Author's Notes: Largely inspired by a tumblr post and katiebour's words from it. I used her speech in this and implemented it into a story with a few edits and tweaks and added thoughts. I think everything should see it and read it so I decided this was a good way to present it.
And to counter this argument, I shall work on a "Pro-Templar" story to show both sides of the spectrum; not that I specifically swing that way but for argument's sake only.
Still working on that Carver story. Silly slow me.
I own nothing. Thank you katiebour. All hail Bioware.
Apostates, escaped mages, children who only recently discovered their magical potential gathered from all around after hearing the recent news from Kirkwall. And the person hosting the meeting was the Champion herself.
Timid, scared mages crowded around the stage Hawke assembled by using crates in the abandoned foundry. She tied a moth eaten scarf around her thumb tightly and after a moment, loosened it. She repeated this a few times along with pinching herself to make sure this wasn't some horrible dream and she could wake up at any moment. She never woke up.
They were all afraid. They were all confused. They were all panicked. They had good reason to be. Hawke cleared her throat and called them to attention, standing on top the crates. "My name is Hawke. Like the bird." She breathed a sigh of relief. Introductions always felt like the hardest part but what she would say next would probably be the most intelligent and mature words she's ever spoken.
But that's when the rushed questions and judgmental comments came rolling in.
"Who was the apostate that started all this?"
"Where is he now?"
"What happened in Kirkwall?"
"I'm so scared..."
"We should just submit to the Templars now before it gets worse."
"Do you expect us to fight?"
"I doubt the Champion is even a mage."
"I heard the man was a healer."
"Does it matter? At least she's helping us."
"I also heard he was possessed. Dumb fool."
"Poor sod."
"Is this a trap? I bet you'll call the Templars on us."
"Why did he do it?"
That last question threw Hawke for a loop. The place grew quiet after the person in the crowd spoke it and they all awaited her answer. Why does she have to be the person with all the answers? Everything seemed to fall on her in the end. She sighed and felt all eyes on her when she opened her mouth, hoping the Maker would be generous today and offer words of wisdom to spill out.
"I don't know." She merely shrugged. It was hard to believe he would do something like this. Then again, was it really? Shouldn't she have seen this coming all along? She pushed aside her uncertainties before they questioned her own beliefs.
"Why do you support him?" The question came from the same person from before.
"I support Anders because of the things he does, not in spite of them." Brief flashes of the Chantry exploding came into mind but she shut them out. "It hurt when he blew up the Chantry. I couldn't believe what he'd done. That he forced my hand like this and actually asked me to kill him."
"So he's sorry for what he's done?" Another person questioned, skeptical yet wondering. Hawke wasn't sure if the person asking was in support of Anders' actions or against them.
"I...can't say." Hawke tightened the scarf. "But then I thought, and thought, and thought some more." She loosened the scarf. "I thought about the fact that mages have been imprisoned, lobotomized, or killed for one thousand years."
"Has it really been that long...?" A horrified gasp came from somewhere in the crowd and Hawke nodded solemnly.
"Back in Kirkwall many of the Templars have out-right said, 'They're not people'. Some days it feels like it's true. Mages can't get married. They can't have children or families. If they have children, the children are taken away and they never see them again. If they fall in love, that person becomes emotional collateral and you'll do anything, and I mean anything, as long as the templars don't hurt them."
"Speaking from personal experience, Champion?" Again that same person.
"You'd think..." Hawke trailed off, letting the moth eaten scarf fall to the ground. She remembers searching through sacks, backpacks, and chests only to find these silly scarfs and Anders would laugh at her. She also remembers the words Anders wrote in his various manifestos. Memorized them even. Time to put them to use. "They're ripped away from their parents as soon as their magic manifests, or in Anders' case, thrown away because they are 'cursed'. They are told, over and over again from the time they arrive at the Circle and throughout their lifetime that their very existence is a sin. They are the next thing to demons."
A few murmurs of resentment toward the Templars emerged.
Hawke continued. "They are put through a ritual designed to test their willpower and ability when they are little more than children, pushed into the Fade where the magical equivalent of a dinner bell has been rung, and a demon waiting to possess them. If they fail they will be killed. If they take too long they will be killed. There are men with swords standing by and waiting to kill them...and all of that when they're barely adults."
Some of escaped mages remember this ritual while the other apostates who have never been in the Circle could only wonder what their lives could've been if things had been different.
