Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Mini episodic insight into minor background characters briefly inhabiting the Coast. Each post is specific to a character, and may not be in chronological order as additional detail is shined in a new light.

The paladin held a hand up toward the dark halfling, declining the offered drink that she held high in his direction. Tzi lowered the drink, finishing it off before turning back to Nihm. "Friends?"

"Nah, don't need one, unless you give me fifty thousand gold coins, then we're friends." The dark robed halfling grinned.

"Tzi spends her money on her friends... " Tzi quipped quickly, returning the cup to Nihm's awaiting hands.

The paladin sent his attention to Nihm. "You're broke?" A tinge of suspicion laced those words as Tzi issued a sizable sum of coin to the Nihm. "Not a coin in my purse." Tzi moved then to appreciatively hug her assumed newfound friend as Nihm stepped back. "Yeah, first rule, don't touch me."

"Tzi expects coin returned then if not friend.." A sensation in her throat beginning to rise.

"Then I guess our friendship is ended, good night." Nihm turned to head back toward the campfire as Tzi coughed collagulated blood into an awaited palm. "Tzi is not repeating herself." Tzi squeaked aloud, chasing after the other halfling as Nathan stalked within proximity.

"Big and hairy, and shines in the moonlight like me arse" The dwarf Nowae was heard conversing with others in proximity of the flame, as Tzi squeaked once more to Nihm at her side. "Tzi not repeating herself... " The dark halfling choked, spitting a more profuse amount of crimson as she looked in panic between her and Nihm. Time felt as though it had slowed, silence befell the area as all eyes then trained on Tzi's frame bent over the now felled Nihm's body. The angered scream from Desrah at the campfire toward Tzi reignited her senses as the paladin's blade was drawn and swung quickly down toward the choking halfling. She rolled back as the blade slammed into the ground where she stood, turning to scramble swiftly into Cloakwood as patrons at the fire began to rise in retaliation. "That magic is forbidden" the words followed after her.

Deep within the woods, a makeshift altar of twig and stone was caressed with ivy and lilac; a woman depicted thereupon holding a spear and shield under a banner of Lurue watched over the crimson trail spilled into the nearby stream, originating from a small body tucked between rock and soil with glass protruding from her throat. Debris from the stream slowly collected her from sight and memory.

"You heard me, didn't you?"

Her voice rung in his ear even when it was spoken over a day prior. Vincent's gaze drifted off toward the setting sun just over the water, occluded by a an assortment of birds that seemed to just hover in place. "I hear you..." He responded to seemingly no one. His forearms found the railing that he leaned upon, cigar lounging between a few fingers, a bent frame as he leaned some of his weight off his feet with an exhale at length.

"You heard me, didn't you?"

Recurring memory took hold in brief, their meeting, the flirting, the casual romance, their bodies held together late into the eve. There were fewer times he was genuinely happy, a fleeting but freeing experience. His head hung lowly, fingertips scraping through obsidian threads that were starting to show the signs of his age before one hand reached to flick ash into the sea to prepare for another lengthy draw.

"You heard me, didn't you?"

He perched the cigar between lips, turning toward the ship's mast, pulling on ropes lashed to under lubricated pulleys to draw and flare the masts, trying desperately to put his mind at ease. He stepped toward the aft side of the ship, lifting a coil of chain before pausing. "Yeah, I heard you... I'm just not listening." He sent a cursory glance to the cold and unmoving body in the crate before continuing forth to lift the anchor and set sail for Baldur's Gate.

The vision was blurred, distant silhouettes slowly moving through each body that dotted the shoreline.

The copper taste shocked his senses, pain and exhaustion were quick reminders of this outcome and through it to much chagrin, he was still alive. Fingers sunk and clawed slowly into the sand beneath him as he started his path toward a nearby rock face jutting from the shore but a few meters away. "You've been a good soldier to me, you know?" a man's voice rung out from his memory, "How many seasons has it been now, since you were in my employment? I remember you as a wee bright eyed lad and now look at you, graying like me." He paused his motion, wincing as the tide brought it's brine wash to his frame, knocking him to the side where a cracked rib would certainly announce it's condition. "Loyal and true to me in every sense of it. A lot of adventures together."

"I don't trust him." He could hear her voice among the other, "He's sending you off with this fleet in your ship, for what? Did he even bother telling you?"

Resuming his slow pace toward the rock cluster, his sharp breaths and agonized grunts were kept as minimal as possible, sweat and brine mixed as it traversed down his face, dripping to the sand to be eventually mingled with a crimson expulsion he wasn't aware of.

"This insistence will sever lines." She spoke.
"What new daybreak we have in opportunity!" He spoke.

