therookery | crystal;

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Richard Dickerson & Wysteria de Foncé
RECIPIENT: You All
NOTES: The highly scientific results from studying a not-so-recent amputation, and a call for volunteers (don't worry, it's not volunteering to get your limbs chopped off). Wysteria is in blue. Richard is in green.

Hello everyone. This is Madame de Foncé speaking, accompanied by Mister Dickerson. There is a whole report written up on the matter which we wish to discuss today. Anyone curious will find it filed among the Project Felandaris records. However, we agreed [sure that's the word for 'Wysteria bullied Richard into it'] that discussing the broad points in a more public venue might do some good.

Go ahead, Mister Dickerson.

Dissection of Madame de Foncé’s arm revealed extensions of the anchor growing outward along the vascular system, confirming the existing supposition that as much of the affected limb should be taken as possible to ensure an anchor is truly separated from its host.

[ There is an odd beat where it seems likely Mister Dickerson is hoping for Wysteria to chirp back in before he continues: ]

It further appears that lyrium has an affinity for -- [ more quietly ] Rifter flesh, for lack of a more delicate distinction. When exposed to Madame de Foncé’s arm it made a fleeting attempt to regrow the parts of her that were missing. [ So the rest of the Wysteria? Another pause. He doesn’t deign to specify. ]

We believe it may hold promise as a healing agent for Rifters if applied topically.

[Which brings them to the true aim of this whole endeavor, the enthusiasm for which has Wysteria's clipping in so briskly after him that there's almost no pause at all between 'if applied topically,' and—]

And so Mister Dickerson and I would like to make a request for volunteers from among the Rifter population. We would like to make a more thorough study of the effects of lyrium on us. I have prepared a sort of sign up form and have posted it on the door of Project Felandaris' office. If you would please add your name to it, Mister Dickerson, and myself, and indeed the general record would be most grateful.

That's all. Thank you. Ask whatever questions you wish to.

[Slightly muffled then, as if the crystal has been lowered away from the general nexus of conversation, Wysteria continues on in the same breath, 'You see, Mister Dickerson? That wasn't painful in the slightest. I hardly see why you were so hesitant—']

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Richard's reappearance in the Felandaris office has warranted a brief flickering glance in his direction, but little else as Wysteria absently reaches behind her ear or perhaps into the twist of her hair and draws out a pen. She has no paper instantly to hand on which to write on, but the impulse being clearly habitual she sets to thoughtlessly tapping the back of the pen against her chin.]

Well, I think we can dismiss that particular point as nonsense given the givens. If we're in any way related to lyrium or formed fully out of the Fade, one might say channeling the arcane is practically more native to us than to a mage. But as for the rest— I don't suppose you might know whether they'd successfully determined the lethal amount of exposure?

To be clear, everything about his ideology was nonsense.

[Just to make sure we're all on the same page. She glances at Richard, a bare nod, but doesn't otherwise comment on his appearance.]

And he didn't kill any of our people, no. We got rescued before any of us actually hit our limits. I mean, I guess it's possible there was an unlucky rifter or two that the Venatori got to before the Inquisition did, but if so I didn't pick it up from his methods or his monologue.

[ Richard nods back, disinclined to interrupt.

Even once he’s settled, he waits for a beat of quiet to hedge in with a politely and assuredly scientifically-based, medically-concerned, magically-prescient: ]

In what way were they utilizing blood magic to keep you alive?

[If Wysteria has any objection over disparaging potentially useful information—really, just because they're methods they wouldn't imagine pursuing, if there was any legitimate information gleaned from the work then surely it would be their responsibility to consider the damages—, she somehow manages to keep it to herself.

Obviously it would be dreadful if anyone had died. And obviously the Venatori researcher in question had been a delusional madman.

In other words: it's a good thing Mister Dickerson takes advantage of this beat of quiet, lest Wysteria had found some impolitic way of filling it.]

[This time, at least, the grimace isn't (directly) about ethics.]

