{ === + === }
We have finished setting up camp. There are a grand total of roughly eighty mercenaries in this camp, plus ten support staff (I'm one of these), organized into roughly fifteen groups. Some groups are bigger than the others. It's just a bunch of tents, really. Tents and bedrolls. We're more or less just set up in the largest available clearing while also keeping something of a small hill between us and the camp we're trying to raid.
When we finish setting up, some of the lighter rangers (on-foot bow folk) arm up, talk among themselves for a while, and sally out. It looks like the most experienced ones are the ones that are in charge, either formally or otherwise.
Speaking of command structure: the most experienced mercenary captain has been given de facto leadership of the entire operation. The pay is split evenly among all teams in the operation, the loot is free for all, and everyone has their own professionalism and future employment opportunities to think about, so there's no butting of heads, which is nice. Professionalism and a lack of backstabbing is always nice.
For now, everyone except the rangers has been told to sit and wait while they go first, and everyone chooses to follow the order for their own safety. Since I don't have anything to do, I'm gonna go see why the rangers are being deployed.
We climb up the hill while staying low and, upon cresting the low hill, flatten ourselves down in the grass to observe.
Oh, I see.
The bandit camp is—from the outside—a large ring of wooden palisades. It's too far for me to gauge size, but given Common Sense the walls should be somewhere around eight feet tall. Above the wall is a trio of somewhat taller, unroofed, observation towers. I assume there are people standing on said towers given the existence of moving shapes on those towers. I can see one break in the wall from my current position, which means that an entrance is right there.
The two camps are at least half a mile out from each other.
As the rangers close in on the bandit camp—not nearly close enough to get a good shot, I think—bandits that are on watch give some kind of signal and mages come out and start shooting fireballs at the rangers. Literal fireballs with a rather significant splash radius, I should note.
The rangers are basically kiting the fireballs, gauging the stockade's defensive range, protective options, so on, so forth. I think this is basically a skirmishing action. Either way, I'm very glad I'm not a ranger.
Defensive range?
Basically, finding the blind spots in the enemy range. By the looks of things, one of those blind spots Has a bear trap, discovered by the leg of a ranger.
…yeah that Ranger is a wee bit fucked. The lady's foot is caught and she gets hit by two fireball aoes (so no direct contact but definite damage). One of the other rangers (same team?) goes over to the lady and tries to cut her loose. Aren't bear traps metal?
"Idiot." Freia comments…when did she get here? We both watch as ooh god I see what she means.
The two rangers are too close to each other and fireballs engulf the two of them.
I think they're dead. Given that one of them seems to be actually on fire, I assume that the one that got bear-trapped is dead. The other one is alive, though, and he…oh jeez that seems a little extreme
He takes his blade and hacks off the girl's foot and carries her away.
The fireballs are choosing non-retreating targets, so the…man and corpse are fine. Fine-ish.
They beeline it back to home base and it just smells like barbeque. I'm not sure what's the operation procedure when it comes with the disposing of What the fuck she's alive?!
The charred corpse is breathing, if slightly.
Uh…so how do I do burn injuries? Um…layers of the skin is first, yeah? I vaguely remember reading about this, but the biggest problem with heavy burn injuries is more infection than anything…I dunno, anything concrete?
So…um…
As we're thinking this over, the Girl Ranger's team is talking in hushed tones about a mercy kill as the Almost!Corpse whimpers faintly.
First, bolster her immunity, then…what do I do about the skin? If she's burned this bad then her skin is pretty much dead, yeah? So…um…
…well, skin peels, doesn't it? If it peels, then it grows in layers. If it grows in layers, then there should be a bottom-most layer of cells that is the most…alive, with progressively more dead layers of cells up to the top of the skin. If I'm remembering right.
Really regretting not taking that Intro to Bio more seriously.
But I think I'm more or less correct, so I should be able to pull this off. At least they laid the girl on a full body piece of cloth.
Ok.
Her team stops their discussion momentarily as we kneel next to Girl Ranger, on the opposite side of their team cleric.
"What do you think?" Says the attending Cleric. He's been keeping her from bleeding out with constant Healing Hands for the past minute. He's also a kindly looking, white-haired, wrinkled old…Imperial? Who looks like he has a lot of battlefields under his belt. Why's he a mercenary?
"I wanna try something." I say. "Can you keep her stabilized? Er, I mean, from bleeding out?"
The Cleric stares at me then nods. "Alright." And then goes back to doing exactly what he was doing. He reminds me of my grandfather.
Focus. Ok. First things first, hamper secondaries.
We try to fluff her sense of pain by triggering endorphins in her brain (with very little success) and then sift off burned sections of her skin with a knife. Then, over the next ten minutes we pump energy into the bottommost layer of her skin cells.
Alright, that's the skin handled. I need a way to bind the wounds to prevent further infections, and also deal with the chopped off foot, but…one thing at a time, I guess.
Power goes into her immune system.
God I hope she has no autoimmune diseases. What else? Fireball is kinda concussive, no? So probably could use a once over everywhere else. Let's expand that healing range to everything in her body. Heart, lungs, spleen, kidney, baby bits, all of it.
…
After the hour of healing her breathing strengthens and calms down a little, and I have no idea if we succeeded or not. Hopefully we did. At least she doesn't look…burned, anymore. She wasn't in sustained flames, so her skin wasn't too fucked to begin with.
Whew. Now I can do the bandages.
As we continue to do this, other burned or arrow-shot Rangers return to camp. The Old Cleric leaves us to our job and takes care of the less serious cases.
…
Whew.
Another hour passes by.
I think I've done my job correctly, because she's opened her eyes! Yay!
Still, taking a Fireball (Fireballs) head-on is near fucking fatal, yeah? Let's try to avoid that in the future. How many fireballs was she hit by, anyway?
Anyhoo, she now has a burn marring her right eye down to her mouth (for some reason I couldn't do anything with this) but she's otherwise healed.
We sit back with a deep exhaling breath.
I'm spent, so I'm going back to my own tent. I got 10 points out of this. My mana's back up to full—yay perks—but I am mentally exhausted.
…
[Next Day]
…
Jake fills me in the details that I've missed. In a nutshell, the Rangers continued with the skirmishing. For the day's actions, there were a total of 40 casualties, 2 fatalities. Obviously we don't have 40 Rangers, so some of them went out again after patching up their minor injuries.
I saw that Ranger lady earlier this morning with basic motor skills, so she's obviously not dead. It is at this point that I remember that necromancy is not illegal in Skyrim.
Anyways, she seems to be ok. Her motor functions are a little fucked (judging by a conversation she had with the Old Cleric) but otherwise she's ok. I imagine the missing foot doesn't help.
So we slept through the night?
