faderift | OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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!

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

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"Fucking Jim." Said with a resigned sigh, he shakes his head. There will always be a Jim somewhere and he'll always think this is it, this is your time to shine Jimothy and then he'll just run his mouth or ram his whole leg down it but never do himself the favour of swallowing himself and blinking out of reality. Except that one time. WIth the mages. Kirkwall is a thing not a place, sooner the Inquisition learns it the better.

Peering at his nug, Yngvi snaps his fingers only to get one black little eye opening and closing again. The impudence of this creature knows no limits (he's taught the nug so well.) "Oi, get up I'm not paying you to loll about here. D'you want to be sausages for the doglords still knocking about because they realised how good they have it here?"

The nug only yawns, curls himself up happily in the papers. Hopefully they aren't important because they're comfy.

"And you're the new what? Furniture salesman? Didn't think we were set up for that in the Gallows yet honestly, we'd be getting folk trapped in cabinets."

"I imagine Jim will be making himself scarce for a while," he mused, watching as the nug went right back to the very vital task of getting his beauty rest in a soft, warm, dry drawer.

The furniture salesman remark is only mildly aggravating. Still much better than sandwich board salesman.

"Nothing so..."

Use your nice words, Medicine Seller.

"...Impractical."

Good enough.

"I am just a medicine seller."

"Jim's on the job tomorrow, Jim's got no chance." Jim's getting the fattest nug lobbed at his incompetent face and Yngvi's charging admission.

Taking another look at this medicine seller as he apparently prefers to be known, Yngvi squints. Has a sniff because usually that's a pungent profession. Healers tents and stalls and Nevarran corpse perfumes and anything remotely related to that sort of thing have aromas to go with them.

"See, that looks more practical than jingling everything about in things strapped to you. My brother Gunnar, lesser than me in every respect you can imagine since I'm here and he's not, they need someone to do their skivvying back with the crew, he makes us potions and poultices along with other things we need. You do that sort of stuff? Puts hair on your chest but you spend three days not seeing straight because of it?" Cards on the table, Gunnar's a good alchemist not a healer.

Yngvi was his test subject growing up and he turned out just fine.

"How unfortunate for Jim."

Not to say the Medicine Seller wouldn't pay to see someone get a fat nug lobbed at their face. Poor nug though.

He listened, following along as best he could with Yngvi's rapid-fire ramble. He'd probably need to look up skivvying later, much to his mild dread.

The Medicine Seller ponderously looked up. Then to the line of merchant stalls along the roadside. And then finally back to Yngvi.

"I am not sure about how much hair I could feasibly add," he said slowly.

"However, if you are looking to see crooked, I have much to offer."

So long as you're not the one doing it then there's never much to fear. Also nugs? Bouncier than you'd expect. He's tested it extensively.

"It's not sprouting out through your shirt. Some ladies - and men - like a man that looks all feral. Half-bear or something. Just hair everywhere, that's what they're there for. Something to grab hold of when it gets going." An appalled gasp comes from Yngvi's left, a Chantry sister in her red robes staring him down before reciting a verse as he waves brightly because that bit hasn't changed at all.

He's unsure what 'blessed are the peacekeepers' has to do with what he said but they're all a bit weird. Anyway, where we they--

"Casual as you like, eh? S'pose so long as it's not the red stuff folk won't be getting their knickers in as much of a twist right now."

Yngvi, it would seem, was not the only one who liked to mess with the Chantry sisters. As she prayed, he gave her a sly smirk that couldn't be construed as anything but flirtatious. It was the final straw and sent her on her way, flushed and muttering furiously.

"There are as many different tastes as there are colours," he mused, his stance on body hair being rather neutral. Though Yngvi's descriptive language left him with a mental image of weeds sprouting through a man's shirt like a human Chia Pet.

"It is not red," he said, assuming Yngvi was talking about poppies and not Red Lyrium. His opium supply was considerably smaller and strictly medicinal. "But I often prescribe taima leaves and extracts for pain."

Go to an Avvar hold, the sights you'll see good sir. There is so much hair. So much.

"No one's worried about a leaf. Unless it's the freshness of witherstalk and that's for a specific case. I mean it's the most prolific case, probably?" He screws his face up in thought but he's probably got the right of it when it comes down to who has the most need of fresh witherstalk. "No one bothers trying to corner the elfroot market, it's everywhere. Does this taima do the same?"

