Today's Black Horse Courier is remarkably unexciting. Imperial officials have decided to plant eucalypts in the Black Marsh to drain the swamps. Fifty or so corpses of opium smugglers have been unearthed so far in a mass grave in the Colovian Highlands. The Cheydinhal City Watch has arrested a trio of Aedric fundamentalists plotting to kill a recent immigrant from Vvardenfell. One week remains until the thirty-sixth anniversary Imperial Simulacrum's end. The Nerevarine has returned. All in all, a slow news day.
Item one on my to-do list is paying an Altmer escort for her services. I know someone of my reputation has no business associating with a lady of lesser virtue, but I just can't resist. Like it or not, Arquen has made my life so much more bearable. She's such a talented Speaker.
Item two is sending a letter to Athon. I don't approve of the marauders he hired last time, but even mercenaries with nothing to offer can still give their lives. That's all mercenaries are good for, in any case.
Item three…well, I haven't gotten that far. My wrist hurts from writing the last entry. It's been a while since I've written anything by hand, thanks to the Aedric recording stone made to help me write the next Elder Scroll. Why I forgot it up north, I don't know. Maybe because it looks like an ordinary soul gem.
I'll leave off here. It's time for a Thieves Guild meeting at the usual place.
The meeting was a bust. No one has found out a damned thing about the lynch mobs and warbands running around Cyrodiil. This is starting to look a lot like one of those leaderless resistance campaigns so loved by the antigovernment types.
Nocturnal's cowl is lying on my bed. I returned it to her last year, but for this job, she's granted me permission to use it. I won't: For all intents and purposes, the Gray Fox died at the hands of Corvus Umbranox.
What kind of silly nickname is "Gray Fox," anyway? That's just asking for trouble. Foxes are caught and killed all the time. I'd hate to have the Foxhounds after my head again. Lex's neighborhood watch program has shut down most Thieves Guild operations in Anvil. I barely got away last time.
A letter from down south mentioned that a few rookie Pickpockets were arrested in Bravil. Idiots. I'll bail them out, but only to keep their fool mouths shut. Snitches endanger operational security, and these operatives helped Mazoga and Gooey fight the Skooma War a few months back. Or was that the Greenmote War? I keep getting these drug wars mixed up.
I'll need to send a few hundred septims to S'Krivva. That's a small fortune for most commoners, but any alchemist with half a brain can make that much in minutes. I already have a drug lab set up in Frostcrag Spire.
And I'm all the way down here in the Imperial City. Damn it. Guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way.
I learned a recipe for a basic Restore Fatigue-class potion early in my career in the Legion. Simply take a little—and I must stress little—parched corn (or wheat or oats) and grind it into fine bits, but make damn sure to stop before the stuff becomes flour. Add cold water, preferably potable quality.
A bit of trivia: In certain circles, it isn't a potion. It's used as the primary food of illegals crossing into Cyrodiil from Elsweyr and the Black Marsh. Hunters often carry it as emergency rations. Elite units in the Legion frequently requisition it, especially when they plan to go deep into the boonies.
Cleanup is hell, though. Lots of fine dust particles in a poorly ventilated shack is hardly a good combination. Still, as I tell my students, alchemy is a dirty job, but it beats manual labor. Speaking of labor…I need to get out and take a break. The air's seriously affecting me.
Those bastards! I do not appreciate almost being cut to pieces when I'm washing my eyes. Why can't they understand that?
I was ambushed quite a few times during the Oblivion Crisis. Audens Avidius ambushed Gooey and me at the then-active Oblivion Gate southeast of the city. Three guesses how that went. A few days later, a conjurer who'd been tracking me since Vvardenfell caught up to us outside the Tiber Septim Hotel—and promptly got his head bashed in with his own spell tome. I don't remember the exact date, but there was also a Mythic Dawn assassination team somewhere in there.
Come to think of it, that fetcher LaChance woke me up after I'd finally fallen asleep after eight days of agonizing over Agronak's death. LaChance got his, but I regret not being there to rip his silver tongue out myself.
There were a lot of other surprise attacks, but I'd rather not mention them here. Ink and parchment are expensive, and I'd only have to transfer these records to a more appropriate medium when I have a chance. Why waste extra money and effort for a temporary record?
Anyway, I took care of my attacker. The punk was decked out in ebony armor and carrying a glass longsword. I was wearing some old, loose fitting robes and armed with a piece of firewood. An uneven match, to say the least.
So how did I beat him? I blocked his swing with the wood, which got his weapon stuck. When he tried to free his blade, I knocked him to the ground with a contact range paralysis spell. Then, after removing the sword, I used the wood to club him to death. A lesson, folks: Axes and other blunt weapons may not be as flashy as swords, but unenchanted heavy armor doesn't shield very well against a little thing we call "blunt force trauma."
I don't like this. Sending someone to kill me when there is no way in hell they should know I'm even in town yet means I'm compromised. If they didn't know I was coming to the Imperial City—and I hope they didn't, because I chose to teleport to the Arcane University more or less on a moment's notice—they might have a lot of agents around here. If they don't, then I hope he was the only one, because his death is going to bring their wrath down on my ass.
Another possibility is that Gooey or my students are working for the enemy, but that doesn't make sense. Gooey is a Daedra worshiper, and my apprentices are devout followers of a non-Aedric entity—alcohol. No, I don't think I've been betrayed.
Well, today's been a waste. I went to the one of the best intelligence services in Tamriel and walked out empty-handed. I brewed a few potions to raise bail money to get some dumbasses out of the pen and ended up looting a full suit of ebony armor instead. Why do I even bother?
First thing tomorrow, I'm going to the Shivering Isles and getting some competent soldiers. I don't like dealing with Haskill or the new duchesses, but it looks like I'll just have to suck it up.
As for now…it's late, my wrist is killing me, I've been awake for two days straight, and I've more or less wasted three sheets of parchment. Time for some shut-eye.
