TEST DRIVE MEME!

[faderifting]

TEST DRIVE MEME

Maybe you’ve been around for a while, or maybe you’re new to the Inquisition. Maybe you’re new to Thedas, having recently fallen from a tear in reality and been collected by uniformed rescuers. Whoever you are, you’ve been sent to Kirkwall, to an outpost where many of the Inquisition’s members and allies work on some of the biggest mysteries and problems the organization must solve if it’d like to keep the world from ending, where “ending” means “falling under the power of an ancient powerful corrupted being who wants everyone to bow to him as a god.”

And just to be clear, it would like that. It would like that a lot.

I. THE GALLOWS: The Gallows is an island fortress in Kirkwall’s harbor. It’s been home to, in order: Tevinter slaves, a Circle of Magi, a lot of creepy red lyrium, and now the Inquisition, which has occupied the fortress with the provisional Viscount’s blessing. There are walls that still need rebuilding and corners that still need dusting, but for the most part the Inquisition has gotten down to business. There’s space in the stone-floored courtyards to train or spar; or, if your skills don’t lie in the realm of hitting things, there’s a large library and several offices supporting the Inquisition’s areas of research and diplomatic efforts. If you don’t know what to do with yourself, then by all means, ask; someone will definitely be able to put you to work.

II. KIRKWALL: A quick row across the harbor will take you to Kirkwall proper. The city is built into the cliffs, from exclusive and wealthy Hightown at the top to impoverished Darktown in the abandoned mining tunnels below. In the middle is Lowtown, home to taverns, merchants, and plenty of trouble to keep anyone looking for it happy. You’re welcome to spend your free time and your money here—but try not to annoy the locals too much, please, in case their welcome runs out. It’d be a shame to have to pack again so soon after arriving.

III. QUESTING: Barely had time to make yourself at home, did you, before you were sent away from Kirkwall again—but this time on a mission. There’s a rift outside of Markham, pouring demons into the fields, and the Inquisition has been asked to lend a hand. Maybe literally. If you have an anchor embedded in your palm, you’re needed to close the damn thing. If not, maybe you’re here to fight demons or guard against bandits on the road, or to gather samples and take notes on the rift’s location once its closed, or to speak to Markham’s nobility afterwards to make sure that they fully appreciate the Inquisition’s efforts. Regardless, it’s a long trip, so we hope you like campfire cooking and sharing a tent.

IV. SENDING CRYSTAL: Joining the Inquisition gets you access to the very latest in barely-understood magical communication devices—namely, a crystal, small enough to wear around your neck, that will allow you to communicate verbally with anyone else who has one. Or everyone else who has one. Say hello.

V. WILDCARD: The whole of Thedas is yours to explore, from coast to uncharted wilderness. Choose your own adventure!

Comments

[paladingus]

There's more than a little deja vu inherent in standing on the site of the erstwhile Kirkwall Chantry and having a mage snap to frightened attention at his command. It's a level of power he'd initially taken as his rightful and holy due, then gradually become unnerved by, and now--

Templars don't have that sort of power anymore. If they did, his room in the barracks wouldn't have become Kirkwall's new death row. If mages didn't know damn well that they held the power now, if they weren't so gleefully determined to turn the tables because they can, nobody would be fearing for Cade's life over a scuffle that didn't even leave bruises. He can't pretend that the fear on this stranger's face doesn't feel good, feel right, if only for a moment.

Then reality reasserts itself, and he realizes that mage or no, he's menacing a blind man a foot shorter than he is. Some champion of the just he must look, right now. He rubs his eyes with weary shame, as long as the mage can't see the brief lapse of discipline.

"What are those runes for?" He doesn't want to cleanse them without provocation and risk damaging the trees, but neither does he trust them.

[faithlikeaseed]

It isn't the question Myr had been expecting, but Simon's brief crisis of conscience bought him enough time for the last of the fear to ebb away and he can answer in a tone that's passing level: "Finding my way, ser. I realized I might become turned around in unfamiliar territory and thought to mark my path back."

He doesn't lower his hands or do so much as draw breath, focusing as hard as he can on appearing harmless. The longer this goes on, the more time his mind has got to run and a new fear has time to take shape: This isn't one of the templars he knows. Difficult as it is for him to wrap his trusting heart around the idea, there are malicious templars out there, templars who wouldn't scruple to abuse or kill those under their charge at the slightest provocation. Would he know in time to defend himself if he ran into one of those? Has he already?

