The Inquisition's records regarding what to do with us if we all die are incomplete. Obviously half of you do not have any family—

[ Coming next month: sensitivity training.]

—but if you would like your remains or your belongings handled in a specific way or given to a specific person, there is a form in the Senechal's office. Or I can write it down for you, if you tell me how you would like your mummy dressed.

The deadline is at some point before you die. So you should do it this week.

[ Salvio—poor Salvio—has actually done something to deserve this, and that something was asking Kostos to make this announcement in the first place. ]

[ bright and airy as the best of autumn days: ]

Dearest compatriots!

The wind blows crisply through the trees, and the preparations for gift-giving and the masks and costumes filling the shops cannot have gone unnoticed. Satinalia approaches! Thus, I have come to charge you all with an important duty. If we are to have festivities at all—which we must, it is so very important to keep morale up in trying times—we must have a proper Ruler to preside over them. So! Who shall it be, this outrageous ridiculous individual least suited to the task of being such on all other days but this?

I shall not make my own feelings on the matter known, in the interest of not being overly influential, but I rather think we shall be coming to similar conclusions on who ought to be seated at the head of our feasting table.

Now discuss boisterously, with both reason and passion!

Do you ever think about the point of the Chant?

❰ it's been a while since adalia spoke on the crystals about... much of anything, really. her voice isn't quite as energetic as it's been in the past, her words coming out more slowly. there's the faintest sound of a pen scratching against parchment as she goes on. ❱

I used to think I had it figured out. It wasn't about the actual story and history of Andraste, it was all about power. Who had it, who was willing to use theirs to hurt people, what people would do to keep it. The Chantry had learned all the wrong lessons from it, I thought. Bunch of wolves, hoarding over the carcass of the truth, tearing strips off and eating them to deny the rest of us access. Uncaring that eventually they would strip the bones bare and leave nothing behind.

❰ for all that adalia's words are blasphemous, inflammatory, she doesn't sound any different than when she started. ponderous, if there had to be a word for it, and if someone could be ponderous while also being uninterested in the answer to their wonderings — she switches topics without so much as a change of inflection. ❱

What do you do when you're angry and it doesn't help? When all of the things that should keep you safe fail and you're powerless and the last thing you have is your anger and then you don't even have that? Is there anything to do, or is it just... this, forever?

For goodness sake, it's marriage, not plague that I am asking if you've contracted. Why on earth do so many of you look like I've asked if your leg has rotten off over something as simple as marriage and children? And at your ages no less?

[ There is that tsk, that universal tsk of a Mother, Grandmother, Aunty, pinching a cheek and fussing. ]

Your fathers and mothers must be growing grey hairs as we speak in worry with your being in a war camp and they are still with no grandchildren.

[ P.S, this is Byerly's fault. ]

You know what this place really needs? More lively music. I'm talking jams, I'm talking real bops. I can't headbang to a lyre.

So, who wants to start a band with me and invent rock and roll? I'm also accepting inventing pop, punk, pop punk, progressive rock, and 80s synth, if you can figure out how to fake a synth. Vaporwave need not apply, and if you even think of trying to start nightcore, fuck you.

I miss my niece. She is... tiny angel, Kira. I am glad she is not here, for her, and the brother-sestra and mother who would be missing here if she was away, but I wish she was here for Sarah.

( A pause, and— )
And me, also. She sees always the good, I think.

Who... Rifters, if you could be wishing for people to be here, who would you choose?

The next time any of us— [ That isn't an all-inclusive us; he means, specifically, mages and rifters and maybe templars, but everyone can figure that out on their own. Or not. He doesn't care. ] —is in the position to make demands, I think we should make sure we have a say in which rifters go to which Circles. We could pick in turns. Like choosing teams.

