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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is largely based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous day
4-201-09-29 04:56
Vernim Wood Inn, Vernim Wood, Eastmarch, Skyrim
In the early morning, I do my crafting. Too impatient to wait for the business hours, I decide we'll leave for Windhelm.
On the road, we talk about Solstheim. The girls are very excited to go there right away. They long for a real adventure and they haven't had the nightmares which I've had and which keep getting more vivid with each passing night. My followers' enthusiasm is truly contagious and I begin to think that there's indeed no need to delay taking care of the Miraak quest. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems, and besides, we have nothing very important to do in Skyrim anyway. So I decide that unless something extraordinary happens, we'll take that ship to Solstheim today.
About halfway between Vernim Wood and Windhelm, we pass by a giant camp called Steamcrag. They don't bother us and neither do we bother them, but we do encounter yet another Dark Brotherhood wannabe assassin who is tired of living. Then we discover a village called Kynesgrove which is a little way away from the main road. It's still a bit too early for the shops. I listen absent-mindedly to two women Ganna and Gemma, apparently sisters, arguing on the porch of their house next to the inn, and then I decide to proceed to Windhelm which is very near. It has many shops and I can be sure to be able to sell all our loot.
In the city, I visit a couple of people to report on completed quests. Lydia happens to hear on the marketplace that Viola had found her ring that had been believed to be lost, and a little later Revyn confirms it when I visit his shop. Difficult as it is to interpret the elves' emotions, Revyn looks truly very relieved.
By the time I've sold all my excess loot, it's about noon. I have but one call left to make – my boyfriend Yrsarald. Of course I have to make love to him one more time before we won't see each other for heaven knows how long.
We go to his bedroom again and do it in a different position. It totally blows me away. Even after our first lovemaking, I wouldn't have expected this. Once again I end up screaming so loudly that the entire palace must hear me. Well, not really, but I'm still a little ashamed of myself when I walk out afterwards. I think I'll do it with my mouth the next time. I mean, after we've had vaginal intercourse twice, I can take it into my mouth without coming across as a slut, can't I?
My followers say: yes, you can. Lydia looks like she'd even do it the first time. Jenassa, on the other hand, is suspiciously reticent about this topic. :-)
At any rate, I won't have any eyes for any other man for some time to come, even though I know my feminine charms could be helpful for persuading Captain Gjalund Salt-Sage. He steadfastly refuses to take us to Solstheim even though he offered us just that a mere few days ago. Apparently those very Pigmasks whom we killed in Ivarsted traveled to Skyrim on Gjalund's ship and scared the living daylights out of him. Fortunately, my followers are just as, er, persuasive as I am and much less attached at this moment, so they come to my help with the negotiations. As the result of the latter, we not only get passage to Solstheim, we won't even have to pay. The Captain spends almost the entire trip in his cabin with the girls, all three of them, while I sit in the bow and take in the sights, fascinated in spite of the cold.
We arrive in the same evening.
Only when we can already see the defense wall of a city, apparently Ravenrock (sometimes spelt Raven Rock), the capital of Solstheim, do Captain Gjalund and my followers appear from his cabin, properly dressed and with serious faces.
We turn around a point and enter the harbor:
Only now does Lydia whisper to me that today is Jenassa's birthday. Dammit, Lydia! Why did you keep something so important a secret from me?
Lydia says Jenassa has always been reluctant to celebrate her birthday among the Nords, because she is very old by our standards (because elves age much more slowly than humans), but Nords have no consideration for that. It's customary that birthday children (unless old and frail) be tossed in the air as many times as how old they will be, and when you do that, you inevitably get to know their age, and Nords tend to make thoughtless comments on Jenassa's age because, as I just said, she's unusually old by human standards. Eventually she got so fed up with it that when she arrived in Hviterun, she didn't even tell people when her birthday was. However, Solstheim is (predominantly) elven land, and so we can give Jenassa a proper birthday party without the fear of her getting offended.
I want to ask how Lydia found out about Jenassa's birthday in the first place, but I have to leave it for later, because our ship has docked and a man who looks very important has come aboard. His name is Adril Arano and he questions us as to the purpose of our visit and warns us sternly from breaking the law and forgetting that this is not Skyrim.
I must say Ravenrock looks a bit grim after sundown, but also fascinatingly different. There's a massive fortification wall, many houses of unusual design and guards in armors that look completely alien. Almost all the people are elves, but likeable ones, not those snotty High Elves. I ask Jenassa if she feels at home here. She says she's lived among the Nords for so long that she's almost turned into a Nord herself. She has general knowledge and vague memories of Dark Elf architecture, but in general she's hardly less impressed with our surroundings than the rest of us.
There aren't many people on the streets, but they all give very similar answers to my question – the name Miraak sounds somehow familiar, but they can't recall where they've heard it. We do learn, though, that it may have something to do with a location called Earth Stone that is just outside the northern gate. So we go check it out. And that place is weird...
Earth Stone is an obelisk that may have some kind of a religious meaning. We are astonished by the lively activity around it in spite of the late hour.
