allthisshitisweird | TEST DRIVE MEME

A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like

it's the 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. WILL IT EVER BE WARM AGAIN WE JUST DON'T KNOW

1. AND THE BEARS THAT ONCE CONTROLLED ME CAN'T GET TO ME AT ALL

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. In case you hadn't guessed, it's still snowy.

2. LET IT GO

At first it sounds like a folktale, passed around tavern hearths and campfires after a few too many tankards. An evil witch with a heart of ice atop a frigid mountain fortress, casting endless winter upon the land, turning those who oppose her into snowmen. But it turns out it's true-- or at least partly. Maybe. Sort of. If you can weed through the stories, the common threads are these: several locals and travelers claim to have been accosted on the back roads through the hills by a female mage who used ice magic to trap them and steal their belongings, sometimes freezing solid those who tried to fight back. Some said she claimed to own the land, others that she was collecting a toll, and several that she cackled wildly about ranted about endless winter. Whichever version you choose to believe, there seems to be an apostate who needs dealing with. Perhaps you'd like to wander the roads in the guise of a wealthy traveler and lure her into an ambush? Scout the caves in the hills and try to track her to her lair? Make a friendly visit and recruit her to the Inquisition?

3. LET IT GO

The Hinterlands are dotted with lakes and ponds and streams, nearly all of which are frozen solid. The locals sometimes travel this way, pushing goods across on sledges, or strapping blades to the bottoms of their boots to skate, carrying messages and supplies or just racing when the weather is clear. Some enterprising souls have even attached sails to their sleds or runners to their rowboats and skitter across the ice hoping not to tip over or stray off-course into rocks. There are other hazards, too: in some places the ice is deceptively thin, and you may come across a stranger unlucky enough to have lost a boot or gotten a leg stuck or fallen through altogether. Maybe you're the unlucky one, treading icy water and calling for help.

4. I AM ONE WITH THE BLAH BLAH BLAAAAAH

The tavern at Redcliffe is rid of both cakes and rats, but is still filled to the brim with rowdy drunks. Tonight they are both rowdier and drunker than usual, and something sets someone off. Maybe it's you, maybe it's the guy next to you, maybe it's someone all the way across the room and you don't even see it happen, but suddenly the entire place is engulfed in a knock-down drag-out glass-smashing chair-swinging bar fight. Dive right in, pick a side, pick no side, get caught off-guard, hide under a table, try to sneak out, it's up to you but you'd better decide quickly.

5. THE COLD NEVER BOTHERED ME ANYWAY

Hunt game, or kill demons, dig under the snow for herbs, track bandits, open a streetside scarf stand in Redcliffe, 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, climb trees or abandoned towers covered in snow, rummage around in empty homes to get out of the snow, run from a dragon, definitely don't kill any fennec foxes, set up camp and chat around the fire, sing a rousing solo about your love of the weather, do whatever the hell you want-- the Hinterlands are your endless frozen playground.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bundled in fur and fabric against the weather, separate from the train of her companions on this unasked for trip to the arse of Ferelden, Gwenaëlle is a small and easily missed figure; the claustrophobia of the carriage had become maddening, the company of her physician intolerable, the smell of the horses...she'd just wanted to walk a little ways, long enough to get sick of it and become grateful again for the things she'd tired of.

She stiffens when the snowball collides with her shoulder. Better there than where it might have hit her somewhere still healing and painful, but she's in no immediate mood to be charitable or reasonable, turning with narrowed eyes difficult to see beneath the elegant, finely-crafted mask that hides most of her face but not the hard set line of her small, bow mouth.

"What are you about?" --snapped sharply, her accent speaking of Halamshiral's high quarter.

Oh.

Oh no.

His breath caught in his throat for a moment of stunned dismay, and he hastened to bow in apology-- the straight-backed obeisance of a military man.

"F-forgive me, milady! I didn't mean-- hadn't seen-- meant no dishonor--" he poured out each phrase as they came to mind, rat-a-tat quick, such that even the mule beside him pinned its ears and leaned away from his broad gesticulations of insistence.

"I hadn't even looked, forgive me, please!"

The immediacy of it is mollifying, but she doesn't want to be mollified, mercurial thing that she is. There is no arguing with anyone traveling with her, no blaming them for the appalling circumstance she's been forced into, and presented with such a target she is reluctant to give it up at once simply because he gives her the apology she absolutely deserves, thank you. Her chilly silence stretches uncomfortably as a counterpoint to his rush to beg her forgiveness, her fingers tightening into little fists hidden by her fur muff.

There's no point to dragging it out, either; it will not satisfy her.

And -

Still.

Finally, not substantially softening her tone, "Going about not looking, this is nonsense. I had been a rogue mage, then what? You are dead as well as foolish."

There.

That. Good. She's not blaming him for her predicament, she's just berating him for being stupid with his own safety. What if she had been a rogue mage, what then. (They probably require more provocation than a snowball, unlike milady. But who knows, mages are unpredictable.)

He remained at half-bow for the duration of this silence, cheeks burning with mortification at himself. It was so warming a thing that he barely felt the bite of cold anymore, and studied a black root that jut out of the snow. Stupid, foolish, clumsy fucking twi--

At the mention of rogue mages, he risked briefly looking up-- and masked his startlement in an overloud clearing of his throat. And then, in awkward haste and attempt to give levity to the situation, he blurted out with a slanted, hopeful smile?

"Would you be so vicious a mage, milady? Slaying a traveler upon the road for his disastrously poor aim?"

Nope. Should have kept my Andraste-cursed mouth shut. Oh Maker, I've just compared her to a killer, is there somewhere to run to? His dark eyes flit to consider the treeline along the road.

Ballsy. Or not, by the way he's looking for an escape route, but Gwenaëlle misses that, anyway - startled into a laugh by something so unanticipated as that particular effort to defuse her clear annoyance. Equal parts annoyed by her own amusement and immediately pleased by the thought of herself as being powerful enough to be merciful if she liked, she rolls her lower lip between her teeth to stop herself from continuing to laugh, and out of longstanding, thoughtful habit.

"Where does the traveler go?" she settles on, the raise of her eyebrows audible in her tone and hidden beneath the pearl-inlaid mask. (It catches the light from the snow in a way she finds very fetching, because there is nothing in her life she can't stage manage and superficially improve. There is a narrative to things. One dresses appropriately.) "Andraste's Herald died for what lies at the end of this road, you know, probably it should be undertaken with a bit of respect."

She is one to fucking talk.

TEST DRIVE MEME

a. hope this is ok? i am nicer than she is.

ahahaha, no worries at all! .c:

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