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[faderifting]

New Year...

...Same Old Hinterlands

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, the first days of the new year find 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.

STILL WITH ADDED SNOW.

1. SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

You have turned the wrong corner in the snow, forded the wrong stream in the snow, crested the wrong hill in the snow, entered the wrong cave in the snow. Maybe you are far from camp, in the snow. Maybe you are in camp, which is also snowy. Whatever has happened, wherever you are: you are being chased through the snow by bears. Did you throw a snowball at the bears? Are they huge and snow-dusted? Babies burrowing through the snow drifts and coming for your ankles? Fade-touched in addition to snow-touched? Controlled by cold mages who are hiding in the snow? Popping up out of the snow like a game of whack-a-mole? What are they chasing you away from in all of this snow? What are they chasing you into, other than more snow? What warm things do you plan to make out of their hide if you kill them in the snow? What do you think they'll craft out of your hide if they kill you in the snow? P.S. It's still snowy.

2. WE TWO HAVE RUN ABOUT THE SLOPES

Farmers have been forced to abandon their homes after a series of vicious attacks by wolves. Packs of them are roaming the foothills and stalking paddocks and even roads seemingly without the usual wariness of humans. Inquisition agents and local volunteers guard travelers through the affected region, hunt the wolves through snowy woods, and track them back to their cavernous lair in the edge of a canyon. Only eliminating the demons that lurk there will free the wolves from their influence and allow the area to return to normal.

3. AND PICKED THE DAISIES FINE

Winter snows freeze and bury the ground, but the need for healing herbs is as great as ever. Stockpiles are thin after the chaos of the last year, and Corporal Vale is desperate enough to send people out to search caves and hollows and cliffsides and beneath overhangs for any plants still clinging to life. The weather is brutal, the search tedious, the footing often treacherous, but that last patch of Crystal Grace could be a key find. Getting it requires clambering up a slippery hillside and stretching up to a ledge and hoping whatever creature lives in that foxhole beside the plant isn't at home, but it's worth it, right?

4. WE TWO HAVE PADDLED IN THE STREAM

With many roads through the hills and ravines blocked by deep snow, some crazy, desperate few have begun traveling by river. The ice is thick and jagged along the shores but in the center the water rushes, just deep enough for a shallow draft boat lightly laden. Supplies are carried down from the passes toward Redcliffe this way, a white-knuckle process that you, for some reason, have become involved in. Maybe you were hired to help fend off the bandits that haunt the calm shallows and try to demand tolls for passage, maybe you're paying your way downstream by helping port both boat and cargo around the steep falls, the mist so thick and cold it coats whatever it touches in a thin sheen of ice. Maybe riding a glorified canoe through rocky rapids and narrow gorges just sounded like a good time. Don't rock the boat!

5. WE'LL TAKE A CUP OF KINDNESS YET

It is still snowing, and the tavern in Redcliffe is still the closest and warmest place to duck into to wait it out, and not only is it packed to the gills but it seems that the First Day celebrations have continued within long past the dawn of the second day. The Gull & Lantern is so packed with thawing visitors that it's hard to walk from one side to the other, the owner has given up on telling these Fereldans they can't bring their dogs inside, every few minutes the group in the corner breaks into a traditional First Day song that will be stuck in your head for weeks, and that lady in the corner is almost definitely someone you've tried to kill before, or vice versa. But there's a fire going, and the bartender seems to think that giving everyone half-price drinks might prevent a brawl instead of causing one, and there aren't any demons indoors, so it could be a lot worse.

6. WILDCARD

Hunt game in the snow, kill demons in the snow, dig under the snow for herbs, track bandits through the snow, deal with someone charging extortionist coat prices now that it's snowing, fall off a deceptively tall rock into the snow, 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 in the snow, climb trees or abandoned towers covered in snow, rummage around in empty homes to get out of the snow, run from a dragon in the snow, cry over how cute that fennec fox you just shot in the snow was, set up camp and chat around the fire because it's snowy and cold, knock yourself out (figuratively, or even literally if that's more your speed)-- the Hinterlands are your Frostback Mountain oyster, topped with snow.

Comments

[ombranera]

[ With all the thrashing limbs and spattering of blood, Zevran cannot very well leave with any certainty that he'll be able to roll free. Much as he used to he braces himself for the rough landing, bones rattling when the beast finally falls. ]

Because my timing is perfect.

