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[Man of Paper]

Yeah, I forgot about needing the whole set. Definitely going to need a base of operations. As for the Thieves Guild, I say we should do it. They can help us out with a metric asston of skills we'll need to survive, as well as a whole set of useful friends. Though then again, don't want to fuck with the Tong. I personally always hated them though, so I do kind of want to eventually see a lot of them with impromptu tracheotomies.

[gman8181]

I say we head to the orc nercromancer in the mages guild.  Tell her quietly that we know she's a necromancer and that we would really appreciate it if she would take us up as her pupil.  Make sure she understands that we understand the math part of magic but were never taught the part about actually using magic.

[Iituem]

Yeah, I forgot about needing the whole set. Definitely going to need a base of operations. As for the Thieves Guild, I say we should do it. They can help us out with a metric asston of skills we'll need to survive, as well as a whole set of useful friends. Though then again, don't want to fuck with the Tong. I personally always hated them though, so I do kind of want to eventually see a lot of them with impromptu tracheotomies.

+1 to this.  The Guild remains one of our best chances for quick training with minimal commitments, and we know that they're monopolists now.  We want to be able to keep stealing stuff, even if that means cutting them into it.

I say we head to the orc nercromancer in the mages guild.  Tell her quietly that we know she's a necromancer and that we would really appreciate it if she would take us up as her pupil.  Make sure she understands that we understand the math part of magic but were never taught the part about actually using magic.

This too, if we think we can talk her down from killing us on the spot.  After all, it's not like we're that bothered about soul capture.

Except... we just realised that there's a very literal and very available afterlife, as evidenced by this ceremony.  Trapping someone's soul and enslaving or destroying it to use it in magic sounds horrible.  I think this might be too far for our conscience.  What do you think, Michael?

[Supercharazad]

It's not destroyed, it's given to the Ideal Masters in the Soul Cairn where they mill about, guarded by a dragon for all eternity.

[CognitiveDissonance]

It's not destroyed, it's given to the Ideal Masters in the Soul Cairn where they mill about, guarded by a dragon for all eternity.

"Sent to the farm Eternal Masters"

[GlyphGryph]

Except... we just realised that there's a very literal and very available afterlife, as evidenced by this ceremony.  Trapping someone's soul and enslaving or destroying it to use it in magic sounds horrible.  I think this might be too far for our conscience.  What do you think, Michael?

That's how NORMAL magic works, like enchantments. Necromancy isn't really that bad in comparison - talking to the dead, raising corpses, etc. and so on. And you can limit it to working with those spirits who are willing to work with you.

Morrowinds opinions on Necromancy are a bit schizophrenic. It is both illegal and common, okay and unforgivable, depending on the circumstances.

[WillowLuman]

The Dunmer are all for calling to spirits of deceased family for traditional purposes, but using the bones of their ancestors for menial labor pisses them off royally. It's not too hard to understand.

Maybe we should drop our thieving ways. After all, even a quick and seemingly easy theft has gotten us quite a bit of unwanted trouble. Plus, they'll want us to do complicated missions with a high price of failure.

At least let's put it off until later, as they'll still charge us plenty for training.

[Rakonas]

Personally I think we should do those imperial cult quests at ebonheart, I remember them all being pretty easy and non-combat but rewarding.

[LordBucket]

Episode 23: Hemorrhaging money, Michael gets annoyed, we abandon our oath, and more deja vue

buy the ring

Buy the ring, and sell it back to Arille.

: "Hey, Vodunius. Looks like I didn't make that big purchase I expected, so here's 100 gold for that ring."

: "Great, thanks!

ask the guy to keep his house

: "By the way, since you'll be leaving Vvardenfell, any chance I could use your shack? You won't be needing it."

: "...uhh, I actually rent it from the census office. Seyda Neen is operated directly by the empire. It's kind of like an embassy, I guess.  All the land here is managed by the census. Socucius is the guy to talk to. I know you can buy land elsewhere, but here everything is temporary rentals, mostly for new arrivals or people like me who aren't planning to stay for long. My house is 100 gold per month, and I split that cost with Darvame. She's my roomate."

: "Really? I wouldn't have guessed that."

