Test Drive Meme!

[faderifting]

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!!

Comments

[amygdalae]

[Bruce had always made it a point to stay away as far from the Templars as possible. Of course, if they needed his help he wouldn't say no, but as much as he could he tried to keep his distance between them. Not before he feared them, but because he didn't want to risk himself being recognized. Granted, it had already been years since he ran away from his Circle, and what happened there wasn't something very widespread - but Bruce didn't want to take any chances. If anybody knew who he really was...

This particular Templar though, it seemed, wasn't aware, and that was good. Although seeing him digging around in the dirt as well while wearing the armor of a knight commander was... surprising.]

I-- [He starts, not quite sure what to say. It's not everyday when this happens, after all.] --you don't have to do that. It's fine.

[theonly]

Don't I?

[ He gives a dismissive look towards the healer as he keeps at what he's doing. ] Think you're going to gather all the herbs you need on your own? As much as I'd like to give orders to my men to do just that so I don't have to, it won't be happening. [ No needs to get to much into the details why. Who can't put the pieces together, anyway? Be brushes the dirt off of his hands.]

Suppose we could order more soldiers or mages out to gather these. [ Stannis lifts his head up to gaze around the area. ] No reason to trust them to do that and not take a chance to cause trouble. [ Either of them. Soldiers find reason to desert. Mages find reason to run. Just more trouble, more wasted time to gather them all back for judgement. Remove the head from the shoulders if they want to be free of this damn war, because it isn't going to be coming any time soon.

He lifts his head up. His jaw sets. There is muttering under his breath (should have kept her phylactery) before he goes back to adding to the pile that he has. Wouldn't have mattered. Those that decided to escape the tower were smart enough to destroy the phlactery area first. ]

[amygdalae]

[--well, Bruce didn't mean any of that, but then again he supposes he should know better than to speak. Back in his own Circle the Templars had been strict too, although it had never been trouble for Bruce. He had always followed the rules. Back then, it all made sense to him. Now, though--things were different. That life was no longer his. It hadn't been for a good number of years now.

Bruce picks a couple more stalks of elfroot and tosses them into his growing basket, gaze steadily trained onto the ground.] I mean, you have other things to do, I'm sure. I'm just mostly collecting for when we need them.

[They have enough for now, yes, but it never hurts to have more. When the refugees come its always more than anybody expects, so its good to be prepared.]

[theonly]

What? Training men who conscripted but don't have the full idea of what they're getting into? Eyes full of spark and wonder? [ Those who come to lend aid without fully understanding what it means to do so. He believes people come here with odd ideals in their head. His own lot, what little there is, act as though they are out of place when this is their place.

A pause. ] We will need them. No matter how much we have now. We will need them. Better get them now while we have a chance to breathe than when we can't. [ The cheeriest outlook for all of this. But he doesn't like the idea of this war. The rebellion was foolish enough. Stupid enough. Men forgot their duties. ]

[amygdalae]

[Putting it that way, Bruce supposes he's not entirely wrong. Although the people did have their hearts in the right place (mostly), so Bruce can't fault them either. Everyone here wanted to try and help in these dangerous times. Even though the Breach was closed now they all had to deal with the fact that the Herald was gone, and attempt to cope without her around, especially since she was the only one who could directly close the rifts.]

They have to start from somewhere. [Everyone starts from somewhere. And the only way from there is forward.] I think as long as they remember what they're here for, the rest will slowly fall into place.

[He doesn't stop him from picking elfroot with him, despite earlier. Heart in the right place. That's what it's all about.]

[theonly]

What they're here for. To do the right thing. To protect the realm. [ Stannis does not sound as though he's scoffing those ideals, not really, but he doubts their conviction. Everything to fall into place. That he does dismiss with another pull of elfroot out of the ground. ]

Do you know what it takes to be part of a war? [ When the mages started their rebellion, he wonders if they knew what it took. Gold and bodies. Cogs in the machine, he once more says to himself. Those fully believing in their place rather than in the future, because those here -- he lifts his eyes up to scan the peaceful scenery -- will not always live to see it. ]

[amygdalae]

[Bruce falters for a moment at the question, because its not a question that's easy to answer. He kept his identity as a mage under wraps but he is still a mage, despite everything. He was betrayed by his family and lived in a Circle, then betrayed by Templars. Inside him is a monster that he fights against everyday to not let out. He's a mage but more and also less than that, a monster who on his best days is almost a man.

For Bruce, almost everyday is a war of his own.]

I've never been a fighter. [He says instead, after a pause, plucking out the elfroot he had been reaching for.] I prefer to help people, if I can. Heal them from the suffering that come because of the war.

[Not quite an answer, he knows, but he hopes its enough.]

[theonly]

You'll certainly see a lot of that.

[ Stannis wonders why he is doing this to the young men and women who come to the Inquisition. He tells them what to expect, what hopelessness awaits them, but he would rather state the truth than have them walk into a lie. A lie of believing in doing good and good will be done, but not without the suffering one feels upon their soul.

Even though he is but in his forties, he feels aged, tired, from what has happened before and wonders if it is a kindness or cruelty that he dismisses the words of others on why they are there if not for duty. Because duty is easier to swallow than sweet intentions. ]

You'll learn to be quite good at it, I think.

[amygdalae]

[Others assume that Bruce is a naive fool even at the age of thirty, but the truth is that Bruce has seen far more, experienced more--been more. He knows full well the implications of war and the horror it brings, the fear of mages and the cruelty of Templars. He knows all of that, and more. Though he will never really speak about it, Bruce knows the scars will never truly fade inside of him.

To the Templar, Bruce only lets out a quiet laugh as he places more plucked elfroot into his basket.] As long as I can help, it is enough.

[A naive and simple thought, he knows, but simple and naive is what gets him through on his worst days.]