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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ah, but Yngvi is tiny and master of the combat roll. He can just roll on out of a house he isn't welcome in. Christine isn't near as wily.

"I think she can, but there are so many and they are like talking to children until they are able to understand--" Oh, hello Yngvi, how are you? Christine is fine. No longer on the verge of a panic attack now, so that's a plus. She moves forward and holds out a hand to help him up. Yes, she knows there's a fifty percent chance his hand is filthy, or bloody, or has a nug attached by its teeth. She will be washing thoroughly later.

"Thank you, Yngvi."

Excuse you, those combat rolls belong to Gwenaëlle Vauquelin above all others, they aren't to be used lightly.

"Children understand more than you think." At least in Kirkwall they do. Or the bits of Kirkwall Yngvi grew up in. He can't really say when it comes to Christine specifically when he doesn't know her so well but there are people that lead comfortable lives and people who lead wealthy lives and their children don't need to know or understand a great many things that Yngvi knew before he could even read or write.

Also that hand has been clearing corpses, he gets corpse duty a lot since he arrived in Kirkwall with a keg he generously offered to repurpose as a wagon.

"Feeling better now with the sweet air of freedom filling your lungs?" He means it sincerely because for her, having that door open is a sort of freedom but...it's Kirkwall. It's not really freedom, is it?

Sadly, Christine doesn't know much about children, but she hopes to someday. She wants her own, but the world is such a mess right now. It would be foolish for anyone -- especially a mage -- to bring a child into this war, for however long it lasts. She doesn't know if the Chantry's rules still apply and mages' children are taken away if they're found out.

"Much better." Though she does move out fully into the hallway, just in case.

"What do they have you doing for clean up today?"

"Reckon we need to add 'fixing the doors' to the list," Yngvi leans past Christine as he speaks to retrieve his lockpicks, removing some chalk from his pocket to mark the door. Not the simple X of a spot cleared out but an odd little symbol that makes sense to a passing dwarf who should see it done. "Get folk some keys. Need my beauty sleep, can't get summoned from my bed at odd hours because someone needs a dwarf to be fiddling with the locks, imagine what I'd look like?"

The joke's funny because when does Yngvi sleep?

"More bodies. I keep telling them that it's a feature, they keep saying 'clear them out' but a lot of them are a lot older than that whole mess. Don't know what we'll be stirring up poking around places here that haven't been had a good poke in decades." That's not meant to sound dirty. Or is it?

Christine merely gives Yngvi a look, with one brow arched because she doubts he goes to bed with rag curlers in his hair.

"Bodies," she repeats quietly, a shudder running through her. And older than the rebellion? Were they mages and Tranquil the Templars had killed and then stuffed away to be forgotten?

"Where are you taking the bodies? Is there a funeral pyre?"

It's the tears of deshyrs who know that the surface dwarves are infinitely more successful than they'll ever be but who can never admit it, great for the skin, keeps his hair the envy of Orlesian debutantes across the empire. Expensive stuff but the Carta finds a way. Tricky to apply it, tends to try running screaming at the mere suggestion of a surfacer who doesn't miss or care for Orzammar or the Stone.

"Kirkwall's old bones. All of Kirkwall's bones. I reckon it's why it looks like it does, I mean, you start in one bit and the bottom and when it got too full of bodies and the smell was bad they built over it and then that bit went the same way then they did that again. Maybe they'll have a High-Hightown?" Just his working theory but he's been so many places through the tunnels and passages that make up the labyrinth that is the city state that he's used to it. It's only what they might have on them that's the surprise.

Looking up at Christine, he tips his head to the side. Considers the question. The possibilities. "I'm taking them away, I was going to make a tasteful memorial. What is it with the burning, how do you all know they want to be burned anyway? Most of this place was on fire, s'what I've been told by the family."

Somehow, despite the danger in the world right now, the past has a way of always surpassing the present for awfulness. Wars were bloodier, massacres a daily occurrence, and no one seemed to bat an eye at all the death surrounding them. Does that make this a more civilized age, or simply a time where people have grown too soft towards the harsh realities of life and death? Christine is certainly soft-hearted in this regard. Practicality says things of this nature are inevitable, but her heart wishes it wasn't so. All those bones. She hopes someone valued each person; loved each person. Because there end suggests someone didn't value them very much at all.

"I was merely guessing, but the tradition is not just Andrastian. It is a way to ensure there is nothing left for spirits to possess." Though honestly, she's not sure if spirits can possess bones. Maybe they can fling the bones around, but it's not like a corpse that can swing a sword, is it? "There are spirits enough here as it is, however, and they are making a great deal of disturbances without needing those old bones."

Her eyes take in the stone walls as she moves towards the outside. She needs to get some air. "Fires spread easily in cities with tightly packed housing."