I wish I could tell you more about that. This was really soon after I first came to Thedas, and as far as I know, there's no magic in my world. None I was exposed to, anyway. So the main thing I could tell at the time was they were either using our blood or, more occasionally, either a junior researcher or probably a slave? It was hard to do much recon while being actively tortured. As far as subjectively, um.

[She exhales.]

It felt different than spirit healing. More, uh, brute force knitting a wound or an injury back together. Then again, they weren't concerned about pain or getting it 100% better, they just didn't want us to die mid-experiment.

[ This would be consistent with what Captain Holden described. Mr. Dickerson nods again, whiskers smoothed through a glance to Wysteria in search of missing context. ]

Were there physical maladies caused by the ingestion of lyrium that required healing?

[ Or was this an all around senseless torture party with incidental lyrium exposure? ]

[During this, Wysteria has drawn some loose pages over and fetched the pen from behind her ear so she may begin jotting down various notes in a rough, more or less translatable shorthand. Scratch, scratch, scratch says the pen's nib across the page—a soft staccato background music.]

I guess it depends on how you count things as "physical." For me personally, I had hallucinations and disorientation, which everything I've heard about lyrium leads me to believe were probably chemical effects on my actual brain. Besides that, uh, there was ... fatigue, thirst unaffected by water. Cold hands. The others had similar symptoms, as far as I heard. But I don't think the healers had much they could do besides keep us comfortable while the effects wore off with time.

That said, I was in bad shape when I got back to Skyhold, so it's possible they did things I don't remember or wasn't conscious for.

[ Mr. Dickerson’s primary takeaway is that lyrium sounds very useful, honestly, as a means of torturing Rifters. Neither of them can see into his skull, but there’s a particular pull at the corner of his mouth that reads more hmm, curious than that’s terrible. ]

Do you recall anything about what you hallucinated?

[ He glances to Wysteria’s notes as if to see how detailed they are for the purpose of cheating off of them later. ]

[The notes she's taking certainly appear to be fairly voluminous, if the number of marks on the page and the tempo of the pen's metal nib scratch is any indication. They are a brisk, succinct summary of symptoms, already combining with a slew of little marginalia which suggests an intent for follow up questions—if not for Cosima specifically, then certainly to be raised over the course of their forthcoming work.]

Yes, that was going to be my question too, [this, echoed, without looking up as Wysteria scribbles some further mark.

It's going to make for a respectable cheat sheet.]

[Whether Cosima's discomfort comes from their reactions, returning to a fairly traumatic memory, or both is unclear. After a short pause, though, she does answer.]

It's been a long time, and I wasn't in any shape to take a lot of notes then. But my memory is that it was largely a mix of paranoia — bugs under my skin, eyes in the walls, that kind of thing — and disorientation in time and place. Seeing people I knew at home who aren't in Thedas, confusion about who it was who was torturing me and why.

[ Dick’s nod catches mid-tilt at the transition from bugs in the wall to people at home. It continues on after a pause, hung up on the grass burr catch of his curiosity. ]

Thank you, [ he says, upon tracing back over the last minute or so of discomfort. ] This will help us to know what we should look out for. [ And how best to phrase any warnings they issue to volunteers in such a way that the experience doesn’t sound like torture. ]

[Wysteria is still scribbling down the dregs of notes as Mister Dickerson arrives at Thank you. It prompts her to look up, an inhale fueling an insistent question that she hasn't yet had the opportunity to ask and is right there behind her teeth.

But there's something in the look of Cosima's face, or maybe the particular tenor of Richard's gratitude that compels her to exhale it as air and to instead adopt an air more or less angling in the general direction of sympathy and reassurance.]

Yes, exactly so. I'm certain everyone will be pleased to know that we have been made aware of the limitations of the whole inquiry.

I'd be interested in reviewing whatever experiments you set up.

[Definitely because she's a member of Research who works a lot with lyrium, and definitely not for forceful intervention.]

crystal;

no subject

no subject

scumbag rockefeller: tags in, immediately loses notif

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject