Forsworn Outrider

A young reachwoman named Rori, and her sabrecat companion, Anluan. (( Forsworn Skyrim OC, may be NSFW. Mod is 18+ ))

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Quagmired

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anvindrfarseer

“Not far. I ran there and back to get the rope.”

Admittedly, that may have seemed a lot longer to her than it did to him. He knew the way, but she’d been fighting to keep a creature she clearly cared deeply about from drowning. Time, for her, must have moved like a glacier.

“I live alone.” His brow furrowed. Why would she–… Oh, the cat. Well, of course, he wouldn’t have offered if it meant bringing a large sabre cat into a populated area. That’d be asking for trouble. “It’s fine.”

She looked at him a moment longer, trying to decide. The will to kill him had faded with his kind act. It didn’t absolve all Nords, but it did absolve him, and so she could stay her spear. Would he feel the same when he realized what she was?

Anluan let out a soft groan. Rori would have to, for him.

She climbed to her feet. “Yes, then. Thank you.” Anluan lumbered up onto his paws as well to tread after them.

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Trapped by Circumstance

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raujel

“That’ll be difficult, ‘cause I’m headin’ the same way when I break camp.”

He’d figured it would come to this.

“I think I’d rather have you and your boy well ahead of me than somewhere behind, so…” He nodded at the cat’s hind leg. “D'you want help with that?”

Rori hesitated, grip tight on her spear and on her son. Then, slowly, she lowered it, dropped it. She’d have to trust him if she wanted Anluan out of the snare before he did permanent damage to his leg.

“I’ll keep him calm.” She agreed, her hand releasing the saber’s ear to press on his forehead, gently. The great cat drooped, not out but pacified, for the moment. “Please help.”

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Quagmired

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anvindrfarseer

Thank Kyne! He thought it would never end. His arms felt like mush when at last he lowered them. His fingers, stiff and numb. The rope fell from trembling hands. His palms were red and raw. Damp, but not bleeding. Mere abrasions. The pull of the earth had rarely seemed as strong as when he lifted his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow.

It must be worse yet for the woman. Gods knew how long she’d been at it before he’d come along. And her song, the magic. He recognized it, or knew its like, at least. What the cold and the exertion hadn’t already taken out of her, the mantra would have.

“You need rest,” he stated once he’d caught his breath. “And warmth. Dry clothes. You’d be welcome at my fire.”

Welcome at his fire. Rori knew with certainty then that the Nord didn’t realize who or what she was. A foolish thing to offer a stranger with a sabrecat, in any case. Maybe his own safety held very little value.

She couldn’t very well harm him now, that was for certain. He’d done all he could to help Anluan, and the sabrecat was alive and whole, if as exhausted as his caretaker. There was a dilemma at hand.

"Are there others?” She asked, taking a pause to gulp in another breath. “How far is it?”

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Trapped by Circumstance

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raujel

“Yeah. You can keep it though,” he quipped with a brief flash of a close-mouthed grin, but all the while he kept a wary eye on that spear of hers, as well as the big cat. “No good to me now.”

He sniffed and cast an idle look around, showing harmless, uninterested in confrontation. The axe in his hand hung loosely at his side. “You passing through, huh?” He gave a little sideways jerk of his head in the direction the tracks had led before. “That way?”

More jokes. If that kept him from hacking in with his axe, she would simply have to suffer through them. Anluan’s growls grew softly, eyes focused squarely on this interloper, afraid. Rori kept her grip on his ear.

“We are.” A cautious answer, waiting for what he wanted. “We’ll leave you be.” An offer of peace, if he would just move on.

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Quagmired

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anvindrfarseer

Now came the hard part. He’d seen people pull a horse out of a situation just like this, once. It took a group of them, but a sabrecat weighed less than a large draft horse, right? They could do this.

“Here,” he breathed, grasping the rope. “I’ll take point.”

He hadn’t been wading around in the muck as long as she had, and likely had more strength left in him. Too late, he realized that for all his forward thinking, he’d forgotten to take a pair of gloves with him. This was going to hurt. Too bad. Nothing he could do about it now. Just had to trust that those calluses from rowing would see him through.

He put his foot against the stem of the tree, and pulled.

Rori followed his directions, grabbing the rope and taking place behind the Nord. How easy, in other circumstances, would it be to plant a spear in his back? How shameful, then, to need his help now. For Anluan’s sake, she’d suffer his assistance.

The small tree he used for leverage was merely young, not quite strong enough for these purposes but full of life. She could help more, there. As they pulled, she sang a steady puirt-a-beul under her breath, the timing matching their pulls. The music was also a focus, pulling the little magic that remained in her through her feet and into the ground, strengthening the roots of the young willow they used as leverage, and to Anluan, goading him forward with his name subtly weaved within the words.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed while they worked. It felt interminable, endless. But when it seemed her arms and legs might give out finally, when all but a few drops of her magicka remained, the mud gave free with a final schluck and Anluan collapsed on the safety of solid ground.

