{ === + === }
So, our intrepid group of adventurers sets off for the bandit's lair!
According to Aria, the trip there will take about six hours or so. Less if we're hurrying, which we are. We're also on foot, because a cart would reveal our position…apparently.
The bandit camp is northeast.
So we're heading to the base of the mountain range that separates the northern side of Skyrim with the southern side. I assume it also provides environmental cover against the north winds and keeps the cold on that side. Or something.
…We travel for a good hour before Aria suddenly sighs out of nowhere.
"We're being followed." Frieda agrees with Aria's sigh. "Should we take care of him?" She pats the hilt of her trusty battleaxe for emphasis.
"Let's see what he wants first." Aria says and slows down. "And besides, it looks like we could use a break." She adds with a glance at Mell and me. We're both suffering a bit because we're not used to Forced Marching.
So we find a nice place to sit down. I take this time to take a seat that conveniently faces the person who's…from a distance it's a bit hard to tell, but he looks like…a Nordic dude who may or may not be the most physically fit guy around. As a (still) skinny Chinese man, I shouldn't judge like that.
We wait for a minute before he reaches us.
"I've finally caught up!" He says cheerily. He's only heaving a little, so he's definitely got a decent pair of lungs.
So now that we're closer…he's…kind of like, y'know, Skyrim Nord A, but definitely younger and leaner. Like, a lot younger and leaner, actually. He's wearing a simple cloth tunic (farmer favorite) and ragged, patched-many-times-over pants. I have an idea as to who this is, I think.
His eyes linger over Aria and (especially) Mell's chest as he scans all of us with a beaming face.
"Who are you and what do you want with us?" Mell demands. Her hostility is possibly because she met his gaze.
"Uh, hi, I-I'm Erik." He says and coughs. "I heard that you, uh, you were going to do some good for Rorikstead and, uh—"
I know of precisely one Erik in Rorikstead and I know exactly what his sub quest may be. "So why do you want to go adventuring with us?" I also don't know why I haven't seen him around town yet. Maybe it's because I spent the days working. Also maybe because I don't remember what his family Inn was called and thus was nowhere near his place of residence.
Erik is suitably surprised that we guessed his goal for coming here. "W-well, uhm. I mean, I want to become an adventurer like you." He says to Aria. I think he wants something a little more personal than that, but then so do all of us, so eh.
Um…
I know we have a no-touch clause. Shush.
"And so you think the best way to do this is to…accompany us." Jake asks for clarification. "As we dive into a pit of bandits and assholes with sharp weapons."
"I!" Erik takes out his axe—looks like a repurposed lumbering axe—and gives it a few swings and oh my god is he bad at this "I can fight!" He insists as all of us stare at him worryingly.
I mean if I can tell that he's bad at this then he must be really bad at this.
He's like us when we were that age.
Yeah, just noticeably more white.
"I don't know about this." Mell gives voice to her wide-eyed worry and looks to us for confirmation.
I think I know how this ends. "You plan to follow us even if we tell you 'no', right?" Judging by what got us here…
Erik nods vigorously. Yep.
"Alright, fine." Aria sighs and gets up. "You follow our orders without question." She commands. "Ash, you're in charge of him."
Mmm…"Aye." It's probably for the best that he stays on the back line. "Are you good with two-handed axes?" I ask Erik.
"No." He says truthfully before trying to lie. "I mean, yes! Yes, it's no different from a pitchfork, right?"
"He's fucked." Jake laughs.
I hand Erik the Battleaxe of cold, because let's be honest I'm not using that shit any time soon. "Here you go, now follow our orders because we're actually going to kill humans."
…
We travel for another two hours before we reach the bandit lair, so I guess we're not really killing humans just yet. It's worth noting that Erik holds the axe as if it was a…uh…the piece of wood that you carry over your shoulder horizontally so you can balance two buckets on either end. It likely has a professional term but I do not know what it is.
Either way, we've hit the foothills of the hills and have…scrambled around some large rocks to a depression in the ground. It's no convenient shaft mine and is more like an open quarry. There is, however, a wooden door that shows the sign of a deeper, more Skyrim-Conventional shaft mine on the polar opposite of our current position. If our current position is south of the mine, then the door would be north.
The open-air mine itself is dotted with bedrolls and lean-tos of leather, with the occasional campfire here and there. There are some racks of kills (mostly deer) in various states of processing, and men wearing scrap leather and fur armor mill around, tending to their own business. If I had to guess, I'd say that this outside area houses at most twenty bandits. I don't know how many would be inside the shaft, but I assume there wouldn't be that many.
Our current position to the south of the camp is…a fairly difficult entrance. The eastern side is the easiest by virtue of there being a lack of giant spiky rocks to block our approach. That said, this does allow for us to get the element of surprise.
Bonus: these guys don't have archers on watch at all. That means we can
Aria draws and charges right in.
Get started right now OK THEN
Jake follows Aria with his greatsword.
We've snuck surprisingly close to the camp, so their charge time is basically nil. The bandits have barely begun to react as Aria reaches and cuts down the first one.
