TEST DRIVE MEME!

[faderifting]

Surprise, Beartch

Bet You Thought Etc.

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.

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.

I. DRAGONS

There is a dragon in the Hinterlands. Everyone knows this. It's difficult not to notice when a dragon flies overhead with a mouth full of screaming sheep (alas, the poor dead sheep) or scorches your fishing boat and makes you swim for it (alas, the poor soaked fishermen). But she's only rarely sighted, and her lair is as of yet unknown, if "yet" is defined as "the moment before this exact moment, right now." Because you've found her. She is, at this very moment, screeching so loud it rattles the cliff sides that are trapping you in her territory and raining fire down over the only clear path of escape. She and her two dozen children don't care if you only wanted some elfroot and spindleweed. They also don't care if you have a sword. You look way more delicious and less woolly than a sheep.

II. CROSSROADS

In the year since the Inquisition's formation, the Crossroads have changed. Most of the refugees from the Mage/Templar War have moved on--if not back home, to new places--and there's been some progress rebuilding the homes and fortresses ruined by the war. Very few people are still living in caves. But rather than quieting down, the Crossroads have begun to bustle. Between the Inquisition's locally stationed forces and the increasing number of travelers and merchants now that the roads are safer, there's enough business to support a tavern with a few rooms for rent, and the Crossroads are becoming a trading post in their own right rather than a dot of houses on the path to Redcliffe--a great place to stop for a drink, to buy basic weaponry, or to unload all of the bear skins you've collected.

III. BEARS

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?

IV. CRYSTALS

Members and trusted agents of the Inquisition are given access to one of the Inquisition's stores of ancient, mysterious sending crystals, allowing them to communicate instantaneously by voice. It's magic. And a magical excuse to ask everyone what their favorite constellation is in the middle of the night.

Or to call for help because you've been treed by bears.

Either way.

V. MISCELLANEOUS

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.

Comments

[liberalum]

Bears, they shout. What did they expect, Dorian doesn't quite mumble into his bedroll. It's tempting to just lie there and hope that everyone else sorts it out, but a panicked cry rakes across his nerves and with a heavy sigh, he drags himself up and off the ground, feeling around the dark interior of his tent, just as it collapses in around him.

Not to worry! He struggles out into the bracing pre-dawn air, dressed only in the smallclothes he went to sleep in and gripping, most importantly, his staff of serpentstone, which crackles with his ire in the form of cold-white lightning. But the bear that collapses his tent was on its way to dying, so he turns his attention outward.

A stray fork of magic zaps and dances its way up Samson's standard-issue sword.

But the next bear, one that's ambling with truly impressive speed up onto the former General, gets a face full of magic, the smell of storm and burning fur rising as it gives a pained growl and a heavy shake of its head. Despite that Dorian is not quite awake, he falls naturally into the fluid motions of spellcasting, more flare and flash than your average Circle southerner, and perhaps a little sharp on the edges of someone who doesn't appreciate this imposition on his beauty sleep.

[redinside]

A little foul-smelling smoke rises, soon cloven in two by the general's blade as it comes down to finish the job with an overhead swing. It seems almost leisurely compared to that fancy footwork over there, but when the blow lands it is with a certainty, a finality, that the splendour of magic tends to lack. The man himself delivers it with his lips pressed together, exhales in a rush after it's done, plants a boot on the beast's neck for leverage and wrenches his blade free of its big skull, grim-faced through the effort and unmoved by the gush of blood that follows.

Red. The glands in his mouth prickle in anticipation of a thing that isn't coming.

In lieu of thanks, Dorian receives a look down and up again, a lip curling in contempt, the glint of crooked teeth. His free hand works its fingers once; they're still tingling from the shock. He is in no position to issue a challenge over 'friendly' fire—even a proper warning would ring hollow—but if he were...

[liberalum]

Standing in the midst of frosty grass and dying bears, Dorian remains poised for further attack, staff turned aside, hands gripping it steady, and lets out a gusting exhale that turns to steam as soon as it strikes the air. He relaxes bodily when nothing immediately bad happens, save that he is without any proper clothing and a Templar is looking at him.

Not just any Templar, naturally. Dorian looks back, planting staff against the ground, posture remorseless.

For stray zaps and his bare, glistening chest both.

"Welcome to the Inquisition," he says, grandly. "This sort of thing happens every other Tuesday. Best grow accustomed."

[redinside]

The Inquisition's Templars would almost certainly take offence to hear Samson counted among them. They wouldn't permit him to don the flaming sword even if he asked—he wears neither their crest nor their colours—but they can't stop him wearing the heraldry of Kirkwall. The wings on his back mantle over him like a shadow of the past, a declaration of love for the city that nearly ground him to dust. Unto itself, beholden to no one.

Still, indeed, a Templar is looking at him. And now said Templar is turning aside, while the twist of his mouth widens, crooked, showing the crags of his teeth. It's not a smile.

"Accustomed to what—your arse?"

These may be his parting words unless Dorian deigns to follow—or to loiter nudely in the chill air, what-have-you. Either way, that beast over there, the one bristling with arrows, needs to be put down before it mauls a recruit caught staggering fresh from sleep.

Not that he cares.