"My Thane! My Thane!" Lydia shook Monilee and called out to her as the Graybeards looked on silently. Watching. Judging. 

 

Pain brought Monilee back to the present. Pain in the sensitive places now skewered by finely wrought metal. Pain in her wrists, and ankles, and throat where she'd been suspended by spectral bindings. Pain in her chest where a harness now held her tight. Pain in her knees and and elbows hands where the cold floor chilled her to the bone even as she lifted herself off the floor.

 

Somewhere in the distance he heard Shayna whisper, "Impossible."

 

Monilee shook her head to clear her mind as Arngeir, the evident leader of the Graybeards spoke. 

 

"You have shown that you are Dragonborn. You have the inborn gift. But do you have the discipline and temperament to follow the path laid out for you? That remains to be seen."

 

"Did you see nothing of what transpired, Graybeard?" Lydia shot back, "My Thane was attacked before your very eyes. Dark forces are in this place, and you have nothing to say about it?"

 

Shayna whispered again, "The gates of Oblivion..."

 

Monilee mastered her pain and rose to her feet. "No, Lydia. I was warned of the danger, and I suspect these Graybeards knew of it as well." If they had an opinion on this, they chose to remain silent. "I came here for honor and from respect for Jarl Balgruuf. I will stay here to bend this power to my will. This is my power, and I will be its master. So Graybeard," the looked Arngeir in the eyes, "Test my discipline and see what you find."

 

"Without training, you have already taken the first steps towards projecting your Voice into a Thu'um, a Shout. Now let us see if you are willing and able to learn. When you Shout, you speak in the language of dragons. Thus, your Dragon Blood gives you an inborn ability to learn Words of Power. All Shouts are made up of three Words of Power. As you master each Word, your Shout will become progressively stronger."

 

What followed was unadulterated torture. With each new lesson, each new word learned, each new shout practiced, the spectre returned. Sometimes she came with a gentle touch, ticking and distracting, other times she came with iron or with a whip. Every time, without exception, it ended in pain for Monilee. But every lesson mastered brought even greater pleasure. At last, gasping on her hands and knees in a pool of her own blood, Monilee heard Arngeir speak in hushed tones.

 

"You truly do have the gift. We will perform your next trial in the courtyard. Follow Master Borri."

 

As the Graybeards filed out of the hall, Edippa produced healing salves and tried her best to minister to Monilee's wounds. 

 

"What did I just see?" She asked.

 

Lydia opined, "Daedra, foul daedra lurk here."

 

But Shayna cut her short. "Not just some daedra. That was Nocturnal herself. The Unfathomable, the Shadow Queen, Lady Luck. She is a being of indescribable power. And she should not be able to manifest herself on Nirn."

 

Edippa nodded slowly. "We should leave this place - we should seek refuge in the Temple of Dibella at Markarth. The divines will protect you, I'm sure."

 

"No!" Monilee insisted. "No! I will have this power, and I will never submit. Never!"

 

Edippa gripped Monilee by the shoulders and spoke to her directly. "Any more of this, and you could die."

 

"Then I'll die, but I'll die the master of my own destiny. Come on," she shook free and moved towards the courtyard, pulling her fur cloak tightly around her.

 

Outside, the Graybeards put a new challenge before Monilee - a completely new Thu'um unrelated to the one she'd practiced before. She conquered it with ease, and this time Nocturnal did not intervene. Perhaps she'd accepted, for the moment at least, Monilee's resolve to press on. 

 

 

After a few more hours of training and reflection, Arngeir declared that Monilee had learned all she could for the moment. To further understand the Voice, she must retrieve an artifact known as the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. Thirsty for more power, Monilee started to make preparations for a new adventure, but Shayna asked her to slow for a moment.

 

"The Horn can wait," she said. "Lady Luck commanded you to seek out the favor of Clavicus Vile. You dare not deny her."

 

Monilee resisted. "No daedra - not you, not Nocturnal - is my master. I'll find a way to escape these bindings and be free of her power."

 

Lydia nodded emphatically as she heard this, but Shayna wasn't deterred. "Nocturnal isn't just a daedra. She is the Ur-Dra, one of the oldest amongst them. You cannot defy her so brazenly and hope to escape her wrath. Plot your escape, yes. I'd expect nothing less. But humor her for now. Clavicus Vile's shrine isn't far from here."

