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

For a short time, he'd had that, a crew. Jonas and Nate and Velanna and Oghren and Sigrun and Justice. They'd fought Darkspawn together, discussed what was going on together - they'd been a team. And then Jonas had abandoned them and it had all fallen apart.

"I don't need comfort. I just need to learn what I can to help, and I don't know how much time we have." They need to defeat Corypheus, that's a given. But somehow there's got to be a balance between taking long enough for mages to get established and not taking so long that countries fall apart, but he has no idea what it is.

"I wish I'd something to offer in return." She's taught him beginning parkour, now this too, and he doesn't know if there's anything she could want.

"Thedas needs the sort of change that Thedas might not be capable of." If Anders doesn't need comfort then Araceli can speak plain then, or closer to plain. "The Chantry needs leadership sooner rather than later since it's such a cornerstone of life here and a new Divine might undo all that any of us accomplish. Nobility need to be held accountable for their actions but I won't hold my breath there. Elves shouldn't be treated as they are, as if they're less, their history crushed and trampled and taken from them but that is hardly a popular fight to be taken to the people. To a degree there is little spoken of the Tal-Vashoth or the Vashoth or the dwarves on the surface as if they are overlooked unless they are a problem or a tool, there are Seekers scattered who knows where, the Templars likely hold just as many opinions as mages but would hold more popular support than them when push comes to shove and I do not know enough of Wardens to speak of them but there are Wardens to add to this mix as well as everything you know of mages and their struggles. Rifters too. Whatever the rifts might have done to the world. Whatever else Corypheus has unleashed that we cannot see.

"All of that one day must be addressed but so too must the people who get forgotten. The people who have the soldiers march through their villages or the mages and templars fighting by their homes. People who do not have these things. Who will never have these things. Who will live and die as they are perhaps with a dream of better. They know a false promise. They need to know that what we do is give them enough at least where they have a world without having to worry for the roof over their heads or there being food on the table. Convince the common people of your plight and you already have an army." Perhaps not the army others imagine with swords and shields and banners but it's the one the people on their thrones and pushing their papers will fear when the unrest begins to swell.

Considering it quietly while she again tries to get her temper back under control (it shouldn't surprise her, that the poor and the common in a place with magic aren't even considered at all but every time when she thinks of the work she was doing at home she pens another letter to Leandra with aching fingers, it still does) she realises she's already said what he could offer. "I know very little of the Grey Wardens. What I do know is hopelessly outdated; the hazard of a book is always that by the time it goes to print the information can already be obsolete in some cases." It's half a lie, Kaisa told her things but Kaisa is Kaisa. Kaisa isn't Anders. And one person can't be considered an accurate and valid source of information.

He nods along as she talks, recognizing and respecting the passion in her voice. There's one point he disagrees with, but there's enough said that he's not bothered by it - if the Chantry is without a Divine for a longer period of time, change might be able to dig in its roots and be impossible to remove. He has no faith in a new Divine seeking to help anyone who can't pay them in money or favor.

"My work, for many years, was in Darktown. I'm setting things in motion so I can return there, teaching and healing and laying a foundation so that they know mages can and will help, can and will care. It's going to take a little time. But once it's set up, anyone who wants to assist is absolutely welcome to do so, and to bring whatever additional lessons or aid they want. It could be an outpost, a refuge, an outreach. The first staging area for improving life for those who have never had opportunities."

His first college, if he can be that optimistic. A joint school for mages and non-alike, because those who don't have magic need exposure to the fact that mages are just people too.

"As far as the Wardens go, while I can't promise to answer all of your questions, I can give them a shot if you'd like to ask them."

Ah but there's always a chance for rot or the one with a hand firm enough to tear all things she might take for weeds out, root and stem. (Araceli has come into possession of plants, there's an attempt at learning the parts.)

"There's a familiarity but Kirkwall is a fresh start, no? Darktown is...I am not fond of underground. In the dark." Castileos doesn't really have caves that you can't go swimming in but Araceli absently rubs her thumb before she catches herself, stopping with a tut. "You understand why I am not fond," she says quickly after the pause becomes too awkward, too strained (why does it still sometimes like to swim to the surface when it should be gone, just a memory and a scar) for her liking. "I can see what I can provide, I don't know what people don't know here until I realise there's something missing that I'm so used to and they look at me as if I have a second head."

Which is useful in a way but not the most ideal way to go about it when your hand can be statement enough in and of itself.

"There is a list. Somewhere. In a book. If Lux hasn't eaten the list for whatever reason a fox has for eating bits of paper he sets eyes upon unless I tell him he is to not eat those papers under any circumstances."

"It's hard to feel an outsider," he agrees quietly. "And I can't blame you for not liking the underground or the dark. I'm not fond of it myself." The people with needs congregate there, though. Or rather, they're herded there. Out of sight, out of mind, and the people who call themselves good find it easier to continue with that illusion if suffering isn't front and center. The pious tend to be anything but, in his opinion.

"As far as what they don't know... it's basic stuff that I'm seeking to teach. Writing, reading, geography, numbers. If someone turns up who has a taste for learning, I hope to pair them with a tutor who can help them learn how to keep learning, but I've not got that setup just yet." It has to wait. He has such grand plans, and there's so much work ahead of him. But he's not alone this time.

"When you find the list, or write it anew, bring it to me. I'll do what I can." At least that's simple enough.

OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall

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[muffled do you hear the people sing in the distance]

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