[IC] Swords & Septims: Adventures in Tamriel (The Elder Scrolls)

[Hank]

Middas, 4th of Last Seed, 4E 203
Near the Southern fringe of Falkreath hold
Skyrim, Tamriel

Planting his gauntlets on his hips, Hector Sibassius narrowed his eyes at the old, wooden gate in front of him. It was built into a small elevation about the height of a man that quickly sloped down to the forest floor. Hidden away in a woodland grove, the gate was the entrance to a Nordic burial chamber that had supposedly been undisturbed since it was built. Hector was always skeptical of such claims, but when it came to this barrow, he was inclined to believe the story. Even with very specific directions the place had been difficult to find, and it wasn't the kind of location anyone would stumble upon by accident any time soon.

As was typical of Falkreath hold, the weather was chilly and gloomy. Fog hung thick between the trees and the sun was hidden behind a heavy layer of clouds, which created the impression of near-twilight, even though it was roughly noon. Or it was supposed to be, anyway. It was hard to keep track of time in this dark forest. The ex-Legionnaire looked around the grove, listening to the oppressive quiet, only punctuated by the chirping of birds and the rustling of woodland creatures in the distance. Looks like I'm the first to arrive.

Hector was used to marching long distances in heavy armor, so he was already dressed in his Cyrodillic steel plate. An old, ragged traveling cloak was draped over his shoulders and hung down to his knees, and a hood was pulled over Hector's helmeted head. His heart-shaped steel shield was strapped to his back, over his cloak. Hector moved one planted hand from his hip and rested it on the pommel of his sword, fingering the hilt. Gaze still fixed on the wooden doors, Hector considered all of his party members in turn, and wondered what they would find here.

Startled by the sound of a snapping twig, Hector whirled around and came face-to-face with the second arrival. He relaxed his grip on his sword's hilt and chuckled. "Oh, it's you," he said. "How was your journey?"

[GM note: the 'second arrival' is whoever finishes their post first.]

[Peik]

''I really should stop smoking before sleeping,'' Balen thought to himself as he slowly carved a path for himself through the woods while trying to keep his hat from getting stuck in stray branches. He preferred the scenic route to the roads, as the view was more preferable in his opinion, and most bandits preyed on the road instead of the forest. Balen had put on his armor under his robe nonetheless, and was confident that he could take down one bandit or two, but he knew better than to try his luck with fighting. After all, there were people more suited for that job.

After about fifteen minutes of walking, Balen finally got infuriated with his hat clinging onto foliage, and pulled it off. He looked like a priest with the thing on anyway, and plus, it was foggy and cloudy as Coldharbor. The sun wouldn’t be searing his scalp anytime soon. Exposing his head to the cold refreshed him and shook him a bit, which gave him newfound energy to move faster.

Balen kept moving quickly, only stopping on occasion to take a deep breath, and feel the long-reaching breeze of Lake Ilinalta. He did not understand why the people of the hold preferred to avoid the lake. There was a rumor that an Imperial Fort was swallowed by the lake, but Balen hadn’t found any traces of a fort when he had gone swimming in it a few days ago. The only bone chilling thing about the lake was the temperature of the water.

Balen slowed down his pace as the ground started to slope downwards, and started holding onto the branches for a more secure footing. The fog was thick around these parts, and he did not want to slip on a cluster of dead leaves, or accidentally step on a broken branch. He guessed that he was closer now, considering how the tree line was getting thinner, and tried to move a bit more silently, and try to cover his towering figure, in case of danger waiting for him at his destination. But unfortunately for him, there was a small piece of twig half covered in the soil, waiting for someone to crack it with a step. And Balen was the lucky candidate.

He raised his head, and saw the armored figure waiting by a door. Before Balen could instinctively draw his 'dagger', however, the figure chuckled and started speaking, with a masculine voice further deepened thanks to the helmet.

''Oh, it’s you. How was your journey?''

Balen stopped, somewhat relieved. ''Sibassius?'' He asked, and his eyes answered his question after glancing at his oddly shaped shield. ''It’s nice to see you again. The road was uneventful. I was afraid of being late – I took the scenic route, you see.'' Balen looked around, but could not see anyone else. ''I guess I’m not, however. Got anything to say about the place?''

[Hank]

It was interesting that the Dunmer scholar, who Hector had considered the person least suited for the whole venture, was second to arrive. At least he knows his pathfinding, Hector mused. Balen's scarlet eyes seemed uncomfortably large and prying in the gloom of the forest grove, but Hector convinced himself to let go of his sword entirely and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Seems to me the only route to this place is the scenic route," Hector grumbled. The forest grove wasn't near any of the hold's roads, as far as Hector could tell. In response to Balen's question, he looked over his shoulder at the wooden doors and shook his head. "Not much. I haven't touched the gates yet, but all seems quiet so far. No sounds of weeping ghosts or armies of Draugr preparing for war. Then again, the dead have a habit of being quiet until they're disturbed, eh?" he added with a wry smile.

Knowing full well that the interred of Nordic tombs had a habit of getting up and walking around, Hector had prepared by bringing with him a few Fire poisons, crafted from a mixture of fire salts and flame stalks. Once applied to his blade, the poison would ignite any wounds inflicted; perfect against the undead.

[Evestra]

Merci swore in Breton and not for the first, or tenth time. The fog and the forest made what would have been a difficult task nearly impossible. Blindly, she stumbled between tree bohles that must have been ancient when Tiber Septim walked the earth. Forests were not her strong suite, sure, she had played in the woods as a child but this was something else. Her mind conjured all manner of enemies in the oppressive fog, spiders, wolves, worse.

Deliberately she stopped and calmed herself. Old Jaq, her tutor in the arts of stealth, always maintained that taking a moment to catch your breath never hurt. Of course Jaq had been killed taking too long in a burglary, so the advice was of dubious quality. There was no true quiet of course, the wildlife chirped and called undisturbed, but without her crashing around, she might be able to hear something.

