faderift | Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

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Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

WHO: Hermione Granger and Open!
WHAT: There's a new ~~witch~~ mage wandering around Skyhold. Come say hello?
WHEN: Backdated to her arrival near the end of Guardian and onward throughout Drakonis.
WHERE: ~~The library.~~ All over Skyhold. ~~But mostly its library.~~
NOTES: Feel free to run into her pretty much anywhere, or have her run into you. And be prepared for all the questions about your character and Thedas/their homeworld and everything in between.

If not for the fact that Hermione had spent so many of her formative years in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Skyhold might have been overwhelming

As it was, the sprawling fortress was a little hard to get used to, since the academic environment that had given Hogwarts some sense of structure amidst the chaos wasn't present here. There was a library, thankfully, and she spent much of her time there, though it was so small that she was certain she'd end up reading every book in there in two weeks' time if she didn't actually go out and explore the rest of her surroundings.

And so every so often, she pried herself away from the cold little corner she'd set aside for herself and wander the rest of the area, though granted, she more often than not was carrying at least one book with her. Usually it was one of the books that had survived the trip through the Fade; anyone who might spot her in the garden or tavern or a safe distance away from the sparring going on in the training grounds might notice her engrossed in such unfamiliar titles as Hogwarts, A History or occasionally digging through Spellman's Syllabary in the vain hope of finding recognizable runes on various inscriptions throughout Skyhold.

After all, just because she was endlessly fascinated by all the new people and cultures and history and magic, it didn't mean she didn't occasionally need a bittersweet reminder of home. Especially when her other major reminder was her wand, which - despite the fact that she'd taken to finding the most solitary places she could find and practicing with it harder than she ever had the night before an exam - still wasn't behaving properly at all. Apologies to those of you who end up slipping on some wayward ice or getting sprayed with pebbles from a spell gone wrong.

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He blinks, tilting his head slightly. "What's... a muggle?"

At the apology he shrugs. "I don't like the Circle, nor did I enjoy being locked away, but... I'll be first to admit that there were some good things to it as well. I did learn about my magic and how to use it there. I wish it had been different though."

Taking the letters, Korrin smiles in thanks though she shakes her head. "It can all wait another time. So, your help would be appreciated and I'll tell you about the First Blight on the way. It's pretty important, since it all ties into the current state of things." She pushes away from the wall slowly, carefully. The throbbing in her back isn't as bad as before, though she's still left feeling a bit tender. "Backtracking a moment, dwarves can't be mages because they have no connection to the Fade, at all. No connection, no magic and no dreaming. It's the way it's always been, as far as anyone knows. Given the way mages are treated, I can't exactly blame them for not jumping to 'fix' that.

And 'mercenary' just means hired muscle, in my case. We guard caravans, rescue people, bring back rare supplies from place X...basically, we do whatever needs doing. Sometimes that involves battle; usually against some nasty creature that we'll wish later we could forget, but we've been tasked with stopping bandits or raiders before. And I know about blood mages because I had to deal with them, too."

She'll elaborate on her personal tales some other time, when Hermione hasn't had a ton of information -mostly awful- thrown at her. "As for the First Blight; in a nutshell, a group of magisters wanting to gain even more power decided to physically enter the Fade and opened a gate into the Golden City -seat of the Maker/the Old Gods- with blood magic. Their pride resulted in the City turning Black, and the mages came back twisted and corrupted, devolving into monsters – the first darkspawn. Said darkspawn went underground, located the Old God Dumat and corrupted him, turning him into the first Archdemon.

Lead by him, they wiped out most of the dwarven kingdoms before taking to the surface. The Blight went on for about two centuries, weakening Tevinter and causing chaos eveyrwhere else, until it came to an end with the Grey Wardens. They're an Order dedicated to stopping Blights and kill darkspawn, and this is what spurred their formation. They managed to kill Dumat and end the Blight, though more Old Gods were found and corrupted later on. We've had five blights so far, and according to legend there's still two more Old Gods out there. The good news that that we -well, the Grey Wardens- are getting better at ending them. The most recent one lasted just a year."