Yep. The mercenaries had Khajiit units watch the camp during the night just in case if they tried some shit against us during the night, but at the end of the day our job is to disperse the camp, so if the bandits run away then it's all the better for us.
I mean, it takes a lot of infrastructure to build a camp that's as sophisticated as the one we're about to face, so if we just scatter them we'd get paid. If they build a second camp, then we can scatter that for some additional profit.
We also get a bagging bonus for each Bandit killed, which is…nice.
Should we be worried about killstealing?
Top performing Mercenary groups get the biggest bundles of money…and then they get picked up by either the Imperials, the Stormcloaks, or the Elves. Nobody wants to appear better than they deserve because nobody really wants to be volunteered into the army.
Anyhoo.
Today's the big day!
The Rangers have mapped out the area around the camp, and we have two avenues of approach. Well, two plus one: there's the front door, the back door, and the giant pit of bloodied stakes.
Nobody wants to go down the path of bloodied stakes.
Our Mercenary Army will be divided into two groups. One going in the front and one going in the back. We are going in the front.
"Fuckin' hell." Was Jake's very honest response.
As we've seen yesterday, the camp is pretty heavily defended with its own group of mages, so our attack group will be heavily dispersed on approach. The heaviest strikers (Jake included) will take point and barge their way through the front door so we don't bunch up and get murdered.
Incidentally, this means that the shock group will be going in second. The Rangers, like before, will be going in first to lure shots and return fire, so as to make the shock group's job easier. The third group will be the secondary attackers (so basically everyone else) and bringing up the rear will be supports like me and Mell who have no planned combat utility.
On the Main Gate front, we have ~10 Rangers, 4 Shock, ~20 Melee, and ~10 Support. These are estimates because everyone keeps moving around.
…I should also note that this isn't like a human wave thing. This is just the basic organization, and our plan boils down to "don't approach the main gate until it's clear." I'm describing everyone as if they are all melee units, but they're, y'know, not. We have a fair number of mages and non-Ranger archers in the mix, and I'm lumping them under the non-Ranger categories for simplicity.
We prepare for some more minutes before setting off.
No point lining up because we run the risk of being fireballed to death, and all that.
We climb over the hill, and the battle is jo-oh wow
Fireballs start flying in our direction.
Visually it looks like we're about to be pelted by…well, fireballs. A fireball's flying speed is pretty slow though, so we get around it ok by moving sideways. Honestly at this distance fireballs are useless.
The fireballs impact at the maximum of their battle range–dictated by the scrolls where they came from–and wash us in bursts of hot air.
I feel a vague sense of regret concerning my life decisions.
…
We dart around at the periphery of the enemy range.
The bandit fortress has basically turned into a porcupine. Fireballs, firebolts, and arrows (I think) are being fired from it in all directions at us as we swarm the thing. I can't see the arrows but I assume they're there. The approach to the base is fairly flat with almost no natural cover, so our plan is basically to just serpentine until we get close enough to counterfire.
The Rangers hit their range first along with some of the lighter Support mages, and they begin pelting the bandits with arrows and Shock type spells. The rest of us have to approach the normal entrances like PLEBS
A fireball zips narrowly past our ear and lands some distance in front of us.
Oh fuck that scared me. Note to self: keep eyes on the palisade at all times. Double Note to self: that one came from behind. If I get the guy that tossed that one I swear to god
The ranger behind us goes "sorry!" and switches over to his shortbow, which he is actually proficient with.
Ahem. I am taking my sweet time to approach because I'm not a frontliner. Jake has been more or less beelining towards the tantalizingly open front gate. One of the other Melee units, being lighter armored, reaches the open gate first with his sword out and oh lord
A barrage of ice and shock spells suddenly and very definitely murder the man. His smoking corpse continues to move and disappears through the door, out of our line of sight.
Fun.
An arrow whizzes into our shitty leather shield.
AH FACK
The shitty shield is shitty and the arrow perforates it no problem. It is now in our arm.
Mother of Fucker.
We pull out the arrow and patch up the wound quickly.
That's gonna keep stinging for a while, ain't it? I can just tell. At least it wasn't aimed at my head. Or barbed.
As we get closer to the palisades as a group, the interception fire begins to congregate at the two entrances, which lets the Rangers plus Friends get into the defender's blind spots and intercept there.
One such ranger, his back to the wooden wall, pops out into range and snipes a bandit archer.
Oh, nice. A Ranger just headshotted a bandit.
The bandit archer's friend returns fire.
Oh, not as nice. A bandit just headshotted a Ranger. He's not that far from me so I can make a detour. Plus he's real close to the wall, and that's where I want to be.
Let's see here…yeah, he's dead, direct shot to the eye, not breathing. RIP unnamed NPC, you will be missed.
…am I allowed to loot allies?
Five second rule.
I'm not gonna eat it.
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
While Ash is off doing his own thing, Jake is a few steps removed from entering the camp's main entrance. Aware of the trap behind the main gate, he readies his fifteen-pounder greatsword and leaps just as he enters the main gate.
Upon crossing the threshold, Jake could see a good twenty bandits making a half-circle around the main gate. The front line of bandits, bristling with spears, wait patiently for him to come into strike range while the back line draws their bows and readies their spells.
Well fuck. Jake throws his greatsword like a Javelin and draws his shortsword. The distance between him and the closest target is a good ten meters.
The bandit archers let loose their barrage of arrows and a few make glancing blows, skimming off of Jake's armor. The fact that all of the arrows curved slightly towards the flying Greatsword registered on nobody's mind. The Greatsword finds an archer's torso and happily buries itself in the man's left lung before leaving as suddenly as it arrived.
Jake manages to close in the ten meters towards a Bandit spearman faster than the mages could expect, and their shots fly wide. The spearman was also not expecting this kind of charge speed, but braced all the same with his shield.
Jake barrels right into the bandit and tears the shield away with his off hand. He plunges his short sword into the Bandit's surprised face as the rest of the guard folds in behind him.
Ash said the armor's thin on the back. Jake recalls. Armed with that knowledge, he continues charging towards the archers, retrieves his greatsword, and whirls around to face a pair of spearmen about to make their stabs.
The greatsword, being a rather sizable object, catches one of the spearman's shields and sends him tottering into his buddy. The moved bodies give a clear line of fire to one of the mages, and he obliges the opportunity with an Ice Spike.
Jake, having like a billion bonuses attached to his armor defensiveness rating, punches the offending shard of ice into glittery little fragments.
"Ah shit, it's the Bull." One of the Bandits groan.
"Damn straight." Jake replies and cracks his knuckles.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
Oh my god he just ran in.
Stick to the plan?
What plan?
