faderift | semi-open | spirit surveys.

Entry tags:

semi-open | spirit surveys.

WHO: Kostos & Mostly Mages
WHAT: Surveying spirits at Circles and battlefields
WHEN: Throughout the winter
WHERE: Various
NOTES: This is for rebel mage tasks. Involved mages are so so invited to toss up top-levels for their Circle/battlefield of choice, which can be exploration or spirit stuff or something else entirely. You're also free to bring an uninvolved/non-mage buddy along, with excuses made for the visit and the spirit aspect kept secret as needed, if you want to do your own CR stuff about visiting old haunts. And if you want to be involved but don't see a clear way in or need more preliminary planning first, hit me up and I will see what I can do.

The network of eluvians makes this prospect—visiting abandoned Circles, surveying battlefields from the Mage/Templar War—less daunting than it might have been before, but many of them still need to wait for some other work to carry the right people within a day's ride. Others need to wait for snowstorms to pass and roads to be cleared. The timing winds up erratic.

But the work itself follows a routine. Address mundane problems first, going around them rather than through them whenever possible. The Circles in the cities might have posted guards who need to be bribed or convinced or snuck around. Those in the wilds might be under occupation by vagrants or highwaymen who require the same. And any of them might have roving shades or veil tears to avoid while Kostos follows a more familiar former occupant through the halls, terse questions about where the fighting was worse, where the Harrowings occurred, or where the troublemakers were tossed emerging from the hood of his heavy coat.

Battlefields are easier. Most of them open spaces, many of them still sporting scars.

Sometimes nothing needs to be summoned; it's already there, running down a corridor in terror, and only needs to be persuaded to stop. Other times Kostos lays out summoning stones.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[OOC: I plan to stick to bespoke starters for Julius, but there's no limit on party size, so grab me on plurk or Discord if you want to and we'll hash it out. Feel free to also use this thread for Kinloch starters of your own if desired.]

Julius is aware that Kinloch Hold isn't occupied. It's not an especially attractive property to bandits, given that the single approach is as much of a liability as an asset, and moreover it's neither hidden nor near anything. Julius lived in the tower for 31 years and can count on his fingers the times he left it before leaving for good. He is keenly aware of the many ways it's designed to keep people in and nothing else.

Still, it's eerie to see the place silent. Even in the aftermath of Uldred's rebellion, there'd still be the motion and activity of the survivors trying to put the pieces back together and rouse themselves to offer the help they'd offered Cousland. This is unsettling in an entirely different way. Like something that should be present is absent, for all his feelings about Circles writ large have changed since he left this place.

As they disembark from the ferry (they'd had to row themselves over, but at least there'd been a boat without any holes in it stored in a nearby shed), he says to Kostos, "Right. So how are we doing this?"

[Feel free to lmk if anything needs adjusting!]

"Carefully," comes the immediate non-answer, most of Kostos' attention taken by staring up at the tower.

Ghislain disabused him of any notion that Southern Circles were anything like the gilded campuses in Nevarra, decades ago. But from a distance this the arches and spires on this one had given the impression of a middle ground between the oppressive prison fortress and the hammered gold dome. Some elegance to it, maybe.

But coming closer has not done it any favors.

He tears his eyes away from the tower and musters a better response. "We should start with something we can verify. Something you saw. Or something someone reliable has written down."

If he were privy to Kostos's thoughts, he might bleakly point out at least it's not literally named The Gallows. As it is, though, he nods his understanding, glancing up the tower thoughtfully.

"What sort of thing? A detail about the place itself, or where a particular event happened? I can probably provide a tolerable amount of either. I was here just shy of 30 years, so I can focus where you think it will be most helpful."

Given the nature of their mission, he suspects it's mostly likely to be "memories he'd prefer not to dwell on" but they're here now and there's no sense in flinching away from it at this point.