(Yes he butchers the pronunciation, no surprises there.) There's a hopefully helpful demonstration of a glazed expression, some swaying, wavey hand gestures; Yngvi's never had a passion for elfroot save the usual applications, he can't vouch for what it apparently does unless he's been playing it up for reasons.

"We're not dealing with weeds in the Gallows. Wish we were. I wouldn't have to bother my arse, dwarves don't know shit about plants." Says the dwarf espousing his beliefs about witherstalk and elfroot.

He just might. And take a picture for posterity. Maybe pick up some new hair-care tips.

"Similar. It's a bit... stronger."

By about 3% if one wanted to get technical about it, which may not sound like a lot, but it definitely would feel it.

"If you prefer, I also carry Waraitake," he explained. "Which are fairly effective."

Generally he sold those to priests or monks who claimed they needed them for 'ritual' purposes. Though he was fairly certain they used them about the same way as anyone else who bought them off him did. Sometimes laughter was the best medicine.

The most profitable too.

"I am curious about the prolific case of witherstalk, however."

"Might need some then. Old men in the family, full of aches and pains."

Old men in the family that might go sending people to see what the prodigal son actually gets up to when he's out and about for this Inquisition he's joined. Or they'll just be happy with something new and intriguing and Yngvi can call it a job well done.

"You should get yourself a room at the Hanged Man, always a space for a person selling something unusual there, don't know if the last one'll still be about and he was a prick." So Yngvi heard. Anyone that associated too much with the Champion gets tucked under that banner and if they don't like it than that's what they get for siding with the person that let his home burn then just fucked off out.

Grinning, Yngvi beckons him in close. He's not got fleas, he's not a doglord after all. "Number one use for witherstalk that doesn't get recorded first in the books all the time because it'd pucker the biddies in the Chantry up probably even though I know my brother's made stuff for them to give to the mages." He's getting ahead of himself, get back to the point Yngvi. "The fresher the witherstalk, the less likely you'll have a horrible screaming mess to deal with if you and yours have the right bits to make the screaming mess. For humans and elves. Not us dwarves. Not sure about the horned folk either but I've heard rumours."

"Old men do always seem to acquire an abundance of both," he mused. He closed the middle drawer of his pack to let Stroganug sleep in peace a little longer and then opened the bottom most drawer to retrieve the fabled Taima and Waraitake. The dried herbs were kept in a canister, and he sifted through some other ingredients to get at the carved wooden box containing the dried mushrooms.

"I have not yet been to this Hanged Man," he said. Sounded like the sort of name for a pub or inn. Or an inn and pub. The two usually went hand-in-hand no matter where you went. Probably not the sort of place he'd linger, but it seemed worth checking out, if only because the name had come up more than once now.

He successfully dislodged the box by the time Yngvi beckoned him and he leaned in attentively. The absence of fleas was probably one of the few things in Yngvi's favour, though the Medicine Seller made note to wash his hair thoroughly that night, in case of lice.

"That is very good to know," he remarked as his lips curled into a satisfied smile. "Many of my customers are old men. Riddled with, as you said, aches and pains. And younger wives."

There was nothing like a lot of money that made the blemishes of old age mysteriously vanish. Beauty was temporary, but a handsome inheritance could be forever if one was clever with coin.

He filled one of those small, handsome silk pouches with a few of the mushrooms, and offered it to Yngvi. "For the interesting anecdote."

"That and wax in the ears."

One assumes. Old men are very good at the selective hearing business after all, has to be something like that trying to protect their ears from all the nonsense they'd need to put up with otherwise. About how unfair it is, how people deserve better, how they might like to be paid more or actually have a dinner tonight. Damned unreasonable, better not to have to risk your hearing with all that sort of rubbish tumbling out of mouths that should know to stay shut.

"Mate. Mate." And again somehow on the exhale Yngvi manages to slip in a very soft but excited mate becase what's this. Have the people not been told? Are they not being entertained? "There's a Hanged Man out front. Look come find me. I'll take you. Find you a good seat. You won't be downwind of the piss and vomit unless that's what you're there for. Kind of has that smell, bit of that sort of taste, can't confirm for the food I didn't do my eating there." Yngvi didn't have that sort of coin for that kind of fancy eating.

