(continued from part 1)
Episode 40, part 2: Blades delivery boy, Alchemy! And...oops.
take some (small) stuff.
Take some small but expensive things
You head back upstairs to SexyWither's pile of stuff and look around. Nobody in line of sight. The guild guide is out of view inside her alcove. You step inside the room and close the door behind you.
Then....you wait.
You listen.
You breath.
Just in case there's an invisible thief watching you, you wave your spear around the room. It makes contact with nothing but the walls. It's probably safe. Probably. You glance at the desk on your right covered with dwemer objects. You open it and find yet more inside. It's very tempting to take some. Some of these things are valuable, but not only are they obviously collectibles, you also know from your time with the Legion that they're illegal to buy or sell. You decide to pass. The books too, would be easily noticed if missing. And the cogs are 50 pounds each. That pretty much just leaves the chest of alchemy materials.
You open up the chest and quickly take some things that hopefully won't be missed.
Gained 1 each of Alit Hide, Ampoule Pod, Black Anther, Emerald, Daedra Heart, Scamp Skin, Fire Salt, and 5 each of Chokeweed, Hound Meat, Rat Meat, Racer Plume and SaltriceThat should do it. You're probably being more cautious than is necessry, but a few of those items should be worth a couple hundred gold each, if you remember correctly. Barring the crazy non-vanilla economy here rearing its ugly head. Plus, you figure you can always come back later. If SexyWithers is coming back regularly it might be safer to take a little bit at a time than a whole bunch at once. You close the chest, open the door and step back outside. The only sound is your heartbeat. You walk around the upstairs balcony of the guild, pass the guild guide and glance over the railing down to the bottom floor in the middle. Edwinna is still scowling at her books. There's no way to know just yet whether anyone in the thieves guild somehow saw you, but you're pretty sure that at least noone in the mage guild noticed.
You still feel nervous, though.
Taste-Test one of everything that we still know nothing about.
New alchemy knowledge: Alit Hide [1]Resist PoisonNew alchemy knowledge: Hound Meat [1]PoisonYou eye the emerald, the daedra heart and the racer plume. Until now all the ingredients you've tried have seemed reasonably edible. You try the feather.
New alchemy knowledge: Racer plume [1]LevitateThe texture wasn't that bed, but the flavor definitely was. Fortunately you have a good excuse to avoid trying the others: It's possible they might be worth a couple hundred gold. You decide to price them before eating them.
go to Ald'Ruhn and do the damn quest
complete Caius's mission.
+1
support doing that mission
...yeah. Maybe you'll go finish that delivery mission for Caius' before making potions. The tools are right on the other side of the door, but you don't want to make off with reagents then immediately use them. That seems too obvious. Instead, you leave the guild and step out into-
... a sandstorm. Grumbling, you cover your face and squint a lot trying to keep sand out of your eyes. Occasionally you need to stop to pluck the accumulated sand from your eyelashes. It's unpleasant, and you rush through the town to get it over with quickly. You end up having to stop and ask a guard for directions, but you make it to the Ald Skaar Inn without too much trouble.
Once inside you ask the bartender if she can direct you to Surane Leoriane, and she tells you that Surane is renting a room downstairs.
:
"Hello. I have a delivery for Surane?":
"I'm Surane."You hand her the sealed letter from Caius. She unseals it and reads it. Then she holds it between her hands and incinerates it with a blast of destruction magic.
:
"Thank you."She turns and goes back inside her room.
That was...anticlimactic.
:
"Any return message, or anything?":
"No, thank you."Ok. On to the next thing, then.
Use alchemy equipment, hang around for a while, try to make some useful stuff
You could do that. From your time with the Legion you know for a fact that it's not a crime to handle unattended objects provided you don't take or damage them. You can read books, for example. Alchemy tools should be no different.
You return to the Mage Guild and go to the alchemy equipment. You figure you'll start with the recipes you know. Checking to confirm that nobody's watching you set your spear on the ground, then drop your pants, and begin.