Frieda follows after with a sulky "unbelievable".
Oh good god Aria is beastly. She's…when you're on the outside looking in, the Dragonborn stomping down mere Bandits is seriously terrifying. I think the fact that the bodies actually come apart probably has something to do with it.
Aria and Jake are both quite surprised that their blades are cutting so well. For some rather obvious reasons (like being too far away to see) we don't realize this.
By the time the bandits have raised something akin to a general alarm over half are dead or dying.
The three of us…are in no hurry to actually jump into a fight. Aria left her bow with us, which I task to Erik because he's the most lightly equipped and has the strongest draw among us.
Still, Erik isn't keen on shooting humans, and by the time he's managed to summon up the courage the three frontliners have cleared the entire camp, sans one. The last bandit escaped into the shaft mine, so whoever is down there now knows we're coming.
Fun fact?
Fun fact: there was one instance where Erik could have made a meaningful contribution to the battle. An Argonian bandit snuck up behind Aria and had all intentions to shank her with a dagger. Aria backhand threw her sword straight into the Argonian's skull, drew a spare short sword, and then proceeded to just keep on killing. I assume the Argonian died on impact, or else Frieda's coup-de-grace finished him off. Her off? I can't tell from a distance and the hands-on inspection just reveals broken bones and blood and gore.
I should note that Jake and Frieda are stronger and better armed (weapon damage-wise) but Aria has more kills than the two put together.
…Still. Scary Special Girl is Scary.
"I didn't see anyone that resembled a leader." Aria says, eyeing the door. "We may have to go in. Jake, collect the dead."
"Aye." Jake takes out a scroll with what I think is the bounty written on it. He walks from bandit to bandit and uses small bits of their armor leather or fur to dab their blood onto the scroll. He mostly focuses on their heads rather than the separate pieces of arm and leg.
When the blood hits the scroll, the scroll glows a little bit.
He finishes his collection and shows us the bounty.
The scroll now has some very out of place triangles and squares lined up on the bottom. Fifteen triangles, five squares.
"This is how we track our bounty kills." Jake explains for my benefit. "It's pretty neat, macabre implications aside." It looks and feels rather like soul trapping, so yeah, I agree.
"I'm impressed." Frieda marvels at Aria as the latter's cleaning her sword (on dead bandit armor). "Your sword arm is impeccable, and your strategies more so."
That is a good point. A part of why Jake has way less kills is likely because he seemed to have been playing a supporting role to Aria's assault. I can't say for sure, but it feels like they have some experience executing it.
"Jake calls it a 'blitzkrieg'." Aria says. "Lightning War. I like it."
Let's refocus the conversation before Germany gets in the way. "So, what happens to the mine?"
"We need to clear it." Aria says. "Since mines tend to be dark and unlit places—especially if they're expecting company—we'll need to go carefully. Jake."
"Yep." Jake holsters his greatsword and picks up a hand axe from one of the dead bandits. "Ash, can you help me real quick?" He gestures to the axe. "Sharpen this thing?"
"Yeah." I have a small grindstone with me.
We quickly put a little bit of an edge to the axe.
It's a twenty second job, so I can't be thorough. Probably a better job than what the bandits had access to, though.
"Mell, Ash, get torches." Aria orders. "Jake, Frieda, and myself will take point. Erik will guard the rear."
"The two of us will provide light, eh?" I nod. "Make sense."
"I also have potions." Mell notes. "So tell me if you need anything."
After another minute of preparation—mostly involving getting the torches collected and lit—we descend into the mines.
Ten feet in and it's dark as night. I don't like this one bit. That said, thanks to the torches we can see pretty well, and thus we can get a decent understanding of the terrain in question.
It's a very straightforward tunnel…very wide, too. Wide enough for five people to stand side-by-side, so there's plenty of room for us to maneuver. There doesn't seem to be any side paths, though the tunnel does narrow as it descends downwards.
At the tunnel's deepest part, it narrows into a doorway of sorts and then expands out into a large, boss-fight room. I can't see the specific details, but the flickering lights inside that boss room implies the existence of a fire source.
Also on the threshold of the doorway is a bear trap.
"Easy." Aria sneers and disarms the bear trap with little effort. It makes a loud bang of metal on metal, and our stealth is gone. "We're going in."
"Yep." Jake says. He, Frieda, and Aria take our remaining torches. The two girls light them with a blast of magical Flames then toss the batch of suddenly lit torches into the room.
With the sudden increase in light, I can see…quite a lot of random clutter on the ground in the form of scrap metals, large rocks, empty pots…trash scattered to hamper movement, no doubt.
Facing our advance party is a team of three plus one. There's one heavily armored bandit (the boss, maybe), two lighter armored guards of his, and one terribly armored bandit that ran in from the outside. They seem unpleasantly surprised by this sudden influx of illumination.
"Get them!" Aria commands and then beelines for the bandit boss. Frieda and Jake both take one guard each. Normally this would mean that the last bandit would be left for one of us (Erik) to take on, but Aria threw her longsword at him so fast his death could have been ruled an accident.
Aria is scary.