Edited 2016-03-09 02:14 (UTC)

It will be in the next generation's hands anyway, whether it's the native-born ones like Kalli or the rifters like Hermione. They're the ones that will shape this world as his generation dies out. And hopefully they'll be smart enough to ignore Vivienne and her delusions about how their cage had been so wonderfully gilded that to leave it was wasteful.

"You don't have our history or our background, but you're here now. If you've already made yourself known as a mage, a witch, then that is how you will be seen. It's getting better, though. Here. In Skyhold. But I wouldn't travel far from here, especially as there's something of a war on."

He pauses and frowns. "Has anyone... told you the rest of what's going on? Is there any sort of primer to our world put together?"

"Oh! Sorry! Muggles are what we call people who can't do magic. They're kept in the dark about the magical world, unless they have reason to know about it. Like my parents. I'm a Muggle-born witch, so my parents of course had to be told what I was when I'd been accepted into wizarding school."

Which brings her to her next point, which she brings up carefully. After all, she doesn't want to be accused of telling anyone here how things should be, not when she's not even from around here. "In my world, magical children are accepted into schools run by other wizards and witches, where they learn about their magic. We also learn about our history and about the ways of the non-magical world, so we can better assimilate without being noticed, since there are some very marked differences between the two. Anyway, once we graduate, we have the chance to work in all sorts of places, including our government, the Ministry of Magic, where we may influence or even become the Minister of Magic, who works directly with the Muggle Prime Minister to keep him abreast of any magical situations he should know about for the safety of his people. So no one really knows who we are, and so they don't bother us, yet we still work together to keep the world safe from any ill-effects of magic. Or as safe as it can be, at any rate. I don't see why something like that can't be developed here."

"Of course it does," Hermione murmurs dryly when Korrin mentions hat the First Blight is connected. "Everything seems to be connected to the current state of things.

Frowning a little at the information about dwarves, Hermione thinks about it for a moment before replying, "Well, at least I know that whatever the source of my original magic is, it certainly isn't the Fade. We have dwarves in my world who can use magic. Actually, dwarves are specifically a type of magical being, like elves or centaurs, but we don't know much about them, as they can be very private. But then, the Muggle world has also come to use the word 'dwarf' to mean little people in general, even without any magical status. I wonder if there's a direct connection." She'd never really thought about it before, to tell the truth.

A little relieved at the explanation about mercenaries, Hermione breathes, "Oh, good. It usually means something much less ethical in nature back home. Not that it's good that you've had to deal with all those things, but I suppose, if you're capable and think the work worth the money, it couldn't have been all bad."

Hermione is always getting awful information thrown at her. It's been the case even before she's ever arrived in Thedas, so at this point, she's just assuming that it's her lot in life. "What exactly is meant by magister? In my world, it's a teacher of sorts; are you saying magic teachers had gone power hungry? Is that what it's like in Tevinter?" She only asks because she's heard the term thrown about whenever Tevinter is mentioned, and just wants to make sure she has the semantics right. After all, she already knows that she means something different from most Thedosians when she talks about elves. "So then, when people talk about the Maker, they're not referencing a single god in a monotheistic religion, but just the Creator god of a pantheon? I thought elves were the polytheistic ones...."

Which, really, just leads her to another point as she tries to digest all of this information. "How much of this is actual history and how much is just religious legend? Not that religion isn't a perfectly valid thing to have belief in, if that's what a person feels, but there's usually a clear division between fact and myth, and I don't know that there is one, in this case."

Hermione wouldn't know how to feel about being considered part of the next generation of mages in Thedas, given that she's under the impression that her stay is a temporary one. But while she's here, she's more than happy to help Detlef in whatever way she can to make sure mages have a shot at a better life in the future.

"I arrived in a snowy place called Emprise du Lion," she explains. "There were demons, and... some sort of soldiers with red crystals jutting out of their bodies. If that's what's waiting for me outside of Skyhold, I'll gladly stay here until things either calm down or I can make my magic work the way it should again." She might have survived a war back home, but she'd done it with magic; not having her full spectrum of spells available to her means that she's going to have to force herself to hang back for the time being.

