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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An island nation. It sounds fascinating, for all that it's hard to picture. And even though it's different from Kirkwall, her words hold true. Kirkwall isn't the largest city he's ever seen, but it's a city-state and most people in authority and power likely don't have to come down here often. Anders takes a breath and looks around, considering.

"Would repairing the docks be important? Or would it just be an extra project, one that doesn't truly impact the lives of the people around here? Is it not as crucial as I thought it would be?" He knows nothing about running a city, honestly, and it's not something he's really going to dig into. Power isn't something he's ever wanted.

"Sailors talk. They need to use the docks and they complain about the state of their ships to other people so it can affect trade because people might say 'oh, I don't want to risk the hull on my ship'. The boatswain hears the complaints of all the crew too so he or she will hear if someone got hurt or if their jobs are harder because equipment somewhere isn't in a fit state and they have a job to report back to the captain. A captain wants a happy crew. Easy enough to pass on a mark-up somewhere else and who gets hit with it?" Araceli shrugs as if she doesn't know but even if Anders didn't live here, the first people to find they have to tighten their belts are those who can ill-afford it.

But back to the docks themselves and the state they're in, the work her and Anders are actually involved in. "You say that they pushed many to Darktown, to hide their poverty, but this is a place where even those without much skill can find work. I think there would be many an employer in Kirkwall willing to overlook the proper paperwork if it meant someone was doing something, maybe for less pay than someone else. Less likely to complain, more likely to get hurt, easiest to exploit." Usually Araceli is good at keeping things out of her voice when she speaks unless it's part of the bit but sometimes it cuts too close and right now it hurts. It's a reminder of what she was made to leave behind. The people she could be helping when she's fighting another war that yes, has so many hurting but no one ever sits down and talks about how many poor there are who have little to nothing in the first place, all of them overlooked and forgotten, always expected to know their place while those above decide things for them.

He presses his lips together, understanding the bitterness in her voice a little. The poor are always disposable, the elves, the mages, and no one should be.

"I know how to get them employment, but I don't know how to get them protection." Anders' voice is quiet. "Hawke was good at that. Intimidating shady business owners to make certain their employees' needs were seen to. I've never been good at getting people to listen to me or be concerned about urgent matters."

And he misses Hawke, not just her skill with negotiating and making people pay attention. Being in Kirkwall without her or Varric was an even more hollow experience.

"Can you do that? Negotiate, get them protections instead of simply being used like tools? If you can, I can speak with people I know in Darktown and find people who are able and wanting a job."

"It isn't about the intimidation. That can do more harm than good. Those things...they're-- I was going to say something about a ship but this might make more sense; it's not painting over the cracks but it's patching the holes in the walls and ceiling when the entire foundation is rotten." Her father's words that she and Leandra and the queensguard have put forward so many times sound neater but she'd maybe have to explain more about ships and she'd have to do a lot more translating in her head so she settles for it and feels tired. When does she get to stop feeling tired? (Someone should remind her one of these days that she's twenty-one, today is not that day, maybe when twenty-two has crept up on her then someone will be good enough to point it out then.) "They take time. And more patience than you think you have.

"When I learned how to shoot and duel, my teacher Marjani taught me a very valuable lesson: you are always the novice to someone, and every novice must swallow their pride. So you swallow it, my dear, not the other way about. Sometimes you have to. You have to let them call you a terrible thing and wear the smile as if it doesn't try to claw its way under your skin, you have to be so polite because they are looking at you. Common girls we're ten-a-penny, we're all the same, we can be replaced just like," she snaps her fingers quick as a flash, feels the kick of it through her arm like a loaded pistol. A certain sort of anger loosens her tongue but she's been a bard a long time by now, she knows how the Game works, how people see everyone. "So you talk. You agree. You pretend you are too stupid to understand the conversation going on over your head. That you don't see the document on the table or the money being exchanged, that someone is too familiar with someone else or how they come and go from estates. You stow your blessings in your holster until you can use them because you have as much as you can. Sometimes you yield and they sing your praises, sometimes they don't know what they've agreed to until all they see is your back when you walk away from the table."

And she should compose herself better because she's in public, get rid of the shark's smile and slide Araceli's face back on. Settle her hands back to what she's doing. Ignore that her heart is pounding and that she's in dire need of her breathing drills. "Do any of these people like card or dice games?" She asks finally, looking back up with still too much fire in her eyes.

