crystal.

[biggame]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Xiomara
RECIPIENT: Everybody
NOTES: Threadjacking approved and encouraged

Hey, if we cut an eluvian in half, will it still work? Because imagine. If we could strap one to a griffon, we could be anywhere, and only one person would have to do the traveling. Or we could strap one to the bottom of a griffon and fly low over a battlefield or a lake and people could jump through without the griffon even needing to land—

[ Or maybe that's just her personal paratrooper fantasy, parachute part PENDING, RESEARCH. ]

I think we could be thinking bigger here. Or smaller. But in a big way.

Comments

[portalling]

Someday, [ bleakly, ] the two could be one and the same. Think of pressing a button on your crystal and thousands of people perish in Denerim. The quicker it gets, the more distant you are from the immediate impact.

[ But trying to tilt the conversation back towards something lighter: ] I promised Novoa I wouldn’t let Research push the technology and let it get too wide-spread. It does seem like we’re somewhat limited in our manufacture of this, anyhow; we haven’t been able to make very many more of these since the initial cache was discovered.

Would you want everyone to have a sending crystal?

[aberratic]

Well, that's... horrifying.

[ how easy would it be to make deadly decisions if you didn't have to be around to see their effects? how easy to allow expedience to outweigh ethics, when you don't have to reckon with its cost?

she takes a moment to sit with that, to really try to understand it. ]

I think... there have been some situations I've experienced that would have been improved by use of a crystal, [ a diplomatic way of saying "if i'd been able to call my father on the mindflayer ship i might have survived it", but also: ] but I understand that would simply be trading one problem for another, now.

It seems there's no good that cannot be warped by those determined enough. Are antibiotics, penicillin—can those be harnessed for evil, too?

[ fear of what could happen is no reason not to innovate—bad does not cancel out good, they exist side-by-side—but it would be good to know what to look out for. ]

[portalling]

[ Huh. ]

Over-use them and your body can get too accustomed to them, diminishing their efficacy. Overdose on them and you’ll have adverse reactions, but that’s any medicine. I think I can actually say this one’s a universal good.

[ He’s a born cynic. Even he sounds a little surprised to mention something so hopeful. But it means it’s worth it; all the time and effort they’re putting in with the professor, it’ll be worth it someday. ]

[aberratic]

Oh.

[ ness sounds just as surprised as stephen, to be fair, and she's not a born cynic. it just seems like something that good... it can't be that simple, can it? that uncomplicated? nothing is uncomplicated, that's not how the world works.

but maybe, just this once, it is. her smile is audible when she speaks. ]

Well, good. We put in so much effort to snare the Professeur, I don't know if I have it in me to talk him around again.