[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

[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?"

[altusimperius]

"It does, but our Chantry is different." Benedict shrugs one shoulder.
"And I don't really know how the Circles work. I've never been to one."

[keenly]

"The Chantry decides what becomes of us," Colin says with a little shrug. A gleam of steel comes to his eyes. "And you think, if I cannot bear the ways of the Maker, the Void is the only direction I can run in. I'd choose oblivion over spending eternity at the side of such a cruel god, with his cruel people."

[sulahnan]

"Well fuck the Maker, then," She looks to Colin, useless anger rising about how he's been made to feel about the world, about magic, about himself. "It's not like he's the only god. Just the one most cited in the name of cruelty."

She needs to do something so her anger doesn't get misdirected at her friends. Athessa turns back to face the shelves, resuming her work while she talks. "I hope the world doesn't go back to the way it was before the war. It should be different. Better."

[altusimperius]

Unsure of what to say, and still anxious that part of the responsibility for the world situation falls on his people and himself, Benedict gives an awkward nod and falls silent.

[keenly]

"With the Divine we have?" Colin shrugs again. "She'll just be looking for some new trick to keep us from rebelling again. Maybe poisoning us with magebane, if that works out with you, Ben. I'm glad my phylactery's gone, at least."

[sulahnan]

So we get rid of the Divine is her first thought, one she almost voices, but then she latches onto a different one.

"Your what? What's a phylactery?"

[altusimperius]

Benedict wilts when Colin addresses him, remaining silent and looking pensively away. There's something profoundly humiliating about the fact that his magic is still being drugged out of him, robbing him of what constituted so much of his identity for so long. Being reminded of it is always a dash of cold water on whatever his mood was before.

[keenly]

Colin looks regretful when Bene makes that face. This wasn't the time to make that statement.

"Um. When they first bring us in, they take a vial of our blood and cast a spell on it, it lets them track us down if we ever escape. We found a number of them, but I think it was decided none could be destroyed if they weren't claimed by the mage in question."

[sulahnan]

She's quiet for a time, processing what Colin has just said. And as she puts thoughts together, she clenches her fists against the counter.

"So they take you away from your families," she starts, slowly. "They throw you in prison, make it so you can't run or hide from them, force you to follow their rules, and then when everyone should be worried about a fucking world war, they make it so you have to willingly walk into their grasp and trust them not to capture you and hurt you some more if you ever want to be actually free."

It's not fair. It's not right.

[altusimperius]

Benedict looks down, contemplating the floor, his spirits low. These are all things he never had to confront before, and has been dealing with in earnest since he came south.