Test Drive Meme!

[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]

A hopeful assassin. What would the Crows say?

[ He crackles a soft laugh, eyes crinkling. Well- yes. Aside from their vengeance he could carry their hope. It is not so heavy a burden to bear. They have seen through the ending of the world once before and come out with stories and songs- why can't they do it a second time? ]

Mmmmhmm. Isabela, Admiral Isabela. [ He smirks. ] Leliana if you wish to reserve your nights for those that I have not had in my bed as of yet- you are going to need to either step up your game or point out who you wish me to avoid as to not make things terribly awkward.

[fightingale]

I do not care what the Crows say.

( She had respected their work, once. She values Zevran far more.

Leliana makes a quiet sound of disgust, pulling back, and it is an easy lapse back into their habits of before - except her ire is dramatised, and half heartedly so. She can barely hold her smile away for more than a few moments. )

I do not need your pity, or your recommendations, thank you.

[ombranera]

But I have so many recommendations to make- when you formed the Inquisition, and do be honest, did you make being ridiculously good looking a requirement? Because it seems as though we are full to the brim of stupidly gorgeous women and handsome men.

[ He sighs- playing up the swoon for her sake; and this is much more like it. The teasing, the way her nose wrinkles just a bit that is wholly sincere and slightly girlish. ]

[fightingale]

Well, I had to consider who might be suited to what roles. You never know when you might need a seduction carried out, and what skills might be required to complete the job... although if I had considered more carefully, I might made you our Seductionary Advisor, outright.

( she says it so seriously, so earnestly, but there is a telltale smile lurking at the corner of her mouth, even as she crosses her arms. )

Although if you are determined to exhaust yourself and all our assets, I may have to pursue a new tactic.

[ombranera]

[ She and only she can get away with joking over such a thing- that he was used for seductions is one of the few truths he'd shared with her during the blight. Anyone else making such a joke would find themselves bleeding in short order. But Leliana? Earns another crinkling of his eyes, another smirk. ]

I am hardly exhausting myself- well. With all but the Qunari. I need a day or so of rest after them but they are worth it.

[fightingale]

( And so would another making the comment bleed at her hand. They both of them were used when they were younger, but Zevran had been bought as a slave, and she had believed she did it for love and adventure. Perhaps she had an easier time of things than her friend, with such convictions, or perhaps there was some lingering naivety in her, still. Her smile gives way to a quiet scoff, and a shake of her head. )

I will take your word for it.

( for now, she is gathering up her collection of dragon teeth, nodding towards the cart. ) I can have agents work the rest of this. I think I would sooner see us on the road, than struggle with working the best bones from the carcass.

[ombranera]

Truly, Leliana, you ought to take a night with one. They are marvelous in so many ways- Korrin especially I think you might like. [ She is even one he hasn't had a roll about with just yet! Not for lack of trying.

Bag filled and with the knowledge that someone will handle the rest, Zevran jogs back to the fearful nugs. Ugh. The noises they make. ]

Better to get these somewhere safe before the wolves hear them and grow hungry.

[fightingale]

Ought I? Food for thought.

( So many jokes. She had not taken anyone to her bed since Marjolaine; oh, she is a master in seduction, but it is harder to hide the truth of what you are when your body is marred and twisted with scars, and some trickier targets would not deem such a body desirable at all. That bothers her not. More bothersome is that others must be sent to do such work, for all the jokes she makes to Zevran, and that is without her idealisations of romance and love. Love was redemption, it was... peace, of a sort. Not all people were meant for such things, she had come to understand, no matter how they might admire the strength for it in others.

This, the joking, it is easier, and she she leaning forward to murmur gentle words to the scared little dears before she looks to Zevran again. Her poor sad nugs. They will live a much happier life at Skyhold. )

If they get hungry then Zevran will get a nice new coat, won't he little nugs? Yes, we'll skin the wolves to keep you save. Yes, we will.

( stop baby talking to the nugs, spymaster jfc )

[ombranera]

...It says something about me that I have missed this. I do not think anything good, but. Something.

[ Her coddling affection is familiar and warming enough that he does not do more than the token sighs of supposed irritation as he settles in among the cages. The nugs are soothed, slowly, by Leliana's cooing and baby talk and Zevran, well.

Crackles a soft laugh. ]

Yes, yes, if there are any bears or wolves that dare attack I shall make a fine coat of their fur.