A second piece following Mithra from my Sunday D&D game; this one taking place a few sessions later after we returned to Boroford, the town we’d started in, and found it to be overrun with death and weirdness.
Things got even weirder after this but that is a story for another day. As ever if you read these, I hope you enjoy; apologies if they are a bit rough, it’s been years since I wrote consistent prose.
It was strange to be back.
She’d been at this place a week before she’d met the others and they’d gone chasing what felt now like some sort of wild goose chase. As Nilsa and her made their way back towards the centre of town, Nilsa striding ahead in what seemed equal parts determination and concern, the latter tinged with a little fear; Mithra found herself casting a look across much of the settlement, still scarred from the goblins that had purportedly raided a few days previously.
The small town of Boroford had been less alien than a larger settlement might have been when she first arrived to meet that cursed emissary of the Queen, Bromm. She’d camped outside for about a week, arriving early to get the lay of the land, her brain too accustomed to monsters in the shadows to simply assume all would be well on arrival. But on the surface it seemed like a simple town, similar to where she grew up, if a tad larger. She’d enjoyed its rustic charm almost in spite of herself, ignored the curious looks and loitered in various spots throughout the town, simply enjoying the presence of people again; even if they were ignorant strangers, they were people, easing an ache for company she hadn’t known she’d had.
Even then though, something had seemed strange.
Back then some of the folks in town had only ever smiled, no matter the situation or insult given by others; even the hunter who had accidentally shot her in the forest when she’d been exploring the area cheerfully stated they’d both learned a valuable lesson that day before strolling away whistling. At the time she’d been wrapped up in her own problems and put it down to her own decades-long semi-isolation in the Verdant Thicket leaving her socially inept in this new environment. Now though…
She was no expert on humans beyond those she’d known growing up, and those memories seemed like they’d happened to a different person now, but she was pretty sure that they didn’t cheerfully smile and laugh about their mother lying slaughtered and unburied in the abandoned tavern next door. The words of Amelia the baker echoed in her mind as she chased after the agitated paladin.
“You should buy these cakes, the last my mother ever made! Aha!”
“Well you know, we’ve all got to die some time!”
Then there was Nilsa, seemingly convinced that this ‘David the Caretaker’ they’d heard of was her brother, a bit of questioning had revealed that he could be human or aasimar, that Nilsa was not on great terms with her family and a joint agreement that whatever had happened in this place something was very wrong.
Things only got worse when they arrived at the town hall.
The woman behind the desk had the same smile, the same casual attitude; Nilsa was scary to most people or at least mildly off putting when angered. She approached problems like a charging bull with about as much tact; and the smiling old woman seemed only to become nicer, as if she were intentionally provoking the increasingly frustrated and distressed paladin.
Watching her mannerisms and attitude though, the idea that the deceased caretaker, (verbally acknowledged to potentially be the deceased brother of the angry and heavily armed woman in front of her), was dead seemed to be an annoyance, something that simply caused more work. It was as if the woman was incapable of empathising or caring, or had been rendered unable to do some by whatever had happened in the town. As she delivered the news that the caretaker named David had likely been killed and left in the tavern they’d passed earlier; the smile, wide and horrifically cheerful, never left her face.
“You didn’t even bury him?!”
Nilsa’s sharp anger burned openly for a moment, a shift of tone that would have rung alarm bells in a sane person’s mind, Mithra was immediately on edge as she saw Nilsa grasping the hilt of the blade on her belt.
“What kind of people do not even bury their dead and leave them to rot!?!”
The old woman’s smile never faltered, never moved; there was only the slight tilt of the head as if the question was foolish.
“Well the caretaker hasn’t been doing his job has he? Clearly we need to find one that is better at what he’s supposed to do.”
The blade began to leave its sheath as Nilsa’s face darkened and fury played across her features, her mismatched eyes burning into the older woman behind the counter. Mithra wanted to be disgusted and felt for Nilsa’s potential loss; but they couldn’t start something here. This town, these people: they were either mad or magically compelled and confronting either situation with their companions scattered across much of Boroford would only end one way.
