POOHEAD189

The Elder Scrolls: Fruits of Contention - Chapter 1 (Completed)

@DervishNoted. And thank you sir, for helping me out! It gives me a clearer foundation to work on.

The Elder Scrolls: Fruits of Contention - Chapter 1 (Completed)

@LeidenschaftI'll switch some things around and see what you and Dervs think when I can. Thank you.

The Elder Scrolls: Fruits of Contention - Chapter 1 (Completed)

@LeidenschaftWell I never mentioned that's what happened to all who didn't pay. I was thinking it was clear there was a bit of racism involved. But I can switch it to something different, regardless.

I don't mean to sound too argumentative to a co-GM. If ya'll want something different, I can brainstorm.

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

A scream on his lips, he split the head of a gor with his sword. He had no idea what was going on here. He would have thought it was a greater demon outside until he saw that the Beastman and Chosen were just as frightened as the rest of them, and then he remembered the Dragon eggs. By Sigmar's balls!

Isolde stumbled into him and screamed in his ear, her eyes wide with fear. He looked around, and his eyes fell upon Hilde and the Scribe. He sheathed his broadsword, and plucked up an exhausted Isolde as if she weighed about as much as his weapon had. He was tired too, but his adrenaline was pumping. He pushed himself across the last bits of carnage and made it to the Scribe.

With a snarl, he kicked the man in the leg, the tiny limb cracking as Vitus fell with a very unmanly screech of pain. Cerdic then kicked him in the chest, before using his free hand to grab Hilde's arm, dragging her. "Come on!" he yelled, charging forward with his last remaining strength toward the dimly lit stairwell.

Behind them, a huge rending of wood and stone tore through their eardrums. Cerdic didn't look back, but the screams of the men and Beastman made it seem evident enough that the beast had ripped through the great doors to the large Hall. A roar the likes of which he had never heard in all of his life followed the noise, and the cold air in the room seemed to be sucked up as he stumbled down the first few steps of the stairwell.

The room behind them exploded in flames. Cerdic leaped down the last 5 steps, hitting the stone bottom and rolling around the corner as intense heat and bits of flame licked them even down there. He covered the unarmored women up with his powerful form, shuddering as the beast let loose. It was less than a minute later, but the noises of claws scraping stone and the mewling of the beast was evident above them. He dragged them down the corridor, suddenly feeling so much heavier but knowing they needed to continue. Isolde let out a rasping cough that seemed to sound too much like their dragging feet.
@Austronaut

🦄 The Best Exotic

Alcander Mires

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Location: Tapri Tea House
Interacting with: Claire@Lady Amalthea Joel@Pundii

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Alcander was pretty much the embodiment of 'eye of the storm' as his two compatriots spilled ice and drink down each others pants and sprinted out of the tea house, laughing and yelling. Joel's question reached Al's ears as he chewed on the second half of his breakfast sandwich. Gotta be honest, I'm pretty in love with this food. He took a sip of water, and gobbled down the last of the sandwich. Another scream from outside echoed into the tea house, and he raised his hand calmly. "Check please."

He apologized profusely, and laid how money down on the table. The next Claire and Joel saw of Alcander was him slipping out of the Tapri joint, his feet sliding as smooth as silk. He seemed to have an amused smile on his face. For someone who wasn't exactly wild with people he just met, he seemed to enjoy being here. In fact he did often like being the level headed one, as if he was the weight to counter balance their antics. "You guys going some place?" he asked, as if he had caught them stealing from the cookie jar.

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure [MATURE] (Open for business, apply within.)

<Snipped quote by POOHEAD189>
Unless you mean he somehow got off-world, got recruited and pretty much hammered into a loyal servant of the Emperor, thus losing most of what made him feral in the first place?

@Jbcool

That's what I was going for, though I might just say he was born on a Hive World anyway.