…ok, bonus! The fact that Jake just ran in is interesting enough to some of the bandits in higher places that they're focusing on him instead. Which means I'm not being targeted for once.
Looking around…there are some casualties here and there. The drop in covering fire means the clerics can now move in and heal.
Reminder to self: LEARN WARDS. Literally every mage is using a ward except for me.
That said, since I now have free time, I can set up my baby and shoot. I'm getting close to the gate now, so I could provide support fire to the breach…
A fireball whizzes over our head and impacts the Old Healer. He has a ward but is still knocked off balance.
…or I can step out a little and nail that bastard shooting fireballs at the healers.
So we do.
It's a pity the autobalest is too unwieldy to be fired while moving. It's a great defensive weapon but it sucks offensively, I guess.
We finish setting up our weapon and
Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!
Two of the bandits on the closest observation tower take shots to the back of their head and stagger forward, then they drop out of sight. Health and Safety standards exist for a reason.
The shot to the head likely killed them first.
Maybe, but still, build railings.
Bandit anti-healer has thus been unharmed, since he moved back and I wasn't about to waste my shots. Time to Oh wait he's shooting
We pull our trigger once (it misses) then abandon our autobalest and run.
Very sad. The glob of fire—a fireball—strikes the autobalest. It doesn't catch and burn, fortunately, though the inherently unstable nature of the weapon means it is now likely too warped to be of use.
Maximum sad. I'll need to build a new one that isn't so reliant on everything going right in order to work. Maybe take some time and think about how to minimize the weapon's size.
Also, I call dibs on that bandit mage. I want his head on a pike.
The other Shock units have followed Jake into the breach, and the Melee units are going in too. Going by the sound of combat, the main action has moved away from the Main Gate and deeper into the camp. It's a bit hard to tell, but since people are not being cut down as they enter I think we can say that things are going well.
So let's follow them into the breach because I need to fuck that mage up for costing me so much time and money. But before that, let's retrieve the autobalest to dissect later.
So we do.
It's a little warm to the touch and the insides rattle in a rather worrying fashion, but it should still be good…in the sense that it won't burn me or else collapse arbitrarily. Anyways, let's head into the camp…
…The center of the camp is basically a bunch of pillars supporting a roof, with tables of Mammoth material scattered everywhere. Jake and the other Shock troops (including the ones from the side gate) are carving deep into the Bandits. There's not a semblance of a combat line, and the fighting is all over the place. Were it not for the over-one-shoulder cape I would not have picked him out of this mess. Good thing all mercenary units brought their own distinguishing marks, eh?
The bandit mages and archers on the higher ground have switched entirely into defense mode, and are liberally pelting the inside of the camp with fireballs, firebolts, and arrows. Which is kinda good, because as we watch one of the Bandit archers get pulled over the wall by a (I think) Merc Ranger armed with a polearm and some ingenuity.
We have, more or less, not moved from the main gate.
"Jeez, this really turned into something." Erik says as he rushes in after us. "Are you hurt anywhere?"
"I'm good." I reply. He nods and advances, intent on chasing after Jake, I think.
I don't know if I should go after that healer killing ba-well he just got his shit perforated by arrows so I'm not gonna get my revenge. Fuck you, nameless NPC archer, but good shot.
…Also they have a seriously good archer. The bandits, I mean. The bandits are losing the battle and are slowly retreating into their rabbit hole. The door is protected by two buff and experienced shield-sword fighters and they're holding strong, not dealing much damage but doing a superb job keeping their attackers at bay. Right behind them is a pair of mages throwing up wards against incoming projectiles, along with a bullshit powerful archer loosing arrow after arrow like a nutcase. His accuracy is terrifyingly g-MOVE
He snaps towards us and fires a shot.
I don't move fast enough and it gets my shin. Fucking hell, but nothing I can't fix.
We get our mobility back in under ten seconds.
Can I say that I love self-healing? Because I love self-healing. Is it narcissism to say that I love my own abilities?
Probably just ego.
I'm out of the direct line of sight of the Sniper, but this also means I can't see what's going on, and I can only judge by sound. Currently, it sounds like: people getting their shit caved in on a frequent basis interrupted by the occasional fireball explosion.
I do have a clear sight to a section of the wall though, and I can very clearly see a bandit mage getting his brains shot out. RIP in peace.
…After a short while, the sounds of combat have more or less died down.
It's thirty seconds later, and we peek around the corner.
Yep, it's about over. The bandits are cutting their losses and have withdrawn into their rabbit hole, and the ones too far away from the hole entrance have dropped their weapons and are surrendering.
It looks like hell. The multitude of fireballs have blackened the earth, and the central tent-like structure is smoking dangerously, and one of the poles has collapsed, and one of the tables is burned, and everything smells like barbecue. I don't know if this smell is because of cooked mammoth or people and it greatly disturbs me.
Breathe in…breathe out. Ok.
We come out of hiding.
Jake seems to be ok. Hell, he seems to be unhurt. There's two or three mercs near him, and though I can't hear what they're saying, the body language seems to be congratulatory. There's too much noise from other people cheering and he's not being very loud anyways, so eh.
…well, he did his job, so now I do mine. Let's see.
The troops alive reform and divide into two groups again.
The second group is basically made of the rangers, and they're going to sit and guard the third entrance that I forgot existed: the pit of spikes. It's possible to exit the camp from that entrance, so they're just gonna sit and wait in case the bandits decide to run out the back door. This maneuver, I imagine, is more to guard our own rear than to erase all bandits.
The first group comprised of mages and melee units talk about how to approach this tunnel. The support staff (me, Mell, etc) get to run around and identify the dead and the dying. This is…arguably, not what I expected to be doing.
"Make sure you identify them and move them over there." The Old Cleric says as we get moving. "If you heal them on the spot, you might miss someone who's in need of more help."
Make sense.
We start to identify the bodies.
I pilfer a piece of blackened wood from a burned down table for scribbling purposes. o for alive, x for dead. 'There', incidentally, is an ad-hoc patch roped off nearby, where the less magically inclined supports have provided hot water and fresh, moderately clean strips of clothing.
Some of the smith-oriented types, I should note (out of happiness), have commandeered the bandit's anvil and grindstone and are repairing some of the equipment damage that they can in this situation.
…
Ten minutes later.
Well, this makes me not as happy.
The casualty count: sixty. Fatality count: thirty. I don't have a convenient pop-up for bandits versus mercenaries, so it's a little hard to tell which side lost what. Also note: bodies that have been burned to a crisp or else were killed on the walls and had fallen outside were not collected. Magic fire is a little weird. I'm judging by the fact that some groups of corpses have people crying over them that we have lost at least twelve people. I think one group of four got TPKed by that bandit sniper, given by their similar looking cotton trinkets. Cripes.