[ He shakes free from where he'd ridden the beast to the ground, wiping his blades clean and frowning at his leathers. Cleaning the blood from it will take him an hour solid- at least the ride back to Skyhold is a long one. He shakes himself free of the last of the scales and flesh, taking the long walk around to find Leliana whole. Just as planned. ]

We are no longer required to camp so close to them- so I have no issue with the nugs.

[fightingale]

Always an answer. ( just a murmur, not really intended to be audible, though she makes no particular effort to conceal it. the benefit of having an assassin at your side meant there was an ally with sharp wits and ready blades. less fortunate was the ready tongue that seemed to accompany it. she had half a mind to unleash Zevran on the noble houses of Orlais to simply watch the ensuing sport, if she didn't want to risk the Inquisition and Josie's sanity being reduced to smoldering rubble.

Even with all that, she is glad to see him in one piece. ) Not required, although arrangements could be made.

( This is the truly sinister side of Sister Nightingale: making a man endure nugs in his sleeping quarters. There is the barest hint of a smile, before she turns a critical gaze to the dragon. ) What say you - worth salvaging any scales for Harritt?

[ombranera]

I share my room with Alistair, I do not need Alistair, his dreams and Schmooples the fifth.

[ He gets so little sleep as it is, though that is not always Alistair's fault.

Zevran takes a wide step around the beasts' mouth, gauging where they cut it and how much remained unmarred by the battle. After a moment, he nods. ]

I would say we ought to write Wade and Herren- but they are no longer answering my letters.

[fightingale]

( she should not smile. she should not smile, and so naturally Leliana is having to rein in a slight smirk, and attempts to cover the expression with a musing hum. ) Nugs do not snore, at least. And they are very clean creatures.

( or, if they do, it's so adorable that Leliana cannot bring herself to chastise them for it, or even shoot them a dark look.

Leliana, herself, is crouched down, pulling back the scales around its mouth and inspecting the fangs. A moment of inspect and she stands, steadies herself, and kicks down hard on the side of the brute's mouth, and again, until some of the teeth have been worked loose. She grins at Zevran between the vicious kicks, head canted slightly to the side. ) Is there anyone left who does answer your letters?

( and, crunch. another kick, and more teeth loosening. )

[ombranera]

No, but they are nocturnal and quite talkative for so small a creature.

[ While she works the fangs, Zevran busies himself with the claws. It is a grisly business, carving back the flesh to remove the talons- but it is something familiar, something that reminds him of their time with Jonas and Shale and Morrigan. He could almost smell Oghren rolling about doing something or another, hear the whine of the dog that they probably shouldn't be feeding scraps from the corpse.

They never did find out if it made the mabari stronger. Ah, well. ]

Alistair always did. You on occasion, when it suited you and when I remembered to write.

[ A twist and a grunt- off comes the first talon. His smirk goes a little soft, a little sad. ]

Wynne. Wynne always answered. Even if only to beg me to stop writing her.

[fightingale]

( Wryly: ) The same could be said of you. It sounds an ideal arrangement.

( Time to gather up some of these teeth, dropping the bloodied things into a leather pouch on her belt. A tilt of her head at the mention of her own letters, straightening up with a tooth in hand when the comment about Wynne comes.

She stops, then, and the sobering of his expression is echoed in her own. Even though it is more restrained, more controlled save for when she is truly caught off guard or slipping into darker territory, there is some sadness in her face. (When last they roamed together, she had been so much freer, but everything is weighted, now. Limited by all that she has seen, has lost. They are not the same as they once were, even if they have shared some brief glimpse of it, today.) )

You miss her. ( It barely needs to be said, yet leaving it unacknowledged feels-- cheap. Letting down both Zevran and Wynne, really. ) It... ( and Leliana pauses, weighing her words before dropping the tooth into the pouch with the others, ) does feel strange, to have so many of us reunited and her absent.

( Some things were too sharp, too raw, to address more directly. They cannot be granted words well, not even by a bard. Singing of the grief of others is one thing; addressing their own is different. )

[ombranera]

[ It is easier to focus on the task at hand, the removal of talons than it is to speak or consider the twist of sentiment that bound together their merry little band. They were not all often friendly and were not all often kind- but it does something to people that live through what they lived, that shouldered the burden of saving the world together and survived to tell the tale of it.

Wynne survived. Wynne had more time than any of them expected- Zevran supposes she might have had as long as she liked.

Being here without her...it feels more than strange. It feels wrong. ]

I sent her a carving of her likeness, once- I do not recall where I found it but she was certainly not amused with the ample cut of her bosom.

