semi-open | spirit surveys.

[exequy]

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.

Comments

[overharrowed]

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.

[aberratic]

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.

[overharrowed]

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.

[aberratic]

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."

[overharrowed]

"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.

[aberratic]

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."