Her hand reached out, hesitating for a moment before gently resting on Nilsa’s shoulder in an attempt to both check her actions and reassure her.
“This isn’t worth our time right now, this isn’t normal. We should go.’
Mithra was grateful when Nilsa released a breath and nodded, offering an irate comment to the woman before turning sharply on her heel and leaving the building, Mithra a few paces behind her. Before crossing the threshold of the town hall she gave one last glance over her shoulder.
The woman was watching them leave, the rictus grin having never once left her face.
Been a long time since I posted any writing on here but in case there is anyone still interested in what I occasionally come up with these days, here is a bit of writing.
It’s from the perspective of Mithra Hyndell, an elven druid who I play in a D&D game on Sundays, this scene took place at the conclusion of the first arc the party experienced. After we’d gotten stuck in a house full of time magic, a vampire and a whole host of other weird shenanigans.
For context, Mithra is the last remaining (as far as she knows) druid of a place called the Verdant Thicket, a forest that has been overrun by some sort of magical corruption. At this point in the story she is working with the group in the hopes of speaking to the personal alchemist of the Queen of the kingdom they are in so as to find a lead on how to fix the Thicket.
For those wanting a read, enjoy!
The walls felt as if they were closing in.
Mithra wasn’t sure how she got here, it had sounded pretty simple: work with a few mercenaries or other interested parties, do a favour for the queen and in return gain the information that could help her home that she desperately needed. Instead, in a short period of time she’d been attacked by orcs, met a man claiming to be a god, visited an impossible mansion and got trapped in a vampire’s castle.
For all her own pride in her abilities, she’d felt increasingly out of her depth since arriving at the town outside the estate of Lord Cartwright, the eternal night the vampire seemed to have conjured around the town and area, the tortured prisoners they’d found and escorted to safety and the bizarre time magic that kept everyone who spent too long on the estate trapped in some sort of loop; a fact they’d only recently discovered when electing to temporarily leave. It went entirely beyond her own experiences, she’d felt increasingly caged, something that the circle of the moon within her railed against in the back of her mind. It had taken a surprisingly understanding Nilsa to snap her back to reality earlier when she’d dropped into a panic; now she was here on the top floor, looking at the dead bodies of her friends.
No, not my friends, some… vision of the future perhaps. Gods this must be hard for them, how do you even comfort at times like this?
The smell of mold and decay hung in the air throughout the library, both musty books and the aroma of rotten flesh; the dead paladin’s skeleton was slumped against the wall, the ominous barred door led to the greenhouse and more bodies. The dark corridor their new companion refused to let go down altogether, shaking her head frantically when traversing it was suggested. Their new companion was an enigma too; an older version of their warrior friend Fiora, older, tired and worn, seemingly unable to speak or communicate beyond the written word and frantic gestures, the last survivor of a group that failed.
That had died.
Around them the ghosts of the Lady Celeste and her killers played out their repeated macabre performance, the same murders and fights over and over again, every hour. Even with all kinds of insanity around them, Lilli dashed off to a side room and Mithra intended to follow but found her eye resting upon a body in the greenhouse with the remains of Zenn, another companion. When she saw it, all thoughts of everything else deserted her mind as a creeping suspicion and fear began to gnaw at her chest.
That figure; the garb looked elven, druidic even, but it wasn’t what she wore; as the wraiths wailed and argued she tuned them out, even the conversations and frantic questioning of this strange future version of Fiora failed to register as she looked the skeletal remains over. Patting down the body, gently at first, then more frantically as she became more and more sure that the body was not her own.
Another might have felt relief to avoid the sight of their own remains, but not Mithra. Death was not the worst thing that could bring an end to a druid from the Verdant Thicket. She found a token, a simple cast leaf denoting rank within her circle, but it wasn’t hers.
