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

[coiledscales]

I am already quite willing to see this world survive without you or your ilk laying their metaphorical talons into me, thank you. Give us some credit.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Wow. Wow.

Dude.

Shut the fuck up.

[letoldthingsdie]

Rifters aren't a resource. They're not livestock. They're people. You would take away their choice in the matter for some hypothetical that Corypheus could just steal Rifters?

[He's going to try very hard not to be angry about all this nonsense. He'd promised Obi-Wan that much. The fact that someone was stupid enough to speak out like this makes him wonder where the value is in trying to reason with anyone at all and yet here he is. Trying.]

[provenforce]

You can't think of any way to track us down that doesn't involve giving someone our blood?

[zombra]

So you're agreeing to have a phylactery made from your blood too, right? I mean, you sound like you're very important. We wouldn't want to lose you.

[tagartist]

Arguments of "it's for your safety" have been used to justify all sorts of bullshit things in my world that never end well for minorities. You'll have to do better than that, I think, to convince us Rifters this is in any way a good idea when we've heard so many negatives about how they can be used to fuck with us.

If we've been kidnapped before and rescued without these things, we can be rescued again. Make your search parties more efficient at tracking people by natural methods. I'd rather endure pain from some evil dipshit and keep my freedom than have my blood in the hands of someone I don't know or trust who could do whatever they wanted with it, claiming it's all for my safety.

[exascendee]

The problem with this proposed safeguard is that it's far too vulnerable to abuse. Any rifter would live under the constant threat that if they did something the Inquisition leadership disagreed with, it would be far too easy to control them. Even just psychologically, it would do far more bad than good.

And even if people were okay with, and it wasn't abused by those in power, which is unlikely, what if Corypheus's forces stole not the people, but the phylacteries? Not just one small group would be in danger, but every single rifter.

And, just for the record, using the threat of the end of the world as leverage to support your argument is a cruel cheap trick.

Crystal

[laurenande]

The heart of conflict, where the crux of this matter truly lies, is what you will do should we refuse to be party to this magnanimous solution.

[Galadriel is calm in the way that people talking in purely hypothetical statements are calm. She is not entertaining this idea, not for a moment, but she is curious about the extent of the logic employed here.]

If we decide our safety is best held in our own hands, not in those of the Inquisition command, what will you do then?

Will it be mandated, demanded of us for the common good? Will you attempt to force us who do not agree to grant you permission? Will you steal our blood against our will?

If any of those answers are 'yes', then what will grant us safety from you, should you choose to abuse these tracking phials? What guarantee could we have that this whole endeavor is not folly, or the beginnings of new chains and new circles for holding us alone?

[faithlikeaseed]

[Tiredly,] We could also develop ways to track them that are voluntary--and won't leave them vulnerable to spells cast on them remotely. Leave it to them to decide whether they'd like the added insurance we can find them if they go missing.

[castintoflames]

No. (Maedhros keeps it brief to save him from doing or saying something he regrets.)

[utulien_aure]

I imagine the world's fate matters to mages as well, and yet they spent these past weeks struggling against the very leash you would put on us.

Why should we not be concerned?

[somethingyettocome]

Phylacteries are a way to find people who get lost? Who're taken?

They're not stealing freedom away or chaining people somewhere?

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

So I thought earlier that these phylacteries were soul jars that were made by evil magic users in order to cheat death. The ones you have here? Worse. The evil soul jars, for all the horrid magic you use to make one, are by choice and make you harder to kill.

These? They are done against your will and make you EASIER to kill.

You guys don't know me, or where I'm from, or what I can do, much less HOW I do it. I am not going to be controlled by anyone, and I will react poorly to anyone who tries.

Side note here. Does anyone actually know how much damage we could do if we all decided that we were unwanted and fucked of too...Does this place have anything like Australia?

And finally. You sir, are you a Rifter? Or a mage? I truly hope so, because if you are not, then you have no idea what you're even talking about, and I have to ask why you're even a fucking PART of this conversation.

[gotyourselfapilot]

Sensible in what way? I do see that you are trying to say that the tracking of it would be helpful. But there has to be another way for that. It just can't be from the phylacteries. You're asking people to give up certain freedoms. Freedoms in which we will talk about and be vocal about.

You're coming up with a possibility of kidnapping and torment for long periods of time. There are people who are strong enough to resist. They know that they are fighting a battle where death is a constant factor. They make those choices now freely. We may not need these phylacteries to save our lives if we are already so willing to take a stand to something that can already kill us.

I wouldn't want the world to end. And the fight is about everyone it seems. [ He goes from one place where it's about everyone with a war right around the corner to another in which people could slaughter them if this law were to go into effect and they refused. ]

[sorcerised]

Are you actually joking?

[ You're not and he knows it, so why dont we just segue straight into... ]

Firstly, Rifters are not a 'valuable resource'. We're people, already brought here against our will and through no fault of our own, and now you want to put leashes and collars on us too. We dont belong to you, or the Inquisition. If you asked for our help and we agreed, and we also agreed to magic that would let you find us, then that's a different matter.

But they are talking about forcing it on us. If you think the only use of that would be to find us when we're in trouble, then you are criminally naive. It would be used to keep track of us, to ensure we could never walk away and allow pressure to be put on us to do what the Inquisition says whether we want to or not. It takes our freedom from us, and I will never stand for that. How dare any of you ask me to.

[ipseite]

In one thing we are agreed, docteur; it is past due that many similarly foreign to myself understood that we are not apart from this world, and behave accordingly.

( beaumanoir is common and so are his thoughts. they will hear this again and again, and the concerns raised (and those not spoken, but felt) will not be assuaged by the wailing and gnashing of teeth. certainly not by threats of force.

she presses a finger to the pulse, acquaints herself with its speed and strength. these will be busy days. )

[circleprodigy]

Of course it seems sensible to someone who has never had one made for himself, or been tormented through it for weeks on end. It's not a simple, harmless inquiry when such items have been abused again and again and again. That many who have deep concerns about this simply wish to see the world end -when we have been fighting for years to prevent just that- is pure nonsense.

[gatheringstorm]

Oh, go fuck yourself.

Just because people don't support making those damned leashes -which were recently used to torment a good portion of our mages, great timing- doesn't mean we want Corypheus to win. I haven't heard your voice before, but I have been fighting this fight for years. I can do that and still protest this as the huge violation it is. You don't get to decide who is loyal and who isn't.

Oh, and an extra fuck you for dragging in the subject of the rifters who were kidnapped, as though you actually care about any of them and what they endured instead of using them as a weapon in your argument. Disgusting.

[iceblade]

Is this your take on the native anchor-bearers, too? Just curious.