faderift | OPEN: The Western Approach

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.

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"Thank you." Leliana takes the scrolling, removing the cord securing it and flicking her gaze over it briefly. Typically she'd sooner scouts brought their reports themselves; she will not voice such to Cassandra. Things have been fraught enough, and she is growing tired of the strains of the interpersonal dragging energy from her that could be far better spent on their cause, and the many causes dear to her heart.

Although the keep is largely sunbathed, with shadows chased away by a particularly persistent sun, Leliana's makeshift workspace has a sail stretched over part of it to ensure some shade. "How are you finding it out there?"

It is troubling, all this.

As it happens, Cassandra had intercepted the report from a scout on his way to Leliana. The scout had looked exceedingly uncomfortable at the idea of handing over the scroll, but in the end, even the future possibility of the Nightingale's censure had not been enough to overcome the immediate certainty of the Seeker's wrath, and he had handed it over without complaint.

The truth is simply that she had wanted to speak to Leliana, but had been unable to bring herself to approach her without some reason. Some excuse to hide behind, should Leliana prove aloof; something solid to discuss to avoid awkward silences. Cowardly of her, perhaps, but only the truth.

Luckily, Leliana seems willing to talk. She shakes her head, unable to keep a disgusted look off her face as she considers the desert.

"Hot, and full of trouble," she says, scowling as she thinks of the darkspawn and the varghests. "We are making progress, however. The water, at least, is safe to drink from again."

"Darkspawn are not easy adversaries." She has fought more of them than most, for weeks upon weeks in the Deep Roads. "You are following all recommendations?"

Covered mouth, covered nose, rigorous inspections of each and every injury. Inconvenient, perhaps even unpleasant in this heat and sweat and the tempers that come with it, but so necessary that Leliana can hardly give it emphasis enough.

"That is a relief, however," Leliana agrees, concerning the water. "Was there a particular matter you wished to discuss?"

"Of course." She has no intention of putting herself at risk of contracting the taint, nor of letting anyone else do the same. "We passed word among the troops. No one will have any excuse not to follow your guidelines."

She hesitates. Neither herself nor Leliana have ever had much use for small talk, and while Leliana can keep a conversation going when she needs to, Cassandra is less skilled at it. With the report handed over and her short update on her own activities complete, Cassandra finds herself at something of a loss on what else to say.

"I...no. That is - " She frowns, biting her lip briefly. "How are repairs at the Keep? Is there anything that you require?" As if there is anything Leliana could require that she could not easily obtain herself.

"Good. I do not imagine people will be reckless, but..." An open handed gesture, a vague sweep to the desert, that essentially means let's be honest, people are always stupid and reckless.

And Cassandra is fumbling over her words. Leliana has known her long enough to see through it, eyebrow raising just slightly at the implication that Cassandra might acquire something Leliana could not. It is--

It is a friendly gesture, at least, and though Leliana is silent for a moment it is not the frostly silences that she can so easily afford. The moment stretches out, and then it stretches further, before she exhales slowly.

"You do not need to dance around matters with me, Casssandra. Is there something on your mind?" She wishes that it sounded a bit warmer, really, but there is a careful evenness in her words, a control that seeps in when she does not feel as balanced as she'd like.

The silence seems to last forever, and Cassandra is nearly on the verge of making her excuses and hastening away in shame when Leliana finally replies.

She's silent herself for a long moment, trying to frame her reply, before blowing out air in a frustrated huff.

"I am not dancing around anything." That part, at least, is true enough. If she had something to say to Leliana, she would say it. The problem is that she doesn't know what she wants to say. "I simply...wished to speak with you. As we once did." She stares down at the floor, her cheeks flushed. "Perhaps I was foolish to try."

Leliana's gaze drops - not so far as Cassandra's, not so noticably, her head still held high and her hands coming to meet behind her back. All told if it went for any shorter length of time it would be barely a flicker, the way sunlight might dance off a deftly handled mirror or the swing of a shield.

"You are not foolish." Slow, steady, each syllable carefully enunciated, the end of each word clipped and precise, as if they are each deserving of some emphasis. "Nor are you alone in... in noting some distance from me."