1920's Gangsters

@SterlingHIT ME BABAY

And by that I mean, yes plz I'd like a reply :3

The Elder Scrolls: Fruits of Contention - Chapter 1 (Completed)

To Dervs

I didn't expect to get a reply so quick, so thank you! I'd like to point out that I had not even really proofread it yet so I expected there to be many problems. I think you might have read it a teeny bit quickly though, so I'll clarify on a few things.

I don’t know if the Umbranox family would still be the counts of Anvil 200 years on (especially after Anvil endured the Oblivion Crisis, was besieged and occupied by the Aldmeri Dominion in the Great War, and the whole collapse of the Septim dynasty), but since noble dynasties can last for hundreds of years and there’s no information stating otherwise, I don’t really see it as a big issue, just something I personally would have considered doing a new noble family for.

I decided it was best to adhere to the lore instead of making one up on my own.

Quick question, why wouldn’t Markus’ father have brought his twin swords with him on his deployments?

Because he had a small retinue of guards and had given up soldiery. The land he was in was 'relatively' safe, but as everyone knows who's played an ES game, sometimes bandits appear.

I’m a bit wary of the whole both parents are dead in the space of two paragraphs thing because it seems like that’s kind of the go-to for a lot of roleplayers who think that being orphaned tragically is the best way to go to establishing a character who sets out on adventures. If there was poison targeted at the count, how would the killer know what goblet was going to be provided to whom? It would make more sense if the server was paid off, or the killer themselves hired a hitman to sneak and do the deed, or if they wanted to ensure there was a minimal chance of failure, poison the wine or whatever that would kill everyone, hide the motive (who were they targeting? Probably the count, but it might have been one of his or her guests), and ensure the best chance of the count drinking the poison instead of someone random like what happened.

To be honest I felt a bit cliche' with that as well, but I also feel like it used to be so common that now it's kind of uncommon. Kind of like the ideal knightly character, that used to be so prevalent, has now given way to the anti-hero or the gritty immoral protagonist that everyone now loves. I could change it though.

Here’s where we kind of veer off into the whole realm of utter disbelief; Markus’ entire life is defined by people he’s close to being murdered. His father by raiders, his mother by a shifty business man who was targeting someone else, and now his paramour getting murdered by the equivalent of a mob boss for not paying her loans back in time. We don’t know anything about this businessman (what is with guys earning a living selling stuff that turns them into comic book villains, I wonder), or why Markus apparently trusted him, just that the guy exists for literally a sentence in the bio before Markus gets his vengeance… it’s just, it’s turning cartoony. If everything’s tragic, nothing is. It’s impossible to feel sympathy for a character that has nothing but tragedy after tragedy befall him because it doesn’t feel genuine or believable. Imagine in your real life that your dad’s killed in a car accident, a few years later, your mom is killed in a convenience store robbery gone wrong, and so you meet a girl who you move in with and then she’s stabbed to death by a jealous ex. It’s just one of those things that just doesn’t really happen, and if it does, it would end up in an internet article of people who have extraordinarily horrible luck.

No offense (and I mean it, just speaking my mind) but I feel like this is more 'not to your tastes' than 'unbelievable' or 'cartoony.' I'd call riding a dragon cartoony, and dead parents bad luck. You seem to be very wary of certain tropes because you might or might not have had bad experiences with people who used them in the past. And while learning from the past is certainly the smart thing to do, it's also kind of odd to have a 'no dead parents' policy for all, especially those who've shown they don't go overboard with things as I'd like to think I have.

I have a few friends who've had luck similar to this, and as a military historian I've seen many cases of things like this. Plus Markus would have plenty of friends alive and well, but I didn't think I'd need to list all of the guys he meets at a pub every friday night, or cousins he visits. I was under the impression that history was about twists and plot points. Though I am playing with the idea that his mother is ok and the Count could have been poisoned instead. I might do that.
Edit: Now that I think on it though, I will do that. Whether or not it's cliche, it seems like an overused trope I have here and just doesn't seem tasteful. Though I'll need to think of a justified reason he'd leave his single mother. Maybe give him a sibling that's more dutiful.