: "NO! It's purely platonic! Really! I'm not...like that. Darvame's a good friend and all, but she's...you know. A dark elf. I wouldn't...I mean, don't get me wrong..some of my best friends are elves. Like Darvame. And...Darvame. Yeah. But I wouldn't want to, you know...be involved with one. That would be...wow. Yuck."

: "...no, I was actually surprised about the...you know what? Nevermind. Enjoy your trip home."

Huh. That was an unexpected twist.

ring, and sell it back to Arille.

: "Hey, Arille."

: "Hello, my most frequent customer."

: "I just picked up an awesome magic ring. You totally need to buy this."

: "Oh. Vodunius' ring?"

: "...maybe."

He puts it on and looks at it.

: "Yes, this is the one. He's been trying to pawn this off on me for ages. Said he bought it hoping to make a profit on it. Poor guy doesn't know anything about enchanting."

He takes it off and hands it back to you.

: "I'll give you 1 gold for it."

: "...I was thinking more like 100."

: "You do realize it's a cursed ring that will kill you if you use it too much, right?"

: "....maybe. BUT, it also helps you run fast!"

: "1 gold for the suicidal cursed ring."

: "2?"

: "Sure. I'll go 2."

: "Meh. For that price I think I'll just hang onto it for now."

I say we get the mortar and pestle

Buy the mortar and pestle

Buy the mortar and pestle

not much point in a partial alchemy kit and we do NOT want to drag all that stuff around

3 to 1 in favor. Ok.

: "Well, sad that you don't want the ring, but I think I want that mortar and pestle. Would you take 120 instead of 123?

: "No."

: "121?"

: "Hmm. Ok. But only because I pity you."

Mercantile skill is now 6

: "Thank you for your business. Come again."

try picking up a large rock (meaning, as heavy as can be carried)
and running with it around Seyda Neen for a few hours.

: "Ok. I can do that."

You head back to the lighthouse and look around for rocks. There aren't really any single rocks that seem suitable. Instead you gather up several rocks, none larger than your head, and put them in your backpack. Then you run around for a while.

Athletics is now 10

: "Hmm. Well, I don't know if that helped at all. The running would have made me stronger with or without the rocks. Did the rocks help? Maybe. I can't really tell."

(GM Note: I used the console to conjure up ~50 pounds worth of stuff then ran in circles for two game hours. You went from 9 89/100 athletics to 10 29/100 athletics. I'm not really sure what you expected from this. But, there you go.)

Try asking around, possibly with our new buddy Vibius, how magical arms and armor work

: "Hmm. I know the basics, but not well enough to teach. Even if I did, I'm on duty until Loredas. Sorry I can't help you. It will probably take half a day to learn what you need to know. I recommend you go to a trainer."

Thieves Guild, I say we should do it.

+1 to this

Maybe we should drop our thieving ways

: "Two in favor, one opposed. Joining a guild is kind of a big decision. Don't think I want to do something that permanent without more agreement. But about half of you are saying to do things that involve going to Balmora, so I guess we can decide once we're there."

What do you think, Michael?

: "I think we're losing focus, and I kind of feel like some of you don't have a very good memory. We're only even in Seyda Neen right now because we had to come through here to get to Pelagiad in order to talk to Ranis' friend about magic training. But we abandoned that because we got distracted by this thing with Foryn and Thavere, and now apparently we're abandoning that too to go to Balmora. From my point of view it was only about 20-30 minutes ago that we swore in the name of the Nine Divines that we'd do what we could to make things right for Thavere. But now most of you seem to want to go to Balmora and just forget about her. We just cremated the guy who killed her fiancee. Why aren't we letting her know that? Did you guys just forget? And to make it worse, the one thing she actually asked for was to know what happened to the book. She didn't ask for us to give it back. She asked what we did with it. We never told her. Instead we went off on some crusade to recover a ring that she never asked about, and that we never found, then we abandoned the book she actually asked about without telling her where it is so she could make her own arrangements to buy it back. Instead of doing any of these obvious things...telling her that his fiancee's murderer is dead, telling her where the book is...instead the consensus seems to be to simply drop it and go to Balmora to do totally other things."