Shaking her head, she smiles a little and remarks, "I know there's a war though not between whom, though I've heard things about the mages and templars, but I think that's sort of a background war? And there had been a native woman with one of these shards in her hand - she'd been called the Herald of... Andraste, I want to say? - and she'd died while closing the breach. But I'm afraid that people have been assuming I know bits and pieces that I don't, and there aren't exactly any books available on current events. I don't suppose you have a newspaper or some other daily or weekly publication here, do you?"

Hermione blinked down at the young woman who just sat herself down on the ground. She wasn't used to such casual behavior, and she already had enough to deal with when it came to getting herself used to this world. Or simply the idea of there being multiple worlds, and not just in the sense of several planets in a solar system.

"Humans don't attend magic schools where you're from? Do you mean to say that no humans have access to magic in your world? But they still know it exists?"

A good heart. A kind one, and concerned with justice. Leliana's gaze does not avert. Instead she watches Hermione for a moment, gently curious, almost tentative, as if looking away might fracture what she is observing. It is not so rare as to be unseen, but human concern for elves was so often lacking. It was easier to see them as servants or to empathise better with those whose concerns could reasonably be deemed their own. "I know," Leliana finally replies, very quietly. "This world is built around cruelty. It needs to change, all of it. And it will - it must."

She is not sure when or how, though she has come to learn that one can never expect others to take up arms. You must be prepared to do it yourself. Though she does not reach out for Hermione (Leliana does not reach out for anyone, these days, where ten years ago she might have pulled her into an impulsive hug) she does draw out a pristine white handkerchief and holds it out. Perhaps her expression is hard to read, some mix of empathy and surprise, painted over with a quiet control, the way she must mask so much.

After long moments of consideration, she speaks.

"And they, these... Death Eaters," Leliana starts, very carefully, eyes narrowing a little as this reminds her of a conversation she'd just recently had with Morrigan, "Call to mind certain figures within our own history."

Not precisely, of course. There are differences, always would be, but to have similarities raise up again, and so quickly, has her mind reeling a little.

"Have you heard of 'magisters'? Again, of the Tevinter Imperium, but... the Chant of Light teaches us that great evils in our lands originated from a group of magisters so proud and vain that they thought to enter the Golden City, and then they did, they corrupted it. The Maker turned his back on us, and these magisters became the first darkspawn - monstrous mockeries of each race that sweep over the lands inflicting death and suffering wherever they might go."

Not easy subjects, indeed. That finally gets a smile out of her. "In my experience the topics that most need discussion are never the easy ones. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Hermione. It is not... often that I find people whose passions seem to so greatly reflect my own." A moment, Leliana turning a thought over in her mind, before she continues. "If ever you find yourself in need of information or recommendations, please seek me out."

Leliana nods, then, to a nearby staircase that leads up to the Rookery. "That is where I am most often found."

It's beyond weird to think of dwarves as being inherently magical, and Korrin wants to get back to that at some point. Learning more about the people of Hermione's world is bound to be interesting, and she's curious to see how much -or how little- they have in common with her own. She smiles a little as Hermione doesn't pass judgment on her line of work, not about to apologize for it.

"Magisters are members of the Magisterium, the Imperial Senate. I don't know all the details, but basically they rule Tevinter. So, it's a political thing, but in Tevinter anyone with political power is also a mage. As for the Maker, they're absolutely talking about a single god; mention anything else to the Chantry and you'll probably see their faces turn purple. But in the time of the First Blight, the Chantry didn't exist then. Tevinter worshipped the Old Gods; some still might, though you can be sure that's kept secret. These days, even Tevinter is subject to the Chantry, though their own version."

Which, again, is not Korrin's forte. She's never been to Tevinter, so everything she knows about the place is secondhand information. Given how they'r at war with the Qunari and how she'd undoubtedly be treated, the Vashoth mage has no desire to see it for herself

"Honestly, I can't tell you where legend ends and history begins. The First Blight was so long ago and destroyed so much that we might never know for sure. What we do know is that the Blights have been part of this world for that long, and that mages are blamed for that ancient act of pride. Yes, some of their reason for imprisoning mages is due to what I said about abominations, but they also fear us screwing over the world again. Nevermind that we suffer the Blights just the same as everyone else."

