#tranquilweek2024

They said he fought like a golem. Not tireless, he was a man of flesh and blood, but fearless. He did not quail before a hurlock, nor he did not panic when they were ambushed by shrieks. When confronted by an ogre, he gave his commands with a calmness that bolstered his fellow wardens and he peppered his foes with arrows at a measured pace, always striking with the greatest efficacy.

Boranehn was the perfect Grey Warden on all accounts, enough so that it sent waves and rumors through the ranks.

How was a Tranquil mage so highly skilled in the art of war?

Was it truly only his status as Tranquil that made him so unshakable when facing down the darkspawn?

Who had recruited a Tranquil in the first place?

They were answers Bora would dispense easily if any dared ask them.

He was skilled because he was trained. All Dalish children started learning a weapon to prepare them to hunt or protect the clan as they grew older, and that training was expanded upon after he escaped the Circle and was taken in by the Wardens.

It was true that being a Tranquil made him incapable of feeling fear, but it did not rob him of the will to survive. His first encounters with darkspawn were very different affairs; it was experience that made him a force to be reckoned with.

It was Warden Blackwall who found him wandering, who stuck a bow in his hand to ward off Templars who sought to reclaim their lost Tranquil, and who sent him to the Warden outpost in Jader. And it was those Wardens who saw a wiry young elf with a sunburst brand on his forehead and honed him.

But no one would ask Bora. The Warden-Constable lacked the warmth those who retained a connection to the Fade needed in the unsettled ranks, and even the dwarves who lacked such connection looked on his blank face and turned away.

Gereon looked up from his work table when the door to his cell was opened. Dorian Pavus stood in the entry. Gereon had known the mage for a long time, and to his eye Dorian looked fatigued.

“I just received word,” Dorian said. He did not move from the doorway. “Felix has passed away.”

“He was sick for a long time,” Gereon intoned. “It was inevitable that this would happen soon.”

“You don’t care at all, do you?” Dorian’s voice cracked beneath the weight of his words, a weight that weighed on Gereon no longer.

“I do care. Felix was my son and it was my duty to care for him. But I am no longer able to feel what you believe I should. I did many things in an effort to prevent his death.”

A flare of magic made the candles about them stand tall, their flames burning hot. Wet streaks reflected the orange light on Dorian’s cheeks; he was upset. Gereon would have been upset too, he knew, under different circumstances.

But there were no different circumstances since the Inquisitor gave his sentence.

“Magister Gereon Alexius.” His voice had filled the grand hall of Skyhold, reverberating off broken stained glass and crumbled stone.

Gereon’s trial had been made a priority once the Inquisition found its new home, his transfer from the Redcliffe dungeons orchestrated in haste. His knees ached where he was forced to kneel on the stone. The magebane he’d been forced to ingest left him powerless and feeble. Shamed before all who attended.

“I have been advised,” the Inquisitor continued, “that the knowledge you hold is too valuable to the Inquisition to kill you. I have likewise been advised that it is too dangerous to leave you unleashed. And I have seen first hand precisely the folly you are prone to when left to your own devices.”

Whispers. Rumors. Gereon had been told little of what transpired when he attempted to erase the Inquisitor from time. Hints. Snarls. The Elder One reneged on his promises, that Gereon knew. What he had done bore no fruit.

“I sentence you with the authority of the Free Mages you indentured and with the approval of the King of Ferelden whose kin you sought to usurp. I sentence you with the consent of the Archon of the Tevinter Imperium you claimed to serve.”

In truth, he had always known that the Imperium would not appreciate his work. If he ever believed in the Venatori’s course in truth, Gereon didn’t now. They had been a means to an end.

This end, it seemed.

“Gereon Alexius has been stripped of his title as Magister. He is stripped of his assets, which will be conveyed to his son and heir Felix Alexius who rendered aid to the Inquisition; Felix has already rendered that right to his friend and brother in his heart, Dorian Pavus. Gereon Alexius is sentenced to serve the term of indenture he presented the Free Mages in service to the Inquisition. He is to deliver all knowledge he possesses that may be of use in the fight against Corypheus into our hands. He is to aid in research.”

Dorian or Felix must have begged for leniency. Advocated for his use.

Gereon would rather die. He was sentenced to outlive his son, to watch him burn.

“He is sentenced to be submitted to the Rite of Tranquility.”

In the moment, Gereon had labeled what he felt as despair, desperation, and doubt. He felt dread pool in his stomach. But the lyrium pressed to his forehead stripped it away.

Now he was Tranquil. And he knew the uselessness of those emotions, how they had clouded his reason. Had he been Tranquil before this all occurred, he would not have torn reality apart in a fruitless venture.

