The Knight, the Sword and the Sentinel: The Siege of Rihad : The Elder Scrolls Series Discussion

» Thu Jun 28, 2012 1:49 pm

THE IMMORTAL BLOOD TIMELINE
PRESENTS

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The Siege of Rihad

The Final Act in The Knight, the Sword and the Sentinel

Watch the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atWrojnxOsA FOR THE KNIGHT, THE SWORD AND THE SENTINEL
PART TWO IN THE LORD OF THE WESTERN LANDS SAGA

*Official Trailer Directed and Edited by: Lord Tidus

* Faction Intro's Created by Person from Anticlere

http://ibt.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_of_the_Western_Lands

http://ibt.wikia.com/wiki/Immortal_Blood_Timeline_Wiki
http://s77.photobucket.com/albums/j76/Titus-lord/Immortal%20Blood%20Timeline/?action=view¤t=PoliticalMapDetailed-1.png

We are always taking new participants! You may join at any time.

Please post all character sheets and questions in the IBT Discussion Thread.

* A FEW WORD FROM THE FOUNDER, http://www.gamesas.com/user/388646-immortalblood/...

Glad to see so many of the older people that made SoS possible have come back. I welcome them and of course their loyalty and continued creation of the timeline lore. This RP is a little bit different than what most people may expect. We accept anyone so don't be discouraged if it seems imposing. It really isn't and although there is a lot of depth to the lore, you really only need to know a few keen basics to get involved. The rest is simply for aesthetics. I want people to keep in mind that what we are doing here is writing a story. And although I love the competitive aspect of the timeline when it becomes a destructive element to the RP itself, it needs to cease. I like the competitive aspect because those are "real" challenges characters have to answer to. And that causes people to reply in a more authentic manner. I'd like to thank everyone who contributed in creating and maintaining this universe, our unique take on the Elder Scrolls world and look forward to the writing that is to come.

The unyielding march of time conquers all. Empires rise, prosper; then whither and fail, making way for new realms to climb to the top over the corpses of the old. None are spared – the tallest towers crumble, the mightiest conquerors succumb to age, the sharpest blades rust and blunt.

But war... War never changes.

Since the dawn of the Fourth Era, Tamriel is a land consumed by war. First, the land of the Altmer - outlandish and bizarre in its beauty - quivered under the thundering of marching boots as thousands met in battle. In their wake, the progenies of the Yokudans stirred, remembering their proud heritage as soldiers, as warriors – and drowned Hammerfell in blood to honour it. At the towering walls of Sentinel, the Legions of Cyrodiil found their match; the siege was broken. The West was free.

Yet the hearts of Ra’Gada burn always for war, and the unquenchable thirst of their gods of battle is not so easily appeased.

More than a year it has been since the West broke from the Sundered Throne, but peace is not forthcoming as brother marches against brother and father takes up the sword against son. Forged in the crucible of war, the Yokudan Empire turns its gaze to the entirety of Hammerfell. They would bring about unity for the Ra’Gada race, and they would do it in the purifying fires of battle.

Their challenge is not unmet. In the Forebear cities of the southern coast, whispers spread of this new realm. It spreads too wide, too soon; it is but a Crown trick, bonds of slavery already broken once disguised as the facade of unity. Eyes turn instead to the ancient heartland of the Empire, to Cyrodiil – to the Knights of the Nine, stalwart protectors of the faith... and now, of the Forebears too, against the depredations of the upstarts in Sentinel.

Armies assemble and march. Soon, the mighty city of Rihad will be under siege. The battle to decide the fate of Hammerfell is nigh.

The time for talk is through, war now looms on the horizon. Who's side will you chose?

Will you drop the plow and scythe to pick up the bow and sword to defend your homelands? will you rise to the call and fight for Hammerfell and for the Elden Yokeda? or will you simply watch as the world around you burn's until the time is right to strike? Whichever you chose is ultimately yours in the end and your sword could be the one that topples Empires, or forges new ones.

* Factions...

Long months have passed since the Roaring Walls broke the Cyrods’ Legions in the dunes of our homeland. Months of fighting; but also of building, prosperity and diplomacy. Cities previously embattled in bitter rivalry open their gates to one another; tribes at one another’s throat for centuries lay down their arms and embrace as brothers. Crown welcomes Forebear, not with a sword in his hand, but with the offer of friendship. That is our dream, and in his wisdom, the Elden Yokeda makes it real.

But the Heartlander pale-skins defile our land with their presence still. They stoop to depths no warrior ever should. They spread their lies, and the craven scum of Rihad listen. They bring their foreign gods to our land, laughing at the spirits of ancient Yokuda. They strike at our very hearths, at those closest to us. And even the greatest man is but a mortal, and his mercy wears thin if so abused.