[fightingale]

( Strange was inadequate, and she knows it well. Strange was what one might say of an unexpectedly warm day in the lingering chill of early spring, or perhaps what could be said of Alistair's cooking, if being less harsh than usually warranted. It did not account for finding oneself deprived of family. A clumsy choice, unbefitting a bard of her years. If she were not so used to what she has become, she might look uneasy or uncomfortable with her own lack of consideration. Lies are too easy, now, and if the lie is that Wynne's death impacted her less than it did, she fears Zevran will see through it all too easily.

Her hands drop away from the gathering of teeth, and she looks to the sky instead, gauging how late the day had stretched. ) She was probably more concerned about what figure of Andraste you vandalised to acquire the low cut bosom and the likeness.

( the barbs and wit are easier than the part that merits the most weight. )

[ombranera]

She wrote back.

[ His voice is not thick, Leliana, why would she think such things? Not thick at all and his hands have not slowed in their work and he has not kept that terrible scarf she knit for him all these years, nor has he kept every reply to every letter he's written and sent.

Not he. ]

To scold me. I can hear her even now, the scolding, see the scowling. There never was a woman that could scowl quite so well at me. [ Nor trouble him to feel guilt. How fair is it that now when he can allow himself to feel it. Now when he can work through it and perhaps use someone to speak of it with, she is gone?

He takes a slow breath and he resumes his cutting, talons settling one by one in his bag. ]

I never apologized. Why should I apologize for attempting to flatter a woman?

[fightingale]

( Perhaps her ears are blocked; she has been concerned that she was coming down with a cold, after all. That must be why Zevran sounds off, because two rogues such as they did not get so caught up on sentimentality. In fact, maybe they both have colds, that would explain it, perfectly. ) She did play very well to her talents. I wish I had paid more mind to how well she scolded you - perhaps taken notes.

( Gaze dropping so she can return to pulling out dragon teeth, Leliana promises to herself to visit the Chantry and the garden on their return to Skyhold. )

I fear that 'decency' is not a concept you or I are well-versed in, Zevran. I will endeavour to find someone better qualified to answer you on that.

( A moment of hesitation, and then, ) There's nothing to stop you from writing an apology now, you know. Or finding a more appropriate likeness.

[ombranera]

I am surprised you did not write a ballad or an ode to her marvelous skills.

[ A beat, a snicker of laughter. ]

Or her magical bosom.

[ The joke feels a little hollow without Wynne there to scowl- but Leliana shall scowl in her stead or make a snort of disgust or- speak of decency. The cloud passes and all is right with the world. ]

We should ask Alistair. He is a terribly decent man, is he not?

[ One paw seen to he moves to the next, taking what plate and scales he can carry easily. Quietly, gently, he murmurs. ]

I suppose I might. She would like that.

[fightingale]

I did not write any such ballad, ( she says, just barely on the amused side of prim and haughty, ) Because I did not wish to invoke the wrath of our best healer. I like my wounds promptly healed.

( and there is a grumble, besides, perhaps a shade too much violence in how she removes the next tooth. )

Decent, yes. Respectable, as well, and inclined to blushing. I am not certain he could endure the topics of bosoms for too long without swooning.

( It sounds a little too harsh to be truly playful, and she frowns as the mess she's made of the beast's mouth. )

That she would. Be sure to include a nice line of poetry. I'm sure I can find something appropriate and bosom free.

[ombranera]

He has grown up some since we last all traveled together, Leliana. There is slightly less blushing. [ Not much, but a little.

But that- oh. That is hard not to ignore. He peeks around the shoulder he is working on to stare at the former lay sister; somewhat surprised by the vehemence with which she speaks. ]

Is that judgement I hear in your voice, my dear? Whatever has Alistair done to earn such harsh treatment of you?

[fightingale]

( An aggrieved sigh. It would be Zevran that catches the brief glimpse of temper. )

Alistair? Nothing. He is an honourable as he ever was.

( But it is Leliana who has become a warped thing. That is not easy to consider. What Wynne might make of them all now, and what she would make of Leliana. )

A slip of temper, Zevran. Best forgotten.

[ombranera]

From a veritable ray of sunshine such as yourself? I find it odd. Speak to me, Leliana, and I promise I will not tease you for a week.

[ And he means it this time, in truth. As much as it is a jest, something to poke at their respective shared pasts- it is unlike her to be thus troubled.

Is it that she has become something of a Bard once more? He can understand her reservations, her concerns. ]

[fightingale]

The Left Hand has no business in the sun, Zevran, as I do not doubt you know.

( I will not tease you, he says, and it earns a flat look. She has played this game before, Crow, and she knows exactly how it will end - with Zevran laughing, and her infuriated.

