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A Roleplayer's Copybook: The Lazy Bard Challenge

Tags: #RP  #Story  #Challenge  #Writing 
  • November 28, 2018

    Thanks. Definitely player error! I have a bad habit of getting names wrong.

  • November 28, 2018

    It happens to everyone, I guess. It's just that I happen to be one of the people who get a significant butt hurt from such things :D

  • November 28, 2018

    I do thank you :] I like to learn where I go wrong.

    Swamp

    Caught in colours, the nightmare was that her skin was dead. No sensations of moisture or lack of, no awareness of the waters of life and death, no sense of smell that bound the whole into one.
    The dream shifted and the world of pain and killing rematerialised. With poisons and the dunmer's elemental powers and her marsh touch, they conquered the mer's nightmare and distroyed Vaermina's artifact. And outside the temple, her Marsh-mate waited, his torch a light against the night sky.

    Back at the tavern, they slept dreamlessly for what night was left. They left early, leaving Dawnstar behind. Over the following days they spent the nights in a broken ship stranded high and dry. The decks were tilted so far they each had to find their own bed where the angle of floor and wall met, once the monstrous crabs were dealt with.

    When they finally tired of searching for novelty amongst the icebergs, they returned to the beach line. Unwisely they followed a double line of standing stones away from the water to its end at a Nordic ruin. It was another deathtrap, an unarmed smoothskin offering an escort job into its depths. Surprisingly, this one had her own lethal magicks as they battled the undead. Glimmers too, drew  from further within herself as she learnt more of her spells releasing fatal light.
    They passed through the dreaded story hall and vanquished a Dragon priest. Glimmers was well aware that without the overwhelming damage of the mage, the two of them would have run far and fast .

    They came to ground where wiry grass was green, and Glimmers saw a canis root, then the purples of deathroot flowers and plants new to her. Within sight of the Solitude arch, they found the spreading mouth of the Karth river and spent days exploring the multitude of islets in the delta. She felt like she had come home, the rich waters of life and death returning to her senses.
    Following the deeper water led them to the town of Morthal. There they found a bed, that was both big and blissfully level. Glimmers spent time with the Alchemist, other than that they kept to themselves.
    The nights were wonderful, the fog lay thick and heavy as they searched for standing stones that the lighted insects seemed to favour. Within one circle of stone, they found a chest holding a flawless amethyst. Glimmers remembered her promise to Talen-Jei back in Riften. The first three amethysts she found must be his. The next three would be hers.
    Recalling their own meeting in the dark deeps she knew the waters had brought her Derkeethus to her.

    Level 50 Restoration
    Exorcist spell Holy Hands
    Necromanticon spell Death Cloud

     

    I have decided to make my fourth major perk line Lockpicking after all as I review her mission statement. She is delver and artisan, which means she is nimble with her fingers and comfortable with fiddling. ( I have been holding off on the fun stuff with jewelry and the associated rapid levelling with speech and smithing until she's got some Hurt with her resto.) Hopefully with the Lockdown perk they may have a chance against any essential Centurions.
    That leaves the Minors as Archery Smithing Alteration Speech.
    It is quite challenging to remember this is one individual, with limited skills and inclinations. At one stage it seemed like I needed a dagger where close combat was forced, I wondered about getting a knife and fork for poisons. I wondered about being a more complete poisoner and using the "touch " skills, ie pickpocketing. I needed to keep going back what were the essential parts of her that I wanted and having to chose the skills to deliver, ie a deep diver and artisan, using the magicks of swamp and waters and swift strikes of poison from the dark.

     

  • November 29, 2018

    Yes, lockpicking makes sense for more people than just thieves. For instance, I justify the use of it for my main fellow (a Thalmor) with the study of Dwemer automatons as a part of his Enchanter training.

    Hehe, that's the purpose of this challenge, so you remember that your character is a person and not Vivec))))

  • Member
    November 29, 2018

    Losing most of your blood and falling asleep exhausted can do some things to you :D

    I'm still dreading Blackreach as a poisoner myself, i dont know how Ostium would deal with the Automatons :D

  • November 29, 2018

    I'm afraid of Blackreach too. There are several Centurions, a giant and a dragon, not to mention numerous Chauruses. Well, Falmer too, but they are not that scary. Centurions are among the things I fear the most in Skyrim.

  • November 30, 2018

    Chaurus, yes. She still has not won against a pen of them. I know when my PC's (and their minions) are finally getting somewhere when they can beat those.  

