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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She locks up tight against the embrace- too shocked by the fact that it's him, that he's here to be overwrought but the sudden surge of contact. Or the lifting. There is lifting going on and her brain shorts out a moment until she's back on her feet and stumbling-

Knowing Anthony is much like knowing a hurricane. You often end up dizzy.

"Yes, I survived the spire- but where have you been?" She combs her hair out of her eyes, blinking at him and the scouts and at him and he's here and there's something-

Off. Something off she can't place. He'd been missing, he had to have been missing. "If that is Ferelden I am dissolving the betrothal."

That wasn't so much as a betrothal any longer but a joke; any formal attempts at a union had ceased when her magic manifested. But details like that are for other people, not for Anthony.

Which is why he needs someone as calm and steady as Adelaide in his life. He is beaming at her and then glowering at the scouts. "You two. Go back to my camp. Get a fire started. Yeah, I'm ordering you. Go go go!"

Yeah, Tony's just that guy who can yell at people and they do things without thinking. It's a gift.

Mostly because it gives him a few minutes with one of his oldest friends, and he's ... got to be easy about this or she was going to freak out. "...Okay, Addy, I need you to stay calm, all right? It's a long story, and I'll tell you all of it. Remember my last letter? I was heading off to Kirkwall, to talk to that Bianca? Best smith of her dwarven generation, blah blah? Well ... I was kidnapped on my way there. By Gaspard and his goons."

"...Every time you open with 'I need you to stay calm' the story invariably contains scandal, explosions, and some way for you to make it partly my fault." Thus it has ever been, even if only through letters. 'No I won't take that match, I have a bride in the Spire' has been a common refrain for years. Nevermind that her own family quietly ceased any attempts at matchmaking and that only served to strengthen his resolve to remain a bachelor by using her as a beard. "Yes, I remember."

It arrived shortly before the first body was found. It'd been-

Well. Something.

"...For the civil war." Anyone with Stark Armaments would turn the tide.

"... Yeah, not this time, Addy." Tony said quietly, his dark eyes shifting to something serious. He took her by the shoulders, his voice quiet, "I'd been held for something over six months. Held against my will, tortured to build them something that would breach any keep in Orlais. I had the designs for it -- a long range projectile armament. I was going to present them to the Empress, with my compliments, when I returned from Kirkwall...after assuring there weren't any hitches."

He wouldn't go into how the weapon wasn't ready - she knew he never presented anything until it met his high level of mechanical standards. That he was going to Kirkwall to go over his plans with another expert should have been proof enough that he knew the design wasn't quite perfect yet.

"That didn't matter to Gaspard, and he ... made my life a living hell for the six months he had me under his 'kind hospitality'. I would have died, if not for another mage. He saved my life, kept me ... sane. He helped me build a suit of armor that I jerry-rigged with runes -- you know that idea I had with powering armor with augments, after hearing about that golem that used to tramp around with the Hero of Fereldan? Well ... I did it. Sort of. It worked. Kind of."

"The idea I kept telling you wouldn't work without poisoning someone with the lyrium it'd take to generate that much power? The idea with the theory you came up with when you were drunk outside your mind and going on three days of no sleep. That idea. And it 'sort of' works." Seeing Tony always ends with a Migraine. Or starts with a migraine. A particular sort of twist behind her eyes that reaches to the depths of her skull and down her spine. That he keeps hanging onto her shoulders is-

Well it's normal. A year ago? It wouldn't be an issue.

Now? Now the tense set of her frame winds tighter and tighter and this is- he is distressed. He has been through quite a bit. She is trying, desperately, to fight down every last instinct that bids her to bat his hands away. When lightening strikes Stark- she is his grounding rod. She cannot flinch away. But she cannot remain either. The hand not in a white knuckled grip on her staff reaches up to tug at his wrist. "How 'kind of' are we talking?"

"... Yeah, yeah that's the one." He always knew it needed tweaking. He always knew Addy would never approve until he could bring her the numbers that hey, look, it works! That was just how he and Adelaide worked. He made her take chances, she made sure he didn't take all the completely idiotic ones.

