Chapter 3

18th of the Last Seed

(Day 3)

I crawled snail-like out of my bed this morning, taking as much time as I possibly could. Then I fell back to sleep on the floor and woke again an hour later. The sun was shining brightly. It looked to be about ten o'clock in the morning. I walked around my room for a bit, and then went downstairs. I exited the inn, determined to find this Caius Cosades.

Well, I wandered around Balmora for a bit and discovered that it was really and I mean really big. I soon got lost trying to find my way around. I picked up somewhere that I might be able to find out about Cosades's residence at the South Wall Corner Club, but I couldn't find that either! I did, however, find a nice "town square" with nobody in it. Nearby, however, were a couple of guilds: the Fighters' Guild and the Mages' Guild.

Finally, after about an hour of searching, I did find Cosades's home stuck somewhere in the back of the town. Caius was nice, but he was a druggy Imperial obsessed with the history of the Empire. Basically, he welcomed me into the Blades, who are the guardians of the Emperor. Hooray… Will I actually get to do anything in this guild? Or is this just an honorary title/association/thingy. The latter soon became apparent when Cosades told me to go join a guild and train up. He also gave me some money to buy stuff.

Well, as soon as I left his house, I already knew what I wanted to try: I was gonna go and become a super-star-fighter-dude-person. Oh, yeah. I also needed a new weapon. Super-star-fighter-dude-people don't go carrying around rusty iron daggers. It's bad for their personal images and egos.

I headed to the nearest shop to see if I could buy any weapons. It turned out the best place for combat equipment was an armor shop! There were absolutely NO weapons shops in Balmora. There was just an armory and a pawnbroker. Oh yeah, and Ra'Virr too. I went to his place.

Ra'Virr's shop was basically a small building next to the guilds with a bed on the top floor and some stuff on the bottom floor. My intimidating Dunmer self marched into the store and demanded to see Ra'Virr's Daedric items, or at least what he claimed to be Daedric. They were really just some enchanted steel and iron items that were pretty much worthless to me. Dejected, I left the building.

Then I had an idea: Maybe the Fighters' Guild gives weapons to its members…? That sounded promising, and after all, I did want to become a super-star-fighter-dude-person. So I marched my super-star-fighter-dude-person-ish butt over to the Fighter's Guild, a mere twenty-five feet away. I talked to the guild master, Eydis Fire-Eye and asked to join the guild. I wondered if I actually had to do anything to join the guild. Well guess what? It turned out I didn't. All I had to do was sign the charter and I was IN! YES!!! Now I can go and do missions and kill stuff and become a super-star-fighter-dude-person-guy-doohickey-thingy-dad. I was so excited for my first assignment. Boy I knew this was going to be good…

I had to kill cave rats. Damn. That sucks. Could she have assigned me a more pointless, boring task? I didn't think so. So, at just about noon, instead of getting lunch, (People don't eat here you know.) I went directly to Darayne Thelas's house. She told me about the cave rat infestation and a whole bunch of other crap that I didn't pay much attention to. Then she gave me the key and told me to get on with the extirpations. I wasn't sure if she actually used that word. And what a weird word. Extirpations??? I mean come on. Who says that anymore?

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. I used her key to open her closet door and killed the rat that was feasting on her beautiful pillows, which I think she said something about when she was talking to me. Then I went to the top storeroom and opened it. I killed the rats there too. Sooo boring. Sooo pointless. Let's get on with the big stuff now, okay Eydis?

So I went back to Darayne and claimed my reward and stuff, and then went back to the Fighters' Guild to talk to Eydis Fire-Eye about the rats. Rats! She didn't give me a weapon as reward! Instead I got a rank increase. How fun.

So I talked to her about a second assignment. I had to kill some egg poachers. That also sounded like it was destined to be an interesting adventure. Sigh… it was time to go to the Shulk egg mine. I followed the river and found a few rats and mudcrabs and such along the way. I finished them off with my awesome-pawesome-super-power-interesting-rusty-iron-dagger-weapon of coolness. They each took about five minutes to kill. I finally arrived at the egg mine and found two poachers guarding it! I went up to them and tried to stab one. Then I found out, oops, they weren't poachers. They were actual egg miners. They eventually forgave me after they chased me around for half an hour and trying to attack me, but I still got a nice fat bounty on my head.

After they were done trying to kill me, I went inside the egg mine and immediately got attacked by a weird wormy thing. This wormy thing had a label stuck to it that read, "Kwama Forager." O…Kay… So anyway, this kwama forager spat poison out at me. Great. First I'm wounded by the egg miners, and now I'm poisoned by a stinking worm.

I killed the forager and headed to the queen's lair, because I figured that's where egg poachers would be: right at the source. And happy happy, joy joy! I was right. And there they were, standing around doing nothing related to poaching. Then, for the third time today, I was attacked. Luckily, the poachers weren't very good with the sword, so my rusty iron dagger actually did some damage.

Hooray for me… I was done with the egg poachers, so I went off through the caves to get out of the mine. It didn't take long to find my way back, and pretty soon I was outside and on my way to Balmora. As soon as I reached the little town square thingy, though, I saw a guard running up to me. I quickly dropped all of the items I had stolen from the Census and Excise offices onto the ground in front of me.

"You have committed a crime and have a bounty on your head," said the guard. "Give me your stolen goods!"

"Alright, here, take them."

"Take what?" asked the guard.

"The stolen stuff! It's right there in front of you!"

"Where?"

"You're standing in it."

"What are you talking about? Are you gonna pay that bounty or what?"

By this time I was kinda confused and rather pissed off, but I paid my bounty and went on my way.

Now, I still didn't have a weapon, but I did have plenty more money than when I started out, so I thought I might as well spend some on a nice tip up to Ald'Ruhn. The minute I approached Ald'Ruhn on the silt strider, though, I began not to like what I saw. (Muhaha. I avoided a nasty split infinitive.) First of all there was an enormous dust storm. Secondly, the entire surrounding environment was gray. How enticing. Not only that but I could also see cliff racers darting around. I hate cliff racers. They have a tendency to really piss me off.

But hooray! I found a weapons shop next to the giant crab-thingo that people lived in and had shops and crap like that in it. You just gotta wonder how they built the Ald'Ruhn manor district inside of a giant crab. Well, anyway, Caius had given me enough money to buy a steel sword, and pretty much nothing else. Damn! Stuff in Vvardenfell is expensive!

Well, after a thankfully short-lived trip to a place I didn't really want to stay in for too long, I headed back to the silt-strider to go back to Balmora again. When I finally got back, it was eleven o'clock and way past my self-imposed bedtime. G'night all.