OOC: This may get heated...

"I'm not asking you nord I'm telling you, those jewels are no use to us!" Kiels voice became stern and angry. "I could drop you before you even knew what happened." Kiel said while shooting a violent gaze.

EDIT: Consider that happening before Forrestgumps post... didn't see it

"you're right Fanier" Dynter said shaking his head. "These are desperate times, we don't want to be broken up over petty bickering over jewels. I shall only take a handful of the precious, they shall not slow us." He ignored the Heated fool next to him and poured the Jewels back in the window. He took back the handful he hade offered Amiel and deposited it in his pocket. "Let us continue," He said "We most save as much time as we can before sundown."

Ic: Watching the debacle in which Dynter offered him jewels, and kiel and fanier quickly responded, Amiel sighed and said "Fine, take the jewels, no reason to let this get out of hand." Amiel was angry that the barbarian had broken his promise to not loot. He decided that Dynter was a man who followed his own lusts and passions more than anything, and could only be trusted if what he promised to do was within those constraints.

Amiel moved over to a weapons shop, but found that the door would not budge. Moving into the alleyway behind the shop, he found the back door bashed in. Amiel than drew his shortsword as he slowly progressed into the shop. The lights had gone out, and he would need to open the front door if he wanted to get any light on the subject. Tip toeing his way there (Careful to avoid any weaponry that might be jutting off a table or sitting on the floor) he eventually found where the front door should be. In front of it was a large cupboard, which Amiel turned over and pushed out of the way before opening the door. As light flowed in, he could better see the ssituation inside.

The main room of the store was filled with old food and other things. A cursory examination would indicate that a large group had been living in this room, but strangely there corpses were not present. A large track of blood led into the basemant, while a smaller track led upstairs, where there was also a lack of windows. Unfortunately, there was little in terms of weaponry, but Amiel did managed to find a high quality steel longsword, much better than his current one. Replacing his Steel longsword with the newer one, he rounded up the small collecction of shortswords that dotted the floor, and placed his old longsword and the other weapons into the wagon.

As he looked at the wagon, Amiel decided that the group should get a good meal in before midday. Approaching Fanier, Amiel was quick to ask a food related question.

"Hey Fanier, I'm thinking the group could use a late breakfast, how 'bout it?"

Fanier was glad the little confrontation was over. When Amiel spoke of breakfast, Fanier remebered he hadn't eaten in two days, since that last time at the tavern.

"Sure," he replied to Amiel as his stomach growled. "Breakfast would be great."

ooc: Look who's back!

ic: Trisha awoke to sunlight in her face and groaned a little, blocking it with her arm. Her eyes opened a little, squinting in the light, and through her overexposed vision she saw the other two Argonians. The newest one whose name she could not recall was sitting up and coughing. Radek was curled up on the floor a couple feet from her, still asleep apparently, and her pack was still where she'd left it, as she'd left it. At least nobody tried to steal my stuff. Not that I have anything worth stealing, but..

Stretching and yawning, something that looked interesting from an Argonian, her tongue curling as she yawned and eyes squeezing shut. When done, her mouth snapped shut and she pushed herself to her feet, grunting at the stiffness in her body. Sleeping as she had did terrible things to the spine and Trisha could certainly feel it, having to crack her neck a good few times to get it to feeling right again. Gingerly stepping over Radek's body, Trish leaned on the window a moment, looking outside at the ruins and death, wondering why she couldn't make herself feel anything for the people who'd been horribly slain in the streets. Her face twisted as she thought that maybe this ordeal was hardening her heart to misery. I.. no that can't be. Maybe I still think, somewhere in me, that I'll wake up in my warm bed with mom sitting by the edge with a cup of tea and some breakfast. I don't really believe this is real. It doesn't feel real.. but.. like a nightmare. A really long nightmare.

The plant on the sill nuzzled the leathers of her arm and she looked down when it gurgled at her for not paying attention to it. Reaching her fingers up, she stroked it gently like a cat, her clawed fingers as gentle as could be. As her body woke up and that warm, numb feeling dissipated, she realized her scales itched from the water trapped under her armor. Sighing, she began unbuckling it, but stopped, not wanting these two to see her bare skin. Even though her chest bore nothing.. private.. the thought of being exposed to anyone in any way made her uneasy. I can do it if they think I'm Tiim-Kast, but not as myself. Trisha sighed in her head. I'm so pathetic..

