#i could use this as daily nano quota

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #14.2

Guess who got two thumbs (still, tho the fate of some of Cahair’s fingers is still up in the air) and got into Orzammar? This guy! But before that...

We pick up with Boshara who is being brought into Orzammar under heavy guard. She is taken to the warrior’s district first and stuffed into a waiting room.

There’s some shouting that follows Boshara’s arrival, but not directed at her. The shouter turns out to be general Saelac, who acts rather graciously towards her.

Boshara asks of Randy’s condition and is told that he is being attended to in the Mandulfr household, which is where Boshara is taken as well.

Boshara is greeted by Marjaleena Cenas there, who as we remember, Boshara suspects on having something to do with the attack on Randy. 

Marjaleena gives Boshara her own personal servant by the name of Bert Ferol, who attends to her every need, including finding her a bigger bedroom, once she realizes she doesn’t quite fit in the regular dwarven-sized bed.

Meanwhile outside, Humbert has a long talk with the door guard regarding the whole Orzammar situation. He learns that there are some people permitted in, namely some Fereldan chantry folk, who are bringing in food aid.

The carta situation inside Orzammar seems to be rather quiet, but the roads outside are getting downright rowdy. This is no concern of General Saelac. 

While the others are going to bed Alf and Cahair decide to go look around. They dare not sneak into the templars’ tents, but they find a group of dwarves drinking and join in.

One of them, by the name of Merrik, takes an immediate liking to Cahair(’s humor), which is certainly a new experience.

They talk a bit about how the dwarves have been waiting here for a while and about the templars, who also have been here a while.

One of the templars drops by to tell the peeps to quiet down and Alf can’t resist making a bit of fun of the templar’s heavy accent. But the situation doesn’t luckily escalate.

While drinking, Cahair and Alf take notice of one dwarf who seems to be a rather poor in trying to lie about what he does for a living.

So Cahair, rather publicly, takes the dagger he retrieved from one of the carta member’s bodies and asks Merrik about it.

The weird dwarf starts certainly paying attention now.

Merrik tries to make Cahair part with the dagger, but Cahair isn’t having any of it and refuses to part with it.

An off-the-cuff mention of Richard (or rather that Cahair’s partner is a man as well) sours Merrik’s attitude towards Cahair rather quickly.

Alf steps in then, and offers Merrik gold for information, which he agrees to.

Merrik tells that the carta had been running some scams involving old turned over carts (such as one we found Trin under last time) and that the dagger has belonged to someone pretty high-ranking in the carta. Of the initials ZH on the handle, Merrik can’t say.

While Alf is discussing with Merrik, the strange dwarf approaches Cahair. He’s clearly quite young, looks to be about 14, though claims to be much older. He tries to get Cahair to give him the dagger to have a look over, but Cahair isn’t having any of that and asks him to come ask about it tomorrow.

After that is done the elves retreat into the cart for the night.

In the morning our fellows still stuck outside wake up to the voices starting to come from outside. They see that the templars seem to be queueing up for one of the tents, we suspect in line for their lyrium intakes.

There’s also the chantry sisters that are let in through the doors.

There doesn’t seem to be much to do, in terms of helping ourselves to get in. We just have to wait for Boshara.

Cahair and Alf notice Merrik and the strange dwarf passed out near their tents and go rife through their pockets. 

Cahair finds some papers that seem to indicate that the strange dwarf is part of a lyrium smuggling ring.

 Alf notices that the money he gave Merrik seems to have disappeared from his purse (and the little that remains, Alf takes for himself).

We also send Merle, our Orlesian dwarf, to make friends with the templars, and he comes back with news. The very angry templar we saw shouting is a Knight-Lietuetant by the name of Jackquemin Gaillard. And apparently there’s a Knight-Captain that’s on their way from Orlais. 

It sounds like the templars are preparing to basically storm Orzammar, which sounds... really bad.

Boshara spends the start of her morning getting prettied up. Marjaleena had ordered some new clothes, more in line with dwarven fashion, to be made for her. She is also made-up in dwarven fashion.

After that, Boshara goes to find the room where Randy is kept. It seems no one, including Marjaleena is let in, but Boshara manages to talk her way in.

Randy is being attended to by several dwarven medics and servants, but is still very much unconscious

Boshara goes to find Marjaleena to see if she can help with getting her other friends in.

Marjaleena seems pleasant enough, but also she doesn’t say much that doesn’t make Boshara suspicious. For example, Boshara gets a sense that she is lying when she talks about the “love at first sight” she felt for Randy.

