Chapter Text
Wait a minute... What even is this?
This imaginary journey is a distance-based physical activity challenge and interactive narrative. Follow the storyline as you track your IRL distance traveled in miles or kilometres. The story will progress as you hit certain distance milestones. If you've ever tried walking to Rivendell via the Eowyn Challenge, this is along those lines.
Once complete, the total distance traveled for this story will be 1,500 miles / 2,414 kilometers.
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Spoiler Note: This journey takes place five years after the events of the Fifth Blight, and so may contain minor spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Acts 1 and 2 of Exodus (DA2).
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How to Participate
Read the story and get moving! Walking, jogging, biking, wheeling, riding, and swimming are just some examples of great ways to get in motion. All chapters are cumulative and labeled with a distance milestone so it's easy to keep track of in what order they should be read in. You'll mostly see them labeled as 2 types:
- 1. Reach [Location] Checkpoints:
- There are 22 of these checkpoints, each representing major points of interest along the Imperial Highway which further the story of your journey.
- 2. "Crossed Swords" Encounters:
- "Crossed Sword Encounters" are random encounters that occur when traveling in-between Checkpoints. Clicking on the link will take you to a random encounter generator I designed specifically for this challenge using Perchance. There are 18 of these chapters, and with any luck, you'll get a different outcome with each one!
So to clarify, you [START] your journey immediately, of course, at Mile 0 (0 km) in Denerim. At Mile 63 (101 km) you've reached the Vigil's Keep checkpoint and can read that chapter. Twenty-five miles later at Mile 88 (142 km), you're interrupted by a "Crossed Swords" ~RaNdOm EnCoUnTeR~ and can read that chapter; and so on...
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Tips
- This was designed as a long-term challenge, so it's expected that it will take the average adventurer a few months to complete. Please, please go at your own pace and be mindful of your health and personal limits.
- You're gonna need a step/distance tracker. Fitness watches/wearables such as Fitbit and Garmin are solid options, but many smartphones have built-in trackers too. I think Apple Watch even has a wheelchair mode, but you can still get decent results from a bike odometer. Treadmills and exercise bikes often have counters built in. You can also use math to calculate your mile/kilometre count based on your step count (if all you have is a pedometer)---I don't particularly recommend going that route, but you do you.
- I've found it most convenient to track manually with my fitness watch and make notes for my progress at the end of the day (I round down to the nearest quarter-mile for easier math), so I recommend keeping a separate “Surveyor's Journal”; something to serve as a space you can use to keep track of your progress, distances, and any related challenge notes. Here's an example to give you an idea:
- At some point I'll update this so that each checkpoint will have a picture of where it is along the route, and also include as well a link here to the full route map so you can easily see in one spot where you've been and where you're going, but it might be a while. Really sorry about that. My computer suddenly broke, so now I need to recover/recreate almost all of my images. :~(
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Enjoy, and happy travels! ^_^