crystal.

[cozen]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Bastien
RECIPIENT: Everyone
NOTES: Fictional war crime discussion! Probably mostly vague here, will use CWs if anything gets specific.

A quick note: we are going to be looking into the allegations that the Chantry's forces were overzealous with civilians in Tevinter. I am coordinating this for now. While we are out and about in Tevinter, if you hear anything about it, let me know. Even if they are only rumors and sound outlandish. And if it does not jeopardize anything else to ask people for more information, then by all means.

If this is something you would like to help more with on an ongoing basis, let me know. We're calling it Project Clothilde.

Comments

private;

[dissolving]

When y'say overzealous, what're we looking for?

[ specifically. he has an idea (or three) ]

forever

[cozen]

The Tevinters we spoke to near the front had heard a lot about villages being destroyed and noncombatants being killed. None of them had been witnesses to any of it personally.

But it would have been soon after Sebastian Vael was lost.

[ That he isn’t asking direct questions is good manners. Temporary ones. ]

[dissolving]

Around Trevis. [ silence stretches, long enough for its own answer. eventually: ] A lot got burned.

[ villages, witnesses. maybe there's no reason to be careful now. vanya knows, ellie did — strange to choke on his tongue, when it's been trying so long to crawl out his jaw. ]

[cozen]

You were there?

[ The logical follow-up question is a terrible thing to ask anyone. ]

[dissolving]

I was in the city.

[ taking it meant mages, and no one thinking very hard about what those counted as. not like they isolate, up there. ]

It was, [ ugly he's thought a dozen times, trevis was ugly. covers the hazy shape of it and comes up short: ] There weren't much of it left, after. Few of the places we passed on the way in, on the way out, they were gone.

[cozen]

[ During Bastien's silence, there's the distant sound of fingers drumming on a wooden surface. One after the other. More deliberate than nervous in energy.

This could, in part, solve the need for reliable witnesses. But only in part. If Cedric's hands are completely clean, it would still be easy for someone to say otherwise. Easy to impugn the credibility of one man. Easy to kill him. ]

Do you know if anyone tried to stop it?

[dissolving]

[ it's not deflection (context) to ask: ]

You been in a battle? Before Kirkwall.

[cozen]

Not as such. The closest was probably the riots in Val Royeaux, but that was different. I imagine, anyway.

[ He hasn't really been in a battle since coming to Kirkwall, either. Skirmishes at most. ]

[dissolving]

Dunno — soldier's a person, army's something else. If it goes bad, it goes mob easy.

[ march is half conscripts, mercenaries, volunteers hardly held a sword. fumbles for the words to explain: in the thick of it, chaos all around, and every second another life-or-death choice. go after the enemy, or clear an exit. get behind your buddy, or get in front of his blade.

follow orders, or cut against them, and he’s certain plenty did. he doesn’t have a lot of names. he was somewhere else for a while. somewhere else now, for the sound of it. ]

Raised it to my Captain. Doubt I was th'only one.

[cozen]

[ Silence as Bastien to nods to himself, unseen. Weighing the desire slash need for further information against Cedric's tone. Dissociating about violence is what all the cool kids do, right? But that doesn't mean you push.

Rather: pivot. ]

We need witnesses the Chantry will listen to, if we want a hope of persuading them to do more to stop it. But one man is too easy a target. We'll talk—do you want to have lunch?

[dissolving]

[ no, he doesn’t want to do that. later tonight, halfway up the hightown stairs, he will start like a puppet, hand thrust into heart. with clarity: no, he very much doesn’t want to do that. but it needs doing. but right now, ]

Yeah. 'M around.

[ so he will. ]

➔ action

[cozen]

Good. Thanks. I'll buy,

[ is either a dry and somber joke about the free dining hall or an offer to take him into the city. It'll depend on the vibes, which he begins trying to judge once he's successfully connected with Cedric on the Gallows grounds around midday the following day.

When they meet, Bastien has a bandalore. It's a little unbalanced, because Laura carved it for him herself, but it works well enough. He rolls it up into his hand (less snappily than achievable with a modern yo-yo) and holds it halfway to Cedric as a silent want to try? ]

[dissolving]

[ It's maybe a little funny, how bad he wants to try. A second or two where it shows, wrestling with some childish instinct to touch and know. Taut as a wire all morning, and yeah, of course he wants to try it. Of course he takes the yo-yo. ]

Haven’t seen one of these in years.