The time for mercy is no more. Queen Roxanna, the beloved wife of our High King, lies dead, slain by an assassin’s blade, and we would not be warriors if we did not avenge her. A royal vengeance... the blood of thousands, for one life. A burning city, for one man’s burning heartache.

The walls of Rihad await. The Ra Gada has come.

We have stood by and watched as the so-called ‘Yokudan Empire’ rose in the west from the ashes of the Empire’s defeat, a gilded cage belying slavery to the Crowns. We have stood by and watched as, one by one, the cities of the west fell – to force of arms or silvered promises. We have stood by and watched, yet the threat to our customs and freedom has not dwindled – instead, it has only grown.

We shall stand by no longer.

The Forebears of the southern coast stand upon the precipice. To step forward is to dare to fight, take up the sword and resist the rising tide; to retreat is to forsake yourself to ignominy and tyranny, to surrender to that against which our ancestors fought so long and so bloodily.

The Yokudans’ armies assemble at the walls of Rihad; the time to act is now. It is said warrior shows his true worth only with his back well and truly against the wall – and now is the time to show our worth if ever there was one. The Septim Empire may have been laid low, retreating to Cyrodiil in the face of adversity, but we do not stand alone in our hour of need. With the Knights of the Nine at our side and our homes to our back, we cannot fail. We must not fail.

We have allowed war to come to our doorstep. Now, there can be no retreat.

* CHAPTERS & CHARACTERS

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1168098-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1178084-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1194788-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1205123-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1215348-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1242514-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1313371-the-knight-the-sword-and-the-sentinel/

The Knight, the Sword and the Sentinel: The Siege of Rihad (Ongoing)

* Summery of Event's and Maps...

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j76/Titus-lord/Immortal%20Blood%20Timeline/TheCityofRihad-Siegemap.jpg
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j76/Titus-lord/Immortal%20Blood%20Timeline/Hammerfell-Imortalblood-draft.jpg

Rules

1. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1343911-geraldduvals-guide-to-battle-rps-reposted/. It's good information and if you have questions about the military aspect of what would go where.

2. Use good grammar and spelling. Type your post up in Word if you don't think you can do it. Everyone makes mistakes so I don't have anything against people who aren't good at the language. English isn't my first language either, but not using precautions such as Word shows you really don't care. Make your posts lengthy and descriptive. Even if it is just a boring conversation, describe, describe, describe!

3. Do NOT be all knowing. It's just stupid when you have a guy in the RP that just seems to be able to guess everything. RP your character unknowing of something if he really doesn't know even if it means his/her death.

4. Familiarize yourself with the lore of the region (just enough to post adequately)

5. Try not to dwell too much on game mechanics

6. Keep in mind the ethnic/racial composition of your armies and factions. For instance, Forebears don't really like Crowns and vice versa, Nomads and City dwellers have different customs and traditions that very well could conflict and if your not careful a transgression could end in your life.

7. Character sheets should be posted in the Timeline discussion thread.

» Thu Jun 28, 2012 8:43 pm

EAST Army, The Sack of Roseguard
Bomilkar Barca

The screams..God’s the screams. A man can get used to the blood, get used to the killing, but the screams…the screams never leave. To the backdrop of war a single cry meant nothing; Men, women, children…the sound of an entire city dieing in the burning hatred of fire and war was all that could be heard in the otherwise emotionless night. From the simmering ash’s a woman calls, blood streaming down the side of her face as she crawls towards a figure standing lone in the night.

“God’s…help me!” she cries, her hands quivering as she grasps at the crimson stained cloak of the figure.

“God’s please help!..” she sobs over and over again, pulling harder at the figure’s cloak as it stares emotionless into the night. Its features are cold and hard, with only the flicker of flames to distinguish it as human. To look upon its face one would question if it really was, for the eye’s, said to be the window to the soul were dark and empty as the void.

Her screams quickly became muffled as her face was pushed to the ground, her hands still grasping towards the figure as she was drug away. Her fate would be that of hundred, maybe even thousands of other women that night. With war comes horrors of mans most inner beast. Otherwise honorable men become the most sinster creatures whom they swore to deffeat and relished in the spoils of their great victories. Come morning, her body would strung up like the others, their half dead husks crusified along the roads trailing the Yokudan armies march to the North Gate River. The Domination had begun in earnest that night, a prelude for what was to come.

“When will it stop?” a voice asks.

“When it stops..” cames the cool, icy reply.

“But when?”

A pause follows, seemingly like an eon before the figure finally breaks, the light of the citys fires finally revealing the hard features of Bomilkar Barca. A lump follows, caught in the Khan of Khan’s throat as he struggles to speak.

