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[WillowLuman]

Good! You know, until that post I felt we had been getting somewhere with Caius and this trip was a distraction, but now I'm not so sure...

[LordBucket]

Episode 41: Tomb-looting and divine intervention

Loot everything that remains.

Loot everything in the crypt.
prioritize items after weight to value ratio.

Venim Tomb. Loot it.
Maybe the small chest on the table is open.
And the book Darkest Darkness is still lying around

: "Ok. That's easy enough. "

You head back into the tomb and take a full inventory:

Things you take
 * The book, Darkest Darkness
 * Cruel Viperblade
 * Potion of cure poison
 * 18 bonemeal
 * 10 gold
 * Expensive-looking robes, shoes, belt and pair of gloves

Things you leave behind
 * 18 urns
 * 14 prayer pads
 * A small chest
 * Two large chests
 * A table
 * 3 stools
 * A full set of netch leather armor
 * Assorted clothes
 * Silver sword
 * Iron shield
 * Assorted skulls and bones

You fold the clothes up with the book and squeeze it all into your nearly-full backpack. They take up a lot of space, but hopefully they'll sell for something. The magic dagger is the real find though. A lot of creatures will be immune to the steel tanto you picked up earlier, and the magic dagger should allow you to at lest do some damage. Plus, it's incredibly light:



: "I think it's time to get out of here. I swear I heard voices from some of those urns I took bonemeal from. I'm kind of used to hearing voices by now, but I don't think the dunmer who were buried here whose ground-up bones I'm taking would be very happy about it."

"Hey, speak to a certain Lordbucket about consoling you stuff to survive. By the way, I am so totally breaking the Fourth and Fifth wall right now."

: "I don't know who that is. Not sure what you mean by the fifth wall, either. But the fourth wall....which fourth wall do you mean? I hear you as voices in my head. Are you guys playing Morrowind? Like, on a computer? Are you looking at me on a screen right now? If you are, that's kind of creepy. Vivec told me that you were my 'higher self' I think was how he described it and I assumed he meant...well, I guess I just assumed it was some kind of fancy new-age spiritual thing and that you were all guardian angels or something. Can you guys seriously access the command console? Because that would totally make my life easier."

Directions for Michael: Left, Left, Right, Straight
Directions again: Right then immediatly Left

But our best best for civilization would be Northeast.

Follow the road to the next sign, follow the signs to a town.

: "...erm, well...I don't know which way is northeast. And the left-right directions you're giving me contradict each other so I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. But finding a sign should be simple enough."

In fact, you find a sign roughly a 15 second run from the tomb. It sort of kills any tension you had over thinking you might be lost.



: "The sign says Vos and Tel Vos. So, that would make this the northeastern-ish quadrant of the island, near Master Aryon's castle and Telvanni land in general."

follow the signs to a town.

pluck every flower and other alchemical items you can get your hands on.

You follow the road, picking ingredients as you go. Mostly whickwheat. In fact, there's so much whickwheat that it doesn't all fit in the small portion of your backpack and you start having to put it in the main compartment, which is already pretty full. The robes, the book and now two pairs of shoes are all fairly light but take up a lot of space. You're still comfortable on weight, but you can only fit so much in there.

You start stuffing the whickwheat into your old tennis shoes when you're interrupted by a rat. You draw your dagger and get ready to fight.

poison your tanto.

The rat doesn't seem to be any huge threat, so you pull out a bottle of poison and pour it over your dagger, then proceed to kill the rat.

Block skill is now 6
Light armor skill is now 21
Shortblade skill is now 6

You're not sure if the poison worked or not. The liquid was thin and runny, and it didn't exactly stick to the blade. A lot of it just poured off leaving only a thin coat, much like if you poured milk on a knife. There was some adhesion, but then you started swinging the knife through the air, hit the rat a couple times before you got any meaningful penetration, and then had to push it through fur and hide to get to any muscles and organs. There was a lot of opportunity for what little liquid was on the knife to fly off or be scraped off. You can't say definitely that it did or didn't have any effect, but if it did have any effect it wasn't very much. The rat certainly didn't screech and die when you stabbed it, and there was no obviously green poison glow effect or anything.

You resume your trip to town, skirting along the road to pick flowers as you go. That's when you see a yurt over the crest of the next hill.



And apparently the residents have seen you. You hear a battle cry of "N'wah!" and see a dunmer charging at you with sword drawn.

keeping yourself on high alert so you see any enemies before they see you

Sorry. You tried.

use your own recall scroll in any situation that isn't trivially easy to deal with.

using your recall scroll in a difficult situation.

