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

The Hinterlands are miserable. They are awful. They are all that's wrong with Ferelden, which is everything, and Gwenaëlle hates them, hates being here, hates the Inquisition and rifts and how rude people are to her, which is extremely. The high quarter of Halamshiral does not prepare a young lady for this sort of thing, and bundled in fur she is still a picture of miniature unhappiness - quiet, mercifully, for much of the duration of her journey. She's sullen but not a fool; there's no sense alienating the people standing between her and the demons that come through the rifts she can close. Or at least not purposefully doing it.

Mostly, she speaks when she must, conscious of the edge in her voice and keeping herself to herself. But - Lacey is interesting, as the rifters who share her unasked for burden go. Quiet, which Gwenaëlle is prepared to appreciate in a person; polished, she thinks. She doesn't chatter a lot of nonsense about foreign worlds, which has the effect of leaving Gwenaëlle more interested than if she'd actually said a great deal, and -

And she's lonely, and no one here wants to talk to her, and if Lacey doesn't either, at least she might be unkind in a more familiar way that Gwenaëlle can get to grips with. She seems the sort.

"What are you building?"

It isn't friendly, but it isn't unfriendly, just a tone of voice that doesn't indicate she's ever thought in her life someone might choose not to answer a question she has.

Lacey hears the crunch of Gwenaëlle's footsteps in the snow just before the other woman speaks; otherwise she might have been startled, and it's not really a good idea to startle a victor. Not that Gwenaëlle or anyone else here would have cause to know that. This isn't Panem, although she hadn't believed that at first; she's too used to the Capitol playing tricks on her to have immediately believed she was somewhere else entirely. Since she came to that realization, she's avoided talking about her home world unless someone asks. It's not exactly a pleasant topic.

She straightens up, brushing snow off her hands, and if she has any trouble meeting the younger woman's eyes, it doesn't show. The blunt question doesn't seem to bother her much, either. She got used to this kind of behavior in the Capitol, the way some of the wealthy elite treated even the victors as though they were beneath them. Normally Lacey would respond to that with her usual cool reserve, but... honestly, it's hard to hold up a facade of being detached when someone's just caught you building a snowman. So while she doesn't quite smile, there might be a slight softening of her expression, a very small crack in the usual aloof veneer.

"It's a snowman." And, for context, she adds, "My brother and I used to make them when I was little."

She's hardly about to launch into a detailed recounting of her childhood, so Gwenaëlle doesn't have anything to fear in that regard. Lacey isn't the type to talk about herself with people she barely knows. Or talk about herself much at all, for that matter.

It isn't the sort of thing Gwenaëlle might’ve done with her brother, largely because officially she hasn't got one and unofficially they're more likely to have pushed each other into snowdrifts. Mostly the brief thought of Marcellin stirs a surge of resentment that she's here and he's not, but it passes quickly; she does love her stupid baby brother, even if he's not hers and an absolute shit besides.

Anyway. How hard can it be, building a snowman?

"I can--" wait. No. Revise that: "I could help."

The second version is a bit more diffident than the first. Obviously if Lacey doesn't want to accept this generous offer of assistance (which is not a request for company, no, of course), that's obviously fine. Doesn't matter. Would have been a shit snowman anyway.

(She would sort of like to, though.)

She half expects to be told that she's being ridiculous. And maybe she is, an adult woman building a snowman by herself. Usually this is something that children do.

But they're in the middle of the Hinterlands (which as far as Lacey can tell has only two defining characteristics: huge and cold), and there's nothing pressing going on right at the moment, and Lacey's feeling nostalgic. Maybe Gwenaëlle is too, or maybe she's just bored. Or lonely, though, looking at her, Lacey's not sure the Orlesian woman would admit to that.

"All right," she says, "If you'd like. I've just gotten started." Because why not? She doesn't know this woman well, and from what little she does know of her she's not exactly the most pleasant person in the world, but if Gwenaëlle is rude then Lacey has more than enough backbone to ask her to leave.

And it's a snowman. So why not.

Gwenaëlle is nothing if not exactly the sort of person who, in a different mood, might have told Lacey that that's absurd and isn't she going to get cold hands. But - not today. She fidgets with her gloves (tightly-fitted leather, fur-lined, extending an inch or two past the wrist) a little, fastidious, cautious of pouring snow in the small gap between glove and sleeve if she's not careful--

If nothing else, at least once she's set to the task, she seems to take a certain amount of personal pride in doing the thing well.

"I went sledding," she says, abruptly, concentrating on what she's doing rather than looking up at Lacey. "Not with a brother, I haven't got one - Gregoire is like a brother, I suppose. We weren't supposed to and we crashed it and then we convinced the housekeeper to patch our hands and not tell anyone we'd hurt ourselves."

A bit awkward, as offerings go, but - a small effort. Friendliness. Sharing something, like Lacey did.

TEST DRIVE MEME

i read ur app and i hope u app mO_Om lmk if this works for you

ahhhh ty c: I put in a reserve so we shall see!

joinnnnnn usssssss

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