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

[allyorfoe]

"Ah, well, if we manage to make the Calling into a tavern song, we might bolster recruiting. Join the Wardens and hear all the hot new songs! Now with a complimentary blood magic ritual."

Revas accepted the possibility of dying, the moment the darkspawn blood touched her lips. They all did. From the moment they wake up as Grey Wardens, any day can be their last, any time they fight can be the final one. But this is different. She's not ready to give up and troop off to the deep roads like a good little dying Warden, and she's not ready to have one of her brothers in arms take a knife to her. She's not ready to let the Blight win.

And yet, either way: If this is the true Calling, or this Corypheus, it seems like the Blight has them on the outs.

"...If you're going to sass me, at least have the courtesy to sit down. You're already too tall. That's your problem, Alistair. Too damn tall. Ought to work on that."

[byblow]

"That's my problem?"

He'd have put at least five other things on the list before his height. But he obeyed, anyway, leaning against the smooth wall of the cave and letting his legs slide out from under him to stretch across the ground. If they were ambushed, it would be that much harder to do something about it--but he didn't think they would be. If he did, he'd have his armor on.

"You should have said something sooner," he said, and made a chopping motion over the knees of his trousers. "If I'd known it was that simple, I'd have cut my legs off ages ago."

[allyorfoe]

"Me and Sigrun were deciding whether or not to tell you, but we didn't want you to feel bad about yourself. It's not your fault you were born that way."

At least if they were ambushed, there's be one more person awake, as Tabris shimmied out of her bedroll, and sat on top of it instead. Her axe was nearby, though if they were successfully ambushed, it'd be a scramble to get it. They'd just have to pray to the Maker that he'd cut them a break once in a while. Surely they were due at least one.

"If you ever want to fix it, though, I have my axe. Two swings, you'll be like the rest of us. Bam." She waved her hand around, trying very hard to keep her face stern. "That's what brothers and sisters in arms are for, right? Helping each other out."