It's probably inevitable that he thinks about his visit to Kamar-Taj as he walks through Kinloch Hold with Stephen at his side. A lot of stone, no gilding, he'd said at the time when Stephen had asked. Granted, some of the gloomy atmosphere of the pace is due to years of neglect, now. But even so, the little details jump out as Julius sees them with fresh eyes: How much he's grown accustomed to having private space in recent years that was unknown to him here. (He's grown accustomed to having a door, something notably absent from any quarters that mages inhabited.) The lack of windows on most of the lower floors. The library that had been so much of his world before he'd seen any of it, now rendered small and a bit sad by the many larger ones he's seen since.

But it's less the place's shabbiness than a feeling in the air. Kamar-Taj hadn't been grand like Cumberland, after all. But it had been full of centered people, calm and dedicated and willing to nod hello to a stranger who arrived there in Stephen's company. And it had been open to the air, most of it. There's a claustrophobia to Kinloch Hold Julius hadn't been conscious of feeling in the three decades he spent here that is presently impossible for him to ignore.

"While we're here," he says quietly, while Kostos is occupied with something not requiring Julius, "did you have any ... was there anything you'd like to see?"

Stephen had leapt at the opportunity to leave the empty houseboat and go on a trip while Gwenaëlle’s on her own roadtrip to Cumberland, but now he might be— well, he still doesn’t regret the excursion, but he’s quickly realising it isn’t the same giddy thrill as delving into the Grand Necropolis. It’s smaller, shabbier, claustrophobic. It’s his very first time inside the ruins of a proper Circle. The Gallows don’t count; they’ve been repurposed. There’s always the bones of it underfoot, but Riftwatch has painted murals, added lyrium lowlights, widened windows, cut into the oppressive gloom until the towers are almost cozy, if you squint.

Kinloch hasn’t had any of those renovations. It’s abandoned. It feels haunted. Even the bridge to the tower was in ruins. It’s not exactly a fun sightseeing excursion.

“Would anything be left of the library?” Stephen finally asks after a moment, mulling. “Or did the mages take everything with them after…”

After.

"Most people traveled light," Julius says, gesturing toward the stairs they can take up to their destination. "I took a book or two, but I." A brief pause. "I wasn't going to war, at the time, so my priorities were probably a bit different. Granted, I can't predict how much looting has been done in the years sense."

Though anyone braving the empty Circle tower was more likely looking for enchanted items than academic volumes, given how remote they were. There were easier places to loot books.

Julius finds himself lightly surprised at how instantly he can lead them anywhere in the tower. It's been a long time, after all, but still not as long as he spent here in the first place. He could probably walk it blindfolded. That not being necessary, he leads them through the curved corridor to the library, the large arch as doorless as most other spaces in the tower. It's only a little smaller than the Gallows library, in truth, but it has a sad and lonely look to it. There are gaps in the bookshelves where fleeing mages took a volume or two, and a layer of dust muffling everything. The library occupies a high enough floor that the windows are wider than the slits on the lower levels, but they're still set well above the floor, giving the entire place a shadowy look even at midday with none of the candles lit.

"I spent a great deal of time in here," Julius says, as they come in. He realizes his voice is low, whether from habit or a sense of foreboding. There's no one here to disturb, presumably. And yet.

There are still enough books left that it still sounds like a library, at least: all that dust and those rows on rows of bound paper swallowing up noise, turning it strangely quiet and muffled.

“I’m not surprised,” Stephen says.

He wants to be respectful — Julius had been beyond respectful when they were in the sorcerers’ old stomping ground — but he can’t help but think the place sad and dreary. There’s not enough natural light. Both Kamar-Taj and the Sanctum Sanctorum had skylights in their libraries, making it as bright and cheery as possible, to escape the usual dim gloom and eyestrain. His heart twinges oddly at the sight of this gutted room, imagining all the mages and apprentices that must have come and gone. There’s mouse droppings in the corner.

“What was it like? Before.”

The normal Circle life, departing it, all of the above; whatever part Julius feels okay discussing.

