#that hat wouldn’t look out of place in morrowind

[gardenwalrus]

George Harrison and Ringo Starr in Germany, June 1966

[mazurah]

Find the Word Tag Game

tagged by @spine-y ​

rules: find the four words in your writing, and then pick four more that other people need to find in theirs.

Your words to find: urgent, grimace, hollow, and beam

URGENT:

As the figure down the path grew more distinct, the party was met with a strange sight. An orange, tiger-striped Khajiit in a tall yellow Colovian fur hat and a flamboyant puffy-sleeved outfit panted his way down the road, pursued by a Dwemer Centurion Sphere. As the curious pair drew close, the sphere thrust out with it’s sword-like arm. The Khajiit dodged, but lost his balance and fell sprawling into the dirt road in front of the party. Ma’zurah promptly disabled the sphere with a well placed ice spike.

Julan reached out a hand to assist the Khajiit to his feet. The Khajiit adjusted his tall, eye-searing yellow hat and dusted himself off. “Many thanks.” he addressed them. “This one also apologizes, for he cannot stop to chat. He is on a most urgent mission to find calipers. The kind strangers would not happen to know where some could be found, would they?”

The party stared at him.

“Uh…” Constance began. “No…?”

“Ah. Well. Khajiit offers his thanks anyway. If you are ever in the Sheogorad region, you simply must come visit. This one may often be found on a small island east of Dagon Fel. If you seek knowledge, this one has much. Some of it verified by actual facts! Khajiit bids you good day. He must be off. Warm sands!”

The strange Khajiit puffed off at a jog, and the three stood in the middle of the road and stared after him until his figure was indistinct again.

“What… what just happened?” Constance plaintively asked.

Ma’zurah began to giggle. Julan looked at Constance’s flummoxed face and began snickering as well.

“I… just… the clothes…” Constance spluttered, already half laughing. “And an urgent mission…? …for calipers…? And the sphere… what? ...where…?” She broke down in fits of giggles.

The laughter escalated until all three of them were howling with laughter in the middle of the empty road.

“Sheogorath on a silt strider! That…” Julan gasped, wiping away a tear of mirth. “That's the stupidest hat I ever saw!”

(From Ma’zurah, Azurah, and the Birth of the Khajiit)

GRIMACE:

“Come on, dumpling, don't be shy,” the Imperial encouraged with a smile that Ma’zurah suspected was supposed to be charming, but only came across as creepy. “Just do this one little favor for Uncle Crassius.”

Ma’zurah’s whiskers twitched. “Must Ma’zurah?”

The Imperial shrugged. “Well of course you don’t have to, sweetie, but if you want my sponsorship…”

Ma’zurah suppressed a grimace. The man didn’t need to finish the sentence. She knew he was likely her only chance for sponsorship in House Hlaalu. Without his backing, she would be unable to obtain any more work, and her rising career in House Hlaalu would stall.

(From Hlaalu Dilemma)

HOLLOW:

“Julan, outsider, we have seen two white Khajiit recently, but only one remains at the camp. You may approach the camp if you will attempt to convince her to leave.”

Julan’s eyebrows rose at this unexpected development, and he agreed. They escorted him to the center of their small circle of yurts, and presented him to a young looking Khajiiti girl in odd, revealing, but formal looking clothing. Even without confirmation from Ma'zurah, he could tell she was another moon cursed Khajiit.

Julan blinked at her. Wooden wind chimes sounded hollowly in the background. The unfamiliar Khajiit cocked her head at him and sent the gulakhan a hesitant, questioning look. Zabamund stood stoically to the side with his arms crossed.

(From Betrayal and Reconciliation)

BEAM:

“I got ‘em as eggs from Morrowind. Hatched ‘em myself!” Ambarys beamed, still holding his pets’ collars. “This here’s Dalder, and that one’s Hla’jul.” He nodded at the durzog and the nix hound in turn. “I trained ‘em to be real friendly. Wouldn’t do to have anybody want to have ‘em put down cause they don’t understand ‘em, y’know?”

The nix hound chittered, and the durzog lolled its tongue out the side of its mouth.

(From Lost in Time)

-

I’m only putting one excerpt per word because I have a lot of writing, and this would be much longer if I tried to use every instance of the words.

@talldarkandroguesome I choose you! Find the words obscene, bitter, impede, and truthful.

[dunmerofskyrim]

37

Downriver a line crossed the water. A slack rope that traced over the fine skin of ice near the banks, and trailed beneath the surface in the middle of its slow dark flow. A flat square barge was moored up on the far side. Its frame was lashed together from wood and a patchwork of leather and cloth stretched between the spars to form a kind of deck. At waterlevel, leather bladders tight-full with air kept the barge afloat.

“Fucking boatmer…” Simra grumbled under his breath. His purse had barely recovered from the route they’d taken down the Balda. “Fucking pirates, all of them…”

“Ho!” The cry came across the water. Already the ferryman was picking the rope from the water with leathermittened hands and beginning to pull. “Ho there trav’lers! Fine fair mornin’!”

