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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!!

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[ Big bony bear claws catch in the splintering door, with a thump of weight that seems to make the entire hut creak ominously, shaking dust amongst the bars of sunlight creeping through gaps in the wood wide enough to slot your fingers through. Outside, the creature goes about its excavation with a kind of plodding curiousity, absent-minded in its ferocity.

It won't be long now.

Or maybe it will be a little longer. It's a strange noise, specifically electrical and so not often heard by those unaccustomed to wielding it. A zap, and a crackle, and a sharp white light flickering brighter than sunlight that recalls lightning.

Immediately, the bear gives a rumbling roar of pain, dragging its claws out of the door. Distracted from its task.

In the air, there is now the smell of burning fur, and ozone. ]

He-llo, you're an ugly one, [ sounds like a man, somewhere outside. There's another crackle of sharp white light -- tearing metal, flame glancing off dry kindling, the sound of a knife running sharp off a whetstone, those are all the things it sounds like -- and another bear growl that is itself unmistakable for anything else. ]

[ A mage. One of the rebels? At least the bear had been predictable in its desire to eat her.

Still clutching the axe tightly, ready to swing if need be, Mia edged closer to the door, now with several large gouges torn out of the wood. The noise and smell tells her that the mage is to thank for distracting the animal...but there's no telling what's gone on beyond that. Unwilling to simply wait, she peers out of one of the holes in the door.

She could hide, she supposes, but mostly she's furious. The rebels and templars are the reason she had to divert from the road in the first place. It was their bloody war wrecking all this havoc among those simply trying to live out their lives.

At lest she'd have a good head of steam going, tell him off properly before she got herself killed. That was something. ]

[ If it is indeed a rebel mage, it appears to only be one, at least; Dorian stands with his feet firmly rooted in the Hinterlands dirt, wielding a staff pointed rigid approximately for the bears snout. And if it is, indeed, a rebel mage, it's one who's bothered to groom at all in the past twenty-four hours. Most of them are too busy, you know, having a war.

In short, he doesn't appear to be from around here, even at a glance and between the claw-torn cracks in blackened wood.

He flourishes his staff, finishing by staking the blunt end of it into the earth, and another burst of crackling energy dances forth to momentarily cage the animal in forking tongues of white light. In its distraction, Dorian chances a glance for the hut, only maybe gets the impression of human life hidden behind bear-ravaged door. ]

If you were planning to run for your life or join in on the fun, [ he shouts-- well, announces is a better description for what his voice does in general ] now would be the time!

[ Another jab of his staff in the air as the bear seems to come to, and another burst of energy. Weaker, this time. ]

[ So. A rescue after all, or so it appears. That's a relief.

The door wedges open, just enough for her to bend down and crawl through, her hair a wild mess of curls about her face and her traveling clothes now streaked with mud and soot. She looks the part of a rebel far more than he, she expects.

But she's still got the axe. And she's not simply leaving him to be eaten, mage or no. Leaving people behind is simply not something she does, and she's not about to start now.

With a look of steely determination she takes up on the beast's flank, swinging that axe as hard as she can muster. The resounding bellow that resounds down to her bones tells her just how little the animal appreciated the gesture. ]

So much for an easy meal, then.

[ Dorian is clearly expecting her to take the former option over the latter, because for all that he has gamely thrown himself into saving a stranger's life -- when in the Inquisition, and all -- bears aren't fun. This one is yellow toothed, has a putrid breath, and scraggled thatches of hair that imply scarring beneath its dense coat.

But then there's an axe, and his eyebrows raise. ]

That's the spirit, [ comes out more flatly ironic than anything else, but there's a certain twinkle to his eye in swift sizing her up that implies he is more than somewhat delighted by her conceptually.

By the time the bear is turning its snout to follow the swing of the axe, Dorian swings his staff and very unmagically clouts the brute over the head with it, springing aside from a confused swipe that could probably have broken his neck without effort. Conserving his energy, somewhat, but determined not to let it hone its attention on the woman.

It does, anyway, opening a maw that could swallow her head, spittle flying.

A more precise jab channels a thicker stream of electricity for the bear's back leg, searing and crackling, tongues of flame withering fur. This time, the bear's bellow is one of pain over ferocity. You'd almost feel bad for it, if there weren't so bloody many of them. ]

[ He's free to pay her sparkling compliments once they're both no longer in harm's way, for all the good they might do. She'll be happy enough to have good news to report home, or any at all. Bit hard to write letters when you're in several indelicate pieces due to mauling.

That second bellow nearly sends her tumbling back into the door frame, but she swings again, this time intending to divert the lunge of that massive furry head if nothing else. She manages to clip it about the face -- Maker willing, she's put an eye out -- and then the sizzle of magic sends her hair standing on end once more. That crack of lightning is enough encouragement for her to get out from between the bear and the house, one hand wiping spittle from her face and the other wrenching her only good weapon free.

