crystal

[wroughtamiss]

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Deacon and Myrobalan
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Confess your weird magic Inquisition
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:
HERE is the survey sheet if you want to just fill it out that way. HERE are the assignment details. Also if you've got a rifter and/or a non-loyalist mage who'd like to be part of this please PM Deacon's journal and we'll sort it since they'd include one of each to try to get better coverage.
There's the option to self-report via npc if your character wouldn't but you'd like to. If you'd like to report on other characters please check with that player first but I know we got spies and shady folks and that's fun but let's make it fun for everyone!

Greetings Inquisition. In light of the negotiations some of your number participated in there are of course promises to be upheld on the Inquisition's end. Namely concerning magic or abilities those among you called rifters possess not native to Thedas as well as magic outside the Circle.

If you'd complete this survey, you'd have our gratitude. If you will have it, you'll have the Chantry's gratitude too: I needn't have to tell you the importance of not sitting idle, all of you.

We'll be available if you'd rather do this in person but copies of the survey are available in the Chantry Relations office.

As with the medical surveys and the information we’re keeping on the shardbearers, this will be maintained--and transferred to the Chantry--under a cipher. If you’ve further concerns about what might be done with what we’ve gathered, [and Myr’s tone says he very well knows there will be,] I’d ask you bring them to me as the new head of Chantry Relations.

[Not for him this whole formal announcement stuff; or, more likely, he’s had too much on his mind to make one. Nevertheless, a splinter of his usual humor:] I’ll be with the surveys in the office.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

The Chantry's requirements only pertain to magic here on Thedas-- I s'pose one might argue knowing what could fall out of a rift might come useful, someday.

Personally, though, I'd be very interested.

[rathercommon]

Yeah, I'd be glad to talk it over. I mean, not that I know that much - I'm just a commoner, myself, and magicians kept their secrets from us, 'cause they didn't want us to know. But I know that magic, for our magicians, came from contracting with demons.

[ Let's see how bad she can make magic back home sound. ]

[faithlikeaseed]

[That's enough for some instinctive revulsion; one point to making it sound awful--

Though Myr reins it in before it makes it to his voice.]

And your demons are alike to our own? Liable to use their agreements to take the body of the mage they've treated with?

[rathercommon]

Not - exactly, no. They can't possess people. They've got bodies of their own, rather. They're quite a lot cleverer, too, if what I hear about demons here is true. But they've got powerful magic, enough to tempt magicians into reaching out to them.

[faithlikeaseed]

We've some very cunning ones--but they're not common, thank the Maker.

[Can't possess people, bodies of their own, and they sound like they're not motivated by a hunger for the world as something else. Very different from their homegrown variety-- But probably not any better, if they're helping fuel the dominion she elsewhere describes.]

What do they ask in return? Are your mages--magicians, pardon--magicians at all without a demon helping them?

[rathercommon]

I don't know. That's something that's kept a secret, so - I don't think so. I think they rely totally on demons for their power.

[ A hesitation. ]

As for what they ask in return...Nothing, really. From what I understand. They haven't got any power to stop it. They're slaves, essentially.

[faithlikeaseed]

[He and Merrill had spoken, back in the abbey, of how demons and spirits alike were two sides of the same coin and both saw the world far differently than mortals did. Of how mortals--bred of the world and bound to it--often couldn't think beyond their own frame and so came to grief for it.

And now, here, again--

He doesn't want to feel sympathetic to anything that goes by the name demon but these hardly seem like if they haven't the volition to avoid being bound to service.]

I see, [quiet, thoughtful] --So if one of your magicians appeared on this side of the rift she'd be liable to come to grief in short order, if she could talk to our native demons at all. [He does not sound like he'd be too broken up by that.]

[rathercommon]

Or he.

[ DON'T BLAME WOMEN FOR THIS. ]

But - I suppose so, yeah. Unless whoever it was could bind the demons here, too.

[faithlikeaseed]

Or he, and that's probably the more likely thing, isn't it?

[All men are tainted by Maferath's sin, etc.]

And it's possible they might, aye. Though coming to Thedas changes things--our demons aren't nearly so helpless, though spirits can be bound if it's done properly. [Rifters can be bound, if it's done properly, though they don't know what "properly" might be.]

I don't know what might be worse--if he could and have demons at his command, or if he couldn't and we've an abomination in our laps.

[rathercommon]

[ Well. She has to speak honestly to that. No matter what her emotions say. ]

I expect the latter. Abominations are - enormously destructive, right?

[faithlikeaseed]

Yes.

[and then there's a pause, and then, abruptly private--]

Worse than what came of Alvar and Jang, [for a not-at-all-painfully-recent example of how bad it could get.]

[rathercommon]

Yeah.

[ A slow breath. ]

Magicians are - Well. They're people. So they have people's desires. Fame, money, power. Not - to kill people without reason.

[faithlikeaseed]

[And the part of that not fit for all the Inquisition's ears having been said, he resumes the conversation where it can be heard,]

Right--right. And even with demons along it's hard to get hold of those things without convincing people to give them to you. So a would-be despot at worst and there's cells for those.

[rathercommon]

Yeah.

[ Guess she'd convinced him of the danger of magicians. Good. ]

But the real risk would be them spreading their knowledge. I can imagine others who'd like to know about those sorts of techniques, right? There are people like that?

[faithlikeaseed]

[She'd won the game already by bringing up Tevinter; it's got an almost talismanic property with some folks, Myr among them.

Even if he should know better, half-Vint he is.

A breath out like a laugh.]

There are people who like the things most people do--money, fame, power. If someone told them they could get them by speaking to demons-- Most Maker-fearing folk would know better, we've stories of it, but there's always some who'd try. Especially if they didn't need a bargain or a mage as intercessor.

And I s'pose your magicians aren't the only ones who get their power other than being born with it, who might try and teach what they know. So--

[So. They keep their eyes open.]

[rathercommon]

Yeah.

[ But - well. She feels an odd little prick of conscience. ]

But it - wouldn't be right just to lock them away without question, either.

[faithlikeaseed]

[Fervently,] It wouldn't. And Maker forfend, we won't--but we'll know what to watch for from our new rifters.

Might be a question worth asking when they arrive. Would you recognize magicians from your own world on sight?

[rathercommon]

[ A little huff, halfway to a laugh. ]

If a magician from my world shows up, everyone will know.

[faithlikeaseed]

Not the quiet, skulking sort, huh? [Like magisters for true, then.]

[rathercommon]

More like the, "here I am, so grand and amazing and powerful, go on and bow down before me" types. If someone's aiming a kick at you for not getting out of their way quick enough, they're probably a magician.

[faithlikeaseed]

Maker be praised; we'll know 'em on sight then unless they land in Tevinter.

[In which case they're screwed for a multitude of reasons, but no need to dwell on that happy thought.]

[rathercommon]

[ A little snort. ]

Now, that's a thought. I expect they'd end up dead there, too, though - Tevinter probably doesn't take kindly to foreign upstarts, magical or no.

[faithlikeaseed]

Native upstarts, either, unless one's the good fortune to be born an altus mage and do the right kind of upstarting. [Is that even a verb? Who cares.]

It's one instant we can be thankful for that peculiar property of northern society, [though what's social mobility in the south, either, for an elven mage.]