Ok…my job…stabilize everyone before trying to heal them one-by-one. Boost immune system, blood cell reproduction, and…what?
Fucking hell I'm out of my depth.
We go around sprinkling heals on everyone who's not being attended to.
Mell's dealing with the dead. I think she's done this before because she is entirely calm as she sprinkles some kind of liquid onto the corpses. Given the amount of appraising remarks made about her actions, I assume this is what you do in Skyrim when you have a corpse you need to…do things with.
To clarify, she has a sprig of some kind of plant that she's dipping into a small, silvery bottle. When the plant comes out, it would have this weird, sparkling quality to it. She would then tap the plant against the corpse's head, neck, and stomach, before returning the plant back into the bottle.
As we watch, one of the mercs mourning for the death of his friend thanks Mell after her actions.
"Thank you for the blessing." He says. That's what it is?
Mell just gives a small, deferential nod. Hum.
Anyhoo.
We healers are busy stripping the boys and girls that are still alive. Most of the injuries are cuts and arrow piercings, which I'm way better at treating than burns because fuck burns forever.
I brought calipers with me, even!
Uh.
I clamp the wound with calipers and 'knit' the wound closed with a hefty boost of healing magic. It's about the closest thing I can get to a suture and I'm not sure my skill in knitting would translate very well to using a needle on the human body, especially when I haven't practiced. I bind the wound after healing for good measure, just in case.
"Healer, what should I do here?" The lady cleric working on the same person asks. She's dealing with the arm. It looks like she's just finished cleaning the wound.
I don't like giving commands when I don't know what I'm doing. "Apply healing magic to the arm with the intent to boost resistance to gangrene." That wound looks rather deep. "Thread some magicka into the arm and see if you can find two reactions. If you do, link them together and maintain the connection before you bind the wound." I think I hear her go 'how do I do that' under her breath but I don't really care.
We don't really notice (because we're too distracted) but we're getting asked more and more questions as we continue to heal.
The magic reaction thing is the nervous system, I think. Having two reactions imply that the nerves in that area have been cut. Given the fact that the nervous system reacts to magic, it therefore follows that maintaining a magic link between the two reactions would cause the link to be repaired over time.
…I should also mention that this is something I'm assuming based on knowledge that I've had for the better part of thirty seconds.
We find out eventually that mending nervous system breaks like this incurs a long-term mana cost on the person in question. If your arm has a severed nerve, this would repair that severing, but would cause you to, say, have 10% reduced mana regeneration for three months or something. The fact that the nervous system contains mana is also why spells like calm and rage have an effect.
I'll need to look more into this when I get home, but for now I assume I'm doing good things.
Anyways, another ten minutes pass and we've more or less stabilized everybody. The intruder team also seems to have finished planning their assault.
Twenty minutes? "Yo, Jake." I get his attention. "That was a long planning session."
"Yeah. You done over there?" He says and I nod. "Nice, nice…it took a long time because nobody's all that interested in busting in."
"Elaborate." Though I can imagine.
Jake takes a stick and starts to draw in the dirt. "Well, first off, it's fucking tunnels. We have no good grasp on the lighting, lines of defense, and their reserves." He draws some tunnels. "They said we were up against a hundred, but for all we know they could have some more inside."
Fair. "So what's the plan?"
He looks up at me. "The shock troops go first and breach the lines."
…It took them twenty minutes to get to Leeroy Jenkins. WELP.
"Sounds good." I nod and get a durable-looking steel shield just lying around on the ground. "I'm going with you." I say to his unasked question. "Like fucking hell am I letting you go down there without field support." I cast Oakflesh on myself twice.
Twice?
I can layer multiples of this if I set the second layer's protection point to the first layer. It's pretty bad in terms of efficiency, but the additional defense is welcome.
"Alright." He says with a grin and shakes his head. "Just so you know, I'm not responsible if you get your ass killed, white mage."
I grin back. "I'm aware."
…
Jake's strike team (because of course he's not going alone) is him, Frieda, Rovain, Erik, two NPC archers (Dark Elves, henceforth Archers A and B), and me. I'm the outlier here, but I can heal, so I get to go. My inclusion into the strike team means other clerics also get folded into strike teams for supporting action.
For the record: Jake and Frieda are the Shock units. Erik and Rovain are the Melee units, and the archers are both archers and mages depending on circumstance.
We descend into the tunnels and, true to form, the bandits have snuffed every single torch.
"Ash, lights." Jake orders.
I throw up some candlelights. These lights are low intensity but far-reaching. I attach them onto myself so we can see where we walk without breaking our stealth too much.
'Low intensity but far reaching' seems like a bit of an oxymoron.
It does. But it works somehow, so I'm not going to question it.
There are no threats, and we reach the first hard turn without incident. Jake motions for me to snuff the lights, so I do.
Archer A presses himself to the wall and peeks around the corner. "Low light." He mutters…oh, right.
I shoot a low yield candlelight onto the far wall. Night vision doesn't work without any light sources, I imagine. Why did I have to snuff my light, Jake?
"We're clear." He says after a moment. "But it looks like there's a barrier further in."
"What kind?" I ask.
"Wooden, by the grain of it." He replies softly, but very pointedly towards Jake. "What should we do?" I guess he's hinting at the chain of command.
"I guess we'll break through if there aren't any side paths." He says. Archer A shakes his head. "Ok, we'll be breaking through. Ash?" He looks to me because we share command. In your face, nameless NPC Archer!
I should be less spiteful to someone who can shoot in darkness. "How does the ground look?" I ask. "Flat?"
Archer A's reply is a little bit grudging. "Won't be a problem for a charge. It doesn't look like there are any traps either."
"Ok." I try to crack my knuckles but think better of it. "I'll fire a low-yield flare behind the barrier so you'll get an idea of where to go. Jake, take the left, Frieda, the right. Shouldn't need to tell you, but the quieter you do it, the better."
"Aye." Jake readies his short swords. Freida does the same with a hand axe.
"What about the rest of us?" Archer B hisses.
"Light infantry will stick to the walls, archers will snipe pop up targets as they appear from behind the walls." I say quickly. "ID the target first before striking. Last thing we need is a friendly kill in a place like this."
"You've had strategist training?" Rovain remarks. "That's quite rare."
…is it? "I'm about as good as Jake." I reply faux-dismissively. "But he's going in, so I'm taking command." I should remember that out-of-expertise literacy is rare. But both me and Jake are literate, so I can just push the fame thing onto him.
We are the bestest friend.
I know, right? "Begin."
Jake's going in. Frieda's going in, light's out. They charge and their armor makes them basically giant tin cans oh my god I really should have sent in the lighter infantry first. The defenders are waking up from behind their barrier.
