Always Lost, Always Hopeful (98) Know Your Limits

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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






4-201-11-23 08:25
Mzulft Aedrome, Mzulft, Eastmarch, Skyrim


Most of our yesterday consisted of a long journey through a vast system of Dwemer halls and tunnels, and there's no way to tell how much longer this is going to take. All we can do is go forward. In the past, we've traveled by foot several times from Solitud to Bitchen or vice versa. Surely we'll reach the end of this Mzulft place someday.

Indeed it takes our well-rested legs less than an hour to arrive at a big locked door, behind which we sense someone. He evidently senses us too. Realizing we're human, he opens the door. Taken aback, he then demands to know who we are and what we've done to Gavros.

Well, we didn't actually do anything. He died in front of our eyes. We were unable to help.

The man, Paratus is his name, starts rambling about something about some crystal and how it's all lost now. I can't make any sense of what he's saying, but I catch a pause in his litany to show him a crystal I've picked up somewhere and ask him if that's what he's talking about. That gets him so excited he looks like he's struggling not to hug me.

Paratus tells us to follow him and starts walking away so rapidly we must almost run to keep up. I ask him what's going on and he says haughtily that he's on official business of the Grand Council of the Synod and that's all I need to know. But he wants to make it absolutely clear that it was all his idea and Gavros took all the credit. All the credit for what? That's none of my business, he says. I'm getting increasingly irritated. Who does he think he is, this jumped-up functionary from Cyrodiil who has lost all his companions and is evidently unable to complete his mission without our help, yet has the nerve to act almost as haughtily as a thalmor?

Paratus's incessant gabbing leaves me no chance to ask if he knows anything about the Staff of Magnus , so I have to go along with his game for the time being. He leads us to a half-sphere-shaped hall, in the center of which is a structure emitting beams of bright blue light.

Paratus says I'll have to place the "focusing crystal" (as it's called) onto that thing in the center and then change its temperature with the spells Flames and Frostbite  until the lightbeams point the right way.

Silently, I walk towards the podium, thinking: And you, our important guest from Cyrodiil? Are you an even less competent mage than you look? Or are you waiting for an opportunity to stab me in the back once I've done my job? In case you haven't noticed, there are three seasoned warriors standing on different sides of you very alert.

I think he has noticed all right, but there's nothing he can do about it, so he just acts as if everything was normal and he had no bad intentions. And maybe he even hasn't. The most likely explanation to his strange behavior is that he believes that this crystal thing is dangerous. Therefore, he prefers to let someone else take the risk so he can live and go on taking the credit.

My intuition tells me very strongly that the crystal is of no danger. However, getting the lighbeams right turns out utterly impossible. I have to look almost directly upwards to apply the spells, but in order to see the light beams clearly I'd have to hover ten meters in the air and next to the mechanism. It's obviously impossible to do both at the same time and neither were Paratus's instructions very clear. I try and try and then I give up and beg Bardslayer to do it on my behalf. He does.

Paratus is happy, for a moment. Then he says the result is not what he expected. He begins lamenting that there is something creating "interference" and he senses it's in Winterhold.

Well, I can't answer that question if I have no idea what your work is, can I?

He insists I tell him if we have something extremely powerful in the College. I won't tell him anything. Instead, I decisively cut into his babble and ask if he knows where the Staff of Magnus may be. He says it must be in a place called Labyrinthian.

Cyrodiil mages have learned to conjure a map that displays sources of extreme magical energy.
Strangely enough, there are only two of them – one in Winterhold and one in Labyrinthian.
This means the Staff of Magnus has to be in one of those places. Since it's not in Winterhold, it must be in Labyrinthian.
Judging by that crude map, Labyrinthian is somewhere between Hviterun and Dånstar.

Then Paratus goes on bombastically about how my trickery won't confuse him – he has now learned we have something extraordinary at the Winterhold College, so he has beaten my little game and he's going to bring that information back to Cyrodiil and he assures me this is not over.

Well, over is precisely how it is for that pompous bastard after I've killed him. How dare that little rat talk to me like this? In addition to my hurt pride, I could have impossibly let him leave and return to those more-politicians-than-mages (as Mirabelle put it) with what he knew. I have no idea how hostile they may be and how powerful they may be, but my loyalty is with the College and I'm going to let smarter people than myself decide how much we want to share with that Synod group.

But enough of this. Let's get out of here.

There's an exit nearby. Just in front of it, I'm stopped by Nerien, that first psijic I met in Saarthal, remember? I'm now seeing him from a better angle and I don't find him all that attractive anymore. I'm even less impressed by his behavior. He congratulates me and tells me further challenges await me but I will prevail. He sounds exactly like a puppetmaster who amuses himself by directing people into situations to watch how they'll handle them. I hate him. I wonder if there's a way to destroy those psijic scumbags. Somehow I doubt it. Currently I can't as much as come up with an insulting nickname for them. "Pissic Order" doesn't sound quite right, does it? "Prick Order"? No. I give up.

We exit into a crisp winter afternoon. In spite of the cloudy sky, the light seems incredibly bright to us after all that time spent in those tunnels. There's no snowfall, but a strong wind is blowing snow back and forth.

The town of Vernim Wood is but a long steep dangerous descent away. I already feel ecstatic from the mere anticipation of being among normal people again. In my mind's eye, I can see buyers and sellers haggle on the marketplace accompanied by the distant clanking of the blacksmith's hammer while the guards walk slowly around making sure the town under their care is safe.

Um... right. Let's get going.

And here we are after half an hour of climbing down.

