If it had happened to anyone else, they might have found it kinda funny - the Wasteland always was good at fucking you over in interesting ways.
As it was, Leviathan didn’t much feel like laughing. Megaton’s metal shell loomed over them, barely a ten minute walk away... and they couldn’t even manage that. Not with the chunk of flesh some scavver's yao guai had taken out of their leg spraying blood every time Levi so much as twitched. Trying to stem the flow had done nothing more than stain their jacket, and they were seriously regretting their decision not to restock on stims before they left camp.
They jerked at the sound of approaching footsteps, the sudden movement making their vision blur. Levi squinted up at the stranger from behind their mask, not bothering to go for their guns - the way their luck was going, they’d manage to shoot themself in the foot or something. “If you’re not going to shoot me and steal my shit, d’you have any Stimpaks to spare? I’d owe you big for it.”
Used to know? Used to know when? What did he do? Can he really be worse than he is now, all big and sad and oversharing?
Eugh, I asked him if he needed anything the other day and he went off about how wonderful it was that mages were finally approaching him. I’m not even a mage! Not even!
“When the mage rebellion started. In Kirkwall. I knew him, but he didn’t know me. I don’t know about the oversharing, but he was… angry. Very close-minded. He ignored things he could have stopped, and people suffered for it. He’s still a stubborn ass, but it seems like he’s trying, I think.”
This isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s certainly not welcome, either.
The door opens just enough for Levi to peer outside, revolver held loosely in oil-stained fingers, and there’s… nothing. “Nothing,” screams again though, and whatever it is, it’s loud. Loud enough to attract some of the more nasty denizens of the Mojave if it doesn’t shut up.
They step out into the heat, and when their eyes adjust to the light they see that it’s a bird.
It’s not any kind they’ve seen before - not like the mangy crows that pick at roadside carrion or the radgulls they’ve encountered on their rare visits to the Commonwealth. It’s bigger, streamlined, more dangerous-looking. It might even be kinda pretty by bird standards, if it weren’t covered in dust and its own blood.
Levi follows the trail of scattered feathers until they’re almost close enough to touch the creature, and they wait. It sprawls awkwardly in the dirt, one bloodied wing poking up towards the sky at an angle that looks wrong even to their untrained eye.
If it can’t fly, it can’t survive. If the blood loss or the heat don’t kill it (can birds die of heatstroke? Levi’s never had to ask that question before), the next predator to pass by the bunker will have it for dinner. Shooting it would be a mercy.
The bird shrieks again, claws scrabbling for purchase in the sand, and lifts itself into the air. Wings flap once, twice, and they almost fool themselves into believing that it’ll fly away on it’s own.
It can’t, but it keeps trying - dragging itself along with short little hops, smears of blood drawing cuneiforms in the dirt. It screams pathetically and flaps its wings and almost looks betrayed, like it can’t comprehend why its body won’t respond the way it should.
The feeling isn’t an unfamiliar one
(or maybe they’re just projecting.)
Leviathan swears at nothing in particular and ducks back into the bunker, revolver discarded.
Ten minutes and three bleeding fingers later, the bird is more or less subdued in a cardboard box and Levi’s hoping that one of the books they’ve scavenged has something to say about animal care. They swear they won’t get attached.
If you lose somebody who is very close to you, you’ve lost something of yourself. It’s not possible to describe what’s happened to you. You’re really not right in your senses.
Private William Hay, Forgotten Voices of the Somme (via pyratescode)
I'm not entirely sure why people even use the "but what about the commoners!" argument, I mean if you played through Act 3 you would know that the Chantry and the Templar order were 100% okay with terrorizing non-mage citizens and you can even witness a bunch of armed templars about to murder a Lowtown woman for giving a shelter to a runaway Circle mage. It's pretty clear that even common non-mage people were never the priority, the priority was always maintaining their power through fear.
It’s a really bizarre argument, isn’t it? I actually find Cullen’s letter on the matter interesting, because in the first paragraph he’s effectively scolding Meredith about letting matters get to this state. He’s pretty clearly not suggesting that turning the Templars’ swords on the general populace is a particularly radical idea – he doesn’t have to sell the point. He just points out that his previous boss never let the commoners get in the way of imprisoning mages, and in order to fix this state of affairs they should bring out Templar Intimidation Strategy #14.
And yes, by Act 2 Anders reports that they’re treating harbouring apostates as a capital offence – and I know he talks elsewhere about Templars threatening mages’ families. By Act 3, many Templars are treating mage sympathisers the same way they would apostates. By Inquisition, Templars are murdering and terrorising suspected sympathisers in the Hinterlands on the flimsiest of excuses: ‘You talked to someone who looked vaguely mage-y to us! Now you must die!’
This is about cutting off any potential support for runaway mages, and preventing any effective resistance from forming. It’s an outright protection racket, in which the Templars promise not to murder you and burn down your house, as long as you hand over your mage children and never try to get them back.
And somehow, once someone is a mage, they are automatically a combatant and attempting to escape or rebel – thus potentially bringing down the wrath of the Templars on those who still get to be designated ‘commoners’ – is wrong, and the damage subsequently inflicted by the Templars is all their fault.
The Templar Order talks like the villain in every damn serial killer film I’ve ever seen. ‘You didn’t behave exactly as I told you to, so now it’s your fault I’m going to hurt your mother’.
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