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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Part of him remembers being small (smaller) and everyone being that much bigger than him, knives because it was Darktown but memories, what can a dwarf even do in these times? That's what that lurching in his stomach is, nostalgia.

It tastes like bile for everyone doesn't it?

Watching him scamper off to wherever he came from, Yngvi at least takes his hand off one of the short axes, slaps his smile back on his face and swaggers up. The nug doesn't. It stares. Little beady black eyes.

"Sort of seeing why a whole bunch of them ran off and joined the Qun," he says as he keeps himself out of grabbing range because you can't always trust doglords now can you? "What he do to you that you were about to twist his arm off and- well I have three ideas for what I'd do; hit him with it, feed him it because he looks like he needs the meal or shove it where the sun don't shine. If he's seen it. Bits of the alienage?"

He sucks in a breath through his teeth. Probably as bad as Darktown, the sun's a dirty rumour if ever there was one.

There's that feeling, that liquid energy that comes from winning a fight. Ioane used to be half in love with it, back when she lived in Denerim. The travel up the mountains to Haven, then on a boat across the Waking Sea, that was a long time without getting in a proper fight. She's almost forgotten the rush.

So she answers evenly, calmly, with the sort of confidence that comes from almost breaking somebody's arm. "He was a cutpurse," Ioane says without evident judgement. The judgement comes later, when she says, "a shitty one. Probably one of his first marks."

Poor little kid. She'd feel bad for him if he hadn't picked her purse to cut. "You better not be his partner," she says, turning to the dwarf. Those axes look nasty, but he's smiling, so she'll take her chances (the rush hasn't worn off yet). "Because the whole 'distract her with chitchat' routine is old hat."

"He's starting out and now he'll not get dinner for making an arse of that, he's all by himself so he's got no other options or he's not all by himself and he's still got no other options. Take your pick." Yngvi lists them off on his fingers, knowing that he's missing off countless others but they'd be here all day and as much as he likes running his mouth, he doesn't want to clutter up the street speculating on some random elf. "

Snorting, he gestures to himself and gives a showman's slow turn to properly display himself. "I'm a dwarf," he replies as if that answers the question. Of course it does, just look at him standing here in this sort of coat, swagger of a polecat. "Not even the Coterie or smugglers'd look at that one. Elves and dwarves in Kirkwall? We keep to our own."

More or less. Or maybe that's blurred since he left after the whole Arishok debacle but he has the pièce de résistance anyway. "That's a very doglord thing to say."

"And if I'd let him have my purse, I'd be out of a job, because all I have is my mistress' money to spend on my mistress' things, and she'd think I stole it or whatnot. This ain't a charity." Ioane rolls her eyes in the dwarf's direction. She knows how things work in cities like this, even if it's her first week in Kirkwall. People are the same kind of poor everywhere.

She considers what the dwarf says. 'Doglord' just doesn't sting, mostly because she's too damn proud of being Fereldan for it to hit proper as an insult, but that's how he meant it. She folds her arms over her chest, an expression of strength. "It a doglord thing to give a shit what you think?"

"If she's Orlesian just get her drunk and she'll forget, that's what they're all like in the end. If she's a Marcher she'll just make you figure out how to earn it back. If she's a doglord then I'm amazed she's in the position to be hiring anyone." Seriously, it might have been years since the Blight, and not every person of Ferelden origin came then but when it comes down to it, most of them aren't on the same level as the Orlesians and Marchers. And the ones that did come during the Blight? Well he doubts things got that much better for them, realistically speaking. The smarter ones probably left when they saw that Kirkwall wasn't the great escape it was cracked up to be.

Folk take a word however they take it; Asher taught him a lot of things that he'd started learning in the undercity about what a person allows to roll off them, how you know where the gaps in the armour are, if that'll let you get the job done one way or the other. Good tricks. "Generally not, usually too busy letting the dogs shit all over the city. Used to be beautiful this place. Then look what happened to it. Lasted longer than the Qunari did though so congratulations, can't say your people didn't beat them." No malice just Yngvi calling it as he sees it from 4'5" above the ground.

