OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

[faderifting]

WHO: All
WHAT: WINTER IS HERE
WHEN: Haring 15-Wintermarch 1
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: You can use this post as an event-style mingle log, or just use it as background information for your RP elsewhere!

It's been a chilly month already, but in mid-Haring the temperature suddenly plummets. One day it's merely cold, and the next morning the Inquisition wakes to frost on the inside of the window panes and an icy draft whistling through every crack in the tower's masonry. Downstairs, the pipes that feed the bathing chambers and the kitchens creak in the walls, loud enough to be heard even out in the courtyard, where they run beneath the stones, and around midday, when the sun has failed to raise the temperature above freezing, a blocked pipe finally gives, cracking open to spill water across the central court and send it running down side passages. The whole area floods several inches deep and almost immediately begins to freeze, presenting at first a gigantic, treacherous slush puddle and, after a few hours, a sheet of sheer ice.

Melting a safe path from door to door and laying down sand or wood to keep it from becoming slick again is a simple enough undertaking, but before the entire courtyard can be thawed, someone appears with ice skates—and that’s a better idea, surely, for at least a few days. Anyone who complains about the frivolity can be assured it’s good exercise, not to mention good training for a force that may have to travel or fight on ice in the future.

Temperatures remain cold enough that even some parts of the harbor begin to freeze, first just at the calmest edges of the shoreline, and then the more protected nooks and crannies of the bay, inlets and the spaces between piers and beneath docks. It snows most days--not real storms, just a couple inches here and there--little enough for the window to blow most of it off the icy plain of the courtyard and other wide open, paved spaces, accumulating on branches and in alleyways, and creating growing drifts in corners and against walls.

After a week or so actual chunks of floating ice begin to fill the narrow channels of the harbor, threatening smaller and less-sturdy vessels, and the situation in the poorer parts of the city begins to grow dire. With the Viscount's blessing, Inquisition teams (particularly mages) are called in to help. Some are assigned to the docks, to clear ice that makes landing and unloading treacherous, others to help escort ships into harbor by melting a path ahead. Others are sent into Lowtown to clear ice and snow and to provide warmth and medical attention where needed. At least one mage is sent with each team, and while many neighborhoods are pleasantly surprised and grateful for the quick work fire glyphs make of cold hearths and frozen streets, a few are unable to overcome their distrust, and refuse the teams entry, determined to take care of their own without the help of dangerous outsiders.

In the last week of the year, a true blizzard strikes, snow falling steadily for more than a day, blanketing the city at least three feet deep. Digging out the Gallows will be a group effort, and most non-essential trips outside the base will be cancelled for a few days until travel is less difficult, while those who reside in the city or elsewhere may be encouraged to stay a night or two in the fortress so they might continue to work without traveling through the storm. But on the first day of Wintermarch the First Day feast goes on as planned, with modest but plentiful food and ale served in the Gallows' dining hall for anyone who wishes to celebrate the new year.

Comments

alienage;

[inagutterson]

Maybe a dwarf should be off helping the people that look like him but the trouble Yngvi's found with people that look like him is that they look like him. Thanks, but no thanks, he'll get out of the Gallows (again) and go help out where he knows other folk since the alienage was a friend to a small dwarf boy getting into scrapes. The keg chariot moves easily over the ice and through snow behind him, stacked with whatever provisions someone needs to get somewhere, a small dwarf buried in a wooly jumper, two coats, and a bear blanket with sleeves.

"You Herian?" He slides to a not-so-elegant stop near to her since the keg is damn heavy, bumps into him to nudge him forward but a controlled flail keeps him upright. "Got a delivery from the Gallows for you. Wood, grease, food and drink for you I was told, few rags I was able to scrounge up for stuffing in any extra gaps."

Please be Herian he's not making another trip dragging this behind him.

[dashing]

"I am." She recognises him, vaguely. More through his familiarity with those she is familiar with, and the only direct time they spoke was when they were both summoned to lend aid. Under the circumstances there was little cause for introductions, other matters far more urgent and pressing, and so it is no surprise he does not know her name, just as she does not know his. "Thank you. It saved much time to have this brought here."

Rather than her running back and forth, a waste of time and energy. She pauses, though. Its cold, and as well wrapped up as the dwarf seems, lack of clothes along are not the only challenge. Numb she might be, in some senses, but she is not out of her mind.

"Have you eaten?" She doesn't know which is the food bundle, but nods to the cart more generally. "Rest a moment, eat." It's not easy task, hauling all that, and not all are willing to come to the alienage.

[inagutterson]

"Yngvi," he says because it feels weird these days, people not knowing things other ones do. Maybe the decent ones should have the names of others willing to come lend a hand, no questions asked. "No problem, s'easy enough for me to get out this way."

