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

It's easy for her to forget how much of a toll mages could take on themselves, so unused to fighting alongside them as she is. She's trying to remember that magic isn't inherently scary, not really, not if it's used right and by the right people. That's what their Chantry says, isn't it? (She isn't really sure what the Chantry says other than snippets she picks up here and there. Such a strange organization.)

When the last all but collapses into something not unlike a puddle onto the floor, Rachette looks back on her helping hand--and pales. "Are you okay?!" Nevermind whatever minor injuries she's sustained, with magical healing...helping, though her natural resistance to magic doesn't make that easy. The mage practically looks on the verge of collapse.

Bethany looks up at the dwarf, surprise flashing over her face at the question, when she realizes that she is in fact, gasping for breath. That her knees feel weak and her head is lighter than a bubble ...

She sucks in a breath, using her staff as something she can lean on. "Just -- a little tired. It will pass." She has a feeling that if she saw herself in a mirror right now, she'd look more like a ghost than a healthy woman in her thirties.

Nathaniel would have her head, for risking herself so. She mentally winced.

"Go, sit. Should I run for a healer?" Or does all she need is rest and lyrium potions? Magical exhaustion is different...maybe. Rachette doesn't know. There should be a skin of water lying somewhere nearby...

Though it doesn't slow her, it strikes her that she's once again showing concern for a Grey Warden. A Grey Warden that clearly isn't one of these...these insane ones, but still a Warden all the same. Maybe she's getting soft, seeing the person first and the blue and grey second. At least Hercules had actively tried to do something to stop the madness, had sacrificed himself. And who is she to say this woman would not have done the same?

Ugh. She can worry about that later, when the mage isn't collapsing in on herself.

"Absolutely not - they have more important duties. I will sit, and revive myself." She goes to sit down on a part of the wall, closing her eyes for a moment as she let her mana return to her naturally and slowly.

Only then does she peek at the other woman, who seems to be looking around at something, then at her, then away again. Don't know what to do with a mage Warden after all this? I can't blame you, neither do I.

She sighed wearily, then asked, "Is there water anywhere?"

"Their duties are to keep people from dropping." As far as she's concerned.

Ah, there's the water, along with the backpack of goodies she's keeping. Rachette comes back over to hand the skin to the mage. "That was good teamwork. But you didn't have to exhaust yourself for me."

"Well, I am not dropping. I'm ... sitting." She stated with a little sigh.

She took the water from her, nodding her thanks before she took a deep drink. After a moment, she rubbed her mouth, handing it over. "I'm a mage - that's my duty, to make sure you make it through without getting seriously hurt."

"Your duty's to throw magic around until there aren't any enemies anymore. I just didn't think it meant literally throwing magic around. Actual fire in one hand and actual ice in the other. Doesn't that hurt?"

Bethany smiled again, with a little less weariness and a little more of her customary warmth. "No, actually. It's all about control. No mage actually needs a staff - it just works as a focus."

Her eyes squint, nose wrinkles just a bit in thought. "So you don't need to focus because you're that good?"

"... Well I never thought of it that way, but I suppose it's accurate." Bethany smiled weakly, before rubbing one hand across her face.

Rachette shook her head, sitting herself by Bethany cross-legged. "I don't think I'll ever understand mages. Or magic. Mostly magic."

"That's all right - we understand only so much ourselves, of magic. We don't know why we have it and others do not. We certainly have never been able to figure out why dwarves cannot become mages." Bethany sighed, resting her elbows on her knees.

"Maybe we're kind of like gatekeepers," she suggested with a shrug. "Who else is going to go down into the mines for your lyrium? There's a reason the Carta gained power smuggling it to the surface." And expanded from there, of course, once they were established surface-side. "What would happen to the mages if there was no longer a supply of the stuff?"

"Well, that certainly makes more sense than - 'we just don't get your weird magic'." Bethany's lips twitched up slightly, before she became pensive.

"More than likely we would only be able to cast very simple spells, or burn ourselves out trying to do more difficult ones. Lyrium is basically the lifeblood of a mage's abilities."

OPEN: The Western Approach

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