“When their dead…when I get you back.”

“I’m not coming back Bomilkar…” the other voice says, words like honey when spoken only to give way to the howl of more screams and the crackle of flames. Bomilkar shudders as the words were spoken, his body jerking to face the lips who spoke yet his eyes see nothing. A few more moments pass before his quivering hand slides across his face, smearing blood across his brow before managing to speak again.

“Then it will never end.”

» Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:35 pm

A butcher's abode

"I swear to Ruptga, woman, touch my leg, and I will [censored] your corpse!"

Blood and grime covered his face; shining through it, the eyes, eyes unnaturally bright. A single tear welled within one of them, fear and desperation gripping the man who had just faced down death by the sword... Oh how he longed for it now, that swift death his comrades fell to. Oh how he feared being killed by that which he could do nothing to fight.

"She's doin' you a favour, you bastard! Lay down still and take it like the Raga you are!"

Hands, scarred and bleeding, grappled against one another as the soldier's comrade fought to hold him down so their butcheress could do her work. Above the wounded man, hazel eyes filled with concern met his own dark green. He wanted her to help him; he knew she could. But fear held him tightly by the throat. If he lost his leg, he would no longer be a man; he would be a cripple. Useless, discarded by his comrades, a burden to his family, left to recall the horrors that had cost him so dearly... and to waste away in solitude.

"Keep still... Just... just be still, you sodding bastard... You wouldn't want your girls to hear how their father thrashed and screamed like a wuss, would you?"

The men loved her, their butcheress. Her name given to her in the army was a grim joke and a reminder of the brutal realities faced by those less fortunate in battle; those who were wounded, but did not die, those gravely injured to whom the remedies of the master alchemists of Sentinel were just tall and distant tales. But she was not - she was real, and she was there to care for them. She could put a man on his feet - and for this they loved her, not like a man would a woman, but like a brother loves his sister, a son loves his mother.

"Nah... we'll tell them how you took it... Took one for the HoonDing! At the walls of Roseguard... You'll tell their sons, and they'll respect you for it, aye..."

Hazel eyes met those of the man still standing. Unseen to the wounded, she shook her head faintly, telling the soldier what he already knew in those recesses of a man's heart that always seemed to feel the worst before it could be known. She could treat a man well enough, and when she couldn't...

His voice faltered.

She leaned forward, her charge shifting uneasily at her movements. "I won't touch your leg, yet. But you've got other wounds; wounds I need to clean and treat."

Swallowing heavily, the wounded soldier laid back down again, his eyes fixed on his brother's face - just as grimy and bloodied. They'd enlisted together, looking to earn bread for their families... fought side by side, looked after one another, in battle and outside it. Gazing into the eyes of his sibling, he didn't even feel her knife slip over his wrist.

Tu'whacca's cut, they called it. The man would bleed out shortly, slipping away relatively painlessly - one of many to pass to the Far Shores.

That was the only mercy war offered, that night. That night when Roseguard burned.

» Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:46 pm

The Sacking of Roseguard

Gods...

It was a killing field. Brown eyes reflecting the light from flames given to houses as children cried, being dragged from their mothers as doors blocked the horrors of war's spoils. The streets had literally ran red with crimson as bodies were piled on top of one another. Corpses were stabbed repeatedly by those on the gruesome detail of ensuring the dead remained so.

At seventeen years of age, Abel, a farmer's son had never witnessed such atrocity. Beardless and scrawny he limped his way looking for a familiar face, any. All of the men he passed were covered in dirt, soot, and blood. He could scarcely recognize faces that just a day before had displayed a patriotic innocence, only to be stained with the sin of killers. The sound of cobblestone was muffled with the splash of what Abel hoped was water, his gut told him otherwise, as he made his way to the flickering lantern lights of a small home. Its reinforced door left open absently.Within, he could hear the rough military voices of men his age.His hand, stained in dirt, shaken in adrenaline splayed against the old door creaking it open.

His eyes were given privy to a sight he had hoped to never witness. The pit formed within his stomach and mind had become almost too much to bear as his heart raced. Affixed to the rafters was a rope, the other end secured around a delicate pair of wrists. She whimpered slightly but had long given up screaming or crying. Her consciousness had likely taken her to another place, but that was not going through the young whelp's mind who had thought he served a pure cause. Here, faced with the grim reality of war he had lost something deeper.

Facing the back of a lightly armored man with breeches to his ankles, brandishing the same uniform he did, the Rough housers. Next to the man occupying the young girl were other men, most of the same age but a few older, licking their lips and eagerly waiting their turn.

She couldn't have been more then four years Abel's junior. The whimpering stopped abruptly as the man turned around, looking to Abel himself. With a devilish grin, "Care for a turn?"

