Trouble never comes alone Options

[jack cloudy]

Yes, so I just couldn't resist and had to get this off my chest. We'll see how long it lasts. Same deal as with redemption, I'll be using this post as a character list and the first part will be in the next one. For now the list is simple.

A question. Should I add a separate entry for Spar at the very bottom that is basically the extra-spoilers edition?

Spar: A female Imperial and the main character of this story. Is guided by 'Them'.
(Portrait)

Silent Fist: A Companion Spar hires to escort her into Bleak Falls Barrow. He doesn't speak, wear shirts or use weapons. Click here for portrait

Faendal: A wood elf who lives in a small village known as Riverwood. He works as a hunter and lumberjack.

Lucan Valerius: The shopkeeper of Riverwood.

Jarl Balgruuf: The Jarl of Whiterun, a city located in the center of Skyrim between the fronts of the Imperial and Stormcloak factions.

Hrongar: Jarl Balgruuf's brother. Looks like he walked off the set of a Conan-film.

Irileth: A Dunmer who serves as Jarl Balgruuf's bodyguard.

Proventus Avenicci: Jarl Balgruuf's steward.


Vilkas: One of the Companions, a mercenary group in Whiterun
Vignar Grey-Mane: Formerly of the Companions, now retired.

Ulfric Stormcloak: The rebel leader in Skyrim, once on of the Emperor's generals.

Arkarik: Someone Spar was supposed to meet in Cyrodiil.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Aug 1 2013, 06:34 PM

[jack cloudy]

Glad everyone liked Hrongar. And he does look like a bandit. I mean, if I walk into Whiterun wearing furs, the guards think I'm a brigand. It's kind of weird how the Jarl's brother and right hand man is the least dressed warrior in the city.

But then again, I'm not complaining. Look at dem well-toned muscles.


Today we rejoin our not-quite-ready-to-die Spar as she get's to meet the town eccentric. Also, this turned out to be longer than I'd planned.



Chapter 1.5


We left the hall, the Jarl up front and me three steps behind. I counted the doors and the people we passed but most of my attention was on what Irileth had said. Be of use in a different way? With her background, different probably meant unpleasant and highly dangerous. Like solo bandit hunting, sniffing around ancient and forgotten places or solving a farmer's goblin problem. The kind of stuff the Fighter's Guild did, or big-name adventurers. If I'd been drafted into the local guard organization, I'd count myself lucky.


The place the Jarl wanted was at the back of the keep. Far at the back in a little tower and out of the way of the regular going ons. It also stank like an alchemy lab, which explained why it was tucked away in a corner like this.
"Here it is." The Jarl said, knocked and opened the door with his key.
"Farengar!" The man called out as he stepped into the room. "Halt for a moment and listen to me."




I stepped in behind him and took in the room in a single quick look. Pots were bubbling away on one end next to a cornertable filled with arcane scriptures while books and a large map of Skyrim were sprawled across the center table that filled most of the room. There were two doors in the back, both ajar. Behind one I saw the corner of a bed and behind the other a rack of books of all shapes and colours. Lighting was poor, most of it coming from a small window up in the ceiling.


I stayed by the door while Balgruuf walked up to the two robed persons that stood bent over the center table.
"Farengar! Listen!" He said again. Now one of the figures looked up and I saw the face behind the hood. He had the haggard face of a man who never slept and kept going on sheer willpower and an unhealthy amount of pick-me-ups. It made him look older than he probably was, and the mosslike growth on his cheeks didn't help.
"This is Farengar Secret-Fire, my court wizard. Farengar, this is Spar. I believe she may help you with the dragon."


He didn't look like a court wizard to me. If this smelly, unwashed, sleep-deprived fellow was allowed to stand behind the throne and whisper advice in the Jarl's ear, it would just shame everyone present. I supposed he aimed more at the 'wizard' part of the title rather than the court one. His words certainly were too brutal to be home at court. Even Hrongar had more tact.
"Another brute of yours? We've been over this before. I need someone with brains. Smarts and common sense. This one looks as dull as the rest of the mighty warriors in your hall. You should feed them less goat-meat. Besides, I just got an assistant last week. I don't need a second, stupider one." The other robed man or woman snickered, but I was not amused. Neither was Jarl Balgruuf, even if he took it in good grace.


"Don't mind Farengar. His tongue is as sharp as his wit, but he means well. She has been in Bleak Falls before. And come out in one piece." I was convinced now that I did not get drafted into the guards corps. I wondered if I should tell them that I turned around before we reached the dangerous parts of the Barrow, or that I'd let Faendal do the heavy lifting. For the moment however I chose to remain silent. I first wanted to know where exactly I was going to be sent and what kind of assistance I could expect. The Jarl stepped out the door again and excused himself.
"I have duties to attend to. I'll leave you three to it. And open the window before someone chokes to death."


