Group role-play: Rodeo 1

Drosta | Fieron | Rhylon | Sarad | Kail | Jaegos | Khesler | Mortigan | Fieron

Drosta
It was a cold, dark night in the city of Yar Nadrak, as Yernik walked through the streets, looking for a place to sleep where he wouldn't wake up wet as a blowfish. He had delivered the letter given to him by his father to the fur trader in an encampment outside of the city, but made the mistake of entering the city right before King Drosta of Gar og Nadrak issued that nobody should enter or leave until some "matter of state" was resolved. Yernik overheard several people who uttered wild guesses on what those matters of state might be, but decided not to pay too much attention to them. His first concern was to find a place to sleep, but without too much silver at hand, and the city packed with stranded merchants and travellers, finding a cheap tavern would be impossible. Suddenly, he came across a small, not too dirty niche between two large buildings, where he should be safe enough from both the rain and the thieves.

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Fieron
He clambered onto the small ledge, and curled up into a ball, trying to find a comfortable position. With his warm cloak tightly wrapped around him and the drumming rain lulling him to sleep, he started to nod off.
Suddenly, the sound of splashing and squelching footsteps woke him, and he instinctively froze. Unfortunately, he was facing the wall, and could only rely on his ears to tell him what was going on.
'This blasted rain!' A deep, hoarse voice snarled, and then demanded, 'Where's the girl?'
'In the city, sir, in the city.' A nervous, wavering voice replied. Both speakers were male.
''Bout time she was here. If I find out who let the king know about all this he's gonna pay.'
'Yes sir.'
'We need a day or two for everything to cool down. Wait at the Lock Nester and bring the girl with you.'
'Yes sir.' said the second man meekly.
'She needs to know how to use a dagger properly, that lass, not just wave it around threatening people. You've brought her up to be too soft.' The first man paused, as though thinking. 'I'll teach her. And maybe we'll have some fun.'
'F-fun? But she's my-'
The word was followed by a meaty smack, followed by a loud thump. Yernik involuntarily winced.
'The next time you say 'but' will be the last time you are a man. Do you understand?' There was no response, but the second man must have obviously agreed in someway, as the man said satisfiedly 'Good. Now he can pay for that insult, and we can get someone else who’s tractable on the throne.' The voice was drowned out as someone trudged back out into the rain.
After a moment, the man groaned, and started puking. Yernik cautiously peered over his shoulder, and the strong stench of vomit hit his nose.
A small, wiry man was on his knees, voiding his stomach of whatever meal he had just eaten. His clothing was ordinary, just like everyone's in Gar og Nadrak, and had Yernik seen him on the streets, he would have never noticed anything unusual. He continued retching long after nothing came up, and eventually weakly lifted his head. He did not notice Yernik as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and tottered out into the rain.
Yernik caught the words 'That Murgo will pay' before the man turned the corner, and vanished from his sight.

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Rhylon
Yernik shuddered against the cold, the wind, the rain, and the shady deal he had just been witness to. Wanting nothing of it, he wrapped his cloak about himself once again, and tried to go to sleep. He was just drifting off when he heard the screams. A woman, by the sound, was screaming for her life and running down the street. Shaking his head and facing the wall, Yernik tried to block out the world around him, until a flash of movement past him caught his attention. Whoever she was, she was beautiful. Despite the rain making her hair wet and limp, and an ugly bruise on her cheek, Yernik had never seen such loveliness. Looking up at her, he did not know what to do, until she looked imploringly at him, and said but three words.
"Help me, please!"
Hearing running footsteps behind him, he turned, half rising. The footsteps belonged to the wiry man he had seen retching earlier, and now he was running towards the girl as fast as he could. "You get back here, Siella!" he yelled, before his attention shifted to Yernik.
For whatever reason, he seemed to think Yernik was guarding the girl, Siella. Reaching to a sheath on his hip, he drew a dagger and rushed at him. Yernik had almost no time to respond, and only escaped being skewered by the narrowest of margins. The wiry man yelled, and thrust again. Yernik tried to dodge again, but the wiry man seemed to have overbalanced himself, and then fell on top of Yernik. The two rolled about on the ground, Yernik focused on nothing but the dagger a mere inches from him. Siella looked on in horror as the two grappled in the alleyway in front of her. Suddenly, they stopped, and there was a pool of blood spreading on the ground beneath them. Yernik gasped, and heaved the body off from on top of him, staring at the dagger planted firmly in his adversary's chest. Siella rushed to Yernik, adulation in her eyes.
Yernik smiled at her, and moved to stand, until a pain like hellfire seared through his side, contorting his face in pain. He looked down, touched a hand to his side, and raised it to his eyes. His own blood glistened on his fingertips.

