[open w/ some closed threads] escort missions.

[arkitect]

WHO: Emet-Selch + others
WHAT: Catch-all for threads related to this.
WHEN: October, current & backdated
WHERE: Accompanied outings or the Gallows
NOTES: none currently!

[thread starters will go in the comments! this will contain both closed, preplanned threads and open thread options, please feel free to hit me up on plurk or discord if you want anything specific!]

Comments

[cozen]

Hm,

[ while he thinks. Bound to fulfill a god's will, but able to work contrary to it at least that much. Interesting. He's not sure he buys it, but what does anyone have except their word, when it comes to rifters?

Anyway, the most important thing: ]

Would you do it again?

[arkitect]

If you ask out of concern for this place, then allow me to first assure you that I know the realms which once composed my home... and this is surely not one of them. I have no reason nor inclination to do anything to it.

[As for the question itself, well. There's a pause, before he just shrugs his shoulders with a little exhale of breath, props his chin in one palm.]

But were I hypothetically given the chance to go back to the beginning, then yes. I would. When we summoned our god, when all of this was first set in motion, we acted to prevent our world from dying entirely. It would not merely be broken but gone, had we done otherwise, and despite what it has led to-- I would not suffer that to pass.

[cozen]

Bien. At least you are honest. I think.

[ It would be an odd thing to lie about—a wasted opportunity to seem more harmless, given there's no one to contradict him. ]

When you say your world, do you mean all of the reflections would have ended? Or only the primary one—yours? [ A moment of rustling in the nut bowl, before, ] And what do you mean when you say it was dying?

[arkitect]

All of them, in the sense that our original world would have been destroyed before the reflections ever came to be.

[He finally takes one of the nuts from the bowl, but he's just sort of fiddling with it, pulling away the shell.]

When I say that it was dying, I mean this in a very literal sense. All of creation had begun to fall apart-- the sun bent low, the seas run red, the land barren. Only desperate measures stood a chance of stopping it before all was lost.

[cozen]

I don't follow. The first part, I mean—the reflections had already come to be, non?

[arkitect]

Ah- no. I may have gotten slightly ahead of that part, but... the reflections came to be after we had averted the end of our world. The end result of a division among our remaining people, when it came to our path moving forward.

[cozen]

I see.

[ Sort of. He sees slightly better, at least, through the strange murkiness of the entire story. ]

So when you said the world was broken—you were part of breaking it.

[arkitect]

I suppose we all were, yes.

[In the sense that their inability to come to a consensus led to it-- but explaining that is the part he likes discussing the least, not to mention that he is well aware of the reputation sacrificial magic has in Thedas. A few moments of silence pass, before:]

You will have to forgive me for being somewhat-- sparse, on the more unpleasant details of the situation, but... a great number of our people lost their lives in our efforts to avert the apocalypse. Those of us who served our deity believed we could bring them back. That it was in fact our responsibility to our people to restore them; others, however, believed our responsibility to the world took precedence, and we ought to leave them be. Leave the world as it was, after our god had restored it.

There was no real compromise, on such a point, and the deity which the dissenters summoned to oppose the first was the one who sundered our world. Struck him with a blow so great it shattered everything along with him.