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

[circleprodigy]

Inessa nods solemnly at the advice, staring at the water rather than the ever-larger statues which dominate the horizon. "Always good advice...but even better for those who must live moment-to-moment. Our work affords little time or opportunity to take the long view of matters that aren't Blight-related. I will try, as best I can." And yes, she is young, barely more than twenty, but the responsibilities settled on her shoulders have aged her more than she'll admit.

She takes a deep, cleansing breath and seems the better for it as she glances back over, nodding. "They deserve to be remembered in a better light. If I can give them that, I will."

[limier]

"Thank you."

Again. She still means it. For all the Circles have become, they were homes once, too. You live your lives side by side, lives that few others see, that none outside understand. Who is going to remember them, if not each other?

"There are words that are not said easily. Better than that they go unheard." So, like, tell Kain ya want to tap that blonde ass. Slowly, she peels her hand from Garahel, steps back from the rail. "I apologize, I am not myself. Perhaps we might speak more of this some other time."

When she has her head about her, when she can be of more use than this; when she can begin to attempt the fraught business of revealing a fate not-to-be.

Some other time. For the moment she needs the space of this conversation. She can dig her cramped way back into the hold and count her breaths, and that will serve, as it always has and must.

Kirkwall waits.