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 filled with bears. Choose your own adventure!

Comments

[aenseidhe]

[ Even were she to be reassuring now, Iorveth would hardly accept it as unquestionable proof. All things have to be shown to him before he'll truly trust them from a person - she has the advantage of being elven that means he doesn't immediately doubt her, though. Humans do not have that luxury of him.

Stubbornness is an invaluable quality, something that feeds into a will to survive and to win. Iorveth's know many fights he should have lost that came out in his favor simply because he so rabidly, viciously, aggressively wanted it to be so. It'll be a trait that serves her well, as is the ease she has with the blood still clinging to her. War isn't something one can be shy with and survive, physically or otherwise. But the skills she mentions aren't asking much. ]

Easy things to learn with practice. [ Balance is learning one's body and how it topples and moves. Easy enough to work with while just walking along a road, which they're sure to do much of on the way back to Kirkwall. Awareness is multitasking, something that comes easier the more it's done. ] We start tomorrow.

[ A beat, and the elf settles back against the tree trunk behind him, feet crossed at the ankles in front of him, relaxing back for the moment. ]

Tell me about yourself in the meantime.

[kecharitomene]

( Tomorrow, he will discover she's slightly under-sold how much she needs to learn, because she will benefit greatly from a bit of 'for fuck's sake, Galatea, you need more technique than hammering until they stop moving'. It turns out being gifted in the application of horrific pain doesn't necessarily track to being talented at doing it on a moving target in quite the same way—

Damn if she isn't persistent, though.

For now: her smile is easy, and she rolls down onto her belly, swings her blue-booted feet in the air and looks easily half the age she is—trauma-stunted, wild and childish both, distressingly competent and unsettlingly playful. She makes herself at ease, and is not in the habit of thinking she needs to do the same for anyone else. )

Well, I'm Galatea! Galatea, who was Lourdes.

( Shortened, most of the time, to 'Galatea Lourdes'; she knows people assume it's her surname, and rarely corrects them. The truth is, she doesn't remember if she had a surname, before, or what it might have been. )

I come from Halamshiral, but my uncle—he's elfblooded, he couldn't stay with our family—took me away when I was small and gave me Galatea for a name, and we traveled all over Orlais to do his work before I was taken into the Chantry. And I was with them, a long time for me but a short time for you probably, until it...

( She makes a vague gesture. )

It didn't suit.

( She was ordered to kill mage children and slaughtered everyone involved in the decision instead. )

So then I get these, ( touching her face, ) and I took my little charges that I sort of, I acquired, I took them to Skyhold, and that's where they are, and they write to me but I can't read, so my friend Bronach who is a rifter elf like you

( "scary" )

she helps me with them. I miss them, a little, but I'm not for children. It's right they're there.

[aenseidhe]

[ She has a bizarre, distracted way of thinking, and though she speaks for children, she seems much like one herself, swaying booted feet and all. It's amusing, but doesn't particularly bother him. Violence makes all kinds of things of people.

It's an interesting story, one that seems to leave a lot of details out, and implies others without so clearly stating. 'Elfblooded', Iorveth is coming to assume, means some sort of half-elf that doesn't look it so much. He'd read of Halamshiral in the library he'd poured through in Kirkwall, a city still possessed mostly by Elves, which is a wonder compared to the world he's from. ]

Iorveth. [ He tells her, by way of introduction. ]

I'm a commander of Scoia'tael - elite Aen Seidhe warriors of my world that fight for the survival of our people. Elves.

[ Because the word 'Aen Seidhe' doesn't translate here, the last graceful human word sadly being the easier explanation. ]

What work did your uncle do?

[kecharitomene]

( She repeats quietly the least familiar words—Scoia'tael, Aen Seidhe—and thinks for a moment of how to describe it, what to say. Her uncle's work is, at least, far easier than speaking of her own. The tools that she's taken and tries now to do things with she's more proud of, to look her own history in the eye without flinching because she thinks: but I will be better, now. More than just the kind of disposable tool that doesn't need to be taught how to read.

There are no wonderful stories about elves coming out of Halamshiral. )

Like Briala, ( she says, a little wistfully. She's seen what the progress Briala has wrested from Orlais looks like. She wishes it looked more like she imagines what might follow in the wake of someone like Iorveth. )

...he is a physician! An alchemist. We would go and trade his work and prayer for food, and shelter, and coin. I haven't seen him in many years; I hope he's well.

[aenseidhe]

[ things that follow Iorveth are burning villages and piles of corpses. the days of attempted diplomacy and hand holding are long, long past and there's nothing of progress to find save for land to clear where walls can be constructed. put someone like Saskia on a throne and perhaps the people might learn to just play nice long enough for a few more generations of Aen Seidhe to be born. They'll have to see, he supposes, but at least he can say he'd put everything he had into it, to give them a chance.

