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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Velanna spends time in Griffon Wing Keep, once the place has been cleaned and fixed, wandering the rooms, looking for anything the Wardens may have left behind. She hopes that none of them would be so careless as to leave the secrets of the organization laying out for anyone to find, but considering the manner of what has happened, she isn't positive they were all in their right minds.

She's humming to herself as she explores, initially Dalish songs in an attempt to drown out the false Calling, but eventually her humming warps so it's more with it than against it.

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The Fortress is too much, even for someone as generally stony as Velanna. She is cautious where she moves, and tries to keep away from all the magical hot spots and shades lurking. She'll dispatch them when needed, although it makes her heart ache.

The Wardens are not Dalish, but they are her people too. What was done here is beyond unforgivable.

The Circle mages in the lowest rooms make her furious. She has seen many Joinings done, prepared the ritual herself once or twice, even. That the mages with the Wardens that had been here were forcing these misguided fools just for their own gain... It made her blood burn, and she stalks from room to room, surveying and growing more furious.

"These Wardens will die for the stupidity they've wrought," she might lament it, if she were the type to do so. Instead, she wants them dead.

"What's that, then?"

Vellana's had a shadow, whether she realizes it or not. Most likely not; hobbits are masters at moving unseen and unheard, and Sam's been known to sneak up even on Galadriel without her noticing.

He'd recognized one of the tunes she'd been humming as one he'd heard from the other Dalish in Skyhold, and had been intrigued enough to follow along behind her, hoping to hear more. He'd recognized a few of them, listened carefully to the unfamiliar ones, and then, subtly, the notes had changed, growing darker and somehow unsettling. Still...she is an Elf. What else would she be humming? "Is...is it an Elven song?"

She's surprised when she hears a voice besides her own and the one in her head. Looking up from the debris she's shifting through she takes note of the speaker, pressing her lips into a thin line for a moment at his question.

"Not exactly," she replies somewhat hesitantly. It took her second to even realize what she'd started humming, and now that she did she was angry with herself. "It's a Grey Warden song," she adds, although not strictly the truth also not a lie. She doesn't particularly look like a Warden at the moment, having traded her usual robes for her old Dalish ones, but that doesn't really change what she is.

"A Grey Warden song?"

Sam pauses, pondering that for a moment. He doesn't know much about Grey Wardens, only that they fight something that sounds a lot like Orcs and that, for some reason, they're not allowed to sleep in the castle anymore.

"It's not very nice, is it?" he continues. "I like the Elvish ones much better, even if they're often sad themselves. But they're always beautiful, all the same. What's this one about?"

"It's not about anything," she replies, a little annoyed, before thinking. She regrets both the tone and the words the second they're past her lips and she sighs, folding her arms over her chest.

"I mean... It's not anything specific. The darkness we fight, I suppose." Although it's more the darkness calling out to them, trying to draw them in. Sinister though the song might sound, it's allure is strong to the Wardens who hear it.

He blinks, a little stunned at her blunt tone, but when she doesn't continue speaking that way or order him away, he relaxes, pondering her answer with a furrowed brow.

"The darkness we fight," he repeats somberly, his thoughts drifting unbidden to Mordor, to the Dark Lord and his awful Black Riders. They're far away now, all of them, but still he shudders before pushing the thought of them stubbornly away. "But what darkness? Do you mean," and he drops his voice to a whisper, unsure whether speaking the name is strictly allowed. "Corypheus?"

"In so many words, yes," she replies, although that isn't right either, and after a moment she shakes her head. "No, I meant the darkness wardens fight. We are an order tasked with fighting darkspawn, and ending the Blights, when they come." She exhales, shrugging her shoulders.

"Corypheus is technically a darkspawn, if rumors are to be believed. So saying he is the darkness we fight isn't entirely incorrect."

"The darkness wardens fight..."

Something about Grey Wardens has been tugging at his brain, though it's only now that he remembers just why. When it does come to him, his eyes open wide, and he leans closer, dropping his voice.

"Oh! The Wardens! Well you don't have to worry; I haven't breathed a word of the wardens, nor of all your secrets" ( of which he knows none) "and I never will. Don't you worry, Miss." He pauses, thinking a moment, and then can't help but add, "Still and all, I don't see why fighting those awful things should be such a secret at all."

This isn't a place he wanted to come back to. Ideally he'd never have set foot in this bleeding desert again, either. Duty, though, comes first. It always has, always will. Duty is what made him decide to become a Warden, where others had been recruited or forced into it, or taken it on as a means to delay an ugly death. Herc had chosen the Wardens, the responsibility. This was the family he had chosen, and it has come to this.

He steps quietly, ignoring the smell, carefully stepping around bodies so as not to disturb them, kneeling and resting a hand on the helmet of a dwarven Warden in the pile. His face isn't carved out granite or a blank slate. There's a tension in his jaw that has everything to do with grief as he takes in the scene.

"They will." There is no satisfaction in it.

Velanna turns to Hercules, pressing her lips together. She isn't quite sure how to respond, knows he's been through much more than she could expect to understand looking at the corpses here and now.

"You're lucky to have escaped," she says after a moment, a little awkwardly. It doesn't feel right, and she wants to say something more, but doesn't know what. This is a hard situation to process, and she isn't entirely certain what she's supposed to be doing.

"Lucky," he agrees, standing and turning away from the pile of bodies, that sickening sweet smell of rot and the that strangely clinging smoke scent rising from the bodies quickly rising in his list of things he'd sooner than not encounter again, coupled with an awareness that it could well happen. These men and women should never have had to be burned. They should have been able to follow the words of the order, their purpose and their duty, and this was not the type of Sacrifice that their death was to be bound to.

"Or selfish." Not a bit for pity, and his tone carries that in it, or so he hopes. "Escaping to get word to Skyhold without bringing more of them with me--"

Herc exhales, and shakes his head. "It doesn't sit right." Even if one man getting out was easier, even if there hadn't been a way to get to anyone else with his condition what it had been. "You doin' alright?"

"I would have done the same," Velanna replies, simply. "If they did not flee on their own, you would have gotten yourself killed trying to bring more." She has a very pragmatic view on life sometimes. Don't feel guilty, Herc, because Velanna will always be a worse person than you are!

"I am angry," she replies to his question, honestly. She's never been one to mince words. "I didn't join the Wardens for the fellowship. But I lost my clan, so... it has become important to me. Being a Warden is important to me. What has been done here... It's an affront to what we are supposed to stand for."

"Maybe." His tone, however, says that he knows she's right, and that he knows he made the right call. It just didn't feel right, and when you've got the world on your back it can start to feel exhausting.

Too bloody right. His jaw clenches, but it's not with anger at what she's saying, it's with a fire that's blistering at both of them. "They'll get what's coming to 'em."

A promise might be too much, but he sounds pretty damn certain. "We'll see to it."

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OPEN: The Western Approach

Velanna | OTA

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