Wow, can't believe you weren't satisfied with that helpful and thorough report.
[She gestures for Yseult to sit down if she wants; the chair across from Cosima's is comfortable enough, though Yseult will have to move at least three books to sit on it.]
Nothing substantial. I could probably get more out of Viktor, now that we've seen it's not forthcoming through official channels. Maybe lean on the seneschal, but I wonder if I'm only thinking of that because I can picture the way Isaac's eyelid would twitch. What are you thinking?
[ Yseult exhales something like a chuckle, tone and brief curve of her mouth a match for Cosima's sarcasm. ] My copy was sent back with a request for additional information, but I haven't high hopes.
[ She shuffles through the books with idle curiosity for the titles before they're set neatly atop the pile on the other chair and she takes their place, one knee crossed over the other beneath her skirt. What is she thinking? ]
That whatever the Venatori are working on there seems too dangerous to leave a mystery. But that [ on the other hand ] we cannot risk a second such incident.
Yeah. It's easy to imagine worse versions of what we got.
[Forgotten agents who no one knew to look for, or even just missing personnel without handy blood magic trackers extant. Given her vivid memories of the negotiations at Skyhold years ago, she's certainly not going to suggest make more phylacteries as a countermeasure.]
It's sort of a unique problem. How to find out more about a thing that, accidentally or on purpose, erases memory? But on the other hand, I deeply don't love that it affected all of us at such a distance, so.
[A quick exhale.]
Probably bad practice to sew "Your name is X, you work for Riftwatch" inside everyone's uniform.
Not the most secure. [ But if they're in uniform anyway-- ]
Yes, the distance is very strange. Could the team have carried the effect with them? It's difficult to say at what point they were forgotten before they arrived and announced themselves at the Gallows.
Possible, I guess. I can't think of a way to check, but I wonder if people they know who they didn't come into proximity with forgot them during the same period. Is it something that hits you, and then somehow reaches through you to everyone you've ever met? Or sort of an aura you need to be within a certain distance of to be affected by?
We're unfortunately way out of my depth, though. We may need to loop in someone with some magic experience to weigh in on the logic or lack thereof.
[ Yseult hums a thoughtful noise and nods--it perhaps goes without saying that they're way out of her depth, too. ]
We might consult Strange as well after Isaac and Viktor have been pressed. Time magic may not be precisely the same, but perhaps close enough. And like Stark he seems to have a great deal of experience with the bizarre.
I think that's probably wise. Can't hurt to ask, anyway. I've thrown weirder things at him.
Do you have any thoughts on like ... would it make sense to have some sort of password or some other well-guarded way to prove we're who we say we are? This is the first time this has happened in particular [as far as they know, which is very lightly worrying], but we've had several instances where someone had to convince the rest of Riftwatch of something high stakes.
[Granitefell not least among them, but Cosima's still not keen to bring up that specific example unless it's necessary.]
Nothing is foolproof, [ Yseult agrees, but the considering furrow between her brows adds that it's a good question. ]
It could have been useful. But a passphrase can be stolen, so it may give either a false sense of security or very little. Assigning each agent an individual passphrase helps but would require records. [ She wobbles a hand back and forth uncertainly. ]
Perhaps as a first line of defense. Some sort of marking is another option, but less appealing.
Yeah, makes sense. And a committed person could do that too. I imagine you can mimic a tattoo with magic, though I haven't run into that specifically.
It's not our number-one problem, I grant you, either way. But you know. This has been in the mix for years. I was in the group that got sent to an alternate future in 9:43. Would have been handy. Well, I assume it would have been, Fade stuff gets weird. Maybe another thing to have Stephen weigh in on.
Not that I've seen, but there are inks that can fake it credibly for several weeks as long as you don't scrub too hard.
[ But she dismisses the idea with another gesture, this one a more definite swipe of her hand. ] I shouldn't have suggested it; I'm not getting a tattoo for Riftwatch after refusing real ones for so many years.
