The Irrelevant Skyrim Experience

by longherin

Two guys play Skyrim in first person mode. And also there's a dragonborn involved, but she does her own thing. Think of it as Skyrim, but not as railroaded due to videogame limitations.

22. The Dwemer Ruin Sidequest Experience

{ === + === }

Alright, we're here!

Warwolf is attached to Piers's noble house employers (whose names I have forgotten and honestly don't give a shit about) and like he said, we're not the only mercenary corps on payroll. By virtue of being one of the bigger noble families participating, our campsite is indoors in the main…big-ass room, along with the two other big noble families, the royal expedition, and the site maintenance.

The entrance to this biggest room used to be a pair of large dwemer doors, but they've more or less been stripped from their hinges and expanded to the rocks and dirt around it. Interestingly, there's also a pair of massive fans bolted to windmills, bolted onto the frame of the gate. The windmills power the fans and they act as very low-effort pumps for the otherwise underground room.

The biggest room itself has…pipes, holes, and a trio of gates leading deeper into the ruins. I don't remember what the inside of Avan looked like, but I'm sure it looked nothing like this. If we treat the main entrance as south of the great chamber, then…well, the east gate is ajar and caved in, more or less. The north entrance is open and strung with torches and magelights, and the west gate is sealed shut with planks and nails. The pipes running along the walls and the ceilings of the chamber have holes in both expected and unexpected locations.

Both types of holes are boarded up. For the record, I find the idea that we're in here in a room that could possibly be a deathtrap to be really, really dumb. Especially when you consider that…actually, nevermind, the people running the camps of the noble families are not the heads of said families, so it's not like there's a major loss if anything untoward happens. The leader of our camp is the fourth son of the family from a third wife, for example.

Anyways…the chamber is divided into four major zones, and our camp is in the northeast quadrant. Warwolf is the furthest from the open gate, which is fine. While inside, we don't need full tents, but instead have poles with tarps set up. Mell gets her own area for alchemy and her stuff, and I get an area for smithing. Our sleeping quarters are divided into two and are proper tents, more or less.

The entire setup and organization and moving resources around take much of the day, to the point where it's just past dusk when we have finished.

"Alright, so what are we doing for today?" Jake asks Piers when we're done setting up. Piers, apart from being the lead of the family's magic division, is also more or less our handler.

"It's your first time underground in a Dwemer ruin, so take the time to familiarize yourself with the surroundings." Piers says. "If you think of this as just a stroll into a mineshaft, then you'll be in for a world of hurt when things get rough." He thinks a little. "The main entrance goes some distance down, so as long as you don't go further than the front entrance, there won't be anything to worry about."

Sounds like a plan. We get together and make the descent.

…

The trip towards the forward base is uneventful and we get a better idea of what the inside of a Dwemer Ruin is supposed to be. Like the game, the hallways have lots of pipes, weird bar-like dividers, pipe outlets, moving gears, so on, so forth.

Unlike the game, of course, this place is absolutely bustling with activity. About a hundred paces from the gate there's a…probably more senior member of the first expedition giving an overview on the closest rotating gear…and it's actually more or less just a safety briefing, which is neat.

As we pass, one of the newer guys snicker at something the senior member says. There is then the sound of something hitting the gear, followed by the newer guy's yelp of pain.

…Good on him, or something.

Further in, a small blacksmith party is busy…uh…disassembling a Dwarven bowl? I'm not sure what they're doing. Occasionally a handcart comes up with a load of dwarven metal trash to probably dump into a pile somewhere. It's sometimes actual elements (like pots and scrap) and other times it's…disassembled parts of things? I guess? When the environment is no longer indestructible to save on game design time people can get real creative with item procurement.

The edge of our path is about fifteen minutes down the hallway. The hallway itself widens a bit due to battle damage and excavations, and this place looks like a fortified front camp. Compared to the base camp, there's a lot more weapons here and a comparatively harder edge to the air. Off to one side of this camp is a pile made of a busted Dwarven Sphere Guard Thing and a few spiders. The pile is being disassembled by a group hacking and hammering at it and tossing out pieces every so often to handcarts waiting nearby. Further out down the path is, as a worker says, 'slightly unsafe'. It's not as if we have enemies at the walls, so I assume it just means that nobody has managed to secure the area at the moment.

Overall, basically just a walk. Occasionally some of the machinery emits smoke and the heat in the region is surprisingly high, so that's something we'll have to be careful of. Likewise, there're also boarded up pipe entrances, but every so often we'd find one that's broken, which implies that mech spiders or those rolling guard thingies are a major and consistent worry if we go deeper in…hmm.

All in all, a small party without stealth and luck is probably not going to go over well. Likewise, a solo explorer is probably just going to die unless they're Aria. I am curious to know how this place will interact with magic, though: there seems to be a severe lack of mages down here at the front camp and I don't know if that's on purpose.

Welp, time to go back.

As we're heading back, we cross paths with a team of very small children being led by a redguard girl a little bit older than Atra.

Ah…the elephant in the room, so to speak. Atra seems to know the leader, though.

Atra goes "Hi Amie" and the two pretty much move on past each other, both quite busy.

Atra and Alma attract some attention from the other kids.

But.

Children.

So, first off, children are not a rare occurrence in the expedition. Lots of the artisans and support staff have younger kids with them who help out with basic chores, with these kids being either parts of the family or else a part of something akin to an apprenticeship. They do things like arrange ingots, fold clothes, so on, so forth. Likewise, the more royal families also have kids with them, mostly being of a comparatively older age (15+) and they're functionally squires, learning on the trade, as it were.

Buuuuuut as with everything, we can't have nice things.

Besides families doing the necessary things to ensure employment, there are also gaggles of orphans and…very young children, for the lack of a better term. I've done a little asking around and it seems that the bigger houses spend money to essentially buy orphans from orphanages and use them as explorers for the places in the dungeon that would require a child-sized body.

Now, to be fair, these kids are treated properly: they're fed, clothed, cleaned, and given weapons, armor, and training, and the people tasked with getting these children up to speed do genuinely seem to care for their well-being. That said, it's practically guaranteed that these children are…bought, to perform a role that most likely will end in their death, and so the only people who are happy with this arrangement are the people who never actually see them.

…For what it's worth, both the orphanages and the children have the right to refuse the transaction, but a) they're orphans, b) they're young, and c) the orphanages consider this to be a very good way to both make some money and to ensure that the children have some kind of future growing up. The little explorers tend to be adopted as skilled workers of some sort should they survive.

The fact that I can't really dispute the whole 'but this is good for their future' part really gets to me too, not gonna lie. I'm also not very happy about the fact that I'm consciously avoiding the teams of orphans because, like everyone else, I have other issues to deal with. Arg.

Like I'm not sure how effective their training for the little kids will be because the oldest is like NINE and I know for a fact it takes more than just a few days to learn how to handle a place like this without actively going into tight and dark places.

But, as Piers rather coldly put it, "That's life. They can either risk dying for a better lot in life now, or they can do the same thing later but with fewer people who care."

Which…bitch move, but I can't say I disagree.

…

[Day One]

…

Well, either way, the exploration begins in earnest. Warwolf is attached to Piers's unit and our first expedition down the shaft is a very simple trip past the forward camp and into an area with a gate. The path itself is very well marked with arrows painted on the ground, but beyond that there are no security considerations.

Units sent for expeditions are divided into 'scout', 'power', and 'cleanup' major roles.

Scout teams tend to go into areas first and mark out dangerous positions, traps, hazards, so on. They'll do some trap cleanup if they can, but for the most part it is just labeling and leaving, to avoid drawing negative attention.

Power teams are basically what you do in the game: get in, kill everything, and then get out. Power teams are well equipped and well trained in all manners of tasks, so the removal of anything that could be dangerous is within a power team's job list.

Cleanup teams loot. It's the safest job in terms of meeting threats (relatively speaking) but the hardest from a pure energy expenditure standpoint. No Dragonborn bag of holding, etc etc etc.

The Explorers tend to be scattered among Power and Scout teams. Piers's Unit is a Power team. Warwolf, as an attachment to Piers, is therefore also a subset of a Power unit.

For the record, though this should be obvious: the assignments can switch around as needed and people can be shuffled into whatever team is necessary. It's more a useful designation than an ironclad rule, basically.

Anyways. The trip, much like the first day, is more about show and tell rather than actual fighting with dangers. It's a path with harmless but active pressure traps and Dwarven treasure chests, and most of the time is spent basically going "ok so here's a Dwemer chest and this is how you open it." To nobody's surprise Aria pops them open without issue. To my surprise I can also pop them open without issue.

"A small amount of magic is needed to open them." Piers says after my attempt. "If you're not magically inclined like these two then it's easier to ask them to open it for you before checking their insides."

The end of the path is a large, locked, open gate. As in, there's a locked lock but there's no pathing issue.

"Alright, now." Piers claps his hands together. "This gate is obviously open, but we're not going any further until our rogues figure out how to get this thing open." He taps the lock that's barely within his reach over his head. "Or else we figure out a way around it. Down there, if we can't make a path quickly and find places to hide or consolidate after getting chased around, we will get mowed down. Everyone clear?" He looks around to the group for nods, which we oblige.

Notably everybody's taking a Dwemer ruin seriously besides me and Jake, which…might be a bad sign, honestly. Regardless, the rogues go to work. As they do, the scout team meant to precede Piers arrives.

"Well, if it isn't young master Kanafe." Piers says with a bit of surprise. "You're leading this team?"

"In name only." The…Kanafe? Boy says. "I have nowhere the experience to do so."

"Nothing wrong with learning." Piers smiles. "As you can see." He frowns at the two rogues making a human ladder to reach the lock. "Sometimes it takes a while."