Distantly, muffled through the fog, she heard voices. Cautiously she pressed forward through the trees. Pausing for a moment she considered the possibility that it was bandits or some other enemy. It seemed unlikely this far off the beaten path, and there was the chance of taking an arrow or blade in the stomach from a nervous ally to consider as well. Comprising she called up her magicka, enjoying the surge of it in her soul. Then she created a magelight, a weak and sputtering thing, but obvious in the fog. With an effort of will she propelled it out ten yards in front of her and started forward.

“Hello?” she called questioningly.

[MMGiru]

"Quiet at night, too," called a voice from above the two men, after one had commented on the dark glade. A strung bow hung by said string on a branch, of a branch, of a healthily sized maple. On a lower, thicker branch, could be seen a pair of feet and ankles, laid casually, pointed away from the maple's trunk.

"If there's anything moving in there, it only moves in there," Ungimros concluded. He spelled a weapon into his hand, and was disappointed to find it a new style of throwing dagger, rather than an arrow. He was still having communicative difficulties with whatever realm of Oblivion his conjurations were sourced from, and had evidently once again failed to properly demand an arrow.

His previous night had consisted primarily of failing to hit several very annoyed slaughterfish with daggers conjured and thrown to pass time. Reaching the tomb quickly had been imperative, given word had managed to spread across the mountains. The trip would only serve to make Ungimros and the rest of his newfound party colder and poorer if some other group cleaned the place out before them. As such, he'd arrived in Falkreath almost a week before the rest of the group planned to, scouted the area, and made sure no one was taking their spoils.

His initial expedition consisted of familiarizing himself with the routes of a few streams that fed into Ilinalta, as well as the oldest trees around, and the various dens of local bears and trolls. By the time Ungimros had settled down and dined on a slaughterfish the first night, he'd managed to collate a decent mental map of the area, which was more useful than the directions they'd been given. By then, he understood how this place had gone unplundered. It did not have the ostentation he'd heard about in other Nordic barrows, there was no trail for even a tracker to follow, and it had been placed in a fairly unremarkable spot.

The rest of his week was mostly scaring local children back to their homes with a 'ghost wolf', antagonizing a troll, making dinner with a lone, racist bandit, and pondering on who among the ancient Nords merited such a discrete burial. He lacked the relevant education though, and his curiosity was mild enough to be easily swept aside by the new arrivals. Even now, before much of a response to Ungimros' words could occur, a High Rock accent seeped through the fog. He stood on his branch with a hiss declaring this his first stretch since waking.

"Look for the big maple," Ungimros called in the appropriate direction, after looking around the tree trunk to see a distant light. He imagined that even if she was as ignorant of plantlife as the stereotypes permeating his homeland suggested, she could follow a voice.

[Evestra]

Look for the big maple? How in the name of oblivion was she supposed to know which one was a maple. Well Merci, she said to herself, look for the one with the leaves. Fortunately any additional botany proved unnecessary, using the sound of the voice and the sense of a spell she was able to get close enough to where both the fog and the trees seemed to thin out.

The grizzled Hector and the Dark Elf, Berig or Balen or something both stood in the small clearing. Neither one seemed the source of the voice.

"Hello gentlemen," she introduced herself, hiding her relief at being in the company of others and out of the cursed fog. The barrow stood infront of her, impressive in an ancient brooding sort of way. As a child she had once gone to Privateer's Hold on a dare. This looked centuries older than that ruin. Merci closed her fist and her magelight winked out, the dimness of the fog redoubling.

[The Nexerus]

The cause for the perpetual gloom in Falkreath was something that interested Elayne Ashing greatly, as with all unknowns. The hold's denizens, if ever they were asked, insisted that the area's unending drear had some sort of divine cause. Usually, this supposedly mystical phenomenon was hypothesized by the peasants to have something to do with the town of Falkreath's unusually large graveyard. A goddess demanding respect for the dead, for instance, or the spirits of the deceased manifesting as grey clouds. Elayne herself suspected, less superstitiously, that the hold was merely affected by natural atmospheric phenomena relating to the nearby and mighty Jerall Mountains. Magic was a pervasive force in Nirn, but it seemed unlikely to the young Breton mage that a wizard of such immense power as to control the skies themselves would waste their grip of Aetherius on making it slightly foggy in a particular area of the backwoods of Skyrim.

Despite the Nordic tomb's remote location, the adequacy of the directions that Elayne had been given in Cheydinhal were enough for her to arrive right on time. As her robe-clad figure appeared to those adventurers already assembled, Elayne eschewed introductions to instead study the ruins. While her small, soft hands, covered by mage's gloves, gently dusted dirt and grime off of an inscription on the barrows' largely decorative exterior, Elayne considered her history with such locations. This would not be the first Nordic ruin that she would explore. Though her glory-and-wealth adventures thus far had not taken her into any long-dead Jarl's tombs, she had undertaken an extensive excavation of an ancient Nordic site during her days in the College of Winterhold. The site, situated a fair distance west of the city, in the wind-swept wastes of Skyrim's far north, had been cleared of threats and obvious valuables long before Elayne had the opportunity to explore it. That, of course, did not phase her in the slightest; Elayne was then and is now far more interested in sites of this sort for their historicity, rather than the treasures they might happen to hold. It seemed queer to Elayne that her counterparts were often so entirely disinterested in the purpose of the ruins they explored. After all, which was more interesting: the necklace around a deceased man's neck, or the man himself, and his story? Very few baubles were of greater note to the collective body of knowledge of Tamriel than the man or mer who carried them. An unexceptional tomb in an even more unexceptional area of Skyrim was unlikely to contain one.

Reaching the end of her train of thought, and all at once realizing that her lack of formal greeting might raise eyebrows of social conscience, Elayne decided to give salutations to her partners in this expedition, all of whom had almost certainly already both seen and heard her during her thoughts. Taking a second to turn her gaze towards the small crowd gathered at the tomb's entrance, Elayne noticed that her fellow Breton, Merci, had apparently just arrived.

