#barfok

[rhineposting]

i happened to re-read @bitchwhoreofastorm 's nord demon short stories recently and I remembered how a while ago I said I had to draw Barfok, so here she is now!!

(i can't exactly remember the specifics of her described appearance but. i like to imagine that her eyes turned yellow after being affected by hermamora. as for the face paint i know it wouldn't make sense for her to use patterns referencing the deity haunting her but i couldn't resist 😭)

[bitchwhoreofastorm]

Jurgen was enjoying a peaceful morning of deep contemplation in his chambers when the sound of a fierce argument arose just outside of his door. Long experience with his compatriots gave him the wisdom to arise and begin to drag his desk in obstruction of the entrance, but alas, he was too slow; the wooden door was thrown open with a violent clatter, and the incarnate of fury roiled into the room.

"I've had enough of her!" bellowed Hoag. The dark, diminutive man was practically frothing at the mouth, frenziedly waving about something Jurgen couldn't quite see. "Enough of her, Wind-Caller, she ought to be stopped! She ought to-- she ought to be put down like a dog!"

"You're over-reacting!" Barfok shouted from further down the passageway.

Jurgen briefly contemplated whether he could push Hoag back down the stairs, but in that moment of hesitation, Hoag had already forced his way past the desk that had meant to keep him out, penetrating Jurgen's previously-serene sanctum. "Deal with her, Wind-Caller!" Hoag spat, "Deal with her or I'll-- I'll--"

"My King," Jurgen interrupted him, pinching his own nose. "Let's all calm down for a moment. What has she done now?"

"I'll tell you what she's done!" Hoag shouted. "She's gone and anthropomorphized my lunch!" And he thrust his hands towards Jurgen.

The object in Hoag's hands was a haunch of roast ox, but it held itself with a dignity that surpassed its humble origin. In the light glinting from its marinated surface it surveyed the room with calm acceptance, observing its crude surroundings with the plain-hearted absence of judgement that set all of Skyrim's peasants apart from their supposed betters. It remained steady as Hoag waved it at Jurgen, unperturbed, as if thinking: 'And you are the so-called leaders of this Empire? You are the men I should call Lord?'

"He's over-reacting!" Barfok had finally appeared in the doorway, panting from the long climb, her pale hair disheveled and falling out of its braids. "It's a joke," she protested to Jurgen, "A silly joke, a prank, that's all!"

"A joke!" roared Hoag, pivoting around. "You bitch, it's a guilt-evoking metaphor for the lowest of my subjects! How am I supposed to eat it now!"

"If you get queasy when your lunch alludes to the petty-folk you send out to die into battle, well, that says more about you than it does about my pranks, doesn't it!"

The ox haunch regarded this argument with bemusement. As did Jurgen.

"She's been at this all day," said Hoag through gritted teeth, returning his attention to Jurgen. "She went and messed with Chemua's soup--"

"Oh that was funny," Barfok guffawed.

"-- Turned it into a complex metaphor for shame. Put him in the foulest mood. And now she goes and ruins my lunch! You've got to make her quit it, Jurgen. Morale's bad enough out there without her turning things into allusions and euphemisms and such!"

Jurgen exhaled through his nose. "Barfok," he said patiently, "Stop turning people's food into literary devices."

"Hey!" Now it was Barfok's turn to push her way into the room, crossing her arms defensively in front of her chest. "Don't you take his side because he's a wimp! It's a joke, Jurgen, a silly little goof-about to make the men laugh. He's the only one who's got a problem with it!"

"Yes, well, he's louder and more irritating. We don't stop a baby bawling because the baby's in the right."

"I'm no babe!" Hoag interjected. "I'm your King even now, Wind-Caller!"

Does this man deserve fealty? the roast ox seemed to say, when Jurgen's gaze fell upon it. He closed his eyes briefly.

"Barfok," said Jurgen, "Please, just-- stop."

A shadow fell over Barfok's usually-jolly face. She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin at Jurgen, staring at him coolly from over her round cheeks. "Why should I?" she said slowly.

"I'm begging you, Sister in Kyne! Do me a favour and keep the peace?"

"Aye, you hear him? Keep the peace!" Hoag directed his wrath once more at Barfok. "You're toeing the treason line, sabotaging us like that! We're getting our arses beat by the elves and you think it cheers anyone up when their saltrice is a biting allusion to the evils of occupation? Get a grip, woman!"

