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!!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He rubs the back of his neck at that. Kid must have come to the Circle after everything.]

You're young. You don't remember when the Circle fell to blood magic. Demons everywhere, abominations... bodies. I couldn't go back, and as times passed I was too afraid of the consequences.

[Alim shakes his head, leaning a bit to his staff as he watched the human. He must be a good person, to have a mabari by his side. It didn't mean their views didn't differ, though.]

From what I've heard and seen so far, it isn't the Chantry that's protecting the refugees around here. It's the Inquisition. I don't care if the Herald was real or not, but the good they do for the people is. So I will join.

I was thirteen. I remember. We were locked in. I didn't think anyone had escaped before that. At least not anyone who made it far. I... suppose I would have ran if I'd been able to. I was so sure we'd all die.

[It hadn't ever really occurred to him that anyone might have got out. The doors had been closed on them so quickly, mages and templars alike. So many had perished, those he knew and those he hadn't. Escapes were difficult at the best of times, but among all that? It had seemed impossible, but now he wondered just how many mages presumed dead had got away.]

I haven't seen many from the Chantry around. [Much as he hates to admit it there are far more of the proclaimed heretics helping out that he's seen.]

I think they'll take you, if that's what you want. I'll pray their intentions are what you believe.

[He got out, and only by the grace of the Maker. Alim wasn't proud about it, running past fighting Templars and throwing himself into Lake Calenhad, but he knew quite well that he wouldn't have survived if he didn't.

The guilt... he just had to live with that.]

I'm glad it was restored. I loved the Circle. It was the only home I ever had.

[Alim rolls his shoulders a bit, glancing at the pyre for a moment.]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Definitely a good person, if he could wish something like luck to an apostate believing in heretics. That reminds, him, however...]

...so why are you here?

It was a good home. I hope it can be restored again someday.

[He had a very good home before the Circle if he recalls correctly, but he misses the Circle far more than he missed the home he'd been took from previously.

Honestly, had they not rescued him once already he'd have been doing all he could to talk the elf out of joining them. Now though... he doesn't know what to believe. The Chantry has denounced them, but he's not sure where he'd be if they hadn't helped him before that. His life has become far more complex of late.]

Chance more than anything. There's no place for those of us who don't want this war. I don't know where to go now.

[He knows that feeling, reaching to rub the back of his neck again and fix the long braid.]

Well... you could come with me. See what the Inquisition is about.

[It was pretty much the only safe place for mages these days, wasn't it? Alim wanted to make a difference, and not being murdered for his Maker-given gift.]

If it's not for you, I'm sure you can leave again.

Edited 2015-10-03 13:31 (UTC)

[He's torn. He hates being on his own. It isn't safe for a mage to be on alone, either for them or for others. At the same time he wants to be a good Andrastian, to obey the Chantry as much as he is able to with the world in the state it's in.]

I don't know. I left them once already. And the Chantry... it's bad enough I'm an apostate. Never mind going against them in other things.

Who knows the Maker's plan? There's nothing else to return to other than this.

[He gestures to the burning pyres with a sigh.]

It's a choice between apostasy and eventual death like these poor, desperate people, or using the Inquisition to help people in need. Refugees, injured... and you're safe. Surely the Maker wants that.

[Why is he trying to convince this guy? It wasn't really his place, but... if he left here and then found the human somewhere dead, he'd feel guilty.]

[He stares at the pyre, buying time to think as much as mourning their loss. He should resist, he thinks, but it honestly seems like the only place he can do any good. He's tried looking elsewhere and found nothing.]

Whatever he wants, it can't be this. I suppose whatever they hope to gain, healing the injured can't be a bad thing. I could help with that.

[There's a small smile at that. Maybe he had found a fellow mage healer, even.]

Andraste was the beacon of mercy and kindness. If the Chantry is too shocked to act, the common man must - and what better way to use the gifts the Maker has given us mages than to help His people?

[He reaches over to rub his mabari's ears a little, making her wag her tail again.]

I'm Alim.

[Holding out his other hand to the human, the scarred elf finally seems fully relaxed.]

That is our duty. I only hope He doesn't see it as an abuse of them.

[He considers the hand carefully. If he shakes it then he'll feel as though he's committing himself, and the cause is one he still isn't sure of. Sensing his discomfort Dougal lifts his head up slightly, rumbling to reassure him that he's there. That seems to shake Daylen into a decision and he takes it, nodding politely.]

Daylen. It's good to meet a mage who isn't wrapped up in this fighting.

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