I've thought about it for aesthetic purposes, but given the preexisting ones [and, presumably, the anchor shard and the execrable attempts at lying under pressure that Yseult herself has witnessed] it's not like I'm suited for undercover work anyway.
Alright. I'll talk to Viktor and keep you in the loop. Let me know if Isaac responds to your feedback, I guess.
[She tugs her right sleeve up, revealing the full design on her forearm.]
So this is an animal shell, it's a creature from home called a nautilus. Maybe they exist in Thedas, I guess I wouldn't know. But the spiral of its shell ... you can describe that mathematically. We call it the Golden Ratio, but that I'm sure must exist here, even if it has another name. But it's this pattern that just repeats itself in nature, in the way flowers arrange their petals and like, how bees build their hives. Tons of stuff. And it's just ... I don't know, I love the symmetry and beauty of it.
I'd want to understand nature even if it wasn't beautiful to our eyes, but it is, and I wanted a connection to that for my second piece.
[ Yseult leans onto the desk to look more closely at the design as Cosima answers. A glance up at 'describe that mathematically'--a topic maybe even further out of her wheelhouse than memory magic--but patterns in nature she can grasp, and symmetry and beauty. ]
I've seen shells this shape. [ she swirls a finger in the air above Cosima's forearm ] Small ones. The way it fades into something like a painting is lovely.
[ She gives it another beat of observation before biting at the dangling hook. ] What was your first?
[She pulls up her left sleeves this time. The tattoo is farther up, not likely to peek out under a sleeve like the shell design. A simple black silhouette of a dandelion in seed is nearly at the crook of her elbow, with a few of the seeds trailing, as if someone had blown them down her arm toward her wrist.]
I wish this one had a great story, but I was a teenager and I thought it was pretty. I mean, I still think it's pretty, no regrets, but no deeply symbolic meaning in mind when I picked it, either. My mom made a face at me, but my dad paid for it, so I don't think it even counts as an act of rebellion.
[The suggestion about her father gets a genuine smile in turn, suggesting this isn't totally off-base.]
Hey, dares are a great traditional reason for tattoos. But if you're in a position one day where they're not a hindrance to your work ... I don't know. I guess it always felt like a way to affirm my bod is mine. To do things just because I want to.
[Which, on a less pleasant note:]
Speaking of, or not really, but ... I've been purposely private with my thoughts about anchor removal, but we may be reaching a point where that's not tenable. [Given the Ness of it all.] But I just wanted to say: Other div heads will know first. If I change my mind about saying something more publicly than I have. Don't want to blindside you.
[ Yseult's first nod is slow and shallow, understanding and--if not quite agreement, the sense that it's an idea she's turning over. It's not difficult to imagine the idea might be a complicated one for a woman in her line of work.
Voluntary amputations are another matter. This nod is brisk. ]
The warning is appreciated. Do you have a sense of what you might say?
Still workshopping that. My personal position hasn't changed; I think I'm more useful with both arms. Yeah, I could vanish again, but I could also get shot with an arrow the next time the Venatori attack. Or I could catch a particularly nasty flu, who knows. The anchor's a risk, but we all run a lot of those. If the war ends and I'm still here, maybe I'll revisit the question, but that's a lot of bridges to cross.
But for everyone else... I'm not comfortable telling people they can or can't make that decision. It's their own life. But I'm, uh, let's go with "alarmed" that Ness felt she had to make it look like an accident. Doing it that way added risk that I don't think was actually necessary. And her complications also illustrate that removing the arm puts you at risk too, if not the same way that keeping it does.
All that said, I don't want to like, single Ness out. People who knew Wysteria know how breezy she could be about risk, and how hard Tony leaving hit her. But if people are coming along later and reading her notes, they may not have that context.