"Stop yelling at me!" Barfok snapped. "I don't take orders from either of you! Nay, not even you, Wind-Passer! And I ent standing here while a couple old nannies squeal at me to mind my manners! Look, Hoaga, even your ox thinks you're pathetic!"

The ox haunch did, indeed, seem to have taken on a scornful air. It had borne witness to the discourse of Nirn's most powerful men, and it had come away disenchanted with both the airs of power and those that bore it. Its scathing observation was enough to bring them to shame.

"Hoag," Jurgen said tersely, "She has a point. I can't control her. Why not go to Ysmir about her?"

The hue of Hoag's face had deepened to a striking crimson. "Because he agrees with her," he said through gritted teeth.

"Ysmir has a sense of humour," Barfok said with pride.

"He encourages her tomfoolery!"

"I framed his chambers with subtle imagery of a forsaken homeland, and you know what? He liked it."

"Traitors and soul-sick fools, both of you!"

"Well," announced Jurgen, as calm as a man being judged by a haunch of meat could possibly be, "That settles it. You just have to let her do as she pleases."

Hoag's face flushed, somehow, even redder. "Let her!" he roared indignantly. "Let her lose this war with japes!"

"And what can you do about it?" Barfok asked smugly. "I'm the stronger Tongue."

"We can't command her, Hoaga," said Jurgen. "So. You'll just have to live with it."

"Damn you! You're meant to be the peace-making one! Can't you negotiate with her?"

"Oh, keep whinging, Hoaga, I'll turn your trousers paradoxical next!"

"The matter is settled," said Jurgen firmly. "Now, both of you, get out of my chambers."

"To Apocrypha with you, Wind-Caller! You know what?" Hoag turned his attention to Barfok, waving his accusing haunch in Jurgen's direction. "Why don't you mess with him this time? Hey? Why don't you, I don't know, fill his desk with symbolism or something!"

"Why, Hoaga, you know I'd do anything you ask!" Barfok said cheerfully.

Jurgen blinked. "Wait--"

He had barely begun to inhale for a counter-thu'um before Barfok sung out three crisp dovahzul words. Nothing happened, but everything was subtly, slightly different, as if they had just slipped from one dream to another-- disconcerting non-transition.

Jurgen blinked again. "Barfok," he said slowly, "What did you just--"

"Oh, would you look at the time, Hoaga!" Barfok butted in. "I'm late for my lunch! Good talk, Jurgen, dremyollock, make sure to shut your windows!" And before Jurgen could intercept her she had lurched out of the door and was rushing down the stairs, leaving behind only the receding sound of triumphant cackling.

Hoag looked from the doorway, to Jurgen, and then, finally, to the large window that dominated one side of the room. He drew in a breath. "Now that's just grim," he muttered, before taking a morose bite of his ox haunch. And, without further explanation or farewell, he turned and followed Barfok out of the room, leaving Jurgen in much-desired solitude.

For several seconds Jurgen stood facing the doorway. He pressed his fingertips to his temples. He contemplated whether he had the courage to turn around.

Finally, he turned to face the window.

The curtains hung limp against the pane, like the sails of a ship bereft of air, betraying a stagnation, a stranding, a loss of all will to go on. Though the window was open, no breeze stirred them, as if Kyne herself had abandoned the sorry scraps of fabric. Against the backdrop of the clear sky outside, the faded blue of them was outright depressing...

[barfok]

i do rly love the au where almalexia is raised by ysmir. like sure she probably ends up on the wrong side of the war with the nords and gets killed by nerevar but god she'd have such a cool time as a kid

[morihaus]

truly our greatest loss from the no alessian timeline is that lattia is never born and never gets to hang out with her best friend barfok

[boethiah]

10 and 38 for the last character you played? -morroworrow

technically speaking the last ‘oc’ i played was barfok because that’s my minecraft name and my minecraft game is a weird self-indulgent barfok-after-the-war-with-the-nords-au so, let’s go with that lol 

010. Do they believe in love at first sight?

barfok doesn’t believe in love, period. she generally thinks that people as a whole are too selfish for ‘love’ to really exist. jurgen ribs on her for this but she is what she is

038. What bad habits do they have?

uses her thu’um frivolously. has erased small hills from existence because she didn’t feel like hiking over them. 'conquered’ narsis because she enjoyed the hogithum festival there and decided she wanted her hold to be narsis. beat bhag in a chess game by turning his queen into a pawn and all her pawns into queens. she also snores, never says please or thank you, talks loudly during plays, interrupts random peoples conversations because she was eavesdropping and has an opinion, and never takes her shoes off indoors  

[boethiah]

!!!!!!!!! oh i LOVE this depiction, thank you so much ;_;

One quick and dirty sketch of Barfok for @ayem

I'll be honest I have no idea what this character is supposed to look like, there's only a single paragraph of her buried in the sermons of vivec.

