Elder scrolls: Blood for gold

[caligari]

overview

• 
  Fort Snowhawk, what a dreary place. Cedran thought as he was doing his rounds across the broken and crumbling battlements of the ancient fort. The view he had wasn't much better, the bogs and sinking swamps of Hjaalmarch were a less than inviting sight for the mercenary, not that the temperature helped.
  
  Cedran crossed his arms and rubbed his hands up and down the length of them to get a bit warmer, he himself was completely covered in fur and still the icy touch of the north chilled him to the bone, he didn't know how these Nords did it. At that time he envied the ones who had the luck to be able to sleep that night, at least they were comfortable... somewhat.
  
  His eyes scanned the entirety of the ruined walls of the fort stopping every now and then on a lone figure holding vigil over the horizon, unlike him they only needed to stay at one place. Lucky them, they could set up a nice little fire basket and keep warm during their nights. Cedran? He had to keep walking, being forced to serve as a pair of second eyes to the stationary lookouts. Still, he was known to stick around and talk to the other guards when things got too cold for him.
  
  With a sigh and a shrug he continued his patrol, the snow crunching beneath his fur boots. In the end He'd be a lot warmer and a lot happier with a belly full of mead.
  
  

 

[sivilia]

Closing the doors behind her, Cecile stepped out into the breezier airs and approached the man as he looked out over the city ruins. She had just woken up - as one of the youngest mercenaries at the ruined fort, she had only been recruited a matter of days ago, and she had not had the chance to converse with any of the other sellswords. Most of them ignored her, thinking that she was just a child, while the others either spoke in a far too perverted tone for her liking, or worse, attempted to persuade her to engage in certain activities. As the man began to walk along the wall, his boots crushing the snow beneath him, she stepped up behind him.

"Did you know that Fort Snowhawk used to be a palace?" she said in a clear voice, in an attempt to make conversation with the exhausted-looking man. "The areas surrounding it once acted as part of a wider, buzzing city. It was a capital, in fact, of Hjaalmarch, long before the city of Markarth took its place. I didn't know that."

 

[caligari]

"Is that so?" Cedran Looked over his shoulder at Cecile, she was new and young, a combination Cedran had little patience for. Even worse, he wasn't really one for small talk or friendly conversation with a mercenary so green she could blend in with the plains of Whiterun. As he spoke he continued walking, if the new girl wanted to continue the conversation she had to follow, he couldn't exactly shirk his duties because someone wanted to talk history. "But if Markarth replaced Snowhawk as capital, wouldn't Snowhawk have been the capital of the Reach rather than Hjaalmarch?"

When it came down to history, Cedran was one of the most well read members of their mercenary company, though his knowledge mainly extended to merethic and first era Nordic history as well as Reachmen past. On the subject of Reachmen he turned back at Cecile and gazed at her primitive and extremely revealing garb usually worn by the Forsworn of the West and shook his head. "I really don't understand how you can walk around in that, I'm bloody freezing my toes off and I'm covered in two layers of fur top to bottom."

The young Breton stopped by a fire basket near the Eastern battlement and held out his hands toward to fire in the hopes of warming up a bit. The flames licked his hands and several strains of fur on his braces retreated in flames for getting too close. The night was colder than usual and the bog had been quiet, always a bad sign. Everyone could feel something was out there, but no one knew what.

 

[sivilia]

"I don't actually know, that's what Havir the Grey told me yesterday," she said, folding her arms. "Although now I think about it, you're probably right. It might have been Morthal, maybe, I wasn't really listening." She watched Cedran turn around to face her and gaze at her clothing. She looked down, and then quickly covered herself up, half-offended by the way that he was looking at her. When he shook his head, her mouth opened slightly - it was almost as if he was judging her for wearing revealing clothing, but when he mentioned the cold, she sighed and lowered her hands. "Yeah, it gets a little chilly sometimes, but this is nothing. When you've got Nord blood, you seem to find it a lot more bearable than most. You were born to the wrong race." She watched him hold his hands above the fires, and peered out over the ruins once more. "Do you reckon we'll get to kill some Stormcloaks some time soon?"