A Night In Skingrad
Note: I don't own Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks, or any part of that brilliant gaming creation. Please don't send any thugs to break my legs.
Note 2: I know that there are a lot of name and story errors, but bear with me, I haven't played the game in nearly a year, so I hope you'll understand. The story itself is based on the Dark Brotherhood mission, "Whodunnit?".
Sigh...It's just buisness. Gad, I hate my job.
Allow me to introduce myself. Gabriel's the name, Gabriel Sharpe. Late of the Imperial City, citizen of the land of Cryodiil, troubadour, expert treasure-hunter, and professional assassin. Yes, yes, I'm an assassin, and the more squeamish of you might want to leave before I continue my tale.
You could say assassination is a fairly dirty job. Killing people for profit is wrong, it's evil, blah blah blah, I've heard it all before. But quite frankly, it pays the bills. And as long as I don't end up dead myself, the cloak and dagger bit can be fairly lucrative.
Honestly, if you took a look at me, you probably wouldn't see anything that would betray my rather sinister side occupation. I mean, I definitely look the part of the troubadour, medium size, clean blue-black hair (slicked back in a ponytail, of course. Ever since that incident with the hair in the lute...don't ask, don't ask), striking blue eyes, a lute strung on my back, and of course, wearing stylish (but slightly dusty, they haven't gotten around to making road cleaners yet) clothes from some of the nearly-finest (and I use the term very loosely) clothiers in the Imperial City. Honestly, aside from the small shortsword I carry on my belt, and in these lands EVERYONE carries some form of blade, I don't look threatening at all.
My demeanor is rather similar, I will freely admit, when danger rears it's ugly head, I tend to move in an opposite direction (except that incident with Martin, and Kvatch's Oblivion Gate...don't ask, don't ask.). Honestly, I don't know why the Dark Brotherhood decided to approach me at all. Perhaps it was my general appearance (as detailed before, frankly, I have the kind of face and posture that just lets me melt into a crowd. I'm very innocuous), or the fact that I (accidentally, of course) shoved a dagger into a drunken brute at the Bloated Float (A nice waterfront tavern in the Imperial City, actually a refitted boat, but I digress). The fact that the brute was trying to crack a table over the head of a nice young lady (who was a member of the Brotherhood too...) might have aided the recruitment process some.
Ah yes, The Dark Brotherhood. They worship the Daedric Lady, Nocturnal. Siren of Shadow, Queen of Darkness, Mistress of the Macabre, and a general downer, they refer to her as the Night Mother. They're also the only assassin's guild in all of Cyrodiil (not government-sanctioned, of course. You want that, you head to Morrowind and the Morag Tong). If you want someone rubbed out, you call them up. (I'd explain how, but quite frankly, it's rather complicated, and I'd prefer to keep the amount of hits I get assigned fairly low, alright?).
The Brotherhood itself is split up into multiple cells spread across the various cities in Cryodiil (mine's in Cheydinhal Township, don't ask where, if you like living), with six to seven assassins in each cell, your "family" (mine consists of the woman I saved, an Orc who enjoys the more brutal aspects of the job, a nice chap, a Khajit sorcerer who seems to perpetually walk around with his tail on fire, a pair of High Elven sisters who I have worked with before, and our captain, a Dark Elf, who, not surprisingly, is a vampire. Name of Vincente Valteri, he's a capital fellow). Talk about dysfunctional, eh?
Either way, it's a lucrative buisness. Of course, the fact that the Imperial Legion seems to want to stop us every time (I've dealt with them before, good clean guys, if a tad overzealous), and the local Thieves' Guild looks at us with a modicum of distaste (the fact that they prefer NOT to kill people on the job...) does make my work slightly more...what's the word I'm looking for...difficult. Trust me, running into a Legionnaire on the job does not exactly increase one's chances of seeing retirement, and our job security sucks (no dental, can you believe it?).
Now, the event I was discussing earlier (The one that makes me hate my job) was actually one of my more brilliantly done jobs. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.
