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]

[Well--

Well, that answers something Myr'd wondered about in the disposition of this assignment.

He's fought larger. He's also lost to larger, nine times out of ten, without the advantage of surprise or magic and that hadn't been the kind of fight that would end with his blood all over the surveys they're collecting. Knowing exactly how this will go takes any fear out of the interaction but none of the wariness.

There is value in that fury; even blind he'd see that. So, without irony, without guile:] How would you have me speak, brother? How would the Chantry?

[wroughtamiss]

[For it to be so soon after Tevinter and to appoint who they have to the leadership of this project is somewhere between mockery and an insult.

A man. An elf. A mage. How much of the Chant, the Chantry, the founding principles does the Inquisition mean to do away with while they're without a Divine? Here he understands the fear of the Mothers better; he is here, he is amongst it, he is choking on it.

Even if Justinia had ideas outside the norm, never would she have gone this far.] The Chantry would have you speak as you know you should: the Chantry protects her people. I have lived that as you have not. I have been there when the refugees have come. When they came from a war that spread from here as a pestilence. More than thirty years ago I took my vows as a Brother of the Faith in Markham.

The Chantry is clear. The Chant is clear. You recall the Chant when it speaks of magic and mages, the Canticles that should come to mind.

[Transfigurations. Erudition when speaking with these rifters. At least to start.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[He cannot know the thoughts of another's heart, but there are patterns in the world one can guess at, and Myr knows how he falls into them: Elven mage, twice beneath contempt for the most orthodox. (Elven mage who has ideas above his station and beyond the walls of the Circle, already a heretic in his heart--oh, what they'd do with that.)

He knows--but it's still hard to suspect of anyone in particular, unprovoked, that prejudice plays a role in how he's treated because he always wants to believe better. Always tries to. Certainly in this Brother's case he'd been incautious with his words, tread around the edge of orthodoxy in a way Coupe had already dressed him down for once before--

But it doesn't mean either of them are right. Even if they're worth listening to and listen he does, to the end of what Deacon's got to say, without interruption or a flicker of anything beyond obedient interest on his face.

Quietly, then:]

When speaking of mages and magic, Brother, I keep the Chant always in mind: Those who bring harm without provocation to the least of His children are hated and accursed by the Maker.

The Chantry protects her people. The Chantry protected me and my Circle, [until it couldn't,] but came too late for Kirkwall. Evil men wrest and pervert the Chant to their own ends; they shackle the Chantry's hands and slow her work of justice, and all the while the innocent suffer and die. I would see them rooted out; to not speak of what they have done and the harm it's done the Chantry's name gives them cover. To say none have reason for concern while they remain in place--

[He realizes where this could go, how it contrasts with what he'd said and the very clear warning that he's been given. He cuts himself short, draws a breath in and lets it out before continuing,]

But I've known only the inside of a Circle for most of my life. You've fought for the folk who need it most and it isn't my ideals that will stitch the Chantry back together. I'd have you as an ally against those who would destroy her completely.

[wroughtamiss]

How long since your Circle fell, Myrobalan? [If Deacon is to know who, exactly, he's dealing with, he has to know what Circle he came from. There isn't time enough for him to go chasing it up the way he might do (the way he'll perhaps have to now with others) to start guessing at loyalties or sympathies, where they're going to draw their lines in the sand.] You can't be unaware of the Nevarran Accord or before that in the Divine Age the restrictions on ordained mages that might serve. There has ever been reason to be more than wary of magic. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.

Kirkwall was blinded by much. The Seekers could not see. The Templars could not either. What we know now of undue influence that had collected in this place already-- Who can say what might have happened had other factors not played their part in it. There is rot in the Chantry when it sits by the throne of Orlais for men and women starving for bread cannot eat the gilding nor do the promises and pacts that place one Mother over another do much to help them.

[Deacon is from Markham. Markham where they care for their agriculture. Where they have their own university but with less pomp and circumstance about it.

Where a man like Deacon can live to grow appalled by excess, where he beats it out in streets when folk will harrass those in need or the Faithful, will speak out of turn against the Chantry, Andraste, the Maker. His body is testament to that.]

You are a mage speaking with rifters when we have no proof of what they are. They have come from across the Fade and some speak of false gods, when last did you hear of that? What havoc did it bring to Thedas that plays itself again now?