"Cleaner," is more a gesture at a joke than an actual attempt at humor; a verbal placeholder while he thinks about what he'd like to say. He runs a fingertip along the edge of a shelf, pausing where a particular volume is clearly missing.

"It's a bit strange, trying to reconcile what it felt like, at the time, and what I can see in hindsight. But even with that aside, it was clean, actually. Orderly. Well-lit by torches and sconces, even if sunlight was relatively scarce in most of the places mages spent their time." He turns back to Stephen properly. "I think... it is easy to look at it, now that it's empty, as a prison. And there are ways that it was that. But it was also a school, and a community, and..."

Julius exhales, almost a sigh. "You have to understand, I came here when I was six. And suddenly I was told I was clever and special and that I had potential." And though Julius doesn't articulate it, it's fair to guess that he wasn't hearing those things before Kinloch Hold. "They were holding me here with things other than the stone walls and the lake, I can say in hindsight. But also, the bonds I made with the other mages here, those weren't less real for being partly due to forced proximity. People still had friendships and rivalries and love affairs here, hard as it may be to picture now."

“People have friendships and rivalries and love affairs in real prisons, too,” Stephen says; possibly a kneejerk rudeness if they hadn’t known each other so long and Stephen already liked the other man so well. It’s just stating a fact, not intending to start a fight.

But. A library is a library, and he can imagine taking refuge in a place very much like this. He unconsciously echoes Julius and runs a finger along one of the shelves closer to him, and wipes the dust off on his trousers.

“Considering,” he says, “that you did learn magic here, you did have teachers, and you did become a teacher yourself. It’s not absurd to think that this prison also functioned as a school and a community and a solace. Because, well, ethically, I imagine it’s at least simpler if your Circle’s named the Gallows and the flaws are more overt. Whereas something like this, you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Especially when it’s all you know.

Stephen cocks his head, thinking. “What we discussed, about mage children these days. It’s not too far out of the realm of possibility to imagine a schooling system, a mage’s academy similar enough to a Circle. People do need to learn how to safely use their abilities somewhere.”

The rifter’s not a loyalist — far from it — but it is, at least, the extension of an olive branch. Some understanding, of the position Julius had once come from.

He can't help his glance toward Benedict as their steady climb up the tower inevitably brings them past the Harrowing chamber. (Surely there will be an unquiet spirit or two here, if anywhere.) Still, given their earlier conversation, he wonders if Benedict even recognizes it at a glance the way any Southern Circle mage would. Julius doesn't hesitate, exactly, but it doesn't feel kind to actively point out the nature of the place.

On the other hand, Benedict may have enough context to guess without help. The grand space, well-lit in a way none of the rooms on lower floors are, but cool with the light filtered through stained glass. The remarkably tall ceilings supported by columns. The stands to hold the lyrium. It's a space designed to make sure that observers know the importance of what takes place within. Even granting cultural differences, it is unique when compared to the rest of the tower.

Still, Julius waits for Benedict to ask. To comment, if he's going to, or perhaps to venture inside.

Edited 2024-11-21 02:29 (UTC)

While Julius can't say he knows Carsus particularly well, there's something that feels oddly appropriate about having a templar at his side while walking the halls of the tower. Not that Julius had been under any special guard, but it was a tall, narrow place with plenty of templars walking to and from places, inevitably sometimes in the same direction he'd been going.

"After having seen a bit of Nevarra myself," he comments (quiet but not hesitant, the way one might lower one's voice near a memorial), "I can imagine this must seem ... different." Diplomatic, but genuinely curious too. Trying to see the inverse of his own experience in Carsus's, if the other man is game to engage.

It is probably not entirely a coincidence that they're passing the tower's Chantry space. Plain wooden benches with neither cushions nor adornment, arranged in rows in front a similarly plain lectionary stand. An unpainted stone statue of Andraste gives the impression of being a place to focus more than a particular inspiration to devotion. The ceiling is high, but the stone walls rising to it are bare save a few sconces.