"Screw off." The bottom rogue grunts. "We're trying." The top rogue goes 'ah-ha!' and the gates click open. The two immediately break their ladder and high-five.

"Well done, well done." Piers laughs. "Took you a full minute to get an unlocked gate open. Let's get moving. Yosef, you're in the lead."

"Aye." Yosef, the Redguard who I assume is leading the scout party, takes point. "Keep close, eyes peeled, and the squirts on a short leash."

The move ahead is a bit slower. We're still in a scouted area and thus still tutorializing, but it's a lot more

One of the scouting parties misses a floor trap, steps on it, and yeows as he's hit on the hand by an arrow.

…dangerous. Like seriously dude wait until we've turned the corner at least.

Their team healer patches him up with a blush to her face.

Not the first time, I guess.

Atra and Alma, being the only kids in the group, are more or less being bothered by the Explorers. They're all keeping relatively quiet but being quite animated all the same.

…

30 minutes later, at an intersection.

…

Contact!

Four Dwarven Sphere Guardians are rolling around on the ground. Are they patrolling?

"Well, shit." Piers hisses. "The previous team didn't know about this. We're backing off."

Huh. "Is this bad?"

"Guardians have patrol routes." Piers says. "They're…a bit of a pain to deal with. We need to get out of here before this turns into a fight."

It's…it's that bad? Also uh oh.

One of the Guardians seems to notice us and deploy into its twin-armed ball leg mode.

Fuck dot tm.

Piers goes "Pull back, pull back!" and the frontliners make a battleline. Then we start pulling back step by step as the Guardians roll very very quickly at us like HOW ARE THEY THAT FAST

The Guardians roll at maximum speed with their blades out. The sound of metal hitting the rock fills the room. The first one reaches Aria, who parries it and is immediately blown away.

It's rotating with the blades like mad, and the first strike on Aria sends her back two to three paces. It keeps going, and the front line pretty much buckles almost immediately after three more hits. Fuck.

We ready some Shock.

"no magic." Piers says quickly. "Not right now, focusing on backing off, no killing them."

Well, balls. I hold off until we get to, and scramble up, a flight of stairs. Aria, pulling the rear, exchanges three more blows with a Guardian before retreating, and then we all turn tail and run a fair distance away.

The Guardians, either unable or unwilling to chase us up the stairs, eventually turn back into a ball and vanish from sight.

Piers lets out a sigh. "Ok, that was unexpected." He gestures to the healers. "Help get everybody patched up." No serious injuries—the blades didn't seem very sharp—but a lot of bruising and at least a few broken arms.

"What were those things?" T'mare asks.

"Dwemer Spheres." Piers says. "Between them and the soulless spiders, they're the biggest threats up here. "Usually we have their patrol patterns mapped, but something's disturbed this bunch."

…that doesn't bode well. "Any guesses?"

Piers shakes his head. "Dwemer ruins tend to run deep, and the ones big enough to warrant an expedition are usually also deep enough to tap into the Reach. Maybe something down there's got them spooked?"

Like…?

"What about those goblin things the guy mentioned earlier?" Jake says. "The Falmer?"

Piers shakes his head. "Could be, but not likely. There's a lot of hypothesis around what the Falmer actually are, but regardless of what the truth might be, it is a fact that the Dwemer defenses don't automatically attack them on sight."

Implying that it's still possible to set the two sides against each other. Good to know. Also goes against that one ruin in the game where turning on the defenses to fight Falmer was a mechanic. If they're actually all non-hostile against each other then I think we'll have problems, but…food for later.

"Honestly, the fact that they're fast as the deep hells and hit even harder isn't the biggest problem." Piers says. "When one goes down, the entire area gets filled by those soulless spiders and things get real dangerous."

"How dangerous can they be?" T'ma scoffs. "I saw the wrecks: they're not bigger than frostbite spiders."

"Danger in numbers." Piers shrugs. "I've never seen one fight, but I've seen enough of the result to know when to stay away." He looks around. "Point is, we're heading back and reporting this. No sense taking too many risks too early."

So we do. We report to a tent pitched in a raised area just outside the ruins's main gate. It's less a tent and more just tarps nailed into the natural walls, but it has enough brought-in riches to look somewhat official.

The Dungeon Master (ish) listens to Piers's report and nods. "Alright, we'll take care of it. In the meantime, Piers, I have something else for you." He moves to a big map pinned to the wall behind him. It's basically one giant piece of cloth with smaller sections of hand-drawn maps pinned and overlapped on top of it, all fixed with a forest of nails. "Check out this section for me." He taps a section of the map. "We got reports of Falmer wandering around the region from the last Cleanup team."

Piers goes "Yep." And reads the map for a minute to memorize it. "Let's go, boys." He heads out, tapping my shoulder.

…

Some fifteen minutes later.

…

The target path is from the eastern exit. Anyways, the tap on the shoulder means that Piers wants to talk to you. So. "What's up?"

"Falmer are god-awful against magic, so I want my best guns forward in case something happens." Piers says.

…but it's just me up here. I frown.

"Yep." He grins. "Good luck!" He takes a very obvious step back and oh my god are you serious

Soooo it's just going to be me. Fuuuu

Anyways. The current marching order is as thus: the dedicated trap-finders and scouts are in first, I'm second, Piers is third, and everyone else in some order afterwards.

It's a little like a diamond formation: people with the best detection are in the front and back, people with the highest firepower in the middle.

Compared to the northern path, this one is comparatively more stripped of Dwemer stuff. A lot of the walls have signs of things missing from them that should be there and there are comparatively less pipes and pipe openings. The path itself is also less structured and more naturally winding. Hmm.

Either way, another thirty minutes in and the lead scout raises a hand for us to stop, about thirty paces before turning the next corner in this weird rocky path. He snaps his fingers, and magic gathers into what looks like a pad on his feet. I want that spell.

He moves forward slowly and peers around the corner. After peeking around, he returns and mouths 'Falmer'. Falmer are sound detectors, but I feel like if they were feeling us then they'd probably feel us already. He nods at me slowly, and casts the same spell onto me. It tingles. He then motions for me to move forward, which I do, following his same slow carefulness.

…huh. Well.

Past the turn and about fifty paces away is a Falmer squad definitely arranged in an…very organized ambush formation. It's hard to see with their numbers, but there are two files: a front line on their knees with shields and swords, and a back line standing up with bows half-drawn and prepared.

We're more or less told that the Falmer have a good sense of hearing. We know that the Falmer have a good sense of hearing. Piers made a point that we should 'be aware when using big spells', which I assume means we might draw more mobs than necessary.

…That said, I'm being told to use a big spell here, so…

Standing in full view of the blind Falmer, we raise our arms.

I hope they don't detect me, but if they do I'll just leg it back to our lines, so no big deal…SHIT

The Falmer in the back draw and fire arrows. They had detected us entirely and were just surprised that only one dude moved into shooting range.

The arrows all hit my reflex casted walls but fuuuck that scared me oh now they're coming run run run run run

We leg it back to the now prepared line.

The Falmer…doesn't fully give chase. They stop before they can round the corner.

"Well, now what?" Piers says with a normal tone. "They knew we were here and set an ambush, but now we have them in a tight spot."

"Can't help but feel like I got used there." I mutter. "Piers. The fuck?"

"Apologies." Piers grins. "Consider it a welcome gift for entering a Dwemer ruin." His grin fades. "When facing down Falmer the first time, too many mages mistake 'staying quiet' as 'not speaking'. I've lost many to this mistake, and given the choices I'd rather lose one mage than an entire party."

…Fair. Dick move, but fair. One of Piers's immediate subordinates pulls out a fireball scroll, activates it, and then lobs it around the corner like a grenade. As soon as it goes off, the frontline fighters with shields charge around and the fight gets started. The weird standoff at the start aside, the Falmer, formation aside, are pretty bad symmetric fighters.

As in, in a straight fighting line they get pushed back when there's no surprises going on.

My contributions to the battle basically boiled down to some Shock tossed at the archers and that was about it. Ultimately, about a third of the Falmer lived to retreat, which they're very good at. Overall, five casualties, with the heaviest injury being a cut artery. It would be really bad if healing magic wasn't a thing that everybody knows.

Still, the guy that got his thigh cut gets sent back to properly heal up, and we move forward. The tunnel gets progressively narrower as we go, but never past about ten feet across. After about, oh…a hundred meters? We come across the first problem area.

"Well, shit." Piers scowls. There's a busted pipe definitely wide enough for a Falmer to crawl through, and the relative shine of the floor of the pipe compared to its ceiling suggests frequent use. Also there's a blood trail, so that counts too. "You're up." He nods towards an Orc, an Orc handler of the Explorer children.

He squints at the pipe and picks a kid. "Thirty paces and toss this torch in." He says, handing over a lit torch. "If you hear anything weird, back out immediately, understand?"

The kid (little nord girl) nods. She does as she's told, and tosses the torch and immediately scrambles back out. Thirty paces for a kid isn't much and I'm pretty sure somebody like Jake could have thrown the distance. Either way, we can see that the pipe goes a little deeper and maybe also slopes downwards.

"So far so good." Piers breathes. "Adail, Telann." He calls upon two mages of his personal retinue.

"At once." The two Nords bow. I don't know which is which, honestly. The dude of the pair raises his hands, and a gust of wind starts to…pipe into the pipe. I guess. The torch reacts…and it glows brighter. HUH…

The lady of the pair then raises her hands and begins shooting out a jet of fire. It seems more…robust…than Flames. The fire enters the pipe, reaches the torch, and seems to brighten as well. We can't see anything else besides that because it's obscured, but they keep this up for about a minute.

"What was that all about?" Jake asks when it's done.

