faderift | OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

WHO: Many People
WHAT: Cleaning up Kirkwall
WHEN: Cloudreach 1-21
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: This log post is for characters who go early to Kirkwall to assist in preparing it for the rest of those assigned there. We strongly encourage IC discussion of things left to character discretion—someone should definitely do a crystal post to discuss what to do with the personal belongings left behind in the Gallows or what new form the statues should take!

Kirkwall once lived on the edge of the Tevinter Imperium and was home to nearly a million slaves. Stolen from elven lands or shipped from across the sea, all slaves fed the Imperium's unquenchable thirst for expansion. They worked in massive quarries and sweltering foundries that produced stone and steel for the Empire.

The city's complicated past is not easy to forget, history having earmarked many corners of the stone city. A ship approaching the harbor spots the city's namesake: an imposing black wall. It is visible for miles, and carved into the cliff side are a pantheon of vile guardians representing the Old Gods. Over the years, the Chantry has effaced many of these profane sentinels, but it will take many more years to erase them all.

Also carved into the cliff is a channel that permits ships into the city's interior. Flanking the channel are two massive bronze statues—the Twins of Kirkwall. The statues have a practical use. Kirkwall sits next to the narrowest point of the Waking Sea, and a massive chain net can be erected between the statues and the lighthouse, closing off the only narrow navigable lane. This stranglehold on sea traffic is jealously guarded by the ever-changing rulers of the city as the net trolls taxes, tolls, and extortions in from the sea.

—From In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar, by Brother Genitivi

Establishing a presence in Kirkwall is a delicate matter. First, there's Provisional Viscount Bran Cavin—a man so used to batting back friendly offers of entirely harmless occupation of the battered city-state that his first three responses to the Inquisition's leadership appeared to be slightly personalized form letters. Proving that the Inquisition is here to work and not to conquer will be a process. The first step in that process is the second reason the move is delicate: the only building the Provisional Viscount is willing to part with is the Gallows, left quarantined and unoccupied since Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard's famous crystallization into red lyrium in the courtyard. The Gallows have since overgrown with red lyrium. If anyone is going to live and work there, there's a lot of work to do.

↠ Cloudreach 1-3: The Journey There
↠ Cloudreach 3-4: Arrival
↠ Cloudreach 4-14: Haunted
↠ Cloudreach 14-21: Spring Cleaning

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A clattering comes from somewhere along the hall that heralds the arrival of one Yngvi Congealedinagutterson. And nugs. And an empty keg. Doing the most.

"Serah!" Testing out the traditional greetings again, they're feeling rusty. His pockets are jingling because guess what: want, take, have, why are the dead going to need any of this stuff? He'd be letting the home team on home turf, can't be doing that can he? Someone'll report him. "Your carriage as requested."

You requested it yeah?

"Oh, thank fuck."

Relief. Perhaps not the most respectful reaction, when one has an armful of corpse, but it's honest. This has been… a long day. A bitterly nostalgic one.

Traces of white light dissipate from her knife as she gestures — do you mind? — to the keg. The wheelbarrows have been breaking down all afternoon, and dragging sacks of bone is good for neither morale nor a skeleton's structural integrity.

At least they’ve yet to run across any of the smaller bodies, the ones she knows must wait somewhere in these halls.

"Careful. Some of them still bite."

(She's noticed that jangle. If Wren doesn’t exactly approve, neither can she fault the practicality. Most faces here are too withered to identify, even with the assistance of trinkets and correspondence. What point is there, beyond that?)

Turn anywhere in Kirkwall and you're going to run into bones, trip over them, open some old chest or door or break through a wall and find them. Skulls and other little piles are markers on a map to you. Sometimes a thing that shares the table too. It's not just the Nevarrans that feel the need to trot out some skull to feast day dinners after all but all in good time, all in good time.

Yngvi shoves the keg the rest of the way over, waiting to see if it does but his hands are wrapped up. Precautions.

