Introducing the first main character- Tharsis the Orc!
Bandits are the bane of my existence.
Don't get me wrong, hunting them has been a lucrative business. Tracking them down, smashing through their ranks with nothing but a hammer and collecting a sizable bounty for my efforts was, for lack of a better word, thrilling. It certainly makes the mead taste better when I'm regaling whatever bar I'm in with tales of my, somewhat gory, heroics.
It was the first step, the tracking them down part, that currently left me quite frigid. Literally.
After getting a tip from one of the local farmers about a possible bandit sighting near the base of one of the many, many mountains near Whiterun, I was able to narrow down exactly where this particular group of bandits had been holed up. Unfortunately, they were stationed near the very top.
As I continued to scale the ever inclining slope of this gigantic slab of rock and snow, I couldn't help but to pick up faint noises echoing from above. They almost sounded like battle cries and possibly... roars? From an animal?
It sounded just like a bear, but that'd be ridiculous. If these idiots went and tried to set up camp in a bears cave then I probably had a fairly easy job of cleaning up to do once I got up there, but I'm never that lucky.
As I grasped the slippery edge of a jutted out boulder, I peered over just in time to see that today was, indeed, my lucky day.
My mouth gaped at the sight of the largest bear I'd ever seen tearing out the throat of what I assumed to be the bandits leader based on his armor which seemed sturdier than the armor his very dead teammates were wearing.
He'd probably lasted the longest because of it.
The sounds of the bandit leader choking on his own blood while holding his gashed throat and the bear letting out a triumphant roar let me know the confrontation came to an abrupt end. I could have left just then, the bandits were good and dead (served them right for thinking they could take refuge in a bear's cave and turning it into their lair), but I needed to get proof that I took care of the bandits in order to claim the bounty. However, there seemed to be at least 950 pounds of pissed off brown bear impeding my progress.
Luckily, he hadn't noticed me yet, so I figured I could sneak past him.
I got as low as I possibly could for a man of my impressive height, at first I stuck to the thin cover of rocks, then some small plants and when I ran out of stuff to hide behind I'd gotten to the point where I was about 5 feet away from the bandit leader's corpse anyway. The bear, meanwhile, had moved to the very lightly armored corpse of a female bandit who'd had her torso ripped open. After tearing away her cloak, he started to feast on her lower abdomen… a fairly unpleasant but not too uncommon sight in my line of work.
I finally got to the remains of the bandit leader, thankfully he was so armored up the bear ended up skipping him entirely. His body was in pristine condition, save for the giant gash on his throat, and all of his gear was perfectly salvageable. I quickly got to work, looting his pockets of the stolen gems and golden rings that were there. After that was done I quietly removed his blood soaked steel helmet and placed it in my pack, easy proof that the bandits were killed… one way or another.
Now that I'd gotten sufficient evidence that the bandits were dead I started on my way back down the mountain, the bear was almost done with his… meal, and I was extremely lucky that he hadn't noticed me yet. As I swung my leg over the edge of the path back down, I took a moment to look back at the scene… and it was my undoing.
Near the bear I spied a particular item that I'd been looking for desperately for the past month. A giant steel battle-axe, with an enchantment no less! It glowed with a reddish hue, it's handle, which was embedded in a patch of pure white snow, seemed to have an inscription carved into it. The blade of the weapon was inscribed in a similar fashion, but from where I was I couldn't make out what it said.
I couldn't just leave it there, it was as if it was calling to me. I placed my leg back on solid ground and moved over to a small cliff that was situated a few yards away. I knew eventually the bear had to go back into his cave and sleep off his dinner, and when he did I'd just make a mad dash for the weapon. Easy as pie.
*Two Hours Later*
Ok, so I've watched him eat five people… not a big deal, I've seen worse, and pace around sniffing the ground trying to track down what might've been my scent which is why this cliff idea was smart on my part, but, unfortunately, that's where my smart ideas came to an end.
Two hours of me reading the same books and freezing my ass off while waiting for this bear to go and hibernate was starting to eat away at my nerves, that and the fact that I was doing all of this for a damned weapon. Alas, I'd already spent so much time waiting him out that I might as well-
Is he biting on it?
"No… NO… "NOOOO!" I screamed out loud, as I now saw that the bear was in fact chewing on the handle of the aforementioned axe, ruining the inscription.
"You stupid beast! You've eaten already, go take your nap!" I yelled, but the bear paid no mind to my outburst, instead opting to sink his teeth even further into the handle, as if it were some sort of chew toy.
Anyone else would've left then, leaving the bear to its devices, but I'm not just anyone else. Although it made no sense, somehow I'd figured the bear was trying to spite me and it made my orcish blood boil, with my sharp front teeth clenching in frustration I grabbed the hilt of my beat-up looking iron warhammer and drew it out, it's metal scraped against the holding satchel on my back making a chinking noise that caused the bear to finally look up at me. I jumped off the cliff, landing with a thud on the snow below, my rage making me ignore the minor pain in my knees from the fall.
"Well?! This is what you wanted right? A real fight with a real warrior?!" I shouted, clearly having lost my mind, the bear roared its response, scraping his sharp claws against the snow and bearing his wickedly sharp teeth in an attempt to intimidate me.
It didn't work, and so we stood there, sizing each other up. The atmosphere was thick with blood lust, I was determined to kill this bear and skin it to stave off the damnable cold it had made me sit through.
After about three minutes of snarling with the bear I decided to move first, I lunged forward and crashed my hammer powerfully down into his back. Barely fazed by the attack, the bear responded in kind by swiping at me wildly. I dunked under his giant furry paw and aimed my hammer at the beast's head, hoping to end this quickly. The grizzly menace saw it coming, though, and jumped back just in time to avoid the blow, only to leap forward again to deliver a slash to my unprotected flesh, gashing my chest and providing a sizable cut.
"Damn I've got to be more careful" I said aloud, I held a hand to my wound as backed, unknowingly, into a corner. The bear followed me and swiped at me twice more as I stepped back, hitting the wall behind me. Although the first swipe bit into my cheek I was able to catch the second with my hammer and knock the bear off balance long enough to get a good shot at his gut. This time the bear seemed visibly shaken from the impact and staggered back a safe distance, slowly pacing around me.
This was going to take a while.
*Five more minutes and another standoff later*
At that point we were both fairly tired, and I could see the bear thinking about whether he should still fight or leave, I couldn't explain it but he gave me this… look. A look that asked if we really had to do this, and honestly I was asking myself the same question, did I really want to kill this bear? It was just defending its territory, and it sort of saved me the trouble of smashing a bunch of bandits up.
Could I just walk away and trust he wouldn't slash my back open and eat me like I'm a late dinner?
In a show of uncertain trust, I started pacing back slowly in the direction of the axe. I placed my old warhammer down and picked up the enchanted treasure I'd sought after this entire time. As I held it up, I saw it shine even brighter in the dawning sunlight. Then I looked over to the bear, who was still observing me from a safe distance. I sheathed the new axe to show I understood our silent truce, and what happened next was something I couldn't believe with my own eyes.
The bear turned away from me and walked back to his cave, when he got inside he laid down with his back to me, let out a huge yawn and fell into a deep slumber almost instantly.
I blinked twice, and then again. When I was sure that all of this was real, I smiled and nodded my head slightly in the bears direction. I left immediately, with the story still fresh in my mind and a new powerful axe on my back.