But he did not regret it, categorically. It was illogical, but he lacked the capacity to regret, only to use hindsight and render judgment.

“The Inquisitor dismissed my petition for you to attend the pyre,” Dorian spoke again when he had mastered himself and the fires around them returned to their previous state. The lower light hid the streaks on his cheeks. “I… told him first.”

“It is his decision to make, as my jailer,” Gereon said.

That upset Dorian again, but the candles did not flare. Instead he approached Gereon and hugged him.

Gereon had never noticed how physically uncomfortable a hug was, something he supposed emotions had once masked. Dorian had pinned his arms to his sides with the embrace and buried his face in Gereon’s shoulders while his own shook. He was stuck in this position and had little recourse to free himself.

It was not the first time Dorian had embraced him so. It was to his master Dorian had run when his father turned to blood, when his father tried to fix him. Back then Gereon had taken Dorian in his arms and calmed him as he had done many times during Felix’s childhood.

What had he felt then? Gereon did not recall. He had not put words to it, and he could not summon its echo disconnected as he was from the Fade.

He knew what was expected of him. It was uncomfortable to move his lower arms to return the embrace, but Gereon did it anyway. Though he did not feel the way Dorian did, it did not give him the right to deny his apprentice the comfort he sought, diminished though it may be in quality.

The Wonders of Thedas was loud.

Not in volume. Its patrons generally kept to quietly appreciative commentary or salacious whispers for some of the more specialized merchandise, and its proprietors were likewise unlikely to raise their voices.

Though the Wonders of Thedas run largely by the Tranquil who enchanted its artifacts, it was not they who decided its decor and public image, nor was it determined by the Chantry. Some decades past, when Orlais ruled over Ferelden, its nobles took offense to the drab nature of the Tranquil and the shop they ran, and while the shop continued its functions the overseer of Denerim commissioned artisans to update and formalize its appearance.

The Wonders of Thedas was one of few buildings in Denerim to still display Orlesian architectural influence after the successful rebellion that saw King Maric set upon the throne, and though the Orlesian nobles who had overseen it were long since ousted, those who took up the duty in their absence continued the trend.

Nestor had been Tranquil for 3 years now, and he had no feelings as all Tranquil did, but that did not mean he lacked opinions. And he was of the opinion that the Wonders of Thedas’ design was loud.

When he voiced this, his fellows did not understand, though he did not expect them to. He had been particular as a mage, too.

The graceful swooping and brilliant colors of Orlesian design had never suited his tastes when he had feelings, and it was his now objective opinion that he had always been correct. The contrasting colors made it difficult for his eyes to focus on certain parts of the store, something that was undesirable when their goal was to showcase and sell the work of the enchanting Tranquil and fund the Circle.

Nevermind the dust that collected in each ill-advised nook and cranny. The amount of time spent dusting each crevice was excessive, time that could be better spent on any other task. By Nestor’s estimation, they could have one more Tranquil working on enchanting for at least four hours a day if there were less extraneous cleaning to be done.

He brought his observations to the mage and templar who oversaw the Wonders, including his sketches of how to remodel the building to suit Fereldan architecture, built to withstand the weather and without the proclivity to collect dust and dirt in all manner of places, but Nestor was dismissed quickly and told to continue servicing the customers. This was not his job.

Nestor disagreed. Optimizing the Wonders was precisely his job, and interacting with the clientele was apt to dissuade them from making a purchase given how the average Fereldan viewed mages and the Tranquil especially. But he knew that his words held no sway.

So Nestor no longer used words in his effort to fix the Wonders.

It started small. One night, when he was left alone to finish closing the shop, Nestor found a knife, and he used it. He started by carving the many nooks and making them less sharp and easier to clean. When no one commented for days afterward, he decided to take it to mean that his corrections were unnoticed or else were tacitly approved.

So he acquired better tools from the workshop and he smoothed all the filigree and flattened each surface that collected dust in their grooves, and still no one commented on it. As if he were the only one who ever noticed those bits of decor at all.

Nestor thought that boldness was considered among the things a Tranquil could not have; not an emotion per se but something under the purview of Valor perhaps.

And yet he grew bolder all the same.

He grew more skilled in his renovations by the day, and never was he taken off the closing shift of the night. It was only when he acquired paint and covered the colors that had hurt his eyes so that anyone seemed to take notice at all.

The mage proprietor blamed the templar. The templar blamed the mage. Both stewed, but never took their arguments above a whisper.

“It’s time for a break,” Minaeve called to the research team as the sun reached its zenith.