"Come along into my laboratory then. And keep quiet." Farengar said and dropped his head back to the table. I noticed that neither of the two had made a move to the window and the air was stifling. In fact, they didn't seem to give me much more than the absolute minimum of attention. Since that was the case I decided to just open the little glass pane before someone did choke on whatever they were boiling.
"I really should have become a Nord instead of an Imperial. Maybe they've got better lungs." I wondered to myself. But were they both Nords? Farengar was one, dirtier than most, but a full-blooded Nord nonetheless. But the other hadn't given me a chance to see what was beneath the hood.


While the wizards did whatever it was they did and conversed in odd terms, I leaned against the wall closest to the window and dodged the errant wisps of smoke that tried to escape the room. I supposed they were dropping names of historians and their theories and tried to match them to whatever information they'd gathered on the new dragon themselves. But booklearning had never been something I'd bothered with so it was a guess at best. And was it actually a dragon that had almost blazed me twice? The Jarl had used the word and it fit the creature. But dragons had been all extinct since forever. Well, all except one it seemed. I wasn't going to deny what I'd seen with my own eyes.
"You believe there is a dragon." I said.
"It flies and makes things extra-crispy. What else could it be?" Aha, the second wizard's voice was unmistakably that of a woman, or a neutered lad.
"A self-immolating bat?" Saw that once, and never managed to forget it. I probably shouldn't have made the joke in any case as the half-bearded man took it for an invitation to lecture.


"No no. Witness accounts are diverse and conflicting, but the physiological trend is more reptilian, with a secondary trend suggesting a certain familiarity with unfeathered birds like the Vvardenfellian Cliffracer. I can't verify that of course since the Cliffracer is as extinct as the dragons are, or were. However, I am certain that," I ignored him from that point on. He was the type who could talk for hours on whatever subject he fancied even if he was alone in an empty room. But what we called it and where it could be put on a diagram didn't matter. All I needed to know was what they planned on doing about it and where my place in that plan was.
"I don't care. What do you need me to do?"


Preciously little, it turned out. Apparently, the court wizard had so little faith in anyone else that he'd resigned himself to doing everything with just him and the woman. Farengar suggested I could sweep the floor or deliver them their belated lunch. It might have been demeaning, but I actually liked the idea of being their maid. Safe, dull and the first to get the news. But his 'assistant' had to ruin it.


"Actually, I could use a steward to take my notes and carry my luggage. My father might be the kind of guy who beats up vampires and liches by himself, but I'm a more delicate flower." As if that wasn't bad enough, she moved a hand, perhaps to slip a lock of hair away from before her eyes. The skin of that hand had the dirty golden hue that could belong to only one race. Altmer. An Altmeri sorcerer who had arrived just last week to help a lousy court wizard with devising plans to kill a dragon that had just flown out of myth a few weeks earlier.


Was the conspiracy I smelled really there, or just me seeing connections where there weren't any?



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Farengar relented and began to explain what the Altmer had planned to do. Unsurprisingly, it had to do with Bleak Falls. I knew that the Jarl had mentioned it for a reason. It was probably one of the reasons why his bodyguard had recommended me for this. The Barrow was not the kind of place I wanted to visit again.
"No." I said but the wizard didn't hear me so I repeated myself.
"I said no." This time he stopped talking.


"You said you'd been there." Farengar objected.
"Your Jarl did. It is a tomb. I have no kin there and don't intend to join its inhabitants." The elf could go alone if she wanted. Farengar had so far implied that all he wanted from the Barrow was some obscure tidbit of information that may or may not have anything to do with the dragon issue. And until I had made up my mind regarding his assistant's trustworthiness, I wasn't going to let her see my back.
"So the Jarl finally answers my request and gets me one with brains. But he had to give me the one who had too much. I should have figured as much. Can't you see the importance?" The Nord moaned while shaking his head. One of the pots boiled over as well, so the Altmer went over to lower the fire and stir. I went to the other side of the center table.


"It's a tomb." I repeated, "It has been looted a dozen times whenever there is a war, a famine or bad economy. All that is left are old bones and older stones. Whatever you need, it is not there. anymore." It was only half a lie. I'd seen quite a few objects that could be sold to a pawnshop or melted and repurposed at a smithy, but all the really valuable items were indeed gone.
"What I need is still there." Farengar insisted.
"If it's valuable, it won't."
"It's valuable to a scholar, not to some gold-grubbing bandit. It's a small cube carved from stone, roughly the size of my fist and lighter than it looks. With the dragon's writing on it."


Dragon's could write? That was an odd choice of words. But I had to admit that if it was just some brick with markings on it, the odds of it lying under a pile of dust in some corner rose considerably. Though I did have to ask how he could be so specific in its description to mention the size and mass.
"It is absolutely vital to my research and what is vital to my research is vital to Skyrim."
"Oh, stop waxing around and just say it already." The Altmer interrupted us from the corner. "There's more than one dragon flitting around and eating the goats. Probably."





Helgen had not been the only city to be attacked? If I'd remained in Riverwood, I'd probably never learned of this. But the woman explained that I was wrong.
"No, Helgen's the only one as far as we know. We sent investigators, but the cities aren't exactly on the most talkative of terms right now. Anyway, did you see the big empty spot over the Jarl's throne?"