Wysteria's anchor had also progressed to a point that was causing harm, or so the report suggested. [ speaking of context. ] That anchors remain the only method of closing rifts and rifters still more common than natives with anchors is also a factor. It's a rare and powerful ability that's being given up.
[ There's a pause, revealed in the subtle shifting of her jaw and press of her mouth after a second as a moment of hesitation, before Yseult decides to be completely frank. ]
Other than rare exceptions, removing the anchor is a selfish choice. It's personal stability over an essential tool we can't create more of. We can't stop them and they won't want to hear it, but they should think about that. The idea of vanishing one day may be terrible but everyone here is risking the same.
Look, my threshold for forbidding it is high. Higher than "I think it's selfish to do what you're doing," though I agree with you that it is that. But I also haven't spoken up before now because I know my position carries weight. Because I didn't want exactly the kind of "accidents" we've just seen as a workaround. I wondered if discouragement would read as prohibition in a way that caused more problems. I think that math has shifted, considering.
Ironically, same reason as mine: Didn't want to set an example. Tried to talk her out of that, but I wasn't willing to blow up her spot among more than the div heads and short of an order she wasn't listening. Not that it mattered in the end, I don't know that anyone bought that it was an accident, especially. I should have ... well. If wishes were horses, as we said back home.
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[She gestures for Yseult to sit down if she wants; the chair across from Cosima's is comfortable enough, though Yseult will have to move at least three books to sit on it.]
Nothing substantial. I could probably get more out of Viktor, now that we've seen it's not forthcoming through official channels. Maybe lean on the seneschal, but I wonder if I'm only thinking of that because I can picture the way Isaac's eyelid would twitch. What are you thinking?
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[ She shuffles through the books with idle curiosity for the titles before they're set neatly atop the pile on the other chair and she takes their place, one knee crossed over the other beneath her skirt. What is she thinking? ]
That whatever the Venatori are working on there seems too dangerous to leave a mystery. But that [ on the other hand ] we cannot risk a second such incident.
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[Forgotten agents who no one knew to look for, or even just missing personnel without handy blood magic trackers extant. Given her vivid memories of the negotiations at Skyhold years ago, she's certainly not going to suggest make more phylacteries as a countermeasure.]
It's sort of a unique problem. How to find out more about a thing that, accidentally or on purpose, erases memory? But on the other hand, I deeply don't love that it affected all of us at such a distance, so.
[A quick exhale.]
Probably bad practice to sew "Your name is X, you work for Riftwatch" inside everyone's uniform.
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Yes, the distance is very strange. Could the team have carried the effect with them? It's difficult to say at what point they were forgotten before they arrived and announced themselves at the Gallows.
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Possible, I guess. I can't think of a way to check, but I wonder if people they know who they didn't come into proximity with forgot them during the same period. Is it something that hits you, and then somehow reaches through you to everyone you've ever met? Or sort of an aura you need to be within a certain distance of to be affected by?
We're unfortunately way out of my depth, though. We may need to loop in someone with some magic experience to weigh in on the logic or lack thereof.
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We might consult Strange as well after Isaac and Viktor have been pressed. Time magic may not be precisely the same, but perhaps close enough. And like Stark he seems to have a great deal of experience with the bizarre.
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Do you have any thoughts on like ... would it make sense to have some sort of password or some other well-guarded way to prove we're who we say we are? This is the first time this has happened in particular [as far as they know, which is very lightly worrying], but we've had several instances where someone had to convince the rest of Riftwatch of something high stakes.
[Granitefell not least among them, but Cosima's still not keen to bring up that specific example unless it's necessary.]
I guess nothing is foolproof.
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It could have been useful. But a passphrase can be stolen, so it may give either a false sense of security or very little. Assigning each agent an individual passphrase helps but would require records. [ She wobbles a hand back and forth uncertainly. ]
Perhaps as a first line of defense. Some sort of marking is another option, but less appealing.
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What kind of marking would you have in mind?
