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

[motherfucking_ghost]

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."

[poleaxe]

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.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"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."

[poleaxe]

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?"