From what I gathered she's a winged human who can control a battlefield with her singing and she carries a lick? Encrusted spear.

So I partially modeled this off of the illustrations of valkyries from a book I have.

[colonel-killa-bee]

Barfok, is someone who I really wish was more prominent in the lore.

She was supposedly a winged tongue that could actually sing the defeat of her enemies into existence. Someone that powerful and who has wings? The last person, or thing we know of that was winged and powerful like this was called a child of Kyne, and was. Morihaus, the father of Minotaurs. 

Barfok, sounds far more powerful, godly, and like a literal Valkyrie in TES, but the only account of her we have is in the 36 lessons, which of course means it could be mere flight of fancy on Vivec’s part. But, if you’ve read the 500 companions, you know the Nords/Atmorans were a very strange and diverse bunch. One guy even shouted himself into a woman by accident. They also had giant-folk, and offspring of giantfolk and atmorans. A child of kyne blessed with wings and great talent with the thu’um isn’t even that strange for them really. Or for that time period in Tamriel. This kind of stuff just happened.

[arcturite]

Barfok, Maid of Plains, who had the powers of event denouement and could shape outcomes by singing.

Commission for @ayem !! I’ve been wanting to draw her for a while, thank you so much for commissioning me!

[barfok]

@nemenalya

[jiubilant]

the nord demons. barfok. ysmir. chemua. bhag. other bhag. hoagie.

[kagrenacs]

your nord demon headcanons. hand em over

:3! There’s five of them, five Great Houses. I think MK did intend for parallels to be drawn, and I’m not just overanalyzing. Bhag to Telvanni for his debate. Chemua to Dres for Khizumet-e. Ysmir to Indoril as the unofficial head. Hoag to Redoran for the war. Barfok to Hlaalu I’m realizing just now for sexual favors :/ (you could also go a step further and say Jurgen to Dagoth as the guys who get left out) I had hoped that was some clue about what holds they may have had, but that kinda falls through with Bhag being in the West opposed to the East.

Beyond that, I think Chemua became Jarl through family connections. And Barfok has a large brown housecat

[bitchwhoreofastorm]

the first blighter, following kastav

-

For three weeks now it's been the same nightmare. The dungeon, after Kastav, with all its dark wetness and pain, the ache of the gag in his jaw. He's waiting to die, in the nightmare, feeling the jagged edge of his own broken rib wearing a slow hole in his lung; he's abandoned, down there, Barfok must be somewhere nearby but he cannot feel her presence. In the nightmare he lies there for interminable time, until something-- the fear of dying alone, perhaps-- compels him to open his eyes. He opens his eyes and he's lying face-to-face with his mother, her blue irises dull as marbles, his father roaring through his heart, and he always thinks (just as he did when it happened) that someone has dyed his mother's fair hair the same colour as his, until he understands that, in fact, her head is red with her spilled blood.

Then the wetness of Kastav is the wetness of blood and the solitude is--

For three weeks now, Chemua has awoken suffocating. He spasms, he gropes around in his silk sheets until he recalls that he took nobody to bed last night, and by then he's sitting upright. He flattens his hand against the badly-mended ribs below his heart, still misshapen to the touch, and he thinks that the injury has rent his lung open before he understands that he's simply in a panic. Then it's gasping, swallowing, forcing himself through his meditations, muttering su'um, su'um as if he can use the thu'um to will himself to normalcy. Wondering, all the while, what sort of a Tongue so frequently finds himself unable to breathe.

Kastav. Kastav. One year out and the word is a shackles: Kastav. One of the most powerful men alive and he knows what it's like to be caged like a dog. Even his racing heart beats it-- Kastav, Kastav, Kastav-- louder than any meditation, until he can't bear to think it, any more than he can bear the memory of the imprisonment. Itching, restless to the bone, he rises and gets dressed.

It's cold comfort: that Mournhold is his, rightful inheritance that hardly wants him. There's a hidden passage just beyond his chambers and he knows the slaveways better in the darkness than the palace hallways in light. Still, he holds his fingertips against the wall when he traverses them, counting paces-- twenty, to a niche here, then a turn left, and a narrow staircase-- then he emerges from a tapestry, much as an assassin would, stepping into a long moonlit hallway with a broad door at the very end of it.

