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#‘’ turned into a monster ‘’ // skyrim

dragonofthemountain · 1 year

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fun fact: the first time I played Skyrim, I went into it less than blind. My only other experience with video games had been Mario Kart with an elementary school friend, Skylanders, and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 on my dad’s old computer. Of course, I was vaguely aware that the game had dragons in it and the memes about it had been around for as long as I had been on the internet. This was total and complete summary of my awareness about the game.

My roommate however, who had lent me her copy of the game to make a new save file on, loved it dearly and was very eager to watch me play for the first time.

Some several hours in and I finally began the Dark Brotherhood quests. We all know how it goes: contact Aventus, kill some old hag, receive a very spooky letter. Strange letter arrives and my interest is now thoroughly piqued. My roommate is thrilled. She loves the Dark Brotherhood questline and is very eager to see my reactions to it. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure what to do with the letter so I put it into my inventory and continue about my day, relatively assured that whatever happens next in the quest will happen naturally.

Time goes by and I still confused about the nature of the letter. Nothing has happened since and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve encountered one of the many infamous bugs of this game. Unbeknownst to me, my poor roommate has begun to realize that I may be dumber than i look and there is a very little chance of me actually getting into a bed at literally any point in this playthrough.

After several instances of me choosing to stand outside a shop and wait for 12 hours instead of finding a bed and sleeping in it like a normal person, my poor roommate finally caves and just tells me to go lie down already please

I did like the Dark Brotherhood quest and feel very bad for my roommate and for me that it took so long to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do

#me: hey kendall what was the deal with that mysterious letter i got a while ago?#kendall: *sweating nervously* uh.. did you know that if you sleep in a bed you own you get a well rested bonus?#me: ...#is that what i was i supposed to do?!?!#i also killed cicero on my first playthrouhg much to her dismay because i found his voice really annoying #also ended up permanetly breaking a quest because one of the quest markers to protect an NPC was labeled optional and he jumped in front of #my blade as i stabbed the boss for the last time and died #turned out protecting him WASNT optional as the next thing to do was talk to him to collect the reward #very proud to say however that despite my mistakes i have never once killed Paarthurnax and anyone who listens to delphine is a monster #skyrim #dark brotherhood

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monsterfuckerconfessions · 3 months

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Just woke up from a dream where I was the monster being fucked. In a skyrim-esque setting I'm like one of the lizard-folk, with scales and horns and a big long tail, and I'm infiltrating a castle by trying to disguise myself as one of the guards. I manage to get myself into the messhall before my disguise starts slipping and they realize I'm not a guard nor a human. Soon I'm trying to fight my way out, but there's too many guards and eventually they have me pinned. They start fucking me, first by holding me down with many hands and roughly fucking my own tail into my asshole while they take turns at my cloaca. I have a cock that can emerge but they put their own cocks into my hole before it can, trapping it inside and making me writhe in pleasure-pain as they fuck against it. They love the feeling of my cock writhing against theirs inside my own hole so they hogtie me up, tying my tail around my neck and mouth to gag me, and putting me on display upon one of the tables for easy access. Whenever someone isn't fucking into my cock-hole they shove a bottle into me to keep my cock trapped inside, building all the pain into pleasure as it keeps me from coming, my cock becoming thicker and more sensitive and making me tighter, much to their amusement. Taking turns fucking both of my holes, sometimes 2 or even three at once if they can manage it, pouring beer around my tail into my mouth to intoxicated me, all the guards get to have their fun as they mock me for how soaking wet I've become, trapped on the edge of coming. They leave me there, stuffed full and in never-ending mindless pleasure-pain, a free-use toy for them to enjoy until they finally tell their masters they found me.

#monsterfucker confessions

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memorycycle · 3 months

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ive never tried a monster energy in my life so i feel like if i sipped one now there would be like a 3 second delay beforw i let out a skyrim grunt and my body does a ragdoll half backflip onto the floor while everything around me turns grey

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biscuitbox23 · 1 month

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The Stag and the Warbler

Pairing: Jaskier/Dandelion x Witcher!Reader.

Summary: The bard has written a song about you. And it has given you a lot to think about.

Author's note: It's a late night thought I've had for a while. Jaskier has always been my favorite character in both the Witcher games, books and the tv show. I wanted to give him a bit of honor by writing this :) —also a little Skyrim reference cuz im not creative in song writing.

Warning: platonic love, fluff, kind of a bittersweet ending.

As Jaskier strummed the strings of his lute, he hummed the tune of a popular ballad. "Our hero, our hero, claims a warrior's heart…" he sang but then paused mid-verse, his forehead creasing in concentration. "I tell you, I tell you, the Witcher comes- no, that does not sound so good," he muttered.

You couldn't help but chuckle at him. You busied yourself with grooming your loyal steed, Melorax. The horse stood still, contentedly munching on bits of hay. While you brushed off dust and dirt from his coat, you could see the tiny frown written on Jaskier's face as he tried to come up with a better verse for his song.

Curious, you asked him, "Who is this hero exactly?"

Jaskier looked up, glad for the distraction. "Ah, well," he said, his fingers stilling on the lute. "It's just a tale, my friend. A story of a brave warrior who fights for justice and honor."

You nodded, understanding the stories that Jaskier shared with you during your travels as a Witcher. Tales like these were always inspiring and entertaining. Jaskier had been your companion for quite a while now, and you had grown fond of his musical talents and witty banter. He would often compare your kinder nature to his friend Geralt, who hailed from a different Witcher school whom you had heard of but never met. After grooming Melorax, you approached the front of the horse and kissed his soft muzzle. The horse whinnied softly, and you smiled at him, feeling content.

"You know I just hunt monsters for coin," you recall, sitting near him as you started the small bonfire.

"Well, yes. But, Y/n of Verden makes a good song subject. Don't you think?" Jaskier smiled widely at you as you put your hands near the fire for warmth. His fingers began strumming on his lute, calmly humming with the tune of his renowned instrument.

You began to listen closely. "With a silver sword gleaming and signs so fierce and cold…" Jaskier sang, "Believe, believe, the Stag of Verden has told."

"Stag?" You asked sheepishly, looking over at him with an expression of confusion.

"Umm… do you prefer to be called deer?" Jaskier asked sheepishly.

"Just confused with the Stag part…" you replied.

"Well, you remind me of a stag."

"How so?" You asked.

"Well, you're strong, very resilient, and almost similar to that of a protector of the realm," Jaskier beamed with poetic pride.

Upon hearing those words, a sense of pride and appreciation washed over you. It was rare for a Witcher to receive such positive recognition, as they are empty vessels of beings whose sole purpose was to slaughter monsters and collect payment. Being regarded as a hero was a new and unexpected experience for you. However, it was evident that most people still saw you as an exterminator who only existed to rid the world of dangerous pests rather than a true hero. All you let out was a slight chuckle.

Jaskier turned his head towards you, and his eyes met yours. He noticed the corners of your mouth curling up, and your eyes sparkled. Curious, he leaned slightly to his right and tilted his head, trying to catch a glimpse of what had caused this reaction in you. "What's so funny, Y/n?" he asked, his voice full of genuine interest and amusement.

"Oh, nothing," you jested. With a look of concern on the bard's face, he turned his gaze back towards his musical instrument, the loot. He asked in a questioning tone, "Is there something wrong with my song? Don't you like it?"

"I assure you that I like it," you said to the worried songwriter before returning to warm your hands by the fire. "Please continue."

Jaskier's face lit up with joy as he responded, "As you wish." He meticulously plucked the strings of his lute, producing a melody that seemed to flow effortlessly from his fingers. His body swayed with the rhythm, and it was clear from his performance that he was a true virtuoso of his craft.

"In the heart of the woodlands, where shadows dance and play Beware, beware, the Stag is on her way For monsters she'll conquer, with every foe she'll slay

You'll know, you'll know, the Stag brings light to the gray."

You were captivated as the bard plucked at the strings of his lute, his voice soft and sweet as honey. The music wrapped around you like a warm embrace, easing the tension in your body and calming your mind. The bard's songs were beautiful masterpieces of melody and meaning. What impressed you the most was how his music seemed to capture the essence of the world around you, bringing to life the sights and sounds of your travels in a way that words alone never could. Being a Witcher often meant living a life of solitude and danger. It made you feel isolated and alone. But having the bard by your side changed everything. His easy conversation and quick wit were a constant source of comfort and amusement, and you eagerly looked forward to every new adventure with him by your side.

By the end, you knew you could never repay the bard for all he had given you, but you were grateful nonetheless.

"You know one thing," you thought to him, "you remind me of a Warbler."

The bard chuckled at you with his sweet smile, "a warbler?"

"Yeah, those birds that sing a lot," you recalled.

As you reminisce about your childhood, your mind wanders back to when you were a young girl, growing up in a Witcher school. Life wasn't easy for you, especially since you were a frail child with a mother who struggled to provide for you. Days at school could be long and tiring, and you often find yourself exhausted by the end of them.

One particular memory that stands out to you is the sound of the Warblers that would perch on the window sill of your room. Their melodic songs would echo through the walls, piercing your ears and keeping you awake at night. You would try to drown out the noise by covering your ears with your pillow, but it was no use - the Warblers always seemed to find a way to sing their way into your thoughts. Despite the annoyance they caused, however, you couldn't help but feel a sense of comfort and familiarity in their presence. After all, they had been a constant presence in your life for as long as you could remember.

"They were annoying when I was young," You scoffed playfully, "I hated listening to them sing whenever I wanted some peace. Now that I'm older, I wish they still sang to me," you look at the burning bonfire as the warmth engulfed the front of your body. “I like your songs, jaskier, even if you played the same tune for a week. I won’t get tired of you.”

"Huh…" Jaskier gave your statement some thought, "I've never had anyone think of me that way." He sat over next to the fire, feeling a bit cold.

"Why? May I ask," You cocked a brow at him.

"I'm a bit of an exasperation and––" Before Jaskier could continue, he stopped himself. He could ruin his godly reputation in front of you, and he did not want that.

"A skirt-chaser?" You continued.

"Oh- No, no, not that," you can sense the embarrassment that overcame his confidence.

"right, alright," A mischievous chuckle escaped your lips as you heard the mention of the notorious bard. His reputation preceded him, and you couldn't help but be amused. Word on the street was he had a knack for breaking up marriages or being the third person for sleeping with married men's wives. You won't deny it. Jaskier was handsome and quite the romantic.

The atmosphere was serene as if the world had a standstill. Not a sound except for the gentle rustling of leaves as the wind passed through the trees. "Can you sing me a song, Jaskier?" You asked, "Please?"

As Jaskier continued his endless string of tales, you couldn't help but politely express your reluctance to hear more. In response, Jaskier flashed a sweet smile and said, "Yes, you may, Y/n."

One day, Jaskier won't be around you. One day, you won't ever see him again, and it will be just you and Melorax on the lonely road. It could happen tomorrow, or it could be years from now. You tried not to dwell on that possibility, but it was always there lingering at the edges of your consciousness. But that did not matter now. It was a love that grew deep inside you that you have never felt. It's a companionship that was a strange yet familiar feeling. One day, he will see you as a monster like everyone else did when they saw you. Despite this, You listened intently to his stories and musings, even when they seemed nonsensical or meandering. You laughed at his jokes and marveled at his wit. You knew these moments were precious, and you never took them for granted because you will never know when that moment will end.

A/n: hey guys :) I apologize if my interpretation of Jaskier and the Witcher universe had errors. I was busy with school to read the books and watch the show for extra context and accuracy and did this all by itself. Overall, im unite happy with how this turned out.

#the witcher #the witcher netflix #the witcher fanfiction #jaskier x reader #jaskier the witcher #witcher netflix #dandelion #jaskier #the witcher 3 #biscuitwrites #Show some love guys <3

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rpgchoices · 27 days

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Useless rpg recs. Videogames (rpgs or not) where you can romance an orc

(m = male character, nb = non binary character, f = female character)

Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition (isometric rpg, protagonist can be male or female): Dorn il Khan (m) (romance has also some scenes in the dlc Siege of Dragonspear)

Bastard Bonds (pixel rpg with turn based combat, protagonist can be male or female): Nazar (m)

Dear Monster (nsfw visual novel, dating sim, male protagonist): Slagathor (m)

Icewind Dale (isometric rpg, protagonist has to be male to romance the orc): Dusky (m, modded npc)

Ikkarus and the Prince of Sin (visual novel with combat, dating sim, male protagonist): Orakh (m)

Orc Covenant: Gay Bara Orc Visual Novel (nsfw visual novel, dating sim, male protagonist): Dagroth (m), Kurdan (m), Karn (m), Yundril (m)

Pathfinder Kingmaker (isometric rpg, protagonist can be male or female): Regongar (m)

Pendula Swing (isometric adventure, rpg, female protagonist): Giglesh'Kern (m)

Salting the Earth (visual novel, dating sim, female protagonist): Dirrong (f), Urnba (f), Eda (f) (and these are more flings than romances: Sakkhan (f), Nim'Gann (f))

Skyrim (action rpg, protagonist can be male or female, romances are just marriages with little content): Ghorza gra-Bagoli (f), Borgakh (f), Gat gro-Shargakh (m), Ghorbash (m)

A Tavern at Night (free visual novel, protagonist can be male, female or non-binary): Azram (m)

Tusks: The orc dating sim (free visual novel, protagonist is male): multiple male characters, to add

(This is an updated version of this previous post)

I played all these games but "Orc Covenant" and "Tusks", so feel free to ask for any info!

