selvin-9 system mingle

[rebuildyourruins]

Who: everyone
Broadcast: no
Action: Selvin-9
When: throughout December until mid-January

[It's fluff-planet time, fleeters, and there's plenty to do. Snow time like the present!]

* System info

Comments

[bryces_pup]

To her it wasn't. It was a refuge, a home for an orphaned girl who had nothing and no one. [It doesn't erase Anders's experience, though, and she's quick to say:] I'm not belittling what Anders endured. He shouldn't have had to. The Circles need to change, that much is clear.

But people are afraid of magic, and what it can do. That fear won't go away overnight. What Anders did and the war that broke out a few years later solidified that fear for many. [It's a catch-22: the mages had to fight for their freedom, but the outbreak of the war and the horrors magic can bring got brought to the forefront of the public's mind.]

Thedas might. The Circles didn't happen overnight, and they won't change that quickly either. We have to take it one step at a time.

[wolfehawke]

Oh I know, I'm not saying it'll happen quickly, but that's why the mage communities sound like a wonderful solution to me. They'd the separate and able to protect themselves, but still able to help with every day things and prove mages aren't to be feared. I think their service to the Inquisition will go a long way, too. They helped of their own free will, after all.

[bryces_pup]

But you know there would be people who'd be vocally against it, as I'm assuming these communities would be without templars. They'd argue that there's no one supervising the mages or watching for blood magic, and so on. [Maker she can already hear the Bannorn lords harping on about it, and given what happened in Redcliffe, Teagan would be backing them, too.] It's such a fraught issue.

[wolfehawke]

There's no one supervising the Templars now either. And even when they were... well, look at Kirkwall.

[He huffs out an irritated breath.]

Templars can't be trusted to police mages any more than non-mages think that mages can police ourselves. There has to be a voice in the middle, that's what Leliana should do as Divine.

[bryces_pup]

[She sighs tiredly.]

I'm aware. The templars committed grave injustices and crimes against the mages, both in and outside of Kirkwall. Change is needed. But as a queen, I need to think of my people and the nobles and what they'll think. Between what happened in Redcliffe during the Blight, Kinloch Hold falling, and the mage-templar war that resulted in fighting and destruction in the Bannorn, many of my people are skeptical of mages, to put it lightly.

[This is why she hates this debate. It could go around and around for hours with no resolution.]

I'd like to see the mages be a part of society. I want things to change. But people are afraid. They've been spoonfed all the stories about apostates and abominations for so long. It is going to be extremely hard to convince them to trust mages, and there's going to be considerable backlash. Perhaps even violence.

[wolfehawke]

I'm not saying you don't, or even that you're wrong about people, what I'm saying is it's worth it to try even knowing all that. People being afraid can't be an excuse to let a system that oppresses a huge number of people just for the way they were born anymore. I understand that we can cause a great deal of trouble, to put it mildly, if we make poor choices, but the system as it stands literally pushes mages into those poor choices because they have no over recourse.

I've heard the same arguments you have, over and over and around again. I've seen the sheer destruction that blood magic can visit on both the unsuspecting and the prepared, but it can't be the wall to hide behind any longer. It's "extremely hard" but it's not something that isn't worth trying anyway.