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[fleurdesel]

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Adelaide

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[pinprick]

"I can't speak to any mage. I used to be nobility. I'm accustomed to a certain standard of education. And since it costs precisely as much to speak with a learned scholar as it costs to speak to an apprentice, I found a scholar. And already, you've proven why. You clearly have the ability to distinguish between known fact and unproven rumor, something I would risk losing by walking into the tavern and asking the first person in robes I see."

[fleurdesel]

"Used to be- ah. That Howe." Fereldan politics aren't something she's spent much of her time on but even that stuck out to her. "Fair enough, I suppose."

[pinprick]

"That Howe," Nathaniel confirms. "Or rather, his son."

[fleurdesel]

"I'd say it costs you more. I actually have standards when it comes to wine." A predictable and ultimately harmless quip, or so she hopes.

[pinprick]

Nice. No awkward questions. He does give a chuckle there.

"So do I. I wouldn't buy swill for someone if I have a choice." Speaking of, he tops off her glass.

"So possession is permanent, except when it isn't. What would you say is the difference between someone who is possessed and an abomination? The Chantry had me thinking they're the same thing, but you've said otherwise."

[fleurdesel]

"Definitions and language varies from circle to circle- and on occasion mage to mage. My personal opinion is a possession is wherein anyone has their body made a puppet by an entity on the other side of the veil, their will channeled through them for better or for worse. An Abomination when an entity slips through the veil and inhabits the skin of a mage." She sips her wine and lets the worst of the chill drop from her eyes. It is no fault of his that it's a touchy subject.

[pinprick]

Which would make Anders an abomination, by that definition. Nathaniel wishes he could dismiss this woman and find another scholar with opinions that are more like what he wants to hear, but that's pointless.

"What happens to a mage who becomes an abomination, then? How would I know one when I see one?"

[fleurdesel]

"The horrific rending of flesh and monstrous form is clue enough. Demonic abominations are very hard to miss." Spirit Abominations are...well she only knows of the one.

[pinprick]

That doesn't describe Anders either. And Nathaniel can't lead her in that direction without raising her suspicions again.

"So it's unlikely that one will sneak up on me in a crowd. And...perhaps the rending of flesh is why everyone assumes there is no way to reverse possession. Or however you call it."

[fleurdesel]

"There were...rumors of Senior Enchanter Wynne being some manner of spiritual abomination, but no one that I knew could ever prove the point. It is an assumption that follows many spirit healers, that we are possessed." She cannot speak to the truth of them. "In theory were a spirit to slip through the Fade and into a willing body it might be different. A large part of why demons become so twisted upon entering a mage's body is that this side of the veil is too much, too real for them."

[pinprick]

"I knew a spirit that inhabited a corpse." This much is not really a secret, though very few probably know about it. "I wouldn't have said he took it well, but perhaps I'll revise my opinion. He took it much better than the demons you describe."

[fleurdesel]

"You- what?" That- that isn't- in theory that is what creates the shambling undead but those spirits are often confused. "And it wasn't mad?"

[pinprick]

"By my standards, he was a little mad. By yours, very probably not. He spoke intelligently, he understood his surroundings, and he wanted to right wrongs in any way he could." Nathaniel rubs his lips, thinking. "He said that spirits try to embody certain virtues they see in our world. I didn't realize at the time that they didn't necessarily know anything about any virtue besides their chosen one."

[fleurdesel]

"...what manner of spirit was this, and how did he come to inhabit a body?" She could take a guess at the how, fell through somewhere thin in the veil, a mistaken summoning- a spirit healer calling for aid that perished mid cast but-

That would be a guess. Specificity is required.

[pinprick]

Welp. Now for this story.

"We were in the Blackmarsh in Ferelden, tracking down a stray Warden from the Anderfels. Kristoff was his name. We found his body there. This was..."

Oh Maker, how does he explain the talking darkspawn and the...whatever. Whatever, he'll take shortcuts.

"The Blackmarsh has a bad history--an entire town, subjected to a blood mage baroness, had vanished many years before. You could see the Veil in places. Or maybe those were tears. We wound up trapped in the Fade, and there we found a spirit rallying the long-dead townsfolk into rebellion against the Baroness. She took the fight to the waking world, and when we woke up, the spirit was inhabiting Kristoff's corpse."

[fleurdesel]

"That is...entirely unprecedented. Being pulled into a fade dream by a strong demonic presence- that has happened before but to wake and pull a spirit through with you?" That is- there is nothing that she knows of or has read, not even a whisper of a rumor of anything even remotely like this and she's been digging through the subject for the better part of a month. "There was no ritual, no rift such as those that we have seen- you simply woke and he woke with you?"

[pinprick]

"The Baroness. She pulled us all back of her own volition, and he was somehow caught up in it."

[fleurdesel]

"I am going to have to look into that." She'd never heard of much the same- but her studies had been focused on using spirits to mend, not demented spirits flipping through the Veil as though it is a door.

[pinprick]

"I always wondered if there was a way to send him back to the Fade. Kristoff's wife found it very upsetting that a spirit was walking around in his body, but the spirit claimed he couldn't do anything about it. None of the Warden mages I've ever talked to knew how it could have been reversed."

[fleurdesel]

"I can imagine." Normally once on this side of the Veil- that is it. The demon is appeased. "So he continued to walk around in a corpse until it rotted out from under him?"

[pinprick]

"He didn't have any other choice. He didn't want to do anything that made him like a demon, so possessing someone living was out of the question."

Until I talked him into it.

[fleurdesel]

"And now he possesses bones." The undead all fall away in time, unless preserved by necromancy. "A disconcerting thought indeed."

[pinprick]

"What mercy could you give him? Or Kristoff's widow?"

[fleurdesel]

"It is a complicated question. Spirits are not often so bound to this side of the veil as it does not hold their interest." Less often do they find their way into bodies, living or dead.

[pinprick]

"Complicated, or unanswered?"