CRYSTAL | THIS IS CRIMINAL

[illithidnapped]

FORM: sending crystals, sometime around week four, during the dragon tracking assignment's first foray into fortress scans
SENDER: Astarion
RECIPIENT: every last one of you, as usual
NOTES: Corypheus is his own content warning

Gods. It's a travesty. A nightmare. Unthinkable.

[He sounds almost shaken. Thoroughly run through by something leaving freshly witnessed tracks through his mind. Harrowing. World-shattering. The horrors of warfare come to a head, or perhaps some new tragedy played out before him, wherever he is now.

His voice is noticeably pained, he soldiers on:]

Villainy I can understand. Inhumane cruelty— fine. Yes. But do you want to know the worst part about all of this?

I thought for certain Corypheus would at least have the decency to be handsome— but no.

[No flowing hair framing unspeakably beautiful features, all gracefully arcing downwards into gleaming armor or finely stitched robes. Not even a half-measure between an enticing magesterial figurehead and some average, mealy-faced man possessed of charisma. No. No!!] The misshapen creature looks about as beguiling as a troll’s festering tit: no glamor, no allure, no illusions, for hells' sake.

It’s an utter wonder anyone follows him at all. I can't make sense of it.

Comments

[justashotaway]

People do not follow only because they wish to.

[illithidnapped]

[Compulsion. The thought curls his lip in distaste even more than the memory of his own vision.]

Fine, yes, I’ll give you that. But that certainly can’t be the whole of it, can it? That he just sways an entire army into licking his boots and committing atrocities for the overwhelming fun of it?

And even if it were, you’d still think he’d have the decency to know shame, looking like he does.

A mask. A cloak that covers his whole....mess...a little more thoroughly. Gods above, it doesn’t take much.

[justashotaway]

[ After a period of quiet, thinking over what he's said: ]

Why does it matter what he looks like?

[armd]

Inhumane cruelty– fine?

(hang on.)

[illithidnapped]

Well darling I know it’s a war, but there has to be a line somewhere, don’t you think?

[bouchonne]

[ He's too tired to laugh properly, but he does summon up an amused bark. ]

My sentiments exactly.

[illithidnapped]

[Music to his wounded ears.]

Thank you, my dear. I was beginning to think I was the only creature in this world with any sense. Why, I practically had to triple take to understand exactly what it was I was looking at from above.

Are we certain the man's not some shambling, meaty scarecrow meant to prop up the whole of this campaign?

Because honestly.

[Honestly!!!]

[broodypants]

He's one of the better looking magisters.

[illithidnapped]

[Somewhere on the other side of the crystal, there's a pained, audible gasp:]

—no.

[molineux]

Try to think of it as an added benefit to his eventual demise, darling: ridding this world of a terrible creature that has offended your sensibilities.

[illithidnapped]

Potted plants offend my sensibilities. Ugly lapdogs in frilled collars.

This? This is a tragedy. Unspeakable.

[kantikoy]

[ A quiet wheeze of a laugh. ]

Oh but it's true.

[illithidnapped]

You've seen it too, haven't you? That awful face.

Looks like the bottom of a boot gave birth to the world's ugliest— well. [He pauses. Clears his throat.] You know already, I won't be so crass.

But if a man like that can succeed, it certainly makes you think deeply about what's possible in the world.

[elegiaque]

Not every terrible thing needs your dick in it.

[illithidnapped]

Do not.

[DO NOT, GWEN.]

I don't want those words— those concepts sharing the same atmosphere as our current topic.

I've suffered enough already. I don't deserve this.

[cozen]

I have heard he is very tall.

[illithidnapped]

So is a tree. You don’t see me crawling up its branches to swear my undying devotion.

[deceivingly]

Some people maybe think: the tit is festering, but it is still a tit.

[illithidnapped]

The thought that enough people like that exist in this world to form a bloody army is so depressing that I might never leave my bed again.

Is Tevinter a literal cesspit? A plagued boneyard, perhaps? Because there's no explanation I can think of beyond that to explain it otherwise.

[clawings]

That fuckin' bad huh?

[illithidnapped]

Be glad that I suffered this for you.

[Saint Astarion: dead and gone and still whining about the horrors of it all.]

Picture the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen— and then multiply it by itself until it’s nigh unrecognizable—

And then do it all over again.

Then you might be close.

[acreage]

What would you have done if he was handsome?

[illithidnapped]

Not have dry-heaved in some overwhelming mixture of nausea, disgust, and flight-sickness.

The man's still my enemy. He despises anything that isn't himself, as I hear it, and that sort of person I've enough experience with to know better than to entertain the thought of switching sides.

But at least then I'd understand him.

[notathreat]

[Ellie laughs- full throated and breathless, one of those that comes out bitterly needed after the end of a very, very long fucking day.]

Holy shit, that bad, huh?

[illithidnapped]

My heart might never recover from the sight.

I’d say a rotted carcass has more charm, but— well, then man is one from the looks of it.

And I’ve never been one to believe you have to sacrifice a decent sense of aesthetics for power.

Or flesh. Just...flesh.