faderift | OPEN: The Western Approach

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: The Western Approach is a terrible place. You should definitely go there.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15 onward
WHERE: The Western Approach
NOTES: This is open to everyone. Characters who would not happily go to the hell desert probably have to go anyway; it's a war, not a vacation.

Once these wastes were a land of plenty. Can you believe it? The rain came north over the Gamordan Peaks, turning the plains green and verdant for three months of the year. Eight hundred years ago, that changed. During the Second Blight, darkspawn spilled out of an enormous crack in the earth, corrupting it with their foul blood... and it never recovered, even after they were driven back underground. The Grey Wardens built Adamant Fortress to stand watch over that chasm, but eventually even they abandoned it to the wind and the biting sand.

What few of us eke out a living in this Maker-forsaken place do so knowing that any number of deaths await us: darkspawn raids, dragons, bandits—not to mention starvation from the lack of water and game. If we stay, it is because we know there are treasures buried in the bones of this place, ruins from the time when Tevinter ruled, and even earlier. We pass tales around our campfires of the things we have seen shrouded in the dust storms. My favorites are the ones about relics that could restore the Western Approach once more... but I don't believe them. Truth be told, on nights when the wind is calm, I can stand on a hilltop and see for miles in the moonlight over a stark beauty of which no other Orlesian can claim to know the equal. On those nights, I hope it will never change.

—From Lands of the Abyss by Magistrate Gilles de Sancriste

I. THE DESERT

When Scout Harding calls somewhere the worst place in Thedas, that's probably a bad sign. Even when nothing in the Western Approach is deliberately trying to kill you, there's nothing kind or forgiving about the landscape: bare and arid, carved through by sharp-dropped canyons, dotted with abandoned mines and signs of the deaths of lost travelers. Winds sweeping through to whip stinging sand into uncovered faces, and periodic dust storms obscure visibility entirely. It's warm enough to be dangerous but not so hot, at this time of year, that heat exhaustion and dehydration can't creep up on you while you aren't paying attention.

And at any given moment, something probably is deliberately trying to kill you. The food chain in the region is top-heavy, with quillbacks, phoenixes, hyenas, and varghests roaming hungrily and as likely to attack one another as the sparse local prey population. Compared to their natural competitors, the Inquisition's forces look like easy marks. The camps the Inquisition scatters at lookout points throughout the region require constant watch, and going anywhere alone is inadvisable. Not only because of the hostile local everything, but also because it is incredibly easy to get lost. One rock formation looks much like another after hours in the sun or bathed in shifting moonlit shadows, and good luck finding many other landmarks. There are a few: chunks of pillars or arches from some ruined structure, or the occasional odd pillar that might, if someone investigates, prove to mark a trail of sorts.

Plus: the only people who seem determined to survive out here are cutthroat bandits and stray Venatori. Double-plus: a high dragon makes occasional fly-bys, scouring the ground below for anything edible, armored or not.

Some reprieve comes at night, relief from both the sun and the area's primarily diurnal predators. But that's when the darkspawn come out.

II. GRIFFON WING KEEP

Bloomingtide 16-17: Taking the Keep

Only a small force of Tevinter cultists remains in Griffon Wing Keep when the Inquisition arrives, seemingly on their way out the door already, but the sight of Inquisition banners is enough to make them stay and fight. There's no need for siege equipment, but there is call for a little bit of patience. With it, a small battalion is able to evade the mages and archers on the walls and storm the doors with few casualties. Fewer than three dozen warriors wait inside. It's a quick, brutal fight; it only takes a night.

Bloomingtide 18 Onward: Home Away From Home

Once the Keep is cleared of occupants, it's ripe for the Inquisition to… occupy… But with implicit permission, at least. Those who aren't needed for fights elsewhere may be put to work clearing out debris and small animals and the remnants left by the cultists, and within a few days the fortress is a serviceable outpost, much more hospitable than the camps out in the sand. Barracks mean even those who don't have beds at Skyhold may have one here, and it takes less than a week for an enterprising merchant to arrive with ale.

