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

[intruthandlove]

"That is a very good question." She says it almost helplessly, but she is ever attentive. Mostly attentive. A small portion of her attention is still on the large muscular fellow following them. She glances at the qunari with the red paint then lets her eyes slip slightly farther back in time to see her follower very nearly run over by a cart.

Good.

"All I've heard of the Qunari are something about an invasion some odd years ago and the Chantry blowing up."

[inagutterson]

"The compound? That was theirs. Never seen anyone so big as the Arishok, he was something else, horns were probably-- I want to say they'd probably be like the height of you if you lopped them off and stood them end to end? Made shit tense, why the folks wanted me and my brother to head off for better prospects. Apparently it was all over some religious book and that's just sad because I thought they'd be more interesting than the Chantry but that book about the whole thing was written by someone involved with the doglord and the merchant's guild so you know." No Yngvi, she doesn't know but he screws his face up like someone just allowed a bronto to take a shit in front of him so it'll have to do before he launches into topic number two.

Trying his best to forget about the times when his home was on fire. When people weren't dying. When he had to come back and wonder if maybe he did in fact know the corpse he happened to be tossing into the communal pile for more fire.

"The Chantry blowing up was a mage. Angry because mages are in Circles and yeah, the Gallows was bad I was working around there doing odd jobs and that was before it got really bad but roof over your head and regular meals? Lot of people would kill for that." Does he need to add that a lot of people have killed for that? How many people actually go out and kill for that because what is a mercenary and what is a soldier, just a matter of how you slice it really and how you justify yourself in the mirror. It's still killing on someone's coin to put food in your belly and clothes on your back isn't it? He sighs and doesn't try to keep the strain from his voice because if he covers one eye and squints he gets it but at the same time? "Lots of people died. He used to be a healer in Kirkwall too, helped people. Then he goes and does that. Didn't think healers did that."