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It's not our number-one problem, I grant you, either way. But you know. This has been in the mix for years. I was in the group that got sent to an alternate future in 9:43. Would have been handy. Well, I assume it would have been, Fade stuff gets weird. Maybe another thing to have Stephen weigh in on.
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[ But she dismisses the idea with another gesture, this one a more definite swipe of her hand. ] I shouldn't have suggested it; I'm not getting a tattoo for Riftwatch after refusing real ones for so many years.
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Alright. I'll talk to Viktor and keep you in the loop. Let me know if Isaac responds to your feedback, I guess.
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Very well. [ but doesn't immediately rise. She flicks a glance instead to the sliver of ink visible below Cosima's sleeve. ]
Can I ask the significance of that one?
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[She tugs her right sleeve up, revealing the full design on her forearm.]
So this is an animal shell, it's a creature from home called a nautilus. Maybe they exist in Thedas, I guess I wouldn't know. But the spiral of its shell ... you can describe that mathematically. We call it the Golden Ratio, but that I'm sure must exist here, even if it has another name. But it's this pattern that just repeats itself in nature, in the way flowers arrange their petals and like, how bees build their hives. Tons of stuff. And it's just ... I don't know, I love the symmetry and beauty of it.
I'd want to understand nature even if it wasn't beautiful to our eyes, but it is, and I wanted a connection to that for my second piece.
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I've seen shells this shape. [ she swirls a finger in the air above Cosima's forearm ] Small ones. The way it fades into something like a painting is lovely.
[ She gives it another beat of observation before biting at the dangling hook. ] What was your first?
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I wish this one had a great story, but I was a teenager and I thought it was pretty. I mean, I still think it's pretty, no regrets, but no deeply symbolic meaning in mind when I picked it, either. My mom made a face at me, but my dad paid for it, so I don't think it even counts as an act of rebellion.
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Darras's were all gotten on a whim or a dare I think, and they are less pretty than this. One day, perhaps. When I've retired.
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Hey, dares are a great traditional reason for tattoos. But if you're in a position one day where they're not a hindrance to your work ... I don't know. I guess it always felt like a way to affirm my bod is mine. To do things just because I want to.
[Which, on a less pleasant note:]
Speaking of, or not really, but ... I've been purposely private with my thoughts about anchor removal, but we may be reaching a point where that's not tenable. [Given the Ness of it all.] But I just wanted to say: Other div heads will know first. If I change my mind about saying something more publicly than I have. Don't want to blindside you.
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Voluntary amputations are another matter. This nod is brisk. ]
The warning is appreciated. Do you have a sense of what you might say?
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But for everyone else... I'm not comfortable telling people they can or can't make that decision. It's their own life. But I'm, uh, let's go with "alarmed" that Ness felt she had to make it look like an accident. Doing it that way added risk that I don't think was actually necessary. And her complications also illustrate that removing the arm puts you at risk too, if not the same way that keeping it does.
All that said, I don't want to like, single Ness out. People who knew Wysteria know how breezy she could be about risk, and how hard Tony leaving hit her. But if people are coming along later and reading her notes, they may not have that context.
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[ There's a pause, revealed in the subtle shifting of her jaw and press of her mouth after a second as a moment of hesitation, before Yseult decides to be completely frank. ]
Other than rare exceptions, removing the anchor is a selfish choice. It's personal stability over an essential tool we can't create more of. We can't stop them and they won't want to hear it, but they should think about that. The idea of vanishing one day may be terrible but everyone here is risking the same.
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[She exhales, a huff of breath.]
Look, my threshold for forbidding it is high. Higher than "I think it's selfish to do what you're doing," though I agree with you that it is that. But I also haven't spoken up before now because I know my position carries weight. Because I didn't want exactly the kind of "accidents" we've just seen as a workaround. I wondered if discouragement would read as prohibition in a way that caused more problems. I think that math has shifted, considering.
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