(continued from part 1)
Episode 39: Part 2: An expected treasure trove
go to Ald'Ruhn and do the damn quest
complete Caius's mission.
+1
support doing that mission
You head next door to the Mage Guild and make your way downstairs. As you approach the guild guide, you notice two things: first, Sharn, the orc necromancer, doesn't seem to be present. Second, there's a dunmer woman you don't recognize standing among a pile of books in the sleeping area.
Curious, you approach her.
:
"Hi. I'm Michael. I don't think I've seen you around here before."No answer.
:
"Excuse me, miss?"No answer. You get up close for a better look. She's breathing. Her eyes are open. And she's just standing there. Experimentally you wave one hand in front of her face.
:
"Hello?"
Your recognize the robe she's wearing. Purple with 6 gems, it's the same outfit that Trebonius wears. Still no response from her though. Curious, you poke her in the belly. Her skin has give to it, so it's not like she's turned to stone, but she doesn't react to your touch. Paralyzed maybe?
:
"Are you ok?"You hold a finger up to her eyes and move it back and forth. No eye tracking at all. You try to move her to the bed, but curiously, you can't. It's like she's rooted to the ground. Not sure what to do, you approach one of the mage guild vendors.
:
"I greet you warmly, outlander. I'm Maravyn. How can I help you?":
"What's the deal with the girl by the beds?":
"You mean Clover?":
"Is that Clover? Dunmer? Long white hair, purple robe?":
"Yes, that's her. What about her?":
"Do you realize she's paralyzed?":
"What? Really?":
"Yes."Maravyn follows you over to inspect Clover. She's still standing there.
:
"Oh, outlander. She's not paralyzed. She's just meditating.":
"No, she's rooted in place.":
"What do you mean?"You place both hands on Clover's hips, lean into her and push as hard as you can. You can't even budge her.
:
"I don't see what the problem is.":
"What? Seriously? This doesn't look odd to you?":
"No, not at all."Maravyn goes back to his table, leaving you perplexed. Is there some basic piece of physics going on here you've completely missed? Or something else? Unsure what to do, you stand there for a moment just staring into her eyes.
:
"Clover, I'd really like it if we could talk."No answer.
Since she's not talking, you start browsing through the books. Biography of Berenziah. That's...not one of the more memorable books. You pick up the next from the stack. Biography of Berenziah again. What, is the entire stack duplicates? Oh, wait. Volume I, volume II, Volume III...looks like it's the full set. You set them down and check another pile. A Brief History of Empire? Again, looks like the full set. You check the next stack. ABCs for Barbarians? How Orsinium Passed to the orc? Those are single books rather than collections. Checking, you don't see Sermons of Vivec anywhere. Collecting books is pretty normal in Morrowind, but so far as you can tell none of these are relevant to any quests. No Vampires of Vvardenfell, no Lost Prophecies, no Progress of Truth. No Fire and Faith, none of the Dwemer books. It occurs to you that if she's got the same deal as Awesomicus, it's possible these are all the worthless reject books she's collected over weeks of being here, and all the useful books are in some kind of invisible inventory you can't see.
:
"Clover, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you're a PC, we need to talk."No answer. You stare into her eyes for a minute, waiting. Nothing. Glancing around first to make sure nobody's looking, you reach out and grab one of her boobs. No response. Then you lift your spear and hold the point up to one of her eyes. No blinking, no eye motion, nothing. It's actually kind of creepy. Definitely crosses into uncanny valley. Eventually you give up and pull some paper out of your bag.
But what to write? What did the voices in your head say the last time we left a note for a suspected PC?
put out a quest for Awesomicus to find us and talk to us about an urgent matter of Imperial security
Hmm. That might work. Caius did say he sent her to go investigate Ilunibi, and you are in the Blades now, so...wait, has she already investigated? You check her arms and face, but you don't see anything that looks like a corprus blister. It's been a couple days since Caius told you he gave her the quest. Maybe she just hasn't done it yet? Hmm. In that case...
Clover
My name is Michael. I have been informed by a mutual acquaintance of ours that you've been tasked with the investigation of the cave of Ilunibi. I have information that may be great use to you. It is vital that you speak to me before you investigate.
A friend,
MichaelThat should do. Doesn't give away any crucial information, but it's a quest hook that would be relevant and of interest regardless of whether she's a PC, the Nerevarine, or whatever. You fold the note and tuck it into the neck of her robe, then wait another minute or two just in case. Still no response from her. Eventually you give up and go to the teleport pad.
:
"Hey, perv. Don't think I've forgotten about you.":
"What? What did I do?":
"Better be nothing, or we'll have to deal with you. Who are you stalking now?"...oh, wait. Right. Last time you spoke with Masalinie some things were said that got taken out of context, you'd recently arrived under escort by Ordinators, and...yeah, it looked kind of bad. Actually, come to think of it, not only does the guild guide thinks you're a stalker, Sharn is probably annoyed at you for disappearing after telling her you'd retrieve that skull for her, everyone in the Vivec guild saw you escorted out of the city by two Ordinators, and that enchanting vendor you tried to buy an unlocking scroll from very obviously thought you were buying it to steal things. Apart from Ranis and Moravyn just now, you haven't really made a good impression here. Well, time to try and fix that.
:
"Hey, look, I know we got off to a bad start, and obviously I must have left a very bad impression on you if you still remember me after the whole month it's been since we last spoke. But can we just get over it? I'm probably going to be joining the guild here soon. At least, as soon as I can learn some magic. Hopefully we're all going to be on the same side here, so...look: I apologize. Whatever it looked like when we last spoke, it wasn't like that. And I apologize for the misunderstanding. Can we be friends?"She doesn't answer right away, but then nods slowly.
