crystal

[arcaneadvisor]

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Morrigan
RECIPIENT: All
WHAT: Let's talk about what god is aka so you found a troubling thing and need to address that one day
WHEN: Post-tourney
WHERE: Kirkwall/Kirkwall-adjacent
NOTES: If you want to push Morrigan on certain things you can certainly try but her finding Geldauran's Claim isn't public knowledge yet given the possibility for it to be highly inflammatory, especially with the rifter status and the Dalish in positions of power in the Inquisition

What do you believe gods are Inquisition? Do you indeed believe that there are gods? The Chantry that likes to press and to meddle might not be for all but there are many of those who will still have the name of the Maker upon their lips in a time of strife. The Dalish have the Creators. The Avvar have beliefs about spirits and gods, and the Chasind have gods of a fashion, men and women beloved of them.

Rifters need not be shy in answering, I ask about...what a god is. What it might be. If it is a thing indeed. Something far beyond the comprehension of any mortal being, shifting even beyond the Veil or Fade that we might never know what it truly is, or if it might something else. Something closer to flesh and blood fashioned long ago. Shaped in the way the world is shaped.

[That phrase turned over and over: There is only the subject and the object, the actor and the acted upon.]

Perhaps… [and well she might as well voice a possibility when they're in Kirkwall where the Veil was stretched so thin long ago] once 'twas possible to raise those of ambition and power as high as the magisters of old Tevinter, to leave terror and awe in their wake depending on the mood, the whim, the offering.

[Eventually...well eventually there will be a report, but until she can trust how to write it, can know what the reception might be when it dares to leave the small group that know even the truth of what lies deep in the Tirashan, she can't bring her hand to write it.]

Comments

a few months from now this is going to be in the elven artifacts' lap so enjoy one day adalia

[arcaneadvisor]

Much of what was written of the Maker comes from the Chant, I have little love of it or either. [Belief of a thing existing, faith, those can be separate from love of a thing and live about the Chasind and that strikes a deeper chrod.]

Again the question comes of reality that I wonder: what makes a thing real. Is it to touch it with the hands, to smell the salt of the skin, to hear breath rattle in the lungs? Or is it what one makes of it? [Or both. Both could be good but unhelpful when that would be the middle ground and when there were bodies, when there was blood in the air in the air with screaming (if that detail can be kept to leadership so much the better) then what good is the middle ground? When the ears are pointed. When home is the forest and the tattoos are blood writing.] Was the sacrifice and blood given freely, demanded, taken, or some combination?

[Does it matter? (Yes.) There's always sacrifice. The roads of Thedas churn wetly, blackly beneath them all wet with the blood of those who built them, bones and old beneath their feet.]

Thedas has wrestled with the face of itself for Ages. The Chantry split between Tevinter and all the rest. Elsewhere there are those who call spirits gods. People cannot fully decide the nature of the prophet Andraste. The Qun threatens and causes more to question their faith. There were Exalted Marches past and one against elves who would not follow a human god. Is that what you mean by questioning here?

she looks forward to it

[thunderproof]

For a thing to be real it must be perceptible. ❰ which... is an oversimplification that adalia almost immediately walks back. ❱ Well, it must have an undeniable effect on the world, at least. I believe in Toril's gods because I have seen them and the works of their faithful; I disbelieve in the Maker because I have seen no evidence of his existence.

❰ as for sacrifice... hoo boy. ❱ It depends on the god, I would expect. I've heard of only two gods in Toril who raised themselves up from mortality, and both are associated with death. The Raven Queen was once a mortal woman who cast down an evil god of death to take his place and more neutrally enforce the natural order, and...

❰ how to talk around the fact that alacruun the undying, lord of undeath and knowing, is here and is talking to morrigan right now. HRGH. ❱

The Undying Dragon wanted to rule the world and remake it in his own proscribed order. He was hatched as any dragon might be, but amassed enough followers willing to sacrifice themselves for him that he achieved apotheosis as a deity of necromancy and knowledge. As he did so, however, the Raven Queen's champions attacked him, right at the crux moment between deification and mortality, the last moment he would ever be truly vulnerable. Killing him would have been impossible, even then, but they managed to imprison him in a purpose-made plane of void, where he's remained ever since.

❰ ...but that got a bit away from morrigan's original question, huh? oops. ❱ His sacrifices were both willing and not; his followers killed themselves and others to give him the power to ascend.