His vision began to fade from him once more, the weight and burden lifting from his limbs...

"For Selgaunt! For Sembia!" they spoke.

The tide rolled in once more on an unconscious soldier.

The sound of the water lapped the side of the boat and splashed against itself, the air drier than what she remembered.

"I can't recall if I hate you more for what you've done, or hate you less for who I became." Her voice failed to leave her thoughts, a blank stare heavenward as her broken body ached among the splintered wood that surrounded her. Her fingers curled in, eyes fluttering to a pained close as the imagery of him spent more of her soul than the physical damage she received.

"... you'll see through me to something else as you have before."

The arrows, the shouting, the memory of a hand gripped around her neck as she dangled above the abyss. The warmth of a fireplace, the unending dark, all blanketed her at once.

Her head rolled back some as her right arm shook in place from the pain that shot through it until she settled again at the bottom of the small boat, limbs sprawled, a labored breath to follow as a copper ring slowly tarnished across it's surface but slowing to a stop far sooner than it's wearer would intend.

The silent stillness whispered "trust in me."

The details were coherent, the dangers apparent, but if the mask wasn't in his hands it was her's, and that was something that just would not do. Sleepless nights fell on one another as he awaited others to confirm suspicions, conclusions were coming closer to a head and as the conveniences of behavioral patterns fell into place he at times assumed the mark was missed but the identity was clear; perhaps either out of being able to recognize it in it's finality or wishing he had more to work with.

"Clever man."

The mask was returned to a tightened hand that he was unwilling to let go of. His testing of the waters was choppy, forward but errant, and it started to paint the portrait he didn't expect - someone who felt exempted from her lot in life and her emotional duress under siege by his asinine inquisition.

Foolishness and the mask now abandoned, he set out to amend for his wrongdoing and her forgiveness.

Quivering fingers curled inward to the palm, her arm held to the air between her and the man that stood still in the doorway as she whispered her inaudible plea. Her eyes held their lids closed longer than they were open, straining under duress while trying to peer at any identifying part of her assailant as he slowly moved his tall frame into the room, ".... mercy, please... " she whispered. The leather of his gloves emanated the muffled grip of it's folded contact, fingers that curled then relaxed in contemplative succession before one palm moved to rest upon the pommel of his sheathed sword at his left hip as though the figure awaited her to state something aloud he came to bear witness for. "I... I didn't know... I didn't know you were still alive, I... " she choked.

"I need but just your name." The voice fell from the figure softly, without malice, without inflection, impersonal.

"They could have just left you dead!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking and breaking in the upper notes. "I gave you life! I did! Me!" Her feet kicked along the ground as she pushed away from him and toward the wall that now held her back, turning her frame slightly as she brought her blood stained arms up to her face, weeping in her sudden wave of fear. "I could have rescued you, I could have pulled you from the graves.... I could, I could save you, I can still save you, please... just.... just say something. Say... something. Damn you!" She grabbed hold of a chair and kicked it toward him though it tumbled only part of the distance toward him and skidded to a halt on the wooden floor. He maneuvered the furniture and slowly closed the distance to her lithe frame.

"C-calista.... Feyarth... I I don't understand...." she could barely murmur the words between her tears.

"For your broken soul, imprinted, within me." He softly whispered her last rite, the pendant bearing a skull and scroll drifting slowly into view as he leaned toward her.

Chop.

A boot found the felled tree as the ax was angled high then low to free it. A step back into the snow bank, a large arc behind, overhead, chop. The winter had been a mild one for most of the region with varying spurts of snow, permitting latecomers to their winter preparations an additional chance or two to in the relief and for this man it would be no different. His brow knit, his arms sore, he had to make do for his children.

"Father, why was the scary lady here?" The child roused inquiry, picking up sticks and piling them into a sack.

"Just some old business." The man replied, a smile on his face. "Not to worry, she and I have parted ways indefinitely."

"Indefinitely?"

Chop.

"Forever. She and I don't work together anymore son." The man leaned down to toss a log aside.

The boy shrugged his shoulders, continuing to gather more sticks. "You'll be home more?"

"Aye, no more treks away from the home. Settling into a calmer, stable life, and do right by you kids." He sniffed, rotating the ax in hand then preparing to strike the tree again.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Chop.

He glanced toward his son then righted his posture before moving toward the small fire he had created for their warmth. The hand that dove into a pocket to retrieve a former symbol of his faith unfurled now the object that he cursed against, the life he left behind. The symbol slipped between fingers and into the fire without reluctance, his attention brought to the joy in his life who pulled the draw string closed on one of the satchels and paused to smile toward his father. Beyond his son in the thicker stretch of wood stood a tall silhouette as it drew back on it's bow and leveled it's aim.

