Aryen Caladras - Roads

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Obsidian Sea
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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Obsidian Sea » Wed Oct 26, 2016 11:03 pm

The Ranger's eyes glance quickly around the interior, his pale blue eyes grown paler yet under The Moonmaiden's kiss. His breathing accelerates as his eyes pierce the darkness. He brings his hands up to his mouth. With the digits of his right hand, Aryen Caladras cautiously fondles The Ring of the Ranger that sits upon his left index finger, and it sharpens his focus all the more. Fear threatens to set in, but no: now, he must see. He expels self-loathing for his follies from his mind the best that he can.

He would see. He must see.

//OOC: Skill rolls as follows, verified via a screenshot with the DM as opposed to in the thread itself so as to not provide messy clutter, which the player cannot bear!

Perception: 18 + 13 = 31
Search: 1 + 4 = 5
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Tristan Thalavar
Nathaniel Askovar
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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Copper Dragon » Mon Oct 31, 2016 9:17 am

Moonlight shines through a cracked window shutter - or is it light within the Ranger's eyes? Claw scratches on a footlocker; the bed in disarray, with muddy traces of feet around it; the shadow of a collapsed body in a far corner in the other direction, the shadow of movement!

Clutter scratch a wooden frame's whine footfalls in the snow - outside. Behind the house. Distancing.

While Aryen Caladras' senses might not prioritise a careful observation of clues in his surroundings, his senses are still impeccable and blessed. Guided by adrenaline, by fear or blessings, the Ranger would be able to quickly conclude that the bedroom is the direction he should go - and beyond it, he can see a small storage area for firewood and other things, and a door that leads into the cellar. Should he enter, swift or slow, he would discover that the cellar is very low and uncomfortable for his frame to pass through - but fortunately no obstacles would be in his way. Under roots and earth for ceiling in the cellar he can see an exit on the other side; the garden entrance.

It is wide open, whatever padlocks or thick wooden bars to seal it having been undone deftly.

And beyond the exit - snowy sky, snowy ground. If he makes his way to it, he soon sees shadows moving. A few trees in the wind - yes, but there - there!

A hunched figure, clad in snow hare furs, just dragging another figure behind a heap of snow. To hide; but Aryen would have been able to spot them, and hear keenly the desperate wheeze of the girl. Of Malvina.

Behind the snowdrift, the kidnapper and the girl make a sprint for it. Heading towards the fields; on them the old gnarled tree, where the village fool had seen eyes before, and where now eyes gleam indeed: two sets. Greedy. Urging.

There is a man's cry out elsewhere among the thatch homes, alarmed.

And all this happens in a matter of a minute.

Where will Aryen go? Back to the cottages or forward? Will he draw bow or sword? Will he opt for anything else?
Plays:
Artemis D'Assanthe, Dawnmaster
Udhana, the Kinless
Dhovainithil, Silver Elf
Jhasira of the Bai Kabor, Dawnbringer (deceased)

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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Obsidian Sea » Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:13 am

Though he had no time to interpret it, a feeling of familiar dread came over him as that man's cry is heard: a helplessness born out of friction of having the wish to do something, but not the way. And it was yet to be seen if he had the will.

Aryen Caladras did not know what was happening in Dorarder - what was happening to Dorarder. He had only the base instincts of man, and an unrequited sense of loyalty to Malvina and her safety. That was the quest he had chosen. For better or for worse, he sought to protect the girl, and if a heart that moved more hastily than the mind was the symptom of folly, then Aryen would be a fool until his heart ceased to beat.

He pursues Malvina's captor without hesitation, Abzag-Ubrat drawn.
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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Copper Dragon » Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:50 pm

The man's cry from Dorarder fades but the village stirs all behind Aryen. He might not hear much of it, nor see the lights in windows waking; his quarry is ahead, and he'd near it with a vengeance.