By questioning, I mean... your Maker does nothing, says nothing, influences nothing, and so there are those who believe and those who don't and those who don't know or don't care to think about it because what good would it do when they have crops to till and babies to feed. In Toril everyone believes, because to disbelieve would be to deny reality.Truthfully, your spirits are more like gods to me than anything else I've seen in Thedas.

[arcaneadvisor]

Not all perceive the same thing. [A mage perceives the Fade a different way to a non-mage, a dwarf doesn't dream, who knows what the Qunari know it as she's never asked one, and the Crossroads-- well Adalia has access to what's written about the eluvians thus far, Morrigan hasn't kept track of who might share what ever since the meeting over maps once ago where the truth was laid out over a table.] You would discount Andraste as evidence of his existence? [Curious simply because there is always Andraste, Andraste and what she was before, what she became while she lived, what she became ever after in every bloody statue in even the simplest Chantry in a village undeserving of a name on a map. (Morrigan knows those villages, she's traipsed through too many of them now.)]

You will have heard of the Old Gods of the Imperium, the Magisters who worshipped them. [She's half of the head of Elven Artifacts, Morrigan more than trusts that she'll have that part in hand since you can't know elven history without knowing the Tevinter parts.] Dragon cults still exist. Or existed, one not so long ago with altars small enough to sacrifice a babe. But for something more like your Raven Queen at least in the spirit of such, there is Ghilan'nain, a huntress changed to a halla and raised to godliness by Andruil after another hunter betrayed her.

[Morrigan listens though, listens intently because this is what she needs to know: what other gods may be like elsewhere because before any of this there was little reason to question much of any of it. Now there is. Her faith, her beliefs? They were her own, private unless there was scorn to be poured upon the Chantry as an organisation, now she has questions to be asked that she has to ask of so many people rather than the echo chamber she might rely upon otherwise. Hearing this is...too much might be familiar in strange places.]

Ever the dragons. Ever the dragons, that which mankind knows little of. [Half of it to herself but where there's a dragon, there's worship, and how many times has that worship gone awry in some fashion? Far better for Adalia to tell her this over a crystal, not in person, for as good as Morrigan is in keeping her expression into a scowl or smirk or some level of interested, she might give it away here. Too much is almost alarming.] Tell me...how much do you know of the Old Gods. Of Corypheus?

[Of the Archdemons.] The cult in Haven performed sacrifices, to an extent I am uncertain of, and Tevinter's legacy is slavery, blood magic fuelled not by their own blood though some of that too sacrificed but not in death. Or not that I am aware. This one you speak of, his will was strong? If you had to say what they were to him, his followers, would you say they were people, or something else? [A leading question, though at this stage every question feels that way. She's too aware of what she brought back with her, locked safely away until such times as it needs to be revealed. Still, she'd rather know, slot more pieces in place.]

You might do well learning of the Avvar or the Chasind, those who split from the Alamarri yet kept their ways. They believe in spirits as greater beings to differing extents to all others in Thedas. Here with those who believe in the Maker, he must be won back after all the wrongs that were done by the Breach of his Golden City in Ages past. [Passive-aggressive parenting is alive and well in Thedas.] To them, to even know the will of the Maker or claim it might be to deny reality when you put how Toril works.

tl;drs forever, oh my god, i'm so sorry

[thunderproof]

Oh, I don't doubt Andraste's existence, that's a matter of historical record. I doubt that she did the things she's purported to have done in the ways she's purported to have done them — I believe there is a Tevinter interpretation that she was a powerful sorceress? It doesn't seem an outlandish idea to me. Which is not then to say I am not open to the idea that she was a cleric or paladin of some kind, that would track with my understanding of divinity perfectly well, but if she was why is no one else? Why are the only people calling on other beings for power those who have bound themselves to or made pacts with spirits?

❰ because the maker turned away from his people, but we'll get to all that in a moment. ❱

Not as much as I would like, truthfully, I've been studying Chantry history more than most other things since the Chantry is so influential at present. I know there were seven Old Gods, dragons who first whispered the secrets of blood magic into the Dreamer Tevinter magisters' ears. The Golden City was breached in their name, and thence come darkspawn and the Blight, and Corypheus centuries later. ❰ a small huff, the audible equivalent of a shrug. ❱ It's all Chantry rhetoric except for that last part, so without digging deeper I can't say what's true and what's a fabrication and what's just been exaggerated over time.