"Well, there are some that do," Ariadne said, looking up at her with bright gray eyes that flashed like silver coins. "But they're very, very rare. The Darucs have magic too, and they're a cousin species to Humans. But they don't use schools, really. It's mostly the Elves. There was a big, famous school of magic one town over from where I lived in Valeria. I had a friend who studied there. She always made it sound so mysterious."

And yes, Ariadne wiggled her fingers with the 'mysterious.' Like she was telling some kind of a ghost story.

She shrugged. "You're either born with it, or you're not. Just like you're born with red hair or you're not."

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Mia notes dryly, both eyebrows lifting, before motioning to the board. "Here are the pawns...they move thusly. Bishops, of course, and the knights. Is this looking familiar to you at all?"

The spaces in which they could move were different, certainly. But it wasn't too different, in truth, and Mia demonstrated the moves and how they might be utilized with a great deal of patience. Who knew? The girl could be masterful back home with her own version of the game, though it sounded like chess where she came from would be a great deal more lively.

"The Fade, that's how we got here, right?" Emma is still picking together the story of her new reality, and there's a lot she still has to learn. She thinks she has the basics, though — the Fade was an otherworld where magic and other, usually dangerous, things stemmed. Sort of a different plane rather than an alternate world, if she understands correctly. She wasn't sure how or why it would affect her magic, yet it sounded like nobody else did, either. Honestly it was more of a relief than anything else. There was no dagger to stop her if the darkness got out of control, but surely she'd exhaust herself thanks to the odd restrictions suddenly set upon her. Right about now? She really needed restrictions.

The idea that learning more about the magic in Thedas, that it might help her find better control of her own, was definitely something she'd have to remember. Though unlike Hermione, she was not particularly interested in sharing her abilities with the natives. If they hated dangerous magic, then well, chances were they weren't going to like meeting a Dark One. She didn't need any more threats hanging over her head as she tried to find her way back home.

She offers a weak smile at the introduction, taking the offered handshake — though she notably lets go the second it's over. "Emma. It's nice to meet you." There's no recognition for the name, unfortunately. Frankly Emma is pretty sure they're from different worlds, since the only place hers has magic is a tiny place in Maine, and in that case she'd definitely remember a face, even if she didn't keep up with all the names. "You've been asking a lot of questions about magic already, I take it. You're not worried about the anti-magic types running around?"

"Dwarves are like that here too." She looked intrigued by the word 'minotaur,' but brushed past it to answer Hermione's question.

"There are giants, yes. I heard there were a few in Emprise, in fact, being experimented on by the Red Templars to be their muscle. Even without that happening to them, they aren't to be trifled with. They have huge tusks and one eye in the center of their forehead. They'll eat anything, including people, so it's best to keep away if you see one or else you'll have to fight it. Not an easy task because they are, as the name suggests, giant."

Ellana nodded. "That's how I feel. Not everyone will like me, but if it's for a good reason instead of just my ears, I would understand."

Hermione's sentiments for elves is unique even for the magical community in her world. House-elves are outright slaves, and to hear Ron and even some of the elves themselves tell it, they prefer it that way. It makes her heart hurt, knowing that the elves don't know any better and that the wizarding community is just taking advantage of that. "All worlds are built on cruelty," she murmurs softly. "I just would have hoped to find that that wasn't the case."

She's well aware that the only way to see any change in the world is to become that change, embody it, and hope people will be inspired by the example. It hasn't worked so far, not insofar as the house-elf business, but then, she'd been young when she'd last tried to form the Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare. She's older now, wiser, so maybe she can reinvent it. Starting with that ghastly name.

It takes a moment for her to realize why Leliana is holding out a handkerchief to her, and when she does, she immediately wipes at her eyes, though she does take her up on the handkerchief with a murmured, "Thank you," surreptitiously dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

"Someone told me about magisters," she replies quietly. "Those magisters, specifically. There's a bit of blurriness between what's fact and what's legend, but that doesn't need to be discussed." Given that Leliana had said that this had been "taught" to her by the Chant of Light, Hermione is going to assume that this means she ascribes a religious meaning behind it all. Hermione isn't against religion, but she's going to reserve judgement whenever there's some haziness between truth and myth.