Abel nervously nodded his head no, before closing the door suddenly, which had promptly invited laughter from inside. Feeling his innards commit to rising from whence they came he unequipped his helmet and fell to his knees at the house's corner, throwing up in it unabashedly. The meaty and sharp noises of a man with a spear going to work on corpses only furthered the vomiting. Then the spear was dropped.

"Abel?!" his name had caused a sudden moment of realization. The wet steps of running boots made their way to him, the acidic pull still at his throat. He attempted to clear it before turning to face whoever recognized him.

"Abel! Morwah be praised your alive." the man, bearded and tall was Hiba, a merchant who had enlisted in the Rough Housers the same day as Abel. Both were unaccustomed to the harshness of war. Hiba had turned his head to face another man stabbing the dead, "Izra, Abel is alive!"

Izra, slightly stouter than most men walked from his detail to see the face of Abel, who had just only then became self-aware he had been puking into his helmet.

Abel took notice of the lack of warmth in Izra's eyes, a baker. Who had always had a joke or two to provide. The killing had ended that warmth in him, and Abel knew he'd never get the baker with a warm joke back. That was the unseen casualty, innocence.

"...I've never seen anything like this."

Hiba frowned slightly before nodding in agreement.

"Neither have I, Abel..."

And that is when Abel reflected on himself, his inaction in stopping that girl from her torment, or associating with men who could commit such acts. War showed a lot about a man's character, especially to himself.

And Abel, what he learned had only left him with disgust.

» Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:11 pm

A few weeks earlier...

Confederation Flagship Gorgon, Port Side Storage

Tucharon

After hours of preparation, the ritual was in place place. The mage known as Tucharon knelt at the middle of a casting circle, surrounded with glowing runes. Candles emitting cyan flames surrounded him, and at his knees sat an incense burner. Tucharon deeply breathed the fumes, feeling the magic within affecting him, attuning him. He began to chant a words to the ritual, the words in an archaic dialect of Nibenese, almost indistinguishable from its modern incarnation, and a language that, beyond the words of the ritual, Tucharon knew nothing of. Two minutes of chanting, the wards on the circle began to pulse with light, and Tucharon began to feel his mind touching the Dreamsleeve. It felt as if his mind drifted along, guided by the ritual. It was a strange sensation, one that made him somehow uncomfortable, as if his soul was somehow partially detatched, and someone on the other side could tear it away, pulling it into the Dreamsleeve forever. If it weren't for the wards in the circle, in fact, such would in fact be possible.

He felt his mind touch another, the mind of a man. It was no mistake: this was the mind of the Archmagister of Battlespire, his master. The man's mind was, like his tongue, well-disciplined, concealing all but his surface thoughts. It was frightening to contact the Archmagister this way, to touch the mind of one so powerful.

Why are you contacting me, Centurion? Has something in your mission gone awry? Before he could internally muse a response, the man continued. I can scarcely believe it. Killing Roxanna has to be the stupidest thing they could have possibly done. Well, except for provoking the Dominion, of course.

Yes, Tucharon thought. We were so close to reaching a ceasefire when it happened. The Confederation made a big sacrifice for it to happen.

Their entire fleet? They vastly underestimated both the bullheadedness of the Yokudans and the stupidity of the Knights. And now this. For what seemed like an eternity, Tucharon heard nothing from the Archmagister. He was beginnign to think that something was wrong when he spoke up again.

All is not lost, Centurion. This can still be salvaged, and at great benefit to the Cyrodiilic Empire. You will, however, need to take an initiative that few would dare do. Do not falter now, the course of Tamriel's history rests on your shoulders. Tucharon felt a sense of dread, fearing he would be required to die. There was so much he desired to do in his lifetime, and so much he wanted to experience. The thought of losing it all filled with him with dread.

Yes, it may come to that, Centurion. You knew the risk when you joined us. But I promise, if you die, you will die a hero, a mer who has done more to change the course of history than many of history's greatest archwizards. Do not falter now, I need you now more than ever.

After a long pause, Tucharon gave his response. Yes, master. I will do as you say.

Good, the Archmagister replied. Then submit your mind, lower your defenses. For the situation to be saved, you must allow me to temporarily control of your body.

What? Why? asked the Altmer

I need to cast a ritual, but from your location. Only through assuming control of your body may I do so. Do not be afraid, Centurion, you will remember none of it, and I promise I'll explain everything afterwards. Now, lower your defenses, so it may start.

Tucharon reluctantly relented. He could feel the man's mind overtaking him, as his senses began to dim. As oblivion overtook him, the one feeling he had was a sense of dread. Do not worry, it will be over...