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transport log » ❝ welcome to Exsilium ❞

Date & Time: Oct. 24th
Location: The Initiative Hold
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports have all arrived and have been led to a banquet room within the Hold.
Warnings: None.

NOTE: This takes place during this plot, though the plot log will not be posted until tomorrow. The Transports already in game have returned from their mission to find the island overrun with monsters. The log is set within the safety of the Initiative Hold, however, so while characters will be aware of what is going on outside, they can otherwise go about their business as usual if they choose.

--

You've just been hustled and bustled through mazes of information and literal, wide corridors of the Initiative Hold and you've been equipped with your weapon—be it a gun, a sword, or even your existing powers. They've handed you this light netbook and a small pouch of coins (or a debit card, if you're more inclined), and there are several Transports before and after you going through the very same motions. You can hear the Greeter's voice as she walks alongside large groups, telling them all about the history of this place and sharing with you your purpose here in a hurried and urgent tone. She looks worse for wear, pale and gaunt, though is putting a great deal of effort into maintaining her energy and professionalism for the new Transports. "I am truly sorry that you came at such a bad time. That wasn't intentional, I assure you."

She leads the way through the Initiative Hold. The walls bear the occasional claw mark as a sign of the misfortune that has plagued the island, but it hardly seems deserted anymore due to the other Transports recently returning from their mission. After turning several corners, you arrive in a large room that has been transformed into a makeshift banquet hall. The food presented is perhaps not as luxurious or bountiful as one would hope, but it is certainly enough to go around, and isn't inedible by any means.

"We wanted to try and make this up to you," she explains. "It's meagre, but we did not have much time to prepare." There are a number of Transports already present, some looking over the long banquet table, others seated throughout the room at large, round tables meant to each seat eight people. The mood is grim, despite the Initiative's efforts to raise morale.

Before the Greeter turns to leave, she is reminding you that it will be perfectly safe to explore the Hold, the courtyard, the housing building, and even a several block radius around it. "Hopefully things will be back to normal soon."

Welcome to the banquet. Welcome to the Initiative Hold—and most importantly, welcome to Exsilium.

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"Hawke?"

Anders would know that ~~beard~~ face anywhere. The interrogative lift he gives the name isn't a who? -- it's a why?

"This is not a costume party, and even if it were, do you really think that would be in the best of taste?"

Dressing in robes, to impersonate a mage. And carrying a staff. A huge fuck-off staff with a big naked figurine atop it, for that matter.

"You know that's a political statement."

"...I know it is," Garrett says, quirking his eyebrows in faint bemusement and much less faint amusement, "You're the one always going on about them."

But there's no time for debating whatever has gotten up Anders' duff now; now is the time for standing up and sweeping Anders into a proper manly embrace, all to lower his voice and whisper into his ear: "We're not in the Fade, are we? I don't remember seeing an abomination in the market, although the woman with the cabbage seemed dodgy."

Then he steps back to hold Anders at arms' length, critically eying his clothes: "And what in the Maker's name are you wearing?"

Anders hasn't had a proper manly embrace from Hawke ... ever, as far as he can remember, not even when Hawke got really shitfaced. Except maybe in Anders' dreams, and none of them recent dreams at that. He gives his friend a distinctly suspicious look.

"Why would you be seeing me in the Fade? Me, as myself? If we were both in the Fade and we're real, I would be all blue and glowy. And you wouldn't be dressed as a mage, because you've no reason to see yourself as one. What I am wearing is my ordinary everyday attire, thanks."

Anders is familiar with the way the Initiative's machines seem to disregard time and jumble up everyone's chronology. Time doesn't make a man a mage, however. He assumes this is his Hawke, showing off the famed and all-too-familiar Hawke sense of humor, e.g., a really bad sense of humor that lends itself to poorly timed jokes and overly broad gestures.

"Andraste's tits, even I don't wear robes." Hasn't worn them for years. "What's this about a woman with a cabbage, anyway?"

Woman With Cabbage, a quest that could take days to complete, no doubt. A possessed cabbage. Track the supply chain back to a haunted farm.