Is the mage hurt? A glance tells her nothing's been torn off yet, and her eyes focus ahead once more. ]

Wonderful. If you've a plan how to end this, now would be the perfect time to share it!

[ Right, yes, an end game; Dorian is getting to that in his attempting to cripple rather than kill, even if you'd imagine this much electricity being channeled into one creature might at least make it woozy.

Still, the damage is done. The bear, now bloodied at its face in addition to having only three cooperative legs, staggers aside, wounded, in a move that isn't an obvious attempt to fight back, but Dorian isn't taking any chances. Staff still in hand, he circles the beast's blind-side, and doesn't presume to grab at the wild-haired woman and her axe because he values his life and limbs. ]

The plan is quitting while ahead.

[ The mage isn't hurt, and he has no plans to be today. He goes to lead the way with haughty agility, not quite back to the main roads -- which are chock full of civil war besides -- but up an incline. He levers himself over a ledge of rock, and turns back to offer a hand. ]

[ A more malicious man might have tried to finish the beast off. It spoke to this one's character that he did not, though there was precious little time to think on it as she quickly fell in step after him.

The brush beat at her boots as they went, and there was only a brief moment of hesitation before she took hold of the offered hand, hauling herself up as much as he might pull, quickly scrambling to her feet once more as soon as she was able. Face flush and certainly looking more like an Avaar tribeswoman at the moment than a Ferelden peasant, she stared back in the direction of the bear as it lumbered away.

Her axe -- might as well be hers, now -- lowered by degrees as she turned back towards Dorian, until it hung harmlessly at her side. If he'd meant her harm he could have accomplished it long before now. ]

Bloody thing nearly had me. I owe you my life, ser mage.

[ A weary noise escaped her as she struggled to brush herself off as best she could. ]

Though I'll admit I'm about three good baths away from feeling completely right with the world again.

[ The same philosophy could be applied to putting the beast down, injured as it is; as it stands, Dorian is more interested in getting out of clawing distance. This accomplished, he slips his staff back into its hooks, eyes sharp and tracking the shape of it below and through the trees until he's satisfied it's moving, and moving away, at that.

And now he turns better attention to her. The last of his magic is dimming down, the air faintly dry around them, a little staticky, but easing.

His smile is crooked, but immediate. ]

Here I thought you were simply trying to fit in.

[ But if anyone can sympathise, it's Dorian. He glances about to get his bearings -- har dee har -- and then points in a vaguely westwards direction. ] There's an Inquisition camp that way -- a twenty minute walk, I'd wager, or a twenty five minute trudge. That is, if you'd like a place to sort yourself out before you're back on your way. Are you hurt?

Edited (clarity) 2015-10-01 23:58 (UTC)

Believe me, I've fended off worse. I'll take a bear over Darkspawn, any day.

[ She took another heavy breath, reaching up to attempt to smooth her hair back into place. No hope of looking prim and proper out here in the wilds, but she'd settle for civilized at a minimum.

It was less of a worry than finding a place to spend the night. But Dorian has her attention, now. ]

You said the Inquisition? Well, that's lucky. I was hoping to find one of their encampments here.

[ There's a faint furrow in her brow, though the crease there says it's an expression not uncommon to her face. ]

I don't suppose you're headed that way yourself?

Fortuitously for you, where the mud is muddiest and the bears are thickest, there someone has the bright idea to pitch a tent.

[ He holds at arm in gesture of this way and gets to walking, at a meander -- she seems a wearier traveller than he, and while he wouldn't purport to being a nice person as a general rule, he has consideration for decorum, and lets the lady set her pace. ]

And it does so happen I am. Dorian Pavus, apparently at your service. [ Despite the qualifier of incident thrown in, he manages to sound as warm and grand as he would be otherwise sincere. ]

[ That's a foreign name, if ever she's heard one. Orlesian? No. Antivan? Doubtful. She'll puzzle over that quietly for a moment, even as she works to make herself as presentable as possible.

She's still a bit of a mess, but she has her posture back at least. That's something. ]

And glad I am for it. Mia Rutherford, at yours.

[ Back straightened, she makes short business of matching Dorian's strides. Tired as she might be, she doesn't intend on falling behind. Whatever aches in her bones have can wait to be seen to. ]

Rutherford.

[ He echoes her name contemplatively rather than with sudden inspiration, like he's trying it out. But it does get a glance, as internally puzzling as her own reaction. His unusual, pale eyes pick a sharper study over her profile, her curls, that specific sheen of blonde that even the pressing, miserable damp and dirt, can't distract him from. ]

What a good, strong, southern name -- all your -fords and -cliffs and -dales. Prevalent, as well, it would seem. You aren't by any chance some relation to our good Commander, are you?

