therookery | crystal

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh certainly. I know all that. I really have been paying attention, truly, and I don't know that my information is really of much consequence at all given the current state of-- well, everything. It only seemed as if our dear Head of Chantry Relations thought there might be cause for concern. Or thought there might be certain parties with cause for concern, which naturally should inspire a certain type of curiosity.

[She can hear herself, how silly and witless she sounds. But there can be no harm in discussing a thing frankly, including one's own ignorance.]

You will have no argument from me. It's true that there seems to be good reason for the Chantry's concern and it's true that I seem to have come through the Fade - though I think it must have been a very short visit, for what it's worth. Something like passing a needle through fabric. And so it seems strange to be concerned about whether the needle is actually thread. --Does that make sense?

How certain are you that it was a visit?

[Wysteria that smacks of demon talk, he has no time for demon talk especially with a mage in the room.]

All information is something the Chantry would gladly hear of but perhaps I should tell you more of the Fade, of spirits and demons. The Canticle of Erudition says the following:

The first of the Maker's children watched across the Veil
And grew jealous of the life
They could not feel, could not touch.
In blackest envy were the demons born.

So it is said that the Maker created the Fade long ago and that it is His first world populated by His First Children who we call spirits, but the spirits could not create. He turned from them as they lacked a soul. They imitated things they had seen. They could not imagine. They could alter their world at will but that was all so He left that world to create Thedas, and between them he put the Veil, though He didn't realise that his First Children could see this new world. They watched. They watched us, the new children of the Maker, and they grew envious of us.

This is why we are concerned. There are places where the Veil grows thin and spirits pass through: they have watched, they have observed, they will be by battlefields and pick up weapons, possessing corpses, and they attack because this is what they've seen. This is before we touch on demons.

[They have reason to be concerned. To be afraid. History has given Thedas and her people every reason to exercise all due caution.]

[Very certain. So certain that she can recall no detail of it; certainly if she'd been there for any length of time, she might at least do that. But--]

Is that what people think I am> What rifters are, I mean. Spirits imitating things. Good gods. I would if that was what I was trying to do that I'd be slightly better at it, don't you?

I cannot speak for all [he has his failings but pride isn't one of them] but that's the most obvious way to look at it in light of the evidence we have. That or demons seeking to gain a foothold in this world. What do you believe you would be better at?

[Just...trying to play it calm here and not immediately leap to his concerns.]

Well. [Said slowly and with all the thought in the world, a pause to give her more time to consider the question.] Well, I would expect I might know more about Thedas, for one. If I had spent my entire existence staring at it. And I think I wouldn't be quite so obvious about being a stranger in this place. If my goal is to trick someone into thinking I'm harmless or that I belong here, I seem to be doing a very bad job of it thus far. All rifters seem to be, I mean. Not that I'm specifically going around bathing in blood or anything.

What does a spirit that picks up the sword remember but the picking up of the sword? It remembers something simple. It remembers the last act of violence. The person that happens upon it is not the one to kill the person being possessed. That person is dead. They are at the Maker's side.

A demon though, a demon is more clever about these things. A demon might well be able to pretend for having watched the dreams of so many sleeping, mages especially.

[The very soul of comfort is Brother Deacon in times of crisis.]

So the theory then, if I understand you, is that we must be spirits precisely because we're so bad at being normal people in Thedas?

[Please imagine Wysteria with her chin in hand and a thoughtful scowl.]

I suppose that's a step up from demon. I'd rather be seen as witless than horrible.

That and you have a piece of the Fade lodged within yourselves.

[Imagining. Committing to memory.]

Of course some of you might be skilled actors. And some among you are little more than rage in a thin skin.

[L a k s h m i.]

There are other people with that, though. People from here with rift shards. And people who are just anger inside bits of wrapping paper, come to think of it.

[Just saying.]

--Not that most people haven't been lovely and accommodating, of course.

crystal

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