"They bit before, less lip on them which is nice. Unless they're elsewhere? Might've stepped in them if they are. Used to run a tight ship she did, back in the day. One place that didn't smell." Not that he minds exactly because he doesn't see the point in getting hung up on it, a smell is a smell, you get used to it then you scrub it off but it's the whingers elsewhere he can't be doing with.

Gallows humour. If it fits,

"Try looking in the rats' bellies." Lips aplenty. It must have been a feast at first, though Wren doesn't know what they've been eating since. Each other, she supposes. "Perhaps the Nevarrans have the right of it with that perfume."

You know. The kind he drinks. Not that she really gives a damn either: A childhood chopping offal, Val Royeaux in high summer, these things accustom you to odour.

Wren crams the body in as best it'll fit, but he was a tall man in life, and a dusty forearm sways out creaking. She wipes the knife on a bit of exposed sleeve, steps back to regard the arrangement.

(A moment to breathe, only. This is no real puzzle. They can snap off the limb and pack it separately.)

"I did not realize you had been within." Only so many ways to make a deal — particularly with a customer base in confinement — but it's one thing to picture him conducting business in an alley, and another between these walls. "Before all this."

Sighing from somewhere deep in the chests of the ancestors that would disown him entirely, Yngvi shakes his head.

"You have much to learn about rats and the etiquette or you're going to wake up trussed on one of their tables with a rotting apple in your mouth, them washing their pink little hands waiting for you, eyes in the dark. Might be a while before they get to you, I've heard they had a glut of Templars after everything. Reckon it's the rifters what need to watch where they step on a dark night." Certain dwarves might have reputations for storytelling but Yngvi can do this sort, the kind of thing passed down from the family when you're little and might wander. It doesn't stop you exactly. It just sorts you. That's the point of the exercise. Rats with perfume though, that's an idea there. Might need to go investigate that one at some point if he ever gets away again.

Accustomed to the life he was leading pre-Skyhold, Yngvi rolls up a sleeve that was sliding back down one arm and puts all his effort into snapping the arm. Not the stoutest of dwarven folk but he works with his hands for a living, pries apart traps and mechanisms that for all they're delicate still have teeth and strength in them.

"What, 'm not good enough to enter these hallowed halls?" He's disappointed that his voice doesn't echo, it ruins the drama but it was only ever the Keep that had a real echo going on at all times. "We had other stuff 'sides the lyrium, all sorts of bits and pieces everyone wanted without the merchant's guild tariffs on everything because they'll gouge your eyes out and sell them because most of them are all really Orzammar still. And that's how Orzammar is. Need to be seen to be seen, you get me?"

"To think they worried about our welcome," They? The Inquisition, the Templars, her dear old dead grandmother; take your pick. Wren drawls. "When the locals hand out free apples."

She watches the elbow splinter free, and supposes that she should feel something more for it. At least something different. If you feel enough for long enough, it all just blurs into noise. Her teeth buzz, skin crawls. The ache in her chest —

— That’s only living.

As these are only bones. Wren shakes her head, pushes it down. Talking shit helps.

"These halls are not hallowed enough for you, Monsieur." Yeah, she gets him. A certain amount of trade is always to be expected and overlooked. It’s just that Yngvi and subtlety are somewhat incongruous. (It wouldn't be so easy for him if they weren't.) "All these delightful statues, and not a single dwarf."

Wren grabs a lump of chalk to mark a wide X on the wall. It must be nearing the end of her shift, they can roll the cask down together.

"Are you prepared to tangle with them again?"

This them, too, is unspecified. The Guild, the Carta — but she's left him an out, if he wants it.

"Oh you should've been here for the doglords, a sight to behold that day. Proper civilised stuff." Honestly he did expect to be turned back. Yeah they've acquitted themselves fairly well for the bits he's been around for but Orlais and the Free Marches? Might've been more of a problem. It'll be if and when they drag Anders along. "Few more weeks and we'll have the rotten ones, they're better."

They hurt less but they explode on impact, that's what he's aiming for.