Of course, there were some things that were not Adelaide. Like slowly becoming stiff under his hands. She hadn't done that since - well. Since they were little kids.

He took his hands off of her, frowning, before he waved his hand, "Forget that for now -- what's wrong with you?"

She could lie- even if she's not terribly skilled in it. Deflections, evasions, redirection the conversation- yes. But this isn't easy to hide, especially when the bulk of that tension drops away as soon as his hands are off of her.

And it's Tony.

She knows him. She trusts him. He has never hurt her intentionally (accidents in the lab don't count), and she's still-

Teeth grit and an abundance of anger turned inward- not entirely unlike how she would snap at herself for being so foolish to miss something she thought ought to be obvious to her or for failing, she grinds out: "Trauma. I survived the Spire. I did not leave unscathed."

She could try to lie, but he knows all her tells. He knows what it means when she squints at him too hard, or when she's starting to get tired because she starts rubbing one eye. He can see when the tension literally runs out of her body like water when he stops touching her.

He gave her a long, hard look, and his voice is oh-so-cold. "Did they touch you? Who was it?" Because it doesn't matter who the hell the templar bastard was - Tony was going to use his considerable resources and genius to make that man's life a living hell. The Black City would be nothing to what he was going to do that asshole.

"Not like you are assuming, Ton-ton." It was disquieting, distressing, she'd nearly been killed- but it wasn't that. "Held to the the wall by my throat and nearly strangled to death by Unger."

Knight Unger, the templar that'd been minding her since she arrived at the tower. That she brought tea. That brought her through her harrowing. That took the late shift with the Mages every First Night to make certain nothing went sideways and no one went careening off the top of the Spire. Someone she thought she ought to trust and one order. One night; and they're enemies.

"Don't- Tony don't. He's already dead. Roul...Roul killed him to save me." And that's blood on her hands she won't be able to wash off anytime soon.

"I don't want to assume, I want to know." Tony's tone is firm, before he relaxed a little at that, but tensed again. Unger? Unger? Maker's Tits, he brought bottles of wine for that guy. Joked about conquests out in the whorehouses. Shock flooded his face, before he took a step back and rubbed his face abruptly.

"... Roul did that?" Good kid, Roul. Probably torn up, taking a life. Tony swallowed, guilt kicking him in the gut, "... I should have been there, Addy. I should have been there to pull you out, pull all you out." He had enough clout. He could have shut this down with money and influence alone. Maker's be Damned.

"With lightening. He saved me." Her eldest and brightest student, a mage in his own right studying to be an Enchanter. She's always been so proud-

With distance she can think back and know the spell was executed perfectly. But then the memory slips in of the smell- the sound of Unger's eyes popping, the choked noises from his throat- Eyes squeezed shut she takes a few deep breaths- something to center herself without the full focus of a meditation. It takes longer than it should but- she's here again. Now. "This was a long time brewing, Tony. There isn't enough coin in Thedas to prevent it. Don't lay this at your own feet; borrowing guilt doesn't suit you."

"Lightening. You know, that's a difficult thing to master, as difficult as a three-gear."

He muttered, as he looked down at his hands. He shook his own head, muttering quietly to himself. "Borrowing guilt I don't need. Got enough of my own." Buckets and buckets of it - and all thanks to his former partner's greed.

"He's always been remarkably skilled." Otherwise he would have struck her down along with Unger. But- she stands, Unger is ash. She must make what Roul did for her worthwhile. "You have as much as you earned on your own- and nothing more."

He looks over his shoulder, before he speaks quietly, "Addy, I wasn't just kidnapped because Gaspard is a bastard. I was kidnapped because Gaspard was an impatient bastard. Because Obie - Obadiah - had been selling weapons to Gaspard for years. That he was the one that provided the weaponry that burned through the alienage in Hamshrial. SO yeah, unwittingly helped a massive prick war profiteer, who then turned around and sold me to Gaspard for a hefty sum."

He shook his head, "My hands are bloody from sheer stupidity."

"Ignorance and Negligence are not stupidity, Tony." It is a terrible thing- it is something that he will likely carry for as long as he's alive- something to make up for. That is simply how he's always been. Failures are born like leaden weights until he makes it right. Something like this? Is not easily made right. "Obadiah deliberately kept you from most of the business dealings aside from showing your works, yes? How could you have known?"

