pirates are friends not foes

[ebeje]

FORM: Sending Crystal
SENDER: Max
RECIPIENT: Everybody (yeah)
WHAT: Introducing pirates: your latest problem courtesy of the Corypheus. The Venatori have sacked their island off the Tevinter coast, and Max consequently has a request.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Kirkwall

[ The journey from Nascere to the Free Marches had been a difficult one, not just for the number of days it had spanned, but for the things each of them had left behind, still tethering them to its beaches. Hopes and dreams that, with each passing mile, they must watch unravel, and begin to accept may never be within their grasp again. Amid the bitter mire of blame that had welled up in its place, one thing had become clear to Max: if she wants to have any say in what comes next, she needs to be the face (or at least the voice) of Nascere, as surely here as she was on its shores.

And she needs to do it before anyone else does.

So it is, the very day the terms of their recruitment to the Inquisition and continued presence in Kirkwall is agreed upon, the sending crystals alight with a new voice. ]

Good afternoon, Inquisition. Some of you I have already had the pleasure to meet, but for those I have not, my name is Max.

[ It's a not unpleasant voice, as these things go. A smooth, melodic Orlesian of the sort one can imagine trading one's cares away to in exchange for gentle but firm reassurance. Today, it is mostly business, but artfully tinged here and there with a withheld sorrow. (Most of which may even be real.) ]

I have recently arrived from the island of Nascere, in the Colean Sea, under circumstances I believe concern us all. One week ago, after operating for some time under the guise of reinstating legitimate Tevinter governance, persons we believe to be agents of Corypheus ravaged our home and have killed or captured many of its people.

The situation in Orlais is no better, as you must know, but even as the Inquisition fights on that front, I would ask one small thing of all of you. While some of us were fortunate enough to make berth in Kirkwall, our sisters and brothers of Nascere have been scattered to the four winds. Some may be dead, others we fear enslaved, but there are still more whose escape we may simply not be aware, who may become allies to you as myself and my colleagues Captains Flint and Vane now are.

[ ‘Colleagues.’ As if they are partners. Perhaps friends. :> ]

I ask then, in the course of your travels to fulfill your duties to the Inquisition, if you should hear word in taverns or crossroads of refugees from Nascere, that you bring this news back to us as soon as you are able. And if you should have business with a man or woman of the account, that you pause but a moment where sense and safety allow, and ask if they are of Nascere. You may find a friend in place of an enemy, and one who would join our cause.

[ Or one of their causes, at any rate. Of those who once called Nascere home, a fair number are more likely to want her dead than reinstated. But there are some whose good opinion Max does not expect, who she would risk more than this to see alive again.

She draws herself up, forcing a gentler warmth into her tone. ]

And, as I am certain rumors abound, [ False ones, surely, ] I would be happy to answer any questions or concerns any of you may have about our island or its former residents as we join your ranks.

Comments

[ebeje]

Neither should there be a darkspawn magister tearing holes in the sky, no? But I do not think that will change only because I will it.

[ Although partly, perhaps, because she wills it. Kitty's idealism is not entirely lost on her, though. ]

How would you see the world different, Mademoiselle Jones?

[rathercommon]

Oh. Just Kitty, please. I'm not...mademzelle anything.

[ The simplicity of her vocabulary, however, contrasts against the complexity of her thinking. She takes a moment to gather her thoughts, then says: ]

It's hard, seeing all the cruelties and injustices of my own world replicated here. It does start to make me half wonder whether it really is just a problem with humanity, and whether there isn't any way out. Whether we can ever break away from these cycles of hatred and violence. But there's no reason for us to be like this. We don't have to be hard and cruel and afraid. Humanity gains nothing by it, and loses so much. So -

I think...I think that it's possible for people to set aside the things that divide them. I think that's how I would see the world different. I don't know how to solve the problem of men doing horrid things to women, or of violence generally, but if men see women as comrades rather than subordinates then justice would be easier to find. Or even Corypheus - they say that he does a lot of what he does because he's furious that Tevinter isn't grand and glorious like it once was. Well, so, if he would just stop tying up everything he is with Tevinter, he could take joy in how far humanity has come, rather than convincing himself that his home is the be-all-end-all. You know?