grandpa skull and fiona

[22:09] <@SpaceThor> Braganca, de Maciel land
[22:10] <@SpaceThor> It's been long months since Fiona left home, grandpa Edmund in tow. Long months dodging bandits, sleeping in forests, not bathing nearly enough...it's enough to almost push you back home. Almost.
[22:11] <Nemi> Almost. Besides, the bandits Fiona and Edmund DIDN'T dodge had /good stuff/. Enough that when she'd find a nice spring somewhere, she'd be able to bathe and neaten up, have a bite of mostly edible food, and pretend it was just a camping trip with grandpa.
[22:13] <@SpaceThor> Not that he'd let you think that. "So, when are you going to train today?" The skull yammers, green lights in its eyes glowing when it's angry.
[22:16] <Nemi> "I was getting to it!" Fiona whines. She is a pale and willowy thing, perpetually in the gangly-awkward stage yet freakishly strong despite her build. Her wavy red hair is tugged back into a loose ponytail and a loose traveling cloak is still wrapped about her. She'd taken to sleeping in her traveling clothes in the little canvas tent, cooking up breakfast of ground hardtack in water to make
[22:16] <Nemi> a crude porridge. "I still have to eat before I do anything, granddad.."
[22:18] <@SpaceThor> "No you don't. I once killed six men before breakfast, and not these scrawny bandits or idiot goblins you're used to fighting. I was even younger than you when I did it too."
[22:22] <Nemi> "Yeees, but granddad.." She gestured to the cave behind the waterfall she'd taken refuge in. The mist prevented her fire's low embers from drawing attention, and the solid walls offered security. And the woodsmanship skills she'd honed on the road these last moons told her that the bear that lived here was long gone- but its scent would ward away most wild beasts. A perfect place. "I don't
[22:22] <Nemi> /have/ six men to kill, so I want to eat up while I can, okay?"
[22:23] <@SpaceThor> The skull sighs as best he can. "Kids today are so lazy."
[22:25] <@SpaceThor> "Anyway, where are we, exactly."
[22:26] <Nemi> Fiona humphs. "We're in Braganca. Since the hunting is good and the bandits aren't too thick, I'm guessing this is someone's forest. Soooo. Possibly a chance to get work." She fetched a wooden spoon from her pack from where it lay near the wall, leaning over to take a spoonful of the miserable porridge. The earwigs added protein and crunch, at least, and being in the wilds for so long made
[22:26] <Nemi> her less bothered by things that would have disgusted the girl she was.
[22:27] <@SpaceThor> "Braganca...how far east are we?"
[22:29] <Nemi> "Nnnnnot /very/, I think. Around central. Why?" Fiona had since given up on mapping her routes, instead trusting to her own woodsmanship to recognize her location by heart rather than by parchment. It worked well for her.
[22:31] <@SpaceThor> "If it's anything like it was when I traveled through here, the border shouldn't be too far east of here. And if the border's there, there'll be soldiers ready for war!"
[22:31] <@SpaceThor> "Finish eating that porridge, we're heading east with haste to find you a REAL challenge."
[22:33] <Nemi> "Pirjahat's army prrrobably wouldn't be happy at a 'heathen necromancer' running around, so I guess I'd be working with Braganca, right?" Fiona rubs her chin, brows arching as she gulps down the rest of the meal. Fortunately, her little rudimentary campsite was easily broken down- the canvas she used as a 'tent' could be used to bundle up her bedroll and other camping supplies, and then she'd
[22:33] <Nemi> just need to huck her pack and get moving. She'd be up and gone within ten minutes.
[22:33] <@SpaceThor> "Hah, working for. You'll be fighting the strongest of all of them!"
[22:35] <Nemi> "Oh! Even better! Go and challenge their elites and.. What then?" She refilled her waterskin from the water pool just outside, heedless of the spray catching her hair and face from proximity to the waterfall, then washed out the bowl with the same.
[22:36] <@SpaceThor> "Kill all of them, then find even stronger foes!"
[22:37] <@SpaceThor> "You act like you have no idea how you get stronger. Some people even go around looking for large rats or housecats to get their start."
[22:38] <@SpaceThor> "Of course, those days were different. Wizards were incapable of remembering things. They had to write everything down, but they still had it made. Felt like there had to be ten of me to even be a threat to a single wizard."
[22:42] <Nemi> "That's bizarre. Fighting rats to get stronger?" Fiona shakes her head, incredulous, and heads over to roll up the canvas and bedroll. That done, she grinned at the floating skull. "Right. Eastward it is!"