"No, it's not. It is better than your old thing, I'll give you that, I noticed it didn't moult on me--and I don't know, you're the fancy educated mage here, not--wait."

Garrett steps back, eying Anders with his own suspicions now. He has a point about Justice, but if he was a demon or some other type of illusion why in the Maker's name would he be trying such a broad and ridiculous lie? Garrett felt vaguely insulted at the idea he could just be talked out of believing he was a mage. He wasn't some self-loathing Tower neophyte. Maybe if he was fourteen and still waking up with small fires in his hair this might work. He was going to have a chat with whoever was in charge of this, that was a sure thing.

"Nothing about a woman with a cabbage. What are you going on about? I like my robes. They happen to suit me. Seeing as I am a mage." A pause. "Wait, is this some sort of crack about me not being properly devoted to the cause? You know perfectly well I find the templars as annoying as you do. Well, not quite as much, admittedly, but you're being rather harsh. If you are you, and not a half-price Anders substitute, in which case you should've put more work in. The nose is absolutely wrong, and the real Anders hasn't washed his hair in weeks, as far as I know."

"A half-price Anders substitute?" Anders takes a long step back and eyes Hawke narrowly. "Now I know you're having me on. It is not my fault that whenever you decide it's a great idea to look for clues at the city's most notorious brothel, someone mistakes me for the merchandise. And it's not very kind of you to remind me."

Especially since the punter also mistook Anders for the fifty-silver special.

"Nor is it very kind to mock my nose, which is an exemplary nose." But he has to pinch it, surreptitiously, to make sure it's all as it should be. The Initiative can tamper with people's minds; they can probably also tamper with people's noses, if they take the notion.

(Note that Anders attempts no defense whatsoever of his hairwashing practices, or lack thereof.)

"Let me be clear. Those robes do not suit you at all. They don't flatter your backside." Those are fighting words and Anders knows it. If Hawke even tries to pretend that isn't his primary consideration in selecting any garment whatsoever, Anders is going to look even more askance at him. So far askance that he'll wind up with his head twisted halfway round, like some unlikely owl. "But since you're dead set on aping a mage for the day, fine. Show me whatever magic trick you've got prepared for the occasion. I am not going to sniff or pull anything you offer, mind. Consider me a spectator, not a volunteer."

"So that's how it's going to be, hm? Stooping." Garrett narrows his eyes, affronted by pretty much all of that, but particularly the dig at his robes. (Actually, it's Anders' strange attitude towards him--if this is a demonic trick it's not very entertaining, and if Anders is trying to pull some prank it's not very funny. Garrett thought he had a monopoly on inappropriate humor at exactly the wrong time, but Anders has always seemed...not better than that, exactly, but a little too earnest, at least with the living. He would have imagined a different kind of joke, that's all.)

"For the record, if we're keeping one," Garrett says, picking up his staff and rejecting the idea of doing anything overly cruel just to slap some sense into the man--if he's real, Garrett hates when he gets moody, and if he's not it'd just be a waste of time, "I resent being asked to prove this, and the next time I'm at that notorious brothel--and I don't like your tone, there--I'm letting you handle your own daring escape."

He doesn't want to knock anything over too obviously, even if Collette has led him to think this place is a step up from the already notoriously willing to forget certain things if it benefited them Kirkwall in that regard, so all he calls up with a snap of his fingers is a shower of sparks that zips out to frizz Anders' hair. That's what you get for saying his robes don't flatter him, goatman.

Anders jumps back, more out of surprise than out of any concern for his clothes or hair. Sure, he bathes regularly these days. And yes, the black suit is a step up from the gray-and-green moulting coat, even if the cut is exactly the same. But Anders will never be the clotheshorse he was in Amaranthine, and his hair's still chopped too short to make a proper, full ponytail; it's still pulled back halfway, with the rest hanging loose, and a flyaway lock at his brow.

It's that flyaway lock that catches a spark from Garrett's pyrotechnic show.

