This fic has been in the workings for about three years, and originally looked quite different. I first got the idea when I was playing Inquisition and saw a ship decorated with the Templar arms beached on the Storm Coast, but after about 5000 words I later discarded, this has lain dormant. I only picked it up again upon reading Michel Foucault's ground-breaking Discipline and Punish this summer, and was thinking over how the sort of developments he described as happening in the policing and ordering of early modern French society might or might not apply to Thedas. At that point, I was already deep into the modern AU in which my other fics were set, and so this here became a bit of backstory.

I have endeavoured to be as precise and representative as I could of the world I seek to imitate, but seek your forgiveness both for any errors in historical accuracy that may have slipped in - it is difficult to loose one's mindset from the present without deeper research than I undertook for this - and for the insularity of the setting. Renaissance Europe was not neither as homogenous nor as isolated as one usually imagines, certainly less isolated than Thedas is, but I do not have the confidence to develop what societies lie outside the boundaries of Thedas with sufficient depth or nuance. Hence, this is perhaps more representative of people living on the Atlantic seaboard before the 1490s than of the Mediterranean in the same period. I have supplied footnotes, at times with recommendations to further reading which I hope you will find as enjoyable as I did.

The original text of this was set in Cardo, a typeface designed for medievalists and philologists. As it includes a wide range of special abbreviations in use for handwriting Latin during the Middle Ages, I have reproduced them in the chapter headings using transcribed spellings. If I get around to it, I might end up replacing them with scans of my own handwriting, and I do have some ideas for making that a bit more flavourful.

About the latter 30k words of this are the first part of my NaNo project. I've finished this fic and will be posting a new chapter every day.

See how different my treatment of you is from yours of Epicurus, in your works at large, and especially in the De Finibus. You are continually praising his life, but his talents you ridicule. I ridicule you in nothing at all. Your life does awaken my pity, as I have said; but your talents and your eloquence call for nothing but congratulation. O great father of Roman eloquence! not I alone but all who deck themselves with the flowers of Latin speech render thanks unto you. It is from your well-springs that we draw the streams that water our meads. You, we freely acknowledge, are the leader who marshals us; yours are the words of encouragement that sustain us; yours is the light that illuminates the path before us. In a word, it is under your auspices that we have attained to such little skill in this art of writing as we may possess …

- Petrarch, second epistle to M Tullius Cicero, 1345

Caput primum, qui de causa initioque itineris narrabit

Under the scorching midday sun of Antivan summers, blood dried quickly.

Throughout the morning, the people of the city had come to watch it. The fishwives of the Bartoletti had been first to arrive, setting up their stalls and laying out the day's catch long before dawn. They did so every day: The Campo Santa Esmeralda was one of the city's principal market squares, one of the places where the old adage of 'if you can't buy it in Rialto, it's Fadestuff' came true. At dawn, the fishwives had been joined by gangs of loitering Blight orphans and elvish[1] servants doing their masters' shopping. By the fourth hour of the day – the twelfth, as they counted here – the square had been bustling with activity as fishmongers had been joined by merchants arguing out deals in a dozen tongues, water and wine dealers meting out refreshments, city magistrates and notaries keeping a watchful eye on the business going on, and a procession carrying the relics of the Blessed Daria, one-time grand cleric of the city, on the occasion of her feast day. Now the sixth hour, noon, had arrived, and with it all commerce had come to a virtual halt as the square filled up with what seemed to be half the city.[2]

Before the portal of the chantry, a scaffold had been set up, decorated with blue and gold bunting. Around the square, the most splendid tapestries and carpets hung from balcony railings and window sills, lending dignity and richness to the proceedings. The buzz of the crowd in the square ebbed and flowed, but for the moment the whole city had ground to a halt.

At the stroke of noon, the chantry doors opened, and the crowd erupted into loud jeering. In solemn progression, three magistrates in their black robes of office and a herald wearing the royal arms of King Azar ascended unto the scaffold, followed by a number of militiamen. Finally, a priestess emerged with the patient, the latter wearing only a hair shift. The jeering rose to tumultuous levels as the crowd pushed forward. Stones were thrown, one barely missing the priestess, and the militia were hard-pressed to keep the mob at bay as the patient was led up the scaffold. Finally, the executioner emerged.

