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New Year...

...Same Old Hinterlands

Maybe the Inquisition sent you, maybe you came seeking the Inquisition. Maybe you fell out of a rift into this world last week and are still just trying to find your feet. However it happened, the first days of the new year find you in the Hinterlands. Tucked between Ferelden's massive Lake Calenhad and the icy Frostback Mountains, the Hinterlands are a hilly region covered in patchy forests and small farms trying to eke out a living between the boulders. Though somewhat remote, the area is rich with game and minerals and home to Redcliffe, a bustling town on a busy trade route.

Lately the Hinterlands have also been full of mages and templars and rifts, all threatening to turn once-peaceful countryside into a dangerous warzone. The Inquisition has set up several camps and sent personnel to try to restore order to the region, unwilling to let it slip into chaos. There's a lot to be done, some of it straightforward killing bad things, some of it weird and nebulous morale-building.

STILL WITH ADDED SNOW.

1. SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

You have turned the wrong corner in the snow, forded the wrong stream in the snow, crested the wrong hill in the snow, entered the wrong cave in the snow. Maybe you are far from camp, in the snow. Maybe you are in camp, which is also snowy. Whatever has happened, wherever you are: you are being chased through the snow by bears. Did you throw a snowball at the bears? Are they huge and snow-dusted? Babies burrowing through the snow drifts and coming for your ankles? Fade-touched in addition to snow-touched? Controlled by cold mages who are hiding in the snow? Popping up out of the snow like a game of whack-a-mole? What are they chasing you away from in all of this snow? What are they chasing you into, other than more snow? What warm things do you plan to make out of their hide if you kill them in the snow? What do you think they'll craft out of your hide if they kill you in the snow? P.S. It's still snowy.

2. WE TWO HAVE RUN ABOUT THE SLOPES

Farmers have been forced to abandon their homes after a series of vicious attacks by wolves. Packs of them are roaming the foothills and stalking paddocks and even roads seemingly without the usual wariness of humans. Inquisition agents and local volunteers guard travelers through the affected region, hunt the wolves through snowy woods, and track them back to their cavernous lair in the edge of a canyon. Only eliminating the demons that lurk there will free the wolves from their influence and allow the area to return to normal.

3. AND PICKED THE DAISIES FINE

Winter snows freeze and bury the ground, but the need for healing herbs is as great as ever. Stockpiles are thin after the chaos of the last year, and Corporal Vale is desperate enough to send people out to search caves and hollows and cliffsides and beneath overhangs for any plants still clinging to life. The weather is brutal, the search tedious, the footing often treacherous, but that last patch of Crystal Grace could be a key find. Getting it requires clambering up a slippery hillside and stretching up to a ledge and hoping whatever creature lives in that foxhole beside the plant isn't at home, but it's worth it, right?

4. WE TWO HAVE PADDLED IN THE STREAM

With many roads through the hills and ravines blocked by deep snow, some crazy, desperate few have begun traveling by river. The ice is thick and jagged along the shores but in the center the water rushes, just deep enough for a shallow draft boat lightly laden. Supplies are carried down from the passes toward Redcliffe this way, a white-knuckle process that you, for some reason, have become involved in. Maybe you were hired to help fend off the bandits that haunt the calm shallows and try to demand tolls for passage, maybe you're paying your way downstream by helping port both boat and cargo around the steep falls, the mist so thick and cold it coats whatever it touches in a thin sheen of ice. Maybe riding a glorified canoe through rocky rapids and narrow gorges just sounded like a good time. Don't rock the boat!

5. WE'LL TAKE A CUP OF KINDNESS YET

It is still snowing, and the tavern in Redcliffe is still the closest and warmest place to duck into to wait it out, and not only is it packed to the gills but it seems that the First Day celebrations have continued within long past the dawn of the second day. The Gull & Lantern is so packed with thawing visitors that it's hard to walk from one side to the other, the owner has given up on telling these Fereldans they can't bring their dogs inside, every few minutes the group in the corner breaks into a traditional First Day song that will be stuck in your head for weeks, and that lady in the corner is almost definitely someone you've tried to kill before, or vice versa. But there's a fire going, and the bartender seems to think that giving everyone half-price drinks might prevent a brawl instead of causing one, and there aren't any demons indoors, so it could be a lot worse.

6. WILDCARD

Hunt game in the snow, kill demons in the snow, dig under the snow for herbs, track bandits through the snow, deal with someone charging extortionist coat prices now that it's snowing, fall off a deceptively tall rock into the snow, get lost circling the same hill ten times trying to find a way up to the weird glowing skull on a stick you can see is up there in the snow, climb trees or abandoned towers covered in snow, rummage around in empty homes to get out of the snow, run from a dragon in the snow, cry over how cute that fennec fox you just shot in the snow was, set up camp and chat around the fire because it's snowy and cold, knock yourself out (figuratively, or even literally if that's more your speed)-- the Hinterlands are your ~~Frostback Mountain~~ oyster, topped with snow.

