crystal

[incaenstrix]

FORM: Sending crystal!
SENDER: Tertia
RECIPIENT: Everyone!
NOTES: Noneeee

[ The voice that comes over the crystals is Tevinter-accented. But not, like, fancy Tevinter. Bottom-rungs-of-Minrathous Tevinter. ]

Hello. My name is Tertia. And - I was hoping that perhaps I might find someone willing to teach magic. [ Is that a taboo thing to ask in the South? Reports have been somewhat sketchy. ] If it's not a dreadful pain.

Comments

[obdurata]

We've got a few enchanters here with teaching experience, ( is not a tevene accent; to tertia it is probably 'indistinguishably southern', although specifically joselyn sounds markhamish. ) and I'm sure any one or several of them would be willing to help you.

Is there a discipline that appeals to you?

[incaenstrix]

Oh -

[ A little noise of surprise, because even though she was told that people would speak back to her using this thing, she didn't fully believe it. Recovering, she says: ]

Sorry. I've worked a bit with elemental magic. Nature magic. Are you a mage?

[obdurata]

I am, yes, but I didn't study past my harrowing so I never advanced to enchanter— I learned to control it, not to use it. I don't practise.

But that sounds like an appropriate starting point to me. And I'd be more than happy to help you with the theory side, when they inevitably start giving you homework. I'm Joselyn.

[incaenstrix]

It's very nice to meet you. [ Um - ] What's a harrowing?

[obdurata]

A harrowing is something that was done to circle mages — I don't know if it's done in Tevinter, you know, I've never asked. It's a...ritual where demons are drawn to a young mage and they must prove that they can hold them off, that they can fend off possession.

Failure is fatal, so it's a significant test.

[incaenstrix]

[ What the fuck? ]

For what purpose?

[obdurata]

Well, that will depend on who you ask, but since you've asked for my opinion—

( there's a wryness to that, but she's frank: ) To weed out the weak and to maintain the fear and control that circles were run with. It's not a test that you prepare for, that you are prepared for— you are taken from your bed in the night, without warning, and as you fight for your life you are surrounded by Templars who will kill you if you fail. And those people who are ready to kill you before you come of age are the people who will decide what the rest of your life looks like, afterwards.

You are meant to be afraid of this. You're meant to remember this fear, and what can be done to you, and that you live because you are allowed to. You're meant to understand that they can decide what you aren't allowed, if you misstep.

( a little hm sound, a sort of high hum and a brisk sigh— )

I stuck to alchemy, afterwards. I preferred the company of our newly arrived children, so I have a lot of practise with teaching the foundational knowledge that served them to learn more from the enchanters.

[incaenstrix]

[ She listens. Then she asks, quietly: ] Why did they let it happen?

[obdurata]

Who?

( is an honest question; soft, not unkind. )

The Chantry says it is necessary and it is good and it is the only way, and who knows better than the Chantry? The people who could have changed it benefited from it. And before they fell, and before we all very loudly emerged telling tales out of class, a lot of people didn't know anything but that this is how it's done, and the only way it can be done.

I don't know what they assumed about our lives. I know that some people feel that it was—a necessary evil. That no one should be mistreated, but that mages should never be free, and if they cannot have one...

Well, as long as the other's still true, you can learn to live with something you don't have to see.

[incaenstrix]

[ But that's not the question. Instead: ]

The mages. Why did they let it happen?

[obdurata]

Well, that's complicated. There's no one single answer, but the rebellion, when it came...

( how to put this. )

Mages grow up with this, too. Mages are told they are things that something is wrong with. Mages are made to fear their capabilities. To believe that this is the only way. And some of them do, some of them...cannot imagine anything else, because it's all we've known. And we're not...

Templars are trained to kill mages. There are particular Templars whose job was solely to hunt down any who escaped, and make an example of that mage to show the others what happens when you think you can escape. Mages are taught to sit in towers and read books. We're dangerous, but we're taught to fear that, not to use it. We were prevented from freely speaking amongst ourselves, from... but we rebelled. We still found ways. And we're still fighting. We're not going back.

[incaenstrix]

I see.

[ Her voice is polite. Quiet. Hard to read anything into it at all. ]

Thank you for telling me of all of that.

[obdurata]

You're welcome. I hope it's useful to you.

None of it's resolved, but nothing is, these days. We all have battles to fight.

[incaenstrix]

Mm-hm.

[ Still basically impossible to get a read on her mood. ]

That's why we're here, I guess.

[obdurata]

( it's not a surprise; for every person who knows exactly what they think of it right away, it's still a lot. maybe she's got to work through it, maybe she'd made assumptions and is reconsidering— maybe she's just disappointed it's not better.

it could be a lot of things. joselyn doesn't consider it inherently her business to know them, if tertia would prefer to take what she's said and absorb it on her own. )

Well, I'm here because there's an anchor-shard in my hand, ( has some mild humor in it, ) but the way the wind blows, I might have ended up here regardless.

[incaenstrix]

Oh.

[ Well. ]

Sorry. I - Sorry.

[obdurata]

( warmer— )

Don't worry about it. I'm where I want to be, it's the least of hardships.

[incaenstrix]

[ Awkwardly, for sheer lack of knowing how to engage with this - because how does one respond to yes, I'm imprisoned, but cheerfully so? - ]

I'm...glad to hear it, then?

[obdurata]

( it's a tough one. )

I wouldn't give up what it's given me, ( she settles on, ) or what it's allowed me to give.

Now, it'd be nice if we lived somewhere other than the fucking Gallows, but here we are.

[incaenstrix]

Oh.

[ A little uncertain. ]

Is there something wrong with it?

[obdurata]

The Gallows has an ugly history all the way back to its original building— slaves, blood magic. Then it was a circle, and one of the worst in recent history. This place used to be a horror show, and not so long ago that we don't have people among our number who knew it then.

But it was the only option, when the Inquisition wanted an outpost here, what would eventually become Riftwatch. So it got cleaned up, and the statues got removed, and the red lyrium, and now it's this. Suppose it's a showing that we can make new things. We can gut the old and build something better.

Still.

[incaenstrix]

[ That only gets a small noise in response. Again, hard to read anything into that noise; there's not much to go on. (But it twists in her, in an unnamable way, to hear of slaves and blood magic as history. It's an ugly feeling. She doesn't want to look at it.) ]

Well, that's nice.