The patient's crimes were read out. He gave his last words, which were lost under the angry shouting of the crowd. Then, the patient was stripped naked and tied to the breaking wheel. Beside it, the executioner weighed a large steel cudgel in his hands. Soon, the king's vengeance would be in full progress, and the enthusiastic participation of the crowd drown out even the patient's screams as his bones would be broken, one by one. The following day, he would be quartered.

Knight-Captain Justine Celeste Genevieve La Tour de Montsalvat listened dispassionately from her vantage point on one of the balconies lining the square, her fingers drumming softly on the pommel of her sword. In truth, she wasn't paying the proceedings all that much attention –this public demonstration of royal authority was for the plebs of the city, the rootless, idle poor. A reminder of the king's vengeance and circus in equal measures – at once, it served to amuse and to rectify the social order by restoring the king's honour in the eyes of the burghers. She was a La Tour de Montsalvat, chevalier of Orlais and a captain of Andraste's own knights. Quite plainly, she stood above this bloody spectacle.

Besides, she had her own issues to worry about. Her ship, the Blessed Amalthea, had only docked in Rialto this morning, to take on supplies for the remainder of their voyage from the Order's grand arsenal in Val Royeaux to Rivain. There, they were under orders to protect Andrastian shipping and prey upon the oxmen heathens' ships to assist the ongoing campaign. Yet shortly after their arrival, a runner had summoned her here, to the elegant townhouse in Santa Esmeralda of what she'd been told was a prominent local patrician family. The runner had not been able to tell her who, precisely, was sending for her, but Justine wasn't going to forget her good manners over this.

Hence, she now stood on the balcony of a large dining room in the townhouse's piano nobile, waiting for her hosts to meet her. A servant had offered her wine and some sugared sweets, but for the most part she had been left to wait on her own for the better part of the last half hour. In her mind, she was going over the preparations they had to make – in Ostwick, she had filled her hold with furs from Ferelden, which she had been hoping to trade in Rialto for the raw silk the Rivaini could print and dye with the most marvellous patterns. In Rivain, after their battles against the oxmen were done, she would take on spices and wines, and altogether could expect to make a tidy profit for the Order, her crew and herself. Of course, she first had to find a buyer for her furs and a seller of silk here in Rialto. Normally, that wouldn't be an issue – the markets of Rialto were famous throughout Thedas, and she could personally attest that there seemed to be nothing under the sky that one couldn't buy or sell in this city. If she was going to waste away the day here, however …

The sound of the door opening interrupted her thoughts. "Thank you for waiting, my child," an elderly woman said behind her. Justine turned, saw, and bowed. "Your Grace," she said. "I wasn't expecting you."

The grand cleric laid her hands on her shoulders. "Oh, let's not stand on ceremony. Stand up straight, Justine, let me have a look at you."

She grinned at that. "It is good to see you, too, Aunt Éselde. How have you been?"

"Growing old and cranky. Say, have you met Commander Alvise di Sammarlo yet?"[3]

A stout, olive-skinned, middle-aged man had walked into the room with the grand cleric. His dark hair and beard were greying, but he carried himself like a soldier. He was dressed well, but plainly: his hosen were pristine white, and the sleeves of his figured grey doublet were slashed and puffed in a fashion that had been fashionable in Val Royeaux years ago. Above the doublet, he wore a sword and a short red cape – in lieu of the cloak usual in colder climes – emblazoned with the flaming sword of the Templar Order. A plain black chaperon was draped over his shoulder, courtesy of the summer heat. This was a man of equal gravitas and wealth, it said. "I have not. It's a pleasure, sir."

They shook hands. "The pleasure is mine. I saw your ship sail into the harbour this morning. The Amalthea, is it? She looks like a fine ship."

Almost automatically, her back straightened and she could scarcely keep from beaming with pride. "The finest in the order's fleet, ser. The heathens won't know what hit them."

Her aunt cleared her throat. "Actually, that is what we wanted to talk to you about. Please, have a seat. Have you eaten yet?"

"Not yet? I was planning on grabbing a bite later from the market …"

The grand cleric very energetically shook her head. "No, no. That shan't do at all, my dear. Sit." That was clearly a command, so Justine did as she was told. Her aunt sat to her left, at the head of the table, and the knight-commander across from her. "I have the Mosto family to thank for this house, by the way," the grand cleric explained. "My palace is undergoing repairs after a fire last month, and the Mosti were kind enough to put their house at my disposal." She clapped her hands. Justine noted with some surprise that her aunt's fingers were far, far spindlier and wrinkled than she could remember, like birch twigs about to break. An elvish servant in white and red livery entered from a hidden door by the fireplace, her head bowed. "Have dinner served, girl. And have them uncork the good Trevisan. 98, I believe?"