"It also kind of bothers me that money has been such a huge problem pretty much since I got here, but now that I have some, you guys have me throwing it away on random stuff. As soon as I got that 500 gold reward, the first thing you guys did was start debating about how much of it to give away. We ended up deciding to give 100 to Vibius, followed by 100 for completely worthless cursed ring, then 121 for a mortar and pestle I can't even use without three more alchemy tools. And if I'd had enough to do it you guys probably would have had me spend the rest buying back that book from Ariile to give it to Thavere, which would have once again left me having to steal from random crates and things just to have enough money for strider transport. I have no idea why we bought this ring. What was our original motivation for talking to Vodunius at all? One of you mentioned tagging along with him when he leaves Vvardenfell...but, do any of us really want to leave Vvardenfell? What for? I have a huge disadvantage in that everyone here is stronger and knows magic. The only advantage I have in this world is our knowledge of it. So why throw away that advantage by going somewhere we don't know about? And even if we do decide to leave, what was the point of buying the ring? Wouldn't it have been easier just to go to where the boats are and book passage? And if the point wasn't to find a way off the island, but rather to get Vodunius' house, then why didn't we just inquire after Foryn's shack? He's dead. Obviously he doesn't need it anymore. Why did we pay 100 gold to get somebody to leave to make their shack available when there already was one available? And honestly, do we even want to be based out of Seyda Neen anyway?"

"I don't understand the motivation for half the stuff you guys say to do. We keep paying to go places and then not doing the thing we went to those places to do. Last time we followed through on anything we planned was when we spoke to Vivec. Since then, we were going to train up some combat skills but never did. We were going to do alchemy, but that was ages ago and we haven't really done anything with it except spend money. We went to Gnisis to join the Legion and never did. We came to Seyda Neen to get to Pelegaid but apparently we're not doing that. We swore an oath to help Thavere but we're abandoning her instead. We were saving money to get magic training but as soon as we got some we threw most of it away. And now suddenly we're leaving to go to Balmora to maybe join the Theives Guild and maybe threaten an orc necromancer. Even if we do manage to talk her into training us instead of killing us to give her a body for her hobby...how exactly does that benefit us? How are we going to get corpses to raise? It's not like we're strong enough to kill anyone right now. Even if we go kill and animate a rat or something, what are we going to do with it? Are we seriously planning to announce to the world that we're a necromancer by having mummified rats follow us around to do our fighting for us? Do we really want to antagonize the tribunal temple right now? If not, where will we keep our undead and how will they benefit us? Off the top of my head I can think of two people in Morrowind who are necromancers for sure, and both of them are WAY stronger than we are...and even they hide and deny their necromancy because they don't want to get killed."

"I just don't feel like some of you are thinking your suggestions through very well. And the suggestions that do make sense, we're not following up on, because every time I start on something you immediately want to drop it and do something else. I think we need to decide on a goal and then take the steps to make it happen rather than running in circles constantly changing our mind about everything."

Begin sampling ingredients, preferably in a place with a healer, such
as the Balmora temple, in case we suffer any adverse reactions.

Ok. On to Balmora.

: "Hi, Darvame. I just spoke with Vodunius. He says he's leaving Vvardenfell. I'm sure you'll get to talk to him before he leaves, but I thought I'd give you a head's up since he's your roomate."

: "Thank you for the warning, sera. Where to?"

: "Balmora."

: "Certainly. 13 gold."

The trip to Balmora is uneventful.



Your arrival, however, is not. As you approach the stairs from the dock you're hit with a strong sense of deja vue. Again. This time it's accompanied by a sensation of vertigo. You lose your balance and stumble. The strider driver reaches out to try to catch you, but he's not fast enough and you end up sitting down to keep from falling off the ramp.

: "Are you alright, sera?"

: "...yes. Thank you. Just...felt a bit dizzy. I'm fine now."

You get back up and resume your trip.

: "I hope I didn't just die again."

The sensation was much stronger that previous times you've felt it. If you were to lose your balance like that again at the wrong time, or during a fight...that could be a problem.

You head to the Balmora temple and go to the shrines.

Acrobatics is now 18



It's 35 gold for a blessing. You hope you won't need one as you go through your reagents, tasting one of each.

