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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Eventually it was bound to happen; Yngvi works with sharp things for a living, his hands bear the brunt of it and they're not exactly working in clean places. Not that he really knew about cleanliness in the first place because he's not some noble but his hand is hurting enough that he's been badgered into finding someone to help.

Someone that won't wiggle their fingers and toss halla piss at him then charge him for the privilege.

"I got bit." The opening words for his interruption into Kattrin's life as he trips over the fennec with the grace you'd expect of a dwarf with four nugs in attendance. "Someone said you could fix it better than the other lot."

Well this was not where she expected things to go today. A rather filthy dwarf with a bite injury. Still, the Avvar woman was not about to turn him away. One because he needed help and two because she wasn't bothered by the filth.

"Sit. What bit you?" He didn't seem poisoned but best to be sure as rolled up the sleeves of her animal hides. At some point she knew she should change into lowlander clothes but some things were harder for her to let go of. Besides, she had no money anyway.

Getting a bucket with some water in it and a clean cloth, she explained her actions. "I will need to clean the bite so it will heal well."

Yes magic could just heal but it could always do so better with help. Especially when dwarves had that built in resistance to magic.

(At least the fennec had the grace to leap away and watch from a distance.)

This is vaguely clean for him. On account of having actual family and vaguely familial associates in unavoidable close contact for the first time in years.

"Half a jaw." Instead of what might be expected - if one ever expects to be told that half a jaw just bit someone but firstly this is Kirkwall and secondly he's been helping to clear the Gallows out from the start - when someone says that, he doesn't use his uninjured hand to indicate if it was the top or bottom jaw. No. It's one half of a face. The left half. Why was the left half of a face lying around well he'd say ask the person that killed them but he's pretty sure that corpse was there too.

"Clean it? Thought you put stuff in it. Mashed up elfroot someone chewed. Shove it all in there with some sort of piss. Ram piss maybe, I hear good things about rams."

Ah. A fight then. No poison but certainly enough to lead to quite the wound if it wasn't taken care of. Kattrin lifted a brow but otherwise didn't question matters as she held out a hand for his. Only to look somewhat amused actually.

"Oh? I am not so certain that would offer you much aid. A good sting to your hand though. That liquid has more bite to it than fire." She was not going to use ram piss on his wound though. Nor would she be doing any sort of weird thing like he was suggesting in that moment. "If you find discomfort in magic then I can use herbs. If you do not then I am familiar with the resistance the dwarves have to magic so I can heal you. The wound will still need cleaning."

Because clean wounds were better than dirty ones for healing.

"Magic doesn't bother me, we've got a mage in our company she's just more about fire than healing. Punches the health back into you or that's how it feels. Only realised the difference when we stopped off in the mountains and had someone that knows how to do it all proper like do it. Less punching. Unless you bother the rams apparently." Even then that wasn't punching that was getting thrown but what's the difference when you're a dwarf that's barely over four feet tall suddenly sailing through the air courtesy of an Avvar?

(Also it was just some corpse with a spirit jammed up it or something, he's a dwarf he doesn't know, he doesn't care, he's tired of having to deal with this and having to pick the locks on doors because people keep getting locked in like seriously invest in doorstops Inquisition or maybe employ the buddy system.)

"Heard it gets people action." Or was that just Asher. He threw a goat too but you could probably work it with a ram and still wrangle a threesome out of the right party. "Yeah...didn't want to go to another mage for it, she-- someone we knew died from an infected wound months back. Wasn't how he was meant to go. Doesn't need to see this on top of being here."

It's skipping an awful lot but rehashing the whole 'and my battlemaster died horribly in bed instead of gloriously in the field and shattered us all and now loads of us are miserable in Kirkwall where he and I first met' isn't what Yngvi goes for with this but...he really doesn't think he could see Christine worrying about him right now.

The dwarf was a little odd but he was amusing actually. Kattrin smiled as she cleaned the hand, making sure to take note of how deep it was and wear it was. Honestly she'd seen and treated worse than this so she couldn't say that she was really bothered in the least by the sight of the injury.

"Men of the Avvar are known for such things, it is true. It could be considered quite the insult to throw a dead goat or ram at another. Though a woman may find such feats of strength attractive too." As for the part about the friend who died, well she didn't respond to that. It was his story to tell and not hers to pry into. They'd only just met so it wasn't her place for asking.

Wound clean, she started to murmur prayers to her gods until her hands began to glow. It was rather a different process from Circle Spirit Healers but she honestly felt herself closer to the spirits than those in the Circle. So this worked for her.