If the elf gave a reply, it was lost in a sudden roar from the crowd in the square. They must have begun breaking the criminal on the wheel. The grand cleric made a face. "Before you go, close the balcony doors." Turning to Justine, she added: "Truly, that demon deserves it. And it is certainly true that the people need to see this; morals have degraded so much since the Blight. But that doesn't make it particularly appetising."

"What'd he do?" she inquired, more to be polite than out of any genuine interest.

"Parricide and arson. That beast killed both his parents and his brother's family in their sleep, then set their house on fire to hide the evidence. He confessed under the strappado last week. It would never have been discovered, you know, if not for that intrepid Ser Tomaso, the new Royal Inquisitor. He actually went and investigated the crime himself – sifted through the ashes, talked to people – before anyone had charged anyone."

Justine raised an eyebrow. "I've heard of that sort of thing. There was a judge in Val Chevin last year who charged criminals himself instead of waiting for denunciations." She shrugged. "It's a little odd. I mean, if judges bring charges, they're automatically biased against the accused."

"On the other hand, relying on people to step forward and accuse people doesn't work if they're afraid of reprisals, or if the guilty person is a powerful man," di Sammarlo pointed out. "I believe it is Marcurio who wrote that the Ancients had a specific official in charge of investigating crimes or possible crimes and bringing them into the light of day – the Lucifex, he was called. That would be an enlightened state to return to, if you'll pardon the pun."

"Our knight-commander is something of a scholar," Grand Cleric Éselde explained, a proud smile on her lips. "He reads both Tevene and Old Dwarfish as if they were Common. Oh, do tell my niece what you told me on the way here, about your new system of punishments for Antivan courts of law …"

The older templar gave a slight cough and looked away. "Her Grace likes to exaggerate my virtues, I'm afraid. I merely said that our current system of punishments is exceedingly arbitrary and quite barbaric. Rather, we should codify each crime and a prescribed sentence, so that evildoers will know exactly what faces them. And each crime should have a proper, related punishment that forces one contemplating it to immediately think of the consequences and shriek back from his grave sin. Thus, an arsonist would be burned at the stake, a murderer executed in the same manner as his victims died, an idling vagabond condemned to hard labour or a kidnapper to the dungeon. Every execution would become a stage play of natural justice, clear for all to see."[4]

Justine leant back in her chair. She wasn't particularly interested in the commander's ideas on criminal justice, truth be told. "It sounds fascinating," she said, trying to be diplomatic. "You, er, wanted to talk to me about something?"

"Oh, quite right. You see, a courier from Val Royeaux arrived yesterday, anticipating your arrival … oh, there's the food at last. What took you, girl? You embarrass me in front of my guests."

The servant kept her head low as she placed "Sorry, Your Reverence …"

"You elves, always apologising. Sorry this, sorry that …" As the grand cleric harangued the elf about the evils of idleness, indolence and petty thievery, Justine's thoughts swayed to what she'd said before the interruption. A raven from Val Royeaux? At once, she thought of her eldest sister, who had been with child when she left the capital – but no, they wouldn't have sent a courier. Her mother? But maman had been fine, and had never been sick a day in her life …

Besides, if this was about her family, Commander di Sammarlo wouldn't be here. No, this was business. And if her instincts were right, this was about the sealed envelope Admiral d'Allereux had handed her the day of the Amalthea's departure from the capital.

Finally, Aunt Éselde dismissed the servants and turned to her. "It's hard to get decent servants these days. When I was your age, the elves were much less lazy, and they didn't steal as much. I'd hire humans, but the wages they demand … You absolutely must try this capon though. My cook is a genius, by any standard."

"Uh, thanks. You were saying … about the courier from Val Royeaux?"

It was Commander di Sammarlo who answered in her aunt's stead. "The missive bore the seal of Her Perfection, the Divine, and was addressed to myself and First Enchanter Anselmo. By the Divine's command, I've got new orders for you and the Amalthea."

