OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

[faderifting]

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

Comments

[inagutterson]

There's plenty of time, he's got twenty of the buggers. Four favourites then all the rest that roam around as they please but Maker have mercy if anyone suggested putting them in the cooking pot. Only he threatens his nugs.

"There's three layers. Hightown with all the rich tits, Lowtown with merchants, the Hanged Man and not-so-well-off tits, and Darktown where the salt of the earth live." Yngvi's had to tell that last lie about what kind of people his family are so many times that it rolls off the tongue nice and easy. "Rothbor's calling himself Lord now? Them mushrooms after dinner in his wine are going to his head if he's conjuring up all sorts of titles."

(Who is Rothbor, he doesn't know, he's out of the loop with some names after the years away and the family haven't caught him up because that'd require more chatting than he's up for right now. Better he be elbow deep in corpses.)

But he gives her his best smile since yeah, there's not going to be a soul in the Inquisition that'll know Darktown better than him, he'd put money on that one, and winks. "Oh, we're familiar. Handsome young dwarf like me? It was a scandal, I had to leave so I didn't damage his reputation if he's become a Lord in my absence but it's the price we pay, isn't it?"

Best thing about talking to strangers and not his friends in Kirkwall, all the lies come flooding back and none of them are here to call him on how he left Kirkwall exactly.

"Shall we? D'you want the scenic route or the direct route? Because I know every single route."

[intruthandlove]

It certainly could be true. It at least teases a smile out of Diana that doesn't quite belong on the face of a guileless servant, small and quick, gone in a blink. Back to the sunny sweet and mild look.

"My! You two must have been very intimate!" Diana hasn't gone undercover in years, the natural outcome of having a very public persona, but she has to admit, there's a bit of fun to it. Particularly there's no immediate risk to life and limb. The flickering shadow of the tailing thug catches her eye. Ah yes...

"The scenic route, if you please," she says, "It will be very helpful to know my way around."

[inagutterson]

Noted. Humans don't look down as much as they should, least not in Yngvi's experience. It's helped as much as it's sometimes hurt. (You focus on the former not the latter, everything ticks over nicely and you ignore everything else, all dwarves look alike, all dwarves are funny, no one thinks about dwarves and it's better than what it's like with elves.)

"I'm not a cheap date if that's what you're thinking, didn't learn my manners from a fishwife or a goatherd." Wherever Yngvi learned his manners, it's clear enough that yes he is a cheap date and would be the kind you'd find reclining in the nude before you've even locked the door. If he didn't actually have more important things to be getting on with unless that's the name of the game. Sometimes it is. People like all sorts. Most people like elves, pretty much everyone will go with a human if they're a human, folk are lying if they aren't curious about Qunari with all the rumours but now and then they like a dwarf.

"Not as scenic as some places, the doglords happened, the Qunari happened, a mage blowing up the Chantry happened," he explains as he begins to lead the way past a merchant that nods to him. "Good markets are where the Inquisition isn't allowed yet, up in Hightown, all the fancy gear is up there but the prices they charge? Ripping you off. There's always someone selling whatever you need to heal or hurt, usually they get a good spot. Might get arms and armour the same place but not always. Don't buy your fish and meat from the same person, just don't, you'll regret it."

[intruthandlove]

"I would never think to question your chastity, ser," Diana says, gravely. There's no reason not to carry on til the end and it's nice to have someone around that's at least familiar with the area. Whether it would help or hurt by the end of this was certainly up for debate, but for now, Diana follows and listens dutifully. She keeps only half an ear and half an eye out of her shadow.

"I've heard a little of the gossip," she says, "A lot of people don't seem very sure about the Inquisition being here." Unsurprising given they were an armed force and Diana's own arrival via rift, accompanied by two demons... Yes, that probably did not help matters overmuch.

[inagutterson]

"Why would you be questioning my third cousin thrice removed?" Not that she's his if she even existed, she'd belong to herself of course but for the sake of the whole bit, why would she be getting questioned in this malarkey? Probably for being just as involved as Yngvi in anything if not more by virtue of having been here when he left but a dwarf doesn't always know. He wheels past some young man on an errand who doesn't even seem to see him.

Typical.

"So 'bout...ten years back there were a whole flood of refugees from the Blight that flooded in and it was shit because they flooded in everywhere and imagine all those people. Appearing. With nothing. Being angry. In the bad bits and staking a claim because they're bigger than a lot of people." Literally taking the food out of your mouth but Yngvi isn't actually saying those words but he was a much smaller dwarf back then. "Also the Qunari - you seen a Qunari? Like a proper one? Well serious and strict and probably wanting to rule the whole of Thedas - appeared. Set up shop in the compound. Chantry got proper offended. Him," Yngvi nods to one still wearing some of the red paint leaning against the wall of a merchant's stall offering arms and armour, "he's one of the ones what stayed after, lot of them left and went real bad up in the Wounded Coast. Place is bad enough on account of the crabs."

[intruthandlove]

"That is a very good question." She says it almost helplessly, but she is ever attentive. Mostly attentive. A small portion of her attention is still on the large muscular fellow following them. She glances at the qunari with the red paint then lets her eyes slip slightly farther back in time to see her follower very nearly run over by a cart.

Good.

"All I've heard of the Qunari are something about an invasion some odd years ago and the Chantry blowing up."

[inagutterson]

"The compound? That was theirs. Never seen anyone so big as the Arishok, he was something else, horns were probably-- I want to say they'd probably be like the height of you if you lopped them off and stood them end to end? Made shit tense, why the folks wanted me and my brother to head off for better prospects. Apparently it was all over some religious book and that's just sad because I thought they'd be more interesting than the Chantry but that book about the whole thing was written by someone involved with the doglord and the merchant's guild so you know." No Yngvi, she doesn't know but he screws his face up like someone just allowed a bronto to take a shit in front of him so it'll have to do before he launches into topic number two.

Trying his best to forget about the times when his home was on fire. When people weren't dying. When he had to come back and wonder if maybe he did in fact know the corpse he happened to be tossing into the communal pile for more fire.

"The Chantry blowing up was a mage. Angry because mages are in Circles and yeah, the Gallows was bad I was working around there doing odd jobs and that was before it got really bad but roof over your head and regular meals? Lot of people would kill for that." Does he need to add that a lot of people have killed for that? How many people actually go out and kill for that because what is a mercenary and what is a soldier, just a matter of how you slice it really and how you justify yourself in the mirror. It's still killing on someone's coin to put food in your belly and clothes on your back isn't it? He sighs and doesn't try to keep the strain from his voice because if he covers one eye and squints he gets it but at the same time? "Lots of people died. He used to be a healer in Kirkwall too, helped people. Then he goes and does that. Didn't think healers did that."