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

[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."