001.

[luaithre]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Marcus Rowntree
RECIPIENT: All
NOTES: Occurs not very long after the Abomination attack.

Greetings. For those I've not met, my name is Marcus. I'm with the Forces division.

[ Male, proper adult in tone and resonance, and a lilt to his accent that marks him as coming from Starkhaven. His manner is-- mannerly, measured, mild. ]

I also number among the mages here who have seen battle before. My skill as a combatant isn't my purpose for addressing anyone today, but we suffered an attack very recently that required quick response, and I have some thoughts.

[ There's a pause, as if to compile said thoughts before speaking to them. ]

As mages, we differ from other militant units in that someone entirely new to combat might exhert the same sheer power as a mage who is well trained and battle hardened. We also wield vastly different weapons, and such weapons can be made deadlier when wielded in combination and tandem. There are enemies some are better suited to face than others. The way in which we engage with a threat differs between each individual. This makes us difficult to corral, but potentially, extremely effective, and hard to predict.

I think we should take the opportunity to share between ourselves our areas of battle and magic expertise, and the things we are weak in. As for myself, I am predisposed towards wielding the elements of fire, rock, and smoke, with a little skill in defensive magics. I am late to learning how to engage an enemy without magic, and I would be glad to learn more.

I'd invite Rifters, too, who have magics of their own, to share what they can do, if they like. And train among us.

[ He could probably leave it there. But he adds-- ]

It's no small thing, to witness a mage overcome the way this stranger was. It was affecting for me as well, as it will be for others. The Circles, once, had an ability to handle such eventualities, in their customarily brutal manner. Whether it be today, or another day, I would welcome conversation between mages about what the future of such moments will be in a world without Circles. This moment, and many others.

My thanks.

Comments

[ipseite]

( it is not unpleasant, the smell and the weight of smoke that she associates with marcus; his cigarettes, the burn of his magic. it pairs curiously with taking up the indulgence herself, one of many things long put away. the cigarette dangles between her fingers with ease of experience, and she is somewhere else, for a moment.

the memory is not unpleasant. this moment is not, either, and she exhales smoke (sort of half-heartedly toward the window, but she doesn't commit). repeats, )

'Psychic freedom', ( prompting. an interesting phrase that she might interpret for herself, but which she would like to hear him elaborate first. )

[luaithre]

[ There is nearly a smile out of him at her prompting. His gaze had settled on wood grain and is slow to lift. ]

I think it was Sima, that coined that phrase. From my Circle. She was good that way, of creating ways of speaking to a thing.

And what we meant there was that Circles had a way of building into you all sorts of walls. Liberty, we knew, was more than just escaping the ones made of stone. To attain a kind of freedom of thinking. Of being able to imagine more possibilities for ourselves than what the Circles would have us become, or how we might use our magic.

And apostates, therefore, enjoyed 'psychic freedom'. As did you, I would imagine, even as you had to hide and run.

[ipseite]

What a clever thing, ( she says, meaning perhaps the phrase or perhaps sima for coining it. clear and succinct and to shape and name something makes it real; attainable. she considers, then, in what manner she experienced what he describes, now. it is

certainly a conversation that required thoughtful choice of venue. he is correct. and she is, too, because she is glad of something to do with her hands and the distraction of the burn in her lungs it has been some time since she felt. )

Magic was both sides of that same coin, ( she says, eventually. ) A part of the freedom that I had attained, and a barrier to attaining any more. The life that I led when we were a rebellion and not a regime was—there were freedoms in it I would never have otherwise experienced. If Marius had been different and I a little less ambitious, I could have been content in it. To step outside of what I had known and know I didn't need it,

I still do not. A gift.

[luaithre]

Rebellion will do that.

[ When timed well, anyway. With a chance of success, a chance of changing things. The ground beneath your feet unstable, the world as soft as clay. ]

It's not so simple, I know. [ He breaks his long stare at the table to look to her, a nod of acknowledgment. ] Apostates living in fear of capture, fear for their family and friends, is its own caging. The Circles casting their shadows still.

