With Blackwall and the others on board, I started the process of tying up the loose ends in the Hinterlands. The many, many, many loose ends. Now, I wasn't truly upset about it, mind you, I’m just saying that some of the things I was expected to do out there didn’t seem worthy of a full-on inquisiting. Wipe out some demonic wolves? Sure. Clear out the remaining mages and Templars who refused to stop fighting before they caused any more collateral damage? Great. Lead a farmer’s lost druffalo back home? That’s where you lose me. On the face of it, you have to admit that a heavily-armed group of four of the Inquisition’s best is not necessary for that particular task. Now, the argument that, when we found it, the beast was being attacked by giant spiders and that any normal person or group who went to find it would have been slaughtered is a perfect example of the historian’s fallacy and is therefore invalid, so don’t even start.
One truly delightful thing that I first noticed during my time in the Hinterlands, but would stay consistent throughout my inquisiting, was the presence of many random magical objects. One type of random magical object, or "RaMO" as I have dubbed them for the sake of brevity and my own amusement, was a magic skull mounted on a pedestal. When one looked through the eye sockets, the skull revealed the location of magical shards in the area. “Shards of what,” you ask? “Who cares,” says I. If there’s a bunch of random things lying about, even if they have no discernible value to me or my mission, I need to find all of them, that’s just the way I am. Also, more practically, I discovered that people who were trying to kill me wanted them, so I found it a worthwhile effort to find them first. Now, most of these shards were tucked away in odd places, but some of them… weren’t. Some of them were just lying out in the open. Next to people’s houses. So, were they invisible before I revealed their location? Was I the only one who could see them? Because if not, why wouldn’t somebody else just pick it up? Or notice it and mention it to a wandering problem-solver like me? Or build a little hut over it so nobody touched the glowing, possibly-evil chunk of magic rock? Seriously, I need answers, this has been bugging me for months.
You know, some kid might come along and find that.
In addition to the scary-looking shards of unknown origin (SLSOUOs? SSOUOSs? ScLoSOUSs? Never mind, just "shards" is fine), I also kept finding what looked to be pieces of a large mosaic all over the place. I’m counting it as a RaMO, even though I’m quite sure they’re just hunks of metal. They were definitely randomly located and objects, fulfilling two out of the three criteria, which is enough to qualify. They were so randomly located, in fact, it was as if somebody had deliberately scattered them about the Hinterlands just so I could find them all again. I’m not really complaining, though, I enjoyed tracking them down and it gave me a task to accomplish when I wasn't burning bandits down.
Just sitting on top of a tower, waiting for me to come find it.
And I burned quite a few bandits down to size, considering a mob of the dastards had taken over an old fortress. Didn’t help them much in the end, though, as rooting them out was a simple task. As were the other pieces of minor business I attended to in the southern Hinterlands. Lots and lots of minor, mundane, pieces. One actually exciting event, to me at least, was my first trip to the Deep Roads, specifically a dwarven outpost that had been infested with Carta smugglers and darkspawn. The Carta are a dwarven organized-crime ring that has had to operate outside of Orzammar more often after they were nearly wiped out by the Hero of Ferelden a while back. Now, is it still a Deep Road if you can see the sky? Whatever, Varric said it was a Deep Road, so I can tick “Deep Roads” off of my list of places to inquisit.
I’ve got nothing clever to say about this, really, it’s just pretty.
After I sealed off the darkspawn entrance with some impenetrable wooden planks, I called it a job well done and headed back to the surface. When that, and all the myriad other tasks, were completed, I headed towards Redcliffe Village. Fiona, the aforementioned leader of the rebel mages, was there and apparently considering an alliance with Tevinter. Since this was a royally idiotic idea, I headed there to stop it. You see, the Tevinter Imperium is a place rife with slavery, blood magic, and evil, pointy hoods. Oh, and they were the ones who forced their way into the Maker’s Golden City in the Fade, causing Him to cast them out, creating the first darkspawn in the process, and then abandon humanity altogether. If you believe what the Chantry says, anyways. Either way, generally arsehole-ish behavior all around. Unfortunately, what I found in Redcliffe was more minor pieces of business. Taking flowers to the grave of an old elf’s deceased wife and finding more lost livestock, a talking ram this time, aren’t exactly the stuff of legends. But, they were tasks that needed doing, and I guess I look like someone who likes doing things. Apparently having a tree tattooed on your face and a glowy hand just screams “problem-solver” to the general public.
I thought about heading into the inn where Fiona was, but I got an ominous feeling when I approached the place. One of those “no turning back” feelings. I was also pretty sure that they wouldn’t have the meeting without me, so, I tabled it and headed back to Haven. I needed some time to catch up with my colleagues and generally refuel before I confronted a problem of that magnitude. When you’ve spent what felt like weeks on end hunting down RaMOs and killing innumerable bears, you might not be thinking clearly. Best to head to the pub, have a pint (of whatever, mostly water for me), and think things over.
