OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

[faderifting]

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

Comments

3;

[foxsays]

The fox struts along ahead of Araceli, as out of place in Kirkwall as he was in Skyhold and even back home but confident enough to come trotting up ahead of his mistress. Calling him back before he can entangle himself and dirty anything, he sits at Diana's feet, staring upwards and offering a paw.

Don't be fooled by the gentleman act, he's shameless.

"How much do you want to know?" She offers since...well, better let them decide how much they actually want before she gets going, the hazards of being a captain's daughter.

[intruthandlove]

Act or no, Diana is charmed. "Hello, friend," she says, a soft laugh in her voice as she kneels down to greet the fox, "What a fine coat you have."

Her communion with nature is a little strange here. It doesn't flow as seamlessly as it did back home, but the affinity was certainly there. Diana stays where she is kneeling, looking up to smile at the woman who addressed her, "As much as you can tell me. I'm afraid I am very far from home and unfamiliar with the land."

[foxsays]

"It's why I gave him his name. Half because it means light where I come from but because he's always had such fur ever since he was a baby." Araceli explains, trying and failing not to laugh when he ends up wiggling his whole body as he wags his tail, ears pricked up.

As Lux continues to be his usual self around any lady, Araceli tries to pick a place to begin. "The Inquisition has only recently arrived in Kirkwall in order to establish a presence in the north, before we were in Skyhold which was much more isolated when it was so high in the Frostback mountains. Kirkwall has suffered much in the past years, however." As she begins to explain, Araceli's glad that she had to study so much of the history as part of her bard studies now even if she'd chafed against some of the reading at times. Gesturing with her left hand, a glowing green mark on it, she sighs quietly. "Kirkwall was where the Mage-Templar war began, or where the spark was kindled at least; the Chantry was destroyed by a mage and from there...it spread. And I realise now that I didn't ask if magic is something you have where you come from."

She's gotten so used to magic now that it's only when she doesn't understand something or a new rifter tells her about their own things that she really thinks about it. Not bad when magic as it happens in Thedas only exists in stories back home.

[intruthandlove]

Diana stays where she is kneeled as she listens to Araceli's explanation, hands absently stroking Lux's fine coat.

"And then this Coryphius appeared," she muses softly, then smiles at the woman, "I am familiar with it, though it's not a gift I have myself." She rises now, giving Lux a parting stroke before offering her hand, "My thanks. I am Diana."

[foxsays]

"Yes and no. In the end they called a Conclave to put an end to it, headed by Divine Justinia, the leader of the Chantry as a whole. The Conclave was destroyed and she was slain, as was almost every other soul in attendance but for one with a mark much like ours. They called her the Herald of Andraste. She could seal rifts with her mark though...I have asked little of her." Araceli's arrival in Thedas isn't something she's thought much of in a long time but touching her hand carefully lest someone look too long at it, she knows it's the only way to tell the tale correctly.

"Corypheus attacked Haven in the end, that was where I arrived, found by some who were scouting the ruins after. The Herald's body was found too when we all arrived at Skyhold together. Araceli Bonaventura, at your service." In a public place or not, she gives a bow because traditions for her are still traditions even a year and a half of Thedas life later.

[intruthandlove]

"I see." There is genuine sadness for the fallen Herald, for the dead Divine. Fallen sisters must always be given their moment of solemn sadness, even if one never knew them. Diana curls her fingers in to brush her own mark and then returns Araceli's bow politely.

"Ah, I've heard of you," she says, some of her normal warmth returning, "A healer, Anders. He mentioned you might know how to use these marks, like the Herald, to seal the rifts."

[foxsays]

Araceli herself doesn't wonder what the Herald might do, what the Herald might say. She didn't know her. She only knows stories and can't trust them but she wonders more if it might change everyone else. A singular leader. If they would be united or if there would be more bitter resentments simmering. It's a waste of her time to wonder much on that either though. Her time is better spent thinking through the problems that land in her lap or that might land there, the ones she's going to have to navigate her way through.

Part of her is a little surprised Anders would mention her, she was slightly more reluctant at first than some and he certainly treated plenty of them involved in what happened in Craintellier but "I can't explain all of it, I don't know magic, I don't possess it. But Anders spoke the truth, I've sealed rifts several times. It takes a few of us to seal each rift, depending on the size. Your hand-- well the mark upon it, it seems to flare to life when you're by a rift that's active. You need to focus to close it, all of us working together, you draw from somewhere deep within yourself to accomplish it."

(The ache is not for the Herald who possessed the mark first, it's for Martel who taught Araceli how to use hers, how not to be afraid of it, that she might walk lighter in the world again.)