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

[periastron]

I... I'm underqualified to talk about this. ( She speaks very slowly, cautiously, trying to muddle this out as she speaks. )

I think most people are, but they don't always want to admit it. My yiayia and baba, they grew up in different faiths that as... that as far as I've always understood it worshipped the same god, but looked at that god in different ways, and saw the role of different figures within that faith in different ways, too. There's a man who is debated as being the son of God or a prophet, and I've always struggled trying to work out which way was right. I thought it was... I mean, I thought it was kind of beautiful, actually, that they had what could have been a huge barrier between them, because of how important their faith was to both of them, but they loved each other so much anyway. I think— for me, anyway— I think the god that they and me worship matters because of love. And I can't talk for the gods here, but for me, the gods that matter, and my God, they can't matter without love. There's a whole lot of other things, but love, that's above all else.

Religion is complicated. Faith is complicated. I'm— we're all just trying to figure it out. I think people can seem godlike, and they can be tied in with gods, but I don't know that I could call them a god. That's a lot. But maybe that's where some of the debate in my world comes from, too, and that guy a lot of people think is a prophet, I do think of as the son of God. So, I mean... what do I know, yeah?

[arcaneadvisor]

I ask not for qualifications, I ask for opinions. How you see it, how you might believe or understand or know a thing. Does the Chantry ask so much as a by your leave before offering up views, unasked? I am asking.

[That makes all the difference in her mind. What she has to know is how people will shape a god in their mind, in the heart, in their hands. How it might have been done before. Might be done again.]

There are ways that the Chasind or Avvar overlap that might come close. Both worship spirits in different ways for they split from the Alamarri but one gives them names, calls them gods, the other is more animalistic, primal. In terms of the split. [The idea of god vs prophet is something much trickier, and Morrigan no Chantry scholar after all, but this is all interesting to hear, something more to consider so she does listen to it carefully. Quietly.] There are debates over Andraste, you might ask the scholars if you wish to be talked into the deafness or the grave whichever comes first. Why is it debated, what he was? Does it matter so much? Is it not clear? Succession and sons are very much made clear.

[Welcome to Thedas, inheritance matters even for the sound of Morrigan rolling her eyes in the background before she--

She stops. Swallows carefully because love. What need does religion have of love? How many people love the Maker? (Leliana, she can believe that Leliana does without doubt, as much as that might strangle her.) It's hard for her to keep some of the venom out but this is a rifter so she can save it for someone else, can think of Flemeth, of Flemeth's idea of love. Of choking vines, of a swallowing bog. Her voice is near-strangled.]

Love...love is many things to many people. Love is not always something warm or gentle or kind. Possessive, all-consuming, hungry. Love has made many a person do great and terrible things.

Would it be easy where you come from, to be but godlike yet to convince others that you are indeed a god? [Muffled Kanye in the distance.]

[periastron]

Most churches don't offer a by your leave. Most people don't. Usually the more of an ignorant, empathy-lacking sack of flaccid dicks they are, the more eager they are to start dishing out opinions.

( Maybe that's her reticence. Maybe that's why she shoots off with her own opinions to be more a dick, sometimes. )

It's— complicated. Part of his story is that he was conceived immaculately and was the Son of God. So for some people, I guess, he's just a man. And for other people he is the Son of God. And I think, I think— I think it's not as simple as succession. I mean, for one it was thousands of years ago that he was born, and it's not clear cut. I guess it comes down to faith and— I don't know. There's nuances, yeah?

( She is deeply out of her depth, wowza. )

But I mean, uh. I get what you're saying, and talk about unhealthy obsessive shit being spun as romantic in literature and shit, I mean. Nah.

( She exhales in a huff of breath. ) There are celebrities that are so huge and so iconic that they have millions and millions of followers who are fans and idealise them and I guess, believe what they believe and want to align themselves with that celebrity, but they aren't perceived as a god. They're still pretty much worshipped, but. Being a god, that'd be different. Divine powers, and stuff.

[arcaneadvisor]

[The accents couldn't be more different, but Morrigan has to wonder if Alexandra and Jester know one another. Something in the phrasing.]

Immaculate conception? [Do you hear her voice climbing Alexandra? Do you hear the laughter almost threatening to escape? Dearest Alistair, a rifter proposes near a decade and a half too late a solution to a dreaded night, imagine that! It has to be swallowed. That takes too long a moment but she's done all of that so the idea of it--] And what squeamish rabble invented that part? The Chantry likely thrashes about with its own face or what mask it puts on, and there are...well, there is whatever this is. What it happens to be. How deep does it run in the nature of beings such as us to worship or to look for a thing, if we might understand any part of it.

[Morrigan has to parse Alexandra's...well whatever that was. Has to look to Celene who is perhaps the greatest example or closest (perhaps before now, not so popular these days, shunned at parties, clutching with fingernails with the varnish chipping, for the best that she dons a mask) she might come up with.] Would it? You spoke of nuance. We have no celebrities, perhaps some rulers with popularity, but what makes these celebrities so popular? If we changed those things about, they might make it here. They could become a god. Given time. Given the right circumstance.