Laughing doesn't feel right exactly because everyone is too edgy. Tiptoeing around everything but Wren startles it out of him when he's wiping his hands on his coat. "Shite, I need to practice my curtsy again now, the spirits'll be after me if I don't. It'd be unfair on the craftsman in charge, they'd need to put their eyes out after engraving my likeness to stone or bronze or gold. Then I'd get a cult. Like them things we were dealing with." No one rumble him about that whole cult of the gallows statues, there was totally a cult, he is pushing the cult angle. Besides, look what they did erect in the end? Some upjumped doglord that went and murdered a bunch of Yngvi's family and friends and vague associates just because they were Carta out and about? Fuck that. Fuck that completely.

Kirkwall and statues can rot with Orzammar and paragons.

"Wrong tense." Yngvi, of all people to go correcting grammar? It's more likely than you think. "Tangled. Not tangle. It's happened, y'know." Is that why it feels like a knot in his chest when he sees too many faces that all nod to him or say 'come have a drink, tell me where you've been' and he can't say no because he doesn't have a reason to say no. There's no where to go exactly. Scurry off to the Inquisition maybe but they wanted dwarves so someone would just say go talk to them. "Everyone's seen some about, met some. 'You know dwarves' they said in Skyhold even when I came with just one dwarf, three humans, an elf and an elfblooded woman." Inquisition why are you like this he says with a shrug and a shove of the cart because the sooner they move the sooner they can shoot the shit.

"This Trade tongue," A short gesture, the requisite joke to soften it. "Une langue brute."

It's difficult to tell when Yngvi's worked up. He floods the air with words, where others hew to telling silences; leaves the listener to pick and strain for significance. But the closer they come to it, the more detail he speaks of the Boneflayers. As though some small security blanket of memory, a talisman against shade.

You know dwarves, and perhaps that's the problem.

"Anyone to be concerned of?"

Wren adjusts the strap of a gauntlet, casts an eyebrow up. Everyone, at a guess: the Carta are not known for employing the kindly and incompetent. But if he’s running interference for the Inquisition, the least they can do is try to have his back.

The rest she’s ill-equipped to handle, to do aught other than to listen. However many qunari jokes she might field, Wren’s blood is as human as it comes, and she can’t deny how badly they need the contacts.

That doesn’t mean that he needs to be alone in it.

"I’ll take first go," Best if they do this in turns, leg lengths being what they are. "If anything falls out, they'll find it on the next sweep."

Eventually. What a ghastly little trail of breadcrumbs.

"Hammers are involved. Made with them. Chiselled into you." Tuck that under your hat, Dalish aren't the only ones with things written on them but well who would admit to getting this dwarf out of his clothes? "It could be worse."

It could be like some places with Orzammar traditions, and Yngvi could have been from there or had someone very recent from there. The itch under his skin would be worse because then people wouldn't understand it.

"Everyone and no one. S'like all folk, some of them you'd trust to watch your pint, some of them you'd trust to sell everything out from under you. Depends what mood some of them are in what they'd do but reckon half of them thought I was dead and all; how d'you send letters tramping across Thedas?" Easily, one assumes because a lot of people manage that simple task and with the frequency of dwarven merchants everywhere you go and the Carta popping up more and more, it'd be even easier but yeah. "The old men worry. Old men do that, think it must be a hazard."

Yngvi is that child that never writes. Hold a vigil for him. (And everyone wants a good return on an investment.)

"Unless it's the hand, one came flopping up in my bed and slapped me across the face, swear on Andraste's probably sainted knickers."

"Of course. The chisels might be dull."

Or the Stone itself. But how do you send letters? With a raven, or a ship, or a caravan, or a runner; in general, with the intention to actually write.

She doesn't. The occasional belated If you heard about that, I lived. Wren knows what she's avoiding by an idle pen, but Yngvi? What expectations has he come home to?

The old men worry, and she doubts it's for a tender heart.

"And how are they taking your resurrection? Those with hands still attached."

Edited 2017-04-10 01:59 (UTC)

Well you send money sometimes but doesn't everyone do that? Send things to dreadful people because they put money into you and even if you sent back news, words are never going to settle debt. That's how everyone puts it. Alienage, Crows, Coterie, Carta, you always have something you'll pay off in the end.