A heavy weight set on her stomach as around her the ghosts played out their argument, the daughter and father who’d come here to save her, even if she didn’t want to be saved, the looting of the mob that accompanied him. To Mithra it was as the wind in the grass, of no importance and mere background noise as she made her way back to the older version of the tiefling she’d met only days ago.
She nodded at the paper in her friend’s hands, her eyes meeting Fiora’s directly, almost unblinkingly as she kept her voice level, Nilsa a spectator as the two women gazed at one another.
“Fiora, was that me in the greenhouse?”
She already knew the answer as the older Fiora scribbled down something frantically on her paper before holding it up.
‘NO’
“Am I dead? Is that why I’m not here?”
A solemn nod was all she received in answer as the tall tiefling woman looked at her, eyes full of pity, loss and more, a sense of loneliness; Mithra was used to solitude, but the type she saw looking out of Fiora’s eyes chilled her. As much as she felt for this lost soul however she also felt the creeping dread rise from the pit of her stomach, like a weed, choking her level breathing as it came.
“Did.. Did something take me? Is that why I’m not here?”
‘YES’
Nilsa looked on, concerned and confused and tired at the back and forth, opening her mouth as Mithra turned, her head spinning as her fears seemed almost confirmed. Walking, or was it staggering, five paces back towards the centre of the room. That sick feeling grew, reaching her lungs and biting down her fears she turned again.
“Was it my home? Did the sickness, the curse of my home take me too?”
A pause.
‘YES’
After that, Mithra didn’t register a lot of what happened next, it was like everything happened at once, their friend of the future had been waiting, waiting for Lady Celeste and her father to be near the window and then threw both them and herself out of it. Ending the loop, the curse all of it; saving both herself and her friends, even if it wasn’t the same friends she’d been through hell with. In the aftermath, everyone took a moment to recover, but Mithra could stand to be in the house no longer.
Catching Nilsa’s attention while the others took a few moments, Mithra smiled a pained mirthless smile that hid none of her internal torment. Her words tumbled out of her mouth at a rapid pace, uncertain and troubled; in her core fear had seized her heart and wouldn’t let go.
“I.. I need outside, I can’t be in here, sorry but I have to breath fresh air. Or as fresh as it gets here.”
Nilsa looked at her and then said something that she didn’t expect, the steely gaze meeting her own.
“That’s fine. I can come with you, if you need it.”
And Mithra said yes.
Minutes later Mithra was sitting on the grass, staring at the dark sky and opening up a part of her history and soul to the paladin beside her. She told her of her fellow druids, the curse that affected not just land and tree but animal; how the druids had feared that their connection to animals, to the forest might leave them vulnerable too.
How it looked like at some point, she was going to turn into a monster if she did not find a way to negate its effects, find a way to save her home.
Nilsa gripped her shoulder and promised to help her, a gesture from the taciturn paladin that was not lost on Mithra, but even in that moment a cold feeling settled inside the druid.
Despair.
She had no idea where to start, she was not powerful, she was not wise and she was out of her depth.
As the rest of the day passed she found herself buoyed by the others, their presence and made a silent vow to herself. In one world she had already failed, but she would not give up: she would fight tooth and claw until her last breath to save her home, to save the others, to save herself.
So this is a story idea that hit me at about 11am this morning and ended up become a thirteen page backstory on a certain Fara’Tiel; a quarian exile who has quite the roller-coaster of a story both before and after the Reaper War. I’ve split it into to parts so it isn’t too daunting to read through.
Part Two is here.
Please enjoy.
Korlus
Radera Shipbreaking Yard
24th October 2178
The sun was hanging low in the sky, a few flying scavengers native to the planet soared across it as it bore down on the spaceship that was lying broken and scattered into pieces on the ground; the jagged sections of exposed metal sticking up like jagged pieces of bone from the corpse of a decaying leviathan. The orange light only helped to accentuate the metal’s faded faintly rusty colour, seeming to stain everything the colour of dried blood; in short it was not the most pleasant place to be. Long shadows lit by flickering electrical lights filled the skeleton of the old turian cruiser, the local power grids supplemented by portable generators the Suns had brought with them, yet still ever so often the lights would flicker and fade, leaving the local crew to stumble about in the poor lighting while they solved the problem.
