bakerstreet | Love on an Adventure

Love on an Adventure

LOVE ON AN ADVENTURE meme

Lucky you. For a while, you get to eschew a normal life and see life past your door; you're going on a quest! It could be for personal reasons, for fun, for profit, or to save the world as you know it. In all likelihood, it's the latter, given the natural order of things, but hopefully it's not. Whatever the case may be, you won't be going it alone, however. Whether it's just you and a partner or a true fellowship, you've got people to back you up. You may not all start out as the best of friends, that's true - still, the fires of potential life or death scenarios or the threat of losing your booty draw you closer together, and a friendship forms.

With one member of your party, more than friendship grows between you.

But wait, you have to defeat the dark lord, find the oldest wand, fight evil by moonlight, create a giant robot, or any other number of tasks. There's no time for this sort of nonsense! Actually, you may push them away because of the mission or due to past wounds that tie into said mission. Maybe, though, you can steal moments to get closer, let a romance blossom...or more.

HOW to PLAY

Comment with your character, preferences, and any other info - ie, keep it PG, etc.
Even though I used a fantasy picture, don't feel constrained! In Harry Potter, they have to find a wand, in Supernatural, the Colt, in Avatar, they have to fight the Fire Lord, etc.
Feel free to AU your character or include information about them.
Reply to others.

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"Right."

On Garyn's signal he casts - the initial push feels somewhat similar to Whirlwind Sprint, but in all other ways this is a completely new sort of magic.

He finds himself treading air, even if it's not strictly necessary, and splitting his attention between Garyn and the landscape below - it's a sort of view he's only ever seen once before, from Odahviing's back.

It's a good thing he's not afraid of heights.

The landscape has shrunk beneath their feet. From this height it is almost like looking down at a smaller relief map within the map they now carry. The wind whips Garyn's hair back as he squints into the distance.

Garyn sees the ridges of the mountains below and dives forward to ride as near the crest as possible.

There. That must be Saering's Watch. He points his finger toward it, knowing he won't be heard in flight. Not that he would need to point it out, given what's happening beneath them at this very moment.

No, the dragon fighting a dozen or so draugr is fairly noticeable. Rather than land in the middle of that, Vanyel looks around for a higher vantage point.

Fortunately, they have their pick of those. Saering's Watch still has several mostly intact towers and connecting bridges, to say nothing of the mountain itself.

He picks one of those bridges, and once he feels himself starting to fall casts from the second scroll as instructed. His landing isn't the most graceful, perhaps, but he manages.

From there, he summons a flame atronach. She glides into their midst and attacks indiscriminately, only adding to the chaos of the brawl.

Garyn reaches the ground first. His . He skips without accelerating down the slope of the mountain until he reaches a ledge just abreast of the aerie's altarpiece. It is large enough for Garyn to stand on, but too small for the dragon.

His bow is drawn the moment he lands. Shot by shot, he picks at the edges of the fiery melee. The ranks of the draugr are thinning.

And then there is a rush of wind behind him. It's not that he hadn't noticed when the dragon took to the air. But, he had reasoned, this ledge was far too small for a dragon to land on. The problem is, a dragon doesn't need to land...

Garyn crouches low and summons his shield barely in time.

He'd been firing primarily at the draugr as well. Their tactics against the dragon prove that they're the sort with some rudimentary intelligence left; slaying the dragon will be tricky enough without having to guard against surprise attacks from them.

When the dragon takes flight, though, he turns his attention to it. It doesn't appear to be a frost dragon, so he loads the crossbow with a normal bolt, soaked in a stamina-draining potion. He has too few of the exploding ones to want to risk wasting them.

When it hovers over Garyn, he takes his chance to fire - and hits it just under the wing. Hardly a fatal blow, but more than enough to irritate and distract the dragon.

The dragon turns its head and grunts in pain and surprise. It's not much, but it's just enough to give Garyn time as he looses an arrow into the beast's throat.

The dragon bellows, nearly gurgling, and lunges with its snapping jaws at the ledge as Garyn jumps off it onto the ground below.

And once Garyn has jumped, and Vanyel can be sure of not accidentally hitting him, he takes the opportunity to cast a lightning spell.

As the dragon was following Garyn, the spell grazes along its side, from wing to leg - which means it lands much more heavily than it intended, with only one leg that will support its weight, and is unable to take flight again immediately.

And as the dragon roars its displeasure with this development, Vanyel scrambles down from his own perch as quickly as he can.

Garyn rises from a crouch and draws his sword, just in time to parry the blow of an oncoming draugr.

The dragon is stumbling and lumbering around on the ground behind him, trying to right itself after the blows it has taken.

To keep it off balance for a little while longer, Vanyel maneuvers himself close enough to Shout at it. "Joor Zah Frul!"

And while the dragon is occupied with its magic-induced existential crisis, he follows that up with another burst of lightning - before getting rather distracted himself as a frost troll emerges from its den and charges at him.

Edited 2015-12-03 20:39 (UTC)

The dragon huddles against the ground, bellowing in confusion. Meanwhile, Garyn locks blades with the hulking draugr. He pushes forward, gaining leverage over the ancient revenant before sweeping his leg under it and sending it to the ground.

He glances toward the frost troll, seeking to know in that fleeting instant whether his assistance is needed...

