002.

[sangsues]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Etienne Guerinet Beaumanoir
RECIPIENT: everyone (sorry)
WHAT: whats all this
WHEN: post-proposal etc
WHERE: the walliest kirk
NOTES: Orlesians

( A quiet clearing of the throat; one can naturally assume it is a very beautiful clearing of the throat, done by a very beautiful man. )

This matter of the phylacteries for rifters… it seems sensible. If they are such a valuable resource to the Inquisition, the closing of rifts, and so on, being able to find said resource if a rival power were to try and overpower them and abscond with them makes sense, I think. For their own safety, for our own safety. If Corypheus and his forces were, for example, to make an attack on a party closing a rift and kidnap those rifters for nefarious purposes, it would be better for all if we were able to find them as quickly as possible. The phylacteries are an established way of doing just this, no?

By all means, if you wish to see the world end, protest. Even if this is not your world, though, I think we can all agree that you are currently in it. It’s fate is not entirely irrelevant to you.

Comments

[laurenande]

Then we are at an impasse, for you have set yourself against me.

It is about me, as it is about every rifter and everyone who is deemed too dangerous for the safety of this world. Your fears are not my own and I will not be made to cower as if they were, nor can I permit you to act upon them if doing so would bring danger to me.

I mean you no harm but I will do nothing further to prove it. If we are to be enemies, I will lament that, but I will not be quietly walked into the darkness. I will not suffer the indignity of imprisonment again, literal of metaphorical.

[esquive]

[He makes a soft, aborted sound, though it's impossible to tell whether it's frustrated or chagrined. Then:] I said it poorly. I mean that the threat which might be posed could be as involuntary to you as it is unknown to the rest of us.

Tell me differently if you know, but the way rifters arrive here is a mystery to the both of us. Isn't it?

[laurenande]

I know not how I was brought to this place, for if I did I would have reversed it long ago. If it was a force that brought me here, the hand of Iluvatar himself, then the threads that weave our fates will not be altered by any phial. The dangers we may pose will not be averted by so small a thing, not if our presence here was orchestrated by a higher being.

If it were a simple accident, a twist and eddy in the currents of time, then there are far greater dangers to concern you. Of all that could be drawn from my world, I am by no means the worst, nor the most powerful.

I would assume that holds true for each of us.

I cannot see how a phylactery might abate that threat, for no power greater than myself would ever permit one to be made, by force or otherwise. If you can see this path, predict how it will end, do enlighten me. I am ever curious of how Men view this world.

[esquive]

[She must be nobility of a kind, he thinks. What other sort might say as much and see herself so removed from the rest? Tread carefully, Marcoulf tells himself.]

You ask too much of me, Lady. [No sarcasm detected.] But to my ear, it's as if neither of us can speak to what might yet happen, or what purpose the shards might serve, or who or what brought rifters here and why.

[Or, or, or. It's a long list of question marks.]

I only say that the phials narrow the threat some of those unknowns might pose. You may not have chosen to come here, to be marked so, or to be responsible for anyone's safety, but here you are and there is the shard.

[laurenande]

[Oh ho, what is this? Some respect for her opinions? Galadriel approves (++) and is, at once, just that much more inclined to consider his argument.

She is silent a moment and, as it passes, sighs.]

When I first came here, I was warned of the dangers of possession, that the spirits of Thedas might try to take us in our sleep.

I did not worry then, not because I did not comprehend the risk, nor believed the dangers you fear were not real, but because I have spent centuries resisting and evading those who would dominate my mind. My every moment has been haunted by a terror Thedas will not know, insidious and perpetual, and I resist. My practice in this art is considerable.

Please understand; while I may not know every facet of the threats within Thedas, I know every way in which I might be used as you worry we could be. I must be cautious, for I do value the lives of the people of Thedas, and to submit myself this way...to narrow the band of those threats but permit more dangers, unknown risks to arise...I cannot.

I cannot guard the phial that would be made of me and so to have it, to gift it elsewhere with no guarantees, is a gamble I cannot take.

[esquive]

I'm sure you know your mind and what you can endure best. [How she's certain she can resist a danger she knows nothing of seems completely counter intuitive, but this is a woman who just used the word 'centuries' in relation to herself. Maybe discussing what's sane and rational with respect to her personally is somewhat of a lost cause.] But forgive me if I'm skeptical whether every rifter has your strength or conviction. In which case, how can there be exceptions without risking dangerous oversights?

Maybe the rifters could suggest a responsible steward such as yourself to work with the Inquisition to help oversee the care and use of rifter phylacteries.

[laurenande]

A good question, and one to which there is no simple answer. A fair solution would require no short span of time to create, time which you and this Inquisition lack.

I can understand your desire to see this solved but tread carefully, even when suggesting the familiar, for you know not what you ask of each of us and...in truth, there is much we cannot answer.

If election of a steward is amenable to those who choose to have these phials made, and were I chosen to carry that burden, I would serve as I always have. Even then, however, I would not encourage this practice. I've no want of power or titles, even if involvement would ease my mind to a degree.

[A lie, but told with the ringing of the truth. She truly does not desire clout, but power is another matter. The responsibility, at least in concept, is a familiar one.]

[esquive]

[There's some riposte to be had in there - where she acknowledges the fact that so much of this is unknown, but denies the potential for danger in it. But he dismisses it. Instead:]

It sounds like nothing can be done today if no one's yet certain how to make phylacteries for rifters. Now seems the time to organize for negotiation instead of refusing it outright.