"Removed from their homes by templars."

"No mage or student is allowed to leave the environs of their Circle except by the explicit permission of the templars, which is not given lightly."

"Can their families visit them?"

"No. It is actually dangerous to be around an untrained mage, but not after they've learned basic control, which doesn't usually take longer than a year or two. After that, keeping them separate from their families is totally unnecessary, except I suppose that it makes it more difficult for their families to decide they are being mistreated and try to rescue them, which I suspect would be a concern if family visits were allowed."

"...So, sometimes a child turns up with an admittedly dangerous condition and needs help and a year or two without unsupervised visits, and this help comes in the form of literally kidnapping and imprisoning them for probably the rest of their lives and then turning them into an emotionless zombie slave if they step out of line, with 'line' defined by religious fanatics who are willing to die young in order to stand ready to defeat rogue mages."

"Right, what can I do to get everything else on your list out of the way, because it sounds like at least one mage is necessary to institute an alternative."

"I expect Tev already asked if you'd be willing to distribute the darkspawn disintegration power to the army we're assembling against the current Blight," she says. "That's my first priority right now: save the world from the immediate threat. After that, I want to restore the Grey Wardens of Ferelden to sustainable numbers, and ideally find a way to stop Grey Wardens from dying so young, which might involve experimenting with whether your purification magic can make someone stop being a Grey Warden, but I don't want to start on that yet because we're going to need every Warden we have if we want to stop this Blight before it turns Ferelden and Orlais into a repeat of the Anderfels."

"What's the exact advantage of being a Grey Warden in particular? I know about the darkspawn sensing thing but it doesn't sound like an overwhelming advantage."

"...There are dragons in this world? I mean, are there un-tainted dragons."

"No, we don't have dragons. Millions of years ago there were very large reptiles and their fossils inspired myths about dragons but the real creatures only had four limbs apiece and they've all been dead for a long time."

"Anyway, I'm happy to tap long lines of people with any combination of magic powers they'd like and perform smaller scale experiments," says Annie. "As long as I can bring my fiancé with me and he's worked that out with his brother so it shouldn't be a problem."

"He may or may not be commanding the army the dwarves will be sending up to help."

"...Tev's similarly lyriumy to my weird sense, but less so," says Annie. "And it interacted oddly with the disintegration power when I gave Stalas that. I'm told he glows more often and a different color now."

"Anyway, when are you planning to be on your way? If we're going with you it will inform how quickly I need to invent the thing I'm working on - or whether I have enough time that it's even worth rushing it."

"I don't think I can stay longer than another week; we still have to look for a clan of Dalish elves in the Brecilian Forest to ask them for their contribution. After that and another few relevant errands, we'll be returning to Redcliffe to join the assembled armies. If we don't decide to ultimately host the gathering somewhere else, which we might. But unless you want to cross most of a country with us, I don't think it would do you much good to follow us out of Orzammar."

"A week isn't long enough to test the thing, let alone invent it first," says Annie. "But if we don't need to leave on the same schedule I guess I have a bit longer. I'll ask Stalas."