OPEN: The Western Approach

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[fightingdirty]

Spoiler alert: Lena is a terrible person.

Her eyes shift briefly to the scout, and she wonders what horrors he experienced with that spice she's using. Maybe he had the runs for days. She huffs out a short laugh at her assumption and looks back towards Araceli before holding out her lump of food. She'll try some if Araceli is. What are the chances she's actually poisoning her own food because she's already built up a tolerance? Granted, this is Lena, who thinks the worst of everyone and has occasionally poisoned herself when bored to build up a tolerance. But only a little poison.

"This where I ask for a story about your first? Go on, then."

[foxsays]

Hopefully Leliana isn't going to require Araceli to build up an immunity to poison. Jellyfish stings and anemones, fine, been there, done that, hazards of going for a swim back home but since she revealed that it's a decided gap in her education, studying them has turned her stomach. Mercifully not literally. With a smile she gives Lena a generous helping though; this is one of Korrin's friends, and she wants to be friends in return.

"The Fallow Mire. First: dead things stay dead where I come from so walking corpses were new. And people here going into a bog in heavy armour is the stupidest thing I've seen. And the noise they all made. You'd think word would travel that disturbing the water draws the dead out but no." Pausing to take a bite of her meal, she rolls her eyes, gesturing with her fork to continue to show that yes, she's still utterly exasperated with that bullshit production from all those months ago. "And then no one knew how to store food or water, because of course, that would involve thinking. Who would even live somewhere with mire in the name? Poor Korrin, she kept having to go fish idiots out because she's so tall."

[fightingdirty]

At least this one has the sense to not be awed at seeing anyplace new. Fact: most of Thedas is awful. And anyplace called a mire is bound to be twice as awful.

"Masochists, probably. Or whole families that lost a fucking dare. Idiots. Who moves into a mire and thinks 'I'll settle down here with the family!'" She shakes her head and bites into her food, which is much improved from the addition of spices. Now she looks less like she wants to murder whoever made it.

[foxsays]

If it was somewhere by the sea then maybe, but even her first glimpse of Antiva meant seeing the ugly side of the Crows rather than the Rialto, rescue rather than taking in the sights. When your arrival in Thedas involves almost being clawed to death by a demon, you stay wary.

"Everyone in the Mire before whatever happened to kill them off. Oh and the Avvar. They were there. They captured some scouts that we had to go rescue, what a loud, strange bunch of people. Wearing goats." Odd. Very odd. But it does make her wonder about Lena, since she knows plenty about Korrin growing up and they're sharing stories it would seem. "What about you? Are you from anywhere with such a terrible reputation? Or are you a Marcher, or close to a Marcher, like Korrin?"

[fightingdirty]

"They're all right. Good in a fight, and no pretensions. No bullshit. They say what they think." Lena really doesn't care if they captured scouts. The scouts shouldn't have been stupid enough to get caught in the first place.

"Ferelden. The northern part. Just south of the Imperial Highway in the Bannorn." That might not mean anything to Araceli, but hey, she can always look at a map sometime.

[foxsays]

"Very loud though, and more concerned with arguing amongst themselves than actually paying attention to anything going on around them. Though that seems to be a general trait among a certain sort of people. Very bad at looking up." Tall people, she's talking about tall people. Since her group went via the rooftop to provide the distraction for the group heading in the main doors.

For a moment her face screws up in thought - she doesn't need to bother putting on the mask all the time, not around Korrin's friends since that'd make it weird if they're all probably meant to spend time together and then they see a big difference since she's herself with Korrin - as she recalls a few maps in her head. "I haven't been there but I think I know where it is, more or less. Is it really all brown and does it smell like wet dog the way the books describe?" Those would be the Orlesian books, but virtually every book on being a bard happens to come from Orlais.

[fightingdirty]

"Huh," she says, thinking that over for a minute. "Way I remember it, they settle disputes with contests. Feats of strength or talent. Shit like that. These ones must've loved to just bitch at one another instead."