"A family original." Piers winks. "It takes advantage of the enclosed space to make better use of both elemental and natural fire." We back up from the pipe so a build crew can block the pipe off with wood. "Our family discovered some kind of gas in the northern areas of Riften. This gas seems to be very effective with regards to boosting the power of fire. Adail and Telann are the best at reproducing its effects, and thus they're my indispensable hands when it comes to something like an underground expedition."

Flammable gas, huh? Interesting.

With that done and over with, we move onwards. A few more of these pipes are found and different Explorers are sent in to each one, probably for training purposes, and the pipes get flushed out one by one.

When nobody's paying attention, I fall back and try to make some…pane? With my hands? I'm thinking back to my foggy High School Chemistry days when we had to do something with things. I'm focused on making Butane with my hands along with a small Flame, and the Flame is definitely brighter, but…yeah, I don't know. I'll have to test this more thoroughly.

Side note: I'm making my gas with the…um…the refinement spell. Forget its name right now. Since I'm using the spell to do it, I assume the two Nords are doing the same.

…

Ultimately, we flush out twelve pipes in total before we head back. The main force that we fought was nowhere to be seen. Piers didn't seem too pleased with that outcome.

His thoughts? "Much as I loathe a fight, I loathe the prospect of a hidden enemy more."

The day ends without further incident.

…

[Day Two]

…

Now that the trial period has ended (more or less), Piers hands out individual missions for each group to accomplish before the day ends. I guess solo action is really frowned upon, huh?

We get a Power and a Scout mission, so the manpower is divvied out for that. Nothing serious.

…

[Day Three]

…

One big Power mission going deep into the path with the Dwemer Spheres…but all we ended up meeting were Spiders. The expedition pushed until they came to what seems to be a halfway broken cafeteria—one of the walls is either tunneled through or else collapsed to the next room. The door itself is blocked off.

…

[Day Four]

…

To the surprise of nobody, the big mission today is to reinforce and secure the path we cleared yesterday with a massive Cleanup operation, hammering in wood over pipe entrances and barring any investigated side doors.

As in, "there are too many pipes in this room so let's just lock the door, it's faster."

As much as I'd like to perma-seal these pipes, we really are just doing this for advanced detection. Under the advice of a dude who grew up on a farm (Random Imperial Man Number 133) we've also strung up a bell with rope on the pipe exit, just in case.

…

[Day Five]

…

Loot!

To refresh, the loot distribution rules for this raid are as follows. "Everything goes into one big pile for management to dole out, and anything you can pocket for yourself is yours to keep." Unfortunately we haven't done any deep dives yet, so loot up 'til now has been scarce.

…Actually it's still scarce. Our divvied loot comes out to five Dwemer bowls, which is kinda nice.

I melt them down immediately for an ingot. Dwemer Metal reacts very well with magic, so all blacksmiths juice their fire with Flames to get ingots faster. No exceptions here.

Still, what do I do with it? One Ingot isn't really enough to make anything worthwhile, and I want to take advantage of its magic conductivity as much as possible.

…Hm.

…

[Day Six]

…

Tragedy!

Well, not really. I mean, yes, but not really, but also yes.

One of the mercenary groups tasked with Scouting got massacred. Of their twenty-odd force, only one guy came back holding onto a trinket, a non-enchanted Dwemer Ring. Like that shit is not worth twenty deaths.

That said, the information he brought back was valuable: there's a series of rooms that his group thought was either an armory or a storage depot, filled to the brim with lockboxes, Dwemer chests, and metal of both scrap and pristine conditions.

Needless to say, that room is our target.

…

[Day Seven]

…

"Should be obvious, but no wandering off on your own." Piers says, mostly to Aria. "I don't want your wanderlust getting all of us killed." She's been exhibiting the Dragonborn standard of 'fuck all of you I do what I want'. She brought back a Dwemer Spider for me, which was nice. She's like a cat sometimes. I learned a lot from its joint articulation and upgraded all of the Folding Swords as a result.

That said, Aria nods amicably.

The different…sub-captains, I guess, of the groups drew straws today, and Piers drew the short one, so he, and by extension us, are taking point.

…

The first leg of the journey is painless. A few pipes with broken barricades to let us know that Spheres have come out of them since we last visited, but no threats. Bells are tossed into those pipes to act as more ad-hoc early warning systems.

The first leg of the journey stops at a set of collapsed stairs. A series of ropes affixed to a nearby pipe let us know just how the Scout team got around.

Worryingly, on the bottom of the ten feet drop is a veritable army of Dwemer Spiders and activated Spheres, and judging by the oh they're shooting at us.

Some of the Dwemer Spiders can discharge lightning, and they do. Some of the Spheres have harpoon guns, which they fire with enthusiasm.

Yikes. We retreat from the edge because there's a lot of fire coming up at us.

An Orc eats a harpoon shot in the head.

"Well, that sucks." Piers says with a frown as the orc's corpse is dragged back. "Mages, Bombards, you're up."

The Bombards are dudes with scrolls. They activate…Fireball? Looks like Fireball. They ready their Fireballs and…well. They more or less line up and run in a circle, and as soon as they can take a side step to the edge they lob their spells and retreat. It's like a cavalry circle but, y'know, no horses. Reason why they do this is because as soon as the Dwemer see them they fire back. Our dudes keep their heads down but sometimes the shots get through.

For the record, I'm basically a Bombardier, so I have my spot in that circle and I fire like everybody else.

After two circles, the Dwemer units split into two groups; one group nestles up to the ledge on the bottom so we can't get a shot, and the other group falls back to get a better angle for when we show up.

"Shit, they have a command core." Piers snarls. "Gonna have to do it the hard way."

"Waiting for you to say that." Aria pulls her sword. "Going." She, with a running start, leaps for a rope. "Ash!"

Oh we're doing that are we.

Aria swings on the rope for a few seconds, her loose grip letting her slide down the rope while having the traction to move erratically in the air. As a volley of fire is drawn to her, we step forward with a bonkers amount of mana allocated for a single spell.

I charged up all my mana batteries for this one. "Fire in the hole!"

As soon as we see the Dwemer units that have moved away to get a better angle, we let loose. Even before we said anything, Jake covered his ears. Piers does the same, and everybody copies him. The sheer amount of Shock bouncing around the room shatters the Dwemer, as well as our own eardrums.

AAAAAAaaaa that hurt. I can't hear shit now, so I assume I popped something.

Piers raises his sword and yells something, and the troops jump in and fight at close range. Aria's already down there. Jake mouths something at me, and, yeah, I popped something.

Yeah, I'm deaf now. Shit. "I can't hear right now." I think I say.

Jake blinks. "[You can't hear?]" He…signs. Ish. He knows ASL (a little), but I don't, so he's more or less homesigning.

ASL = American Sign Language.

I nod. "[That]." I just point to the hallway that the rest of the melee units are charging into.

Mell now comes up to Jake, asks him something to the effect of "What's the matter?". Jake explains, and she looks at me with shock, and then goes "You're an idiot!" with a look of worry.

I nod, and shrug.

Anyhoo…I think I blew the fuck out of my ears, 'cuz it feels like the ground is swaying. My sense of balance is fucked too, huh?

…well, whatever. While I regenerate the mana needed to fix this problem, let's follow up in this eerie peace and quiet plus rumbling.

We rappel down the rope and fall on our ass.

No sense of balance sucks. Little by little, I can force myself forwards by holding onto the wall. Aria, you owe me big for this.

Anyway, the fighting is still straightforward. The Spheres are powerful as expected, and it basically takes a full team of four or five to reasonably bring it down. Progress is slow but steady, with parties rotating in and out of frontline combat to help bring any hurt members back into action.

…That said, we are basically on a time limit. The Spheres are the weakest when there are narrower hallways, and right now the hallways are wide enough for the Spheres to turn into literal tornados before striking at the front liners.

As we watch, a Redguard takes a full-powered hit to his torso and sides in a very painful way. He pretty much snaps in half like a tree branch.

Yeah, he ded. At the moment I can't coordinate, so I have nothing to contribute to the battle.

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jake and Aria are the stars of the fight. Armed with the folding sword, the two of them rather easily smash their way through chunks of the Dwemer automatons. Unfortunately, their hits, while powerful, were not exactly critical.

"Shit." Jake hacks off a Sphere's arm and then backsteps out of its reach. "These things really don't quit." He slams the folding sword into the center of the Sphere, where the core should be. "Fuck." It takes a swing at him anyway.

"Don't bother, their core is bait." A veteran behind him says. "When they run low on magicka they just run and recover somewhere. You have to scrap it entirely."

"Double fuck." Jake pulls the fixing pin from the folding sword and uses it to clamp on the Sphere's still good arm. His other hand free, he punches its head and fires the Spiker. The Sphere's head snaps back with the ringing of metal on metal. The overstressed Spiker shatters. Jake, unconcerned, pulls his dagger and spikes it into the Sphere's arm. He then pulls his hammer and with one smashing hit rams the dagger through, severing the Sphere's arm from its body.

The Sphere, now missing pieces, shakes off the folding sword and retreats, leaving its arm behind. Jake recovers his weapons with a bit of grumbling.

Elsewhere, Aria, with her folding sword, slams into the base of her Sphere. In retaliation, it spins with its bladed arms out rather dangerously if haphazardly, but doesn't deter Aria from slamming into its base again, unbalancing it and causing it to fall face-first. As its head momentarily hits the ground, she brings her sword down on it like a sledgehammer, repeatedly, and moves slightly towards its torso with each hit.

The result is a mildly flattened and definitely scrapped Sphere. As she takes a deep breath, the Sphere's base detaches the destroyed torso with a resounding ping! and rolls hurriedly away from the battlefield.

She stares at it for a few seconds and then go "the fuck?"

"Gotta hand it to the Dwemer Engineers." Another warrior beside her (Orc) says. "They know how to rightly mix form and function."