Intrigued, Justine leant forwards in her chair. She had yet to touch her food. Her current orders were to proceed to the Northern Passage and then unseal the envelope she'd been given. Beyond that, anything was a mystery. And while Justine was not prone to disobey orders, she was no fan of mysteries, either. "So what are they?"

"You are to take on one of my mages as a passenger, Enchanter Marsilio Cavalcanti. Once he's aboard, you are to return to Val Royeaux immediately, so the Enchanter can present himself to Divine. Here, have it in writing." He handed her an envelope of waxed parchment. The seal was broken, but appeared to be genuine. "Right now …"

"Whoa, hold on a moment," she interrupted. "My orders are to sail north, to fight the Qunari, not to play ferryman to some mage. Why can't he just book passage on a trading ship?"

"Because it's the Divine who's asking, dear, not some preened-up pepper merchant. And when the Divine asks, speed is of the essence. Your ship is the fastest in the harbour right now, you know that."

"More importantly," the knight-commander added, "it is a templar ship. That means it's safe."

"Because he's a mage?"

"What? No. Because he is important, and a personal friend besides. Say, do you happen to own any printed books?"

She frowned. She didn't read much, and when she did, she preferred the neatness of manuscripts. "An abridged Chant, I think. Maybe a few others in the family library. Why?"

"Because chances are, they were set and printed in Marsilio's workshop. He's been at it for five years now and these days has eight presses running day and night. The way he's set up – with dozens of Tranquil each concentrating on doing just one task each, without distractions … his workshop can produce dozens of volumes every day, rubricated and illuminated by hand, each more alike, neater and more beautiful than anything you can find in the world's best scriptoria."

Leaning back, Justine crossed her arms. "Alright, so he's a decent printer. What's that got to do with me having to ferry him back to Val Royeaux?"

Aunt Éselde gave her a mildly scolding look and folded her hands. "Because that's what the Divine commands. But the benefits Messer Cavalcanti could bring to all of humanity are immeasurable, you must see that. Just imagine, dear – in five years' time, every village chantry and every peasant-priestess could own a Chant and know how to read it. In twenty, every home in Thedas could have a copy, and every child know how to read it. And once this is done …" She closed her eyes, launched into a sing-song chant. "From every corner of the earth / the Chant of Light echoed: / and the Maker walked the land / with Andraste at His right hand …"

She almost laughed at that before catching herself. "And you seriously believe that this mage can bring about the return of the Maker, with books? Most commoners can't even read vulgar, let alone care about the intricacies of the faith. With all due respect, auntie, we've got more important things to worry about than chasing pious fantasies. With the oxmen harassing our shipping and Tevinter acting up again …"

"That's quite enough, young lady. As it happens, I agree with Her Perfection in this matter. The Chantry must seize this new opportunity, for the greater glory of the Maker, before some vile heretic gets the chance to spew their dangerous filth in print. It is imperative that Messer Cavalcanti get to Val Royeaux, and you will escort him there."

Frustrated, Justine looked to the knight-commander for support. He simply shrugged, the traitor. "I don't deal in eschatology. We templars serve the Chantry, and that means we follow orders and don't try to argue with them."

For an instant she tried to imagine those words in Commander d'Arnaud's mouth, and failed. Her household might be in disorder, if her lashing-out at the elf earlier was any indication, but clearly, her aunt had Commander di Sammarlo well under heel.[5] "It's a foolish order. There are Andrastians being slaughtered in the north. If the templars don't protect them, their lives and souls are in mortal danger. Our honour demands …"

"Captain, there is an entire templar host marching on Rivain right now to cast out the heathens. Half the order's fleet is already patrolling northern seas. I, personally, barely have enough men to garrison the Circle and Castle Alessia because of the war. If you can give me a good reason why you, specifically, are indispensable to our war effort, I'll consider it. But I'll not defy a direct command from the Sunburst Throne for the sake of your personal glory and ambition."

Her throat tight, Justine nodded. Her orders were still sealed, who knew what they contained? "Understood, ser. Have your man report to the Amalthea's mooring at dawn tomorrow, and we will convey him safely to Val Royeaux."

Resolutely, Aunt Éselde clapped her hands. "Capital. Now, darling, you really need to try the capon and tell me all about what's been happening at home …"[6]

[1] We use 'elvish' instead of 'elven' here as the Common adjective – elves themselves generally use 'elven', which is more closely cognate to the original elvhen and will later become standard Common

[2] Here, the day is divided into 12 hours from dawn to dusk, and the night in another twelve. This means that an hour's length varies wildly depending on the time of year and a location's latitude. The alternative style here presented, based on one in use in Italy until the 18th century, counts 24 hours between sunsets. Again, this depends on the season and location.