III. THE STILL RUINS

Despite signs of recent activity, the lavish Tevinter palace tucked incongruously into the canyons is quiet and still, when the Inquisition discovers it—quiet, still, but not empty. The ancient ruin is brimming with demons and Tevinters in incredibly outdated fashions, all frozen in place, as they have been for hundreds of years. No one breathes or blinks, but their skin is still warm and alive to the touch.

Beyond the entryway and halls and through the courtyard, there are signs of research and experimentation, and one man stood unmoving with his hand clasped around something unseen.

Perhaps someone will discover the cause. Perhaps someone will undo the spell that's been cast over the palace. Perhaps, if someone does, someone will take the opportunity to not immediately murder all of these valuable sources of ancient information, and instead only murder most of them. In the meantime, however, it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to get this close to a rage demon without receiving a face full of fire. Take advantage.

IV. CORACAVUS

Signs of the Venatori point upward: up the hills, up ladders and towers, and into the ancient Tevinter prison, Coracavus, that was built into the mountainside. The ruin is filled with sand now, with half-collapsed walls and anything not made of stone worn away by winds, and the Venatori are long gone, their hunt for relics from the glory days of the Imperium abandoned when an excavation attempt opened the prison to darkspawn, instead. The darkspawn have retreated as well, but there are signs of their presence. Namely the smell and the half-eaten corpses of slaves—primarily elven and dwarven—who were left behind to their fates when the Tevinters fled.

There's no sign of them now, but digging through their abandoned camps may turn up a name, if anyone would like to see that he pays.

V. ADAMANT FORTRESS

A day's determined walk from the nearest Inquisition camp, Adamant Fortress overlooks the vast chasm—dubbed the Abyssal Rift—from which darkspawn poured during the Second Blight. It stood abandoned for nearly 150 years before the Grey Wardens' recent reoccupation, and it's abandoned again now, emptied out well before the Inquisition's forces arrive. There are signs that the retreat was a hasty one: scattered belongings, opened doors, abandoned meals, and no fewer than fifty bodies left on a mass pyre that only half-burned without anyone to tend it.

The Veil has always been thin here, and it's thinner now, where demons have been pulled through from the Fade. Rifts hang over the battlements and in the corridors, and escaped shades lurk in the dark corridors, siphoning away the willpower of those who linger until they come close enough to attack. Those who visit the Fortress set up camp outside of it rather than within it, wisely.

There are clear signs of blood sacrifice, for those who look: the bodies, blood stains on the stone floors, neat lists of names systemically crossed through. Sorting through documents left behind may turn up vague notes in a mage's runic shorthand or the journal of a trepidatious new recruit (Lourde, a pickpocket, crossed through on the registers). Behind a locked door in the lowest rooms are the bodies of sixteen mages, still in their Circle robes, left lying where they fell when the Joining took them. Mages who were among the rebels in Redcliffe may recognize a face or two as belonging to the hardliners who left with the Tevinters.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With several mostly empty canteens and waterskins in a pack, Araceli had volunteered to leave the small camp to head off to resupply, not bothered by the heat but still looking forward to cooling off in the baking heat of the day, as well as gaining a little peace. The scouts were fine, but the soldiers complained endlessly, and the light glinting and glaring on their polished armour helped no one either. A longish walk but again, a chance to stretch her legs with no one bothering her? She'd take it.

It was the sound that caught her attention, making her pick up the pace to skirt around the beast, footsteps silent, glad she hadn't given Korrin back the amulet she'd been given when heading off to Antiva. The ladder was out of the question but the rocks weren't and with care she climbed up until she made a leap for the platform, hauling herself up easily with a smile.

"I thought you might like assistance, if that's what I think it is? It's apparently very nasty."

Lara started slightly, grip tightening on her bow at the sudden whump of weight hitting the wood so very close to her, but once she saw that her company was human, rather than another of - whatever the thing was below her - she relaxed again.

"You're a step ahead of me, then," she murmured, shifting to give the woman more room. "Or than knowing that just about everything here is ready and able to bite, I haven't a clue what it is." She nodded her head toward the edge of the platform and down at the beast. "What have you heard?"

"I think," leaning further over the edge to get a better look before pulling back when it snapped up at her, "that it's a quillback. I decided to do some reading before I came to the Approach since I didn't the last few times. Just in case there are walking corpses again." True, she was warned about them over the sending crystal but now she better understands just how much she needs to be prepared for in Thedas.