Aria grumbles and retreats. Both of them belong to the heavy strikers group, which meant that they only really surged forward when the others defending the line needed someone to take down something big and scary.

Ash, more or less watching from the back, observes as the Cleanup crews hurriedly builds a series of rope and pulleys for the ledge area while the front line moves onward. As the fighting progresses, fresh weapons and shields are dropped down to the line on baskets.

After a good hour of hard fighting, the Dwemers are pushed far enough back that the path to the armory is secured. However…

"We can't keep this up for very long." Piers grumbles. "Cleanup! Get in there and clean it out!"

The designated cleanup crew rush into the armory and, relatively protected from harm by the front line of fighters, haul out everything they can carry, up to and including any dwarven chests they could uproot from the floor.

Another hour later, and the expedition leader grits his teeth. "That's enough! We're pulling back!"

With that, the front line retreats at a rapid pace and everything that isn't ready for recovery is immediately abandoned. At the cliff, the strongest archers and mages get first claim back up, and as soon as they arrive, they turn to provide covering fire for the lifts and the rest of the team.

"We'll hold the line!" Jake says, with a nod from Aria. With the rest of Warwolf in tow (sans Ash, the girls, and Mell), they ready their folding swords and engage. Ash, one of the first to be hauled up along with the other wounded, facepalms. From his perch, he assists them with bolts of Shock while the rest of the team evacuates. Soon, the only ones on the ground are Aria and Jake, facing off against a seemingly unending horde of Dwemer automatons.

"Aiight, we out. Make way!" Jake says. In unison, the two of them hurl their folding swords up towards the cliff as the mages scramble back. Aria jumps into Jake's arms in a princess carry and Jake, flying and jumping perks active, leaps up and clears the cliff without issues.

Aria jumps off and with a cheery "Fuck yeah" the two high-five.

…

[1st Person Camera]

…

Well, that was a thing. With Mell's help, I can walk, and trail the team back up into camp.

It's quite telling that the previously clear path with plenty of wood and metal blocking up pipes…are now populated by spiders. Fortunately, not many are here, so the fighters can clear them without problems.

Also, very weird to only feel vibrations but not hear anything. I can feel wet things running down the side of my face, which is also not very pleasant.

Anyways, the retreat is pretty straightforward. The spiders can't swarm enough to be a threat, so they get beaten down and taken home for scrapping.

…

Back at camp.

Total casualties of the day: eighty. Fatalities: thirty-five.

As far as Warwolf is considered, everybody except the girls and Mell are casualties. Eric and the Gro-kala brothers are severely wounded, with Eric losing his leg in the battle. Technically I'm also heavily wounded.

Well.

Mell preps some mana potions for us once we're back at our camp.

She writes down "are you alright?" on a scroll. I nod and chug all of the pots.

Aiight. I most likely will need to rebuild my ears entirely given the loss of balance. I...have looked at the diagram of an ear a few times, but…yeah, this is going to be "choke it with mana" all the way through.

Ok, deep breaths.

We close our eyes and heal our own ears. They pop.

FUCK AAAaaaaah that's weird. Suddenly hearing shit is weird.

…hm. I think these new ears are better. A lot better, actually. A little too good. It kind of hurts.

We ball up some cotton and stuff them into our ears.

I'll do some fine tuning when I'm free. Down the hatch!

More potions, then we tend to the Gro-Kala brothers.

Major lacerations all over the body, cut arteries everywhere…if they weren't orcs they'd be dead. Still, the scope of damage aside, the healing itself is very straightforward.

Down the hatch! It's a good thing Mell puts berries in her potions or I'd be really fucking sick of them by now.

Eric's turn.

"I'm in your care." Erik says, very obviously shaken. His leg had to be amputated because it was bleeding too rapidly and there were no healers nearby to help. It's just a burnt stump now. Kind of overkill if you ask me but eh, I reap what I sow on this one.

Alma and Atra help out with water, bandages. This…this is going to be a lengthy operation. Not hard, I don't think, just lengthy.

My plan is to basically mirror his good leg for his gone one. To that end, I have a lot of chicken bones, pig bones, meat, veggies…basically everything that can be Replaced into material.

Aiight.

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

"So he's trying to regrow Erik's leg." One healer says to another as they watch the Warwolf tent. "you're shittin' me."

"I shit you not, my good Breton friend." The other Healer says. "Well, then again, Warwolf is basically known to be a band of idiots." They watch the T-sisters go about their business. "Hot idiots."

"Yeah, look at their gear." The first Healer mutters. They watch T'ma strip off the damaged parts of her armor and replace them with fresh parts. "It's obviously not something materially expensive like Ebony, but…y'know." He taps his wrist.

"I want a set." The Breton healer agrees. "One of them took a hit that was meant for me and just shrugged the damn thing off." The person in question, T'ma, glares at them watching her change(ish) and walks off. "Material costs aside, the skill it needs to make that kind of armor, for that many people, in such a short amount of time…"

"Short?" Healer A frowns. "I thought Warwolf was always in Riften. I mean, look at that building of theirs."

"Nah, they moved in a few months ago." Healer B says. "That smith of theirs, the vice-master, is apparently bankrolling the team."

"Makes sense." Healer B nods. "Jake's usually too busy to be doing the books." He stops. "Wait a second. So the vice…what, smiths, healers, does public relations, and administration? How does he have the time?"

"It probably helps when they don't have to spend a lot on gear." Healer A says. "Still…if you think about it, nobody around Skyrim makes armor that way, nobody that I know about in all of Tamriel makes armor that way." He scratches his face. "Think he's actually nobility?"

Healer B mulls on it for a bit. "Would make sense. A prodigal son doing shit for his own amusement." He looks at Healer A with a bit of a mischievous glint in his eye. "Feel like changing jobs when this is over?"

…

[Dusk, 1st Person Camera]

…

Aaaand done.

Erik sits up.

"This feels weird." He gingerly gets to his feet. Or, he tries to, and then sits back down again. "Hurts like hell." He laughs. Cry-laughs. "Ash, you're a miracle, you know that?"

"You've seen me do this plenty of times by now." I grin.

Erik laughs. "Doesn't make it any less impressive."

I make a 'well, ok then' kind of gesture. "In any case, that leg will probably need some time to settle." I can see the magic…lines? Mist? Radiating from it. "Until it does, lie down."

"Or use these." T'mare gives Erik a pair of crutches. "Though given the hour it might be easier to just sleep."

"I'd feel better sleeping in my bunk." Erik says, getting up from the operating table. "Hey, man." He pats me on the shoulder. "I can't say enough words for what you're doing for all of us here." He says…very earnestly. "Seriously. Thank you."

I have trouble dealing with praise. "Then do me a favor and stop adding to my workload."

He grins. "Sure thing, boss."

…

[Next Day]

…

Lootshare time!

For Warwolf's accomplishments on the front lines, we get five chests and twenty pieces of gear, along with a fair amount of scrap Dwemer material to use.

We also get a medium-strength magic trinket for our troubles…well, we would have. Instead, Piers co-opted that reward for one of the other merc groups—they got shivved bad, and the survivors are jumping ship. Can't blame them.

Instead, Piers has a personal reward for me.

A

BOOK

OF

MUUUUFFFFLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I fucking salivated once he gave it to me.

That was about fifteen minutes ago.

I will study this like it's…

…uh. I now realize I've never really read anything instructive with unbridled passion. Huh.

Whatever. I will study the shit out of it. Before that, though.

"Hey, Aria, read this for me." I hand it to her so she can learn Muffle and be the Stealth Archer we all eventually become.

Aria flips through it with a very guilty expression on her face. "I've learned it." She says/mumbles. Also she's been ignoring me so that's a thing. Well, less ignoring me and more avoiding contact.

I will corner her about this later (though I'm pretty sure I know what it's about) but for now I'm interested in the loot we got.

The chests are lootboxes. If we get them open we can keep what's on the inside.

…the catch, is, of course, opening them. Aria's the Dragonborn but she's not a Player Dragonborn necessarily, so she's shite at lockpicking, and the rest of us have no experience either apart from what we've seen during training. The lock we dealt with during orientation was a novice lock, and it wasn't the first time it was opened, either, so…

Erik gets to work on the locks with T'nerem's help.

…Um.

"Let's just say I wasn't the best lad in my youth." Erik says with a mischievous wink.

T'nerem doesn't say anything, but she's got the smirk of a person who knows exactly what's up. Well, we'll leave it to them, then.

We have three types of chests: small, medium, large. The ones that were unlocked from the beginning are, of course, opened immediately. Nothing great in there: most of them carried coins, which, considering how many we're getting, are practically worthless. These batches are of the common Dwemer/Iron mix. In camp, we use them as coasters and that's pretty much about it.

…Actually if you think about their size there's no way they're coasters, but eh. Moving on.

The easily unlocked chests contain…pieces? Pieces. After unlocking all of them and looking for commonalities, we can say for certain that the pieces are essentially replacement parts, like scabbards, armor fixtures, joints, so on, so forth.

The medium chests are the same, pieces, but more…important, in a way. One of them had a stack of unfinished blades, for example. Makes sense. The biggest chests we took from the armor are about two feet wide at best, and there's no loot hammerspace to suddenly get full suits of armor.

The hardest chests…are a wee bit fucked.

"Nope." Erik sighs after fifteen minutes. "I don't know how to make my way into this one." He looks around. "Maybe we can ask somebody for a hand?"

T'nerem shrugs. "They'll ask for a share of the spoils."

"Bah." Erik turns his attention to the chest again. "I will have your insides, you stubborn box." He mutters.

Well, while he's working on that. There are a few things in the pile that I want to study at length later, but the rest…

We turn the non vital materials into ingots.

What can I make with this? We're not exactly fairing poorly against the threats down here, and I don't really want to make something big and scary.

