...
Holy crap.
Very start of the game and I've already found something huge.
Eventually windows comes up and you're staring at your favorite desktop wallpaper: an adorable picture of princesses Celestia and Luna nuzzling together before a glorious sunset. It warms your heart, but your mind is restless. What are you going to do? Homework? No...you can do it later. Maybe a game? Yeah, sure. You open up your start menu and...
...mumble...mumble...shall We...mumble...
You look around. You could of sworn you just heard a voice. You listen carefully, but you don't hear anything. Shrugging, you go back to your start menu and begin browsing though-
...but We're out of...mumble...
Your heart skips a beat. You totally heard someone talking. A female voice. You strain to hear, but all you hear is the sound of your own heartbeat. It's kind of creepy. You glance at your computer and notice that the speakers are powered on. Instantly you relax and giggle the anxiety away. Obviously your speakers were just picking up radio interference. Probably just a ham radio operator passing through the-
...mumble...what about this...mumble...
That's totally not coming from your speakers. At least you don't think it is. Curious, you reach to turn up the speaker volume when suddenly your chair drops out from beneath you and you feel yourself falling backwards. You see a blur, then sunlight in your eyes, then.
SPLASH!
Capitalized Royal We, dark colored text, female. Could we have been brought here by Luna? Either way, we fell through just after she said "what about this," so it's seeming likely that the imperial female whose voice we heard is the one who brought us here.
It's also the same color as the Balmora Butcher, but I'm not sure how much to read into that.
Next tidbit:
Do you have a star sign? I mean, sure you're a Taurus, but...do you, you know?
Interesting detail for someone we later found out might be a Tamriel native.
: "Yes. Preferably from the first urination of the day, as it will be more concentrated and therefore contain more vital essence. Urine is the prima materia of our work, and truly the other plant and animal parts we use serve simply to give the final result character rather than substance."
Now this is interesting for a number of reasons, most prominently that we've never heard any references to it anywhere else. Assuming this is actually true, it'd add a sort of daily bonus potion.
Speaking of which, the concept of a "day" is a little fuzzy here. Presumably she means a literal star-day, but since sleeping isn't mandatory (or indeed, common), that raises questions about what exactly would cause urine to become more concentrated if you haven't already urinated that day. Is there some kind of Potency stat that slowly regenerates like stamina? Or does she mean a sleep-day, and our Urine score is recovered like health?
For that matter, is the potency of urine all or nothing? Is it malleable? Is there some theoretical way to refine pee until it produces a much stronger effect than our alchemy skill would indicate? Do we have to use our own urine? What determines its potency- alchemical skill, vitality, fluids drunk, nothing? Would working in ogrim urine produce different results than mudcrab excrement?
Does anything else- blood or saliva, for instance- contain this "vital essence" that's so important?
For the next few hours you practice with Nalcarya, using her tools and cheap materials. One thing you notice immediately is that since the process has four discrete steps, it is fairly time-consuming. But, since the alchemy tools are fairly large and the potions themselves are rather small, it doesn't take particularly longer to make 10 potions than it does to make 1. You can easily refine ten potions worth of reagents in a single batch.
Also interesting. I wonder if the four-ingredient limit is still in effect here.
: "No. While reagents are necessary to give the result character, remember that the prima materia of alchemy comes from your own body, and is therefore unique to each alchemist. For one alchemist, those ingredients you mentioned might make a potion of healing, for another they might make one of invisibility or paralysis. Or both. Every ingredient has a number of effects, positive or negative, that vary and are unique to every alchemist. Now that you understand the processes involved, the actual production of a usable potion simply requires the selection of any combination of reagents that have at least two matching properties. What those properties are, you will need to discover for yourself."
Answered part of my own question- yes, that ogrim and mudcrab urine might result in completely different effects from the same ingredients.
Still not clear if
potency is the result of alchemical skill, but it seems likely. If so, that'd mean a bottle of a skilled alchemist's pee would be a vital ingredient that would allow even a novice to produce master-level potions.
Spores will typically grow back within a day, but a fully grown mushroom might take weeks.
Oho. This might imply that Suspected Applejack's Suspected Farm has plenty to do after all.
The entire process and methods of alchemy are far more intricate and complicated than you ever would have guessed. And altogether, you still don't understand why it works. Nalcarya gives the metaphor of alcohol, and how it isn't exactly intuitive that boiling things and letting them rot would create edible results, let alone results that would give a pleasant buzz. But she also hints that there is a more fundamental, perhaps "spiritual" force at work.
In a world where magicka is omnipresent and most people are at least vaguely aware of this, vague references to a supposed "spiritual" force are somewhat interesting. I'd love a chance to experiment with or talk to a skilled alchemist about some of the nuances.
You buy the steel tanto complete with scabbard and carrying strings for 10 septims. Strange. You thought those cost more. It's still a bit heavier than you'd like, but reasonably so, and you're pretty confidant it would hurt a lot to get stabbed with it.
28 gold base price, 2 Mercantile. Ra'Virr was feeling
generous that day. Either it was damaged to hell, hot, or he was moved by our realization that a chitin war axe was too heavy to wield.
You feel a sense of deja vue as you pick the axe up...slowly. What is it with the heavy weapons here, and why do you feel like you've held the same exact axe before? Shrugging, you hand it back to Ra'virr and continue browsing for other weapons. You're pretty sure he has something light enough to...oh. Score.
You buy the steel tanto complete with scabbard and carrying strings for 10 septims. That's about what you remember them costing. The weapon is a bit heavier than you'd like, but reasonably so, and you're pretty confidant it would hurt a lot to get stabbed with it. Though not nearly as much as it would hurt to get hit by a dwemer war axe. Not that you would know.
After the respawn. Interesting. So Michael doesn't remember the events, but he does retain some aspects of memory.
The first sense of deja vu was just from walking out of the Mages Guild on our way to Nalcarya for alchemy training. I can't imagine what would have killed us between walking out the door and heading to an alchemist's shop.
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Topic: Marooned in Morrowind (FINISHED) (Read 432764 times)