Well, ok. But you don't really know if this is dangerous yet. Rats are easy enough now that you can blithely stand there and rearrange your inventory while their teeth chip at your leg armor. This is probably a tougher fight, but you decide to stand and fight first to see how it goes before you run. You have emergency options, now.

You retreat backwards down the hill towards the road hoping to draw the runner away from his friend.



It doesn't work, and you end up fighting one in melee while the other shoots arrows at you.

(GM Comment: was that awesome timing on the arrow, or what?)

It rapidly becomes obvious that it's a battle you can't win. It's not that the incoming damage is insurmountable. You're definitely taking damage but you have a couple restore health potions and you're don't feel like death is imminent. The problem is that you just can't hit your opponent. It's uncanny how quickly he dodges, and even when you do manage to hit him your weapon obviously isn't penetrating his armor. Granted, this is a weapon you're not terribly skilled with but you suspect that even with your spear this wouldn't go any differently. You're certainly much tougher than you used to be and the armor helps a lot, but your actual fighting skills are still very meager.

Health is now 13/59

You give up on the fight, pull out your scroll and look at it.

: "Take me home."



...this isn't home. Where is this? You look around for a moment, disoriented, before you recognize your surroundings: You're in Wolverine Hall, the imperial settlement just outside of Sadrith Mora.

And that's when it occurs to you:

we should use the chance to talk to the Zainab. According to the wiki,
they are the most foreigner-friendly tribe of the ashlanders.

: "Wait, dunmer...yurt...were those Ashlanders who just attacked me on sight?"

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Level 7
Health 13/59
Armor rating: 4

Spoiler: Attributes (click to show/hide)

26.9 Strength (20)
34.9 Speed (30)
36.9 Agility (30)
39.8 Endurance (30)
42.4 Intelligence (40)
43.8 Personality (40)
56.0 Luck (50)

Spoiler: skills (click to show/hide)

Numbers in parenthesis are starting values
30 Acrobatics (0)
22 Athletics (5)
 6 Armorer (0)

 6 Block (0)
 7 Heavy Armor (0)
 5 Medium Armor (0)
 21 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)

20 Speechcraft (10)
 9 Mercantile (0)

Spoiler: Equipped (click to show/hide)

 * 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:
   * 95 gold
   * 2 Standard restore health potions
   * 2 poison potions
   * 1 potion of cure poison
   * 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 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
 * 30 Whickwheat(?)
 * The book, Darkest Darkness
 * Cruel Viperblade
 * Expensive robe
 * Expensive shoes
 * Expenisive left glove
 * Expensive right glove
 * Exquisite belt
Small compartment
 * 491 gold
 * 8 empty bottle
 * 2 Ampoule Pod
 * 1 Black Anther
 * 18 Bonemeal(?)
 * 1 bread
 * 7 bungler's bane
 * 5 Chokeweed
 * 3 Corkbulb
 * 1 kwama cuttle
 * 25 Heather
 * 3 hypha facia
 * 11 luminous russula
 * 4 Racer Plume
 * 1 Rat Meat
 * 8 saltrice
 * 1 Scamp Skin
 * 2 Stoneflower petals(?)
 * 5 spore pod
 * 6 violet coprinus

Spoiler: Faction standings (click to show/hide)

Blades, Novice
Imperial Legion, Recruit
Fighter's Guild, Associate (1 quest completed)
Mage Guild, Associate

Spoiler: Equipment (currently at Caius Cosades' house in Balmora) (click to show/hide)

 * Steel tanto, with scabbard and carrying straps
 * Imperial steel Cuirass
 * Apprentice mortar and pestle

Spoiler: Alchemy Knowledge (click to show/hide)

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?

[Parcae]

OK, I don't know that area so I can't offer very concrete suggestions, but I do think that whatever we do should prioritize getting back to Balmora and learning magic. The local Mages' Guild might possibly have someone willing to heal us, send us to Balmora, convey some kind of message to Balmora for money/a free trip there, or even teach us magic for similar prices to Balmora.

We've fooled around long enough. We really, REALLY need to learn magic so that we can get some kind of plan going. Google tells me that this is a Telvanni area, suggesting opportunities to get our Balmora friend back into favor, but trying to be adventurers when we are weaker than everyone in the universe is only going to get us killed.

