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

Spring Cleaning, Docks

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin's going nowhere near the crowd of natives, certain that any interference on her part would cause things to take a turn for the worse. She's a 'scary qunari', after all. But during cleanup at the docks, she'll spot Alan after taking a break from energizing debris or whatever else for construction purposes. It occurs to her that this wouldn't be the worst way to make a living if she tired of the mercenary life...but that's never going to happen.

Upon spotting Alan, Korrin heads over with a freshly-filled canteen, which she promptly offers. "Thirsty? You've been at it all day." Eyeing the paint job, she manages a small smile. "Those are the first things I've seen here that aren't eyesores. Nice work."

[alankazam]

He turns, and it's a relief to find Korrin there.

Alan's not often so easy to surprise, but this place, it's a lot. Even separated from the bulk of the city, the smells and sights and sounds all crowd. His senses sting duller than usual.

"Thank you," He offers, and it comes more easily, more readily than it used to. So does the smile a moment later — though still faint and puzzled for it. "They told me to make them happier."

If he must paint, to paint flowers, and not faces. Pictures, and not impressions. Drawings, and not art.

It's well enough. For all his pretensions, Alan can admit the value of something simple and pretty in a place so grim as this.

He takes the canteen with a ducking nod. It's been too long since they've talked, but that's the way of things about her. They can set them down, these conversations, pick them up again at length.

It's easier to handle.

"I didn't know that you could do that. With the rocks, and the beams." A vague gesture, implying magic.

[gatheringstorm]

That she catches him by surprise is unexpected, since Korrin never counts herself as stealthy. But she can hardly blame him for being overwhelmed by their new surroundings; so is she, more than she lets on...in public, anyway. The last thing she wants is to show weakness in a city that remembers the qunari invasion.

"It's a good start, something to boost the mood of those here while we work on the rest...and an effective middle finger to everyone or everything that tried to make this city a living hell." She still harbors severe doubts about making the area truly livable, but defiance is something she can get behind.

At his observation, she raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "Really? I don't think I ever tried to hide it. I used to do the same back at Skyhold, when we first arrived there. 'Terrible shape' would be putting it kindly. You missed all that, though, so fair enough."

[alankazam]

He scratches at his hair with a shrug (leaves a streak of paint running through it),

"We never really did anything like that."

Alan's always known his education was limited, but the past few months have only hammered the point in — not only a failing of his tutors' absence, but perhaps the tutors themselves. If Haven owned secrets not found of lowland mages, it came at some cost. The realization's disconcerting.

"Do you think," A cautious glance to the sides: The coat's clear, no one's about to swoop down with a broom and demands to get sweeping. "You might show me?"

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin raises an eyebrow at cautious glancing, but nods. "Sure, it's not a problem. I could do this in my sleep, it's that easy. You'll get the hang of it, too."

Stepping back, she eyes some planks that would make for a decent walkway up to the next left. Concentrating, she wreathes her arms in greenish flame. As she raises her arms, the planks rise with them until they settle where they need to be.

[alankazam]

He watches, head tipped owlish; hands sketching a faint imitation of her own. The canteen sloshes — belatedly, he remembers to set it aside.

"Are you pulling it through directly?" The energy, the Fade, that peculiar other sense. He lacks the words to describe it properly (isn't terribly sure the others would have them, either). "Like light?"

Like Veilfire, he means. But there's no force to that.

[gatheringstorm]

She nods, demonstrating again just so he can have a better look. "More or less, yeah. It's less effort than it seems; you're just channeling it, letting it come forth. Just try it, but don't overthink it. Like a lot of magic, you'll understand best by doing."

[alankazam]

Fingers splayed to copy hers, brow fixed in concentration, he swoops his arms toward a pile of sandbags. Absolutely nothing happens.

A few more tries manage to wrangle out a shimmering haze of light, a bag lifts briefly up —

— And that's when his sleeve catches on fire. Flailing, he shoves it over the side of the water, plunging in up to his shoulder. The faint smell of singed cloth wafts through the air.

Alan glances up to Korrin, breathing hard, eyes shot wide. Without the slightest bit of irony:

"I think I've almost got it."

[gatheringstorm]

"Shit--" When that sleeve is set alight, Korrin instinctively raises a hand, frost gathering...and she extinguishes it as the water extinguishes the flame. She shakes her head with an understanding smile. "Just be sure to keep practicing with water nearby, until you don't need it. The same thing happened to me before, but I was just as lucky and don't have scars from it."