Assassin Tails, Silent Killing Across Nirn Options

[Silver]

First Act.

Target : Legion Captain, Marvilo Cendari

Assassin : Lauhna

Location : Fort Ashmouth, Northern Vvardenfell, Morrowind

Special Requests : The captain must die in his quarters, the guards outside his door must not be alerted.

Notes : The captain sleeps on the fourth floor dormitory, three windows, two doors ; One into the hallway, the other a small closet. Captain sometimes sleeps in his armour.

Fort Ashmouth, a newly constructed behemoth on the edge of the regenerating region surrounding the old Ghost Fence, was hardly completed a month before the first assassin was hired to kill off a Captain of the Imperial Legion. The Captain was well liked amongst the men and in the small town that grew up around it along with the tough mountain scrub that was replacing the wasteland tundra that previously covered the area.

It's thick, grey walls were still ashed and blackened all along the south-eastern side, and drifts of volcanic dirt crept into every cranny between the massive stones that it was constructed from. The guards patrolled the parapets relentlessly, as they do in every other fort they occupy. A small change was necessary to their uniform, a netch leather scarf, pulled up over their mouth and nose whenever the ash storms blew, as not to clog their mouth with it's burnt taste. This particular morning, the scarves were down, the sun shone strong and true through the wispy grey clouds, and the townspeople went about their day as usual, collecting ash yams, chatting in the market square, bustling from place to place, with the steady clang of blacksmith hammers setting a steady beat.

The sun rose toward the middle of the sky, it's long journey reaching the downturn, while the folk of Ashmouth continued to toil, on into the afternoon. It gave them a crimson tinge as it settled for evening behind the mountains, the people had settled into their homes, oil lamps and lanterns hung from shop corners, and the candlelight from the homely houses afforded the only light as the first of the twin moons filled the sky. About the time when the second moon began it's rise, Launha arrived along with a biting wind, carrying sharp sand and the howling of nature. Her garb, once depthless black silk wrapped over midnight leather was now irretrievably dirtied, the ash having embedded into the clothes, and wearing away the black inks.

Her tail swayed in irritation, the only exposed fur to the ash, aside from her pointed ears, and both were matted and ruffled badly, only adding to her contrary mood. The fort was ahead, it's blurry silhouette still massive in the roaring sand. She headed down the rough hill toward it, slinking from rock to rock, watching for the indecipherable forms of the guards that marched along, the damped stomp of their march hardly audible in the wind. Making it to the wall without incident, her own sharp eyes unable to discern the guards, and they, facing into the ash, would never have seen a hint of her.

She pressed herself to the wall, then tugged one of her tight gloves off. Wiggling her fingers for a moment, she ran them over the rough stone and mortar of the fort, stroking the grooves thoughtfully as the knives and blades hooked to her rattled quietly, making soft patters against the leather. She sighed after another moment of this caressing, and snapped her glove back on, taking hold of the stone just above her head. The lithe muscles in her arm strained, as she struggled to get the thin sole of her boot to fit into the edging, she managed it after a moment, and pushed herself up, rising her other foot to almost waist height, and finding another foothold, pushing up and catching onto another stone, she scaled the side of the tower, claws aching under her weight, thighs burning with the continuous effort. The ash pushed her harder against the wall in a fearsome gale, ripping at her handholds, burning her eyes and drying out her mouth. She kept on with it, as the night dragged on, the dull light of the red moon above giving her naturally night-sighted eyes just enough to find handhold after handhold, sliding up the wall in her own manner.

Just as her claws felt ready to rip from above her fingers, and she was struggling to lift her feet to even knee height above the next, her hand wavered on an open space, a cavern in the sheer wall of hard stones, and with a final effort she collapsed onto it, sitting awkwardly atop the base of her tail on the windowsill. She shifted about, and found a more comfortable position, though she had to sit tenderly with her tail between her legs and hanging down to brush the ash off the wall. Panting, she cleaned a little circle from the paned glass, and looked into a darkened room, only a single, dying candle flickered weakly to lend warmth and light to the room. On the very edge of the circle, lay the woollen covers and hard wood construction of a bed, the boxy plates of armour outlined by the sheets, and a hand with steel bands along it confirming the suspicion of it, sticking out near the table with it's melting candle.