Tammunei looked skyward and frowned. The weather was tin-grey and threatened drizzle. No sky for how thick it was banked in clouds and all the colour of cinders. The sort of sun you had to search for, active and earnest, squinting after some small change in light. And all around the river, the grasses were bearded with frost, the reeds frozen stiff and pale.

“You think so?” Simra called back.

“Nothin’ too bad, nothin’ too bad at all… Still workin’, am I not? A dear fine mornin’, then! A fine dear fair morning…”

A fine fair blighted grey morning to squeeze coin out of the choiceless, Simra reckoned. They were in the crutch of two rivers now, the better part of a day’s travel deep, and could either cross the water or else turn round and hope to skirt it. Fording the flow was scarce any choice at all in this cold and the ferryman knew it. That accounted for his grin, Simra thought, as the barge drew up closer. Or might be that was just his teeth.

The ferryman was Orsimer. Tall and broad in the shoulders but otherwise rangy as a skinned hare, to reckon what you could through the heavy outdoor clothes he wore. A short waxed cape, its hem tasselled with beads, was draped round his shoulders and chest, front and back. It hung to his waist and clattered as he moved. He wore a short coat under it of parchment yellow roughcloth, quilted and padded into squares and diamonds. Almost an arming garment, Simra reckoned — almost a soldier’s aketon. A long grey kilt was belted over that, its skirts girded up and backward between his legs, to show his wiry-haired calves and bare green-grey feet. From out the back of his broad conical farmer’s hat, a thick braid of black hair hung heavy over one shoulder and down his chest, to end in a clattering black iron bell. Like you’d collar a cow with, Simra thought. How long since he’d last seen a cow? He’d seen ‘beef’ for sale in Narsis – he’d never eaten it; wouldn’t know the difference after all – but if beef was dear in Skyrim, whatever passed as cowflesh in Morrowind was sold at thrice the cost. He’d seen no cattle in years…

A wheeze of filled air-skins; a grind of silt. The barge bumped onto the near bank. Its ferryman looked them over, counting them slow and careful. He stood on the boatside like it was a rampart, and he looking down from the high-ground. Confident as anything, swagger even in his stillness as he put hands to hips and leaned in, nodding slow as he spoke:

“Three of you, is it? Mmmh. And two o’ them, hm? Guars…” He drawled over the word, butchering its plural. Simra noticed one of his hands rested casual near a bone handle wrapped into the folds of his kilt’s belt. A half-hidden knife.

“How much?” Noor said.

“Hold on.” Simra shuffled and slipped from the back of the guar he and Tammunei shared. He stumped the butt of his spear against the sod. Strolled in reach of the ferryman. Stumped the spear again into the dirt, ponderish, and looking at the rusted spike as it bothered the frosty grass. “Conversation first. Fine morning for it, right? What’s closed Senie up so tight? What’s that?”

Simra pointed with his free hand downriver, towards the fork where Senie sat on its hill and behind its walls. Smoke rose from the river’s opposite side, trails on trails into the sky where they hung together, mingling in the windless heights. Simra’s hand flashed silver proudflesh and three pale fingers as he gestured. Red beads around the wrist, and plaited silk threads hung with teardrop pendants of green trueglass. Then the rags that bound his sleeves in, to wrap and safeguard the warmth of his body.

“Depends as what it’s worth to you, knowing,” said the ferryman.

“Nothing overmuch,” said Simra. “Except that it’ll help us decide if we want to cross or turn back. Use your fine-looking boat or not.”

The Orsimer stuck out his jaw and twitched his lower lip. “Not heard then, have you?”

“No news from down the road our way, no.”

“Huh. Overtaken, Senie is. Some scuffle inside, two months back might’ve been. All I know’s their lord and council — they strung them from the walls. Hooks in them. Bled or parched to death, all of them by now.”

“Why?”

“Something about their gods. Your gods. What-you-will.” The Orsimer shrugged. “Want to be left alone is how it seems to me.”

“Know the feeling, but never so much that I’d shoot at someone who came too close.”

“Not hurt, are you?” The ferryman sounded almost concerned. “Could be I’d have saved you that near scraping. Don’t go downstream, that’s what I say, but there’s been plenty crossing down here.”

“Which gods?” said Tammunei.

“Eh?” Another shrug from the ferryman. “How should I know? Three of them.”

“Which three?”

“Ffah. How should I know?”

“Hm. And them camped on the far side of the fork,” said Simra. “Who’s that?”

“Some army brought in from eastward over the mountains.”

“Indoril then,” Simra said.

“Some scouts of theirs I ferried over. Oh, two yest’days back and of a mornin’. If they’ve come back since then, it’s not been with me. What they’d be doin’ over from eastward and here in Winter, I surely don’t know… They were asked here’s what they said.”

