therookery | [ OPEN ] Let No Soul Hunger For Justice: An Inquiry.

FORM: Sending Crystals
SENDER: Adelaide LeBlanc
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Vaguely philosophical question time
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Part of Let No Soul Hunger For Justice.

[ Adelaide’s voice is even, if tired- but what else is new? Still this is a requirement for the next ritual and to that end, she must find some sort of acceptable truth from a variety of opinions. Sequestered in ‘her’ desk in the Library, full pot of coffee warmed to one side, sheaves of blank paper and bottles of fresh ink before her. To her right? Anders with a similar set up, papers, quills, ink- a kitten. To her left, Roul to take just as many notes. Prepared as they are ever going to be- she asks. ]

A few questions for the Inquisition:

What is a soul, truly? What fundamental differences are there between a mortal’s soul and the embodiment of a spirit? Is it the culmination of our thoughts and experiences, our emotions? Is it a combination of our self given purpose and our ambition?

A mortal might change their purpose, might grow and become more due to our experiences- most spirits do not. But what more than that? What sets one soul apart and makes it distinct from another? Can the same be said of similar spirits?

Answers need not be religious or academic- merely true. What do you believe to be the difference, what do you believe to be a soul?

[ ooc: threadjacking is welcome and encouraged ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you're expecting me to feel sorry for you, you're out of luck. Korrin's already told me what you're trying to do and for the record, I think you're setting yourself up for failure. The thing is, you're going in with what the Chantry does. You don't have to. It's not like they're in your heads spying on you. All that paranoia is the shit you're taking in with you. Look at the Maker, you think he's turned his back on you and gone off in a huff. Our gods aren't like that. The reason I'm laid up like this is because I've dragged my feet on something I was meant to do for a fellow warrior, when I put it right.

If I wanted pity I'd go to the Chantry. I am asking for information, for an opportunity to understand alternate perspectives so that what I hope to do comes from a place closer to a universal truth and less what I understand to be so. If you would like to tell me more, I would like to hear it. If you wish to condescend? We both have time to spend elsewhere.

And I'm telling you this: every ritual we have is designed to force the spirits out when they speak through the mage or augur, and that when apprenticeship is over, there's another one they have to go through to end the possession. If they don't, they're exiled. If they're a weak mage and simply can't, they're cared for, watched over by our spirit gods to ensure the souls don't become corrupted. We don't want abominations. It would be a disaster. But if there's corruption of the abomination, if that mage might harm the hold, the abomination dies in their sleep. Our gods aren't cruel, and we show respect.

[There's a pause where Asher's breath catches like he might cough, where he's fighting it back and down, breath rattling in the back of his throat.]

Sometimes a healer has to know when to slip the knife into the thigh and let someone go. I'm not trying to be a prick, this is how it is.

That is done because no one has tried to fix this. No one has been allowed to make even a token attempt by the Chantry. A mage is possessed, they are killed. That so many things that could otherwise be avoided or treated end with the sword due to Chantry doctrine is wrong. This is a sickness like any other and it can be cured- if there is a way to undo tranquility? There must be a cure.

It's not a sickness though, this isn't about the body because if it was the body you would be asking about the body, and you wouldn't be asking the likes of me, you'd be asking healers, you'd be asking people from lands you haven't been to or anyone that's gone to some through some fancy schooling with a silver spoon shoved up their arse. You're asking because you know it's not a sickness because it's the spirit and the soul, because it's deeper than flesh to things only a few of us understand. I had to leave Skyhold for a while. Knowing he'd been here all that time. Almost lost a good friend over it. I left to get right with my gods.

[Because a spirit is a god is a spirit, because it doesn't matter what other people believe, it just matters what Asher believes because he lives it, he carries it with him wherever he goes, and he almost died because one of his gods is punishing him for dragging his feet on another matter.]

Rituals can force a spirit out but here's the thing: that spirit is out. You haven't solved the problem. You haven't even halved it, if anything, you've probably gone and doubled it because there's a corrupted spirit and a mess of a person and you can't split yourself in half to deal with it.

[Never half ass one thing Adelaide, whole ass one thing. Not that Anders even deserves a fractional peripheral glimpse of dat ass.]

A tainted spirit can be killed.

[ Cured is-

No one has attempted to do so. No one has tried. And at the moment she doesn't terribly care if Anders is left a mess- he'd done this to himself. What comes after is his to mind, her word is secure, some manner of progress made. ]

I would rather separate the spirit from the man and kill the spirit than stand by the Chantry's tried and true 'kill the abomination' or 'kill the supposed abomination'. We have to try to find something better or there's no point to any of this.

So you do this and then what? You kill the spirit - and we don't know who corrupted who here, we can't really know that but let's say for the sake of the argument that both hands are bloody because that's the sort of world this is, I think we're safe enough going with that assumption - but you're still left with a man that did that. Do you even know if you can kill this spirit? What it's going to have learned being inside his head? Being around all the people he's ever been around? Watching? And it was older.

[Asher might not be book smart but he's a battlemaster, and current wounds notwithstanding, he is a damned good one. Asher cares about people, selfish though he generally tends to act and sound. There are a lot of people already hurt and hurting in Skyhold.]

'I would rather'. Life isn't that easy.

We kill the spirit and likely have a mess of a man afterward that may or may not yet be a danger to himself and others. [ It's- weary, honestly. Low and resigned. Doing this, finding a way to do this is important- but what comes after? It is difficult to plan for that when you aren't certain if a thing will even work. ] It might be a kindness, then.

[ To put a blade to him in his sleep, if there is truly no hope of recovery. If he has become so entangled with all that Justice is that there's nothing of him left. ]

You think this has been easy?

I don't think there's going to be a may, not when you look at all the people around Skyhold and what he's done. People are allowed to be angry. Half my crew lost their home and their families in one night. [It changes you when that happens, that sort of ugly clawing grief he had to hold people through, had to hold them together through.] You might find a much uglier man than the spirit. You can't ever know. Even the people that knew him before, he won't be that man. You change when a spirit speaks through you.

[But Asher knows augurs so of course he can speak like people should just know that.]

Why do you think it's in their sleep in the hold? When neither know? The abomination goes to sleep and neither wake. [If Asher was a different person who hadn't been kicked out at fifteen, who lived a life where comfort was a common thing, then maybe he'd say that they both went somewhere they could be together and their lives were free of pain but dead is dead, and they go off to the Lady of the Skies in the case of the body, and a new spirit fills the gap.]

I'm not saying it's been easy, but someone has to say it. Someone that actually does kill for a living and that knows this sort of thing.

[It's not exactly an offer but it's been said.]

I am the last to tell anyone they've no right to be angry for what he did. What happened in Kirwall was a large part of what influenced the events in the Spire. My home, until it became no more. It...it is not about him, what I am trying to do. It is about others like him that have not yet lost so much of themselves that they will becoe someone that would do what he did. That he is here and volunteering to do this is convenient. That it may or may not kill him is likewise convenient.

[ Not the desired result, but- he was prepared to die, many wished his head on a pike. It wouldn't be the neat execution most would expect but it would be a fair price paid for what happened, in theory. ]

It...we have not come to that point just yet. We've a few more left to try and then- one option more after that.

Should all else fail? The knife. And as I am the one that has fought so long to see these rituals done, I shall hold it myself.

[ It would only be fair, unless someone else would wish to claim that particular honor. A sleep spell, cutting a vein- the very thought of it makes her feel ill. But if there were no other choice left- he was right. It would be the most kind thing to do. ]

[ OPEN ] Let No Soul Hunger For Justice: An Inquiry.

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