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

[mythalenaste]

"If you don't like the food, there's plenty outside, and you won't have to pay. Want me to show you?"

She takes a swallow of beer.

[antivanleather]

"..." A long moment passes where he simply stares at her, enraptured and thoroughly curious. "Yes."

[mythalenaste]

Five-year-olds can do the things Pel is about to show Zevran. And she's about to use these basic Life 101 skills to impress a boy. City boys are great.

She takes a huge swallow of her beer and shoots to her feet, reaching out to grab Zevran's wrist and drag him outside.

"I don't have any weapons, but that won't stop us from eating well. This is good land."

[antivanleather]

She is taking him by the wrist- curious and intensely amused, he follows with his pint of ale in hand. He'll pay when they return. If they return. Surely they will return, yes?

"How fortunate it is that I have plenty. What do you require? A knife? A garrote?"

[mythalenaste]

"Arrows? No, I'm not good enough."

It's a few minutes' march outside the city walls into the woods, where Pel finds a fallen log and rips a platter-sized chunk of bark off. She bangs it hard against the side of the log to free it of critters and hands it to Zevran.

"Go steal some fire. There's a nice big one in the tavern."

[antivanleather]

"...Steal fire." What. "I can do you one better, mm?"

It is a simple thing, after all. He pulls a length of oiled cloth from a pouch at his belt, binds it around one end of the bark and sparks it with flint and steel. Soon enough they've a torch all their own. Traveling in the deep roads this is common enough practice with the Dwarves, and though it has been years? Some habits are best to keep. "Behold. Fire."

[mythalenaste]

Pel lifts a brow at the torch.

"Are you going to just hold it there while I dig the fire pit myself? Will your little rag last that long?"

[antivanleather]

"The rag should last long enough." Slow burning fabric blends, hurrah. He smooths aside some of the leaves and debris in the dirt with the toe of his boot and stabs the unlit end of the bark into the ground. There. Now they both might dig. "How large will we need to make this pit?"

[mythalenaste]

She slips a knife out to draw a line, sits back on her heels, and sighs.

"Mythal'enaste," she says, as if surrendering. "Could you keep a lookout? Make sure nobody's watching."

[antivanleather]

"And what, see two elves attempting to cook dinner? The scandal." But he does turn his eyes to the surrounding wood, most pointedly in the direction from whence they came. All the better to mind those that might follow.

[mythalenaste]

Pel doesn't like using magic like it's the only tool she has, but at this time, it's the right tool for the job. She puts away the knife and spreads her hands over the earth. The roots in the soil (from plants, from trees, a massive tangle just beneath the surface) move, gripping and tugging and pulling away so that in seconds, a bare, perfect pit for a fire.

"All right, I'm done. Start building the fire while I get our supper."

[antivanleather]

Digging should have taken longer, and he'd heard no spade put to dirt. And yet when he turns there is a pit, and there is she with clean hands and an innocent look.

Curious. And cautious. He can appreciate that.

"As my lady Pel wills." There are stones to circle the pit and kindling enough to build a fire- he gets to it.

[mythalenaste]

She is not long gone. She returns holding four squirrels by the tail (no explanation about how she got them) and a host of little tubers the size of cherry tomatoes. The tubers get buried under the hot ash while the squirrels are skinned and roasted on spits. While they cook, she gathers wild greens and berries, piling them on the bark platter to make a salad.

When it's all done, she digs up the tubers and takes the squirrels off the fire.

"And there you have it. Free of charge."

[antivanleather]

Tubers, squirrels, and salad. It takes him back to traveling with the Warden and for a moment beyond the crackling of the fire and the popping of fat he can almost hear a terrible joke as told by Alistair, the strumming of Leliana's lute, the rumbling snuffle of the Mabari, Wynne and Morrigan discussing something or another. Strange and dire as that time had been, a small part of him misses that sense of joined purpose, that sense of camaraderie unlike any he'd ever known.

He shakes off the fugue easily enough, pulling a small flask from his belt. "Dinner and brandy, what more could I desire?"

[mythalenaste]

"Oh, you have brandy?"

Pel sits beside him, looking curious as she sets the platter in front of them both and grabs a tuber to pop into her mouth.

[antivanleather]

"Only the finest Antivan Brandy to warm my heart on these cold Fereldan nights." He offers her the flask first, as is only polite. "A little bit of home in a bottle."

[mythalenaste]

She takes a big swig from the offered flask. And almost chokes. It's a tearful effort to swallow it. She's done fortified wines, but never more than a sip of anything so potent as brandy. But after swallowing and recovering, while still blinking her eyes and handing the flask back to its owner, there's a lovely warmth spreading through her limbs outward from her heart. She has effectively killed all of her taste buds, but she's feeling somewhat relaxed now.

"I'll take your word on it being good brandy," she aspirates. "The aftertaste is nice," she adds.

[antivanleather]

"You- um. You are meant to sip it." Not swig it. He should have said something sooner, it seems. Ah well it is a learning experience. There is enough left for him to take a slow sip, savoring the burn, spice, and warmth of his favored vice.

Well.

Second favored.

"Perhaps we should find a bottle of Antivan wine instead."

[mythalenaste]

A bubble of an embarrassed laugh. She is really botching this, isn't she?

"The food will get cold," she points out lamely.

[antivanleather]

"And a fine meal it is." He smiles. She is trying, so should he. The tubers are lovely, the squirrel gamey in the way all squirrel tends to be but not so bad a thing. "This is far better than what we would have gotten in town, thank you."

[mythalenaste]

Truth be told, Pel is a utilitarian cook. The magic she works is only magic, not something that makes people feel happy or special. At least he's enjoying it, or pretending to. She smiles back at him.

"I guess I'm not used to cities yet. Or just...civilization, as it were. I don't know where to get anything, or how to act, or how to look or dress. I know this, though. I'm glad it's...something, to you."

Obsolete, maybe. All the things she strove for in life made irrelevant by joining up with the "right" people.

"Quaint, I suppose."

[antivanleather]

"Well, the first thing you should probably know is Civilization? Is not entirely civilized. Especially when it comes to elves, but that I'm certain you have picked up already. If possible when it comes to purchasing goods or trade? It helps to have a human do the actual bartering. Or to look particularly intimidating. Being overcharged and underpaid is something that happens to almost everyone, but it happens more frequently to elves." Unfortunate, but true. "How you ought to look and act- aside from taking care not to make it known well that you are a mage? It does not matter. And this?"

He gestures to the pit, their meal. "Is not without value. Take civilization out of the city? And it rapidly falls apart."

[mythalenaste]

"I knew most of that." The smile grows wan. "I only ever knew the bad things. I always thought cities were places of needless decadence, where the depraved spat on the starving and nobody knew life didn't need all of that. And all Dalish are very careful of templars. It's why we don't have more than a few mages in a clan."

She doesn't know that the threat he probably speaks of isn't templars.

[antivanleather]

"To be fair, you'll find that everywhere. The cities, the villages, the hamlets, the Antivan Aravels." He shrugs. "Put a group of people together and someone will want to put someone else 'in their place'. Such is the way of things."

[mythalenaste]

"Is that the way you left the Dalish you knew?"

Plenty of Dalish are like that, even though their lore teaches them that they are merely elves who have forgotten they are elves. Part of the purpose of keeping the lost lore is to teach it to the other elves when they have a homeland again at last. As far as Pel can tell, city elves must be as pureblooded as Dalish, but that's not necessarily the prevailing attitude. Some even consider flat-eared elves to be race traitors.