Health, specifically. You might note that stories of habitual cannibals inevitably have those sad beings as rather mad, far beyond the reach of this one mere star and into other stars such as your world of origin. There's a reason for that, in the blood and in the meat. Sickness has a very easy time crossing like to like, even amongst beasts. The more consumed the higher the risk of such an illness striking. There is no living thing thusly that prospers, which also consumes its own kind as a regular and large portion of its diet.
[Explaining the details of it as he understood them might well be beyond him, without being certain of Myr's actual base knowledge. But everyone understood sickness and contagion.
These Templar must be some form of guard or police force. That at least was familiar, even the Ancients had ways to deal with rogue elements of their society, or escaped concepts getting loose and causing trouble. Bringing down one of their own, gone mad from some source, was obligatory.]
I have long wondered what the monsters did in this world for the millions of years before the onset of witch bonds a mere few centuries ago. Was the murder of witches rampant, so they may be devoured? There's no tales of such, and surely there would be as a warning for why bonds are vital, lest civilization as it is return to those dark and bloody days. Mayhap truly there is no risk for madness, and it results only because it is expected.
[He wasn't entirely sure of it. There could be a point where the beast and the thinking mind simply ... merged, seamless and whole. Certainly his harpy neighbors didn't seem to need any such bonds with a witch to keep going, they were living quite fine as they were.]
Yes. Two. A deadly enemy, and one whom was once an ally.
[It's an explanation that Myr's never heard before, but it makes absolute intuitive sense laid out that way. Certainly cannibal societies were not a talked-about thing in the Circles of Magi, but there did seem to be an odd trend toward madness in the accounts Myr had read of them in passing--in Genitivi or one of the man's peers. Sicknesses being more apt to spread like-to-like even accords with the sympathetic principles every mage knew were writ in the Fade; if demons could be drawn to haunt a man's mind for the familiar content of his thoughts, then why wouldn't an illness be the same way?]
I hadn't known that. S'pose that does go some way to explaining our disgust for it, doesn't it...
[The Maker's moral rules underlay nature's workings, after all.
The mention of "millions of years" gives the Faun momentary pause. Actually, hadn't they seen something of the world's deep past?]
I think, [he says, slowly,] --based on a dream we had some months ago, that the earliest Monsters were not much more than very smart beasts, and there were no Witches for them to draw from. They must've gotten their magic from the leylines, then--or from their connection to the world as it was.
I suspect for a time after that the kinds lived separate and what we call "feral" now might have simply been how Monsters were, among each other--and the more dangerous irruptions of our nature are in part a result of how society's demands suppress and distort them. And--perhaps--
[There's a sound as he gets up and begins pacing, hooves click-clicking on whatever floor he's walking on.] --If humans here didn't have magic to start, but gained it over time, they might've pulled it from whatever natural reservoir Monsters once drew on. We, [hm, wait,] they wouldn't have needed to turn to Witches until much of the magic was in Witches, and then with the advent of the Cwyld pushing them out of their homes...
[It's not a wholly connected train of thought, not yet. He mumbles to himself a little more on the subject, before sighing.] Wish I could make better use of the Coven's library--or the Underground's; there's got to be more on this somewhere.
[Then a jingling interruption as he shakes his head to clear the cobwebs.] --Though I suppose we could test the hypothesis that we go mad because of our own expectations, if we surveyed all the Mirrorbound and whether or not they believed what the Coven told them.
[Pause.] I'm--sorry, messere.
[He's put himself temporarily into a like situation. He doesn't have many enemies, but if the only people who'd ever come through the Mirror from Thedas had been--oh--Corypheus and Vandelin's apprentice Rohesia...] That's surely worse than being alone here.
[He sounds a touch incredulous, but he's still not really experienced how those work here - the one time he had such a dream-nightmare, it hadn't overlapped at all into the waking world. He'll allow it for the time being, because prophecy was a possibility, why not looking back? But he'd want evidence in time, and an explanation for how they became intelligent if they really were just animals once.
It didn't bode well for his eventual fate, though.]
When you say 'earliest', how early do you speak? Millions of years? Most species rise to sapience in the span of only a few million, but the implication is that these ... humans had already been thus and intelligence only came far after them, and the local mortals are not particularly further along than the earliest of advances thus cannot be an ancient species.
[There must be information somewhere indeed, but how much could a blind faun really do by way of research?]
... If you have not already, it might be advisable to seek a spell which will translate the written word into speech for you. I fear I will not be a great example of whether or not one might go mad simply through belief, for I have already fallen victim to it. Expectation leads the result, one would have to isolate a new monster with no information leading from the Coven, and then keep them that way for some months.
[A difficult prospect!
But easier to consider than other things.]
