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ecccentrick · 3 years

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Jaskier Should Really Listen To Geralt pt. 2

Pt.1 || Pt. 3 || Ao3

This is my last writing post here, since I now have a writing blog @eccentrick-ramblings. Prompts and requests are open.

Jaskier had many talents. He could sing, write, dance, play multiple instruments, and was something of a scholar, if did say so himself. But one talent that was known but was hardly spoken of in polite company was the one that was going to get him out of this situation alive.

He was going to slut it up.

Making himself relax back into the bed, he slid one of his hands through the monster’s thick hair, humming as though content with the current state of things. The creature’s hand of steel relaxed minutely against Jaskier’s stomach and he forced himself not to take a shuddering breath, instead breathing from his diaphragm.

“So you’re one of those, huh?” Jaskier asked, letting his voice go slightly rough.

The monster stiffened.

“Of what?”

Jaskier widened his legs. The beast nestled deeper between them, his whole upper body splaying across Jaskier’s. He tried not to take that as the threat it surely was.

Turning his head so that his lips brushed against the monster’s ear at every syllable, he said, “Hm, one of those men who enjoys roleplay of the, uh, should I say, unconventional sort? Can’t say I’ve come across too many, but I’m always willing to give things a try.”

The beast pulled back from Jaskier’s neck to stare into his eyes, like he was going to ask if Jaskier was truly that dumb and horny. And Jaskier could hear Geralt’s reply in his mind, yes.

Wait. Geralt.

Shit.

Okay, so Jaskier had a new idea. He wouldn’t just deescalate the situation like previously planned, stall until Geralt came back empty handed and frustrated. Jaskier would actually have to save himself this time. And, now that he thought about it, the rest of the residents of the inn.

He was beginning to realize why Geralt was so crotchety all the damn time.

Something in the monster’s eyes changed, a dawning understanding and anticipation. It was feral and raw and Jaskier met it with one of his own, shifting his hips up. He almost had it.

With one hand still in its hair, he trailed the other up its torso, gently touching its sides, before getting to its shoulder blades, fingertips clenching the muscle and bone there, digging his fingernails in hard enough that if it were a human, there would surely be marks left behind.

“What is it you have in mind?” The beast slurred his words, despite having only one watered down ale that evening.

The hand holding Jaskier down raised up, higher and higher, until it came around his neck, a soft shackle. His heart beat double time, and he sucked in a breath that he could still blessedly take, for now.

His mind blanked for a few seconds, because, to be completely honest, this beast was hitting all of Jaskier’s buttons. If this man were a human, they would surely get up to some great fun. Jaskier couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Geralt. Geralt leaning over him, Geralt holding him down, Geralt’s calloused and scarred hand around his neck, holding him in place, stealing his breath.

Without having the feign a moan, Jaskier said, “Well, why don’t you chase me?” he dug his nails in deeper. “Capture me. Hunt me down.”

The beast sucked in a harsh breath and Jaskier knew he had him, once and for all. Better or for worse.

“Perhaps I should give you a head start?” the monster asked. “But you’d have to be quiet, not wake anyone up. Wouldn’t want anyone to be in the crosshairs of a hunt, now would you?”

The creaking of the stairs almost did him in.

The innkeeper had muted the lights in the dining area, leaving them only bright enough to cast shadows and create a sense of unease. Or perhaps that was because he had a beast after him, coming for his blood. Literally.

He tried to move quietly. The steps creaked. That small sound, so inconsequential, made him realize all that was at stake. The innkeeper, who now most likely slept in the kitchen so her guests could have the rooms, the father and child that were staying in the room next to his, and the orange cat that liked to slink around guests' ankles...their lives were all in jeopardy, and only Jaskier being a good little lamb to slaughter might save them.

What the beast didn’t know was that the lamb intended to lead it to its end.

He opened the door slowly, silently. Fresh air filled his lungs, crisp and cool. The moon was high in the sky, lighting the way for Jaskier, his socked feet kicking up dust as he went from a slow creep to a desperate sprint in a span of seconds.

The village was close to a forest, and knowing it was the best place for cover, Jaskier ran for it. Once treetops came overhead, he stopped for a quick breather and to orient himself.

Geralt always told Jaskier what direction he’d be going in on any hunt. It wasn’t always that way; the bard searching and finding an overdosed witcher next to a dead leshen after he failed to arrive back at the tavern set that to rights. Luckily Jaskier had memorized Geralt’s potions long ago, or he’d be dead and buried.

