This raises an eyebrow: “Students would choose it willingly, before it’s even necessary? As an alternative to trying Harrowing at all?”
Much like how Julius had looked at Kamar-Taj as another version of life for mages, Strange finds himself morbidly fascinated by the Circles for the same reason: in another world, another life, this might have been him. In all the sprawling multiverse, a boy named Stephen might have been born in Denerim and eventually sent to a Circle of Magi.
That touch of guilt in Julius’ voice is even more familiar, though, and so Strange mulls over what to say. He’s not the best at finding the right words, but he tries:
“There’s a lot of moving pieces in a war, and too many for one person to keep track of. I imagine that just getting through and surviving it was difficult enough. We can always kick ourselves for not doing enough, perpetually second-guessing if we did the right thing — but I think, ultimately, we have to know that you did the best you could, in the situation you were in at the time. That’s what I try to tell myself, at least.”
Quietly, to Strange's initial question: "Attempting a Harrowing and failing it means instant execution." It's a thing he didn't think to explain, a fundamental property of the way Circles used to work. "The idea, on paper, is that Harrowing proves a mage can withstand demonic temptation. That they have enough control that their power doesn't make them a danger to themselves or anyone else."
It's best it's come up, probably; in Julius's mind, it's impossible to understand Circle mages without understanding what Harrowing had been for them. Why some would choose Tranquility rather than risking it.
And the word isn’t enough. Imagine that: choosing an assured lobotomisation over the mere potential of failure.
— he can’t, actually, imagine that. Stephen Strange’s whole thing is that he tries, again and again, even in the face of certain failure, even when it’s desperately unwise. But not everyone would make that call. He has to remind himself that not everyone would make that call.
“That’s— I’m sorry,” he says. Can’t really put together the right words, and he finds himself reaching for his closest comparison although it comes up vastly short. “My teacher dropped me on a frigid mountain to incentivise me to portal off it before I died, but it might have been empty bluster, she might have come back to pick me up if I’d failed. And it’s not— it’s not the same. There’s motivation and then there’s institutional abuse.”
Is that rude to say? Well, regardless, he’s said it.
“What happens to mages these days, after the war? With the Circles gone?”
Julius may have come down in a different place, a few years earlier, on whether or not to characterize the system as abusive. Today, however, he just says with a rueful smile, "I think it's probably optimistic to declare with certainty that the Circles are gone, under the circumstances, but I know what you mean. There's no one thing happening, right now. Some are going to the Inquisition, though after Fiona's death I don't know if the Inquisition's mages are still viewed as such a definitive options. There have always been apostates who stay with their families or hide with one another; I'm sure those numbers have swelled without Templars actively hunting them down the last few years. It's not unheard of to defect to Tevinter, for reasons you can probably guess." Given how mages are treated in the South, a nation where they rule could have its appeal even with all the other factors in play.
He goes on: "But you do raise the question ... I suspect some pious parents are still inclined to turn children over to the Chantry. I was six when my magic manifested, hardly old enough to make an informed choice as to where I'd want to go if it had been offered to me." Which, to be clear, it was not. "It may be worth talking to Project Haven to see if we can find out if the Chantry has a current system for dealing with those children." The war with Corypheus has been going on long enough now families who'd prefer not to harbor a mage are probably disinclined to wait it out.
“Oh god, as if Riftwatch doesn’t have enough going on without becoming a makeshift orphanage.” Which isn’t exactly the suggestion, but it feels a little safer to crack a joke about it and a small smile, sounding faux alarmed. Imagine. Kids running around underfoot in the middle of a war.
But, well —
Strange hesitates, then. He can’t stop his mind from examining all the angles and automatically starting to consider potential solutions. Julius had seen the kids at Kamar-Taj. Some of the sorcerers-in-training were so young.
“You’re in Diplomacy,” he says slowly, “Could that be an option? Find some sympathetic Chantry mother we know, entice her to run some benevolent children’s home which isn’t likely to turn cruel. Magical training supervised by a mage or mages who need work and could guide them in their abilities. Keep it quiet. Is that the sort of thing which might pass muster in Thedas, or would people riot at the thought?”
Perhaps it’s idealistic, considering all the local baggage, but he can’t help but think about it. How lucky he’d been, to have accepting teachers.
It's something he hasn't really thought about before so concretely; as Strange has just mentioned, it's not as if Riftwatch has the personnel to spare to offer to take anyone in themselves. But the second idea is one he turns over.
"You'd be asking anyone affiliated with the Chantry to take a massive risk," he says, after a few moments. "Yes, we could frame it as a wartime necessity, never meant to be permanent, but sanctioning it would be a tacit admission that the Circles effectively do not exist right now. That's mostly true, but if the Chantry admits that, it is going to be much harder to shove mages back into them after Corypheus is dealt with and the Templars aren't all on an Exalted March. If someone did that without permission, there's a risk they could be branded a heretic."
