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[WillowLuman]

-snip-

That sounds like it might have something, but also remember:


The lady in that dream sounded an awful lot like Azura, and the star she usually holds could be interpreted as a sun. I must say, I'm not sure if I like the idea of crossing into another franchise. If it is ponies, though, that could have more to do with Michael's own psyche, given that he's pretty obviously a huge fan. Speaking of which...

Michael, how life-like does this world look to you? I'd hazard a guess at "very", but all we the voices can see is the usual textures and models, with some graphics mods. It still looks like a game to us. We don't see the light like you do, we see a magicka bar and the infamous saran wrap effect.

[IronyOwl]

That sounds like it might have something, but also remember:

Ah, good point. I wonder what that would do to an interpretation of the dream, though. The sun is presumably the sun, but also Azura's Star. The moon I'm not familiar with, if it has any symbolism outside her spheres. So... hrm. For that matter, the sun is a magicka portal, whereas the moon is... a corpse, actually. Now that's interesting, though the crescent part makes me wonder how literal it is.

So I guess that'd turn the dream meaning into... abandon your mortal shell for magickal power, or something?

If Sharn refuses to teach you for whatever reason, ask her about necromancy. Make sure you’re in the crowded arena so she can’t make a scene. Ask her about her own personal copy of ‘Legion of the Dead’ in her chest at the mages guild. She’ll cave and possibly teach you some spells for free. Try to reason with her first though, we need her later. She might not care about divayths mark but can't hurt for her to think we have friends in high places.

I see very little reason to antagonize a necromancer in a public place in an effort to coerce her into teaching us Restoration. I say we focus on making friends and allies over alienating everyone in an effort to squeeze every last immediate advantage out of them.


Anyway, as far as instructions from Mages Guild -> Arena go, assuming we need them:

Assuming everything's vanilla, which we know it isn't, you should start on a stone platform overlooking the Vivec Mages Guild. Go straight down the stairs, past where Trebonius is sitting in Vanilla, all the way up either staircase to your sides, and out the front door. It's not hard to get out of there.

Once out into the courtyard, go ahead and take the large door to your right outside. Down the stairs and curve hard to your left to take the waistworks door right next to the stairs. Once inside, keep curling to your left down some stairs to the lower waistworks.

Once you're through a door near a balcony, take your first right. There should be a door directly in front of you and two long hallways to either side. You want to keep going straight, through the nice close door, which leads outside. You should be facing the canton you're trying to get to next, but there won't be a bridge in front of you. Take either of the ramps to your sides down, then curl back towards the way you were facing when you came outside.

That should lead you to the main bridge leading from Foreign Quarter to Redoran. Scurry across, turn left, and follow the path around to the next bridge. That's the Arena, and you'll want to get to the highest point.

To get there, just take whatever ramp is closest, then circle around the upper outside level until you get to one of the big staircases leading in.


So yes, this should get us quickly and easily from the mages guild to the Arena, assuming that's what we're doing and nothing's radically reorganized.

[WillowLuman]

Well, we've already been to Vivec city and seen that it has essentially the vanilla layout.

We already tried stuff with Sharn, and we already thought better of it. IIRC she may still be a bit ticked at us for wasting her time.

[gordy]

I only suggested if she wouldn’t help for money, she might need to be coerced. The PC does it in the vanilla game, we should be able to manage it. There aren’t any skill trainers in Vivec guild IIRC. However, there’s a mysticism skill book just sitting out in the open. Its on a bookshelf by Craetia’s alchemy shop. Have we read any skill books yet, I don’t remember. In Balmora there are some,

Dance in Fire Chapter 3 – Nine toes house
The Mirror - Rithleens House
The Warriors Charge – Karlirahs House
Mystery of Talara – Tyravel Mano
Incident in Necrom – Balyns house
Lessons of Vivec 14 – Temple
Lessons of Vivec 34 – Temple
Lessons of Vivec 20 – Drarayne Thelas house
 Lessons of Vivec 22 – Hlaalo Manor
Words and Philosophy – Western Guard tower north
We should be able to drop by and try a few that are in the open.

