— kindness is what you showed to me

[sulena]

WHO: Saoirse Ceallach + OPEN
WHAT: Saoirse decides the best way to get information on some missing elves is to go undercover as a servant, it goes as well as you expect + some daily activities
WHEN: Throughout mid-to-late August
WHERE: Kirkwall, various
NOTES: Mentions of physical and verbal abuse.

— ＧＡＬＬＯＷＳ.

Her trips to the Gallows have grown in these past weeks. She comes to work with the other in the Chantry relations group and make sure that the small chapel and libraries are kept tidy. Other times, she helps in the kitchens and carries messages while re-learning the passageways that were once all that she knew. It was darker days then... many days that forced her to keep the smaller ones closer to her in vain attempts to protect and shield them from the violence that was becoming their every day.

Today, Saoirse has traveled far up into the Gallows to the large room where their Harrowings once took place. Her Harrowing took place here too. A dimly lit room, surrounded by Templars with hidden faces and her heart threatening to burst. She had passed, of course and became a mage while this place became a distant memory that only reappeared as more mages were made Tranquil and with some never returning at all. Carefully, she traces the outline of something in the gathered dust with the blade of her staff and breathes out a tried sigh.

She will not cry, not now. There was still far too much to do.

— ＡＬＩＥＮＡＧＥ.

Kirkwall's alienage has become a second home for Saoirse these days. She comes to see the elves there almost every morning and leaves their company well after the sun has set in the evening. More often than not she is helping wherever she can lead a hand whether she is cleaning, minding children, gardening or teaching one of the various skills that she has acquired. Other times, she sits with the hahren and listens to her stories that she knows (stories that the hahren of Starkhaven did not know, or knew differently) and sips tea that smells of apples.

Today, she sits at the vhenadahl with a small handful of elven children. In her lap is a well-worn leather book, faded and barely holding together. She does not need it as she knows the Chant by heart and that includes the more... well, controversial verses:

"When the tale was finished, Andraste said to Shartan: Truly, the Maker has called you, just as He called me, to be a Light for your People..."

— ＴＨＥ ＨＡＮＧＥＤ ＭＡＮ.

In truth, Saoirse is the sort of person that stands out inside of a tavern like the Hanged Man. A small, yet bright elf woman, barefoot and constantly surrounded by music. Although she has a variety of weathered instruments with her but the lute and pan whistle are seemingly her favorite. Her songs vary between the the joyous sort of tavern melody that one might except to the more somber ones for those darker, more quiet nights. Most songs are sung in the common tongue but every so often she sings in the language of her home, one that only those that called Starkhaven's alienage home would know.

Tonight has been a quieter night though she has led a drinking song earlier, mostly she has sat near the center of the tavern and played whatever melody came to her mind. Sometimes folk would come up, requesting both familiar and unfamiliar songs, otherwise she would wander until finding a patron and offering them a raised brow.

"I hope your evening has been well," she says with a brilliant smile. "Might you have a request?"

— ＨＩＧＨＴＯＷＮ.

The Egremont family is minor nobility among those in Kirkwall, but nevertheless a good place to start. She has heard the whispers among the women of the alienage to the eldest son's behavior and Lady Egremont's vicious words and even more vicious hand. There is always a need for servants, elven ones to hide in the shadows of the lower levels while their human counterparts took care of things upstairs. It is easy enough to earn a place among the elven servants, the older woman that conducts the interview certainly does her job to sell such terrible things as a blessing for someone so unfortunate as herself.

Her day starts before the sun raises and ends far after the sun sets. She washes, cleans and runs errands under harsh pressure. The head lady in waiting uses any excuse to punish them. A hair is out of place, their is a stain on their apron or their fingers have cracked from being worked raw. She strikes them with a heavy cane on their knuckles, shins and across the face. Once she does not get the laundry in before it rains and goes to sleep nursing two broken fingers that she urges to heal with what little creation magic she knows.

Later in the week, once her bruises have faded, she is set out to retrieve a delivery from a nearby seamstress. In her hurry out of the alley from the back entrance (there was nothing good about a elf entering a hightown store through the door, let alone one clearly dressed as a servant) she fails to look carefully, almost running into someone and very quickly bowing her head.

"I am terribly sorry." She says, hoping whomever it was would not send word back to the household. She could not do her job if she was bedridden. "You were not hurt... were you?"

— ＤＯＣＫＳ.

She knows that the Egremont family is a dead end. As terrible as they are to their elven servants, they are not reasonable for the missing elves and she finds herself back at square one. A part of her wishes to end this ploy, find another way but there was much to learn within the walls of the Hightown estates. Information between servants could be worth their weight in gold and perhaps, just maybe, she could still find the lead she needed.

Yet as Saoirse nurses her bruised cheek and busted lip, she wonders if she can stand it. When she is allowed to sleep, the nights are filled with nightmares of the Gallows and the aftermath of its fall. Every strike brings back another bloody memory and prays that she could last long enough to find a thread to lead her to preventing more elves from vanishing.

— ＷＩＬＤＣＡＲＤ.

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Comments

gallows;

[arcaneadvisor]

Moving from the Gallows to Sundermount is a slow process but at least Morrigan is getting out and away even if it's in stages. A temporary stay in a former Circle that was once a prison (and was ever a prison, give it whatever name you wish but that never changes the intent behind those behind it) is more than enough in her opinion. Kieran at least had barely known it more than a few nights of rest after travel, safely tucked away with Gwenaelle or as safe as she might make him here. Better than him ever living in the shadow of a place where red lyrium and suffering called home.