With his arms folded, he taps his fingers above his elbow, absently thinking it through.
"It's a couple of problems together, I think. I've no doubt we could find at least a few mages willing to help with some rudimentary training and instruction. But without at least a veneer of Chantry involvement, parents like mine aren't likely to voluntarily send their children to a mage-supervised situation. Sympathetic parents, maybe, or those who are just so scared they want a mage out of their house and don't care where they go. But there's enough piety in Thedas that there would be resistance, even beyond the Chantry itself." He shakes his head. "I don't think it's impossible, but it's going to be a challenge. On the other hand, if we could establish something now, it will give us some bargaining power later. And it would give at least some children somewhere safe to go."
Strictly speaking, this might not be Strange’s problem — not his circus, not his monkeys — but no one here’s going to care much about the technicalities of the difference between a sorcerer and a mage, and if it weren’t for that shard in his palm, he’d be considered one just the same. And people look at rifters with much the same dubious mistrust; he’d heard some of the arguments for giving them the same treatingment after the war. Their fates might be more intertwined than he’d like.
It’s no surprise, then, that he identifies as a mage himself, and finds himself invested in the problem. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
“The other risk,” Strange says, “is that you wouldn’t want to accidentally recreate the Circles all over again, just under a different name. History repeating itself. One would want it to be better than what came before. We might have too much on our plate already to tackle this too, but we’re also uniquely-situated by having so many free mages publicly organised under one roof, and so we might be positioned to think about alternatives. And presumably having some option available somewhere on the continent is better than having no options at all: staying at home or being turned out on the street.”
Or worse. He wonders how bad it gets in the even less tolerant villages, finding a child’s manifested as a mage.
Probably bad. Let’s not ask.
maybe wrap up for now but circle back to this potential idea in a thread closer to the present?
"There is that," Julius agrees, quietly. "I used to think reform was the better way forward, for ... there were reasons, some lack of information, others lack of context. But I know the tendency well enough. There are mages who are rightly wary that anything too similar to the Circles would slide back into being the Circles with minimal prodding. That said..."
A sigh. It's a problem he's been turning over for a long time, and he truly does appreciate the fresh perspective. That said, it's a large tangle to try to tease apart and it hasn't gotten any smaller in the past few years.
"I think it was good. Seeing Kamar-Taj. Thinking about ... the training, the chance to talk with other mages, or sorcerers rather. That there were some good things we might be able to build a different way." He hadn't fully expected it to be so affecting, in the moment, but it's clear Julius has thought about it since.
"If you're interested in getting involved, native mage politics are messy, but you've raised an excellent point about children. If you haven't, you might want to talk to Mme de Cedoux, some. She has an interesting perspective as another rifter who can use magic, and she's gotten more fully involved with our efforts here. Obviously," with a wry little smile, "we're all here for Riftwatch, and that's the more immediate priority. But what happens to mages, now and later, is a thing some of us have been working on simultaneously. And history shows that rifters are likely to be lumped in with us. Even the ones who can't do magic." Much less those who could.
“A good idea.” As if they don’t already have enough on their endless to-do lists, but, “Between being a rifter and a magic-user, I’ve always felt you and I are more in the same boat than not. I’ll talk to her and hear what she thinks.”
It’s a sunny day, warm and a little drowsy with the daylight trickling in through the windows. Strange has been working too long, pent-up with these Sashamiri reports, and could probably do with a break. Nothing like stretching one's legs after dealing with weighty philosophical conversations about the fate of an entire people.
“Y’know what, let’s go for a walk,” he says, sweeping his paperwork back into a tidier pile. “I’d like some fresh air.”
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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no subject
Much like how Julius had looked at Kamar-Taj as another version of life for mages, Strange finds himself morbidly fascinated by the Circles for the same reason: in another world, another life, this might have been him. In all the sprawling multiverse, a boy named Stephen might have been born in Denerim and eventually sent to a Circle of Magi.
That touch of guilt in Julius’ voice is even more familiar, though, and so Strange mulls over what to say. He’s not the best at finding the right words, but he tries:
“There’s a lot of moving pieces in a war, and too many for one person to keep track of. I imagine that just getting through and surviving it was difficult enough. We can always kick ourselves for not doing enough, perpetually second-guessing if we did the right thing — but I think, ultimately, we have to know that you did the best you could, in the situation you were in at the time. That’s what I try to tell myself, at least.”
no subject
It's best it's come up, probably; in Julius's mind, it's impossible to understand Circle mages without understanding what Harrowing had been for them. Why some would choose Tranquility rather than risking it.
no subject
And the word isn’t enough. Imagine that: choosing an assured lobotomisation over the mere potential of failure.
— he can’t, actually, imagine that. Stephen Strange’s whole thing is that he tries, again and again, even in the face of certain failure, even when it’s desperately unwise. But not everyone would make that call. He has to remind himself that not everyone would make that call.