Geralt had told him he was heading southwest, which was. . .which way was it? He was fucked, wasn’t he? And not even by a deathless death like all scandalous bards want to go out.

“Okay, let’s see. Eeny, meene, miny. . .moe! This way then.”

He dashed in that direction, heading deeper into the woods. He ran until his legs burned, until the wagon roads gave way to deer tracks, until there was nothing but trees, brush and silence. Not even an owl dared to hoot. The monster was here coming for him.

Jaskier took a deep breath, filling his lungs to their capacity. And then, in that creepy quiet, he screamed.

“GERALT! GERALT! GERALLLT IT’S AFTER MEEEE!”

Waiting only a beat, Jaskier continued his flight. There was no sign of the grumpy witcher, and he just gave away his ruse. Perhaps the fear had addled his mind. He should’ve been sneakier, hid in a hollow tree stump, or something. Taken his perfume bottle with him and doused a trail of potent fragrance behind each step. But, then, the monster could follow that too. Hell, even a particularly observant human would’ve been able to trace him; he always bought the strong stuff.

“DAMMIT!”

He was soon lost, hopelessly and completely. The lights from the village had long since dimmed and he didn’t know which way was the way back. At least if the monster got to him, the others might be spared until Geralt could find it and kill it. His death wouldn’t be in vain. Perhaps he’d even become a local hero.

A branch to his left cracked. A rustling, then a growl. Footsteps, and then the monster revealed himself, moving from shadows and into the moonlight. It was a great entrance, the bard had to give him that. Points for the dramatics. At the very least, Jaskier wouldn’t die a boring death.

“It’s as I thought. You were running to your witcher. I’d be angry, but that’ll make this more interesting.”

Jaskier grit his teeth. “You’re awfully arrogant for a monster in the sights of a witcher. The White Wolf. You’ll be dead by morning and Geralt and I will be walking the Path again.”

The beast came closer, his steps measured and sure. Suddenly, he was at Jaskier’s side, a hand at his delicate neck and another on his right shoulder. Back, back, back the monster pushed him, until he hit the nearest tree, bark digging into his exposed neck. He squeezed Jaskier’s neck, bringing a wheeze from the bard’s lips.

“Why. . .” the hand tightened and the longing to cough almost made him gag, “Why me?”

“Because of your blood, it smells so rare, so fine. None of these backwater hicks taste of anything but the dirt under my boots. But you. . .such fresh nectar.”

“Th-That’s a little insulting,” he took a harsh gulp of air, and it whistled in his throat. “That you- only - wanted me - my blood - not my - da-dashing good-”

“Enough, Jaskier. Save your breath.”

“G-Ger-”

His back, once against rough bark, was now against a hard chest. And there was that band of steel around his neck. Air fought to get into his lungs, and his voice demanded to be heard but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t make the words form on his lips. Eyes bulged and the skin of his face heated. He was being strangled, and instead of a thoughtless tumor it was at the will of someone who chose to steal his breath until he had none left.

Soft hands tore against steel. Feet dug into earth, kicked and scrambled, never meeting anything solid besides the ground. Reason fled his mind, and he was just a vessel. A vessel that wanted free.

“Jaskier, stay calm!” Geralt’s voice reached his ears, echoing. Oh, there was still some hope. He might survive.

“So I see that you’re a coward,” Geralt said.

Jaskier was about to be offended until the beast spoke.

“You’re trying to appeal to my ego. You do care for this bard, then?”

Geralt was all wobbly and misty, like he was made of liquid bones. His eyes were black, veins a dark gray. Jaskier tried to squint, rapidly blink, but he wouldn’t stay put, wouldn’t go back to normal.

His throat ached.

“Let the bard go. He played his part of the bait, now let him go and we can end this. You...you hunt and kill the weak and expect not to be confronted? Take a hostage, a meat shield. Pathetic and cowardly.”

“I don’t think I’m going to do that. I’m probably all of those things, now that I think about it, and I don’t rightly care. Now, can’t you see I’m celebrating a holiday? The moon is full.”

“Higher vampire. Shit.”

The vampire laughed and that’s when things got fuzzy for Jaskier. He wanted to come out of his skin, wanted to be able to see clearly. His heart felt like it wanted to gallop out of his chest and race Roach.

