Episode 52: Yagrum Bagarn
we have one potion of invisibility which can help us get in or out, but not both. I vote we charge through, dodge everything we can, talk to Yagrum, and only use the potion if it's clear we need it.
+1 to this.
Agreed.
Run Forrest, run!
You turn away from the horde of corpus beasts and jog to the door. You counted five, but they're not particularly fast and you don't feel you're in any danger so long as you can keep your distance.
Remember the directions I gave you: Straight ahead from the entrance, ignoring the side tunnels, through a door and a tall chamber, until you reach a brazier (that probably has a skeleton lying next to it.) Make a left. Unless this Yagrum has a different personality, he's probably in his workshop/study corner.
The door is slightly open and has a sign on it that reads "please keep this door closed." Frowning, you step through and immediately notice that the air on this side is fresher, more clear. The green mist you saw earlier is still present but it's not as thick. Is this some kind of airlock? Since it seems safe, you close the door behind you just in time to hear thumping and scratching from the other side. Not wanting to stick around to see if they can open the door, you continue through to the next room.
Fireplace, no brazier. Corpus monsters, but no skeleton. You try to work your way past them, but they see you and you end up skirting your way to the right rather than left to avoid them. Unfortunately this takes you to a tunnel blocked by another corprus monster.
There's no way you can slip by. And if the voices are to be believed, it's the wrong way anyway. Turning back the way you came, you see that the two lame corprus beasts from the room with the campfire have both followed you. There's not much you can do but try to run past them.
Health is now 48/61It doesn't hurt bad, but you really hope you didn't just contract corpus. Heading down the left corridor this time, the air continues to clear.
Michael, can you tell your own stats, in number form? We know the numbers of each of them, including health, magicka, and fatigue.
I approve of asking
:
"I have no game interface at all. No character sheet, no mouseovers for items, nothing. Remember when I first arrived I couldn't even figure out which mushrooms were which?"If not in numbers, do you have some kind of feeling of them?
:
"Well, it depends. For example, it's obvious I'm stronger now than when I first got here. It's not like I've lifted weights and checked how much they weigh, but just imagine if you went from being able to lift 100 pounds to being able to lift 150. You'd notice, even if you didn't know the weight of anything you were carrying. I'm stronger, faster tougher than I was when I got here. It's just obvious.""Other things...work differently? Like for example when I smell potions I just kind of know what they do. But even that's not that weird. If you were to smell fruit juice from any citrus fruit, you'd know it had vitamin c in it even if you couldn't distinguish tangelo from mandarin orange. It's kind of like that. Healing potion has a very distinct smell, but I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a healing potion made of one ingredient vs another. Though even that's not surprising. The calcination step of alchemy basically incinerates stuff to ash. If I make a potion out of rat meat, it doesn't smell like rat when I'm done.""The weirdest thing is item enchantments. That's kind of odd. Before I learned to see magic, after Strillian taught me how I could get a sense for what things did...and I don't know how to explain it. I'd just touch them and know. No numbers or anything, but if you were to hand me two swords with the same enchantment and one stronger than the other, I'd be able to tell you which was which. The thing is though, now that I can see magic...I know what it was I was sensing because I can actually see it."Michael draws his dagger.
:
"See? It's not like there are any numbers anywhere. It's just a big knife. But if you close your eyes and focus on the magic..."
:
"See that rolling greenish layer covering the blade? See the red, purple and...umm...not sure what color that is. But that...right there."Michael points to a spot near where the blade meets the hilt.
:
"Right there. That. What color is that? I don't know what to call it. Do you guys know? Anyway, relax and defocus your eyes a bit, really feel for the magic and see how the entire blade is translucent? See how you can see the cave wall behind it? The magic aura on the knife is really obvious, but if you look really closely you can see that the aura extend through the inside of the blade, and that the aura, the dagger and the cave are all made of the same stuff. That? It's magicka. It's the same thing going on with marks. When I saw Azura's mark inside my head it was actually a little glowing yellow and orange star. Or the guild marks. The mage guild mark is a little green shape. Though it's not solid green. There's some other stuff on the inside that I'm guessing indicate rank and..."
:
"Whoa."Instead of a secluded little workshop in the middle of a cave, apparently there's an entire Telvanni-style mushroom city down here. You see a few stray corprus monsters, but they don't appear to be chasing you. Cautiously, you look around.
Mushroom houses and crates, cots, rugs, campfires...even a few mostly normal looking dunmer standing around alongside obviously deformed corprus beasts. As you make your way through the area, one of the afflicted sees you staring and nods as if to say hello. What's going on here?
Eventually you make your way through to the wooden platform on the far side.