[3] At this point, there is no such thing as military ranks. The titles that would later turn into them are more diffuse. A templar or warden commander – invariably a knight, except in the case of mage wardens – is the officer in charge of a commandry of their order. Those might range in size, wealth and importance all the way from the garrison of a major circle to a minor country manor. Naturally, their prestige and actual precedence is proportional to the size of their posting. Any knight, including a commander might at the same time be a captain – an officer in charge of other knights, especially on detached service. In addition to knights (and mages), both major orders also include lay members, called serjeants, who are commanded either by knights or by lieutenants of their own number. Not all lieutenants are subordinate to captains or commanders, but a lieutenant can never command a knight.

[4] Largely a sixteenth-century idea, this marked the beginning of a long transition from punishment as a vendetta-like act of vengeance to restore the lawgiver's honour to the Enlightenment ideal of reforming and reshaping both convicts and observers.

[5] Renaissance housekeeping guides were preoccupied with the key question of how to maintain order and decorum in the household, in particularly among domestic servants. This was even more important if the head of the household was a person in the public eye. There was a widespread belief that a man's household reflected a microcosm of the state, so that princes, politicians and ambassadors had to take extra care to be seen to run a tight ship. Similarly, liberality and splendour were prized as the domestic equivalent to the all-important princely virtue of magnificence.

[6] One of the ways in which the Thedas of the games is least alike to its medieval western European model is the provision of food. Even during the relative abundance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which was followed by a century of near-continuous famine and Black Death epidemics, Medieval Europe was a world of great scarcity. Food, far from being 'just' another requirement of the body, was the controlling feature of social, religious, and economic life. This is a common strand in fantasy settings, largely because of how difficult it is to imagine for most Westerners today: not only do they no longer experience regular famines, but whatever scarcities they face are a) small-scale and personal and b) occasioned by the consumer's poverty, rather than a cataclysmic failure of supply. Medieval and early modern Europeans, meanwhile, deep into the nineteenth century, lived lives in which starvation was an ever-present threat even in years of plenty. Consider, for instance, the abundance of fairy tales which, in some way, centre around food: a never-ending cornucopia of food, or the mythical land of plenty of Cockaigne where "roasted pigs wander about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, where grilled geese fly directly into one's mouth, where cooked fish jump out of the water and land at one's feet." These fantasies betray the deep uncertainty medieval Europeans felt about their daily sustenance. For more about this, consider Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life (New York, 2001). Consider also the religious significance that eating and fasting had. Not for nought does the Lord's Prayer ask: "give us this day our daily bread", a petition that medieval theologians parsed as the Bread of Life, i.e. the Body of Christ consumed in the Eucharist. Even as the liturgy came to emphasise the consecration of the host rather than its actual consumption by the communing laity, a widespread, frenzied cult of Corpus Christi emerged that expressed itself in processions, pilgrimages, and excessive fasting. Women in particular frequently attempted to live on water and the Eucharist alone, born from a very real sense that, by eating God, God became part of oneself. For more about this, consider Caroline Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1988). From a culinary history perspective, let it also be considered that food and eating were not always about the actual taste of the food: while they are not representative of what people ate on a daily basis, feasts as the characteristic medieval meal "was more an aesthetic and social event than a gastronomic one. The feast was a banquet for all the senses; indeed, food was almost an excuse for indulging senses other than taste. Medieval chroniclers who describe feasts do not give menus, although they lavish attention on the entertainment provided. They describe the appearance of dishes, not the flavor; [sic] the sequence of events, not of courses." (Bynum, Holy Feast, pp. 60-1).

Thedas, meanwhile, is a land of incredible plenty; one of many instances where the games unthinkingly transpose their creators' contemporary sensibilities into a medieval-flavoured setting, with corresponding contradictions. One may attempt to justify this by the widespread application of magic (decreasing as time goes on and it is supplanted by more efficient agricultural techniques) in agriculture, The games themselves are of little help, as what food is found in the environment (particularly Skyhold's miniscule kitchen) is clearly intended more as window-dressing than aught else. Accordingly, the author has elected to portray eating experience in mid-Exalted Age Thedas as generally modern.

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