     

    A home

    She felt at peace as their stay lengthened. The marshlands drew her, chilled though they were. She sometimes missed Riften and the absence of Marsh-kin, but on the other hand the smoothskins here, mainly human, overwhelmingly Nord, wanted to mind their own business, apart from their suspicions towards that one mer who didn't smell right anyway. 
    The sea was close too, the shifting delta, the long beaches and the mysteries of the endless distant ice. She felt a love for the sea she'd never had when she lived on the Docks. Peace was this place, once away from the town itself. Does she, do they dare to ask for a shack?
    Roots. It meant putting down roots here (a human idiom but apt). Sacrificing something of themselves, committing themselves to these waters. Becoming involved in local concerns.
    It meant finding themselves in a vampire lair, hunting their leader that wanted Morthal as its own cattle pen. The leader fell easily, as they attacked from the shadows. Glimmers was surprised how easy it went down to her thin ray of deadly light and her mate's arrow. The rest of it though was a vicious battle, the thralls deadly with their heavy weapons. Running and hiding and ambushing, one by one the bloodsuckers and slaves fell, and amazingly both Saxhleel survived, their blood untainted.

    The reward was almost perfect. Permission to build their own dwelling on land beside the sea, quite distant from the town. It was too far up from the water to be perfect, but maybe the smoothskins showed some sense in not trusting the Northern sea. From their own found treasures and her transactions with Lami the alchemist, they raised the five thousand gold.
    It was ironic too, the silhouette of HIgh Gate Ruins looked down on them from a neighbouring ridge. (The slaying of the HIgh Gate dragon priest had given them the courage to enter the depths of another barrow in the swamp and claim a broken amulet from its destroyed owner. She drank her way through more invisiblty potions and learnt more of the power of Light)

    They stayed until their small house was finished, the fish farm and garden seeded, and a smelter built for their return. They had agreed to two favours, both of which took them up the headwaters of the Hjaal to the Whiterun tundra.

    Level 20 Alchemy 51, Restoration 54, Sneak 79, Lockpicking 31, Archery 28, Alteration 21, Smithing 16, Speech 23

  • December 3, 2018

    Tundra

    Days turned to weeks as they dallied in the swamps and sea. One evening they passed near the base of hills and kept swimming as they found the current of the Hjaal. When they reached the falls that fed it they climbed amongst the hills until they were reunited with the waters.
    Somewhere close, they thought, there was a bandit cave  under 'contract'.  Orotheim was the name on the scrap of paper they carried. A crabber pointd out a high fall that was close to the cave, though it took most of the night to work their way up to the feeder stream and cross to the terrace where the cave would be.
    Mammoth skulls, and a staked corpse showed the entrance. They edged in, caught one bandit in the tunnel. Further in, another, and another. And one more, and then they had the cave to themselves.After hauling out the corpses and dropping them over the cliff, they made themselves at home in the small cave complex.
    It was night again when they left, hoping the lunar moths might be common on the tundra. They followed the course of the stream as it ran along the base of the mountain range, eventually seeming to lose itself in the tundra bog. The lights of the city on the hill were visible, so they left the waters to trudge over the tundra to Whiterun gates. Glimmers could remember now, the stream that ran from under the city to join into the lively waters flowing down from Riverwood.
    While in the city, they passed on a letter from Igrod the younger to the Kynareth priestess. Glimmer felt sadness as they talked under the dying tree of Whiterun. When she hears the smoothskin wants sap -cut- from the Ancient One within the Eastmarch hot pools, she walks away. With a hagraven's knife, at that!
    After a day and a night at the city spent trading and potion making they left to attempt to find the waters they'd left. They were challenged by bandits as they neared the hills, chose not to run, and end up fighting their way into the mine beyond the stockade. Another night spent on a bandit's bed, and Glimmers found a spell book to take back for studying.
    The small stream was lined with nirn roots and crabs. Where the water had sunk below the ground, they could still follow old channels and gullys as the ground sloped down towards cliffs skirting the Whiterun tundra. Once they reached fast flowing waters and falls, Glimmers felt no need to return to this land again. Soon the lowland current returned them to the marshlands and then to their home where she could study how to whisper to the Earthbones and find the gleam of gold within the reds and greys of iron ore.

     

    Level 21
    Spell Transmute

     

    I spent time with a previous outcast character in Orotheim and it became one of my favourite bases. Great country to roam, not too big and easy to clean out, cooking spit and smithing set up, and the mad wizard's hut and his crafting stations is within a days walk.

     

  • December 3, 2018

    One of the things that annoy me a lot is that there's no road from Whiterun to Morthal.

  • Member
    December 3, 2018
    True, worst thing is the dragon thats on the way there. :D