Rori followed suit, her knees buckling. Tired, hands burning from the rope, her song ended, replaced by a heady sigh of relief. The worst was over. They’d done it. Anluan was safe.

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Trapped by Circumstance

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raujel

The morning sun warmed his back, making its steady ascend in the eastern sky. He was about ready to break camp, but first he’d needed to complete his round along the snares he’d set the day before. He’d caught two hares already, but hoped for one more. There were some farmsteads a couple of hours’ walk from here. He’d see if he could trade the pelts and the meat for some other meat they’d dried and smoked already. For the road. Then he’d be up and over the mountains before the weather turned and the snow came in. He’d sit out the winter hunting antelopes in the plains on the south-west side of the Reach, drinking millet beers at sundown on the steps of a little tavern on the rural outskirts of Elinhir.

Yeah, that was the life.

It’d have to wait. What was this? He squatted by a set of prints. Fresh. Sabrecat. Footprints, too. Small, light. They ran alongside each other, not after and over each other. They were spaced such as in a comfortable walk. One wasn’t chasing the other. They belonged together. No matter, so long as they left his camp alone.

He got up and continued on his round. The tracks were headed the same way. They’d better not have taken his–… He heard something and dropped to a crouch. A woman’s voice, hushed, but nearby. He drew an axe and advanced through the low, hardy shrubs until he found his snare, and those who’d made these tracks. The cat, a young male by the looks of it. The woman, Reachfolk. Should’ve guessed. Well, he’d best offer his help. In these parts, it couldn’t hurt to get on a Forsworn’s good side. He stood, no longer trying to go unheard. Underbrush rustled with him stepping forward.

“Fuck me. Hares grow big in these parts.”

One of her hands was on her spear the moment the first leaves crackled out of place, the other on Anluan’s muzzle to prevent the sabrecat from panicking. The stranger who approached wasn’t a Nord, and though he held a weapon, he wasn’t threatening them. Not so far as she could tell. Not yet.

Anluan tried to twist away, to snarl, but the snare cut deeper into his paw. Her hand reached up and twisted his ear, pulling him back in line for his own safety. She didn’t want to calm him with magic just yet, dull his senses in case that axe came swinging.

“This your snare?” Rori asked, keeping the spear between the both of them. She was in no mood for jokes.

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Quagmired

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anvindrfarseer

“All right…” He paused for breath. Felt like it’d taken them an age of mucking about in the mud to get the rope in place, and the hardest part was yet to come.

Kyne, let this work. The mire didn’t kill quick. It was a slow and agonizing death. It could take hours, a day, to succumb to the cold and exhaustion, only to drown for your trouble. You’d think the worst would be over by then, that drowning would be peace. It wasn’t. Anyone who ever pulled a corpse out of the muck or from under the ice, knew the blind panic in those frozen, bloated faces. It was hell until the end.    

Let’s get on with it, then, and out of this, first. He was hip-deep in water, and though he’d tried to distribute his weight and tread carefully, the mud had sucked him up over his ankles as well. He threw the end of the rigging to shore and grabbed the other rope he’d tied to the tree earlier. He held out his other hand to the woman. “Come. We use the tree as leverage, pull him out.”

The sound Anluan made as Rori grabbed the man’s hand and followed him onto sturdier ground was heartbreaking. The sabrecat didn’t have the energy to panic, but it was clear he thought he was being left behind. And if Rori was going to be of any use, cold and mud-covered as she was, she couldn’t spare the strength to reassure him.

She found firmer ground and the rope, readying herself for the next step. She was tired, but there was no room for rest. All she could do was pray the two of them, and the tree, had the strength to pull Anluan out, and that the sabrecat found reserves to assist. She would cut his throat before she let him suffocate in the mire.

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Quagmired

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anvindrfarseer

He let his hand fall back to his side. By Kyne, this was a mess. But maybe… Yeah. That tree over there–… Well, it was more of a shrub, but it looked sturdy enough to serve as leverage to hoist the beast out of the mud.

“All right.” He backed away from the mire’s edge, gesturing for her to stay put, as redundant and ironic as that was. “I’ll get rope.”

He ran most of the way to his shack and back again, but by the time he returned – a coil of rope slung over each shoulder, and a blanket under his arm – the light was fading. He’d foreseen it and brought a torch. He stuck it in the earth by the edge.

