allthisshitisweird | Test Drive Meme!

You'll Never Leave the Hinterlands Alive*

Welcome to Fade Rift's very first Test Drive Meme! Use one of the prompts below or make up your own, and tag around! Have fun, try out the setting, generate samples for your app, coerce your friends into joining you.

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, early fall finds 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.

1. In the Deep Dark Hills of Western Ferelden

You have turned the wrong corner, forded the wrong stream, crested the wrong hill, entered the wrong cave. Maybe you are far from camp. Maybe you are in camp. Whatever has happened, wherever you are: you are being chased by bears. Did you provoke the bears? Are they huge? Babies? Fade-touched? Mage-controlled? What are they chasing you away from? What are they chasing you into? What do you plan to make out of their hide if you kill them? What do you think they'll craft out of your hide if they kill you?

2. There I Read on a Hillside Gravestone

The rebel mages and renegade templars have ravaged the Hinterlands, skirmishes breaking out all over. It looks like you've just missed one-- great spikes of ice melt slowly in the cool autumn sunlight and patches of grass and trees have been scorched away. Three bodies are scattered about, two templars and one mage judging by their clothing. You could bury them. Or search their pockets. Or track their friends. Or all of the above, if you're feeling industrious.

3. Won't You Walk With Me Out the Mouth of this Holler

Whatever task you were actually sent out here to do, you are going to be late. One-Eyed Jimmy asked so nicely for your help finding his prize ram, Lord Woolsley. It's been in the family for years, so smart for a ram, it's a good luck charm, their business has boomed with it around, and it's lived for so long, he just can't abide thinking of it getting eaten by some mangy apostate. And then he went and offered you money, too. How could you say no? Maybe you're still wandering, asking everyone you pass if they've seen a ram that looks like it's wearing an orangey-red sweater. Maybe you've found it and are chasing it around a lake or trying to lead it back to the village for your reward. Maybe you've gotten fed up and gotten out your sword to bring Jimmy a new sweater instead and discovered that lucky Lord Woolsley is a demon in sheep's clothing. Surprise!

4. Fill Your Cup With Whatever Bitter Brew You're Drinking

Just because the region's had a rough time lately doesn't mean the tavern at Redcliffe is any less crowded than usual. Bella behind the bar dishes out tankards to refugees and soldiers, scared villagers and angry farmers, merchants traveling through from Orzammar and Orlais and families fleeing the rifts in the foothills. It's packed, basically. The Inquisition has only recently extended its influence into the region, and while some have already seen the benefit-- demons killed, fighting broken up-- others are skeptical.

5. Spend Your Life Just Thinkin' of How to Get Away

Choose Your Own Adventure: hunt game, kill demons, gather herbs, track bandits, haggle over the price of armor, fall off a deceptively tall rock, 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, rummage around in empty homes, run from a dragon, cry over how cute that fennec fox you just shot was, set up camp and chat around the fire, knock yourself out (figuratively, or even literally if that's more your speed)-- the Hinterlands are your ~~Frostback Mountain~~ oyster.

*Yeah, I had this stuck in my head. It's a good song!!

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Ariadne had noticed. But she had yet to understand.

A bit self consciously, she looked at the mark on her hand. It was a little unnerving, for any number of reasons. Her own skin was, in her natural state, a shade of green only slightly softer. She'd never gone half and half before. No, she'd gotten quite good at maintaining her Human form. So good, in fact, that there were moments, when she was resting, when she wouldn't recognize her own face in a mirror.

Add to that, the fact that Tranns had a tattoo in almost the exact same place on her hand. Hers, though, meant something spiritual, something Ariadne had yet to understand.

Had she been touched by a god?

Well, obviously, it meant something to the scornful man. Perhaps he could be of use beyond bear baiting.

"It just sort of appeared," she said, holding it out for him to see. "I don't know what it means."

"It means you're out of your depth," he said, "and a very long way from home."

As if to punctuate that, he swapped his staff from one hand to the other.

"What d'you know about the Inquisition?" Seeing the reaction on her face, or perhaps the lack thereof, he went on before she could answer verbally: "Mn. Thought so. Come on; we'll get you somewhere less vulnerable to bear attacks."

As curious as the word 'Inquisition' was--and as frightening--Ariadne found herself slightly transfixed by the way he moved the staff.

"Are you a carnival barker?" she asked.

Nearly eight years ago, right after she'd sacrificed her wings, Lysia had taken her to a traveling carnival. She remembered that there had been a ringmaster with a staff like that. And he'd swung it wildly about, emphasizing his words. It had been like watching a musician play.

