OPEN: The Loyal Shield

[lifeofendurance]

WHO: Aleron and YOU
WHAT: General Catch All while the Seeker settles in
WHEN: Guardian 24-Drakonis 14
WHERE: Skyhold (varies)
NOTES: Prose or brackets fine. Can also use for any scenes wanted.

It barely takes any time since his arrival for Aleron to resume what has been his daily habits for years now. Being relocated inside the Inquisition fortress has made little difference, beyond a change of scenery. He knows of no other way than the one he's followed most his life. With everything outside the walls in sheer chaos, finding order within his personal habits provides a rock solid foundation to face those challenges.

Chapel
Every morning and evening, before he breaks his fast, before he commits himself to rest, Aleron can be found inside the Chapel, knelt in prayer. He is as earnest in his devotions as he is with the remainder of his life and spends no less than an hour each time praying through sections of the Chant of Light. It is familiar. It is the base of his faith. It is his faith that holds him up, and to neglect it would be unjust in his mind.

Courtyard
During the day, Aleron commits himself to practice and training his weapon skills, though he prefers light leathers to full armor for the exercise. A particularly sharp eye or veteran combatant will note something unusual. He executes moves with precision, clearly well studied, with years of practice. However, he does not excel with the sword, not like a true master or exceptional talent would. Still, every day, he is present in the yard, working on his form, his stance, his skills.

Stables
Most days, he finds his way to the stables, to check after the welfare of his horse he rode into Skyhold. Valiente is a lively mount, but not too aggressive, nor does he seem to mind being quartered with so many others. Weather permitting, Aleron saddles him for a short ride through the mountain passes, enough to keep the horse hale and hearty, but never so much as to risk his health or a broken limb on treacherous footing.

Library
Every afternoon, the Seeker abandons physical pursuits for academic ones. Anyone who's made note of his somber default expression will find him different when engaged in scholarly reading and research. His eyes light as he peruses the shelves, smiles and looks of surprise manifest when he stumbles across some new tidbit of fact or history of which he had previously been unaware. Peculiar to some that a man could become so animated reading titles such as Tales of the Destruction of Thedas or The Essays of Divine Ambrosia II, but his excitement over the material is present and palpable.

Tavern
Of an evening, there is a solitary man seated with a single ale which he nurses slowly. Aleron doesn't engage in games of chance, flirt with the servers, or join in any more raucous singing that happens once the patrons are well in their cups. He sits, listens to the bard, sometimes reads a book, other times a letter. The letters often sit on the table for a considerable length of time while he stares off into the distance, as if deliberating if he wants to open them or not. If the place is crowded, he makes no objections to others joining him.

Comments

[foxsays]

What Araceli knows of the Chantry has come from overhearing conversations, and much of it in relation to Mages and how the Chant is used to dictate that they live in Circles, specifically the definition of 'to serve man' and how open for interpretation that seems to vary a great deal.

"Let me make sure I am understanding this correctly. A group of mages - I would imagine human - made this decision centuries ago. Since then, that has been used to keep the Circles as an institution until the outbreak of the Mage-Templar war? And the eternal flame is part of Chantry proceedings, is it to do with your funeral traditions?" It's easy to keep her tone light when she's just trying to wrap her head around it, making sure that she really does understand. "Yet the wording of the Chant of Light is that magic must serve man, that is where I run into difficulty. Yes, there are better uses than just lighting this eternal flame but I wonder if they knew just what would come to pass. You're meant to keep a weather eye on the horizon."

Her lover is a mage though, as are so many of her friends here so it's easy to have a bias, that they shouldn't be bound by what a group centuries ago desired.

"Fascinating is one way to look at it, shrewd is another. Those are the desires and actions of others that go unmentioned, and she gets to take credit for them without mentioning that it was dissent that lead to it in the first place. Not to say I don't approve of how she did it, there are many who rule in such a fashion and the people love them for it." It also sounds very Orlesian, very much like the Game, but she's smart enough not to say that.