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Celinie is not wholly convinced this is not some elaborate dream from which she has yet to wake. Honestly, this is a far better dream than the ones she's suffered since Carteneau. The mark on her hand is certainly perplexing though. An explanation might be kind if anyone happens to catch her staring at her hand.

1. Wolves and Demons and Rifts, oh my!

There is a problem with holes in the sky that spew out violent creatures which in turn whip up the local wildlife into a frenzy. On a better day, a day a year ago, perhaps, Celinie would have responded as any Conjurer of Stillglade Fane would do: quell or pacify the wildlife and purge the source. However this young Elezen is no longer the wide-eyed innocent playing at adventurer to feed her distant family. She has seen too much. And now, all she can see are the Carteneau Plains, littered with bodies, air filled with screams of terror and agony as an elder primal bursts out of the falling moon. Falling debris of Dalamud crushing soldiers, both allies and Garleans alike. Fire and smoke and death and blood are still fresh in her nose. Once more she is in that moment and not in her present.

Her present has her standing before a pack of wolves driven to madness by the demons from the rift. One lone Elezen woman, frozen with fear and memory, unmoving and unaware of the doom headed for her. Hopefully those scouts are coming soon.

2. I'm a closet Botanist, really!

Hunting for healing herbs. This is something Celinie can do and surprisingly well. Before the war, she'd spent some of her days quietly learning the basics of botany from the Botanist's Guild. Master E-Sumi-Yan thought working with plants first hand, even if only enough to grow some flowers or lentils in a garden, would assist their fledgling conjurer develop a rapport with nature. What pleases her about this task is that it keeps her away from fighting, away from conflict. It is cold and hard labor searching for plants which she is unfamiliar, but it is soothing work nonetheless.

There are few finds, which is disappointing, but the potential to help bring succor to others drives her on. She spots a beautiful plant with purple and green leaves at the entry to a cave, certain that's one that's being sought after. However, there seems to be something skittering around inside. Uncertain if the creature is a threat or not, she turns and asks simply, "Should I put it to sleep, ere we collect the plant?"

3. Wildcard

Be careful if she starts holding her head. Someone's about to get a glimpse into your past whether either of you like it or not.

[Anything in her app or that's happened in Fade Rift is fair game.]

They're on their way back to the Gull & Lantern after a long stretch of fighting rift-mad creatures, bandits and Ventaori. Despite any healing, Korrin's body aches with weariness and she's looking forward to not moving for a while. But Celinie holding her head has her pausing in concern as she holds out a steadying hand.

"Hey, we're not that far. Can you make it?"

Oh no. Not now. There is the sharp pain Celinie knows too well that comes with an almost nauseating wave of lightheadedness and disorientation. A rush of sound in her ears as the Echo triggers. The Qunari's question goes unheard as her "gift" takes hold.

In a hazy view, she sees Korrin with others on a snowy ledge, looking at half-dressed, half-starved people in cages. They're guarded by men with red crystals growing on and out of their bodies. It is terrible to behold. More horrible, the discussion that ensues that they cannot rescue the captives alone and must leave them behind for reinforcements.

As suddenly as the vision starts, it ends, leaving the poor Elezen staggering to remain on her feet. Her worry isn't as much for herself as what she's seen. Celinie doesn't like revealing that she has the Echo, but she cannot cannot refrain from asking. She must.

"Those people in the cages. Were they saved?" Gods be good, please let them have been spared.

About to ask again, Korrin stops and stares as Celinie asks that question instead. Her face goes blank with shock, though she snaps out of it enough to prevent her companion from taking a tumble, offering her support. She hesitates a moment, but finally nods.

"Some of them. We're going back for the rest soon. How...how did you do that?"

"I... cannot explain it." No really, she can't. Practicalities aside that she doesn't know why she's been blessed with the Echo, she's been rather sworn to secrecy about it. Uncertain if it will be a problem here, having it is problem enough at home. Certain Garlean elements are wanting to eradicate anyone with such gifts as no better than the beast tribes. Uncontrollable gifts that manifest as they will. "I didn't mean to pry."

Her heart aches to hear that some were left behind to such a fate and it's that compassion that overrides her embarrassment over the situation. Still, her hands are shaking now. "I would go to aid those people. If they yet remain."

Korrin fidgets, plainly not comfortable with the prying, however unintentional. "They do, but they won't for long, and they're being guarded by Red Templars. We're looking at battle, no way around it. And you can try to explain, if I'm going to end up hearing blurbs from my past."

