allthisshitisweird | Test Drive Meme!

You'll Never Leave the Hinterlands Alive*

Welcome to Fade Rift's very first Test Drive Meme! Use one of the prompts below or make up your own, and tag around! Have fun, try out the setting, generate samples for your app, coerce your friends into joining you.

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, early fall finds 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.

1. In the Deep Dark Hills of Western Ferelden

You have turned the wrong corner, forded the wrong stream, crested the wrong hill, entered the wrong cave. Maybe you are far from camp. Maybe you are in camp. Whatever has happened, wherever you are: you are being chased by bears. Did you provoke the bears? Are they huge? Babies? Fade-touched? Mage-controlled? What are they chasing you away from? What are they chasing you into? What do you plan to make out of their hide if you kill them? What do you think they'll craft out of your hide if they kill you?

2. There I Read on a Hillside Gravestone

The rebel mages and renegade templars have ravaged the Hinterlands, skirmishes breaking out all over. It looks like you've just missed one-- great spikes of ice melt slowly in the cool autumn sunlight and patches of grass and trees have been scorched away. Three bodies are scattered about, two templars and one mage judging by their clothing. You could bury them. Or search their pockets. Or track their friends. Or all of the above, if you're feeling industrious.

3. Won't You Walk With Me Out the Mouth of this Holler

Whatever task you were actually sent out here to do, you are going to be late. One-Eyed Jimmy asked so nicely for your help finding his prize ram, Lord Woolsley. It's been in the family for years, so smart for a ram, it's a good luck charm, their business has boomed with it around, and it's lived for so long, he just can't abide thinking of it getting eaten by some mangy apostate. And then he went and offered you money, too. How could you say no? Maybe you're still wandering, asking everyone you pass if they've seen a ram that looks like it's wearing an orangey-red sweater. Maybe you've found it and are chasing it around a lake or trying to lead it back to the village for your reward. Maybe you've gotten fed up and gotten out your sword to bring Jimmy a new sweater instead and discovered that lucky Lord Woolsley is a demon in sheep's clothing. Surprise!

4. Fill Your Cup With Whatever Bitter Brew You're Drinking

Just because the region's had a rough time lately doesn't mean the tavern at Redcliffe is any less crowded than usual. Bella behind the bar dishes out tankards to refugees and soldiers, scared villagers and angry farmers, merchants traveling through from Orzammar and Orlais and families fleeing the rifts in the foothills. It's packed, basically. The Inquisition has only recently extended its influence into the region, and while some have already seen the benefit-- demons killed, fighting broken up-- others are skeptical.

5. Spend Your Life Just Thinkin' of How to Get Away

Choose Your Own Adventure: hunt game, kill demons, gather herbs, track bandits, haggle over the price of armor, fall off a deceptively tall rock, 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, climb trees or abandoned towers, rummage around in empty homes, run from a dragon, cry over how cute that fennec fox you just shot was, set up camp and chat around the fire, knock yourself out (figuratively, or even literally if that's more your speed)-- the Hinterlands are your ~~Frostback Mountain~~ oyster.

*Yeah, I had this stuck in my head. It's a good song!!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sigrun has made jokes about death ever since she joined the Legion. Even before then, technically, given her former lifestyle, but the symbolic death and funeral gave her a lot more material to work with. It’s a habit that was born of a contradictory mixture of deflection and acceptance, and the humor has served her well. Comparing death to a close relative made being surrounded by it that much easier to bear.

But the Calling... Not even the Legion of the Dead could prepare her for this. It doesn’t feel anything like she thought it would. The compulsive thoughts, the sense of losing herself— And it’s so damn persistent that it’s impossible to fully ignore, even for a moment.

It’s also significantly more musical than she expected.

At least the nightmares are familiar. They’re by no means pleasant, having intensified significantly since the start of all this, but it’s a side-effect she has experience with. It helps that they can only haunt her when she’s asleep. Even so, Sigrun is grateful when she’s jolted from her fitful slumber. Not so grateful with the delivery via a boot in the face, but it’s the thought that counts. She rises with a groan, her voice still thick with exhaustion as she solidly ignores the cold sheen of sweat sticking to her person in favor of acknowledging Alistair.

“Considering that would involve us singing? No, I don’t. That would be worse. Much worse. Some of us need our eardrums for things. Like hearing.”

"Maybe not for much longer, eh?"

That's grim, but it isn't as grim as the Calling or the Breach, so really--comparatively speaking--Alistair is a shining light in the darkness. Or something. He thinks Sigrun will appreciate him, anyway, of all people.

He graciously gets his foot out of her face, now that she's awake, and goes back to looking out the mouth of the cave. If they're all murdered tonight, it won't be because he was distracted by funny dwarves. It will be because everything in the world is terrible right now.

"Anyway, I bet you have a lovely singing voice."

“If Clarel gets her way, perhaps. I’d rather stay alive just to stick it to her. You’d be surprised how much spite such a short person can produce.” Grimness is, indeed, a quality that Sigrun can get behind. It’s something that she’s known for, after all.

Well. That, and being perky. It’s a hard balancing act, but someone has to do it. Leave it to the dwarf.

She makes to start packing up her bedroll as Alistair resumes his guard duty, once the dirt is wiped from her cheek. (A proper disgusted face is pulled to accompany that part, complete with a stuck out tongue and fake gagging sounds.) After her nightmare, she has no intention of going back to sleep. She doesn’t think she could, even if she tried. And she doesn’t want to try. Luckily for her, the only other person that looks to be awake is also the most talkative. That works out in her favor. It’s a lot easier to stay awake by mouthing off as opposed to staring at the wall.

“If you’d like, I can sing in victory the next time I kill something in combat. You can be the judge.”

A beat. Sigrun cranes her neck, peering into the darkness from where she’s kneeling further into the cave, hands still clutching at the makeshift bedding.

“... Anything out there?”

"If it's about the same amount of alcohol such a short person can drink," Alistair says, "I don't think I'd be surprised at all."

A moment of silence for Oghren, wherever he may be. Or a moment of 'silence,' as it were, punctured by Sigrun's gagging sounds and the rustling of her bedroll-rolling. But that's good. Fitting.

"Demons," he says, and if he were better at straight-faced delivery perhaps that would be cause for concern, but he isn't--"rebel mages, rogue Templars, Inquisition scouts, Clarel's hounds." He pauses. "Owls, probably." But nothing near the mouth of their cave, no. Not anywhere close. "I do think you should sing next time you kill something, for sure. If anything else is still standing you might confuse it long enough for us to cut it down."

Ironically enough, the drunken dwarf is the first place Sigrun’s own mind wanders to with the mention of ‘short’ and ‘alcohol’. If there’s one thing that can be said for him, it’s that he makes a strong impression. “I don’t think those two things are directly proportional. Oghren is more drunk than I am angry on any given day. And that’s saying a lot. He can make me really angry.”

Once she’s done packing up her bedroll, she hoists herself up to a standing position and gives the thing a good solid kick. A proper tribute to Oghren’s memory. Or a way of releasing pent-up frustration stemming from any number of things that have gone wrong recently. Take your pick.

“Is that all?” Sigrun snorts, crossing her arms. She's grinning in spite of herself, just barely. “Truly, you are a master tactician. Next you’re going to tell me that dancing a jig is great battle strategy.”

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