Taking a breath to try and gather herself together after her upset about the elves, she manages a small, crooked smile as she meets Leliana's gaze. "I don't really find people who do much more than entertain my passion until it becomes annoying, so thank you. I appreciate the offer, especially since I still have a lot to learn about Thedas." Her smile faltering, she glances away before remarking, "No offense, but the things I learn don't seem to paint a particularly nice picture."

"So... Tevinter is essentially what my world would be like if Voldemort had won, from the sound of it." That doesn't really make Hermione at all eager to visit the place anytime soon. Or to talk to any of the people from there, but she'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Because Korrin said so.

"But does the Chantry recognize this event that hinges on the idea of pagan Old Gods being the cause of these Blights? Or do they claim these darkspawn came from somewhere else?" People make all sorts of claims in the name of religion back home, but they can usually be disputed by facts and logic. If there are actually darkspawn running around, though, and there's known magic at work and historical evidence of magisters who'd actually gone to this Golden City, it seems like there's more than faith at work here. Hermione just likes to be able to parse out the fact from the fiction.

"So before the Blights," Hermione asks, "does that mean that mages and non-mages got along? That we've been feared ever since, despite the fact that was so long ago that it's likely no one even remotely related to those magisters is even alive?" Not that it would matter if a distant relative of such a person existed, unless he or she was guilty of some sort of crime. It's telling, though, that Hermione is already beginning to use the word "we" while discussing the plight of mages.

Hermione is familiar with chess, certainly, but she'd never been overly good at it. Oh, it isn't unusual for her to win a few games here and there, but it's one of the only areas where Ron can excel over her. She just doesn't have the head for strategy, usually planning too far ahead to see what was happening within the next move.

"It looks about the same, yes," she replies, a little relieved. Glancing up at Mia, she smiles and tells her,"Thank you. There have been so many differences between my world and Thedas that it's nice to find something at least a little familiar."

"Through a rift in the Fade, yes," Hermione replies, as though she's lived here her entire life. Asking a lot of questions has the benefit of obtaining a lot of answers in a short amount of time. She's no expert, but it would surprise no one from home if she became a Thedosian scholar within her first month here. "Think of it as a tear through the fabric of space and time. Or through a veil, if that expression means the same for you as it does for me." But then, that just reminds her about Sirius, and she doesn't want to think about something so depressing right at the moment.

Noting nothing off about the brief contact, Hermione shrugs. "I haven't had cause to worry, really. Most of the people I've been running into have been mages themselves. The few that aren't have been remarkably accommodating. I think Skyhold has something of an open door policy, from my understanding of things. Even elves are discriminated against outside of here, but then, they don't seem to have a good time of things anywhere."

Peering at Emma curiously, she asks, "Do you have elves where you're from? We call ours house-elves, but I'd prefer to think of them as just elves, since they are what they are regardless of where they are."

Trying to learn to ignore this girl's idiosyncrasies, Hermione nodded. "Yes, well, that's more or less how it works at home, too. But a witch and a wizard are almost always going to have a child with magic, and two Muggles - that's a person who can't do magic- will almost always have a Muggle child. Occasionally you'll get a Muggle-born witch or wizard, like me, and rarely you'll get a Squib, someone born to a wizarding family but who can't use magic. But essentially, anyone who can use magic has to go to school for it, so they don't just accidentally... blow up a restaurant or something."

It seemed that Hermione's world had a word for everything. Now that was truly fascinating. But Ariadne didn't like to get into lengthy linguistic debates with Humans. It often tipped her hand. And even when it didn't...most Humans...most humanoids...didn't have the same ear that an Alastrian had.

Instead, she gestured for Hermione to sit down with her. She seemed awfully uncomfortable, just standing there.

"So which one are you?" she asked curiously. "Obviously not a Muggle, based on the way you've described them."

It is telling, and Korrin's lips curve into a small smile upon hearing that. Witch or otherwise in her world, here Hermione is counted as a mage, and thus their plight is essentially hers. Not that Korrin would wish for the latter, but at least Hermione will come to understand it better than most rifters.