It ought to strike familiar, striding the halls of a Circle, but the memory of Nevarra City is hazy; gone a little like a dream. When he thinks of it, he thinks of the high arch of a doorway. Couldn't tell you where it led.

A hand lingers on worn wood, heavy in dust. Different, yeah, strange. Stranger – he does not say – for the emptiness.

(His own dead Alienage was more ornate.)

"'S not all Cumberland," He admits. A shining door, cut into hillside. "But thought it'd be nearer town."

You row to the Gallows. It's still Kirkwall. Set apart, and yet a part, close enough to bleed for it. He glances Julius, tries to square the shape of a smooth tongue, a steady manner, and life on this frigid rock.

"Lot of work to keep it going this far out. You take a hand in that?"

Seneschal now, and he had to learn it somewhere. Fuck knows if Fereldens keep clergy for that.

Edited 2024-12-02 10:02 (UTC)

It would make sense if he had, Julius can think now. He's a sensible and organized man, good with logistics. And he'd been trustworthy. 30 years in the tower and he'd never once made a break for it. Even so:

"Not especially. Mages in Kinloch Hold weren't permitted non-mage correspondents, much less in-person contacts. There'd have been no way to hand off any of that sort of work to us without putting us in touch with merchants and suppliers." See: Carsus's earlier point about not being near a town. The trading area on the shore of the lake had sprung up after the tower was built. When the site was selected, it was near nothing at all, by design.

Julius smiles, rueful, at something. After a moment, he decides to say it: "You'd never credit it now, but when I first left the tower, I found currency a bit hard to get the hang of. I mean, I knew the theory, but I had no real sense of what a normal price for anything was. I'm sure I was cheated several times while it was easy to do so." It was a little bit funny, as long as you didn't linger on why a mage in his mid-30s had never learned how money works.

"Knew a kid like that," An answering tug at his mouth. "Went to the Chantry real young. Reckon half the barracks fleeced him."

But Declan's been dead a long time.

"We're all lucky you learn quick. Must've been a hell of an adjustment."

Forced into the world, and its sprawling wilderness of bodies, voices; of people entirely alien. It's a wonder there weren't more Abominations in those early days. Must've been mages enough never spied a crowd.

He creaks to a seat, the nearer to regard Andraste.

"S'pose I don't see the point," And maybe it's a bit ironic, sat there in blackened steel; the worked grooves of tendon and bone, "Of burying the world."

Edited 2024-12-05 08:37 (UTC)

"It took some time," of the adjustment, a bit quieter. "I'd been out a little, during the Fifth Blight. But as you can imagine, that wasn't preparation for most of the mundane parts of life." He hadn't been afraid, exactly, but he'd been a proud man trying to hide, and every flaw in his ability to do so had grated once.

He comes to sit near Carsus, across the aisle from him. He's looking at the statue, too, as he asks, "Do you want what they told us the point of the isolation was, or my guess?" Maybe franker than he'd usually be, but whether that's where they are or Carsus's thoughtful tone is unclear.

He can work out the tactics: You put Circles on water, under earth. Even Cumberland's heavy curtains and marble halls are good in a fire. Slow to burn. So, a lake. Smart. Limits the approaches, limits the exits, and that's smart too – keeps something like Uldred from spilling over –

But that's different from shut letters. From shut cities, hell; from no runs around the yard. There'd been gardens, in the Capital. Trees. A sky.

"If you're offering," Julius' guess. "Reckon y'know if it worked."

"Well. I imagine what they told us won't shock you. Contain abominations, keep everyone safe from mages gone wrong. Keep mages safe from fearful peasants, maybe, though I thought that argument was a bit weak even at the time. After all, they let some of us out to help with the Darkspawn. Stakes are high enough, they're willing to risk it."

His hands are folded; he absently runs a finger along the side of a ring he's wearing.

