Niamh's Adventures in Nirn..., This is a thread featuring a digest of stories about... Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

NIAMH.
But first, who is she?
Well she's a character who I have been acquainted with for a very long time, and with whom I have travelled across many worlds.

She's a Wood-Elf, in Nirn terms - of about 30. She's very much her own boss, and not a terribly pleasant individual. She is, to employ a cliche, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". She's a hard drinking, promiscuous, authority-hating rebel with baggage enough and troubles enough to fill a volume of psychoanalysts' shelves.

She's maybe 5 feet 8 inches in height, very slender, with pale skin and long black hair and dark, chestnut eyes in deep sockets. She had a predilection for body-piercing and a bad-attitude to personal hygiene. She's a thief and an assassin and pretty much anything else that will garner her gold and a thrill.
In the Nirn universe - (Cyrodiil) - she lives principally in Bravil, but has a shack on the waterfront outside of the walls of the Imperial City, although she spends much of her time in a rather dysfunctional relationship with Jo, one of the local "courtesans", who you will not be reading about on here(!).
In Morrowind she was a loner who pretty much stumbled upon a destiny of sorts more by simply being in a certain place at a certain time than by design; whilst she arrived in Skyrim confused and somehow "altered", more feral and wild, as part of a story arc that started in Cyrodiil and ended back there amidst death and heartache.
Since then she has had a second chance, but is squandering it, reverting once again to type...

Throughout her adventures in Nirn - Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, her character has evolved and changed. She's taken on aspects of each of these variants to become something "other" than what she started as; more rounded, but far more complicated. The ultimate expression of that is in the world that she now inhabits - Varrius, a world created for her specifically, with it's own story arc and characters.
Anyway, that's by-the-by, for the nonce, this thread will have various stories and vignettes that I have written involving her, and the characters that she has interacted with, during the time that she has inhabited the Elder Scrolls universe.
(Only some of the stories are on here, as this is a 13-rated forum, and not everything I write is... suitable. For stories not on here, do feel free to visit Niamh's blog, in the signature.)

I hope you enjoy her stories, it's gives me a lot of pleasure to write them.

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 19 2013, 04:22 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

So, Niamh has experienced a bit of an epiphany and is perhaps not as murderously ruthless as she was, well relatively speaking. Trouble is, even her best efforts at being personable can go a little awry...

The Lonely Suitor Lodge in Bravil had seen a great deal of action in it's time, Bravil was not a town known for it's quiet and relaxed atmosphere. Recently though, much of the action had been down to, or had at least involved, One of Bravil's more recent residents, if not one of it's most consistently present.
The lodge's owner, Bogrum Gro-Galash, had already had to bar Niamh several times, mostly for disorderly conduct, but most recently for blatantly taking money off of the bar in full view of both him and the other patrons. Her contention that it had been hers to start with and that she would give it back when she bought another ale washed with neither he himself nor with his friend Gorbog Gro-Magor, who served as the Lonely Suitor's occasional bouncer.

Gorbog was a hefty slab of meat and Bogrum was not exactly a drink of water either, but despite that, and in spite of the Bosmer's advanced state of inebriation, it had still taken both of them to eject her (twice) from the premises.
Indeed, it was a source of constant surprise to the erstwhile landlord that the Wood Elf's rather scrawny and underfed appearance belied a not inconsiderable, sinewy, strength.

Therefore, it was with no small degree of trepidation that he now observed her walking out of the gathering dusk and into the smoky atmosphere of his inn on, to the minute no less, the first day after her most recent two-month ban.
His hand instinctively groped for the cudgel that he kept under the counter; scanning the common room, he took in the current incumbents. It was a quiet night, with only a few patrons in; two Khajiits up from Leyawiin and on their way north to the Imperial City, a couple of surly mercenaries playing cards in a dim corner, surrounded by a pall of fairly rancid tobacco smoke, and some Pond-Life working their way through a pitcher of Mead.
It was Gorbog's night off so there was only he himself and Luciana - (Galena, local fence in conjunction with the Kat, S'krivva, who lived over by the gate. More importantly she was Niamh's sort-of girlfriend and almost the only person in Bravil that the Bosmer took any real notice of) - she helped out at the bar and waited tables from time-to-time. She lived in rooms atop Niamh's dwelling, just across from the Lodge, next to that Fletcher's shop.
Niamh he knew spent a lot of time in that shop; she was reputed to be able to put an arrow clean through an apple at a distance of two and one half furlongs. Had the claim been made about anyone else then Bogrum would not have believed it, however it was something that he really could imagine her doing. Quite a lot.