She pulls away from the dragon. Where her arms would have swung and loosened up in years past, now she holds them close, controlled. ) No, I am no ray of sunshine. To be such would extinguish all the benefits of shadows.

[ombranera]

The Left Hand was once a Lay Sister with a vision and a song in her heart.

[ A terribly romantic picture- and he teased her about the vision endlessly- but a vision none the less. They'd both been younger, brighter- though of the two he cannot help but think he has found himself at the better end of bitterness; less resigned and dutiful and more viciously determined.

What Leliana has made herself- she has done out of faith. While he has no means of understanding such a drive- he has ever known her faith to guide her and guide her well. ]

And yet here a Shadow stands, basking in the work you have done. [ She knows what the Crows call him, now. What Antiva murmurs of in the blackest, bleakest corners. ] You do what you must. You always have- and there has never been shame in it, nor dishonor in acting out of faith.

[fightingale]

And before that she was a bard, who took no small delight in sculpting the Game in compliance with Marjolaine's whims.

( Dorothea had saved her from Marjolaine, from herself. But what is she sculpting herself into in service of Justinia and then the Inquisition? Her mouth snags into a scowl, brow furrowed. )

What of my faith? ( She turns on him then, temper peaked. ) The Maker asks all of us. Our blood - our lives. Nothing would seem to sate him.

( Later she will despise herself for this outburst, those weakness, but better in the presence of a friend than that of a stranger. ) If there is no dishonour in acting out of faith, then what say you of the mages taken from their mothers as children and dragged to the Circle under order of the Chantry? What of those who justify drawing blood as an act in the Maker's name? Is that not dishonour?

( And these questions, these doubts, they insult the very memories of Justinia and of Wynne, of all those who shared her faith and rejoiced in it, just as she has - does? She knows not. )

[ombranera]

[ Once in a rare, rare while- Zevran is capable of great solemnity. Of gravity and seriousness when it is required of him. Aside from the cultural requirements of any Antivan- Zevran has never spared much thought of faith. Life and death slip past too quickly for any assassin to meditate on such things-

But in truth when he was at his lowest point, when he lost all faith in all things- seeing Leliana have her own and act on it, live through it? Gave him hope in people in nothing else. Renewed his faith in those he cared to keep around him through choice or circumstance.

To see her struggle so cuts at him more than he thought possible. ]

There is faith- and there is fear. There is greed. There is justification and pontification used to smooth over crimes; you and I know this better than anyone in Thedas I should think. [ He circles around the downed dragon, dagger going into it's sheathe as he approaches her. ] I know little of faith as you well know. I care little for those that murder and cite the Maker as cause- if you wish someone dead? Kill them and hide it, or kill them and own it. But I do know this, Leliana. When you agonized over what path to choose and Jonas left you to it- you allowed your faith to guide you. You trusted in your own resolve. That more than anything else is what saw you through the bight and seen you thus far. Question the Chantry, for it is made by men. Question the Maker for his absence. But do not question yourself on your worth because of what you have done in the name of your faith and your resolve.

[ He reaches out, then, blood on his gloves as dark as the blood on her hands. He takes hers between his and looks up into her eyes, lips crooked in a smile. ]

For in this? I have never met your equal.

[fightingale]

( Fear and greed are certainly traits she has encountered more often than she would care to. She sung for them, found her way into their beds and slit their throats, and that tended to be a quiet evening. She was Marjolaine's pretty thing, and even after all these years, the traces of Marjolaine linger. Much she is as peace with; other things are closer to hooks under her skin, just close enough to the surface that they might pierce should she move too fast, stretch to far. It is a melodramatic comparison, true, but a bard should have some talent in spinning drama into their tales.

She lingers, arms crossed, gaze trained forward and strictly away from Zevran until he rounds on her. She almost protests the comment about the Maker's absence, that very lack of belief in absence is what brought her to Jonas' side. It is not the real point, here, and so she stays her tongue. And perhaps because it is easier, and because she feels like she should attempt to listen on the rare occasions when Zevran links together so many words and so seriously. On any other day, she might suggest a toast, perhaps commissioning a painting. )

I do not know if it is my worth in question. ( slow, quiet. ) I wonder if it is my path. Marjolaine told me I was like her, many years ago. She said so repeatedly, in fact.

( and she was not deaf to the whispers and murmurs, to Morrigan's barbs, an ironic self-righteousness at finding the Sister was not so righteous as she seemed. ) Perhaps she was right. My faith and my resolve, they... have found different inspirations. I wonder if this has been a simple matter of delusion. Smoke and mirrors, the sort that both of us should have seen through long ago.