#orcs #baldur's gate 2 #pathfinder kingmaker #dear monster #orc covenant #a tavern at night #salting the earth #pendula swing #tusks #skyrim #bastard bonds #icewind dale #ikkarus and the prince of sin #useless recs

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dynamite124 · 6 months

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Doing some BG3/Skyrim fic research; On a scale of 1-10, 1 being “I’ll follow you no matter the danger” and 10 being “I’m gone the moment you look away, good luck tracking me,” if Tally’s rescuer had a limited time before they, say, turned into a monster, or had a heart condition that made them into a walking bomb, how likely is he to stick around? And if he’s unlikely, what would it take for him to stay anyways?

I know this is incredibly hyper-specific, but I’m curious and want to write in-character.

(If a full measure of the scenario as it happens in Skyrim is needed to give a concrete answer lmk)

Definitely a 1.

Taliesin was ready for the long run should the worst happen to the player. He was ready to be their full time caregiver should they go insane from reading the Elder Scroll.

Might seem unhealthy, but Taliesin is afraid of loosing the one person in his life that he considers his friend. So, if his friend has a limited time being alive or something bad was going to happen, they're not going to face it alone. He'll remain by their side till the bitter end.

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nientedenada · 7 months

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Mages Guild Morass: A Mix-Up over Vanus Galerion's Final Fate

Also posted on r/teslore. A couple months ago, my friend @akaviri-dovah asked a question about Vanus Galerion's timeline.

Ok so I’m reading up on Vanus uesp page again and apparently there was a point wherein he abandoned his guild and left Tamriel?? […] "Over time, Galerion grew bitterly disillusioned with the contrived hierarchies and sinister political environment that the Mages Guild had become. He grew regretful for establishing the guild in the first place, as it had become monster of its own, and was too late for him to fix. After denouncing the guild, Galerion elected to leave Tamriel entirely to travel to other lands. For many years Galerion wandered around Nirn. Eventually, after long his abandonment of the Mages Guild, Galerion claimed that he had found the virtue of magic in his solitary travels." [This description] probably wouldn’t line up with how he still managed to gather so many mages and Lamp Knights (guild specific) in his battle against Manni right?

This question completely confuddled me at first, because it turned out I didn't know my Vanus Galerion lore very well at all. But now I know a lot more and I am here to share a very niche lore puzzle with you all.

I think we're all aware that when the devs imported lore books into ESO, they didn't always make certain the books' contents fit into the previously established timeline. Sometimes that can be explained by Hermaeus Mora moving books about through time, but often books are edited for ESO but some detail is overlooked. This is what appears to have happened with Vanus Galerion.

Origin of the Mages Guild, written by Ted Peterson, has been in every big TES game since Daggerfall except Skyrim. It’s been edited for different games, but the last paragraph is the same in all versions.

One need not be a member of the Mages Guild to know that this carefully contrived hierarchy is often nothing more than a chimera. As Vanus Galerion himself said bitterly, leaving Tamriel to travel to other lands, "The Guild has become nothing more than an intricate morass of political infighting."

In Daggerfall and Morrowind, that is the last heard of Vanus Galerion. This version is backed up by a role-playing thread from 2001 in which Ted Peterson, posting as Tedders, has an exchange with Vanus Galerion (also played by himself)

Tedders: Thank Mara for Vanus Galerion for freeing the Old Ways and founding the Mages Guild. Vanus Galerion: For many long years I did regret that very deed, as it seems I created just another monster of sinister politics. The virtue of magic I found in my solitary travels, many years after I abandoned the Mages Guild and ventured on my own. Tedders: Poor Trechtus. It's too late now.

Oblivion, though, adds a new version of Vanus Galerion’s fate. In Mannimarco, King of Worms, it’s explained that Vanus never did peace out on the Mages Guild. He actually died leading Mages Guild Lamp Knights against Mannimarco.

They say Galerion left the Guild, calling it 'a morass,' But untruth is a powerful stream, polluting the river of time. Galerion beheld Mannimarco's rise through powers sublime, To his mages and Lamp Knights, 'Before my last breath, Face I must the tyranny of worms, and kill at last, undeath.' He led them north to cursed lands, to a mountain pass.

(Short interlude: this is not quite as bad as Mannimarco's own poetry, but it ain't good)

In this text, Vanus Galerion is killed in the fight against Mannimarco

A thousand good and evil perished then, history confirms. Among, alas, Vanus Galerion, he who showed the way,

This version is supported by Mannimarco’s claim in Oblivion that he had Galerion’s corpse in his possession.

I must say, I expected Arch-Mage Traven, rather than his star pupil. I am disappointed to see that he could not face me himself. I have met so many of his predecessors over the years. I developed a particular fondness for Galerion, ill-preserved though he may be.

So, depending on whose version you believe, Vanus either left the guild calling it a morass or led the guild in a final battle against Mannimarco.

In comes ESO to complicate matters.

The ESO Devs did not include Mannimarco, King of Worms in the game, since Vanus Galerion is still alive in ESO. But they didn’t ignore the text. A lot of the details of Vanus and Mannimarco’s early life from Mannimarco King of Worms are fleshed out in the Summerset expansion via. Vanus’ ESO autobiography: Artaeum Lost, as well as in ESO flashbacks to their time with the Psijics.

However, base game ESO stumbled with their version of Origin of the Mages Guild, which still ends

When you bring this book into ESO, you get the implication that Vanus got into a snit at the Mages Guild, left Tamriel to travel other lands, AND THEN came back from abroad for the events of ESO where he’s very involved in Mages Guild business again.

So to sum it up

Version 1: Daggerfall to Morrowind: Vanus is said to have called the guild a morass and left Tamriel at some unspecified date. That is the last mention of him.

Version 2: Oblivion to Skyrim: It's suggested that story is untrue and he actually died leading the Mages guild in a fight against Mannimarco but many believe he instead left Tamriel after calling the Guild a morass.

Version 3: ESO: Doesn't go into Vanus' death because it's not happened yet but keeps details from that Oblivion/Skyrim Version about his earlier life with Mannimarco. ESO devs miss the detail of the morass line referring to Vanus Galerion's permanent disappearance in both Versions 1 and 2.

I think if we go with Version 3, which is the most up-to-date, we would conclude that he did get into an earlier snit with his subordinates, went globetrotting, and then came back to guide the Mages Guild. Centuries later, someone misattributed the morass remark from the earlier situation to the latter disappearance.

Or you could go with time-travelling books.

Or you could just shrug your shoulders and ignore the obvious developer error and continue with the timeline established by the previous games.

UESP has cobbled all these sources into one timeline: ESO Events -> Morass Remark and Exit from Mages Guild -> Leading the Mages Guild against Mannimarco/ Death. But unless we go with the time-travelling books theory, this doesn’t seem possible.

End of Morass Gate.

#Vanus Galerion #tesblr #tes lore #niente lore #elder scrolls online #Mannimarco

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uvexar · 3 months

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Dragon Discourse is back to 5e social media and I've realized that dragons form a really fascinating vertical slice of all the problems with the system. Not just technical problems, but problems in the culture of the game.

Dragons in 5e D&D are big sacks of hit points with deadly breath weapons. Large dragons have a Frightful Presence, which is like a fight-or-flight response effect triggered on everyone close enough to it. The largest get to slap people with their wings and knock them over with their tails. The most powerful dragons have Legendary Actions, giving them extra attacks on other people's turns, and if you fight them in their lair, their lair has effects too. A burst of fire might come out of a crack in a red dragon's cave, for instance.

It's not a bad setup. But the problem comes when dragons have to intersect with the rest of the game.

If you play a dragon like an intelligent creature (which you should - "intelligence" meaning not totally brain-dead), its abilities suggest a monster that outside of its lair will *never* let go of its areal advantage. It will fly down, use its fire breath on the player characters, then fly away until it recharges. This wouldn't be bad, except that 5e as a system encourages characters builds around specific aspects of combat. In this situation, melee-only characters are going to have to suck it up and use a bow, which they wouldn't be as optimized for, but which would still be effective.

But 5e as a culture? HATES this kind of scenario. You might be wondering, why is a tabletop game encouraging closing off an entire area of combat for the sake of optimization? The answer is, it isn't; however, the culture of 5e suggests that when a character specializes in something, they should be expected to be doing that thing *all the time* and *nothing else.* Players will get upset if they encounter a monster that hard-counters their focused character build!

This isn't necessarily their fault, of course. 5e is incredibly glued to the 2D grid/battlemap, only surpassed by 4e in that respect. Its range increments in all areas (weapons, spell areas, movement speeds) are set up for a space no wider than 150 feet or so across, and that's honestly being generous. And because streaming is absolutely enamored with rich territory maps and VTTs, and streaming is a cornerstone of 5e as a product, very few players have any reason to expect a battle with a vertical component larger than 30 feet. (Anything larger is increasingly abstract and hard to render on a grid map.) As a result, players are able to comfortably design builds that are "melee-only."

Dragons break the whole paradigm of 2D, VTT-focused combat in half. So what happens when you play a dragon intelligently in 5e? Simple: Players get frustrated, and characters die.

An analogy here that I think is appropriate is, imagine if enemies just inside your load range in Skyrim could spray fire at you with a 20% chance of nearly killing you. That wouldn't be fun! 5e doesn't have a literal load range, of course, but *effectively* it does.

There are three ways you can run a dragon in 5e. The first is to give it a death wish. Make it land like a Skyrim dragon at half health, or hell just treat it like a big dinosaur that can do some long jumps. What you're left with is a bag of hit points with no brain that can't fly. And that's a pretty easy fight - worse, it's *boring.*

The second way is to homebrew the shit out of it. 4e has this over 5e in terms of dragons: they escape the trap of the grid's event horizon by having a lot of cool abilities they can use. You can add a bunch of these cool abilities to a dragon in 5e, and it almost makes it a good fight! Except now you're fixing an issue with the game on your own time, in ways that are explicitly counter to the game's actual monster design paradigms. You are stapling 4e onto 5e. Which is fine until the contradictions become overwhelming.

The third way, of course, is to play it intelligently. How are players expected to respond to a real life dragon?

In myth and legend, heroes never meet dragons on even turf. Even Saint George, the classic knight on a lance facing down a fiery serpent, actually pacifies the dragon with the Cross in the story. So if a group of PCs wants to kill a dragon, they have to use every tool at their disposal. Find allies, place traps, seek it out in its lair where it has nowhere else to run, and keep it from getting airborne.

This is proactive play. And this is where the last and biggest issue with 5e comes in: *5e actively discourages proactive play.*

This is a problem both cultural and mechanical. Mechanically, 5e's adventure design is extremely reactive and railroad-y, almost scripted in some cases (Descent into Avernus comes to mind). Culturally, the fantasy games most often played by people nowadays are *incredibly* reactive and railroad-y, because that's how video games are programmed! Dragon Age and the Witcher and World of Warcraft and *especially* Skyrim aren't designed for you to be proactive, to build your own goals, or find your own solution to problems.

What this means is that very few players, unless they came up in an older game tradition (or are a horrible revanchist like me), expect the solution to a combat encounter to be found outside of that very combat encounter. And if they have no other choice? It's frustrating! The game isn't giving them the tools to succeed! *They haven't been taught to think this way.*

(This goes for DMs too - the game encourages DMs to design adventures and encounters in a video-game fashion, mechanically and culturally. So of course a dragon in that paradigm, using the 5e rules, is going to suck.)

What's the solution? Well, other than homebrewing (which let's be honest means you should just play 4e), the solution is a hard uphill battle against cultural and mechanical biases. So honestly the easiest way to play a dragon in 5e is to not play it at all.

And that sucks.

#dnd #dragon #5e #ttrpg

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cinnamonest · 1 year

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I've been thinking a lot about the historical "Oni being absolute menaces to humanity and taking their females as breeding slaves on the regular" AU for Itto I made a while back (part one here) and decided to make a part two for it because I am denegerate and shameless.

I love the concept of them (or any group/boy/etc) having absolutely no conscience whatsoever, or rather just this wacky values/moral system defined by their own best interests and imperatives, it's just so >:)))))

I also keep thinking of the Oni in this AU as some combination of 1) the supermutants in fallout, 2) the orcs in skyrim and 3) the viltrumites in Invincible, particularly bc there's a scene in Invincible where Omniman talks about how viltrumite blood is so potent that Mark is technically like 99% viltrumite despite technically being only half-viltrumite bc human genes are so weak by comparison, and that concept gave me Tingly Sensations therefore I made them the same

//this is darker than the last one, contains mentions of gore, viscera and death, intense fear, unintentional cannibalism, gendered-focused stuff, forced impreg, monster death, plus all the usual warnings

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The Oni generally don't breed with each other. Why is this? Eh... who can say. They can be... somewhat aggressive and stubborn creatures, so it's difficult for them to form partnerships with each other without, you know, ending up trying to kill each other. Both go with calmer creatures that compliment their own heated natures.

The female oni tend to breed with other youkai, as they tend to want creatures just as strong as them, but less… hard-headed and aggressive as their same-species counterparts. They go for boring creatures that are strong, but stupid (seeing as they don’t make use of their strength by terrorizing other species, the logical thing to do with that strength).

The male ones, though, crave weaker things, so they go for humans.

The thing is, Oni genes are so strong, any halfling offspring is essentially just an Oni with a drop or two of the other half's blood. So even if an Oni takes the tiniest, shortest, weakest, frailest, sickliest human girl, the offspring will still be tall, insanely strong, and in good health.

You would need centuries worth of cross-breeding before you’d begin to see a diminishing in these traits, which is why it doesn't really matter if they breed with such a weaker and inferior species such as humans, the offspring will be just as strong as their fathers anyway. Consequently, they don't have to worry about any traits the mother might have that would be undesirable for the offspring getting passed down.

In fact, this contributes to what they choose. Whereas a human male might seek out a stronger, healthier female in hopes of producing children with the same traits, the Oni do the opposite. Since they don’t have to worry about the weak traits being passed down, they go for the weak ones. Granted, all humans seem weak by comparison, but if for example you see a group of them out in their fields or going down their roads that’s clearly struggling to keep up with the others and falling behind, stumbling a lot, and so on, that means it’s a weak human. You’ll often see the other humans turn their heads and look over their shoulders to check on the one falling behind, so they acknowledge it’s a weak one, too. They’re also easier to pick off, as you can sometimes quietly come up behind them and snatch them up while the others aren’t looking (be warned though, they tend to squeal and attract attention if you do this).

Similarly, whenever they’re performing tasks and moving things around and the like, look for the one that’s carrying the smallest amount of things in its arms. Sometimes this is just laziness, but often it means they can’t carry the same weight as the others.

All that matters is the sex of the human, so that you can breed it. You can usually distinguish this by the color of clothing they wear, the way they walk, the sound of their voices if you get close enough to hear, and for some of them, their hips or chest may protrude enough to be visible even clothed.

Which is why finding you was a very fortunate coincidence! The gods must have some favor for him.

You've been going in and out of unconsciousness, head still throbbing pretty badly. The intense panic means your brain has been fighting as hard as it could to retain consciousness, but the blow was still rather hard. Even in the mental fog, you’re vaguely aware of an increasing concern as you realize you’re getting further and further from home, through the woods, into unfamiliar wilderness.

You’re not certain how much time passes, you black out a few times before you reach a cabin out in a clearing, surrounded by woodland. Nice little stream next to it. It would quite the scenic spot if not for, you know, your current circumstances and the panic accompanying them.

Once you get in, you're awake again, dizzy and disoriented. You're promptly set down – gently! Gotta be careful with such fragile beings – onto a bed.

You slowly sit upright, pushing yourself up on trembling arms as your vision slowly stops spinning. And then, you… sit there. You don’t think you could manage to stand without falling down even if you tried, and even then, your body is completely frozen in fear.

And you sitting still is a pleasant surprise. You're already doing so well! There's a lot of Oni who recall that their human girl would take off running the moment she was set down, flail and kick and scream and the like, but not you! You're being very good. You're just sitting upright, hands clenched into fists, staring straight ahead. Perfectly still, aside from that weird vibrating thing your body is doing all over.

First things first. Take all the human clothes off (no need for them, you’ll just be here all the time anyway, and the robe things humans wear makes it complicated to take off, much less practical than their own clothing, so this avoids a hassle). Make sure you don't have any injuries. You make a soft little sound and tense up at all the touching, as you’re lifted and spun and jerked all sorts of ways to look over you for cuts or bruises, but you don't fight. You just curl up, pulling your knees up to your chest, tiny human hands trembling, curling up to grasp at the sheets.

You have everything you need for now right here. Bed, some extra blankets (humans are temperature sensitive, they get cold easily), and a big bowl of water (he wasn't sure if humans use cups or if they drink straight from the water like animals, so this was a suitable solution), on a table beside the bed.

And a nice cuff connected to the wall for your neck. He’s already prepared ahead well ahead of time, of course, it would reflect poorly on him not to have fully planned the essentials out, being unable to properly care for a human partner would be culturally shameful to them.

As with everything else, you make a little squeaking sound when it goes around your neck, but don’t move a muscle, merely sitting tense and shivering, eyes wide and darting all around, taking in your surroundings. Of course, it’s expected that you would be disoriented. It’s all very new to you. Most humans don’t ever really leave their villages.

And that’s fine. You have plenty of time to get used to your new environment. You will be here for the remainder of your life, after all, unless you both have to leave this place for whatever reason. Regardless, there’s nothing unexpected – they share their own experiences amongst themselves enough and are taught enough to know humans aren’t exactly ecstatic and enthusiastic from the get-go, and many try to run away. But, pretty much everyone says that they become a lot better behaved over time. Sometimes you have to hurt them to achieve this, but it’s just a necessary part of the process.

Interestingly enough, almost all accounts say that the humans seem very fearful at first, that they jolt when you touch them, that they whimper and often struggle or flail around, as if scared of something. Although the reason for this is unknown. Most conclude they’re just skittish, like animals.

Hm. But… what now? There’s a lot of advice passed around on how to get a human, which he followed pretty well – lurk around the villages, wait for an ideal one to go off on its own, make sure it’s not being watched by another human, be sure to be gentle and not break it on the way back, and make sure it’s not injured upon arrival. And likewise, there’s plenty of things they’re taught how to do in regards to daily life and certain aspects of having a human, but no one ever specifically says you’re supposed to do this or that after the checking for injury part. No guidelines for what to do next.

Might as well try to communicate. The vocabulary and accent and intonation of the Oni and human dialects are quite different, though, making normal conversation impossible.

First, you probably are called by something, right? He tries the standard tactic – point to self, say his name, point at you, poke your chest, wait for an answer. It takes a few times, but you finally get it, raising a hand – still shivering badly – up to point out yourself and stammer out an unfamiliar word. Thankfully it’s something not difficult, some of you humans have names that are nearly incomprehensible to their linguistic familiarity, but yours is intelligible to him.

You’re still shivering really badly. Must be cold. Here. Have the blanket. It gets wrapped around your shoulders.

Your eyes dart around a bit more. You open your mouth, but as soon as you turn your eyes to look up at him, you close it and bite your lip, shrinking back. You swallow, you stutter, but you finally do say something vaguely intelligible, or at least, he can understand a few words.

Let… let me go… let me… I… home… won’t tell… about this place…

That’s also expected. They do try to leave. As with everything else, they know this full well. The humans don’t like being taken out of their human herd.

But if they accept it in the end, then it can’t be a bad thing. That’s only logical. And at least you were asking rather than just trying to flee, so that’s a good start!

You probably wouldn’t be able to make out what he’s saying, though, if he tried to explain why. So a simple ‘no, stay here’ should be sufficient.

Your expression doesn’t change much when you hear that, seeing as you’re already wide-eyed and fearful, but you do swallow heavily. You force a sheepish smile as you try a different approach.

O-oh, you don’t want me… too weak… a-and... can’t… I can’t… like you all can… should just t-take me back, right…?

That doesn’t matter. Do humans really not know about this? Of course you're weak. That's the point.

More importantly, how sad, that you think you would be unwanted for some traits of yours. The humans must have been cruel to you to make you think this. Well, you’ll be appreciated here! So don’t worry, you don’t have to go back, you can stay here.

You don’t reply, but your facial expression twitches, which he thinks maybe you understood at least some of what he said. Your eyes go back to scanning over your surroundings. You seem to fixate on the door. Hm… well, at least you can’t get over there, the chain won’t allow for it. So there’s nothing to worry about. Besides, there’s more important matters at hand.

He grabs you by the waist, pulls you to sit on his lap. You’re still so stiff.

But don't worry, you don't have to do anything, anyway. You feel so light, if he just grips both hands on your waist, he can jerk you up and down with ease. Gives the motion a test – yep, if he holds you up with a hand on each side of your waist, you feel about like holding a small rock or something, no effort required.

Which is also the best way to do it, the first time at least – for those body size difference issues. It's said that if you put the human girl down on its back or stomach without first knowing their body and it's limitations pretty well, there's more risk of injury if you go at the wrong angle. With you sitting on top like this, chests nearly touching, it will be easy to readjust you to different angles of needed.

See, while being a bit bigger on average in general, their bodily proportions are also a little bit different from humans' in a few key areas. For starters, Oni have pretty big hands — the hand-to-body size proportional difference is bigger than that of a human. Just by enough that it's not immediately noticeable, but when you see it up close and really look at it, it becomes apparent. See, if he wraps both hands around your waist, his thumbs meet each other in the front, and the middle fingers come close to touching in the back, almost wrapping around you fully.

The other disproportionate part... well, it's a known issue that can cause some difficulties in breeding, but there are certain guidelines and tips to ensure it doesn't become too much of an issue.

There's a necessary test before mating. See, the Oni have learned that humans are fragile internally, just like how their bones and skin are fragile. There's a certain limit. Unfortunately, this was learned over time through trial and error... hey, be glad you were born when you were, and weren't one of those unfortunate early experimental relationships that turned into cautionary tales.

Okay… hold still for a second, he has to do the test you’re supposed to check for. Pulls it out, lines it up with your body, pressing it against your stomach.

You freeze up, your eyes go wide and you start to breathe really strangely, these short and rapid shallow breaths over and over, leaning back and away. You're staring intensely are the spot where the tip ends... right there, right at the bottom of your ribcage.

Which is good! That's what they test for, to make sure that it doesn't go beyond the human's bottommost rib, commonly known amongst them as the “bottom-rib rule.” Any more than that, and... well, based on word of mouth, the human can potentially sustain some pretty intense internal injury. That would be bad. It's an important matter of compatibility. This is good news, it would be so awful if he had to go return you after all this effort.

The other part is to check the girth versus that of the girl's forearm. Any more girthy than that, and likewise, it's best to return the human. Again, he'd hate to have to do that. Or maybe it was the upper arm? Yeah, that sounds right. Human forearms are so tiny, there's no way that's all they can manage. You're holding your arms bent at an angle, hands in front of you with your fingers curled, uneasy, as if you want to reach out and grab something, but are too hesitant to.

You whimper, a pitiful little noise. You're probably unaware of the bottom-rib rule, and mistakenly believe it'll hurt you. But it won't. See?

...Okay, well, actually, it's having trouble going in. It doesn't slide in softly like it's supposed to, it feels more like meeting a firm resistance, where you're clamped down so tight that the tip is big enough that it's more like a blunt object pressing against it.

But you just have to kind of shove, right? Hold you really tight with both hands, line it up — too focused to hear your soft little 'w-wait, wait-', and jerk you downward really hard.

There. See, with that much brute force, it just went right in. You're not even bleeding!

You do make a pretty loud sound though. You throw your head back, eyes blown wide, taking a choked, gasping breath before you make this... shriek. Your legs involuntarily spasm and kick.

You're gasping and heaving. It kind of bulges out of your stomach a bit, you can see where the end of it is by the protruding lump in your gut.

You do squeal quite a bit more. Your eyes leak tears. But that's normal, so it's said. As long as there's no blood and no signs of severe injury, the cries and noises are just what they do. Regardless, some pain is normal, unfortunately, you have to go through this initial stage where there is a bit of pain a few times to reach a point where it won't hurt.

The reason for this being, the she-humans are used to their human males, a species known for being quite pathetic, as they're weak and cowardly and, most notably, are not nearly as endowed. Really, it's so strange that such breedable creatures like the human females have such inferior counterparts, and even more bizarre that you so often willingly mate yourselves to them. You're probably stuck with no other choice. How unfortunate.

Your eyes are huge. You keep your gaze locked onto the spot of the bulge in your stomach, a look of shock and distress on your face.

Okay. Try that again... pull you up, jerk you down. And again, and again. Faster with each movement.

Your hands reach to your sides and grab at the hands wrapped around your waist, but you're shivering so badly all you can do is grip at them. With each movement, you make these little yelping noises, squeaks and squeals. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to differentiate between pained and pleasurable sounds for the human girls, they more or less make the same noises for each, so it's said. Again, the standard is that as long as there's no blood, that means it's all fine.

You get louder, higher, until it culminates into squealing. Your body spasms and quivers, fluid squirts out of you. Those are all supposed to be good. As the spasming slows down, you start to go limp, you sort of slump over.

…But it’s not until the adrenaline wears down that it seems everything catches up to you. After a few minutes, just as you seem to get to breathing normally again, your face contorts, you clench your teeth and groan in pain, falling down onto your side and clutching at your lower abdomen. And then you sort of curl into a ball, pulling your knees up, whimpering.

That’s probably supposed to happen. Or at least normal. You did pass the rib rule, so you can’t be injured, your body probably just isn’t used to it. It’s said to also be not only normal, but pretty much the majority of cases, that they seem to be in some pain afterwards, for up to several days. Their bodies just have to get conditioned to it. It shouldn’t take too long.

On the bright side, you don't take long to fall asleep. In fact, you essentially sort of uh... collapse. Your eyes close and your shivering goes still, only occasionally twitching, body still a bit tense, but noticeably more relaxed than it was up until a few moments ago. Probably very tired, today was a really big day for you after all! You're overwhelmed with the transitioning to a new lifestyle and all that.

Likewise, you jolt when you wake up the next morning, and you panic for a second, head jerking all around as you take in your surroundings and seem to remember where you are. You must have expected to still wake up back in your human village. But no, no need to be so afraid, you're in a much safer place than the human village now, so you'll probably calm down any minute now.

You move to stand up, but... when you try to move your legs, you suddenly stiffen, your jaw clenches and you groan in pain as you fall back onto your side, clutching at your lower stomach again. Huh. Are human bodies so weak they take more than a few hours to recover from soreness? You're even more fragile than he realized. No matter. There's already some food you can eat... got it from terrorizing some human merchant yesterday, just a few hours before coming across you actually! So no need to make food for now.

For now, you can just get adjusted. He's patient, no worries. You need to familiarize yourself with your surroundings and get used to things, of course, over the next few weeks.

Which you do. Of course, your first priority is getting out, but you're smart enough to not just bolt with him around. Until you actually get such an opportunity, you have to do your best to survive. Seeing that your captor has a surprisingly cheerful and good-natured disposition puts you at a bit of ease, but... even on the first day, it becomes immediately evident that much of what you heard in your village's folk tales and legends is not only true, but even worse.

At first, you thought it would be better, because of the one thing that is a bit inaccurate — they don't tower over people to the same extent you always heard, no. He's definitely a little taller than the average person, but not like a nine-foot giant the way your legends described. So, that would hopefully mean they're not as strong as legends say either.

Except that turns out to be even worse. You get a taste of reality on the very first day, when you had to build a fire in the stove this house has inside. After being given an instruction to 'wait here' along with some other words you couldn't quite make out, you watched in curiosity through the window as he walked over to the edge of the forest, grabbed a sizeable tree by the trunk and—

The blood drains from your face. You have to sit down, you feel dizzy. Still, you have to listen to the sound of the thing scraping against the ground as the now-uprooted tree is dragged towards the home, set on the ground, and torn apart. You would almost think it was an act of intentional intimidation, if not for that airheaded smile on his face as he comes in to hand you the pieces, not seeming to recognize the act as abnormal in the slightest. You're doing your best to comply, so you give a twitching smile back, taking it with trembling hands.

He notices you keep looking at it though, staring at the rest of the tree laying on the grass outside, to be used in coming days. You're probably not used to seeing it done that way, he does know that. Humans, for some reason, choose to use a bunch of metallic tools to take stuff like that down, but really, it's kind of a hassle, using his hands is a lot easier. Surely you won't mind that.

He notices you do this a lot in coming days, too, whenever things are broken. Whether it's rocks, metal, wood, anything. Whenever he crushes or breaks or snaps something sturdy with his bare hands, your eyes widen a bit, you often swallow heavily and shrink away a bit. It's probably the noise, some of you humans are sensitive to loud noises, right? He'll try to do it faster so it can be over sooner, then.

There are a lot of inconvenient little details to owning a human, so he also learns. He learns that you have to be picked up very carefully too, not just set down carefully. If he just grabs an arm or leg and lifts you off the ground that way, it seems to hurt you, you yelp and squeal. And you really panic if you're picked up by the neck. So he makes a point to remember to pick you up in one of the ways you seem to prefer, where your body is supported.

You also can't move as quickly, and your weakness is easy to underestimate, often finding that you struggle to pick up what he would consider lightweight things. You tire out easily, often having to pause and catch your breath despite not having moved much at all by his standards. For whatever reason, you also tend to sort of limp when you walk, sometimes stepping in a certain direction will make you grimace and tense up, clutch your lower stomach again, and you have to take a few moments to breathe in and out before continuing. It's all rather endearing, though, and it's fine that you're so weak, it's not like you need to be strong.

Similarly, being unable to understand each other very well presents some challenges. You're very smart, though. Generally, you can understand the tasks you're being assigned to, even without understanding any words for them. He just has to pick you up and place you in front of an object or task, and you start doing it. Although you do tend to drop things a lot, with those shaky hands of yours. He's also been working hard to correct your speech, since you say so many things wrong. Works with you in short sessions, holding an object that you don't know the correct word for and keep saying the incorrect human word. Has you say it over and over until you hopefully get it.

As for you, you soon find that the Oni lifestyle is rather... lazy. You're used to the lifestyle of Inazuman village culture. Everyone wakes at sunrise, they all go out for a day of whatever they do, be it rice field laboring or crafting or whatever.

Your internal clock is also set to wake up around then from years of routine, but now you find yourself laying awake, locked in place by an iron grip until some time in the late morning, if not around noon, the sun is already high up in the sky. Not that you get out of bed without at least breeding once or twice beforehand.

Morning time is probably the easiest and gentlest. Being from the side angle means there's an extra few inches that don't quite go in, and you're grateful for anything that reduces the throbbing pains later. There is a typical routine, you get bred once or twice when you wake up, and again before you sleep, but other than that it's randomized throughout the day, whenever the urge strikes, you suppose. Your insides are bruised and battered. You get used to the constant soreness, the irritated, raw, reddened flesh.

Soon, though, you can manage to stand up soon after (you still need a few minutes to get over it, but your body has indeed adjusted). You stand up, make food, eat... and then it just sort of varies. You never do too much, a lot of it is helping with this or that, working on tasks to maintain the house or make more food. You finally get allowed to wear your old clothes after you manage to communicate that it protects you from sunburn and dust, but only loosely tied in the front (easier to remove, that way), and nothing underneath it (very pesky and unnecessary).

Sometimes he goes away for a while, leaves you chained to the wall, in the bed. Comes back with armfuls of stuff. Bags of wheat and rice and other sources of food, all of which you know full well was obtained through some form of theft or pillaging. You tend to say a thanks to the gods for your provisions as your people are raised to do, but you now add a little prayer of hope that no lives were lost in the process. You often help put it away in the correct area of the house.

Regarding that, you do manage to one day communicate a question about the house, after repeating yourself a few times. Did you build this?

He very proudly answers that no, he didn't, there was a human living here, and he just killed them and took over the place! Leaving home, slaughtering some other creatures and taking over their dwelling is sort of a coming-of-age rite of passage for every young Oni, apparently. Most leave the nest and live by themselves a while, may later come back to live in one of their communities... you do manage to make out that part. The thought of going go live in a place where there are others of these... things makes you shiver more than the newly acquired knowledge that you're living in a dead man's house. You try to forget that information in the coming days.

You still get bred more throughout the day, and at night. Often just grabbing you wherever you are and pulling you back. Nor do you have to be in bed, because as it turns out, there's no issue with just picking you up and railing into you with you suspended in the air, jerking your body up and down like some kind of toy, with no signs of it being strenuous or difficult at all. It's a rather terrifying experience for you, though, seeing as your legs flail in the air, the way you squeal when you're suspended off the ground.

Even in general, he does notice that you are rather... fearful. Always easily startled, your expressions are frequently nervous.

Not that this is unexpected. Fear is very prevalent in the she-humans. Everyone who owns one has said the same thing, that they have these behaviors where they often stiffen and whimper and tremble, especially in the beginning. No one knows exactly why this is, or what it could be that they're so afraid of. Reasonably, they should feel very safe, as they are in good protection, but they may not make the connection that their captor's strength equates to their own safety, due to their tiny, simple human brains.

A surefire way to do ensure they understand this, and put the fears to rest, is to demonstrate one's strength and protection. Wait for dangerous creatures to come wandering to the home, and kill them, make sure the girl witnesses it. Ideally, he waits for a group of churls to come rummaging by, and quickly makes work of them, caving their heads in with a club. Repeat this process as necessary, and be sure to be as violent and bloody as possible about it.

Thankfully, there's plenty of churls in the area, so the opportunity arises frequently. You do seem to have some reaction. Your eyes go wide, you shiver really badly. You tend to look away from the corpses. You stiffen at his touch, still.

It must not be enough, the creatures must have gotten too close to the house for your comfort. You'll just have to see more demonstrations, more violent in nature.

So next time, he just decapitates them with his bare hands. One hand on the shoulder, one hand grasping the jaw, and then simply pull the two apart. There's a ripping sound, a crackling sound when it snaps the vertebrae. That gargling sound when the thing's throat fills with its own blood, then silence.

See, aren't you glad he took care of the... oh, you're swaying back and forth pretty bad. You alright?

You stand on the porch for a few moments, swaying, before falling flat on your back.

Huh. Odd. Well, at least you wake up shortly after, once you're set in bed. You reply to questioning with something about seeing blood being the reason for your loss of consciousness. How strange. Humans are really built against their best chances for survival, aren't they? And the human males are too weak to protect you, too. It's a miracle your species has survived.

You're just an extra fearful one, he finally concludes. That's okay, it's kind of endearing. And it's not like it really causes any problems.

Despite it being... unsettling, though, you are reasonable enough that you're actually quite grateful. Admittedly, you know you're be dead in minutes if you were on your own against these creatures, so, you're glad to have the protection... you still can't help but sort of subconsciously imagine if that strength were applied to your bones, though, whenever you think about trying to get out and run home. The more of these demonstrations of strength and protection you see, the more you can't help but let your mind wander to potential consequences of what may happen to your arms and legs if you were to be caught trying to get out.

In his mind, though, it's all just part of keeping you and the homestead safe. Of course, churls aren't really much of a threat, and taking care of them is no big deal. Neither is any other monster. In fact, he's pretty sure he's never come across a living being that wasn't pretty easy to kill, aside from a few of his own kind. Which he did kill several of his own kind, you find out in one attempted conversation.

Competitiveness and violence is not only accepted, but actually encouraged amongst the young Oni. Their elders and villages pretty much teach them that brutality is the way of survival and prosperity. As long as a fight is started on equal agreement, whatever happens in that fight is considered fair, and culls their species of the weak. Sneak-attacking murders, though, as well as killing when the other did not agree to fight, is seen as cowardly, and punished severely. He's always fought fairly, though, and came out the victor in every fight thus far.

The weakness of most creatures doesn't mean there's nothing to watch out for, though. For every Oni, the real threat to you and your human's sanctity is a very stressful, and unfortunately, very likely scenario.

See, humans live in these herd groups. Sometimes, there is a possible worst-case scenario in which the human's former herd comes looking for them. While humans are weak, they are often sneaky and crafty, such as their weapons that fire from a distance to compensate for their weakness. Also, they attack in groups. You have to watch out for that, make sure they don't sneak up on you.

As you might imagine, humans, especially of the male variety, kind of resent the Oni to an extent. Not that there's any good reason, besides maybe the history of Oni killing them en masse and decimating entire villages and pillaging their food and tools and stealing their wives and female loved ones to make them broodmares and cucking them and all that. But mostly, it's just irrational, unfounded prejudice.

Because of this, sometimes, especially if one of their herd females goes missing, they team up in large groups and try to hunt them down, attempt to gang up on and surround them. It’s not unique to them either, the humans in this era would later be recorded in Inazuman history to actually frequently go up against the various monsters that terrorized them (being human in this time period was quite unfortunate, when you consider everything they were up against).

The solution is to be very proactive, get the humans before they find their way to you, and prevent more humans from coming along.

The first step is to patrol the vicinity of the homestead for humans. If you find one, just quickly kill them in some way (twisting the head in a circle does it instantaneously).

Now, the important part here is to ensure the other humans stay away. This is achieved by taking one's various human kills and arranging them as a warning.

Most Oni put the human heads on pikes, string the intestines out like a rope between them and leave the rest strewn out in pieces, but he prefers to sort of take a lazy shortcut by just running a stake through the body as a whole, at a sort of upward angle so it goes in through the back and out the neck or mouth. Then, you prop the stake up high, so any incoming humans will see it. And if they're not stupid, they’ll take the warning, turn around and leave.

He had a few already, but needs to get working on it now that the homestead has something worth protecting! It takes some time (and the effort of chasing down the humans), but eventually he gets a nice series of stakes set up in a decently well spread-out circle around the area. Hopefully, you will take this as a source of comfort, knowing you were saved from all these potential threats. You blacked out and collapsed again the first time you were proudly shown them, but he understands that's just your weird human tendency, and doesn't mean you're any less appreciative.

Humans are very sensitive to putrid smells, though, so he had to put it a ways away, albeit still within eyesight from the porch. But that's probably better, ensures the humans turn away even sooner.

Oh, and as another plus, the bodies attracts birds! Specifically those black crows, they come swooping down to pick out the eyes and soft parts like the belly and lips and cheeks first, then bigger birds come to scavenge the rest of the tougher parts.

This is similar to a traditional practice the humans have, where they lay out seeds to attract birds, so hopefully it will give you a comforting and familiar feeling. He takes you outside and sits down, pulls you onto his lap and rests his head on top of yours to watch the birds come flock to eat. The birds that eat seed and the birds that eat putrefying flesh are probably different sorts of birds, but they’re still pretty.

It's basically a form of traditional lawn decor for them. There are other variants, too. Once you get enough, a lot of Oni make this banner-like piece by stringing skulls together on a rope through the eye sockets, then tying each end to a tree branch so it's stretched out over a distance. Other bones can be stuck in the ground in a line akin to a fence.

The number of human bodies and bones collected and displayed on your homestead is supposed to be a demonstration of one's prowess. A pride thing. But eventually, he runs out of humans to pick off that come wandering in, and has to go over to a nearby farm to snatch up a few. Grabs a few meat animals while he’s there too, gotta have more food since there’s two of you now.

That’s generally how they get by. It’s sort of a natural process via evolution, when you think about it. Humans learned to adapt by hunting and fishing and the like, they’re clever and all. And Oni likewise got strong and powerful and learned how to… well, no, they don’t need to learn to hunt, when they can just pillage.

Not that they never kill their own meat. It’s just that there’s a lot less of a strategy than with humans. They’re fast enough to catch up to most animals, and strong enough to just kill them on the spot with their bare hands. No need to invent bows and arrows and spears and stuff like that, although they do use clubs every now and then. Thankfully, most things out here are churls and monsters, so you don't have to watch any animals die, but you do get to bear witness to unsuspecting monsters getting too close, only to be immediately lunged at and snapped in half. Pretty easy.

And if there’s a shortage, just go to a human settlement and take some of their livestock. He has plenty of human stuff already, various non-perishable foodstuffs and materials. And sometimes, especially if no animals are available, just take people.

...About that. You know that whole "they don't actually eat humans" thing? Turns out that's... only partially true.

Yes, it's correct that the stories you're told in childhood are fiction. You're not going to be killed and eaten when you're dragged away by one of the horned monsters, that's just told to young girls to scare them into not wandering off, while also hiding the age-inappropriate reality from them. The Oni don't actually eat people... that is, for ones intending to be kept for breeding.

Some male humans are not so lucky. Animals are preferable, but sometimes food is running low and some of the would-be territory markers become lunch instead.

But he's actually very considerate of you, in that way. He realizes that you might not react very well to the thought of eating one of your own kind, so, he makes sure to go ahead and hack up the human meat to the point it's not recognizable as such before giving it to you to make food out of. What you don't know won't hurt you.

Much like everything else, they simply don’t think of killing (and consuming) humans at random, with no reason other than urge or convenience, as wrong. It’s just… what one does, what they all do. Take what you need, do what you want. And if the humans being stolen from get mad, just kill them. It’s not like it’s hard to do so, so why not?

But for whatever reason, despite your seeming repulsion, oddly enough, he notices you do go over to the humans hanging on the stakes, sometimes. While it's gruesome, while it leaves you feeling sick to your stomach, you always make it a point to go out and look at it, take in the features, clothing, everything.

Checking to ensure you don't recognize the face. You almost don't want to know, but at the same time, you can't live with not knowing. You're terrified that — no, you know that one of these days, you're going to see a familiar face.

That day does finally come.

Something was off about these humans, from the start. Finds them while making a quick sweep of the territory to check for threats. Coming through the woods at nighttime, carrying lit torches to find their way through the dark, unusual behavior for their usually cautious kind, who are self-aware of their vulnerability. What's more attention-grabbing, however, is what they keep yelling.

Yelling something over and over. The word you said pointing to yourself that first night, the word that gets you to turn your head and grabs your attention if he says it. Your name.

Why would this person be yelling it so loudly? No, not one, but several people. All calling out.

To come out all this way, it has to be humans here to look for you. Intending to steal you away. The audacity. Planning to just, what, grab you and drag you away from your home? He can't allow that.

Apparently the warnings were not enough to keep these humans away. In fact, they seem to be taking the territory markers as some sort of trail guidelines, coming directly down the trail of warnings leading up to the homestead. Or maybe those bodies have rotted and aren't recognizable warnings anymore... he hasn't checked in a while.

Oh, well. If so, these humans can just replace the old corpses.

They probably figured out what happened to you. Some girl goes out to get something and disappears without a trace, leaving behind no blood or signs of having been killed or attacked by an animal? There's generally only one explanation for that.

They're actively looking for recognizable signs of one of the abhorred creatures' dwellings, putting aside the natural unease the warnings would give them, instead using them as markers to know they're getting close. Hope they haven't hurt any others of his kind while trying to avenge you or something. Don't they know you're not being harmed? Why come after you then?

How stupid. Even if you were being harmed, they're just getting themselves killed anyway. Oh well. Their choice.

It's confirmed that they're looking for him, or at least one of his kind, because they do immediately attack on sight, when he makes his way over to them. Very pesky, they swing their swords around and make a lot of loud noises. Saying some gibberish or another, hard to tell with their weird way of speech. The attacks are easy to sidestep, though. This repeats a few times, the humans keep swinging and he keeps casually stepping out of the way.

It's getting annoying. He reaches out to plant his hand on one of them somehow and make the human stand still, but this turns out to be a poor choice – the sword nicks his arm. Ow.

Okay. Now he’s irritated. He grabs the human by the head, lifts it up, and flings it hard against the nearest tree trunk. There’s a lot of snapping sounds. It falls down limp and unmoving.

Wow. They really are fragile. But just to be sure, he rolls the body onto its stomach and presses a foot against the spine until there’s a crack, ensuring the spine is broken all over. You tend to faint when you see particularly bloody corpses, and he’s worried you’re going to hit your head one of these days. So breaking the bones is a better way of killing the human without making too much of a mess. This one isn’t bloody besides a few scrapes from the trees, but it is all bent at weird angles all over.

Still, this unfortunately earns a very negative reaction from the rest of the humans, who attack with increased vigor. It's easy to grab them by their heads, though. Their skulls are also very soft, so if you just put one hand on each side and squeeze down, it pops very easily. The issue with that, though, is that he gets gooey stuff and blood all over his hands, and that might make you faint again... but it's the fastest way. Didn't think to bring a weapon. Sorry.

Very soon, all ten or so of them are taken care of. And thankfully, at least half of them still have fully intact heads, which makes them more intimidating-looking to hang up. The humans seem to be carrying rope on them (maybe that was supposed to be to restrain you? Surely they know he can easily tear through rope...), so he goes ahead and strings several up into the trees, lets them hang by the neck, even easier than running stakes through them. The rest have to be brought back to the house, though, set on the floor just long enough to fetch spikes and get them skewered.

You grimace as usual, but then you turn your head to avert your gaze, to go back to your task.

But before you can even fully turn your head away, you do a double-take. Your head snaps back to the previous position to look at the bodies again.

Your eyes go wide, your jaw falls open. The utensil in your hand goes clattering to the floor, and you fall down onto your knees. You slowly raise your trembling arm to put your hand over your mouth. You start to breathe rapidly.

That's an expression he's never seen on your face. It's not disgust. In fact, you shuffle over to one of them in particular. Cradle the head in your trembling hands, seemingly no regard for the blood. Normally you would never touch them, or even get so close. This is different from how you usually react to human corpses.

...Oh. Right. They were calling your name. They knew you. He now realizes you are probably seeing people you were fond of run through with a stick like a roast. Whoops.

The more he thinks about it, that one in particular that was very, very invigorated, seemingly attacked with more ferocity than the others. Perhaps driven by an intense emotion, comparative to the others, maybe knew you better. The same one you're holding, staring at with wide, disbelieving eyes. But it's odd. That human looks nothing like you. You can't be related. Perhaps it was just another member of the human herd you were in.

Or maybe...

A thought occurs to him. Something that, somehow, has never crossed his mind before.

You might have been mated to a human, before you came here. That's... a very likely possibility. They do tend to stick to their own kind. He's never really considered it, but, you did have a life and a home before coming here. It's widely thought that humans have terrible memory, but maybe you're an exception? You probably recognize this one, if that is the case, as it would be a human you saw daily.

That's... irksome. It invokes a strange emotion he's never really experienced before. A strong dislike for that one in particular, an irritation. Should have killed him slower. At least he can really tear him apart when hanging him up.

It's a bit irritating that you'd be sad, though. You should have forgotten that by now, you know? And you're supposed to like him more than you ever did that one. That one was weak, so why would you continue to be fond of him? Why would you still be upset?

And why do you look so afraid, whenever he takes a few steps over to you? You stare up with wide, terrified eyes, shrink back. But they're dead, no threat to you. You wouldn't be afraid of him, would you? Surely not. You would never. Maybe you're just confused, overwhelmed.

You make a soft little sound when the one you're holding is pulled away from you, you hold your hands out to grab at it, but when your eyes meet, you shrink back as always. You curl up, pulling your knees to your chest, burying your face in your arms. You shoulders start to make a jerking movement every few moments, you sniffle.

...It is very, very irritating. In fact, because the human's body is rather intact even after dragging it away (promising to return soon, to which you had no reaction but to continue your soft little sobbing), for once he puts a great deal of effort into taking it apart piece by piece, putting the head up on a stake, the arms and legs on separate ones. It feels satisfying, in a petulant sort of way. There's a belief among one of those youkai or another that if a body is torn to pieces shortly after death, the spirit will never find peace, roam the earth forever or something. He hopes that's truly the case. It is deserved, after all.

But by the time he gets back, you've exhausted yourself into sleep. Curled up, eyes all puffy, right where you sit on the ground. You barely stir as you're put into bed.

You stay sickly for a while after that. You're quiet, cold, you don't want to get out of bed. You barely respond to anything. You seem irritated, resentful even, always turning away. It is frustrating, admittedly creates a very bitter feeling, that same foreign emotion. But, he has no idea what to do about it. Eventually, he gets frustrated enough that he grabs you by the shoulders, forces you upright. You protest, writhe, but increasing the grip on your shoulders to a point of pain causes you to go stiff and quiet. There you go. This must be what was meant when he was taught that sometimes you do have to hurt them a little for their own good.

You're essentially forced to become interactive again, dragged everywhere, given mild doses of tight squeezing pain when you refuse to react. You finally become responsive again, slowly, little by little. Really, you have no other choice. The only thing you can really do is carry on. He takes that as a good sign, though. Sometimes, though, you have this mean expression, it's very unpleasant. Thankfully, this, too, is fixed very easily, just by grabbing you by the jaw and telling you to stop. You always listen very well.

More humans come after that, too, looking for you, another party that must have known something happened to the first one. Those, though, he makes sure to just leave hanging in the woods, having learned the first time to be sure not to have a repeat of what happened last time. And then one more group comes looking for you, but after that, it stops. They must have given up, or perhaps he just wiped out so much of their population that they no longer see it as worth the risk.

Perhaps that first incident gives you a bit of spite, though, because one day, a few months later, you finally get your opportunity to run, and you take it. He goes to get something so close by, he thinks there's no need to tie you up, at least until he returns.

Oh... where did his human go? You're not in bed.

Oh, no. You must have wandered off and gotten lost. Humans will often see things that catch their short attention spans and chase after them, and they’re not very bright, so they can’t find their way back. You don't really know what you're doing, you just run off into the woods because that's your nature. It's part of why you need protection, from your own foolishness.

Of course, it doesn't take long to find you, out in the woods. You're whimpering pretty badly, and you start squealing when he picks you up by your neck, rambling at the speed of light.

I'm sorry I'm sorry please don't hurt me please don't I won't run again I promise please—

You're talking way too fast for him to understand most of it though, even if it wasn't muddled by the human accent and dialect.

Poor thing. You're panicking so badly, you must have been so afraid when you realized you couldn't find your way back home. But it's all okay now. It’s alright, you didn’t mean to. You're promptly set down in bed when you return. See? You're safe. Good human. You get a pat on the head.

You recover from it, but it takes a very, very long time before you're willing to try again. You're emboldened by the lack of, you know, having your limbs snapped or something the first time, so you do try once more, and then another time, but it always ends up the same way. You never make it so much as a mile.

It does eventually become a problem. Okay, the first few times it was excusable, but you really need to stop doing this. You clearly don't understand that being out here is bad for you, that it's dangerous. So he has to tell you, to be sure you get it.

You can't be running off. Don't leave unless I tell you to. You'll get hurt.

It seems to work.

In truth, you didn't understand what he said, but you did understand the last three words, and that's all you need to, your eyes widen and you stiffen up yet again. Even so, the tone of voice, especially the contrast from his usual, was enough to terrify you into not trying again, at least not for a long, long time.

...In fact, you start to sort of... give up. You're not really sure exactly when it began, but, you notice these days you've more or less accepted your fate. At first, you were adamant on returning home, you thought of nothing else, but these days it feels further and further away.

You’ve grown used to things. You stopped having your life flash before your eyes at every touch and sudden movement pretty early on, and it just gets more comfortable with time. Although you do still hold onto some hope, still stay alert to opportunities. Even then, what's the point? Nothing to go home to, not anymore.

But even when you think about leaving, you do feel a twinge of guilt. You would almost feel bad, leaving him alone... you try to shake the feeling, remind yourself of how it ended up like this, remind yourself of what you saw on that night that now begins to feel further and further away, but... you know he cares about you a lot, really.

It baffles you, their apparent value system.

He seems to think nothing of the various humans that hang on spikes around the property, the ones killed or devastated by theft and pillaging. Handles their corpses like you used to see butchers handle slabs of meat. Kills them without so much as a second of hesitation.

You would expect someone like that, someone capable of that brutality, to be incapable of tenderness and caring. Likewise, you'd expect a caring person to be incapable of such cold violence.

And yet, that time you fell down in the middle of the yard, scraped your knees, he was across the yard and by your side in seconds. Carried you in, wrapped your bleeding knee up with some of the rags kept in the drawers made out of torn human clothes. Refused to let you walk for days, carrying you everywhere until you insisted you were fine.

That time you caught a cold, he never left your side for the entire time you were sick. Every now and then, when you cut or burn yourself cooking, he always hurries to get you water from the stream and some spare cloth to wrap around it.

Sometimes you jolt awake in the middle of the night, from dreams induced from the grotesque imagery burned into your brain. And when you do, he always stirs at the motions you make, pulls you close, rubs your back in a comforting way.

He brings you back things from the human property pillaging you might like. Silks so valuable you never would have dreamed of owning a single one. New tools and utensils for you, cute decorations, anything that might make you happy.

And on the rare occasion now that you, even now, still occasionally get some glimmer of hope and "wander off and get lost" again, he always frets over making sure you're not hurt before bringing you back.

It's all so caring and sweet, it feels so bizarre when you're struck over and over again with the reminder that it is, in fact, all the same individual.

Likewise, when the day comes that you finally do start to swell up, he shows a lot of concern for your well-being. Makes sure you don't walk as much, carries you more often, ensures you're always eating a lot. Very happy about the whole thing. But he does notice you seem to be very very very distressed and concerned about the matter, the look on your own face when you look downward, the way you start to breathe fast and clench your fists.

You're probably concerned for your well-being, you think it'll harm you or something. Is that what you're worried about? Don't worry, the horns don't grow in until shortly after they're born. They're just little nubs up until then. So don't worry, it's not gonna like impale you from the inside or anything. So you can put your fears to rest, yeah, that's definitely your concern.

He wouldn't want you to be afraid. You are very valuable to him, you know, a real treasure. And like so many treasured things, you are so very vulnerable, so fragile.

Not that you need to worry, he'll always be there to crush anything that tries to take you away. After all, stealing you away from your only home and tearing you from someone who loves you is unforgivable. He can't comprehend what sort of evil creature would do something like that.

#.it #i keep thinking of that scene in brklyn99 thats like #'do i even weigh anything to you?'#'it's like holding a couple of grapes'#also darling trying to rationalize why its okay to stay w/the person that murdered your loved ones bc reasons #yan.txt

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esta-elavaris · 7 months

Text

Flufftober Day 5: X+ 1 ~ Brynjolf/F!Dragonborn [6,164 words]

Three times Brynjolf wondered just who Kirsi was, and one time he found out.

It's 2023 and I'm writing all these words about Brynjolf from Skyrim. Unreal. I can't even explain the word count. It started as a quick flufftober fill and spiralled into this monster. Filled with a hefty dose of humour at how absurd the Dragonborn's travelling companions must find it when they have fifty thousand different careers and excel at them all.

My Flufftober '23 masterpost can be found here 💜✨

It was Brynjolf’s business to be able to take the measure of someone – quickly. It was no good risking being caught with his hand in some poor bugger’s pocket if that bugger was, well, poor. Not that he was ever caught, not since he was a lad, but it was the principle of the thing. The potential risk had to be outweighed by the potential reward, that was just good business, and he was a good businessman.

But Kirsi? It was a funny thing that the more he saw of her, the less it seemed he knew. She’d strolled into Riften with a bow and blade both far finer than the worn fur armour she sported, which could have meant two things. Either she could afford to heed her armour less because by the time the enemy saw her, it was too late – or the bow and blade were stolen, and the armour reflected the truth of her finances. The truth turned out to be both. Which, as far as recruitment was concerned, was perfect. Maybe the signs had been there since day one that she’d end up running their little outfit.

Unfortunately – infuriatingly – that was the last time Brynjolf had managed to successfully gauge much of anything about the Nord lass who infiltrated his thoughts more and more with each passing month. From then on, the only sure thing about her was that she could, and would, produce results. Flitting in and out of the Ragged Flagon with ill-gotten goods in her hands, a smile on her face, and…blood in her hair. Usually.

The first time, Brynjolf commented upon it, asking vaguely if she recalled their rule regarding bloodshed. She’d blinked at him, followed his gaze, and responded with an ‘oh – no, that’s unrelated, don’t worry’ before making a joke about how it blended in with the colour very nicely anyway. And that had been that. Skyrim was a demanding place in which to live, and those who’d never had blood in their hair seldom lasted long, so it wasn’t a major cause for concern.

No, Brynjolf’s cause for concern came months later – long after Kirsi had been made master of the guild, no less. They saw less of her for a while, but that was her way. That was the way with plenty here, even. Folk always turned up eventually, with a story to tell and something to sell to Tonilia, more often than not. This absence stretched on a little longer, yes, but it hadn’t even occurred to Brynjolf to really worry until she did turn up again. And she seemed in no mood for storytelling.

The Ragged Flagon went gradually silent as she walked in. Brynjolf, his usually keen senses off-duty, noticed the silence before he noticed her, turning to see what everybody else was staring at and then stilling. Kirsi strode in, steadfastly avoiding the eyes of any who looked in her direction. She wore her Nightingale armour, but it was not so form-fitting as it once had been, bunching and baggy here and there suggesting a sudden and unhealthy amount of thinning that a jagged sharpness at her jaw and cheekbones confirmed. Her auburn hair had once been bound back into a complicated series of braids, but it had long since rebelled against it, most of it curling in whisps around her face, and she was sporting a new and very angry looking scar on said face.

It ran from her right temple all the way down to her chin, framing the side of her features in a sort of jagged crescent moon.

“Kirsi…” Brynjolf said, stunned.

“I can’t discuss business right now,” she said flatly, her voice hoarse.

He hadn’t intended to discuss business…but he supposed he deserved it. He’d been avoiding her before she left, and it seemed she’d noticed. Unsurprisingly. Brynjolf fell silent, watching as she turned her head in the direction of Galathil who sad in her usual place, lifting a hand absentmindedly to the scar that they all stared at. Ultimately, she appeared to think better of it. Instead, she dropped a weighty bag of gold down onto the bar, loaded her arms up with bottles of mead, and headed for the cistern without another word.

“What was that?” Vex was the one to break the silence.

“I dunno,” Delvin responded grimly. “But she didn’t even look like that when Mercer…”

There was little need for him to elaborate on that. Brynjolf’s lips set into a thin line, then he counted to twenty, and finally he followed.

Kirsi was at her bed when he entered the cistern, not bothering to hunker behind the screen as she changed – not unusual, few of them here bothered with modesty. And the looks she was drawing were more to do with shock and dismay than anything that might be considered leering. Already she was halfway out of her Nightingale armour, and Brynjolf could see that there was little of her from the neck down that was not badly, badly bruised. Or burned. Or littered with gashes that looked one wrong twist away from reopening.

Whatever healing she’d undergone, be it from potions of magic, it appeared she’d prioritised them to heal her face. That, or they’d all been much worse beforehand. It was hard to gauge the state of her armour thanks to the colour, but he suspected if he took a real look, he’d find it stained badly with blood.

"Wouldn’t you be more comfortable at Honeyside?” he asked – if only to stop himself standing and staring like a fool any longer.

“Am I not welcome here?”

“You know that’s not what I meant, lass.”

At her home in the city – which she would’ve had to bypass to get here, no less – her bed was bigger, and she had a housecarl who could help her. Not that those here wouldn’t, but she didn’t seem to be in the mood for their company. It would be less stifling for her, he suspected, accepting help from one whose sworn duty was to offer it.

“Nobody can find me here,” she said finally.

After several deep breaths. Brynjolf couldn’t quite figure whether they were against whatever pain she was feeling, or just an attempt to find the patience for a conversation. She was wound tight, it was plain as day as she kicked her armour under the bed now that she was stripped down to her smalls, before she pulled a shirt over her head. There seemed to be little intention of finding breeches to go with it.

“…Are people looking for you, lass?”

People who had done this? There was a dangerous, angry streak in Brynjolf that hoped they’d come here looking. They’d regret it sorely.

“No,” she shook her head. “Just don’t want to be found.”

She paused, then, pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. “There’s just…there’s always something else. Can’t be dealing with it now.”

Brynjolf stilled, lost for words. Then he asked quietly.

“Do you need anything, lass?”

“Just sleep,” she said quietly.

What in the name of Talos had she gotten into? Where was it that she disappeared to so frequently? Who was she?

Kirsi slept for three days – stirring here and there to sit up and down a bottle of mead, or to turn over in a slow and beleaguered fashion that left nobody in any doubt as to how sorely she felt her injuries – but otherwise, she was out cold. The same conversation was had over and over in that time.

She needs a healer.

She is a healer.

I don’t think she has the strength to heal herself more.

Could someone carry her up above to get her help?

I don’t think she’d allow it.

Could we bring someone down here to look her over? Someone that won’t blab?

I don’t think she’d allow that, either.

Ultimately, Thrynn looked her over…with all of his limited healing knowledge, gleaned here and there from his days of patching himself up amidst bouts of banditry. Kirsi didn’t seem to notice it much. The unease in Brynjolf’s stomach gnawed deeper.

She’s more exhausted than injured, he ultimately concluded.

It didn’t cheer them much. Then, on the fifth day, she rose. The signal was given by Vipir, who strolled through the Flagon whistling a jaunty little tune, and Brynjolf was moving swiftly thereafter. Ignoring the looks that followed him. He entered the cistern expecting to find her sitting up, or maybe at the little cavern that they designated as a kitchen. Instead she was up, she was dressed, and the contents of her pack were strewn across her bed as she methodically took inventory for the trip ahead. Wherever that would be.

Brynjolf felt alarm streak through him – very much not liking the prospect of her barrelling off into the unknown after worrying them all sick for the better part of a week.

“What happened to your dagger, lass?” he asked rather than voicing any of that.

Ever since she’d commissioned it from Balimund, he’d never seen her parted from it.

“Lost it,” she muttered sourly.

“Where?”

She could have that thing wrenched out of her hand and flung into the Sea of Ghosts and she’d go diving in after it.

“Sovngarde,” she grunted.

Not in the mood for serious conversation, then.

“When are you heading out?”

“Why? Are you coming with me?”

Brynjolf made a very quick, very impulsive decision then.

“If I’m invited.”

Stilling, she turned her head and stared at him for a few long moments.

“You’re being serious?” she asked, tone unreadable.

“Things here can keep for a while,” he shrugged. “I trust the others to stop the place from burning down in my absence.”

And it was far, far better than torturing himself wondering what she was up to and how she was doing, should she leave alone.

“And you wouldn’t just rather speak another time?”

Brynjolf forced a strained laugh. “I deserve that.”

Kirsi tilted her head as if in agreement. Then, finally, she sighed.

“Don’t wear your Guild armour. Don’t pack light, either. I don’t know how long I’ll be this time,” she said, watching as he nodded along. “And Brynjolf? You have to listen to me while we’re out there. If I say no…extra-curricular activities in a certain hold, I mean it.”

“We did well enough together at Irkngthand, didn’t we?”

She considered his words for a long moment, with eyes that he knew had sussed out many a foe, and then finally she nodded.

“Fine. We leave after midday.”

“We leave,” he countered, “once you’ve eaten something.”

That earned another sigh, but it was followed by another nod, and Brynjolf took it as a good sign that she listened to him.

Stepping out into the world again felt like a gradual lightening for Kirsi. Even with the worried looks Brynjolf kept pretending he very much was not sending in her direction. They stopped at Honeyside just long enough for her to switch out weapons, stock up on potions, and for Iona to fix her new travelling companion with a withering glare, and then they were out of Riften.

She didn’t know why she’d agreed to let him come along. Well, she did know, she just wasn’t a massive fan of said reasoning. This was the first time he hadn’t given her the brush-off in months, and even in her exhaustion and the numbness that had overtaken her since defeating Alduin, she didn’t want to squander whatever chance there might’ve been for things to go back to normal between them.

…and she was at least present enough to know that weeks spend wandering and camping on her own would do little to help her mental state, at present. Maybe she could’ve hired someone to watch her back and provide civil conversation, but she also didn’t want to shoulder the responsibility of that. Brynjolf had asked to come along, and so his hide was therefore his own concern.

Being out and moving felt good, though, and with every stray breeze that caught her hair and every birdsong that met her ears, she felt more like her old self. Maybe she just needed to be reminded that it was all still here. When they set up camp for the night, she was even laughing when Bryn went out of his way to try and make her do so…although she knew just how dour she must’ve been since her return when she saw how surprised he was to get any sort of response at all.

“I’m not asking that you tell me now, lass,” he hedged when dinner was eaten and there was little to do but doze by the fire ‘til morning came. “But I have to know…are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Probably not,” she admitted quietly.

And he accepted it readily enough. Or hid well, if he did not. Well, save for one comment, spoken incredibly lightly.

“I dread to think what’s so salacious and sinister that even I can’t be told about it.”

She snorted quietly, staring at the stars above. “It’s not salacious. Nor sinister. It’s just…a lot.”

Keeping her countless lives separate was something she always endeavoured to do, all while being painfully aware that bits and pieces were bound to crash in on one another at some point. This wasn’t like keeping a spouse and a lover secret from one another, it was bigger and more all-encompassing than that. She toed the line between doing what she could to keep those boundaries in place, while staying detached enough that she wouldn’t fall to pieces should the lines in the sand be erased by a crashing wave.

It was just…neater. The guild had to stay secret for obvious reasons – she could only imagine what Vilkas or Ulfric would think if they saw her slipping into the Ragged Flagon and making all sorts of underhanded deals with her friends down there. She could even kid herself that it was easier for the guild if they didn’t know about any of the rest of it. That maybe they’d balk if they realised their Guild Master was the Dragonborn, or Ulfric’s best soldier, Thane of too many holds to count, or even Archmage of Winterhold’s college. All those titles didn’t particularly lend themselves to secrecy.

But that wasn’t why she kept it from Brynjolf. She didn’t want to be the Dragonborn, nor Stormblade, nor the Harbinger, or whatever else she was known as across this land, when Brynjolf spoke to her. When he deigned to speak to her, these days.

Which was why it was a risk bringing him with her.

But she was a thief, was she not? She was good at sneaking.

It took the better part of three weeks for them to get to Whiterun – with Kirsi gradually healing herself with magic and potions both as they travelled. By the end of the first week she was smiling freely again, and by the end of the second she was cracking her own jokes to go along with his. Brynjolf didn’t press the matter of what had gotten her into such a state, and she didn’t make any more allusions to his steadfast avoidance of her prior to it, so he did what he could to avoid looking that gift-horse in the mouth.

When Whiterun loomed before them, jutting up above the rest of the landscape, she issued those aforementioned orders that he’d promised to follow back in Riften. No stealing, no conning, no shenanigans. If I have to start bullshitting, go along with it. He’d shrugged and agreed, too pleased at her swift change in spirits to start arguments now.

And the time for that bullshitting came alarmingly quickly, for they hadn’t yet yet cleared the Honningbrew Meadery when a group of warriors came walking from the other direction, spotted her, and immediately approached.

“Shit,” she breathed.

Brynjolf’s hand had been straying towards his sword when one called out.

“Kirsi! You’re back!”

They were two men and a woman, the first to greet her being the bigger of the two men. Twins, Brynjolf quickly realised, despite their difference in stature – both sporting long dark hair, and dark war paint around their eyes. The woman, another redhead, watched he and Kirsi curiously as the men stepped forth to shake her hand and then pull her into a one armed hug that mostly consisted of a thump on the back.

“Farkas,” she greeted with a tired smile, then repeating the gesture with the other two. “Vilkas. Aela.”

“We didn’t know when you were coming back. After that business with the dragon at Dragonsreach…” Aela greeted.

“Well, I’m back now,” she interrupted quickly.

“With a sellsword, too. Can’t fight your own battles these days?” Vilkas asked, his eyes lingering on Brynjolf.

Brynjolf returned the scrutiny with a lazy smile. It didn’t endear him to the man…but he hadn’t particularly intended it to.

“Not a sellsword – a friend,” she said. “This is Brynjolf. Brynjolf, these are the Companions.”

“Companions to who?” Brynjolf greeted wryly.

“Ysgramor,” Vilkas sneered.

“Oh. You must be older than you look, then.”

“We’re only here for the night. For a comfortable place to sleep and a good meal,” Kirsi interrupted – shooting a look in his direction that was too amused to hold any real bite to it.

“You’ll find both in Jorrvaskr,” Farkas said. “You and your friend. Come. It’s been too long.”

If any other than Brynjolf noted her reluctance, they did not show it.

They arrived to the Companions’ long-hall just in time for dinner – which was swiftly followed by drinking and merry-making thereafter. Brynjolf was accustomed to fudging the details as far as his identity was concerned; not often introducing himself with ‘good morning, I’m a high-ranking member of Skyrim’s biggest criminal enterprise, Dark Brotherhood notwithstanding’, and so he was able to do so here without blinking.

Well, there was one moment that gave him cause to blink. Harbinger. He had heard of the Companions, of course, he wasn’t a fool. His question by the gates had mainly been to rankle the dark-haired man who clearly loathed his presence and whatever his association might’ve been with Kirsi. Any doubt Brynjolf had as to that loathing was gone when he saw how the man’s eyes followed her about the hall throughout the night. And more-so when Brynjolf dragged her up for a dance, bringing yet another smile to her face…and a matching one to his own.

The glare gained yet more frost to it when Ria asked Kirsi about her new scar, and she lifted a hand self-consciously to it, muttering something about a dragon. Brynjolf took it to be a joke – it was what people used as an explanation for every minor cut and scrape since the beasts returned to Skyrim, but the Companions murmured appreciatively.

“I’m sure it’ll fade, with time,” the Imperial offered reassuringly.

“It suits you,” Brynjolf said simply, returning Kirsi’s gaze boldly when she eyed him in surprise – as if trying to figure out whether he was teasing or not.

When the hour grew so late that it was technically early, Kirsi finally drummed her hands against the long table at which they’d feasted, announcing loudly.

“It’s time we headed to Breezehome – I’ll come by in the morning before I leave.”

“Why not stay here? Tilma readied your quarters while we’ve all been up here. Your friend can bed down with the whelps,” Vilkas commented.

Njada made a noise of displeasure somewhere down the table. The suggestion put her in an uncomfortable position - Brynjolf could see that easily enough. Refuse, and it would be a rejection of the people whom her role here was to offer guidance. Accept, and a lesser man might be insulted in Brynjolf’s shoes. But Kirsi considered it, sighed, and then spoke.

“The Harbinger’s quarters are big enough to share, Bryn. Come on – Tilma will have a bath waiting, too.”

Brynjolf grinned as he watched Vilkas’ regret at saying a word wash over his face.

The rooms below Jorrvaskr were cooler than the hall above, not so warmed by bodies and smoke and revelry, but a bath did indeed wait there for them in the bedchamber next door to the sitting room, steam rising steadily from it.

“Ladies first,” Brynjolf shrugged.

Weeks on the road together had shed them of whatever modesty might have remained, and Kirsi shrugged and began to strip off.

“Multiple rooms, eh lass?” he commented, taking stock of the fineness of the room.

“They’ll always feel like Kodlak’s rooms to me,” she commented quietly. “My predecessor.”

“Even so, it’s funny to think what bed you chose to fall into when you needed that rest when this waited for you here.”

“Don’t act like you don’t remember what I said at the time.”

“Mm. Still, there’s a lad up there that would’ve waited on you hand and foot while you recovered.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he snorted, but then a furious motion caught his eye even as he studiously trained his gaze straight ahead.

Kirsi was in the bath, the water steadily turning murky after weeks of travel – which made it a little easier for him to keep his eyes stuck on her face, despite the flush that crept up from his neck towards his cheeks. She motioned once across her neck as if to say ‘stop’, and then pointed to her ear, and then the door.

Brynjolf almost laughed. In what world would they be overheard all the way down here? But there was no room for argument in her gaze and he slumped back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, one question on his mind.

Who are you, Kirsi?

Despite Kirsi’s fears, Brynjolf finding out about her identity – one of them, at least – did not instate the sort of distance she’d feared it might. Oh, a fair amount of good natured ribbing came her way, but with Brynjolf that was always a decidedly good thing, and so she left Whiterun in a better mood than she’d arrived…and in a mood that was unrecognisable to the one she’d departed Riften in.

Rescuing townsfolk from bandits holding them hostage? You’re joking. What are the guards doing? Resting?

You make saving lives sound like a bad thing.

It might be, depending on what it pays. How much?

What?

How much each time? What’s the going rate for a saved life?

…It doesn’t matter. It pays in more than gold. Goodwill. Contacts. Reputation.

By the Nine, it’s a pittance, isn’t it? How much Kirsi? I’ll just keep irritating you until you tell me.

…A hundred gold each time.

When he stopped laughing – which felt like hours later – he pointed out he could make ten times that depending on the job he took. Her pointing out that she could also raid whatever lairs the jobs sent her into did little to help.

Don’t tell me half the goods you fence to Tonilia are gotten honestly, lass. It’ll break my heart.

And it was too difficult to act annoyed by him when she was laughing along.

From Whiterun they turned north to Windhelm. Kirsi withdrew her rule against larceny for all of an hour so that Brynjolf could liberate a farmhouse of a couple of bottles of wine – more for the thrill than anything else, and because free wine tasted better. That night when they made camp, they mulled it over a fire and huddled together far more closely than the barely-encroaching chill necessitated. By the time they were a few tankards deep, she felt giddy and foggy and overall like herself again, matters of fate and destiny and death and Sovngarde, and what a Dragonborn was worth once they’d achieved their purpose, fading behind Brynjolf’s jokes and the way he kept smiling at her and looking at her.

The night was pressing on when she found herself pressed against him beneath a blanket, their backs against a tree, her head on his shoulder as she was pulled further and further towards sleep.

“Lass?” he murmured lowly. “Kirsi?”

She didn’t respond – the original intention being to not respond right away, needing to blink herself into wakefulness before she could wrap her lips around syllables, much less words. But after a moment of silence, he relaxed and pulled her closer.

“I won’t give you the brush off again,” he murmured.

They were words that should have been basic decency, but they had the sound of a vow. As well as that not intended for conscious ears. So she pretended to be asleep, and soon she was no longer pretending.

It took another two weeks for them to reach Windhelm, not helped by their unhurried pace that defied the cold snapping at their heels. Kirsi, aptly named after the frost, seemed to enjoy it if anything. And Brynjolf? Brynjolf…endured it. With a smile. Primarily because he was happy. Happier than he’d been in a while…and more content than he’d admit in this strange and unexpected little routine they’d slipped into together by now.

He was happy as they slipped into Windhelm in the early hours of the morning, when he watched Kirsi pay a little brown-haired lass a hundred times what the entire stock of flowers she peddled were worth, when he found out that had been Kirsi’s main reason for wanting to come here in the first place (for it had been a while since she’d last given the wee girl a stupid amount of gold, and she was worried the last lost may have run out by now), and he was happy when they slipped into Hjerim – her stupidly big Windhelm home – and began to cobble together a hot meal.

Most of all, he was wrapped up in the atmosphere that had fast begun to overtake them. The one that had him enforcing that distance all that time ago, that stupid distance, convincing himself that his own worries were valid concerns about business and the running of the guild and not just cowardice over not wanting to face how he’d feel if it went tits up. That worry was still there, and it would gnaw at his insides like a pack of skeevers if he let it, but it was overpowered by how much he could get used to this. The little smiles. The looks. The complete lack of personal space between them as they went about their little routines.

That happiness was put on pause when a knock interrupted their dinner preparations.

Cursing beneath her breath, much as she had when they’d been spotted by the Companions, she cleaned her hands free of flour from the bread she’d been making and strode for the door. Brynjolf followed, a dagger in hand behind his back, a force of habit.

“Jorleif,” she greeted tiredly. “What is it?”

“Still not one for pleasantries, I see,” Jorleif replied. “High King Ulfric invites you to sup with him tonight – he was pleased to hear you were back in Windhelm.”

“I brought a guest with me.”

“Bring the guest, please!” Jorleif responded happily enough. “Galmar will be there, too. A real reunion, through and through.”

“When?”

“As soon as you can get to the Palace of the Kings, I expect.”

“…Wait here.”

Turning away from the door, she almost walked straight into Brynjolf – and then breathed a soft laugh at the weapon in his hand. Taking up the bread dough in its bowl from the kitchen table, she strode back to Jorleif and thrust the bowl into his hands.

“Here. Have the cooks bake this, I don’t want it going to waste. Move quickly, or else the cold will ruin it."

Whether it was a ploy to be rid of the messenger quickly, a way to amuse herself, or she was truly very excited about that particular loaf of bread, it had the intended effect – the man was quickly gone, and she turned a look filled with trepidation in Brynjolf’s direction.

“How would you like to have supper with the High King of Skyrim?”

Had he not overheard the exchange, he’d never have believed her.

Rather than rush to her wardrobe to change into finery, she settled for brushing the flour from her armour (and her hair) and then leading the way out of the door. It was a short walk to the palace – and Brynjolf’s disbelief did surface when he saw how Ulfric Stormcloak greeted Kirsi. With a warm greeting, and a hug.

“When did you arrive, Stormblade?” he asked, paying Brynjolf all the attention High Kings likely usually paid people who didn’t immediately interest them.

“This morning, my King,” she bowed at the neck and was forcibly straightened, Ulfric having none of it.

“This morning? I should set the guards on you for being here so long without coming here. And who’s this?”

He had not yet looked at Brynjolf, but it was plain he had not escaped his notice.

“Brynjolf. A friend – and a travelling companion. Bryn, this is Ulfric Stormcloak, and his housecarl Galmar Stone-fist.”

This is Ulfric. Like he was a friend from the tavern and little more. Was he supposed to bow? Brynjolf did not bow – not to anybody. He didn’t much want to start here. So instead, he cleared his throat and looked between the two of them.

“I wasn’t aware you rubbed shoulders with royalty, Kirsi. I imagine how you met must be quite the tale.”

Galmar breathed a harsh laugh. “She’s not told you? By Talos, if I’d survived Helgen all within a hundred leagues of me would know the tale at all times.”

Helgen? Brynjolf stared in disbelief. The look remained on his face throughout dinner, and he was in less of a mood for teasing than he had been in Whiterun.

Do you remember Korvanjud, girl? When you snuck up onto the walkway and rained fire down on those Imperial bastards from above?

Ulfric had cut in there. I remember it. I still owe you that drink, don’t I?

You fought in the war? Brynjolf had asked, unable to help himself.

She’s not told you that either, lad? By Talos, I don’t know how Ulfric would’ve won the damn thing as swiftly as he did without the Dr-

Galmar. Kirsi had cut in, fixing the man with a hard stare.

…Without the driving force that Stormblade here proved to be. Ulfric had covered for his housecarl – and Brynjolf didn’t buy it for a second.

They returned to Hjerim that night in silence.

“Brynjolf, sooner or later you’ll have to say something to me.”

After dinner, they’d retired back to her home wordlessly, and Kirsi didn’t try to break the silence until they were out of the city gates early the next morning. Brynjolf suspected she was worried that High King of hers would issue an invitation for breakfast, too, if they didn’t make themselves scarce.

“The Companions were one thing. Harbinger, do-gooder, whatever. I figured you need easy money to supplement your finances, a cover for all of the ill-gotten gold you make with us. Whatever. Soldiering? Not my business either – the civil war never interested me, and maybe it’s a good thing that your mighty High King’s victory stopped Maven from being directly in charge of the Rift. It’s even a relief to know your not being scared of her has reasonable roots that go beyond plain old foolishness. Maybe even who you are – whoever that is – provides you with useful contacts, I don’t know. But that’s the point. I don’t know. And the more I see, the less I know.”

“Bryn…”

“Are you a highborn lass, then? Is that it? Because you’ve done too much for us for me to call that a conflict of interest, you know?”

“Not at all. I’m as common as the muck beneath our boots.”

“Most peasants don’t sup with High Kings.”

“A twist of fate, little more.”

“One you don’t trust me enough to explain.”

“It’s not like that.”

“What is it like?”

Sighing, she shook her head and looked out across the snow landscape, visibly searching for the words.

“Most folk like me in the context they know me in. You insist Vilkas is in love with me, and maybe he is, but only in the context he knows me in. He could barely square himself with my throwing a fireball at a draugr – some nonsense about it not being an honourable way or fight, I don’t know what the- anyway, if he does love me, he loves Kirsi, the Harbinger of the Companions and Thane of Whiterun. The one who disappears and returns having cleared out a cave of bandits, or rescued a citizen, or beat the shit out of someone who threatened a villager. That’s not me. You know that better than anybody. If he saw the rest of it? He’d go from being attracted to me, to wanting to take up arms against me very damn quickly. I can’t even resent him for it, either. He believes what I’ve led him to believe.”

It was clear she wasn’t done when she paused, and so Brynjolf waited in silence for her to continue.

“Ulfric…he’s less rigid, perhaps. Not that he’s in love with me. If he was ever going to pursue anything like that, it would be because of what I am and not who I am.

“I’m sure he has enough soldiers to take his pick from, lass.”

“It’s not that I was referring to,” she muttered sourly. “So long as I’m subtle about whatever else I get up to, I’m sure he doesn’t care. But is that better or worse than Vilkas’ outlook? I don’t…I can’t have that happen again. Not with you.”

“You think I’d go running because you give gold to orphans and run an outfit of block-headed warriors?”

“I don’t run then. And they’re not block-headed,” she said softly. “And it’s more than that.”

“How much more, Kirsi?”

“Much more. An entire world-load of complications. And you’ve shut me out before for less.”

Brynjolf faltered. “Kirsi…lass…”

They were interrupted by the screech of a dragon, and then a blast of fire.

The battle was a hard-won one. She’d fought worse dragons, after all – the worst dragon – but she was certain the ones that were left were growing fiercer, as if in some desperate bid to cling onto the foothold they’d previously dug out for themselves in this land.

They hadn’t been far from Kynesgrove, and so they’d been joined by miners and guards as they battled the beast, but that threatened to be more of a help than a hindrance – making sure none were in the line of fire as she shot spells and bellowed Shouts at the dragon until finally she could make the killing blow, driving her blade through its eye.

She turned to Brynjolf then, looking at him almost mournfully as she fought to regain her breath, well-accustomed by now to the feeling of the dragon’s soul whipping about her body and finally sinking in. It felt like she was being held before a bonfire, the heat just shy of actually burning. Brynjolf stared, his face splattered with dragon blood, his eyes wide.

“I’m the Dragonborn,” Kirsi breathed.

Like the skeever wasn’t already out of the bag. How long had she refused to use Shouts around him? Even in their pursuit of Mercer through Falmer-infested caves. All for nothing. Brynjolf continued to stare – a time during which she did her best to predict what he would do. Mostly, her money was on an awkwardly mumbled “I’m heading back to Riften, I’ll see you next time you complete a job”.

Instead, though, he threw down his blade and strode towards her, few paying them much mind at all as they trailed back towards whatever they’d been doing when the dragon descended. Now it was Kirsi’s turn to stare…right up until he was within arm’s length of her, when he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her towards him, pulling her into a kiss that filled her with fire more than the souls of a hundred dragons ever could.

When he pulled back, he stayed close, one rough fingertip trailing across the scar at the side of her face. Kirsi was fast deciding she wasn’t going to have the face sculptor get rid of it, after all.

“No more secrets, lass?”

“No more secrets,” she confirmed softly, eyes flickering down to his lips and then up to his eyes again. “Although…”

Her hands had come to rest at his chest and she felt him stiffen, dreading what she was going to say next.

“I’m also the Archmage at the College of Winterhold,” she said. “I thought we might go there next.”

Brynjolf breathed a laugh, his forehead pressing against hers. “I can live with that.”

Links: AO3 -- FF.net -- flufftober masterpost -- dividers by cafekitsune

#esta's flufftober '23 fills #flufftober 2023 #flufftober2023 #brynjolf/f!dragonborn #brynjolf x f!dragonborn #skyrim fic #skyrim fanfic #skyrim fanfiction #brynjolf fanfic #brynjolf fanfiction

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trickstarbrave · 2 years

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big improvement i would put in the elder scrolls story wise if we rebuilt it would be an actual dragon cult faction. no you dont have to be able to join it (though i would like that and think it would be cool lol) but i feel it would make sense and add more to the setting.

currently the dragon cult is made up of just undead. draugar and dragon priests etc. people entombed since the merethic era waiting for their gods to come back. i think it would be better if real people just up and decided “fuck it. i hate everything going on right now. i hate the war, i hate the thalmor, i hate this empire now, and i hate the stormcloaks. let alduin come back. if he wants to rule the world or end it so be it this place sucks” and just decided to start the cult back up. or maybe its villagers in small settlements who give tribute to dragons in exchange for not being turned into charred corpses--the empire and stormcloaks sure as shit cant supply enough soldiers to keep them safe, and all they have to do is hail the dragons and give them some cattle to keep from being the next helgen.

because as it stands right now the dragons arent imposing or scary they just seem like big monsters that show up to destroy shit for no reason. everyone stands around after you killed one going “wow the dragonborn” and then goes on with their day. they dont even run and hide inside during a dragon attack consistently without a mod. dragons are just annoyances. i think it would be better to see the real effects of them. have them be basically a third faction like in the civil war, they start claiming cities after alduin brings them back. have to keep hushed about being dragonborn there. be able to talk to dragons in those settlements who have their own opinions about you being dragonborn and about alduin in there.

also i think the civil war should have been more important. have patrols along the roads. if you progress far enough they attack you on sight in enemy territory. taxes, screenings, etc. forts should be important strategic points and not just bandit dens. bridges could have been destroyed and rebuilt in the conflict and you can see evidence of it. have different ways you can go about doing it, like you can be a spy, an open fighter, an archer, etc etc. gives a lot of replay value if its not just picking which npcs you wanna install in cities and who you wanna take orders to but instead its own challenges and ways of accomplishing taking a city. each questline should also involve real issues each faction has, like how the empire cant spare more troops so they need to make due with what they have and stormcloaks having limited supplies so they have many soldiers to feed and not enough metal and food to arm and feed them.

basically everyone suggests redoing skyrim in the way of gutting the dragons and making the thalmor the big bad and stopping the civil war altogether or whatever. i think the bare bones is fine the biggest problem with skyrim is that Nothing Ever Happens. random encounters mean nothing. dragon attacks except for the tower and helgen Mean Nothing. dragons are just big monsters and bandits are just random enemies and you can only talk to like 3 dragons in the entire game and you dont even really get to understand dragon culture and morality. the civil war doesn’t feel like a war and everything is more filmsy than a disney park. giving some remote realism, branching options of things to go to accomplish the same things, and more depth would go along way to help the game not feel dead and shallow. because an RPG should have. role play in it. choices you make. those choices at least SEEMING like they actually matter when you think about it longer than 5 minutes

#skyrim #the elder scrolls #the elder scrolls skyrim

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argisthebulwark · 1 year

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so so so I was on my way to work this morning blasting music right. not paying any particular attention to anything, just letting my playlist shuffle through bc I still had major fog brain and didn't think of anything past hitting play and what not.

Well suddenly mantra by bring me the horizon came on and it snapped me awake, particularly the part right after the second chorus that goes like "I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, all I'm asking for's a little bit of faith" bc my brain was like !!! major miraak and ldb vibes holy shit (which btw this entire blog is responsible for my new obsession with him so thanks)

like that part just hits soooo well for that. the lbd asking miraak to just have faith in them!!! and leave apocrypha with them. I had it on repeat for hours today and it's just been stuck it my head for the rest

aaa!! i don't usually listen to new BMTH but you're so right about this song. it's been added to my Miraak playlist. it goes so well. i'll link it here for anyone who wants to listen

"I promise I can save you."

The Last Dragonborn's words rattled Miraak's bones. Their hand was covered in blood and ink when they thrust it toward him. Eyes full of desperation watched his every move over the Black Book sitting open in their lap, dark magic whirling and twisting over its pages.

He couldn't trust them. They were his enemy. He belonged in Apocrypha even if it crumbled. He wanted nothing more than to squash their obnoxious hopefulness. He couldn't be saved, didn't know if he wanted to be.

"Close your eyes and listen carefully, Dragonborn." Miraak put every ounce of hatred into his words. They didn't even flinch. "I am bound to this realm. You cannot save me."

"I'm the only one that can save you." Their hand grabbed his, warm skin sticking together and Miraak was disgusted by the way his heart leapt. He'd stomped down his feelings for so long. He wouldn't allow himself to feel that way about the Last Dragonborn.

"How do you expect to do this?" That damned smile was on their face at his words. He knew he'd lost to them yet again. He had spent lifetimes building himself into an unbeatable foe but failed time and time again when met with the Last Dragonborn.

"I know it doesn't make a lot of sense." They babbled and gripped his hand so tight he swore he'd lose feeling. "All I'm asking for is a little bit of faith."

Their words took his breath away. The Book's green glow cast eerie shadows across the Last Dragonborn's face when they looked over at him and Miraak caught a glance of what they could have been. He imagined them at his side at the height of his power, matching thrones in his palace, the unstoppable force they could have become had they met under different circumstances.

"Can you believe in me?"

It's so easy to believe in them. Miraak felt himself nodding before he could think better of it. Apocrypha's seas beat against their platform and for the first time in ages he felt hope. It was a dangerous feeling but the Last Dragonborn gave him hope.

The world turned upside down. Miraak was nauseous when he tumbled through empty space, flashes of green and black stealing his vision when he succumbed to the power of the Black Book. The Last Dragonborn clung to his hand through it all. They never let him go.

Landing back on Skyrim knocked the air from his lungs. The bright sun overhead blinded him and old smells he'd long forgotten filled his nose. Trees towered overhead and Miraak waited for his vision to stop swirling.

Despite his worst fears the Last Dragonborn never let go of Miraak's hand. They squeezed his fingers to call his attention. He hesitated - his mask had been lost in their last battle. He wasn't sure what they saw when they looked at his face, if he'd become some horrible monster like the Seekers.

Their eyes crinkled when they smiled up at him. Miraak knew he was staring but couldn't help himself - the grime covering their face did nothing to stop his heart from hammering. He even felt a bit guilty for leaving so many wounds on them.

"How did you do that?" He whispered, trying to figure out how they'd cast a calming or persuasion enchantment without him noticing. He knew the truth but had to bury it. He couldn't have feelings for the Last Dragonborn. Absolutely not.

"Do what?" They laughed, rolling closer to Miraak over the dirty ground of whatever forest they'd landed in. "I just talked to you. You're the one that listened."

They were dangerous. Far too charismatic for their own good. Miraak's heart leapt when the Dragonborn leaned close to him, studying his face. They didn't seem horrified so it couldn't be too bad, though he didn't feel inclined to find a mirror anytime soon.

"You're too persuasive." Miraak felt himself smiling, a plan already forming in his mind. His last plot had only failed because he was working against the Last Dragonborn, but on the same side they could conquer everything. "Do you want to start a cult with me?"

#thank you anon this song actually fucks #asks #anon #miraak #writing #skyrim #miraak/dragonborn

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snarryauctoberfest · 7 months

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Snarry AUctoberfest: Week 1 💚❤️

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Never in Your Favour || E || 20k Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Underage Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

Muggle AU. Headmaster Dumbledore decides it is time for Harry to train resistance to interrogation so he can properly join the Order of the Ostrich. And who better to administer that training than his very own Chemistry teacher, Severus Snape? "I am not merely talking about discomfort – you will be hurt, you will need medical assistance, there is going to be a severe impact on your mental health as well. We will be far, far out of range of a student-teacher relationship."

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Receive You || T || 11.5k Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

It was supposed to be a typical investigation, even if “unwanted mischief in Glenloris” left too much up for conjecture. Suspicious characters were sneaking around the ancient dragon tomb just outside of town, and Severus had been sent to look into it. Things become a bit more complicated, however, when a young man and his white horse come to town. Prompt: 0001 - Wild Card! Snarry meet-cute in a Skyrim reskin with a dash of Yakuza/Like a Dragon mixed in for flavor.

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Wicked Wiesn || E || 18k Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

Severus fought tooth and nail to be spared the experience of visiting the famous Oktoberfest with his colleagues, but of course Albus made him come. Being forced to endure the crowds of people, a handsome waiter catches his eye. Maybe this whole affair is not as bad as it seems, and maybe Severus can find something (or someone) to enjoy this craziness.

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Innocent Lilies || E || 1k Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

It was bittersweet to have Harry as he was back then — a charming boy who asked after another's health, who cared for the hippogriffs roaming the castle grounds, and who greeted Severus each day with a bashful hello. Now Harry was the Dark Lord, ruling the land with a tight grip and harsh declarations, so different from his first eighteen years of life. Severus receives confirmation one night. A 2HA Snarry inspired fic.

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Unexpected Suitor || T || 6k Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

Prompt: Historical AU. Harry must marry before his 25th birthday in order to receive his inheritance or see it given to a distant relative, but he has driven off every suitor. Fed up, Lily decides he can marry her childhood friend Severus, who won't let himself be scared off by Harry's antics. James is less enthused, but can see no other option for Harry to receive his inheritance. - "Severus, you'd be perfect!" "Excuse me?" exclaimed James and Harry simultaneously, one horrified, the other shocked. Severus' eyes narrowed. "I'm not quite sure what you mean, Lily." -

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Harry Potter and the Monster in the Woods || T || 5.8k Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

Harry is sent into the woods to be sacrificed to the creature who lives there in exchange for the creature lifting his curse on Harry's village. Harry is rather surprised not to be eaten. The creature is rather surprised that Harry turns out to be a tolerable life companion.

💚❤️ [Fanfic] Brat! || E || 25.7k Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Tumblr Post: Link AO3: Link

“Every child in the world will know his name!” With Voldemort gone forever, Harry’s childhood goes a little differently. Years later, Severus is called in to help deal with Harry’s magical outbursts. Life will never be the same again.

2023 Snarry AUctoberfest Entries || HOS Tumblr || Discord

#2023 snarry auctoberfest #house of snarry #snarry fanfic #snarry #pro snape

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dartagnantt · 3 months

Text

Sanguine Seeker Ranger Archetype | Vampiric power to hunt your quarry

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! You should also follow my new Kickstarter so you can be alerted when it goes live next year!

My gift to you is vampires. This will probably not be sanctioned by the church.

Life Sense

One of my favourite senses. I blame skyrim where it's broken as hell, but oh so good.

Drain Blood

What do you do with the blood when you find it? You drink it of course.

Blood Trail

But what if it gets away? Well, hunt it to the ends of the vampire-damned earth

Drink Deep

Once you catch it, give it the deep suck. Give your foes anemia.

Misty Rebuttal

And not directly blood flavoured, but quite handy regardless :)

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Third Casters Revised

Undying Templates

Bone-Eaters

School of White Necromancy

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

#d&d 5e #subclasses #ranger #ranger archetype #ranger conclave

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