"Hello," she muttered to the group absent-mindedly, but in a friendly tone and at appropriate volume. Having now read the inscription that had earlier caught her eye, she moved on to examining the general architectural style of the structure, her green eyes slowly grazing about as she surmised. This ruin was from around the same era as the one she'd excavated along the Sea of Ghosts, with her classmates. It besmirched Elayne's thorough nature to have to do a more 'smash-and-grab' style excavation of this second site, and to thus be left unable to adequately compare and contrast the two, but the young mage doubted her less educated partners were willing to wait the many weeks that a formal excavation would take. Turning her attention entirely towards the group now, Elayne continued, "Have any of you any experience with tombs of this type? I visited one much farther to the North once upon a time. Worked there for a little under a month, with some others from the College. My superiors had already cleared the ruin of Draugr and such, of course, so I'm afraid that whatever it is we face in there I'll have only read about. It is best to use fire, yes?"

[Peik]

‘’I suppose you’re right about the route,’’ Balen replied to Sibassius, considering the barrow’s remote location. He guessed that whoever built this tomb did not want their dead disturbed by any means. Which was understandable – he himself did not want his corpse to be used as some experiment or undead sex slave. ‘’And yes, the dead usually keep to themselves.’’ He remembered trying to place his father’s ashes and skull in a proper place, while getting berated by his ancestors all the while. ‘’That’s not a pedestal, you s’wit, that’s my damned third son!’’ His great-great-grandfather was a very loud and rude man, despite being dead for the last few hundred years, and having lived as a priest of the High Fane. At least he had the courtesy to keep the Tomb Guardians off Balen’s hide. Nonetheless, it was not a very pleasant experience, and Balen did not think that today, going into a tomb of Nords who hated the guts of his race in life, and probably still do so in the afterlife, would be easy.

‘’Quiet at night, too,’’ a voice spoke, and Balen instinctively looked up at the spot where the voice originated. Managing to keep his startled mind in check, he saw the Bosmer, Ungimros, on the branches. ‘’I shouldn’t be surprised that the Bosmer came here first,’’ Balen thought to himself. The damn creatures were swift, like their distant relatives, the Khajiit. Before he could greet him, however, a light appeared, and following it, a voice echoed through the woods, and the Bosmer answered the question, somewhat vaguely. A few moments later, Merci appeared, walking out of the fog. ‘’Hello Merci, Ungimros,’’ Balen said, for the sake of courtesy. ‘’How was the walk?’’ Before he could get an answer, however, the other Breton, Elayne, walked out of the woods into the clearing, and before saying anything, started examining the dusty inscriptions around the gate. Balen gazed a questioning stare at her, before turning to Sibassius with the same look, not wishing to break the silence.

The Breton herself seemed to have enough of the quiet, though, and decided to break it with a somewhat dull greeting. She seemed to be more interested in the tomb compared to her companions, a behavior that could lead to bad assumptions about her. People of knowledge were always seen as somewhat of a burden in expeditions such as this, and Balen knew well that giving off the impression of an absent-minded, aloof and uncaring scholar was not good. Elayne finished the examination after a few moments, and fortunately for herself started to talk. "Have any of you any experience with tombs of this type? I visited one much farther to the North once upon a time. Worked there for a little under a month, with some others from the College. My superiors had already cleared the ruin of Draugr and such, of course, so I'm afraid that whatever it is we face in there I'll have only read about. It is best to use fire, yes?" Balen turned his face back at Elayne. ‘’Well, Nords can shrug the coldest temperature, so I assume that ice magic is out of the equation. And Bernadette Bantien’s account does claim that fire is a good repellent. What I’m afraid of, however, is the possibility of a Dragon Priest residing in there. Most of the Draugr roam still to keep worshipping beyond death,’’ Balen said, and continued, ‘’And we’ve all heard stories of the powers of their tongue.’’

[Flagg]

"Dragon Priest!" erupted a loud voice, thick with the accents of the far East, "We should be so lucky. I've never met one, but think of what it could tell us!"

Somewhat alarmingly, the head and arms of Baladas Venym emerged straight up from the ground, in front of a small thicket adjacent to the tomb's entrance. Gradually more of the wizard emerged as he managed to pull himself out of what was apparently a partially concealed hole in the rocky ground, barely big enough for a man- or dunmer- to crawl through.

"Air vents!" he explained as he stood, shaking dust and cobwebs from his battered robes, "Ground around these tombs is always thick with air vents. For the slaves they had build them, I suppose. Not all of them always got filled in afterwards."

The wizard offered the assembled adventurers a smile full of yellowed teeth, crimson eyes glittering in the half-light. "Thought I'd take a peek while I waited for the rest of you- do a little scouting. Not much to report, I'm afraid- unless you like spiders the size of my hand. This particular vent goes to a section that looks caved in. Hope at least some of the tomb is still standing for us. Be a shame to come out here and find a pile of rubble."

He patted his robes, as though searching for something. "Oh!" he said, leaning down and thrusting his arm into the vent he had just clambered out of, pulling his notched wooden staff out after him, "Almost forgot this."

[Tuujaimaa]

The sound of twigs snapping underfoot accompanied the light footsteps of the Altmeri mage that walked across them, adding to the veritable chorus of noises within the forest that she had found herself in. She had trudged through worse places than this before in service to the Thalmor, but she never did manage to get the hang of pathfinding within the dense embrace of the forest - that was an art better left to her Bosmeri cousins, and it was one of the few things they were good for, short of providing land. She vaguely recalled that the group she had agreed to adventure with contained one of the woodfolk, and made a mental note to keep an eye out on the canopies above for his lurking. It would not do to be taken unawares by a wood elf, though forests were undoubtedly their domain and it would hardly be surprising for her to be at a natural disadvantage. Arrogance was one thing, but letting yourself be killed for it was a mistake that she did not intend to make like so many of her brethren had in the past.