Yngvi let the interest pile up. Didn't really have the head for numbers on this sort of thing the way he does for a bargain.

(Someone knew that one.)

"Loudly. You ever met a big dwarven family? The hair is loud, the eyebrows are loud, the handshakes are thunderclaps. Things fall out of the beards that folk forgot were there that you find out were older than you, some of those things had lives and families in that time. Of course there's always some sulking prick in the corner." That sulking prick is kind of one of Yngvi's dads but who doesn't have a strained relationship with his dad in Thedas? "Look they'll all be happy to see Templars and Mages sleeping here again, knowing their boy had a hand in it while the other one is off doing-- well probably Nevarran girls if he can."

"I often sneak into dwarven reunions. Blend right in."

Templars and mages, He’s shoving it back at her again — but it's not a complete brushoff. Wren sucks in a breath. She'll only push this so far; the offer's on the table, however quietly implied.

All she can do is keep her eyes open, and hope he doesn't have need of them. Too much shit to handle, too many less capable of looking after themselves.

"Likes them cold, does he?" Accusing your friends' brothers of necrophilia, as you do. "This is the convenience of wedding Andraste: Ashes are so very portable."

She’ll go along with a change in topic. Blasphemy seems more likely to cheer him.

Edited 2017-04-11 09:25 (UTC)

"Sitting at the children's table, waiting for your beard to fill in." Mmm yeah let him-- not rub his scruff because that means he'd need to wash his face, his face hasn't been touching corpses, it can go a little longer just with a splash of questionably clean water.

The hands go back down after hovering in mid-air, back to shoving the keg along because one day he'll need to clean this and there will never be enough lemons to get the smell out, he will need to improvise perhaps but for now?

Still it's appreciated. No Boneflayers means being exposed in too many places. Dwarves seldom fare well that way.

"You know they're warmer than you'd think." Is that a confirmation from Mr. Congealedinagutterson? "So what, stick your finger in, twiddle it around - was it good for you too love? Probably more than the great betrayer ever did."

The puff of something that — under other circumstances — might be laughter.

"Pour them on the floor, sweep her up off her feet." Maker, let him never repeat that to anyone.

"I have seldom heard such passion of the Chant," She begins, "As I have among those Brothers and Sisters who have taken the vow."

"I am given to wonder, at such times, what one does with thousands of eager spouses. How difficult it must be, to find a moment's peace."

Congratulations, Yngvi's snorting laugh comes out.

"You'd get kicked out for saying that. Wouldn't burn you for it when your time was up, you might enjoy it and have something written down for scandalous things. I do have a list of every Chantry we got banned for going to for enthusiastic worship."

Is that how you put it when you need to run out in your boots, clutching everything to you with everything else flapping in the breeze?

"Same as parents do. Feign deafness."

"I am sorry," She tips her head to the side, cups a free hand around an ear. "I did not catch that —"

Wren may not be anyone's dad, but she's committed.

"— If this business of public debate continues, I may do so." Feign deafness, that is. "Will I know any Chantries on the list? Anyone that I should avoid mentioning the Boneflayer name to?"

As though she intended to at all. A contact in the lyrium trade, that's all Yngvi's been of the reports thus far. Specifying Carta would be redundant.

"Dad? Dad it's your son. Yngvi. The handsome talented one."

Somewhere in Thedas, Gunnar curses his name as per usual, the next letter from him should be interesting ot say the least.

"Pretty much every Chantry we ever went to that? Not the gaudy ones in Orlais, they're just tasteless and you've got other stuff going on there. I don't know how they classed the thing with the wine in that one place though..."

They still got hired. You can't argue with results in the end and the reputation helped in a way because it was a scandalous thing for Orlesians to gossip about behind the masks. "One of them wrote the big fancy one in her book but that never happened, Melisende would've actually murdered us for that one."

"The statues are so pretty, one forgets they're of an execution."

