jade_sabre | Not Yet by Lightning, Chapter 2 (Reply)

Yay! Chapter two of my fic is up!

So, since I'm stubborn, here's the summary of Things You Need to Know for Chapter Two:

In the last chapter, we met Laura Farthing, who is the main character of my fic. If I'm ever feeling particularly narcissistic, I'll post up the screencap I have of her, but in the meantime, you'll get a mental picture all your own.

We also heard mention of her father, Daeghun. As Daeghun is an elf and Laura is 100% human, it's pretty obvious that he is actually her foster-father. He's known for being a bit...reserved. Daeghun's half-brother is a half-elf named Duncan, who owns a bar called the Sunken Flagon.

In chapter two, we meet Laura's companions! As I mentioned in my first post (warning: reading the entire dramatis personae will make explicit details of the plot) on the subject, the companions are the people who join up with the main character in order that your main character can beat the game. Among other things.

Khelgar (short baldy) is a dwarf who likes to fight. A Lot. I mean, this guy seriously likes to beat stuff up. Laura meets him outside an inn called the Weeping Willow, where several men are threatening him, and although he is perfectly capable of defending himself she gets dragged into the fight anyway, and next thing she knows they're walking down the road together. It happens.

Neeshka (the kid with the horns) is a tiefling, which means that somewhere along the line there's demon blood in her family--probably recentish, according to the strength of it. Laura and Khelgar meet Neeshka outside a keep, where she is being harassed by soldiers because she looks suspicious (and, really, she is a thief, so they're not entirely unfounded in their suspicion). Laura and Khlegar somehow get sucked into helping her as well.

Elanee (on the right) is a wood elf druid. She really likes Nature. Turns out she's been stalking Laura since Laura was little, and finally gives in and stalks her more openly in order to lend her aid to Laura's travels. These three encounters obviously happen prior to chapter 1.

Qara (with the staff) is a human sorceress, which means her use of magic is pretty spontaneous. She and her schoolmates decide to have a fight outside the Flagon; Laura sits back and watches, and privately laughs when Duncan forces Qara to work for him to pay off her debt.

Grobnar is a gnome bard. He is insane. Not much else to say.

Casavir does not appear to have a decent screenshot of himself ANYWHERE, and happens to be a human paladin. How we meet him is part of the plot between chapters 1 and 2, which I will now explain here.

No. Is too much. Let me sum up.

In order to learn more about the silver shards, Laura must speak to a sage in Blacklake, the rich-people district of Neverwinter. Unfortunately, Blacklake is completely sealed because noblemen have been getting murdered recently. In order to gain passage into Blacklake, the game allows you to a) throw in your lot with the local gang of thieves (who are actually much more powerful than previously guessed) or b) join the local chapter of the City Watch and work your way into Blacklake by ridding the Docks district of the aforementioned gang of thieves.

Laura, being an honorable sort of girl, joins up with the City Watch and finds herself running all over the Docks doing random side quests. I actually have here a snippet of her contemplating her leaders: Cormick, a fellow Harborman ex-patriot, and Brelaina, her captain:

Laura was surprised by the depth of Cormick's loyalty to Neverwinter--though she supposed years of rising through the ranks could do that to a person. She herself still felt a Harborman, an outsider, and really could care less if Neverwinter burned under its own weight.

At least Brelaina seemed to have a decent head on her shoulders. One thing at a time, indeed.

Finally, she reaches a point where she thinks perhaps she has done enough. Instead, the City Watch sends her to a place in the mountains southeast of Neverwinter called Old Owl Well (it's the highlighted icon on the map), where a diplomat from a northern city has disappeared. Once there, she meets the Greycloaks, who are the soldiers outside of Neverwinter (and therefore not part of the City Watch proper; they also tend to be more green-back-recruit-types), and learns that the orcs in the area have recently unified under Logram Eyegouger, and that if Logram were to be killed, perhaps the orcs would go back to fighting each other. She also hears tales of another force fighting the orcs, some kind of rogue band of soldiers or something that no one can contact.

So what does she do? Go into the mountains to find Logram, of course, and along the way she runs into said rogue band of soldiers. Their leader is the paladin Casavir, who offers to serve as her guide to Logram's lair, and she, having no other choice, accepts his help.

Again, questions/comments/reviews are always welcome. :-)

Not Yet by Lightning, chapter 2