“You know what? I’ll just save this for later.”

A prickling sensation started at his side and spread, tendrils of numbness. It quickly became a burning feeling and with it came air, blessed air. The ground met his body. The steel band was gone.

He took a few moments to catch his breath. Each gulp of air felt like swallowing hot coals, his lungs screaming. Once clarity disrupted the fog over Jaskier’s mind he trailed a shaking hand to his side. It came back sticky with blood. He glanced up and saw the vampire lick long, protruding claw-like nails.

In the wise words of Geralt of Rivia, fuck.

#geraskier #jaskier #geralt of rivia #gerlion #the witcher #witcher #julian alfred pankratz #dandelion #rainy writes

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laurelnose · 4 years

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Im going to need u to explain to me what u said in the tags of the modding post in Simpleton words cause I'm. A fucking idiot when it comes to computer shit and the arm wrestling in TW2 is genuinely the most stressful thing ive ever had to endure in a video game

Also i forgot to mention this in my last ask abt being an idiot— i love u! You're rly cool. That's all ^`^

aw! ilu too anon.

ok first of all: if the arm wrestling is the only thing about w2 that you want to fix you don’t have to fuck about with any of the unpacking nonsense! you do have to be playing on PC. I’m using this mod to always win dice poker/arm wrestling. steps as follow:

download whichever version you want (always win only arm wrestling, always win only dice poker, always win both). the file is a zip folder and you can put it wherever you want.

extract the contents of the zip, also to wherever you want. inside is a README.txt and a file called base_scripts.dzip. you can ignore the readme, it’s just the description of the mod from the nexus site in a text file.

find your witcher 2 folder. if you’re playing on Steam, you’re looking for something like C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\the witcher 2\CookedPC. if you’re not sure, here’s how to view your Steam installation path. if you’re on GOG it’s usually C:\GOG Games\The Witcher 2\CookedPC. if not, you can find the installation path in the GOG launcher by clicking Witcher 2, then the settings button to the right of the center top bar, then “Manage Installation > Show folder”.

there should be a base_scripts.dzip already in the CookedPC folder—copy it somewhere else for backup or rename it to something like base_scripts_original.dzip

go back to your downloaded mod folder and drag and drop the mod’s base_scripts.dzip into the Witcher 2 CookedPC folder. if it asks if you want to replace the existing base_scripts.dzip say yes (but make sure to have backed up or renamed the original first!)

ta-da! load up W2 and go dunk on some arm wrestlers.

if you want to fix a BUNCH of things about W2 it’s a little harder.

base_scripts.dzip is basically a special kind of zip folder with a bunch of smaller script files zipped into it. so for instance, the arm wrestling mod changes only the minigame scripts, while Conversation Skills Always Succeed changes only the scene_function script. technically, those don’t conflict, except the changed files have been packed up into two different base_scripts.dzip, and you can only have one base_scripts.dzip.

some mods don’t mess with base_scripts.dzip at all. True Encumbrance Remover (sets all item weights to 0 because inventory management sucks) is another one you can just drag and drop right into CookedPC, not even any file replacement required. the way to check if you’re going to need to do some fuckery for nexus mods is on the Files tab; click “Preview file contents” and if you see a base_script.dzip in there, it’ll require some fiddling if you want to use it with other base_script.dzip mods. how to do the fiddling:

you will need:

Gibbed RED Tools

probably a copy of W2 on GOG because Steam’s a little bitch about DRM. if you have it on Steam you can redeem a free GOG copy of W2 here using the CD key you find in the Steam launcher here:

you can try doing this modding process with Steam files, but it’s entirely possible that it’ll throw errors for you talking about file access, and if so... switch to GOG and install Witcher 2 again. i know it’s a pain to have multiple launchers but if you’re willing to fuck around this much with mods it’s not THAT much of a pain.

ok! step 1: getting into base_scripts.dzip with Gibbed RED tools

download Gibbed RED Tools and extract the contents. you can put the resulting unzipped folder wherever you like, just make sure you know where.

open up the windows command prompt—open the start menu, type in “cmd”, right click the program that comes up, and hit “run as administrator”. SCARY BLACK PROGRAMMING BOX. it’s ok all we have to do is type some stuff in! hit enter after every command and be sure to include all the spaces and quotation marks.

