crystal

[inkindled]

FORM: sending crystal
SENDER: Matthias
RECIPIENT: everyone
NOTES: nah

Right, so--is there anything that can be done to make a staff cool?

[Well.]

More deadly, like. If it needed to be used for offense. Or defense, even. S'ppose it wouldn't hurt if it looked cooler as well.

Comments

[inkindled]

What, like with flattery? Make 'em feel smarter than they are?

[rathercommon]

Mm - sometimes, yeah. But more often just through...programming. Telling people the same story over and over and over again until they finally start believing it's true. I mean - you know all about it, don't you - You see it with mages, and this story that mages have got to be locked up or killed. There are even clever people who believe that.

[inkindled]

[well.]

Are those people actually clever? Dunno if I'd believe that.

[rathercommon]

'Course they are. It's a fallacy to assume that someone's stupid just 'cause they're opposed to you.

[inkindled]

S'not exactly what I mean, though. More like--I mean, anyone who's got sense would say you can't assume every single mage is suspect, right. One dog attacks someone, no one starts going about saying, right, lock the dogs up, every single dog is bound to bite--that'd be nonsense.

And to be clever I reckon you've got to have at least some sense.

[rathercommon]

Dunno.

[ She's quiet a moment, then says: ]

Where I'm from, magicians act like every commoner they come across is slimy and dirty and awful and stupid, right. But they're also the people who made England, my country, into the most powerful empire in the world. I mean - There's got to have some sense to do that, right?

[inkindled]

[Oh. Right. It's tough, orienting his thoughts to be entirely backwards of what he's always known. Near enough he can get is, Tevinter, but more different still, and go from there.]

Dunno. Maybe not. Like... maybe it's enough to be opportunistic, like? And then tenacious.

How did... it happen? The, er, system, with mages at the top. Magicians, I mean. Has it always been that way?

[rathercommon]

Oh -

[ The question takes her a little by surprise. ]

Where I'm from, you mean? No, not always. A little over a century ago, the Founder - William Gladstone - took power from the Commoner Parliament. There were foreign enemies threatening us, the story goes, and so they gladly handed control over to him so that he could keep us safe.

[ A little dryly: ]

I'm sure the story's total crap, but they've buried any true accounts of what actually happened, so who knows.

[inkindled]

But they weren't oppressed before, or anything? S'ppose if they were, they might have buried those stories away as well. Then again, that'd make for a decent story of its own for how the whole thing started. It'd just be less strong. If it all happened out of a need, so people could be safe--that'd be magicians saving everyone, and everyone'd be so grateful, and all.

[rathercommon]

They might have been. There was someone I talked to - he told me a bit about how...it all goes in cycles. They oppress us, so we get furious and destroy them, and all that.

[ A shrug. ]

I expect it might be like that in Tevinter, someday. The soporati rising up and turning it into what it's like in the South.

[inkindled]

[Sort of what he was thinking, that, and not at all something he wants to think about.]

I hope not. It shouldn't. I mean, they haven't got it right in Tevinter-- [mostly? maybe?] --but it ought not switch around so it's...

I mean, neither way is good, right?

[rathercommon]

No.

[ No uncertainty there. ]

Whether it's the few oppressing the many or the many oppressing the few, it's still oppression. And that's evil, no matter who's on which side. What they do up there is awful, but so's what they do to you lot down here.

[inkindled]

Yeah.

[Who could disagree with that?]

If we get to do things as we like, it won't turn into that. 'Cause we just want to be left alone, really. I mean, the good mages do, there might be those that want something else-- [And does he blame them, really? But that's not a thought he should be entertaining, not now when he's debating the evil of oppression--] I reckon most would settle just to be left to it.

[rathercommon]

Well -

[ She chews a little on her lip. ]

You deserve more than that, don't you.

[inkindled]

Me, I'm being realistic. When it's said and done, I'll take 'being left alone and still alive'. Ambition is for after battles.

[rathercommon]

D'you really think so? I've always thought of it as being most important before 'em.

[inkindled]

Two different types of ambition, I reckon. There's the sort that makes you get up and go into battle, fight for what you believe in, and all--and there's the sort that lets you sort out what's important after the battle's done.

[rathercommon]

I can't go into battle without thinking about what's important after the battle's done.

[inkindled]

Well--you've got to have a bit of an idea, yeah. Ideals and all. But you don't have to have it fully formed or anything.