equivalently irregular

Gage: Aha! I was curious if someone would eventually ask this question. The answer is I didn’t join her – at least not voluntarily. And yes… I do indeed miss my slaves. I had four of them, and we used to have such fun. (pout)

No, the Grey Wardens never struck me as offering an advantageous career path. I was conscripted by Eingana herself, and though she saved my life in doing so, her actions initially annoyed me a great deal. I came around in time, once I realized the opportunities being a Grey Warden afforded me.

A few years after the Blight, Eingana was traveling in Tevinter with a number of her colleagues, visiting various ancient libraries. On their way back to Weisshaupt, they happened to stop in Vol Dorma where I was imprisoned at the time. You see, I had been behaving in a way – conducting certain experiments with blood magic and demonic possession on slaves, some of whom were mine and some of whom belonged to my master, the magister Andronicus – which the Magisterial Senate and the templars of the Imperial Chantry found objectionable.

If you want my personal opinion, I was entirely innocent of any real wrongdoing. I had cleared everything with Andronicus first, and I had his full and unconditional support for my activities. They were also undertaken with the most serious of intentions. I was a long way from a child playing with fire, or some arrogant undergraduate pup still wet behind the ears and frolicking in blood for his own shallow amusement. In fact I was undertaking critical research into a very potent and largely unexplored realm of magic which may very well prove fundamentally important in the near or moderately near future to the survival of Thedosian civilization. The Senators and templars who indicted me are usually quite competent and liberal in their attitudes towards magical experimentation, provided everything is properly documented and no persons or materials of import are endangered. Their absurd short-sightedness and naïveté in this situation astounded and disappointed me; I understand even Andronicus, a man of supreme influence and wealth, was disciplined for his role in the incident after my departure.

By the time Eingana arrived in Vol Dorma, I had already been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Somehow – to this day I have no idea how she did it – the Warden-Commander found out about my situation. She made inquiries, to Andronicus himself as well as several of the Senators and the Knight-Commander involved in my trial, and finally to me personally. She visited the enchanted cell where I was held and asked me about my research. I answered her questions truthfully and in detail, believing that I would soon be executed and that someone who could potentially use what little I had discovered might as well know. She listened carefully and then departed, and not an hour later I was escorted from my cell by representatives of the Senate who told me that I had been conscripted into the Grey Wardens and was to leave Tevinter immediately.

Imagine my reaction. This Ferelden bitch, an elf no less, shows up out of nowhere and conscripts me into a foreign military order – and not just any order, but the Grey Wardens. Peasants and criminals and snot-nosed nobles and the occasional lunatic maleficarum who kill vermin, with no expectation of reward or recognition. She had condemned me either to an unusually painful death or to a drastically foreshortened lifetime spent hunting darkspawn in filthy, rot-encrusted tunnels by day and tormented by the whispers of archdemons by night. Without even asking me first.

What would you have said? I myself would rather have been executed. At least the methods employed by the courts of Tevinter to end a life are ostensibly humane.

As you have no doubt deduced, I survived the Joining, and in time I came to realize that joining the Grey Wardens was the best thing that could have happened to me. I still correspond with Andronicus when I can, though I must do so in a complex cipher. Much to their chagrin, the Senate was unable to supersede Weisshaupt’s authority and bar me from ever entering their lands again, as was their fervent desire. They do, however, continue to hound me most annoyingly whenever I am in Tevinter, and I am told they regard any correspondence incoming or outgoing from the office of Magister Andronicus with great suspicion.

Fortunately for me – and for many, many others, as will become apparent sooner or later – Andronicus and I had anticipated some opposition to our studies, and developed a means of exchanging our findings wholly indecipherable to unwelcome eyes. Though our communication is irregular and much less frequent than I would like, my experiments have continued and even flourished. I was pleasantly surprised to find a few amiable mages among the Grey Wardens who shared my views and my passion for delving into the murky waters of the unknown, and who have introduced me to entire other worlds of magic of which I previously had not the slightest conception. With their help, I have learned much that I never could have in Tevinter, even with Andronicus’s help and protection. There is still substantial ground to cover, however… and I must get back to it. (sinister wink)

Gage: Oho! Is it? Now this is an interesting question. The short answer is – no. However, the short answer is also yes. Let me explain.