I had noticed the discoloured area on the wall but thought little of it. I'd presumed it had held a rug or perhaps a mammoth's skull, some show of the Jarl's valour or honour. Well, I came close with the mammoth.
"The first Jarl of Dragonsreach mounted the skull of the dragon he'd slain there." The Altmer said which prompted another unneeded explanation from Farengar.
"Olaf One-Eye. He purportedly came upon the dragon Numinex during," Before he could launch into another hour-long lecture, I cut him off.
"And the point is?"


"It came back alive. It grew flesh even. Then, it died again. Dragon or not, they can't live as just a head. Few things can come to think of it."

Now it wasn't unusual for dead beings to return to life, or unlife more specifically. There was the accidental in the form of ghosts and the vengeful wraiths. There was the deliberate in the form of skeletons, zombies and bonewalkers which were often used to guard crypts or necromantic workshops. And there was the extremely deliberate in the form of liches and vampires. But none of those grew flesh they didn't already have. That was something new. I could also see how it was utterly terrifying. A dragon on its own was bad news enough, but if they could actually reverse their injuries long after death, even if just temporarily, they'd just made number one on the list of potentially civilization-destroying entities. It was a short list, and I'd rather it had stayed short.




While I thought about the problem, Farengar had been expositing about Numinex and more interestingly, about dragons in general. He claimed that dragons were worshipped in the past and not only that, but that the dragons kept human slaves. Now keeping slaves was impossible without intelligence and communication. If the dragons could be communicated with, then they could be manipulated. That changed everything.
"What do you have to offer? I could consider seeking your 'cube' but I need persuasion." I said to the woman.
"As I said earlier, you'll be my steward. Tombhunting is in my blood. I'll handle the dangers"
"No." I wasn't going to let an Altmer into that Barrow and unlock the secret behind commanding a self-replenishing army of citybusters. Not in this era.
"Hey, I know what you're thinking." She protested, "But I can take care of myself. I won't hold you back or anything."
"I don't work with Altmer."




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It was a dangerous thing I'd said. Altmer were known for three things. Pride, a short temper that came with that pride and a habit of murdering those who triggered that temper. But I couldn't lose. She could do nothing, and I would win. Or she could kill me, but then the Jarl wouldn't let her stay and help with Farengar's project. She would be executed or exiled and in both cases it would severely delay her plans. She did nothing. Nothing except snarl and rage with words.
"Oh, you're one of those. Fine, tell us what you need instead then, you racist two-coin woman from I don't know where."


"First, you stay here." I began. If I was going to do this expedition myself, I needed to make all the preparations before I stepped out of the gates. "Second, I require equipment. You give me the coin, I'll buy the necessities. Thirdly, information. I want to know its layout, defences, wards, type and number of undead. I don't care whether it comes from hearsay, legend, scholarly treatise or anything else. Fourthly, I require manpower. If there is anyone who is smart enough not to step into a trap, loyal enough not to stab me in the back and brave enough not to run away, I want him."


"And what guarantee do you have that you won't run out on us the moment we give you the money? Wouldn't be the first time that happened." It was almost humorous how the Altmer complained how she didn't trust me while I only made things so hard because I didn't trust her.
"If I run, I die. Most likely. And I'm not going to die yet. Fifth." I said and she protested immediately.
"There's a fifth? You want me to do your laundry while we're at it?!"

"Those were needs for your smash-and-grab. This is my price. I need the old magic. Passwall, aetheric anchor, levitation, remote manipulation. Farengar will teach me." I said which drew even more protest from the mer.
"Oh no, don't even think it! The Septim dynasty outlawed those." But at whose demands? It was well known to me that the Altmeri Psiijic order, or mer who claimed to speak for them, had pushed for the control and reduction of spell knowledge in the hands of us 'lesser' races. From the times of myth, they had orated for laws, enraged mobs of the distrusting and superstitious. And sometimes, they just sent a 'hero' to take out a rogue and malevolent sorcerer who came too close to some secret they wanted to monopolize.
"There hasn't been a Septim in nearly two hundred years. Their laws no longer apply." I shot back at her. But I wasn't trying to convince her. All I needed to do was convince the court wizard, which wasn't hard. Farengar was the stereotypical mad mage. Give him an interesting problem, and he would work on it till he dropped.


"I don't have them in a tome of course. Reconstruction would be needed instead. I would have to work back from effect to cause. That is by no means an easy feat. Far beyond the capabilities of the average wizard." He said and I knew I'd won again.
"Will you do it? Reconstruct the spells and teach me? Or are you an average wizard?" I asked him. Questioning his skill was the final touch I needed.
"Jarl Balgruuf has an eye for talent. And he chose me to be his court magician. Once my dragon investigation is completed, I will start working on your spells. There are many practical applications you know. Communication, transportation, architectural work, medical treatment," Farengar answered. It wasn't an interesting problem anymore, but a matter of pride.


"Good. Then we have a deal. I will get started immediately." I said and stepped out of the door.




"Son of a Guar. Just don't get yourself killed. My skin may be shiny but it isn't actually made of gold."







OOC: Farengar is so fun to make fun of.