Who else would really fancy coming anyway? Even if it's maybe just a bit selfish of him since holing up in the Gallows was beginning to drive him more than a little bit mad. Getting out, making the trip down here where it was the quietest he'd seen Kirkwall this side of a tragedy? Sort of nice. Until the shivering really picked up because the cold coming in from unprotected waters is a different cold to the one found at the top of a mountain. Yngvi doesn't have the layer of padding typically all dwarves do, runs to skinny on a good day, worse on others, food just falling right off the ribs somehow. Where it's on all sides, up through his feet, he's burning through all that faster.

"You seen what they're passing off as porridge in the Gallows? Reckon you could cover holes in the wall with it in a pinch," still, Yngvi did eat it because who says no to food? Half his body (there's not even four and a half feet of it) disappears into the keg to rummage, to find some parcels, one for him, a bigger one for a bigger person away all day-- "Careful, got someone to do a-" he wiggles his free hand to indicate spells in case anyone in earshot startles, "to keep it hot, there's some sort of cake-y thing in there fresh out the oven for the brave selfless soul."

[dashing]

“Well met, Serah.” It seems clumsy to introduce herself when he knows her name already, and so she does not; it would merely be the gaudy flinging about of titles, well-earned as they might be.

Carefully, she accepts the parcel, brow quirking for a moment with that magical hand wiggle. “Hardly brave or selfless. It is but a matter of duty.” Duty, doing what is right, attempting to look to her people, even if she is not always counted one of them. That, at least, she can understand, as painful as it is. “If being out here some days can keep the people here warm and preserve the vhenadahl from axes another winter, that is worth it.”

People in the alienage had so little; “Losing the vhenadahl is a hurt that I would not see them endure.”

It is a relief to have something warm in her hands, though - Yngvi’s caution in even speaking of magic was an echo of her own refusal to cast magic in the alienage, within Kirkwall, unless there was desperate need of it. “This, I think, will be far superior to the porridge,” she adds appreciatively. It might even have been conspiratorial, if she weren’t so very… her.

[inagutterson]

"It's an alienage. Kirkwall's alienage. Can't imagine folk were lining up to come here unless they've got family from here or mates. Toss up between this place and Darktown for last place you'd care about in a disaster, and y'know, more humans in Darktown." That's a horrible way to put it but Yngvi's just laying it out flat here if Herian's doing it, not trying to sound rude but that sort of false cheer from someone who's heard that told to him, who sat there and just...heard it. Like a slap that came that you can't really do a thing about. "They'd end up with that weird one they got in Halamshiral. Had a whiff of Kirkwall but the wrong bits y'know?" Something to unsettle him, to set his teeth on edge when he'd put hands on it. Punched it for his lady.

Or they'd end up with that garden he can't look at. The one he talks around in all the other letters he's written.

"Nicer vhenadahl than the one in Gwaren or Denerim, always painted up real nice, little lanterns 'bout it. If I didn't know they'd freeze like every other trap I'd offer to set some down but - and you didn't hear this from me - I raided every office I could get into for something to keep the hinges going." Cramming some food in his mouth gets him to shut up about crimes he did not commit because the doors were open and possession is nine-tenths of the law so seeing as he now possesses all the lubrication his traps need, that's all his, no crime has taken place, there was never any crime Knight-Enchanter serah!

[dashing]

Herian cannot really argue that. "Such may be so, but I believe— if we wish to see the world change for the better, then we all of us must do whatever we are able. That is the Inquisition's duty, I think, or at least that is the path I would see it take, were it able to be shaped by my hands alone."

A litte shrug, as she starts to eat, taking a moment to indulge in the warmth, even if she dare not stay still too long, lest she begin to freeze in place, and lose the momentum of her work.

"I've seen more than I'd cared to with the axe taken to them, or left a burned husk in the wake of human tempers." Her disgust isn't overt, exactly, but it is present and detectable all the same. Disgust, and a degree of sadness - strange, perhaps, to see hanging on a human. Traps would have indeed been welcome then, if the faint hint of a smile is anything to go by, though it's all the fainter, as opposed to almost anyone else. "Requisitioning supplies as an agent of the Inquisition," she suggests, putting it in phrasing that won't get the dwarf in trouble. She can hardly assume he wasn't free to take required supplies."

A sigh. All the traps in the world might not stop some humans, or they would only stoke their temper to greater heat.

"The Starkhaven tree still grows strong."

[inagutterson]

Smiling behind the food in his hands, Yngvi feels the warmth of the words in his bones but it's a bit beyond him the way it'd be in other days. Orzammar's meant to be better. New king, new rules, same blind eyes. Orlais has an elf for a marquis, an empress that's meant to be there for elves, most of the nobles are tittering behind their hands at best. The Inquisition-- well, he had his childhood story about hope. Doesn't stop him doing it. "It'd be good, if some people started looking down and doing a bit of seeing, the rest of us maybe got to look up just for the sake of looking?" You know, instead of it being a matter of course expected for them.