Vanyel was able to duck the troll's initial lunge -though only just- and by the time Garyn looks over he's recovered enough to fire back at the troll with a long burst of flame. The flame atronach he summoned earlier has rejoined the fight as well. They have the troll in hand, at least for the moment.

It's a moot point, anyway - the dragon has recovered enough to clamber into snapping range.

Garyn enters a defensive posture as it lunges at him - dancing, waiting for an opening.

The power of his Shout is dissipating as well, and Vanyel is too occupied with staying out of range of the troll to do much about that at the moment - the constant bombardment of flames is doing quite a number on it, but it's still got at least enough life in it to lunge if he stops casting.

It's difficult to miss the moment when the dragon lunges forward, though, and to guess from that what it intends - probably not to eat him, or even bite anything off. But with an arm or leg in its mouth it could shake him like a ragdoll, drop him back to the ground from great heights, or do any number of other unpleasant things. Thinking quickly, he orders the atronach to go distract the dragon. He has enough magicka -and enough exploding crossbow bolts- to deal with the troll.

The burning daedroth rises to hover above the ground before diving headlong into the side of the beast's head, just as it was snapping for Garyn's leg. In its hobbled state, the searing blow is enough to send it reeling, snapping its head back like a felled prizefighter.

It's more than enough. Garyn coils his legs beneath him and plunges Trueflame into the dragon's neck.

The atronach has done her job, then - though that doesn't stop her from continuing to lob fireballs at the dragon. Like most of her kind, she enjoys fighting, and since she hasn't been ordered to stand down... luckily, she's on the other side of the dragon and there's little to no chance of her hitting Garyn.

Vanyel, meanwhile, finishes off the troll as quickly as he's able, blasting it with fire bolts and laying into it with Dawnbreaker until it's down for good. Then he continues his descent - it looks like they've just about finished off the dragon, but just in case...

The life ebbs quickly from the wounded dragon, as it slumps to its death. Its flesh crumbles, crackles, and glows as its soul flows out of it.

And once again, the specter of Miraak appears to absorb its soul. This time, it seems, he has no time or inclination to taunt his fellow Dragonborn; he simply absorbs the soul in silence and is gone.

Only once he's vanished does Vanyel speak up. "We should probably avoid having to slay any more dragons if we can possibly help it. I don't know what he'd need dragon souls for, but it can't be good."

"Agreed," Garyn says. "We wouldn't want to give him any sort of an advantage."

He glances about the aerie, looking for any lurking foes.

"I think the way is clear now."

"Here's hoping." But as he climbs back up the stairs, heading toward the word wall on the upper level, nothing else jumps out to attack him, and nothing stirs on the lower level either.

As in the temple, he kneels to inspect the carving and comes away having learned what feels like the first word of a new Shout - 'gol'.

Garyn follows him as he climbs up to the wall and finds the word.

"Any sense of what it does?"

After a moment's consideration, he replies, "The word picked out here was 'earth.'" He taps the series of Dovahzul runes that were glowing just moments ago. "Based on that, I'm guessing that it will be targeting the Wind Stone to break Miraak's spell, rather than working directly on the Skaal."

Hard to say how, at this point - the rest of the inscription doesn't offer much in the way of context clues.

"Well, whatever the case, we'll need to get there as fast as we can," Garyn says.

"The stone is east of the headwaters of the Harstrad. We'll need to hoof it from here."

"Or wing it?" He suggests, heading for the steps again. Once he's near the bottom, he Shouts. "Dur Neh Viir!"

There's a sudden rush of what looks like purple flames (the same shade as a charged soul gem) from the snowy ground on up, and when they die down a dragon is left standing there. It's a rather sickly-looking one, almost nothing to it but skin and bone, and the leathery wings are so tattered it doesn't seem like the thing should be able to fly at all.

But it flaps its wings, quite clearly intending to take off before Vanyel calls out to it. "Just a moment, Durnehviir. I need a favor from you before you fly off."

It eyes him for a moment, then asks in a wet, rasping voice, "What sort of favor, Qahnariin?"

Garyn sees exactly where Vanyel is going with this. It's not that he doesn't agree. He'd just rather he asked instead.

Whereas Vanyel figures it's safer if he does the asking. Durnehviir does reason to hold off attacking him, at least - though he doesn't flatter himself that they'll be enough to stay the dragon's hand if he gets offended enough to attack. Even then, he already knows he can take Durnehviir in a fight.

And Durnehviir knows it too - so though he's visibly agitated by the request for a ride and a growl rumbles up from his chest, he makes no move to attack. "Rax wah ruus! I am no donth key to be saddled and ridden at your whim!"

"I know. Krosis. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't urgent," Vanyel replies, laying a hand on the dragon's neck. "But time is of the essence, and I can't think of any faster way to travel than on dragon's wings."

Durnehviir grumbles, and continues to look very unhappy about it, but the compliment mollifies him enough that he lowers his neck - a clear invitation for them to climb on. Vanyel waves Garyn over before going ahead and doing so.

Edited 2016-01-02 20:57 (UTC)

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Sorry this is so late - RL is devouring me

No prob, this time of year is pretty busy irl for just about everyone

Got even busier after that. Sure would like to get this started again.

I'm down with that : )

Re: I'm down with that : )

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Sorry for yet another delay - holiday and job shenanigans

No worries!

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