Trust is an interesting concept. There are many different kinds of trust. I could enumerate them in detail, but I think I know the kind you mean. You are referring to the trust between lovers – the trust which comes with deep affection and unconditional love, the willingness to believe in the other and one’s commitment to the other, utterly outside and beyond all reason; and the unshakeable confidence that this feeling is reciprocated to its fullest extent. In this particular case, you wonder if I have difficulty finding someone to whom I am comfortable submitting sexually without fear that they will – “take things too far,” so to speak.

The question is meaningless because this kind of trust is alien to me. For all the emotions I may experience which revolve around another human being, I cannot for the life of me dredge up anything even remotely similar to what I have just described – and I have tried. It is not that I am unwilling to commit or reluctant to share myself, but that trust in this sense is something of which I am fundamentally incapable.

The upset of the emotional wellbeing or stability of any individual causes cascades of problems in their ability to think rationally and even sometimes in their physical health. This is true for any sentient being, whether or not they admit it. Housing one’s own stability and self-worth within another is like testing the depth of an unknown river with both feet. How, I wonder, could any sane, thinking man or woman invest themselves so heavily in something they can never truly control? And if they could – why? Why take that risk? Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not being deliberately eristic. I find this genuinely incomprehensible.

Let me illustrate what I mean by a very concrete example. One of the greatest strengths of the people of the Qun (which ought to be separated and preserved from the rest of their preposterous, fanatical religion) is the uncompromising solidity of every individual. Every Qunari knows his place, knows what he must be doing at all times and knows what only distracts him and must be avoided or destroyed. This, and no other single concept or nexus of concepts from their idiotic philosophy, is the reason the Qunari represent such an unyielding bastion of power in northern Thedas.

The idea of relying so heavily on some entity outside myself for my emotional stability – and conversely, of some other entity relying so heavily on me for its stability – this is utterly contradictory to the way I think. In a vacuum, one can and must rely on only one thing, and that is one’s own power. Everything else, beneficial or malignant, is secondary and must be dealt with as such. To think or act otherwise is the nadir of insanity.

In a given dynamic between myself and a partner, I submit to their aggression or their demands because it gives me pleasure to do so. It thrills me to watch an individual exert their power over another who seems very much helpless to fight back, even more so if that ostensibly helpless individual is myself. Now you might say, “But isn’t that just what you’ve just said is insanity – allowing another’s power to come before your own?” No, and I will tell you why not.

Every sapient being acts under restraint for the majority of their lives: in a manner of speaking, we leash ourselves in “polite” or “civilized” company because our societies function around individuals who remain in control of themselves. We refrain from exploring our passions to their utmost depths because we must in order for our daily lives to operate as “normal,” and our prosperity is dependent on this notion of normalcy. Similarly, we leash ourselves in private because we are so used to remaining leashed in public that we are unsure of how to be any other way; and even if we realized how to do it, we would be afraid. This fear is a perfectly normal consequence of our civilization and the constellation of values that is constructed around us from the moment we are born. However, that does not mean we should submit to it or allow it to constrain us when we are alone with ourselves – or with another who is similarly unbound.

I have mentioned that one’s own power must always come first. This is inviolable, but there is no shame or danger to oneself in helping another if one’s own power is not threatened by doing so. Why should there be? Collaboration is the foundation of society. That is what “society” means. Thus to help another towards unleashing him- or herself and achieving the truest expression of their power is a worthy endeavour, insofar it does not undermine one’s own.

This is why the short answer to the question of trust in the context of my sexual appetites is no. Anyone can unleash themselves as I have described, given the right encouragement. Any individual who is capable of doing so is beautiful to me, unequivocally. I enjoy it because I am fulfilling the other’s expression of power; I am their object to do with as they wish, and I will allow them as much license as they can achieve… unless I am genuinely threatened. Fortunately, I rarely am. I may be submitting to another and allowing them to use my body for any number of personal depravities of theirs, but I am never, ever defenceless.

This is also why the short answer to the aforementioned question is yes. An individual who is truly capable, with help or without, of casting off all the chains of social convention that hobble them and embracing their own nature with true, honest, joyful abandon – this is a rare individual. They are difficult to find.

I count myself extraordinarily lucky that I have had the pleasure of finding three such individuals in my lifetime thus far. One is the Tevinter magister, Andronicus; one was a Rivaini seeress by the name of Tangwen; and the third is the Warden-Commander of Ferelden, Eingana Tabris.

Gage: Pillaging? Now really, I’ve never pilla-

(beat)

Nevermind. I’m flattered by your interest. (leer) The answer is that I never do anything but rape, pillage, fuck, and cast blood magic. (deranged cackle) No, I’m kidding. I study magic, mostly. The last question I was asked is quite similar to this one; check my response for the answer.