"You could put out someone's eye with that!" Anders protests. "What is it, blackpowder?" If so, Anders wants his recipe. There's no smell of dragon dung at all.

"Are you serious?" Garrett's gast is completely flabbered, Anders, and he's rapidly running out of patience. "I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but do you really think this is the time?"

He folds his arms and scowls, formerly already false good mood discarded. He's been kidnapped, accused of philanthropy he didn't commit, forced to play with a strange mirror-like device (which historically is a bad thing to do, and will probably have Consequences), and otherwise manhandled and mistreated.

"I also can't believe I was relieved to see you. Have you lost your mind? Is that what the 'psychology' thing was about?" He sweeps a hand out and dances a chair up from the ground, waggling it rebukingly at Anders. "I will hit you over the head to bring you to your senses. If you're making a habit out of this, though, Maker help me--"

Edited 2012-10-29 18:47 (UTC)

Anders folds his arms and plants his feet wide. He doesn't believe Garrett Hawke would actually hit him over the head with a chair. Might hit Justice over the head with a chair, and then it's Anders who regains consciousness with a bloody goose egg forming atop his skull, but that's a different set of circumstances altogether.

"What do you mean, do I really think this is the time. Do you really think that any time is a good time for ... for a mage impersonator?"

Anders thinks right, and Garrett drops the chair with a heavy sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Whatever has gotten into you besides the usual, I don't like it. Please, oh wise Anders or Anders-impersonator, is there anything I can do to prove I'm a mage, like I was a mage yesterday and will be one tomorrow and into perpetuity?" He waggles his fingers at him, exasperated. "How do you feel about ice?"

Since Garrett is picking up his teacup and freezing the contents, tipped towards Anders so he can see the lack of duplicity. "Is that blackpowder too? Or let me guess--I've got a real mage hidden in my pocket."

Besides the usual. A remarkably tasteful way to refer to Anders' spirit tenant, actually. Slightly mollified, and extremely perplexed -- he can't think of a way to freeze liquid via sleight-of-hand -- Anders reaches for the teacup and sticks his finger in to tap a nail against the rimed surface of the beverage formerly known as tea.

"That woman you mentioned, with the cabbage. Did you happen to eat any of the cabbage?"

"No. What? Why?" Although he's pleased that Anders isn't going to keep talking nonsense--it's still, well. Odd. Now that Anders isn't slinging baseless accusations Garrett sets the teacup down, peering at him with concern.

"You're not the first person to make strange accusation about me today. I'm still not convinced any of this is real, but humor me--what is going on?" He straightens his recently maligned robes with another sigh, but a softer one. If Anders can be persuaded to make sense, well, things will be looking up. "If someone's been tampering with your mind I promise to let you hit them first. It's only fair."

"Humor you? I suppose that can't hurt anything. Much." Anders favors him with another distinctly mistrustful look. "What's going on is ..."

And he proceeds to deliver a terse summary of exactly what the Initiative greeter generally says, only with editorial comments mixed in, because he doesn't have a whole lot of faith in the Initiative and he's never been one to keep his opinions to himself.

None of what he says has any bearing on mages, Hawkes, or mage Hawkes.

"One thing they don't always make clear. We're not just pulled from different worlds, some of us are pulled from different times within the same world. Not all of us, mind. Nate -- Nathaniel Howe -- is roughly contemporary with myself, give or take perhaps a handful of days or weeks. What year is it for you?"

Garrett waits much more patiently through Anders' explanation than the one actually given by the Greeter, nodding at the important points with just a touch of impatience--only to blink broadly at that last little tidbit.

"9:34 Dragon Age. And--I see, that--I have to go back to the Deep Roads after all?"

Hold on, Anders, because that's clearly almost the most important part. Then--

"So what you're telling me, again assuming this is happening while I'm awake, is that there's some...world where I'm not a mage?"

Now give him a few more seconds...

"Maker's musty teats, that sounds horrible." His shudder is only slightly exaggerated. "Apology accepted."

