrees, before seeing Benedict. A few things happen on his face at that point--his eyes lighting up, a little smile flitting across his lips, then his eyes glancing away as he consciously tries to settle, to keep from betraying his heart's reaction to seeing the other man. Too late. He only came in to return the coffee pot, not to see Colin.

"Thank you," he says.

[sulahnan]

Athessa turns around, looking to Benedict as another question occurs to her.

"The Circles in Tevinter are different from the southern ones, aren't they?"

[altusimperius]

He may only be here to return the coffee pot, but Benedict isn't going to walk back out without engaging.
"I wouldn't know," he says with a little shrug, coming over to join them, "I was tutored privately, at home. But I assume so, since Tevinter doesn't treat its mages like prisoners."

[keenly]

"It's a very good education," Colin says, feeling generous that way. "They just...have very specific ways they want you to use that education. Unpaid labor, unpaid apothecaries, unpaid soldiers. Sometimes they take away your free will just to get extra kitchen hands. Make children fight demons and kill them if they take too long at it."

[sulahnan]

"That's fucked," is Athessa's eloquent opinion on the matter. "They shouldn't trade controlling you in exchange for giving you what you need to know to actually use your magic."

[altusimperius]

Benedict comes to lean on whatever surface is nearest, intrigued by the conversation even if he can't contribute much, at least about Southerners.

Well. He can, he realizes-- it's just not pleasant.

"...the dungeons down below," he says in a quiet, evasive, I'm-not-emotional-about-this tone, "they were designed for mages. And the manacles and things."

[keenly]

"Every Circle has them," Colin says, gaze going distant. "Prisons within prisons. Sometimes they put new apprentices in there before they're processed. Other times, it's just used as punishment. Anders spent a year in ours--in one go, I mean, not total. Completely solitary, wasn't allowed any visitors at all."

He swallows. "There's not a trade. It's not an exchange. They'll either control us or they'll kill us, and we're meant to be grateful either way. That hasn't changed."

[sulahnan]

She hates this. Feeling like it's so obvious that mages should be trained without imprisonment first, without being ripped away from their families.

"What about abominations?" Asked of Benedict, her expression serious and tinged with dread.

[altusimperius]

"What about them?" he asks uneasily, hunching his shoulders, "like... what if someone becomes one down there?"

[keenly]

“In Tevinter,” Colin corrects gently.

[sulahnan]

"Yeah, like, are they more common? Less common? Do we know that at all?" She looks between the two men, her expression not unlike that of a child asking about the concept of death.

"Do they have the uh...what're they called. Harrowings? In all Circles?"

[altusimperius]

"You don't really hear about them the same way," Bene replies pensively, "they happen, I know, and... well, sometimes on purpose. But most of the mages up north don't live in the kind of fear that they-- that we do down here." His eyes flit briefly to meet Colin's.

"It's rarer that they're pushed to that level of desperation, I guess."

[keenly]

Colin meets that look and then glances away.

"Blood mages can force it to happen. Force demons into people. Happened at my Circle."

[sulahnan]

Her attention swivels from Benedict to Colin, her serious-listening-face giving way to wide-eyed shock. What he said has some uncomfortable implications, ones she's not ready to think about just now. Her finger twitches and she balls her hands into fists instinctively. There aren't any blood mages here, the twitch is just a twitch. Nobody is pulling on her veins.

She's never feared Benedict, or Colin. Even having seen what Colin is capable of (even though that was a dream), she trusts him.

"That's so fucked up," she says at last, "the Chantry just can't stand anyone not playing by their rules, can they?"

[altusimperius]

"I mean. That's not really the Chantry doing it," Benedict admits, Colin's words sinking into him. It's not something he'd find unexpected from... people he knows, even, who might get opportunistic with Laetans.

"The thing about Tevinter is it's... got a bit of a reputation for blood magic." Not that there was much wind in his sails to begin with, but it's definitely gone now.

[keenly]

"I think...what was used at my Circle to stop it, the, um, the blood mages making people get possessed, there's something called the Litany of Adralla. It stops any mind domination. But, there's a window of time where it can be used, and it's useless against anyone who's already an abomination. I don't know if you can, I don't know, teach it to mages to protect themselves and others, I've never read it or used it. I'd say ask Alistair, the Warden, but he's left again. He's one of the people who saved my Circle."

[sulahnan]

"But..." There's too much to pick apart here, to try to understand. "I mean, the blood mages are one thing, but it's the Chantry forcing such desperation, right? Or does the Chantry control the Circles in Tevinter, too?"