Rites of Tranquility and Annulment

These two rites are measures of control that the Templars once used to keep order in the Circles of Magi. The Rite of Tranquility was used on a mage deemed too dangerous or at risk of demonic possession to keep their gift. It cuts that mage off from the Fade, effectively cutting them off from magic, but at a terrible price. The rite also strips a person of all emotion, leaving them a husk of their former selves. Possibly the only benefit to this process is that Tranquil mages can work lyrium to enchant things far more safely than most. Long thought to be irreversible, one of the inciting incidents of the Mage-Templar war was the discovery that this was not the case, and that some of the Seekers of Truth knew about this already and attempted, violently, to hide this fact. I learned from Cassandra that initiates of the Seekers of Truth unknowingly go through this rite, which is then reversed, and it is this process that gives a Seeker their abilities.

The Rite of Annulment was the last resort of the Templars, and it simply gave them the right to kill every mage in a Circle. The Templars are supposed to be given authorization to use this rite by the Chantry, usually the Divine herself. After the destruction of the Chantry in Kirkwall by the apostate Anders, however, the city’s Knight-Commander, Meredith, who had been slowly driven insane by red lyrium, decided to not wait for permission and invoked the rite herself. Naturally, the mages did not respond well to this, and violence erupted throughout the city before Hawke and her companions were able to put a stop to it. Both rites are terrible, evil, things driven by the fear of mages. The problem is, those fears can be completely justified, as magic can be extremely dangerous. Obviously, I abhor both of them, but the moral debate is a bit moot at the moment, seeing as how both the Circles and the Templars no longer exist.