( Her hand remains in his, and she watches him; fond, careful. ) I know my worth. My purpose? That is another matter.

[ombranera]

Those that take people and shape them into things say that often. Your Marjolaine- my Taliesin. My masters. [ She had loved hers once- and he loved his- or thought he had when he did not know what it was to love. Without a point of comparison that drive for approval and affection can be easily mistaken for the real thing. ] Even after they are slain- their work lingers. The words are seeds they hope to grow into a vine that would strangle our desires to be anything more than what they meant for us.

[ He doesn't speak of his past seriously around Leliana as a rule but this- this he knows. This he has worked through in some way or another; this? Leliana herself helped him through without ever knowing. Perhaps he ought to tell her one day. ]

What is it you would say before battle? 'The righteous stand before the darkness and the Maker shall guide their hand.' That is your purpose, Leliana. To stand before the darkness. To cut through it. You and I have been drenched in the cruelties of the world and have cut back against the hands that shaped us in our own ways- of the two of us? I think your path will lead to a better world. [ His revenge is purely selfish. Leliana's? Will shape a brighter future. ] You bring the dawn, Usignolo, so those that hold false flames to abuse the hopes of others have nowhere left to hide.

[fightingale]

( Your Marjolaine, yes. Hers, that she had loved so dearly, even as her knife mapped a path between Leliana's ribs. For some that was a metaphor, when love fell apart, but this was so very literal. Marjolaine had condemned her to a slow death as a plaything to a sadist. Marjolaine had been the puppet master, and Leliana her marionette, dancing as told until the moment the strings were cut. And then she was restrung, by Dorothea, by devotion to the Maker, and now? She could well be tugging the strings to make her own agents dance, if she thought carefully on it.

Her brow furrows, and perhaps - just perhaps - in that moment there is the confused surprise that might have belonged to the Chantry lay sister he journeyed with. Zevran had, and always would be, somewhat perplexing. She opens her mouth, and by her expression it would seem she plans to voice a protest, before slowly closing it again. The righteous stand before the darkness. Darkness they had then, and darkness they had now, and it is-- painful, how Zevran's words strike her. Not so similar to old injuries being cut open, that they might be fully cleansed and healed, rather than being left to grow sweet and foul and fester.

There is a long silence before she can muster words and trust her voice to deliver them, though her head is bowed. )

My dear friend, do not undermine your own heart. ( Because if it is she who will lead them to a better world, than who is he but the guide? ) What else have we to light the path?

[ombranera]

What heart? [ The moment of seriousness has come, settled, made it's strike and gone as though it were never here. ] I cannot undermine that which I do not carry.

[ His smile, should she see it, is self depreciating and wry, faintly bitter in it's humor. Once he may have had a heart. He left it to bleed out on the cobblestones years ago.

Gently, he reaches up to touch her cheek and urge her to look at him clearly. ]

Bright smiles and hopeful song. Or a warm bed full of lovely women. [ Here, the teasing arch of his brow, the twist of humor to his voice. ] How can a world full of such beauty ever be so dark, mm?

[fightingale]

( No, hang on. She isn't going to let him get away quite so easily as that. ) Oh? A heartless man would seek inspire another's faith and resolve?

( A slight quirk of her brow, head tilted just so. ) Are you so eager to counter your own efforts as that?

( It is-- confronting, in a strange way, but she complies. Or, rather, she does not back down. She lost that ability some time ago, for better or worse. ) It has been quite some time since my bed was full of lovely women, ( come her own slightly dry reply, ) But if I refamiliarise myself with the indulgence, you'll be the first to know.

( No, he really won't. )

[ombranera]

A heartless man knows well what it is to lose his own and wishes to spare the heart of one he finds himself somewhat fond of a similar fate. [ Too clever by half, his Leliana. Too kind. ] You've heart enough for both of us. In fact- that is how I get away with having no heart and no conscience. You carry one for me, Alistair carries the other. And for the two of you? I carry...well. I do not know exactly what, but I am certain it will come to me.

[ He would say he carries their bitterness, their bloodied hands and hearts, their darker secrets the world has no need of knowing. He carries their revenge; not to say that either of them need him to take those lives on their behalf but- if a few extra bodies ended up among the masters he'd cut down it is not as though he needs to tell them. ]

I must reintroduce you and Isabela; while it is not a bed full of lovely women- she will certainly help you make the most of what room is available to you.