As Xa-Raku woke up, she stared at her dresser, wanting to get out of her armor and into something dry and comfortable, but unable to bear what she'd have to do to do so. With a languid, hissing sigh, she removed her gauntlets and knelt by Radek, nudging his shoulder gently. "Radek? It's morning. I.. I know you're probably really tired, but.. we should.." A lump formed in her throat that she had to swallow before she could make herself say what she needed to. She knew they needed to get as far away as they could, but.. somehow, the faint possibility that she was leaving her parents trapped somewhere to die hurt. Knowing she needed to leave the only real place she ever felt safe and loved hurt. But she knew that getting eaten alive would hurt a lot worse. "We should pack up and leave as soon as we can." Trisha forced herself to finish after but a small pause.

OOC: Aulakauss, that was brilliant, your writing makes it seem like I'm reading a book.

IC: Dynter's stomach grumbled right on que and he said "Um...I feel like some Necr-os, remember the motto; Just like ordinary Os but regurgitated after being eaten and then resurrected into a delicous undead monstrosity" He smiled, he hoped for once they'd realise when he was joking. He walked back to the wagon and pulled out some rice and fruit, the traditional cyrodilic breakfast. Served bland. He also found some oats in the wagon and said "Any one porridge? It might take longer to cook but it's tastier then this rice crap."

Trisha's last sentence reminded Xa-raku of how little he knew what to do next. There were a hundred different options they might take, and he couldn't begin to tell which was the best course of action. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and slowly stood up. He took a few deep breaths, trying to form his confusion into words.

"Where will we go?" He asked her. He wanted to add something else, but drew a blank.

OOC:Grumps, fanier ate steak and eggs while in the castle in cheydinhal around sunrise
IC: Amiel did not get Dynter's joke in the least, and looked incredibly puzzled.

"O's?"

Amiel took the oats from Dynter, and then took some cinnamon from the wagon.

"I'd serve something better than porridge, but I think we should use the meats for an early dinner, as we're going to need the energy to survive the horde. Fortunately, Porridge can taste decent with some spices added to it, but what really helps is a wee bit of booze!"

Amiel went ito the weapons shop and pulled out some planks of wood and a chair. Taking the gathered wood, he put them in a pile in the middle of the street, and then set up a pot above it. he then went into a alleyway, where there was a well. Raising up the bucket from the well, he cut the filled bucket from the ropes and brought the bucket back to the pot. Filling the pot with water from the bucket, Amiel than took a bottle of whiskey from the wagon and poured a small amount into the pot. He then stirred the whiskey-water mix until it was well mixed. Taking his leave of the pot, Amiel went back to the wagon and got some salt from one of the meat bags. Placing the oats into the pot, he than set about starting a fire. After some amount of effort using some stick like splinters of wood, he managed to start a fire. As the chair and wooden planks caught fire, the pot and its contents began to heat up, wafting a somewhat decent smell through the streets. Amiel then sotok one of the cinnamon sticks he had gotten from the wagon and began stirring what would soon be porridge.

After a few minutes, Amiel dropped in some salt and some ground up cinnamon and began stirring that in with the cinnamon stick. After a small amount of time, Amiel drew his sword and used it to push down some of the burning material. The flames lost some of their height, and one could reasonably guess that the pot was no longer being heated to the same degree. Returning his sword to his sheath, Amiel entered one of the local shops and came back out with a ladel, and some bowels. Removing the pot from the fire, he used the ladel to put some porridge into each of the bowels.

"Digg in."

Radek's somewhat peaceful dreaming was interrupted with a hand on his shoulder, and a gentle voice whispering "Radek? It's morning. I.. I know you're probably really tired, but.. we should..", then silence. Radek slowly opened his eyes, not really seeing anything at first, he rubbed them slightly, then looked upward. "We should pack up and leave as soon as we can." said Trisha, seeming to force it out. Radek senses then kicked in, and immediately, his stomach growled for food. He forced himself up against the wall, and placed a hand on his stomach. "Where will we go?" came a question from across the room. Radek looked over at their new room mate, Xa-Raku.

