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]

Here's another (very) little vignette about Luciana and Niamh, partly because I'm experimenting a little with different styles and partly because contextually I think it's worth adding.
I'm wanting to develop them further beyond the very obvious confines of the PC/NPC thing within the gameworld, relationship-wise and adventure-wise - (I have plans)...
[I'm hoping that this is not pushing too far at the envelope; if it is I apologise in advance, mods, do please let me know and I'll remove it - (don't worry, there's a bit of a kiss at the end, nothing more!!)
P.S. If anyone following our heroine's adventures thus far has not figured out her preferences, now would be a good time to brace yourselves...!!]
Anyway, on with the show...

Any relationship with Niamh was never going to be a simple affair, Luciana had figured that out pretty soon after making the Bosmer's aquaintance. The Wood Elf was clearly, if not unhinged, then not fighting with a full quiver of arrows, and was deeply if not worryingly odd in any number of ways.
Still there was something about her though that the Breton just could not let go of.
If only she could put her finger on what it was.

That she was ferociously attractive was an absolute, but even that beauty carried with it an ambiguous darkness - her eyes were a very dark chestnut, nestled in deep, black sockets. Her skin was pale and smooth like porcelain, yet up close she was smeared with a layer of grime and dirt; her hair - which at first sight was lush and thick, long and black with deep red streaks, tied in a high ponytail - on closer inspection was revealed to be greasy and as dirty as her skin.
She seemed to Luciana to be at once like some darkly splendid forest-thing who had stepped out of one of her mother's stories and into her life and yet up close and upon further inspection she looked, and smelt if it came to it, like the complete antithesis.

A woman of immense contradiction then, a woman whose physical opposition was reflected very much by the fey and random nature of her mind and spirit, a woman whom Luciana had come to realise was at once as cruel and selfish and uncaring as she was passionate and possessed of a vigorous and overwhelming spirit of life and love.
She was an enigma to be sure and Luciana, enamoured of her as she was, wanted to find the key that would unlock her mysteries. She wanted to find out what made her tick and most of all she knew, she just knew, that somewhere inside was a bright and shining kernel that was yet hidden under layers of pain and sadness; themselves wrapped in a thick blanket of seeming bravado and studied nonchalance which Niamh wielded like a shield, to cut off the world from her and her from it.
She fascinated Luciana, at least at first.

Had she done the right thing?
Sometimes now she wondered, wondered whether she would not have been happier just walking away and never knowing what might have been; what actually was, was not what she had thought it would be.
But therein lay the problem, she had not thought about the consequences of what she had done until later, too late; but equally she could not have not done what she did if her very life had depended upon it.

She had let Niamh into her bed on a sudden impulse, though her mind had counselled against it her heart and her body had yearned to be a part of the lifeforce that streamed out of the Bosmer.
One night, some six months ago she had got her wish, and more besides.
++++
Niamh had been back in Bravil for about a week or so whilst Luciana had been out to Leyawiin on an errand for S'krivva.
She had returned that morning to find a note pinned to the door of her dwelling, on the floor above Niamh's. Unpinning it she had gone inside her house and lighting a candle - it had been getting on for six of the evening and the light was failing - she had held it up and read it, squinting as she did so. It was from Niamh, in her spidery hand and as usual terribly spelt and appalling written:
"Haye Loocheeyanna weare ar yoo meate mai atte th sooter"
She had grinned to herself, suddenly happy, even though she was tired from her journey; the country between the southern city of Leyawiin and Bravil was a little awkward in places and on more than one occasion she had been forced to ride hard to escape the unwelcome attention of bandits.

It was ten minutes later when she arrived at the Lonely Suitor Lodge, just along from their dwellings. It was on the whole a quiet inn, not generally known for trouble even given it's location in Bravil which was not the most salubrious of settlements, if one were honest.
She opened the door to the smokey, dimly lit interior and stepped inside.
The interior of the tavern was warm and muggy, especially after the dry, relatively chilly air outside. Luciana looked around and smiled when she located the Wood Elf.
"But of course..." She thought to herself and set off to the darkest corner of the common room, out of the firelight. There really wasn't any other part of the place that the Bosmer would be. Even in bright sunlight shadows clung to her.

"Took yer toime." Grinned Niamh when the other sat down. "Got ye a drink." She gestured to an ale, alongside a plate of meats, cheeses and a couple of slices of coarse, nutty bread. Simple fair but filling.
"Thank you." Said Luciana, and set about the food with gusto.
"S'nuthin.'" Shrugged the Bosmer, taking a swig of her own drink. "Just figgered you'd be starved after yer journey an' all." The Elf's voice, although outwardly rather harsh had an underlying lilt to it, an almost musical, rich brogue that made Luciana tingle when she heard it.
She stuffed a heroic chunk of bread and cheese into her mouth and took a swig of her drink, she grinned at Niamh, who shook her head and smiled.

It was funny, thought Luciana, for all of the other's studied detachment, Niamh cleared liked her; and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that it was as if she had been befriended by some wild creature who could turn on her at any moment, whose favour she was in only for as long as the wind blew in the right direction.
She finished eating, pushed the only half-emptied plate away, took a swig of ale to wash out her mouth.
"Best make the most of it then..." She thought to herself.

"I missed you, you know." She said.
Niamh looked round at her, her eyes deep pools of black, dotted with faint points of light much as a fathomless lake, when seen at night, might reflect a twisted image of the moon or stars.
"Did ye?" She asked, sitting forward, leaning on the table. "Did ye really?"
Luciana's heart suddenly began to pound in her chest, it felt as if someone were hitting her on the breastbone with a hammer. She took a deep breath.
"Yes."
Leaning over the table, she slid her hand around the back of Niamh's head and pulled the other woman's face to hers, their lips met and Luciana kissed her, hard, pressing the Bosmer's mouth firmly against her own even until she felt the other's unfeasibly sharp canines draw blood from her lip and felt the metal ring that pierced Niamh's lower lip grate against her teeth.
Niamh's breath was hot and sour with ale, Luciana's tongue thrust inside her mouth and Niamh, whose initial surprise at the other's sudden and impulsive behaviour was rapidly disappearing, responded in kind.
The two women kissed each other hard, breath snorting from their nostrils, tongues entwining, saliva mingling with blood from Luciana's cut lip - the iron-sharp taste swapping back and forth between them.

It was never, from there, going to end any other way.