"Oh-- oh!" Understanding dawns, and Yngvi's not one to always just think that a human face means human since that's sort of a stupid thing to do, bit rude into the bargain and all. There's Liadan after all who has a human face from her human father but there had been her elven mother until the Chantry exploded taking them both away in a single night. "Got some friends in high places, literally, d'you know how many stairs I have to climb now with my legs? Bet she won't mind." It's Wren, he's wearing the jumper she knitted him if she minds he'll just steal the dog, that dog likes him and besides they aren't roommates anymore he's entitled to a bit of being a problematic infant.

"I never went to the alienage there, what's-- is it okay? Asking what it's like? Is it in a better state than here?"

[dashing]

"You may ask whatever you wish of me, Serah Yngvi. I am not ashamed of where I come from." If anything, her tone suggests the contrary. The alienage is her blood and her heritage. She takes a moment to think. "It is different, and much the same. It felt like a maze of narrow trees, where at times you looked up and couldn't see the sky but for faint cracks of blue or grey, because the buildings were built so close and leaning into one another, by design and by neglect. Some home might be parted across a lane from one another, but in their upper stories you could pass something from one window to your neighbour through their window, with neither of you struggling to reach."

She has seen it in other cities, in the poorest areas, where space was a precious commodity and people built desperately rather than safely. Many homes were too neglected for the upper stories to be safely inhabited, or there were multiple families sharing, or the homes were much smaller.

"I'm not sure I've seen damp in Kirkwall the way it could be in Starkhaven, as if nothing you could do could ever make the clothes dry or the house dry. People could get fearsome rattling in their chests in the winter, and in the summer the mud turned to dust." Much like every alienage, really. There is something fond in her tone, though; wistful. "Wildflowers could grow in the strangest places, though. They were determined to thrive against the odds." Not dissimilar to the people of that alienage, she thinks. Herian shakes herself, and shrugs. "I do not know all that ails this alienage, but I would say it is no better, and no worse. The people of all alienages suffer for their confinement and abuse, but so too can they be wondrous, despite all that adversity."

The alienage they stand in is blanketed in snow, with all tracks but Yngvi's recent footsteps already softened and distorted by snowfall.

"She?" The question is, perhaps, a little belated.

[inagutterson]

"Not everyone who comes out of the alienage who does't look it wants people to know. Dwarves don't always want you knowing if they ever came from Orzammar sometimes, other times yeah, they don't shut up about it but y'know, family…" It'd be easy to blame the intake of breath on the cold but it sticks in him. Saying that word. "Family just gets uncomfortable for some people, s'not always on them. Just is what is."

Which is why Yngvi eats until he's done, listens carefully, nodding along because it's always what happens in a poor place where the lumber is crap or the walls get damp, where you can't really build outward because someone decided however long ago 'this is how much of our bit of the world we've alloted all of you' even when they're all scrapping over borders. No matter how much of Orzammar ever got reclaimed each Blight, each push into an old forgotten Thaig, it wasn't as if the Dusters were ever going to see a speck of that. It'd be the Castes who saw the room to spread out, to stretch.

"Foundry District gets a bit like that, probably worse there and in Lowtown for all the places I didn't recognise since we came back. At least in Darktown you don't really build as such. It's there. You carve? Dig? Dunno, you don't build from it just scrape out what there is. Must've been bad if you and the neighbours didn't get on - they'd just go upstairs and lob something at you if you went up for a bit of peace or so you could talk shit 'bout them." That's what'd happen to Yngvi who doesn't always keep his mouth shut, can you even imagine the carnage?

Sometimes, Yngvi does all he can not to remember his childhood. Pushes it down. Stuffs it in boxes that he wraps chains around to lug down to the docks to sink. Other times he trips over something that isn't so bad. "There was always damp in Darktown, when the doglords came over after the Blight they made it worse. Not that it was good but if you grow up with it, you know how to live with it but they came, got sick, spread that everywhere. People still cough more than I remember." The humans had all clustered round a human mage healer. (He'd blown the Chantry up.) "Herbs grew in places though. Mushrooms. Just by the stairs. In little corners. It's how my brother picked up alchemy because there were things he could use to start. Some elves were down there too but...s'pose it was just a different sort of same to the alienages." Now that he hears it from Herian at least. Maybe it was just wanting to make the choice. Wanting to pick somewhere for themselves instead of accepting it when they'd crept into Darktown instead.

"Wren." Shit, wait, hang on excuse the look of panic because the cold makes his memory slow to catch up with him but that's too familiar by half-- "Ser Coupe. We doubled up back in Skyhold and it stuck. She's...she's been good to me. Better than most everyone else." Recognise the knitwear from the Coupe Winter Collection Herian?