"What apology? I didn't drag you here. And you're not a mage. You're a rogue --" Anders holds up a hand to forestall an anticipated cascade of puns. "The lockpicking, trap-springing kind. You've never been a mage. You'd be an improbably late bloomer for that."

"The apology for saying my robes aren't flattering and accusing me of mage impersonation." Seriously, keep up. Garrett can't completely avoid a certain relieved fondness, though. Accepting the impossible is...well, he's determined to just keep going along with this for now.

"All right. I'm done offering proof of who I am." He holds his hands up, palms towards Anders, in surrender. "I'd like to hear your ideas for how I could be managing this impersonation. Please, astound me, because you're right, I'm far too old to suddenly be showing magic."

"Your robes aren't flattering. I'd be lying if I said they were. You don't expect me to lie, do you? Just to appease your monstrous vanity?" Anders pulls a face. "As for mage impersonation -- if you aren't impersonating a mage, then I'm relieved. I hope I don't need to explain why."

There are very few scenarios where someone might want to impersonate a mage. The least objectionable of which would be some kinky horrible Templar sex games, like the ones Anders accused Aveline's first husband of playing. And that's still plenty objectionable, to Anders' mind. (Otherwise it wouldn't be a matter for accusation, would it?) Likelier would be mockery of the mage cause or of mages as a class. The parodic element is certainly suggested by Garrett's choice of staff, adorned with an ornament that verges on the obscene.

"Is that supposed to be Andraste on your staff?"

"It's my father's."

Any lingering hope that Anders was playing a particularly poor joke on him vanishes in that moment. Garrett reaches for the staff and curls his hand protectively around it.

"You don't have to explain anything to me." He reminds himself to stay calm--not all that hard, in the end. If he takes Anders' words at face value (and he doubts this is a demon after all, because this isn't endearing or tempting in the slightest, and as torment goes it's not very horrible) he can understand why he'd be upset. "I was born a mage. I grew up hiding from the Chantry with my father and my sister. I know what the templars did to you, and to Karl, and to hundreds--no, thousands of other mages. You've had me read your blighted manifesto, for the Maker's sake. We're friends. So speaking as someone who let you cry on my shoulder about your cat, would you mind terribly believing me?"

"I was not crying. My eyes were watering! Residual irritation from that blighted saar'qamek gas."

It's telling that of everything Garrett just said, that's the part Anders objects to.

It's also telling that Anders would let Hawke comfort him over the loss of his cat, and not over the loss of Karl. Not even years later, when they were close enough as friends that Anders could've legitimately talked about loss with Hawke. Not even when Hawke lost his own mother, a situation that could have called for commiseration, if ever there was one --

-- but then, that death happened in 9:34 Dragon, and Anders doesn't know what part of the year Garrett's been captured from, yet --

He winces. This is not going to be easy. On the bright side, it also means Hawke doesn't know about what Anders is going to do in 9:37 Dragon, and that makes everything worlds easier.

A deep breath. "I believe you. I'm sorry, it's just very difficult to take in. Garrett Hawke, a mage."

"You're not the one having an identity crisis," Garrett huffs, but he's somewhat mollified. Especially by the fact that things aren't so bad with his mirror self that they haven't at least had some kind of connection.

So, tentatively, Garrett reaches out to shove Anders lightly on the shoulder. Farm boy affection, he's been told, a few times by this very mage.

"All right, you weren't crying. Bleeding heart that you are." He lifts his shoulders in a slight shrug; no need to get worked up, clearly. Not out in the open like this. "Garrett Hawke, rogue, sounds just as impossible. Not that I don't have a roguish charm..."

Yeah, Garrett wasn't going to let that go so easily, sorry Anders.

"Do you and I--you and him still drink?" Garrett cocks his head. "If ever a situation has called for discussing it over drinks, it's this."

Today is a good day for wincing, it seems. Not because of the shoulder-shove -- that goes along with all that's Hawke. Companionable shoves, the smell of wet dog when he gets caught in the rain, that sort of thing. No, the problem's all Anders. "I can drink a little. To be sociable. Nothing's changed really."