…
Thirty seconds later, the three of them have murdered the bejesus out of the rest of the bandits. Jake collects a piece of their souls.
"Mission complete." Jake shows me the scroll. It now has a golden trim around the edges that definitely wasn't there before. "Now we can get down to business." He grins.
Yes. The true business: looting everything not nailed down.
The mine is basically the storage of the place. Most of the sacks and barrels are filled with staple goods like grains, fruits, veggies, so on. Some of them have more interesting stuff like spices and such, and those bags are much smaller by comparison. There are some cabinets and weapon racks, but the racks are empty and the cabinets have nothing of major interest. The weapons, I think, were all being used by the ex-occupants of these mines, who have all died tragically due to…homicide.
The cabinets hold scrap papers and leathers, with one or two journals of the bandit team's exploits. It's cool, but not valuable.
We quickly flip through the journal to see if there's anything of merit. There isn't.
Though most of the loot is not valuable, we are taking EVERYTHING not nailed down, so everything must go. There is a wagon outside, so we'll be…probably…using that…we don't have a beast of burden.
…I guess that question is for later. For now we have to worry about the biggest loot of all: the end dungeon chest.
Aria checks to see if it's trapped and then pops it open.
"Not bad." She says, tossing its contents out onto the cavern floor. "For bandits, anyway."
There's a sack of gold (roughly 1000 coins, guessing by weight), an ornamental-looking sword, some bars of a silvery metal, and two spell books (Candlelight and Healing Hands). There's also a ring. Aria weighs the ring with a small frown on her face.
"It's enchanted, but I don't know with what." She says and stows it away in a small bag. "Until I can have it appraised and identified, it stays in here." She pats the bag. I guess having to Identify items is now going to be a thing. I hope it's not a ring of burden.
"You want these?" Jake asks me, waving the spellbooks around. "Might be helpful."
Aria takes the books and thumbs through them, nodding slightly. "Yeah, might be helpful." She hands them off to me.
"I don't know how to use magic yet." I reply. "So I'd like them, but I need someone to teach me first."
"I can do that." Aria offers. "I can teach you on the way back."
"Thanks." I say sincerely because fuck yeah magic.
…
Apart from the wagon, the outside part of the bandit camp is terribly threadbare. The furs and cloths used to build the tents are basically the most valuable things here. After we're done loading everything onto the cart, Aria, Freida, Mell and Erik come together and torch the place with Flames.
In the end we stole 20 weapons of varying types, 10 shields, the equivalent of 5 sets of armor—
Equivalent?
Judging by the bits and pieces we were willing to salvage. Aria's not really above looting from the dead, and Freida got talked into it reasonably easily. They stripped the parts that were either not too bloodied or too difficult to clean, and the patchwork of material makes up about five sets of armor.
Uh…we got weapons, shields, armor…the gold, the spellbooks…and a few bags of grains and veggies.
So…elephant in the room: our lack of a…elephant, I guess. We don't have a beast of burden for our wagon….cart. It's more of a cart than a wagon. The cart is a two wheeled, "Someone has to carry this thing" type of cart. It's large enough to hold all the stuff we've piled onto it provided that we have an animal for it.
Fortunately Aria has a plan to procure a draft animal.
She concentrates and creates an orb of dark, pulling energy…it's conjuration, isn't it? She casts…oh wow.
A large spectral wolf, the size of a horse, comes into being in front of the cart.
Aria, like she's done this a million times, hooks the cart onto the wolf. The wolf doesn't seem to care.
"See? Mary Sue." Jake mutters with a small grin. "She ain't special for nothing."
No kidding.
…
On our way back, Aria teaches me magic. Or more precisely, she teaches me the theory of magic.
So, in a nutshell, magic is a thing that you feel. That's…y'know, pretty reasonable. It's not necessarily mental power in the sense that "your mind makes it real", but more…um…
To seriously oversimplify, Aria calls it an 'affinity with nature', a nebulous term that the other three magic users in our group ambivalently agree with because nobody here has a formal education in the arts of magic. To make her point a little more clear, Aria holds my hand and runs magic through her veins. It bleeds (kinda) into my hands and I think I get a coarse idea despite the shitty description she gave.
I then had her cast Flames while holding hands just to make sure. I mildly regret the decision, but at least I learned something from it. Something besides "fire is hot", anyway.
So…conjecture: everyone innately has magic power, and the difficulty is the method and ease of harnessing the power. Evidence: there was a serious pulse that was running through Aria's hands, and it flared hot right before she, y'know, roasted the fuck out of my hand.
After Aria's assistance, I am able to cast spells by virtue of shameless copying. After an hour of shameless copying, I am then able to cast Flames without shameless copying.
So…shameful copying?
…Yes.
Also Jake learns to use Flames as well through roughly the same method.
The two of us make a similar observation at roughly the same time: the act of using magic is a very tingly feeling that runs through our veins. In many ways, it is very similar to the act of, say, raising our arm over our head. By which I mean: it's impossibly easy to move your arm over your head, and it's impossibly hard to define exactly how it happens.
