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Who: Cole to everyone
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Pathstone
When: Now

[Cole is actually looking at the camera, which is a minor miracle for those familiar with his habit of leaving his communicator next to him and pointing at the ceiling.]

How do mortals know what you're feeling? Varric used to tell me what it was, or Jove, or Solas, but they're gone and now I don't know what these feelings are. I can tell how to help other people and how to navigate their hurts but I can't do it with my own.

[He gives a small sigh and looks off somewhere. A fluff slug climbs over the communicator screen.]

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[A very good thing indeed, even if Adalwolfe would never actually dream of following through with a horrible thought like that.]

It amounts to the same thing.

No. Idiot isn't the same.

... there are none so blind as those that refuse to see.

... I'm not sure that's actually true, but I heard it.

No, I know that. What I meant was the end result is the same; she's against the rebellion as a whole, can't see the underlying reasons why it happened are solid ones, the injustices her own people endured.

[He sounds like Anders, he knows, but he spent most of a year after Kirkwall sounding like Anders, telling First Enchanters and any other representative of a Circle the same thing. Tower after Circle Tower in the Free Marches and some further south, he used the same words where Anders couldn't speak for fear of his actions in Kirkwall undermining the Circle mages' ability to follow.]

She doesn't see anything but her own position in Orlesian society. Probably the only reason she was even let into the Inquisition.

They're not her people. Not to her. Not to them.

[Vivienne was very clear on that.]

Yes. She threw a big party and informed Cadash she was joining the Inquisition. Cadash thought she was funny, and wanted to see what she'd do.

[Hawke snorts at that, but finds he has little taste for talking about Vivienne further. He has no stomach for mages who buy into the Chantry line that all mages are dangerous and therefore should be imprisoned just for what they are. Nevermind that they're people and if they were treated like people, taught to control their powers and taught the difference between right and wrong, that they'd be no more dangerous than any idiot who handles a crossbow. If you tell people all their lives that they're monsters, what other choice do they have?]

I think Lavellan might have let her join for the same reason, in my Thedas. I don't think he listened to her much.

No. Cadash didn't listen to her at all.

[He remembers a tiny dwarf woman staring down Cullen, her hand firm on the box of lyrium and swearing that she'd be strong enough for him to stay off it.]

Cole and Vivienne were both from White Spire. The top and the bottom.

[It might help explain his vague fascination in understanding her. They were both created in the same chantry.]

[It may explain it, but Wolfe is at his limit there, unfortunately.]

Cole, I'm sorry, but I just don't know what else to say about her. I'm fairly certain the only reason she didn't attempt to kill me outright during my brief visit to the Inquisition was because it would be gauche.

[He has exactly zero fans among loyalist mages.]

Okay.

Did you meet Blackwall?

Briefly. He didn't really talk much, though I do think I heard him appealing to some Wardens at Adamant, trying to get them to stop fighting us. He's a hard man to read.

Mm.

Do you know what makes a Warden Grey?

I do, yes. Anders told me, actually. In the fleet, before he remembered who I was. I can't imagine doing that. Disgusting.

[He calls it that to hide the lump in his throat, the knowledge that Anders will someday have to answer his blasted Calling and then Hawke will have no place to call home. Anders is home, for him. To let the darkspawn just take him... Adalwolfe's fairly certain he'd rather die fighting at his love's side than just walk away from that.]

You mortals eat and drink things all the time. It's weird.

[Someone is still refusing to do the eating and drinking thing because it grosses him out.]

Blackwall didn't.

Not Darkspawn blood. That's strictly a disgusting Warden thing.

[A beat.]

Which... apparently means Blackwall is not an actual Grey Warden?

[Huh.]

Edited 2016-10-25 04:36 (UTC)

... Blackwall was. Really a Grey Warden.

Thomas though... Thomas wanted to be.

So the Blackwall in the Inquisition isn't actually Gordon Blackwall but a non-Warden named Thomas who just wanted to be a Warden?

[He doesn't laugh, but there's definitely an incredulous bent to his voice.]

Sounds like the Inquisitor knows how to make the same sorts of friends I do.

Blackwall died before Thomas could be Initiated. They stopped to kill some Darkspawn, to collect what was needed, but Blackwall died instead and Thomas was scared that no one would believe he had been accepted.

Makes sense, but with all the problems with Corypheus' fake calling, I'm honestly surprised no one really noticed before Adamant, and then after I guess no one would unless they were a fellow Warden. Apparently they can feel each other, something about the taint.

[He sobers a bit, glad that Cole's powers of extreme, brain-scrubbing observation don't extend over video. The taint is probably his least favorite subject considering that it will send Anders to the Deep Roads in roughly twenty years...

He locks that thought away, shoving it back into the far recesses of his mind, as he always does. They'll stay in the fleet, the taint doesn't progress here, it will be fine.]

I guess I can see why he would do that, if he was afraid. People do a lot of things out of fear.

The Wardens closed ranks.

If they had talked about it, it wouldn't have ended how it did, according to lots of people.

I don't know if that's true. I just know they hurt themselves and lots of others.

I think it's true. There's something about people not bouncing their plans off of others first that makes them do stupid things. Like turn to blood magic.

[He sighs.]

Clarel made the right decision in the end, but she was too late to save quite a lot of people who needn't have died. People always have this urge to close ranks when something terrible happens, but that's when communication is most important. You never know who might have an alternative you haven't thought of for being too close to the problem.

She did. But the other wardens had to live with what they did.

[And that was sometimes the hardest thing. Living with the consequences.]

Better to live with it and atone for it than die and have no chance to set things right.

[Hard or not, it's always the better option for anyone who's not just intent on being terrible in the first place. As little as Adalwolfe knew of Clarel, he didn't think she was a bad person at heart, just a frightened one with a slew of people looking to her for answers she didn't have. She made the wrong call, but it could happen to anyone. And it did. So many of the Wardens fell to blood magic to try and save themselves. It was horrific and could have been prevented, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand.]

Yes. That's better. That's why the Templar had to do. Live with the memory, like I do. Make sure it never happens again.

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