“Hold on.” One of his ropes, he tied to the base of the tree. He unrolled and threw it towards the woman. A lifeline, for later. He waded in with the blanket and the second rope. He offered her the former. “Get this under his belly before the rope, so it won’t cut into his skin when we pull him out.”

When he left, Rori hardly believed he would be back. At least, not alone, and not with any designs on being helpful. Here he had her at his mercy, making an incredibly unusual request. How could this stranger want anything but to run, or kill? She would kill him, if their roles were reversed.

His return came as a shock, then, as was his care in providing her a way out and protecting Anluan from painful injury with his foresight. She was stunned enough to almost bungle securing both the blanket in place, saved only by his continued assistance. Together they moved the blanket into position, then the rope. Anluan was kept quiet and docile through sheer exhaustion. Rori didn’t have the magic to spare in pacifying him.

The rigging in place, she looked back to the Nord. He was the one with the plan. 

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✿ ☠ if you're still doing these!

✿ Appearance ☠ Battle Prowess

Rori had never seen such a contradiction. He moved with the same odd power that she had witnessed in briarhearts growing up, but he dressed and spoke like a well-bred Breton. It was unnerving, to say the least. Certainly, he had to be able to fight. His musculature was apparent, and a telling scar split his throat, but beyond that…

Rori didn’t like what she couldn’t box neatly, and so she resolved to give them man a wide berth. Best safe than sorry.

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✿ ☠

✿ Appearance ☠ Battle Prowess

Was this person lost? Woman? Man? …Mer? Rori could at least determine they weren’t a Nord, or Imperial, but the rest was gray skin and auburn curls. They had a walking stick, too, and moved like hobbled grace. What a strange person.

A strange person who was likely to get in trouble, the further they went out West. They looked older, frailer than one who should be traveling. Anluan might get a bit of meat off of them (they had, at least, a bit of a middle to them), but more likely they were going to meet a bandit or six and that’d be the end of those curls.

Well, it wasn’t any of her business, anyway.

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✿

✿ Appearance

Rori’s first thought was that someone had made up a man as a mer, or somehow made room for a man in a mer’s skin. Too brawny, too gruff, to be what she thought a mer was. His parentage was inscrutable, but it wasn’t enough Nord to make her edgy.

No, the axes he held were enough for that, the set of his gaze, the unspoken threat in his stance. She would have to tread carefully, but he was not her enemy. Not yet. If he made even the slightest wrong move, however, she’d be safer with a spear through his gut than not.

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✿ ☯

✿ Appearance☯ Decisions

Sometimes, it wasn’t easy to tell a Nord from an Imperial from a Breton, but Rori had pegged him on sight as a hated enemy of her people. Under other circumstances she would have found little time to scrutinize his features further. But now she was mud-slogged, exhausted, and desperate, so she could at least appreciate the ingrained toughness of his ancestry and how it just might save Anluan.

But he couldn’t know what she was, could he, if he was helping. If she ignored how clear and piercing those eyes were, how they seemed to bore into her with just a glance, she could pretend this was not some trick. He had decided to help her and, foolhardy a choice as it might be, it was a sliver of hope that could keep her from losing Anluan. It would be enough to stay her hand, later, so long as he did the same.

[askdusty]

Send me a symbol for my character's thoughts on your character's...

✿ Appearance

☼ Personality

✉ Intelligence

☠ Battle Prowess

♥ Romantic Potential

✘ Secrets

☯ Decisions

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Crossing Paths

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notyourlark

She was beyond fascinated with the healer’s technique, though her own duties prevented her from studying it as closely as she would have liked. From what she could tell, though, the basic principle relied on magically precipitating specific alchemical properties of certain flora, not entirely dissimilar from her own work. She would need to investigate this further.

In the meantime, she was more than occupied. There were many wavering at death’s door, and among them many too stubborn to willingly accept her aid. She couldn’t say she didn’t understand, but this was no time for coddling such trivial concerns. When one fallen raider tried to put a dagger through his chest rather than take the false life, a quick calm spell was all she needed to soothe his already delirious mind. He would be thankful later, or not. It mattered little to her.

When at last it was done, she wandered back to the outrider on shaky legs, dizzied from her efforts. A curious laugh spilled forth from her chest, and she let herself half-sit, half-tumble to the ground. “Well, that was quite an exercise,non?” She laughed again, her breath too short to expel more than a short trill. “You’re quite impressive, if you don’t mind my saying so. Truly a pity you’re not more of a conversationalist. I’m sure you’ve no shortage of wisdom to impart.”

Rori wished she could have been surprised the Breton returned to her rather than join the rest of the Forsworn. They were preparing to move out, to return to the Redoubt, while Rori had plans to simply rest until she was able to move on again. They would celebrate; she would patrol.

