#turithys

[therunawayscamp]

“Which would you choose?”

'If I had to?’ Turithys kicked her boot against the table it was resting on a few times. ‘Werewolves. ‘Least they’re only a problem once a month. Vampires’re a pain in the arse all the bloody time.’

[therunawayscamp]

♤ 3. slap my muse’s hand away (reverse!)

♤ 3. slap my your muse’s hand away (reverse!)

A slap was one word for it. Coming from Turithys, it was more like a punch, and she grabbed the oars out of Amon’s reach as well.

‘I’ll take care of that, thank you very much.’

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Background: Turithys

Prior to signing on with Captain R’khan, Turithys’s naval experience came from ferrying various groups of people around Vvardenfell. Growing up, she lived in a small settlement on Azura’s Coast, helping run her mother run a ferry between the Vvardenfell and the smaller off-shore islands. Her clients were primarily from Telvanni looking to reach one of the towers in the region, which played a reasonably large part in Turithys’s eventual decision to move -- her personal alignment had always been with House Indoril, and she could see she was never going to join the House where she was.

At the end of 4E 4, when she was twenty years of age, Turithys bid farewell to her family and set out to make the trek across the Ashlands. All she had with her were the clothes on her back, some provisions, and her sailing knowledge, and it was the latter which proved the most useful. In the habit of reading her environment after years at sea, particularly the weather, she could tell something was wrong when she came within sight of Red Mountain. The ash storms, which had been dying down since the Nerevarine, were thicker than she had ever known them, the air was warmer and dryer, and she felt more than one minor earthquake as she passed through Vvardenfell’s volcanic centre.

When she arrived in Vivec City, her mind was made up. Rather than find a place to stay and start up her own ferry, which had been her plan when she left home, she got on the first ship to Blacklight and settled on the Morrowind mainland instead. Her instincts were rewarded a year later, when the Red Year obliterated Vivec City and laid waste to most of Vvardenfell. Her family did not escape.

Turithys sought a new family in House Indoril, which readily accepted her into its ranks during the chaos of the fights with the New Temple in the hopes of strengthening its traditional position, but it quickly became evident that the House would not survive as it was. When it was taken over completely by the New Temple, Turithys, refusing to convert to a different faith, was on her own again. In her attempts to keep herself occupied, she threw herself first into the military during the Accession War, and then into a new ferry business taking archaeologists to the ruins of Vvardenfell, with a spot of mercenary work on the side, but she always remained on the lookout for new opportunities.

Such an opportunity eventually presented itself in the form of the Runaway Scamp. Turithys had been aware of them for a while -- they are impossible to miss in Blacklight -- and Captain R’khan was pleased to have her aboard with her history of both sea- and swordsmanship.

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Grief

The Scamps have lost more than a few of their own over the centuries, but that doesn’t make it any easier. They each have their own ways of reacting to and dealing with the ensuing grief.

R’khan gets much stricter and quicker to anger. The only time he has ever hit Luca was after a crew member was killed, in response to an unrelated incident. She didn’t retaliate, surprisingly, but ran away and hid in the hold for a while, where the Argonians kept her company. R’khan didn’t apologise but then again, he also didn’t punish her for shirking her duties.

Speaking of Luca, on the rare occasions when somebody she actually likes dies, she gets stuck in the denial phase of grief. The person in question cannot be dead, and if they are, there must be a way to get them back. That’s what shady deals with the daedra are for.

Vilayn shuts himself away refusing to talk to anyone and drinks heavily; the length of time and amount of booze vary according to how much he liked the recently deceased. He was drunk for three days straight after he found out that his mother had died. Casether is worried about what will happen if (when) Hazil succumbs to his illness.

Tosti becomes cold, almost surgical. He tends to disappear for a length of time as well. If the person who died was someone close to him, and if they died before their time, the people at fault for their death tend to meet an unpleasant fate of their own shortly afterwards.

Azareth takes the news in his usual stoic way. It’s even more difficult than usual to coax conversation out of him afterwards, although he might be found in deep, quiet debate with Ethysil. Eventually he will pour out one for the deceased, smoke one of his fancier pipes in their honour, and move on.

Bereavement might be the only thing which silences Eddis’s laughter. True, he will start sucking and chewing on his teeth instead, but at least it’s a break from his usual giggling. He also becomes more erratic in his behaviour. The last time they lost a crew member and this happened, R’khan, in a moment of genuine concern for his bosun, called Eddis into his quarters for a private talk; Eddis was back to usual when he left.

Drasonval, Braskan, Oran and Sham commiserate with each other. Their omnipresent sense of camaraderie intensifies, and they will gather around, usually with a drink, and if they all knew the deceased they will share stories together until they’re able to laugh again. If only one of them was personally affected, the others will do their best to cheer him or her up or, failing that, just be there.

Bob will take her feelings out on any objects nearby, smashing them until she feels better. Surprisingly, it works. She doesn’t understand why everybody else has to bury their emotions, or sit around doing nothing about them.

Eldnar feels loss keenly, and struggles to hide his sentimentality. It embarrasses him and -- what a shock -- the crew tease him for it, so he tends to disappear in this sort of situation until he’s over the tears.

According to his beliefs, Ethysil is not supposed to consider death an end, merely a return to a greater whole. That’s all very well as an abstract idea. In practice he becomes very sombre, spends a lot more time alone with his thoughts, and either avoids talking to people if he is the only person affected, or listens quietly if other people knew the deceased.

Jo’Raya doesn’t show much in how she deal with other people, but she loses her appetite and spends a lot more time sleeping, or at least curled up in her bunk, than she usually does.

Assuming her surgical efforts did not contribute towards the death in question, Rosie deals with grief reasonably well. Like anyone, she goes through periods of sadness and anger, but they fade in a reasonable amount of time. If her surgical efforts did contribute, once she overcomes the guilt she will be determined to learn from the experience and do better next time, and will throw herself almost frantically into her work and study to ensure this is the case.

Turithys shuts down all personal communication. She will only talk to people to discuss work, and it can take a long time before she is ready to relax and open up again.

Like Jo’Raya, Xisthia’s interactions with others don’t change much, but that’s assuming they can find her. She will spend most of her time swimming and hiding underwater, distracting herself with exploring the seabed and sometimes sitting on rocks down there, watching the ripples overhead.

Zannammu appears to have much more faith in her concept of an afterlife than Ethysil. She is convinced that those who pass on receive their just rewards and uses this to cope with the loss of them in her own life.

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An Imperial scholar once tried to argue with the Scamps that if you really think about it, the Red Year was Vivec’s own fault for not moving Baar Dau.

Unfortunately the scholar was trying to argue with Ethysil, Azareth and Turithys.

While those three would be proud to admit that they can never agree on anything about their religion among themselves, they were quick to leap to each other’s defence when challenged by an outsider. After a great deal of circular reasoning and cheerfully nonsensical arguments, they insisted that really, if you want to start tracing blame back like that, you might as well say it’s Sheogorath’s fault for throwing the rock in the first place, further cementing how right the Tribunal were in labelling him as one of the House of Troubles. Silly scholar!

The scholar had got bored and left long before they reached this conclusion.

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Turithys 

Turithys -- or Indoril Turithys, to give her proper title -- used to be a sword-for-hire, ferrying groups of archaeologists across the Inner Sea to the ruins of Vvardenfell before being persuaded to join the Runaway Scamp instead. She is no stranger to peril after navigating those volcanic waters and approaches situations in a much more controlled, businesslike manner than some of her shipmates. While they are busy debauching, she will be the one watching the door for the arrival of the guards.

She always wanted to be an Ordinator as a child, and joining House Indoril was her first step towards achieving that dream, but she never progressed beyond the rank of hireling before the Red Year threw everything into chaos and the Tribunal fell. Despite this, and her discomfort with its current ties to the New Temple, she maintains some loyalty to her House, which occasionally causes her to butt heads with Braskan.

Turithys tends to a small home brewery when ashore in Blacklight. The crew are emphatically not invited to come and see it.

The eyepatch is purely for the look of things. She takes it off for fights and sometimes forgets which eye it’s supposed to cover when the time comes to put it back on.

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Turithys comes to the rescue of the Scamps, including the author, Mr Vilayn.

