Foreigners are Always Interesting (Working Title) Options

[legionslayer]

Hello all! I'm new to the Chorral.com forums but I've been playing and modding in Elder Scrolls (mainly Oblivion) for some time. As of now I'm really trying to get a feel for the lore, speech patterns and beliefs of the various races, starting with those I'm most familiar with, the Nords and the Dark Elves.

For my first project, I'm posting the first draft of the start of some fanfiction set in the Third Era (3E?), Oblivion time period. Though this is still a rough draft, I'd appreciate any comments you might have. I'm particularly interested in errors in how I've characterized the various races, tips regarding how they talk and relate to each other, and any other backstory I might have misinterpreted from what little I got in the game (sadly, I hurried through most of Oblivion) and from the UESPwiki. I'd particularly welcome suggestions for making the dialogue fit better with each race, with links to appropriate samples if they're available. Also, if I've tripped up somewhere in the weapons or armor, feel free to point that out as well.

I've worked regularly with a writer's group for a good while and have a fairly thick skin when it comes to my work, so feel free to comment on anything you think could use improvement--it's doubtful you'll hurt my feelings. All I ask is that you provide specifics as to why it stuck out to you and a suggestion for how to fix it. And, of course, I'll happily return the favor by taking a look at anything you might have up.

Thanks all!



Foreigners are Always Interesting (Working Title)

1.

It was not the ringing sound of blades colliding that roused Tarel from his slumber underneath the overhang of massive Prayer Rock, nor the grunts and cries of men as they were struck or cut or fell with a crunch against the newly fallen snow. It was the cursing—-particularly, the shrill, female voice that was doing it and the strange, slippery sounding words she used.

The clash of blades as they spilled the blood of men was nothing to get upset about—-Tarel was a Nord, after all, as accustomed to blades clashing and men shouting as he was to breathing and eating—-but the cursing of so obviously foreign a tongue this deep in Skyrim had him curious. He laid quiet with his ears open and listened as the men screamed murder, the woman shrieked curses, and blades rang together in the cacophonous singsong of combat. Yes, the woman—-he'd assume she was a woman, because the idea of a man with such a high voice was unsettling—-the woman doing the cursing was doing it in a way that almost sounded like poetry, if poetry could be made of shouted statements that one's parents made babies with goats. Nords and most especially Tarel cursed often, and heartily, and with good reason, but never had Tarel heard a string of curses that sounded as pretty as this.

Tarel pondered a moment, the sat up and stretched his arms to the sky with a massive yawn. His brother Havel had the daytime patrol (Tarel had the night) and would certainly have roused him had the fracas Tarel heard been any threat to Lorna, the small hometown they shared. Whatever the fight was about, it was obviously none of their business. Even so, Tarel pushed off the pleasant sloth of his late morning nap and grinned. Foreigners, by nature, were always interesting. He stomped out his sputtering fire, took up his greatsword, and lumbered into the snowy wilderness beyond his shelter to see what all the fuss was about.

Tarel found 'the fuss' not twenty paces distant, stretched out in a tableau of blood-stained and trampled snow in a small pass, directly below his sheltered lookout. Three dead foreigners, Redguard and Breton by the look of them, were lying in pieces spread out in a circle around a pair of harried looking Dark Elves in tattered, flowing cloaks. Five more warriors in mismatched armor and gray snow cloaks ringed the two elves in the middle, circling warily.

The first elf they hunted was a frothing red-eyed maniac wielding what looked to be a claymore far larger than seemed practical. It was most likely the weapon responsible for cutting three of the unfortunate hunters into so many pieces. His thick black cloak had been tattered by blades and rocks, and it rippled in the wind to reveal hard boiled leather armor underneath. Pressing her back to his was a slight Dark Elf in a tattered brown robe wielding a glittering blood-stained dirk in each hand. A ponytail of dark hair whipped against her cheek, and her snarling mouth matched the curses flying from her lips. She screamed at the men surrounding them, all in that strange, foreign tongue that sounded so new and pretty to Tarel's ears.

Tarel watched as the remaining five foreigners moved in on the two Dark Elves from all sides, the motions beneath their mismatched leather armor and billowing gray cloaks suggesting a Khajiit, an Argonian, and a Nord, as well as a pair of fresh green Imperials whose swords were shaking in their hands. The Dark Elves had the experience, to be sure, but the five that ringed them had the numbers. As Tarel knew from his many scuffles in the Imperial Army before his discharge and return to his hometown of Lorna, even a cluster of relatively unskilled swordsmen could still draw blood from the best of veteran blades. All the mob had to do was attack all at once, from all sides, with absolutely no idea just how badly they were outmatched.

The large Dark Elf frothed at the mouth as he watched his hunters come, a mountain of barely contained rage. By comparison, the smaller female at his back was a picture of restrained energy, snarling and cursing as her dirks practically danced in her hands. Tarel settled cross-legged on the edge of his lookout and balanced the cool steel of his greatsword across the massive muscles of his thighs.

No matter how it turned out, this was going to be an impressive fight.

[legionslayer]

2.

The big Argonian was the first to break the standoff, perhaps confident the spinning arc of his large flail would keep him safe from harm. In response to his first few steps, the Dark Elf with the giant sword moved faster than an elf of his size had any right to do, lunging forward and downward and all but watching the spiked head of the flail streak by a hair's breadth above his head. With fluidity that defied its ridiculous size, the blade of his oversized claymore moved relentlessly in a great and terrible arc, finding cloak and leather and bone before it emerged from the Argonian's other side in a spray of red and white.