She was aware, however, that she was more of a curiosity than any of the others, save perhaps their Briarheart. She would entertain this flower, then. Out of gratitude, if nothing else.

Conversation, however, was not her strong point. She struggled to determine which of Narcisse’s points to address, and ended up staring at her dumbly for a moment, tired and mute. Then, she sighed. “I don’t spend time speaking.” She glanced over her shoulder, for emphasis or just caution, at her sated son, now lying on his side in the warm light. He was the only one to speak to, usually, and he didn’t understand words so much as tone.

She hesitated on her next words, but fear that the Breton’s runaway tongue would trample over what she had to say caused her to speak more quickly than usual. “We’ll leave here, soon. You should move on, too.”

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Crossing Paths

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notyourlark

“Of course.” The response was brief, direct, as if she were adapting the manner of the reachwoman. Narcisse had never used her talents to save a life before, but there was a first time for everything.

She could feel the exhaustion setting into her spirit already, the magical exertions expended in the heat of combat still weighing on her. Nevertheless, she pushed herself harder, using up reserves she never quite realized she had. Occasionally, her eyes would catch those of the Forsworn healer, and she would nod to a fallen warrior whose life she had prolonged for perhaps a few minutes or hours.

Not once did she pause to ask herself why.

That the Breton didn’t go on for precious minutes or fluff up when Rori didn’t use wasteful, silly ‘pleases’ almost unbalanced the healer. At least there were no arguments about which to save and which to leave. Rori found those under the empire often far too sentimental about the lives of enemies.

Healing was exhausting for her, as well, as she took bits of flowers, pressed them to wounds, and pushed her magic through them. Fresh flowers had a different magic than salves, wilder, more unpredictable, but also stronger, still full of the plant’s life. She hummed and clucked out rhythmic sounds as she worked, keeping herself and the magic confined within the beats.

The flowers were mainly delicate blue, but sometimes the poisonous plants worked just as well. That magic was harder; the plant had made itself poison to defend itself, to hurt, not heal, but if Rori tricked it a bit with magic, it could calm a heart or dip a hurting person into the comfort of sleep long enough to help them. It was most helpful with Narcisse’s poor patients, clinging artificially to life while Rori pulled them back from the brink. Some may have preferred death, but she knew that the Forsworn could never win if they let even one life go lightly.

By the end, Rori fell back, exhausted, the plants she had gathered staining her hands green where they weren’t bloody and red. The plants themselves had shrunk and dried, preserved but no longer alive. She would have to thank the gods for them, later.

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Crossing Paths

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notyourlark

The sabrecat was of no small interest to her; Narcisse wondered what sort of wild magic might have been in play here, binding the creature to its keeper’s will. She found it immensely doubtful that such a beast could be easily tamed by any other means.

Her smile softened just a touch at the rider’s question. “My control over life and death is wholly unnatural, I’m afraid. I can grant false life to the gravely wounded, yes, but it would only delay the inevitable until a more dedicated healer can tend to them.”

She might have been a help to a wounded briarheart, but from what she’d seen the Forsworn champion had come out with only minor injuries.

Rori’s mouth twisted downwards as Narcisse spoke, confused but not displeased. “Delaying death is useful. There are gravely wounded, here.” The battlefield had many who would draw their last breath before Rori could reach their side. If this flower could keep even one more breathing, it would be worth it.

She strode back towards the wounded being laid out, a nod of her head gesturing for the stranger to join her. “Find them; I won’t be long after.” The magic this Breton called ‘unnatural’ was something she had grown alongside, had seen beating in the chests of briarhearts. While she didn’t wholly disagree with the verdict, now was not the time to be picky.

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Crossing Paths

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notyourlark

“No need,” the mage sang cheerily, as if the bodies strewn about were already forgotten. She felt no need to admit that she’d learned long ago how to alleviate the odor of blood and shit with a minor magical adjustment to her own perceptions. “’Tis not thanks I’m after, dearest, only to aid good folk where I am able.”

That, actually, was not necessarily untrue. Narcisse was many things before she was any sort of idealist. Injustice, she knew, was an inherent corruption within any society. Yet there were some symptoms of that cancer that offended even her simplest notions of morality.

“It occurs to me that we’ve not been properly acquainted.” There was something in the selflessness of this woman that demanded her admiration. She bowed, unable to resist her own flare for the dramatic. “You may call me Narcisse.”

Rori hoped Narcisse didn’t expect a bow in return. Her name suited her, though, immediately evoking images of large-petaled, purple flowers and poisonous perfumes. Ostentatious and dangerous.

“Rori,” she passed back by way of introduction, then swept an arm back to the eating sabrecat, “and Anluan.” The woman had magic; perhaps she could be of further assistance. “Do you heal? There is a lot to do.”