Today is a day about working, returned from the Wilds as she is full of as many questions as she left with if not more. A slender volume tucked under her arm, Morrigan's getting some space from what she's been working on in her office. Behind her heavy door. (Solid oak, witchy spells, Sabine was never wrong about what was required to keep things both in and out.) Walking without a plan, without direction and this is where she finds herself, peering inside at-- well she knows the elven woman not but Morrigan is curious, always has been, so she stares for a time before announcing herself.

"I have seen only one Harrowing chamber before this one, in Kinloch Hold. More than ten years ago now though given the circumstances…'tis hard to say how alike two may be."

[sulena]

With raised brows, Saoirse turns on her heels to face the unfamiliar woman with a tilt of her head. She is not someone that the young mage, simply knows of in the sense that she knows of others that held such major roles in the Blight of a decade past.

This, of course, means she knows nothing. She knows stories and stories, she knows, tends to make mountains out of anthills when it comes to the truth of the matter.

"The Harrowing chamber in Starkhaven was very bright place. Stained glass windows of many colors that bathed the entire chamber with color and depicted fanciful moments in history... or so I heard." She says, shrugging her shoulders under heavy robes and leaning slightly into her staff. "I never saw it, you see. Not before the Circle burned down and we came to Kirkwall."

Came to Kirkwall. It sounds so nice compared to the actual events... of being marched here in some glum parade and flanked by Templars ready to behead them at a moments notice. Those nights on the road were some of the worst...

"I never much cared for this place while I lived here," she murmurs. "Though I imagine the Harrowing chamber of Kinlock Hold must have been... much more difficult. If what is said to have happened there ten years prior is all to be believed."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Is that not the way of so many things?" Morrigan doesn't hesitate but some part of her wants to when she takes the final step over the threshold, longs to recoil, and if she could blame it only on what she saw once then it would be easier. A life of freedom is a thing you never give up lightly and there's an itch beneath her skin, a pricking of sweat at her hairline. "Paint it golden, gild it, forget that there is flesh and blood, that there is a terribly messy thing beneath it all."

History goes that way. The heart of the Chantry and Orlais nestle side by side, decorative silver spoons and Morrigan walked the halls of Court long enough to know the rot beneath the brocades, the perfumes, the masks.

"Serault likely made that glass in your Starkhaven tower that remains no longer, I have spent time there, I have seen the works they are capable of. Perhaps..." She looks around, thinking about the statues removed and sold to scrap. 'Tis no bad thing to remember what came before. "I know many of the glassworkers still. Quite the journey from Starkhaven to Kirkwall with so many mages, was it not?" That there were Templars willing to make it surprises her but she knows not the circumstances, perhaps the Gallows was considered the only option, a prison, a fortress, whatever Meredith was before the madness as Morrigan heard.

A Harrowing Chamber is a Harrowing Chamber, a ridiculous test set by those who know little and less, who teach too many to fear in her mind. "Few were prepared to resist what came. Blood mages and the madness such unleash, abominations and demons afflicting the minds of Templars and the dead walking. The growths however. I remember the growths. The sound they made." Her voice is thicker at the end through the effort to swallow past the bile that rises to scorch her throat.

[sulena]

"I thought that of the entire world on some nights," She says tiredly. "Piled in a cell, surrounded by echoing screams and crying. If rifts had been a problem then that they are now, I would have thought myself having falling into one. Fallen into some rotten core."

Saoirse has never been one to linger in the darkness but it would be a lie to say it did not exist somewhere in her heart. No one from the Gallows left these halls without some ounce of it leeching into their bones and into their hearts. Nevertheless, she listens with a tilt of her head. Serault, she thinks. Somewhere far in Orlais, further than she ever traveled but mentioned with both fondness and fear.

"The journey was long, yes. Some mages were able to travel elsewhere, to Circles in Orlais or Nevarra but Kirkwall was most willing. They had the space, as you can see and plenty of Templars to handle it." She does not like to think back on it, the journey from Starkhaven to Kirkwall but it is still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

"Many of us did not make it to Kirkwall. Escapes, fighting back... there are many graves that dot the road between my home and here."

Again, she listens and ponders. Would she have survived such madness? "I could not imagine a madness greater than that of Meredith and Orsino in the end. Perhaps it is for the best then... the terror here was more than enough."

[arcaneadvisor]

"There is a thing my mother said once," and she has to consider these words and where she says them where the other name (the name you give in the light as if to paint a better picture of it) lies heavily upon the face of the world, "that grief must come later, in the dark shadows, before you take vengeance."

She pauses. Considers it again and how much there is to be swallowed about rooms that were never hers but might have been, about what she saw once ten years ago. "Perhaps if you are not inclined to the other half you might forget it as the ramblings of an old woman with too many tales and titles put to her name but there is something in the first half. If you can find it." Morrigan has found where and how to pick out the meaning and the good things from her mother's teachings but she had a lifetime to do it in and then over ten years away from her, much of that raising a son of her own with the determination to not be that. A return home...maybe it's done the same for her as it does for this young woman now.

"Those who thought they might take their chance then-- Kirkwall was most willing, it almost sounds friendly. But then folk forget that animals bare their teeth for different reasons than you or I," she says and doesn't smile, looks sad, thinks about how much is trampled and lost and crushed underfoot. "I have met some now who have gone on to live lives they would not have had otherwise. One is a Warden now."

Is that a terrible way to look at it? To have to say: yes, you have suffered, I have suffered, they suffered but it got better? Who does it help? (She doesn't know, she doesn't want to admit that when she has no more answers than when the girl dearest to her in the world sobbed out her grief and secrets into her lap so long ago in Skyhold.)