…then let's just have fun. We can save the Dwemer stuff for later.

We then proceed to have fun by hammering and twisting the iron into organic and flowy and definitely weird shapes.

And then I get my head on straight and start hammering out a crowbar. "Ey, Erik." I hand it to him. He looks at it in confusion, looks at the chest, go 'ooh' and then gets to work.

Fun part about real life: if the lock doesn't work, brute force will.

.

[An hour later]

.

Fuck.

"Welp." Erik tosses aside the crowbar and stares at the broken Dwemer lock. "Not my fault." He says instantly. "I did as I was told."

Ok then, plan B.

We make a Dwemer sledgehammer.

"Jake! Aria! One of you!" I call out because, in my haste, I've made an object so poorly balanced that I can't lift it safely. "I got a mission for you!"

The two of them, watching us tally loot, blink in surprise. "me first." Jake says and doublehands the Big Maul. "You know this is a fuckin' terrible idea, right?"

Yes. "No." I grin.

"Aiight." Jake squares up against the chest and everybody runs for cover.

With a mighty swing, he brings the maul down onto the chest. The impact silences the entire camp, the chest practically jumps off of the floor by a good foot or so, and…it's still not broken.

…Huh. Dwemer metal is very good at physical force distribution. Good to know. It's soft, good at conducting magic and physical force…and is very soft…I feel like we can make use of it somehow.

But first.

We get some nails and straps and hammer them around the chest, fixing it to the floor.

"Y'know at some point this stops being sensical and just goes into delusion." Jake comments, cracks his neck, readies the Great Maul, and SLAM!

…The floor broke. The floor broke, the straps broke, the nails broke. The chest and its fucked up lock are fine. Wow.

"I'm impressed in a lot of ways." Jake mutters, the Great Maul dying in his arms. "Anything else we can do?"

"Welp." I put up some struts around the chest and put heavy clothes over it, and then put on a mask of deeply colored glass. To be honest, I don't think this will work, but in the event that it does I really, really don't want to spend the mana to rebuild my eyes.

Anyhoo. Fire! "Jake, I'm gonna cut a little."

"Fuck if you pull it off." Jake says. "Yeah, guys? No looking into this place until Ash comes out. It's bad for your eyes." I hear some acknowledgements in return.

Aiight. Fire! More Fire! Even more fire!

We create the hottest fire we're able and twist it into a torch the size of our pinky.

Let's cut!

.

[Five minutes later]

.

Cutting failed. The energy of the magical fire ended up dissipating into the entirety of the chest rather than any sole area. Either I'm not putting out enough fire, or the rate of dispersion is just too high.

Oh well. Fiiiiiiiiiine. T'nerem doesn't want me to mess with the lock so…

We Replace one of the edges of the box with some scrap iron we have lying around.

One more time.

…? Huh. It looks like the scrap iron is taking some of the resiliency to fire that the rest of the box is made of. It's a little easier to cut, but not to the point where it'll just give out. I wonder if this means that the box itself is also a magical artifact?

Hrm.

We replace a section of the scrap iron with scroll paper and punch through it.

Really, really should've just done that from the beginning. But it's been a very valuable learning experience.

So now that I have a solution, I do the same with all of the other boxes we were not able to open. The contents, collated together, are: some coins, some plates with writing inscribed onto them, and some blueprints, for a lack of a better term. Also some trinkets that are pretty cool looking, but they'll need to be reverse engineered. All of it needs to be reverse engineered.

We'll worry about that once we have a lot of time to block off for it. For now, the materials are given to T'nerem to dissect and chew on at her own pace.

Now, the issue with Aria. She's feeling guilty because the explosion thing was our joint idea but I paid a price for it and she didn't. I…I'm going to capitalize on this and make her wear something that will likely get me killed in my sleep and it will be worth it.

Not right now though, it's a bad time.

…

[Roughly the End of Week Two]

…

Weeeeeelll this is a thing.

First off, the good news: I have learned Muffle. It's surprisingly dense, so we're the only ones to have pulled it off so far (Aria aside). By essentially creating a wall of force around our feet, we prevent sound from leaving until the energy dissipates. This has a side effect of making every one of our steps feel just a bit tingly when the energy invariably goes to the only place it can go: back into our bodies.

Comparatively speaking…the cost-over-time version has a better effect, but the tingling feeling escalates to the point of pain when we run, so we can't really run when it's active. The one-shot version (the game version) is not as effective when running, but it lets you run.

…Also it's not effective when running for the reason called "other parts of a person's gear clanks" but meh. When I get the time, I'll reverse engineer it so that it works for the entire body

Through the week we…didn't really do a whole lot. Increased Dwemer activity and the lack of a cohesive target meant that it was more or less business as usual, which of course meant that Jake and Aria could punch real deep into the ruins if they wanted to, but they had to give up any chance of looting in favor of being able to retreat.

I should give them more straps, or like a wagon, or something.

The bad news, now.

It turns out that one of the items recovered is Hella Good™ or something, and (this is the big one) caused one of the noble families funding the expedition to…take special interest.

Slight aside: for all intents and purposes, our boxes are officially "not opened".

To that end, the big boss™ of the expedition has arrived. By which I mean, a more senior member of the family who arrived smelling like he traveled while being completely soaked in wine. Like…dude could not be more of a 'Silver Spoon Decadent Trust Fund Baby' if he tried. The only thing that's arguably saving him is that he's not a Fat Nord Fuck but even then I'm sure his armor and dress shirt has straps and buttons that would very much so like to dispute that point.

Incidentally: all my party now wears a layer of leather over their armor. Can't risk it. As soon as I heard that a Nobler Noble was coming (from Piers) I figured we needed compromises. The girls are also wearing leather caps which dramatically reduce how pretty they look from a distance, for obvious reasons.

I mean, I know we can paste the fucker, his guards, and probably everybody in the room if it came to it, but we're trying to avoid needing to do that.

Still, the point is: because he's heard that the Dwemer ruins have Rich Phat Loot™, he's pressuring the expedition leaders to be more aggressive and take more risks, which they don't want to do, because the guards are active. So the compromise is to dive deeper into the Falmer side.

For reference: the Dwemer side is 'power', while the Falmer side is 'Stealth'. We're more or less going to be on the receiving end of stealth archers and I do not like it one bit.

…But we have to, because we're being paid to and considering the circumstances, it's safer to be a part of the mob than to go off on our own. In the unlikely case that the noble has connections to the Stormcloaks and we fuck up somewhere down the line, pissing him off might result in us being total fugitives, separated from both factions.

It'd be fun, sure, but considering how damage works in real life I don't think I can shrug off an assassination during the night. I don't think I can shrug off an assassination aimed at my girls during the night.

Ergo, grit teeth.

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

Ash's feelings were not unique.

"This is such bullshit." Nord Warrior A grumbles as they march into the Falmer path.

"Damn straight." Nord Ranger B agrees. "Falmer are tricky little shits. Stay close to Warwolf if you want to live." He glances at the band hanging around the left edge of the troop.

Warrior A grunts. "I like 'em as much as the next batch, but those overgrown cats don't sit right with me." He shakes his head. "Can't trust a Khajiit with your coin, much less your life."

Ranger B shrugs. "They don't look it, but suit yourself. When you're bleeding out of your chest you'll be begging one of them to haul you to their vice head.

"That Ash?" Warrior A rolls his eyes. "Don't trust him. Don't like him, either." He glares at Ash, who's currently walking and talking with his girls. "Dude's a poser noble pretending to be a merc."

Ranger B sighs.

The party continues further down the tunnel until it opens up into a cavernous area. Scraps of Dwemer pipes and wall fixtures hint at its previous existence as a part of the ruin, but the combination of Falmer use and general degradation has turned it into a massive hall with multiple levels and plenty of dead ends.

"Well boys, here we are." The New Noble says with entirely far too much cheer in his voice. "untold riches just ready for us to plunder!"

More than one person mutters "Oh, I'm sure." Under their breath.

"Master, your orders?" The Noble says, very obviously ceding control to the expedition master with all the pretense of observing the established chain of command.

Give me the short stick, why don't you. The Expedition Master sighs in his head. "Alright, lads, we'll go by the books."

With that command, the different task forces fan out in the area and move to secure it. Despite its size and relative complexity, the teams secure the area in record time. As the last teams report their success, the Master's frown deepens.

"well, ok…" He mutters as he updates the sketch of the room. "Abandoned hovels, empty nests…you." She points to a messenger. "Call Warwolf here." The messenger leaves, and some minutes later return with Jake in tow. "Jake, I have a request for you."

Jake's feeling a little apprehensive. "What's up?"

"I want your party to guard our rear." She says, tapping their point of entry on the map. "I don't like this one bit, and if things go south I want the most flexible party holding the line."

"In other words, you want us to be the last one out." Jake says slowly.

"In essence." The Master nods. "I trust the swordarms of you and Aria." He pulls Jake in closer for a whisper. "Honestly, you're the only party I trust to sit still and wait when shit goes wrong, and I'm not about to let that spoiled lard bucket kill my men for nothing."

Jake's response is a bit of a defeated shrug. "Alright, we'll take care of it."

Thus, Ash finds himself fortifying their entrance/retreat path. The entryway to this large and cavernous room was a slick, slightly downward slope. Slightly precarious when nothing's going on, the path was almost guaranteed to cause problems in the event of a hurried retreat, so Ash spent his time orchestrating a mass stair-nailing event into the path.

Meanwhile, the other teams found no less than five major paths and eight minor paths that lead deeper into the unknown.

"This is stupid." Was the Master's only comment. All of the minor paths were roped off and crudely sealed away via scrap metal and shattered glass, plus a few glyphs from the senior mages. Of the major paths, one terminated in a scrapyard of bones and worthless debris, three led deeper downwards (one was literally a cliff into a bottomless void) and one led higher and closer to the Dwemer section of the ruins. Naturally, that one is the one chosen for further exploration.

