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]

(warning, contains violence and some suggestive/strong language, so it's pretty much a standard Niamh tale then!)

-BOUNTY HUNTERS-

The arrow thumped against her as she ran, striking her armour slap between her shoulder blades. It bounced harmlessly off of the suit, but the impact - (it MUST have been made of stone!) - shoved her off balance as it's momentum combined with hers.
Tiny dwemer constructs within the suit whined and hummed as the armour strove to keep her upright, but to no avail and she fell forwards, arms windmilling and legs slipping out from under her.
Though the dwemer-suit cushioned much of the impact, she still hit the hard soil beneath the scrubby forest grass with a bone-jarring thump. Momentarily the air was knocked out of her and, winded and gasping for breath, she tumbled over and over down the slope, her lithe body bouncing off of fallen branches and hidden stones and rocks.
Instinctively she curled herself into a ball, hands over the back of her head as she rolled and jolted down the hill, the suit's arcane systems whirring frantically as it tried to fight against gravity and right her.

She came to rest in a bramble bush that, unfortunately, concealed within it's thorny depths a rocky outcrop. Niamh impacted this back-first with a shuddering thump, crying out in pain as her legs were flung out behind her and her back bent painfully around the boulder.
She fell onto her front and lay there for a moment; long-fingered, gloved hands digging into the mulchy soil beneath the bush, head to one side, mouth open as she huffed and whiffled, gasping for breath.
eventually after what seemed an age - (though in truth it was mere seconds) - she righted herself, got up onto her knees. wiping soil and leaves from her face. Even though the suit had protected her from the worst of the impact, still she could feel her vertebrae protesting, and knew she would be in trouble later, again.
She was only thirty summers, a mere babe in arms by the standard of her species, and yet her body was racked with aches and pains, old wounds and bitter scars...

Shaking her head to clear it, she performed a quick check of her equipment. "Curse it all." She muttered; she'd lost her bow "Selene" somewhere up the hill, presumably round about the time the quiver had dislodged itself from the clips that had hitherto held it fairly securely to the back of the suit.
The short sword "Jess" had been flung off also, scabbard and all.
"Dibella's puss!" She snarled.
Casting around her, she found a fist-sized rock and grabbing it, got to her feet in a crouch, and headed off to her right, into the shadows of the trees.
----
"She went this way!" Came the harsh voice some two or three minutes later, from further up the hill. "I got 'er a fine shot in the back but the little minx has got some gods-damned decent armour on!"
Niamh could not hear the the answering voice, only the nearer one, but the conversation, one-sided as it was, was easy enough to pick up.
"Nah, she went a*se over t*t down this hill into the bushes, If we move fast we'll 'ave 'er and then we'll 'ave ourselves some gold..."
There was the sound of a large body moving none-too-quietly through the undergrowth, and from away to her left, in the sun-dappled shadows of the trees, a voice - the same voice - continued, quieter this time; "An' a bit of fun for me, too..."

The Bosmer sneered, her dark eyes gleaming in their shadowed sockets. "Ye'll be a lucky man indeed if'n ye think ye can hae yer way wi' me..."
Hunkering down into the shadows at the base of the tree, she remained perfectly still, watching the darkness opposite her, barely breathing; silent.
She gripped the rock in her right hand; behind and slightly above her a bird sang, small insects crawled and buzzed amongst the flowers around her.

The figure moved out of the shadows of the trees in front of her, a hulking male, clad in some kind of plate metal on his top-half, a steel sword in one hand and a quiver and bow at his back. He turned his head this way and that, brushing long greasy hair from his eyes as he searched for her.
Further up the slope she could hear now the voice of his partner.
"Can you see her, Olav?" The voice was female, but harsh and heavily-accented.
"No!" Olav turned his head to shout back up. "seems our little cat wants to play." There was an ugly sneer in his voice. He turned back to the task in hand, tightening his grip on his sword, moving ever closer to her hiding place.
"I know some games, little elf." He whispered, then; "here pussy pussy, here kitty. Let Olav and his sword make friends..."

She considered hefting the rock at him there and then but, good shot as she was, she couldn't guarantee a kill, no, patience was key here...
She waited.
----
He was literally in touching-distance.
She came out of the shadows at the base of tree just as he turned from her, facing back upslope to say something to his companion.
Raising the rock in a gloved hand she brought it down hard and fast on the back of Olav's head, the suit's mechanisms providing her with additional strength and power.
There was a sharp crack as rock met skull, Olav made a wretching noise in his throat and bright blood squirted in a spray from his mouth.
He went down bonelessly, hitting the ground like sack of carrots. She winced at the sudden stench as his bowels evacuated.
He rolled onto his back as he fell, finishing up against the very outcropping under the brambles that had saved Niamh only a few minutes earlier.
Still crouching, she scuttled over to him, looked at him for a moment.

He gazed at her unblinking with one eye, the other was pointing off to the right, glassy and unseeing. A thin stream of bloody drool bubbled from his full lips, flowing haltingly over the thick stubble that covered his face.
He tried to lift a hand towards her, but it was evident that he had no longer any control over his limbs and instead the fingers simply twitched convulsively, nails scraping against the metal of his chestpiece.
"Gah, urgo... igeh!" He said, his voice thick.
His left leg began to spasm, the heel of his boot thudding against the undergrowth.

Niamh lifted the rock again and brought it down, hard, on his forehead.
There was a splintering sound, he went still; something white and goopy began to drip out of his ears.

Dropping the rock, Niamh grabbed one of the arrows from the fallen bounty hunter's quiver and looked back up the slope.
"An' now we'll hae ourselves a reckonin'." She breathed, and clutching the arrow firmly by the shaft, she slid back into the shadows of the trees and headed back up the hill...

-END-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Aug 2 2013, 05:03 PM