Jake and Frieda successfully make contact with the enemy. The loudness of their approach helped Erik and Rovain get closer without being detected at all. Between the four of them, they mop up the seven bandits holding the chokepoint without too much hassle.
"If there are more checkpoints down here, then they would have heard us." Jake says as we regroup.
Good point. "Everybody to the walls." I say and ready my shield in front of me.
After a few seconds, we hear a flurry of arrows sent down in our direction. One of them hit my shield, and one of them hit something soft on the other side. I've snuffed the lights so I don't know w-someone just hit the ground.
"Jake, plan B." I say quickly. "I'm using flash."
"Aiight. Everybody close your eyes." Jake says. "When Ash tells us to, we charge."
"You trust him a lot." Frieda remarks, but (I hope) does as she's told.
Another arrow plinks and glances off of my shield and boy do I not have the time for this FLASH
A trio of candlelights with maximized intensity gets fired down the hallway. Three extremely bright flashes fill the tunnels after some ten seconds of flight, followed by…a complete lack of reaction from the other side.
…I guess flash(not bangs) aren't a new invention, huh?
Good thing I fired two sets of them.
The second trio of flashes explode some five seconds after the first, accompanied by yells of dismay and a few "my eyes!"
"GO!" Jake roars, the team of five takes off.
The one down is Rovain. Looks like the shot hit him square in the eye…but he's still breathing.
"Don't move." I put up a small light and crouch over him. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"Silence was a necessity." He says, fighting to keep his breath even. "I didn't want to break the mission."
I'm pretty sure the mission was broken at that point. "You, sir, are a rank one idiot." I sigh. Let's try this new thing to use.
New thing?
If the nervous system runs on mana, then I should be able to induce an anesthetic kind of effect by suppressing that flow around areas that I want to work on. I feel like my first experiment shouldn't be on Rovain, but going by the looks of things he's gonna be blind unless I succeed, so…sorry Rovain.
We start pouring healing energy into the area around his eye with the intention to suppress all other forms of magic in the area.
"My face feels numb." He remarks. "What are you doing?"
I might want to bring in some insurance. "Bite on this." I get a roll of cloth and stuff it into his mouth.
"Huh?" He muffles in surprise and then goes "AHFUCK" as I yank the arrow from his eye. I expected more screaming, though I guess the cloth helped.
Lessee…eyeballs are round, have a curved lens in the front, have nerve endings connecting the end, different types for reacting to color and intensity…I don't know a lot about eyeballs but I feel like I should be able to repair one with the help of magic™
We take a minute to patch up Rovain's eye as best we can.
By the time I finish, the second strike team has descended as well. We're staggering the approach so we don't get clustered in the tunnel and maximal murdered by fireballs.
"Ok, I'm up." Rovain gets to his feet. He's holding onto his shot eye (left) with his left hand. "Let's get back with the others."
So we do. In the time that we've spent away, Jake has led the way in the fine art of murdering camping snipers, and stands above a quad of archers with some very nice-looking broken bows.
"You alright?" He asks Rovain as we group up.
"I'll live." Rovain stops clutching his eye. "What's next?"
"There's a fork in the tunnels ahead." Archer B says. "I don't know how much deeper this goes, but the fork can mean nothing good."
"I think we can attribute our lack of imminent demise to the tunnel's continued depth." Archer A adds. "Still, I hate forks."
Have you tried a spoon?
Jake nods. "Ok. We'll see what we can do."
The fork up ahead is…uh, well, a fork. Apart from the usual wheelbarrows and mining stuff lying around, it is literally a tunnel with an offshoot path that veers right.
"Ash, get some light here." Jake orders as he moves the squad closer to the tunnel's right wall.
"Aiight." I get closer to the fork entrance and throw some candlelights downrange. Let's see…
…the fork makes another sharp left turn a little bit deeper in. I can't tell from here if there are guards hiding beyond that sharp turn, though the fork does seem to taper off as it gets deeper.
We describe that to Jake.
"Might just be a discovery tunnel." I add. "What's your call?"
"Let's take a look." Jake says. "Team two, you guys get the main path." He says to the leader of the second team (they caught up).
Team two goes down the main path and we advance down the side path. It does indeed taper off, and end roughly in a pile of inglorious rubble. Trapped rubble.
"Runes." Archer A says as a warning before we get any closer. I think I can see faint strands of mana on the rubble, but uh…I'll take his word for it? I'm not interested in getting close enough to get my face blown off just to dig into rocks.
Strands of mana?
Like…little glowy lines. I'm calling them strands of mana because that's what I think it is. Anyways, we retreat back into the main tunnel and oh my god
A glut of fireballs zip through the main cave accompanied by explosions.
"Christ." Jake mutters as the explosions die down. Team two's probably dead now, yeah? "Ok, what now?"
"We can starve them out?" Erik offers. "I can't imagine them having much food down there."
"We can let them leave." Jake adds. "It's not like we have to kill them here."
"We can get a little bit closer before we make a judgment call." Rovain says. "Pray that our intelligence wasn't completely wrong."
That's honestly the smartest option, so we go with option three.
…The rest of the tunnel is straight. Some of the snuffed torches have been re-lit due to (probably) the fight between Team Two and The Bandits, and helps us illuminate the smell of burnt iron in the air. Also it's a bit smoky.
…It is an incredibly straight shot down the tunnel, and it's much longer than I anticipated, but after a full two minutes of slow walking, we begin to see a soft light at the end of the tunnel. There are no signs of barricades barring our path, which implies the existence of ground traps and another chokepoint.
Fuck™.
"I don't like this." Erik voices our thoughts. "I don't like any of this."
"Nothing stopping us from pulling back and waiting." I note. "Unless you wanna leeroy this, Jake?"
"Not too keen on that." Jake chuckles. "I don't get that kind of magic resistance."
What to do…what to do…
The biggest problem, obviously, is that we're facing an unknown amount of firepower that's beyond our sight range. As soon as we enter firing range they would have the first shot, and then we would die. In game you never really had the problem of walking into a firing arc, except that one part in the civil war questline, but even then you (the player) were given a side path to take. We don't have a side path.
That side tunnel, maybe?
The traps aside, the tunnel is literally a dead end. I'm going to say that the bandits living here have a better feel of the tunnels than we do, so even if that tunnel has a secondary entrance it will likely be well defended.
Erm…
Why not repair the autobalest?
It's not too badly warped so I can certainly do that, but…the problem with the autobalest is that it's functionally a stationary weapon. I can set it up, sure, but I would have to be within the line of sight of my target in order to do so. I don't have cover, they do, so it's likely going to end with me having to abandon the weapon again. Also (more related) I left it up on the surface with Mell.
On the topic of arrows, though, "Archers, how sure are you of your bow arm?" I ask the two of them.
