Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2017-04-02 10:59 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2017-04-02 10:59 pm
Entry tags:
- ! open,
- { alan fane },
- { alistair },
- { anders },
- { araceli bonaventura },
- { bellamy blake },
- { christine delacroix },
- { clarke griffin },
- { freddie durfort-lacapalette },
- { inessa serra },
- { james norrington },
- { jamie mccrimmon },
- { jim kirk },
- { korrin ataash },
- { leonard church },
- { luwenna coupe },
- { malcolm reed },
- { merrill },
- { prompto argentum },
- { rachette dakal },
- { samouel gareth },
- { the medicine seller },
- { twelfth doctor },
- { tyrion lannister },
- { yngvi }
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!
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
Bones, Battles, and Bad Beer - oh my!
There was a slippery crunch underfoot as the Medicine Seller stepped into the dusty room. There were several rat carcasses in varying stages of decay littered across the floor. The room was higher up and thus had been spared the red lyrium growths that had taken over the lower levels. He suspected the rats must have fled here to take refuge from the growths below and starved to death. The room had gotten little more than a perfunctory check for glowing red clusters before being left in largely the state it was, which was frankly an unsanitary mess.
But despite the scattered dead vermin, the mess of moldering books and scrolls and the overpowering stench of death and decay, the room had its advantages. It was spacious as these rooms went, probably an office once as there was a desk and several shelves and cabinets. The desk was beyond repair - something had smashed it. But the shelves were intact and had some useful looking bits and bobs that he could salvage.
"It is a wonder a Gashadokuro has not appeared," he said softly, sparing the crunched carcass a pitying glance, before continuing his exploration.
He found the bodies behind a bookcase - a templar and a mage if the rusted armour and tattered robes were anything to go by. They were slumped down, huddled together under the safety of the book cases, and their bodies picked clean of flesh by hungry rats. The Medicine Seller knelt down, inspecting the skeletons - both women judging by the jawline - and one of them still held an open vial. Picking it up, he gave it a sniff.
Hemlock and wolfsbane. Or something similar. It would seem they'd poisoned themselves, opting to die together rather than on opposing sides.
"A lovers' suicide," he mused, perhaps to himself, perhaps to the sword tucked neatly in the sash around his middle.
b. rift them a new one
The Medicine Seller was not given to hard labour. The best that could be said about him was that he'd cleaned out the room he'd picked for himself and didn't protest too greatly if he got roped into helping others with their own cleaning.
But the rifts - he made himself more than a little useful there. The scales that seemed to measure distance rather than weight were particularly handy in pointing the way to nearby, active rifts. And his own abilities seemed tailor made for dealing with demons. He was incredibly skilled at blocking their way with his paper talismans or hindering their movements with some unseen yet powerful force - leaving them ripe for the picking to more offensive-minded combatants.
It probably seem strange that he carried a sword then. He certainly never unsheathed it, though he'd used it once or twice to block a blow from a particularly obstinate terror demon. It was a odd thing, short and thin, almost more a dagger than a sword. It seemed more decorative than functional but then again, so did the Medicine Seller, and he was quite at home in a supernatural scuffle. The sheath and handle were polished wood, stained red and inlaid with gold and gems. There was a strange, goblin-like head with eyes of amber on the handle. To the keen observer, the face seemed to subtly change expressions and sometimes its mouth was open, other times closed. Or perhaps it was a trick of the light.
One could not really say for certain
c. city living
Kirkwall was a mess. It was a tangle of poverty, prejudice, and dark secrets and forbidden things. Of course, that just so happened to be the kind of mess the Medicine Seller liked.
When he wasn't helping with the effort at the Gallows or volunteering for rift closings, he took to wandering. While the shard in his hand kept him on the same short leash as before, there was now so much more to explore.
There was a good number of merchants around the docks, and the Medicine Seller found he could make quite a pretty penny selling 'Old Dalish Remedies' and 'Mysterious Elven Artifacts' (their words, not his. He just wasn't above rolling with other's assumptions if it made his life little easier. And richer.)
He spent an obscenely large amount of time shopping for fish - one would think that in a port city it wouldn't be so much a feat to acquire them fresh, but apparently that just wasn't the case. Still, he managed, even if his keen nose had been thrown off a number of times by the overwhelming fish smell. He may have to invest in a pole and bait and simply catch his own - it seemed less effort.
Each day was a new adventure though. New sights, new sounds, new smells. He'd even ventured into the Hanged Man. He didn't buy a drink, however, because he was fairly certain that the beer being served, while whatever it was made of had certainly been fermented and distilled, it wasn't any grain he could tell.
a
Little bones splinter underfoot to announce her; she doesn’t bother to look to the rats below. She’s had word there’s a Rifter on this level — a strange one, but aren’t they all — making his way through the halls. Some sort of foreign mage, an elf.
That’s well enough. They need what help they can get. Still, she can’t shake the impression that it’ll help a bit more if they all know what to look for. Wren tugs down the cloth tied around her face. Comments, softly:
"A waste."