Continuing to trudge through the forest and the murk that seemed to pervade it, she allowed her thoughts to wander back to some of her less uncivilised companions. From what she remembered, there were a decent number of mages within the group - always a positive beginning - and that none of them were Altmeri, which she felt would be a continued source of disappointment in the few days to come. Still, they had one Altmer in her, and that was at least enough to begin with. Maybe they could replace one of the various nondescript Dunmer in the group with a mage of real talent, or perhaps one of the two seemingly identical Bretons? She could tell that each of the Bretons wanted to be someone with true magical talent, and that was enough to pass her initial checks of interest, but the Dunmer seemed... Well, like a typical Dunmer. The Imperial, Hector, was going to be the crux of the group if Aenyarin had to pick an individual to pin that responsibility on - he had been the most approachable, even to her (an agent of the Thalmor, no less) and it seemed like he had the correct attitude, mindset, and most importantly skillset to be a competent adventurer. Whether or not he was a leader was another matter, but Aenyarin's first impressions were rarely wrong after so many years in the business of moulding the psyche of those unfortunate enough to cross the Thalmor and end up caught. "Blackbird", or Hraf Raven-Eye, was one such individual whose first impression would stick with him for a hundred lifetimes, and to Aenyarin, that impression was "dangerous". She had resolved to be eternally vigilant from the moment she laid eyes upon him, and his mannerisms and speech had only proven that initial feeling of distrust correct. She would be watching him most carefully of all in the adventures to come.

Aenyarin turned a corner, mentally running over the directions she'd been given one more time, and musing over how she likely would not make it quite on time - still, that was for the best, as people finding the burial site before her would give her some clues as to where exactly in the wretched forest she should travel. She had noted the occasional footprint in the mulch already, but had gleaned nothing from it beyond a vague direction and the fact that that meant someone had travelled this way previously. Given the relative isolation of the section of forest they were in and the lack of any other tracks suggesting a chase, she could surmise that it was a member of the little adventuring group and had set to following the trail as best as she could.

When she finally arrived at the clearing, several party members had already arrived ahead of her. Electing not to greet herself brazenly, she merely lifted her hood down and looked forwards towards the entrance to the tomb, then towards the other members of the party.

"I apologise for the lateness." was all that Aenyarin said, not quite wanting to antagonise anybody of her own accord just yet, but she would certainly speak back when spoken to. It would not have done for her to have begun criticising the other party members before they had even gotten a chance to talk about her first, after all – she had the advantage.

[Dead Cruiser]

The Blackbird stepped heavily through the shrouded forest. The light of the noonday sun, choked back by clouds, did nothing to dissipate the heavy cover of fog. Hraf furrowed his brow, as he concentrated on the landmarks that had been described to him. He wasn't a woodsman, not even close, and trying to track down an inconspicuous location was an arduous enough task without the impenetrable haze of Falkreath. Though the weather was cold enough to bite, sweat beaded on his forehead from concentration. While he didn't consider himself urbane, Hraf was most certainly not in his element, stomping through the wilderness. He stopped, doffed his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow, and the continued on with the steel helm tucked under his arm.

Hraf continued to plod through the forest, quietly cursing all the while. How the hell did he end up here? Tripping over roots and getting slapped in the face by tree branches in the middle of the gods-damned continent. Imperial patrols of the coastal seas had been tight for the last eight months, and he could barely leave port without catching sight of red sails. Every day the coves and caves he was used to hiding and stashing treasure in were raided and collapsed. The ground was shrinking under his feet, and he was burning through his "savings" faster than he could replenish them. This was his last-ditch effort. The Thieve's Guild in Skyrim, formerly a joke, seemed to have reassumed control of the major holds. Hraf wanted business with them, but to gain a foothold in Riften, he would need capital. Thus, the foolhardy treasure hunt with a bunch of lunatics.

A loose root caught Blackbird's boot and sent him sprawling onto his belly. Spewing obscenities, he struggled back onto his feet, spitting out grass and leaf litter. He was surefooted on the deck of a ship, where usually nothing was reaching out to trip him, but that meant nothing in this forsaken forest. The armor didn't help; his armored boots made his footing even more unsteady, and the other armor such as his maille and bracers distorted his center of gravity. This treasure had damn well better be worth it to suffer this indignity.

Despite the rage boiling in his gut, Blackbird conjured up and expression of suave indifference as his destination came into sight. He didn't spot the crypt, per say, as much as the crowd gathered around it. It seemed that his tromping blindly through the gloom and doom of Falkreath had cost him some time, and was (if his counting was correct) the last to arrive. It was of little importance. Assuming his usual posture of unshakable confidence, Hraf affixed his customary sleazy, sly grin to his face, and surveyed the party as he approached. Each one he gave a quick, visual shakedown; his face relaxed and casual, yet his eyes cold and hard, like dark pits in his face.

"Gentlemen," He spoke, voice clear and deep, his Nord accent tinted by the port dialects of dozens of cities, "Ladies... Forgive my tardiness. We agreed to meet at noon, and yet I can scarcely see the sun." Deciding to ramble, he paced through the middle of their gathering. "The further north one travels, the clearer the skies. At night, there are so many stars, and they read clearer than any map a mortal hand could draw..." He trailed off, staring wistfully in no particular direction for dramatic effect. Snapping his attention back to the group, he affixed his helmet and said, "I digress. Shall we begin spelunking?"

[MMGiru]

Shortly before the crow arrived, Ungimros heard a man in armor fall, some distance away. Other elves may have forgotten how to use their pointed ears, but a Valenwood Boishe like Ungimros hadn't. When Blackbird finally entered the clearing, Ungimros could see and hear surprising composure from the Nord. Briefly, he wondered if someone else had fallen, and wondered if the crow's betrayal had come so soon. It did not seem plausible, but was easy enough to check.

While someone else was busy responding to Blackbird, Ungimros dropped from his maple, landing a few feet from the Altmer, Aenyarin. When he'd landed though, his eyes were on Blackbird, and ultimately to the small, brown lines scattered on his person. Pine needles weren't falling in this season, and being on the ground was how a person accumulated dead ones. Ungimros smirked directly at Blackbird, before turning to the Altmer he'd landed beside.

"Very hospitable, the Nordic people. Isn't that right, friend?" This he asked knowing they two would likely only ever feel enmity towards one another for the length of their association, but that most Nords of this country had it for both of them.

[Hank]

[GM note: I will briefly control a few of your actions to get the ball rolling. Complaints can be directed at me in the OOC tab.]