 

Monilee let her blood cool for a moment and considered this. "You're right, Shayna. This calls for a more subtle approach. But we aren't going to the Shrine - not right away. We need to go to Falkreath first. I... I just know it. I'm not sure how."

 

Edippa added, "Falkreath is on the route from here to Markarth. Perhaps in the course of your quest to Nocturnal you could conspire to find yourself in the Temple of Dibella. I'm sure the priestesses would do everything they could to help you."

 

"Perhaps," Monilee conceded, then she said it again as a whole-hearted agreement. "Yes, perhaps indeed. Falkreath first, with all the malicious compliance we can muster."

 

Shayna seemed to approve, "Oh, you know the High Rock girl is up to no good when she starts using big words."

 

Despite the biting wind, it was still early afternoon when they departed High Hrothgar; the party made a quick descent of the seven thousand steps, but all the way down Monilee's new "toys" tormented her. Her wrist cuffs continually stuck to one another whenever they touched; the piercings in her nipples occasionally and unpredictably heated up, burning her until she removed her breastplate; and the interlocking rings piercing through her labia tugged and rubbed constantly, arousing her in spite of the pain. Monilee did her best to pull her cloak tight around her against the wind, but she found herself shivering with cold and shuddering as the muscles in her thighs and belly spasmed with excitement. It was hard to concentrate on the path in front of her, and Monilee had to focus all her will to not trip over the thick stone steps. Perhaps Nocturnal had not given up at all, and had just decided to take a more subtle approach to tormenting Monilee.

 

At length, they reached Ivarstead. Though they stopped at the inn to stock up on trail provisions, the party made no plans to stop for the night. They would head south, the west over the mountains, camping for the night after they made their descent. Then on the Falkreath town in the morning. 

 

Just clear of town, a courier stopped the party. "Thane Monilee of Whiterun?" he asked, "Got something here for you, your hands only." When she acknowledged her identity, he slipped her a pair of wax-sealed letters before opining further on the source of the letters. One from 'the Jarl,' and another from someone he described in less charitable terms. Monilee accepted the letters with thanks, but decided to wait until they made camp to read them. 

 

 

Proceeding south along the road, the party noticed the approach of a group of soldiers in armor bearing the sign of the Temple of Stendarr. Vigilants, Monilee noted. She had seen them scattered throughout the towns and cities she visited, and gave this roving patrol no mind. Not, at least, until they fell upon the party with gauntleted fists swinging. Taken by surprise, Monilee and her companions were soon tied up and forced to the ground. Just as their leader discovered Monilee's impenetrable chastity piercings, a loud road interrupted the incipient assault. Charging from the woods, an unlikely pair emerged to their rescue: a raging black bear and a gray haired, shaggy dog. The bear tore the leader apart in a shower of blood, removing his head from his body like the cork from a potion bottle. The rest of the supposed vigilants - more likely well-costumed bandits - ran for their lives with the bear in hot pursuit. 

 

As Monilee's companions struggled free of their bindings, they found themselves alone on the road, but for the dog. 

 

 

Test Results

Shorter blog post since story advancement was limited. Behind the scenes, I ran several events repeatedly to test/verify outcomes, especially "fair play" between Toys and DD.

 

• Spontaneous binding worked correctly
• Anal torch ejection worked correctly
  • Following up on our previous discussion about the anal torch, I was very happy with the fairly brief amount of time it initially stayed attached, and with how it left behind a ground object so players who wanted it could retrieve the Toy. Obviously there's some randomness involved, but this is much better than in SLaV where it was stuck on the player for a long time unless she used the MCM.
• Got accosted and raped on the road; during this event, Monilee was put in a DD armbinder. The scene appeared to work gracefully with no error messages, though I observed that Fondle Thyself overrode the armbinder idle. I'm not sure if this is unavoidable without using DAR or if there is a prioritization hierarchy that can be used to keep FTS from breaking yoke/armbinder animations provided by non Toys mods. Not strictly a Toys bug, but it is an opportunity for enhancement. 
• Toys did accede to replacement by DD mostly gracefully. There was some message spam that suggested it took 3 rounds of 'push and shove' between DD to replace a Toys gag with a DD gag. This may have been partially due to script lag since it occured during a highly scripted DCL scenario that has been associated with slow script performance in past versions.