And now for the second chapter, where you get to see real ACTION!... :P
Empress of Death
Tylermech66
The next morning Neka woke up from the dirty, matted bed and started gathering her new loot. The rags she was currently wearing would never be enough to protect her.
Walking through the mine, she stripped a female bandit close to her dimensions of her hide armor. It wasn't great but it would do. then she stripped a few of the banded iron pieces from the chieftain. The Pauldrons, gauntlets, and the calve pieces. Any of the other pieces didn't fit.
Picking up a simple steel sword and, thank the gods, a green cloth hood. Neka left her little haven before another bandit clan could decide to make it their home, her new coin pouch jingling with an excess of gold.
Walking down the pathway towards the light smoke she could see in the sky. Neka eventually made it to a hamlet that, for some strange reason, only had a short wall on both ends of the road, but it didn't encircle the entire hamlet. It confused her the utter uselessness of the wall.
Maybe it was a Nord thing...
Anyway, she realized that her gathering of makeshift armor may have been useless when she saw the blacksmith working away at his forge.
Neka walked up to the blacksmith and shook her coin pouch.
"May I use your forge Sirrah? As you can see, my current armor is blatantly useless." The nord man chuckled and nodded, not complaining about the amount of armor as he would have let her use the forge for free, but Neka did not know that (imperial smithies are far less generous)
Looking up at the sun, she nodded to herself and decided that the day would last long enough for her to make some basic steel armor. Working up the forge Neka glanced around at the pieces of armor hanging from the rafters for inspiration and got to work using the Nord style steel armor as a base.
After several long hours, an impressed Alvor looked over her armor.
"Impressive, you been smithing long lass?" Neka shrugged, nord style armor was remarkably easy to make, much less complicated parts. It would protect less but it would do.
"I got some lessons here and there, thinking about improving my skills eventually but I havn't had the time. Maybe I can start soon." Hmm.
Anyway, her new armor was basically a set of steel armor. But the, rather dumb looking in her opinion, pauldrons were replaced with thick leather half mantles that stopped just short of her elbows. They each had a simple engraving that depicted a stylized skull over the shoulders, using a nordic design for it to match her armor.
The lower part of the armor resembled the nord plate armor, but it had some thick protective leather to make a sort of coattail extending from under the waist armor, resembling the ends of some robes she'd seen. (An: think the coattails of Ezio's suits from Assassin's Creed except thick leather.)
Her feet were mostly bare (She blushed at that part when asked, she hated shoes), but they had a thick flap of leather over the top of her feet with a strap under the arch of her feet, mostly to stop her armor from chafing from the calf armor, of which had the upper part of the imperial steel armor.
The left gauntlet had been made with very thick slabs of steel, to act as a shield while she used her magic. If the opposing weapon was either steel or a lesser material she could just grab the blade and stab the enemy with her other hand. The fingers were thick and had sharp ends for ripping flesh.
Also she had pieced together a loose leather hood to give her an intimidating aura while protecting her head from scratches, cuts, and water. Like all the leather parts, it had some stylized swirling patterns.
She bought a large swath of leather that she stitched a black bear fur into and made it into a thick, light armor fur cloak that extended to her ankles, raising the very large hood over her head she smiled to the blacksmith who was nodding to himself, he had just been inspired for a similar armor she knew it.
The thick leather of the cloak was engraved with swirling nordic designs mixed in with a few well hidden stylized skulls.
And finally, she quickly threw together a large leather satchel and duffel bag. The satchel would be at her side under the cloak but the duffel bag would be slung from her back.
"Thank you, this is much more comfortable." He smirked and looked to the armor.
"Just so you know, most Nord blacksmiths will let you use the forge free of charge, but I wouldn't refuse a good amount of gold." Neka chuckled and decided to keep that in mind as she left for the general store, she needed some potions as she didn't have the materials to make them herself at the moment.
Upon entering the store Neka immediately noticed the somber air, then the argument between siblings brought her to the counter.
"And again I will not let you go traipsing into a ruin full of undead to retreat it! If anything I'll pay a mercenary, end of story!" Coughing lightly into her hand, Neka caught the siblings' attention.
"I need some health and magicka potions, if you have them... oh, and could you show me any spellbook that you have on hand?" The man shooed his sister away and got to work gathering the materials. He laid them on the counter and Neka, curious, looked over the names and effects of the spell books.
