Episode 21, part 1: First Blood
0. Make sure the guard is gone, and then apologize with all the heart-bleeding-feeling you've just experienced.
1. Tell her that you cannot get the book back now, but you might be able to get something else she lost (look foggy at this moment, like you've had a sight from the Nine Divines, as they say), if she tells you which "he" went missing. This will trigger the part of the quest normally gained through rumor.
2. Go find the body, and grab the money. You know where it is, and you can move fast...if of course it's still there. The murder is obviously unsolved, but the body could easily have been found and dealt with, and she'll tell you. Regardless, stop jumping to save energy for running.
3-1. If you gained corpse money/information, report to the effective police officer of this town about the murder, give him the taxes, and say that you are going to go investigate immediately.
3-2. If you learned 2 is already done, tell her that you will start investigating immediately to find her ring, then make those words the truth.
4. You already know who did it, but you should collect the information to make sure it's the same person this time. Also, not mixing up events.
5. Quietly and swiftly get a guard for the murderer, talk to them alone with the door ajar, in an attempt to get them to serve time instead of dieing needlessly. Let the guard do the fighting if they get violent, but help if you can. Make sure to get that ring.
6. Return the ring to Thavere, asking her if it will at all make up for what you took from her. You will mean it, too; why do these people have to be so much more gripping when they're right there in person?
I support this
+1
+1 as well
Im throwing my vote in with this.
:
"Miss, I apologize. I'm very sorry for your loss."
:
"What do you know of my loss?":
"You're right. I don't know what it is you've lost. I don't know what kind of relationship you had." You gaze upward, trying to look inspirational.
"But I do know that you're in pain, and by the Nine Divines, I'm going to do what I can to ease your burden."It's difficult to gauge her look. If you were to try, you'd call it skeptical optimism. It's like she wants to believe you, but is afraid that if she gets her hopes up, they'll just be thrown to the ground and stomped on later.
:
"Please excuse me."You walk out of town to look for the body, not sure if you'll find one. You never found Tarhiel's body. Plus, the way you remember it, when this quest is done normally, nobody knows that Processus is actually dead rather than just missing until you find the body and report it to the Census office. From the way Thavere acted, you're pretty sure she knows he's dead. Time to go find a body.
You head out of town and set out in the direction you think of where the body is supposed to be.
You're pretty sure he's off the road to the left, so you get close enough to see the water and walk through the grass. You pass a couple mudcrabs, but they ignore you. It's a misty night, and visibility isn't very good. You see some boulders up ahead and think the body might be just on the other side. Quickly making your way closer, all you find is a pair of massive rats, who unlike the mudcrabs, take immediate notice of you.
Knowing there's no way you can take them on, you turn to run, but despite their stubby legs, they seem to be faster than you are. One of them manages to bite your leg as you run. It hurts, but not terribly.
Unarmored skill is now 1Health is now 38/40You manage to kick him off and keep running, but it's nearly a minute run back to Seyda neen, and the rat is biting at you the entire trip.
Unarmored skill is now 2Health is now 34/40Fortunately by now you're nearly at the bridge leading to Seyda Neen
:
"Help!"A guard comes running to your rescue.
Unfortunately, he chooses to attack the trailing rat, leaving you to struggle with the closest one for a bit, but you manage to take no further injury by the time he comes over and one-shots it.
:
"Thank you."
:
"Anytime, citizen.":
"Hey, how long have you been in the Legion?"He seems a bit surprised at the question.
:
"A little over two years.":
"So you did your year, and you've reenlisted twice? How is it? Good?":
"I can think of no finer way to serve our Emperor.":
"Right, but...how is it?":
"I spent my first few months on wall duty at the various forts. Darius and Moonmoth mostly. The wildlife here know to avoid forts, so It was dull. Eventually I was reassigned to the Balmora - Moonmoth route. That was my first taste of combat. Rats, cliff racers...every few weeks it was something.":
"Every few weeks?":
"Yes. I remember clearly the first time I fought a scrib. It had followed a miner from the Shulk egg mine back to Balmora and was harassing the silt strider. Couldn't hurt it, of course, but when I saw it I drew my sword, ran up and swung, but somehow missed. It turned around and bit me. First time I'd ever been paralyzed. I thought I was going to die. But it just kept biting my shins until the effect wore off and I crushed its head with one blow. It was glorious."Clearly the guard is relishing in the memory.