“That’s— I’m sorry,” he says. Can’t really put together the right words, and he finds himself reaching for his closest comparison although it comes up vastly short. “My teacher dropped me on a frigid mountain to incentivise me to portal off it before I died, but it might have been empty bluster, she might have come back to pick me up if I’d failed. And it’s not— it’s not the same. There’s motivation and then there’s institutional abuse.”
Is that rude to say? Well, regardless, he’s said it.
“What happens to mages these days, after the war? With the Circles gone?”
no subject
He goes on: "But you do raise the question ... I suspect some pious parents are still inclined to turn children over to the Chantry. I was six when my magic manifested, hardly old enough to make an informed choice as to where I'd want to go if it had been offered to me." Which, to be clear, it was not. "It may be worth talking to Project Haven to see if we can find out if the Chantry has a current system for dealing with those children." The war with Corypheus has been going on long enough now families who'd prefer not to harbor a mage are probably disinclined to wait it out.
no subject
But, well —
Strange hesitates, then. He can’t stop his mind from examining all the angles and automatically starting to consider potential solutions. Julius had seen the kids at Kamar-Taj. Some of the sorcerers-in-training were so young.
“You’re in Diplomacy,” he says slowly, “Could that be an option? Find some sympathetic Chantry mother we know, entice her to run some benevolent children’s home which isn’t likely to turn cruel. Magical training supervised by a mage or mages who need work and could guide them in their abilities. Keep it quiet. Is that the sort of thing which might pass muster in Thedas, or would people riot at the thought?”
Perhaps it’s idealistic, considering all the local baggage, but he can’t help but think about it. How lucky he’d been, to have accepting teachers.
no subject
"You'd be asking anyone affiliated with the Chantry to take a massive risk," he says, after a few moments. "Yes, we could frame it as a wartime necessity, never meant to be permanent, but sanctioning it would be a tacit admission that the Circles effectively do not exist right now. That's mostly true, but if the Chantry admits that, it is going to be much harder to shove mages back into them after Corypheus is dealt with and the Templars aren't all on an Exalted March. If someone did that without permission, there's a risk they could be branded a heretic."
With his arms folded, he taps his fingers above his elbow, absently thinking it through.
"It's a couple of problems together, I think. I've no doubt we could find at least a few mages willing to help with some rudimentary training and instruction. But without at least a veneer of Chantry involvement, parents like mine aren't likely to voluntarily send their children to a mage-supervised situation. Sympathetic parents, maybe, or those who are just so scared they want a mage out of their house and don't care where they go. But there's enough piety in Thedas that there would be resistance, even beyond the Chantry itself." He shakes his head. "I don't think it's impossible, but it's going to be a challenge. On the other hand, if we could establish something now, it will give us some bargaining power later. And it would give at least some children somewhere safe to go."
no subject
It’s no surprise, then, that he identifies as a mage himself, and finds himself invested in the problem. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
“The other risk,” Strange says, “is that you wouldn’t want to accidentally recreate the Circles all over again, just under a different name. History repeating itself. One would want it to be better than what came before. We might have too much on our plate already to tackle this too, but we’re also uniquely-situated by having so many free mages publicly organised under one roof, and so we might be positioned to think about alternatives. And presumably having some option available somewhere on the continent is better than having no options at all: staying at home or being turned out on the street.”
Or worse. He wonders how bad it gets in the even less tolerant villages, finding a child’s manifested as a mage.
Probably bad. Let’s not ask.
maybe wrap up for now but circle back to this potential idea in a thread closer to the present?
A sigh. It's a problem he's been turning over for a long time, and he truly does appreciate the fresh perspective. That said, it's a large tangle to try to tease apart and it hasn't gotten any smaller in the past few years.
"I think it was good. Seeing Kamar-Taj. Thinking about ... the training, the chance to talk with other mages, or sorcerers rather. That there were some good things we might be able to build a different way." He hadn't fully expected it to be so affecting, in the moment, but it's clear Julius has thought about it since.
"If you're interested in getting involved, native mage politics are messy, but you've raised an excellent point about children. If you haven't, you might want to talk to Mme de Cedoux, some. She has an interesting perspective as another rifter who can use magic, and she's gotten more fully involved with our efforts here. Obviously," with a wry little smile, "we're all here for Riftwatch, and that's the more immediate priority. But what happens to mages, now and later, is a thing some of us have been working on simultaneously. And history shows that rifters are likely to be lumped in with us. Even the ones who can't do magic." Much less those who could.
👍 slaps a bow on it
It’s a sunny day, warm and a little drowsy with the daylight trickling in through the windows. Strange has been working too long, pent-up with these Sashamiri reports, and could probably do with a break. Nothing like stretching one's legs after dealing with weighty philosophical conversations about the fate of an entire people.
“Y’know what, let’s go for a walk,” he says, sweeping his paperwork back into a tidier pile. “I’d like some fresh air.”