Quieter, he says, "But it's much easier, isn't it. Telling people that mages are dangerous if they've never met one who isn't a small child. If they've never met one at all. Easier telling people we're too different, that there's no practical way we can live with normal people. That it's better for everyone if we're kept apart and to ourselves. How many people were in a position to say anything different, especially here in Ferelden?" No Grand Necropolis that needed tending; no nobles eager to ensure their afterlives were shepherded properly. Just a population who heard nothing about the mages at all, or that some of the had inevitably become Abominations as expected, though even that probably made less of an impression than it otherwise would have if it hadn't happened in the middle of a Blight. Normal people had other things to worry about.

"Lotta old magic in the hills."

Isn't disagreement: Those who could say anything different are their own breed of threat. Astrid's people, and the Chasind below; the Dalish tilting along Imperial wreckage. All of them ruled by mages, and enough who might've stepped in for the end of occupation, and its tenuous claims. Would've been easy then to take a fort or a field, call yourself warlord of a new, old country.

The trouble is, mages are dangerous. Only look at Nevarra.

"But I reckon that goes two ways," The trouble is, everyone's dangerous, if they try. "Telling folks we're too different. Why stick your neck out for someone you never met?"

He isn't asking a hypothetical. Julius fought the Blight.

He raises his eyebrows, involuntarily, at that. But he takes a moment to consider his answer.

"...two answers to that, too, really. For me personally, I imagine it's the same reason I joined the Inquisition and that I stay with Riftwatch. I feel like it's my responsibility to do what I can, regardless of how anyone feels about me." And that is true. However.

"The other answer is that when Kinloch Hold was an operational Circle, it was very much not optional. If the Templars tapped your shoulder, you went to the front with them." He doesn't assume Cedric knows as much. He's learned enough to know that Nevarra was different in a variety of way. But in the tower they're sitting in, there were decades and centuries where why mattered very little for most mages.

After a moment, he adds, "Seems strange, sometimes. I would have volunteered, and here I am years later. A lot of people didn't come back from Denerim who probably wouldn't have gone if they had a choice. Picked for loyalty and how unlikely it was they'd run off, I suspect, not for magical strength." Not bitter, just tired.

Julius' brows lift, and Cedric thinks: Stupid question. Half a second's reflex, the impulse to equivocate. He doesn't. Sometimes, the stupid question's worth asking. It's not every mage came to the Inquisition, to Riftwatch. One war writes the next.

"I'm sorry," Honest. Orlais took a lot of conscripts, it's no kindness. "Things get bad enough, they get... blurry. Dunno that anyone chooses, by the time 's in the streets."

And a broken bargain to find themselves there. Freedom for safety. Alienage walls, tower walls, they keep the danger out much as in. To be dragged from them -

"Means something different, when you do." Julius has now. He'd know. "Deserved t'have that."

"I suppose it does," a little bit quieter. "The Fifth Blight was ... I suppose I don't want to say better or worse than the current potentially world-ending threat. But there's something visceral about fighting Darkspawn, especially when they're in your home. It's hard for me to imagine not doing anything about it in a world where I have the capability."

He'd wondered, before, if in another world he'd have ended up a Warden. Certainly it wouldn't have fed his ambition, but on the other hand, there's something uniquely unsettling about the Blight that has lingered with him decades later.

"Still. Some people face danger in the streets and run. I think everyone in Riftwatch has passed that test, at least." All of them have put their lives on the line to oppose Corypheus, even if some divisions do it more directly than others.

"Yeah," The thin quirk of a smile. Not pleased, not really, just sometimes you look a way when you're tired. "And 's always a new danger."

There will always be Darkspawn. There will always be a world to defend, or leave behind, or sit on your hands waiting for the news.

"It still feel like home?"

In here. Out there.

He doesn't say his first thought: More than Castle Selywn did, at least. He's not close enough to Carsus to say it. Possibly he's not close enough to anyone but perhaps Marcus or Petrana. It would open up a lot of questions he's not keen on answering.

