faderift | 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

Teren seems to be dropping her guard at least somewhat, continuing to watch Anders levelly but-- perhaps-- with a slightly softer gaze when he talks about Karl.
"You can hardly take credit for that," she points out, "if you blame a failure on yourself, it'd better be at least partially your fault." She fold her arms.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say the ones who failed are the people who let this place go to shit to begin with." At least she'd actually done something to anger the people she'd lost; she'd earned their ire. It sounds like Anders just happened to be with someone who was always doomed.

"Tranquility, that's when..." she clarifies, pointing to her forehead. It's a question: Teren's not sure she's ever met a Tranquil, but she's glimpsed them once or twice.

Anders swallows hard before nodding.

"A mage is cut off from the Fade and branded. When it happens they're... gone. There's nothing left of who they are, simply a being that will follow orders. A mindless slave." There's pain in his voice despite his efforts to sound calm. "Or rather, there's something, but it's buried, beaten down. When I was, when I found him like that, with Templars closing in for the kill, I lost control. Justice took control, and when I was in control again, Karl was Karl again. For a few brief moments he begged me to end his life before it all went grey again, before all joy and color was taken from the world, and I did fail. I couldn't, not while he still sounded like him. And then he was calm again, and asking me why I, why I was looking at him like that."

He takes a breath, and then another. "I ended his body. They took away the man. It wasn't even..."

Anders snorts and shakes his head. "It wasn't even legal. They've a dozen different situations when it's legal to do that to a mage, but in Kirkwall they were doing it on whims, or when a Templar wanted to assault a mage who would fight back too much, or if one was annoying. The Tranquil were even chatting about it in public as if it was nothing, and no one cared. Every Kirkwall Templar knew, few cared. Why would they? The victims were mages."

He's bitter and on a roll. Someone might want to stop him. "Karl was just a mage. One of their best instructors, one of the most caring people I've ever met, but to them? Disposable. Used as filler in their trap."

This is a phenomenon Teren can barely begin to comprehend, but she at least is able to recognize how close it is to Anders. How wound up in his experience it's been, as deception has been in hers.
She listens quietly as he explains, resisting the rather unusual urge to put a hand on his shoulder. People change through torture, but to have their entire personality stolen away in the blink of an eye? That's... monstrous.

"I'm sorry," she says, a bit stiffly, for lack of anything meaningful to say. It's too big of a thing, she doubts any words can soothe it.

There's not really anything to say. Karl is gone, lost because people couldn't see a mage as a person. The wound is old, but it still hurts and so Anders is quiet for several moments after giving her a nod.

"We've both lost," he says finally. "We've both been betrayed, and we've both betrayed. At least there's common ground there to rebuild on. And it's not like I'm going anywhere anytime soon, and, hopefully, neither are you."

Hopefully not.
"...not unless it becomes necessary," she says, a bit evasively, but with a touch of weariness. She's all mixed up these days, uncertain of whom to trust and why, if anyone. Perhaps she doesn't deserve to trust anyone.
"But what I want has... rarely factored into things, as I've come to see." It's been a hard lesson to learn.

"I understand that." Not like he'd done well when trying to go for what he's wanted. The only exception was what's happened with Nate. Everything else has backfired.

"For what it's worth, Teren, I hope it doesn't become necessary. You seem tired, and Kirkwall's not going to be any less tiring, but it's better with people around who care about you. And you have that."

She actually drops her gaze, and doesn't seem to know what to say. It is possible that, in Teren's fifty-some-odd years of life, she has never been told she was cared about. It could be inferred, certainly. But said outright? Not in the life she lives.
Teren opens her mouth to respond, then simply closes it again, glancing only briefly at Anders before looking away and pursing her lips with the subtlest of nods. "I have things to do," she abruptly decides, and turns to go. A system error has occurred, she has to restart.

OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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that's rough, buddy

His boyfriend, the moon.

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