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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Alistair opens his mouth, stops, then holds up a hand, a visible wait a sec pause. He'll answer that in a minute.

"I meant with us. Assuming the world doesn't end, which..." Is possible. He shrugs. "It won't go on like this forever. And then we'll have Ferelden—" He gestures to Nathaniel, fingers wiggling. "—and Orlais."

An identical gesture at the empty air on his other side.

"I don't know that we have anyone. Bethany is trying to leave, Kaisa would get us exiled in a week. But if you ever think anyone could do it."

There's a weighty pause.

"Bethany will serve while she is with us," he says crossly, though not in that condescending tone he tends to use when it's Alistair he's cross with. "Until that day she walks out for good, or cures the Taint, she is a Warden and will be expected to carry out her full duties. Who would be your suggestion?"

"Someone whose heart is in it," Alistair says, so used to Nathaniel being cross that he doesn't currently pause to evaluate the specific quality of the crossness, "and who isn't me. I don't know that we have anyone now. But if someone stands out later, or you think you could mentor someone into it—I don't know. Once the dust settles we might be able to find Stroud, or maybe Nevarra or someone will send down one of their veterans. But it can't hurt to be ready to have it left up to us, in case it is."

He kicks a rock off the docks and into the water. There's nothing angry about it, only restless.

"I know Bethany will do what she's asked to do. But this isn't what she wants. It never was."

That only makes Nathaniel angrier. So many people are so concerned with whether or not people want this life, as if there's anything to be done about it now. As if that's something normal people even have, a right to reshape life into some kind of dreamland. Nathaniel didn't want this, at first. Now he does, and it's being taken away from him. Alistair spoke of command of Ferelden so casually, something Nathaniel would have been overjoyed about a few weeks ago.

His anger simmers down--it is not Alistair with which Nathaniel is angry--and he releases a breath.

"If Inessa were more senior, perhaps. Meanwhile, perhaps we can outsource the job to someone assigned to another location. They'll find it as easy to manage there as we would here."

"Sure," Alistair says, a little slowly, not entirely sure they're not talking at cross purposes. "It's not urgent. We don't need someone now. We just might later, so keep an eye out for a—another you, I suppose, Maker help me. And we can see about giving Inessa more responsibility in the meantime."

Which brings him back around:

"I don't know. I think Teren needs to stay quartermaster. I know you two don't get along, but she's good at it, she's willing to do it, and just think how much more time she'll have to cause you trouble if she's bored."

Oh look, Nate bit into a lemon again. He rubs his temple.

"She spent nearly two months racking up work just to send it to me out of spite, Alistair. My complaints with her have a great deal more basis than We two don't get along."

He almost smiles. He looks away quickly and rubs his mouth in an attempt to hide it, then stays looking away after the urge is passed, because he's about to be earnest. Gross.

"Look, Howe, I know I'm easy on her, but there was a time she was the only person willing to dunk my heroic—" His voice carries quotation marks. "—head in a bucket and tell me to grow up." A pause. "Now that I think about it, I'm surprised you don't get along better. But I owe her. And we're all she has left now. And it was sort of funny."

Too far? Alistair glances sideways from the corner of his eye to check Nathaniel's mood.

"I already talked to her once. I can talk to her again if you'd like. Or we can all have a meeting, like the old days." Six whole months ago.

It was sort of funny he says. No it wasn't.

Still, when Alistair says it, it does seem like an outsider would see it a certain way. A senior Warden having to row to the Gallows to return an unwanted package.

If Alistair blinks, he will miss it--a stifled chuckle and a suppressed smile. Then it's gone, replaced by a somewhat resentful look.

Is it funny? Probably. Worth it? It might actually be. Nobody has disobeyed his orders so far. No major complaints about requisitions being held up. In fact, the only consequence, aside from Nathaniel being grouchier than usual, has been a certain...levity, among everyone who isn't him.

"Fine," he announces. "I will be the prankable one. Teren will be quartermaster, if you are agreeable. Which, pending surprise reservations, I believe you are."

"I'm always agreeable," Alistair lies baldly, giving Nathaniel an intentionally obnoxious, comradely thump on the back, "and people will stop enjoying make a fool of you if you spend more time making a fool of yourself." Kind of a compliment? Also the secret to his popularity, he's pretty sure. People stopped so obviously feeling the need to knock him down a few pegs, at the abbey, when he was already on the floor, probably writhing around and pretending to die from a cane-thwap. "We could always string up another tightrope, if you want."

A faint glare at the back-slap. "No, thank you. The stick up my arse would throw off my balance."

Alistair laughs for about five people, altogether, and for them still rarely and briefly, but his grin does stretch wide with genuine amusement, for the two seconds before it starts to feel too dangerously close to being friendly with Nathaniel Howe. Then it shrinks back to his usual crooked smirk, and he turns his attention back out toward the water.

"Then that's settled," he says. "And if you'll send a message to Ansburg, I'll have a look underground—?"