hit enter! ok now we’re inside the Gibbed RED Tools folder. we want to tell it where the original base_scripts.dzip is, and what folder it should unpack that file into. create a new folder somewhere for the unpacked files to live and then type in the next command!

first command moves us from the default folder into the folder that contains our Gibbed RED tools. the command structure is:

cd "path to Gibbed RED tools"

so for instance:

cd "C:\Users\laurelnose\Downloads\Gibbed RED Tools"

it should unfurl a whole long list of file names! you can navigate to the folder you told it to unpack to and see all of the little script files that make up base_scripts.dzip. now we’re cooking.

the command structure is:

Gibbed.RED.Unpack.exe "location of base_scripts.dzip" "place to unzip file to"

so for example:

Gibbed.RED.Unpack.exe "C:\GOG Games\The Witcher 2\CookedPC\base_scripts.dzip" "C:\Users\laurelnose\UnpackedBaseScript"

go back to nexus mods and pick out all the base_scripts.dzip mods you want. say, Conversation Skills and Dice Poker/Arm Wrestling. or even more than that, as many as you want! repeat these steps for EACH MOD INDIVIDUALLY:

find out which files they modified. Conversation Skills is nice because they say right in their description that they modified game\scenes\scene_functions.ws . other modders, it’s a little tougher; Poker/Wrestling doesn’t say, so i had to poke around in the “posts” tab until i found a user saying that it modified game\minigames\dicepoker.ws and game\minigames\wristwrestling.ws

download the mod, and extract the contents into a folder. create a new folder wherever you’d like—name it whatever, but you’re going to be making one for each mod so to keep them straight something like ModNameUnpacked might be best.

go back to command line. if you closed it before, repeat the cd command to get back into the Gibbed RED Tools folder, otherwise you can just use the unpacking command again to unzip the mod’s base_scripts.dzip into your ModNameUnpacked folder.

open up the unpacked folder and navigate through the folder structure until you find the file they said they modified. so for Conversation Skills, find scene_functions.ws in the game\scenes folder.

for instance:

Gibbed.RED.Unpack.exe "C:\Users\laurelnose\Downloads\ConversationMod\base_scripts.dzip" "C:\Users\laurelnose\Downloads\ConversationModUnpacked"

pull up your unzipped original base_scripts.dzip from the previous section. move the modified file from the mod folder into the same place in the original base_scripts.dzip folder. so scene_functions.ws goes in game\scenes in your original base_scripts.dzip folder. let it replace/overwrite the original scene_functions.ws.

repeat this for each mod individually. if you’re doing a lot of mods you’re going to end up with a lot of folders! we can delete them later. if by some unfortunate chance you want two mods that modify the same .ws file you’d have to actually figure out which lines each one modified and rewrite your original .ws file to include both, so... idk don’t get yourself into this situation lmao

ok, now that you’ve pulled out the modified scripts from each mod you wanted and put them into your unpacked original base_scripts folder, it is time to pack that sucker up into a regular .dzip again!

back into command line. again if you closed it before, use the cd command to get back to your Gibbed RED Tools folder, otherwise the new command we’re using is:

Gibbed.RED.Pack.exe "location to put the packed folder\base_scripts.dzip" "location of files to pack up"

this time it won’t put out a whole list of files, because it didn’t pull out any files, it packed them up all neatly. check the location you told it to put base_scripts.dzip and if it’s there you’re golden!

so for example:

Gibbed.RED.Pack.exe "C:\Users\laurelnose\base_scripts.dzip" "C:\Users\laurelnose\UnpackedBaseScript"

pull up your Witcher 2 CookedPC folder—if you haven’t already backed up or renamed your original base_scripts.dzip, do that—and move your newly-created base_scripts.dzip full of all your lovely mods into the CookedPC folder!

you can now delete all of the ModNameUnpacked folders you created. if you need to start over, just delete the modded base_scripts.dzip and either move your backup into the CookedPC folder or change the name of the original back to base_scripts.dzip and that should undo all of your changes. worst case scenario you have to uninstall and reinstall, but that shouldn’t happen if you backed up your base_scripts.dzip!

#hopefully this makes sense!#these games are a pain in the ass to mod it rly makes me nostalgic for like... minecraft #also unfortunately i do not think GOG has achievements for W2 #i think this is a small price to pay in exchange for having fun playing the game but ymmv #asks #anonymous

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