[lifeofendurance]

Aleron is more than overjoyed to have someone with so keen an interest in the history, and current state, of the Chantry. He's done extensive reading on the subject over his lifetime and is pleased to have found someone to engage in academic and theological discourse.

"At that time in history, I believe the decision was made wholly by humans. Dwarves are incapable of wielding magics, the Qunari had not yet made their landing on Par Vollen, and as this was prior to the first Exalted March of the Dales, predates the establishment of alienages. To our understanding of history, the elves took to the Dales and had little to do with the cares of men. So much so that they willfully chose to ignore pleas for help in fighting the Second Blight. So in that, you are correct.

"As to the Eternal Flame, it is not quite so related. The Eternal Flame is to honor Andraste and her death on the pyre. Which is not to say that fire is not the preferred choice for funerary rites in much of Thedas. Where there is much death, the Veil weakens and demons will possess whatever mortal vessels are nearby, including the bodies of the departed. Nevarrans are different. They have special priests, always mages, called Mortalitasi. They serve the necropolis by safeguarding the bodies of the deceased. Others may disagree, but I feel the Mortalitasi are serving man and the Maker well with their gifts."

Unfortunately, the Mortalitasi are very active in political power within Nevarra, where Aleron has been living the past fifteen years. He respects them, respects the service they bring, but he cannot wrap his mind around the convoluted maneuvers they take. The Game or Antivan politics or Nevarran power plays of the death mages? All of it is too much a headache to keep straight. Give him a battlefield to plan. Or a straight conversation.

[foxsays]

There's a moment where she disappears back to her table to grab another book and the parchment she'd been using for notes, quill moving rapidly as she jots down brief notes in her own language, her script flowing but still neat, glancing up at him as she goes. She's going to have to start keeping stuff on her, maybe in one of the little book-shaped pouches she's seen some of the mages wearing.

"The Qunari are more harsh in their treatment of mages than the Circles, at least from what I've learned so far. Was the Chantry involved in the foundation of the alienages? There are poor places where I come from, and where you can live is very much determined by how much money you can make but there's no practice of saying 'you are this, this is where you and yours will live'." Araceli's own building was cheap enough for her when she had plenty of money coming in as a thief but for some of the artists it was always a struggle to pay the rent if she hadn't been there to pitch in with food. Diplomatic relations seem a much more tricky and complicated business when other races so different from one another are involved, though the Qunari always seem to be on the fringes, a potential threat and a distraction for Tevinter so they can't truly rise again, if what she's studied and learned thus far is true. "It is...it is simply very hard to just accept that because they wished it to be so that it has been this way ever since until the mage rebellions began. Or that a singular set of beliefs can dominate so much of a place, for so very long with so little change that an outsider can see. Perhaps it is your eternal flame that makes it so." That's not really a joke but she has no desire to be seen as rude or mocking, to cross any boundaries, not when she's learning this much on a subject she knows shockingly little about.

"That part of your funerary practices was explained, and Lady Thevenet was kind enough to clarify some of the Nevarran practices when I spoke with her a time ago. I had the very great fortune," the sarcasm rolls off her tongue as it only can with a girl that has barely left her teens behind, "to visit the Fallow Mire with the Inquisition, my companion there was kind enough to explain why the walking corpses were so. We made an effort to burn the dead that we found after that, and on a return visit. I have heard of the Dalish way too which is closer to my own; they plant a tree over their deceased, we have a shroud made of byssus silk that is weighed down, so that the sea reclaims us once again and we can give back to it what we have taken; we will eat the fish and crabs, the seaweeds and kelps." It's important to her that even some here know what is to happen to her should she be close to death or pass away, to be burnt would be to parted forever from the thing that made her and loves her best, to be nothing but a waste that won't give parts of herself to other things so another person will grow strong from them.

Flexing her fingers, she gives him a once-over, brow furrowing just a touch. "Forgive me, I have not even asked your name but men are not allowed to be of great rank within the southern Chantry yet you speak so passionately, you are a scholar too? Of your faith and the history?"