Unless you have education in body mechanics and the muscularity of the human body and the cell communications and the
Oy.
Imagine writing a how-to for moving an arm to an alien with zero knowledge of the human body or the chemical processes that go into muscular contraction, nervous signals, and other human body shenanigans.
So…Qwop.
…Yes, but harder. Like Qwop, but instead of the game stopping only when your head touches the ground, it stops every time you run incorrectly, and nobody tells you how to run in the right way.
Anyways, after some practice I can now cast Flames, Candlelight, and Healing Hands. I'll probably be able to do Shock after I go back and read that particular book again. The books basically describes (in very lurid detail) how the magic 'feels' in your body as you mold it, and by molding the magic in a very specific way, you get to either pop a ball of light or make someone feel really good by touching them. Still not sure about why a book is 90% short stories though, but I assume there's a reason for it.
Go back to the 'feel good' part.
Apparently my Healing Hands has a sub-effect called Viagra, if Jake is to be believed. I think he's bullshitting me.
Anyhoo…now that I can cast, I'll need to think about what spells I want to use. Since I don't have anything like a pop…do I have a pop-up menu? Magic. P. Tab-Left. Up Up down down left right left…
…No? No. I do not have a magic menu. Since I don't have a menu that conveniently lists all the spells I know, it stands to reason that I'll need to keep books on hand to constantly remind myself how to cast, and if my repertoire gets too large then…uh, then I'll die because of the Dewey Decimal System.
I never learned that, by the way. Also I've played with SkyUI for so long I've forgotten how the normal magic UI looks in Skyrim.
Anyways.
The overarching question is…what kind of caster do I want to be? Enchanter doesn't count because it's a given. It can't possibly be more of a given.
Mm…I think…even if I end up in solo situations, my crafting background means I'll likely be more reliant on gear instead of innate abilities. By that logic, I'll probably be a mid or long range caster. A ritual caster, maybe?
Well, let's look through our options, assuming that we're working with the magic that exists in vanilla Skyrim and my current casting traits.
We had a break to spar with Jake (he's the only one who knows what we're trying to do) in order to understand our casting traits.
Aria is a terrible measuring stick because she's too awesome, so we're using Mell and Frieda as the baseline. Erik has no casting experience beyond using his flames to light torches, so he's out as a reference point. Anyways.
Jake's a very 'traditional' caster, like Frieda. When he engages in close range combat he basically gets one spell to use without the ability to switch at random. If he wants to use a different spell, he has to back off, defend, and then get a new spell before jumping back in. Imagine if the game did not pause when you accessed your magic menu (and you don't get hotkeys). The game doesn't pause, and whenever you're in the menu all hits against you are criticals. Falling back, in that sense, sounds like a pretty smart idea.
I'm a 'ritual' caster like Mell. I can switch spells faster than Jake, but my casting abilities greatly suffer whenever I'm engaged in physical combat. I imagine this to be something that will be fixed given more combat experience, but it's safer to assume that I'll just be keeping my distance at all times unless I have no other choice. In game terms, imagine if you can't use spells the instant you take damage of any kind, and your physical skills suck.
So, with that in mind…what are my options on a per-tree basis?
Destruction: I likely will not be spamming the simple ones. The elemental cloaks and the traps are probably going to be my go-to here.
Illusion (and Mysticism): Courage, Anti-courage? I think this tree is just going to be me throwing around morale boosting area of effect spells…and lights. Mostly lights. Maybe also detect life, if we can get that spell from Oblivion…Cyrodill, somehow. I miss Detect Life. It was the only way I could play Oblivion back on my potato of a computer back when it first came out.
Alteration: Pre-battle buffs, I imagine. Stoneskin for days, man. I don't think I've ever used an alteration spell besides the -skin type spells in game. I don't think there are other alteration spells in-game, though I'm likely wrong.
Restoration: My in-battle bread and butter, I imagine. Clerical duties all day, every day. I don't think I'll be able to use healing hands in the heat of battle, though, so I need to see if there is a ranged heal or something.
Conjuration: My…other in-battle bread and butter? I can imagine sitting back and summoning like there's no tomorrow and have them do the fighting for me. In-game I just use conjuration for the soul-trapping and conjure bow…which might happen here, but I don't really think so. I'll need to look into the availability of spellbooks before I can make a better judgment.
…Well, possibilities aside, I need to study the spells some more.
So we do, for the entirety of the trip back we study the Candlelight spell.
Hmm…so basically, there are two ways to use a spell. Effect over time, and Fire and Forget. There are some variations between the schools, but every spell can be divided down these two lines.
Effect over time is Dots, Damage over time. I say 'effect' because obviously candlelight deals no damage. Either way, this is the default stance for spells like Healing Hand, Wards, Flames, etc. It's about maintaining constant and consistent magical flow for optimal spell power over a set or unset amount of time.
Fire and Forget is the other half. Firebolt, Stoneskin, Candlelight, etc. This category means that you cast a 'complete' shot of the spell and discharge it. Whatever happens afterwards stays on a fixed timer and poofs after that timer is gone.
