AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please read the disclaimer at the end. Also, Bioware, and the respective authors of the works I've cited, own what they respectively own.
Cullen
Cullen finds himself walking towards the ruin that just days ago was the Kirkwall Chantry, and decides that there's nothing interesting there. So he takes a few steps towards Anna Hawke's estate, and as fate would have it, the door's ajar. Apparently, all its inhabitants—Anna Hawke, her revolutionary lover Anders, and all their servants—have left.
"What in the Maker's name have I got to lose?" he asks himself, and enters. "Anna Hawke is famous for a lot of things, not the least of which are her riches. And riches aren't always measured in gold and jewels."
His feet take him to Anna's desk, still cramped with letters from investors, her business partner Hubert, Orsino, distraught mages, grateful nobles, potioneers and rune makers, Meredith, and all those other unfortunate souls crying to her for help. His own letter about Guard Captain Aveline is also here. Not really interesting, in the grand scheme of things. He moves along.
Anna's library is full: histories, legends from all around, children's books, healing treaties and grimoires, a couple of apocryphal texts. He chuckles as he realizes that the Champion of Kirkwall, for all her brawns, has a taste for books. He finds a copy of The Book of Shartan and a Dalish Tome of Slumbering Elders, books which can hardly be bought in the Hightown Market.
But a particular manuscript catches his eye. If this is what he thinks it is, then he may be close to understanding why the mage-templar mess occurred, and how it can be resolved.
The Mages' Manifesto
A specter is haunting Southern Thedas—the specter of Mage Rights. All the powers of the old system have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: the Divine and the Templars, Kings and Queen, Princes and Empresses, even the elusive Seekers.
1. The Movement for Mage Rights should be acknowledged by Thedosian powers to be a power in itself.
2. It is high time that the mages be recognized as people. We mages should be able to publish our views, and live our lives in a society that does not condemn us for our gifts.
Chapter I. Mages and Non-Mages
The History of Southern Thedas, as it now exists, is the history of the oppression of mages.
Mages and the Chantry, in a word, oppressed and oppressor, stand in struggle against one another. So long as the Chantry refuses to acknowledge that mages have a right to be free people, like it has denounced slavery, then the struggle continues.
Andraste suffered at the hands of the magisters. Thus, she feared the influence of magic. But if the Maker himself blamed magic for the magisters' actions in the Black City, why would he still gift us with it? The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men, not from the will of the Maker.
The modern Southern Thedosian society that has sprouted after the death of Andraste has not done away with the fear of mages. Rather, it has established the demonization of those gifted with magic, with the Chantry spearheading ignorance and hostility against even mage-children, so much so that parents voluntarily send their magical children away, and sometimes treat them with violence as well.
Andraste died on the stake, and with her died the secret of her being a mage, as the Imperial Chantry decrees, or not, as the Southern Chantry preaches. She did not leave a coherent book regarding the Maker's wishes, or how to abolish slavery, or how to set up religious services solely dedicated to the Maker. No. Andraste's followers, the precursor of the Chantry, stole not just Her ashes from the Imperium, but also her teachings. They sang Her songs and gave new meaning to them: magic is meant to serve man and never to rule over him is now meant to oppress the mages by placing them in slave-like conditions in the Circles. To think that Andraste waged war on the Imperium to free slaves!
Eventually, young King Drakon of Orlais, seeking to consolidate his power, took a series of Exalted Marches to unite warring tribes into an empire solely dedicated to the Maker's will—or what he thought was the Maker's will. He, and not the Maker, created the Circle of Magi, the Order of Templars, and the Holy Office of the Divine. And it is through the Circle and the Templars that the Chantry culls those mages it deems weak, rebellious, or different, and strip their emotions and the essence of what they are through the Rite of Tranquility. Innumerable mages have been branded on their foreheads, stripped of what made them individuals with their own personalities, because of some fault or fear of the Chantry. And while it is true that some mages use forbidden blood magic and dally with demons, the Chantry remains unchecked on their use of the Rite. What is disturbing about the Tranquil are not just their lack of emotion or desire, but that some mages voluntarily seek this rite as a means to be more pleasing to a mage-hating society.
Modern Southern Thedosian society has embraced and accepted the Circle of Magi. Some Circle mages even regard their entire existence with their respective Circles, accepting their lot in life, tolerating the many abuses of the Templars, of the Chantry, and of the world, because they are mages. They forget themselves, that they are still people, with the ability to love, and to feel, and to exist peacefully.
Cullen slams the book shut, as if fearing that the Knight-Commander would see him reading such a heretical treatise, until he remembers that the Knight-Commander is now a red statue in the Gallows courtyard.
How can a madman, a mass murderer, an abomination, think, let alone compile his thoughts cohesively in a book? Cullen ponders. What led Anders, Anders for the Maker's sake, who used to pet mousers back in Kinloch Hold, who used to treat people for free in Darktown, down to this road?
Oh, to be young again, and idealistic, back in time before Uldred's madness, when he was a stuttering Templar who thought that mages were people, too, before reality crashed down on him and he realized that mages, who are ever vulnerable to demons, ought not to be considered as people…
…but are they not people who deserve to be treated as people?
Cullen remembers a line from the only Orlesian play he's seen: If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
There we go, he thinks. The mages have indeed been wronged. And now, they revenged.
The templar sighs, and braves the book again, to the Void what the Chantry wants to book-burn. Maybe, just maybe, he can learn from this…
DISCLAIMER: I have based The Mages' Manifesto from Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto, because I have noted similarities with the mages' plight and the overworked laborers' plight during the Industrial Revolution. But note that this is a work of fiction. It does not promote, uphold, degrade, antagonize, or denounce ideologies. Also, William Shakespeare wrote that "do we not bleed" line.
Please tell me what you think, and if I should continue!