He didn't kill us....I suppose that's good..., He was about to answer Xa-Raku's question, but his stomach lurched painfully, causing him to wince. When he recovered, he looked directly at Xa-Raku, ''There's no where to go...'' Radek said pitifully. ''The Corprus are bound to be on their way to the rest of the cities...'' He put his head on the wall, and and let out a small groan as he tried to move his legs. It felt as if every bone in his body was broken, he attempted to stand up, placing on of his arms of the shelf, to try and use if as a stand. He bent his leg slightly and put barely any weight on it before it began screaming in pain. He let out a loud whimper, before letting go of the shelf, and taking the weight off his leg. He placed one of his hand on his leg, then began rolling up his pant sleeve to get a better look at what was wrong.

As his pant-sleeve neared his lower thigh, it seemed as if a heated sword was being stuck into Radek's leg. He let out a few rapid yelps, before revealing his thigh. Covering his entire thigh, was, an incredibly large discolored bruise. His natural scale-tone was shades of green, but the bruise was an ugly purple. He groaned loudly, ''Thats not a good sign...'' He mumbled, then leaned his head against the wall, and shut his eyes. Oh gods....what now?

Fanier dug a spoon into the porridge. "Holy [censored], Amiel," he told his friend. "This is delicious." He jammed the spoon once more into the bowl. It was so good he had actually put down his peach to focus on the hot porridge.

"Amiel," Fanier said with his mouth full, so his speech was muffled a bit. "Where'd you learn to cook?"

IC: As Amiel happily devoured his own concotion of spices, booze, and oats, fanier asked him a qwuestion. Thinking on it for a moment, he decided to answer the question truthfully.

"Well when I was a boy I would skip my lessons to hang out with the plantaition servants. They taught me how to cook."

Fanier listened to Amiel as he shoveled more porridge into his mouth. "Really, hmm." he said, intrigued. As he finished his bowl he picked up his peach and stood up. "Well then, hurry up and finish guys, we've got to get moving. We'll search the market district first, then the Arcane University."

"And Dynter," he turned to the big guy. "Don't hide anything. We've got to share the loot." Fanier got up and put his bowl back in the wagon.

OOC: Hey Spider pig PMed me, and to make a long story short he won't be able to post for a while. So he's Pming me his posts so I can post them for him.

IC:
Dynter

Dynter looked at Fanier. "I would not hide anything from either of you. As partners, we all deserve equal shares. If I find an object that is of particular use to me, but not to you, I will keep it. However, all other items are to be pooled towards the good of the group. Speaking of our group, what do you think we should call ourselves. The Fellowship of something?. What do the two of you think would be good idea?" He asked. "Also," He commented to Amiel "I'm not a big fan of porridge, but that was dilicous. You spent your time well learning to cook. All your skill in sword craft cannot save you when you are dieing of hunger."



Dynter stood up. He looked around. This was a ghost town now. Rubbish was thrown across the streets, a calmness resonated around the city. It felt like a kind of Twilight. A cold wind blew through the air. It was hard to imagine the bustling city Dynter remembered becoming this wasteland. "Well, time to move on." He said to his companions.

The monk had too many questions to count. He barely knew what corprus was, he had spent most of his life in Black Marsh, and so knowledge of current events was a commodity he had in short supply. Corprus he had heard of only in stories from the freed slaves, and if the oblivion gates had not opened, he would never have found out about the Emperor's assassination until years later. What he did know was that Corprus came from Morrowind, so the best course of action would be to move in the opposite direction. No, wait. He thought, It may be wiser to travel into Morrowind to find out the cause of the new outbreak. He sighed as he was again caught in decisive limbo.

"We don't have enough information," Xa-raku half-pondered, half-complained, "We do not know how many other cities have been destroyed. This might be the first one to be attacked, or it may be the only piece of civilization left in Tamriel." He cracked his knuckles idly while he spoke.