We could go see Trebonius at the Vivec guild and at least let him know what we learned about the disappearance of the Dwemer. Divayths mark will help with that even if we don’t have the books (Egg of Time, Divine Metaphysics, Hanging Gardens).

[GlyphGryph]

Talking to Trebonius seems like a good idea. Make sure to see what we can get for our information FIRST, hah. (but nicely!)

[Xanmyral]

On another topic:

Suggested Spells if we go Destruction. I won't suggest any for Restoration because I assume it obvious.

Fire Spell Of Some Kind: Useful in making our own clay bottles, or in a round about way, hollow clay shells that we can shove makeshift gunpowder into along with a wick. Or just blast them with it, but I greatly prefer the whole 'makeshift bomb' thing honestly. Show theses primitives what's what.

Only difficulty would be acquiring the ingredients, I suppose.

Lightning Spell Of Some Kind: Useful in zapping things, indirectly making clay bottles due to the lightning still generating heat, hitting large amounts of enemies at once with judicial use of salt water, and possible makeshift rail-firing slugs/chunks of metal. Also show these primitives what's what, how dare they insult our glorious electricity.

[IronyOwl]

I only suggested if she wouldn’t help for money, she might need to be coerced. The PC does it in the vanilla game, we should be able to manage it. There aren’t any skill trainers in Vivec guild IIRC.

But why? It's not like she's the only one who could do it, and indeed, we're not even sure if she's qualified to do it. It's like suggesting we threaten a shopkeeper with a knife if he doesn't sell us the thing we need for a price we can afford it at. Only it's worse than that, because in this case the shopkeeper is a member of a faction we belong to and the thing we want from him is something we have to interact with him for a bit to actually acquire.

And I would have thought that "but the PC does it" has been shown to be a very poor indicator of whether we can do it by now, both in terms of ability and whether it works that way here.

However, there’s a mysticism skill book just sitting out in the open. Its on a bookshelf by Craetia’s alchemy shop. Have we read any skill books yet, I don’t remember. In Balmora there are some,

Again, a lot of stuff works differently here. There's no guarantee those books are still there or that we'd be allowed to read them for free, or even that skill gains from them work the same.

It might still be something we should ask about, though.

We could go see Trebonius at the Vivec guild and at least let him know what we learned about the disappearance of the Dwemer. Divayths mark will help with that even if we don’t have the books (Egg of Time, Divine Metaphysics, Hanging Gardens).

Again, why? I also would have thought that finding important people and blathering important information at them has been shown to be relatively ineffective as well. Is there a point to telling the archmage of the mages guild what the last dwarf told us?

If you mean to complete the quest, he hasn't given it to us, he might have already given it to someone else, we don't have any of the books we need, and someone else might have already completed it. I really don't think that's a productive use of anything.

let's base our choice of starting destruction spells on their applicability in making grenades and railguns

...

[Xanmyral]

Oh fine.

The other things still stand, we can make clay bottles and start fires with a fire spell but we can possibly do the same with an electricity one if we work it a bit, albeit it will be slower. We do have the option of frying several things at once with the application of salt water and conductivity however, where as with fire we could possibly catch them aflame.

[WillowLuman]

We can play with science once we know how to actually cast stuff reliably. For now, we ought to get some fire, for the utility. If we get destruction, I say we get fire.

[gordy]

Because we can be hardly worse off than we are now. Look at the efforts and rewards the other characters have gone to already – one is challenging a guild master, the other with stashes of high level (console cheat?) items left haphazardly around. Another a councillor following the path to high levels in the ranked Houses. All we have is odd dreams, voices in our head and a few months in the army. Risk for reward is all I’m saying. There’s no doubt the original intention of the LP was to examine how quickly vast knowledge of the game world could be exploited. If not for the dream (which I believe heralds back to Michaels azura mark and less about ponies), I’d say he has no special place in this world whatsoever. But he’s a good bloke and deserves to learn magick. None of the Vivek school can manage it and if we can make friends with Sharn, she is almost certainly capable if not willing.