Hope for the best. The Inquisition would root out all the bad ones, wouldn't they? And this fellow doesn't sound malicious (he's got a nice voice, actually, some detached idiot part of Myr's brain remarks), simply as weary as one might expect from someone having to chase mages all day long. Mages who're putting suspicious runes all over a forest they weren't supposed to be in in the first place.

"They just make noise," he volunteers, abruptly. "And give a little charge to whatever they're resting on, so I know where I've placed them. That's all."

[paladingus]

That's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the runes, and Simon wants to believe it--mostly because if it's true, he doesn't have to do anything about them, and that's always a favorable outcome. He narrows his eyes at one. It's still not doing anything but chiming innocuously. A flame rune would have set them both on fire by now.

"I suppose you'd have to do something like that, wouldn't you," he admits. "It's a pretty clever solution. Not that you'd need it if you stayed outside where you belong."

He's got to point that out, if only because he has to set some kind of example for other aspiring garden-invaders. The guards are there for a reason, damn it. But nothing vital appears to be disturbed, and even if it had been--it's not as if having the place intact has done the investigation any good at all, so they really might as well let the whole damn city tramp through the place as they please. It wouldn't make a lick of difference.

"Ordinarily, I'd ask if this really is unfamiliar territory, but you look too lost for it to be an act." Against his will, there's a tiny glimmer of amusement there.

tfw I'm calling them runes but they're actually named glyphs by the games whoops

[faithlikeaseed]

"Yes, ser." He's maybe a little too eager to reply, a little too relieved that the scolding's no more severe than it is. No, he shouldn't've gone into the forest, and he hopes his contrition for that is clear. (You ought to be ashamed, mutters something in the back of his head that sounds a little like his cousin, bowing your head so readily. He banishes it.)

And for all he's lapsed into a habit of humorless compliance, it's not in his nature to ignore a hint of a joke when it's made in his direction. His lips form into a twitch of a smile at Simon's words. "Very unfamiliar. Don't know how other Circles handle it, ser, but they didn't let us out to romp in the forest at Hasmal."

He pauses, considering a moment, before asking a careful question: "May I take up my staff again? I'll banish the glyphs, if you like."

It should be safe enough, now that there's a templar around who can escort him out of the forest. And, likely, all the way back to the Gallows in shame. (Don't think about that.)

pff me too, let's just call it a WoW homage and ignore that runes are a different thing

[paladingus]

"I don't know if you've heard, but Hightown didn't have a forest to romp in until a few days ago. We're still working out exactly how it came to be. You understand my suspicion." But he feels increasingly a bit stupid for it nonetheless. This guy could be a particularly clever blood mage trying to throw templars off the scent of what he's done, but...more likely, he really is just a harmless blind man from a foreign Circle, as curious about this inexplicable new phenomenon as anyone else would be.

He looks back at the glyph on the nearest tree, and sighs. Best not to leave it there to confuse things, if anyone else is going to come poking around for clues. "All right, all right. Just clean it all up and I'll help you back. If the guard's back at his post, though, you're on your own with him."

let's.

[faithlikeaseed]

The hint of a smile on Myr's face vanishes as quickly as it appeared, taking the humor in his voice with it. "I understand completely, ser. I'd intended myself to investigate its origins."

Given leave to retrieve his staff, he leans down to do just that, tucking it into the crook of his arm as he straightens. "If that's permitted," he adds as an afterthought, reaching out to wipe the glyph from the tree as easily as he might chalk from a slate. The remains of it hang glimmering in the air before disintegrating in the fragmented afternoon sunlight. "I would, of course, share my findings."

Then he frowns down at his hand, touching his thumb to his fingers and palm to gauge just how much sap he picked up. ...Enough that he doesn't want to be tracking it everywhere. "Though if not-- While I'd hate to delay my eventual reckoning with the guard, ser, I could use a moment's more time."

Carefully--well aware he might well be trying this fellow's patience, and looking suspicious to boot--he shakes his sleeves back from his hands, reaching with the clean one to extract a kerchief from an inner pocket of his robe. (Just so long as he doesn't look like he's trying to cast something without permission, it will be all right, won't it?) With it he begins to scrub away at the sap in a woefully unproductive manner.

[paladingus]

It's a tempting offer, in a way, because Simon's not getting anywhere with the quandary on his own, but he shakes his head.