Sidenote: Do not waste any more pieces of paper. Being able to write spells on them will probably be a major advantage at some point.

[WillowLuman]

I hear you as voices in my head. Are you guys playing Morrowind? Like, on a computer? Are you looking at me on a screen right now? If you are, that's kind of creepy. Vivec told me that you were my 'higher self' I think was how he described it and I assumed he meant...well, I guess I just assumed it was some kind of fancy new-age spiritual thing and that you were all guardian angels or something. Can you guys seriously access the command console? Because that would totally make my life easier.

Hmm... worth a try...

Code: [Select]

player->additem ingred_bread_01_UNI3 3
coc "Sadrith Mora, Wolverine Hall: Mage's Guild"A test of several things at once. I doubt our influence extends too far beyond Michael, if at all, but perhaps enough for something small as this.

Micheal... I want you to concentrate. Enter the mages' guild, take a good look around. Close your eyes. Imagine yourself, seen from the back, imagine the room around you. Imagine this view framed by the rim of a monitor. Imagine the icons, the minimap, the status bars. Imagine a room beyond this monitor and tell me: what do you hear?

Truth be told Micheal, we are playing a game, but I am no longer certain of the role we play, of our own natures. The answers you must find are as much metaphysical as they are practical. Bear with me. As we guide you with suggestions and hints, I suspect we too are guided similarly. As you exist in a layer of reality subsequent to our own, so to do I suspect we are subsequent to another layer. You followed our suggestions without realizing, until Vivec revealed us with his unique perspective. Well, I suspect I have heard the voice suggesting our own course of action. Only on occasion, and recently has this voice spoken directly to us, clear as you hear us yourself, and it was out of frustration.

And this voice has spoken through you, cleverly, through words you yourself would say, arising from the thoughts and feelings you would naturally have in the situation where they were spoken. But nonetheless, they were not your words alone. Perhaps you are the way you are so that you would say these things in its stead, under your own initiative. We suggest things to you, some of which you do not like but go with anyway, as you cannot disobey yourself. That is the meaning of what Vivec said, I believe. You hear us, but you do not hear this other voice, though it influences you all the same.

This is why you must concentrate. What do you see through the fifth wall, Michael? Is it a wall of glass or translucent plastic, as some suspect? Or is it a wall on something more inconceivable? What must it be like, for a PC, to never see the screen? No matter which way they look, it always retreats behind them. Sure, their character model might turn towards it at times, but the camera, their true eye, never can. Perhaps, though, sometimes they see a flash out of the corners of their eyes, a glimpse of the reality above theirs. Or perhaps seeing such a thing requires they turn their heads at right angles to reality.

But you must try. What would you see if you looked through, Michael? A room in a college dorm? Would you see our faces, looking and listening to you? Perhaps you would see someone else, writing your thoughts as they came to you, your actions as you performed them. Perhaps you would see inside this person's mind, your experiences even we are not privy to. Or perhaps merely some cosmic battleground or chessboard. But you must try.

Anyhow:

I know those Ashlanders. Outcasts, bandits.  And they're relatively tough, by NPC standards. But I doubt the main Zainaib tribe would attack us on sight. Of course, even with the Zanaib, we should approach cautiously and with respect.

I agree we should get back to Balmora, as safely and cheaply as possible. Somehow I feel there's a very interesting reason we wound up out here, but we've got the resources we need, and we need to allocate them before they slip through our fingers again.

[Parcae]

Yeah, I'm sure there's a reason the GM chose to put us here, but we'd spend a bunch of updates talking to everyone in town, we don't know the right questions to ask anyway ("HELLO DO YOU KNOW HOW TO REAPPOINT A DEPOSED MOUTH AND IF SO WILL YOU TELL ME FOR FREE FOR NO REASON,") and, whatever it is, we can come back and do it better after we can actually, y'know, do stuff. The GM has been not-so-subtly hinting for a long time that our tagged skills are in magic (they have to be somewhere, and apparently Michael's knowledge of algebra is near-miraculous here), so let's learn some magic already - here if we can, in Balmora if we can't.

[LordBucket]

I'm sure there's a reason the GM chose to put us here,

You used divine intervention. As somebody described earlier, divine intervention teleports you to the nearby imperial cult shrine by zone.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MWDivineMap.jpg

You were in the yellow zone. You ended up at the yellow zone's shrine.

