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

[dreadinquisitor]

"I wanted to try," Maxwell said, rubbing a hand over his hair as he turned to find the trail again and get back to the march. "But my mother wouldn't hear it." His voice raised two octaves. "'It's diversion enough already, you don't need to waste more time...'"

He rolled his eyes.

"Thankfully, my mentor was more understanding. He didn't mind that I had to buy them."

[el_tybs]

The imitation was unexpected, and as such Sam makes a face when Maxwell's voice suddenly sounds different, tilting his head down so that he can look over the odd shaded glasses he had.

"So you want to find that alpha because you are able to do so without someone telling you 'no'?" That made sense.

[dreadinquisitor]

Maxwell laughed.

"Well, that makes it sound... petulant." His chuckled rumbled into silence as he shook his head. "It's just - it's my choice now. I have my duty, yes, now to the Inquisition, but my time otherwise is mine. I don't have to explain it, or justify it. I'm finally my own person, not just one part of the Treveans."

[el_tybs]

Sam smiles softly at the laugh. He hadn't exactly meant it that way, simply that Maxwell had wanted to do something for himself because he could - he can relate to that. "That sounds familiar." Something himself and many others were getting to experience. "Course you know those quillbacks are pretty mean. I can only imagine what an 'alpha' one is like."

[dreadinquisitor]

"Bigger, I'm sure. Uglier. All the more determined to reduce me to my useful bits and pieces." He shrugged. "The effort worthy of the prize, and all."

He snorted bemusedly and shot Sam a wry smile.

"If I don't make it, please don't send my ashes home."

[el_tybs]

"Always bigger, uglier, and badder. Guess if they were small, fluffy, and cute it wouldn't be the same."

At the look, Sam reaches over and gives Maxwell a bit of a shove.

"Come off it. If you bite the dust while I'm here, I'm not doing a very good job. Just don't go running off to die, I'll take care of you."

[dreadinquisitor]

"My faithful babysitter, where would I be without you?"

Maxwell grinned, chuckling again, low in his throat as he allowed himself to pushed just slightly off-balance and staggered sideways.

"So what about you then? Any special plans for the Approach? Anything I can help you not get eaten by?"

[el_tybs]

"Mmm, probably at the bottom of this dune looking at bones to be honest."

Chuckling lightly, with a shake of his head slightly, Sam wipes at his brow to rid himself of sweat.

"Well if you put it that way, probably everything. I'm going to be studying some animals while I'm out here. Right now I have my eye set on those phoenixes."

[dreadinquisitor]

"I've heard their feathers are useful," Maxwell replied as he righted himself and drifted back to walk beside Sam. "But this is an awful lot of teeth."

He gave the man a light shove in return.

"You don't get yourself eaten either."

[el_tybs]

"Yes, a lot of teeth, and a particularly foul odor when they feel inclined to make it."

The shove has him stumbling a bit with a patch of sand shifting under foot, but Sam manages to catch himself before he fabolously starts tumbling down it.

"I'm pretty hard to eat, they'd have to catch me first."

[dreadinquisitor]

"Maybe it's not the springs that smell so bad then? It's just all the phoenixes together," Maxwell teased with a chuckle. "Forget the teeth, that's the true thing to fear."

[el_tybs]

"No, I'm pretty sure the springs do smell. Nothing out here can just be normal." Picturing a bunch of phoenixes though, smelling up a region just because was a bit amusing.

"Well at least it just smells. It would be worse if it smelled and they were able to set it on fire." At least he hopes that wasn't a thing.

[dreadinquisitor]

Maxwell laughed, a full warm sound, his head cocking back with it.

"Name anything that's been normal anywhere the Inquisition has sent us. I'm still finding mud from The Mire."

[el_tybs]

"Well we never found that invisible fire-breathing zombie giant in the Mire." You know that thing they made up when they first talked.

"Maxwell if you're still finding mud from the Mire that might just be that you aren't cleaning well enough." He sure you are Max, but you had set yourself up for that.

[dreadinquisitor]

"So maybe I didn't fully rinse out my socks, picky picky," Maxwell replied without missing a beat, taking the teasing in stride. "That doesn't change that I still think it's secretly alive. Multiplying when I'm not looking."

[el_tybs]

"What, are you collecting mud samples from Fereldan? Feels better then the stuff back home, huh?" That's gross, but probably the tamest place to be hiding mud really. "Well it's invisible, it could be multiplying even when you are looking."

[dreadinquisitor]

"Drat, you've rooted me out," Maxwell sighed, hard done upon. "My true purpose for joining up with the Inquisition. The Great Mud Catalogue was to be my crowning achievement. A must have for farmers everywhere."

[el_tybs]

"That is quite the feat you're trying to accomplish. Kind of hard to that in the desert though." Well unless they found an oasis, then there might be mud to collect. "Just where are you keeping all this mud?"

[dreadinquisitor]

"You'll have to read my first edition to find out," Maxwell teased. "First edition, volume one."

He waved an airy hand as they trudged along through the sand.

"I'll be sure to add you to the waiting list."

[el_tybs]

"First edition, volume one? Just how many volumes you plan on making exactly?"

First edition no less.

"So you tell in your book where you keep your mud? Isn't that getting rid of your secrets then? Or is that integral to mud collecting?"

[dreadinquisitor]

"Well, of course." Maxwell tipped his head, eyes rolling dramatically. "I'm happy to labor over the writing for you, but to actually go back to the likes of The Fallow Mire? You're on your own, friend."

[el_tybs]

Well sorry, Maxwell - he isn't a mud collector so he doesn't know.

"You have your mud collection at the Fallow Mire?" That was an interesting place to keep mud - at a swamp.

After a time of just walking, Sam sighs and pulls his waterskin free. "Do you suppose there are any alphas out here?"

[dreadinquisitor]

He tipped his head back, raising a hand to shield his eyes as he scanned across the sweltering horizon.

"Here exactly?" He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "I'd like to think they aren't so elusive that I would have missed the signs if one were here. But maybe..." He glanced back the way they'd come. "Maybe they are smarter than your average bear."

Or maybe he was just particularly unobservant.

[el_tybs]

"Wouldn't put it past it actually. The animals out here are oddly good at hiding. Behind almost nothing." Except for sand and sand dunes - maybe the occasional rock or dead plant. "Probably why we don't see bears out here." That and being way too hot.

[OoC: *cries* Got lost in all my inbox stuff. I'm good with handwaving or ending for newer things.]

[dreadinquisitor]

"True enough!" Maxwell laughed. "I was down in the basin the other night, and had my back turned for only a moment and wouldn't you know it, a hyena came out the damned ether."

The pelt would be put to good use, but he could have done without the heart attack of nearly turning into a face full of teeth and drool.