Fara’Tiel didn’t have that problem, her suit did give her some advantages, one was a visor that could adapt to the poor lighting conditions and allowed her to watch her unhelmeted colleagues attempt to adjust to the new visual situation. Of course, she was a quarian so her eyes were better at low light than her human and batarian counterparts anyway; the downside of that was that between the ease of sight and her relatively small stature left her being selected to crawl through the decrepit maintenance tunnels and make sure the new power lines the techs had set up were all still connected. It was still something of a squeeze for her, but she’d never been one to give up and as such she was managing to force her way through, albeit with a large amount of swearing and cursing down the radio, much to the amusement of the rest of her teammates.
“Come on Fara, I don’t think you can make the ship bigger by yelling at it.” Ran’tamar grinned as Fara’s fresh wave of cursing came down the comm, a lot of it aimed at lazy techs who couldn’t check their own work. “Just check all the slots and fix any that aren’t working. Ya are a quarian after all, just wave your omni at it and it’ll be fine.”
Fara paused her crawling and looked down at the ground for a moment, her blue visor failing to hide her eyes as she narrowed them, visualising the cocky face of the lieutenant. At that moment she wanted to punch him in all four of his eyes and her thinly veiled disgust weighed heavy on her voice as she responded.
“Ran you know full well I don’t know shit about tech, I shoot things. That’s always been my job. I can rewire your shit and that’s about as much as you are gonna get.”
She growled slightly as her hip got caught against a particularly narrow part of the tunnel and had to squirm out of it, the armoured suit thankfully had little in the way of material that could get caught on the occasional jagged piece of rust, had she been wearing the traditional quarian ensemble the cloth would have been shredded after snagging by now. The metal groans on occasion as she clambered through the tunnel, something she tried very hard to ignore, as if something were to go wrong there wasn’t exactly a lot she could do while stuck in a narrow tunnel.
The tunnel ahead of her was lit through her visor, the wiring the Suns’ techs had set up ran along the wall next to her and following it at least meant she wasn’t going to get lost in the warren of maintenance tunnels that the old ship had going. A few dark cramped minutes later she could see the break in the wiring, her visor highlighting it for her as she neared the problem, muttering darkly about how she didn’t join the Suns to crawl around in vents, Fara shifted her position, bracing her back against the wall of the vent and twisting onto her side so she could properly access the faulty relay. With a flick of her wrist her omni-tool activated and a warm orange glow filled the dark space, a moment later her free hand had pried off the protective casing from the relay, letting her run a scan over the innards of the device. Once the diagnostic was in she shook her head in irritation and activated her comm.
“I’ve found the problem, apparently your salarian couldn’t be arsed to check the wiring in his own damn devices, several wires have fried and I’m fairly certain they weren’t connected properly. Give me a few and I’ll see if I can replace them and get it working again. Don’t turn on the damn power for ancestor’s sake.”
The batarian on the end of the line took a moment to respond, his gruff voice echoing down the long dark tunnel she was lying in, his tone a mixture of approving and amused.
“Alright, just fix it up Fara, I’ll be sure to send Kylon a reprimand later. Power’s off in your section until you give the okay.”
Fara got down to business, she’d had some engineering experience aboard the Fleet back in the day, as a marine she’d needed to make sure she could keep things running and all quarians were expected to be able to keep their ship running to some degree. Given the average recruit the Blue Suns seemed to take on she was fairly certain she probably had a fair bit of technical expertise in comparison, but she didn’t see herself as any sort of expert, and resented it when Ran tried to foist any and all technical problems onto her. She didn’t make any secret that she didn’t approve of that shit, she was willing to do stuff like fix the relays if she had to, good of the group and all, but she didn’t have to like it.
