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

[tactical_alert]

"I trained and spent much time in Orlais, enough to speak the tongue. I wish I didn't know as much about the Game as I do. It's true that none are immune from it, and those who refuse to play are still impacted by it. Still," he says with a mildly impetuous sniff, "I prefer to leave it to the Orlesians who invented their version specifically." Careful, you're letting your Fereldan show.

It's been long enough since Rifters had begun to arrive with...few incidents--he doesn't have the awful suspicion that they might, in fact, be demons. Just confused people from other lands and other times who are occasionally very helpful or trouble. Araceli has been, thankfully, the former. "Seekers are not so unlike Templars, though you'll hardly ever hear either side admit it. There's plenty of bad blood and wounded pride between us. In the broadest of strokes, we find the Templars to be rash and power-hungry, and the Templars find us prideful showoffs there to one-up them. We are, in many ways, there to do or finish the jobs that Templars were unable to, but naturally it's more complicated than that."

She was there. He's got no reason not to say it. "We're both involved in such events as Annulments. Bringing in apostates and dangerous maleficars. And we also bring Templars to justice when it's called for. Seekers have a reputation for being the dour-faced special forces of the Divine sent in to clean up especially terrible messes." A shrug. "I cannot deny the reputation being fully earned. But now that the Seekers are scattered to the winds, it's more of a title than a position."

He won't, of course, go into the details, the differences involving lyrium consumption, or the ability to burn the lyrium within a user's body. The differences are enough to cause a rift between the Orders. And enough to sever a number of family ties.

The talk of optimism brings a wry curl to his lips. If Charles could only have been around to hear someone say that to him... "The work at Skyhold took what feels like an age to make properly lived in, and that was a forgotten and abandoned fortress atop a mountain pass few would have ever been foolish enough to traverse. The work in Kirkwall is going to be difficult, of course, but in comparison we've our work cut out for us."

[foxsays]

"There is an even more elaborate version where I come from in another country where they all wear masks all the time and everyone must have a 'twin' that they share a public name with, to know their true name - it's a preoccupation, it can even become bloody in trying to obtain it." Needless to say that the greatest assassins come from that country though it's the only place where a demon figures so greatly in their stories unlike Araceli's tales of the sea and the moon and all their many wonders so there's that.

As far as you know. Just kidding she's good. Parkouring around with a lute and a fox, delving elbow deep into politics far more than more of the natives care to? Absolutely nothing to worry about with her she's happy to be helpful and needed here. "Both groups answered to the Chantry prior to the fall of the Circles and the dissolution of the Order, that is how I have heard it told. But there is always something else going on within itself, after all, even the mages fought amongst themselves in the end when it came down to the voting." Araceli is still angry about that or more about how those who could use their voices didn't and how those who are held up as examples never claimed a side but still meddle as though they do. Have some damned conviction and stick with it. "I imagine that with the loss of the Lord Seeker and the death of the Divine it has become far more complicated still, and will remain that way for some time to come. I do not envy either of your orders what lies ahead there yet all lives are touched by it."

Cast a stone over the water and how far do the ripples spread, what do they upset?

"There are some things that reputation can help to accomplish, just the shadow of a name that can sway a great many things." Araceli says it carefully because Rivain isn't something that she'll ever forget; no matter what arguments she might hear from either side, she lived with those people, had her heart in her throat when they were frightened and grieving and angry. She can't step back so easily from that, when their beliefs were ground under someone's heel. It isn't for Araceli to say things she might wish to. It wasn't her war at the start. She wasn't here. She can't be so free as she might be around people she knows better. "What is that verse...blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow?"

(Araceli isn't that good at the Chant but she knows that verse if only from how often she's heard it around Skyhold, always something heavy about it when it's uttered.)

"There were holes in the roof in Skyhold, believe me, I was up there more than anyone else, I knew where they all were. The goods will be fresher and there won't be the damages and charges from having to haul them up the mountain, the news comes quicker, we might not all have to stay crammed in the same space living on top of each other. Can you imagine - everyone. In buildings. How long did people have to stay outside the main hold?" Too long. The answer is always too long.

[tactical_alert]

He understands her concern, even if she doesn't show it. The wry look remains, if a few shades darker than before. "There's a reason I'm the one being given some of these forms to sign despite not technically being in charge of anything at all." Only so far being the left hand of Cassandra will go. Meant something in Skyhold, less so here. Here he's just another one of them until they're all sorted--just...more, being a Seeker. Just as the Templars are more than a common man, to their own, and yet? Same boat. Quite literally.

"Benedictions. Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood the Maker's will is written." He lets it hang in the air, a sort of reverence. "I don't expect you to understand the religion and the Chant, but that you've picked up on any of it is more than I could ask for. The Chantry," he continues with a tight pull of his face, not quite a grimace but very, very close, "still does not, as an institution, take to us kindly. We must work on it if we stand any chance of making progress. If they could just agree on a new Divine, that would go a long way in uniting itself so that we, in turn, can unite with the Chantry. We've a long way to go as far as Thedas is concerned. But still...progress."

[foxsays]

"You say technically now, do any of us know what our places will be when anything at all settles?" Araceli's been wondering over it herself, how much this is going to change, if this is going to be an actual chance to do something. To see change done. To get more work done than just studying and outposts and going to the next party to talk to more nobles.

Store your blessings in your holster, she thinks, her father's voice in her ear still with her and it's comforting to know she hasn't forgotten it.

"The Chant is a part of Thedas, it's something held dear to so many, woven deep within Thedas itself. There are such things where I am from." If Araceli hadn't shared such a story, she likely wouldn't have been pointed in the direction of Rivain and so they wouldn't have gone to help the people they helped. That's the power in the stories of where people came from and how they came to be. "Orlais being on the road to recovery could help somewhat, no? The Grand Cathedral is there. A new Divine could give us another obstacle to face when there are already so many before us if she does not agree with what we must do. The Inquisition was heretical when I fell through a rift, she might think the same."

[tactical_alert]

"Much is yet to be determined." About their positions, and the future, the Divine, the Chantry. He has his questions and his doubts, but he's sure that they need a Divine.

Just...one that's on their side, let a new one overthrow Justinia's orders.

"Many minds need yet be changed. I'm sure there are many in power yet who see us as heretics and a threat to stability of the region, despite the fact that there's already a threat to stability in their towns. If we can bend enough ears to sympathy..." A shrug. Maybe they can get enough sway to not be overthrown by a new Divine. Maybe even have a say in who it is.

[foxsays]

"People in the towns care about still having a roof over their head. Having enough food on the table. Parts of where I lived before it was a choice between the rent or paying for your food, I would imagine that there are places here where the choice is just as stark. People know a false promise. They want better for their children than they ever had or the chance for more. That there won't be a war or soldiers or mages and templars rampaging through the countryside, that things can be secured." She's thinking about how people from the place the war so long ago at home was lost still come to Castileos for just the hope of more, of better, she sighs softly. "Clearing out the demons whenever there are rifts could do a great deal, seeing that we are all there, that we are willing whenever there are red templars or Venatori or whatever else? That should help them to remember who did what when their rulers were busy keeping their thrones instead of of helping them."

Orlais she's looking at you and judging all of you, yes that includes you Briala along with the whole Chantry.