arcaneadvisor (
arcaneadvisor) wrote in
therookery2017-04-10 06:07 pm
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crystal
FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Morrigan
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Give her your spooky stories, also Flemeth/Asha'bellanar since people are off to Kirkwall
WHEN: Whenever you hear it what is time
WHERE: Skyhold (Morrigan's there, maybe you're elsewhere, welcome to the spoop podcast)
NOTES: Gonna just say oblig horror warnings for the content, if your thread contains anything you feel the need to warn for please stick it in the subject line and I'll update here.
SENDER: Morrigan
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Give her your spooky stories, also Flemeth/Asha'bellanar since people are off to Kirkwall
WHEN: Whenever you hear it what is time
WHERE: Skyhold (Morrigan's there, maybe you're elsewhere, welcome to the spoop podcast)
NOTES: Gonna just say oblig horror warnings for the content, if your thread contains anything you feel the need to warn for please stick it in the subject line and I'll update here.
The long nights and short days have passed us, Inquisition, yet I believe a certain appetite remains for some tales no matter the season. Those tales a mother or father told you, an older sibling, some elder grown grey and wise, while you were tucked up in your bed at night with the fire crackling in the hearth so very very far away, your light but that of the candle reflected in their eyes. [Well, there was no such thing in the Korcari Wilds for her but just believe in it. Imagine if you will, dear listener, and let her dark crooning voice lull you off into oblivion if you dare.]
Such tales as to chill and curdle the very blood in your veins. How many tales in Ferelden are told of my mother to have a wayward child behaving or to have those older still falling in line. We turn to Kirkwall now, perhaps that is why I think of where last she was sighted - the one the Dalish know by Asha'bellanar - and all those stories of stealing babes from their beds for her cooking pot that the Chasind will believe to this very day. Indulge me, if you will Inquisition, what tales frightened you as a child? Are there those that quicken your breath still? That send you hurrying along the darkened halls when a stray draft has the candle guttering out? Are those impossible fingers at your window or are they the branches of the overgrown tree? Is it the dreadful howling of a wolf or do the werewolves lope out of the forests once again?
[Morrigan has a talent for this sort of drama, leaning very close to her sending crystal to deliver it in her best 'oh how she dances under the moon' voice, all hushed and breathy when she must, drawing out each and every pause. The last pause before she ends the message is one of consideration. Has she not left out a rather sizeable group?]
Those who come from beyond the rifts, are there such tales you learned as children? Are there those you have learned of this world? Do they compare? I shall tell you a tale of mine own if trade is required.
no subject
Is this a habit with some lay sisters? Odd beliefs in the Maker? At least I can be certain this one is far too old to be the one that I know. [Leliana had certainly had the oddest ideas about the Maker Morrigan had ever heard when first they met.]
There is many a place where the wolves are bold or where one must explain a terrible act, I suppose. Perhaps she still tells those stories now somewhere.
no subject
Often. To take vows is to forsake some portion of one's own nature. A path made difficult, when one knows their own so clearly.
[ Wolf or woman. The Chantry asks a certain degree of conformity, of order in its ranks. It makes the wheels turn smoothly — but it's a sacrifice, all the same. ]
Likely she was shuffled to some abbey distant. Many are happier of it. I believe that you mentioned a trade?
no subject
To allow another to take hold of some part of you - I could never abide by such a thing, does it not chafe in the end? To live a life no longer yours, perhaps that is the horror I can scarcely fathom.
[Every story has a truth in it, every cautionary tale comes from a place of fear and horror that makes the mind and body recoil from it; this is hers.]
There is a tale I heard from the Chasind some years ago, of a spirit in the waters and whose favour they would seek to gain each year with an offering of ale. Each would provide something towards the brewing of this ale and one would be chosen from a lot to be the one who would wade alone into the waters once the ale had been brewed, holding aloft their cup.
The Wilds are dark, even wetlands one knows well dangerous but they would go alone at night to wade up to the waist and beseech the spirit. They would not say what the words were to me, they were not for my hearing but the ale would be tossed into the waters and they would rejoin with all the rest. A candle burned upon an altar for a time and standing in silence was required until the shaman signalled that it may be put out, believing - or hoping - that the next year would be bountiful.
no subject
No life is wholly our own. We belong to the world — to family, trade, the necessity of survival. It is upon us to choose which we serve.
[ It chafes. Her neck is worn raw with the lead. But to live a life only for oneself, how lonely must that be? ]
A poor omen, I suppose, if none returned. [ This isn't a tale she'd have been like to hear otherwise; her voice betrays clear interest. ] How common candles are to these rituals. One sees them everywhere, even when sight is no object.
[ Absolutely unstated: In the Chant, too. ]
For our benefit, do you think, or for something beyond?
no subject
Careful how easily you say that with many an eager ear, there are always those as hungry as any demon.
[If you only ever knew loneliness, would you know any different? There is a world now, a child, not the acid-tongue of a hag to be escaped.]
Few know where any Chasind settlements are, were one to disappear entirely would there be any to mourn their passing from this world to the next?
Perhaps it is from where we have told the stories in the first place? So often in the dark with only that light to see by where the shadows grow long enough that we might be somewhere else entirely.
no subject
And they are not the only ones with teeth.
[ Wren considers, ]
Fire as the guide; neither solid nor Fade. It rings with a certain truth, both have a way of burning the unwary.
Were there a people with no stories, I suppose we should never know them. They might vanish as cleanly as your Wilders.
no subject
[Kill Bill sirens.]
Temptation too. That light in the dark one sees for miles, be it friend or foe. Or demon these days. [One flight over the Exalted Plains to witness the arrival of rifters and she saw more of them than one would like, flames in their wake.]