[WillowLuman]

Yeah, I'm sure there's a reason the GM chose to put us here,

It's not Sadrith Mora that the GM dropped us in, it was the middle of the Grazelands. It could have been a simple fluke, but I don't want to take anything at face value anymore.

[Parcae]

I don't think it matters anyway. We're right near a Mages' Guild. Clearly the thing to do is go there and talk to people, with the objective of seeing if anyone can/will help us for a reasonable amount of money. We can go check out the Ashlands later if we want to.

[Man of Paper]

Or, you know, use that referral we got.

Or did we do that already? I don't remember anymore.

Also, would it still be a good recommendation? I mean, it has been over a month since we first got it. If there are as many strings attached to everything as I think there are, then that might bring up some form of a complication, major or otherwise.

[WillowLuman]

We've got:

-Ranis's referral
-An offer from Fast Eddie
-Another referral from that one mage back in Ald'ruun

We get Fast Eddie to teach us to channel, then we can get training in the schools from our other contacts. After all, he only offered to teach us channeling anyway.

[LordBucket]

use that referral we got.

Or did we do that already?

The referral from Ranis? Yes and no. You did 'use' it in Episode 36 part 1 by showing it to Nileno Dorvayn. She said she'd accept month-to-month room rental payments rather than X months paid in advance provided you could get a written letter of recomendation from a Balmora resident. She also offered to give you a 50 gold/month discount on the room rate. Ranis' refferal, which is from Episode 15, is addressed to Nelvyn Andrano in Pelegaid, who you have not spoken to, and it describes you as well-versed in metamagical math and suggests that you'd make a good student. It had nothing to do with Nileno, but since she happens to have business relations with Ranis, and she took the referral to a third party as 'good enough' even though it wasn't addressed to her. However, you decided to not rent a room. Therefore the referral is still in your possession.
 

We get Fast Eddie to teach us to channel, then we can get training in the schools from our other
contacts. After all, he only offered to teach us channeling anyway.

Not correct. Fast Eddie explicitly offered to teach you spell schools in addition to channeling. He also made several various payment proposals, but the two of you never agreed on specific terms. See Episode 36 part 1.

Another referral from that one mage back in Ald'ruun

Note that the referral you're referring to, which was given by Edwinna Elbert in Episode 40 part 1, was a purely verbal recommendation. She simply suggested Folms Mirel at the Caldera guildhall as a suitable trainer for your needs, and said that since the Caldera guildhall is 'more casual' than other guildhalls, that it might be easier to convince him to take the time out of his duties for you than it would otherwise be to convince suitable trainers at other mage guilds.

So yes, you guys have identified at least three potential trainers:

 * Fast Eddie in Balmora, who you've spoken to
 * Nelvyn Andrano in Pelagiad, who you've not spoken to, but have a written letter of recommendation to from Ranis
 * Folms Mirel in the Caldera Mage Guild hall, who you've not spoken to

Several others (Ranis, Caius, Edwinna) have identified themselves as capable, but unwilling to take a student due to time constraints.

[WillowLuman]

Revision: get as much training from Eddie as our money will allow.

[GlyphGryph]

Sell Loot (preferably someplace that won't get upset about whatever bit we're trying to sell). Stop at Pelegiad and see if we can get a better training deal than from fast Eddy (it's certainly possible - we are a member of the Mages Guild and have a recommendation). If we have enough cash from pawning stuff to get channeling AND a school from fast Eddy (or we get a better offer in Pelegiad and have cash to spare), purchase another "save our ass" scroll - Intervention is great.

[WillowLuman]

I second getting a second scroll, provided it doesn't cut us off from other goals. Those things are essential.

Was there a trader in Balmora who likes us? I know we're buddies with Arrile but I think there was someone in Balmora we can also get good prices from. Hmm. Maybe we could make a quick detour to Caldera to check on Creeper?

[Parcae]

Yeah, what Glyph said. Fast Eddy seemed pretty desperate for cash, so he's almost certainly the cheapest option; but unless the trip to Pelegiad is super expensive for some reason, we should explore all options. There's no harm in a little price comparison; it makes us contacts, it could save us money, and it will level up our Speechcraft and/or Mercantile.

But we need to avoid checking every merchant and wizard in Morrowind. We're almost at a crucial point in our character development, and we need to stop messing around. If we run out of money, we can raid SexyWithers' stash again. That's obviously not our first choice, since it's  risky, but time is money. We need to learn magic as soon as we possibly can, so that LordBucket doesn't throw up his hands at GMing an unemployment simulator.