He'd start catching up. Malvina gasps. The figure dragging and pulling her notices Aryen, hisses, and speeds up. And with the sight of Selune he can already discern the shapes that make for the old tree, and the flickering eyes' owners in the tree's hollow underbelly.

Goblins.

As if to punctuate that realisation, a wicked iron arrow flies past Aryen's side - a miss. Another arrow from the old tree's belly, another miss, but it grazes. The foul-looking, fur-clad creatures hiss and sneer and snarl, and seeing only one man they spill forth.

Four of them against the one Aryen. Goblins appear in children's tales and nightmares, but their size only makes humans underestimate them - they are crafty and cruel, and fight as dirtily as they can. While they try to pepper the fast approaching Ranger with arrows, they spread out, eager for an easy and cowardly kill.

One moves to meet him close, an ugly rusty spike in its clutches, and another moves to flank him and get in his back. They would distract him and - should they have their way - they would see him bleed out onto the snow and maybe even lick his lifeblood on the spot.

But Abzag-Ubrat is a mighty sword and the wielder mighty too; it keeps the two goblins in front of Aryen at bay. They cower, they duck, they crawl around to avoid the greatsword. One lands a hit, a stab that goes deep into Aryen's leg - another jumps onto the Dalelander's back, trying to bite at an ear, and the two goblins who kept to the bow screech in delight as they aim at him.

Little did the archers hear the wolf that pounced them - their screeches turned into shrieks of pain and fright.

It was a battle that Aryen Caladras' skill and experience had guaranteed to see win. One goblin was slain by the strike of the greatsword, the other's throat torn open by Fenrir. One fled, and the final one may have been tossed or stomped into the snowy ground. But the clash did not come without some scratches and injuries, and most preciously of all: time.

Malvina was being dragged into the old tree, her thin form looking like it was getting swallowed alive by a dark monster.

Aryen could make the long-strided leap to get to her and grab one of her limbs and pull; this would require his Strength and power of body. Or he could abandon Abzag-Ubrat in favour of something to throw or to shoot; this would require his Dexterity and swiftness. Or he could call on the Moonmaiden's spells - if any are imprinted on the Ranger's mind - to halt what was happening.
Spoiler:
OOC: The player is requested to make a Strength or Dexterity check respectively, or describe a spell that the PC would use.
Plays:
Artemis D'Assanthe, Dawnmaster
Udhana, the Kinless
Dhovainithil, Silver Elf
Jhasira of the Bai Kabor, Dawnbringer (deceased)

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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Obsidian Sea » Sun Nov 06, 2016 12:58 pm

Aryen Caladras drives himself across the distance that separates him from the terrible sight of Malvina's coming entrapment. He trusts Fenrir to round upon any returning foe, for the wolf had an uncanny wisdom to match its predatory instinct: at times patient, or seemingly thoughtful, the wolf seemed to understand the Ranger's needs and wants better than he himself. Coming close to Malvina, adrenaline and horror pressing him to further action, Aryen lunges forward, gasping with desperate determination as he closes a hand around Malvina's wrist. He pulls himself in towards her, fighting to pull her away, as pale blue eyes regard the girl and her monstrous jailor with frenetic glances here and there.

//OOC: Attribute roll provided below, verified serverside with the DM.

Strength: 3 +3 = 6
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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Copper Dragon » Thu Nov 10, 2016 7:21 pm

Aryen Caladras has a natural strength to him - perhaps a legacy of his Illuskan blood, not just his life outdoors? - and so he grabs for Malvina, an adamant grip latching around the girl's wrist. He will succeed: his physical might is without question, as is his determination. Only, will success be quick and effortless, so that he is not at risk of being harmed further in the effort?

His strength will succeed, yes. But Beshaba laughs that night. Not just at the goblins that crossed Aryen's path.

Malvina screams, voice cracking from the sheer effort - and the sheer pain.

