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

[doneisdone]

"Not luxury so much," she muses, "practice. I had to be taught the Trade tongue, same as anyone else." And Orlesian, and technically Nevarran, though that was learned more through osmosis, listening to her mother speak. "There are those expect to hear certain things of certain people in certain places, and perhaps had I not learned to say those things, I wouldn't be here." She might be dead. Or worse, a toothless old whore in the gutters of a fishing village no one's ever heard of.
"Funny you say that, as the majority of Wardens I meet have more honor than the rest of the world put together." She pauses. "Myself excluded, naturally."

[inagutterson]

Yngvi rubs his nose, doesn't say what he could. Luxury is a skewed thing when children are expendable, scrapping for a mouthful; consuming his siblings in one sense is quite literal. What went into him never went into them. Dwarves are tougher than anyone except grey folk with horns but that just drags it out.

"So where was that when Kirkwall was on fire a while back? Cause I saw some of them. You're shite at lying low," it comes out less sharp than he'd like, as if he's been punched but he's still struggling on. "Got proper involved in fuckin Ferelden. Sitting around now."

[doneisdone]

"Good question," Teren hums, and stops walking to think. She looks around at the surrounding market, trying to imagine it on fire and in tatters, ravaged by war and magic. Rather than keep talking above Yngvi's head, she bends into a crouch, leveling her gaze with his in such a way that acknowledges his shortness but doesn't condescend.
"Don't know. In Orlais, probably. Not sitting around, but not helping either." She purses her lips a moment. "Left your lot for dead, did they."

[inagutterson]

"Gonna throw your back out," Yngvi says because he can't help himself, because the list of people that tend to make exceptions for him without making it strange or weird or doing a great deal of sighing are smaller than he is. Strange that he can see all the scars though, can pick it out the way someone who had to know how fast to run round a corner just knows; when your home is hurting, maybe you're hurting too. (Yngvi doesn't believe in that same as Melisende didn't cry about Halamshiral, just screamed and scared them all when they were all in battle, thinks about his brother and then that time everyone almost cracked under the weight of Liadan's grief when the Chantry news came.)

"Champion and their friends liked cutting a bloody swathe through us, says a lot about the company a person keeps when they're in with the merchants who do the real robbing." He examines a nail that's in danger of coming off, turning black from what he hopes is just a misplaced strike of a hammer during some routine work. Not that the strike was misplaced but that's dwarves and grievances. "Think more of the alienage and anyone down in this bit got it worst, lot of damage, trying to get out, lot of spears and fire and even some of the Qunari mages. The big chained things. Made Asher pause for a minute."

[doneisdone]

"Never you mind," Teren gruffly retorts, and fully takes a knee to hear Yngvi out as he talks. She nods slowly, her lips pursed, expression unamused.

"The gilded tales of heroes and valor never do seem to remember those slaughtered in their making." She drops her gaze. "It's the same everywhere, the poor and the downtrodden left to rot and serve as fodder for whatever bloody war it is at any given time. Not surprising, but all the same, I'm sorry you had to endure it."
She angles her head in the direction of the alienage, narrowing her eyes. "...and as much so that they did. Do they take at all kindly to shems, or are they best left alone?"
The way Teren says 'shems' is easy and unnoticed, as though it's always been a part of her basic vernacular.

[inagutterson]

"Lot of people kill. Just matters how someone tells it I think," Yngvi says it careful enough or rather casual enough like he doesn't care, like he doesn't think about it, like it's just come careening through his head in the scope of this conversation as he looks at Teren from the side of his eye because that's too much human in his space. Makes him feel a bit hemmed in. Older memories than he has all the words for. "Putting food in a belly and clothes on a back in the end, I got out and away, got to see the world with coin that's all mine in my pocket. Lot of them didn't."

He doesn't know what to do with something that isn't pity but he does nod and smile because she's not being weird about it. Not being Wren with the word games they play but it's appreciated all the same.

Turning in the direction of where the alienage is if he could see through buildings - and you can, can't you, when you know a place, just slowly unfold it in your mind from every angle no matter what happens to be in the way and thinks. "Some'll say they won't mind because when do they get a say in who comes and goes in the alienage? They have to live there but they still don't get even that? Rude. But there are some of them what sell stuff and they'll take your coin, and other ones with elf-blooded ones here and there, few more that just shrug and get on so long as you treat 'em as you find 'em, like they're a person." Like they should be treated but that's controversial, bordering on revolutionary really.

[doneisdone]

Teren can't help but notice that this little dude is on edge, in a way she's never encountered in someone who doesn't already think she's there to kill them. Maybe he does? But this is her friendly version. She's not sure what else to do, or whether it's worth trying.
"All right," she says blithely, and straightens again, squinting towards the alienage. "Suppose I'll see what needs doing. Well met, Congealedinagutterson." She says it completely straightfaced.