Even a year ago she might have let her hands twist a little in a conversation with a friend, have let her weight shift more from foot to fit. Now she holds herself more rigidly, and only worsens the more people want her to change.

"People are reaching out to me and I do not know what to offer them."

It's not the answer she had expected. Cassandra's lips part in surprise - Leliana does not often admit to uncertainty, even to her. And certainly not since their disagreement. She had been prepared to be rebuked, rebuffed; if she was lucky, Leliana would roll her eyes in fond exasperation and deftly change the subject, rather than laughing outright or coldly dismissing Cassandra from her presence.

She is not quite certain how to reply, at first; and then she knows, all at once. Leliana had stood by her through so many of her own crises and instances of self-doubt, a steady, reassuring presence. Cassandra can do no less than the same.

"Offer them what they ask for," she says, but it's a suggestion and not a declaration, her tone and eyes soft and kind rather than impatient or imperious. "Offer them the truth."

"What they ask for?"

Incredulity, restrained as it might be. "They ask for whimsy and sentiment. They ask for things which have little relevance to this Inquisition."

For a woman that is better forgotten, for softness that would undermine what she must (will) do.

"They are dissatisfied with that."

"They ask for no more than you are able to give them, I am sure. These...people, reaching out to you..." She hesitates, biting her lip. "They are your...friends, are they not?"

Cassandra is hardly one for whimsy, and has few friends herself, and a less than stellar track record at either making or keeping them. But that fact only heightens her own awareness of just how precious they can be. Leliana has many people who care about her, and more than once Cassandra had listened to her reminiscing and telling tales with those she had fought beside in the Fifth Blight, and tried, with utter failure, to imagine herself in ten years, fondly recalling old times with the Inner Circle of the Inquisition.

It seems impossible that she would be able to sustain any friendship that long, if they ever existed in the first place. Impossible, but a wonderful fantasy, all the same. And so it is with concern and a little envy that she studies Leliana now. She will not stand by while Leliana throws away what had seemingly come so easily to her, what Cassandra is certain she herself will never have.

"They would not ask you to be someone you are not."

Leliana looks towards Cassandra, then, there is frost in her expression and a bitterness in her voice that might be better suited to a howling mountaintop than the flats of the Western Approach. "That is exactly what they would ask. They want back the girl they knew in the Blight. They want a person who was delusional in her idealism, in her beliefs of how it was the world could be saved and bettered."

It was a painful truth to grasp about oneself.

Leliana shakes her head. "I had to change, Cassandra, to be effective, and it was not enough to protect Justinia or to help the condition of mages and elves. Whatever I must do to ensure that people are safe and to protect this Inquisition will be done. There is no room for flexibility."

"Leliana..."

Cassandra is not naive. She knows that the duties of the Left Hand differ from those of the Right, that Leliana had been called upon to do things that Justinia had never asked of Cassandra. All for the good of the Chantry and its people, of course.

But the chill in Leliana's expression pains her, and she frowns, troubled, at the sound of her voice. She's silent for a moment, gathering her words.

"We all want to protect the Inquisition," she says at last. "I am sure that your friends understand that. But that does not mean - You need not give up who you are in order to do so, Leliana." She looks at her, beseechingly. "You must not. Justinia - Justinia would not have wanted that."

"To think," Leliana replies, after a long pause, "you and Morrigan agree on something." It is a cheap evasion, and she knows it. Morrigan's emphasis had been different, in some ways, but the overall tone of it had been the same.

She turns her gaze on Cassandra then, sharp and focused.

"Justinia would not, no. But she is no longer here." It is a raw, painful truth. "Justinia would have wanted many things to be different."

"Morrigan?"

Cassandra looks shocked, for a moment, and then shakes her head. She will not allow Leliana to derail her, not so blatantly.

This, she feels, is too important.

Leliana is right, of course. Doubtless Justinia would not have approved of many things that have happened since her death, many of the choices that her former Right and Left Hands have made - neither of them are anywhere near perfect, and they had both misstepped more than once. But her expression darkens briefly, all the same - a fleeting shadow of disapproval.

"That does not mean we must forget her, or that we should," she protests. "Andraste is no longer here either, but we do not forget her, or her teachings."