This, at least, is familiar. Yagram Bagarn, the dwarf, his belly distended from corprus growths and the lower half of his body removed and replaced with a mechanically powered six-legged dwarven metal walker, talking animatedly with one of Divayth's daughters. You approach in time to catch the trailing end of what sounds like a joke.
:
"...and so I ask him, what if the missus catches you?"
:
"What did he say?":
"He looks at me with a straight face, and get this, he says 'Oh, but I'm counting on it!'":
"Hahahaha! That's hilarious!":
"Thank you, thank you. You're a good crowd. I'll be here all century. And speaking of centuries, looks like we have a guest from the Legion."The dunmer turns and looks at you.
:
"Oh, hello.":
"Hi.":
"Please excuse me."She raises her hands and engulfs you in a flurry of white magic. Then pauses, and casts again.
:
"What was that?":
"That's what she said.":
"I screen all new arrivals for basic and blight disease. You didn't appear to be infected, but I find it's best to be careful.":
"So what brings you to Yagrum Bagarn, Last Living Dwarf?":
"...well, I-":
"Comedian extraordinaire!":
"Erm, I have-":
"Dashing and handsome!"He looks at you expectantly. You look at him for a moment before continuing.
:
"I have a-":
"And great with the ladies!"The dunmer giggles.
:
"But no seriously, what can I do for you?":
"I have a device that-":
"Oh! A toy! Let me see let me see!"Shrugging, you pull out your cellphone and hand it to him. He immediately pulls it open with both hands and examines the insides.
:
"Hmm. Electrical device. Non-sentient. Buttons. Imperial lettering. Archaic battery design. Enchanted liquid...I'm guessing this is a psychomanteum. Clever, aligning a liquid like that, though I don't see why you needed so many when a single solid crystal would have done as well. Why is it so small? What's a Nokia?":
"That's the name of the company that made it.":
"Does it work? It's not responding to me.":
"Yes, there's a power button turns it on.":
"Oh, power button. Quaint."You reach for the phone to show him but he yanks it away from you.
:
"No spoilers!"He immediately begins mashing buttons with an index finger.
:
"The best way to learn about potentially dangerous alien technology is ALWAYS to madly tinker with it until something happens. You are an alien, aren't you?":
"The jury is still out on that one."Eventually he manages to find the power button. He looks amused as it lights up.
:
"Oh...wow, this is pretty. Though not as pretty as our lovely host, of course.":
"I'm Uupse, by the way.":
"Michael.":
"And I'm Yagram, sexy genius incarnate. Pleasure to meet me, I'm sure.":
"Don't mind Yagrum. He's always like this.":
"And you love me for it. Let's see, since we haven't been fried to cinders yet I'm guessing the aura effect is not a doomsday weapon. Looking for a power source, maybe? Oh! I get it. It's looking for friends. What's the battery for? I've known Altmer who put out more than this puts out power. It depends on relays, I take it?":
"...erm, cell phone towers, yes.":
"No connection found. Well, no surprise there. This obviously wasn't made in Tamriel."He continues mashing buttons. Hoping that you still get the 600 gold if he destroys it, you worriedly turn to Uupse.
:
"Sorry to trouble you, but I had a bit of an incident with an inmate on the way in. Could you check me for corprus?":
"Please, call them guests. And you don't need to worry. Corprus isn't contagious. At least, not like vampirism or lycanthropy. You can't catch it just by being touched by someone who has it.":
"Really? Are you sure?":
"Quite sure. Did you notice the green haze on your way in?":
"Yes?":
"That's airborne dust made up of very fine particles of skin shedded from the growths on our guests. You were inhaling corprus dust the entire way in."You suppress the urge to vomit.
:
"Corprus is magical in nature, not parasitic. You could eat raw chunks of corprus meat all day long, or spread pus from corprus pustules onto an open wound without any risk of contracting it.":
"How does it spread then?":
"Magical contact with the more powerful ash creatures.":
"Ha! Take that you bulbous green pig!"You glance over at Yagrum. Apparently he's playing Angry Birds.