Hector narrowed his eyes when Baladas Venym emerged from the soil. "Yes, that would be a shame," he commented, immediately wary of the Dunmer sorcerer. Who dives into an air vent like that? Hector shook his head and hoped Venym's eclectic behavior wouldn't become a problem.

With the arrival of the Blackbird, the entire party was assembled. As the Nord finished his rant, he ended with "I digress. Shall we begin spelunking?". Hector nodded and unsheathed his sword, coating it in a layer of Fire poison from one of the flasks fastened at his hip. Drops of poison ran down the length of the blade and dropped from the tip, sizzling and burning small holes in the forest floor. With his free hand, Hector withdrew his shield from his back and slipped his left arm through the leather straps. "Yes, let us be off," Hector said.

As the rest finished their own preparations, Hector strode over to the wooden gates of the Nordic tomb and carefully pushed against one with his steel boot. With remarkably little resistance, the wooden door swung open inwards, revealing total darkness. Looking over his shoulder, Hector locked eyes with Merci and asked: "Care to replicate that magelight cantrip of yours?"

In response, a sputtering magelight drifted past Hector and into the tomb. It illuminated stone walls covered in old Nordic inscriptions; Hector could see figures on either side of a priest or sorcerer of some kind, and the heavily-stylized head of a dragon looming above them all. A small shiver ran down Hector's back as he recalled Balen's words about the Dragon Priests.

Stairs, the steps old and in disrepair, descended into the earth. Merci's magelight didn't illuminate the passage for more than ten meters in any direction, so it was impossible to tell what would wait for them at the bottom. "Come on," Hector said, as much to himself as the other party members, and stepped into the tomb, carefully navigating the steps, keeping his eyes fixed on the uneven floor.

A few minutes later...

Suddenly, there was the bottom of the stairs. Hector looked up and found himself staring into a large, circular chamber. Merci's magelight drifted onwards to the center of the room. The walls were decorated with even more inscriptions, depicting scenes of burial and worship. How high up is the ceiling? Hector thought to himself, as the magelight only revealed the walls vanishing into the darkness above them. Gingerly, Hector approached the center of the room, his head pivoting as if on a swivel. He spotted several sarcophagi lining the room, with even more propped up against the walls or standing upright in man-sized alcoves. The rest of the party followed behind him, breathing quietly in the deathly silence of the tomb.

That was when Balen stood on a pressure plate. The small clack and the sound of grinding stone echoed through the circular chamber. Hector turned to face him, his mouth opened to say something, when the sound of more stones scraping against each other behind him grabbed his attention. The entrance to the chamber had been sealed off by a pair of stone doors, blocking off their escape route. Then he heard a similar sound from the other side of the chamber. And to his right. And to his left.

All around them, the sarcophagi were opening.

"To me!" Hector yelled, his decades of training and leadership experience kicking in. "Form a circle and stand with your backs to each other! Blackbird, I've got this side, you cover the other!" Hector and the Nord pirate were, as far as Hector could tell, the only two members of the party with significant experience in close-quarters combat. Hector hoped the two of them would be able to fend their enemies off while the others could use their bows and magic and whatnot to dispatch the walking dead from a distance.

Emerging from the gloom came more than a dozen -- perhaps even two dozen -- Draugr. Their death rattles and gurgling filled the air, and Hector spotted the gleam of swords and axes. The Imperial raised his shield and sword, ready to jab at anything that came too close, and not a second too late, either; one of the Draugr ran at him, sword swinging, wheezing something in a language Hector didn't understand. Hector caught the blow on his shield and drove his sword into the ancient Nord's chest, which burst into flames almost instantly. The Draugr collapsed to the ground in several parts as its chest disintegrated.

First blood, Hector grimly thought to himself. The first of many.

[Dead Cruiser]

Dungeons, Hraf decided, were officially his least favorite place to be. Only beating out forests by a nose, mind, but never the less. He found the cramped area to move in suffocating, and the particular stale quality of the air was harsh on his throat. When he had signed up for this venture, he figured that it wouldn't be any different from the smuggling decks of a ship, or a smuggler's cave. Hell, he had even hidden out in a gutted old Nord ruin once or twice. This was quite different. The stench of death hung heavily in the air, and an implacable feeling of dread was crawling up his spine like a spider. Not that he was afraid, mind, as it took more than an unsettling atmosphere to unnerve a steely pirate captain. Far more pressing was his intuition screaming at him that he needed to leave immediately. He was able to suppress the urge and keep cool, though he gritted his teeth and clenched his shield and sword tightly.

As a trap was apparently sprung, all of the anxious anticipation that Blackbird had been repressing suddenly sprang up. Luckily, he was able to put it to good use by forcing it out at his aggressors. He bellowed as he unsheathed his sword and hacked at the closest draugr to crawl out from its tomb. The undead cretin was stunned and pushed back by each blow, but only for a moment and an inch apiece. The soldier started to bark orders, and Hraf quickly fell in line to form a defensive position. He was less offended by having been ordered about like an inferior, compared to his offense of having been ordered to take part in a completely obvious tactical move. He wasn't an idiot.

The draugr Hraf had been hacking at earlier was now upon him again, scrabbling at his shield with wide, lazy strikes. A little force from the brunt of his shield was enough to send it off balance, and Hraf dispatched the ghoul once and for all with a sharp blow to its collarbone. The draugr was split shoulder to hip, gutting it like a mackerel. Its dissicated innards, little more than grey dust after spending gods-know-how-many years in its tomb, spilled out on the floor, and it collapsed in a heap. Hraf didn't celebrate beyond exhaling forcefully from his nostrils, and turned his attention to the next-closest draugr. He raised his shield in anticipation of the coming attack, the mummified warrior slowly shambling over to him, sword raised.

[Peik]

‘’Count only the happy hours. For mortals, they are all too few.’’

- Vivec

Balen knew better than to think of the possibilities that could arise as they entered the tomb shortly after the Nord’s arrival and inane rant, something that Balen viewed as nothing more than an attempt to look intellectual. But, looking down on companions was not a smart course of action, and Balen simply chose to forget it and shut down his mind as they entered the barrow. Following Merci’s light, the group slowly walked down the stairs, in a rather cramped environment (not that Balen expected a grave to be comfortable). Balen followed the group almost robotically, ‘dagger’ in hand. All he thought of was the happy hours. After all, bravery was for the fools, and he needed bravery right now.

At the end of the descent was a chamber large, dark and foreboding. Balen watched the head of the group, Sibassius, walk towards the center. Nobody, including himself, dared to make a sound. With every step, Balen expected Sibassius to spring a trap – but, as he would learn in a few moments, it was not Sibassius but himself that would start the carnage. And, seconds later (though for Balen, hours), the moment came. The deathly silence was interrupted by the clacking sound of a timeless mechanism, and the following grinding of rocks older than time. ‘’Oh, s’wit.’’

And thus, the dead woke up. As the slow motions of the Draugr led them out of their resting grounds, the Nord roared and started striking at one of the Draugr, before Sibassius called for the group to form a circle. It was fitting that the head of the group (at least, that’s what Balen believed) would spill first blood, and the fight officially started for Balen when Sibassius drove his searing sword into the chest of one of the dead and felled it with that same blow. Moments later, the Nord managed to finish off the restless body that he had peppered with strikes moments before, and exhaled thoroughly. Balen felt alien against the Nord’s rather primitive fighting technique, it was loud, wide – and as Frandar Hunding said, shouting to halt the sands’ shifting only left one hoarse. But it was effective. He had no doubts about that, and the cleft corpse on the ground was its testament.

Balen, on the other hand, was the completely opposite. His fighting, learned from books and books only, with only little real life experience, was not fancy, but was also definitely not as simple as the Nord’s, who seemed to rely more on his natural strength and speed as opposed to technique. And Sibassius, in Balen’s eyes, was the compromise between the two sides. He was trained well, and he had experience as well. It was pleasing to watch – not as much as a Redguard trained in the arts of his natives, but it was definitely a sight better than the Nord’s hacking and slashing.

The crack of bone underneath the foot woke Balen from his daydreaming about fighting technique and put him back into his body. Balen looked around as the swarm of Draugr walked on towards the group, stepping on the remains of their fallen brothers and cracking them, or simply crushing their legs, stripped of muscle, underneath the weight of their bodies. Then he saw a tall corpse lumbering towards him, bearing a zweihander in one hand. Behind Balen was the rest of the group – he could not move back – if he did, they’d be thrown into the line of fire. And standing still, it appeared, would cause him to part into two, courtesy of a millennia-old sword.

‘’A thrust is elegant, and a cut is powerful, but sometimes the right action is a head-butt.’’

Deciding to heed Hunding’s advice, Balen thrust himself forward against the downwards strike of the immense Nord-corpse, and felt the Draugr’s elbow crack on his shoulder thanks to the weight of the claymore and the frail nature of its bones. Balen pushed the creature with an amateurish strike with his forearm, and saw it fall, its right arm flailing freely thanks to the shattered bones. Balen knew it wasn’t dead, but he didn’t expect it to get up just now.

‘’Do not lose the melody in rapture of one triumphant note.’’

Balen remembered this almost far too late, and barely got out of the way of an axe-wielding Draugr, almost tumbling onto the ground. ‘’I need practice,’’ Balen thought to himself as he raised his blade against the walking corpse. He was lucky – these creatures were nowhere as fast as living warriors. ‘’Strike the throat. Every book advises to strike the dagger into the throat.’’ This ringing inside his mind, Balen lodged his blade arm forward, plunging the oversized dagger into the Draugr’s neck, with the tip protruding through, having cut through the spine. Balen pulled his blade out of the corpse and moved back into the defensive circle as the corpse tumbled onto the ground. His momentary feeling of triumph was humbled after seeing the horde of Draugr still surrounding them. ‘’Spirit of Arkay help us.’’

[Evestra]

Merci was glad that the darkness hid her blush. There were several mages with the group and most of them might have managed the magelight with more skill and elegance than she did. It wasn’t her fault that her training was spotty but she could feel the judging eyes of the other on her back.

When the trap sprang she had a momentary flash of horror, afraid that it was her fault. It was followed by an equally guilty rush of vindication that it hadn’t been her that had fouled up. Focus. You can feel guilty and still be alive if you keep your mind on the job. She fell back behind the warriors. There was little she could do directly, she doubted that the undead would fall for illusions. Fire. They were dry like kindling. Her own abilities with destruction were meager at best, but there was more than one way to skin a saber cat.

“Space! I need space,” she yelled above the crash of swords. With practiced strokes she began scratching a hasty summoning circle onto the moss covered stones. She could call up someone who would bring fire. Magicka shivered through her body. The first time she had done this she had been surrounded by chanting cultists, crazed with halluonegienc laced wine. Keep you mind on the present! She reached for the Daedra as she called its name under her breath. It writhed against her will like a snake. Grimly she ground her intent against it, forcing the Daedra to take the shape she wanted, forcing it to obey her. The fire atronach began to rise from the ground, the heat of it warming her skin but not burning her. It was forbidden to burn her, though in its heart it wanted nothing more than to drag her to the primordial fire from whence it came.

[MMGiru]

Underground wasn't the norm for Ungimros or anyone else he'd grown up with, and enormous, intricate tombs would have been an absurdity in Valenwood, where Bosmer were fed to people, beasts, plants, or fungi, and most others met the same fate. Burial in stone struck Ungimros as selfish and fearful; primitive. This had no value to those still living.

The tomb's air was stale, and mildly noxious. Nothing green to breathe anew, and nothing red to breathe the old; it had simply filtered through stone, and dust, and root, and corpse. Sound acted unnaturally with no sky above the ceiling, and no windows in the walls. Light could only ever come from their group, and the only things that could react were their predators. Everything was wrong.

But, the Imperial had imagined coin here, and Ungimros had agreed, along with everyone else. So here he was, with his bow already drawn when corpses began to walk out of stone caskets. Backing into a circle to fight was a thing Ungimros had never needed to do before, and he bumped into someone - a Dunmer, he thought - while they moved into the formation. He heard Merci call for space, which struck him as a bit rich, given the circumstances, but knew he needed some also. To that end, Ungimros elected to call on his only friend.

Using his bow hand to hold an arrow he'd already knocked, he held out his then-free hand. He made his fingers reach into a place that was not the crypt; nor indeed Nirn or even Mundus. He could feel something like the humid, electrified air just before a storm, and feel wind. Finally, he found a patch of fur, and grabbed hold, communicating only an emotional need for violence. His hand performed the motions despite visibly being still in the tomb, only a blue glow to indicate it was not.

A bubbling, rumbling sound stemmed from his hand, but sounded far away at the same time. Some small amount of blue-purple light danced on his arm, the magelight above them keeping its influence small. The Bosmer shoved his ensorcelled hand out in front of him, and a sound between cracking, popping, and tearing heralded a spectral wolf between Ungimros and a few walking corpses.

Not wasting any time, both Ungimros and the wolf-shaped daedra attacked. The wolf worked at the legs of a draugr, snapping and barking to taunt it, and trying to bite its knees out when it missed with a greatsword. The sap elf loosed an arrow between another draugr's faintly glowing eyes, and grinned, until he realized the corpse found the arrow merely a stunning annoyance.

Ungimros reached into his quiver to find a particularly marked shaft, took it, knocked it, and aimed. A broadheaded glass arrow fwip'd into a draugr that was closing on the Bosmer, and sailed through the creature's neck, piercing its spine. It fell forward and snapped the shaft under its weight. Ungimros cursed the inevitable cost of refletching and reattaching that head, but made a mental note to retrieve it.

When he looked to his spectral wolf, he saw the beast had successfully severed a knee and grounded its own enemy, but now had two rotten hands around its half-substantial head. When a magically filtered but still fleshy crunch came from the wolf's head, the beast's light blue form dissipated back into whatever its home plane was. Satisfied the draugr was slowed enough to ignore, Ungimros returned his attention to the one with an arrow in its head, which was shambling towards him. No time to knock an arrow.

Suddenly, there was firelight in the room, and the druagr turned to see it. Ungimros did not. He pulled his glass broadhead from the other corpse's kneck, cutting his hand in the process, and put the broken arrow through the draugr's spine, same as it had gone before. The corpse fell, backward this time.

[Flagg]

"Wonderful magelight dear," rambled Venym to Merci, far too loudly, as the company descended into the pit, "You're doing beautifully. Illumination is one of the most underrrrrated functions of magic, I've always said so. Do you know, the Dwemer managed to create their own su- oh you stupid fucking n'wah."

The Telvanni trailed off as Balen stepped into the ancient trap and caskets began springing open, the cracking of stone and the groans of the undead filling the vast chamber. Draugr dragged themselves from ancient resting places and charged the adventurers.

"Perhaps you can delude them into lying down again? Make them think they're still dead?" said Venym to Aenyarin with a smile, as Hector shouted for the group to circle up, "Just a thought."

The draugr closed in on the party, and Hector and Hraf scored kills while Merci shouted for space.

"So much for illusion," muttered the Telvanni as Balen put another draugr down. The air in the tomb took on the sharp, burnt smell of spent magicka as the Bosmer summoned a spectral wolf and Merci called forth an atronach.

"Splendid job, if a bit old fashioned in technique!" shouted Venym to Merci, offering the Breton a crooked grin, "The control could be better- remind me to show you one of these days how to- wait, wait, hang on!"

The dunmer mage ducked an axe swing from a charging draugr. The monster turned to strike again, but there was a bright, bluish flash and a bang like thunder and the draugr flew backwards, back arched, electricity crackling around it. The corpse collided with several of its charging companions, bowling them over.

"Annoying, very annoying," said Venym, both hands now on his staff, sweat breaking out on his dark blue brow, "Who goes into a tomb without a basic knowledge of pressure plates. I mean seriously-"

A draugr wielding a two-handed sword charged Sibassius, and the wizard stepped between them, meeting the ghoul's powerful swing with his staff. The draugr's cut should have bisected both wood and wizard, but instead the sword exploded backwards on contact with the Telvanni's staff, impaling the zombie with shards of ancient nordic steel. The hulking beast righted itself, snarling despite its wounds, and launched itself at Venym. The Bosmer's wolf-spectre caught it around the ankle and sent it tumbling to the ground, where Venym crushed it's head with his staff.

"Good boy," he said to the semi-corporeal wolf, "Very good boy."

[Tuujaimaa]

As the high elf trudged through the gloaming and the dank that infested the until-recently undisturbed tomb, Aenyarin was very quickly reminded of why she had chosen to step back from the more active parts of her duties. Tombs like this one were not ones she had been intimately familiar with, but she had read enough of the reports to know what could transpire in these hidden-away relics of a civilisation long passed, and she endeavoured first and foremost to not join the ranks of the dead that were laid to rest in here - though she suspected that her own demise may well be significantly more inglorious than the hallowed ceremonies that no doubt accompanied the ancient dead leaving behind their mortal vessels within these very walls.

Merci's magelight was sufficient - it could have been better, she thought - and as it lead the pack of unlikely adventurers further into the depths of the earth, Aenyarin made sure to run over in her mind things that could go wrong. Nordic tombs were frequently infested with traps, and the low light levels did not lend themselves well to rigorously checking wherever one went. Still, if the reports she had read were accurate, the pressure plates that were famous in these tombs had a tendency to exist within the center of the paths to increase the likelihood of the unaware tomb-robbers stepping on them. Aenyarin made a conscious effort to step slightly to the side to avoid any such unfortunate events. When Balen stepped on the very sort of pressure plate she had been worried about triggering herself, she was both amused that one of her lesser companions had triggered the trap, and entirely more derisive that it had been triggered at all. She reasoned to herself that someone had been bound to, but she had expected the Dunmer to be a little more cautious of such things and not quite so wrapped up in his own head that he forgot to look at the ground.

As the draugr begun to animate themselves once more after centuries of inactivity, the group closed in on itself, forming a rough circle with the mages that did not have any obvious physical skills in the center. Aenyarin found herself among the ranks of those in the middle, and begun formulating a plan of action while she still had the luxury of time. When she had to rely on her skill in Destruction magic, Aenyarin had always favoured the element of frost as a means to exhaust her opponents and prolong their suffering - physical pain made the mind much less resistant, after all - but that worked poorly against even living Nords, never mind their deceased brethren. She could hazard a chance at Fire, but she knew very few spells that would not bathe a large area around them in flame and potentially cause harm to people it had no business harming - amusing as it would be to catch the Bosmer or the Nord with a lick of flame, she did not want to endanger herself by endangering her front line of defence against the rising dead.

Unfortunately, before she could finish that train of thought, the dead were already among them. When Venym asked if she could delude the dead into believing that they were still dead, she let out a derisive snort and replied with a haughty quip:

"No more than you can delude your corpses into believing that they're alive again."

The exchange of words did serve as a focal point for the ideas brimming in the Altmer's mind, however, and she may not have been able to delude the dead... But those in the tomb still living could be. She had read once that the illusion of confidence was just as powerful as the real thing, and while she did not know about that specifically, the illusion of an emotion or a state of being often evoked reactions comparable to or greater than the real thing. It was telling of the fragile nature of the mind, and that fragility had always struck Aenyarin as a weak point to be exploited - perhaps there was greater strength in that fragility than she had believed possible. As she allowed the magicka to well up inside her, she concentrated the intent on that of confidence and bravado, a rally, a call to arms. If she could not delude the dead or risk harming the living, then she would put her primary talent to the best use she could by giving her allies the strength of will they needed to fight at their very best.

[The Nexerus]

Elayne was not so unwise as to walk into a Nordic crypt unprepared. Before she dared to enter, and whilst Hector was coating his blade, she made sure to ready a few basic offensive spells in her mind, preparing to channel the flaming might of Aetherius at a moment's whim. It was always possible, and therefore always needed to be accounted for, that a small army of Draugr would walk out of their coffins the second Hector disturbed the tomb's entrance. Waiting with bated breath and fires burning away at her fingertips, Elayne waited for Hector to push open the door, and caught a lump in her throat: total darkness and absolute silence met her eyes, and naught else. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Elayne followed closely behind the Imperial the multitude of possibilities of what might lay waiting for her and her partners on the other side of the doors. Once inside the tomb, the helpful illumination offered by her fellow Breton awakened Elayne's eyes to her first sight of treasure; the crypt's ancient stone walls were decorated with a multitude of inscribed symbols, each of which Elayne examined as closely as she could in the short time frame offered to her. By the time the group began their long decline down the steps that lay at the opposite end of the entrance, Elayne was already sure of the crypt's age and purpose. It was built in the time of, dedicated to, and could potentially contain a Dragon Priest. Her initial fear quickly quenched by academic curiosity, the young Breton mage trudged on eagerly down the timeworn passageway leading, assuredly, to the tomb's heart.

Memories immediately flooded into Elayne's mind of her excursion to the tomb along the Shivering Sea, long past. She had been so young, then. Barely a novice of magic, capable of casting only the most basic of incantations, and with considerable difficultly and exhaustion. It was in a tomb like this, in the same darkness that Merci was now fighting, that Elayne had first been taught to magically produce light. It was especially useful then; even more useful than it was now for this group of adventurers. It was needed now primarily to identify threats, and therefore its thoroughness was unimportant. To the students of Winterhold on that first expedition, however, the light was needed for reading, for writing, for assessing architectural styles, and even for outdoing classmates with brighter and less tiring light spells. On the day of her visit to the Shivering Sea, unable at first to produce any light at all, Elayne had been by far the least experienced mage present. Her present experience flavoured by the memories of her past, Elayne cast her eyes to Merci, and acknowledged the woman's nervousness and blush. She must have looked like that to her classmates, those many years ago, when her thoughts were plagued by feelings of inferiority, as the Daggerfall denizen's were now. She considered trying to help Merci—to share what she knew and perhaps improve her acquaintance's form—but quickly cast the thought aside. If she was embarrassed of her abilities already, surely another mage stepping in to help were would make things all the worse. She might even learn better this way. More fluidly.

Several minutes after she had begun descending the stairs, though only a few moments in Elayne's intrigued and nostalgic mind, she reached their end, and breathed an inaudible sigh, unused to such an exercise. The thought occurred to Elayne, with a chuckle, that this foreboding tomb had been quite calm thus far for a staircase to have been the most arguing task yet, and that perhaps her earlier apprehension when first the tomb's door opened was entirely unfounded. This idea was immediately thrown aside and shuttered to pieces when deathly silence of the Nordic relic was broken first by a 'click', and then by what Elayne identified as a Dwemer curse. The Elvish alchemist had triggered a trap. Her mind immediately brought down to Nirn, Elayne once again readied her spells, the flickers of flame burning once more at her finger-tips helping ever-so-slightly to illuminate the open room. What little Elayne could sense in the darkness and the rattles of sarcophagi she did not particularly enjoy; perhaps twenty Draugr, long deceased servants of the Dovah, were awoken and ready to fight.

Taking a few moments to channel her casting, Elayne struck the foes last, her mind and body bolstered by Aenyarin's call to arms and her confidence bolstered by the rest of her allies more instinctual defences. Elayne's assault was a powerful one: a firestorm, conjured towards the back of the pack of Draugr to avoid damaging any allies. The stagnant air around four or five Draugr was set ablaze, and their entire bodies burst into flames, their decayed bones burning ever brighter the closer they stood to the blast's epicentre. The spell lingered, even as Elayne's attention faded from it, and turned to Ungimros. The Bosmer had downed one of the undead abominations, but injured himself slightly in the process. Nothing a quick spell couldn't fix! Pressing her hands together, Elayne approached Ungimros from behind and cast an orangish ball of light and energy in the direction of his bleeding hand. The cut, small as it was, healed immediately, the blood seeming to glow in the second it took for the Bosmer's flesh to mend itself. Elayne smiled, pleased, on a internal level, with her restoration of her ally's full health and ability even more so than she'd been with harming the handful of Draugr. There was something innately satisfying in Restoration to the Breton mage that Destruction, no matter for how righteous a cause, could not replicate.