In lieu of something actually productive to do, Xa-raku began stretching in preparation for the running and jumping he would no doubt be doing in a rather short time.

"Can the corprus swim? If not, they may find themselves overwhelmed in Black Marsh. The fleshflies will certainly have their way with them."

He abruptly stopped stretching and asked them, "Apologies, but I still do not know your names."

IC: Amiel was glad to hear complements about his cooking, and it seemed to make the porridge more delicious. As he listened to Dynter's talk of the loot, Amiel felt uninterested, but when he said they needed a name, he laughed.

"A name? Isn't the whole corpus monsters taking over the world thing more important than making us sound like those knights of the thorn hacks in cheydinhal? IF we must have a name, I guess we could call ourseves the 'Fellowship of individuals who are found to be lacking in pustules or other signs of infection with the malignant disease of Corpus.'"

Amiel took the cooking pot he had used and went over to a well. Drawing some water (from a different well than the one where he cut the rope) he took the water and rinsed out the pot, trying to gets what was left of the porridge out. Using his nails to scraqe off the last bits, Amiels fingers were visibly sore. f''ing oats. Amiel then threw the bucket back into the wagon.

"What time is it?" Amiel said offhandedly as he looked up at the sky. IT was quite clear that they still had a good amount of daylight left, but it was not clear to Amiel how many hours it had been since daybreak. Looking around the market district, Amiel spotted the Black horse courier building. Going inside, Amiel rummaged through the various newspapers that were scattered on the floor and found one that was interesting. Reading the main article aloud, Amiel said "Morrowind goes silent, possible invasion by muffins?" Taking a gander at this preposterous joke article, Amiel chuckled to himself before throwing away the newspaper and leaving the building.

Kiel ate his porridge easily. He has had nothing that good in a long time. "I agree this is very good poridge." He took a final sip and realized the porridge was gone. Kiel couldn't help but chuckle at the talk of naming there group. Most of the times he hated Dynters bizzare humor but this time it was quite funny to Kiel. Perhaps it was finaly reaching there goal of getting to the Imperial City that had made him into a lighter mood. Regardless of the whole city being empty. He used to visit here often, in fact this was the last place he had been before he had met up with the group. He remember there used to be nowhere to go where there would be little people.

Kiel heard Amiel ponder the amount of daylight they had left. "I think it's still before noon." Kiel replied briefly. Amiel then read an article about Morrowind going silent. Muffins would be a welcome alternative. Kiel smiled gently. He stood up and followed Amiel out the door. He had already gotten some arrows from the weapon shop, that's about all he needed. He knew that Dynter was going to have his hands all over any gold that they would find.

Fanier went back to the wagon, and rummaged through the assortment of food, weapons, and supplies that was strewn about the floor. After a few minutes, he pulled out his elven shortsword, and began to strap it to his back. He didn't plan on running into any corprus today, but in these times, you had to be careful.

After the sword was securely fixed to his lower back, Fanier returned to the group. "Let's get moving," he told the others. "We'll need every minute of daylight we can get."

OOC: The RP is dyin.

Alas, cruel irony.

NOOOOO!!!!

POST! POST! POST!

POST NOW YOU [censored]S!

OOC: Sorry for the outburst. I'm gonna go ahead and get us to the arcane university now, just to get things moving. I'll assume that you all get in the wagon.

IC: "Waylas!" Fanier called to the front of the wagon. "Let's get moving! We're going to the Arcane University!" Waylas promptly started the wagon forward at a steady trot. Fanier relaxed in the corner of the wagon.

About twenty minutes passed, and they were upon the gates to the Arcane University. Fanier was apalled. He had seen the University before, but never like this. The entrance tower was toppled, and large bouders of Ayleid stone were scattered over the ground. The two gates on either side of the tower were town down, mangled in the most abstract shapes. The ground was scorched, and al the trees were burnt down. Fanier coud tell that the mages must have put up quite a fight.

"Waylas, bring us up to the entrace tower. We'll search the Arch-Mage's quarters." called Fanier from the back of the wagon. Waylas pulled up the the front door of the tower, which was knocked off one of its hinges.