"If they take your like," Ioane says with a grin, "it can't have ever been very beautiful." Said with an equal lack of malice. Ioane isn't used to pretty words and calm conversations; she doesn't know what to do with idle chitchat all nice and flowery and polite. This is the kind of shit she's used to, hissing at locals while she did her daily rounds, being called names and answering in kind. Sure, it broke into fights sometimes, but that was the way you showed when you were really pissed, not just holding your own.

Ioane is frequently angry, yes, it's true. But words are just air. The things that really matter are buried deep in the wreckage of Haven, where no fool words can hurt them.

She looks back down at her shopping list with its unintelligible scrapes of ink. "Where do they keep the napery in this bazaar? Since you're so gifted when it comes to telling me about this blighted place."

"My like? My like? You know nothing of the royalty and nobility of what runs beneath you that isn't Orzammar, lineages lost to time with tangled tails the likes of which would boggle the mind." Rat kings, he's been pushing the rat kings real hard since Skyhold and he's never going to stop now that he's here in their kingdom. One day he'll have a true sight to show people when he ushers a visitor into their court but until then it's just a taste. A tease.

Still there's an itch under his skin that wasn't there before about being a dwarf. A thing he's never had. He doesn't like it. Doesn't really know what to do with it really. 'You're a dwarf, get us dwarves' and 'deal with this red lyrium because you're dwarves' and then the whole 'and your family is Carta'. Talking around it with Wren before he decides to go drinking for real once he knows he's not going to wake up on ice thanks to some apostate the Carta have on the payroll with half his innards being removed.

Oh wait she's asking something "This bizarre what?" Yngvi doesn't know that word so he assumes this has to be some sort of doglord induced misunderstanding. Or he wants to see what she does with it. "Could just go pinch them off someone's laundry line, don't know where some of what you'll be buying round here has come from, might be off a corpse."

"Yeah, yeah," she mutters, listening to him talk. It's amusing, but she does have things to do. If he gets in the way, she'll lose him in the crowd, but until then, why not listen? There's no harm in it.

"They'll know if I nicked them. Don't you know anything?" She starts walking in the direction of a linens tent nearby, shrugging over her shoulder. "You gonna help or just keep coughing up your every thought?" After a second. "Don't worry, I don't expect you to do nothing."

"Got me this far." Some people make a good living from talking all the time but he knows when not to talk, when that's valuable, but keep talking and that's when it all gets good and interesting. It's not like he's got the imposing stature to do things other ways if he wants to go working things out. "You don't have anything against elves, do you?"

Doesn't hurt to check, to make sure because he's going somewhere.

"They do good work because they need to. Obviously. Shoddy work for them isn't a slap on the wrist. Or if it is then it stings more than it would for you or me." It'd sting for Yngvi too but differently, probably same for her, she's not noble. Anyway. "I know someone, she's still set up at her stall, I mean it's through a man and he's a human who thinks he's something but he's never dirtied his hands through hard work a day in his life."

Well, that's on odd question. Shit, is that what this is all about? He thinks she's some idiot who goes around waving a knife in alienages? Ioane just barely manages to keep from rolling her eyes. Who's got the time for that kind of hate? "Only if they got something against me first." Like the cutpurse-in-training, little whelp.

"I've known the like. Look, there's something in it for you if you just stand about looking menacing. Don't need any folk trying to skimp on my order because I'm, oh, you know, a doglord?" She says it with an amused smile. The fact that people think it's an insult has yet to get old. It will eventually, she's right sure, but it hasn't yet, bless it.

"Not everyone wants to go buy things from an elf." Or not everyone that's taller than Yngvi that happens to be a human. Seems they get a bit twitchy about it, start wondering about their place in the world and all that weird nonsense and all.