"They are subject to the whims of their often sadistic jailers, who will beat them, rape them, and try to provoke them into becoming possessed simply to have an excuse to cut them down. They are rarely allowed outside; no sunshine, no fresh air, no running in the fields or playing ball games. No frolicking in the snow or standing in the rain. They are kept inside, under guard, where their existence is regulated from morning to evening; classes, meals, and sleep, all under the watchful eyes of the guards who are there to kill you if you mess up. The ages vary from five to the elderly." Hawke can't imagine Anders or any other mage staying cooped up in a place like that. Sweet little Merrill or her little sister Bethany...
Hawke gave silent thanks to Anders for writing all those manifestos and for leaving some of them behind in her home.
The words came out smoother now, stronger even. "They are forced into crowded quarters with twenty to thirty people and no privacy. No doors on the bathrooms, no closed areas for bathing or using the bathroom, no privacy for dressing...even the Harrowed mages are crowded into rooms without doors, where three beds, separated by a wall or a bookshelf mock the convention of privacy."
"They are given no autonomy. As Emile de Launcet says, he's never had a drink, never cooked something for himself. They are treated like overgrown children all their lives and then punished for not being adult enough to resist temptation." She often wondered where Emile was at now.
"And if they are brash enough to want more, to hope for more like Anders, they come to the Circle at an age where they remember what it's like to run free, to have family, friends, crushes on the pretty girl next door, pets, work, freedom, they are branded rebellious troublemakers. If they run away from their stone prison they are hunted like animals using what is, hypocritically enough, pretty much blood magic -the use of the phylactery- and dragged back. If it happens often enough the punishments become severe, like being put in solitary confinement for a year." Anders told her one time in what feels like a lifetime ago when she noticed the scars on him when helping to heal him. The scars coming from being lashed multiple times during his time in the dungeons...
Every single person in the room cringed or winced as they tried to imagine what it'd be like to be trapped in solitary confinement for a long time without much human contact.
"Plenty's been written on the extraordinarily traumatic nature of solitary confinement and the long-term consequences it brings but I won't reiterate that here. But it's torture, pure and simple." Hawke whispered in a soft voice, "And when a mage can't take it anymore, he'll either fall apart internally or externally. Anders says the most common way for a mage to die is by his own hand, and just imagine that for a moment. Anders has seen multiple mages kill themselves, has probably found their bodies or had friends that simply gave up the fight and didn't come to bed the next night."
Some of the mages who's been in a Circle nodded, understanding.
"If they fall apart externally the demons are there, taking them over and puppeting them in a grotesque parody of power before they're cut down. Either way they're dead." Hawke hated the cruel statements she spoke but they were true if albeit harsh. Besides she must share what Anders told her, it's the least she could do.
"Now put yourself in his shoes. Remember what you were like at five or seven or even twelve? Remember your parents, your family, your life before? Now imagine that it's been discovered that you have a trait totally out of your control; something dangerous and feared, sure, but no more so than a sword in the hands of a child. Imagine your parents cursing your name, beating you, locking you up, handing you over to armed strangers. Imagine your mother tearfully pressing a pillow into your hands and knowing that in all likelihood you will never see any of your family again." This could've happened to her. This could've happened to Bethany. They were the lucky ones, the apostates despite the fact they're constantly watching their backs for Templars.
"Imagine these strange armed men then drag you across the countryside, screaming, crying, afraid, and bring you into a prison. You are thrown into a large room full of strangers, people you've been told to fear all your life until you realized you were one of them. Maybe they make fun of you, the new kid, the one who can't read, who doesn't know a fireball from a Cone of Cold. Imagine being a place where you are taught to harness the power inside of you and simultaneously condemned for having it in the first place. Where you are taught to heal, to help others, but never allowed to actually do so." Anders told her of her cousin Amell and how she reminded him of her. That Amell and Jowan tried helping him and kept healing him when he came back from the dungeons but that it was hard to do under the scrutiny of the Templars.
As Hawke spoke, it was like the crowd wasn't even there, that she wasn't inspiring and strengthening their willpower to fight. She too imagined all these things.
"Maybe you remember when your Aunt was sick or the cow sprained a leg, and you wish you could just go home and help, where you could fireball the silly wolf that keeps eating your family's sheep. But you can't go home and so you're reduced to performing ridiculous arcane exercises that may or may not have practical value. You're cursed, useless, and in the eyes of your jailers, a punishment inflicted upon the world. You're less than human and you will be watched in case you slip and if you do the templars will be there to cut you down."
"But what of this Anders? What makes him different from the rest of us?" A voice piped up from the quiet crowd and added, "In other words, why should we follow his example?"