:
"So, Yagrum. Divayth offered me 600 gold for the phone. What would you say it's worth?":
"Serves you right for resisting the might of the avian-oh, what? 600 gold? Seems fair. Whoever made this, it's absolutely amazing what they did with such a primitive medium.":
"Primitive?":
"Yes. I've seen similar devices, toys really. But no civilization I've encountered uses electricity for anything this complicated.:
"What do they use instead?":
"Internal biology, acoustics, stone, lots of things. Personally I'm fond of steam. Vastly superior to electricity. The logic gates take up more space, but that's just the kind of man I am. Big.":
"At least before the corpr-":
"WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT.":
"How is steam superior to electricity?":
"Easier to generate, less dangerous, more powerful, more reliable, more scalable. Of course if you want build small, it's best to work with principal forces directly. But not everyone's capable of that, and magical solutions aren't always ideal. Especially when building for public works, the unskilled lower classes, etc. Which is one of the problems with electricity. If you can't command the Aether flow, how do you recharge a device like this? You can't simply ask the peasants to go down to the river and grab a few buckets of electricity. Non-magical generation of electricity is possible, yes, but it's difficult and rife with problems. It's dangerous. It doesn't store well. You can't simply fill a cistern with electricity. Electrical batteries are inefficient compared to magical batteries. And if you're going to use a self-powering solution, as with soul gems or Aetherial gatherers, why go the extra step of converting to highly volatile electricity rather than storing raw magicka? It would be like trying to store fire rather than storing wood and igniting it when needed.":
"Excuse me for leaving mid-lecture, but I'd like to make my rounds before morning. Enjoy your stay, Michael."Yagrum makes an exagerated attempt to bow, made difficult by his mechanical spider legs. Uupse giggles at the attempt and waves goodbye to you both, leaving Yagrum to pick up where he left off.
:
"Also, electrical devices tend to be very delicate. This little gadget is powered by electricity, but if I were to zap it with even a tiny lightning spell not even enough to kill a rat, it would burn out very easily. Can you imagine if somebody asked me to build a steam animunculi, a device powered by water...and if I then built it so flimsy that any time it was exposed to too much water it broke? Ridiculous. And yet this, not only would a simple lightning spell completely destroy it, I imagine dunking it in water for too long would break it too. Or dropping it into a simple campfire. Or stepping on it. Worse, if you're not careful electrical devices can destroy each other simply by being in close proximity to each other. Any time you run an electric current through anything it generates a field effect that tends to interfere with other electrically powered devices. A society founded on electrical technology would have a terrible time shielding everything. Whereas steam, you could literally drop functioning animunculi into the boiler of a steam generator and they'd all work just fine.":
"But if steam is so much better than electricity, why don't I see...I don't know, more cool stuff here? Where I come from, everyone has a phone like this and can talk to anyone. We have cars and computers and airplanes. Here, most everyone seems to be living in mud huts or mushrooms and writing with quills on paper.":
"Airships? What type of airships?":
"Mostly airplanes.":
"Right, but how do they fly?":
"Well, two wings and a propeller. They go fast and the shape of the wing generates lift.":
"Manned craft? Heavier than air?":
"Yes.":
"I'm impressed. Usually ships of that sort would be powered by either chemical fuel or air suction.":
"...oh. Actually, we do use jet fuel for planes.":
"I thought we were discussing steam vs electricity. Wasn't this your electrically-powered society you were describing?":
"Well, yeah...but we don't use electricity for planes. Or for cars, much.":
"Because it's difficult to work with? Difficult to generate, store, transport and so forth?":
"...yeah.":
"There you go. To answer your question, you don't see these things in Morrowind because Morrowind is a superstitious, primitive backwoods. At least from what I've seen. I don't get out much. But you'll notice there's no steam power here either, except for a few ruins I'm told most people are scared of. Civilization has sort of fallen by the wayside in recent millenia.":
"What do you think are the chances we could use this phone to jumpstart a new technological society here?":
"Slim to none. It seems a fun toy, but honestly, I have to ask why it would even occur to you to build something like this in the first place. What was the problem this was intended to solve?":
"Well, let's say I'm in Balmora and you're here, and we both have a phone. I could use mine to call you on yours and we could talk."Yagrum frowns.
:
"You mean we both need to have one? You can't use it to scry on independent targets?":
"Scry? You mean like with a crystal ball?":
"Of course. Isn't this a psychomanteum?":
"What's a psychomanteum?":
"I thought this was. A psychmanteum is a scrying device. Crystal ball, mirror, pool of water, the Telvanni like to use those pink crystals, doesn't really matter. You choose a person or place you want to view, and you can use it to see and hear. Add a projected illusion or a second device on the viewed end and it's two-way communication.":
"...huh. Umm, no. This isn't like that.":
"Then what does it do? Just...allow you to talk and lob pictures of birds at pictures of pigs?":
"Well, some other stuff too, but mostly, yeah.":
"So it does even less than I assumed. Would you be able to build me a second one?":
"No, these are mass produced by machines.":
"I don't suppose you'd be able to build a machine to mass produce them?":
"No. I was kind of hoping you'd be able to.":
"Reverse engineering something like this would be a nightmare. What about the relays you mentioned? Do machines build those also?":
"You mean the cell towers? I don't think so.":
"What kind of range does it have?":
"Well, back home I can reliably call pretty much anyone in the entire world, but if you mean just from phone to tower, I think it's measured in miles.":
"How large is your world?":
"Umm...11,000 miles diameter I think?":
"A sphere? And you have relays, apparently large enough that you call them towers, spaced at distances measured in miles across that surface area?"Yagrum is beginning to look perplexed.
:
"Well, there's a lot of water, so it's not like the whole planet's covered.":
"Even if it were only a single row of relays spaced 100 miles apart across the globe, that's several hundred at least.":
"Actually it's probably tens of thousands I'd guess. Maybe hundreds of thousands.":
"Hundreds of thousands? Towers? Entire buildings, hundreds of thousands of them? Just to talk? If you were going to go to all that effort, wouldn't it have been better to build a teleport pad network?":
"We can't teleport."Yagram blinks a couple times.
:
"I suppose in that case the device might make some sense. But I don't expect that they'll catch on here."You glance down at the sun. Looks like it will be poking out over the horizon in another 30 minutes or so.
Level 8
Health 48/61
Magick 69/69
Armor rating: 4
27.3 Strength (20)
35.0 Speed (30)
37.3 Agility (30)
40.1 Endurance (30)
42.4 Intelligence (40)
40.0 Willpower (40)
44.6 Personality (40)
57.0 Luck (50)
Numbers in parenthesis are starting values
33 Acrobatics (0)
22 Athletics (5)
7 Armorer (0)
6 Block (0)
7 Heavy Armor (0)
5 Medium Armor (0)
22 Light armor (0)
9 Unarmored (0)
5 Blunt Weapon
12 Hand to Hand
5 Longblade
6 Shortblade
8 Spear
7 Alchemy (0)
5 Enchanting (0)
21 Speechcraft (10)
12 Mercantile (0)
* Cellphone
* Cruel Viperblade
* Chitin shield
* Chitin left + right gauntlets
* Chitin greaves
* Chitin cuirass
* Chitin left + right pauldrons
* Chitin boots
* Combat belt
* Commoner's shirt
* Commoner's pants
* Interior coinpurse, containing:
* lockpick
* 1 standard invisibility potion
* 1 potion of water walking
* 1 empty bottle
Backpack (Worn) (damp)
Main compartment:
* Dwemer Puzzle Box
* Tennis shoes
* 3 illegible water logged papers
* 1 illegible water-logged scroll of divine intervention
* Yellow water-damaged notepad with 54 pages left
* 1 pen
* "20% cooler" Rainbow Dash t-shirt (damp)
* Denim pants (damp)
* wallet with picture ID and $30 in cash
* 2 lesser soulgems (empty)
* 29 Whickwheat
Small compartment
* 122 gold
* 8 empty bottle
* 2 Ampoule Pod
* 1 Black Anther
* 7 bungler's bane
* 5 Chokeweed
* 3 Corkbulb
* 25 Heather
* 3 hypha facia
* 11 luminous russula
* 4 Racer Plume
* 8 saltrice
* 2 Stoneflower petals
* 5 spore pod
* 6 violet coprinus
Bearer of Azura's Mark
Blades, Novice
Imperial Legion, Recruit
Fighter's Guild, Associate (1 quest completed)
Mage Guild, Associate
Registered Sadrith Mora business visa, with slave-handling endorsement
* Steel tanto, with scabbard and carrying straps
* Imperial steel Cuirass
* Apprentice mortar and pestle
Alit Hide [1]Resist Poison
Ash yam [1]Restore personality
Ampoule Pod [1]Restore speed
Black Anther [1]Resist poison
Black lichen [1]Drain Health
Bread [1]Restore Fatigue
Bungler's Bane [1]Drain agility
Chokeweed [1]Drain health
Coda Flower [1]Restore luck
Comberry [1]Drain health
Corkbulb Root [1]Restore luck
Crab Meat [1]Restore fatigue
Gravedust [1]Burden
Green Lichen [1]Night Eye
Heather [1]Poison
Hound Meat [1]Poison
Hypha facia [1]Drain speed
Kresh fiber [1]Cure common disease
Kwama cuttle [1]Restore health
Large kwama egg [1]Restore fatigue
Luminous russ. [1]Paralysis
Marshmerrow [1]Resist common disease
Muck [1]Poison
Racer plume [1]Levitate
Rat meat [1]Poison
Roobrush [1]Restore intelligence
Saltrice [1]Restore endurance
Scale [1]Swift swim
Scathecraw [1]Paralyze
Spore pod [1]Paralysis
Stoneflower petal [1]Fortify health
Sm. Kwama Egg [1]Restore Fatigue
Violet coprinus [1]Water Walking
Whickwheat [1]Cure paralysis
Willow Anther [1]Water Breathing
* One picture of you standing in Divayth Fyr's study
* One, very jumpy 10 second video of you and Divayth waving the phone around inside his study
What do you do?
Author
Topic: Marooned in Morrowind (FINISHED) (Read 435368 times)