There isn't time to value that many people, not where Yngvi comes from. People are an investment and they're always piss poor ones for the first years until they can start to do a few things. Mages have never seemed like the best bet for the Chantry, maybe that's why Kirkwall had so many Tranquil when folk always wanted enchanting done and you don't pay Tranquil. (Ticks a lot of folk off, delicate balance to keep people sweet with lyrium and all the rest.)

"Christine, it's Kirkwall. You'll get used to everything. There was blood magic everywhere here, no one bats an eye about that sort of thing. Reckon it was why Asher came here because he thought it'd go all Avvar eventually. The spirits would relax, stretch out, figure out what they were about and things'd be grand y'know?" By the way he is literally quoting drunk young Asher back when Yngvi first met him when Yngvi was even smaller and shrimpier. "You leave those old bones alone, go anywhere in the bits of the city people think you're not meant to see and you'll stop seeing them."

Or Yngvi did. But he grew up backwards to most, didn't get to see up top until he was grown, as he says.

"Fires almost every day in Kirkwall." Yngvi's voice is muffled while he shrugs out of his coat, fanning himself with the untucked bottom half of his shirt. "Hightown's spread out but more and more people came in. Lots more buildings than I remember now, must've rebuilt and crammed more in after me and Gunnar took off with Asher as lads."

Yngvi, that is unfair. Don't bring up Asher because she is already in a delicate enough mental state and now she's going to be even worse off remembering her friend that should be here so she can hear these words from his own lips.

"We are not very welcome in the city as a whole yet," she says. Yes, they're allowed to shop and take in the, err, sights, but nothing more. And even when the Viscount loosens that restriction, she doesn't know where she would even go. This place makes Redcliffe feel homey.

"I am sure the nobles complained about having less space." Not that Marcher nobles are as cutthroat as her own people in that class. They can't be; because no one plays the Game like those who invented it. Her gaze shifts to the dwarf and an eyebrow lifts in question. "You are overheated? Are you feeling unwell?" Leave it to the healer to immediately think someone might be sick.

Asher literally lived here. They all did. There's an awful lot of pain here for Yngvi but is he getting upset about it? (Yes. Yes he is he just does upset differently, less tears and more the facade stretched thin as he snaps and realises the jokes are too close to the bone.)

"Oh don't be boring and tell me you care about all that bollocks. You, me, a night on the lash. I'm from here. What, they going to say I can't show a friend the places I lived and worked near all my life because I'm the poor bastard that decided to freeze his balls off in Skyhold so others wouldn't have to?" Come at him Inquisition and/or Kirkwall, he'll take on all comers, he's ready to go, cutting his promos, he'll take you all on.

In the midst of blowing a long raspberry because nobles, wow he does not care, he only registers her words when he's attractively scratching his chest. (Please note the tattoo right on the tit of 'I am the war', why yes he likes the poetry of certain Orlesian poets, he is a dwarf of great culture.) "Relax would? Been working on all sorts all day, 'm sweaty. Think I got cobwebs on my nips, thought that only happened to dowagers. They get haunted after a certain age."

"Would a night spent out with you end with the two of us in a jail cell?" she asks dryly, because there's no way that seeing the sights with him wouldn't end with them in a great deal of trouble over something Yngvi said or did.

She wonders if Yngvi could be considered attractive to anyone. Maybe the blind. And deaf. Though Yngvi would probably find some way to piss those people off too. Look, Christine may have banged Asher, but at least he'd bathed before she'd touch him. And he'd liked her bossing him around. Yngvi is like a miniature, dirtier Asher that Christine has no desire to know what he's like in bed.

"Then the fresh air will do us both some good," she replies, leading him towards the main doors of the tower that lead outside. She's just going to ignore the dowager comment, because that's a terrible mental image.

"You know that I could get you arrested right now for slander." He keeps the heat he might put in his voice, which would still be a joke because it's him, out because y'know, just got her out of a locked room and she was a right state. "Why d'you assume that, I'm a legitimate businessman and it's the merchant's guild or Templars getting angry about a deal or whinging mages who don't like what was in the letters who landed me in there."

(Lies. Lies lies lies. With some truth. Which is why he can say it easy as you please like he always does when he knows different ways in and out of her for all sorts of reasons.)

Also he has absolutely had people, don't be rude, he is a handsome boy with a heart of gold under all that dirt but generally? More important concerns win the day for him. As they should for everyone.

"Just let me-" Scooting off, he returns with a nug stuffed under one arm, blinking at Christine from this sudden new view of the world. "Don't trust half the folk here with my nugs, thinking they're dinner. Isn't that right Nug Wellington? Right, away we go."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject