Elder Scrolls V: Blood and Steel (Main Thread)

[Alita~]

Elder Scrolls v: Blood and Steel takes place in the vast lands of Skyrim, following a band of adventurers whose paths cross after a panicked escape from a town called Helgen. A giant winged beast had flown overhead, and burned the town to the ground — right in the midst of an execution. It was a close call for some, and many didn't make it out alive. Now, the survivors must decide what to do. Many of them hold rivaling opinions and beliefs, and some may be sworn enemies, but the legendary creature could still be hunting them right now... Do they work together, split up, or outright kill each other on the spot?
Rumor has it there's a mage by the name of Thorzhul that would pay a pretty sum of gold in return for the services of group of able mercenaries... Many of the living are in dire need of some kind of work, now that their lives have been completely destroyed. Will they take the job, or find some other way to get by? Join now, and decide for yourself!

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[Alita~]

⚔️ 𝐒𝐣𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐤𝐤𝐢 ⚔️
Nord | Female | 32 | Warrior | Werewolf | Location: Helgen Cave Exit | Tagging: Rashin, Vaylani, Marcus, Faelhien
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Sjavakki's chest heaved violently as she stumbled out of the cave mouth and into the daylight, her right hand clutching her crimson-stained axe with a death grip. There were four other survivors behind her — at least there were four when she last saw. There had been a lot more of them just a few minutes earlier, all running in one large panicked group into the towers, then the barracks, right through the torture room, and finally into the extensive cave system that eventually led them out into the open. There had been yelling, screaming, and mass slaughter all the way though, but she couldn't imagine it was much worse than what had happened on the surface.
It had seemed a normal day at first... everything had been going alright. There had been an execution scheduled, of course, but Sjavakki hadn't planned to watch it. She had only been stopping at Helgen's inn to get a meal before continuing on her course to Falkreath. She had only just arrived.
And then all Hell broke loose.
There was a giant winged beast — a dragon — that flew down from the sky, wreaking havoc on the town with its flaming breath. It burned everything. Buildings, people, animals... even the very walls that surrounded the place were crumbled. It had sent the entire town into a blind panic, with every living soul scrambling to make a desperate escape with their lives. From the looks of it, only few were successful.
Sjavakki leaned herself against the outside wall of the cave, making way for the rest of them to emerge. She had no doubt that whoever was left of them were still in shock, just as she was. Nevermind the absolute bloodbath they all had just been apart of... there was a dragon. A real living dragon, who had ended countless lives, and annihilated an entire town in the span of just ten minutes. Dragons were the stuff of stories... legends. They weren't supposed to exist! But this one... it was very real, and Sjavakki was very afraid.
The warrior looked to the remaining survivors, her eyes wide in disbelief. She began to take deep breaths to try to calm herself down, but didn't yet bother sheathing her weapon. She still didn't know who all had made it out, and whether or not they would be... civil. During the horrific rush to escape, she sensed more than one other of her kind. Some who held wolf blood had even turned right in the middle of the crowd. She hoped in the back of her mind that some of her kind had made it out... but that was far from what she was focused on at the moment.

[InfectedHau]

Vaylani||Dunmer||Vampire||Helgen Cave||Tagged: Sjavakki, Rashin, Marcus, Faelhien

Vaylani winced as she stepped out into the sunlight, pulling her hood up over her head. She'd been a vampire for a long time, but the daylight never hurt any less. She tried not to go out during the day when she could avoid it, but current circumstances had forced a change to her routine. "Well," she remarked, to nobody in particular, "that was interesting. Didn't think I'd get to see a dragon in my lifetime, shame that one left before I could get a proper conversation going." She'd lived a decent while, but dragons were eternal. She'd have loved to have sat down with one, who knew what kind of knowledge it was keeping in that fiery reptilian brain. Almost made getting captured and almost executed worth it.

"Well, I'll just have to keep an eye on the skies," the dunmer said, sheathing her saber and wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth with her thumb. It wasn't hers, she'd had plenty of time to feed while they were fighting their way out of the keep. "Big beastie like that can't be too hard to spot, eh?"

[Baphymet]

Faelhien||Bosmer||Helgen Cave Exit||Tagged: Sjavakki, Rashin, Marcus, Vaylani
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Faelhien kept her head low, her Nightengale bow in hand as she stepped out of the cave and staying a little bit away from the other survivors she had been trailing with. She sighed and pushed her hood back to run a hand through her hair. She wasn't expecting something like this to have went down, nor did she want to have such interactions with random people.

Faelhien had been in Helgen for business reasons, wanting to have her job carried out quickly and cleanly. Until a tale from legends appeared and attacked the town that she happened to be in. She huffed and leaned against a tree, looking at the Dunmer who was speaking. She just glanced at the female, not wanting to engage in much conversation unless necessary. Faelhien wasn't going to speak, not after what just happened. Her mind raced, her eye twitching. What was she going to tell the guild? That a dragon attacked when she was doing a job? She wasn't able to complete a job because of a dragon.

Unless word broke out and the guild found out about the dragon, she couldn't return with the truth.

She shook her head nonetheless, glancing in the direction that the dragon flew off to. She put her bow on her back and waited for the other survivors to come up with something. She didn't really have anywhere else to go for now.

[Fortune's Fool]

Rashin || Argonian Mage || 21 || ~Sjavakki, Vaylani, Marcus, Faelhien

The Argonian had a death grip on his control staff as he stumbled out of the cave and into the daylight. It was a miracle he'd found it in the rush through the barracks, but he probably wouldn't have made it without it. Or at least something with how heavily he was leaning on it. Between fighting and channeling small strands of mana into the staff to call Dwiin to him Rashin's energy currently was... limited, and the way his legs were trembling wasn't only from the exertion {he was not built to run, he could barely walk on a bad day} but from memories of fire as well. No sooner had he left the cave and ensured he was not in anyone's way, his back hit... rock? Probably on one side of the cave mouth then, his vision was a little dark around the edges. Maybe it was a different rock entirely and he'd stumbled farther than he'd thought.

By Sithis, he'd just been looking for daedra's hearts in alchemy shops. If he'd known all this would happen he would have just bribed someone at the college to summon one!

Distantly he could hear words and he struggled to make them out. After a moment Rashin managed to actually speak, trying very hard to act like he wasn't still actively gasping for air and failing miserably. "Didn't seem... much for conversation... anyway..." and he was glad for that. He didn't want some big fiery creature straight out of a story anywhere near him ever again. Certainly didn't want to speak to them if it was that easy for them to decide to just roast an entire town. "If I see it coming back... I'm going back into the cave... and taking my chances... with the giant spiders... and the stormcloaks and soldiers."

[Foe Paw]

☾ Mᴀʀᴄᴜs Vɪᴛᴀʟɪs Aᴛᴇʟʟᴜs
---- he/him • 36 • imperial archer • werewolf • location. helgen cave exit• tags. Sjavakki, Rashin, Faelhien, Vaylani

Marcus looked up from where he was nursing a burn to scoff at the dunmer's smooth, casual tone, like the last hour of running for their lives was no more than a curiosity. "The mage has the right idea. You'd be a fool to approach that rampaging animal. Certainly, if it knew how to talk, it would have." Could dragons even speak? He was hard pressed to recall any relevant information about them, except for children's stories that might have thrown a dragon or two into the plot. It sounded absurd, but now again, how could anything be stranger than the bare bones of the story, that a dragon had appeared in front of their eyes? Marcus would feel tempted to disregard it as madness created from a near-death experience, if so many others weren't right there besides him, soot-covered and shaking - or, in the case of the dunmer, threatening to go look for it again.

He paused and hissed in pain, shaking out his hand. He'd been emptying the contents of a stolen waterskin over it, to soothe the burn he'd acquired when a building started to half collapse around him. It'd been hell to run through the burning city - and then through the dungeons and caverns, forcing himself to shoot with it - but, nevertheless, he was alive. It was more than he expected to have when he woke up to a sword at his throat yesterday morning, or even an hour ago, standing on a line in his tattered armor to await the executioner's axe. It was appalling that freedom for his sorry hide would come at the cost that it did - and at that he turned to look at the rising smoke column behind them, all that remained of the sleepy town of Helgen - but he was too relieved at being free to not make use of the opportunity. He'd even managed to collect the weapons that had been taken from him, from a chest in the dungeons where he'd been put. The rest of his supplies, though, were doubtless scattered or lost by now. He looked at the waterskin in his hands, contemplating that he might have escaped a dragon merely to starve a mere handful of days later. He couldn't hunt with a burned hand, and the couple of gold pieces scavenged from the dead bodies wasn't enough for healing potions. He wondered if he'd dare going into town and using the money to stay at an inn until he was healed enough.