New alchemy knowledge: ampoule Pod - [1] Restore speed
New alchemy knowledge: bungler's bane - [1] Drain agility
New alchemy knowledge: coda flower - [1] Restore luck
New alchemy knowledge: hypha facia - [1] Drain
New alchemy knowledge: rat meat - [1] Poison
New alchemy knowledge: spore pod - [1] Paralysis
New alchemy knowledge: violet coprinus - [1] Water Walking

You feel a little woozy from the poison, but the effect passes quickly.

Health is now 32/41

head to the orc nercromancer in the mages guild.  Tell her quietly that we know she's a necromancer

This too, if we think we can talk her down from killing us on the spot.

: "...I guess that's two in favor and none opposed? Or is it one and a half in favor? That second yes vote sounds tentative to me. And the way I remember it, apart from Ranis, we already have a bad reputation at the Balmora mage guild. Well, let's go talk to her."

You find her right where you expect her, downstairs in the mage guild. When you walk up, she seems to be intently fiddling with things on her shelf, muttering to herself in a throaty language you don't recognize.



: "Excuse me. Hi, I-"

: "What do you want!?!? I'm BUSY!!!!"

: "...I wanted to ask you-"

: "I don't care! Go away!"

...oh, that's right. She doesn't like to talk. In-game, she generally refuses to talk unless you're at a certain stage of the main quest. Hmm. Well, I guess I could tell her we know she's a necromancer like one of you suggested. That would probably get her attention. Is that what we want to do?

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Known stats
Level 2
Health 32/41
Armor rating: 1

Attributes (Values in parenthesis are starting values)
21.8 Strength (20)
30.7 Speed (30)
32.0 Agility (30)
30.5 Endurance (30)
41.0 Intelligence (40)
42.6 Personality (40)
51.0 Luck (50)

Skills
18 Acrobatics (0)
10 Athletics (5)
 2 Unarmored (0)
17 Speechcraft (10)
 6 Mercantile (0)
 5 Alchemy (0)

Worn:
 * Steel tanto, with scabbard and carrying straps
 * Cursed ring of athletics and drain health
 * Colovian fur "helm"
 * Commoner's shirt
 * Commoner's belt
 * 'Expensive' pants
 * Tennis shoes
 * Interior coinpurse, containing 44 gold

Backpack
Main compartment:
 * Thieves Guild invitation
 * Letter of introduction from Ranis Athrys
 * Yellow notepad with 57 pages left
 * 1 pen
 * Apprentice mortar and pestle
 * 1 Standard Restore Health potions
 * 1 Greef
 * 2 soulgems of uncertain size
 * "20% cooler" Rainbow Dash t-shirt,
 * Denim pants
 * a cellphone and wallet with picture ID and $30 in cash

Small compartment
 * 179 gold
 * 1 ampoule Pod
 * 1 bread
 * 7 bungler's bane
 * 3 hypha facia
 * 1 kwama cuttle
 * 11 luminous russula
 * 1 rat meat
 * 3 saltrice
 * 5 spore pod
 * 6 violet coprinus

Alchemy Knowledge
ampoule Pod - [1]Restore speed
Bread - [1]Restore Fatigue
bungler's bane - [1]Drain agility
coda flower - [1]Restore luck
hypha facia - [1]Drain
kwama cuttle [1]Restore health
luminous russula [1]Paralysis
rat meat - [1]Poison
saltrice [1]Restore endurance
spore pod - [1]Paralysis
Small Kwama Egg - [1]Restore Fatigue
violet coprinus - [1]Water Walking

What do you do?

[WillowLuman]

Alright Mike, let's get some things straight, so we stop wasting time. We suggest things you should do, but we don't necessarily mean for you to do them immediately. Apologies, we should have been more clear about that. We need to coordinate more amongst ourselves the times at which actions should be taken and he order in which they occur.

I suggested helping Vodonius since, at least in the game, it nets you a discount from Davarme and use of his house. And his house certainly seems much nicer than Foyrn's leaky shack on the mud. Like your previous death, I did not forsee the divergence.

That little Deja Vu episode was certainly disturbing. If you died, we didn't see it. It might have had something to do with the thieves' guild, or perhaps from Ms. Orc (I don't think she's the murdering type, though: necromancer's tend to use the already dead). The fact that we didn't see it, though, might suggest the PC. In any case, let's watch our step.

I really have no idea what to do with the necromancer. I didn't think we were done in Seyda Neen, but it won't do to run back there now. Really, we should have stopped by Peligaid on the way. My vote is neutral.

