faderift | 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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She continues to laugh, genuinely surprised that he's bothering to tell jokes. Most figure out she's a servant, and turn any attempt at charm right off.

"You fight for the Inquisition? Some kind of mercenary?" His accent's dwarven, but that could just mean he spent his early life as a trader. It's not exactly unheard of. With a sharp pull, the corpse comes out of the closet and onto some rotting sheets Ioane laid out earlier. All according to plan.

"No ghosts yet. I'm not very interesting to haunt, must be."

He's always charming. Some use a word very different from 'charming', but hey, let's stick with that. It's a nice, positive word.

"I mean, yeah, I'm technically with the Inquisition." He won't regale her the tale of Cassandra putting a sword to his throat. Not to someone he just met. Get a few ales in him first. "Fight demons and crazy red lyrium-ified Templars and all that." Just wait, the whole Rifter thing will come out on its own, don't worry.

He shakes his hands off of whatever goopy goo Bastard might've gotten on him before taking one end of the sheet. "Count your blessings. I hear these spectral assholes like locking people in rooms as well as the usual spook-fest of weird noises and cold spots and stuff like that. I don't even really get the history of this place and even I can tell there's bad news all around."

"Who needs to know the history," Ioane says, which is a great way to cover for her own ignorance. She knows the Mage / Templar War started here, and there was a great battle that helped make Kirkwall the shithole it is now. Beyond that, who cares? "Mages got killed and ripped open the Veil. Ain't that always the way of it?"

Her tone is rather rhetorical. Politics and history have never been of much import to her. She keeps draggin Bastard out toward the pyre in the courtyard. "Leave mage shit to the mages, that's what we say in Denerim."

"I...mean, I guess that's sort of about right, that I know of. I think mages kind of want help with the mage shit, though. Hence a war. But I try really really hard not to get involved."

Well, more involved. He's involved with a mage but not with the...mage-y half of her? Hm, better never say that to Christine's face.

"Doesn't always, historically, work out for me, but hey." /SHRUG

"Starting a war with Templar's gotta be the worst way to ask for help I ever heard," Ioane says, politically sensitive as always. They're nearing the flaming corpse pile, and Ioane helps the other man heave the thing into the flames.

Wiping some of the grime off her, she grins over at him. It's all teeth, not terribly attractive on an already equine face. "Ioane, by the way. Shake your hand, but believe me, you don't want it."

Eugh, okay, that's something he didn't have to deal with back home. Flaming corpse piles. ...I mean, he did have to deal with a base of corpses that one time when Tex killed his whole team, and then there were all the dead Wyomings, but, none of them were flaming. (In an on fire sense. He can't say whether any of those dudes were flaming in a Donut sense.)

"I can't really say. I try not to take sides. Issues like this are always, like, waaaay more complex to someone who isn't even from here. There's like...nuances and stuff." Not shaking hands is fine with him, but he gives something of a casual salute. "Church. Pleasure saving you from pretend monsters and gross squishy corpses."

Ioane laughs again, just pleased to not be carrying a corpse. And, you know, to be talking to someone who bothers to make jokes. He doesn't know she's some dirty tanner's daughter from the arse end pits of Denerim. It's... nice, not having a past. Most people don't ever get the chance to loose their history. She's damned lucky.

"Ioane. Of Denerim, late. Where're you from? Y'almost sound dwarven." A trader, she's sure of it. Somewhere on the outskirts near a route.

"Uh. Nnnnnot around here. Not anywhere remotely near here." It's not that he's ashamed of being a Rifter. Never. He just never knows how anyone will react. "Kind of from a place way beyond the Fade from a distant world and time and, uh, dimension. Etc."

A look of illumination slowly spreads over Ioane's face. It doesn't do her any favors. "Ohh, you're one'a them folk. They type the Rift been spitting out."

Ioane's reaction, then, is one of dull surprise. She just can't quite believe it, that something so bloody mystical magical would fall into her lap. So she just... doesn't. It's not that she thinks he's lying, it's that the truth is so fantastical she just keeps it at arm's length. She just doesn't know what to do with it.

Obviously. "How's that, uh, workin' out for you?"

OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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