:
"So how'd you end up in Seyda Neen?":
"We rotate assignments every month. Last month I was stationed in Khuul, this month Seyda Neen, next month I might be anywhere. This is a good post. Close to people, nice quiet town, but far enough into the woods that there's still some action.":
"Did the Legion teach you to fight?":
"Yes. Basic is four weeks. There's a lot to learn other than fighting, but by the time you'e done you'll have learned how to use armor and shield, as well as the preferred legion weapons: long blades, blunt weapons and spears. Are you considering joining?":
"Considering. Haven't decided. By the way, I'm Michael.":
"Michael? That's an unusual name. Vibius Caecilianus."You thank Vibius again for his time, then retrieve some alchemically usable rat meat from the rats. By the time you finish the sky is starting to get noticeably blue, and you take a few minutes to see if you can locate the morning sun. Turns out that "south" is on the other side of Seyda Neen, so you miss the sunrise itself, but you do manage to catch a nice view from near the lighthouse.
The brony in you giggles like a schoolgirl and you thank "Celestia" for raising the sun, wondering which of the daedra would be actually be responsible for sun-raising here, or if there even is such a thing. Aren't Azura's spheres dusk and dawn? So that would make her...Twilight? You chuckle at the thought, but quietly hope that she isn't watching. This is, after all, her time, and you're not sure she'd get the joke. Actually, that brings up an interesting question. Vivec said he was mortal now, but what about the daedra? Are they omniscient here? What's the extent of their power? Azura in particular was the
narrator for Morrowind. Surely she would be in a position to know something about your situation?
Anyway, the sun is lovely, and seeing it make your wounds not hurt as much. Only then does it occurs to you that maybe you should check them. Obviously walking hasn't been a problem, but you don't want to get infected. You sit down in the dirt and check out the backs of your legs. There are obvious, bloodied holes in your pants, and pulling them up you see that there are some equally obvious
gaping holes in your calves. You immediately reach for your health potion, but before you take it, it occurs to you that it doesn't hurt even when you flex the muscle and you don't seem to be bleeding particularly. You stand up again and jump a few times. Doing so doesn't make it hurt any more than it already does, and you don't seem especially hindered by the injury. Curious, you sit back down, pull a pant leg up again, wipe off one finger as best as you can and poke it into one of the wounds to feel around. The sensation of running your finger along the inside of the wound in a direction parallel to your leg is distinctly different running it perpendicular. Your pretty sure those are muscle fibers you're feeling.
It's
creepy, but it just doesn't hurt all that much. It feels no worse than fairly bad cat scratches or a rugburn.
Shrugging, you get up and head back out of town. You don't know yet if infection is an issue, but at least bleeding doesn't seem to be. Worst case, you can use your health potion, and you're fairly certain you can find cheap ways to cure disease. You return to the clearing in the boulders you found the rats in. Looking at it, it doesn't look right, but on the far side of the boulders you find a clearing that you're almost positive is where Processus' body is supposed to be.
No body. But, several mushrooms. You scrape the alchemically useful lamella from their undersides while you consider the situation. You're not totally surprised his body isn't here. Thavere knew he was dead. Did that dunmer woman start this quest and not finish it? Or are there others besides the two of you able to do quests? Can any npc do quests? Or does this entire "quest" dynamic not work here like it does in game? Certainly the world here more or less matches the initial Morrowind game state. Maybe you're not really "in the game" anymore, and this world was simply created from an initial snapshot. Or maybe like one of your voices keeps suggesting, this is a game but there are a whole bunch of PCs in it.
Oh, is that a draggle tail plant? You pick some more alchemy materials while you ponder.
What doesn't make sense is that the body isn't here. In Morrowind, it wasn't possible to move certain bodies. This was one of the permanent ones that couldn't be moved except via the console. But it isn't here. But then, the majority of bodies can be moved. So maybe the "permanent" bodies are simply acting like "temporary" bodies. That would actually be trivially easy to script. You'd almost call it a bugfix.
Oh, look. There's some hypha facia. Sure, may as well take that too.
But what about the ring? Well, several obvious possibilities come to mind. If a guard found it and dragged the body back to town, it might have been confiscated as part of the investigation. If a PC took it, or anyone else for that matter...they might have looted the body and only turned in the tax records and gold to the census office. For that matter, it's possible that the body was never turned in it all. You don't remember anyone actually
saying that he was dead. Given your own recent encounter with two rodents of unusual size, if the guy went out to collect taxes as part of a regular route, and disappeared for days, it wouldn't be such a stretch to guess he was dead. There's no shortage of wildlife they might simply have assumed he'd been eaten by. Or for that matter, that might have eaten his corpse if nobody came by to find it. It's possible the ring might be in a guar's belly right now.
Oh, is that a...
...cliff racer? Time to leave.
Now.You turn to flee, the leftover sting from your leg injuries completely forgotton as visions of being eaten to death by cliff racers fills your mind. You turn to look, still running, and nearly do a "dumb girl in horror movie running from killer" faceplant, but manage to stumble your way out of the fall. Pausing, you look...but you see nothing, and hear only your own ragged breath over the background swamp noises.
It didn't see you.
You walk the rest of the way back to Seyda Neen while you consider what to do.
(continued in part 2)
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Topic: Marooned in Morrowind (FINISHED) (Read 434495 times)