"This one's known me a long time, we go back. I look menacing she'll get right offended it's why I'm going to take you to see her so that she'll see you're with me and get a deal that way instead of seeing a human asking about a deal with a dwarf ready to throw a bear trap at her face." By the way he throws bear traps. Usually at the undead. Or demons. Or men. At crotch height because that's optimal throwing range for a dwarf of his stature. "She can't skimp you though. She's an elf. It's how it works?" It turns into a question because yeah, Ioane's a doglord so Yngvi can call her what he likes and so can other people to their peril but this one has to go off to the alienage at the end of the day, where could she ever really get away with anything like that? Unless places started looking up since Yngvi last toddled through Ferelden's more civilised parts.

Oh.

Well, that's damn nice of him. She'll have to thank him, one of these days. Not now, obviously; he'd brag over it. She'll find a time when he's soused. Maybe then he won't even remember.

Her expression is a bit softer, though, not that it matters. She's always had a hard face. "Being picky's always been more expensive than I could afford," she says with a shrug. "Ain't one of the fancy doglords. Sorry to let you down."

She doesn't sound sincere at all. You could even say she sounds sarcastic.

"Never get to meet the fancy ones," he complains. Also a lie because he's worked for some but again, fancy is a relative term when you've done jobs for Orlesians and Nevarrans and Marchers because it's harder to pick out the titled Fereldans from the ones who fell off the turnip cart than it is with others. "Always the farmers and the farmhands and the ones sent on the errands, it's like people don't want to bend the neck to talk to a dwarf."

They could just lift him up to be at eye level, provide him a box, bend the knee - he's not fussed but do they? No.

Anyway, a short walk. Yngvi points out people, assigns them as 'good guy, arse, handsy drunkard, can't count your coin or his so check three times' and so on before grinning and leaning on a counter. "The prodigal boyo returns if you hadn't heard, this is a friend, she needs-- cloth stuff?" He flaps. Tries to keep the dirt off the goods.

The elf, a small woman in her mid-forties with lines on her face, grey hair and white streaks at her temples tries and fails not to smile at him before she gives him a swat. "You've got two legs you urchin, use them. Tell me what you're looking for mistress, I'll do my best to provide."

Ioane listens close, trying to memorize every word. She'd be a fool not to. She'd figured this dwarf was a native, sure, but she hadn't realized he was her kind of native, the sort of folk who know the byways and the unspoken rules, the shortcuts not just through streets but through people.

It's important to know, and since she don't know it, it's important to know him. She'll keep an eye on him in the future.

From her own experience, she can plainly see the elven woman's fond of him. No shopkeep ever gave her that sort of supressed smile, but she recognizes the look from others. This dwarf bloke's in thick with the locals. He's annoying, sure, but he's either done them a good turn, or they know him from somebody's someone, or they're just as used to him as the scenery. Doesn't matter. She ought to be smart and cut a deal with him, something to soften her doglord disadvantage. (It doesn't occur to her to befriend him. That's never how it works, for her.)

She smiles at the elven woman and hands her the shopping list she was given; of course Ioane can't read it. But the elven woman seems to understand well enough, nods, and says she'll have it at the ready in an hour or so. Ioane nods, curt, and thanks her, before turning back to the dwarf.

"Alright," she says, "thank you. Did me a right favor." She's not dumb enough to think it was freely given, but she'll worry about that later. "Name's Ioane, by the way."

Hopefully not too close an eye the nights he goes boozing. Or when he tries something a touch stronger. True, there's always something to be learnt but oh at what cost will it be?

The thing about growing up short is that he knows how it goes for everyone getting the short end of the stick but elves and dwarves in the cities? More in common than some understand. He's only got so much in him for casting his lots and he threw it in with the elves before he ever had a gripe with doglords. Some things live in him. Older than he is. Bigger than his skin. The smile of an old elf woman like he's just another grandchild is part of.

"Yngvi. Congealedinagutterson. Come by the Gallows if you fancy Diamondback with me and the nugs."

Most poor folk don't have last names, so plenty make their own. Ioane isn't sure if it's funny or stupid to weave a joke into yours. Probably both.

Still, she appreciates the offer. "Owe you a favor, I do," she says. Her family has no honor, but she's not of them anymore. She's a different person, if she wants to be. So she'll try this 'paying debts' thing. "Ever need it, call on Ioane. I'm an Inquisition servant."

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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