[22:43] <@SpaceThor> "And no running from bandits this time. You see someone with a sword looking at you funny, you challenge and then kill them!"
[22:44] <Nemi> "Granddad, there were twelve of them and they had crossbows. I don't think I'd have been able to cut them down!" She pouts as she ties on her sword-belt, then throws on her pack. On to the entrance of the cave- it'd be a long day's hike, but at least she had plenty of smoked meat left over from the deer she killed the week previous.
[22:44] <@SpaceThor> "That's just quitter talk!"
[22:47] <Nemi> "Okay, I'd probably get the first six, but that's a /lot/ of arrows!" Fiona nimbly scrabbles down the uneven rocks leading on down to the floor of the forest and sets off. She had a compass and good senses- she'd be fine.
[22:52] <@SpaceThor> "Not good enough. Every mile, give me fifty pushups."
[22:52] <@SpaceThor> "You'll never get strong if you don't put the work in!"
[22:55] <Nemi> "Uuuugh, fiiiine!" Fiona mock-sighs. "I'll fight you on that- one hundred pushups and one-hundred situps, so there," she continues onward when something gnawed at her. "What's with the bloodlust lately, anyway? It used to be all about you roving the world, meeting all kinds of new and interesting people, killing half of them and fucking the other half, so on so on.. Now you just want me to
[22:55] <Nemi> find really tough foes and beat them."
[23:01] <@SpaceThor> "Because I could never have gotten any of that if I didn't have the strength to survive in this world. It's not a peaceful place."
[23:01] <@SpaceThor> "I bet you didn't even know that Pirhajat had moved war elephants into their contested borderlands."
[23:03] <@SpaceThor> "Or what that means for you."
[23:08] <Nemi> "Will I have to figure out how to fight one? Don't they have skin like armour and tusks like spears?" Fiona steps across a ravine using a fallen tree trunk.
[23:09] <@SpaceThor> "Not what I was going for, but you have to use fire. It spooks them and they throw their riders."
[23:09] <@SpaceThor> "What that means is that people are going to want you to pick a side and fight in a war. And you have to be ready for when they don't take neutrality for an answer."
[23:11] <@SpaceThor> "Going into the borderlands also means that the niceties of civilization aren't going to be present. Sure there'll be ladies and, presumably, gentlemen of lower moral fiber if you catch my drift, but you'll be in a fight for your life!"
[23:12] <Nemi> "Sounds like a real adventure. Maybe I'll get to tell /my/ grandkids stories about it when I'm a grumpy floating skull," Fiona grins as she scrabbles nimbly up a cliffside.
[23:12] <@SpaceThor> "Hah, if you don't get it pulverized into dust by a Bragancan maceman. Hey wait a minute..."
[23:13] <@SpaceThor> "Turn me around, I think I see a landmark."
[23:18] <Nemi> "Oh?" Fiona halts at the cliff's edge, turning as to turn Edmund in the process. "What do you see?"
[23:19] <@SpaceThor> "...that's Torre Mareira. We're already in the borderlands."
[23:19] <@SpaceThor> You can almost feel it turn to glare at you. "You said we were in the center of the country."
[23:20] <Nemi> "Well.. I've never been good at geography," Fiona admits with a sheepish grin.
[23:20] <@SpaceThor> "Fifty pushups."
[23:23] <Nemi> "Yes, Granddad.." Fiona hops down to get to it, there on the cliff's edge, keeping her heavy pack on her back all the while. She knocked those pushups out like a machine.
[23:24] <@SpaceThor> "Now, let's head down into the township. Montijo, I think it was. Barely a scrap of land when I was through here last, but there was this dwarf girl....well, you're not here to learn about what a hound your granddad was."
[23:25] <Nemi> "That was.. Seventy years ago, wasn't it? I think she'd be a full-grown /woman/ by now. Dwarves!" Fiona shrugs as she scampers easily down the cliffside, worn gloves offering her as sure a grasp as her bare hands. It wasn't too far a walk- for /her/, at least.
[23:27] <@SpaceThor> "I'm just saying she could figure out if they put silver over copper on a coin using only her mouth."
[23:28] <Nemi> "Now /that/ is skill. Wow," Fiona nods, impressed, as she set off, trusting in her knowledge of the sun and woodcraft to proceed to town with due haste and elegance. She might be considering what ELSE a tongue like that could be good for.