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

[sistertohermen]

Her eyes went wide. "You're a Warden?" She knew they took in all sorts, even dwarves. She just didn't expect half the people she talked to to end up being Wardens. The feelings about them were...complicated, but at least she didn't hate all of them just on principle.

"I mean...I hope they don't expect Wardens to learn flying. Ships are fine, if weird. It's weird, but it's exciting. The surface has some crazy shit; these people don't realize everything they have sometimes."

[wardeneructate]

"Been one for around ten or so years now." Not that he ever really threw that title around. Being Warden was just a thing he'd done. It wasn't a deciding factor on who he was as a person.

"Even if they expect it I'm not going to. My feet are just fine on this ground and that's where my axe is best suited. Flying. Peh." Oghren took a big drink of his ale because the very idea of flying...terrifying. "Now get me some mabari chariots and then we'll be talking."

[sistertohermen]

She doesn't open an old wound and ask if he knew Herc. That would be rude to herself, and there are enough Wardens (or...were, anyway, before things happened) that they obviously don't all know each other.

"Mabari are those big dogs, yeah? Get all painted kind of like qunari? That I'd like to see. Better than little nug chariots. And faster than brontos."

[wardeneructate]

"Nugs aren't going to do it and bronto are too big. Mabari though. Just the right size and you could unhook them to get some real ripping action going. I've seen what those teeth can do. Real handy in a battle."

He laughed a bit, rather thrilled someone was listening to his idea about his chariots. Most people would have blown him off at this point.

"Just got to train them up. Then you're the deadliest thing out there."

[sistertohermen]

"Something to really put the fear of all the surface gods and all the Ancestors in someone, that's for sure. They're giant babies when they want to be but fight like anything in battle." She's seen it a handful of times. "Might be hard-pressed to convince anyone with a mabari to let you hook them up to a chariot, though."

[wardeneructate]

"Bah. I'll figure it out at some point. Not all of those mutts are tied to someone right? Probably can get it figured out with the ones that aren't." Sure that was totally how it worked. It wasn't but at least Oghren had a lot of stubbornness stuck in him. "You want to be one of the first to ride with me?"