[OPEN] A dwarf out and about

[ragweed]

WHO: Kit and OPEN
WHAT: Kit recovering from the injury he sustained in the Deep Roads, and then exploring the Gallows a bit.
WHEN: The latter half of Solace/July.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This post is open to anyone who might have reason to drop by the infirmary, or interact with a slightly lost looking, ripped a f dwarf limping around the Gallows after his convalescence.

Kirkwall has changed since Kit was last in it.

He'd landed in the City of Chains the first time 'round the same summer the Arishok's warship ran aground and the Qunari themselves were camped out in their compound by the docks like dread sentinels. The dwarven mercenary band he'd been a part of at the time had been serving as a guard retinue for a Merchants' Guild caravan, and business had brought them into the city to settle old debts, and generate some new ones, all in the name of profit. The city had looked like a right shithole then, with the poor, the dead, and the dying right under the noses of the nobility, sitting pretty in their decadent Hightown estates. Chantry Templars and priestesses could be found at nearly every level of the city--save Darktown, of course, where they never set foot except in pursuit of apostates.

It still looked like a shithole--but at least the Gallows had a forest right in the middle of it now.


I. THE INFIRMARY


The cot he's been laid up in for the past couple of days is clean and comfortable; the blanket is a bit scratchy, and obviously cut for someone about a foot and a half taller than your average dwarf, but it gets the job done and keeps the chill out. A competent physicker has seen to his wounded leg, though after many failed attempts at cajoling Kit into accepting it, she finally accepts that he's just not going to tolerate a mage healer taking a look at the wound.

It means his leg still aches terribly days after his misadventure into the Deep Roads... but all things considered, he's definitely had worse.

It's a cool, early morning when he takes the crutch that has been left at his bedside and limps his way just outside the infirmary to roll himself a cigarette and have a smoke. Leaning against the doorframe, he squints his eyes against the morning light and enjoys the quiet, interrupted only by the drowsy sounds of the Gallows personnel as they wake, and the cries of seabirds.



II. THE LIBRARY


He's never been in a library before.

No, really. The casteless dwarves certainly weren't allowed into the Diamond Quarter back in Orzammar, let alone into the hallowed halls of the Shaperate with her many mysteries and memories of the dwarves who came before. As a dead-eyed duster kid looking up at the Diamond Quarter from the stifling ruins of Dust Town, Kit liked to imagine that there was, at one point, a Gandir dwarf who'd had a name, a caste, and a life recorded in those memories. Before he'd been reviled, and then forgotten, and then reviled again.

It was a stupid thing to waste energy daydreaming about, when he had no idea where his next meal was going to come from. And with the Legion, the only books he read were the ones that his fellows used to teach him his letters.

So it's not academic curiosity that brings Kit and his crutch limping into the Gallows library, each awkward step resonating with embarrassing noisiness throughout the cavernous chamber. He grimaces, and tries to peg-leg along more discreetly; does this place have anything on dwarven history? Probably not. He looks anyway.


III. WILDCARD


[got a better idea? go for it, man, I'll roll with anything as long as it's set in the Gallows]

Comments

[misdirection_hex]

"Oh," he says, trying to sound merely politely surprised. Vandelin is a bit out of his depth in any discussion about the Fifth Blight, or any Blight, or the Deep Roads, or Orzammar, or the Legion. Or dwarves.

He resolves silently to fix this problem as soon as he's no longer banned from the library. (Simply asking the perfectly friendly dwarf for whom he would need to know this information, thereby revealing his lack of worldly wisdom on the matter, is a totally unacceptable solution.) "Well, it's a good thing you did decide to swing by them when you did. Not sure what we'd have done otherwise." Even with Teren on their side, he wouldn't have liked their odds.

He's never given much thought to the identifiability of his accent--or hasn't since early childhood in the Circle, anyway, when he'd made a defiant and deliberate effort to keep his alienage dialect even when surrounded by humans who'd all sounded varying degrees of posh to him. "Marcher, yes," he says approvingly. "You've got a good ear. But it's the other end of them. I came from Hasmal. I've never been to Kirkwall until just a few months ago."

[ragweed]

"Well, it's a good thing you did decide to swing by them when you did. Not sure what we'd have done otherwise."

Even recalling Teren's competence at dispatching darkspawn and Vandelin's eagerness to help, Kit finds himself in agreement there; their meeting in the Deep Roads was fortuitous, but not only for them. "I expect if you folks hadn't come along when you did, things might've gone poorly for me, too," he points out, then smiles again. "I think we're even."

Hasmal. His mercenary work never carried him that far west above ground, though he's doubtless forged into the depths of the Deep Roads below it at some stage. The Legion tended to get around, just not to anywhere most folks would choose to go if they had their druthers. He looks around at the stark, oppressive aesthetic of the Gallows, his opinion of the place clearly written on his face. "I've been here once before," he admits, like owning up to having had influenza or something equally unpleasant. Lowering his voice a fraction, he adds, "Wonder whose idea it was to set up shop in the Gallows."

[misdirection_hex]

"They didn't consult me about it, that's for sure." He grins at the candor of Kit's distaste for the place. "I don't think it was the Inquisition's idea, either. I'm pretty sure this was the viscount's thinly-veiled attempt at a 'fuck off,' pardon my Orlesian, and we called his bluff."

Vandelin speaks with far more authority on the subject than he actually has, as per usual, but even if he doesn't actually know, he thinks it sounds like a reasonable explanation for how they came to be based in the Gallows. It's difficult, in any case, for him to imagine the offer of this place as anything but a purposeful fuck-you.

It's an unpleasant subject for pleasant company, though, and he returns to the idea of the darkspawn rescue (because...this is somehow a less objectionable topic.)

"Normally, I like to hear that my debts are caught up on," he says, "but in this case, I was hoping I might at least have to buy you a drink first."

[ragweed]

Whether he actually knows what he's talking about or is just pretending that he does, Kit finds the story pretty plausible just based on his past experience with noble big-whigs and their ilk. They like to talk a big game, but the second you show a bit of backbone, they wilt like flowers after a hint of frost.

"Normally, I like to hear that my debts are caught up on, but in this case, I was hoping I might at least have to buy you a drink first."

Kit pauses. It's only for a fraction of a second, and it doesn't hinder his smile, but there's an inscrutable quality to his gaze that makes reading that smile difficult. Then his gaze warms, the corners of his eyes crinkling a bit.

"Well if you're buying, I'd be rude to say no."