In (ahem) “her” 3DNPC character debut, Lindsey Lorraine voices Carah; a whimsical courier who takes her job to heart.
And with this, the quest Thrice-Bitten, Once Shy is all ready to go for the Monday update. (And there was much rejoicing.)
She swears she can hear Baan Dar laughing from his aetherial hiding place as she runs; enemy arrows whistling so close as to slit the skin of her pumping arms and legs. She flinches at the familiar thud of impact into tree trunks, earth– the thick material of her pack. Her heart is a thunder of panic in her chest as branches break off in her hands, are discarded behind her. A curse, a heaving breath, a sob, escapes her: These trees cannot be climbed.
The will to run is draining fast; she can feel the spasms of fatigue starting in her calves. She leaps over a crop of rock, hopes in vain to elude the three– three— bandit chiefs behind her, with their axe, hammer, and greatsword. She cuts a corner, doubles back– right through her pursuers before they have a chance to react, to swing.
The archer has no such failing.
Pain erupts in her arm, but she refuses to stagger, to stop– Blood like liquid fire races in rivulets to her fingers; flinging red drops into the unbending, unaiding trees. She thinks she knows, now, what the Red Mountain must have felt like when Baar Dau cleaved Vivec.
Desperately, she tumbles down an incline, slides behind a fallen log– crouches, cradles her arm; hopes the wind tears away her heaving breaths. Salt blooms in her mouth. She realizes she is weeping.
Her teeth clench so hard she can feel them nearly splinter. With a few hasty breaths through her nose and Healing lighting her good hand, she wrenches the arrow from her arm. The magic balms the agony, knits her flesh before she can cry out. She fills her lungs when her magicka empties, Healing blinking out of her palm. She can hear the bandits searching for her, calling her out of hiding as if expecting her to respond. Her jaw sets with fury.
Where, in Yffre’s name, is Skjarn?
Canted, lion-esque eyes scan the field before her; the road they two had been walking when the bandits had appeared from nowhere, steel blazing. She’d been in awe of the barrow they were passing and its great stone arches. Deaf to the snapping of twigs and rustle of grass beneath heavily armored feet.
There– against the slope of the barrow’s hill, the glint of Skjarn’s armor silhouettes a huddled form. Dead?
Her hands flash to her bow, her arrows, just as the bandit archer steps hard to jump over the log she hides behind. Her shot pierces him from under chin through top of skull. He is dead in the air, and broken when he hits the ground.
The chiefs are not far behind– the enraged roar of the Orc like a flame beneath her, and she runs.
“Skjarn!” She yells, sprinting toward his body for all she’s worth. She can see his thick arms shaking with pain; the knuckles of his axe hand clenching white, useless around the weapon. Alive. She barely has time to reach through the top of her pack and feel for cold ceramic before the telltale grunting shout of a killing blow sounds at her back.
In one slow blink, time protracts. She thinks of the small, brown deer she used to hunt in Valenwood– how they could jump so high as to use the low branches of the trees as footing to escape an arrow shot. And when time snaps back like a bowstring, she is already jumping. Once, twice; the healing potion landing square in Skjarn’s lap as the battleaxe swings beneath her feet.
She lands, turns, has no time to get her bow back, the Orc is bearing down– she is that little deer, isn’t she? Brown skin trembling, dried tears on her cheeks as she scrabbles, scrambles to get far enough away, just–
Skjarn staggers behind the Orc, makes himself stand. She can see color filling his cheeks over the heaving shoulder of her killer’s armor. The Orc is pulling his weapon behind him, bending like an oak for the executioner’s blow. Skjarn hefts his axe in his hand, coils his body to strike– so much faster than the heavy Orc– like a cobra, like a king– The sun glints off the axehead, the wind pulls at his armor, and suddenly– She can see all the things he has said. All the praise that has been given him. Her eyes widen and a smile pulls her thin lips in that moment. He is noble, he is a hero, he is–
The Orc whirls– striking Skjarn right back down. His little axe falls with a clatter and a whimper.
… Seriously?
“No one bests an Orc!” The bandit chief sneers, spits into the dirt beside Skjarn’s– again– trembling, feeble, beaten body.
She sighs, rolls her eyes, and grabs her bow. Two rapid arrows later, and the Orc is off to meet his god. But there are still two chiefs more.
“Come on, Skjarn,” she picks up his arm, shoves another potion into his weak fingers. “You’re not even bleeding.”
And then she’s running into the trees, focus fixed on the remaining bandits charging down the field toward Skjarn. This had been her plan all along, when she’d met Skjarn in Dragon Bridge. He’d been painfully arrogant, pandering his own praise, but his neck was as thick as his biceps, and she could use a bit of melee to hold her targets still for the sting of her bow.
