Skyhold

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone & everyone
WHAT: Open post for business as usual around Skyhold
WHEN: The first couple weeks of Harvestmere, 9:41 (aka October)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Please mark any necessary content warnings in thread subject lines. Also, make sure to check out the other log posts already made!

Far from the glamorous adventurous world-saving people signed up for, most of the hustle and bustle in Skyhold at present is cleaning. The Great Hall is a disaster, and crews are assigned to haul out the cracked and rotting planks fallen from the wide-open roof, and tear down the vines covering the walls. Ivy encrusts the main staircase outside and many of the fortress walls and is cleared in section while other groups assess or begin shoring up the stonework as it's revealed. There are scaffolding to build, materials to sort, crates to unload, tents to stitch together or set-up, and on and on and on, endless mundane chores vital to the survival of the organization.

When not hard at work, people cluster around fires across the courtyards. Many mingle freely, going about their business, running errands and messages, planning scouting missions, tallying up supplies, distributing or playing with the sending crystals that were found in a basement vault and which a group of mages have just today finished preparing for use. Once a good number have been passed around and the first Inquisition-wide transmission made messages start being broadcast; maybe you can help someone out.

The rebel mages and renegade templars mainly keep to themselves at opposite sides of the complex given the choice. Mages assist with healing and research and bicker amongst themselves about their options and their fate. Templars help train recruits in swordforms and basic combat techniques or spar with the more advanced and bicker amongst themselves about their options and their fate. Despite having all pledged themselves to the Inquisition, they still feel like separate factions and tension between them is palpable wherever they cross paths.

Like at meals, or the communal message board in the courtyard, or at the Herald's Rest. The mess hall/tavern is so new it still smells of sawdust, and its stock has been limited to one type of strong ale until today, when a shipment of West Hill brandy has finally arrived. The mood in the place is convivial in celebration of that, but there's still plenty of muttering, especially as the night drags on and the discontented get further into their cups.

Comments

[rathercommon]

It's not exactly a pleasure to see a fellow dwarva. It's not that Kitty doesn't like her own people - no. The opposite. Very much the opposite. She loves them so fiercely that sometimes it feels like her heart will get torn in two. The continued oppression of the castes, the social inequality, all fill her with deep fury, but that fury is only possible because of her feelings towards her nation and her people.

No, the problem isn't dislike. The problem is knowledge. Kitty pretends to be a former merchant-caste surface dwarf, topsiders accept it. When they see a dwarf, they expect her to be a former merchant-caste surface dwarf. They don't question. Another dwarf, though? They know what merchant-caste look like. They know what surfacer culture is like, and what Stone culture is like. A dwarf is far more likely to peg her as a liar.

So Kitty watches the woman (Scout Harding; she's not even going to pretend that she doesn't know exactly who that is) as she comes into the tavern. As she sits down, Kitty debates whether to come over or not. Risk it or not...

Finally, she risks it.

"Hello," she says, turning a bright smile on Harding. Surely she looks like nothing more than a good young maid fetching drinks for the tavern patrons. There's nothing more to her than that. "You look like you're in need of a drink."

[lacere]

It's been a busy enough afternoon turned evening, but then, all of Harding's afternoons and evenings are much the same. The smile she turns to Kitty upon her approach is pleasant enough - a fellow surfacer as part of the Inquisition is a welcome sight, as few as they are and divided into groups of non-Carta and actual-Carta and Varric - but she's a scout, and she's paid to notice things. Right now, she's noticing that if this is indeed what her fellow dwarf is meant to be doing, she's doing it well.

"You could say that," she muses. "It's been a long day. Or longer You know, I don't actually remember the last time I sat down."

Was it last night? It might have been last night.