I have been told of a spirit found in something not unlike a phylactery that had slept so long it forgot all but what it had been trained to be. Memory remains, even if the tale does not, dreaming quietly.
no subject
Might we consider such a thing an honest memory? Spirits are such singular creatures; do they not lose the nuance and depth of a moment?
[ It's a genuine question. Her experience of them has been rather singular itself. ]
no subject
[The prospect doesn't amuse her as much as it might have. Reputation casts a long shadow.]
I was not there to observe. [No she's not bitter at all Wren you would be mad to think that.] Spirits are intelligent living creatures. If it crossed or remained deliberately it would maintain itself and what it was as it appears to have done. The Chantry understands only what it wishes to of them which is nothing.
six million years later
[ of spirits. because cole's still hanging around, and holy fuck she hates cole and would like dearly to own every shred of advantage in avoiding the thing, ]
What would you have more widely-known?
no subject
[That she's avoided Cole or whatever she's heard hasn't been only down to chance. When there are the sort of skeletons tucked away such as Morrigan has, she cannot trust a spirit with them.]
All of it. That a mage might never fear their magic and thus be easy prey for the demons that come. That all that was before would be known to us. There was a time when it was not men that ruled this world and we see small relics of it now, things we can only clutch at the meaning of perhaps never to know. I would not have that again for magic yet we cut it down, strip it to small paltry things for the understanding of those without it. That they might feel comfortable with it. Magic is a wild thing, a thing in the very blood and bone of a person, sewn so deep you must sever them from the Fade entirely to keep them from it and with that take all emotion. Wildness can never be tamed. Even your hound will bite and the beasts of the field kick and crush.
no subject
[ like a road prone to flooding, or an opportunist's bridge toll. like it or not (go on and guess which camp she's in) they need to understand what they're up against.
... and it's easier than explaining that she lost her shit at a ghost. ]
Should no knowledge be limited?
no subject
[People require housing and bedding and resources but compared to shades, terrors, pride abominations and all the other things prowling far and wide from wherever a rift opens? She'll absolutely take the rifters and their tales and how it might better her own understanding of things.]
Do you not wonder if we might have a great deal less conflict had we a great deal more understanding? I was in the midst of the Fifth Blight. I can think of many things that might have gone rather differently had we known then what tis known now. What is already forgotten now.
no subject
[ perhaps. perhaps not. a connection to the fade seems it need be involved. still, there's the dwarf, isn't there? how in fuck does that work? and all these strange and useless items —
why no fade bunnies? where are the fade bunnies. step it the fuck up, thedas. ]
Conflict is as much a piece of our nature as magic. I'd not see the world rid of either.
[ there's always something worth striving against, some betterment worth fighting for. or perhaps she only needs to believe there is. who would she be if there weren't? (what would she do, to find that unhappiness still there?) ]
But neither would I hand my secrets to all comers. Judgment, discretion — these must accompany understanding, no? Else we are as children with fire.
no subject
[This edges too close to eluvians, to Crossroads, to things she would never tell a Templar even with a blade to her throat; there would be the burst of her flesh going and a thousand stinging insects or a blight-ridden beast to contend with.
But they could be useful to her.]
I did not say an end to all conflict. Conflict is many things to many people. That mess inflicted upon near all Thedas spreading out from Kirkwall? Would you not have seen that differently? More understanding, more knowledge? How might the world look, I wonder. I would not see the Qunari way of 'no conflict' either, not after hearing it personally. [Thanks but no thanks Sten, you can keep that.
Oh but the idea of it. What might not have fallen. What might not have been lost. What is being lost as they speak now. Maddening.]
What I speak of are greater things than small petty concerns. The things that have shaped this world that so many have turned a blind eye to - what ruins have you walked past or through or perhaps even sheltered in for a time, not knowing their purpose, their history. Gone. That chance has slipped through our fingers now. Though for some of us, history has already decided that our stories are not our own to tell, that our secrets are to be laid bare to the bone for the pot. The dwarf was good enough to embellish, the scholars for the Blight less so. One hopes to be in the good graces of whomever shall put forth this tale, else you shall need a great many fires.
no subject
(if someone had acted sooner. if other measures had been taken. if everyone stopped slaughtering each other as categories, and began again as people,)
morrigan is fascinating. morrigan makes sense. morrigan cannot be trusted. the woman played the imperial court, and she isn't without a stake in all this — no matter how she'd hold herself above it all. that awareness doesn't change that she knows exactly which buttons to push. they've never exactly been a mystery, but neither is wren used to anyone bothering.
the silence lingers a touch longer than she'd care to allow. when she begins again: ]
That may be a lost cause.
[ right now she knows exactly one author, and the prospects aren't sunny. ]
I cannot guess how much research has been lost with the rebellion, to say nothing of that which never made it to the page. If there is any hope I have of it, of your ruins — it is that some chances come again. Some tales do.
no subject
Templars, of course, are never their own people as they have said. The Chantry, the Circle. The Sisters and the Mothers with their own agendas, too many of them with a family seeking something because of course she is not unaware after so many years by the bosom of the Chantry and the faithful, gaudy overly gilded thing.
(Why not be rid of that and the palaces, see what changes then but no, not a thing to be spoken of.)
There's a smile in her voice.]
I see. [What a temper she possesses, this terrible girl of theirs.] Did the rebellion have research? I did read some of what was in Kinloch Hold. Rather sad.
no subject
[ a slight puff of air. not patriotism, not quite — but she still takes a measure of pride in the people she'd served. ]
I thank you for the conversation, Madame. It has intrigued.