Vernim Wood has good crafting facilities, but unfortunately no proper bath. I wonder how they can live like this. At the limit of our carrying capacity, we sell some stuff here and decide to move westwards to Darkwater. As you know, we're actually headed south, but that'll be a mountainous region which means no easily accessible bodies of water. Northwest of Vernim Wood, though, there's the area with all those delightful warm water pools. My plan is this: we'll clean up thoroughly, do our crafting in Darkwater and go south-southwest from there, taking the road that turns east. (See the map below.) That way, we'll reach Shor and after that Bitchen by a slight detour. The latter will undoubtedly be the best place in this region for celebrating Jordis's birthday which is tomorrow.

On our way to Darkwater, we may be able to get a good picture of Billy.

We'll probably spend the night in Darkwater.
Our final destination is, as you can see, south of Bitchen's main city gate, that is within the city walls.
The pink dot is Mzulft where we came from earlier today.
"Our" giant Billy lives near that mushroom-shaped symbol between Vernim Wood and Darkwater.

Our path to the nearest warm water pool is temporarily obstructed by a couple of bears and skeletons and such.

Farther to the northwest is a dragon.

Don't ask me why he isn't attacking. Maybe he likes to watch. At any rate, this a thrill not quite like anything else.

We wash one at a time, the three others keeping an eye on the surroundings. When we're clean and back in our armors, the dragon attacks us after all. Oh, and here's a picture of Billy for you:

In Darkwater, I do some mining and smithing.

Then the girls and I sit in the warm water for a while. We have the open-air bath all to ourselves today. I recall Irileth, Jarl Balgruuf's housecarl. I ask Jenassa why Irileth is often so bellicose. Not that I assume that all Dark Elves are bosom-pals, but maybe Jenassa understands her better.
She shrugs and says noncommittally that Irileth has had a very hard life. After a few seconds of silence, she goes on: "I knew her many years ago. When I came to Skyrim, I heard she was in Hviterun, so I looked her up. But she was not happy to see me. I suppose she doesn't want to be reminded of the old times." I have the distinct impression Jenassa doesn't either, but I don't say anything.
We are all silent for some time and then we get dressed and go to the inn where we sit and chat with the villagers until it's time to go to bed.



next awakening






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Always Lost, Always Hopeful (97) Following the Trail

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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.
———————————————




previous day






4-201-11-22 05:52
Calixto's House of Curiosities, Windhelm, Eastmarch, Skyrim


I meet up with the girls in the bath at the Candlehearth Hall. I'm curious to know what they did last night. They make a half-hearted attempt to get me to report first, but this time I'm unwavering.

Turns out that on Jenassa's suggestion they went to check out the nightlife in the elven quarter. They sat in the New Gnisis inn and got acquainted with a couple of locals, and then they went all together into that shabby inn above the street level. Lydia and Jordis insist and Jenassa denies that Jenassa would have liked to take a room already in the New Gnisis, but then she and her new friend Zirik came along after all. Finally, all three of my followers ended up spending the night there with elven men – in separate rooms this time, though, as Lydia points out.

After breakfast, we set out to the south in the midst of a nice winter morning.

Our destination is the Dwemer ruin Mzulft, but rather than take the highway, I want to go via Kynesgrove and Narzulbur and then try to find a direct way to Mzulft across the mountains.

In Kynesgrove, we make a brief stop at the inn and exchange a few words with the innkeeper Iddra as well as Engrid, the woman with a big axe whom I met in Hviterun. Then we move on uphill to the east.

This is the place where Alduin awakened another dragon that time when we were here with Rudelphine:

We ascend higher still, into the realm of winter. As we approach the Orc village Narzulbur, even a slight snowfall starts:

By the time we enter, the traders are already at work. We also talk to many villagers and visit the mine.

It's half past 10 when we head for Mzulft. After the initial descent down the steep hills south of Narzulbur, the rest is easy. The weather remains beautiful and the air temperature rises quickly. This spruce forest outside the snowy region is utterly adorable. I find myself wishing Mzulft were much farther away than it actually is.

There's no one outside Mzulft. Inside, however, we find a man named Gavros Plinius who is taking his last breaths just as we enter.

Clearly too confused to notice our presence, he drivels something about a crystal and then he's dead. He appears to have been one of those Synod mages from Cyrodiil.

We find a letter on him with instructions from an Adjunct  to the effect that a Conclave  wants something done in the Oculory . I've no idea what any of that means.

We proceed into robust stone corridors lit by eerie yellow-green lamps, and walk among enormous pipes of dark yellow metal and weird moving things, some of which emit steam – a sight so familiar by now that we barely take notice. Our attention is focused on not missing anything that walks on legs.

As I quickly realize, we also have to watch out for things on the floor that trigger heavy or sharp objects hitting you.

From time to time, we encounter Dwarven Spiders as well as dead Cyrodiilian mages. Eventually we reach a system of caves where there are neither massive stone columns nor metal pipes and mechanisms, but there are still those Dwemer lamps, as well as an odd dead Synod member. It's possible this place used to be a mine.

A few of those Synod researchers are female. It's so sad. Women are meant to spread harmony and happiness,
not to get slain in faraway dungeons pursuing somebody's dubious ambitions.
(Although, who am I to say that?)

The caves end and we're in another complex of Dwemer structures. Here we begin to encounter Falmers in addition to an occasional Dwemer killer machine. In one hall, we even run across a human bandit fighting a Falmer.

I know it's difficult to see it from a still picture, but those two are making a hell of a racket up there.
I'm having my bow at the ready just in case. I won't be firing that arrow any time soon.

The bandit wins, but then he's too damned dumb to realize we would pose no threat to him if he'd just walk the other way and allow us to mind our own business.

Eventually we end up in a room that has some of those stone beds typical of Dwemer ruins. They sound much more uncomfortable than they are. As it's past 1 in the night already, I decide we'll get some sleep now.



next awakening






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