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Sarad
She stared at him in disbelief. Shifting her gaze from his deep gash to his pain-torn face, Siella could do nothing but continues to stare in abject horror. Whether it had been his intention or not, the man who lay bleeding before her had saved her. As his eyes began to glaze over, he gasped one raspy breath and broke whatever spell she had been under.
"Help!," she screamed, "Somebody help this man!"
Her need to help this man - repay her hero - overrode her need for stealth and caution in the foreign city.
A door opened nearby, allowing a peal of light to fall upon the two of them. A burly man with a bloodstained apron stood in the door way and quickly beckoned them into the warm, well-lit kitchen. Quickly assessing the situation, the strange man moved to help her and the two of them carried her semi-conscious saviour inside. The cook - as Siella had guessed him to be - ordered her to lay him on a few sacks of grain lying in the far corner, and the two of them dropped their burden lightly there. The cook grabbed a clean rag, and after ripping off Siella's rescuer's shirt, applied pressure on the bleeding wound.
The man groaned once, and fell unconscious there on the flour. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and the cook benevolently fetched a few blankets for the two. Siella lay down on another sack of grain under a woollen blanket and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of the happier times before her life was so complicated; before the running, back when she was but a small child living on a countryside far away from the squalor that was Yar Nadrak.

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Kail
While Siella’s dreams were bright and carefree, although she might would think of them as gloomy once she woke up, Yernik’s were quite the opposite. Over and over he wrestled with the man in the dark, cold and wet alley and countless times he experienced the surprise of his survival and the tearing pain in his side as a result. As a slight fever set in his dreams only got worse, sometimes switching places between him and his adversary so that Yernik, all too many times, felt the dagger sink into his chest instead of wounding his side.
The cook dabbed Yernik’s forehead with cold water as often was necessary while Siella peacefully slept on her sack of grain with a faint smile on her lips. Suddely she sat up and started panting and looked wildly around the room. Realising that what she had seen just a moment ago was just a dream she calmed down a little and her attention turned to Yernik and the cook.
“How is he?”, she asked in a weak voice, still shaken from her dream.
At that moment Yernik woke up but was still on the border between dream and reality. Through his clouded mind he heard someone say: “.. fever.. not infect..” and promply lost conciousness again.

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Jaegos
Yernik opened his eyes and was relieved to be greeted by a blurry image of a face instead of the repeated nightmare. However, when his sight finally cleared up, he was soon wishing for the nightmare again.
“ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!!! MONSTER!!”
The old lady who had been treating his wounds hit him so hard he almost fell unconscious again. Muttering something about rude youngsters these days and how hurt she was, the old lady exited the room leaving the now very confused Yernik in a heap on the floor.
After pulling his aching body back onto the bed and praying to all seven Gods, Yernik attempted to fall asleep and hopefully wake up in his own bed again. He closed his eyes. Darkness. Dark was good, nothing there to hurt you. Footsteps. That would be his father coming to drag him to work. A woman’s voice. That would be umm… He had no idea what that could be. His mother had died when he was young and he had no siblings. After remembering not to scream regardless of whatever hideous visage greeted him, he opened his eyes again.
Now this was not so bad. Although he still was not in his room, the face that now greeted him was far prettier than the first and oddly familiar. Of course! The girl Siella! Then he groaned with the realisation that his nightmare was really true. Looking at the girl again, he realised that her wounds had healed and immediately turned to check his side. It was healed too. Maybe the attack really did not happen?
“Isn’t Alyia a good healer? She told me that you had made a full recovery.”
Hopes dashed once again, Yernik frowned “So I really did kill a man?”
The girl nodded.
“And I was stabbed in the side?”
The girl nodded.
“And this happened last night?”
The girl shook her head. “You’ve been unconscious for one month now.”
Yernik fainted again from the thought of what his father would do to him for being so late.