With a beep the relay’s haptic interface flipped over into green territory, indicating that it was ready to go and that the makeshift base was going to have power once again. With no small sigh of relief, the quarian woman leaned back against the wall for a moment and then activated her comm again.
“‘Kay, that should have sorted it out. Now where is the nearest exit out of here?”
Ran’s voice echoed back into her helmet as she cast her eyes over her shoulder and eyed the way she’d come with a skeptical eye; the luminous glance confirming that making her way back along the vent was going to be one hell of an arduous ordeal.
“We’ve got something for you, maintenance access about twenty metres ahead Fara, should be a grate that gets your short arse back into the main ship.”
Fara scowled at nothing and started crawling ahead, declining to dignify the batarian asshole with a response; after around a minute she found herself looking at a large rusted grate, beyond it she could see the vague outline of one of the many corridors that the wreck had. The rust however didn’t look too promising, indeed the entire thing looked like it had rusted shut and a cursory rattle of the grate failed to do more than wobble it slightly.
Urgh.
Fara made a disgusted grunt that no one could hear as she strained against the bars again for a few moments but she quickly figured out that she was going to have to try and take a different approach. Shifting her position and drawing her legs in towards herself, she reversed her angle in the vents, leaving her legs angled towards the grate and her way out. After looking around and getting as good a grasp on the metal of the corridor as she could, she braced herself and pulled back one of her legs, slamming the boot of her suit into the grate before pulling back and trying again.
Fara’Tiel was a person who kept in good shape and quarian legs had a lot of muscle in them to start with given their shape, however initially the merc was worried that her plan was not going to bear fruit. Indeed, the grate seemed to stubbornly stick at first, resisting her kicks with squeaks and groans as she slammed her foot into it. However Fara gritted her teeth and persisted, until finally the grate began to shake loose groaning and then finally flying off of it’s seat with a loud crash. After slumping back for a moment and taking a breath Fara slid herself out of the tunnel, rolling her neck and shoulders and stretching her arms, relieved to be out of the small tunnel.
It took her a few minutes to get her bearings but she quickly found her way back to the main base the Blue Suns had set up in the centre of the base, giving a mock salute to the Lieutenant Ran’tamar as she made her way back into the main briefing room. Ran’tamar nodded and grinned in amusement at the slightly irate aura the quarian was radiating, but turned his attention back to the rest of the group. His hands danced over the console and shut down the projections, nodding at the others in the room.
“Alright, all of you take a break, I want everyone here first thing tomorrow for the update on the new job, Captain Rawes is here to give us the details and he’s a hardass who’ll put you on varren watch if you show up late.”
The previous occupants of the room started to file out, a couple nodded at Fara as they passed, others were too wrapped up in their own business or in their own conversations. Fara waited until they’d all left the room before heading over to see Ran, leaning back against the lip of the desk around the projector as he finished up whatever it was that he was doing. She couldn’t help but poke a little at the new job they were all taking part in.
“So, big shot with a big job coming around tomorrow? Should we be worried?” Fara folded her arms and met the batarian’s eyes coolly, she knew he tended to be fairly reticent on job details, but after crawling around vents for him she felt he owed her one, or several. “Big shot captain’s don’t tend to worry about shit on Korlus of all places. Especially new outposts.”
Ran gave her a neutral look before grinning, and she knew that she was going to hate the next answer that came out of his mouth.
“You asking me for the short answer Fara?”
Fara’s face didn’t move and her tone was far too sweet when she responded a few moments later, having left the silence to hang just long enough to make Ran shift a little uncomfortably.
“You could say that, also thank you for reminding me.” Her fist was a blur as she punched him on the upper arm, causing him to yelp and jump back complaining. “That’s for earlier and I guess for now too, rude arse that you are. I’m not fucking two foot tall!”
Ran rubbed his upper arm, glad he had his light armour on to cushion the blow somewhat, despite the pain however, the joke had been more than worth it, Fara could tell he was still trying hard not to grin.