At that door stands a Shout on duty. He locks eyes with Chemua, long enough that Chemua can read his suspicion even in the dim; then Chemua turns and goes the other way, making the rest of his journey in the open. Wondering, all the while, whether the fear on his face shows.

Movement helps. So does being around people, though there are dwindling numbers whose company he can seem to abide. In the daytime there's always Amun-Shae, though Chemua finds her company embarrassing, he likes her patience and the wisdom of statecraft she shares. Then there's Nords: Fenja, Einhelf, Amornen, Eloja, men who are not friends because a Tongue does not have friends but who are trusted followers and overlook his flaws. The Daughters of Mephala who bed men for coin and the ale-daughters who bed a Jarl's son for favour and glory.

In the nighttime however, if he hasn't the foresight to bring someone to bed, there's no-one-- no-one but the empty hallways of Mournhold palace, and wary guards, and imagined assassins in every shadow. The ghost of his mother's blood soaking into the rug. His pace quickens--

--And then he's outside, in the courtyard, then passing through the public gardens with all their dappled shadow. The night is cold and dry, the sky clear, the stars violently yellow in their firmament. He's worn a cloak over the silken tunic and trousers, wrapping himself in it like a common thief, and it offers little warmth but compared to other places (High Hrothgar with its bitter blizzards) the city never manages to truly chill him. Chemua does not pause to check whether he is being followed. In the wake of the nightmares it is too easy to feel invisible (Kastav, dark dank Kastav where they lay forgotten) and though no handsome tall man, a fearsome Tongue no less, should ever pass through life with the sense that they are totally unseen, so he does. So he goes. Wondering, all the while, what sort of Tongue…

… Out in Mournhold proper, just beyond the gate in the Eastern district, there is a meadery adjoined to a tall wooden storeroom piled up against the palace walls. Even in these small hours the city does not sleep and Chemua finds the meadery open, its last few customers in low conversation. The barkeep knows him on sight-- there's a glass for him before he asks, but he does not take the drink, not tonight. He passes the counter, goes down a half-flight of steps and through a low wooden doorway, head ducked, down into a brick-lined cellar that smells richly of honey and is occupied by many vats.

He has to wonder about other people, sometimes. Such as Barfok, who was also imprisoned at Kastav, that odd ugly Skyrimisk woman a little older than he. Chemua doesn't like her, perhaps because there's something upstaging about her (what is the mother assassinated when he was a little boy compared to her family massacred before her eyes as an adolescent? His exile to Hrothgar compared to her years in the Vvardenfell wastes?) And still he wonders whether she, too, balks at cellars, and wakes up from nightmares every night, and wants to rip out her own heart at the thought of being caged. He suspects so. The letters she sometimes writes him are cheerful in a false, frantic way, making him suspect that his own attempts at normalcy are just as futile.

Other people, he wonders always about other people-- why not, because it always helps not to be alone. And here in this cellar he is not alone.

Chemua closes the door behind him and in that solitude he finally lets his mind turn to the chatter he's long tuned out.

The doorway he leans against groans the obnoxious groan of domesticated qethsegolle, the sluggish complaining of stone forced to be masonry. The cellar is lousy with it, a chorus of complaints that he's learned to tune out but never fully puts from his mind-- Mournhold itself is a riot of bickering, layers upon layers of architectural wrongdoing, three cities piled atop one another and none of them know how to get along. Even in the solitude of the cellar he can still hear the homesick whine of the Skyrim-pine that makes up the mead barrels, and the ecstatic gibbering of fermentation. Local honey and foreign yeast.

It is obnoxious. Walls do not mute the qethsegolle; somewhere deep below his feet is the unsettling chatter of the earth-bones the Dwemer broke here once (and mustn't they feel awful, tortured down there in the deep dark, bound, forgotten, their broken ribs wearing holes in their-- no.)

He shakes his head clear. He draws in a deep breath. He focuses his attention on the qethsegol that speaks in the corner.

We want the light. We want the light.

Behind a fermentation vat is a slapshod alchemy lab: a shelf of ingredients, a rough-hewn table stained with inexplicable substances. And atop the table are potted plants, some local and some foreign, some old and some young, all straining towards a tiny window set high in the wall. Their leaves are pale, their stalks wilting-- some of them are dying-- Chemua kneels before the table and rests his chin atop the wood, staring up through his eyelashes at the dirt-filled pots. The sad mewling of photosynthesis starved of its nourishment. Eyes unfocused, he listens to them-- We want the light! We want the light!-- the pained gasping of it, the desperation.

