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]

Note: this vignette and the one above are not chronologically contiguous...

"How about a horse?" Asked Luciana the next morning.
She paused in the act of frying potatoes and crabmeat for breakfast and looked back over her shoulder at the room's other occupant.
"Oi don't like 'orses." Said Niamh grumpily. Despite sitting, or rather lounging, on a bench seat beneath a flickering lantern she still contrived to be mostly in shadow. What could be seen of her skin reflected the sooty, dancing light pallidly. Her dark eyes glittered; sunlight caught in deep woodland pools.
Luciana loved those eyes.

Their owner however was currently being her usual difficult self with all the mystery of a small child. Luciana made a face and turned back to the breakfast pan.
For a moment there was silence but for the pop and crackle of cooking food and hot butter. Behind her she heard the sound of the Wood Elf pouring herself another ale.
"But," she said over her shoulder, "I've heard tell it's dangerous now between here and the city."
Niamh made a disparaging noise. "Oi've never had much trouble."
"Maybe not." Replied Luciana. "But they say there are more Daedra about now, and then these gates..." she took the pan off of the stove and padded barefoot over to the table.

"They say a lot of things." Said Niamh, picking a small loaf of coarse bread up from the table and tearing off a chunk with her long fingers. "So they do." She cocked her head to one side, looking at Luciana and shrugging her shoulders. "And it's only the one gate anyway so it is."
Biting off a chunk of the bread she chewed it thoughtfully for a moment, marshalling her words, all the while gesturing at the other woman with the remaining piece. Luciana ladled out their meal into wooden bowls, accompanied by the sounds of Niamh chewing and as a counterpoint, the tolling of the bells of the Chapel of Mara across the waterway.

"Anyway, that whatever-his-name-is is going to fix it for us. Apparently." The Bosmer said eventually with rather facetious emphasis upon the last word. She dropped the remains of the bread into the bowl with the fried food and grinned wolfishly at Luciana revealing white teeth and disconcertingly long, pointed canines.
Luciana took a swallow of mead, picked up a spoon, and after looking at it dubiously, rubbed it against the sleeve of her tunic.

"But nobody's seen him for months," she pointed out, "Not since he disappeared into it, Gods, he could be dead for anyone knows."
Niamh, who had been packing food into her face in the manner of a starving refugee stopped mid-shovel and stared intently at the Breton seated opposite her. "Why?" She asked. "What d'you care anyway?"
"Um..." Replied Luciana, suddenly aware of the earth starting to shift beneath her. "Well, I mean that that gate destroyed Kvatch, and, I don't see anyone else stepping in to help if he's gone and got himself killed and there are more of them." This last was said rather pointedly. She didn't want Niamh to go anywhere near the gate if she were honest, but sometimes - more often than not lately, it seemed - her attitude got her hackles up.
Niamh ignored the remark anyway.
"It's over aways yet." She gestured in a vaguely westwards direction. "Besides, any gate'll have to come through me first, to get to you so it will." She winked at Luciana.

Oh that's rich, thought Luciana. She did not, in her heart of hearts, believe for one second that her erstwhile lover would be anywhere near her if another gate were to open and become a threat to her, to either of them - regardless of the Elf's admittedly conveniently timed assurances that she herself was a changed woman who would do right by the other.
Luciana snorted and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Is that what you told Jo, up in the city?"

Niamh never even batted an eyelid. "No," she said through a mouthful of potato, "we've not really spoken of it."

Well, at least she was honest; although alternatively she might just not care enough to lie. On balance Luciana preferred to believe the former was the case, or at least to hope so.
She put her spoon down in her half-empty bowl, blinked a couple of times and swallowed. "You're leaving soon, then?"
Opposite her, Niamh sat back from the table, leaning against the rough wooden planking that made up the wall of the dwelling. Luciana had made an effort to cover the walls of her home with furs to insulate it; money being tight though, she had not been able to finish the job and so bare wood was still very much the way of it. Bare wood and drafts.

The Wood Elf belched loudly.
"Good." She said, indicating with her eyes the now empty bowl in front of her. The other smiled, perhaps a little sadly, at her as she picked at her teeth with a long fingernail; chipped black nailpaint still clinging to it.
"And yes, Oi do intend to go soon. The city and up to Cheydinhal..."
She didn't bother finishing the sentence, Luciana knew very well what Niamh did, occasionally, for a living; it remained unspoken between them though, the Bosmer's one real concession to the other's more delicate sensibilities.

That Luciana was upset there was no doubt. Despite, or rather in spite, of her outwardly flirtatious and lively demeanour she was at heart a sensitive soul and had increasingly fallen for Niamh of whom she felt, for all of her overt selfishness and seemingly uncaring nature; not to mention her obvious lack of fidelity, had something about her worth saving and worth fighting for. It had never been just a physical thing, for her at least; although she had nothing to complain about in that department.
Mentally, spiritually, and emotionally though she increasingly felt as if she were cast adrift in a stormy sea, strapped to the Elf and doomed to be tossed with her wherever the whims of the latter's ephemeral, fey nature may take them. It was a journey that once she would have relished, but one that now, increasingly, she had come to approach with a dreadful trepidation.
All this she kept to herself though. She doubted it would have made much difference to Niamh, if she were to know her true feelings; whether she would care.

But still, for all that, she missed her when she was away, worried for her safety; looked out for her return. She hated her indifference and her blatant sleeping around.
She loved her and she wished her dead but mostly, mostly she was confused and a little lost truth be told - She'd rather be with Niamh than not, and some Niamh was at least better than none at all.
...

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: May 2 2013, 12:08 AM