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]

"That and wax in the ears."

One assumes. Old men are very good at the selective hearing business after all, has to be something like that trying to protect their ears from all the nonsense they'd need to put up with otherwise. About how unfair it is, how people deserve better, how they might like to be paid more or actually have a dinner tonight. Damned unreasonable, better not to have to risk your hearing with all that sort of rubbish tumbling out of mouths that should know to stay shut.

"Mate. Mate." And again somehow on the exhale Yngvi manages to slip in a very soft but excited mate becase what's this. Have the people not been told? Are they not being entertained? "There's a Hanged Man out front. Look come find me. I'll take you. Find you a good seat. You won't be downwind of the piss and vomit unless that's what you're there for. Kind of has that smell, bit of that sort of taste, can't confirm for the food I didn't do my eating there." Yngvi didn't have that sort of coin for that kind of fancy eating.

(When the Hanged Man is fancy eating, you really need to look at your life and the choices others once made for you.)

"Heard a story about older wives being better but I've got seven fathers and five mothers, that's about typical for a dwarf-- and am I going to wake up with no trousers if I eat these? Or do I make tea with them?" He stops to think as he holds out his gross dirty hands because he hasn't heard of washing, that's for people who want to get sick, a healthy layer of grime seals in the good health don't you know. "Wait are these the ones you feed to a horse or a ram or summat then you drink their piss brewed into a tea? They do weird shit in the Anderfels, there's fuck all to do up there."

[meds4sale]

"I carry a wash for that as well," he said in an offhand sort of way. He was, after all, very well aware of what the elderly said and did to avoid little inconveniences.

He watched in mild fascination as Yngvi grew animated - well, more so than he'd been before - and began to excitedly extole the virtues of what, as far as the Medicine Seller could tell, was pretty much every pub, inn, and miscellaneous roadside establishment that would entertain the occasional itinerant.

It sounded like exactly the sort of place the Medicine Seller needed. The sort of place where rumours probably flowed as freely as the bad beer (and piss and vomit and various other bodily fluids).

"What a generous offer - I would certainly appreciate it."

The Medicine Seller considered Yngvi's question about the mushrooms carefully.

"You simply... eat them. No horse or ram necessary. Though..." The corners of his mouth turned up in a small grin. "...Perhaps only a little at a time. They are... strong."

Then again, someone streaking through the courtyard of the Gallows could provide some much needed levity.

[inagutterson]

"Wouldn't want them to worry, all these vagabonds traipsing around over their heads? Can you imagine what the old duffers'd think?" Yngvi's a little too eager to move on beyond that part, happy to maybe be the ears if he needs to be just now if it keeps them from getting their fingers too deep in too many things he'd rather they not be involved in. Dwarves have short fingers but they're strong and grasping, they sink them in like mabari will with a tasty joint of mutton.

Grinning, Yngvi gives half a bow before remembering the weight of what's in his pockets and how it starts to tip him over too far, forcing him to scramble to catch himself. Smooth. Real smooth. A damned professional. "Come look for me whenever you fancy, I'll be around. Or just ask any of the dwarves in the Gallows for me by name, they'll all point you and I'll show you to the best seats. Apparently you can sit on the Champion's seat but why you'd want to sit on the seat of some upjumped doglord that went about killing folk for no good reason, folk just making a living I don't know."

(A selective history of Kirkwall through the eyes of the people who knew people who got murdered by Hawke.)

"Handy, it'd be dracolisks and they've already eaten several fingers, five noses and tried to suck out an eye, or the nuggalopes and I mean look at Stroganugg, not his fault someone had ideas about his cousin generations back is it?"

[meds4sale]

"In my defense," he said slowly, "I have never heard of a duffer, so I wouldn't know what it would be thinking."

Still picking up that slang. He could probably figure it out from context, but it was more fun to see if the dwarf had more interesting things to say.

"I will do that. I am sure you will be easy to find." All he needed to do was follow the odor of halitosis and damp privy carpet.

He'd seen the nuggalopes once - he really didn't have much desire to again. The hands were a bit... off putting. And given his line of work that was tough to do.

Though speaking of Stroganugg...

He opened the drawer where the little nug had burrowed more deeply into the scraps of papers.

"I trust you will want this one back?"

[inagutterson]

"You've never met one of the elderly? You lucky bastard." Translation acquired. Maybe it's from one of his very Starkhaven relatives rather than it being strictly Kirkwall.

Glancing at his nug, somehow apparently related to monsters, his face softens. Stupid things to care about. Should've palmed them off on folk before coming here and yet.

And yet they're his. That's the thing.

"He's the one that keeps the rest in line, let me move some things about." A carta coat is a coat of many pockets, most of them buried deep in the lining of the coat and it's one of these that Yngvi fidgets with after he's balanced the outer pocket on the other side so he won't be walking strangely. A nug is always a fat little thing. "C'mon you chunky little pest, time to be shoving off."

Yngvi is perhaps surprisingly gentle, scooping up the nug. It doesn't even stir when he tucks it into the inside pocket so it'll nod off against his chest before it can roll back into the pile up in the Gallows with all the rest.