Perhaps that’s callous. She stoops to run a hand over the armor; a desiccated twin to her own. Rust's bitten deep, they might be able to grind down enough to salvage a piece or two. The rest is a loss.
(There's nothing here that isn't.)
"The wheelcart is broken again. They will be up here a while."
no subject
Her remark didn't seem too callous to him, but then the Medicine Seller's threshold for such things wasn't exactly what one would call normal.
"They have waited a long time already," he said, sitting back on his haunches.
"And removing the Red Lyrium seems to have taken care of whatever lingered here."
no subject
One problem only worsens the other. The snake eats its tail,
She tears her eyes away to better regard him. Tattoos, or — well. Something. How terribly Dalish, though nothing else quite fits the mold. With a huff of breath, Wren kneels beside the pair.
"I trust they do not disturb your work?"
What precisely that is remains to be seen, but at least he doesn't seem squeamish of it. She carefully pats down the rotten folds of robe, feeling for anything that might linger in the pockets:
A letter, too molded to read. A single coin; this, she offers over to him.
no subject
"Spirits are compelled by powerful emotions, yes? The history of this place is full of regret, that would draw them like moths to a flame. And here, the few people who could cross that barrier between planes were kept. It is a wonder it has endured at all."
The snake eating its own tail indeed.
The empty vial had since disappeared, likely into the recesses of his own voluminous sleeves.
"There is nothing left of them to bother," he said idly. Not even a bad smell - the rats had really picked them clean. And it seemed Wren was intent on picking them cleaner.
He took the coin, turning it over in his hand curiously.
"Ah. There is an inscription."
He squinted, trying to make it out through several years worth of tarnish and grime. Perhaps it would give some clue as to who the lovers were.
no subject
The lower levels of the Spire were worn patchwork; she has seen ruins, battlefields, even houses with their own concerns. The Gallows are a measure unto their own.
(She had not stepped foot in the Spire after Annulment, perhaps —)
"Can you make anything of it?"
Elven vision is typically finer than a man's in dim light. Why that shouldn't hold for a Rifted one, she can't say. The coin's not currency: The metal's too cheap, non-standard. More likely, some form of medallion.
no subject
But that was then. The coin was inspected with more scrutiny as he rubbed away what grime he could. The Medicine Seller wasn't an elf, but he did have good eyesight.
"Kahris. Possibly Kabris." It sounded elven - maybe the mage's name since he'd yet to see an elven templar. "And Rosamunde. There's more, but the only other words I can make out are 'eternal bond'."
Too small, too rusted. Cheap metal to mark the closest thing they could get to a proper marriage and barely lasted beyond their own deaths. It was a sad story, but he hoped they'd at least find peace in another life.
no subject
Strive as she might, the theory of these matters inevitably outpaces her. He’s more adept. The value of an outsider's perspective, she supposes. The long wear of death strikes a different image than the Breach. Maybe it shouldn’t — it would explain the use the shard-holders have been of strengthening this place.
Her hand lingers a moment on the woman's sleeve, pulls away.
"Kabris and Rosamunde."
Fools. To pretend to the possibility of such a thing, to die for it. So they'd died as equals. So what? Far better to have lived as them. You live alone if you must, but you live. This rest is only fantasy: A pretty dream for those willing to close their eyes to the facts. To the fight. Well, she wishes them all the fucking best of it.
Wren shifts to stand. Motion, action, it’s always been easier than stillness. Tastes less bitter in her mouth.
"I shall check them against the rosters. Perhaps some note can be made. If there are any surviving family,"
She gestures, knows how little it will mean. This happened.
no subject
Whatever he thought might have happened didn't, and he tucked the ludicrously jeweled blade back in the brocade sash.
"Nothing of them has lingered," he stated with surety. So that was good, at least. He stood, and brushed the dust from his knees.
He cast Wren a curious glance.
"What will you tell their families?" If there were any families to be told.
no subject
Thin comfort (if comfort's what, any kin would even seek), but it's an organizational courtesy. Cleaning after the dead is an ugly business, and the Inquisition must appear to elevate the work — if only in the public eye.
A glance back, to his blade; her eyebrows lift faintly. Like dowsing, but for what? Spirits?
"That they received rites."
A confirmation (undisturbed, unpossessed) they may better understand. The stillness of ash is less foreign than — well. Whatever it is he's doing.
"You can read them? Their presence?" Under other circumstances, Wren might temper that curiousity with a greater wariness. Here and now, a medium's too damn useful to fret over. "Absence,"
She corrects.
no subject
He was never great at metaphors - whether on sticks or thread, a dried fish was a dried fish, and it was getting to be time for dinner.
"I need the sword and scales," he said in that deliberately slow manner of speech of his, "to know for certain."
He looked to the sad heap of bones and moldered fabric and rusted mail, then back to Wren.
"There is nothing here left to do. By your leave, I will move on. ...In case something remains."