Snorting at Araceli's question, she shakes her head. She lived in Ferelden all her life until she was sixteen, but she doesn't hold some deep pride of the country. Nor does she hate it. Her upbringing was simple, and beyond some people being assholes about Vashoth as they passed by, most people in the community were used to the one Vashoth family living there.

"Only after harvest season when nothing's growing. Otherwise it's good farmland." She nearly leaves it at that, rarely giving more information than she feels she has to, out of sheer laziness. But then she adds, "And wet dog, no. Pig shit, yes."

[foxsays]

"They were living in a bog that came up to even Korrin's hips in places. I think someone almost drowned somewhere." The 'idiot' is implied with the twist of her mouth and the roll of her eyes, you can't really expect much sense of folk who look at a bog and decide to settle down in it.

Then there's the whole 'let's put our Inquisition up a mountain and have people camp in the freezing snow' thing, and yes, it's hard to get to it but that does go for everyone. Including people with supplies. The worst part of leaving Skyhold to go anywhere more exciting is always the going back because she loves climbing, but she definitely doesn't like hiking, not when she's got short legs that were made for running over the sand or rooftops or the decks of ships.

"Pig shit? Really? I don't know if that's better or worse than the fish market in the summer. Mercenary suits you better than farming, I think."

[fightingdirty]

"You get used to it when you can't escape it," she points out. "Suited my father and brother better too. Only my mother stayed at home." And Lena has rarely stopped back home in recent years. She likes her mother just fine, but sticking around the tiny farm community just isn't Lena's style.

[foxsays]

"Home to me is the sea, so long as I could see it then I was never away. I miss the markets now, I even miss the dead gulls Lux used to want to eat if I gave him even half a chance." Out here she won't let him eat dead things when nearly everything in Thedas seems designed to kill probably even in death and beyond, and Lux is something from home, something dear to her heart, still lording it over fennecs out here from his vantage point, king of a crumbling castle but who knows the hearts of foxes not even Araceli Bonaventura does.

"But you did escape it though. To be Valo-kas. To know Korrin. To end up here. There are stories amidst all that."

[fightingdirty]

The way Araceli speaks of home gives her pause. She's a bit worried about this relationship between her friend and the rifter for Korrin's sake. Anyone who ends up hurting Korrin is someone who has to answer to Lena. And yeah, yeah, she knows the whole 'would hurt myself before I hurt her' thing that fools in love like to say, but all Lena knows is there is a green Fade shard of Doom in Araceli's palm, and no one seems to know shit all about shards, or they'd have a way to yank them out.

So if these shards suddenly pop open a portal back home, is Araceli zooming through it? And what's more, is Korrin zooming through it with her? This isn't shit she's telling Korrin. She brought up her concerns when the pair met up in the Hinterlands and Korrin told her she'd asked herself the same things before. But that doesn't mean Lena wants to see Korrin hurt or lose her either.

She says nothing in response to Araceli's memories, and instead says, "Korrin probably tells them better."

[foxsays]

Whenever Korrin talked about her Valo-kas sisters, it's the same sort of way Araceli probably talks about the queensguard or Leandra although she does skirt around the details with them by always just calling them her friends so no one knows quite what they do or how they all know each other, she never really expected Lena to be like this. It'd probably be the same if Leandra came through a rift, or Rajani or Nerissa or any of the rest, people that don't quite exist the same way in the real world the way they do when someone else is talking about them.

It's surprising but she's undeterred, merely shrugging. "It isn't a question of better, I'm not rating them. A story changes with the teller, everyone remembers the same thing differently, sees it differently, lives it differently because it was part of their life. I'm a pirate captain's daughter, I grew up hearing the same stories that weren't the same because of that."

[fightingdirty]

"Provided I even remember," Lena points out. "I give less of a fuck than most people. Things don't stick in my memory too well." Which is true on some level. She's lazy and doesn't care about much beyond her own personal triumphs, so those are what tend to stick with her. But if she sits with Korrin, Asher, Mal, or Taaranda and they start the trip down memory lane, little bits resurface and she can join back in with the retelling.