"If we want outside help, we'll ask for it," he says. "Until then, the guards are there for a reason." Not that he'd put the guards there, or had anything to do with it. But it seems prudent nonetheless.

There's no reason to be quite so authoritarian, though, now that his mind has already shuffled Myr into the 'not a threat' pile. He looks more reassured once the glyphs are gone--not that this guy has any way of knowing that. It does not immediately occur to him what the problem here is, and he watches the elf scrub at the sap with something like sympathy.

"That's not going to work," he says, ever helpful. "You'll need soap at least."

[faithlikeaseed]

"You think?" What could be a sarcastic retort is softened by Myr's rueful expression and mournful tone. "Really got myself good, didn't I? Pardon me, ser, I'll need a spell for this."

New as he might be to the whole forest experience, Myr's no stranger to sticky conifers. There'd been a few of the tame, well-manicured variety in the Circle gardens, and their care had redounded to anyone with the will to maintain them when the Circles collapsed. He'd had ample opportunity since then to work out a way to get sap off his hands...and out of his clothes...and hair...

Cupping his gummed-up fingers, he mutters to himself--setting out spell parameters--and is shortly rewarded with a palmful of dark viscous oil. Rubbed into the sap, it loosens up the whole sticky mess and makes wiping the whole lot up with the kerchief much easier. He folds the oil-smeared cloth into a square with one corner tucked in once he's done. "That'll have to do until I'm back to the Gallows."

He tips his face politely in Simon's direction, adding, "Ready now, ser."

[paladingus]

Templars don't usually need to know a great deal about the details of how magic works in order to counter it, and neither the Gallows nor the Ansburg Circle had been big on innovative utility magic in any case--the most interesting thing to come out of the latter in decades had been a lengthy treatise on potential magical causes of sock disappearance in the laundry. Simon raises his eyebrows with unabashed interest as the oil materializes. He's never seen that particular spell in use.

"How are you doing that?" he asks. "I mean, yes, magic, ha ha, but--can you really just conjure that up whenever you like? However much you need?"

[faithlikeaseed]

He's taken aback by the question, and as much shows from what's visible of his expression beneath the blindfold. "How technical of an explanation do you want for that?" he asks in turn, exchanging the puzzlement for a grin.

"And, yes, so long as I'm not being blocked," as a nod to present company, "but there's practical upper limits on how much I can create in one casting. Since the usual application in war is for a slick or a drench to set on fire, it's powered for--mh." He pauses thoughtfully, tapping a finger against his lips as he tries to remember the exact figure. "Ten gallons? Twelve? All at once. Harder to get more than that, but much easier to get less."

It takes him a moment to realize how much nerd verbiage he just dumped in Simon's lap there, and his grin takes a turn for the abashed. "Sorry. That's more of an answer than you needed, wasn't it."

[paladingus]

"As technical as you like," he says. If Myr could see Simon's face, he'd have much less reason to doubt himself, but as it is, Simon's expression of fascination will have to be lost on him.

He does what calculations he can in his head, trying to envision the sort of puddle twelve gallons of oil would make when launched with magical propulsion. "Well, that'd ruin anyone's day, wouldn't it," he muses, impressed in spite of himself. He starts to reflect on how there's not much he could do about a physical slick of grease, not like the way glyphs tremble and dissolve when he exposes them to the harsh light of the waking world--but that's not something to say aloud, not in front of a mage. There's no wisdom in just handing that little weakness to them on a platter, however friendly they might sound. It doesn't do to get too chatty.

Still, it's fun to talk shop, and he rubs the back of his neck a little ruefully. Surely there's no real harm in it if he's judicious about what he says in return.

"No, no, that was exactly the answer I needed," he says. "How did I not know about this? You'd think mages would be using it all the time, if it's that simple..."

For once, his mind isn't actually drifting off into fantasies of anything untoward. He's just imagining how much easier it would be to tinker with things if he had built-in machine-lubricating capabilities.

[faithlikeaseed]

There's something a little alarming in Myr's grin as Simon remarks on the day-ruining properties of that much oil. "Absolutely. And it's flammable as anything," he volunteers, cheerily. "Usual practice is to throw a fireball at it right after."