[ That's all. ]

❰ the crystal feed opens up on a feminine voice clearing their throat. ❱

Good afternoon, goodladies and goodsirs of the Inquisition. We hope this message finds you well; we are Adalia and Provost Thranduil, recently returned from Skyhold bearing news of the phylactery negotiations on behalf of the party of ourselves, Cosima Niehaus, Araceli Bonaventura y Castell, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

To start with, Rifters may now rest easy on the question of mandatory phylacteries.

[ thranduil slides in. ]The only cases in which a Rifter will receive a phylactery on a permanent basis are much the same as those for which a mage would: support of Corypheus and his forces, committing a violent crime, or otherwise posing a sustained danger to the Inquisition.

❰ back to adalia. ❱

In addition, there is now the option for any Rifter concerned about their safety while on dangerous missions to have a phylactery made temporarily, so that should the worst come to pass, we may use the phylactery to locate them. This is voluntary, however, and not a requirement.

Happily, we have also made significant strides in our public perception — the Inquisition has agreed to support us as legal people, thereby using the weight of its power to fight for our access to the rights and privileges of all Thedosians. Moreover, the Chantry will make a public announcement in the coming weeks that Rifters are not demons, and we are free to convert as we please. The importance of these gains cannot be overstated, and we are very proud to have been able to deliver them to you.

In exchange for these gains, we have acquiesced to share with the Chantry our research into the nature of rifts and Rifters, as well as registers of those Rifters with magical abilities, and native magics considered unusual by the Chantry. Additionally, Rifters will henceforth be officially considered part and parcel with mages, and will share their fates when the question of Circles must be decided again. It is our desire that Rifters and mages may work together to abolish the Circles, and earn freedom for both groups.

Some of us, [ he says, ] especially the most recently arrived, may not have yet acclimated to the permanence of our situation. May this serve to remind you. Your comrades in the Inquisition are just that. Rifters have already died in the fight against Corypheus, and I am not so naive to think that there will not be more. We are here not until the end of this war but until the end of our lives, and it is time to recognize that although we have had the extraordinary privilege of the Inquisition's patronage, we owe more than just the closing of rifts to Thedas. This is now our home, and we must fight to protect it and its people as we would fight to protect where were born.

❰ slowly, somewhat nervously, as though she’s been surprised by something — ❱

These negotiations were hard-fought, and doggedly so, with steadfast dedication and an eye to the future of both the Inquisition and Rifters' collective wellbeing and successful integration into Thedas. Now, may we return our focus to Corypheus, and ending the threat he poses.

[ an afterthought: ] Those Rifters with questions and concerns are free to come to my office to discuss them.

( A quiet clearing of the throat; one can naturally assume it is a very beautiful clearing of the throat, done by a very beautiful man. )

This matter of the phylacteries for rifters… it seems sensible. If they are such a valuable resource to the Inquisition, the closing of rifts, and so on, being able to find said resource if a rival power were to try and overpower them and abscond with them makes sense, I think. For their own safety, for our own safety. If Corypheus and his forces were, for example, to make an attack on a party closing a rift and kidnap those rifters for nefarious purposes, it would be better for all if we were able to find them as quickly as possible. The phylacteries are an established way of doing just this, no?

By all means, if you wish to see the world end, protest. Even if this is not your world, though, I think we can all agree that you are currently in it. It’s fate is not entirely irrelevant to you.

[ thranduil's voice is tight, if still somehow pleasant: ]

I understand that there are a great number of questions and concerns at the moment regarding the Inquisition's proposed policy of phylacteries for Rifters.

If there are concerns that anyone would wish to make known through official channels, the Research Division has been appointed to handle the research of this new, proposed policy. [ very pointed stressing. ] My office is where it has always been, and any concerns should be turned into the box reserved for correspondence of that nature.

I would remind all Rifters that we are yet considered a single unit. [ remember the curfew? ] That poor behavior will affect all of us- indeed, anyone currently afflicted with a Shard. I would advise them that this is never as true as it is now, and that consequences for actions taken in the heat of the moment are the same as those made when rational.