Instead, he lingers over the question Carsus did ask for a moment or two. Eventually, he leans back in the pew. "It feels like a ghost of a place that was home once, if that makes sense. I don't know what it would feel like if I'd left, but I came back and it was still operational. Full of other mages and templars, especially the ones I knew. Now it feels like..." He trails, looking for an analogy. When he finds one, he says it more quietly. "It feels like going through the things of someone you knew after they'd died. They're not here anymore, but there's something about the concreteness of the things they touched and wore and cared about that makes it feel heavier that they're gone. If that makes any sense."

"It does," There's a pen-knife in his pack. There are footprints on the carpets, marks on the benches; nearly invisible. A dozen places where presence wears imperceptibly thin. Taken altogether in one great hollow. "Makes it real."

Death pushes on the Fade. Life, it pushes back. Heavy. Concrete.

"Never went back to Nevarra. Hill just collapsed."

Little funny, after all that. The capital, with a heap of dust; then Ferelden, and its tomb.

Julius knows that even relatively new rifters without Ness's personal motivations must pick up some cues about the Circle system in short order. They live in the Gallows; it's hard to avoid. But every Circle was particular, and Kinloch Hold has gained a particular reputation, given its near annulment and its involvement with Ferelden weathering the Fifth Blight. He resists the impulse to play tour guide, mostly, focusing on why they're present and not commenting on every stone they pass.

Perhaps the impulse to teach is stronger for a reason as they pass the apprentices' quarters, the doorless entryways revealing the rows of neat bunk beds. A few personal items are still left scattered on the bureaus and desks, evidence of hasty leaving. Anything valuable has been long since picked over, he has no doubt. "It's strange," he says quietly, to Ness, as she's closest to him while they pass. "To think the youngest apprentices who lived here are now old enough to fight, themselves, now. I wonder how many made their way to the Inquisition." Rhetorical, yes, but directed enough to her as to invite comment.

Her first thought, which she has enough tact not to speak aloud, is as many as didn't die at the hands of some templar, I expect. That thought Ness keeps to herself while she mulls over her real response.

"I hope fewer of them than the Inquisition would like," is where she ends up. "This war is a necessity, but I'd prefer to imagine these mages didn't go straight from a cage to a fight."

It's nice to imagine that some apprentices made it to a quiet life of freedom, even if depressingly unlikely. She doesn't linger on it though, tracing a finger over the cracked wood of an old bed post, ruminative.

"There is much here that reminds me of my previous life," she says. "I did not stay in them, my father had a private room which we shared, but some other Avowed had communal barracks. I cleaned them, from time to time, when it needed doing and everyone else was busy."

She looks around, and tries to imagine it: these rooms, so like the ones in Candlekeep, full of people, halls echoing with chatter and chanting, the shuffling of robes and the smell of old books. She imagines eager faces, the prickling feeling of magic all through the air, the giggles of young apprentices learning what they can do for the first time.

Now she imagines that none of them can ever, ever leave.

"Do you miss it?" Ness asks, turning to Julius with no trace of judgment.

Julius has the brief thought that some of them might have had families who'd been glad to see them. He hopes some of them found their way home. But many mages had no family but one another, especially as they grew. War or not, Fiona might have offered something that felt more secure. But that's likely a thornier political question than she meant to pry into. It's clear her observation is one born of sympathy, and he can respect it for that.

Instead, he answers her question. "Sometimes," frankly. "Parts. There are people I miss, certainly. And there was a simplicity to my life here that had its benefits. Things that would bother me now didn't then, because I'd not lived any differently or seen other options." And he'd thrived, within a set of clear rules. A path with no crossroads, for quite a long distance.

He lingers in the doorway of the apprentices' rooms, clearly seeing occupants who were no longer present in his mind's eye. "I miss teaching. I liked working with the apprentices. I wasn't a teacher exclusively, but the enchanters all took our turns, especially when our numbers were small after we were nearly annulled. I hope Southern mages can find a way to revive magical education in a less patchwork way, and soon. Younger mages are ill-served by being left wholly to their own devices, I think." He thinks, briefly, of an Orlesian father desperate to help his scared daughter.