She is tugged lower and farther into the old tree's trunk, not enough to disappear as Aryen holds onto her; but there is some visceral carnal carnivorous sound, and it takes all of the Ranger's might to twist and pull at Malvina to free her from the narrow darkness she's being eaten by -

- he pulls -

- harder still --

-- and Malvina flies into his arms, released suddenly, goblins squealing with disgusting snarls and smacks of their lips below in the bark.

She whimpers with terror in Aryen Caladras' embrace; she lives. But the goblins might not for long. As Aryen pulls his protégé out and away of the old tree's hollow, Fenrir storms past him to claw at the creatures within. His is of a powerful form, but more slender than Aryen, and his snout reaches far to crunch at the arm of one of his prey.

While from Malvina's thin little frame, warmth emanates onto Aryen. It is sticky and wet. If looked upon, Aryen would find that he had indeed saved the girl, but her left arm, not the one that Aryen had pulled to get her to safety, was one and all blood. Chunks of flesh missing. A hand dangling, mangled through teeth, by the joints.

She is crying and looks up at Aryen. The willow-thin forearm bleeds in pulses. While in the background the growls of a wolf and the vermin-like scurrying of fleeing goblins can be heard, Malvina's blood drops can be heard, but the girl herself makes no sound: in silence, she seeks the Dalelander's gaze. She seeks its reassurance. She is in shock.

It all fades into memory; the goblins' noise, the cries in Dorarder at a distance. To one with keen senses as Aryen, it can be clear that the monstrous threat has passed. And the threat on Malvina's survival?
Plays:
Artemis D'Assanthe, Dawnmaster
Udhana, the Kinless
Dhovainithil, Silver Elf
Jhasira of the Bai Kabor, Dawnbringer (deceased)

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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Obsidian Sea » Tue Nov 15, 2016 2:28 pm

Malvina had suffered enough: more than she deserved, and yet misfortune had given her Aryen Caladras as a guardian, so that when in her shocked state she sought him out for comfort, she would see a similarly muted man staring back at her. A bow he could wield; a sword or axe, too, but words were too often beyond his proficiency and he knew not what he could say to the girl. In the selfishness of dread, he could only consider with quiet horror the shape that failure had taken, here where he held her in his arms.

But the immediate moments after the revelation, subduing him, are in the moments thereafter put aside. A man of few words, it makes sense for his own survival that Aryen would be a man of action. He rests her down, carefully, whispering urgencies that she stay still and strong, waiting for him there. He scavenges the nearby area, seeking some herb; some torn fabric; or tonic left in the snow in the wake of the Goblin's defeat: anything that would help Malvina's recovery, or at least numb the pain whilst he does what is already within his power to do using his own skill and provisions.

"It's okay. It's okay. It's okay, Malvina. It's going to be okay." The words were intermittent in the action, commendable more for their frequency than for their quality.

She could be stabilised, but should she keep the arm; the hand? Would she ever gain the strength to make use of them again even if she did? It is then when he settles down next to her to apply careful study and practice to the arm that the Ranger trains a regularity into his breathing. He would have to work steadily, and do his best - and hope that it was good enough.

//OOC: Skill rolls as follows, verified via a screenshot with the DM.

Heal: 15 + 11 = 26
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Aryen Caladras
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Nathaniel Askovar
Elizabeth van der Lowe

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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Copper Dragon » Thu Nov 24, 2016 6:25 pm

The night around them grew colder, and Malvina's pale face grew paler still as blood was lost... But she would make it.

Aryen Caladras' efforts seem to limit the damage done to the girl, and his focus in that moment is only outmatched by the insightfulness with which he applies his makeshift treatments. Malvina whimpers and looks up at him with the largest eyes, in shock; but she would make it.

Around them, Dorarder's villagers seem to take control of their settlement again, and the goblins that had snuck into other houses are killed vindictively or chased off; guttural shrieks from the short-grown menaces rise and die off. Villagers shout to one another, calling out names or reassurances in response. The old crone that had taken in Malvina for the night is discovered to have died, and apparently another elderly man elsewhere has been gravely injured and is being tended to. But she - Malvina - would make it.