In vanilla Skyrim, all spells fall into one or the other categories. In this 'real world' Skyrim, all spells can be used in both ways. For example, Candlelight can be used to either "create a floating ball of light that follows the caster and lasts for x seconds" or "create a floating ball of light that follows the caster and costs x mana per second", depending on how you formulate the cast.
Also, you have some element of control over the spell's particulars. Just like how you can unleash a downward slash that has variable power, hit area, or attack speed, how a caster formulates a spell changes the kind of result you get. Candlelight can glow brighter, follow faster/slower, last longer…so on, so forth. All the more reason for us to keep the books around, I suppose, since I basically need to review the spell's default casting before I can change it in any way.
…obstacles aside, I'm looking forward to this. I really need to do some shopping when I get back to Whiterun and raid some bookstores.
Also, Aria is a seriously terrible teacher. She's way too talented which translates to some seriously bad instructions.
For reference, I learned Candlelight after an hour and a half of practice and constant close reading.
Aria learned to use the spell when she thumbed through the book after looting it from the chest.
Mell took an hour, Frieda knew it already, and Jake took another hour and a half. Erik had no interest in learning it.
What's Jake's stance on magic?
He's melee oriented so he gets super reduced experience from using magic, but it doesn't stop him from actually using it. He plans to use basically some –skin spell before charging in, or else heals in case a cleric isn't readily on hand.
…
After four hours of riding on a wolf-pulled cart, we arrived back in Rorikstead.
People stop and stare at the giant spectral wolf pulling the wagon.
Aria gives no fucks. Also, why is there suddenly more traffic on the road? There are carts and people bustling everywhere and the atmosphere is…less than pleasant.
Hmm. "Sir." I stop a guard. "What's going on?"
"A dragon attacked Whiterun earlier." The guard says darkly. "It may be coming here."
…oh shit.
We all look at each other.
It's that named dragon that kicks off the plot proper, isn't it? I don't remember his name because I literally never pay attention to it. It was only on like the twentieth playthrough or so that I even noticed that he had a name or was speaking people language.
"Dragons?" Mell scoffs. "Yeah right." She rolls her eyes, too.
"Let's pretend the dragon threat is real." I interject because it looks like Erik wants to interject. "What's our plan of action?"
As of right now, most of Rorikstead's confusion is based around whether if a Dragon exists at all. Most people don't believe it, but the guards are taking the possibility seriously. Because the guards are taking it seriously, some people go "well it's worth being a bit careful" and are evacuating. So between the evacuations and the guards preparing it's pretty oh shit
As we're making our observations we hear a roar in the distance
Everyone freezes because that roaring is so…incredibly foreign to the environment. Despite the ambient noise and despite how soft it is, we can clearly hear it over…everything. It's probably not an overstatement to say that the roar is not entirely…physical.
"Bear Bear Bear!" Jake mutters with no small amounts of urgency. "We gotta move!"
Bear?
It's an old warning we made from a different co-op game back during the days of splitscreen gaming POINT IS shit's about the hit the fan and we need to hide like right now
The Guards all find clear spots to shoot from and aim their bows at the sky. Aria readies her bow as well, though she doesn't find said clear spot.
We abandon our cart (Aria unsummons her giant wolf), dismount, and crouch next to it. I…don't know if I like this very much. I feel very small. This sucks.
We hear another roar. It seems to seep deep into our mind and we shudder involuntarily.
I…I can say for a certainty that I'm terrified.
I wanna bolt.
I wanna bolt real bad.
I want to get out of here.
Our response is not unique: of the people that are visible on the road, many are shaking in fear. Some are outright running away in whatever direction they can find, completely disregarding friends and family in their attempt to…escape from something.
In our case, Jake puts his hand on our shoulder and keeps us in place before we can do something insane.
.
[3rd Person Camera because I don't want to use italics anymore]
.
Mirmulnir sees the confusion his Dismay Shout has inflicted onto the town beneath him. While he's far too high to hear the increase in confusion, he could sense it below him. Still, as much as he wanted to crush this small puny human settlement, the previous events in Rorikstead weighed on his mind, and the presence of an eerily similar magic source within the town dissuaded him from committing to an attack.
That said, he wasn't about to just disappoint the humans and leave.
Mirmulnir lazily rolls in the air, and then dives upon the town below him with the grace and gravitas of an apex predator bearing down on its prey.
"Yol Toor Shul!"
His conic breath of fire sears a line into the village as he pulls up at the last moment. Thatched roofs and the occasional villager catch on fire, and smoke begins to rise even as he takes into the air with a rapid beat of his wings.
He then feels a sudden hit to his tail. It wasn't a strong one, and certainly not one that he would have taken into account under normal circumstances. Still, it didn't feel as if the hit did any damage, and Mirmulnir puts the issue out of his mind as he climbs away from the slowly igniting Rorikstead.
.
[1st Person Camera]
.
It…it left?
He left?
Why did he leave?
Why did he oh wait there is a fire
Let's what the hell I don't even
Holy shit
Holy shit
Ok, uh…um…
Between the people running around and the people trying to firefight the fire and the people still panicking there is just utter chaos.
