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

[tactical_alert]

Faiths have been based on much less than the bones of someone with a following. [It's not angry, but more forceful. This conversation is not an indulgence, a way in a sense to make sense of that which lies beyond, the questions they both seem to have. But it is his faith, or the basis thereof, that she mocks. Hard to take so much of it without some defense.

Even if she's right.

What isn't offensive is the talk of spirits. Because they do exist. Even if he had somehow doubted that, the incident at Skyhold would have put that to rest. Hope and Despair chatting over his soul. Like old friends. And beyond that, he'd been in the Fade as few had before their wayward group.]

Spirits as the middle, between gods and mortals. Or spirits as gods to mortals, not unlike the Avvar faith. Spirits who can assist those who call to them in ways beyond any mere person, any natural mage. Spirits perhaps those that help the somniari, the elves of old. The Chant says that spirits are the Maker's first children. But even if that is not so, they still come from somewhere. The question then becomes, did something else, more mysterious and more powerful, create them--or were they always? Creating themselves, in some strange mirror of us. Such a fascination with us.

We'll never know, perhaps, who or what made the Fade. Perhaps it was us. Mortals so long ago there is no memory that can reach them, with knowledge and skills long forgotten. It might have always been, as the world beneath our feet has always been.

[Something about what she says, though. What she has read. Where she has been. He hasn't actually asked. Because this could be a thought exercise, and yet...]

Why are you so curious?

[arcaneadvisor]

Sisters in villages pay coin for bones of spurious origin. Knights will be sent out to die in the quest for ashes that might heal the sick. Who is to say then that a dragon is not Andraste risen again? [The Fifth Blight was not always an entirely harrowing time, but she lifts these three because this is what happens, this is what the world is as she has seen it: chasing at loose ends to have something, and if by that logic she might exist, then why not a dragon?

There is Morrigan's own mother who lives and lives again.

Who is the dragon. (The shape of the divine, no less.) Easier to say for her when she lived it herself, when she saw Haven as it was, blood-soaked, wretched, children with their dark rhymes, daggers above the scholar in a corrupted Chantry. (Justinia as much a madwoman for having the Conclave there, and she wonders why she never thought to ask Leliana more about the whole business.)]

Spirits are the same to the Chasind, more with animalistic or the seasons personified but given the splitting off from the Alamarri, well, we know the history. [And ah, the Seeker who knows more than a Templar would. Who has done his reading. Who has learnt his lessons.] Somniari whispering in the ears, sowing enough discord perhaps, or bending those to their will as needed; could you imagine, Seeker? To be faced by one with such might? If you possessed but a shadow or nothing at all compared to their power? What do you think you would feel like in the face of that? Small, one imagines. Unworthy, perhaps? Or as a Seeker it may be impossible, I know there are Templars who would find themselves incapable of seeing themselves as anything but superior to all once in their charge even now. Magic comes from the Fade so if you believe in the Maker, then the Maker did indeed make them.

Or... [And this is where she must pause, must lean close with that coy smile on her face] it comes from the elves. They had Uthenera after all. They were first. They had great skills and power beyond comprehension. Some part of me does wonder if they were the very first to possess that power in those days for I have seen what they have left behind, what they constructed that goes beyond what any mage is capable of now.

[And if ancient elves have created such things...well, they have created them. They have created them without being taught for they required no teacher but themselves, time, effort, failure. She is alarmed and intrigued in equal measure.]

I have spent near a year in the attempt to find my mother, a woman the Dalish name Asha'bellanar, the Chasind Mother of Vengeance. 'Tis a quest that has sent me places I thought not to return nor venture to, yet I have gone to find things...I am uncertain what to make of. They leave even a Witch of the Wilds with questions.

[tactical_alert]

...You take a certain joy in twisting expectations and threatening to shake the very roots of what people think they know from the ground. [Not admonition. He's impressed. But then, such is something a Witch of the Wilds would do.

Hard to comment on the whole 'my mother is an immortal dragon elven god' thing, though, if he's honest. Because how do you argue against that?

Her thoughts and musings are challenging, and while he has traveled far and wide, they have been for less than religious reasons, no out of finding artifacts, not searching for a strange family member. He hasn't sought out the obscure places she must have, places that would not be on any map or mentioned in any history book (none approved by the Chantry, at any rate). He feels the urge to go rooting around in less than approved books.

His faith, though, however twisted the words may have become, gives him comfort. As any faith should. Instead of picking apart her theories, he instead ventures thus:]

I'll not suggest that there are questions that cannot be answered. I do suggest there may be some that one would be better of not knowing the answers to. I don't know where this one lies, but...if you do find an answer, one that satisfies you. What a god is. What would you even do with that information?