"I'm no scholar, but before the First Blight, Tevinter was the dominant force on Thedas. The magisters ruled Tevinter and so everyone else. I doubt that generated a lot of goodwill, though whether the hatred was as rabid as it became later, is a good question. I wish I could answer it. What I do know is that the First Blight weakened the Imperium, to the point where Andraste and her cult of the Maker gathered enough strength to challenge it.

The Chantry claims that darkspawn are the result of the tainted magisters; originally human, but since then they're the tainted copies of all races. I can't say how that's possible, and something tells me I'll sleep better at night not knowing. No darkspawn were mentioned before the First Blight, though; that every source which comes to mind is very clear on that."

Edited 2016-03-09 23:48 (UTC)

"Wouldn't that be a thing, a listing of what's gone on." Anders shakes his head. He can tell by her scattered description of things that no one has really helped straighten things out... but then again, where would they start? The story goes back hundreds of years.

"We don't have anything like that, but let me try to... outline. The world was made by the Maker. Big surprise there. There are two parts. The waking world, which you see, and the Fade, touched by dreamers, walked by mages, and home to spirits and demons. The Maker hung out in the Golden City until who knows what happened. He got bored, frustrated, it doesn't really matter. He buggered off. Left the City behind.

"A group of very powerful mages from Tevinter, a country, decided they'd take the Maker's place and went into the Golden City, turning it Black. You can see it from any part of the Fade, dark and foreboding. The point is, one of them was named Corypheus. Or at least he's claiming to be one of them. That's the guy the main war is against, and this was over a thousand years ago. He's powerful enough that I believe him.

"Jump forward not too much further, to about nine hundred years ago, and there's a woman named Andraste who sought to stop the spread of the Tevinter Imperium. Mage-run empire, enslaved and slaughtered elves, were trying to spread across the continent. Fighting happened, she got betrayed and killed and set up as the Maker's bride and basically worshiped. The Tevinter stopped spreading. This is about the time when people decided that just because some mages were corrupt and loved power, all mages must be evil and seek it out, and they should be locked up for the safety of everyone else. This was justified as Andraste's will, because one of the things she said was that magic should serve men, not men serve magic.

"And now we come to recent times. We're finally finding freedom after a few things have happened - Lord Seeker Lambert causing a slaughter, a mage blowing up a Chantry, a building dedicated to the worship of Andraste, and the destruction of the conclave, meeting of mages and Andraste's worship's highest figure, the Divine, by Corypheus - the Templars who were are jailers are angry, everyone's threatened by Corypheus and his massive dragon, elves have still been being slaughtered by humans, the qunari want to enslave most of us and kill the rest, it's a lovely time to be visiting Thedas."

His lips quirk upward despite how he tries to keep from grinning. "Any questions?"

Edited (By thousands I mean hundreds...) 2016-03-10 09:12 (UTC)

A little shake of her head, nothing more - no thanks are necessary.

"Only so much blurriness," Leliana comments, barely audible though there is no aggression in her tone, only thoughtfulness. "You are correct, however."

Things she does not say - that the Chant of Light is the word of man and not Maker, that it has been altered over time, that the Chant has been used to keep mages oppressed and controlled and to justify many evils that do not reflect the Maker's heart, nor His will. Such thoughts are for herself alone. Her faith belongs to none but herself.

"I have found myself in such positions more than once." The present moment being no exception. "That is the cost of truly seeing, I fear. So many are able to justify the suffering of others, or simply to ignore it, because the system that is flawed has not maligned them, personally. They do not comprehend the cost, whether it be human, elven, qunari or dwarf - it does not concern them. You have found us in a time of floundering, a chance for the broken systems to be taken apart and rebuilt so all might benefit and thrive, and so few have the vision to bring it to pass."

Leliana shrugs, though the gesture is barely visible, when the motion is so subtle and she is wrapped up in armour. "Perhaps the perspectives of rifters will allow us to better ourselves by learning the lessons of more worlds."

Though it will only work if people become less determined to be blind, to be selfish. "I... believe that Thedas has the capacity to be much kinder than it has allowed itself to become."

Any questions, he asks. He clearly hasn't cottoned on to just who he's talking to.

A lot of what he tells her is familiar, either from her readings or from her various conversations with people. It still seems odd, foreign, and that's because so much of it is tied to religion and legend. The fact that he starts off with telling her about the Maker is telling, though so is the way he simply disregards this being.

