therookery | (no subject)

Current Location: Gallows, Kirkwall

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(no subject)

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Inessa Serra
RECIPIENT: Everyone/the Rifts and the Veil project
WHAT: Survey's up, plus private Rifts and the Veil meeting
WHEN: A few days after the rifter arrivals
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Actual survey is here.

Greetings, this is Inessa Serra of the Rifts and the Veil project. I'm here to ask for the assistance of any who bear anchors and would be agreeable to answering a (hopefully short) survey for our records. All information is confidential and will not be shared beyond approved Inquisition personnel. If this interests you, please stop by and pick up a form at my office or just outside it, on the sixth floor of the central tower. If you hear a mabari barking, you're headed in the right direction. I look forward to any replies and thank you for you time.

[Private to project members]

Consider this an impromptu crystal-meeting. I thought it might be more convenient for all involved.

I'm aware that many are hurting at this time. A valued member of the Inquisition has been lost to us, through her own anchor. If you were close to her, you have my condolences, and I understand if you must take time away to grieve. Siuona was the first to succumb to this fate; it's my hope that she will be the last, but for that to occur, our research must persist. To that end, I welcome a proactive approach. If there is an angle you think we ought to be pursuitng, mention it here and we can work on it together. Even if an idea is half-formed and you are wondering as to it's feasibility, don't be afraid to contribute. We will learn nothing by holding back.

[Having cleared the air on that, she sounds a little more energetic.] If you've looked through the survey, you will have seen mention of potential anchor-monitoring for those willing to volunteer their time. I am looking for volunteers on our end, as well. At the moment, the plan is simply to record any changes witnessed or told to us. If you're interested, I can note that as well. Otherwise, I open this meeting up to members at large.

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Thalmor keep dossiers. If I didn't have one before I had to leave Valenwood, I know that I have one now. They don't make for good reading, to see someone's life laid bare to the bone on the page for all the things that might be useful now or in the future.

[Things to think about when she considers what things in Thedas fall into what come close to the Thalmor. Her hackles are up; this is a hard thing to trust, better to carve out something else with information people can do something else with.]

Daedra have to be summoned from Oblivion by worship or conjuration, and the Daedric Princes rule over their own planes. Oblivion is...chaos. The Void stretched out, not the opposite of Aetherius which is the afterlife but if you turned yourself inside out then that would be closer; if Aetherius is where a person goes whole, hale, healthy, then Oblivion is twisted, dark, depressing. As you'd be if you wore your insides on the outside.

You have anchors, rifts, the Veil, the Fade, demons. [Are you following Inessa or should she split it out more, her mind feels hollowed out speaking of it this way but she's dealt with so many, it's strange to put it to someone when she bent her knee at the altar, ate the flesh, drank the wine, cut the flesh, pledged her soul, all that and so much more for all of the Princes.]

[Dwelling on the Thalmor is postponed as she listens to this talk of Daedra, and there's the sound of a quill scratching as she writes this down for later use.]

Do you believe that Oblivion and the Fade could have a connection, of sorts? That Daedric Princes could take interest in this?

Some of them, believe me, there's little Sheogorath wouldn't look to in some way but I didn't mean it that way exactly. It was-- so if the Fade is where all things are and the afterlife instead of what I know it to be then in this way we say Daedra are demons and spirits.

Daedra aren't entirely good or evil so it works for both. Now, we have the anchors to close rifts. To banish. To unmake them into the rifts again. Can you summon demons? Conjure them?

And yet, I've no reports of daedra appearing around the rifts, only our native demons. Some factor must keep them firmly on the other side.

We can...through blood magic. [Said in the same tone as 'sacrificing infants', i.e. it's something widely condemned.] If a maleficar was in our ranks, and they would know better than to make themselves known, those methods would never be approved by the Inquisition at large. Such magic is condemned for many reasons, but the one relevant to our project is that it can harm the Veil. That is entirely opposite to our purpose.

Would you know a daedra if you met one? I met some that walk about the same as you or do. When I met one in a tavern and started drinking with him, I didn't know he was anything different to a man until much, much later. How do you know? You can't.