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Khesler
More dreams, except these dreams were of a beautiful girl. He had seen this girl before, in the alley. He tried to focus on her features, but to no avail. The harder he focused the blurrier she seemed. He gave up and decided not to care about it.
Again Yernik awoke with blurry vision.
This was happening too much, he thought to himself.
It was mid-afternoon when he finally stood again. The month of lying down had started to atrophy his muscles. He decided if he was ever going to get home, he should do so before his father thought he was dead. He decided to go looking for that girl.
He opened the door to the shabby back room he was in, to see a kitchen.
"I guess it's better than nothing," he laughed to himself.
As he was sneaking out of the kitchen a fat hand grabbed his shoulder.
"I see you are feeling better now," a somehow familiar voice said. Yernik turned to see a stocky man in a white hat.
"Yes sir, do I know you?" he asked.
"No you probably don't remember me, with the fever and all. The name's Ketan. I’m a chef here. Your girl was raising all hell about you needing help from a wound. She started scaring off the costumers." the man explained.
"So, it was you who helped me?" Yernik asked he man.
"Yes, me and my mother decided to help, my mother was the old hag you called a monster, she didn't like that too much."
Yernik decided he needed to find that girl again.
"Do you know where 'my girl' is right now?" he asked.
"She's over at the Gryphon's Tail Pub, dancing to help pay for your stay here. I know the owner, and I set her up."
"Thank you," said Yernik, "I should go find her, I will be back shortly."
With that he walked out of the restaurant and headed for the Pub.

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Mortigan
Thoughts rolled through Yernik’s head as he walked towards the pub. She dances? He had seen a few dancers in his day, but none who were quite as beautiful as Siella. He shook his head to clear his mind. That wasn’t the issue now. He needed to find out what was going on that night, needed some sort of understanding and reasoning behind the death of that man. Murder and death are something they may be accustomed to here in this city, but Yernik was s simple man from a simple family.
Still, it touched him within to know she stood next to him for the month (still can’t believe a month has gone by) he was out. Since she didn’t run, the problems she was facing must have ended with the man’s life.
Absently he gently touched the skin near his knife wound. It felt strangely dead, not quite cold, but not warm either, almost as if he was touching something leathery. Curious now, he opened his vest slightly to look at it, and gasped in shock. It was a deep black at the wound, and the skin around it, looked as if the blackness was slowly spreading.
Suddenly his mind swam with images he couldn’t comprehend, battles in far off places, women acting in ways that made him involuntarily blush, murders being committed. His body reeled at the effort to make sense of everything flowing through his mind. As it slowly cleared within his head, he realized he was laying face up on the ground, and a few people were giving him questionable glances. His side wound no longer felt dead, a burning sensation pulsed through it, and pain threatened to consume him.
‘You FOOL,’ he heard a rasping voice say behind him, ‘why did you let him leave? I told you he was not ready. If the process has to be started again, I swear to you Ketan, your heart will be the next upon the altar.’
‘I’m sorry, Dread Siella, I only thought…’
‘Your not supposed to think at all,’ she cut him off, ‘your mother thinks, not you, you carry. Now carry him back, I must prepare myself for tonight’s rites.’
Yernik tried to sit up, the pain in his side making it hard to think straight at all, to take in what he heard. Looking to his side again, he noticed the blackness has spread more. Slowly, a thought dawned on him. These people were doing something to him. It was the last thought that went through his head before a huge fist crashed into his head. Quickly losing consciousness, he thought to his father and prayed silently for help.

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Fieron
He was being chased.
There was pitch darkness and absolute silence, except for his thumping heart, his heavy breathing and his loud footsteps. How he knew he was being chased, he did not know. What chased him, he did not know either. But he knew if he stopped he would be dead. He did not dare to even glance over his shoulder.
Thud thud. Thud thud.
His heart pounded loudly, and for a moment he thought he heard its twin beating a counterpoint, and then it was gone.
Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet tipped downwards, and he fell over and started to roll, bruising his ribs and his head and his arms and his legs and his feet… And what waited at the bottom of the slope...
He opened his eyes, and was immediately blinded by the bright light in his eyes. He groaned as he squinted, every part of his body aching badly, worse than what he had suffered from when his father gave him a lashing for stealing. Eventually his eyes adjusted.
A large hulking man was peering down at him with obvious distaste. Yernik flinched slightly, and the man was pushed aside by a petite woman. She snorted and thrust a tunic in Yernik’s face.
‘I won’t have you running around without anything on.’ Yernik looked down and realised that he was naked. The black, ugly patch also appeared to have shrunk. He was about to prod it when the woman seized his wrist. ‘You put this on first and forget that thing.’ Yernik quickly obeyed her after noticing the twin knives at her waist and the unnerving look in her eyes.
‘You had a nightmare?’ The man rumbled. Yernik nodded. ‘You surprised me when you jerked awake like that.’
‘Klesoc, you leave the room.’ The woman commanded imperiously. Klesoc gave her a long look, but she was not intimidated, staring back haughtily.
‘This is none of your business, Lyssa.’ He scowled at Lyssa. She held her gaze for a moment longer before flouncing out of the room. ‘Good. Now let’s talk about Siella… and that thing in your side.

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