allthisshitisweird | TEST DRIVE MEME!

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TEST DRIVE MEME!

I ROLL TO SEDUCE THE BEAR

Tucked between the massive Lake Calenhad and the icy Frostback Mountains in Ferelden’s chilly, hilly south, the Hinterlands are a region covered in patchy forests, small farms, and a bustling fishing village called Redcliffe. The region was recently the frontline of a war between mages and Templars, but the Inquisition’s military presence has restored order and is now focused on helping the locals and influx of refugees rebuild their lives. Whether you’re a recent recruit or a hardened veteran, a Fereldan local or someone who recently fell out of a rift from another world, you may be asked to go lend a hand.

I. FLOODS

A burst of unseasonably warm weather (in no way inspired by real life events) is initially greeted with relief, gloves discarded and scarves unwrapped—but followed within the week by severe flooding across the region. Maybe you’re sent out to help debris from a road or collect the bodies of those swept away. Or maybe you’re less lucky and instead there when the waters come, shepherding refugees to higher ground, or caught riding in the flow on a dislodged roof or log. Maybe there’s a bear on the roof with you.

II. TREASURE HUNTS

Given the lack of banks and lockboxes, when the people here have something they value, they often hide it—under the ground, in a tree, behind a waterfall. So here you are, with a sketch of some landmarks found on a body, trying to find… something. If you find it, it might be useful: weapons, runes, a stash of supplies. Or it might be someone’s box of racy letters and a request to deliver them to a now-married woman who will slap you on delivery.

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.

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No, please. Tell someone else here that what they've faced has nothing on what you have. I'm sure they'll suddenly respect you greatly.

[Nobody likes to be told that their struggle isn't as bad as other peoples', he's quite certain.]

[In her case he would be quite wrong. Because hers is worse, sorry.]

Great wisdom can only come from great suffering.

[Which, anyone can understand.]

It can come. It doesn't always. And plenty of us have been through great suffering.

We shall see...

[She's honestly tired of this. At this point, she'd even take a conversation with Brax over talking to this man.]

Your poor people.

[He's not really one for letting someone else have the last word, especially when they're blind to others.]

[She sighs heavily. And he's about to learn the extent of her suffering. Her voice is soft. Sad. And filled with the weight of the knowledge that the lives of billions upon billions rest upon her shoulders.]

Which ones? Which version of my people are you talking about? Because I have been to so many parallel universes. There's the universe where Time Lords never existed because they never unlocked the secrets of time travel. There's the one where nearly the entire planet was overrun with the Free Time Virus. Which your Red Lyrium seems comparable to. There's the Universe where my counterpart was a ruthless dictator bent on killing anyone who didn't agree with her because she was that mad for power. There was my home universe, which is on the brink of a multi-universe war that will likely end in the destruction of the whole of creation. So which of my people are so poor?

You think I have no compassion based upon this short conversation. But know this: I consider all of those people my people and I would do anything to save them. Anything.

[Even sacrifice herself. Her past and her future. She would give it all up, if it meant saving them from the Daleks and the Free Time Virus.]

[He sighs heavily.]

I think you lack understanding. Maybe you've compassion for the smallest of your people, but I think it more likely you lose sight. I could list what all my world has been through, what I've been through, but my point is that you telling someone that their struggles, their conflicts and pain, don't match up to yours without you knowing a thing about them is dismissive and ignorant. You don't know this world and you're not seeking an understanding by assuming you've been through worse.

I think the people you see past are the poor ones.

Well. We have clearly reached an impasse.

[And she just sounds... tired. Even in this universe she carries the weight of all those Gallifreys with her. And that's something this man isn't understanding at all.]

Because the thing you expect from me is the same thing you refuse to give.

[No matter that she has given it. Simply by listening to him. She doesn't have to agree with him to listen.]

I'd give you respect if you acknowledged me as an equal. But you don't. Not by dismissing what I've been through as less, rather than simply different. That's all I was seeking. But you didn't want to speak with someone of this world, your voice made that clear even if you didn't say it outright, and you don't see me as an equal.