“That all they said?”

“That and something about pulling some priest out the fort by his hair. They said plenty ‘bout that.”

Borderguards and ferrymen, bridge and gate sentries — you could always trust them to have news worth sharing. Seemed this ferryman wasn’t yet well-versed in that side of his chosen career.

“Been here long?” Simra asked. “At this pitch with your boat?”

“Long enough,” said the ferryman, defensive. “Work’s good lately. Picked right up, it has. Not used to folk wantin’ so much of a chat though, can’t say I am. Most part it’s that they’re in too much of a hurry to cross. You? Two journeys, I’d say. You and your beast, then yous and yours. Extra, that is.”

“How much?”

The two crossings came to a yera and two in total. A shil per passenger and another two for each journey over. Simra had been gouged worse before, but he’d also known plenty work for longer than this ferryman and earn less for it. Still, fair’s fair, even when it’s not fair to you. Given the one boat on this bridgeless length of river, Simra would’ve charged higher — that if only for the boredom of being a ferryman in the first blighted place.

First Simra, Tammunei, their lighter-laden guar. Then Noor and the packguar. Simra watched over the water as the ferryman’s mouth moved, trying for talk, his jaw jutting and juddering. Noor’s mouth stayed firm shut. The beasts peered over the boatsides, one staring deep into its own murky reflection, the other peeking and balking and shying from the water until it was sound and stable-footed on the other bank once more.

On this side of the river, the fields were stripped bare. Paddies deep with frozen mud and ice-chased standing water. Ditches to draw the river and feed the crops stooped much the same: gutters of filth and frost. Rows of fruit-shrubs, bare and stiff, skinny at the trunk and skinny at the limbs. A path of stripped earth ran along beside the water.

Tammunei didn’t remount the guar. Give it a rest, they said, after the water and carrying two riders for so long. The three of them and their two mounts plodded along at footpace. They tended towards the smoke, downriver to the fork and the camp. A wordless verdict between them.

“Is there any need?” Noor said.

“To go through the camp?” Simra said. “A few needs, yeah.” Not that he liked it any more than she did, though he fancied their reasons differed. “Food’s the foremost, if you want to know.”

“We can forage. Hunt. Ghosts preserve me but surely you can go a few days without rice.”

“Forage.” Simra snorted. “In the wake of all them? You heard the orc. They came from eastward. We’ll be tracking back the way they marched from, down the Davon’s Watch road. If you think there’ll be anything left to glean where an army’s foraged through..? Nchow. The pickings’ll be poorer than piss-poor. I’d bet on it. Gold or glass, I’d bet on it any day.”

“You said they were Indoril,” Tammunei began. “New Temple Ordinators…”

“Some of them. The officers maybe. I’d say mercenaries and levies for the rest.”

“I’d have thought Ordinators would mean honour, discipline, restraint…”

“They’re no guarantee of good behaviour, if that’s what you mean. Or good supply lines for that matter. Some people, you give them a bronze mask and they’ll hide all they can behind it. Do whatever they’d never dared to do, and say, no, now it’s for the cause…”

“Will it be safe then?”

“We’re wisewomer,” said Noor. “Sacred servants of the oldest ancestors, the oldest gods. The baelathri Temple reclaimed them only lately, but we’ve given the gods their due since Veloth’s day. They love us now as much as they hated us before. Of course we’ll be safe.”

“Mmh. They love the idea of you fine enough,” muttered Simra. “It’s when you’re there before their eyes, all skins and beads and braids, they decide they’ve got a problem…”

Tammunei shied close to their guar, edging into its neck and putting both hands on its leading-bridle.

“We’ll be safe,” Noor repeated, firmer now.

“Course we will,” said Simra, “if we keep each other that way.”

Senie’s outer walls showed smooth and slightly sloping in the nearing distance. Brick and mortar the colour of bones til they seamed down into the sides of the hill the fort-town had its roots on. There the incline slacked and tumbled in heather and crags of stone to the brown waters where the rivers combined.

Around the three on the riverside path, a feeble breeze picked up, fretting with their hair and the hems of their clothes. None were dressed for Winter, or a journey slow-leading into lands with colder climes. Stupid of them, Simra reckoned. Of him most of all. Noor in her tasselled blanket-cloak and shawl, her ragged threadbare riding-coat — she was best prepared, for all she looked like a small and lope-stepping scarecrow in those tatters. But Tammunei had only the coat Simra had given them, ocean-coloured, with a recent-patched hole in the gut of it. And Simra himself had no coat, no cloak at all.

“What’re the other reasons?” said Tammunei.

“Hm?”

“We could just carry on past. Follow the road when it turns east. But we won’t because of food, and what else?”

“Oh.” Simra shrugged, and fidgeted with his fingers and the shaft of his spear. “Sheer bloodyminded curiosity. Wanna know what’s happening here. We got less than half a story from that bastard ferryman. I want the whole fucking thing.”