FYI making gunpowder grenades seem like a really good way to hurt ourselves and chew up time we don’t have. We could get off several attacks in the same amount of time it would take to hopefully hurt someone with a homemade IED. Plus it would take a long time to source the sulphur and nitrates required. It would be different if we weren’t on a deadline – see Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court for similar idea (pissing off wizards by showing off modern firearm technology and upset the feudal system!).

[LordBucket]

Feedback on a couple questions/comments:

we can learnspell schools at least through the guild, right?

Yes. In fact, Folms Mirel, the guildmaster of the Caldera branch specifically offered to match Eddie's price.

: "I actually have a standing offer from a Telvanni for 500."

: "Ok. I can match that. 500's reasonable. You'll have to wait a few days though. This party isn't going to end any time soon and there's no way I can expect you to focus over all the music"

Granted, he was talking about channeling, which you already have, but he is a previous point of contact on the issue, and with the Balmora office presently mostly empty, he'd be an obvious person to talk to.

Sharn in particular

Sharn has not been present in the Balmora Mage Guild since at least episode 39:

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.

If she'd returned Michael probably would have noticed it during one of his many passings through the area.

If Sharn refuses to teach you for whatever reason, ask her about necromancy.

You already did, then flaked on the prerequisite quest she gave you.

-- I cannot teach you necromancy. I am not a necromancer. Necromancy is wrong. Praise ALMSIVI. However, perhaps if you have the time you could be of assistance to me in a completely unrelated matter that is definitely not necromancy because necromancy is wrong. Just south of Pelegiad is the Andrano ancestral tomb. Perhaps you could visit the tomb and retrieve the skull of Llevule Andrano for me. Not merely any skull will do. It must be his.

: "Thank you, Sharn. I'm definitely interested in your proposal. But I don't think I can rush right out and do it just this instant. I think I need to get a bit stronger first.""

: "I have no use for a weak ally. The offer won't be available forever. Once I'm done here I'll go out and do it myself if you haven't already."

Immediately after she told you it was a limited time offer, you joined the legion and were in training for several weeks.

if the quest progression is the same here, that would mean she's probably already retrieved the dwemer cube for Hasphat, and the skull for the necro-oh. Right. The skull quest that the orc offered you before you joined the legion. The one that she said was a limited time offer. That quest probably isn't available anymore.

why aren’t we making Michael jump everywhere?

He is. That's why you keep getting acrobatics skill gains all the time.

Skill gain: Acrobatics skill is now 1

Acrobatics skill is now 2

Acrobatics skill is now 8

...many, many episodes later...

Acrobatics is now 33

Michael, how life-like does this world look to you?

Pretty sure this has already been addressed, though I'm having difficulty finding the reference. At the very least, if you read episode 1 you'll notice that at no point does Michael exclaim anything like "How unusual this is! Suddenly I appear to be in a low resolution graphical world rather than a lifelife one!" and it took him some walking around to convince himself that he actually is in Morrowind:

You land in a murky pool of gross green swamp water.

A moment later something lands on your head. You leap to your feet, scrambling to get away...and then realize it's your backpack.  You drag yourself out of the waist-deep swampwater and up the embankment to a dirt road with fencing that has a familiar look to it. You take off your shirt, shoes and socks to try to squeeze out as much water as possible while looking around to take in your surroundings. You almost think that this looks like....nah, couldn't be.

You put your wet clothes back on, sling your backpack over your shoulder and start walking, taking in as much of the scenery as you can. The more your eyes take in, the more familiar everything seems. The trees, the dirt road you're walking on, the sky, the...is that a mudcrab?

