#rite of tranquility

[originalheroluck]

[awkward-tension-art]

These were suppose to be warmup doodles that I took too far

[awkward-tension-art]

Oops. Having thoughts.

Mage!Rook forced through the Rite of Tranquility. I can imagine Lucanis would shut down entirely and Spite would take over for actual days on end out of pure, unadulterated rage.

[djinnhatescold]

I have a very strong, very visceral reaction to the idea of turning someone Tranquil in Dragon Age media. Similar to child death/injury, I simply can not handle it. I wonder how many people out there share this with me.

Like, I'm sure your Tranquil fic/art is amazing and I love you and I'm proud of you for putting it out there but if I turn my gaze toward it I will turn to stone.

[briarruler]

So the Rite of Tranquillity can cured by having a Fade Spirit touch your mind.

Spirit Healers attract benevolent Fade Spirits.

Anders is a Spirit Healer.

What if after one of his escape attempts Anders was made Tranquil?

It works for all of... I don't know, lets say a day, before one of Anders' Spirit helpers come looking for him and brushes against his mind, breaking the Tranquillity.

[katuary]

Just posted a one shot, trying something a little new (non-protagonist related). Heavy warnings for anyone sensitive to Rite of Tranquility and related topics.

Don’t think my RPG group follows me here, but spoiler warning for them, just in case!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/40784217

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[briarruler]

I've long (aka before Dragon Age: Inquisition confirmed it was possible) thought it would be funny (or perhaps ironic would be a better word) if the Rite of Tranquillity started getting used on non-mages.

Admittedly this started as a: so the activities of the Tranquil fund the Circles of Magi, and if they make such valuable slaves (as the only non-dwarves who can handle Lyrium, they make enchanted objects and being Tranquil they tend to be obedient and non-resisting) then what is stopping the Templars from falsely accusing people of being Mages for the purpose of making them Tranquil or simply abducting random people and shipping them off to a different Circle for Tranquillity so people wouldn't recognise them?

Then there was a period of: why isn't the Tevinter Imperium full of Tranquil? Wouldn't they make perfect slaves?

And my current thoughts are more: so what if a Mage learnt how the Rite of Tranquillity is done and decided to go around making important people Tranquil?

I presume that dwarves (having no connection to the Fade) and Fade Spirits (being made of the Fade) are immune to the Rite of Tranquillity but that everyone else would be fair game for being made Tranquil.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

The lore says that Tranquil mages who undergo a reversal of the Rite are very emotional in the aftermath, and that makes so much sense to me, and here’s why:

When we are born, we have no sense of scale or severity for anything we experience or feel. Babies are emotional because they have not yet learned how to regulate them. Everything is 100 to them. With proper teaching and nurturing, we grow up to develop “walls” and water lochs and filters to help us manage the more turbulent and I would say..conflict-causing emotions such as anger, sadness, resentment, envy, etc. Part of life is learning how to endure and creating these mental barriers to help us endure.

But that’s the thing. They’re purely mental. They exist because we know how our emotions feel, what has triggered strong reactions in the past, and we’ve learned how to hold them back with floodgates.

But the Rite of Tranquility erases emotions, and with it, erases all of those checks and barriers. When it’s reversed, you have have re-granted a grown adult with all of their emotions sans barriers, because the barriers themselves are built out of emotions and emotional experiences. They are back to square 1 with their self-regulation. Things are 0 or 100 with them again, like a new brain fresh out of the womb. It sounds like it would be hell on earth, because at the very least mages weren’t manifesting magic as infants. By the time they were coming into their powers, the average kid had some capacity to temper themselves, or some frame of reference to distinguish what was a “big deal” and what didn’t warrant anything more than a passing “that’s sad” or “ugh, I don’t want to think about *him*” rather than bawling your eyes out or Arthur fist-clenching in silent seething rage.

But no, “healed” mages not only are emotionally volatile, but they also have magic, making them even more dangerous to themselves and others because of how intimately tied to self-discipline the manifestation of magic is. In reversing the Rite of Tranquility you risk those mages needing to be made Tranquil again, anyway..

That is why the Rite of Tranquility is essentially a living death sentence. Reversing does nothing to undo the damage inflicted on the victim. It’s not even a ‘reversal’ at that point. You can never fully return someone to who they once were, not entirely, and that’s the real tragedy of it—a “cure” that isn’t a cure at all.