Warwolf, as the rear guard, simply gets to sit and wait.

…

[1st Person Camera]

…

I don't know if I envy the guys going in to search for loot or not. On one hand, stealth archers everywhere. On the other, stealth archers everywhere, except I get to sit.

So, this entrance is honestly not that large: the tunnel that we came through has two points where the size change can be considered significant, with the smallest part being wide enough for five people to march through at once. My biggest worry is still 'what happens during a full-on retreat', though I suppose if it came to that then no amount of preparations would help.

Still, while the teams are away, I just shoot magelight everywhere and brighten the place up. The biggest problem being that the magelights, by virtue of creating light, also creates areas with some rather extreme shadows.

The good thing about our entrance is that it's high enough that we can't be surprised by an attack from above. The bad thing is that there is no natural defense, and I can't use Replace to make some walls because that would raise too many awkward questions.

Ugh.

…

[One Hour Passes]

…

Casualties start getting ferried back to the camp.

…So, for context:

This big room is big, like…a good hundred meters across and fifty high, easy. The pathways are winding and somewhat difficult to navigate due to low light and moisture, but the team have been hammering in footholds and torches along the best paths to make lives easier.

The Escape Path, Warwolf's position, is high enough that we have vision on all of the winding pathways from…well, the highest is roughly equal to us. So almost a birds-eye view of the room. The Escape Path, notably, doesn't quite have the room necessary to create a camp, thus, the forward camp is actually lower than where we are where there's more room. It's not far enough to be out of sight, but far enough that the path in between can be considered to be unguarded.

Anyways, casualties get ferried back to camp, and I get called down to help with the more severe cases. All of the injuries seem to be trap related judging by the descriptions, so I assume that means the Falmer-filled shoe has yet to drop.

…

[Three hours pass]

…

Casualties are continuing to stream in, but those that do are in pretty high spirits. Apparently they found the back entrance to a Dwemer treasury and surely nothing can go wrong there.

…

[Four hours pass]

…

I…guess I was wrong, because nothing did go wrong. The treasury room was apparently pretty small, because they came back with several crates of jingle jangles. The assumption is that it, y'know, is literally a treasury room and these are crates of coins. Not the best discovery all things considered, but still pretty nice.

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

As the expedition reaches its five-hour mark, one of the minor tunnels suddenly lights up. The glyphs in that tunnel had triggered.

"Shit." Ash mutters. "Look at all the chances we're not taking." He takes a deep breath and begins to shout. "Get the wounded up the hill! Let's go! Let's go!" The people resting at base camp, also having heard the glyphs go off, weren't about to argue.

Sure enough, Falmer began to swarm into the room, at a rate substantially slower than the term 'swarming' could apply. Three of them reach the now abandoned base camp area and get immediately mowed down by arrows.

"Alright, it looks worse than it is." Ash mutters. Almost immediately, he hears simultaneous explosions from the other minor tunnels. "Fuck. It's worse than it looks."

Falmer begin to pour into the chamber and towards the camp.

"Hooo fuck it's way worse than it looks." Ash charges up some Lightning. "Back up! Form up! Let's do this by the numbers!" He begins to rake the Falmer with rays of Shock. "Move it!"

…

At around the same time, the primary expedition hears the roar of the Falmer behind them.

"Yep, show's over." Piers growls. "About face! We're going back!"

The Noble, fortunately only Greedy, has no issues complying with an order that could save his life. The unit turns back, then almost immediately runs into an organized Falmer battleline.

The first warriors meeting the Falmer get the chance to yell "Oh shit!" before the cutting starts. The Falmer press forward surprisingly fast with their shields, compressing and tightening the party's ranks, before laying into them with surprisingly sharp spears.

"Front line hold! Second and third ranks back off!" The Noble yells immediately. "Make space! Piers!"

Piers, with a flash of magical power, creates layers upon layers of barkskin for the frontline troops. "Volley on my order! Frost, heavy low!"

The mages familiar with Piers yell their acknowledgement and create batches of ice spears that are long and hefty. The front line, surprised by the blades of the Falmer, gets pushed back some but ultimately holds despite damage.

"Volley!" Piers roars. He and his mages fire their ice spears up at an angle into the sky, where they fly up into the air, then lazily come back down. As the spears point down towards the Falmer, all of the mages simultaneously ball their hands into a fist. With the sound of splintering ice, the back half of the spears break off, sending the lighter, pointed end of the spears at blistering speeds into the Falmer. They pierce the chitin shields and cut into the Falmer with great effect. Seconds later, after the spears enter the Falmer, the struck Falmer shudder as the spears explode inside their bodies, killing them good and proper. "Cut a path!"

With the Falmer a little deterred, the non-Falmer party take the advantage and drive into and shatter the shield wall.

"Fuck there's a lot of them!" Jake says with a slightly worried laugh. "I can't imagine how many would be hitting the camp!"

"A lot less if we do our jobs right!" Aria replies, the bloodlust getting to her. "Kill them all!" She unclips her folding sword and, like a demented tornado, sends Falmer scattering.

…

Fifteen minutes later, and the problem is not getting better. The advance party has fought their way past the Falmer into the main cavern area, and then immediately got bogged down by the fact that 1) there are a lot of Falmer and 2) most of them have arrows. Fortunately, by virtue of the arrows being not very sharp, the advance team were able to fight their way to the field camp anyway.

"Yo! What took you?!" Ash roars, trying to keep his head on a swivel. "Let's mosey!"

Piers took the time to look around him and nearly lost his attention. Around the camp, practically piling up like a rampart, were scorched with shock magic. A few seemed to have been blasted so hard and pieces of their bodies were missing. Well, I can hazard a guess as to who's responsible. Piers glances at Ash. All this, by himself?

The advance party reforms into a shell, facing the swarm of Falmer, and retreat step by step. As they reach an area conducive to choke points, the ranks reform again and the injured get to step back and breath.

"Glory to Mara, fuck this place." One of those badly injured warriors says with a hiss, stepping back and sitting down. "I'm not getting paid enough for this shit. Oh, thank you." He looks up to see Atra hand him some water. He feels a bit bad and hopes she didn't hear anything he said.

"Are you hurt anywhere?" Atra asks the man bleeding from several places.

"Nah, I'll be alright." The man bleeding from several places replies with a cocky grin. "Takes more than this to take me down, don't you worry." He tries to ignore the difference between his words and reality.

Atra frowns, but nods, and just pops a few seconds' worth of Heal onto the man before moving on to the next person she sees.

"She's a good kid." The man says with some appreciation and gets to Healing his own wounds.

After another ten minutes, the situation pacified even further that fresh supplies could be brought back from the main camp to this forward position. The general consensus on the front line was that all attempts should be made to stop the enemy from pressing inwards and towards the main camp, in case the Falmer decided to learn from their attempt and make more aggressive attacks. Still, at this point, the main danger was more or less done and over with, and the heavily wounded and dead could be evacuated. With the battleline fixed in a chokepoint to their advantage, high splash spells like fireball get to join the fight.

An hour later, the Falmer retreated, leaving around two hundred dead Falmer and about thirty dead adventurers. The adventuring party, having had quite enough, pull back to a place that's easier to defend, set up a forward post, and return to the main camp.

…

[1st Person Camera, Two Hours Later]

…

Aaaaaa that was a mess. I suppose it's good that the Fucking Noble has a level head and knows how to delegate, but fuck him all the same.

We've all had dinner but no rest, since we're all still a bit on edge. Something about the air tonight doesn't feel right. Could just be the nerves, or the hundreds upon hundreds of Falmer that we had to carve through. I mean, hell, Aria's the most resistant to blood of all of us and she took a full-on bath to get rid of the smell.

…speaking of which, the entire camp smells like blood. It's not exactly pleasant.

"Hey."

FUCK oh it's T'nerem. "What's up?" I'm still just a wee bit on edge. We're just sitting around in our campsite cooling off.

She looks genuinely worried. "Are you ok?"

…? Why would I not be ok? "I'm fine. I'm pretty sure I'm fine." I look at myself. I look fine.

"Well, we all saw you do…y'know, that." She makes some sparks in her hand. "At this point I won't be surprised if even the Imperial Arcane University knew about you."

We had, at some point in the defense, went 'fuck it' and started raking the lines of Falmer archers with beams of Shock. It didn't kill them outright, but was definitely effective in stopping massed arrow attacks by shocking the bejesus out of the would-be shooters.

"I'm as surprised as they are." I say with a shrug. Warwolf as a family is fully aware of the fact that I'm basically a moving bank of mana. "Must be something to do with the magicka flowing in the Dwemer ruins."

She rolls her eyes. "No, seriously." She sits down. "Are you alright?"

What is she getting at?

T'nerem preens her tail. "Regardless of reason or context, the releasing of that many souls tend to have negative side effects." She stares into my eyes. "It's why armies are always accompanied by clerics and priests."

…Huh.

"And you've…well, you've done a lot." She says. "Both you and Jake."

Super huh. "Not Aria?"

"Aria's…Aria." T'nerem says slightly dismissively. "Her condition makes her well suited to combat."

…Hm. Given that…uh…I know Aria reconvened and said something about the Greybeards but I don't remember if that was before or after the T-sisters showed up. Either way, probably talking about the Dragonborn condition.

"In any case, if you're feeling unwell or strange, please let us know." She says. "I know you keep to yourself a lot, but understand that we do care about you, and we know you care about us, so don't be shy about the state of your health." She smiles.

…Hm… "I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

…

That aside, levels. We've been putting them off so far, but…

After the events of today, I have a grand total of 458 levels. Jake has 336. HA!

