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

"That is putting it kindly. Perhaps we ought write a letter to toss through the next rift. A list of requests, if we are to be receiving random baggage." Maker knows they both carry more than enough. The Templar likely just as much- he's a templar. All templars have their own quiet, soulful baggage of some manner they cart about in one of two ways: with grave stoicism or a self-righteous reminder of 'oh how I suffer, I suffer for you'.

To Adelaide's knowledge, Kane has thus far been the former and all the more pleasing company for it.

She takes a moment to blink at them both, squinting to be precise. Gauging. Considering. Judging. "...They suit you."

Said with all the conviction of one dubiously testing the weight of a thoroughly rotted plank on a bridge.

"Somewhat." Specificity matters.

Martel is perfectly aware that at best, Adelaide is being deeply sarcastic - and at their expense, no less. All the same, he lowers the glasses very slightly on his nose to regard her over them, and says, "Thank you," downright sunnily. A tilt of his head back - if his hair were still so long as it had been when he first arrived, that would have been a proper toss - slides them back into place and he scrutinizes Kane, finally settling on approval.

"These will come in useful," he says, squinting at the reduced glare of the endlessly sandy horizon.

Also, not irrelevantly, they look great. Actually.

Kane lowers his hands once he's sure the eye-glasses won't promptly fall from his face, scanning the bright, sunny surroundings with the renewed confidence of not needing to squint against the glare. He has no reason to believe that Adelaide is being sarcastic, particularly when she qualifies it, which earns a twinge of a smile out of the whiskery Knight-Captain.

He nods back at Martel, like ah yes, they do in fact look great.

"They'll come in useful on our way back to Skyhold," he adds, side along to Adelaide too, approval for this find that is only minimally mock. "It can get just as bright on the snow. We should--" He adjusts the sit of his claimed glasses, recalling the word. "--requisite them."

She is well familiar with the look that comes of peering over the rim of glasses. Somehow shading the lenses of the glass makes it more and less. More aloof, less disparaging. That Martel is so cheerful upon his response does not help and even her weary, exasperated composure cracks. Faintly. The tossing of is hair is what does it- so overblown and faintly ridiculous that she might, might be smirking.

Slightly.

Just a touch.

"You may very well start a new trend, the two of you, gallivanting about with such...unique eyewear." The stress upon the word edges around the unspoken 'horrid' but only just.

"My lady's sensibility is offended," Martel says, remaining unaccountably cheerful for all that he is as dry as the desert around them. Rising, he adds, "I'll find it in me to bear that, somehow. You understand, Adelaide."

That her occasional disapproval only makes him stronger? She probably understands that just fine.

Kane's smile is a little hidden, both due to the usual salt-and-pepper bristle as well as how smiles usually happen on his face. He isn't quite on Martel's level of shamelessness but certainly in agreement as to the usefulness of these things and perhaps, just a little, their style.

"I don't know that I've ever been accused of gallivanting," he says, peering back into the crate, picking out a couple more to inspect, before offering a pair of mirror aviators to Adelaide. One of us one of us. "It must be an effect of tailing this one so often," a tip of his head to Martel indicates which one he means.

"You are not seeing yourselves wearing these things." Things, not glasses, for they are hardly stylish and they are an affront to what few values of Orlesian style and sensibility that she yet holds dear. Perhaps it is but a token protest- yet another means of picking at Martel's pride and Kane simply has the misfortune to be folded in with the lot. But then the offer.

Then the look. And the tip of the head that speaks of Martel being this man's problem as much as he is hers and that? Endears Kane to her somewhat. More than enough to reluctantly accept the shades. "If I put them on will you be less insufferably smug, or more?"

More, that's the answer, but she puts them on anyway.

Few people are on Martel's level of shamelessness; he laughs and drawls, "You wound me," sounding not especially wounded by the accusation of being the sort of bad influence that leads to gallivanting. As accusations go, it is both novel and sort of charming, so you know what, he'll take that.

And--

"Well, my dear, now we're seeing you. And I for one am delighted."

OPEN: The Western Approach

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