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

a

[limier]

It’s not a pleasant scene. If it was, they wouldn’t need to be here.

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."

[meds4sale]

He didn't tense at the crunching of bones underfoot, but he did shift his gaze from the sad heap of bones to Wren, watching her carefully. He knew enough about Templars to at least be a little wary in their presence. And to be on whatever could be considered his best behaviour.

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."

[limier]

"It must wear upon the Veil, Maker knows how."

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.

[meds4sale]

Well, the Maker wasn't here to say. But the Medicine Seller thought he might have a good idea. Whether the statement was rhetorical or not, he felt no reason not offer his own insight.

"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.

[limier]

"Quite," Her brow pinches, slight. "But I have never seen damage so extensive."

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.

[meds4sale]

"I was told there was a great breach a year ago," said the Medicine Seller. He hadn't seen it, but the scar in the sky where a gaping green hole had once been might count as more extensive damage than a few malevolent spirits.

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.

[limier]

Wren nods, doesn’t comment of it further.

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.

[meds4sale]

He held the sheathed sword over the desiccated remains, watching the strange, goblin-like head on the hilt for any sign of ...something. The Medicine Seller only seemed to be half-listening to Wren as he watched and waited.

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.

[limier]

"That they did not die alone,"

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.

[meds4sale]

He mulled the question over in his head. He could, the way one might be able to sense a haystack containing a needle, but not its precise location.

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."