The Forbidden Oasis is a rare spot of green in the vast brownness that is the deserts of western Orlais. Formed by an underground river briefly slipping to the surface and cascading down the rocks into a small pool below, it is probably the most pleasant place I visited in an otherwise awful region. Not to say that it didn’t have problems of its own, namely the tiered landscape that made navigating the area very annoying, but not bad for the middle of a massive wasteland. There weren’t too many points of interest there past the water itself, just some caves, ruins and abandoned mines full of giant spiders. The only significant ruin was the reason we went there in the first place. The Forbidden Oasis was the source of the most significant category of RaMO that I encountered, the shards I found all over Thedas. After finding the first of these in the Hinterlands, the Inquisition looked into the mysterious pieces of something or other and found a connection to an elven temple tucked behind the waterfall of the oasis. The shards opened a series of doors that led into the temple and to lots of undead and demons. But, since Corypheus and the Venatori wanted whatever was inside, we decided to get there first. Probably my favorite thing about the area itself was the fact that there were shards there. Most of the shards had been distributed from one side of the continent to the other, but there were 15 of them just laying within eyesight of the thing they were meant to open. I’m not sure if envisioning someone cutting a corner at the beginning of the distribution by getting rid of a handful of them right away, or being completely frustrated at the end of this massive journey and just bringing some back home to throw around the immediate area is funnier to me. I have no idea if that is actually how the shards ended up hidden all over the place, by the way, but since we never figured that part out, it’s just what I’ve come up with in my head. And the Venatori never actually showed up, now that I think about it, so their whole plan for the place was just an enormous waste of time that the Inquisition took advantage of. The Forbidden Oasis turned out to be far more humorous than a hole in the desert with an evil temple in the middle of it has any right to be.