Closed to Circle Mages

[keenly]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Colin
RECIPIENT: All Circle mages
WHAT: A lively debate about Divine candidates
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: This will be followed, hopefully, by a formal vote as to which candidate the mages throw in with.

I was thinking--oh, um, it's Colin--I was thinking if mages don't unite behind a candidate, we're likely to get one that doesn't have our interests at heart. I think if we voted to rebel, we can vote to stand together behind one of the candidates and do what we can to get them elected. Unofficially, I mean. Of course unofficially.

So let's talk about it, argue about it very loudly, and then vote on it. Who should be Divine?

Comments

[keenly]

I'm lashing out because they are allies. They've been in the Circle, they should know better. You should know better. You think you can reason with a Divine that's already made up her mind and that's not how it works. No one but our own will give us a fair shake, and our own seems to be rushing forward to give what little power we do have back to the Chantry. And it's bad, it's very bad to have been powerless back then. But to know your fellow mage, who saw the same things you did and knows everything you know, is happy to make you powerless again as well as himself, and pats himself on the back about it because he feels very moderate and reasonable when I'm just trying. Not. To die.

[overharrowed]

None of the candidates were mages, last I checked.

[A little flat.]

The fact the Chantry was temporarily without a leader didn't mean we'd won anything. Giving anything back isn't what we're talking about, because the war is not over, it's a truce while we deal with Corypheus. That's not new information. I think more than one of the candidates is likely to honor the gains we've made through negotiation, especially if the Inquisition remains the force I expect it will in the aftermath of all of this. But if you're going to immediately fall back on the position that any mage with an approach other than the one you've seized on is an active betrayal, of you or in general, I think perhaps this conversation is unlikely to go anywhere especially productive just now.

[keenly]

I've not seized on any approach, Julius. I'm just trying not to die. Take whatever moral high ground you want, but it's of no use to me if I die on it. Your moderate candidates would put me in a Circle without asking either of us first, and in the outside world, I can at least look after myself.

[overharrowed]

It isn't about the moral high ground. It isn't about your tone, or your manners, or any of the other things you've accused me of reacting to in this conversation. It's about the fact that it feels distinctly as if you're responding to what you imagine I think, rather than to what I'm actually saying.

You're an adult, Colin, and you can and should make your own choices. Running, not running, or anything else. But I don't see the point in continuing to discuss this with you when your mind is made up and you see compromise as tantamount to accepting death.

[keenly]

The Circles are death. That they weren't so for you doesn't mean it's an exaggeration.

[overharrowed]

[He doesn't say "Elise hasn't promised to dissolve them," because they are more or less past the point of attempting to have a reasonable debate regardless, and he suspects it would only make things worse.]

You've made up your mind, and this isn't getting us anywhere. I've no desire to keep agitating you, and we've strayed a long way from the original topic. I'll leave you to overseeing your vote, and I'll cast mine when the time comes. Perhaps let's leave it at that.

[It... isn't really a suggestion. For all that he's no longer Colin's teacher, the tone's still there when he reaches for it.]

[keenly]

Fine. [There's some shame at hearing the tone, knowing from it if nothing else that he should have shut up ten minutes ago.]