I also don’t see how he’d connect bandits as being the same sort of filth as the disgruntled business man who poisoned his mother

He was thinking of them as being the same kind of people that killed his father, more like. Though to a young vigilante, most criminals seem cut from the same cloth I'd imagine.

Your khajiit friend’s name is also nothing but a prefix and suffix. Ji means young, dar means thief (usually given to those born under the sign of the Shadow). I don’t know if that’s intentional, but his name literally is just Young Thief, which would be an unfortunate thing to name your child or yourself.

It was intentional. I kinda did it to hit home on the kind of people Markus would now be dealing with, and I was thinking it would be a name given to an unwanted child. I wasn't planning on making a thorough backstory for him though.

This guy, it doesn’t really make sense that he’d be giving out loans and then murdering people who can’t pay him back.

I don't quite understand the sentence. I'm not sure which guy you refer to, unless you mean the one who killed Elenwyn.

First business guy wanting to assassinate the count for screwing him for taxes makes sense in a fashion, it’s believable. This guy, it doesn’t really make sense that he’d be giving out loans and then murdering people who can’t pay him back. This practice would have gotten him locked up a long time ago, because the very first place any guardsman would look into a murder investigation is if the victim had any enemies or anyone close to them who’d have a reason to harm them. They find out she’d been paying off this loan shark, and doubtless she’d be keeping receipts, and that guy would have been arrested on suspicion of murder until more conclusive evidence was found… although just as likely to be accused of the murder right away because medieval societies weren’t known for their crack CSI squads.

But anyways, point is, if the guy was getting screwed for payments, he’d simply stop giving Elenwyn money and likely tell his associates that she’s an unreliable client. It puts her in a bad situation, he protects his investments, and it’s not the highest form of crime in the land. If the guy was a really bad apple, he’d probably just as likely to hire a few thugs to beat her up and steal some of her valuables. If you suddenly have a pile of bodies show up from people who were discovered to default on their loans, the net kind of starts to close. It’s extremely terrible of an idea for anyone to do this.

I was thinking the fact that 1) medieval societies arent known for their crack CSI squads to mean that he might not think too much on killing her, and 2) the fact that the general consensus of an Alter living in the capital city is a bad one and many wouldn't care if a body was found somewhere, and 3) there is such a thing as bribing city guards.

You’re also going to have to explain to the GMs exactly what this whole fledging information network entails. Something like that may have serious gameplay implications and give Markus an unfair advantage over other characters if suddenly he has random NPCs track him down to pass on information to him of in game events that nobody else can possibly know, for instance.

I'll word this better but it was only him knowing a few merchants in the Imperial city, which is what I meant by fledgling. It would have no impact on anything in Skyrim as a whole, or even most of Cyrodiil.

Also, assume the stuff I didn't comment on will be changed as well.

Ok so, other than problems with history, my list of things to do is

• Reword his weaknesses. I was more thinking of him maybe taking a leap across a crevice without using rope, more than him giving away his team when they are trying to evade enemies.
• Switch mercantile with theif. I was looking up Oblivion skills earlier, my bad.
• Reword on personality.
• Switch Mede to Mete
• Flesh out more on his experiences as a thief

Also speaking of Dax, he is now walking into the Inn with Raelyn if anyone wants to collab or say hi.

TNT - The Nameless Tavern. (Always Open)

Anyone wanna speak to Ben? :D

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure [MATURE] (Open for business, apply within.)

So I went to 2 bookstores today and couldn't find any Ravenor/Eisenhorn books, but I did find a Rogue Trader and thumbed through it. I think I'll be a human merc from a feral world, who is recruited into the Adeptus Arbites, who then finds too much corruption for them to handle sanely, and decides to become a Bounty Hunter instead.