“I don’t know Fara, 5’6 is pretty close.”
He kept well out of punching range this time as Fara glared and his and then rolled her eyes, leaning against the desk again.
“Whatever Ran, just answer the damn question.” Her tone became more serious again and her eyes narrowed a little more as she looked down at his console. “What’s going on?”
Her batarian colleague took a few steps forwards, holding up his hands placating as he spoke, coming back in line with his console and continuing to shut down his applications for the night. His eyes met hers through the visor and she could tell he was being honest as he spoke.
“I don’t know, I’ve heard another cell on Korlus is working with Krogan, but that’s the only thing I’ve heard that might link to us. It could be anything.” He shut off his computer and shadowed her as they both started to make their way towards the door, the lights in the room dimming as the VI detected them leaving. “We should find out everything tomorrow if we are lucky. Try and relax if you can though Fara, you’re way too suspicious of the people in charge, they can be shit but they are just people.”
Fara listened to her batarian friend as the pair of them headed back towards the old living quarters on the ship that the group had been revamping, they took the stairs down a few floors, after all, the elevators were somewhat suspect given the power problems they’d been having. They passed a couple of other Suns as they made their way to their quarters, the white and blue uniform the same as their own, most of them were either heading to bed like them or starting their night shift on the planet, with the amount of varren and other vermin hiding away in the various ship ruins there was a need for the constant guard. Fara always hated the night shift herself and felt a little bad when she saw a couple of new bloods heading off for the first time; they’d probably have all sort of fun dealing with varren and the occasional vorcha that decided to become king of the junkyard.
Joining the Suns had been something of a leap for Fara back in the day, but as an exile she’d not had a lot of options; while initially she’d been uneasy about utilising her combat skills, they had ended up getting her exiled after all, the wider galaxy didn’t exactly have a lot of charity for scapegoated exiles from the quarian Flotilla. Needless to say Ran and his colleagues hadn’t been sure about a quarian in the Suns at first, but given her extensive combat experience she’d been given a chance. After a shaky start Fara had excelled, her experience and perspective giving the Suns outlier she worked for an edge on several missions for nearly a decade; she’d even managed to make her immediate colleagues see past their whole anti-quarian attitude for the most part. Still, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy, especially as her group had started to be noticed by the less scrupulous members higher up in the Suns’ hierarchy, she’d had no issue driving out the vorcha and varren to make a base here, but in the recent past their clients had taken a definite shady turn.
For her part Fara’s own philosophy of ‘exile but not a criminal’ had been diluted somewhat by her association; still, there was nothing she could do. As frustrating as she found their increasingly rapid departure from the moral grey area, there was not a ton she could do about it. You didn’t just quit the Blue Suns, you were with them for good. Ran knew she was already resisting the current path his crew was taking and had done his best to walk a middle ground, but defying direct orders wasn’t his style; she knew he really wished she’d just put her own hang ups aside and work with him to get a better cut for their group. But Fara was nothing if not stubborn and so she’d been chomping at the bit for the last few months, getting increasingly bitter when her objections were not listened to.
Still, Fara felt like she had it better than most people who left the Flotilla, and her friendship with Ran was something that helped take the sting off some of the things that their little group did. She shot a sidelong look at the batarian biotic as they made their way down the hall to their rooms; she knew she owed the guy a lot.
“Right, see you in the morning Ran. Sleep well yeah?”
After the mutual pleasantries had concluded, Fara strolled into her room, dropping her pistol on her table and turning to lock her bedroom door for the night. Picking up a nutri-paste tube she took an energetic jump and landed on her bed, ignoring armour modules on her suit for the moment. The orange light from the omni added a warm ambience to the room as she sat back on her bed, glad to be able to put her feet up and sit back on her bed. Whatever else was going to happen she was fairly certain of one thing, tonight things were okay, tonight she would be able to rest without watching her back and that was no bad thing.