Hours of walking and time in the dark possibly almost dying vs. writing a letter—but it feels like an even trade to him. He's using his limited capacity for sitting still long enough to write whole paragraphs words on Sabine.

"Ansburg it is," Nathaniel agrees, because really, Alistair gets the short end of that shaft. Who would rather go into the Deep Roads than write a letter? "There's something else. We need to gain reputation in Kirkwall. Anders and I came up with some ideas."

Edited 2017-04-20 13:03 (UTC)

"Gain reputation," Alistair echoes, skepticism obvious but not too sharp.

Nathaniel catches that tone and frowns. "So how did three Wardens end the Blight?"

"By killing an Archdemon," Alistair says, eyebrow going up.

He knows that isn't what Nathaniel means.

"People didn't help us because they were impressed by us. They were bound to." He slips into a tone that's a little more tired and somewhat rehearsed—this is something he's had to say before, multiple times, to people who were not particularly happy with him. Or not particularly happy with Cousland but unable to tell him so directly. "Anything we did for them in the meantime was to remove obstacles they couldn't remove alone. We weren't trading favors."

"Oh?" Nathaniel's eyebrows rise ironically. "How did you win the Landsmeet, then? How did you make Bhelen king? And the people who journeyed with you, were they bound to do so as well?"

"Do you really want me to go through all of that for you?" Alistair asks, rubbing his temple with a thumb joint. "Because I can. I have. Four times in one day, once. And I was still in trouble."

Enough trouble to keep him walking, and Bethany following, when Kirkwall was actively on fire and being invaded by Qunari. But Nathaniel is perfectly welcome to try to break down that wall. It wasn't always there—he built it the same day he had to tell the story four times, being picked apart in Cousland's stead and lectured like an errant schoolboy the entire time. And the workmanship is sort of shoddy anyway.

"But no, go on. Why do we need to make Kirkwall like us."

"We don't," Nathaniel says with a glare. As he speaks, he gets quieter, a sign he is frustrated. "We need alliances. We need alliances because our enemy has power, influence, the resources of the Anderfels, and as we know now, every chance of taking over the whole of the North. To make alliances, we need people to know about us, to know what we're doing, and to know why we are different from the bad ones. Andraste's blood, Alistair, even the Inquisition barely tolerates us, and without them, we are a splinter faction pretending nothing has changed since Clarel massacred most of us and enslaved the rest. We cannot function the same as when we were many."

"They mainly barely tolerate Anders," Alistair says—wry, not angry, despite being baffled and possibly criticized. He's not sure who's apparently been pretending nothing has changed. "And I think as long as we're not installing one of our own as Viscount, the difference between us and the bad ones is pretty obvious. Unless Cousland does come back. Then we might have some explaining to do."

"We can't prove anything with the absence of bad things." Nathaniel sounds less hissy, now that Alistair doesn't seem to be baiting him, just genuinely clueless. "We need to do good. We need to be visible. We need to use every resource we can in this fight. Peoples' heroes have turned against their own. They need hope."

His brow furrows, and now he sounds puzzled. "Why are you so against this? It can't do anything but benefit us."

"I was asking," Alistair says with put-upon false patience, "for you to explain what you meant." And then the Blight got brought into it. Ugh. "And I'm not against doing good. Doing our job is doing good. But no one really wants to know what we do. No one wants to see us except when we're saving them. That's what lets us do what has to be done. We can make the hard choices, do what's really the right thing for everyone even if no one likes it, and ssurvive it when everyone hates us for it. The Inquisition can form alliances and make friends and gain power, but it can't do that."

Nathaniel shakes his head a little. "I'm talking about a task force to make some repairs in Lowtown, distribute blankets in Darktown, and perhaps shove you into a couple of Hightown parties. This is what you fight me on? You brag about making the hard decisions, so make one. I want to see if you can do it."

Alistair SHOVES NATHANIEL OFF THE PIER AND THEN SITS DOWN TO KICK WATER INTO HIS FACE WHENEVER HE TRIES TO TALK

Alistair scowls for a moment—a moment when he contemplates explaining in excruciating detail, with funny-voiced examples, the difference between bragging and explaining how their organization is meant to function—but that passes quickly into a more withdrawn sullenness. This would all be much easier if he didn't actually respect Nathaniel's stupid staid opinions.

"That's not hard," he says: "No."

A pause. Just to be annoying.

"No parties. I don't know why people keep thinking me and the nobility is a good idea. It's not. The best I can do is disappoint them, and the worst is—worse." Eloquent. "The other things... maybe. We'd have to be careful. Quiet. We're able to take what we need from everyone because we're using it to fight the Blight. If they think we're taking things from them to give to someone else, especially someone they don't care about, they won't keep cooperating when we have to ask for more."

Continued look of bewilderment. "I come to you about public relations and not only do you say no, but you suggest stealing blankets. And go on a tirade about making the decisions no one else will. What's gotten into you, Alistair?"

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byblow - 2017-04-20 18:07 (UTC) - Expand

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