Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5583506-20160322234619/@comment-5583506-20160324150636

(Disturbing pie incoming. Sensitive readers beware.)

"No, it's just that..." Falana sighed. "This is not an easy story for me to tell. It was... I think twenty years ago. Maybe more... I was a part of an expedition set out to locate the whereabouts of an Outsider tribe who had seemingly disappeared. Though we feared the worst, there was little that could have prepared us for what we were about to see. This was on the coasts of High Rock, and I'd rather not go back there. The expedition was expected to take months, maybe a whole year, but it ended up a lot shorter. For while we managed to locate the last known whereabouts of the Outsider tribe we couldn't find a single trace of them. No blood or anything. It was almost as if the world had swallowed them whole.

She made a short pause almost as if she reflected over the event. "Eventually it ocurred to me that we were looking for them too much on the mainland. There were tracks leading down to the shores. Indicating by the pace of the steps they must have been on the run from something... or someone. Maybe they were startled by a Beast? I don't know. We followed the footsteps down to the cliffs of the shore. The weather was grey and dull, and the roaring waves came crashing up against us, coating our trousers in the cold waters of the north. We found the remains of what appeared to be a campfire, now completely drenched of course. Maybe the water had been calmer back then."

She looked up at Aigren with a worrying stare, implying that she was about to come to the worst part of the story. "While my comrades left to secure the area and search for any whereabouts of the Outsiders, I was left behind with my mentor search for any tracks among the cliffs. I wandered down to the cliffs and became slightly surprised at the sight of a crudely made toy, depicting a bear being washed ashore. On this place, out in nowhere, there was this cute and cuddly little object floating around, and the rest of the world wouldn't have been the wiser. When I bent down to reach out for it, I noticed that there was something attached to it. Around its fuzzy belly were fingers. Small and thin, like those of a child. It was turned blue from the cold and had slightly swollen up, due to the amount of time it had spent in the water. It only took my eyes a moment to track what those fingers were attached to. A small arm was floating around in the water, completely ripped off by the shoulder. It was so light that... that the only thing that prevented from sinking to the bottom of the Sea of Ghosts, was the stuffing inside the teddybear which it was desperately holding onto. I remember how I screamed and my mentor came rushing down to see the sight. The remains of a dismember child, perhaps no older than two years old, was floating around beneath my feet. I remember how my mentor grabbed me by the shoulder and threw both himself and me to the side. He shouted something, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe it was some sort of warning or something. I just recall how I injured my shoulder against one of the sharp rocks, cutting a wound open just below my shoulder. Then I looked up and noticed what it was my mentor had saved me from."

Falana made a stop to swallow. Her expression was completely frozen and she didn't even appear to look at Aigren any longer. "It was the gigantic head of a Slaughterfish Beast. It had launched itself out of the sea and brought itself onto land, just in order to devour us. The snapping sound of its jaws was sickening; like a pair of rough millstones slamming together. But it wasn't the sight of the Slaughterfish Beast that made me froze up in fear. It was what it had stuck between its teeth. Among each and every sharp peak, between those two rows and deadliness there were eyes staring back at me. Between the teeth there were the bodies of the missing Outsider tribe, hanging out in all manner of positions. It's remarkable how, despite being constantly chewed upon and due to the the time they had spent beneath the surface, they were remarkably intact. All the facial expressions were there, frozen in time as if they had experienced their last moments over and over again. It was..."

She shook her head. "I don't even know how to describe it. But a part of me died that day, just as much as those poor people. Among the many rows of teeth there were also several smaller heads. Children, all of them. I stared at them and they stared back at me; all bugeyed with expressions of terror and fear painted upon their lifeless faces. And I was lying there and couldn't help myself but wonder which one of these lost souls the severed arm had belonged to. As the Beast continued to snap with its jaws, eager to get itself a bite out of me and my mentor, the rows of teeth began to close in on the heads even further, severing what last strings of flesh and tissue there was left between them and the body. Eventually one of the heads were cut free, falling to the ground for what felt like ages. It was that of a small girl. It was early morning and the sun was dim behind that thick sheet of clouds, but from what I could make out she had either grey or blue eyes. The head fell right before my feet. I had expected it to simply collaps and lay still there, but instead..."

Falana suddenly convulsed and covered her mouth with her hand, struggling to speak. "H-her... her head exploded... Cracked against the rocks. Though the exterior had somehow been perfectly preserved... the insides of it were completely rotten... The sea had gotten the better of it. The insides were filled with rot and various smaller sea creatures. While I screamed out in sheer terror my mentor rose to his feet, launched himself up onto the Beast's head and buried his blades into the back of its skull, swiftly ending its life. The rest of our group returned to find a stranded Slaughterfish Beast and thus came the conclusion of the mystery as to where the Outsider tribe had gone. Supposedly they had been driven to the coast by a nearby Beast and made a camp too close to the shore where they had met with the same fate that would have befallen me and my mentor if he hadn't been fast enough to notice the threat approaching.

We buried the Outsiders... or what was left of them. The teddybear serving as a headstone. I made three choices that day: I would never approach the open water again, I would train relentlessly in order to become strong enough to annihilate every last one of those monsters of the face of Nirn, and I would never have children of my own..."

Ran'Jinro looked around at the members of the group. "I suggest we all go to sleep", he said. "By this time tomorrow we will have reached the Jeralls. It will be cold as hell."

He looked at some of the people Falana had brought with her. "Could you see if you can get a fire going in that old fireplace? Just keep the fire low, we don't want to attract unwanted attention."

"Understood", said a young Imperial.

Evelyne looked around inside the mess hall. "Wonder how long it's been since someone was last here?" she said. "I mean, I know that the place is centuries old, but who's to say that someone hasn't been using this as a hideout from Beasts after they emerged?"