Sorceress' Speech
Fifteenth Day of the Eighth Month 294 AC
Taken in isolation, the word 'oversight' does not carry the most pleasant of implications, like a shadow that smothers, a watchful other who would judge without sympathy or understanding. Teana had heard that among the students of Academies and Universities of the realm it had even started to gain a dread reputation for 'one who makes an end of illicit celebrations' which is about the greatest sin among their ranks, she assumed. But as one who had done her own share of overseeing in the hectic early days of the Scholarum, with little more than the mandate of the constitution to hand, she could not be more happy to finally know there were eyes beyond her own, beyond the Scholarum, on the fate of those gifted with the potential or the reality of magic great and small.
As she rolled her new made curls about the gold and emerald pin with a cantrip and splashed a dash of rose water on the edges of her long trailing sleeves in preparation for her visit, Teana had to confront not just a reflection made strange by the antiquated formality expected of her at her destination, but also an age old truth.
Very few people spent weeks and months of their lives trying to contort their minds into the right framework to use magic because they wanted to work to the betterment of their fellow magicians. Having gotten past the threat of drawing a murderous mob in broad daylight or constrained or killed at the whim of some petty local potentate, most of the spell-weavers of the Scholarum were entirely content to follow their ambitions, be they in alchemy, in healing, in battle magic, or judicial service.
Even those who chose to teach generally did so because it would leave them with a steady income near a well stocked library where they might pursue personal projects. Mages who had been forged in fire, peril, and death were growing fewer among the upper echelons of the organization as it expanded. It would be foolish to count upon sympathy to forge a shared sense of identity, such as was found in the first days after the raising of the Shadow Tower.
So it was a relief not to need that, the sense of guild belonging, or perhaps the
mystery cult, which in the tongue of Teana's birth could mean anything from an actual religion to a gathering of scholars with a particular focus.
From shadow to shadow she stepped, over the tamed seas and the lands less tame, to Oldtown by the farthest shore, and yet even there one could find the Inspector General Arcane in his two piece suit, not a magician, not even close, but one most invested in making sure than magic was applied in accordance to the law and that mages were protected so long as they practiced thus.
There had already been cases of violence against the gifted here, generally against those whose affinity to the arcane came from the Far Realm, who had been shunned and cast aside by their fellows. As these unfortunates stepped, or at times crawled, into the light in the hope that imperial clemency was not a lie, they were often the targets of misplaced zeal and anger. How easily it might have grown to be more, a spark to tinder set.
That was why Teana Strycos stood in the square outside the Starry Sept and began to speak thusly, "My name is Teana of Volantis and I was born a slave and a mummer. I was reborn a sorceress not through the gifts of some kindly power wishing to spare me of suffering, but through the malice of a wicked spirit that would have seen all of Volantis made cinder and ash." She looked over the crowd, half gawkers, half gimlet-eyed suspicion of those who had come to see the 'shadow witch', but here and there she saw small flyers, simple information written in their own tongue explaining in simple terms some of the very things she had come here to recount.
"I do not come here asking for sympathy for the girl I was then, for behold, she is no more, and I stand in her place proud and free and She who sought to use me is no more. I ask instead that you consider your neighbors, your friends, and your kin, and ponder what it might be that sees them touched by the strange and otherworldly. The touch of evil, you whisper, you fear, but be these evils ever so great, they are not alone in weaving the fate of the world. Oft a perilous seed in fair soil shall fair fruit bear, so long as we are not so foolish as to cast it aside..."
Teana spoke with cool confidence, not just from the experience of teaching, but secure in the knowledge that when she was gone those hardened paper sheets would still be there to echo her words and explanations and so would the men and women of the Ministry of Magic who had designed and printed them to the benefit of the still undiscovered mages of the city, though they themselves had not a spark of power.
The city of Oldtown is having problems with anti-magic violence. What should the government do?
[] Continue with the information campaign and prosecute crimes as they are found
[] Divert resources to find all the hidden mages whether they wish to be found or not for their own protection
[] Crack down hard on anti-magic sentiment while it is not yet organized
[] Write in
OOC: Background rolls ahoy. Not going to say what sort since it would be something of a spoiler. Not yet edited.
