#circleposting

[sapphim]

when anders said " The Ferelden Circle's more fun. Everyone was kissing everyone. Though that was before the abominations." I really took that to heart. I was jotting down notes. like ok. everyone was kissing everyone. got it. anything else?

[vermilionstarlight]

the factory has been abandoned for decades. there's nothing here for you anymore. there hasn't been for years.

[jorb2]

[sapphim]

ok so. hang on. do you know how even though we've had spirit healing as a selectable specialization in two games in the series and (more to the point!) had two prominent recruitable spirit healer companions in the series... most of the information we know about how spirit healing actually functions comes from the entirely paratextual Spirit Healer article from the (now defunct) official bioware wiki, much of which was never (to my knowledge) explicitly restated or elaborated on in any of the games/books/comics? like Wynne is one of the only companions in Origins who doesn't even grant their own specialization in-game, so she never explains her perspective on it. like in the year 2026 (especially given that healing magic was jettisoned without ceremony as a player-accessible option over a decade ago (!)) this feels strangely apocryphal:

Becoming a spirit healer, however, is no simple matter. To gain the services of such benevolent and righteous beings requires that the mage earn their trust. Often this requires a series of trials to prove that the mage’s goals are as noble as the spirit demands, though some mages have claimed to command the compliance of such spirits through sheer force of charisma. Some spirit mages even claim they did not choose their calling; instead, a powerful spirit chose them and led them into lives of service and ordeal.

like. what!

[sapphim]

I am of course thinking about my own OCs now (oh Trevelyans... the family that you are!) but once you've considered the propensity for noble families to pledge their youngest children to Chantry service as public proof of piety (and to preempt a significant amount of infighting over inheritance rights) as well as the prevalence of ~inconvenient~ noble-born mages we've encountered over the course of the series... one does start to wonder how many templar recruits were pledged to the service for the purpose of absolving their families of the private guilt and public embarrassment of having a mage child taken to the Circle

[sapphim]

I've been referring to Mouse as Rafael's pet pride demon because it's jokes and he's my silly guy, right, but like it does have to be taken into account that the Circle of Magi as an institution is by its very nature a torment nexus that turns spirits into demons just as relentlessly as it turns mages into time bombs, yeah?

[sapphim]

Did Wynne connect the dots? She's not naïve. She's watched as her child was taken away from her on her delivery bed. As a spirit healer it's possible she's had to stand by and watch as the same was done to others. She spent decades trying to learn the identity of her son, only succeeding after she became a national hero. She knows as well as anyone that a child of a Circle mage is taken to be raised by the Chantry until they're old enough to be interred into another Circle separate from their parents, never to know them. Does she imagine she sees her son's face on every new, young orphaned apprentice admitted to the circle?

Does she know about the others? She's known many templars over the course of her four+ decades of life in the Circle, any of whom we know very well may have been orphans raised by the Chantry. Does she have suspicions as to their parentage, as well? Alistair is nearly a decade younger than her own son. Never knew his mother, raised in a Chantry monastery, pressed against his will into the Templar order. Does she see her son when she looks at him, too?

[sapphim]

my personal preference for headcanoning the contradictory alistair-templar-lyrium issue is to say that templar recruits do, relatively very late in their training—considering that most of their training is just swordplay and brainwashing—begin taking lyrium in small controlled quantities specifically to enable the practice of their magical abilities. alistair either did so as well, or he got fast-tracked for training with other fade-sensitive recruits who were able to begin this training without the aid of lyrium. either way, he obviously quit before completing his training and taking his vows, never experienced the effects of addiction and withdrawal, and then came away with the impression—being able to continue to use his abilities without lyrium consumption—that templar lyrium use is entirely a scam sold to templars by the chantry (I mean... he's right), and is thoroughly unaware of his own fade sensitivity or that it does make him somewhat unique in this regard.