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

i love her so much

[limier]

There are two great things about someone briefly putting their back to you to open a door:

1.) The door is now open.
2.) You can throw your long-suffering gaze to the ceiling like an ungrateful tool and no one else has to know.

"Excellent, shall we —" The door slams shut again. Then opens. Then slams, then opens, then slams, then opens. Wren jams herself into the frame as it swings closed once more, braces for the heavy crunch of metal on metal. She shoves back hard, manages to hold the space a crack. Footsteps from behind Teren, sudden and fast,

The door swings wide once more. Left shoving only air, Wren stumbles,

— And trips into the wall. The noble and ancient Templar order, everyone.

[doneisdone]

Well if she'd said that aloud, Teren would've been mortified at the fact that she put her back to someone who was paying attention. What is she, a noob?
But generally she assumes Templars won't murder people within the Inquisition's reaches, so perhaps her faith wasn't ill-placed in this scenario. At least her faith in Wren wasn't; that in her own skills is quickly called into question when the door slams back in her face, causing her to stumble back in surprise with a yelp.

She's still processing whatever the hell the Templar's doing when her shithead-senses alert her to someone fast approaching, and she flattens herself against the wall in time to watch Wren go sprawling forward.
It'd be funny if it weren't so RUBBISH. Who was that, who did that?? Teren dropped her lever when the door slammed, so now both hands are free to draw her blades from over her shoulders and hold them at the ready. It's not uncharacteristic for her to be cautious, paranoid even, but her eyes are a bit comically wide at the moment.

[limier]

There’s no one there.

No one but the two of them. The room is still and quiet, save for the gentle creaking of hinges; soft, buffeted by a sea breeze they're far too far indoors to catch.

Stiffly, Wren rises — plants herself solidly against the door, pinches a new nosebleed shut.

"The desk, or something to block the frame," She suggests, the words nasally-muffled. "Keep away from any piled rubbish."

Choice of words entirely intentional. Her free hand slips to the knife at her side, shimmering with the faintest quality of light. She doesn’t pull at it just yet.

"No fear. Yes?"

(Invisible fingers tease at the tight order of Teren’s bun, tug a strand free —)

[doneisdone]

"Fear?" Teren snaps, an automatic response: anyone who thinks she'd display fear in the presence of a near stranger has another thing coming.
Then there's a tug on her hair and Teren swats it, nearly stabbing herself in the face in the process, and jolts away from the wall with both daggers ready to kill... nothing.

Eyes narrowed, she looks to Wren, then straightens and haughtily walks by her into the room.
She's too scrawny to move an entire desk by herself, but she gives the accompanying chair a kick to make sure it isn't going to fly away, then grabs it and brings it over to wedge it in where the Templar's standing.
As an afterthought, she tugs a rag from one of her pouches and hands it to Wren, for the blood. When in doubt, always assume you'll get hit in the face.

[limier]

Wren returns the look, lets it lie.

"Merci," She shifts out of place, shoves the rag over her nose. Now the knife comes out, blade held low from her side.

The corners are all dim and lumped with rubble, but one shades almost imperceptibly darker. Wren stalks toward it, blade darting out to catch the edge of a moldering sheet, tug it aside. It falls away from a heavy trunk, the wood stained and singed —

— And that voice returns, crackling, far louder. High-pitched, but fierce: It's my spot — you can't have it —

She tucks the rag aside, drops to her knees, knife raised,

"Warden," I found it first! You can't, "Be ready."

[doneisdone]

Ugh. Orlesian. If they weren't so clearly in this to the bitter end, Teren would have more thoughts on that.
Instead, there's a voice from nowhere, and she blinks rapidly, looking like a cat smelling something it would rather not. "Oh come off it," she barks, glancing around, "you're not real, act like it."
She will turn this room around.

[limier]

Silence, and then:

They’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming, ready or not —

This is enough. Wren drags the chest open, stabs down at the little corpse curled within. The room floods briefly with screams, with a blaze of silvery light.

It clears onto the stench of something burning. Something sweeps up from beneath the desk into a thick cloud of ash, congeals into the flickering grey form of a robed girl, tiny ears pointed, tiny eyes blazing with flame. She surges towards Teren, distends as she travels, grows taller. Until, not a girl at all,

Its jaw peels impossibly down, around, splitting like a seam onto a fiery mouth the length of its body. The ash wraith blazes with barely-suppressed heat.

[doneisdone]

All things magic can get tossed, as far as Teren's concerned, and this encounter is doing nothing to change her mind.
Darkspawn are one thing, she can deal with those, they're corporeal and can't materialize out of thin air or, in this case, the corpse of an elven child. It's because of that latter detail that she hesitates to use her daggers, despite what her eyes are telling her, and steps clumsily back to press against the wall as quickly as the wraith advances.

Can she even stab it? Or will her dagger go straight through? Is it some manifestation of the little child, or a demon, or something else entirely? Teren is paralyzed by not knowing, which, to the untrained eye, looks an awful lot like terror.