He lifts his chin from the table and says aloud: "Nobody is coming to save you."

He's spoken in Aldmeris but there's a note of the thu'um in it. Though the qethsegolle quiver, they fail to understand.

We grow towards the light, whimpers the notion of photosynthesis, We want the light. We want the light.

"So strain harder," Chemua tells it. "Tear yourself apart, if you want, it will come to nothing."

We want the light. We need more to live.

"Shall I carry you outside?" He rises off his knees, then sits in the chair. "Ah, but it's night-time, there's no light to be had. I'd be wasting the effort of saving you."

Barfok called him a monster. Said that his use of the thu'um was horrible-- that all he did was torture the qethsegol-- as if other thu'umcraft were based on anything less than brutal domination. Chemua himself has never considered his thu'um more than idle conversation, sprinkled here and there, perhaps, with a bit of cruel truth. It's all a moot point. He is certain the qethsegolle feel nothing comprehensible to mortals, and that if the Tongues believe they can converse, it is only because every other Tongue is as lonely as he is, starving to believe the world echoes them back. He considers this all a hallucination, his little nocturnal talks with the qethsegolle that govern plant growth, no more real than his nightmares. Still, it helps not to be alone.

When he speaks this time it's a real thu'um-- a single word of draconic that, in his tones, can be loosely translated as surrender, if surrender did not carry a connotation of peace. The desolation of something inevitably awful. Wide-eyed gasping futility. A stalk of wickwheat shrivels in on itself.

The qethsegolle of photosynthesis says, confused, Is there no light?

He still hasn't managed to find the words to get it through to them.

"There is light," Chemua replies in Aldmeris, "But not for you. You will never again taste the light, do you hear me?"

A hole in the world while the qethsegolle falls tremulously silent. It, of course, understands nothing but that single awful word. Then it starts up again, feebler: We want the light.

"You cannot have the light! You will perish down here."

We want the light.

"What for? What good will the light do you now? I've laced your soils with poison, you will perish within the week. The light cannot save you!"

We want the light.

"You may as well be dead!"

There was the thu'um in that, too, unrestrained in form, and Chemua feels reality rustle around him like a blanket. The world has noticed his heavy hand upon its flank for the briefest of moments and that awareness makes him feel naked. Deep beneath them, a pulse beats.

We want the light.

He clenches his eyes shut, turns his face towards the lamp on the wall, and sees through his eyelids the red of blood.

"No light," Chemua whispers. "You qethsegolle all died to birth this world. You're corpses. What for do you need the light? Shor sos nil. You should be rotting already."

And when he looks at the table again, he finds that they are; the air is thick with rot and the stalks of wickwheat are crimson and stunted in their pots. There is no more gibbering of photosynthesis. The world's murmuring makeup is all horror, mute bystander's gossip: the alchemy ingredients on the shelf questioning to each other whether it's true that they should be rotting, the yeast in the vats dying in their own alcoholic excrement. The cellar stagnant as a tomb.

He feels no better. This has not helped. Chemua rests his cheek against the rough-hewn table, closes his eyes, and waits like a prisoner for the morning.

[barfok]

i swear i had more to say about the tong but i got distracetd by a ttrpg with my husband in which i got to be barfok

[morihaus]

ayem brings up a good point i HAVE made my oc emperor lattia interact quite a lot with their oc barfok (who belongs to her) and now other than that... i think the most ive done is make some kind of joke about me jiub and zurin's archmages all being grumpy in a room together or something. the council of elders has decided that satu can be archmage if she wants it so bad (neither of the others want the role at all)

[boethiah]

(insert strawberry) Barfok!

according to children of the sky, “The greatest of the Nords... can move by casting a shout, appearing where it lands.” 

i h/c that this is how barfok moved, using a very advanced version of wuld na kest. she could travel vast distances to wherever her shout landed-- even if that landing involved crossing plane of reality. from this ability she earned a reputation as a valkyrie, being able to travel to a location instantaneously-- “maid-of-planes” refers to the belief she could travel between planes of oblivion, when in reality she was just a whiterun lass who could land where her shout fell 

[dross-the-fish]

One quick and dirty sketch of Barfok for @ayem

I'll be honest I have no idea what this character is supposed to look like, there's only a single paragraph of her buried in the sermons of vivec.

From what I gathered she's a winged human who can control a battlefield with her singing and she carries a lick? Encrusted spear.

So I partially modeled this off of the illustrations of valkyries from a book I have.