The rest of the night, Aryen would be granted peace to tend to the orphan girl: no further danger arises, and the villagers are more keenly busy with securing their home and gathering with torches and pitchforks in the middle of Dorarder than with him. They see the goblin corpses that Aryen and Fenrir left behind, and surely in the morning they might gather those dead. But now, the remainder of the evening is Aryen's, Malvina's and Selune's.

Malvina's dirty blonde head rests against the Ranger's chest by the end of it. Whether it is he who approaches the village with Malvina in his arms, or if it is a villager that approaches him as he tends to her... there is one jaded man that addresses the Dalelander.

"You killed the most, stranger," he begins hoarsely but earnestly. "Without that sword, more of us'd be bleeding. But you should leave."

He looks stern but regretful. "Some think you lured them out, the goblins, by being here. I don't think so. Fools speak that way. But you should leave. For the girl."

The villager's gaze finds Malvina, but then he turns to the field with the dead goblins; with the faintest hint of dawn on the sky on one side; with Selune shining down on the other, bright.

"Tsurlagol...", the villager says as he eyes the moon, his voice not quite his. He looks to Aryen, his weathered face bearing an alien expression, his grey eyes almost silver in the moon's reflection. "You should bring her to Tsurlagol."

Tsurlagol; Aryen would not have to stand still long in thought to recall the city's name. It is the last free city before one reaches Impiltur from the west; a large walled settlement that neither quite belongs to the Vast nor to the Forgotten Kingdom of Impiltur. There are various temples there, where indeed the girl could be healed. But there are other cities underway from Dorarder there, surely, not the least Lyrabar, Impiltur's capitol. Both cities lie a week afar at least. Still, Tsurlagol lies closest to the Grey Forest, and it not being Impilturan may mean some additional quality that Lyrabar does not have. But what?

Whichever way he might opt for, Aryen Caladras is nevertheless bidden to leave Dorarder, and to take Malvina with him. And now, where he had been travelling with a silent, stubborn, and near-hostile child before, it is a fiercely attached and quick-to-please girl that is his companion, and Fenrir's.

For although she is utterly shaken by what had happened to her, Malvina seems to find in Aryen's presence an indestructible saviour, and in Fenrir an untamed and untameable friend. She suffers with her hand - which remains attached to her wrist, thanks to the Ranger, if useless and motionless - but she makes an active effort to help Aryen in his tasks every time they set up camp, or at least to not be in his way. She peels roots and cuts vegetables clumsily with her other hand; she folds up his clothes neatly when he has to work on the campfire or is hunting for them; and she tries to speak - in Common. "How are you...?" "Good hunt", "Good food".

She does not mind where they head, as long as it is together. Is it to Tsurlagol? Is it to Lyrabar? Or perhaps somewhere else yet?
Plays:
Artemis D'Assanthe, Dawnmaster
Udhana, the Kinless
Dhovainithil, Silver Elf
Jhasira of the Bai Kabor, Dawnbringer (deceased)

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Re: Aryen Caladras - Roads

Postby Obsidian Sea » Fri Nov 25, 2016 2:34 pm

When he returns to the village with the wounded Malvina, Aryen Caladras is struck by a sudden feeling of aimlessness. As the villagers mobilise to mitigate the damage of the night's surprise, the Ranger feels poignantly that he has no place among them. And so, nurturing that feeling of estrangement with paralysis, it is with a sudden tight tension of body that he heeds the approach of the jaded man.

That he was taken in the village for a bad omen did not disappoint him as much as it should have: it was a sad thing to be called, but one that he had become used to - if not an accusation that he had lodged with himself in days prior to the current. Had it been his fault or no, he shouldered the blame, knowing it to be beyond his capacity or his strength of will to try and alter the minds of the villagers otherwise. And so, nodding a few times in resignation, he complies to Dorarder's expectation.