Gaudy. That's a word for it. Easier to think of another life, than to carry Andraste's legacy in this one. Doubtless it inspires some: Elevates the story, eases belief. More practically, the nobility enjoy their comforts. The money only flows so long as they continue to appear monied.

It's distasteful; so's wheeling a corpse out in a barrel. Still has to get done.

(You put out the fires at your feet before you set any more,)

"But you've got a book about you," She considers. "I may need to learn to read. Or perhaps I shall pay one of these fine, Orlesian scholars to dictate to me —"

"When I think about all the money it took to make the statues, and we're talking workers even if they weren't paid for it properly because let's face it, you don't pay them properly you just pay one person with some grand vision. Then the materials for the statues. The materials to make those into the finished product. Then the equipment? It's a good con."

Saying nothing of the lyrium, the armour, the vestments, the wine, the candles, a thousand other things that add up when he sees them in their red garments (dye isn't cheap but it's cheaper than lyrium if everyone's hard-up in some crackdown and you're trying to fob off a desperate Templar) asking for coin from folk who don't have it? Well, isn't Andraste watching? Andraste the slave? Who freed the slaves? Who marched alongside the elves they forget about?

He can picture her handling a corpse easier than her in repose.

"Come off it, Templars can read, there's no other way to memorise the Chant without your tongues falling off. And I'm not in it." He's never read the substance of the book, maybe he is. "They're filth. Utter filth. Very accurate in their depictions of Avvar life." (They're not, that was on purpose and she's something of a laughing stock for it.)

She's been told now and again how the Chantry uses her. They do, but she chose it, and it’s been a fair trade. Food in her belly, clothes on her back; books, training, a cause. A little box in her room and a routine,

She owes them: Everyone who pays their tithes and hopes for a bit of peace.

"So I should have it dictated."

Filth's better among friends. Otherwise it's just the unfortunate drivel you find tucked away beneath the bunks. (The awkwardness always to wonder: Is this really the best they could get their hands on?)

"Do you ever," She begins, tries to decide whether to follow through. He's unhappy enough without adding her own mess. But grand statues crumble, grand visions fade. The con dies with the artist. "Think of how this shall be remembered? If anyone will at all. How small this business might seem, a few decades hence."

One way or another. Life will wind on, or the Venatori will stamp them out raw. Either way, she'll be long-gone; Yngvi, as any beetle, may survive a time beneath the boot.

Want to go tell the mages that? How there are people who'd kill, and do kill, for those same things? Yngvi'll watch and wait. He's got some traps he can set out, no charge, no fuss.

"Depends on how sturdy you think your ribs are. Or that of the one doing the reading. Might require a healer on retainer, some salons in the summer seasons have readings and between that and the corsets their lungs go pop." Yngvi does not put his finger in his mouth to make the noise, he knows where some of these corpses have been and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Yngvi looks up at her. Looks through her and there's a lurch in his gut because Wren is a Templar after all, Templars take lyrium, Templars need lyrium and for all the jokes it burns a hole through them. Is this why there was carving in Skyhold? So that some stone would remember? "One day all the mountains'll be whittled down by the wind and rain too. It's just names on bits of paper, trees wherever we buried the Dalish, bones and spirits eventually. Flags and banners. Might get some good songs and stories, that's the best you can hope for, that and someone that knows how to tell them and do them justice."

Nothing is permanent and Yngvi prefers it that way. That he can slip through the passage of time itself, through the eye of a needle.

There's a funny expression on her face, difficult to place. Perhaps it's comforting, that none of this will matter in the end; she'd find it more so, if she could believe it made anything matter less in the moment.

But it's a longer string of serious words than she's ever heard of him, and that's something in itself. An offering. If it still all matters for too fucking much, and too little by turns —

— Well. At least they're not alone in that.

"Live in the now, yes?" Hashtag YOLO, tell your friends, but she doesn't sound as though her heart's in it. The body pile's not far ahead, she stoops to begin prying Bonesy out of the barrel. "Or in the stomach of a bird."

Let the Dalish keep their trees. (She does listen when he speaks, even if it's not to her.)

"Better voices of those, anyway."

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

spring cleaning, gallows;

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