[ipseite]

( they changed the world; petrana wishes, at this great distance now, to be more sure that she had bettered it. that it would hold. that her legacy would be something other than how victory had turned to ash in her mouth.

she will do better, this time. she will do more. )

It wants for dismantling.

( she would like to do a great deal more.

after a moment, )

Have I told you how strange it was to me, to see men perform magic? At the beginning, when I first came here.

[luaithre]

[ Marcus lifts his cigarette to smoke from it in that moment's pause. He did not like the way some conversations today began to wear on him. He tells himself it's the medium -- he has an excess of patience for singular debate, or even among a group. Twenty odd conversations at the same time is taxing.

Even so. The idea of getting tired is unacceptable. He thinks of Derrica's tireless empathy.

He tunes back in as she speaks again. He had started to move his fingers in a deliberate, subtle pattern, funneling some of the accumulated smoke in the air towards the open window, and then curls his fingers back in. ]

No, [ he says. It is a prompt. ]

[ipseite]

Marius was exceptional. ( something halfway between a sigh and a laugh, wreathing her in pale tendrils of smoke. ) An exception. Witchcraft is women's work, women's sin—I'd no shortage of either. He taught me, yet I was the witch. Men were rarely so—desperate.

You, ( with an encompassing gesture, tracing the shape of him with the lit end of her cigarette, ) you would have had a hundred ways to advance yourself, to thrive. Become a merchant, a soldier, a particularly strict tutor. But a woman's options outside of the homes of her father or her husband are fewer, in Sulleciel, and Thedas was quite the...the flaws were apparent, of course, but those first days it was simply astonishing to see what women might do without wrangling permission first, and men absorbed in the work of magic without shame.

That it seemed so much better here does, I think, speak more to my homeland than to Thedas. I have kept that squarely in mind.

[luaithre]

[ The notion of women harbouring sin is as baffling as you could expect of someone reared on Andrastianism, magic or no magic. Marcus's reaction is still understated, a private smile to himself at the strangeness of infinite worlds, and the ways in which the imagination of the cosmos is still so limited. ]

My father owned ships, [ he says, ] and my mother was occupied in domestic affairs. I imagine my brothers grew to own his ships. My sister, to new domestic affairs.

I don't know how I'd have been, if the Circle hadn't interfered. But I know that it's magic that would have elevated me from all that-- ordinariness. I think, even in your world, its confines, the same could be said of yourself.

[ipseite]

Even confined, I was as free as I had ever been.

( maybe not true of all her experiences of confinement (—the last one, particularly), but not so much an exaggeration for that. )

I had great ambition to be a catalyst for change, but I outstripped even my wildest dreams. I was never certain, in that life, if it were victory or cautionary tale.

[luaithre]

Caution against what?

[ He asks the question rather than talk over it and assure her otherwise. He also nudges a tea saucer nearer so he can deposit some ash into it. ]

[ipseite]

( she briefly considers disapproving of that for form's sake, but it isn't as if there's a suitable ashtray living in her office and nor had she thought first to offer an alternative, so instead it simply becomes something she tucks away on another mental to do list.

probably, next time he visits her office, there will be an ashtray in it. )

I gambled everything—my life, my daughters, an empire that was not mine to stake—on a man who liked my ideals until and unless they inconvenienced him. I helped him to power that was utterly unchecked and for all the good that we did.

( an exhalation. )

Any of it might be undone in a moment at his whim and I am not there to—to do more. He had tired of my counsel and they were difficult years. I hope that I did more than I could see from where I sat.

( that someone had been bettered for it. that it would hold. )

[luaithre]

I can't imagine you didn't leave an impression.

[ Marcus breathes out a stream of smoke once he says this, offering a fleeting smile, twitched to life, rare. ]

If not on your lord husband, than the world entire. You intend to do the same in this one?

[ipseite]

( she mirrors that smile, and on her it lingers: )

No.

( she taps ash off into the same saucer that he had used a moment before. )

I intend to do better; I intend to do more.