The now orphaned child wept over his father's body.

I know not the passage of time; the bleak gray is a surrogate of unnerving anonymity as the flicker of light and dark pays homage of peering through a black sheer ribbon and I stand transfixed to it's acquiescence. My dark skin now pale, my once red pupils now white, reflections of contrast that severed my consciousness as I pass shimmering fracture upon shimmering fracture and disjointed paroxysms of bewildering desperation enveloped the calm serenity of vacuity - the stigmata of this hell. The portal within Ulcaster lead me here but the door I escaped was not the terminus I sought and now I bear witness to a realm unfolded before me lacking decipherable recognition against the jutting silhouettes that clawed the dark heavens and I, now alone, cannot recognize my new undoing in this dream. Urgency has escaped me.

Long have I turned the ear to listen to the chime of a higher calling that others are gifted, longer still have I lost faith in my soul's final comfort and true to my scathing criticism prayers from my lips go unanswered. The dull ache tugs at the heart to my longing to be here, this inanimate retribution for who I am and I willfully suffocate to it's unblinking gaze, and were I to discover some kernel of truth about myself I worry the poison will bellow like a lanced boil in all the manner deserved unto me. Within these vulnerable innermost chambers of my mind I deceived my intuition, an elegant but unbearably clutching trill of nihilistic entropy now challenged by the flaying conscious thought in study of scriptures of the Loross lexicon, and through it my voice no longer owned.

I stood compromised, solitary, a vessel. For all my machinations, for all my wit, for all my centuries of study and practice, I have lost.

She lurks in those dark woods before me and with quivering hand I reach.

Staring upon the heavens, looking down

The stillness of the bodies laid to their rest in the dark cavern of the Dev'lin Qu'ellar was only interrupted by the creature that fed on them, keeping their unconscious frames afloat in blood and sinew, nurturing them in a symbiotic pool. Grotesque flesh splayed across, nail and tooth protrusions hooking into the bodies that laid claim to the offerings of the drow whose intentions with the beast were unknown.

See and then make believe when your night is through

Among those silent within the pool a pair of limbs mangled and intertwined with the collection gripped in a shuddered and final attempt to free it's owner. Fingers curling inward around the emaciated limb of another body splayed across the midsection turned white in the struggle as blood poured from the digits to return to the pool, slipping near frictionless along the length of the shin until catching the knee and falling down upon a protruding claw of the dominating monster that encircled.

Looking for you

The sound of bone against glass was heard as the the struggling body fell limp against it's bed of taut grotesque growth that recognized the attempt to sever and instead began to claim the body further within. Blood collected around the porcelain face as the body sunk lower, sharp gasps of breath heard that was shallow in every draw, lips that parted as though to beg the gods for salvation though no word escaped. In the final exhale the eyes that blinked open widened as the pupils dilated until a hairline fracture like glass broke across the surface.

Through you
The frozen and broken floorboards of an abandoned cottage in the Cloud Peaks squeaked under load of a young armored man, his gaze to meet the heterochromatic lavender and blue gaze of the white haired elf that emerged from the mirror, only to disappear with her seconds later.

A chorus of familiar voices linger like a bitter talisman in silent evenings such as these, innocuous to those unknowing of frayed and abrupt, sometimes interwoven, chapters of his life but for him they were screaming beyond the cacophony of his distorted veneer of truth with names he'll soon forget. A quill hasn't traced his memories in years, vague and absent, talents of his vice slipping in and out from his consciousness appropriately embroidering where his emotions and logic were swallowed and something less benign took shape, no doubt evasive to garrulous scrutiny, but gave rise of the chisel and hammer against the rock of his mind he'll never recognize. The periphery of his focus pulsed a soft interrupted flicker of orange hues as a figure rounded the fire and approached, leaning forward from the exhausted blur to send a palm to meet his jaw and turn his attention slowly toward it, the lips pulled, pursed, and folded in languid and protracted cast, words that never escaped them to meet his ears.

His own lips parted, a struggled exhale to boil along the surface of an unidentified pain.

The eyes, were they blue?

His head angled back, gaze fixed upon the heavens.

Were they gold?

Fingers slowly uncurl from the empty needle fixed vial as his body became still.

The hypnagogic wrench of his right arm toward him was halted as his hand neared his chest. It had been long enough now that the onset of something unknown to others were starting to take it's place on the stage within his mind, a war internal obstructed only by the red leaf cigars he frequently dragged hot fumes from.

"You were saying you found her?" A voice calmly murmured across from him. "That she managed to return?"

