A Battered Old Journal, Prologue and Chapter Index

Title: A Battered Old Journal, Prologue

Series: Dragon Age

Characters: OC: Colin Theirin, OC: Mathis Hawke

Words: 421

Summary: Hidden in the library of the Ferelden Circle Tower is a battered old leather-bound journal that has given the mages of Thedas hope for one day being able to live free of stone walls and templar jailors. Within it are the accountings of Mathis Hawke during both the rise and fall of the Kirkwall Circle as well as his life after on the run.

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There is a battered old leather-bound journal that the mages of Ferelden’s Tower protect above any others.

It came to the Tower over a hundred years ago, the only possession of a fifteen year-old boy who claimed only the name ‘Hawke’. Hawke disappeared without a trace five days after he was brought in and how he managed that is still a mystery. A week later one of the Senior Enchanters found the journal hidden in the library and read it, each page bringing a revelation as to who its author had been and who the boy Hawke was.

He hid it in another place in the library and shared the existence of the journal with only those he trusted. In the years since that discovery, one mage or another has stumbled across the journal and read what was within, sharing it with others so almost all know of it. A handful of templars (including the current Knight-Commander) also know of its existence but they are the ones who understand that those they guard are still people.

Both groups guard the journal to keep it from being discovered by the Chantry. If the Divine knew what has grown within the Tower for a hundred years, what has spread out tentatively to other Circles through carefully coded correspondence and the rare travels, she would call for all of them to be annulled.

Because for a hundred years the knowledge that mages can be free to live their lives without being trapped has existed. All thanks to a disappearing boy who claimed a name the Chantry declared traitorous and blasphemous.

What work would we and our few templar allies go so far to hide?

Only one written by a mage who was born into that freedom could push all of us to such heights. The very public knowledge of his death, his mother’s death, his uncle’s death, and the survival of his sister and the children he writes of only aided our efforts.

The words of Mathis Hawke have influenced the mages of Thedas for a hundred years because the Divine of the Dragon Age, of the Faith Age, and of the current Age were wrong. Kirkwall was not full of heretics who allowed maleficarum free reign; it was full of men and women who merely wanted to live.

And it is the hope and dream of us all that one day what so briefly existed in Kirkwall will be the norm throughout Thedas.

– from the journal of First Enchanter Colin Theirin, 11:20 Blood

Chapter Index
Chapter One: Fifteen Solace, 9:56 Dragon 
Chapter Two: Twenty-seven Solace, 9:56 Dragon
Chapter Three: Nine August, 9:56 Dragon
Chapter Four: Thirteen August, 9:56 Dragon
Chapter Five: Thirty August, 9:56 Dragon
Chapter Six: Tenth Kingsway, 9:56 Dragon
Chapter Seven: Twenty-one Kingsway, 9:56 Dragon