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 certainly doesn't doubt the spirit's, well, virtuousness.

Bruce takes some more spindleweed to join in his growing pile in his basket, then starts to wade out of the river he's ankle-deep in.]

Don't worry about it. If a demon is here, I'm sure it would reveal itself.

[Ignoring the total irony that he's the demon in question, of course. But anything so that the spirit would let the matter rest.]

[livingimpaired]

THEY USUALLY DO.

[ He interlaces his fingers as he looks about nervously, but it seems like despite the rage that he feels ... nothing is coming. The eye sockets seem to look all around before letting out a sigh. More the noise than actually sighing. ]

SO WHAT IS YOUR NAME, HUMAN? I AM PAPYRUS. A NAME I LEARNED FROM THIS WORLD AND I FEEL THAT IT SUITS ME WELL.

[amygdalae]

[Papyrus, yes. Bruce managed to get that earlier, although it is hard to place names to spirits when they're so... spirit-like. Half the time its hard to just think of Cole as Cole.

(And of course, Bruce far too easily notes the irony in his thinking.)

He gets out of the waters and reaches for the rag that had been hanging at his side, using it to dry his feet. As he does that, he gives his name to the spirit, since it had so kindly giving its own.]

It's Bruce. [The name he took for himself after he fled the Circles, to this mess of a life he now had. A life that would never be enough for the countless others he had taken and destroyed.]

[livingimpaired]

BRUCE, HUH? THAT IS... A WONDERFUL NAME. I HAVE NEVER HEARD A NAME LIKE IT. [ True enough. Who sat around to tell a talking skeleton their name these days? Most ran from him in terror. Others thought him to be a demon which frightened him. What would they do to him? And it was not like he knew how to leave this world... not that he liked to broadcast that.]

ARE YOU... COLD? I HEAR THAT SOMETIMES COLD, HOT. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS... LIKE IS IT AN EMOTION?

[amygdalae]

[Bruce hardly thinks that his self-appointed name is wonderful, but he appreciates the thought all the same. All things considered, a spirit being so hopeful is probably one of the best things to happen. Or the worst. It's hard to gauge it all. Spirits don't usually just come through the Fade like this as far as he knew.

At the next bunch of questions Bruce only takes a moment to process them, and then he looks to the spirit - Papyrus - once more.]

It's a--sensation. [A beat.] Physical sensation. [How do you describe things like cold and hot to a spirit...] Hot is like fire, heat, while cold is like ice, frigid.

[livingimpaired]

YOU MORTALS ARE REALLY SOMETHING. YOU GUYS ARE ALWAYS EXISTING AND HAVING THINGS LIKE HOT, COLD. IT IS VERY STRANGE.

[ To say the least. Icy, hm? Like sadness. Sad dreams always feel so ... so it is more like emotions than they think. Maybe. His skeletal fingers scratch along side his skull. ]

IN ANY CASE, I THINK THAT YOU ARE ALL HANDLING IT VERY WELL.

[amygdalae]

--well, thank you. I suppose. [It's certainly odd, but Bruce has dealt with stranger things. Well, perhaps not as strange as this. All of this is pretty strange.

Bruce finishes drying his feet and hangs the rag back at his side before moving to put on his knee-high leather boots. Just give him a moment, it won't be long.]

[livingimpaired]

YOU HUMANS SURE DO HAVE A LOT OF LAYERS? IS IT COLD OUT RIGHT NOW? I CAN'T TELL.


[ Another lean forward to watch what Bruce is doing .... before drawing back. Really. What is that? His bones rattle inside the armor but he won't bring up those feelings, again, that would frighten if he goes on and on.

So he plays off the drawing away to pick some nearby flowers up instead. ]

[amygdalae]

[Despite himself Bruce laughs softly, a wry smile on his lips as he puts on the other boot.]

It is a little chilly. But it is the afternoon. [When night comes, that's when it'll be freezing.

Bruce finishes up with his footwear and straightens himself, taking his basket of herbs and slinging it across his back to carry it back to camp. If he noticed anything with Papyrus' reaction, he doesn't say anything about it.]

C'mon, let's go.