…We should go and do something about this.
…
One firefighting montage later…
Fires are a big deal™ in a fantasy medieval era, and the amount of fire that dragon brought into the town was…significant, to say the least. Despite the best efforts of uncoordinated civilians and a handful of frost mages, by the time the fire has been beaten Rorikstead has lost a quarter of its structures.
We lucked out, in a way: the dragon's breath hit close to the northern side of town along with a northern wind, which held for long enough for the fire to be somewhat contained. 'Course, it meant the buildings north of the strike zone were write-offs, but the rest were ok.
…
Whew.
It is now the night after the dragon attack.
It…it shows, too. Everyone's impossibly jumpy and deathly quiet. Every little noise would make us twitch.
I…don't think I've ever actually considered a scenario where the dragon would just dive bomb the location and then leave.
How do we kill it then? Can we kill it? I don't think we can without the grounding shout, unless we build actual AAA. Anti-Aircraft Artillery.
Ugh.
Well, I'm gonna go rub my wood before bed.
So what are we making?
Nothing, really. Still just getting used to carpentry…I need proper stockpiles of material before I actually try to make things anyways.
…Speaking of wood, Aria shot an arrow at the dragon before it flew away.
You're only thinking of that now?
I've been on firefighting duty.
Anyways, when the dragon swooped down and I was busy being terrified out of my mind, Aria jumped onto the wagon, drew her bow, and took a shot at the dragon.
I think she hit, because some time later (after we were done firefighting) she went out looking for—and subsequently returned with—a small dragon scale. I think/believe that it is a dragon scale because if it is the scale of anything else we're going to have some serious questions. The thing is like the size of a dinner plate, for fuck's sake.
We go to bed later and dream of fire, burning, and giant flying fish.
…
[Next Day]
…
Dreams are odd. Why did it have so many burning teeth? Anyways.
Strategy session! We're at an inn. Time to plan out what we're doing next.
"For better or worse, we've done our job." Aria says. "We should head back to Whiterun."
All in favor: everyone. All opposed: none.
Freida did not vote. Reason: she went back with her own group.
Strategy session done!
Um.
Honestly we all just want to get out of here.
"What about me?" Erik asks. We didn't include him as a member of the group despite him sitting right next to us. His father's inn was on the south side of town and was thus spared from the fire, so it's not like he has a vested interest in staying. That said…Rorikstead could use every hand it had right now.
"What do you want to do?" Jake asks him. "Do you want to stay and help your dad? It looks like this place could use the help." We're sitting in his father's inn, which is a little bit overtaxed in terms of manpower.
"Rorikstead is a small place without a lot of wealth. Even if I stayed I wouldn't be of help to my father." He says…though I get the feeling he's not…er, he's being truthful, but…not. Or something.
"We're not full time mercenaries or adventurers, you know?" Jake reminds him. "Just because you're tagging along doesn't mean you'll get coin."
Oh, also: he gave back my Greataxe of cold, as unused as it may be.
"I-I know." Erik says. "But…" He throws a glance towards the north side of town. We can't see it because walls are solid, but we all get what he's implying.
As in: nevermind the adventure, he just wants to skip town.
His dad gets some time to pass by the table. "Take Erik with you." He says. "If Rorikstead isn't safe, then I want him away from here."
"Wh-" Erik twists in his seat. "Father, you're really staying here then?" He stands to go and talk to his old man, rather than yell at him from across the room.
"Should we take him with us?" Jake asks, scowling. "Aria?"
"I see no reason to." Aria sighs. "But he's going to follow us and likely die in the attempt if we don't."
I feel like we're seriously overestimating Erik's sense of…lack of self-preservation at this point.
Still. "Better question: what do we do after Whiterun?" I ask. "I mean, the city was hit pretty bad…worse than Rorikstead, if I heard right. What will the two of you do when you get back?" I gesture to Jake and Aria, because me and Mell at least have property.
"Honestly? I'm not sure." Jake muses. "Things haven't gone according to plan, so I'm a little at a loss." He says with a meaningful glance at me. Basically, Aria hasn't been recognized as the Dragonborn because she didn't get to kill the dragon.
"I can get some extra beds if you guys need a place to sleep." I say. "If I'm gonna be making shit then I'll need rawmats, and to get rawmats I need people."
"What are rawmats?" Aria asks curiously.
Jake nods. "Yeah, I can do that, assuming Whiterun's economy hasn't switched because of the dragon." By which he means 'everyone's stockpiling shit for crises.'
"What are rawmats?" Aria insists.
"Raw Materials, so iron, leather, so on." I explain. "It'd also be nice if I could get my hands on an enchanting table and learn some enchanting later."
"You'd make the most fucking amazing enchanted gear." Jake grins. "You and your Gundam fetish."
Oh yeah. "You know it."
"What's a Gundam?" Aria demands.
"What's a fetish?" Mell asks innocently.
…
In the end, Erik was reluctantly convinced by his father to go to Whiterun and get away from Rorikstead, much to Erik's worry. The dude is, despite all of his teenage rebelliousness, fiercely protective of his father. I can respect that.