From Marjaleena Boshara learns that king Aeducan sent the carta leaders to become part of the Legion of the Dead and for a while all was peaceful, but now the carta is back in full swing.

About Boshara’s request, Marjaleena suggests they go talk to her father. As the only alive paragon, Jon Cenas’ word has quite a sway.

Boshara asks why Jon was made paragon, and Marjaleena explains that he was a rather famous paragon champion, did a lot to advance the sport and kid’s education and also he designed some pretty sick grappling hooks.

So that’s where they go. They find Jon in his house in his personal gym. He seems like a very nice older man.

They talk a bit about the Provings that Jon Cenas is preparing for. He’ll be facing General Saelac in a friendly match.

Speaking of Provings, wouldn’t that just be the greatest way to get our heroes still outside Orzammar in? Boshara and Jon Cenas sure think so.

They would need to ask General Saelac’s opinion, so Jon sends for him.

While they wait, Boshara asks for Jon for his autograph which he gives.

General Saelac comes by and Boshara starts pitching our friends to him.

It starts relatively sane, seeing that Humbert has an actual soldier’s training of sorts. Though Boshara uses descriptive words such as iron-muscled, which Humbert would probably not use for himself.

Then Boshara introduces Cahair as a “sly fox” and goes almost a bit overboard with the “wild elf” angle, but reigns it in at last second.

Elspet is introduced as Pamela Paine, the mystic woman and a martial art expert who can knock people off their feet by her expertise in aura destruction.

And Alf is the Shadow Warrior In-Sein (get it?), who lives and strikes from the shadows.

General Saelac is impressed by this and says he’ll send people to pick them up. Boshara can go to the warrior’s quarters where they’ll meet.

While they head there Boshara asks about King Aeducan and the lyrium situation, both which the general assures to be fine. 

He gently requests that Boshara would lay off on topics relating to politics, which Boshara agrees to.

So, our heroes’ boring morning of templar-watching is interrupted by dwarves coming to get them. 

When they enter Orzammar, they can hear Knight-Captain Gailard starting another shouting match with the door guards.

They are taken in the Commons and then left to their own devices. They stay and listen to a town crier for a while. It seems that General Saelac is rather well-liked by the folk of Orzammar. Or at least he has a good propaganda machine.

We drop our bronto and cart at Tapser’s Tavern to a rather unpleasant stablehand.

Before heading to the warrior’s quarters, we notice the Fereldan Chantry sisters giving out food, and Elspet decides to go talk to one of them to let them know about the Orlesian templars’ plan of entering Orzammar by force.

She also scores a date with the sister, who is named Jennifer.

Our heroes meet up with Boshara who arranges a luncheon with Saelac. Elspet goes to a date of her own and doesn’t join this event.

Boshara introduces our confused heroes with the same grandiose, if not more, and they have to act like they know what’s going on.

Once our heroes’ role in the Provings (they would be an entertainment match before the actual competition, and wouldn’t be using weapons) is explained, it doesn’t sound quite as bad.

Humbert and Cahair ask about the carta situation and whether they need to worry about carta’s revenge. Saelac assures that there will be no need to worry, but assigns a soldier named Carras to investigate the matter further.

Humbert also tries to push on the Aeducan issue, since Randy was supposed to bring the fertility rune to him, but Saelac uses the promise Boshara made to him to change the subject.

Elspet and Jennifer have a pleasant little date. Jennifer is a bit worried about the information Elspet gave and says that she’ll pass the information on. 

After lunch, Boshara and Cahair share all their information in elvish, as they can be pretty certain no one else there speaks it. Meanwhile Humbert talks with Boshara’s two personal body guards Olira Ulmot and Corav Turmot, but I didn’t hear any of that conversation, so I’ll just report on Boshara and Cahair.

They discuss how much Marjaleena might be involved in this whole thing, is it possible that the carta leaders from the Legion of the Dead escaped to surface and if there’s a way for Boshara to find out more (for example we saw some of the carta members we killed having quite unusual tattoos), is king Aeducan dead or just kept captive, and how much Saelac is at fault.

Boshara isn’t free to walk around, but she has access to the Diamond Quarter, so she’ll continue her investigation there, focusing on the carta leaders turned legionnaires and Aeducan. Regarding our ship’s lyrium troubles, she could also ask Marjaleena to help with that, and maybe at the same time, find out more about her.

The others can’t go to the Diamond Quarter, but they can move around more freely, so it is decided they’ll focus on the carta: Alf could try to sneak in to the Dust Down to find some carta members, while Humbert could join the night patrol looking for carta activities. Cahair could go check the miner’s quarters since we aren’t quite certain what the lyrium situation of Orzammar exactly is.