(When the Hanged Man is fancy eating, you really need to look at your life and the choices others once made for you.)

"Heard a story about older wives being better but I've got seven fathers and five mothers, that's about typical for a dwarf-- and am I going to wake up with no trousers if I eat these? Or do I make tea with them?" He stops to think as he holds out his gross dirty hands because he hasn't heard of washing, that's for people who want to get sick, a healthy layer of grime seals in the good health don't you know. "Wait are these the ones you feed to a horse or a ram or summat then you drink their piss brewed into a tea? They do weird shit in the Anderfels, there's fuck all to do up there."

"I carry a wash for that as well," he said in an offhand sort of way. He was, after all, very well aware of what the elderly said and did to avoid little inconveniences.

He watched in mild fascination as Yngvi grew animated - well, more so than he'd been before - and began to excitedly extole the virtues of what, as far as the Medicine Seller could tell, was pretty much every pub, inn, and miscellaneous roadside establishment that would entertain the occasional itinerant.

It sounded like exactly the sort of place the Medicine Seller needed. The sort of place where rumours probably flowed as freely as the bad beer (and piss and vomit and various other bodily fluids).

"What a generous offer - I would certainly appreciate it."

The Medicine Seller considered Yngvi's question about the mushrooms carefully.

"You simply... eat them. No horse or ram necessary. Though..." The corners of his mouth turned up in a small grin. "...Perhaps only a little at a time. They are... strong."

Then again, someone streaking through the courtyard of the Gallows could provide some much needed levity.

"Wouldn't want them to worry, all these vagabonds traipsing around over their heads? Can you imagine what the old duffers'd think?" Yngvi's a little too eager to move on beyond that part, happy to maybe be the ears if he needs to be just now if it keeps them from getting their fingers too deep in too many things he'd rather they not be involved in. Dwarves have short fingers but they're strong and grasping, they sink them in like mabari will with a tasty joint of mutton.

Grinning, Yngvi gives half a bow before remembering the weight of what's in his pockets and how it starts to tip him over too far, forcing him to scramble to catch himself. Smooth. Real smooth. A damned professional. "Come look for me whenever you fancy, I'll be around. Or just ask any of the dwarves in the Gallows for me by name, they'll all point you and I'll show you to the best seats. Apparently you can sit on the Champion's seat but why you'd want to sit on the seat of some upjumped doglord that went about killing folk for no good reason, folk just making a living I don't know."

(A selective history of Kirkwall through the eyes of the people who knew people who got murdered by Hawke.)

"Handy, it'd be dracolisks and they've already eaten several fingers, five noses and tried to suck out an eye, or the nuggalopes and I mean look at Stroganugg, not his fault someone had ideas about his cousin generations back is it?"

"In my defense," he said slowly, "I have never heard of a duffer, so I wouldn't know what it would be thinking."

Still picking up that slang. He could probably figure it out from context, but it was more fun to see if the dwarf had more interesting things to say.

"I will do that. I am sure you will be easy to find." All he needed to do was follow the odor of halitosis and damp privy carpet.

He'd seen the nuggalopes once - he really didn't have much desire to again. The hands were a bit... off putting. And given his line of work that was tough to do.

Though speaking of Stroganugg...

He opened the drawer where the little nug had burrowed more deeply into the scraps of papers.

"I trust you will want this one back?"

"You've never met one of the elderly? You lucky bastard." Translation acquired. Maybe it's from one of his very Starkhaven relatives rather than it being strictly Kirkwall.

Glancing at his nug, somehow apparently related to monsters, his face softens. Stupid things to care about. Should've palmed them off on folk before coming here and yet.

And yet they're his. That's the thing.

"He's the one that keeps the rest in line, let me move some things about." A carta coat is a coat of many pockets, most of them buried deep in the lining of the coat and it's one of these that Yngvi fidgets with after he's balanced the outer pocket on the other side so he won't be walking strangely. A nug is always a fat little thing. "C'mon you chunky little pest, time to be shoving off."

Yngvi is perhaps surprisingly gentle, scooping up the nug. It doesn't even stir when he tucks it into the inside pocket so it'll nod off against his chest before it can roll back into the pile up in the Gallows with all the rest.

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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