Gage: Well – delving into esoterica is the main thing I do, really. It is something of a hobby of mine, even outside the studies I must undertake to increase my power and maintain proficiency in the magical arts. I genuinely enjoy the study of magical theory, the nature of the Fade, spirits, and demons.

Of particular interest to me is the ancient magocracy of Tevinter, against which the prophet Andraste warred. Much knowledge has been lost concerning the intricacies of blood magic, including whole volumes on effects that may only be invoked through those means, since the First Blight and the first Exalted March. Combining the magics of our physical world, which draws its power from blood, and that of the spirit world, which draws from mana and lyrium, possesses incalculable potential.

It is said that the Imperial magisters of yore were able to use this kind of combinatorial magic to physically breach the Veil and travel to the Golden City. Whether that is true, and whether it resulted in the blackening of the City and the creation of the darkspawn taint as the Chantry claims, I cannot say for certain – and neither can anyone else, including the White Divine, no matter what she or her followers think to be the case. If it is true, the implications are staggering. What other worlds, I wonder, might lie beyond Thedas, beyond the Fade? What new and wondrous realms might we discover if we simply explore?

I am of the opinion that the truly great men and women of the future will be those mages who delve into this untapped knowledge to its furthest depths. Today, such practices remain impractical outside Tevinter due to the widespread control of the Andrastian Chantry, coupled with their crippling naïveté concerning the nature of magic (especially blood magic) and by proxy its practitioners.

For this reason, another area of my interests lies in the practice of magic by peoples outside Chantry control. I spent over two years in Rivain conducting research for my thesis, and during that time I grew acquainted with their mystics and seers – an ancient magic-using culture with its own brand of knowledge and its own equally valid depth, the entirety of which the Chantry condemns as “hedge magic.” It disgusts me that scholars and priests in Val Royeaux and other places sniff and dismiss the accumulated wisdom of an entire people simply because of their differing beliefs about the world and its origins. Theirs is a systemic, self-destructive foolishness, the magnitude and profundity of which is unprecedented in Thedosian history… at least, prior to the arrival of the Qunari.

While in Rivain I also visited with a number of Dalish clans and engaged in various fruitful dialogues with their hahrens and Keepers. I offered to teach them anything I knew that they didn’t, or to provide for them whatever goods or services that were within my power to obtain but not theirs; this in exchange for access to some of the lore and magic they have preserved since the fall of Arlathan. Most were somewhat reticent and unwilling to share their sacred knowledge with a human – perfectly understandable, given the way elven culture and population have been decimated and overtaken by that of humans in the last several millennia. Still, my communications with the Dalish have yielded me numerous invaluable insights into my magical praxis, which has allowed me a much greater breadth in the number and types of magic I am able to invoke and weave together simultaneously.

As an aside, I confess I often have great difficulty in reconciling the proud, recalcitrant Dalish elves with their meek and wretched cousins in the cities. The disdain of the Dalish for their counterparts who live among humans is hardly difficult to understand.

Finally, one of the most fascinating areas of magic I have begun to explore since joining the Grey Wardens concerns the darkspawn taint. A colleague of Eingana’s, to whom she introduced me some time after my recruitment, has undertaken extensive research into this matter and uncovered an entire realm of potent secrets. I have since eagerly joined his experimentation whenever possible, and while we are ever learning more, it becomes increasingly obvious that we have but dipped our feet into a vast and fathomless ocean. This is a very exciting time indeed to be both a mage and a Grey Warden.

I cannot say more at this time, as much of what I know is classified knowledge for Wardens’ eyes and ears only. There are few authorities I cannot and will not easily circumvent; one of these is Weisshaupt Fortress. I can, however, tell you that the taint which all darkspawn carry, and – most importantly – which all Grey Wardens absorb in the Joining ritual, can manifest a dizzying array of properties when properly stimulated. Even Wardens who are not mages possess this potential within them, though to a lesser extent.

I firmly believe that this type of magic, as well as the combinatorial theory of blood and mana I mentioned above, constitutes the future of magical practice. We – that is, the humans and elves of Thedas – have mastered the elements, the natural forces of the world, and even much of the Fade. This is not the end of magical knowledge. There is more, so much more to be discovered. This is what excites me and fills my free time; this is what occupies my thoughts when I have no other responsibilities to attend to.