Which is to say, It's not you, it's me. In other words, I'm still possessed.

"But yes. This does seem an occasion calling for some strong drink." And Anders goes about acquiring some for them both, just like that, falling into old companion-habits. (He'll have to watch himself with Cousland and Hawke both about. What if they both stand on opposite sides of a circle, and call here, Anders -- which direction would he run?)

Once he's got them both sat down with a glass of clear strong liquor, vodka it's called, Anders leans back in his chair and stretches his legs out, stretches his arms in front of him, cracks his knuckles. "You got snatched from 9:34, you said. What's just happened back home? Bring me up to date on current events."

The difference with this Hawke, perhaps, moreso than mage or not, is that he wouldn't call. He just trusts those who associate with him to know which way they want to go, and if it ends up being with him then all it means is that he's done enough to earn their loyalty. This Anders might not go to him, and all Garrett would count it as would be his own shortcomings.

"Ah, yes. Our blue friend." Garrett's wince this time is companionable familiarity, something he almost regrets--it comes easy to him too, falling into the rhythms of friendship. "Well--I just became Champion of Kirkwall, after dealing with the qunari problem. No small thanks to you, of course."

He raises his glass in salute, and knocks back a swallow, barely wincing. Whatever this is, it's certainly more pure than most drink he's had. He thinks he could like it, in its tastelessness, and he holds the glass up to eye it thoughtfully. (Mostly to avoid eye contact.)

"And...my mother," he says, much more softly, "And Corypheus."

"Yes. It was an eventful year." Anders stares into his own glass, a glass he intends to nurse indefinitely. "I ... didn't want to give anything away. For all I know, the same things won't happen for you, and then I'd just be giving you needless cause for upset."

The nature of the Initiative's missions is such that Anders is now quite well aware of alternate timelines, and the changes that can be wrought therein. Granted, he's still not sure how his group's presence at that muddy bardic gathering Woodstock changed history.

"But those three things did happen. Four, if you count ... blueness, which is more of a continual happening. And you know about Karl."

There are infinitely many ways their lives could have diverged from a common path, and yet the year 9:34 turned out the same for them both. Except that Garrett is apparently a mage, and shouldn't that make everything different? Make him care more. Make him ... not so blighted nonchalant about what Meredith was doing in Kirkwall. A mage as Champion. What could that mean? For Kirkwall's mages? For everyone?

For Justice?

"I'm sorry those things happened the way they did. I'm ... sorry to hear I wasn't any more help than I remember being."

"You did more than enough," Garrett says, startled, and only after saying it does he realize how it might sound.

"Out of all of that. I couldn't have done it without you. I mean that sincerely, I know it's hard to tell." He glances away then, aware that too much riveting eye contact is--they've been over it, in a roundabout way, and Garrett tends to agree with Anders' belief it'd be nothing but disaster. With him or anyone else. Champion or not, he's an apostate. There's not much future in that.

"Anyway. If you really want to apologize for something, it should be for accusing me of monstrous vanity. I can assure you I'm not like whatever clotheshorse you follow around." He flashes a smile he hopes is somewhat winning, or at least lifts the mood. "What year are you from, then? Can you give me some gambling predictions?"

Anders peers at Hawke until Hawke glances away. Then Anders reproaches himself silently for staring. It's just -- everything is the same. The fall of his hair across his brow is the same. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Yet he's also different, and not just in his mageness. The fact Hawke even tries to clarify when he's being sincere, the fact he has the self-awareness to know what he sounds like, the fact he cares whether Anders (or anyone) knows whether he's sincere or not.

"I have no gambling predictions, alas. If I did, you'd be best advised not to trust any of it." Anders is the unluckiest of gamblers, when he can afford the vice. "I'm not too terribly far ahead of you, actually." Deliberately downplaying the gap in chronology, lest he stir undue curiosity regarding the interim. "I think Nathaniel's ahead of me by a few weeks -- it was 9:37 for both of us."

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championhawke - 2012-10-31 05:00 (UTC) - Expand

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