If Simon were anyone but a templar--that is, someone who knows perfectly well a mage's capacity for destruction already--Myr might reconsider being so frank about his ability to turn a battlefield into a firestorm at a moment's notice. (It's something he'd had ample cause to think about on the way from Hasmal, where the restive civilian populace had been very close to finishing what the rebellion had started themselves.) But it is fun to talk shop, especially when "shop" includes area denial and massive explosions.

It's also fun--in a different way--to have someone who asks worthwhile questions. Myr shifts a little where he's standing as he considers the one implied in Simon's words, wrapping both hands around his staff and leaning on it comfortably. "Honestly, unless it's your area of specialization, you don't think so much about the things you could do with a weaker version of a spell," he says thoughtfully. "Or one you've changed the parameters on so it's less flatly harmful. It's easier to memorize the way it's set out for you so you can carry it off in a fight without a flaw, and forget about what else you could do with it."

At least, for most mages. His grin becomes a little more like a grimace as he thinks about his own deficits in that area, then shrugs it off. Better not to dump all that on a stranger. "As for the hows, it's a matter of dipping into the Fade for the--heh--matter you need, and telling it the shape it's got to be. If I want so much grease," he gestures grandly like he intends to drench their surrounds in the stuff, "I have to grab the unshaped potential of 'grease' out of the Fade, tell it what I want, and tell it where to go, burning up mana for all of that. A set spell is the theoretical most-efficient way to accomplish that task, with--"

He pauses, wrinkling up his nose and chewing on his lower lip as he thinks about how to put it into words. "--It's got the right mental shape to it, let's say. Any time you cast a spell, the first step is forming your initial desire--uh, a velleity in technical terms; why they call it that I don't know--into the right shape for altering the Fade the way you want. Like any other tool--sometimes you need a blade to cut through it, sometimes a spade to dig it up, sometimes a hand to pull it around you. Spells give you that proper shape in a form you can memorize, that won't require so much of your power as beating your head against the Fade would.

"Though that's not the only way there is to explain what we do--it's one theory among many. Another says that magic is searching out through the Fade what could have already happened if the world had gone differently, and making that be so. It's the opposite of what you templars do to stop us, when you make the world be more real."

He looks strangely wistful at that for a fleeting moment--then seems to realize he's lecturing and interrupts himself with a laugh. "Which is very far afield from the point. But there you go; that's how you get grease out of nowhere. I could walk you through the spell itself but without being a mage yourself, I can't really show it to you from the inside."

[paladingus]

Simon doesn't know this guy from Maferath, and it's hard not to interpret that sharklike smile as pride that comes from experience, making him wonder just whose day might have been ruined by a massive flaming grease explosion. He remembers the rebel mages out in the Ferelden boonies, raiding villages, destroying crops and livestock, slaughtering any civilian unfortunate or foolhardy enough to come within miles--thinks too, then, about the ex-templars doing exactly the same, and opts to keep his mouth shut just a little while longer and see where this discussion goes.

It's fascinating; he can't pretend it isn't. He's always liked to know how things work, even if this particular explanation is going largely over his head--the mechanical is his realm, the strictly physical, the real, and while that particular focus makes it difficult to grasp the more arcane theory Myr's putting forth, he recognizes that that's actually part of the point of it. He can understand that second theory, when all he needs to do is grasp the perfect counterpoint of what he already knows. It all fits together like well-oiled gears in a clock, and he does love it when an explanation comes together so neatly.

"Can't they both be true?" he asks. "The theories? The second one you brought up--the idea of that you can make what could have been come true, if we don't stop you--that explains plenty that I've seen, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with conjuring grease, it's true. The way you explained that to begin with made far more sense."

[faithlikeaseed]

It's the smile of someone who loves the idea of explosions an awful lot--and hasn't actually ever had to use one against another sapient being.

He wouldn't find it nearly so fun if he had.

If Myr could give Simon a sharp look, he would. A nice voice and he asks smart questions. "That's a good question. We usually argue about them like one has to be true and the other's not, but there's no reason it can't be both," he replies. "I can't think about doing magic the second way--if I tried to imagine a world where this forest was already covered in grease, nothing would happen. Can't wrap my brain around it. But my c--other mages I know can only work the other way.

"Or maybe all this work I've got to do in my head about pushing the Fade around is really just another way of making a world that wasn't more real." He pauses, considering that from all angles, and gifts Simon's direction with an earnest smile. "I hadn't thought about it that way before. Thanks for asking, so I could."