"I wasn't that smart," he says quietly. He'd not smiled and let it pass. He'd fought back, struggled, and bore the marks on his body and mind and even heart, to this day. And likely for the whole of his life.

"I didn't bend my neck. I was older than many who are taken, and didn't believe that was the shape things should take. There was... There was one senior enchanter who convinced me to calm down for a time, to pretend, to survive. And then that didn't work." There is an anger that will never die deep in his core for what was taken away. Sometimes, on days where he was absolutely worn down between Justice and Darktown, that had been all that sustained him.

"I tried again, for seven years, in Kirkwall. We both know how that story ended. I envy your strength."

There's a few moments of lingering silence before he looks around the docks. "And in answer to your question, yes. Card games, Wicked Grace especially. It's a Kirkwall favorite. I'm an awful card player."

Thedas is a very selfish place, Araceli has thought that from the start when she came to Skyhold and opened her ears and her eyes, watched and listened, up on the battlements and in the tavern, later in the libraries or at the parties, moving around the camps. People might have a common cause but it breaks upon the rocks into petty squabbles or some struggle for who suffers most, who gains most, and it amazes her that the Inquisition has held together as much as it has for so long. (She isn't so stupid as to say this, whenever she does she's careful.)

(Still, her homeland had one war to figure out that no, we need to be better at doing this. Ink washes away easier than blood, a headache from a treaty is better than the heartache of death in senseless bloody violence.)

"And now you are here again," she says at last, flexing the ache out of her hands until she can make her thumb pop. "It isn't always about smart, it's about...opportunity. The correct one. The right time, the right place, the right people. You learn to play the games." Anders knows she was a thief after all, information is so often worth thrice its weight in gold. Speaking of games...

"Cards games are always about reading the other players at the table, thinking a good few moves ahead of them with each hand. Learn their tells and then you get good at cards faster than learning the rules."

"Do you believe that an opportunity always comes around, then?" Whether he'd created his own with the Chantry or not is... debatable. It had given others an opportunity, at least, but it hadn't been good for anyone. Just less bad for some.

"And could you teach someone how to play the games? They're not going to leave mages alone. As soon as the threat of Corypheus is gone, the mages will be a target again." There's also a chance the rifters won't be too far behind, but he doesn't want to try to be manipulative. He's already asking for help.

"Not always by itself. You keep your ears and your eyes open, but maybe it's something that my people are used to looking for. We're a nation of sailors and pirates and rogues, I'm a captain's daughter and a thief, I have to make a plan that has as many possible ways in and out as I can manage." Not an exaggeration, she worked alone for the most. "You can be selfish but when the times are hard, we are all expected to be a crew. One body, one mind, hauling together."

Right now...right now she misses that. Balancing chasing your wants with what everyone needs, people who just get it.

Mages are the way to get her to listen. Mages are her stake in this, not rifters; she's Inquisition, slipped rifter away from her identity more than a year ago as something she chose to call herself. "Of course, I've taught others. It might not be anywhere as comfortable as the Herald's Rest but that just adds to the lesson."

For a short time, he'd had that, a crew. Jonas and Nate and Velanna and Oghren and Sigrun and Justice. They'd fought Darkspawn together, discussed what was going on together - they'd been a team. And then Jonas had abandoned them and it had all fallen apart.

"I don't need comfort. I just need to learn what I can to help, and I don't know how much time we have." They need to defeat Corypheus, that's a given. But somehow there's got to be a balance between taking long enough for mages to get established and not taking so long that countries fall apart, but he has no idea what it is.

"I wish I'd something to offer in return." She's taught him beginning parkour, now this too, and he doesn't know if there's anything she could want.

"Thedas needs the sort of change that Thedas might not be capable of." If Anders doesn't need comfort then Araceli can speak plain then, or closer to plain. "The Chantry needs leadership sooner rather than later since it's such a cornerstone of life here and a new Divine might undo all that any of us accomplish. Nobility need to be held accountable for their actions but I won't hold my breath there. Elves shouldn't be treated as they are, as if they're less, their history crushed and trampled and taken from them but that is hardly a popular fight to be taken to the people. To a degree there is little spoken of the Tal-Vashoth or the Vashoth or the dwarves on the surface as if they are overlooked unless they are a problem or a tool, there are Seekers scattered who knows where, the Templars likely hold just as many opinions as mages but would hold more popular support than them when push comes to shove and I do not know enough of Wardens to speak of them but there are Wardens to add to this mix as well as everything you know of mages and their struggles. Rifters too. Whatever the rifts might have done to the world. Whatever else Corypheus has unleashed that we cannot see.