"In a situation like this? Expect us to hit a target every other arrow at best." Archer A says modestly. Kudos to you for being honest. "What's your plan?"
I have one, though it's a pretty simple one. "We all run in to soak fire while the two of you pick off mages."
Moment of silence.
"That is a stupid plan." Jake says.
I know. "It'd help if I knew what the map looked like."
By now, team three has joined us and are faced with the same dilemma.
…team three has a bunch of conjuration mages.
"What if we sent in familiars?" I amend my plan. "Have them soak the first barrage before we charge in ourselves."
We are all in agreement that this plan is a marginally better one.
"Or we can just summon some Fire Atronachs." One of the mages quips.
We are all in agreement that this plan is a way better one.
The Conjurors, with the help of some Fire Salt, conjures four Fire Atronachs. They are very bright, and we're not that far from the tunnel exit, so it's safe to say that the bandits know we're here. The conjurors then throw some dirt onto the Elementals, and then command them forward and onwards.
We will very likely be using 'Atronach' and 'Elemental' interchangeably.
The Elementals exit the dungeon first and are met with a spate of spells. There are a few fireballs, but most of the fire directed towards them are ice in nature. There are probably also arrows, but I can't see them.
The Flame Elementals are durable enough against attacks and they make some good headway into the primary room. They also do this thing where, at low health, they do a suicide rush against the lowest target and explode. Their bomb status allows both of our teams to clear the chokepoint and bring the battle into the main room.
The main room opens into a kind of a pit. Upon exiting the tunnel we're on a wooden raised platform that's been heavily doused in water. The platform curves to the right, hugging the walls of a large, open space. On the opposing side of our main entrance platform is another series of wooden platforms. The path to access those platforms is not immediately clear. On those platforms stand bandits and archers, some of whom have a direct, clean shot towards the tunnel. Everything is lit by torches.
…I should also mention that the tunnel exit is lathered with burns and broken arrows, a testament to the bandits' mediocre accuracy. The main entrance platform is also littered with the corpses of team two, some of which appear rather badly burnt.
Nevermind them. Team three scatter on the main entrance platform, raise wards, and begin firing at the bandits on platforms. Did the Flame Elementals…Atronachs, do Flame Atronachs fly or something? Because I don't see the bandits being threatened by—
One of the mages on team three summons a Flame Atronach into the sky. It does indeed fly.
…Neat. I should learn Conjuration.
So team three is trading shots. Meanwhile, we, team one, have descended the spiral slope of the main platform—it's like ten feet up—and are charging towards the main block of bandits waiting at the base of the room. There's about twenty of them, and one of them is wearing armor of a high enough quality that I believe him to be the leader.
The bandits in the front form a shieldwall against Jake's impending onslaught. The bandits in the back ready Javelins and throw them at Jake. He is basically slow walking towards the bandits.
Jake puffs out his chest with a glare at the bandits and the Javelins literally bounce off of his armor.
"The rumors are true." Frieda says with a grin. "The man's invincible." She's about a step behind him.
The bandit leader, undeterred, draws his bow (Dwarven by the looks of it) and fires an arrow at Jake.
Jake punches the arrow into tiny little pieces. I am in awe.
"You don't know what you're messing with, boy." Jake says derisively (complete with a rather poor Texas accent). "Better put that down before somebody gets hurt."
The bandit shieldwall prepares to receive Jake. Jake unclips his greatsword, and with a MASSIVE golf swing (ish) snaps the entire shieldwall in half. He hit two guys, and both of them are now in pieces.
Wow.
"Surrender." Jake grin/snarls at the bandit leader.
He looks at Jake, at two of his dead dudes, then at Jake again, and draws his sword.
"Damn shame." Jake says, and the frontliners go to work. Archers A and B are with team three, and they're steadily winning against the enemy ranged units. Team Four has now entered and they've also split in half, with the melee component coming down to help while the ranged unit provides covering fire.
I have no frontline combat ability, so I'm just gonna sit back here and watch.
One of the bandits seems to take offense at the fact that I'm sitting here and watching. He breaks free from Rovain (taking a gash on the arm for his troubles) and beelines straight towards me.
I have no frontline combat ability, but that doesn't make me useless. Sparks gather on my hands.
We go Emperor Palpatine on the poor sucker.
AH HAHAHAHAHAHA! THIS IS THE POWAH OF A SITH LORD!
My Shock is very mana hungry in exchange for more hitting power. I have mana to spare. The man is now writhing on the ground and I didn't even have to kill his next of kin to do it.
…I have fully embraced the Dark Side because my goodness is it fun. The bandit is now twitching on the ground.
We shock him again for the amusement value. A bandit shoots an arrow at us in retaliation.
I feel a nick on my shoulder and see an arrow bounce off.
On one hand: ha-ha!
On the other: whoever shot that arrow earlier at me is amazing at his job. Read into that how you will.
On the third: good on you dude for trying to protect your buddy but fuck you all the same.
We shock his buddy out of spite.
I really should stop that.
While I'm playing with my near-dead bandit, Jake has already cut his way to the bandit leader. The available walking space in the main room isn't very large, so the bandit footsoldiers actually formed a rather deep meatshield against his intrusion. Nevertheless, Jake has doggedly managed to cleave his way through the ranks of defending bandits, his perks paying off huge dividends as his opponents' armor melts before his blade.
My sword is fucking amazing, yeah?
Jake went through five ranks of bandits (20 men in total) before the other five lost heart. They pretty much broke at the same time and scattered deeper into the room…in one direction. No points for guessing where the backdoor is, then.
The bandit leader, now nominally alone (the ranged bandits have surrendered), throws down his sword, puts his hands where we can see them, and gets down on his knees.
"Good boy." Jake grins, and ties the man up.
…
[Battle Over]
…
Whew.
The bandits that ran out the back did not go very far, as we learned later. The rangers posted on lookout saw them all coming out of the back entrance, but since the rangers covered the steps out of the pit with a layer of slick, shiny mud, the bandits could not make their ultimate escape and summarily surrendered to a man.
…
[Looting]
…
Yay~ Or not yay.
The entire camp is stripped of everything that isn't nailed down.
Warwolf gets to walk away with: the spellbook of Transmutation, the bandit leader as a captive, and an assortment of gear and materials. Erik estimates the loot at around 3000 gold to split among the five of us. Jake gets distribution rights since he's the unit leader.
All told, of the hundred-some (eighty-some) mercenaries sent to deal with the problem, 56 survived with another nine in 'true' casualties (people who need extensive healing). Of the 56, 40 of them had some kind of battle injury. 56 mercenaries in 6 teams, with one team having all but one of its members wiped out…the last surviving member is, literally, the team's proverbial pack mule.