[ That would be lucky for him now, wouldn't it. ]

Edited (missing words come back here) 2015-10-02 03:23 (UTC)

[ Well that was quick, though he seemed a quick lad to start. Still, the mention does earn a wry smile from her as they trudge on, the axe still hanging firmly in her grip along the trek. ]

His elder sister, in fact.

[ There's a challenge in those brown eyes as she regards Dorian with an arched brow, ready to measure whatever reaction he might have to that news and judge accordingly. ]

Cullen, truth be told, does not know I was planning a visit. I do hope you'll be kind enough to keep it that way.

Edited 2015-10-02 03:41 (UTC)

[ Ah ha. Dorian is, rightfully, rather surprised he got that correct and didn't, you know, somehow mistake Cullen's family name with some other equally blonde and stoic sounding variation, or maybe there are a lot of Rutherfords in the south, and it shows mainly in a twist of a smile that twitches the corresponding curl of his mustache.

The lines at his eyes crease a little in his own brand of subtle amusement, listening as they continue to squelch through the Hinterlands for camp yonder. ]

A surprise, is it. Thank the Maker the bear didn't go and spoil it -- everyone knows that man could use something pleasant and unexpected to happen to him. Usually, it's the dead opposite.

[ Demons aren't a surprise anymore, for instance. Neither are casualties. ]

Your secret is safe with me, my lady. You shouldn't feel the same way about the bit where I happened along in your journey.

[ Oh, Dorian's looking quite pleased with himself, and it doesn't escape Mia's notice. Both eyebrows lift then, eyes trailing back to the path they seem to be treading. ]

Ah. You must know him, then.

[ Which is different than knowing of him, as likely everyone associated with the Inquisition must. No, there's a personal air to the way he speaks of him...and if that's the case, then she must have rightly guessed this man's mettle.

She'd have no trouble at all telling Cullen about the man's bravery. But it's the manner in which the request is given that has her side-eyeing him, if only slightly. ]

You say that as if I'm to be a tally mark on some score being kept between the two of you.

[ She side-eyes; he laughs. ]

If anyone's keeping score, it'll be me alone, rest assured. I shan't allow you to think the Commander and myself are so familiar.

[ But familiar enough to have stood, not too few times, at the war table while plotting to wrangle the rebel mages, and some sharper worded suggestions about Cullen's pressure as to the Templars. Ambient distrust is slow to disintegrate, no matter how strong his charm offensive.

He opts not to lay bare the innerworkings of his meaning. She's sharp, apparently, disinclined to dismiss him as a simple apostate attempting to curry favour. Fair enough. ]

But you simply must tell me the purpose of your journey. I don't mind saying the Inquisition could always use a maiden so handy with an axe.

[ 'Maiden'. She chuckles at that. Perhaps a maid of the 'old' variety, if anything.

But quickly enough she grows somber again, the expression sitting comfortably on her face as though well familiar with the territory. ]

This isn't the first time our home has been threatened. The chaos extends even to South Reach. I suppose I must have thought I could be of some use to the only people doing anything about it.

[ It's as evasive as she ever cares to be, and it's still the truth. After a moment her lips purse slightly. ]

Besides. It might make a nice change, actually knowing what's going on instead of parsing through vague letters.

[ It's good enough for casual introductions, and for someone whose reasons are equally as optimistic sounding as they are elusive. The sound of a stream registers, and Dorian steps ahead, identifying where he last remembered there to be sufficient stones jutting high enough to not make a dog's breakfast out of his shoes.

Once poised, he turns to offer her a gentlemanly hand to help her across. ]

Truly. Let me take a stab at it. [ He affects a Cullenish tone, which is sort of just a flatter version of his own. ] 'Dearest Mia. The weather continues charming. Not as many demons as rumoured, honest. It's all going according to plan, please do not embark on reckless journeying through the bear-infested wilds. Love--'

And then he crosses out 'Commander' before 'Cullen'.

Edited 2015-10-03 09:12 (UTC)

[ She laughs at that, honest to goodness laughter. They crease lines that haven't seen use in a long while as she shakes her head, reaching across the stream to take Dorian's hand. ]

Oh. He must adore you.

[ Cullen always did get very sullen when he was being mocked, even in good fun. There might have been a related nickname involved when he was younger, but she's not cruel enough a sister to supply it now.

Clucking her tongue, she moves on to the next stepping stone ahead of him, the water splashing about her boot heels as she does so. It's a lucky thing she's abandoned her skirts for the time being, no matter how unladylike it might be. ]

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