"All of that one day must be addressed but so too must the people who get forgotten. The people who have the soldiers march through their villages or the mages and templars fighting by their homes. People who do not have these things. Who will never have these things. Who will live and die as they are perhaps with a dream of better. They know a false promise. They need to know that what we do is give them enough at least where they have a world without having to worry for the roof over their heads or there being food on the table. Convince the common people of your plight and you already have an army." Perhaps not the army others imagine with swords and shields and banners but it's the one the people on their thrones and pushing their papers will fear when the unrest begins to swell.

Considering it quietly while she again tries to get her temper back under control (it shouldn't surprise her, that the poor and the common in a place with magic aren't even considered at all but every time when she thinks of the work she was doing at home she pens another letter to Leandra with aching fingers, it still does) she realises she's already said what he could offer. "I know very little of the Grey Wardens. What I do know is hopelessly outdated; the hazard of a book is always that by the time it goes to print the information can already be obsolete in some cases." It's half a lie, Kaisa told her things but Kaisa is Kaisa. Kaisa isn't Anders. And one person can't be considered an accurate and valid source of information.

He nods along as she talks, recognizing and respecting the passion in her voice. There's one point he disagrees with, but there's enough said that he's not bothered by it - if the Chantry is without a Divine for a longer period of time, change might be able to dig in its roots and be impossible to remove. He has no faith in a new Divine seeking to help anyone who can't pay them in money or favor.

"My work, for many years, was in Darktown. I'm setting things in motion so I can return there, teaching and healing and laying a foundation so that they know mages can and will help, can and will care. It's going to take a little time. But once it's set up, anyone who wants to assist is absolutely welcome to do so, and to bring whatever additional lessons or aid they want. It could be an outpost, a refuge, an outreach. The first staging area for improving life for those who have never had opportunities."

His first college, if he can be that optimistic. A joint school for mages and non-alike, because those who don't have magic need exposure to the fact that mages are just people too.

"As far as the Wardens go, while I can't promise to answer all of your questions, I can give them a shot if you'd like to ask them."

Ah but there's always a chance for rot or the one with a hand firm enough to tear all things she might take for weeds out, root and stem. (Araceli has come into possession of plants, there's an attempt at learning the parts.)

"There's a familiarity but Kirkwall is a fresh start, no? Darktown is...I am not fond of underground. In the dark." Castileos doesn't really have caves that you can't go swimming in but Araceli absently rubs her thumb before she catches herself, stopping with a tut. "You understand why I am not fond," she says quickly after the pause becomes too awkward, too strained (why does it still sometimes like to swim to the surface when it should be gone, just a memory and a scar) for her liking. "I can see what I can provide, I don't know what people don't know here until I realise there's something missing that I'm so used to and they look at me as if I have a second head."

Which is useful in a way but not the most ideal way to go about it when your hand can be statement enough in and of itself.

"There is a list. Somewhere. In a book. If Lux hasn't eaten the list for whatever reason a fox has for eating bits of paper he sets eyes upon unless I tell him he is to not eat those papers under any circumstances."

"It's hard to feel an outsider," he agrees quietly. "And I can't blame you for not liking the underground or the dark. I'm not fond of it myself." The people with needs congregate there, though. Or rather, they're herded there. Out of sight, out of mind, and the people who call themselves good find it easier to continue with that illusion if suffering isn't front and center. The pious tend to be anything but, in his opinion.

"As far as what they don't know... it's basic stuff that I'm seeking to teach. Writing, reading, geography, numbers. If someone turns up who has a taste for learning, I hope to pair them with a tutor who can help them learn how to keep learning, but I've not got that setup just yet." It has to wait. He has such grand plans, and there's so much work ahead of him. But he's not alone this time.

"When you find the list, or write it anew, bring it to me. I'll do what I can." At least that's simple enough.

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OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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[muffled do you hear the people sing in the distance]

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