…he's actually still at a higher level than me. Which is understandably bullshit.

Anyways, cracking 1000 gets +2 to Luck. I have 23 greater perks and…honestly not a lot I want to spend it on. Well, I have a lot I want to spend it on, but I know if I branch out too much it'd be bad, so…

Full on mage: 3 ranks of: efficiencies (destruction, restoration, illusion, conjuration), magic pierce, overcast, parallel casting.

Magic pierce just says "can skip some defense", which I hope will be useful later. Overcasting lets me spend more mana to hurt more things, and parallel casting boosts both my mana cap, restoration, and how much magic damage I take.

Skills-wise, I bump to 100: Enchant, Dechant, armormaking, weaponmaking, multicast, heal. And then I spread the rest out around.

For finishing effects, I get a bunch that are a result of bumping up to 100, as well as 'Rainbow mage', which came from all those efficiencies. It gives an extra boost to my mana conservation on spells.

I still plan to use spells at full power, which at this point basically means that my normal spells hit like fucking trucks. Pile on the effects of canisters and spending those mana canisters and at this point I basically have a win button that's also a nuke. Here's to hoping I never need to use it.

Jake…takes a mishmash of stuff, especially 50 ranks of: Battle Offense, Rhythm, Cadence, and Defense. These seem to be pretty similar skills. Basically, offense and cadence are attack based (damage, speed) while defense and rhythm are defense based (defense, dodge). As far as we can tell based on their description, they're more effective the longer a fight gets, so he's definitely thinking ahead with these.

For perks, he takes…things that make him fly better, and then three ranks of confectionist, because he wants to be able to make kickass sweets.

Finishing effects: Aerial Ace (better midair maneuverability). He still can't quite control his flight, so this is very much so contingent on him having the chance to practice.

Also, weirdly, or not so weirdly, both Atra and Alma have gained restoration ranks! Atra's at 25, and Alma's at 20. They don't know how it happened. It's cool though.

Well, that marks the end of the night.

…

[End of Week Three]

…

Honestly, the Fucking Noble is…competent. Like he's a greedy little fuck and the past week hasn't changed our recognition of that fact, but he is very good at organizing and has a good head on his shoulders, with a keen enough memory to know where people are and where they should be.

As such…well, y'know, grudging respect and all that.

That said, we're now here because of that whole 'knowing where people are' business. According to the plan™, there is a watch system established in our defenses, and one of those watches hasn't returned.

We're…uh…pretty sure we know what got them, but we need to find out, if only to see about any hidden side paths that we don't know about.

To that end…

"Warwolf, you'll accompany the Sword Ragers." Piers orders us. "They're a little on the rough side, but I have faith in you." He stares at me specifically. "That said, don't do anything crazy, got it?"

The Sword Ragers is a party of a dozen orc heavy warriors with some experience. Also accompanying them is half a dozen Explorers.

"Why do we have to take kids with us?" The Sword Rager Leader says with extreme distaste. "You." He points to me. "Keep an eye on the little squirts."

I shrug. "Sure."

And on that, we're off!

The trip down is uneventful. The farthest defense position is understandably abandoned, so the activity doesn't go down further than the old defensive line.

As we go past the line, the Ragers immediately fan out and our pace slows to a crawl. They check each nook and cranny of this…honestly rather hard-to-hide-in tunnel. I keep my eyes glued to the ceiling because fuck ceilings.

The trip leading up to the abandoned defensive position also yields no results.

"…Huh." The SR Leader peers into the darkness, past my floating magelight. "Can you send one down there?" He jerks his head to the big cavernous chamber of…stinks like corpses. Yuck.

Anyhoo, boom!

A series of magelights illuminate the chamber.

Same as before, a lot of dead corners and dark nooks. Plus Falmer corpses.

"Hmm." SR Leader squints. "Their weapons are gone."

I…my eyes aren't that good.

"Yeah, looks like it." Jake agrees. "Think they got recovered by the Falmer?"

"I used to scoff at the idea that they would have a level of organization." SR Leader says. "I've been proven wrong these past few days." He pulls his sword and shield. "We're going to take a closer look."

The Explorers almost instinctively move forward. Note: small children. One of them is that girl my girls are friends with.

The SR Leader is…less than pleased with their decision. He has a moment of severe indecision before letting their approach pass with a royally pissed off expression on their face and dude seriously no complaints?

"It's not the Orc's way to discourage initiative." He says, almost seething. "But watch yourselves."

"We'll be careful." The girl…Amie, was it? Says with determination…but a definite quiver. Also she's like the lone outlier to the whole 'and all the kids are tiny' thing. She's still tiny, but it's less age and more, y'know, nutritional deficit.

Jake's commanding our unit. "Yanna, Nerem, you're on overwatch. Kalas on flank. Ash, buffs."

"Yep." Skin and Muffle for everyone forever!

…well actually only for the non Warwolf units. Everybody in Warwolf, per my insistence, knows how to do either Muffle or Budget Muffle.

Budget Muffle: Essentially the same spell, but incomplete so the effect is reduced. Used under the premise that 'something is better than nothing'.

"Alright, let's do this." The SR Leader mutters, moving forward soundlessly. Just for kicks, I concentrate and go into Mana Vision, the thing I did back in that fighting ring.

…Blue lines radiate from us, from the spells I cast, and seep into the ground, the walls. It's a little creepy, but it's no different from how it looks back in Riften.

The pile of corpses is also giving off mana, which is kind of odd in the sense of how long it's been after their death. I mean, the fact that the corpses are here at all is odd too, but…

While we watch, the Explorers gingerly step towards the pile of corpses and poke around with long sticks.

When they're done poking around, the SR force moves forward. Warwolf is circling around the edges (so to speak), with me and Mell bringing up the rear as support units/artillery.

Suddenly, streaks of mana diverge into the darkened parts where the magelight can't reach.

…?

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

T'ma is the first to notice. Instinctively, she angles her body to put the Folding Sword in a defensive position. A streak of iron flies from a dark corner and strikes the sword. The sound of metal on metal immediately draws everybody's attention as a Falmer with an eye-covering Chitin helmet springs from its hiding place.

"Fuck!" T'ma braces against the Falmer Shadowmaster's charge. It lunges for her feet with a full-body tackle and takes them out almost immediately. T'ma, unbalanced, rolls back to regain her footing, but the Shadowmaster leaps onto her and pins her to the ground. It then, with a furious growl, rakes into her face with its claws.

"Ma!" T'mare charges forward to help and is almost skewered by another iron chain from a dead spot.

"Ambush! Form up!" The SR Leader shouts, and the battleline begins to consolidate. Meanwhile, T'ma, bleeding profusely, kicks the Shadowmaster in the shin and punches into its sternum with her left fist.

Sensing danger, the Shadowmaster leaps away as T'ma fires her Spiker into where its sternum would be. Its retreat lets her get back to her feet and unhinge the Folding Sword, swinging it by reflex as the Shadowmaster charges back in. When not fixed by its pin, the Folding Sword is not as great in a battle, but it is still a large hunk of metal. The Shadowmaster, in its need to evade such a massive hunk, dives in low again for her feet.

Ready this time, T'ma leaps back and kicks with her metal shoes into its face, cracking the helmet and sending it sprawling back.

In this time, T'mare also found herself fighting a Shadowmaster, armed with a spear. Outreached, T'mare had no choice but to fall back and make distance so her sisters can snipe it from a distance.

"Alright!" SR Leader yells as T'ma, blood flowing down her face and panting, returns to the defensive line. "We're pulling back!" A half dozen other Falmer appear from their hiding places, surrounding the slowly retreating parties.

"Mother shit." Ash growls. From their perch behind the front line, they had a clear view of targets…if and only if those targets actually attack. As soon as the two Shadowmasters lost their quarry, they immediately retreated to cover so as to avoid getting sniped.

There is then a low rumble and the sound of skittering on rock.

"Chaurus." Jake snarls.

Three of the large, serpentine insects snake their way towards the front line, staying low and out of sight of the archers. As soon as they enter their range, they rear back and spew their poison onto the humans.

"Shields!" The SR Leader orders, raising their shields against the poison coming for their eyes. As soon as their shields go up, the Falmer waiting in the shadows charge against the SR Leader and his immediate compatriots.

The strike timed perfectly with the landing of the poison, to the point where those who were aware of the charge had no time to issue a warning. Once again going for the legs, the Falmer takes down their three targets and hack into their left and right with vicious speed. The SR Leader, with a Falmer literally standing and stomping on his chest, makes a wild swing with his axe. The Shadowmaster on his chest sidesteps the swing and drives his feet of gnarled nails into the lightly armored parts of the Leader's body. It then jumps up and dodges an arrow fired by T'nerem. The arrow lodges into the SR Leader's thigh.

Shit, these guys are good. T'ma winces as a Shadowmaster cuts into the lighter parts of her armor. I can't get a good hit in. She blocks a swing with her Spiker. This damned blood isn't helping. She's squeezed one eye shut to stop the blood from getting in. Suddenly, she feels something strike her leg, accompanied by a sharp pain.

That 'something' was a supple rope attached to a piece of scrap steel, bent and beaten with a combination of battle damage and Falmer Intent to work as a barbed hook. She feels the hideously sharp pain and cries out as the Falmer on the other end of the rope gives it a sharp tug. Once again, she loses her balance and hits the ground, with the Falmer reeling her in like a fish. T'ma, not keen on getting dragged in, sticks her folding sword straight up and slams it against the ground.

The Gro-Kala brothers immediately jump in to rescue. Desmo stomps on the chain and holds it in place, while Dali unbuckles an axe and hurls it at the Shadowmaster pulling on it. "Boss! We need you down here!"