I'm glad we don't have to worry about keeping the kid on a short leash.
Either way, Aria summons her Great Wolf for cart-pulling duties and we make the day-long trip to Whiterun.
Anyhoo…in the past few days, I've gained three skill points in total. Jake got five. We also get some time to actually talk about our perk charts in depth.
"I mean, if we're gonna party up then we need to specialize." Jake says. "I'm…ostensibly…tanking."
Jake takes three ranks of Combat Recovery (Increased health recovery while injured) and two ranks of Analysis (can identify items better). He tried to ID the ring but couldn't make heads or tails of it.
As for me…"I'm gonna be crafting a lot, probably, so I'll take support perks."
I take Magic Recovery (Mana recovery speed increase), Enchanting Mastery (Can enchant better), and Dechant Mastery (can break down items better). I saw dechant mastery and had a bad feeling (of the 'wait where's Disenchant' variety), so I took it.
"What do you guys mean by 'perks'?" Mell asks curiously.
Also note: we're not making this discussion in private. We take some time to explain our perk chart to Mell…to the entire cart, really.
One short exposition later…
"Neat." Mell and Erik aren't quite sure what we're talking about.
"I have something similar." Aria observes. "Though it seems to be less intricate than yours…and more well-defined."
So she CAN choose her level ups….actually I have no idea if that's the case. She says she can see it, but that's different from actually being able to control things.
"Mell, it's like this." I get her attention and try to walk her through the feeling of accessing the perk chart.
Why?
More firepower? If she's staying around, great. If not, good to have friends in other places.
"I think I can see it now." Mell says slowly after about an hour of her focusing. "I have…Herbalism and Alcohol mastery." She says, then her eyes go a little wide.
"As expected of an apothecary." I say quickly because I get the feeling she really didn't want to let that second perk slip. "Then again I've never seen an apothecary's skill chart so I would have no idea."
Mell smiles at us. She's quite cute. Non-sequitur: why does she only have two perks? If she has the same perk chart as we do then it also stands to reason that she gains experience when she, y'know, does shit. So…by now, she should have tons upon tons of points.
…Maybe they can't pick their perks? Hmm. Without diving deeper into this I can't draw a conclusion one way or another, so we'll shelve the issue for later thought.
To wit: after we tell her how to pick a perk (to the best of our ability) she tries for a good hour and makes zero progress.
For the rest of the trip I talk with the three of them about the perk tree, but mostly about Jake since the other two can't quite wrap their heads around specialization the way we're used to. We're planning out our trees under the assumption that our current party structure will not be consistent.
There are a lot of possible options, so we're not drafting any concrete plans yet.
"Especially since there are a lot of invisible perks on the tree." Jake notes.
There are just way too many perks for us to conceivably plan around each one. If I could just throw it to the internet and have them document it in like 30 seconds…
So what else are we doing for the trip?
I'm basically spamming healing hands to see what I can learn out of it. In order to cast it consecutively I took a seat on the cart and borrowed Mell for it.
Going by the sounds she made the experience was pleasant. Or else it was extremely unpleasant, I dunno.
Why Mell specifically?
…she's cute and easy to convince. I swear to god I am not depraved.
And the amount of people that believe you is…
…if it's not zero then I'm not doing my job right.
Anyways!
Strange and/or arousing moans aside, I gained a point from constantly casting the spell. With apologies to Mell, I started to vary how to channel magical power after about three hours of experience. It…uh. When I tried to make it more efficient, she started moaning (more).
…Actually when I tried to do anything she started moaning, so I think she was just fucking with me in general.
Anyways, eventually Mell volunteered to cut her hand with a dagger so I can experiment, so she's still cool all things considered. Though it was a little weird how she's pretty ok with putting a knife into her hand. Repeatedly.
"This is how I test healing potion recipes." Mell says when I ask.
Anyways, now that I actually have a wound to work with, I get substantial progress on how healing hands work and get another point in the process.
So…Healing hands, and I think by extension all healing spells, have an effectiveness that directly correlates with how well you can see the wound and how well you know the human body…and how much magic power you put into the spell. Power is self-explanatory.
To give an example with the other two, let's say that Mell cuts the palm of her hand. If I'm looking at the wound with perfect knowledge of the anatomical proportions of Mell's hand, then the spell will work at 100% efficiency. If I'm casting onto the back of Mell's hand, then we're at 70%. If I'm awkwardly rubbing her neck, it's like 25%. If I'm massaging her shins, it's like…10%.
I'm surprised she even let us try that last one, to be honest.
I'm also more surprised that massaging her shins while looking at the open wound in her hand bumps it up to like…more. I'm gonna pretend I know what I'm talking about and call it 40%.
POINT BEING, healing magic is more effective when you know what you're trying to heal. It's entirely possible to just do what Aria does and pour power into the wound until it closes with no regard for efficiency, but for us normies it's probably a good idea to refresh our understanding of human anatomy at some point.
