faderifting: (Default)
Fade Rift Mods ([personal profile] faderifting) wrote in [community profile] allthisshitisweird2015-09-30 09:21 pm
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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!!
stumbling: (crouch)

[personal profile] stumbling 2015-10-02 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not shy. Just... [Awkward. And unused to flirtations from men he's just met.

He looks up to the gap in the trees above, using the sun to assess the direction before turning to the south.]


South, you say?
antivanleather: (do go on...)

[personal profile] antivanleather 2015-10-02 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Unaccustomed to compliments? [ Zevran crackles a laugh. ] A pity. I would have thought you to be showered with them.

South I said, yes.
stumbling: (worse than a harrowing)

[personal profile] stumbling 2015-10-02 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know you!

[On the plus side walking gives him an excuse to do something else. Maybe finding this town will distract him. He is the one who knows where they're going.]
antivanleather: (Now that is an excellent idea)

[personal profile] antivanleather 2015-10-02 10:39 pm (UTC)(link)
You don't know me yet. I am hoping to change that.

[ Walking and talking and flirting are three things he can do well. All at the same time, in fact! He turns back the way he'd come, confident that his newly found entourage would follow. ]
stumbling: (dwarven theories on gravity)

[personal profile] stumbling 2015-10-02 10:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[Follow he does, but keeps from being too close to his side.]

It doesn't concern you that I'm a mage?

[He'd always thought that would scare off people outside the Circle. Apparently an incorrect assumption in this case.]
antivanleather: (Legolas has nothing on me)

[personal profile] antivanleather 2015-10-02 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of my favorite people have been mages. [ And some of his least favorite, but that was just how it was sometimes. ] All it does is open up quite a few new and exciting possibilities for both of us.
stumbling: (glance)

[personal profile] stumbling 2015-10-03 01:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Occasionally too exciting. A girl once told me she could make the earth move for me. I didn't realise she meant it literally.

[Not to mention she'd cast the spell far more powerfully than a joke had warranted. They'd both been in trouble for that.]
antivanleather: (Now that is a good look for you)

[personal profile] antivanleather 2015-10-03 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I find the figurative moving to be much more enjoyable. [ One too many avalanches would do that. ] And twice as satisfying.
stumbling: (Default)

[personal profile] stumbling 2015-10-07 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)
As do most people, I think.
antivanleather: (do go on...)

[personal profile] antivanleather 2015-10-07 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
And rightly so, I should think. Things may slip about if the actual earth moves mid coitus.