"Did people come to worship Andraste because she tried to stop the spread of an empire that treated elves so poorly?" she asks, wanting desperately to believe that Thedas had been filled with caring people at one point. Of course, she's also a realist, which leads her to dryly follow up with, "Or was it only because they hated mages more than elves and so loathed the idea of a mage-ruled government?"

Frowning by now, she adds, "Mages aren't the embodiment of magic, so there's no reason for them to have been subjugated simply because of the poor choices of the few. How many non-mages have blundered their way through history, after all?"

That frown does take on a sadder quality as she considers Detlef's last words, though, and she looks up at him, obviously torn. "Why is it that mages are finding freedom when there's so much chaos in the world? A slaughter? Blowing up a-.... These are all acts of terrorism, you understand. I know that mages have been oppressed, but becoming the monsters everyone wants to think they - ... wants to think we are, it isn't going to help us in the long run. It's just going to muddy the waters."

She does try and think about non-mages, though, which leads her to a brief follow-up question. "When you say that qunari want to enslave or kill us... I assume you mean the followers of the Qun? Is that true, or does it just seem away because their religion is so much different from the rest of Thedas'? Does anyone ever actually talk to them, outside of the ones who left the Qun or were born outside of it?" Because she's met Korrin and the Iron Bull, and they both seemed to be nice enough, if a bit intimidating at first glance.

Hermione blinked at the explanation of giants. "That... sounds more like a cyclops," she murmured uncertainly. "No, our giants look just like people, just... well, giant. They're thought to be a bit savage, but they can really quite reasonable if you'd just sit down and talk to them. Why, the groundskeeper at my school is even half-giant, though I have no idea how his parents quite managed that. It boggles the mind to think about that sort of thing, really."

Cracking a small smile, she told Ellana, "Then it seems as though we'll get along just fine. And for what it's worth, you have lovely ears." She was pretty certain that wasn't what she'd meant, but Hermione decided to throw it in there anyway.

For what it's worth, Hermione is glad Leliana doesn't try to engage her in a conversation about religion; she doesn't even feel comfortable talking about that in her own world, where she can hold her own in a discussion about Christianity or Judaism or even Taoism. Here, in a world where she doesn't even know the names for the various belief systems beyond referring to them as monotheistic or polytheistic, she has no idea how such a discussion would go.

As Leliana speaks, Hermione looks down, feeling her words resonating within her. She'd often made comparisons between Voldemort and his Death Eaters to Hitler and his Nazis, and she's come to realize that no matter what time period, no matter what world, there will always be evil men and women who want nothing more than to hate and destroy.

"Back home, almost sixty years ago, there was a man who had this idea about a 'master race,' and decided that he and his followers would kill all those who didn't fit into that mold he'd created in his own head, whether it was for their nationality, religion, lifestyle, or allegiances. Over sixty million people died. Sixty. Million. It's hard to think about numbers when they get to be so big, but... there is a poem I'd heard a long time ago, written by a man who lived through that."

She closes her eyes, trying to remember the verse verbatim, glad that she has an excellent memory when it comes to things she's read. "'First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me— ... and there was no one left to speak for me.'" She feels that there's a line or two missing or a word out of place, but the sentiment is still very much there as she meets Leliana's eyes once again. "Most people are happy to stand by and watch the world destroy itself, not realizing that they're a part of that world. As much as I'd hate to think of anyone going through that sort of thing, at least there's a chance for the people here to gain that foresight before they end up in a spiral of self-destruction just because they couldn't be fussed to stop a problem before it got out of hand."

She lets that hang in the air for a moment before shaking her head and mentioning, "The people I've met here at Skyhold have all been very decent to me, despite my being considered a mage and a stranger in this world. So yes, I'll hold out hope that Thedas can be better than what it is, so long as the people of Skyhold work to spread their positive influence."

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Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

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so much teal deer

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the tealest of teal deers o/

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I AM SO SORRY

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NEVER APOLOGIZE ♥

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ARE YOU SURE BECAUSE I CAN BE PRETTY OBNOXIOUS

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LIES