Black Traffic

An Open IC RP

The sweltering heat of the noon-day sun beats down on the granules of sand with cruel redundancy. Here, in the arid hell of Northern Elsweyr, nature is not a benevolent caregiver, her children covetously consuming her bounty; No, in these badlands, nature is dead. She has been replaced by a belligerent abuser, wringing dry the tongues of the children, and spilling his despicable pets across the landscape, to which, he has laid ruin. These brutal truths ring particularly true in the ears of the peculiar Nordic travelers crossing their pilfered peoples across the desert. Slavers, they’re called.

In their small league of twenty or so, withholding the slaves, they travel to the East, toward Cyrodiil and ultimately the repugnant morass known as Blackmarsh, in order to meet with a vile creature of a man which few have met and which fewer still would willfully acquaint. As one might guess, this meeting will pertain to the vile business of this entire excursion: the black traffic. But only the leader of the slavers knows, in their entirety, the specifics of the group’s rendezvous with the villainous cur. Others have, in their own meddling right, scrounged up scraps of detail relating to the day’s revolting commerce; but they aren’t the focus of this text. Rather, it is the man most ill-informed, or perhaps, apathetic to the immorality of the happenings around him.

The man rides a reddish-brown horse, most-likely native to a southern province rather than his frigid homeland of Skyrim, lazily swaying with his steed as he concentrates his placid gaze on an emaciated, caged khajiit (who is feeling just a tad irate over this whole ordeal). He is a small man (considering the size of his fellow landsmen) and is red about his hard-shaven neck and face, which agitates him almost to severity, but that is true of all his freshly groomed Nordic camaraderie (more on that later). This man is called Nothel the Timid, a title he could abhor if he didn’t feel it true to an extent. He had always known his voice was quiet compared to his fellow Nords, but not soft.

Nothel banishes these thoughts and returns his mind to its quarry, the poor creature in the cage next to him, moving at the same grueling pace as the rest of the caravan. He summons what he feels to be a sufficiently kind smile and, true to his name, timidly asks the seething khajiit,

“Are you thirsty, friend? Hungry?” The captured khajiit snarls. “I know you might not feel inclined to let me care for you, my being with this unclean heap of reprobates, but my companions have laid the onus on me to keep you in health, which is a weight I’m glad to carry; so, please, help me help y-“ The cat-man leaps with frightening vigor against his enclosure.

“Iss it becaussse you command all the fear of a sssickly child? I mean, that they don’t have you in their little raiding party, but inssstead have you acting in the place of a nurssse? I don’t think you can even heft an axe! You puny-“the khajiit’s tirade faded away in the place of his own intrigue as to why the Nord’s grin had grown.

“Would you you like to eat, or wouldn’t you, kitten?” Noth would hate himself for behaving in such an appalling manner, later, and he realized it. Of course, he didn’t stop. “A good pet ought to know how to appeal to its master.” He’d really hate himself.

The khajiit sank down to the base of the wagon-bed and, looking at the shifting ground, “Now I see why they don’t let you raid…” His feline eyes dart up, then lazily descend, “You’re the cruelessst of them all.”

Noth’s grin begins to fade. “You say that now.” He looks to the creature “Tell me when you get hungry.” From behind the horse, he produces a simple, double-headed axe and points it toward a half-fainted khajiit woman, dressed in the same rags as her cohort, “What about you?”

She feebly raises her head to the caregiver, and gently answers, “I would like to eat.” Nothel nods and places the handle of his axe back into its ring on his belt and opens a weighty bag around the neck of his steed, which had begun to exert its heavy burden. Just as he begins to retrieve a slab of salted meat wrapped in a waxy cloth, a redguard by the name of Kirra peers back from a wagon just in front the cart Nothel rode next to, and in a thick, syrupy accent says,

“Nothel, before you commit to our secondary investments, our real capital hasn’t eaten in seven hours.” Kirra’s arm flies upward, his once carefully embroidered garb swooping in a spectacle, and points to a half-naked jaguar man, procured from one of the tropical jungles of the coastal region which was, surprisingly, less inhabitable than these badlands. At least to the Nords. For a moment, Nothel thought back to a few tomes he had earlier dissected which had described the effects of the moons on the birthing of various species of khajiit. It was never a real debacle, saving books from any night’s campfires; Nothel’s intellectual pursuits may not be respected among his associates, but he’s still well liked.

“He’ll do what he will! Noth, distribute the food at your discretion.” From further ahead in the small band of carts, the leader of this jaunt, Forval Blackleg. He was a grey-haired Nordic man, and an old friend of Noth’s, among others.

After the timorous traveler allotted his foodstuffs (which he had already rationed out in his mind) to the captives, the previously predicted self-loathing set in on Noth’s already afflicted cognizance. He looked down at the retreating ground, and thought hard. He thought about the slaves, and the moral entanglements he would later thrash in bed over, after this wretched quest had ended. He thought about Kirra, and the tension rising between he and Forval. He thought about Forval, and growing up in Skyrim with his eldest friend Arman. He thought about Skyrim, and her growing troubles. He thought about the world’s turmoil, and where he fit in it. He thought about himself, and how he would never have foreseen this grisly trade in his future. And then, after an hour or so had passed, the echoes attacked.

Nothel had always heard the echoes, as long as he could recall. Every night as a child, just before he drifted to sleep, he heard the sounds and voices of what perceived as the passed day’s happenings. He once heard a mage speak of the curiosities of the brain, and how it would recall the events of whatever it had endured as its owner slept, and it’s why he was under this impression. It wasn’t until he became violently, deathly ill in his twentieth year that the echoes began to perturb him. They had begun to weave into his daily, conscious thoughts, even after he had recovered. Wide awake, they began to weigh heavy on his overused mind and, the longer he stayed in his trances of thought, the worse they affected him. Things would speak to him, appear before him, and he treated these delusions as if they were every-day occurrences. It frightened him deeply, as he could barely remember them afterwards.

This was the path he had set down, today.

“Looks as though Noth has gone off on his travels, again.” Arman, a red-haired, sunburnt and shaven Nordic behemoth of a man said to Kirra, who rode shotgun in the cart the Nord was driving. “He’s not having a heat stroke, is he? Forval having you lot shave would seem awfully moot if-“Arman shook his head. “No, friend, Nothel has always been that way. Ever since we were boys picking juniper berries back in Haafingar. You could be talking one minute and the next,” Arman snaps for emphasis, “He’d be gone off somewhere inside his own head.”

“Well, by the way he’s swaying, I’d say your friend’s traveling abroad.” Arman swings his head back and throws a hard look at Nothel, “Damn it, he’s clear to Atmora. Forval! Noth!” The Elder Nord pulls back his reigns and, after quickly examining Nothel under a thick squint, gutturally yells, “The suns too hot on his head, someone go catch Nothel, we’re stopping!” And, with that, the procession is halted.