"All right, everyone out!" Fanier said to the group, jumping out the back of the wagon.

As the wagon moved towards the Arcane university, Amiel wondered what they would find there. His question seemed to be answered though as they approached the now ruined University. It was a shocking site, the University had been destroyed, and in some areas it seemed to have been brought down to its very foundations. Amiel did not know what to think about it, but within moments he realised that they had no chance of stopping the horde if the mages guild couldn't defeat them after doing all of this. If the horde can't be defeated, then our only hope is a cure, or a toxin.

Upon verbal urging from Fanier Amiel left the wagon, and entered into the central tower. As he entered, he again noticed the level of destruction. The wall across from him was partially collapsed, revealing the university's orerry. Most of the room featured toppled furniture, and a large collection of blood splatters combined with about three corpses. As he looked around, he could find no method of ascending the tower, but did notice a glowing pad. Stepping on it, he was teleported to the next level of the tower.

OOC: Spider pig's post.

IC: Dynter scanned the Arcane university as the wagon came to a stop. The ground was scorched and some of the buildings were almost completely destroyed.

Hearing Fanier, Dynter jumped off the Wagon and walked up the charred marble steps of the University. Walking through the hole where they were once doors, Dynter came upon the lobby of the Tower. 3 Charred bodies lay across the floor. Dynter felt unnerved at the sight. He looked around the room just in time to catch a glimpse of Amiel dissipearing through a mystical platform.

Dynter had worked for the Mage's guild as a mercenary before and knew that that Platform led to the council chambers...and in the council chambers there was a door leading to the Guild treasury...With that in mind, Dynter moved across the room and stood on the Platform. He was surrounded with Arcane light for a second, and then he felt himself traveling through the void.

Fanier followed the others through the portal, and found himself in the Mage's Guild Council chamber. A body was slumped over the central round table, others were lying against bookshelves or sprawled on the floor. The stone walls were scorched and crumbling. The entire ceiling was gone, as the upper part of the tower had fallen to the ground. Farther into the chamber, a large section of wall had crumbled, leaving a gigantic hole in the side of the tower.

Fanier walked over to the hole and looked over. He could see the upper part of the tower, in several pieces on the ground. And for the first time he saw the rest of the Arcane University.

Bodies littered the ground, both human and corprus alike. Doors to the buildings had been knocked down. And almost the entire ground, including the stone walkways as well as the grass, was stained with blood. Blood covered walls, doors, trees, gates, everything.

Fanier walked back to Amiel and Dynter. "Let's start searching."

Kiel looked around, shocked at the bloodshed filling the place. We are all screwed. Kiel looked around for some healing potions, those will help alot.

Kiel turned to Fanier. "After we are done finding items of use, where will we go?" Kiel sounded as calm as anyone can be but in the inside he was scared and angry. He did not know what they did do now because they were betting on the Imperial City being safe. And after seeing the full effects of the corpus in the city, he wanted to kill every corpus in all of nirn. He didn't know if it was possible, but he wanted to destroy all of them, and save tamriel.

IC: Amiel surveyed the damage to the Arcane university proper. A ruined field of corpses and blood. It was a shocking site, the kind of thing that one expects from a fire and brimstone sermon. As Kiel asked Fanier where they should go, Amiel decided to chime in and answer.

"WHere we go depends upon what we want to do about the corpus infestation. Tell me Kiel, do you want to survive, or do you want to find a poison? That Calandras bastard was probably right in that we'd have to find Divayth Fyr if we wanted to create a poison or cure. The other option is to head either north or west. We can go to skyrim under the assumption that the infestation is manageable in colder climates, or we can go west in an attempt to assist in mounting a 'valiant last stand.' All options are longshots, but attempting to find Divayth Fyr involves going to morrowind, and if the infestation originated there we will either face an abandoned monument to civilization or the largest horde we've ever witnessed."

Amiel continued to look down upon the ruins. Despite the fact that they needed supplies, the archives might provide useful information about corpus beasts, but the scrolls that were housed here could help in a fight. Amiel had to choose, shall he search for weapons or knowledge?