We took 23 captives, two of which were leaders. There was a third one, but he slipped away some time before we set up our defensive net (I guess).
The total wealth sacked from the camp came to a figure of around 30,000 gold, including rare mammoth tusks, foodstuffs, furs, equipment, precious gems, and other material.
And we only get 3000 of it?
The 30000 gold is just an estimate. Plus, both Jake and I were in agreement that the transmutation spellbook was more valuable in the long run, so we gave up some right of loot for it.
…the camp also kept slaves. Around 36 in all.
We found them chained together, kept away from the fighting in a separate room that was honestly quite too small for the amount of people involved. The group that found them brought them back into the main room, still in chains.
"Oh, wow." Was Rovain's very lukewarm response. "I'll take the pretty looking high elf."
"Into that kind of thing, aren't you?" Freida sniffed in response. "Six per group?" She said, to general agreement.
I realize, now, rather harshly, that me and Jake were the only people who had anything close to a negative reaction to seeing slaves. They were all wearing sack-hole clothing and looked…
…well, honestly? Not that bad. Like, they were skinny, but not to the point where it looked like they were being starved. They were dirty, sure, but were comparable to our mercenary folk before all this fighting began.
"Good to know the bandits had appreciation for resale value." Rovain commented as he picked out his slaves (four girls, two guys).
"What do you plan to do with them?" Jake asked, a little mechanically.
"Probably sell them to the guild." Rovain said lightly. "Not like I can afford to take care of them anyways."
Of course there's a slavers guild. Why would there not be.
"Which ones do you want, Jake?" Freida asked with all the tone of discussing the weather.
"Fucking hell." Jake had muttered so only I could hear.
In the end, we took the two youngest (two girls (Can't tell the race)) and four oldest (3 men (2 Nord, 1 Orc), one woman (Breton)).
"You could have taken someone we could use." Was both Mell and Erik's response when they saw who we took. Not in those exact words, but in those sentiments.
I…I realize that this is the society they live in and that this sort of morals is standardized, but that did not stop me from hating the two of them just a little.
With everything handled, we pack up camp and head back to Whiterun.
I've finished doing my once-over of the slaves we claimed. The girls are suffering from some malnutrition and…probably issues deriving from said malnutrition. They won't talk, so the other slaves dutifully informed me that the girls were the newest slaves. The bandits told us that the girls were apparently refugees from Whiterun, captured at around the time when Mirmulnir buzzed the city. They were with a caravan heading to Solitude that was hideously underprotected, and when the bandits hit the caravan the guards turned traitor and the rest was history. The kids were apparently abandoned as everyone else scattered in every which way.
The bandits, unwilling to just leave the two kids alone, brought them back to camp. Their boss would not take the kids into the camp unless they were valuable, so the children were chained and enslaved. I'm not sure how I feel about all of this. Hell, I don't even know if the bandits are telling the truth.
Anyways…the girls are suffering from malnutrition and related health issues, the adults have some minor cuts and bruises but are otherwise fine. They don't really care for the girls because it's very much so every slave for themselves, which…again, I don't know how to feel about this.
We're all sitting on the (much lighter) supplies cart. In order to keep our mind off of this whole slaves business, we turn to look at something else.
WHOA WHOA WHOA
Rovain puts his sword to the neck of the High Elf he took and slits her neck. He then crassly pushes the woman to the side of the road.
JESUS CHRIST DUDE
"What the hell was that for?!" Jake demands as we leap off of the cart.
Heal heal heal heal heal
We immediately begin stabilizing the woman while repairing the damage to her larynx.
"She's a Thalmor battlemage." Rovain says coldly. "Thalmor scum deserve no less." He cuts across Jake's response. "I'm disgusted that you lot did not kill her." He says to the bandits.
"We figured the Aldemari would pay a pretty sum for an officer." The Bandit boss said with a shrug.
"Idiot." Freida laughs. "Thalmor don't pay ransom. They'll just kill you and be done with it."
Ok, ok, she's stabilized. "WHAT THE FUCK, ROVAIN?!"
We obviously heard none of that conversation. Also, the caravan came to an abrupt stop because we jumped off.
He blinks at me. "Like I said, she's a Thalmor battlemage, and an officer at that. Do you support the Aldemari Dominion?"
I'm a little bit too pissed to care. "You don't kill people like that!"
"I appreciate your candor, Ash." Freida sighs. "Keep in mind that quite a few of us have taken the path of a mercenary because people like her made other ways of living impossible." She spits those words out. "Your adherence to the healer's code is admirable." She adds to mend bridges.
I…ugh. I don't know. "What made you think she's a Thalmor?" I ask tiredly.
"Left hand." Rovain says dismissively.
On the woman's left hand is an imprint of a small triangle with two little whiskers on its head, and two pairs of 'wings' on its back.
"That's the sign of a Thalmor." Rovain explains. "Only visible when the person in question is using magic, or has magic running through their body."
…I…I won't pretend to uphold some kind of shining armor moral code. "I'm against you just up and killing people regardless of who they are." I sigh.
"He's got a point, though." Freida says. "Rovain, that was a very Thalmor thing to do."
"I consider it equal payment." Rovain sneers. "If you want to keep a Thalmor under your roof, go right ahead. We will not be waiting for you." He says, and the caravan moves forward. "Just don't be surprised if she disappears one night and never returns again."
Jake stares at us, and we shake our head slightly. He nods and stays put on the cart.
The woman coughs and regains consciousness after five minutes of waiting. Five minutes of me debating what to do.
In game? I would have killed a person like her without a second thought. Because, above all else, it is a videogame, with a different set of expectations and norms. The Thalmor basically exist as a secondary set of enemies for you to fight and loot.
She's…y'know, real, now. I can't, in good conscience, kill her.
Even if she has the blood of a hundred men on her hands?
And that's my problem. I've always been a bit (well, hell, more than a bit) derisive of people who don't take into account the other actions of a person in front of them just because those actions were not visible. So…yeah, to have something like this thrown at my face is a bit…
…I know I won't sleep easily if I do anything other than escort this person to safety. And even then I would not be able to sleep easily, because I would be indirectly responsible for any other kind of evil she may commit. I also know that I am not responsible for the actions that she chooses to take in the future…this is a pickle.
"I suppose you're looking for a 'thank you'." She says rather rebelliously.
I don't know. I really don't know. "Convince me that you don't deserve to die."
She stops short and sizes up the competition. I'm basically unarmed (I have a fruit knife). "As a healer? You don't have the guts." She spits.
…Well, Nuremburg is a thing, no?
As in…
Even if you were 'following orders', there is an expectation that you are responsible for your own actions. I should be aware of what I am doing.
We lay a hand on the woman's head. She leans away but does not resist further.