Much of the cigar was obscured from view behind his lofted hand, pinched between index and thumb as it lingered mere inches from his lips. The large Sembite's dark gray gaze rose from the thin silver tendrils escaping from the end of the cigar and toward the speaker. "Yeah, something like that." The left palm lowered to his left thigh, elbow sent upward as the shoulder articulated, curling his frame forward with the right elbow finding it's place to the right knee. " As much as I can gather anyways. "

Blood glided slowly down the bottom of the wrist that came into focus as the figure before Vincent leaned forward, sending fingers around the handle of the porcelain cup on the small coffee table between them where a few drops would fall and spatter, trailing behind the withdrawal of the unfocused figure's hand back to them.

"Did she say anything to you yet? Tell you what happened to her?"

The Sembite angled his right hand toward the table, the tip of the middle finger dipping gently into the viscous and hot crimson before dragging slowly in obscure symbols across the surface. "Just that she's alive, that she's safe." Vincent mumbled near inaudibly, "That she's to depart for her family, live her life."

"Mm." The other figure opened with words that began to fade into noise.

The stained hand turned and brought the bloodied finger toward him, closer that he could find it in focus to study the reflective sheen as the beginning tremble at the tips started to manifest. Vincent articulated the shaking hand and brought the cigar to his lips, eyes closing as the embers at the tip illuminated brightly and held his breath.

"... but at least promise me you'll consider talking about this? You seem a little distraught." The voice of the unknown speaker across from him returned to his consciousness.

The former soldier's eyes opened, glancing to the fading view of the stain on his fingertips, then the missing crimson lines on the table before landing upon the pure white female standing behind the sitting Lathandarite whose red hued claws at his neck desperately plunged into the flesh with no effect. "I think I've found peace." Vincent exhaled sharply through his nostrils, leaning forward to flick ash of the cigar to a saucer upon the table then returned the cigar to his lips as his gaze narrowed at the fading woman. "I couldn't be happier..." he smiled damn near ear to ear behind the lingering smoke between them.

Night had fell upon the gathered throng, the distant stare of lover upon multicolored mask and hood donned by assailant who robbed her of her heart's counterpart was one of helplessness mingled with anger and despair. The space between them lies empty of the victim that once stood there now ripped free of the domain of mortals and thrusted to destination unknown - a space left to cold Coastal late season rains, a space left to the slow approach of supporters that encircled the space stunned yet by the abruptness of what they observed and the woman remaining that was incensed by her devotion. The southernly path near intersection of the Lion's Way was made sacred though none in presence would know it for some time, and with it the basis of what was to come.
The elder elfin creature turned from the structure owing its existence to his name and peered toward the diminutive silver haired Iliathor sister. It wasn't her exploration that caused him the subtle scowl but the brash impulse toward its application gave reason for his concern, and to some relief his assumptions of her focus at least should pivot her in natural course afar of ill matters and subsequent consequences. Rhys towered over her as he leaned forward, a narrowing of his gaze and immediate utterance of the singular inquiry, "Why?"

Fingertips brushed against her own brow, a growing grin on her own countenance only served to irritate him more before jeweled hand would drop to rest at her side, digits curled in to press nails against palm that owned them and release again. The silence continued to grow until broken again by the roll of his eyes and straightening of his posture, a slow exhale to join the ensemble. "There are limits in this world and you're dead set to topple over every one of them that you encounter, a chirping sparrow left as unguarded bait for hawk." He rounded past her and closed the distance between he and the pathway's edge that tapered down and toward stream that cut through Doron Amar. "A duet of poised bravado just for your ire and impatience." He folded his arms in stern disapproval of her. He knew within himself that she oft sided toward justification of acts for the means of accomplishing goals, awareness of her tendencies and impulses for swift resolution even at the cost of her reputation, and he knew she didn't need to say a single word.

"Stay safe" was his parting offer as conversation in history between the two over his concerns of parallels drawn between she and Selengil was made without reminding.

"Just stay safe."
"A chirping sparrow left as unguarded bait for hawk..." Those words were upon the elf girl's mind as lips traversed incantation and hands moved to withdraw spell component and urge somatic invocation. Someone dear to her was taken and the consideration of consequence ignored. Heat poured now from the portal she opened, the blast of sulfur and ash dried upon the blood on edge of invoking fingers, and as silver tendrils whipped past the frame of her face, a singular glance over shoulder toward the gathered group and the damned's lover, the first step within to risk her own soul would be hers and taken regardless of if joined by the masses.

Time slipped to incalculable hours, the battle weary that joined to the depths encircled the worn lone fallen Marshall as his lover swept in to embrace him and the elf swept into the backdrop of their spectators.