Using the tip of a thin stiletto she unhooked the window, and squeezed through, landing on the other side with proper feline grace. Her fingers brushed the floor, slinking forward on her toes and balancing herself low to the floor with her tail, there was a groan as the captain rolled over, facing away from the window now. The candle stuttered in the wind that had managed to slip through the window that had been left open a crack. She was almost atop the bed, when the captain, bleary-eyed with sleep began to climb to his feet. She pounced, wrapping a forearm around his face, forcing the soft leather and silk into his mouth as her other hand came round with a sickle shaped dagger, slitting first his neck, letting forth a bubbling burst of blood that sprayed onto her arm, and then embedding it into his spine. The candle sputtered out. Then, with a jerk she withdrew it, and leapt onto the inside windowsill. And with a blown kiss, she proceeded to slide back down the wall.

In the morning, the body was found there, blood staining the front of the golden plates, the bed tousled and the room coated with a fine glaze of ash. On pillow was left two fine hairs of golden fur, missed by the guards, and later the worksmen who cleaned out the room, falling from the bed as it was taken from the room, and left there on the dank stones for years to come as it remained empty and unused.

And so ends the first assassination. I will be writing more, and they'll feature Khajit, Argonain and the occasional delusional orc. If anyone wants too, they can fill out a form like the one at the beginning, and I'll write a story around it!.

This post has been edited by Silver: Apr 26 2009, 09:55 AM

[Silver]

Since the next update is going to take longer than I thought, I'm going to do it in two parts... so without further adue...

I liked the finger daggers mabey the next one could be a count meeting with some other guy and there are gards surrounding the palace and u gotta find some underground passage way using a map pickpocketed from a warden of the highest cournt in the world and then infiltrate the palace and pickpocketing the guy the count is meeting to get some amulet the enchant the ammulet to inflict damage on the werer and put the ammy back in the guys pocket

Aha! A challenge! ... and please don't say the word ammy, it's bringing back memories of 2D Runescape. And the 1990's. The NES nostalgia is killing me.

Third Act

Target : Count Duekoo

Assassin : Hieja-Malli

Location : Imperial City, Cryodiil

Special Requests : Must die gradually through a life draining enchantment.

Notes : To access the meeting room, the catacombs and sewers will have to be successfully navigated ; the Warden in the White-Gold Tower has had a map made recently. The count is going to be picking up a rare amulet from an adventurer in the basement of a lockhouse, this is the only chance in the next few months that the Count will be picking up a amulet that hasn't been inspected by guards.

His thighs were on fire, his eyes burned, arms ached and his tail felt like lead. He edged up another few inches, his strained muscles relaxing with the scant inches that he had decreased between them. The first hundred meters of climbing up the side of the White-Gold Tower had taken little effort, the natural traction of his scales, and the thousands of little hooks on his gloves giving him easy access for the gradual slope, but now it ramped up into an impassable ascent. He had to shimmy the last few hundred meters, taking more than most of the night, seeing as the sun was now glimmering faintly as a tiny shard across the horizon.

The early morning light shone on his faded blue-grey scales, coated in chalk, and they drank the warm red rays in, and he continued to drag himself onward, tail swaying slowly. He glanced over his shoulder to see his progress, and instantly wished he hadn't. Below, falling away as if he was in the star-touched heavens, there was the Imperial City, shaped like a great disc upon the ground, with the thick outlying ring of the walls. The people were indiscernible from the ground, and houses were nothing but children's blocks. He continued on, shaken. Assassins were trained not to feel fear, no terror, no shock, but this was beyond anything he was prepared for.

He finally got to the window that he was headed for, marked days earlier by a carefully inserted spy posing as a maid. He ripped the red towel away, and used it to clean the chalk from his back, shaking vigorously with the joy of being free of the dry powder. Here, so high up and in the Imperial province, his scales itched the sheer lack of moisture dying them out, some peeled away leaving shinier scales beneath, the scales and chalk went with the towel into his pack. Out of the pack came a dreary plain brown robe, and that went over his assassin's garb, masking it's bulk almost perfectly.

The room was empty as planned, but he only opened the door a silver, peering through with a sharp, reptilian eye. It was empty, aside from the stray dust bunnies that now laid claim to the expanse of cold stone, their empire of dirt momentarily invaded by his clawed feet. The bunnies mounted a fair defence, drifting around his ankles and exploding against the hem of his robes, but their opponent was too fiercesome even in his ignorance, destroying their forces with an absent swish of his tail and obliterating their kingdom that had taken weeks lurking in forgotten corners to build.