Hawke had to make them see Anders for who he really is, not what the world is making him out to be. "This is Anders' reality. And when he fights back, does he immediately go blow up the Chantry? No. The first thing he does when he stops running is set up a clinic to heal people, to help, and to hide. He only gets involved in the mage underground because he came to help Karl, his friend." Hawke had to make them sympathize and realize. "Imagine finding someone you deeply cared for and to see them made Tranquil, an emotionless hollow shell of what they used to be.
"So he blows up the Chantry then, right? No. He sits down and writes out well-thought out arguments, and goes around begging people to read it. He tries to send it to Orsino, Meredith, anyone who will listen and make changes. He tries the peaceful route. But no one is interested in logic, in how mages who are properly trained and cared-for are no more dangerous than a trained soldier. How they could help. No one is interested in the fact that mages are the Maker's children too and his creations don't deserve to be punished for something completely out of their control." People nodded in agreement and Hawke managed a small smile. So far, so good.
"Awhile ago Anders told me that the mage cause is all but lost. Most of the people he worked with have been killed by Meredith. No one is reading his manifestos, no one is even considering his viewpoint because the system as it is has endured for a thousand years. Why should we bother to change it? I'll tell you why. Because we're people just like everybody else and deserve to be treated as such." Hawke thought back to all the times she's had to hide in Darktown in order to keep her family safe and not to gain the Templar's attention. How someone somewhere in Thedas had to do the same.
She glanced out into the crowd and questioned them once more. "How do you change something a thousand years in the making? How do you incite your fellow mages to rise up and to see the slow death for what it is; how do you fight for the freedom simply to live as a human being?"
"We tell the Templars to be nicer to us." A lone child offered with a toothy grin and Hawke gave him a small smile.
"You do it by forcing the hand of your common enemy. Anders didn't blow up the Chantry to kill the Grand Cleric or to kill anyone. He did it because it was the one thing that would guarantee that Meredith would order the Rite of Annulment on a Circle full of innocent mages. He exposed to all of the mages that their guilt or innocence doesn't matter. The Templars have the power of life and death over them and will exercise it at their whim. There is no one to protect them, no one to save them when the Rite is ordered." She recalled a time when a rumor was going around that the Hero of Ferelden saved the Circle of Magi at Lake Calenhad from the Rite of Annulment and let the mages in Ferelden watch themselves instead of the Templars.
"Meredith would have ordered it anyway for she had already sent to Val Royeaux for permission but that particular execution of the Rite would have been cloaked under the guise of 'they're all blood mages and they deserve it.' They all would have died without a murmur, the Circle wiped clean, and with no one left to argue their guilt or innocence. Anders' actions make it crystal-clear that he is the one to blame for the Chantry and that the Circle was in no way responsible. But Meredith takes it out on them anyway because the people will demand blood and after all they're just mages, it's not like they're human. Right?" Hawke said the last part softly, watching something flicker across their faces. Unreadable expressions they bore and it was hard to tell whether they were listening or not.
"Anders reveals to all of the mages beyond a shadow of a doubt that they exist at the Templar's sufferance and that they are to be executed regardless if they are guilty or innocent. The Circle is a death sentence. Change and revolution won't come from the outside. So he creates it on the inside and pushes the Templars to reveal who they really are. Executioners." That same fear they had before appeared again but something was hidden behind that emotion. Determination.
"There are fourteen Circles of Magi in Thedas, each with dozens or even hundreds of mages. For a thousand years untold generations of mages have come and gone, been imprisoned, tortured, killed. Unless someone does something, untold future generations will continue in the same vicious cycle." Those exact words he told her when she had helped him pass out his manifestos and now she wishes she would've listened more closely.
"He takes on the mantle and burden of being the savior of his people. The compassionate healer kills a building full of innocent people -and it nearly destroys him to do it- in order to save thousands upon thousands of innocents in the present and future. He knows that he deserves to die for what he's done and begs me to put him to the sword. As long as the revolution occurs, his own life is unimportant." Hawke's face hardened, hands clenched tightly; she now wanted that moth eaten scarf back.
Hawke watched as the fear completely washed away and a new feeling was instilled in them. They were all somewhere in between afraid and lonely from total wreck before they came here but now...
"Life for us has been less than kind. We've all been treated like dirt before. It's how we deal with it is what makes us who are." Looks of approval flashed in their eyes. "Anders refuses to accept that he or any mage deserve their treatment and he fights, unceasingly, for all of them. For us. He would sacrifice his life so that justice may be done."
"What did you do with Anders afterward?" A lone voice called out unexpectedly.
"I showed him mercy."