Avexis grabbed a hasty pinch of sand and sprinkled it over her work to dry it out before setting it aside and cleaned the nib of her quill while the other researchers headed for the lunch pot. She was in no rush to eat, her hunger not yet great enough to gnaw at her insides, and it would only diminish her work later should she let the ink smudge or her quill get gummed up.

Once she was certain her equipment was as ready as it could be, she joined the end of the line to get a bowl of stew. The cook today was another tranquil, one whom she recognized from the Spire as a scullery worker. His food was flavorful, but the mages in the Spire who came from nobler lines would have sniffed at his presentation. Avexis found it to be adequate, but Circle politics had always been beyond her, Tranquil or no.

The stew was nutritious and pleasant to the tongue, and the appreciative noises of the other researchers told her that her objective opinion was shared. The vegetables were suitably soft, and she didn’t need to chew the meat (though she did, as the alternative would potentially lead to choking, a highly unpleasant experience).

She ate diligently, and the quality of the food improved her speed at eating it as well. Once she had sopped up the dregs with the provided bread, Avexis stood and collected the abandoned bowls of some of her fellows to bring to the stream just outside of camp. Though it was not part of her duties to clean after other people, she still remembered something of how to read social situations. Those bowls she collected belonged to researchers who had shown her kindness, or at least had not impeded her work, and who were in their sated state either conversing jovially with others or basking in the dappled sunlight of the Emerald Graves in a sleepy stupor.

It was considered nice of her to do this for them unbidden, and because she needed to wash her own bowl before resuming work Avexis considered it no excess burden. She would spend an additional few minutes at the stream, but she would only be walking to and from the stream once, and their owls rested comfortably in a stack with her own.

A scout roosted nearby atop a boulder, surveying the distance for any sign of a Great Bear. There was no danger to Avexis so long as they did their job.

The stream was runoff from the nearby mountains and was frigid to the touch. She would need to sacrifice perfect cleanliness for speed to prevent any undo numbness in her fingers. Her circulation was poor, and she was ill suited to the cold or persistent exposure to it.

With a small stub of soap and a stone and cloth to lather, she set to her task. She rinsed each bowl in the running stream first, then filled the dirtiest with water and made her lather with the soap. She scrubbed each bowl with the cloth, only using the stone to scrape out matter that had embedded in cracks. Once cleaned, each was set aside on a wide flat rock to start drying before she stacked them all again to return to camp.

That was the order that things should have taken, a great splash not knocked over the bowl of soapy water and soaked Avexis’ robes all along her front. She turned to find the cause.

A frog sat on the edge of the stream. Its speckled pattern told her that it was native to the area.

It looked at her, and it croaked. The croak told her nothing.

“I no longer speak to animals,” Avexis informed the frog. Once, she had spoken to animals and they understood her; and when the animals made noises at her, she understood them as well. With the gift of Tranquility she had received at the Spire, that was no longer the case, even when she stared the frog in the eye.

It croaked again.

Avexis reached toward it to collect the now empty soap bowl, and the frog did not move away as she was certain it should. She refilled the bowl, added another chip of soap, and lathered it.

The frog did not knock over the bowl again, nor did it depart until she stood, her stack of clean bowls ready to return to camp. It ribbited once more and vanished into a shrub.

Clemence was diligent in his work. Contrary to the belief of many, not all Tranquil were. Owain had said it was because Clemence was detail-oriented, and he found no fault in that.

As an apprentice, he had been very precise, never attempting any spell or ritual until he was certain it was perfect. It earned him a reputation for being slow. That slowness made the enchanters question if he was ready for his harrowing, if he would ever be ready.

His favorite adage at the time, measure twice and cut once, did not apply to confronting demons.

And so Clemence joined the ranks of the Tranquil, where his reputation for slowness followed. Owain gave him tasks suited to that slowness, preserving documents in the archive and preparing alchemical ingredients in the stock room. Eventually the alchemists wondered at the improved state of their ingredients and on learning of Clemence's focus, took him under their wing to work in the laboratory.

The quality of the Circle's potions improved. Though he was Tranquil and the other alchemists were not, he was treated as one of them. Sometimes they even looked him in the eye.

So when the Circles fell, Clemence followed them south from Kinloch to join the free mages in Redcliffe.

The laboratory in Skyhold was new. The former head alchemist of the Inquisition had lost all his materials to fire when Haven fell, and the new head was procuring enough alembics to supply an army.

Without a station of his own, Clemence’s productivity would be suboptimal, but he made himself useful in other ways. He prepared ingredients for others’ potions and monitored their stations when they could not. He retrieved the documents that the creature researchers compiled and relayed the information to the head alchemist to alter their brewing schedule and increase production of the most key concoctions.