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

That sounds like it would be... very cold.

[ Ellana frowns. It's obvious that such clothing would garner a lot of attention, and that was probably the point, but she couldn't imagine doing something like that herself. ]

But it was probably her plan to keep you and others enraptured, wasn't it?

It was. It showed. [ He drops his hands to his sides, not making the appropriate gesture to prove that it indeed was chilly and everyone who saw this lady knew it. ] I think she was hoping for more ardent fascination than morbid, to be perfectly honest.

[ Whatever the reason, just discussing the woman has distracted Ellana from the rams and chariots. Even long after the fact, that plunging neckline is a conversation topic. ]

Is that common dress in Orlais? Do the men compete with tight breeches?

That they do. It's quite distracting attempting to get any work done there. Also? Highly uncomfortable. [ Certain things need to breathe, after all.

He pauses mid stride, peering out to the far end of the clearing. ]

How red would you say this ram would be?

[ Her nose wrinkles a little. Can't their clothes be pretty and functional? Orlesians are strange. ]

Oh, the man said orange and red.

[ ~~Oh shit, she's cute.~~

Zevran gestures to the ram in question, just on the other side of the clearing. ]

It appears we have found him.

[ She's the best type of cute: the kind that doesn't realize when she's being cute. ]

Oh, that's him, all right! The man said to just encourage him to come home, so I suppose we nudge him back towards Redcliffe?

[ Maker preserve him from kind, cute women. They always lead him into trouble. ]

Or we could lasso him and lead him back like a proper domesticated animal. If we provide food? He should be pleased to come along.

[ The suggestion is foreign to Ellana, only because this isn't how they treat their halla. Halla are their friends, not their pets or animals forced to work. ]

I don't have a rope, and I wouldn't feel right about it anyway. But I could gather some sweet flowers. Maybe that would entice him.

I do- a ram such as this? Is accustomed to a lead. Perhaps he is still wearing his bridle and that will save us some pain. [ From under his cloak he unspools some thin cord- perfect for rappelling, stringing a trap- or strangling a target.

Or, as it so happens, fashioning a lead for a ram. ]

He seems well enough. The flowers would certainly coax him close enough to urge him home.

As long as he's used to it, and doesn't mind it.

[ It's a concession, since she doesn't know how different from halla a ram might be. ]

I'll pick some while you get around him?

As you will. [ He flicks a smart salute before all but vanishing into the nearby foliage, using his skills meant for assassination on...rounding up a Ram.

What a day it is, Zevran. ]

Test Drive Meme!

strolling around in those, what's that word again? oh, boots

Herding your halla you don't get too far, carts are required for trading, racing

what's an andraste and why does she, what's the word? buuuuurn

When's it her turn, wouldn't she need, need to explore the world far from trees

out of the clan, obsessed with man, part of that woooorld

that was magical <3

yes! it was great.

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