She walked round the side of the bar, her pale skin orange-hued in the flickering lamp light, dark eyes glittering, black, red-streaked hair tied in a high ponytail with her customary, incongruously jolly, red ribbon, revealing large and knifelike ears, pierced through with many rings.
The two mercenaries had ceased their card game and were ogling her with open abandon; well they might, thought Bogrum to himself. She was in her customary garb of an excessively - (to his way of thinking) - skimpy leather cuirass affair that appeared to consist mostly of straps, similarly designed hand and arm wrappings, black briefs, and some equally exotic white leather boots.

Not one single bit of it looked like it would protect her from anything stronger than a light breeze, but he had it on good authority that there were a number of discrete and powerful virtues set upon her armour that left her very well protected indeed and, furthermore, proved fairly efficacious at disabling would-be attackers - (there was certainly something odd with her, on more than one occasion when he had been forced to manhandle her he had felt a jolt, like a lightning strike he imagined, through his hands and arms and had been sore for days afterwards).

Regardless of all of that however, the upshot of her choice of apparel was that a considerable amount of white skin, tightly wrapping a slender, sinewy body was on view. Granted it was more often than not more than a little battered and bruised and in truth could have benefited from being cleaned more often, but there it was.
The two hearts tattooed on her lower back didn't really help either. She had a body that shrieked "Look at me!", and a demeanour that growled "... and if you do l will kill you."

Happily for Bogrum he was above all of that nonsense. Happily married for thirty years, and having seen all manner of examples of the fairer sex pass through the doors of the Lodge during his tenure as Landlord, he pretty much considered himself immune to the charms and wiles of the female of any species - (save for his good lady wife of course) - but even if only to himself he would have had to admit that there was definitely a certain "something" about the Bosmer; she was both, it seemed, attractive and terrifying in equal measure - or possibly "attractively terrifying", or, "terminally pretty".
Not that any man would likely get the chance mind you, by all accounts she exclusively preferred her mead served from the "Other Barrel" if you...
There was a cough from across the counter.

Caught off guard and pulled away from his reverie, Bogrum was at a momentary loss for words. Opposite him stood Niamh. Immediately he thought that something about her was a little "different".
"Good evenin' to ye, barkeep!" She said, her voice a harsh yet somehow richly musical brogue.
That was it! She was unarmed, but... Suddenly confused he looked at her intensely in the dim lantern light. something was happening to her face, her eyes were still deeply shadowed pools of palpable night, her nose still had a ring through it as did her lower lip, there was still something Alien about her look and yet...

Smiling.
She was smiling at him. He had never seen her smile before. Her teeth were very white and, he noted with a kind of resigned horror, Very Sharp Indeed; her lips were red and full and...
... Visions of the good lady Gro-Galash floated in front of him. He shook his big head as if to clear it, letting instinct take over.
"Niamh, good evening. Wha... what can I get you?"
She beamed mightily at him. Gods! Her mouth was a deathtrap for the unwary.
"Oi will have an ale, Bogrum." She said, her face still locked in a rictus grin. Bogrum was aware of Luciana, off to his left, watching her part-time paramour intently.
"Coming up." He replied. He had sort of figured out what was going on now. Someone (Luciana) had evidently been educating the wayward Wood Elf in the basics of conversation.
He grinned to himself, well it was a start he supposed, and she WAS trying and no one had died yet so...

He stood up with a foaming mug of ale, an encouraging smile on his lips. He turned around, the smile died.
One of the mercenaries had arrived at the counter, he was eyeing Niamh up with an eye both appraising and openly lecherous.
"You're very tall, for a Bosmer." He said, somewhat drunkenly. "Are you sure you're a bosmer?" He leant closer to her, peering at her through squinted eyes.
Bogrum noticed the two Khajiits heading for the door, quietly and slowly.

Niamh had turned to the mercenary, he was a big Redquard, and she had to crane her neck to look up at his face.
She was still smiling.
"And you're very Ugly even fer a human, so ye are." She said matter-of-factly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bogrum noticed Luciana put her head in her hands.

"Izzat so?" Growled the merc, tensing his shoulders, his big meaty hands balling into fists.
"Yes." Replied the Bosmer, and kneed him in the crackers.

The big man's eyes crossed and he went down like a sack of particularly weighty potatoes. Niamh watched him go, Bogrum grabbed his cudgel and the other mercenary stood up, pushing over the table as he did so.
"Gods," thought Luciana pulling out her blade, "it had all been going so well..."