"...Actually isn't Ignorance just another word for Stupidity?" Tony asked, arching an eyebrow, "And Negligence can certainly be blamed on lazy thinking. All of which, I am guilty of." He paused, his jaw tightening as he looked down at the snow, dark eyes hard as stones. "He said I shouldn't worry about such things - that I should keep my mind focused on the real work. Real work - building weapons that killed innocent people, those who had no part in the Civil War."

He shook his head, "I'm one of the smartest men in all of Thedas, Addy. I should have known.. I should have asked. Never, not one damned time ... " A sharp breath, "Well, that's over now. All of it. I'm not making weapons of mass destruction anymore."

"That would be deliberate, knowing, or malicious ignorance. Stupidity is an inability to learn; that is not something that you suffer." Tony could learn, the hard part was getting him to quit. His near obsessive tendencies to chase an answer or build a solution reminded her well of her own habit of chasing an answer in the fade if need be. "You trusted him as your father trusted him. For all that you build- that you built weapons you tend to believe in the good in people. You hold them to a higher standard."

She knows that well enough. "Not even for the Inquisition?"

"I feel I should thank you for the compliment, but I have a feeling it's sort of a back-handed compliment towards my obsessive compulsive behavior." He joked, but something in his shoulders loosened a little. Adelaide always had the gift to get right through his bullshit. "... I guess so. Or at least I expect to be, I don't know, people. Not monsters. Not like something out of a Fade-rift nightmare."

There was a pause, then, before his lips flattened out, "We'll see about that. I need to see what they can do for me, first."

"That depends on what it is you need doing." The Inquisition is capable of much- marvelously so; but they cannot move mountains nor seal the rifts just yet. Time and work and cooperation; the last of which is far more difficult than she'd anticipated- will manage it a great deal.

"...Well. Okay." He leaned down and parted his shirt, where the shard was now sticking out of his sternum. "Can they help me with this, yet? And if not, do they know if I can use it as some kind of power source... ?"

"...what did you do?!" This has to be something he's done to himself, out of curiosity, out of some twisted accident- out of spite. Tony usually does his worst tricks out of spite. Her hands overflowed with blue light as she rested them on his shoulders, seeking out the aches of having a shard in ones' chest and smoothing them over without asking. sHe'd never needed to ask in the past. "Tony this thing can kill you-"

"Me? I didn't do this. A giant rift in the sky did this by creating little rifts. One of those rifts popped up while I was escaping - if I hadn't been wearing my augmented armor I would have been dead." He eyed the shard, feeling the pain release around it while Addy worked. "Oh good to know - the shard thing stuck in me is gonna kill me."

He gave her a wry look. "Hence, Inquisition. So they pull it out and it doesn't kill me."

"...they can't be removed." Not without killing him. Leaving it in- that would kill him eventually as well.

Shit.

"There is no- you need to avoid rifts. Rifts and VeilFire. The shards react to them in some way- most others with them have the shard in their hand and while I will not go so far as to say it does not hurt them; it certainly will cause you a great deal more harm for all that it is lodged in your chest."

"... well shit." He rubbed his face for a moment, before giving her a wry look. "Okay. I will just have to avoid things that appear out of nowhere. No problem."

Deep breath, and giving her a firm look. "...You have to know, I've left pretty much everything to you. Hire someone reliable to run it for you -- if you want to switch it to magical staffs I guess I can't blame you but you'll want to hire some good enchanters. Seems like you might be okay with the ones you got, but look into the Dwarven Merchant Guild, regardless."

"What- Tony I am a mage; we cannot hold land or titles or run businesses." Even with the war and what they might build in the Inquisition that would be too much far too quickly and she was simply going to ignore the fact he decided of everyone he'd ever known that she was to whom he would leave his enterprise. "Stop being an idiot. I am not going to let you die like this. We will learn more and find an answer and fix this. That is what I do, remember?"

What was left to her to fix was never something so risky as this- a burnt palm, a sloppy letter, an ill conceived notion for one of his projects- not his life. Never his life.

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