Elspet could use her bird form to help with Boshara and maybe Boshara could even sneak her in to check on Randy.

But those plans we shall be putting into action NEXT TIME! Dundunduu.

[wordsmithandwanderings]

Camp NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

So Camp NaNoWriMo is finally over! This was the first Camp NaNoWriMo I have ever participated in. I’ve never participated in the November NaNoWriMo. So, now that it’s over, I decided to reflect on my experience during my first camp NaNoWriMo.

How I felt before Camp NaNoWriMo

Since this was my first time participating in camp NaNoWriMo, I was pretty darn excited. Last November, I wanted to participate in the official nano, but I didn’t because I was too busy with school. However, since we’re all in quarantine and/or self isolation, I had a lot of time to do camp nano.

How I feel after Camp NaNoWriMo

I think the best way to describe how I feel is satisfied. I’m satisfied that I participated in camp nano, and that I stuck to it to the end. I don’t feel super happy or proud of myself for finishing though. I think that may be because I had a daily goal, but I didn’t have a clear end goal in mind.

Did I win?

And speaking of end goals, did I win camp nano? Realistically speaking, using the term “win” doesn’t really...paint the right picture of how to “succeed” at nano. The fact that I participated means that I’ve won. At least that’s what I try to think. However, I only had a daily goal, and not an end goal. My goal was to write a minimum of 500 words a day. Did I write 500 words every single day?

No. I didn’t. I tracked every single day, and there are some days where I did not write a single word. There were some days where I wrote less than 500 words. By that logic, I have failed. But the thing is, I don’t feel like I’ve failed. Story wise, I have made so much progress for Superhuman, and I’m proud of myself for that. Not to mention that on some days, I wrote way more than 500 words. So it’s hard to say that I “won.”

Also, if I wrote 500 words for 30 days straight, then I should have written 15, 000 words for Superhuman. However, I did not do that. So let’s calculate just how many words I have written in the entire month.

Word count at the beginning of camp nano: 12, 012 words.

Word count at the end of camp nano: 31, 909 words.

31909 - 12012 = 27, 897

Therefore, I have written 27, 897 words in the entire month. That’s 12, 897 more words than what I expected.

You know what? I won camp NaNoWriMo. In my opinion, writing 12,897 more words than what you expected at the beginning is worthy of “victory.”

What did I learn?

I think I mainly learned two things this month.

1. There’s a reason why the advice “write every day” is popular.

Getting into the habit of writing something, every single day, is really helpful. I didn’t even set up a writing routine that I tried to stick to. My body just got the urge to write around the same time almost every day, and that is almost scary. So even though it isn’t possible to write every single day, (there were some days I didn’t write! Remember that!) getting into a habit is really helpful. Which leads into my next lesson.

2. Any progress, is real progress!

I usually beat myself up when I don’t write anything, (or when I’m not productive,) so whenever I heard that “progress is progress,” I just didn’t really believe it. But now that I’ve finished camp nano, I can finally understand what they mean by that. There were some days where I failed, and I didn’t meet my goal or didn’t even bother to write! There were some days where I was so pumped to write, and others where I only did it because it was camp. Some words I might keep, others I might scrap. But even if I didn’t always meet my daily quota, I still wrote way more than what I expected to. And that would not have been possible without any of the words that I have written this month. So yes, even if you only write 100 words one day, it’s still progress.

Final thoughts on Camp NaNoWriMo

I feel like part of what made Camp NaNoWriMo so enjoyable for me was the fact that I could make my own goals. That way, I could make goals that were fitted to me, and it helped me to achieve them. With official NaNoWriMo, you have to write 50k in a month, which is a little over 1k words a day. I know I can write 1k in a day. But official NaNoWriMo still seems so intimidating. I’m glad that I started with camp NaNoWriMo so that I could make my own goals. If you’re thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo, but are too intimidated? Then I would recommend starting with camp NaNoWriMo, and making a goal that you know you’ll be able to stick to. Camp NaNoWriMo takes place during April, and July, meaning the next one is just in a couple of months!

And Now, Random Stats that no one asked for

Most productive day: Day 24

Least productive day(s): Days 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20

Most enjoyable day(s): Days 25-29

Least enjoyable day: Day 4, 5

# of writing streaks (amount of days where I completed my goal every day): 4

Longest writing streak: Day 24-30

Shortest writing streak: Day 13-14

If you read all the way to the end, then you deserve a gold star. Here ⭐️ Thanks for reading my ramblings. Happy writing!