He followed the corridors along, their cool interior reminding him of the tightly enclosed spaces of the jungle in the Black Marsh, broken here by grand intersecting corridors, and in his home by open expanses of water from which it's name was derived. It was spectacular nonetheless; the Ayelids who built this tower in ages past were truly masters of stonework art, grand arches and the sheer height of the tower attesting to that truth. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to admire the scrolling edgework, as he walked impassively through the halls toward the Warden's office. After a few minutes of wandering the bone-white halls, he found the solid oak door, it was open a fraction letting the warm glow, and the soft snap, of a crackling fire out into the lonely hall.

He crept closer, the only sound was the brush of the robes as he drew up to the door, pressing against the frame and peering in. Normally, such a movement would be suspicious and could attract the attention of a passer-by, especially a bored servant or maid with little else to do. But after the Oblivion crisis, the use of this great tower had been slowly dwindling, without an Emperor to look after and the Council staying in their private villas, only convening in the lower chambers. He listened at the door, and upon hear the soft snort of a sleeping man, he closed his fingers around the edge of the door and slowly pushed it inward, stopping when it met the resistance of a high-seated rug, and slipping between the door and jam.

Meeting the warmth of the blazing fireplace head-on, the first thing that his eyes snapped to next was the peacefully slumbering form of the Imperial, Costra Mondades, who was the current Warden. The man, with his grizzled beard and thick features resembled nothing better than a hibernating bear, especially considering his bulky physique. Hieja murmured a soft-spoken prayer to whichever God, or Goddess, of luck had granted him this favour. Slinking across the room with grace that would have shamed a Bosmer in the trees, he lifted the map of the sewers from the desk, rolled it into a tight tube and slipping it up, and into his sleeve.

Whatever god of luck had been with him previous both abandoned and betrayed him now, and his ever so careful step came down upon the haft of a halberd, imported from Vvardenfell, and so happened to be balanced against a rack of broken spears. They clattered to the floor, rousing the Warden in a surprisingly quick fashion. It must have been the soldier training kicking in, or some long dormant trait that the man possessed that brought him to full attention in a flash, though he was a touch too slow to catch the dart of Hieja as he sprinted down the hallway, cutting through the hindering robes with a blink-slash of steel. Even so, when he darted into the room that he entered from, the Warden, clad in full armour by the jingling stomp of his step, was close enough behind to follow the Argonian in.

There were a few moments before the massive hulk of a man entered the room, quick thinking along with quick movement is needed for every assassin, and Hieja measured his choices in moments. Hiding would be worthless, the Warden would know he was somewhere in the room. Fighting would ruin both the assassination, and the Imperial might win. He took an option he hope wouldn't turn out to be fatal, leaping from the balcony. Doing so in the traditional sense would obviously kill him outright along with contact on the ground, so he spread his arms and the broad map, trying to slow himself in the air as his feet scrabbled at the smooth surface of the White-Gold Tower. Down, down, down, speeding toward the ground so quickly that he felt as if a team of horses were surely drawing him there, but he skipped off the final slope of the tower, and crashed into a number of thin wooden crates with a horrific clatter.

The nearby citizens backed away, unsure of how this explosion of wooden splinters had occurred, and deep within the wreckage, a blue tail twitched slightly. He was alive. Surviving through sheer luck, and the mass of pillow crates he had impacted, even still there were painful spears of wood driven through him, and his scales were torn in a bloody mess. The map, made it out unscathed. Stuck in the mess, the Legion guards had decided to leave it for the day, he waited patiently with the noon sun dragging across the sky searing down with scorching heat, and he was stuck in this burning hell of feather down and wood, blood slowly congealing all down his side. The throb of the impaled limb slowly faded, which could only be taken as a bad sign, and as dusk finally over took the light, he would have traded the Emperor's Sceptre for a pond.

Crawling out of the wreak, leaving a splash of darkened blood along behind him and dragging his bloodless leg along behind him, he slowly made his way along the street like a dying cripple, which he technically was at the moment. Reaching the nearest healer he knew, an apothecary in the Market Quarter, he promptly collapsed on the doorstep. He was dragged inside a few minutes later, with a surprised gasp and a conspicuous glance up and down the street. Another person left a few minutes later, dragging the bloody rags furthur on down the cobblestones, leaving a long trail toward the Arena.

...

This post has been edited by Silver: May 11 2009, 12:10 PM