The sentiments are familiar, as if pulled from Ness's own thoughts—doesn't she miss Candlekeep, after all, miss Vazeiros, for all that she wouldn't go back? Simplicity, not for lack of options, but for the clarity of expectation. Behave like this, accept these limitations, don't ask for more. Do the some for the rest of your life and you'll be safe, you'll be fed, you'll have purpose.

You'll never have love, or belonging. Your world will be small. But you'll have more than many get, even so.

It's a bitter feeling, to long for something fully cognizant of its poison. To see the cage clearly for what it is, and to, despite it all, wish earnestly for the bars.

"I understand," she says, and leaves it at that.

As to magical education—she sighs, thoughts dark on war and what's neglected in its interest. Her eyes light up after a moment though, just a little, and she turns to Julius, cautiously hopeful.

"Have you—has anyone considered starting a school, maybe? Not a Circle, but a proper school. Teach children control and respect for their power, love for their community..."

Surely someone has thought of it by now, and there are reasons it hasn't happened, but... What if they haven't? What if everyone's assumed the outcome, so no one's even tried?

From her tone, he thinks she does understand, at that. He tucks that away to ask about another time. It's not that he isn't interested, but her story deserves better than to have to fight a tower full of ghosts for his full attention. Instead, he turns to her question.

"I'm sure I'm not the only one to think about an alternative to the Circle system, if we succeed in our aims of mage liberty after the war. After all, Tevinter trains their mages without imprisoning them; it's not a wholly new thought." They're even called Circles there, though he thinks keeping the name in Southern Thedas would be more likely to rip open old wounds.

"But to answer your question, yes, I have thought about it. For me personally, I don't think I would have the attention to give it that it would require, as long as I'm committed to Riftwatch. And I know I don't have the resources; we'd have to enlist one or more interested patrons. Not an impossible hurdle, but tricky while the Chantry hasn't yet acknowledged that the Circle system as we knew it before the war is over." He has high hopes they can still get there, but convincing a noble to stand against the Chantry is still more complicated than convincing them that all children, even mages, deserve education.

The thing about Ness is, she hears about a task—the suggestion of a task, even, the potential for a task—and she starts acting as if it's already hers. She can't structure, fund, and staff a magic school all by herself... But she can talk to the people who can. She can fundraise. She can be the persuasive, pleasant face attached to the idea, coordinating between all the different people who can do a better job than she can—

And all these cogs started turning as soon as the words enlist interested patrons left Julius' lips.

"We could start with our most open-minded university contacts," she says, distantly, logistics and planning taking her somewhere far away from Kinloch Hold, "or be sneaky about our purpose, I suppose, just to get an idea of where we should begin. I don't know how to structure a school but I know patrons will want proof we're not just running blindly away from the Chantry without a plan. That means... scouting buildings that would suit, or property where such a thing could be built, determining projected budget, we should make inquiries as to what protections the Circles had in place for when magic went awry that weren't just 'kill everyone'..."

Who's we in all this? Who knows. She's entirely in her own head now, making mental lists of people to contact, things to look up, as she begins to pace, wholly overtaken by this idea—much in the same way she's been overtaken by working with Research on medical advancements, or with Julius himself on her Quartermaster's duties.

He smiles, initially, at her running through the list of to-dos, jumping directly to "when" and ignoring "if." It's a winning quality, and her approach makes sense as she lays it out. Start looking at practicalities. It's much as he would do it.

Until her comment about "protections" and he looks as if he's bitten into an unpleasant filling in a pastry without expecting it. The expression is brief and muted, but certainly there before he smooths it over.