Ah, there is no pity needed. We are used to spending decades, sometimes centuries alone. This is merely an inconvenient problem which could have been made easier by a willing ally.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 03:51 pm (UTC)[Explaining the details of it as he understood them might well be beyond him, without being certain of Myr's actual base knowledge. But everyone understood sickness and contagion.
These Templar must be some form of guard or police force. That at least was familiar, even the Ancients had ways to deal with rogue elements of their society, or escaped concepts getting loose and causing trouble. Bringing down one of their own, gone mad from some source, was obligatory.]
I have long wondered what the monsters did in this world for the millions of years before the onset of witch bonds a mere few centuries ago. Was the murder of witches rampant, so they may be devoured? There's no tales of such, and surely there would be as a warning for why bonds are vital, lest civilization as it is return to those dark and bloody days. Mayhap truly there is no risk for madness, and it results only because it is expected.
[He wasn't entirely sure of it. There could be a point where the beast and the thinking mind simply ... merged, seamless and whole. Certainly his harpy neighbors didn't seem to need any such bonds with a witch to keep going, they were living quite fine as they were.]
Yes. Two. A deadly enemy, and one whom was once an ally.
[It's ... said with some reluctance.]
Neither are options.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-24 06:27 am (UTC)[It's an explanation that Myr's never heard before, but it makes absolute intuitive sense laid out that way. Certainly cannibal societies were not a talked-about thing in the Circles of Magi, but there did seem to be an odd trend toward madness in the accounts Myr had read of them in passing--in Genitivi or one of the man's peers. Sicknesses being more apt to spread like-to-like even accords with the sympathetic principles every mage knew were writ in the Fade; if demons could be drawn to haunt a man's mind for the familiar content of his thoughts, then why wouldn't an illness be the same way?]
I hadn't known that. S'pose that does go some way to explaining our disgust for it, doesn't it...
[The Maker's moral rules underlay nature's workings, after all.
The mention of "millions of years" gives the Faun momentary pause. Actually, hadn't they seen something of the world's deep past?]
I think, [he says, slowly,] --based on a dream we had some months ago, that the earliest Monsters were not much more than very smart beasts, and there were no Witches for them to draw from. They must've gotten their magic from the leylines, then--or from their connection to the world as it was.
I suspect for a time after that the kinds lived separate and what we call "feral" now might have simply been how Monsters were, among each other--and the more dangerous irruptions of our nature are in part a result of how society's demands suppress and distort them. And--perhaps--
[There's a sound as he gets up and begins pacing, hooves click-clicking on whatever floor he's walking on.] --If humans here didn't have magic to start, but gained it over time, they might've pulled it from whatever natural reservoir Monsters once drew on. We, [hm, wait,] they wouldn't have needed to turn to Witches until much of the magic was in Witches, and then with the advent of the Cwyld pushing them out of their homes...
[It's not a wholly connected train of thought, not yet. He mumbles to himself a little more on the subject, before sighing.] Wish I could make better use of the Coven's library--or the Underground's; there's got to be more on this somewhere.
[Then a jingling interruption as he shakes his head to clear the cobwebs.] --Though I suppose we could test the hypothesis that we go mad because of our own expectations, if we surveyed all the Mirrorbound and whether or not they believed what the Coven told them.
[Pause.] I'm--sorry, messere.
[He's put himself temporarily into a like situation. He doesn't have many enemies, but if the only people who'd ever come through the Mirror from Thedas had been--oh--Corypheus and Vandelin's apprentice Rohesia...] That's surely worse than being alone here.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 01:07 am (UTC)[He sounds a touch incredulous, but he's still not really experienced how those work here - the one time he had such a dream-nightmare, it hadn't overlapped at all into the waking world. He'll allow it for the time being, because prophecy was a possibility, why not looking back? But he'd want evidence in time, and an explanation for how they became intelligent if they really were just animals once.
It didn't bode well for his eventual fate, though.]
When you say 'earliest', how early do you speak? Millions of years? Most species rise to sapience in the span of only a few million, but the implication is that these ... humans had already been thus and intelligence only came far after them, and the local mortals are not particularly further along than the earliest of advances thus cannot be an ancient species.
[There must be information somewhere indeed, but how much could a blind faun really do by way of research?]
... If you have not already, it might be advisable to seek a spell which will translate the written word into speech for you. I fear I will not be a great example of whether or not one might go mad simply through belief, for I have already fallen victim to it. Expectation leads the result, one would have to isolate a new monster with no information leading from the Coven, and then keep them that way for some months.
[A difficult prospect!
But easier to consider than other things.]
Ah, there is no pity needed. We are used to spending decades, sometimes centuries alone. This is merely an inconvenient problem which could have been made easier by a willing ally.