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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The kid tried to hide it but Oghren saw the reaction in the end. He laughed a bit though, not offended in the slightest. "Breathe it in. That's the smell of Oghren's love scent. You'll learn what the ladies like if you breathe that."

Ah but back to the question. "Hrm? Don't you know much about dwarves? Or are you one of those hand people?"

"You and I have very different tastes in ladies," Kirk grunted. As of right now, he had no lady lovers, which was somewhat odd for him. But that was just how it had worked out - all his current lovers were men. He almost quipped that the ladies around here must love passing out, but kept that much behind his teeth.

"You mean a Rifter? Yeah, I am," he nodded, figuring that Oghren didn't have to much animosity towards them given his tone. "I've been on Thedas almost a year, but I haven't spent time around any dwarves, and I take what I've seen written with quite a bit of salt. I'd rather here it from a dwarf."

"Doubt that since I am pretty sure I like them female and breathing. So unless you're liking ladies that are dead..." He gave a little chuckle then went about focusing on this Rifter talk. Honestly he didn't really get them and thought rifts were creepy and unnatural things. But no way was he going to fault people for falling through them. Well, not unless they were insulting. Though that had less to do with rifts and more to do with a personality really.

"Good to see you're a Rifter actually wanting to learn about dwarves. Last one I really talked to at all thought he should say dwarves and humans are the same with no differences." Well that wasn't quite what had been said but it was what Oghren had heard and he was still insulted by the insinuation. "Alright then, what do you want to know about dwarves? I'll answer your questions. Maybe even with only a few dirty jokes instead of loads of them too."

Kirk was not to thrilled with the Rifts either, especially having fallen through one. He could understand people being distrustful, especially with what normally came through. Better, he thought, not to make to many waves about it, but at least Oghren did not seem likely to throw him into the waters because of it.

An arched brow met that statement. "No differences? You have obvious physical differences, even if you bear a humanoid shape. I am not nearly so well read on your culture, but it should be fairly obvious your culture would differ from a human's. I would suspect that depending on region, there would several different forms, am I right?"

"If you mean different cultures then sure. You got the Orzammar dwarves but you also got the surface dwarves. They've got a whole different thing going on up here." Something he'd been familiar with for about a decade now. "We've all got this sturdy look but we're still different from the humans. Can't use magic for example. We're too resistant to it."

This kid was getting it. As such Oghren liked him already. Far better than just lumping all the races together like that other Rifter had done.

"And what sort of dwarf are you then?" Kirk inquired as they walked, having recovered nicely from his earlier gassing. "And why would you be resistant to magic to the point you can't even use it? That seems a rather odd trait to develop when magic is so prevalent in the rest of Thedas." A pause as he considered his words for a beat. "Or, perhaps not. Perhaps it's a defensive evolution..." he mused.

"Well you see, I'm that drunk dwarf everyone finds really disappointing because they get these expectations of heroes then find out they're sodding people with problems just like the rest of the world." Oghren laughed a bit but really it wasn't really an answer to the kid's questioning soooooo...

"They'd call me a surface dwarf now. Was born in Orzammar though. And dwarves have been mining lyrium. Got to the point where we could hear its song to mine it and find it. But that meant we couldn't enter that Fade place when we sleep. So without that connect we stopped being able to use magic. Good with mining lyrium and making runes but can't manage magic at all. That's something only the humans, elves, and qunari can manage."

He gave a snort. "For the best. They all have their weird problems with magic anyway."

Kirk didn't quite understand all of that. When it came to things like the Fade and magic he often didn't. The principles behind it were simply not something he could so easily wrap his mind around, and he had to just let it go. Otherwise he would give himself an unnecessary headache.

"Maybe it's more like you guys became immune to magic, and that immunity just passed down through the generations," he mused. "It would make sense, given what I've heard of lyrium. If you were around it a lot, growing an immunity would be a natural protection."

He looked to Oghren and chuckled. "Between you and me, I don't have much of a care for magic either."

"Can't say we're immune to magic actually. We can have it used on us. We just can't use it. Only those that can go into the Fade can use magic like that. Not something that we can do because we don't dream when we sleep."

Oghren studied the kid a bit, deciding more work could wait a moment. The kid had some thoughts in him and he was finding himself wanting to poke at it.

"What don't you like about it?"

"Still say it's kind of lucky. I've been to the Fade once and that is the most I ever need to go. Or anyone, though I know mages don't really have a choice," he said, and there was a bitterness in his tone, the quiet anger of someone who knew they didn't have the power to make a situation better despite their hopes.

He paused at that, trying to find the words that would properly explain his distaste.

"I suppose I should start by prefacing that there is no magic in my world, not as you know it," he began, crossing his arms as he thought. "I don't like it because no one can really explain it in a way that makes sense to me. There's no rational explanation, to my mind. I know that it works - I see that it does. But the how... the how bothers me because I don't understand the how."

"You don't have a choice either. You're visiting that place every time you dream and you just don't realize it."

He wondered if Rifters just weren't told things like that. That the Fade wasn't something they could avoid unless you were a creature that didn't dream. As long as there were dreams then there was access to the Fade.

"Why do you need to understand it? What good is that going to do you?"

He squinted at the dwarf, because that was not how dreams worked. Not at all, and he didn't like thinking about it. Damn it, sometimes he really did hate Thedas, just a little bit more.

"Why shouldn't I want to understand it?" he asked in return, waving his bandaged hand. "I have what might as well be a solidified piece of it stuck in my hand. Yeah, I want to understand it."

"Eh? Are these rifts and the fade the same thing?"

He honestly hadn't been paying attention. Mostly because it wasn't something he was any good at. Magic business was really weird and as long as it worked and wasn't hurting people he didn't care much. Which probably wasn't too helpful but he figured it was more helpful than him trying for research when he was bad at that.

"Who the hell knows?" he sighed. "But I... think so? I at least thing they're probably connected some how, or at least the source of their openings are. I thought magic came from the Fade anyways?" he pressed, because honestly the exact sources of magic and where it came from on top of how it was done was still a touch confusing for him. One day, he thought, he find a way to explain it that clicked, but today was not that day.

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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