[faithlikeaseed]

Four years, Brother--but we remained with the wreckage for three of them, our templars and those of us still loyal to the Chantry. Until we couldn't remain in Hasmal for the city's fear of what we might do, and Knight-Commander Brycen sent for help from the Inquisition.

[Yet it is a gift, Myr doesn't say, but inclines his head in the face of Deacon's rebuke: acknowledged.] And I may indeed treat it more lightly than it deserves, for we live with it near to hand in the Circles and spend our lives immersed in it. Knowing that fear is justified, [somewhat,] and knowing how best to act to ease it--are two different things. I do not always get the latter right, in my enthusiasm.

[He will not cavil and pretend he is other than what he is; he will not go back to that scared boy who nearly let the idea the Maker had cursed him consume him. That isn't who Iolan Shivana raised his son to be.

But there's also no sense in alienating someone who speaks the words his own heart has often uttered; though what they each define as rot in the Chantry differs greatly on important points, Myr suspects. But it's enough on other points to hear that much said plainly.

Soft, then,] The Inquisition took the rebel mages in and any templars who would come to them, and thus we all were spared the war they'd started. I'm ever-mindful of those who weren't given so much.

[But ah, then, to the matter of rifters-- He visibly hesitates when Deacon said we have no proof; because it isn't true. And he doesn't know what or how much he should say of the truth, only that it is there to be had--anyone might speak of what had happened during the rifter plague; their own records contain word of it--and is it falsity to not point someone to it?

Attack the other point first. Don't make a mistake for want of careful thought on what you do and don't owe this man.]

Their gods have left them. [Six, saying her god's voice was silent and yet she prayed anyway.] They aren't be found within the Fade; so much couldn't be said for the Old Gods or the demons or any other foul thing men have worshipped and would part the Veil for. But-- [breath in, breath out,] I take your caution, Brother.

[wroughtamiss]

Hasmal. [In the Marches though that never necessarily dictates where someone came from in the first place. But time out of the Circle is still time out of the Circle where a mage is more vulnerable to the world, and a man doesn't have to be a Templar to know the havoc one is capable of wreaking when they fall prey to influence.

There was the war, after all, as discussed.]

You might meditate in addition to prayer. True meditation. No thoughts encroaching, the body and mind entirely stilled to allow much to be wiped clean from the slate when it passes to leave with a different measure of peace than prayer. Enthusiasm untempered is a dangerous thing for any when it leads one astray; how many injuries did any of us have in our childhood from too much of that, too little sense then to know better what came of it? [More an abstract for him. Everything owed to the Chantry, enthusiasm portioned appropriately that it might be given to those deserving of it with what was left for Deacon a slice that said this much we believe is right for you, enjoy your free time but remember, always remember this is what we who give you life have given you and perhaps a good reminder for some.

That he had Abigail with him though--]

The Templars require reminder of their duties likewise, the Chantry has stood so long, the Chantry took in many who saw the brunt of it though the Free Marches fortunately weren't the Hinterlands and the letters we received from there. Perhaps we might one day write sins as should be written by all souls who belong to the Chantry, I'm certain even the Gallows might spare a brazier in these times.

[Tradition. Reminders. Let them turn to that as he straightens and passes a hand over his face, sighing heavily.]

Do you know that for certain Myrobalan? Or are you taking their word for it.

[faithlikeaseed]

[How many injuries did any of us have, Deacon asks, and Myr makes a quiet noise between a snort and a half-hearted laugh. Too many, in his case; he knows his own weakness here, though he has long had the luxury--kept in a Circle under templar guard--of not dealing with it.

No longer. Whatever advice might exist on the matter is welcome.] Thank you. I will make the effort at it; we've all need enough for whatever peace we can get.

[Braziers, and sins, and wayward templars. Another way of finding peace, to see all one's wrongs erased in flame and remitted.] Observing our faith more openly, [thoughtful,] would be a good example for those who wonder what it is we defend and have only the worst stories to go on.

[He tips his head at Deacon's question, as if he would spend a moment considering it from all sides as he has the others, but this is an easier answer--] I take them at their word; but they are so often at odds I'd think one of them would have broken any conspiracy they'd forged out of sheer spite and told us if they did hear things whispering to them. Or one of the ones who trusts so completely, [it does not show in his voice but he aches that they do, and that their trust is inevitably betrayed,] that the world means them only good might say something amiss. You've heard them.