CRYSTAL | MISS ME, DARLINGS?

[illithidnapped]

FORM: sending crystals, during the truth event, you know what to do
SENDER: your favorite rogue, Astarion xoxo
RECIPIENT: as always, everyone
NOTES: if you drank Truth Soup, cough up your feelings; if you didn't drink the soup, make it worse for everyone, I dare you

[Someone's bored tonight. And it's been over a year since the last time he felt restlessness stirring him into needling action— particularly when he's noticed a couple of blurted-out confessions running high and harsh in the air. He could sleuth around. Sniff about for any signs of volatile tampering (or ask if this is just the next phase of whatever sleepless affliction's still nipping at everyone's collective heels)....

But this is so much more fun.

Anyway— ahem, and all that:]

Name one thing you like about someone else in Riftwatch. Anything. Anything at all.

Bonus points if you feel like getting weird with it.

[And don't think he's generous enough to actually start this game himself: that, you're all going to have to do on your own.

Or maybe just ask nicely.]

Comments

[armd]

Yeah, (is the clipped response, clearly unmoved,) I know that.

But I don't think you get that I don't give a shit if I die having never made peace with her. (She isn't angry at all, but it could be a little unnerving how calmly she says it. How readily, like she's thought about it before now.)

I trust her. It's enough for her. It's gonna have to be enough for you too. (Got that?

Now,) Why wouldn't she side with the mages? She knows magic. (Duh, dude.)

[illithidnapped]

Oh.

[You know that noise. Everyone that knows Astarion, knows that noise.]

I'd suspected it, but now that I know it for certain, I have to confess that I'm much more curious about what you do actually 'give a shit' about— at least before you die.

[His scoff is light; he's scratching at his own curls somewhere she can't see.]

It's not native magic. It's not a vehicle for possession the way the Chantry likes to wave about when it comes to mages and whatnot. It also, for the record, feeds into exactly what all rebel mages want: which is us taking up their cause as if it were our own— as if the stakes matter equally for both sides, and that the second the Chantry starts locking up anyone with a staff, they'll be grabbing with their other hand for every last Rifter on the streets.

[armd]

(Well he is free to be curious about that all he likes; he hasn't framed it like a question, so Abby doesn't feel the need to truthfully answer it!!

What she says instead is,) Oh come on. The Chantry doesn't give a shit if it's native magic or not and you know it. So why wouldn't we take up the cause when it's going to affect us in exactly the same way– and you're included in that, in case you've forgotten.

(Airly,) What's your plan, huh. Slinking off with Fenris in the night and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves?