GideonTrideSep 29, 2019Sep 29, 2019 at 05:38 AM
#1
ESO @name: @GideontTride
Discord Tag: @NoiseTrash#7900
Character Name: Skulks-in-Clouds-Shade
Race: Argonian
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Affliction: Obsession with vengeance, psychologically tormented, hunted by House Telvanni
Marital Status: Single, Not Looking for Anyone
Sexual Orientation: Asexual
Physical Description: A little tall for an Argonian, Skulks stands at about 6'. He is wiry and lithe, hungry-looking to a point of near starvation, and he carries himself with an unnerving grace. As though each movement he makes is calculated. His skin and scales are a dark grey-green, almost like a tortoise shell, with contrasts of brighter pale green spotted like the belly of a toad. He has one milky white albino eye that he was afflicted with as a child, but he never speaks about how it happened. His other eye is bright shimmering gold and brown with inky flecks spattered about, elliptical, and burns with a quiet rage and disgust with most of what his gaze falls upon. Plumes of thick black feathers dart out of the top of his head which is also adorned with a gold and ruby jewelry of some Argonian make. His long rigid snout has a number of scars along the left side; his mouth stretching back to his neck in a grotesque mixture of a grimace and a sneer. He is often in lightweight, tight fitted black leather armor, preferring to be able to move nimbly and swiftly to execute any in his path for revenge. His near silent movement is unsettling to most, and at times his manner so slight that people have been unaware he is even in the same room. His voice is a deep growling whisper, and he typically says very little unless he is putting on some apropos demeanor in order to insinuate himself into the worlds of others, ostensibly to serve some purpose toward his endeavor to murder the agents of House Telvanni. When he is being intimidating, his manner becomes even more demure and he will stand statue-still, staring at the unfortunate target of his ire. A loathsome man, Skulks spends most of his time alone, plotting and thinking upon the vile, ichorous vengeance he seeks. There is a nearly imperceptible sadness about him that only those who have experienced a tremendous and harrowing pain can detect.
Background:
My character is an Argonian (Saxhleel) Nightblade. His story is one of suffering, slavery, and vengeance. He is inclined to help those who suffer the abuses of masters and slavery, but this delusional, perceived altruism is a veil he casts upon his own mind to cope with the horrible things he has done, and must do in order to free his siblings and all those enslaved. Becoming distracted toward greater things by the obsession of revenge to faceless masters, he is rarely without intent. It was not long ago that slaving became unpopular and unsavory in Vvardenfell, but it still exists, and part of his impossible goal is to eradicate it. Argonians often have a very different, or almost no, sense time in regard to eventual or existential thought, their memories long and eidetic. Many of the things you will read will be without punctuation, and cover a long period but don't have much actual sequence, and are disorganized intentionally as they are written in character, and it is unbearable for him to visit most of these memories. A testament to his shattered psyche.
We find ourselves in a dimly lit room at a forgettable roadside inn and tavern, far from anything. A dwindling fire crackling in the hearth, sat in deep cushioned chairs, a bottle of brandy at the ready.
"I speak now in your tongue as I have learned it well; we will never speak upon this subject again. And if I come to find, and I always find what I seek, that you have uttered a one word of this to anyone else, I will slowly take from you the breathe and tongue which you used to betray me. Your life will be forfeit. And to impress upon you as to the nature of my resolve, I know every exit from this room and you are as far as can be from all of them. And though you think you have invited me here it was in fact myself that chose this location long before you even knew you would. I was the one that had young Sapphur suggest this roadside inn to you. I was the one who had him start working for you and your sister. I chose _you_ to hear my story.
Take this with the gravity of Oblivion when you promise me you will never speak of this night, and should you ever entertain the notion, pray death take you before I reach you; as I am singularly talented in the arts of torture and murder and I can make minutes stretch into years...
(Skulks takes a long breath and exhales, his demeanor shifting instantly to that of an ingratiating host.)
I suppose I did not carefully arrange this moment to bandy words with you.
Now! Erect your spine, have a glass of brandy, listen carefully, and do not once interrupt me.
Of fifteen eggs, a smaller clutch... I was a quiet one among the ready. Some of the others once said I did not drink enough of the sap of the Hist, and therefore have no soul.
Looking to the Hist for guidance, the shadows of each vine and branch became my friend. Spending much of my time lurking underneath the dark waters of the bog, contemplating how best to please my elders. Once, I would see the woman of the water. She has sisters she would not speak of, though I asked, and she spoke in cryptic foreseeing, an auger of my doomed fate.
I would never please my Elders, it seemed. I would never have the chance.
Rites of passage gave us the ways the warrior takes, but I preferred the way of the hunter. Obfuscate, observe, stalk, execute.
Then... (He pauses for only a few seconds but their weight is unfathomable) ...they came and took us. We knew to shroud inside the veil even the Hist's gaze cannot pierce, and still they found us. Brutes with swords, cudgels, nets, cages...smelling of filth and wretchedness.
What you call 'Black Marsh' was behind me. All of us kin and many more besides were taken from our home, most of us never to return.
House Telvanni; (He spits this out with such vile disgust and hatred it almost pains you to hear)
My clutch siblings (Sxhu-uch) and I were sold to them by the dryskins that took us. These were no empty, scale-drying threats of the Elves or Men of Black Marsh. These were dark masters of Vvardenfell, whose intentions are too unseemly to speak upon.
It was the last time I saw my clutch, or any of Saxhleel children. Many are taken as children and do not even remember the Xanmeer, Pyramids our people once built and charted the stars from.
My siblings... (Skulks' gaze wanders and settles in a thousand-yard stare into the middle distance. Perhaps searching for some memory, or more likely running from it.)
Some of them returned to the Hist by valiant effort.
Some of them just to be found the very next morning, and further, more depraved horrors done upon their minds and scales.
Some... I will not tell you. You are not allowed to know.
Later, the mages sent their empowered brutal men into our tribes home, they killed many of our elders and our best warriors were cut down like so much dried vine.
I first saw their trees, like marsh mushrooms as big as buildings, the skies; so bright and TOO bright, even.
I could barely see, I shrilled my eyes and carried along, shrieking inside. I trembled with my siblings inside a cage for weeks. Beaten, starved, humiliated in ways... unspeakable ways.
Then, there were the young Telvanni mages. What we would once call xhuthi... like the sticky resin discharge of swamp fleshflies...
They made me into their own molding.
I am nothing but a mold, if even above an animal, to them. They that have destroyed and enslaved my clutch, shattered tormented and defiled the lives of so many, for the cost of a sturdy wagon.
Their will becomes my will. Each finger of their hand did not know what the next one did, but I am to move as an extension of that hand. Think as they think. Theirs to command and use. A weapon, the crooked finger of a monstrous sorcerer pointing at you and cursing you to slowly suffer in agonizing pain before your body finally succumbs to the sweet merciful embrace of death. I began to enjoy torturing, drawing out the death of my masters enemies. Those were dark days, and still there were darker to come.
I listen to their words, practice the somatic gesturing. I read their books when they sleep and I take to myself the things that serve for our true justice. But you and I know there is no justice. No innocent, no guilty. There is only punishment, and I am that great black gavel crashing into the presidium, condemning you, the nameless target of a dark mages conspirings.
I tell you now, and just this once; They groomed me as an assassin. One of countless I am certain, as I have taken the breath from others that tried and failed at their conditioning.
I took to the killing, more to the learning how to kill. Their magics came to me, though they think Saxhleel as a race of beasts, animals to be harvested. We could never be of their intellect, so I exploit their weakness... ignorance becomes our only ally. Still they do teach me the dark arts.
They came to call me Nightblade.
I found I could pierce the flesh and heart of a target at ten paces with my mind, draining its life and sapping it into my own vigor. I could vanish right before your eyes, silently rip your throat out and watch as your steaming blood pours from what was your neck onto the cold ground. Or perhaps never be seen at all as my perfectly-aimed poison arrow finds its way to its final destination. Cast a baleful curse upon you, paralyzing you where you stand, but never taking from you your sensation, your eyes would expand with horror as I slowly slink up to you, all the while knowing you can still feel pain, your mind conjuring all manner of horror I would visit upon your body.
Here, have another mug of Brandy.
(Skulks stands and stares into the sputtering fire for a while, poking it absently with the iron. Letting the crackle of of wood and creaking of overstuffed chairs fill the quiet. His milky white eye flickering dimly like a flagging lightning storm cast into fog. He mumbles something to himself, unintelligible. Even staring directly at him you could almost lose sight of the faint creature. Eventually he draws a sudden and deep breath, focuses on his audience, and continues.)
So, I began to use these knife-ears as a means to find the power to bring about the complete annihilation of their so proud and powerful House. I would seek my egg-siblings, free them, turn them to my cause. But we both know I am too far gone for most to even recognize me.
I would take things, things of power, hide them under the water where dryskins cannot breathe. They would bicker and scheme against each other thinking that one was trying to undermine another. I turned them against each other.
When master Mevredh Nothadayn came to me and instructed me to deal with his own cousin, I did so with great relish. I ensured that the younger mage knew who it was that had sentenced him to this before the end.
Then I came for Mevredh himself.
(Skulks eyes well up with a feverish reverence and his head raises an imperious fraction. There is a kind of thinly veiled hysteria in his next words.)
After the houses master and his twin nephews lay dead in their chambers, I slipped away. The very toolset they trained me with put to use against them.
(His voice now raising in both pitch and volume he recites these words like they have been rehearsed, exhaustively.)
If you have heard anything I have said and taken it into your heart, you will now know that I will, NO MATTER THE COST, end the enslavement of the Sahxleel! And I will spit the BLACK SPERM OF MY VENGEANCE ONTO THE FACELESS MASTERS OF HOUSE TELVANNI!!!!
(After a pause so very brief, the incensed murderer composes himself into the quiet scholar, dictating to the scribe.)
They know of me, as they should. To this day, Skulks-in-Clouds-Shade is hunted by their powerful agents. Hunted by those that I once was. I must stay shrewd and vigilant, clear minded in order to evade these brokers of death. They are Nightblades after all, and it is only a matter of time before one of them is better than me. I must hurry to task, an operative of unseen doom, a hunted pariah of Vvardenfell, disguising myself at every turn.
When even the Dark Brotherhood came to kill me, I outwitted them, made myself among them without their ever knowing I was once a target. I fulfilled their contracts, engendered myself to them, was who they wanted me to be. And I employed the necessary coercion to ultimately utilize them toward my own goals, turning them upon the very men who contracted these witless fucks to end me.
I have aligned myself with thieves and brigands, cut-purses and jack-a-blades, to assist me in procuring the resources I need to endure another day. I have stolen and murdered and done much worse to find even a scrap of knowledge as to the whereabouts of my kin. I have done much worse besides to root out the Telvanni masters, those I can reach have known the taste of this blade. (During that last sentence he imperceptibly removed a dagger from somewhere on himself and, presenting it, focuses his eyes upon it.) But I have no taste for these vile deeds.
(The blade finds its way back into some part of his vambrace.)
Through mountain moving effort I found two of my siblings, still slaves.
One of them I managed to free, killing his master in front of his own children. I gave him every coin I had to help him return to Black Marsh, and I pray to the Hist that he made it, or died trying. The other... a sister, she was too far conditioned to be saved. The things they did to her mind... broke her. She couldn't, WOULDN'T, leave her master. She was lost to me, to us all. I gave her poison that she might use it on him or at least herself, but this only made things the worse.
She drank it, but was found before the Hist could reclaim her. They brought her back from the brink of death with magics and alchemy, a concerted effort for a slave... and her master redoubled his cruelty for her actions. He was too powerful for me, despite my efficiency I know my betters. I could not kill him, I could not save her. So I spared her any further pain and did the deed myself.
(Skulks eyes retake that distant, hazy expression.)
She looked relieved at the end of it...
(He pauses again for an agonizing beat)
I will never be able to see another thing when I close my eyes than the face of my sister as I took her life.
(He quickly gathers himself and his terse and calm demeanor return effortlessly, as though he had in an instant forgotten speaking on or reminding himself of this so-thought mercy killing.)
Now, you have heard as much as I will tell, and the hour grows late and I have an appointment to keep. Have some more Brandy, it's a good vintage I am told...
And it will still your trembling hands. For how they would tremble if you knew what I am about to do.
Discord Tag: @NoiseTrash#7900
Character Name: Skulks-in-Clouds-Shade
Race: Argonian
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Affliction: Obsession with vengeance, psychologically tormented, hunted by House Telvanni
Marital Status: Single, Not Looking for Anyone
Sexual Orientation: Asexual
Physical Description: A little tall for an Argonian, Skulks stands at about 6'. He is wiry and lithe, hungry-looking to a point of near starvation, and he carries himself with an unnerving grace. As though each movement he makes is calculated. His skin and scales are a dark grey-green, almost like a tortoise shell, with contrasts of brighter pale green spotted like the belly of a toad. He has one milky white albino eye that he was afflicted with as a child, but he never speaks about how it happened. His other eye is bright shimmering gold and brown with inky flecks spattered about, elliptical, and burns with a quiet rage and disgust with most of what his gaze falls upon. Plumes of thick black feathers dart out of the top of his head which is also adorned with a gold and ruby jewelry of some Argonian make. His long rigid snout has a number of scars along the left side; his mouth stretching back to his neck in a grotesque mixture of a grimace and a sneer. He is often in lightweight, tight fitted black leather armor, preferring to be able to move nimbly and swiftly to execute any in his path for revenge. His near silent movement is unsettling to most, and at times his manner so slight that people have been unaware he is even in the same room. His voice is a deep growling whisper, and he typically says very little unless he is putting on some apropos demeanor in order to insinuate himself into the worlds of others, ostensibly to serve some purpose toward his endeavor to murder the agents of House Telvanni. When he is being intimidating, his manner becomes even more demure and he will stand statue-still, staring at the unfortunate target of his ire. A loathsome man, Skulks spends most of his time alone, plotting and thinking upon the vile, ichorous vengeance he seeks. There is a nearly imperceptible sadness about him that only those who have experienced a tremendous and harrowing pain can detect.
Background:
My character is an Argonian (Saxhleel) Nightblade. His story is one of suffering, slavery, and vengeance. He is inclined to help those who suffer the abuses of masters and slavery, but this delusional, perceived altruism is a veil he casts upon his own mind to cope with the horrible things he has done, and must do in order to free his siblings and all those enslaved. Becoming distracted toward greater things by the obsession of revenge to faceless masters, he is rarely without intent. It was not long ago that slaving became unpopular and unsavory in Vvardenfell, but it still exists, and part of his impossible goal is to eradicate it. Argonians often have a very different, or almost no, sense time in regard to eventual or existential thought, their memories long and eidetic. Many of the things you will read will be without punctuation, and cover a long period but don't have much actual sequence, and are disorganized intentionally as they are written in character, and it is unbearable for him to visit most of these memories. A testament to his shattered psyche.
We find ourselves in a dimly lit room at a forgettable roadside inn and tavern, far from anything. A dwindling fire crackling in the hearth, sat in deep cushioned chairs, a bottle of brandy at the ready.
"I speak now in your tongue as I have learned it well; we will never speak upon this subject again. And if I come to find, and I always find what I seek, that you have uttered a one word of this to anyone else, I will slowly take from you the breathe and tongue which you used to betray me. Your life will be forfeit. And to impress upon you as to the nature of my resolve, I know every exit from this room and you are as far as can be from all of them. And though you think you have invited me here it was in fact myself that chose this location long before you even knew you would. I was the one that had young Sapphur suggest this roadside inn to you. I was the one who had him start working for you and your sister. I chose _you_ to hear my story.
Take this with the gravity of Oblivion when you promise me you will never speak of this night, and should you ever entertain the notion, pray death take you before I reach you; as I am singularly talented in the arts of torture and murder and I can make minutes stretch into years...
(Skulks takes a long breath and exhales, his demeanor shifting instantly to that of an ingratiating host.)
I suppose I did not carefully arrange this moment to bandy words with you.
Now! Erect your spine, have a glass of brandy, listen carefully, and do not once interrupt me.
Of fifteen eggs, a smaller clutch... I was a quiet one among the ready. Some of the others once said I did not drink enough of the sap of the Hist, and therefore have no soul.
Looking to the Hist for guidance, the shadows of each vine and branch became my friend. Spending much of my time lurking underneath the dark waters of the bog, contemplating how best to please my elders. Once, I would see the woman of the water. She has sisters she would not speak of, though I asked, and she spoke in cryptic foreseeing, an auger of my doomed fate.
I would never please my Elders, it seemed. I would never have the chance.
Rites of passage gave us the ways the warrior takes, but I preferred the way of the hunter. Obfuscate, observe, stalk, execute.
Then... (He pauses for only a few seconds but their weight is unfathomable) ...they came and took us. We knew to shroud inside the veil even the Hist's gaze cannot pierce, and still they found us. Brutes with swords, cudgels, nets, cages...smelling of filth and wretchedness.
What you call 'Black Marsh' was behind me. All of us kin and many more besides were taken from our home, most of us never to return.
House Telvanni; (He spits this out with such vile disgust and hatred it almost pains you to hear)
My clutch siblings (Sxhu-uch) and I were sold to them by the dryskins that took us. These were no empty, scale-drying threats of the Elves or Men of Black Marsh. These were dark masters of Vvardenfell, whose intentions are too unseemly to speak upon.
It was the last time I saw my clutch, or any of Saxhleel children. Many are taken as children and do not even remember the Xanmeer, Pyramids our people once built and charted the stars from.
My siblings... (Skulks' gaze wanders and settles in a thousand-yard stare into the middle distance. Perhaps searching for some memory, or more likely running from it.)
Some of them returned to the Hist by valiant effort.
Some of them just to be found the very next morning, and further, more depraved horrors done upon their minds and scales.
Some... I will not tell you. You are not allowed to know.
Later, the mages sent their empowered brutal men into our tribes home, they killed many of our elders and our best warriors were cut down like so much dried vine.
I first saw their trees, like marsh mushrooms as big as buildings, the skies; so bright and TOO bright, even.
I could barely see, I shrilled my eyes and carried along, shrieking inside. I trembled with my siblings inside a cage for weeks. Beaten, starved, humiliated in ways... unspeakable ways.
Then, there were the young Telvanni mages. What we would once call xhuthi... like the sticky resin discharge of swamp fleshflies...
They made me into their own molding.
I am nothing but a mold, if even above an animal, to them. They that have destroyed and enslaved my clutch, shattered tormented and defiled the lives of so many, for the cost of a sturdy wagon.
Their will becomes my will. Each finger of their hand did not know what the next one did, but I am to move as an extension of that hand. Think as they think. Theirs to command and use. A weapon, the crooked finger of a monstrous sorcerer pointing at you and cursing you to slowly suffer in agonizing pain before your body finally succumbs to the sweet merciful embrace of death. I began to enjoy torturing, drawing out the death of my masters enemies. Those were dark days, and still there were darker to come.
I listen to their words, practice the somatic gesturing. I read their books when they sleep and I take to myself the things that serve for our true justice. But you and I know there is no justice. No innocent, no guilty. There is only punishment, and I am that great black gavel crashing into the presidium, condemning you, the nameless target of a dark mages conspirings.
I tell you now, and just this once; They groomed me as an assassin. One of countless I am certain, as I have taken the breath from others that tried and failed at their conditioning.
I took to the killing, more to the learning how to kill. Their magics came to me, though they think Saxhleel as a race of beasts, animals to be harvested. We could never be of their intellect, so I exploit their weakness... ignorance becomes our only ally. Still they do teach me the dark arts.
They came to call me Nightblade.
I found I could pierce the flesh and heart of a target at ten paces with my mind, draining its life and sapping it into my own vigor. I could vanish right before your eyes, silently rip your throat out and watch as your steaming blood pours from what was your neck onto the cold ground. Or perhaps never be seen at all as my perfectly-aimed poison arrow finds its way to its final destination. Cast a baleful curse upon you, paralyzing you where you stand, but never taking from you your sensation, your eyes would expand with horror as I slowly slink up to you, all the while knowing you can still feel pain, your mind conjuring all manner of horror I would visit upon your body.
Here, have another mug of Brandy.
(Skulks stands and stares into the sputtering fire for a while, poking it absently with the iron. Letting the crackle of of wood and creaking of overstuffed chairs fill the quiet. His milky white eye flickering dimly like a flagging lightning storm cast into fog. He mumbles something to himself, unintelligible. Even staring directly at him you could almost lose sight of the faint creature. Eventually he draws a sudden and deep breath, focuses on his audience, and continues.)
So, I began to use these knife-ears as a means to find the power to bring about the complete annihilation of their so proud and powerful House. I would seek my egg-siblings, free them, turn them to my cause. But we both know I am too far gone for most to even recognize me.
I would take things, things of power, hide them under the water where dryskins cannot breathe. They would bicker and scheme against each other thinking that one was trying to undermine another. I turned them against each other.
When master Mevredh Nothadayn came to me and instructed me to deal with his own cousin, I did so with great relish. I ensured that the younger mage knew who it was that had sentenced him to this before the end.
Then I came for Mevredh himself.
(Skulks eyes well up with a feverish reverence and his head raises an imperious fraction. There is a kind of thinly veiled hysteria in his next words.)
After the houses master and his twin nephews lay dead in their chambers, I slipped away. The very toolset they trained me with put to use against them.
(His voice now raising in both pitch and volume he recites these words like they have been rehearsed, exhaustively.)
If you have heard anything I have said and taken it into your heart, you will now know that I will, NO MATTER THE COST, end the enslavement of the Sahxleel! And I will spit the BLACK SPERM OF MY VENGEANCE ONTO THE FACELESS MASTERS OF HOUSE TELVANNI!!!!
(After a pause so very brief, the incensed murderer composes himself into the quiet scholar, dictating to the scribe.)
They know of me, as they should. To this day, Skulks-in-Clouds-Shade is hunted by their powerful agents. Hunted by those that I once was. I must stay shrewd and vigilant, clear minded in order to evade these brokers of death. They are Nightblades after all, and it is only a matter of time before one of them is better than me. I must hurry to task, an operative of unseen doom, a hunted pariah of Vvardenfell, disguising myself at every turn.
When even the Dark Brotherhood came to kill me, I outwitted them, made myself among them without their ever knowing I was once a target. I fulfilled their contracts, engendered myself to them, was who they wanted me to be. And I employed the necessary coercion to ultimately utilize them toward my own goals, turning them upon the very men who contracted these witless fucks to end me.
I have aligned myself with thieves and brigands, cut-purses and jack-a-blades, to assist me in procuring the resources I need to endure another day. I have stolen and murdered and done much worse to find even a scrap of knowledge as to the whereabouts of my kin. I have done much worse besides to root out the Telvanni masters, those I can reach have known the taste of this blade. (During that last sentence he imperceptibly removed a dagger from somewhere on himself and, presenting it, focuses his eyes upon it.) But I have no taste for these vile deeds.
(The blade finds its way back into some part of his vambrace.)
Through mountain moving effort I found two of my siblings, still slaves.
One of them I managed to free, killing his master in front of his own children. I gave him every coin I had to help him return to Black Marsh, and I pray to the Hist that he made it, or died trying. The other... a sister, she was too far conditioned to be saved. The things they did to her mind... broke her. She couldn't, WOULDN'T, leave her master. She was lost to me, to us all. I gave her poison that she might use it on him or at least herself, but this only made things the worse.
She drank it, but was found before the Hist could reclaim her. They brought her back from the brink of death with magics and alchemy, a concerted effort for a slave... and her master redoubled his cruelty for her actions. He was too powerful for me, despite my efficiency I know my betters. I could not kill him, I could not save her. So I spared her any further pain and did the deed myself.
(Skulks eyes retake that distant, hazy expression.)
She looked relieved at the end of it...
(He pauses again for an agonizing beat)
I will never be able to see another thing when I close my eyes than the face of my sister as I took her life.
(He quickly gathers himself and his terse and calm demeanor return effortlessly, as though he had in an instant forgotten speaking on or reminding himself of this so-thought mercy killing.)
Now, you have heard as much as I will tell, and the hour grows late and I have an appointment to keep. Have some more Brandy, it's a good vintage I am told...
And it will still your trembling hands. For how they would tremble if you knew what I am about to do.
rabiezcoreOct 04, 2019