"I knew her long before she was Justinia," Leliana replies. There is a calmness in her tone that could be genuine, or could be akin to stepping on ice under the impression that it had some strength to it— a moment of calm before the strike of something more calamitous. "Do not think I could ever forget her, Cassandra. Do not think me so capricious as that."

Calm, still, but with a strange preciseness to it, something walking the same line as sharpness without yet falling into it.

She has two sets of teachings from Justinia. The first which bade her give up arms, and the second which begged her to take them back up. Leliana had known full well what it would mean to take up the mantle of Left Hand, and she had chosen it regardless. Ultimately, even in her idealism, she knew that ruthlessness was necessary for some things.

"All the changes I have made to myself have been to serve her, Andraste and the Maker. I wish to see peace as her legacy. Any cost to me is for the benefit of Thedas and its people. That she would understand."

That she had not asked for, but she had needed, and Leliana had gladly committed to it.

She's treading on dangerous ground, she can tell. One wrong step and she could well destroy this fragile peace they have rebuilt. But Leliana is her friend, whether either of them would choose to describe each other in such terms at the moment or not. And Cassandra has never let danger stop her before.

"The Maker loves all of his children," she says quietly, unhappily. Already she suspects that she will not be successful in convincing Leliana of anything. She has never had a talent with words. "He would not want us to sacrifice without need."

She looks at Leliana, a piercing gaze. Silently pleading for her to listen and to understand. "He would not see you cold and alone, cut off from friendship and love. No more than Most Holy would. No more than I would."

Without need? The look she affords Cassandra after that is incredulous, though she does not give it voice. It seems so preposterous, to think that Leliana had not done anything out of necessity alone, out of thoroughness and precision.

Need.

"Love remains the greatest of the Maker's gifts," she agrees, holding Cassandra's gaze steadily. "The matters of my heart are my own. I require no approval and I will ignore censure. Better that my focus remains on the task at hand, and you are spared any cause for alarm."

"I do not - "

She stops, making a noise of frustration as she tries to keep from raising her voice. Why must this always be so difficult?

"I would not censure you, Leliana," she says at last. "I merely - Is it so terrible, to want you to be happy?"

Leliana pauses, as well, and if she were less controlled she would pinch the bridge of her nose or rub her hands over her face, try to rein herself in, take the jagged sharpness off herself.

"And when the costs of happiness are unknown?"

It is a ridiculous counter, but she is not fully sure how to articulate it, how to express her concerns without laying all bare, and that in and of itself is infuriating to her. She should be sharper than this, better than this, and instead her mind feels muddled, and by Morrigan, no less.

"It is not terrible," she replies, more quietly. "But I do not know if I want will be the bring of happiness, or disaster."

Good thing she is not melodramatic as all hell.

Cassandra shakes her head, less in rebuttal than confused helplessness. Naturally, this is all going wrong. All she had wanted - all she wants is to talk to Leliana, to have a conversation that does not feel as if it could turn sour any second.

She opens her mouth, perhaps to ask Leliana just what it is she wants - she must know that Cassandra would do everything in her power to help her achieve it, if it will make her happy. But before she can speak, she is interrupted.

A scout runs up, looking beyond terrified at the prospect of interrupting a discussion between the Seeker and the Nightingale, but Cassandra turns her attention to him immediately. The message he brings must be important, if he would dare to approach them despite his terror. "What is it?"

"Seeker Pentaghast, Sister Leliana," he manages, eyes darting between them as he bobs his head in a cursory bow. He focuses on Cassandra at her question. "My apologies, but the darkspawn have attacked again, and a scouting party was caught unawares. They do not have the numbers to defend themselves - "

Cassandra cuts him off, sharing a glance with Leliana. She is grateful to note that in this, at least, they seem to still completely understand each other, as Leliana graces her with an infinitesimal nod. She nods back, expression tense with worry, before turning to the scout, already beginning to walk as she interrogates him.

"Lead me to them. How many enemies?"

Her conversation with Leliana will just have to wait - and as guilty as it makes her feel, Cassandra can't help being somewhat relieved at the forced delay.

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OPEN: The Western Approach

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