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

[universal_charm]

He chuckled softly. "So it would seem. I think so long as your faith brings you comfort - then it's all good." He had nothing against religion, not really. Live and let live, he liked to think. He just didn't like it when people tried to shove their religion and beliefs down his throat. So long as it did no harm to others, people could believe what they wanted.

His gaze naturally went back to the looming miasma before them, his heart twisting. "What are we here to do, James?" he asked quietly.

[judgemewhole]

He sighed, looking at his clasped hands, "I need it now, more than ever." Which he was not going to shove down anyone's throat. Not anymore. He'd grown past that. He arched an eyebrow at Jim's question, before his gaze became thoughtful.

"We are here to make up for past mistakes." He said slowly.

[universal_charm]

Kirk looked at him and cocked his head slightly. "We as in you or we as in the Inquisition?" There was a distinction between the two he didn't feel could be ignored, and was one of the reasons he had avoided joining the Inquisition in full. He was never sure of their true desires, what it was they were really after and he suspected that neither did those that flew their banner.

[judgemewhole]

Here, James paused, before he stated, "We - as in myself - and the Templar Order. Perhaps, in some small way, the mages as well. We terrified the populace there, in one way or another."

He sighed, before he smirked, "Of course I suppose we could always ask the Qunari to tag along, to make it a trifecta."

[universal_charm]

Everyone had been hurt, in one way or another the way it had been told to Kirk. There had been no winners and no losers. Just a lot of hurt and angry people on one side and the other, neither quite wrong or quite right. It made for a gray sort of place, didn't it?

"Eh, why not right?" Kirk chuckled and shrugged. "I mean, in for penny in for a pound, right?"