Battle. The one thing that Celinie now fears more than anything. The one thing that will trigger her own memories to overwhelm her, if her guilt does not do so first. Yet she cannot in any good conscious leave those poor souls to perish if anything at all can be done to save them.

The insistence, rightly so to be fair, on explaining the Echo is both startling and frightening enough for her to pull up short from her ruminations on the fate of those prisoners in the snow. The expression that arrives is nothing quite short of an antelope doe staring straight into the the jingling lantern of a chocobo carriage.

There are others with this gift, she knows, yet none of them could well explain it beyond it being an unknown manifestation given to a select few. And she can no more control it, nor explain it, than she could her childhood draw to the outside of the mines which were her home. She doubts that Korrin would turn on her fully for having the Echo, but there is still no small level of fear and dismay that she's done something quite wrong.

Well. If she's to break her word about secrecy, at least she can keep all others safe by speaking naught of them. There is a level of a lie in making it a singular experience in the telling, and she is most uncomfortable with it, but better that than risk the rest. "I call it the Echo. There is... no controlling when it will manifest or how. I've never known it to come without purpose, only when there is a truth in someone's soul demanding to be made known."

Celinie pauses to give Korrin a most thoughtful, and compassion-laden, look. It is not lost on her that this is somehow quite significant to her companion.

"It troubles you to have left them behind, does it not?"

Korrin's not sure she would call it a 'gift', not since it could easily draw the wrong sort of attention. It's hard enough to convince others that rifters aren't demons with that going on. And she hardly seems fond of the notion of someone peering into her mind like that, intentional or not.

Crossing her arms, she frowns and nods, looking away. "Of course it does. Some of them aren't going to last in the time it takes us to reach them in greater numbers. But if we'd tried to free more, we'd have been overrun. There was no good solution, not that time."

Ah there it is, that intense feeling that she's done something quite quite wrong, despite it being largely out of her control. Briefly she can hear Mama and Papa's frustrated and fearful disappointment calling her 'willful' and 'disobedient' again. She can read Korrin's closed off body language and recognizes she's gone and crossed a line that can never be fully repaired. But she must try. Not for herself but more for this woman whose life she's peeked into.

"I understand all too well about no good solutions." Attempting to disable the mechanical monstrosity that ripped the moon from the heavens? Not a good idea. Trotting off to an unwinnable war to try to stop Dalamud's final descent? Certainly not a good solution at all. "Perhaps I may yet help? I could put a segment of their captors to sleep."

A properly timed spell to spread out her Repose to a group might buy them more time. Pacifist she might be now, but remaining fully passive just isn't in her nature. Celinie feels more and more she must do something now that she knows.

That gets Korrin's attention and she quirks an eyebrow, interested. "Really, now? That would be useful. I hope it works on all kinds; they aren't exactly human, not anymore. Some of them are now downright bestial."

Please don't let there be a behemoth. She didn't see one on the outskirts of the quarry, but that doesn't mean it isn't further in. If so, they're all fucked; memories of the one in Haven are particularly ingrained, and the devastation it caused. It was only eclipsed by Corypheus and that pet dragon of his, though she tries not to think about that as she'd rather not have Celinie comment on that whole mess.

At the mention of the Red Templars she'd seen in the Echo, Celinie bites her bottom lip. She quite wondered about them but was fearful to broach the subject. Now that it's come up, her curiosity is pressing hard on her. "Anything alive, it should work, that I've seen. May I..." Hrm, should she or should she not ask. "What happened to those people? The ones guarding those prisoners. There was something misshapen about them."

Edited 2016-01-13 04:24 (UTC)

The question itself doesn't bother her, though dwelling on the Red Templars isn't her favorite subject. "They ingested red lyrium. The normal kind is addicting and has some severe side-effects, but that stuff is far, far worse. It consumes you, twisting you into a blighted creature until there's nothing left. And they're all under Corypheus' sway."

Hm?

[Bruce glances from the patch of herbs he had been working from, looking towards the other with a questioning glance.]

What are you putting to sleep? [He hadn't exactly seen anything himself, so he's a bit lost on what she's asking.]

[Celinie motions both to the cave and the beautiful plant she spotted at its mouth. Royal Elfroot, she thinks she heard it called by description.]

I thought I heard something skittering around inside.

[Ah yes, there's that litter of wild nugs romping around inside the cave. One pokes its head out and starts rooting around in the grasses.]

Forgive me, I'm not familiar with the local wildlife to know if they are prone to aggression and I'd not disturb or provoke them if I can help it.

[Bruce takes another moment to shift so that he can better look at what she's referring to, making a soft 'ah' once he sees what she's talking about.]

Oh, you don't need to worry about them. [He glances back to her and manages a smile.] They're entirely harmless.