...oh, right. You have only one empty bottle. Fortunately this being a mage guild there's a conveniently nearby alchemy supplier. You spend 10 gold for ten bottles. That could be troublesome at some point, but for now, worst case you can simply pour out the bottles and re-use them. While you're at the vendor, you price check the emerald, daedra heart and fire salts for 177 gold. Much less than you were hoping for, but you sell them anyway. That brings you to 576 gold. Enough to get started with Fast Eddie if you still want to. Sorting through your materials for recipes you can make, poison is what you have most in abundance. May as well make less useful stuff first, and save the more useful stuff for after you've gained some skill. You wanted to experiment with using poison anyway.
Used:6 Heather + 6 Hound meat
4 Heather + 4 Rat Meat
Gained:3 potions of poison
Alchemy skill is now 7Only three successes, but you feel more comfortable with alchemy. And you've discovered something: even though you're pretty sure you haven't had anything to drink since that bottle of greef you shared with Vibius back in Seyda Neen over a month ago, apparently you can pee on demand. Anyway, next you pull out...
...wait. Suddenly you feel something. It seems familiar. This isn't deja vu but-
This. Is.
Bad.You whirl around.
So far nothing threatening. But you set your spear down on the ground in order to have your hands free to use the alchemy tools. So right now you have no weapons on you at all. You knew that choosing a spear would be create problems, but this particular one never occurred to you. You were standing in the middle of SexyWithers' stuff. She must have had a recall point right where you were standing and when she recalled, you swapped places with her. Strillian warned you that could happen.
We should carry at least 2 weapons at all times, in case we need a backup.
Honestly, I thought we already agreed on that
Yes, yes. It was on the to-do list, but your tanto is back at Caius' and you were planning to talk to him
anyway after you delivered his letter. You didn't want to go barging back in and have to explain why you hadn't done it yet. So now here you are in some random dunmer tomb, without a weapon.
Well, on the bright side it looks like the place has already been cleared. Odds are, when whomever swapped positions with you they had already finished the tomb and were returning home to drop off loot. You search the various bodies. A dunmer with expensive-looking clothes that are probably worth taking when you're not worried about being murdered by tomb undead, a skeleton with a silver sword and iron shield, both of which are stupidly heavy. And an imperial with a bunch of cloth armor that isn't really an upgrade for you, and...aha. A steel tanto and a lockpick, You take them both. In a corner you find a chitin shield, which you take also. The tanto won't damage tomb undead, but hopefully there aren't any left.
You leave the room in the only direction you can, and go up a flight of stairs into a room with more urns.
There's probably a bunch of bonedust you can scavenge from those urns, but right now you're too nervous to go digging through them. You make a right and head up another flight of stairs. Then turn left and come to a door. You open it.
You have absolutely no idea where you are.
Level 7
Health 59/59
Armor rating: 4
26.8 Strength (20)
34.8 Speed (30)
36.6 Agility (30)
39.7 Endurance (30)
42.4 Intelligence (40)
43.8 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
7 Alchemy (0)
5 Enchanting (0)
20 Speechcraft (10)
9 Mercantile (0)
* Steel tanto
* Chitin shield
* 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:
* 85 gold
* 2 Standard restore health potions
* 3 poison potions
* lockpick
Backpack (Worn)
Main compartment:
* Tennis shoes
* A strange note that reads 'Remember, we are watching you.'
* Letter of introduction from Ranis Athrys
* 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
* 491 gold
* 8 empty bottle
* 2 Ampoule Pod
* 1 Black Anther
* 1 bread
* 7 bungler's bane
* 25 Heather
* 5 Chokeweed
* 3 Corkbulb
* 1 kwama cuttle
* 3 hypha facia
* 11 luminous russula
* 4 Racer Plume
* 8 saltrice
* 1 Scamp Skin
* 5 spore pod
* 6 violet coprinus
Blades, Novice
Imperial Legion, Recruit
Fighter's Guild, Associate (1 quest completed)
Mage Guild, Associate
* Steel tanto, with scabbard and carrying straps
* Imperial steel Cuirass
* Apprentice mortar and pestle
Alit Hide [1]Resist Poison
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
Hound Meat [1]Poison
Hypha facia [1]Drain speed
Kwama cuttle [1]Restore health
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
Sm. Kwama Egg [1]Restore Fatigue
Violet coprinus [1]Water Walking
Willow Anther [1]Water Breathing
What do you do?