In my various travels, I often am contacted by one or another in my cell, requesting I do this job, or that mark, for various reasons. I was passing through the township of Skingrad at the time (southern Cryodiil, lovely area, beautiful landscapes, Skingrad itself is famous for it's wines), doing what I do best, when I recieve a "dead drop" (no, not literally, it's just an envelope) in my room (Luther Broad's Boarding House, cheap, but the food stinks). Apparently I was to attend a party, so I naturally dug out my best togs. What the other partygoers didn't know was, there was to be one of those "murder mystery" games. The owner of the home (don't ask, I can't remember his name anyway) had requested all of these former "friends" of his (various chaps of varying races, all of whom apparently deserved a quick and hasty exit from this mortal coil) come to the party to find a certain treasure. If you haven't gotten the gist of it yet, I was the sixth guest, and there was no treasure.
The mansion was nice, decent, clean. Full of nooks and crannies, dark corners, plenty of doors. Honestly, you couldn't have gotten a better place for a mass knock-off if you ordered it. The footman (the Orc I mentioned earlier, he had some choice ideas on what I should do) let me in, then locked the door. There were all the guests. A little old lady (apparently conned the old geezer out of a good deal of cash), the richie's no-account nephew (real jerk, that guy), an old soldier (don't really know why he was there), the butler (there's ALWAYS a butler...), and the fellow's mistress (the old geezer's, I mean).
I guess you could say it was ease itself to start. The mistress was pretty much trying to attach herself to every attractive guy in the room (the no-account nephew, no accounting for taste). So, a quick note, upstairs she goes, a quick stab, and that's one li'l indian down. Next up was the old soldier. Canny old fellow, he was. Followed him down to the basement, he was poking around, looking under everything. A quick push and he was soon looking under a fairly weighty bust. Ouch.
So just three li'l indians left, eh? I don't mind telling you, now comes the part of the job I don't enjoy (then again, I don't really enjoy any facet of the job, but I told you, it pays the bills). By now, all of them had pretty much caught on that one of us was a murderer (give you three guesses who). I gotta tell you, I can do a pretty good impersonation of a freaked-out target. One major pain-in-the-keester was that lousy nephew, he may be no-account, but when it came to planning how to avoid a dagger in the back, he was pretty clever. He suggested we all hole up in one room and watch one another. Now, you can imagine, how the holy hell am I supposed to knock off three people in the same room without being detected?
This is where I pulled out a tactic I like to refer to as the "drunken duck" maneuver (the title itself came from an incident in Bravil township with a rather intoxicated farmer and an angry fowl...don't ask, don't ask). It was actually rather simple, I convinced the three that we should search the house together, and that way we would be guaranteed to stay safe, and get the treasure to boot. Trusting to the inherent greed of these individuals (and the fact that we were all thirsty as hell, hence the drunken part of the title), we slipped off together to search. Soon we ended up in the wine cellar (coincidence? I think not), and we removed a few bottles for future use. Separating each of them was a challenge, but a few hints in one direction, and greed eventually took over.
The butler was the first, he snuck off (I actually wasn't expecting it, but never look a gift needra in the mouth) to his quarters to retrieve something. Due to the fact that I didn't want any blood on my dagger (a "dead" giveaway, geddit?), I decided he should make a hasty departure. Did I mention his quarters were on the 4th floor? With a single window? Overlooking a cliff?
When I returned, I naturally made a faux show of the butler having injured me, and HE was the one who was our murderer (note to all readers, cuts on the leg are painful. VERY painful.). The two bought it, hook, line, and sinker. From there, we simply celebrated in the dining room, the treasure was ours, no worries, the wine flowed. Soon the nephew was out cold, and the old lady was wandering off to continue the search. Shame how the poor fellow accidentally ate that chicken bone, eh? Choked to death, tsk, tsk, tsk. (Humor's the only thing that keeps me from really becoming melancholy about this whole damned buisness).
From there, all that was left was the grandma. Gad, I hate this part of the job. Dealing with her was very difficult. I mean, I couldn't very well stick a dagger in her back, and poison was out of the question. Luckily, my job was rather simplified when she showed up in the dining room, me trying to "resucitate" (for the record, EWWWWW) him, and she, er...had a heart attack. Yeah. Don't ask me how, don't ask me why, but I guess somebody up there likes me.
So, there you have it. Getting out of the mansion was simple, the Brotherhood had made a small passageway through the cellar, slipping through there and out was child's play. I was out, the guests were removed, and I was paid in full. But you know, I read in the Black Horse Courier a few weeks later that the old man had died in his sleep about the same time I finished the job. (the owner of the mansion, I mean). However, there was something odd about him when he died.
He was grinning.