Of course they gave chase. This was now an Assault Against A Guard, an even more serious offence than the one we had committed, viz. looking at someone a bit funny on the way into town. In fact every guard in Dawnstar leapt into action in response to such an outrage. Not only the two patrolling the path outside the jail, but the guard outside their Council House or whatever they call it

gave chase, and the ones down on the docks raced up to join in, and as they charged through the streets they picked up more and more people. Turithys, at the head of the line, wasn't worried. She kept her eyes forward and her feet moving, aiming for the gap in the mountains which takes you out towards the next inlet and Yngvild. If she could reach that she would have the ocean, our own element, and the guards would be at a disadvantage.

She didn't make it.

On the edge of Dawnstar there are several cottages. They aren't what anybody would call desirable properties, when all you can farm is snow and the only view is of a cliff face, but some of them insist on putting fences around their personal patch of ice anyway. Probably they think that will stop any snow bears or frost trolls which come wandering along and let me tell you from my days on Solstheim, it won't. But that's not the point. The point is, Turithys had noticed these fences while she was coming up with her plan, and she made good use of them now. She made the back of the last cottage before the guards and while she was out of sight, she vaulted the fence and crouched down behind it, hidden from view.

Shouts and footsteps thundered past. Turithys didn't move. She held her breath and squatted on the ice, as if it had frozen her to the spot. The only sound, had someone been close enough to hear it, was her counting almost silently. The first two guards passed. Then the guard from outside the White Hall. Then the rest, one after the other, none of them bothering to check around them or notice that the footprints in the snow they were following belonged to their own comrades. Turithys counted each one past and, when she reckoned it was safe, sprinted back down the alleys without looking over her shoulder.

With all the guards off on their wild goose chase outside town, it was the work of a moment to pick the lock on the door, even for someone like Turithys who for all her talents cannot pick a lock to save her life. We heard the scratching and cursing from inside. There were so many of us the guard had been forced to let us take over the entire building and settle for locking the front door behind us, so some of us were napping upstairs while the rest poked through the evidence chests or investigated the tunnel possibilities of the jail proper. I think Mr Azareth was setting up a gambling den in one corner and was almost reluctant to be rescued. Still, one way or another we gathered everyone in the main hall and waited.

The door opened. We looked out at Turithys, the snow melting on her shoulders as it met the warmth of the flaming torches, and she looked in at us, a ragtag bunch of sailors full of relief. After a few seconds she waved us out, but not before she made sure we all heard her say,

'You lot really are a pack of hopeless s'wits, ain't you?'

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Turithys comes up with a Plan.

News of our capture was all over town, so it didn't take Turithys long to learn what had happened. Rightly so, too. Capturing a crew as notorious as ours is a feat worth bragging about, and keeping us locked up for more than five minutes doubly so. Like I said before, if you want the details of how they managed it you can go and find someone in Dawnstar to ask because I'm not telling that story. Needless to say we put up a valiant struggle and they only managed it due to Chance.

The best place to learn the latest gossip – apart from a tavern obviously, and since we'd gone missing Turithys didn't think it wise to go wandering after us – the other best place to learn the latest gossip is a blacksmith's forge, and so that was where Turithys went. The locals like to gather around the fire in a place as cold as Skyrim, and she heard all about our capture while she hunkered down beside the flames and watched the barracks from this safe vantage point. Nobody paid her much attention with her scarf pulled over her face, just another lost soul seeking warmth from the frost, and she had time to consider her plan.

Her reasoning, as she watched the guards patrolling back and forth along Dawnstar's upper road, went like this:

The guards had arrested a crew mostly made up of Dunmer never before seen in Dawnstar.

If they noticed her, another Dunmer never before seen in Dawnstar, skulking around the jail, even Nords might be a bit suspicious.

As a result, they would probably decide to give chase as soon as they caught sight of her.

You or I might decide in light of this that the best course of action would be avoiding the guards altogether. Turithys pulled down her scarf, marched up the hill, and looked them square in the eye, marching towards the jail. Just as they were debating among themselves whether to investigate she picked up a rock and, still maintaining eye contact, threw it at the nearest guard's helmet.