[He exhales.]

Which is the very thing I've spent my whole life fighting for, freedom and equality, so you'll have to excuse me for not respecting yet another person who refuses to see me as a person.

[And now her frustration comes out.]

Oh for goodness sake! I try to find and connect with people from my universe and suddenly that means I don't see you as a person? Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?

[If she were the faceplaming sort, that would be happening right now.]

Look, I know it must be terribly confusing to have people from so many different places arriving here. But, you have your people here. I am just trying to see if any of mine are. That doesn't mean you are lesser. It only means that I desire to connect with people who understand what I understand, so that I can have one moment where maybe things make sense in all of this chaos.

That's not... Maker's breath. You're not hearing a thing I'm saying. It's about you acting as if the struggles here are less than what you've seen and been through when you don't know a thing about here and act like you've been through everything that could be gone through! You haven't. And even if you had, it doesn't invalidate what others have suffered!

And you are doing the exact thing you are accusing me of doing.

[Not to mention, he clearly doesn't believe a word of what she's said about her experiences.]

And you expect me to believe you without even saying what the suffering is.

[Which is a tough sell. "Ohhh we suffer so much... But I'm not going to say a thing about it."]

Because some of us don't go around spouting off every tragedy that's occurred to us.

[He's heard enough that he doesn't doubt her stories. He just doesn't think they mean she's suffered more greatly than people here. She's not going to be convinced, though, so he makes the conversation private.]

But fine. I'm a mage, which means I was torn from my family as a child when my magic decided to make itself known, and locked in a tower along with other mages. I tried to escape, and was beaten. I fell in love, and that love was taken away and transferred to another tower because mages aren't allowed that. I escaped more times and was beaten each time I was caught and finally stuck in a cell, alone, in the dungeon, for a year. My final escape I was caught again, and had the choice between death right then and there, or joining a group that had a delayed death sentence, the Wardens, all because I wanted to be free. Clearly I chose the latter.

[He takes a breath.]

But that wasn't enough for those who had kept capturing me and hauling me back. They harassed me constantly, attempted to kill me, and when I killed them in defense I lost what friends I'd found in the Wardens because I had to flee. So I found my first love again, and because there was still resentment about me being free and a mage, he was stripped of all he was, made Tranquil, empty and hollow, in an attempt to lure me to my death. My story continues from there, and it's all death and loss. It's got the dictator who wanted my kind slaughtered because we're not all meek sheep, it has several of my friends being killed simply because they were trying to rescue mages, and it has me losing other friends because I fought back, and harder than I should have.

For hundreds upon hundreds of years my people have been caged, and it's only recently that we're out here, in the world, getting the chance to understand what freedom is and can be. I've known bad. I've known devastatingly bad. Do I get respect now, or is my metaphorical cock not large enough yet?

[She has no idea how to make things private or not, so she hopes, for his sake whatever he had done holds on her side as well. She will start with his question. Because that's clearly the most important thing to him.]

Contrary to what you may believe, you had respect before you allowed your own arrogance get in the way....

I am sorry such has happened to you. It explains your anger and your resentment of me. However. I am not them. I am not from this word. I do not have any control here.

[Though she'd like to. Like the Doctor, she has a strong drive for peace. And in this place, asserting her control might be the best way. It had worked on one of the Galifreys, after all.]

So, why do you treat me as if I am one of them?

Because you minimized what I'd been through. You minimized what my people go through. Suffering loss and captivity and torture and abuse is the height of suffering; what you have seen is not worse than what my people go through.

[His voice has returned to mostly patient. She's listening, at least.]

No one who has been through what many mages have, or what many elves have, would find it easy to hear someone else imply their suffering and pain is nothing when it has been a defining part of their lives.

[Romana just sighs.]

You can believe whatever you wish. But jumping to conclusions and then holding fast to such is hardly a way forward.

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TEST DRIVE MEME!

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Erm. Sorry for the TL;DR

...and sorry back for hitting enter, LOL

I've done that too many times to count!

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