[limier]

Wren scrambles up, rounds on the thing.

"Stab it!" She shouts, with no such reservations. The spirit raises itself to loom over Teren, and for a second Wren's sure that'll be the end of it, that she'll spend tonight writing out apologies to the Warden-Commanders. "Stab it, damn it —!"

She’s cut off as it turns on her, claws raking out to smash with sudden solidity into the space she occupied only seconds ago. The knife falls in the scramble, and Wren dives for a metal rod (some wall hanging) to jab forward. Shine radiates down its length, a smothering realness, and the wraith reels back with a screech.

It isn't enough.

"— The head! Go for the head!"

Disrupt this rough body enough, and they might force it to disperse. With luck, contact won’t just roast them both.

[doneisdone]

Teren doesn't need to be told twice. Though she misses her chance when it's looming, she gets an even better one when it turns to go after Wren, and she plunges her dagger into its lower back. It's something of a signature move, intended to cruelly sever the spinal cord and paralyze, at least... if the victim relies on things like muscles and nerves, which a wraith might not.
The second dagger sinks into the back of its neck, aimed toward the chin, a gruesome hand puppet who, if it were a sensible person, would now take a moment to bleed out painfully.

[limier]

Sculpted ash parts wide around Teren's blade, opens onto an oozing orange heat. It's not enough to sear, but unpleasant all the same, as though holding one's hand over flame. It falters, no nerves to cut but plenty of pain still for it —

And then the second knife plunges through its face.

The Wraith sinks, grey flesh sinking and puddling free of the point, pools low to the floor. It's losing shape by the moment, and Wren stakes the point of the rod down into it in a furious sweeping flurry, shakes hot ash over the stone floor to scatter the last of it.

She leans heavily against the pole, coughs,

"Good. Ah. Nice. Nice work." A gesture, vaguely stabby.

[doneisdone]

In general it's good when the thing that's attacking you dies itself, but this has been a strange encounter and Teren still isn't quite certain what to make of it. She stands still, knives still held aloft as the wraith melts to the floor and dissipates, and she steps back only when Wren does her... Templar... thing. Again.
Wiping ash from her brow, Teren regards her thoughtfully. "Right," she says, "you too."

[limier]

A huff of breath. Hard to say whether it's a laugh, or just the dust. She already knows she won't have a voice tomorrow.

"Hardly. I should still be staring at a locked door."

What they need now is a broom, but. Probably best to deal with the corpse first. Wren stoops back to the trunk, wedges the lid tightly shut. It's heavy, the latch is thick — how easy it would have been, to become trapped inside.

Would anyone have heard her struggle, against the chaos? Perhaps someone had and decided darkness was kinder; or intended to return, and fell themselves,

The details don't bear dwelling. They matter little now.

"Was this your first?"

[doneisdone]

Teren catches a glimpse of the child before the trunk shuts, and for the briefest moment her stoic front falters into a look of muted anguish. No one should have to die that way, least of all a small girl who likely saw very little kindness in her life.
"First what?" she asks, more brusquely than she intends, "dead person?" The cruelty of it gnaws at her.

[limier]

It’s as much an answer, she supposes. No Warden (no one who wields a knife like that) is new to the business of death. But of what comes after?

"Shade."

Her first. Your first Circle, your first fallen child — other questions, ones best not pursued. With some effort, Wren hauls up the chest into her arms. The weight’s steadying, gives her a task, focus.

This is only a shell, only the imitation of a moment. The girl was gone long ago.

"They do not understand life. But they try to copy it."

[doneisdone]

Teren scrutinizes the chest as it's hauled up, her eyes narrowed bitterly. It's too late to even inter the body properly, to give the girl the respect she lacked.

"...many of us can say the same," she says instead, bending to wipe the detritus from her blades on her leg. Perhaps it's an attempt at levity.

[limier]

Pithy.

"And yet," Wren manuvers the trunk carefully towards the doorframe, hooks a foot around the chair to yank it from place. "We muddle on."

It’d be easier to have her out of this thing, but bad for morale. Worse if any flesh came apart in the journey. The fewer people that see this, the better.

In the courtyard there will be sheets and pyres and well-intentioned words. They won’t mean anything, but maybe they’ll make someone feel nice. The flames, at least, will keep this from reoccurring.

"Have you chalk, or anything to mark the door?"

[doneisdone]

No chalk, but the solution is more obvious than that. Teren thinks a moment, then simply wipes her hand across the surface of the door twice, leaving an X in ash.
She looks back at Wren with eyebrows raised, as if to say 'good enough?'

[limier]

It'll do. Thank the Maker one of them's decent at lateral thinking.

A short nod, and that's that. She'll check up on Teren later, perhaps, when the proverbial dust has settled. When all this is a little less fresh.

For now, there's still work to be done. Wren intends to see that it is.