[ Turned overhand, thumb scuffing the edge of rough-carved wood. Someone makes everything, but someone made this; too amateur for anything you'd sell. Like Astrid’s little figures: Better for a kid to break off the legs than sit on some shelf. ]

Where'd you find it?

[cozen]

Laura Kint—she was before your time.

[ Nevarran. But a mildly infamous problem in Nevarra, so Bastien does not volunteer that possible connection. He hopes she's alright, wherever she is. ]

She found out I'd wanted one as a child and never had one. It was very sweet.

[ His hands, empty for the time being, go into his pockets. He's good at watching people without looking like he's watching them. ]

Dining hall stew or dockside sandwiches? Or whatever else, if you have a request.

[dissolving]

[ The twitch of his lip is agreement. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. He works hand into string, experimental. Takes longer than it ought for someone writes with both hands. ]

Docks, I'll split.

[ Makes the whole thing feel less a bribe: Fish for the eyrie, passing your squalling cousin the toy. A wrist spins, sends the yo-yo unspooling into dirt. Cedric stoops to collect, wiping the dust on a sleeve. It's a short walk to the ferry. ]

We had one of those, uh, cups? Cups with a ball. Used t'fight over it. [ But that's not what Bastien's here for: ] Wasn't in camp, mostly, when Riftwatch came 'round.

[cozen]

[ Bastien's smile flashes wider at the mention of the cup and ball, then sobers without quite disappearing. ]

We might have kidnapped you otherwise,

[ is a thought he could elaborate on, if it were the time, place, or point for teasing hyperbole. Those big brown eyes, that disinclination to enable atrocities. Surely someone would have fallen in love and stuffed him into a sack on their way out. ]

Were you on the frontlines?

[dissolving]

Mostly, uh — patrols. Tracking. Escort gigs.

[ Abominations in the desert, elves in the desert, and anyone leaving the oasis could do for a sword. Cedric's mouth twists a bit, stepping onto the boat. Passes Bastien back the toy.

(It'll be a week or two before he remembers that joke, and makes a real face,) ]

Weren't getting on so hot with folks. It was... I volunteered. A lot.

[cozen]

[ Maybe the anchor was lucky then, Bastien does not say—we have to keep the ratio of obliviously pointed comments below a certain level here.

It's Tabitha at the oars today, uninterested as ever in exchanging more than a nod or paying them much attention. That means it isn't rude to take the seat furthest away from her, the way it might be with Jonah. ]

We have it pretty easy here, don't we? Comparatively.

[dissolving]

[ This is where he's supposed to divert onto some bland, true thing: That it's good that it's easier here. That there's hard shit everywhere, and Riftwatch is full of folks who run toward it. Bastien stayed for the ruins, dug the rubble, helped his neighbours; sacrificed. Rutyer's still here, with his bow and the picture of a little girl. They kill dragons, they end nightmares,

So this is where he should pass it back. But that's not why they're here. ]

Know folks saw it, but dunno if they get it. 'S been... well, been harder on the company men, I reckon.

[ Or half Orlais wouldn't have deserted. ]

Chantry spent too much to starve us. But my teeth're still loose, and time off's a joke, and I didn't have a lieutenant, because we kept losing 'em like some fucking curse; 'til no one wanted the job. And, well.

[ He's talking too much. A shrug. ]

Five years of that.

[cozen]

Five—it has been that long, hasn't it? Shit.

[ He's watching Cedric's hands more than his face. More comfortable that way, sitting alongside each other, and he's learned keeping his ear still makes things simpler to process. Lemons in his pigeonhole would be condescending, maybe. Chatting with the kitchen staff about winter stews, about keeping the pieces small enough for the back of a mouth, staying careful with surprise hard bits—that he wouldn't have to know anything about. ]

Did it feel like it was going to keep on? I mean—I'm not asking you to predict the future. Not really. But after it happened, with the soldiers you knew, did it feel like something had been released and finished, for the time being? Were people ashamed of it and settling down? Or were they emboldened, and it felt like it was only starting?

[dissolving]

[ One hand knuckles the other, rubbing loose circles into the space between finger and thumb. Water laps the side of the ferry, sloshing salt about their boots. A seagull screams. The hum of the city grows louder with every creak of oar. Noise,

You can lose yourself in it. Turns over a palm, traces the question. ]

Dunno. Losing Starkhaven, that was a blow. That we never — [ Turned aside, diverted full forces to the siege. ] — But it won't be the last. And shame... Reckon some folks get bolder, when they got something to run from. Looks like control.

[ What's self-awareness. He's never met her. ]