It appeared that Nordic spells were designed less for finesse than they were for power. She liked that. The adept level cyrodilic spells she knew were not as powerful as the apprentice level Nordic spells. It made her wonder what spells she could find in Morrowind.
Of course, she already knew a few of the Nordic spells, fireball and flame cloak and flame rune, but otherwise her spells were Cyrodilic.
"If you are interested in magic I believe the College of Winterhold has a vast knowledge collected, never been there myself but I have heard good, and bad of course, things about it." Neka nodded gratefully, woe be the person who was rude to the person serving them.
Either way, she spent most of the last of her gold on all the basic spellbooks and a good amount of potions and a Dwarven dagger, useful things, superbly durable and good as a weapon and a multi use tool. Then her curiosity got the better of her.
"What was it you were arguing about?" The imperial, Lucan she believed, looked embarrassed.
"Well, it's a tad embarrassing. You see I used to have this large, golden claw that I would leave on the counter as a decoration and ice breaker. A conversation piece if you will. It brought a few more customers than usual to my store. But recently it's been stolen! Some bandits came in the dead of night and took it up to Bleak Falls Barrow. I don't know why, it wasn't worth much more than anything else here, guess because it was made of gold and looked more so." Rubbing his chin, he looked at Neka up and down.
"I have a proposition, if you could retrieve my claw I'd be willing to pay you three time's it's worth plus some more potions, what say you?" Neka glanced into her now almost empty coin pouch and nodded, she needed the money.
"Good! I must warn you, undead tend to crawl in those crypts, the Nord dead are buried there I believe. Uh, the Nords call them Draugr, be careful." While this would make most other people less sure of the quest, Neka suddenly was very interested in it.
You see, she was a, rather skilled if she said so herself, necromancer. Her two main focuses in magic were death and fire (she adores fire...), and she was always interested in new, different death magic techniques.
Her own goal in life was to make herself into a perfect lich, but keep her soul, or something similar, immortality at least, without being bound to a daedric prince.
It was a long and dangerous goal that would take her years but it was a goal nonetheless.
Oh, and a side goal to figure out how to raise headless undead, it was a lost art.
Anyway, she quickly left for the Barrow and, with a new fire in her eyes, climbed the mountain.
Neka hummed to herself as she walked up the steps. Her satchel was already jingling with gold from that tower she raided. It wasn't much but it was a start. Plus she had some loot in her bag.
She was glad she made the cloak though as the biting winds of skyrim buffeted her as she climbed. She was Solstheim born and used to the cold, but only a pure nord could deal with this with a smile.
Good thing she liked the cold, in comparison to the heat at least.
But before she could lament more an arrow thumped into the ground right next to her, raising her arms she readied a fire in her left hand ready to try her new spells.
A war cry echoed through the blizzard and she could make out a charging figure. Unsheathing her sword Neka sprinted towards the figure and just as he was about to swing down his iron greatsword she raised her armored hand, grabbed the blade jolting her to the bone and she stabbed her shortsword into his heart.
He, in his dying breaths, took out his dagger and tried to stab her but she simply stepped back and watched him die, it takes a while to die most of the time she had noticed.
Quickly rifling through his pockets for a few pieces of gold she continued and an arrow slammed into her armored leg, luckily the steel had bounced it away but still she cursed her forgetfulness.
Wreathing herself in a cloak of fire Neka charged again, the bandit tried to shoot her but she was too fast for him to aim at. Finally she slammed into him but she had only stabbed him in the kidney, meaning he'd still function but would die eventually. He kneed her away but this gave her the chance to throw a fireball at his face. Despite herself his panicked and pain filled screams made her smirk, just a little. Finally she ended his suffering by stabbing him in the neck with her dagger, where the head connects to the spine.
One more bandit was guarding the large iron doors so she picked up a bow and carefully aimed at her face, the arrow was let loose and she died almost instantly, only letting out a short scream before dying.
She unstrung the longbow and placed it around her body along with a quiver of iron arrows. Walking up to the large iron doors she let out a long breathe, then pushed them open.
Ok! Just so you know I COULD have made this longer but I decided not to, just so I can come out with regular updates (Yay!)
A fun fact, Neka started out as a character for a side story I was planning to write to experiment with an uber evil character, but she evolved slowly in my brainbox into a relatable character until she wasn't in the "Bad guy" class anymore and more into the "Rather dark magnificent bastard" class :P