The Khajiit on the Argonian's left flank was impressively quick, Tarel saw, and his lithe body and claws ducked under the swing that passed him as the Argonian screamed. As he moved one clawed hand raked the Dark Elf's wrist, just where the boiled leather armor split at the joint. The Cat-man's glistening claws drew a bright splash of blood that seemed insignificant compared to the gore spouting from the two pieces of Argonian now falling to the snow. Even so, the Khajiit's blow was well-planned and superbly placed.

While the Dark Elf managed to swing his sword back around into a guard position using the momentum of its prior movement, as any good swordsmen should, he shuddered when he blocked the swinging longsword from the Nord to the dead Argonian's right. That told Tarel the Khajiit had not only ripped open muscle, he'd found bone. Tarel supposed wielding a claymore as massive as the one this Dark Elf carried was a bit harder when one's wrist was broken.

Tarel didn't worry much for the Nord—-it was no one from his village, he knew, because the man was wearing sheepskin boots, not lamb—-but he found himself intensely interested in the furiously angry and loud-mouthed Dark Elf female. In the time it had taken her companion to kill the Argonian and fend off the others, she had ducked under the first Imperial's clumsy strike and closed with both of them, slicing the first man's fingers apart with one dirk while her other slashed the second man's throat. Her blade came away from a bright, bloody grin deep in the neck of the second Imperial, whose sword grip was even now falling from his hands. Even so, he died with the edge of his blade in the woman's side, a small victory, but more than he deserved.

Numbers, Tarel thought with a shake of his head. It's always the numbers that do you in.

The Imperial whose fingers were now decorating the snow had just started to shriek when the woman spun the dirk she'd used to open the second man's neck, took a step, and turned the first man's screams into a bubbling wheeze with a single, graceful strike.

Poor choice, Tarel thought, to send the party's two most unskilled hunters against the smaller quarry, just because she happened to be a woman. One of the three experienced hunters facing the male could probably have taken the woman's head off, given the distraction and acceptable death of a single Imperial. The Dark Elf woman spun, twirled her dirks, and shouted another fervent curse.

She looked back to her big partner just in time to see his blade slice *through* the well-placed guard of the Nord. As the two halves of the Nord's cleanly cut sword sprang apart the Dark Elf's blade continued on, easily separating the man's head from his shoulders. The Khajiit took the opportunity the massive, heavy swing presented to again strike in its wake, a wicked fast hand tossing a dagger that glittered in the mid-morning light. That dagger buried itself, all the way to the hilt, in the right eye of the big Dark Elf.

Tarel frowned for the first time that day. Damn rotten luck, he thought, first for the Nord whose sword had been split (the man had parried the strike well—-that fact that the Dark Elf had a better weapon really wasn't his fault) and second for the Dark Elf himself who, even if the dagger hadn't cut straight to the center of his brain, would certainly lose the use of his right eye. Losing an eye was almost as bad as losing a sword arm, as far as Tarel was concerned. Neither was a loss from which any man ever fully recovered.

The woman's curses and snarls turned into an all but banshee-worthy shriek as she watched her big partner stumble back, clutching the dagger hilt protruding from his bloody eye. He fell with a massive thump. His oversized sword spun flashing for a moment, on its tip, then clattered to rest on a rock by the big elf's side. Blood was rushing from the hole where his red right eye had been, and though his mouth was open, no scream was pouring forth.

The Khajiit wasted no time, leaping forward and over the body of the fallen Dark Elf with claws extended to finish the hunt. He had, perhaps, misjudged how close he was to victory. The woman was inconsolable and far beyond reason now, as her violent and truly reckless charge showed. She dodged neatly around the Khajiit's clumsy looking leap, blades flashing as she came close to hacking off his tail.

The lithe cat-man landed, rolled, and bared his teeth at her, hissing as her two bloody dirks darted and danced before his eyes. Her speed was easily the equal of his, and he knew that, now. The cat-man backed off, darting forward and back, feinting left and right, as the woman matched him step for step. Her cursing had all stopped now. In a way, the utter silence in which she now moved was even more worrisome than the curses that had come before. At least before, at least with those, she had made *some* noise.

Circling around and around on a carpet of crunching, bloodied snow, cat-man and Dark Elf darted and dodged and feinted. At last, the Khajiit saw an opening. He darted in with a gleeful hiss, his claws raking the Dark Elf's face, but Tarel saw then that she had wanted that—-she had allowed him the opening because it allowed her to slice one dirk clean across his middle. The Khajiit's pleased expression of victory turned to mild surprise as he took a step back, glanced down at the bundles of unwinding intestine pouring forth from his opened midriff, then fell to his knees with a huff of puzzled alarm.

With speed that made even the Khajiit look clumsy, the Dark Elf woman *moved*. Her arms parted then closed in a moment of enviable grace. Her twin dirks crossed one over the other inside the cat-man's neck, taking his still surprised head off its body in one last spectacular burst of blood. The head hit the snow as the woman fell to her knees.

Her victory was an empty one, for her companion, her big, stalwart friend, lie unmoving at her side with a knife sticking out of his eye. The woman clutched her side as she leaned over him, and Tarel only then remembered she'd been cut as well, by the dying Imperial. She fell face and hand first across the chest of her partner, letting loose an anguished wail that echoed off the walls around her.

That mournful, tortured sound chilled Tarel in a way that the frost and snow of Skyrim never could.