(She looks at the Breach. It's a good sign, she hopes.)

"Am I interrupting something?"

Roderick elects to try to ignore her. "You walk a dangerous line, Seeker."

"The Breach may be quiet, but it is still a threat. I will not ignore it." Then to Bellona, "We were discussing our next steps."

"What are our options?" she asks, stepping up. 

Roderick splutters. "You are involving her? For all you know, she was behind the death of the Divine!"

"No," Cassandra says grimly. "She was not. What she has done, and what we heard at the Temple of Sacred Ashes is proof enough of that."

Leliana picks up the thread. "Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave. Someone Most Holy did not expect. Perhaps they died. Perhaps they escaped. Or perhaps... they have allies who yet live."

Roderick stares. "I am a suspect?" he says incredulously.

"You," Leliana says flatly, "and many others."

"At an early point like this? Everyone should be." Shrug. "I'm sorry for your loss - but I came into this as an unlucky bystander, nothing more."

"Some luck," Roderick scoffs. "You survive the explosion that killed the Divine, that mark on your hand that just happens to be exactly what is needed to close the rifts, your foolhardy assault on the temple, and then you fail to even fully close the Breach."

"What do you suggest we do differently?"

"We must travel to Val Royeaux. A new Divine will need to be elected-"

"We don't have that kind of time, and you know it, Chancellor. The world is burning. It will not wait six months for the grand clerics to debate."

     "You do not have the authority to do anything else!"

"That's where you're wrong, Chancellor. Cassandra?"

She takes a thick tome off a shelf to the side and sets it firmly on the table with a heavy thud.

"This is writ from Divine Justinia, granting us the authority to act. To bring back the Inquisition of old and restore order to the world."

"By the will of the Divine and on my position as a Seeker for Truth, I declare the Inquisition reborn."

Roderick blanches. Then, lips compressed in a thin line, stalks out of the room.

" - What's the Inquisition?"

"A very old Andrastian institution. One that goes back to before the founding of the Chantry itself, almost a thousand years ago."

A quick history lesson: the Tevinter Imperium controls the continent, the First Blight happens (brief digression for what darkspawn are- corrupted monsters from underground following the will of a blighted dragon), the Imperium has its control shaken, an alliance of the southern Alamarri tribes creates a contending nation. Led by a divinely-inspired princess (that's Andraste), they ally with the oppressed elves and push the Tevinters back to north of the Waking Sea. Andraste is betrayed, taken prisoner, and executed by the Imperium. Her cult (and belief in the Maker she proselytized for) lives on, however, and the Imperium never regains control of the south. It's a chaotic and lawless time as people rediscover what they want to be without the shadow of empire pressing down on them. The original Inquisition was a group of zealous cultists who had it as their mission to protect the common people from the ravages of the disorder, righting wrongs and striking down tyrants. Not all the records paint them in an entirely complimentary light. 'Inquisition' is a name that will command fear as well as respect.

She listens intently, asking only a few clarifying questions along the way (unusually so for her).

"You're leaning on people thinking I'm the Herald of Andraste," she says at the end, quietly. 

"We haven't discouraged them."

"I'm not. And I'm a servant of Truth, not your propaganda poster child," she warns. "I didn't support a nation built on lies when it was my own. I won't support someone else's."

"It wasn't something we started, for whatever that's worth." Sigh. "And to be honest, we don't have the resources to fully stamp the rumors out. Justinia's death has us on the back foot. She had intended us to force a resolution to the mage-templar conflict if the Conclave failed, but now... We have another, larger problem in the Breach."

"Rumors are one thing. An official stance would be another."

"And are the mages and templars going to agree you have a larger common problem now?"

"Doubtful. Neither side is what you'd call reasonable."

"Do you think we're likely to end up having to pick a side?"

"The way this shit's been going? Yeah."

"I'll want to know more about them then, at some point..."

"That's fair. There's a lot of context we should catch you up on."

"And I should share more of my own history, and especially how Amestrian alchemy works."