This cult sounds... I mean, awful, but in a fascinating way. Why did they think sacrifice was necessary? What were they trying to accomplish? ❰ as for what alacruun thought of his followers... gods, wouldn't adalia like to know. she can make guesses, probably accurate ones, but who knows what really goes through his head. ❱ Dragons are naturally narcissists, on my plane. Even the good ones believe they are the apex of creation, and nothing could ever improve upon them. So I imagine... I imagine the Undying Dragon's followers didn't merit thinking about, as far as he was concerned. Their service to him was just as it should be, and if they died or killed for him it was in pursuit of a more ordered world, so it was just. And... yes. I think his will was very strong.

I've been interested in the Avvar beliefs, but most of what I've learned of them has been from Chantry sources, again, so I'm not sure what's true. That aside... ❰ there's another huff, slightly indignant this time, and if morrigan could imagine adalia rolling her eyes and crossing her arms at this point she wouldn't be far off. ❱ The very idea of a god willing to turn on his children, on purpose, is utterly ridiculous. If a god were willing to do such a thing, they should be abandoned in turn by their children in search of a god willing to uphold their duties to the people they shepherd. There are ills in the world no mortal man can take on alone, and for his god to just let him, out of petty desire for more followers or to teach a lesson already learned five times over —

❰ adalia hates andrastianism a lot, can you tell. ❱

The Maker is either too petty and cruel to be followed anyway, or he never existed in the way Andrastians believe he did in the first place. I'm inclined to believe the latter, because even the most evil gods I know of have not turned their backs on the world.

this got away from me, sorry!

[arcaneadvisor]

She came from the Alamarri who became the Avvar and the Chasind, so it goes that their god's did not help. Their gods being spirits. I imagine that helped a great deal with all that came after in the making of a Chantry in her image, when their magic involves spirits, after rebelling and pushing back Tevinter. [The Chantry says many things etc.] 'Tis easy to call a person mad if they do it in their sight, or to shut a person away that they might not hear or mistake a voice for some darker thing come whispering in their ear while the Avvar are far from them now, knowing a thing for what it is.

[Maybe Andraste met a spirit who claimed to be something else, who knows. Who truly knows, and that is what Morrigan is getting at with all of this: if there is a god, then what is it, is it a thing all of them have shaped themselves collectively through the years, through decades, centuries, millenia?]

The Old Gods whispered to the magisters of Tevinter once. The Old Gods who then became Archdemons who rise to head each Blight. I have seen an Archdemon rage during the Fifth Blight, Urthemiel once the Dragon of Beauty, for all of them are twisted, a corruption of what they once were same as the Taint befouls their former nature. Blood magic and death will thin the Veil, and certainly there has ever been plenty of that ever since the magisters began their works, Kirkwall in particular. There is always a truth in a tale. I grew up daughter of a legend who lives still and told her truth to me, I know well enough to peer through the lies that build up through time to know that some seed of truth allowed them to grow. [Talking of the Blight unsettles her now, she's more eager to talk about Haven.

Talking about insufferable scholars almost dying is preferable to a great many things, she's found.] They called themselves the Disciples of Andraste and believed her to be a High Dragon. That and they planned to kill a scholar - Genitivi, he's written a great many works, fortunately the Hero was present to put an end to that. [Morrigan sounds disappointed, they could do with fewer Chantry scholars attempting to 'see beyond the lens of their faith' or however they put it. That's when the eyes glaze over because the faith is there, omnipresent, beating you about the head throughout the text.] Dragons are beasts but for those I have spoken of, the Old Gods and the Archdemons. My mother though she is something...other. [Less comfortable with that, the reason she even asks any of this is to track the woman down. Flemeth would be smiling throughout.] Those who were acted upon, we shall say, to be used, perhaps not as the Old Gods but a good touchstone to start, I doubt the magisters have ever cared who they killed unless they lacked the next shipment, the dragons even less.

The Chasind are similar but different, I grew up near but separate. [Alone. Isolated. Looking in.] They cling to it, it allows them to blame others. The elves. The Qunari. All of Tevinter. Any others with a faith not strong enough. All heathens. But if man made him, then perhaps man cannot unmake him yet, perhaps man does not have the will for it is built too deep in too many for too long.