Ash, watching from his perch, hears the yell. "Stay with the sisters." He says quickly to Atra and Alma and rushes down to the chain. As if sensing his approach, the Falmer make a redoubled effort to drag the chain against the combined might of Desmo and T'ma.

"I've got an idea." Desmo says as they slowly lose the tug of war. "You're gonna hate me for this."

"Fuck." T'ma had the same idea. "Yeah, go for it." She unclips a piece of the Composite armor and chomps down on it.

Desmo strains harder against the chain and then suddenly lets go. The force of the Falmers' pull rips out the barb from her leg with a splash of blood, meat, and tendons. T'ma, crushing the piece of armor in her mouth, hobbles to her feet and retreat with Desmo acting as a crutch.

Meanwhile, the rest of the fight was going badly despite being surprisingly even. The Falmer Shadowmasters, while stronger and more vicious fighters, were hampered by the fact that their weapons couldn't cut through the standard steel armor of the Sword Ragers. Even better, whenever they struck the Warwolf composite armor, the inherently flexible nature of the armor's material would cause the swords to catch. Even so, despite lacking any critical hits, the Shadowmasters were drawing a lot of blood from their prey.

"You little fuck!" The SR Leader roars as he and a Shadowmaster grapple. "I'll have your throat!" He rolls to pin the Shadowmaster onto the ground and slugs it with his iron fist. The Shadowmaster responds by first clawing out the Leader's eyes and then, as the Leader reels back, snaps forward and bites into his thigh.

The sudden pain allows the orc to focus, and he brings his fist down onto the Shadowmaster's head. As the Falmer crumples, his wingman swoops in and drives a sword into its neck. The SR Leader falls to his knees, the poison in the Shadowmaster's fangs getting to him.

Shit, he's poisoned? The Wingman thinks and looks around. Ash was currently busy tending to T'Ma's severe leg wound. He looks up to the two Warwolf girls. "Healer!" He shouts. "Need a healer!"

Atra, seeing Ash busy, instinctively moves down to help.

T'yanna, the closest, is caught completely flat-footed. "Wha-wait!" She follows after the little girl. "Nere, Mell, with me! Alma too!" She reasoned that it would be the safest to stay as a group, especially now that the battleline had disintegrated. The Atra-led group reaches the SR Leader.

"He's poisoned!" The Wingman says. "Help him!"

Mell jumps in, since Atra has zero experience dealing with poisons. "I got it. Atra, take care of his bleeding." She pulls a normal anti-venom, rethinks her options, puts it away, and instead pulls something a little more Falmer-grade. She then pops the cork and puts a gulp into his mouth. While waiting to see if he'd spit it back out, she liberally spreads the rest onto his body and his open wounds.

Isn't that unsafe? Basically everybody thought, but had no time to voice.

While that's going on, Atra and Alma put their hands over his most major wounds and close them with their Healing. The Wingman couldn't help but look for the darkening spots underneath his skin, a sign of a poor healer underestimating the depth of the wound. He sees them everywhere on his Leader's body, but none of them sizable enough to need a second treatment.

With the otherwise established 'back line' of the group moving down, the non-combatants of the frontline party (read: the Explorers) naturally move towards them for defense.

Atra looks up to see Amie's confused and frightened face. "Are you ok?" She asks over the din of combat around them. Amie nods, eyes darting around and not really paying attention.

"Shit." T'yanna grits her teeth. "Incoming!" She draws her bow against a trio of Falmer sprinting towards them on all fours. Both her and T'nerem loose an arrow, but the shots fly high. Both then drop their bows and draw swords, and clash with two of the Falmer. The last one breaks through and aim squarely at Alma.

Amie sees the target of its charge first and yells. "Alma!"

Alma, a little girl, is not very good at battlefield situational awareness. With her back turned towards the charging Falmer, she had turned her head toward T'yanna when she shouted, then locked her eyes onto the third Falmer charging through, then turned her head again to Amie when she shouted, and finally remembered that there's a Falmer charging in.

With an 'eep!' she pulls her knife for defense (fumbling it) and shoots Flames at the charging Falmer.

The Falmer, perhaps working on experience, didn't bother dodging the magical flames of a small child.

Alma's flames hit it full on in the face and it immediately recoils from the intense burning. Alma, more or less reacting on instinct, is using the full force of her Flames and thus, already on the back foot, the Falmer can't help but scramble and retreat against the overbearing heat and flames. Erik, previously backing up the Gro-Kala brothers, jumps in as the Falmer recovers and beats its head in with his shield.

From this point on, the fighting becomes more straightforward. While still working with the element of surprise, the Falmer could tell that their advantage was fast slipping away, and after a few more exchanges they peel off. The Shadowmasters that had fought less or took less damage stayed behind for longer to cover the rest of their squadron.

The human back line, now solidly being defended by the consolidated front line, gets the chance to breathe, and the wounded are moved around Ash so he can properly take care of them.

"Whew." Amie breathes out, still skittish and looking around somewhat wildly. "We're ok now, right? Totally ok?"

"Better than when we started." The SR Leader grunts. "Get back to camp and report what happened." He's sitting with his back to a rock.

"Right." Amie stands up shakily. She half bolts, half scampers away.

A few more exchanges later, the rest of the Shadowmasters pull back. With the threat now officially gone, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

"Fuck me." Jake groans. "You girls ok?"

"We're fine." T'mare coughs. "The corpses down here aren't making things any easier. Ma, you alright?"

"I'll live." T'ma gingerly flexes her foot. "I think I can understand why the people before us got royally fucked over." She sits up and gives Ash's leg a hug (he's busy). "Thanks."

Ash instinctively pats her head and rubs her ears. "Sure." He says absentmindedly.

After the group's been patched up, it was decided rather quickly via general consensus that moving forward is too dangerous, and so they turned back to report their findings.

…

[1st Person Camera]

…

The group we're looking for is written off as killed in action. Sucks to be them, but I'm not about to have another heart attack looking for them.

The Falmer entrance is fortified harder, and we come to a general consensus that there's no loot in that direction worth the risk.

…

[Week Four, Day 1]

…

Tragedy!

On the Dwemer side, the cliffs that we fought and lost hearing at is now home to a Dwemer Guardian. A scout reported back seeing a massive metal face staring at him on his scouting trip.

Ergo, that path is now blocked off too. If the Guardian decides to breathe steam the entire cliffside will suffer for it, and we can't get close enough to see what's underneath him, so, yeah.

The Noble's response is a half-hearted shrug. "Well, that's that, then." And we begin to pack.

"When the ruins' responses die down, another party will be formed to delve deeper." Piers explains as we get our stuff together. "But for now, this place is as good as locked away."

No surprises there, though I guess it's kind of both neat and worrying that the Dwemer ruin has enough automation and system awareness to know when to escalate the caliber of its defenses. Makes me wonder what Markarth is like.

Anyhoo, after we rustle together our shit, we pack up and go home.

…

Our ultimate haul, after everything that should get melted down got melted down, is about a hundred Dwemer ingots, twenty iron ingots, five moonstone ingots (more on this), and five gold ingots. Also, three intact Dwemer spiders (except for the parts that aren't intact). Also some armors, weapons, and unenchanted but finely crafted trinkets. And, of course, the nonofficial stuff that is now official, because we need to tally it up in the end.

As stated earlier, everything we've gained will be used for reverse engineering, and will likely not survive the process. I believe that the ending results will be more than worth it, especially if I can get some tidbits here and there that'll stop me from needing to reinvent the wheel a few times. I'm excited, not gonna lie.

Now. Moonstone.

It is the most fucking finnicky material I've ever seen.

…Disclaimer, if I've worked with Moonstone before I have forgotten because I never had it in any big numbers.

Anyway.

If Dwemer metal is good at conducting and retaining mana, then Moonstone is the polar opposite. Ish. It also conducts and retains mana, but only to a point. Depending how it's shaped, it conducts and retains mana differently. It's dumb. It's honestly going to be really useful, but it's really dumb.

Like I used Replace to make two identical pieces of Moonstone and their conductivity were different from each other in wildly different ways. I refuse to believe that it's just how it is, though, so there's going to be some science to be done for a while.

The Dwemer parts…I'm mostly interested in the joint articulation. Dwemer spider joints are hideously tough for how thin they look, so learning from it would let me do some neato bullshit™ in the future.

Factoring in the payment, we're up by a lot. Comparatively speaking, I was a lot more active in reforging weapons, so as a result the damage cost can be considered to be less. It's hard to tell, honestly. Either way, we're walking away from this with both money and loot, so it's a success, damage aside.

As for the other group that we care about, the Explorers…

Overall, the group's headcount came up to 58 children at the beginning of the expedition. At the end, we're at 50. All of the losses were on the Falmer side, and I'm…honestly not that surprised. Piers did mention that it's unusual for there to be so little losses to the Explorers, so…y'know, gift horse.

Honestly I'm more or less just glad that it's over now.

…

[Return to Riften]

…

The entire trip took about a month, and nothing major has happened in the world, which…in itself is a bit of a problem, but it does let us unwind because fuck we could use a vacation at home right about now.

…

[Two Days Later]

…

Fuck™.

"Hello there." Byrnjolf says with a wry grin, leaning against the door. "I think I found someone that wants to meet you."

That somebody is a grizzled Nord with

I mean that's Esbern let's not pretend

It's early in the morning. Five minutes ago there was a knock at the door, and of course the knocker is Byrnjolf, who also has the biggest shit eating grin on his face. Accompanying him are a pair of well-dressed men.

His backups have armor, so I assume that means they're his bodyguards.

"It's been a while, Jend." Esbern says, locking onto the one person he knows in the entire group. "Did you miss me?"

Fuck dot tm. What's going on here?

.

.

.

{ === + === }

Author Notes:

It just makes sense that a local powerhouses like nobles would try to strip ruins in force.