What, I wonder, would happen if I were to completely cut off magic flow from a person's brain to the rest of their body?
Answer: I don't have enough mana to do that. It's apparently a percentage thing, not a flat number thing. I did, however, make her extremely tired.
I could, like, make her system hypersensitive and make it a living hell for her to continue to exist, or else fulfill a common role in every work of pornographic material ever, but that feels like a douchey thing to do.
…though that does raise an interesting question. Could I artificially stimulate endorphin production or nervous system reactions, like, semi-permanently? I mean, if it's possible to cast something like Fear or Fury then it should be possible, right?
Hmm.
"I hope that wasn't your attempt to kill me." The woman says with a surprising note of fear in her voice after recovering from my experiment. "It didn't seem to work." Aand it's gone.
"I'm having a crisis of conscience in your favor." I say. "You should be a little grateful."
"Oh, I am." She says, sounding quite ungrateful. "Should I kiss your feet?"
I should note that she is 'Skyrim Elf' and not 'Mod Elf'. Make of that what you will. "If I were to free you, what would you do?"
She blinks slowly. "Probably go back to killing your friends and family." She says in a flat tone. "I'm a Thalmor who's been captured once, what do you think I'll do?"
…Legitimately, I do not know. I've never been in a situation like this before. "So you can't go back, then?"
She rolls her eyes.
I put my hand on her head and think really hard about spiking the nerves in her arms.
"Ow!" She jerks away, rubbing her arm. "What did you do?"
"Nothing." I say, because I only thought about it really hard. Note to self: learn Calm, Fury, and Heroic Presence (or whatever the ally buff thing is called). "But you should learn to keep a civil tone lest the other side takes you seriously."
"So be it." She says, and then clams up.
…are there magical ways to pacify slaves? Because I can imagine free will being a major detriment to the whole slavery business, as it usually is.
The slave has a band of calming aura around her neck, but since we don't know what to look for we don't recognize that it is there. It's less a magical item and more like a perfumed ring.
You know what? I don't have a sense of moral consistency and I definitely can't just leave someone to die out of politics. If this bites me in the ass, so be it.
"You're free to do as you please." I sigh and get to work following the caravan home. They're going slowly because people are wounded, so catching up should be no problem. "Though I do hope you'll follow me."
The catch-up process took like, a minute of light jogging.
The lady follows us back to the caravan.
"I figured you wouldn't go through with it." Frieda says with a smirk and holds a beckoning hand out to Rovain. He hands her a coin.
…I have to admit I don't have the stomach to entertain the fact that they just bet a coin on a murder.
"I'm going to guess you don't know the commands." Some other mage says as I climb back into the equipment wagon. Commands? "So that's a no." He snaps his fingers.
A ring begins to glow across the necks of every one of the slaves we captured.
Over the next few minutes, as I take a piece of cloth and sow, the mage goes through a handful of magic spells required to activate and use a slaving ring. The slaving ring, incidentally, isn't a high magic artifact. Basically the ring is a glorified journal, and you activate it when you want the slave to do as you want.
That doesn't sound very convincing.
It…isn't. It's a very 'honor system' kind of slavery by the sound of it. Acts of rebellion gets registered, which gets resolved at a later time, if at all. Generally slaves are expected to just pay off their debt and go off on their own way.
…well, I can imagine at least one scenario where this expectation doesn't match reality.
"What are you making there?" Rovain asks as I finish my little work.
The people that can walk are expected to walk. Healers and the wounded are exceptions.
Because we're valuable like that, or something. "A glove." I hold up a glove. It's a little long and thin but it's serviceable. "Wear this." I give it to the lady. "It would suck if that sign on your hand gets you killed."
"You are way too nice to people." Rovain observes as the Thalmor girl puts the glove onto her left hand.
…
Eventually we make our way back to Whiterun. Under the advice of the expedition leader, we (me and Jake) take the captured slaves to the Slaver's Guild, where they get registered, cleaned up, fed, and properly taken care of.
Seems a little unusual for slaves.
According to the guild worker: "we don't make good business by selling slaves that are in poor condition."
I mean, hell, they even get new clothes. Simple clothes, to be sure, but new clothes.
Anyways, we get paid a grand total of 1000 gold for the five slaves we sold. Again, I realize that this is the norm for the local environment and thus I shouldn't put too much thought on it, but…yeah. I'm pretty not ok with this. They took the Thalmor lady too, though at a (supposed) steep discount because she's a political liability.
Tangent: better slave collars are reserved for high quality (read: POW noble) slaves. Those come with enchants and are easily a few thousand coins a piece. Small wonder they don't go on normal folk.
…also, we sold five.
"What about them?" I point (much to my own disgust) to the two kids.
"We don't deal in children." The guild worker says professionally. "And definitely not in girls."
…Can I punch him? I want to punch him. "Why?"
"No market." The worker says. "We've had bad experiences with dealing with children: usually they get abused or else just abandoned to an orphanage. As a business, it's not in our best interest to pay money for either of these things to happen." He leans in to whisper. "Most people looking for slaves are looking for workers or skilled craftsmen. If they're looking for children, they're in the wrong business."
Makes sense. I can't say I like that train of logic, but it makes sense.
"The local Orphanage is overcrowded." He adds, almost as an afterthought. "If you want to get rid of them, you'd have to do it somewhere else."
Why are…oh, right, yeah. Mirmulnir.
Ugh.
We end up leaving the guilds district with the two grubby little kids in tow.
Mell has gone home as soon as we've gotten back to Whiterun, and Erik's sticking to Jake.
"So…uh…" Jake, like me, is deeply uncomfortable with the little wake-up call we've had in the past hour. "I'm gonna go find us a headquarters." He says.
Huh. "You can't work in the guild?" Whatever guild it was.
Jake shakes his head. "They take a cut if we do, so I'd rather find my own building. What about you?"
"I'm going home." I say. "If you're out, could you get me some hefty cloth mats?"
He blinks slowly. "Oh…really?"
Yes, really. "It's going to get cold soon. Also get me, like, two extra sets of wares."
He grins. "Ayep."
So…
I am not a good person. I don't pretend to be. I'll probably stop caring about my idealized version of human rights after another year here, and I think I'll be ok with that.
…well, let's see if we can find the parents of these kids first.
Fingers crossed?
Fingers crossed but I'm uh…y'know. Hedging my bets.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes: This took a bit of a dark twist at the end, no?
Also, though I will hammer the point home later: Skyrim slavery is effectively a form of debt restructuring, in the same way that missed payments on a modern mortgage can cause a bank to seriously change a person's life despite the bank not having official ownership of that person. It's still considered slavery under Ash and Jake's eyes because the end point is the same: a loss of rights as a person.