Again, Skjarn pulls himself up. Axe in hand, he plants his feet as if the oncoming bandits are a tide and, he, the immovable cliff shore. This time, she beams wickedly, notching an arrow and following the leading bandit’s pace. She can almost hear future bards singing Skjarn’s heroism as he stands his ground, raises his axe in counterpoint to the bandit chief’s rising sword, and…!
Falls.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
A few poison-dipped arrows find their marks and the Bosmer stomps from the trees to her staggered companion. He heaves a breath, pushes himself up, and is just finding his footing again when she reaches him.
“What was that?” She demands in a snarl, seeing dented armor but not a single wound upon his body. “What on Nirn was that?”
He fixes her with a look that wouldn’t turn the gaze of the homeliest tavern wench, though he clearly believes it would.
“Some call me Skjarn the Magnificent.” He drawls. “It’s a little redundant, don’t ya think?”
Her fist flashes with her temper.
“Hey!”
“Come on.” She snaps, wrenching the arrows from her pack and stuffing them in her quiver. She should’ve known when he hadn’t so much as mentioned coin when she asked him to follow her that something was up. Free help is free help, she’d thought then.
Yeah, she retorts now, assuming a pace she hopes will get Skjarn lost in the mountains. And I got what I paid for.
I have a lot of feelings and I am going to tell you about them.
I have never, not once, in two years of playing Skyrim, played with followers. All of my Dovahkiins have explored, fought, adventured, lived or died absolutely solo. Talking to any of the NPCs offering to follow just never made me want to have that annoyance. It’s hard enough watching for traps for myself, and what if they get in my way? And having to make sure they’re still behind me and not stuck on the other side of a mountain or cliff? Ugh. No thanks. Me, myself, and I are plenty.
Until yesterday. Until this mod.
My new Dunmer was passing through Riverwood with a chip on her shoulder. Thanks to the Alternate Start mod, I imagine she was attacked on the road by racist Nords/Imperials and left for dead, and had to struggle her way back to safety and society. With coin in her pocket and food in her belly for the first time in weeks, finally recovering from Witbane AND Rattles AND Rockjoint thanks to dirty water and fending off beasts by hand for days, and tentatively accepting the kindness of the family of the soldier she’d saved on an accidental discovery of a ruined Helgen– she met an eager young Nord named Hjoromir. He talked a lot and smiled a lot; and she passed him by, annoyed at his energy and sunny attitude. She had things to sell and a life to carve out again after it had been beaten out of her.
But then she kept running into him. He was still chipper, still smiling, and she had to give it to him that he was hard-working. Eventually she asked after more than his name. She heard when he talked about his family, but she listened when he so offhandedly mentioned his disapproval of the racist traditions of his father.
Slowly the young man becomes endearing, and she keeps an eye out for him as she settles into the town, slowly building up the supplies she knows she needs to move on. His dreams of adventure strike a chord with her; as though her heart were a lute left out in the winter, and the strings froze stiff and tuneless as stone. But then Hjoromir comes like a child heedless to the chill of the snow, and plucks the taut, frozen strings until finally they thrum; shaking off the ice that had held them mute, and the lute remembers what it was made for.
When the Valeriuses ask her to return their stolen ornament, the Dunmer shoulders her pack and steps onto the road. And there is Hjoromir, smiling and greeting her as he walks, no doubt to Alvor’s smithy to work. She surprises herself when she asks him to come along with her. And more when she turns right back around to buy the boy some proper armor. The septims that were so hard-won and now so jealously hoarded, are spent easily for the young man and his dreams. “I can invest in this boy,” she thinks, as she pushes a steel battleaxe into his hands. And a mace. And a cuirass, and boots, and bracers, and a fur cloak for good measure because the mountain slope will be cold, even for a Nord. She does not think how everything she wears was salvaged from corpses; none of it new, none of it paid for, and none of it truly hers. She does not think about “why” because there’s Hjoromir again, as they walk, talking about dreams and she can hear him smiling without looking. He is full of thanks, thanks for her, and she tells herself she’s investing in one less racist bigot, one more good soul, and maybe that’s all it is.
But when bandits are at their feet and she checks for any green around his gills, all she finds is a smile– and he acts out a story from his mind of the dragon Numinex and a damsel in distress. She has to jump back when he swings the battleaxe with a flourish, retelling a showdown that never happened with more animation than any bard she’s heard. She feels something against her cheek, and realizes she is smiling, too.