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allthisshitisweird2016-01-01 03:35 pm
faderifting) wrote in allthisshitisweird2016-01-01 03:35 pm
Entry tags:
Test Drive Meme!
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 yourFrostback Mountainoyster, topped with snow.
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"Mind your words. Someone could get the wrong idea."
The W-word, in particular. They are not Wardens in public.
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"Maker's Breath ...someone would, wouldn't they? And me getting above my station other than a common mercenary. Good thing I haven't actually got any big secrets to tell." Oh, outside of being a Mage. And a Hawke. Now a secret Warden.
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"Everyone has secrets, Beth."
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"Me, I'm as boring as they come. Just with a wild imagination."
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"Should we stay the night, or get in a few more hours on the road?"
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"There will be a foot of snow on the ground overnight. It will be safer to travel in the morning." She breathed in, looking around wistfully. "So, we should probably just eat, and go to sleep."
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"Food and floor it is." He pours himself wine and takes a swig. That's the only way to drink Rite Wine. "It'll be good to have a roof over our heads." They haven't had that since Highever.
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"Is it strange? This place makes me homesick." Homesick for the The Hanged Man. Varric would laugh until he fell to the floor. Maker she missed him.
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He's made peace with this.
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"He wouldn't have been possessed by Justice if it weren't for me." He's told her this before. She's the only person he's ever shared it with. He doesn't look upset by this, just...adding another crime he didn't prevent to the pile. How he convinced Justice that it wouldn't be so bad to possess a living host, something Justice had thought despicable before. If you gave instead of taking, I would consider you no demon.
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