[Hearing that they're docile is a relief. Especially as she gets a closer look at the source of the mysterious noise.]

Twelve bless, they're terribly cute. What are they?

[Her hands are practically itching to pet them. Mama always hated her coming home of an evening with some newfound critter wanted for a pet.]

They're called nugs.

[He watches them as they cautiously approach closer, quirking a small smile.]

'Cute' isn't what most people would call them, though.

[Ah there we go, the temptation is now too great. Celinie kneels down and holds out her hand, palm up, to see if the little nug will come closer.]

It isn't? Why not?

[Because she could just scoop up the whole lot of them and adopt them. There's a vague niggling that the elementals would not approve of removing an entire population of a creature from their environment because they are precious, but she's quite ignoring that for the moment.]

[Bruce watches for a moment to see how the nug responds, his smile widening a little at the sight of it before he shakes his head.]

They're not exactly what people would think of in general terms of cute and cuddly. [Cats and dogs are cuddly. Nugs, not so much.]

They're so sweet...

[Now one of the little creatures is settled on Celinie's lap getting a petting. She's taken with them, even if most others wouldn't be. Then again, she's got a soft spot for most animals, doubly so if they're injured or abandoned.

Eventually she remembers why they're even out there in the first place. She points to the royal elfroot she'd spotted initially.]

Was that something we were looking for?

Can't really deny that.

[They are pretty sweet, all things considered. They are after all absloutely harmless despite their not cute looks.

He looks in the direction where she is gesturing, quickly noticing the royal elfroot there and giving a nod to confirm her question.]

Yes--royal elfroot. That's what we need.

Over the sounds of the wolves rose a war cry, a wordless scream that got louder as the source rushed towards Celinie, and then past her. A human woman with a massive sword, meeting the wolves head on. She lets out a whoop, adrenaline rushing through her veins, and blood pumping loudly in her ears, as she slashes at the band of wolves. No ordinary wolves, she's sure about that. Any normal wolf would have been running by now.

But Kaisa isn't here to extrapolate on the nature of wolves, she's here to protect the strange woman that looks shell shocked. A civilian, probably, with no ability to fight. Better to stand than to run, at least--Normal wolves might be worried about a creature that faces them head on, but would charge to chase one fleeing.

But, these aren't normal wolves. What was that about not extrapolating?

"You had better run!" She called out, hoping it would break the woman out of her terrified trance. "I'll hold them off, don't you worry!"

Shouting at shell shocked Celinie did just the trick in snapping her back to the present day. Unfortunately the episode left her shaking like lingering fall leaf tossed about in a lusty autumn gale. She blinked at her surroundings, only just realizing that wolves were charging her and a woman who had stepped into the gap. Thank the Twelve for that woman.

Too rattled to think quickly or defensively for her own protection, the warning to flee didn't quite register either. Else, she most certainly would have done. Thought that she should put them to sleep to assist in her flight did not come yet either. Only that here stood a fighter poised to take them all one and such an act could well be her end.

With a slight shake of her head to clear the fog of disorientation, the Elezen pulled out a leafy twig, brandished like a weapon of sorts.

"I can help!"

Drawing on the strength of the earth beneath their feet, she cast Stoneskin on her savior, to entirely blunt any damage she should take from canine teeth and claws.

Not a civilian, then, but a Mage. It also made sense--trapped up in a tower her whole life, like a princess of legend, how would she know how in Thedas to face wolves? At least she seemed capable enough to lend a hand in some way. The feeling of having magic cast on you was always odd, a strangle tingling, itching underneath your skin. That this magic managed to change her skin didn't help.

But Kaisa will take itchy skin over scratched up, bloody skin any day.

It certainly helped with the damage, because the Warden couldn't avoid all of the wolves, uncanny in planning and teamwork. But that gave her an edge--or at least, blunted theirs. By the time she speaks again, there are significantly fewer wolves.

"Thanks! Can you do much in the way of healing? Or fireballs, those are cool."

Fireballs? Oh sweet Matron, she's certainly no Thaumaturge. Although Celinie's been through enough that she couldn't manage to cast an offensive spell even if she wanted to. That's a lengthy explanation, however, and not one to be had in the moment.

"I'm a healer, yes." That much she can do. Oddly, knowing that she cannot tap her full potential as a conjurer serves to make her feel practically useless, though she knows the healing arts are just as important as damaging ones.

To demonstrate, she feels about her for the life surrounding them, pulling from that deep wellspring to bathe Kaisa in healing magic, to bind and restore injuries. As an added measure, she taps into the refreshing of nearby water to bestow Regen as well, tiny spurts of healing and restoration of energy.

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Test Drive Meme!

Celinie Brookstone | Final Fantasy XIV (prose or brackets)

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