Letting the magic wrap around the bite, she concentrated to make sure the dwarf resistance would finally break down enough to let her start mending it.

"Didn't stop Asher getting a wife." Which...well he's dead. People know. They met her. Met the kid. No one talks about it and Yngvi doesn't know how to talk to them about it so whatever, he'll just talk about Avvar stuff he knows of since they're the whole reason he even got a surname to begin with. Felt like belonging that. He gets it.

"Which hold d'you come from?" Yngvi listens a lot. More than generally anyone gives him credit for because when half the stuff that comes out of your mouth sounds like 'you what mate' then understandable but Carta dwarves, always listening in on your shit. Or dwarves. Shorter than everyone else so you need to know what's going on to know if you're making a profit or clearing out before they come for you or getting ready to rumble.

He'd heard a lot of prayers for a lot of reasons, but at least the last lot on a visit to see everyone else up there had been happier. Generally 'please don't let Yngvi piss everyone off too badly and get killed for it' from all parties. Mostly the augur. And then, because he's short for a dwarf and that means he knows no shame because that's how it works. "You're short if you're from there but I know them names."

Asher was not a name known to her but the Frostbacks were also a large place with Avvar stretched out across them. Kattrin knew she did not know ever Avvar by name and face, likely never would now. "I am short for one born Avvar. However, I do not hail from a hold now."

Moving her hands, she finished closing up the wound and let out a sigh. Studying the area, she made sure it was properly done, not being one to just heal then send someone off. The area needed to be inspected after to make sure she hadn't managed to mess anything up in her connection with the spirits.

"I am in exile now. The Avvar would only consider me dead at this point."

The first sort of magical healing he's received in the Inquisition that hasn't been a swiped poultice or potion (coin is left, or something equivalent in value) feels so different to Amalia that he's waiting for the punch. It gives him time to sit still so he doesn't mess up her work because that's rude (and Amalia would give him an actual punch, he doesn't fancy testing the waters with a stranger.)

Rules tend to be a very hazy thing to someone who was taught a strange version of the law that revolved around loopholes and breaking it and bending it or gaming the system but he did learn things. Mostly to not get arrested or to get out of being arrested or have hands cut off or something unpleasant.

"Did you not let go of your spirit when it was time? Augur taught us all that bit, said it was different to Circle mages here and how they do it, you all get possessed for a bit then you need to let it back out of you." He's butchering Gjurd's far more measured and eloquent words, what do you expect from a Kirkwall boy?

"I released my teacher when the time came. That was some time ago." Several years actually. "The gods led me to leave the life I was living behind and to move towards this Inquisition instead."

That left out a lot of details but it was the absolute truth as she saw it. Kattrin smiled a little but really she saw no reason to keep that part from the dwarf. He knew some measure of the practices of her former people and so he had earned the answer to his question. At least as far as that much went.

"It is not common for an Augur to share such things with outsiders though. The practices of the Avvar are often kept among the Avvar alone since others may find them displeasing."

"Asher was more Avvar than his blood said. Things festering nearly killed him and I guess they did. His mother hid that she was half-Avvar, Asher's grandfather says that Asher's a joke the gods played on her for denying who she was and she exiled Asher from her home. When Asher took us there for the first time he gave me and my brother a last name all proper like, said we were his family."

Yngvi still struggles with that sometimes. Family. Family maybe being a thing you got to choose instead of being a thing that happened to you because Asher said you were allowed to have a family that way if you wanted to. Roaming around the hold and only being teased gently or when he was actually a menace. Honoured guest and it meaning something for the first time in however many years he'd had. (Too few, it's generally accepted he has too few under his belt.)

It's unfair he went how he did, Yngvi hasn't made his peace with it even if he said he did.

"Look, no one's shoving a spirit up me and you lot haven't blown up my home so why would I care? You were all around 'fore everyone else yeah? So. You know what you're doing with it. Got sat down by a fire and told stories because if we were his family, everyone said me and Gunnar should know things."

"They are a very open hold. Not every hold would have felt the same as they." The one she'd left certainly wouldn't have. Their views on lowlanders were far more...unfriendly. Certainly more so than the hold she'd been born to. Not that it mattered as much now since she wouldn't be seeing any of the holds ever again.

"There would be many stories to tell though."

Of that she was certain. The Avvar were different but they had just as long of a history. Perhaps longer one could argue.

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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