As for the thieves' guild, remember that we'd still have to pay them for training, just like any other guild.

[hostergaard]

Right, I would like to point out that the rest of an entire alchemy set is only 70 gold.

We know enough to make potions of restore fatigue and paralysis.

The fatigue potions can be somewhat useful, and are made from incredibly cheap and common materials; bread and small kwarma eggs. At 1 gold each and 1 gold for a flask, we would have to be really fucking terrible at making potions to not make ones worth more than 3 gold.

I mean, a bargain fortify fatigue is worth 5 gold. We should at least be able to break even, or even if we don't its a cheap way to train alchemy (make sure to smell resulting potions, might as well try to learn to recognize them by smell)

Also, I wonder if we can apply potions to our weapons; if we can we should make a paralysis potion and put it on our tanto, just to even out the odds a little.


I am not against joining thieves guild, but if there is a choice I would rather take mages guild, because magic. I am also a little too emphatic to be a ruthless thief, we should really make it a quest goal to get that book back. But its a good way to get some money early on easily, and we can play the Robin Hood role and only steal from the rich and give some of the loot to the poor for the sake of our conscience.

Rather, I think we should follow up on that letter of recommendation, it seems the best way to get some training and contacts in an easy and efficient manner.

Also, thinking about it, while our dollars have no monetary value it may be worth a lot. Why? The bills (and coins to a degree) would be considered fantastically intricate works of art by the denizen of this medieval world. Find someone who like the arts and sell them as pocket paintings or something. I think Crassius Curio in Vivec may be a buyer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Man, I am loving this LP, its a fresh twist on how to make fresh LP on old games.

[Iituem]

That... was embarrassingly valid.  I say we pick one course and stick to it from here on in, until it's completed.

Since we're in Balmora the necromancer comes to mind (pretty sure she'll kill us) as does the Thieves' Guild.  I vote the guild, but I'll change if there's a good argument for necromancer.

But we should just choose one clear goal and stick to it, for Michael's sanity's sake.

[GlyphGryph]

I am coming down hard as opposed to the thieves guild. What does it do for us? Not a hell of a lot, that's what. They want a cut of work we'll do - for them! - and we get skills in return that are pretty much useless once we get some magic. Heeeeelll no.

Also, ugh, why did we leave town. >_< I too suspect it's a side effect of conversation and commands ending up so interwined. We need to come up with a way to deal with this. How about...

We should limit actual, immediate, "do this now" commands to this sort of thing.

And anyway, Mike, the reason we didn't go back and tell her, and why there no commands to, was that we were still trying to find the ring or get back the book last I knew! I didn't realize we'd given up on that - but since we apparently have, we should return to her and at least hope that finding the killer helped, and find out if there's anything else that we might be able to do for her.

For the future, consider this command permanent - Unless I explicitly support something, if it involves leaving the town we are currently in for the next action, I oppose it)

I wanted to suggest we buy the rest of the Alchemy supplies, but we STILL don't have a place to stay - we need to talk to that guy that was mentioned but I have no idea where he is. I think we can manage 100 a month. And right now it seems like Alchemy is a decent way for us to make some money, or at least I hope so.

[LordBucket]

We need to coordinate more amongst ourselves

Do you guys need more time between updates? Part of the problem might be that they happen too often. This thread is only 27 days old and we've had 23 updates in that time. So if people suggest X and then don't log on for 24 hours, odds are fairly good that they'll have missed the chance to make suggestions to provide follow-through for their previous suggestion.

I could do updates less often. Maybe more like twice a week instead of every day or two?

We need to come up with a way to deal with this. How about...

I'm willing to switch to an explicit-commands-only model if that would help. It's come up several times that people have phrased things as questions or conditionals and I've been unsure whether they were intended as suggestions. For example, we could bold formal suggestions and anything not bolded I'll interpret as discussion, or long-term planning, rather than anything to include right away in an update. Though this being a 27 page thread I'd be slightly concerned that not everyone would notice an announcement to that effect.

[GlyphGryph]

Maybe smaller updates instead? I certainly would have had more suggestions once we realized we weren't actually getting the house in exchange for the ring, for example. Since the whole point of that exercise, as I understood it, was to get the house.