There's a scaffolding and there are people everywhere busy with building something. The weird part is they're completely unresponsive. Whomever we try to talk to, they mutter phrases like "Here do we toil," "Now through them does he speak," "And when the world shall see," etc., and just go on with their work. We even see a town guard in uniform among them, just as oblivious of us as everyone else. Someone has done something very terrible to them. This is far worse than Dånstar.
There's but one person who doesn't act like a sleepwalker.
Neloth says he has no idea what those people are doing, but he's eager to see what'll happen when they will have completed whatever they're building here. Hey, don't you care about those poor things, I'd like to ask him. But it's not a good idea to risk rubbing people the wrong way when I've only been in this country for less than two hours. What matters right now is information.
Neloth is the first person we've met who can tell us who Miraak is. Only the Miraak he knows has been dead for thousands of years. But that's hardly the point. We are after the people who worship him now. Whether or not Miraak himself is alive or dead is irrelevant. Unfortunately, Neloth can't help us with that. He hasn't heard anything about cultists who wear masks that look a bit like the face of a pig. All he knows is that there are ruins of an ancient temple of Miraak on this island. He shows me the approximate location on his map.
That's where we shall go tomorrow. That is as long I succeed in getting a map of my own. Where could I find one?
Neloth shrugs and says there are bound to be some on sale somewhere. Or I could ask at the town government. In the morning, of course, not now. He acts like maps are something common. Truly, this isn't Skyrim.
We thank Neloth and head back to the town. I'm not at all tired yet. I tell the girls they can go to the inn and get started with Jenassa's birthday party or something while I will continue exploring the town. This is even more interesting than hearing what they did with Captain Gjalund. We'll have plenty of time to talk about that later.
The girls choose to come with me. They say they won't be able to destroy the Miraak cult by themselves if I get stabbed in the back in some dark alley. Jenassa adds that exploring an unknown town is much more interesting than sitting and eating and drinking.
We enter a nice big house of most unusual design which is inhabited by Vendil and Tilisu Severin, a married couple. They welcome us cordially and don't mind us looking around in their home with great curiosity. However, they uncautiously say things to each other that make me suspect they're up to something no good. I'll be keeping an eye on them – that is in case I should ever happen not to be busy with something more important.
We also climb onto the town fortifications and see a volcano throwing something that looks like ash into the sky. That's evidently the reason why there are heaps of gray ash everywhere. It occurs to me that the air can't be very healthy around here.
After an inn with only one visitor and a couple more street chats, we find a mine. There are a man and a woman in there, arguing agitatedly. It seems that the (very old) man wants to go exploring something and his loving wife thinks it's too dangerous.
I turn to the woman first. Her name is Aphia. She says her husband Crescius's great-grandfather was killed in this very mine and Crescius believes that the owner – East Empire Company – has been covering up something criminal. Crescius himself – by the way, I think he's the first non-elf we see in Ravenrock – tells us the same, but at greater length and more dramatically. I won't bother you with all that. Suffice to say that I promise him we'll take a look at the mine and try to find his ancestor's remains and the diary he was supposed to be carrying. Crescius gives me the key to the mine.
It would seem that the workers at the Earth Stone are not the only ones who are strange in their heads here. We meet a woman on the street who answers my greeting with "The idle mind sleeps," and walks on, and then a man who says "I am his hands." Maybe that curse grows stronger at night? We'd better go indoors anyway. It's getting late and we've explored enough for one evening.
Ravenrock's main inn is called The Retching Netch. (Jenassa believes to have heard that netches are big animals who live in or near water). It's built similarly to other houses here: the ground floor is one relatively big room, and a wide staircase goes down to the lower floor that has one large hall and several rooms. It looks very exotic to us, but seems usual house design in this city.
[series of 3 pictures you can click through; click on the first picture to make it big, then press the right arrow to see the next picture etc.; press Esc to return to the text]
The only person on the ground level is a sellsword called Teldryn with whom we exchange a few words. Then we proceed to the basement level, which is surprisingly empty as well, considering it's shortly before midnight. The innkeeper introduces himself as Geldis Sadri.
We ask Geldis to lend us a hand tossing Jenassa in the air as is the Skyrim tradition. When the few customers present realize what we're up to, they join us enthusiastically and promise to introduce the same custom here. Then we order some drinks and food. The men seem to be delighted to have someone from outside to exchange stories with. Geldis tells us about a man Ralis who is excavating something somewhere. I in turn ask him if he's a relative of the shopkeeper Revyn Sadri in Windhelm, and learn he is, but distant. He knows Revyn has a sister Idesa who also lives in Windhelm. Their parents knew Geldis's parents before they left Ravenrock.
New customers keep coming in all the time. Geldis says word must have gotten around about four women from Skyrim having entered the inn, and wonders if there's any chance we'd agree to stay in town permanently. We decline with coy smiles. Then we question Teldryn thoroughly about the island and its people and monsters, him being evidently the only true expert, while Geldis gets up occasionally to invite entering visitors to come and sit with us.
It's almost 3 o'clock in the night when I decide to turn in. There are several big rooms available. At 70 septims per person, it's somewhat more expensive than the Skyrim average, but considering the natural and economic hardships we're told the town has been facing, as well as the obvious scarcity of travelers, it's laudable that someone bothers to keep an inn here at all.
I'm very happy with our achievements of today.
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