TEST DRIVE MEME!

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[paladingus]

Now there's a distressing thought. Simon doesn't object much to bards themselves--except that it doesn't seem fair that some people get to prance around singing for their supper while everyone else has to find a real job--but the notoriety of being immortalized in song is something he could really do without.

"Oh, you can try," he says, "but it'll never catch on." Talented though he may have been as a retriever, he'd make a far less compelling subject than the original bloodhound. He hadn't even been able to inspire the other Ansburg templars to stay and do their jobs throughout the initial rebellion, much less inspire anyone to sing about him.

It galls him a little, at times, to be quite such a nobody, to take orders from people with fewer years and loftier titles than he has, but that's what he appreciates about Wren. There's no embarrassment in playing subordinate to someone genuinely older and more experienced. He moves ahead without further complaint, greatsword at the ready.

There's no sign of bear activity, but a curious ambient feeling of jittery foreboding as if he still expects to run into one at any second. He's not prone to that level of paranoia, except when it's been too long between lyrium doses, and now he swears he can hear humming from somewhere ahead and under them. The map had shown a cave, hadn't it? Somewhere up here. They should be nearly on top of it.

[Edit: No worries! I do that all the time too. Case in point.]

[limier]

Working with Simon has been a blessedly mundane experience.

He’s skillful, he’s reliable... and thus far, he’s kept any terrible personal traumas from bleeding onto his public duty.

All that shouldn’t be such a surprise, but with half their number dead or mad, well. Expectations have lowered. He doesn’t need a title to exceed some others she’s run with of late; hotheads and the empty-handed, all these new young officers trying to hold together the wreckage of their ranks.

Wren steps carefully to his side, one hand flashing out in the signal for wait, caution, the other slipping to the short hilt of a dirk. That deep thrum in the earth, like every stray hair set to vibrating,

She jerks her chin to the ground, and her eyebrows lift in question. Whatever’s ahead of them, beneath them, is he ready?

A few short gestures to the sides: Eyes peeled, go slow. There’s no telling what others might have left behind. Better they not stroll in blind — or worse, find themselves plunging through a tunnel ceiling.

[ ahaha, thanks! ❤ ]

[paladingus]

He tries to be reliable, anyway. Most of the time, he does all right. When he's around fellow templars, he tries harder, ceaselessly afraid of falling short in his duty and seeming unworthy in comparison. It's...a lot easier to look good in comparison to other templars, these days, but Wren is not one of those easy-to-measure-up-to ones, and she keeps him on his toes with a half-conscious desire to impress her.

So whatever is in that cave, he's got this. Really. He's all over this. Even if it's a bear.

It is not a bear, as he discovers, dropping down to the level of the entrance with a quiet jangle of armor. They might be better off if it were. The red glow of the massive, malevolent lyrium deposit reaches out of the rock as if beckoning, and Simon freezes.

[limier]

Oh, fuck.

A sharp breath in. The recoil's instinctive, the glance back learned — no one over their shoulders, but,

The remains of a camp, long-abandoned. Set beneath a little overhang of rock, it wouldn’t have held many. Two or three, at most. Ragged canvas hangs in molding disarray, still spiked into bloodshot stone. Rope coils over the rotten dirt.

"Ashlock," Quietly, a pointed sort of calm. With deliberate slowness (the better he see it coming), she places a hand to his shoulder, tries to guide him a step back.

If they’re alone — a sense she can't trust, not with the noise of it in her teeth — if they’re alone, then the threat isn’t an immediate one. Were they meant to find this? Did they know? A malice she’s not willing to accord just yet,

"Your sash. Tie it over your face."

Any small precautions. They’ve time to figure out how to handle this, if they’re careful. If they really are alone.

(A familiar song, set discordant. Gaps, silences that shape the imitation of words too faint to catch; an echo down a well.)

"How far back did you feel it?"