Pale blue eyes still lit by The Moonmaiden's sad smile, as they would be until the stars were once more covered by the iron sheets which were the snow-stuffed clouds, and by the brightness of a pale white sun heralding the coming shift from autumn to winter, watch with a kind of mute fascination at the sudden change in the man's demeanour.

"Yes. I will."

Aryen Caladras cannot put words to why he is complicit to the man's instruction. Blind faith? One might deem it characteristic of him. Blind obedience? That, too, was not beyond him. He was more comfortable to be the dog, following at the heel of another's direction. That he spent so much of his time in isolation had not made him a strong figure of individuality, and he disliked the burden of making decisions in the company of others that he had to make every day alone to facilitate his own survival.

The road to Tsurlagol would be long, but they would take it together. Aryen overcompensates for the orphan's injury, adding needless duties to the necessary ones so that the journey might in any way be easier for the girl. He was born to a life of honest labour: humble; mediocre though it was, it was the way that he knew best to prove his capacity to care for others.

"I am well," he says, returning to the fire with three rabbits one early evening, the soft and distant smile of a pensive father given to Malvina over the light of the open fire. "Good hunt. Good food."
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Nathaniel Askovar
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To Tsurlagol

Postby Copper Dragon » Sat Nov 26, 2016 6:26 pm

First to Third Day of Travel

Their journey is not kind: it stays cold and the road is beset by snow. Malvina is prone to give her ward a welcoming hug when he returns from his necessary forays, as much in her gratitude as it is in relief for his return. Nevertheless, she suffers from weakness and trauma on the best of days and is ghoulish in appearance on the worst.

Indeed, on day one of them setting out from Dorarder Malvina bears her weight through the thick snows, but it is with effort. She is thin, and despite whatever Aryen puts on her and the thick blanket that she was gifted with from the locals upon their departure, she forever seems to be freezing. She takes whatever food in that she can, but it is precious little and terribly slow.

It is as if her body wills the child to perish; to heed the premonitions of the grim villagers of Dorarder.

On the second day, she has to rest every other hour or be carried. She has a fever, which Aryen would be able to treat and even to suppress, but not even his exalted diligence can cure Malvina's paleness and the black circles under her eyes.

On the third day, they finally come across another more noteworthy thaedar, a place where they can find a place to lay their heads somewhere with a roof. The locals here speak no single word of Common; and with Aryen not sharing their language, it is up to Malvina, weak and soft-spoken, to parley on their behalf. The conversation she has with a middle-aged couple of the village seems curt, and their grimaces are distrustful and skeptical; but they come to a clear agreement about the girl and her guardian. Even if it is just a pile of hay by the farm animals, they are provided with shelter as well as food.

Aryen Caladras is a skilled woodsman - there is no one who can care for Malvina better on this journey than he. He will have had an intrinsic understanding of the landscape, where and how it is most efficient for them to traverse it, and how best to take advantage of it. The Ranger is a boon in this terrain, outside the villages, and one could argue he should be famous for his talents - but precious few Impilturans recognise him, and few are those too that want to remember his name. He is little known, and no one on the road or in the thaedars offers assistance based on some reputation.

Tsurlagol, though, is different; much is known about it and much too is spoken.

Tsurlagol is supposedly an impressive settlement. Thirteen thousand inhabitants it boasts, although it has endured many a siege and raid by orcs, goblins, bugbears across the centuries. Lyrabar is more resplendent, more eloquent; it is of course the crowning city of Impiltur, home to a thousand shops and experts and resources. Will Tsurlagol compete in what it can offer? Will it be a safe haven to visit with Malvina, perhaps to offer her the healing treatments she deserves?

Seeing her condition, will she make it that far?

OOC: The DM rolled Fortitude checks for Malvina's condition (DC 15 to get better, DC 12 to stay in the same conditions) the first three days: the results of which are 5 + 12 + 11.
Plays:
Artemis D'Assanthe, Dawnmaster
Udhana, the Kinless
Dhovainithil, Silver Elf
Jhasira of the Bai Kabor, Dawnbringer (deceased)


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