"I'm a mage of the Nevarran Circle, specializing in spirit manipulation and the necromantic arts." He opted for the truth, though he suspected that whatever he said, it would sound like Tevene to her. But where could she possibly be from? She spoke the common tongue, but to be so isolated, so ignorant of the goings-on...

The Qun, perhaps? They had been known to recruit outside their own race. As they started to walk, he eyed her clothes again, looking for clues.

"My name is Sherlock Holmes."

Ariadne dressed in the typical style of a Human of the realm. What set her apart from Humans more was the way she walked. She had a habit, especially when she was ill-at-ease, of holding her arms still, slightly raised to either side. It gave her the appearance of a bird, ready to take flight any second.

As for mags of the Nevarran Circle...Ariadne didn't know much about magic, beyond her own. But she more or less understood. "Necromantic arts," she repeated. "That has to do with the dead."

Not a question.

To his name, she bowed her head politely. It meant nothing to her, but it didn't seem all that unusual. A typical Human name. From a family she simply didn't know. And there was no shortage of them.

Well, she wasn't wrong.

"Death, and the spirits that wait on it. Fear, decay... the echoes of memory." He looked toward her with dramatically widened eyes, before remembering she might not be as put off by the concept as the average Ferelden. People in the south had such a tendency to get skittish about Necromancy. As if lighting people on fire was somehow more palatable.

He raised his free hand and circled it around once, drawing up a small amount of that purple energy.

"I draw the spirits to me, and command them to my will."

Again, she saw that sense of showmanship in him. Well. If his magical career ever got boring, she supposed, he could always make it as some kind of ringmaster.

She watched him create the energy with considerable interest. It wasn't that she'd never seen magic before. But that kind of magic was something of a rarity back home. A few Darcus here and there communed with the dead. But Elves wouldn't touch it and Humans didn't know how.

Her fingers twitched with the urge to reach out and touch the purple. But she held back.

"What sort of will do you have?"

He waved the magic away. "Strong enough to survive the Harrowing." And there was a note of — bitterness? — somewhere in his tone.

The Qun was looking more and more likely. The things one heard about the way they treated mages in that society... under the right circumstances, it wouldn't be surprising that she'd never seen magic up close. Yet there was one thing that kept him from being certain in that conclusion.

She was too trusting.

As they exited the forest, the walls of Redcliffe became visible, just over the next couple of hills. Already Sherlock could see people milling about near the entrance.

"Put your hands in your pockets," he advised. Quiet, but firm.

Ariadne wanted to ask him why, but given how low his tone was, she supposed it wasn't something to be discussed in public.

She had no reason not to trust him, of course. So she tucked her hand away.

And turned her attention on the walls of Redcliffe. It was a confusing sight. Mostly because the architecture didn't match what she was used to seeing in Valeria. It was...almost flimsy. It reminded her of the scattered Human villages of Deleo that her mother so often warned her to stay away from.

She wasn't in Valeria.

...so then...where was she?

Expectantly, she looked up to Sherlock, half wishing she had the Elvish propensity for telepathy. "Ariadne," she told him abruptly.

Her introduction got a curt nod, much the same as she'd given him. He'd been wondering whether she was going to get around to it.

"Ariadne." Testing out the name. It sounded Antivan, though she lacked the accent.

"Welcome to Redcliffe."

Alastrians had a knack for picking up on rhythms and patterns. It made them excellent translators. The problem was that, sometimes, they also began to pick up accents. Ariadne didn't mean to start imitating the way he said certain words, but she was. More and more as the conversation continued.

And it really came out when she repeated "Redcliffe."

An interesting name. Ariadne hoped and excepted that it had something to do with red cliffs, but she couldn't be sure. Everything looked like it was sort of covered in mud.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she muttered. Still. She didn't sound terribly disappointed. All new places were interesting.

"Your presence is highly improbable, yet here you are." But from where, he still couldn't say. A problem he could easily solve by asking her... not that he was going to.

Sherlock hated admitting not knowing something when he should be able to work it out.

They passed through the open gate with no more than a glance and a nod by the guards standing there. Redcliffe was no longer quite as paranoid as it had been when the Rifts first opened. They recognized Sherlock as an agent of the Inquisition, and allowed him and his guest to pass without question.

"What's the last thing you remember? From before your arrival."

"Climbing a maple tree," she said.

And that was what had really jarred her. One minute, she'd been in a maple forest, considering a doze up in one of the highest branches she could find. And then...it had all gone wrong somehow.

He was certainly right about the probabilities. She could actually see them, like threads in a tapestry before her. And none could explain how she'd gone from a healthy maple tree to a forest of sickly, unfamiliar trees.

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