:
"Ok. But I've got my eye on you.":
"Great. That's totally ok. Thank you."Awkward silence.
:
"So, where would you like to go?":
"Oh, right. Ald'rhun, please.":
"15 gold."You pay her and step onto the teleport pad. A moment later you're in Ald'ruhn.
It looks like there's a large pile of stuff laying in the hallway. Curious, you take closer look.
Looks like quite the treasure pile. A full set of alchemy tools, mixed master and grandmaster pieces. Nearly a full suit of orcish and several pieces of imperial steel heavy armor. Several slave bracers. Daedric and dwemer battle axes you can barely lift. A dragonscale shield? That's kind of rare. Several assorted swords and...oh, a glass jinxblade, that's a nice weapon. Wait...staff of peace? Shield of the undaunted? Some of these are plot critical quest rewards. And is that...the artifact axe, Cloudcleaver, just laying discarded on the ground? What's that even from?
Whoever did this has been busy. But there's more. Seeing that the door to your left is open, you turn to look.
Looks like this is where the quest books went. At least a few of them: two copies of Chronicles of Nchuleft, Progress of Truth and Antecedants of Dwemer Law. And apparently about 600 pounds worth of dwemer cogs scattered on the bed. To your right:
The desk is covered is assorted dwemer stuff: mugs, pitchers, coins...even a puzzle box. And, what's this? An Argonian head on a plaque? The head of Scourge? That's a particularly obscure easter egg. What about the chest?
Alchemy ingredients. Since you know the voices are going to ask...no, you don't see any diamonds or void salts. But you do find an emerald and some raw ebony, which are kind of rare.
As you survey the hoard, you become increasingly nervous. Whomever did all this is obviously
way ahead of you. They could probably sneeze and kill you. And if you were to venture a guess, they probably have a recall point here. They could potentially teleport in at any moment. The question is: would that be a good thing or a bad thing? You're not sure. And what about the hoard? There's enough riches casually laying around to easily solve all your money problems forever. But do you really want to steal stuff from someone who could probably kill you accidentally? On one hand, odds are good there's so much stuff here you could probably make off with a few items and they'd never even notice. But on the other hand...Progress of Truth, artifact axe, even the jinxblade...there are a several tems that if this were your personal collection you'd absolutely notice if they disappeared. And not necessarily the more valuable ones. Like the slave bracers, for example. Totally worthless in terms of the vendoring, but usually players keep those to track how many slaves they've either freed as part of the Twin Lamps quests. Taking the cheap stuff isn't a guarantee that theft would go unnoticed. But then, even if they do notice, what are they going to do about it? There's no way for them to track you, right? But then finally...some of the things you most want are either impractically heavy, or impractically big. Like the alchemy tools. Those would be really nice to have. But it would be absolutely be noticed if they were gone, and you still don't really have anywhere to put them. And even if you di, what about the mage guild npcs? Assuming it's even meaningful to call anyone an npc here, would they be able to report you if you were seen visibly carting off treasure that's been cluttering up their guild hall? Somebody's bound to notice if you leave carrying anything big.
Looks like you have some decisions to make.
Level 7
Health 59/59
Armor rating: 4
26.8 Strength (20)
34.8 Speed (30)
36.6 Agility (30)
39.7 Endurance (30)
42.0 Intelligence (40)
43.6 Personality (40)
56.0 Luck (50)
Numbers in parenthesis are starting values
30 Acrobatics (0)
22 Athletics (5)
6 Armorer (0)
5 Block (0)
7 Heavy Armor (0)
5 Medium Armor (0)
20 Light armor (0)
9 Unarmored (0)
5 Blunt Weapon
12 Hand to Hand
5 Longblade
5 Shortblade
8 Spear
5 Alchemy (0)
5 Enchanting (0)
19 Speechcraft (10)
9 Mercantile (0)
* Silver spear
* Colovian fur "helm"
* Chitin left + right gauntlets
* Chitin greaves
* Chitin cuirass
* Chitin left + right pauldrons
* Chitin boots
* Cursed ring of athletics and drain health
* Combat belt
* Commoner's shirt
* Commoner's pants
* Interior coinpurse, containing:
* 185 gold
* 2 Standard restore health potions
Backpack (Worn)
Main compartment:
* Tennis shoes
* A strange note that reads 'Remember, we are watching you.'
* Letter of introduction from Ranis Athrys
* Sealed Letter for Surane Leoriane
* Commoner's belt
* Yellow notepad with 54 pages left
* 1 divine intervention scroll, trigger words 'take me home'
* 1 pen
* "20% cooler" Rainbow Dash t-shirt,
* Denim pants
* a cellphone and wallet with picture ID and $30 in cash
* 2 soulgems of uncertain size
Small compartment
* 224 gold
* 1 empty bottle
* 35 Heather
* 3 Corkbulb
* 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
Blades, Novice
Imperial Legion, Recruit
Fighter's Guild, Associate (1 quest completed)
* Steel tanto, with scabbard and carrying straps
* Imperial steel Cuirass
* Apprentice mortar and pestle
Ampoule Pod [1]Restore speed
Black Anther [1]Resist poison
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
Hypha facia [1]Drain speed
Kwama cuttle [1]Restore health
Luminous russ. [1]Paralysis
Marshmerrow [1]Resist common disease
Muck [1]Poison
Rat meat [1]Poison
Roobrush [1]Restore intelligence
Saltrice [1]Restore endurance
Scale [1]Swift swim
Scathecraw [1]Paralyze
Spore pod [1]Paralysis
Sm. Kwama Egg [1]Restore Fatigue
Violet coprinus [1]Water Walking
Willow Anther [1]Water Breathing
What do you do?
Author
Topic: Marooned in Morrowind (FINISHED) (Read 434469 times)