Yeah. No sense denying it. You're in Morrowind.

we see a magicka bar

Do you?

There's no guarantee those books are still there or that we'd be allowed to read them for free,
or even that skill gains from them work the same.

It was confirmed when you stole the The Wraith's Wedding Dowry from the grieving widow Thavere in Seyda Neen in episode 19 that "skill books" do not give skill gains:

all you find is some bread on a piece of paper, a pewter mug, a bottle of greef, two barrels and a book titled "the Wraith's Wedding Dowry." You open up the book and read the first page. You don't feel any different.

[WillowLuman]

Well, not a bar per se but we see how much magicka he has, in numbers. Point is, I'm trying to tell him we can't see the magic lights, that to him it all looks real but we're literally still seeing the game. That's the important bit. He sees things that we don't, and vice versa. And I want to let him know that before a more serious misunderstanding occurs.

[IronyOwl]

Because we can be hardly worse off than we are now. Look at the efforts and rewards the other characters have gone to already – one is challenging a guild master, the other with stashes of high level (console cheat?) items left haphazardly around. Another a councillor following the path to high levels in the ranked Houses. All we have is odd dreams, voices in our head and a few months in the army. Risk for reward is all I’m saying. There’s no doubt the original intention of the LP was to examine how quickly vast knowledge of the game world could be exploited. If not for the dream (which I believe heralds back to Michaels azura mark and less about ponies), I’d say he has no special place in this world whatsoever. But he’s a good bloke and deserves to learn magick. None of the Vivek school can manage it and if we can make friends with Sharn, she is almost certainly capable if not willing.

We can most certainly be worse off than we are now, and that's not the same as a given idea being likely to improve the situation. I could recommend we try to rob a store by the same reasoning, but I'm guessing you'd consider that an awful idea that's more likely to get us laughed at, alienated, and/or stabbed than to give us a bunch of money.

I don't see how risk vs reward is supposed to make this a better idea. We'd be risking the wrath of a necromancer far more powerful and better-connected than we are for what, exactly? The chance that she'll really teach us for free over a few days in her hidden crypt lair instead of just murdering us for being an insolent little pest? A few spells that we can't even learn yet? I don't see how the feasible rewards are supposed to outweigh the risks here.

Then you say "if we can make friends with Sharn." Yes, if we were friends with her, she might be able to teach us. What you suggested is almost directly the opposite of making friends with her. It'd make her resent us at absolute best, and start trying to figure out ways to brutally dispose of us at worst. Hell, the penalty for murder is only 1000 gold, right? She could literally murder us in broad daylight and get off with a fine that's only twice as much as what she'd have lost training us for free anyway. Compared to the risk of being outed as a necromancer, even serving the jail time and apologizing her way back into the guild could be a steal.

[WillowLuman]

Actually, with Eddie having left town, Caldera sounds pretty good to me. It's been a few days, the party must be over. And the cost is the same.

[ShoesandHats]

Also, just a theory on the Mark of Azura: I think it probably just denotes someone relevant/important to the main plotline or possibly quests in general. PCs are, well, PCs. Vivec gives you Wraithguard/drops Wraithguard. Divayth gives you the corprus cure. You have to give Yagrum the boots so that Divayth will give you the cure, and he fixes the Wraithguard if you take the backdoor and kill Vivec. There are a couple of skooma addicts involved in some quests, in Morrowind as well as in other Elder Scrolls games. I can't think off the top of my head of any skooma addicts relevant to the main plotline of Morrowind, but maybe there's one. There are obviously a thousand different merchants and adventurers who give you quests/are part of quests. This is, of course, just going off an offhand comment made by Divayth, so maybe we're not privy to essential information on that front. Clover, a PC, doesn't have a Mark according to Divayth. Maybe she doesn't intend to finish/participate in the main quest? It could just be that I'm pulling this all out of my ass.