He's sure the Pontar will need more of his burning villages and corpse trails before it's actually allowed to be. His work's hardly done. ]

Briala? Another friend of yours? [ Another from the Inquisition? Galatea doesn't seem to care much about giving context, but it makes for things to ask questions about and prod. She's perhaps one of the first people in this world Iorveth actually cares to get to know. ]

A healer. It's a valuable skill to have. Did you pick up any of his knowledge? [ As paramount as knowing how to do violence very, very well to a body is, healers are utterly indispensable on a battlefield and in a brigade of warriors. ]

[kecharitomene]

( She shakes her head—no, she's never met the Marquise, can't imagine that she ever will, but she prefers the next question to the first one and so doesn't elaborate, doesn't have any great desire to dwell on the bitter taste of that victory.

It might be nice to see someone else's home burn, for once. )

I was a little girl when I was taken away from him—and he was busy, I did other things.

( Her smile is smaller than it was before, turned inward, private; remembering. )

I guess in a way, yes? I know what people can recover from, what they can't. Where it bleeds a great deal but doesn't do so much damage as it looks. How long a person can survive different—stresses. The way to apply pressure to give yourself time to apply more.

( She shrugs— )

I didn't learn this from my uncle. He taught me the Chant.

[aenseidhe]

[ oh. this girl is talking about torture. HAAAAAA. it does take a moment to really sink in, and when it does, iorveth barks a short laugh, smiling. ]

Very valuable skills indeed. It's ever such a pain when a man dies before you're done with a conversation. [ really annoying!! so inconvenient!! ] But you're right in that it's not the ideal for fighting like we did earlier. The opposite is what you'd want on the battlefield - the idea is to kill things fast rather than slow.

[ He can help her with that too. Efficiency, multitasking. Attention to detail is still key, but it's a different brand of detail. Maybe make of game of it - points for how few swings of a sword it takes before you can move to your next target. It'll be fun. Anyway. ]

I don't imagine you'd learn those skills from the Chantry either. What brought you to learn them?

[kecharitomene]

( Her glance sideways is—

She's still smiling, but it's different.

Most of the time, it would be easy to imagine that the bright, wrong face Galatea presents to the world is the only one that she has; that the disjointed nature of her thinking is reflected in limited vision. It would be a mercy, perhaps, if she was as ignorant as she's ought to be.

She is smiling. It is very likely she was smiling this same, kind smile in dark rooms beneath chantries across Orlais. )

You think the Chantry holds the south with prayer?

( She thought so, once. )

[aenseidhe]

[ it isn't a surprising fact to learn - new, yes, but the churches of men in his world acted much the same. always a need to have control over the followers, to keep coffers filled and pews warmed. religion like a means of law rather than of spirit. something that seems so perverse and backwards from the purpose of it.

Iorveth sighs, looking up through the branches at the stars above them. ]

Even in faith humanity must seek to conquer and suppress. Hardly matters if it's their own people or not.

[ He'd seen the traveling evangelists back when he'd been young as well, seeking out nonhumans still true to the old gods, offering them aid but at the cost of swearing enlightenment. a matter of numbers rather than souls. ]

As everything else with mankind, it must consume all, or it simply isn't enough. [ he is Bitter. ]

[kecharitomene]

They tell me, Galatea, you are doing the Maker's work.

( She traces shapes in the air, illustrating nothing in particular, her eyes nearly a decade away, a little girl full of piss and vinegar and faith, unshakeable even now. If she had not been so, would she have been as easy to mold? If she had not been so, would she have ever left? )

The Chantry plays the game. Keeps secrets. Takes secrets. The mothers told me that they know who deserves, so I know because they know—

( A laugh, quiet. )

I don't think the Maker was with me, after all, in those rooms. I will be sure, next time!

( quieter; more serene: ) I will be sure.

( Sometimes, the light in the darkness is a fire you lit. )

[aenseidhe]

No mortal, priest or otherwise, can tell a soul what they deserve with certainty, and fate hardly ever deals in those terms regardless.

[ did kingdoms deserve to fall? did children of any race deserve to be orphaned in a war? one man's savior can be another's monster and both can be valid. aen seidhe religions and mysticisms aren't nearly so strict as human's, iorveth's found in his years. the revere Dana, Queen of the Fields, and pledge respect to the nature she provides and watches over.

the quality of a soul doesn't seem to come into question much, nor does judgment and punishment. just a matter of 'protect what gives you life'. the idea of expecting the goddess to hand them a set of moral codes to teach them how to act just seems absurd from where he sits. such is culture, maybe. ]

You'll have to decide for yourself, now. Who suffers and who lives to keep the world your Maker gifted you protected.

[kecharitomene]

( It is very important that she decides; it is important that she doesn't take for granted that she can trust the information given to her, that she finds her own certainty.

She says, )

I've been practising,

( in a complacent way, satisfied.

Which can't mean anything but corpses left behind her. )