[More likely in her own opinion is that the daedra are less interested in a place such as Thedas when there's the chaos of Tamriel to keep them busy, or the more complicated way Nirn, Mundus, etc are formed but considering how her explanations of time go? That's something hard to explain anyway.]

And that's…[No. She doesn't know but her hands are red to the elbows, to the shoulders, how much has she sacrificed, has she given?] There aren't any other ways to do it? None? [From an academic standpoint. From someone who looks at the world differently. From someone trying to understand her place in all this once again.]

So, a master of disguise or at least a low profile? That does make matters rather more difficult.

[She can only hope none have arrived, they have enough chaos and wildcards in play.]

Few others are desperate enough to want a demon's company. Though in areas where the Veil is especially thin, they can often cross over. Walking corpses are simply a demon doing so and possessing the nearest available form.

Hircine appeared as a white stag. Meridia spoke to me when I found her beacon abandoned in a chest in a giant's camp once.

[How would you know? Smart. Fiendishly smart compared to the things that threw themselves in her path straight out of a rift, closer to the atronachs that even then would've needed to be conjured by someone.]

Walking corpses—skeletons or things with the flesh still on? Or both?

Both, honestly. Anything undead is a demon's work and the result of a thin Veil, which tends to happen in places that have seen a lot of death. That's why where were so many walking corpses in the Fallow Mire, where the local populace had succumbed to plague. It's true of the Exalted Plains as well, where the bodies of former civil war soldiers walk and attack anything still living.

Reanimation is how that works, magic gets involved. Necromancy, not demons. Some of them were buried as they were, withered into what they became with some little life in them since they—it's not sleep but close, rest? -- and rise when disturbed or at night even in their deep burial mounds. Some of the draugr can speak, just fragments, old things. Old as them and the days when they walked the world.

[Some shout. Not a thing to say.]

The skeletons wear their old weapons too though, the wind sighs in their bones as time does, walking until you stop it with an arrow. The new ones are only through necromancy though, more reason that it's—

[Allowed here but listen to it catch like a fishhook in her mouth, how distasteful a word it is; the dead risen, hurling themselves at you to fall to ash when their time is spent.]

Draugr...your dead speak? How unnerving.

[Her next words are careful, knowing that what happend at the Grand Necropolis hardly put necromancy of Thedas in a positive light.]

Reanimation in Thedas is...well, its own separate category. According to a Nevarran belief, when a soul of the dead crosses the Fade, it displaces a spirit. Based on that, the Mortalitasi believe that mummifying corpses provides a safe host for the displaced Fade spirits. The Mortalitasi draw wisps rather than intelligent spirits across the Veil and they are responsible for the mummification of the bodies of the Nevarran elite. It is not a practice shared elsewhere in Thedas, given the Andrastian preference for the funeral pyre.

They're Nord dead. Undead. Specific sort that might've been buried alive or embalmed, I don't know. They hurt all the dead they have there but the speech is fragments you wouldn't understand. Never to but at. Mostly when you fight.

[Whenever those dried up husks they called lungs loosed a shout same as her own though-- who were they? Were they acolytes of the Dragon Priests?]

It's desecration of a body, dress it up how you want but I know what they sound like when they come back, I stood in Sovngarde where the Nords go to meet the ancient heroes so I know the afterlife in this one. I know their confusion, their peace, what right do the living have to interfere with the dead?

And yet, we need Nevarra as an ally, not an enemy. What happened in the Grand Necropolis reflects poorly on the Inquisition, not the Nevarran people. Until we have indisputable proof that there was a compelling reason to attack their ancestors, the strain could affect our operations in Thedas and our overall goal. Doubtless Corypheus' forces prefer it that way.

I suppose I must keep this meeting on track, but another time, I would be interested in hearing this afterlife you visited.

Maybe they should be better at looking after their dead and where they lay their ancestors to rest. Not that it surprises me; the walking dead, cannibals [cough] and shirking their duties to another they might pay to take it on. What is your oath to your Divine when you might ask another with the promise of coin or reward to do it on your behalf?

I—I there's something I put to the back of my mind, something I never thoughto think of again until now but it's to do with the Daedra and dreams. I'll speak to you privately of Vaermina.

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