"Supposedly it feeds on carrion but look at that thing - do you think anything gets that big eating what other beasts leave behind?"

"And lions will feed on kills made by other animals," Lara muttered, "but I'd be just about as eager to jump down and say hello to one of those."

She pointed toward the animal's head.

"No teeth on the surface of it, but look at that - it's got a beak, curved like a raptor's. I'll bet it's just as sharp."

Besides the rustling quills and the curved talons.

"Anything that big in my country? It thankfully happens to live in the sea, and honestly most of them will leave you alone if you leave them alone in return." Even sharks but well, after what she'd read about quillbacks, even accounting for a rather absurd amount of purple prose that had veered off on a religious bent at one point?

Well no one could fault them for being wary.

"Anything left baking out under the sun this long must be tough as old leather. We could flank it, if you felt like trying it, I have throwing knives on me." Unlike the Fallow Mire, she'd be able to get them back if they could take the thing down too.

Lara wanted to ask where she was from - the accent familiar somehow - but it was hardly the time for it.

Later, she told herself. There would be time for proper introductions when they weren't being sized up for lunch.

"The skin is likely thick, but it doesn't look armored." Reaching back, she peeled an arrow from her quiver, and slipped it into her whisker basket. "Probably won't be easy, but I don't think it's impossible."

Antiva, if you asked all the scouts except one. Spain if you asked Church. (Actually go ask Church, Church had such a brilliant way of describe Araceli that the word vomit was utterly charming and she had committed each one to heart for the days where she found herself homesick.)

"Something else out here definitely is, I can't remember the name though." She knew it had scales, whatever it was, but that at least it wasn't a dragon though she'd watched one of those flying overhead until it had been just enough to make her blood run cold. With a nod, she loosened her knives then the rapiers to ready them too. "I survived coming through a rift, what's an overgrown bird-beast with spines where only fish ought to have spines?"

Moving quickly, she slipped down the way she had come to land with a quiet roll in the sand staying low to the ground behind the beast, flanking around. At least she hadn't given Korrin back that amulet yet.

Something armored besides the dragon she'd spotted winging overhead?

Wonderful.

But now wasn't the time for that either.

Taking a breath, she waited until Araceli had moved, disappearing over the edge of the platform before leaning and drawing her bowstring back.

"Sorry about this," she muttered, sighting down the arrow. "But it's you or us."

And they had to do what they must.

A slight adjustment as the beast's head bobbed, and then she loosed.

The bastard relation of both dragons and wyverns. That happened to be fond of water, something Araceli could understand but it'd be something of a problem out here in the Approach, when the Inquisition had so many people to supply, and so many utterly unused to being in such heat.

Using the distraction of the arrow, she threw her first knife, aiming for low in the hind leg, a little above the knee. The cry it let out had her shivering even in the heat, aware of her distinct lack of armour but she kept moving, not looking back before she scrambled up the rocks ahead of her to perch and send another knife flashing down and into the softer meat below the throat.

The arrow skipped over the leathery hide of the quillback's head, cutting but not digging; dragging a long tear over its sloping scalp. It tossed its head, snarling and hissing, and whirled in an attempt to lash out... and nearly stumbling over itself as the knife attempted to drag its leg out from under it.

Lara moved fast, edging along the platform until she could mirror the other woman's aim, sending an arrow toward the leg on the opposite side. If they could immobilize it, the fight would get much easier.

Getting the legs down wouldn't mean they were out of danger, not with that beak, but pain would confuse it, as would its body refusing to do what it wanted to do, and making sure it was slower than her would mean she could get back down on the ground and stay with it, letting Lara fire so long as she stayed clear. Arrows at least you could hear whistling through the air even if this was yet another time where she longed for her pistols. A pistol would punch through that hide, she was certain.

Well, she had no pistols. Only knives and her rapiers that she couldn't use for the moment as she moved down the rocks, angling one blade to catch the light to blind the quillback. Recoiling, the beast moved, turning away as she threw the other, giving Lara an opportunity to fire; something to add to another letter home she could never send, about just how effective dazzling strategies could truly be on land after all.

OPEN: The Western Approach

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