"I can speak to what was in place here. Not every Circle, I've since gathered, was the same. But a fair number of them are things I wouldn't want to reproduce going forward." He doesn't blame her for not knowing, but she should know before they're talking to others about the plan, certainly. Everyone else with any Circle experience will, after all.

If she hadn't turned to pace toward him at just the right (wrong?) moment, she might not have seen Julius' expression change. For a moment, Ness isn't sure what she's done wrong—the look was too brief, her focus too far elsewhere to effectively connect cause and effect.

It doesn't take long to figure out, of course. Between Julius not wanting to replicate them and what she already knows about Circles...

"Of course not," she says softly, a weird mix of chagrined and angry. Can't one thing in this fucking plane not be horrible? Just one? And why did she have to say that so cavalierly, that was clearly a thought best kept to herself.

Her stomach rolls, and Ness forces herself to take a deep breath. Self-recrimination won't fix anything. She can't un-say the stupid thing she said. Dwelling won't help, and the point is to help.

She starts again, slower this time.

"There will have to be alternatives. No Templars, no Annulment, no Tranquility. There must be other ways of limiting magic's destructive ability—if nothing else, Circle structures must have been protected against errant fireballs? Barrier magic might be a place to start... Lyrium? Could it be worked into the walls, maybe? That could be dangerous if not done correctly... but is there a correct way to do something like that? Dwarves would know, probably."

It's only when she's paced away from him again that Ness realizes: she's gotten carried away again, and she visibly drags her focus back into the room, onto Julius, with a wince.

"I apologize, Seneschal. I'm—very passionate about this idea, obviously, but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't mean to... I know it's complicated."

"You have nothing to apologize for," was both kind and sincere. "I agree with you that it's an idea worth pursuing. And I think the perspective of someone seeing the situation with fresh eyes will be valuable in it, for what it's worth. Mages who grew up here, we all carry ... particular experiences that shaped us. It leaves a particular shape."

He glances around the room they're in. The remains of that life. It's striking that Ness sometimes struggles to picture it, and when he was her age, he hadn't been able to picture any meaningful alternative. On which note, he resumes, quieter:

"For what it's worth, it took me a long time to even get to the position of abandoning the Circle system, personally. And part of what held me back was that I'd seen the aftermath of magic gone wrong personally. The rebellion here involved blood magic and abominations," plural, "and it came very close to wiping us out before they could even bother to annul the Circle. I've changed my thinking on the future for Thedosian mages, but not because I've forgotten the ways that magic can go lethally wrong. I think we will need to work through safeguards for accidents, yes, but ... if you are talking to rich natives who aren't mages themselves, they're going to ask what about abominations early." They might even mention Uldred by name, if they're in Ferelden. "It's something we should think about in this project."

He doesn't speak as if it's something she should have known before, but as if it's something she'll need to factor in. If (when) they move forward.

Edited 2025-02-07 01:18 (UTC)

She's already considering, mind spooling out from her again, taward Nevarra, Rivain, researching which Circles had the least number of abominations, what their practices were like, how they trained their mages—but Ness wrestles her attention back, grounds herself to the conversation here and now.

We, he said.

"I understand, Seneschal, and you're right, of course. It would be irresponsible, self-defeating, not to consider that perspective. Thank you, for your indulgence, and your advice."

There are those that might rail against having to prove they can be trusted to educate themselves; Ness isn't one of them. However she feels about it (bad, for the record), yelling about it won't change anything. They have to work with the world as it is, not as it should be—not as it is in Faerûn, hard as it can be to avoid the comparisons. This would never happen in the Sword Coast... But they're not in the Sword Coast. How things are there is immaterial.

"It can be... difficult," she says, soft, after a short pause, "to imagine a future after this war. So much is uncertain in so many ways, for all of us. I don't even know if I'll be here tomorrow," a prospect which she visibly has to Not Think About, "but I hope... I hope we have the chance to decide if this is really what we want to do with ourselves after. I like the idea of it."

Edited (fixing invisible html) 2025-02-17 02:16 (UTC)

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