Faced with the appallingly short list of options, he turned to the rest of the survivors, clearing out his throat to ask in his usual gruff tone. "Where will you go from here? I don't know enough of the area to know the way to a town."

[Alita~]

⚔️ 𝐒𝐣𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐤𝐤𝐢 ⚔️
Nord | Female | 32 | Warrior | Werewolf | Location: Helgen Cave Exit | Tagging: Rashin, Vaylani, Marcus, Faelhien
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The brown-haired Nord finally set down her axe, not bothering to wipe the blood off, and quickly studied the other four. How could that Dunmer be so calm at a time like this? Was she completely blind to what had just happened? And then there was the Bosmer. She didn't seem to be in shock either. Just standing a few meters off, seeming merely disappointed. Was there something Sjavakki was missing, or were these Elves just insane? She looked to the Argonian, but quickly turned her attention to the Imperial when he began to speak.
Something was different about him... She got a bit closer, as non-suspiciously as she could in the situation, and took a long smell of the air, disguising it as a much needed deep breath.
So one did make it out... After glancing quickly at the others, she made eye contact with the other Werewolf, her striking blue eyes boring into his, and lingering abnormally long before she slowly averted them. She thought for a moment, staring at the ground in silence. Where would she go? There's no way it could be safe to travel on the roads with a dragon on the loose. For all they knew, there could be many, many more. She let out a breath, and shook her head.
"I don't know. It's probably not safe to tr-" She was cut off by a deafening roar that made her blood run cold. There was three heavy wing-beats that got rapidly closer, until the sound was practically on top of them. Sjavakki ducked down and backed up quickly to the wall of the cave as the beast sped over the mountain and climbed higher and higher into the sky, luckily missing — or ignoring — them all.

[InfectedHau]

Vaylani||Dunmer||Vampire||Helgen Cave||Tagged: Sjavakki, Rashin, Marcus, Faelhien

"They can speak," Vaylani said. "I've seen enough records of their language to know that much. They're as inteligent as..." She cast a slightly derisive eye over the assembled survivors. "Well, as intelligent as I, at least. They're far more than simple animals, if the legends are to be believed." Everyone seemed not to want to encounter the dragon again, which she didn't really understand. Sure, it had lain waste to one town, but there could have been any number of factors playing into that. This was the first dragon sighting in decades, perhaps centuries, did they not see what a momentous occasion this was? Burns and bruises were a small price to pay to be a part of history.

The dragon passed overhead, apparently oblivious to the dunmer's attempts to wave it down. Unfortunate, but unsurprising. It probably had other things on its mind. "I suppose I'll tag along with you all," she said, in response to the Imperial's second question. "We seem to be the only survivors of the attack, so it stands to reason that the dragon has a vested interest in finding us. Either to finish the job, or because it freed us on purpose. Regardless of the why, it's the best chance I have of finding it again." Her mind was brimming with questions to ask the beast, even the questions on itself and its race could have filled a book. If the dragons were really returning, she wanted to know everything she could about them.

[Fortune's Fool]

Rashin || Argonian Mage || 21 || ~Sjavakki, Vaylani, Marcus, Faelhien

Despite his previous words, when the dragon appeared in the sky Rashin did not move. He was already right against the stone of the cave entrance and he likely wouldn't have been able to get actually into the cave in time to not be seen anyway. And despite the... absolutely insane Dunmer's attempts, it didn't seem to notice them, or at the very least didn't seem to care. "It's a big, fiery lizard," Rashin stated sharply, at least he'd managed to catch his breath a bit, "and I get the feeling it does not want to talk to you." Still leaning on the staff in his hands he at least managed to stand up straight.

Ideally he'd make his way back to the college, but with Dwiin still missing {he hoped it was making its way to him but he'd never had reason to test the limits when it came to distance between it and the control staff before} he didn't hold much hope for him making it all the way back on his own. "I can't say I'm familiar with this area either," he turned to speak to the Imperial who had mentioned something similar before the dragon's brief reappearance, "I generally spend my time much farther North."

[La Esmeralda]

Thranduil/Bosmer/Ranger/location: Helgen cave

The elf astride his nobel steed Shadow mere, came back to were his venture in skyrim all began. His amber like eyes were taking in the basically destroyed town. He tensed up as he heard voices , close by in the cave, so he reached back to grab his ebony greatsword, as a precaution