…
Candlelight was a lot less fun. I think it may be indicative of how Illusion spells work in general, but in order to make a Candlelight ball you have to have to achieve a very specific balance between power and efficiency. Trying to change the mix for, say, longer duration or a brighter light, causes an exponential increase in spell cost if it isn't done correctly. What qualifies as 'correctly' is a little bit up for debate.
I got another point from that little discovery. I put both of the points I've gained into Reinforcement, because I think we can all agree that I've been abusing the fuck out of that, and that therefore the most logical choice is to make it even more overpowered.
…Even though two points is a pretty slight difference, I feel.
…
We arrive at Whiterun a little after nightfall. It's pretty normal apart from a sense of…muted…ness? Everything feels more subdued than it should be, even though it's after hours. Whiterun doesn't have much of a night life—everything's restricted to inns and such—but even so, things feel more solemn than normal. The guards wave us in (Aria had to unsummon her Giant Wolf) and we…
…go to my shack of a house, I guess.
Mell's place was burned. Apparently it was still standing, but since it still smelled like smoke she wasn't about to chance a night in it.
We don't sleep in my house, mind, because the infrastructure is just not there. We instead rent two rooms and kinda make do, since all the inns were pretty crowded.
I wonder why.
…No, seriously. I had expected some people to leave, if temporarily, so to have the inn be so overbooked was a surprise.
Also, real glad I have my own bed right about now.
…
[Next Day]
…
So, first orders of business: Mell and Jake will go and examine her house in detail, Aria's going to report her bounty to the castle (where she got it), Erik will look around for something to do—an excuse so he can walk around the city for damages, and I'll be scrapping the gear we've looted from the bandits.
No point selling them since the only people who would buy corpse gear would be…smithies, like mine, who are looking for more materials to smelt down.
Anyways…
Mell's house is partially burned. According to Jake, some of the key structural beams have been seriously compromised so the house is no longer safe to live in, and a good chunk of the roof had collapsed. Mell's going to hire an architect to take a more professional look at it later and see about the repairs, but for now what little she salvaged from her shop is transferred to my hut, where she'll operate her business on the short term.
For the two that had a chance to really walk around and scope out the effects of the dragon attack…Aria and Erik delivered some pretty similar stories. There's a pretty noticeable gash in the middle of Whiterun, where many buildings have been damaged by the fire (if not burned to cinders). Since the dragon stayed longer, there was comparatively more damage to the city over a greater variety of areas. However, due to Whiterun having a healthier pool of ice mages and a more robust water access, the actual damage was pretty well contained.
Still, I'm going to guess that the loss of wealth is pretty substantial. Also: apparently the Tree in the middle of the city (The Gildegreen?) was injured by the attack and thus needs to be revived.
A party left earlier yesterday for the…um…thing. You have to visit a cave with a giant tree and then stab the tree for its blood and then run from like a million Spriggans who really, desperately want your asshole. I don't think the travelers were looking for Nettlebane so…y'know, good luck to them, or something.
Aria earned 5000(!) gold from her mission. She gets 2500 (no complaints there), the three of us (Jake, Mell, me) gets 750 each, and Erik gets 250.
So that's that for their side of the job.
As for me…
I stripped down everything (metal) we found back to their component materials for a total of 30 iron and 10 steel ingots. Any wood bits get scrapped and tossed into the fire. The armor bits…the metal bits we smelt down for ingots (resulting in mostly slag) and the leather/furs get cleaned as best as they can and then stashed away.
Before I had intended to just toss them into the forge and get rid of 'em, but…I can Replace and strengthen material with the power of High-Octane Bullshit, so having spare materials on hand, even if it isn't immediately workable, is a useful consideration.
That said…I'm not entirely sure what to do with the workable materials.
Hmm.
…
I make nails and bracings and other construction material out of the iron and some daggers and axes out of the steel. Pretty simple stuff, no Replacement usage, just…y'know, normal gear.
I also sent Jake to buy cloth, straw, furs, and cotton. 500 gold's worth. With the materials I make some mattresses. Very thin mattresses, but mattresses nonetheless.
They're pretty warm, so…mission complete, all things considered.
…Whew. Well. I guess we're cooling off for a few days. Until we're sure what's going on, it's better to stay put.
…
[That Night]
…
I sold the construction materials for 300 gold. Technically I lost money, but the iron was basically free, so eh.
As I said, Mell moved her potions table and some supplies to my house and is operating her business from my hut. She's made (according to her) 150 gold of profit. So that's 150 after deducting her material cost.
Erik and Jake went to help with the city's rebuilding effort.
Aria more or less has nothing to do (strangely) and thus has been sleeping inside the hut.
…I'm not surprised, I guess. She's done like 99% of the work so far. She deserves some rest.
…
[One Week Passes]
…
The stuff that happened is…more or less the same? Or, rather, I make gear out of iron ore that Jake and Erik bring back and then sell the spares for money.
Jake and Erik aren't out mining themselves, mind you; following the dragon attack, the miners are skittish, and are looking for some extra hands to guard them just in case the dragon comes back. Erik managed to negotiate a trade with the miners: they'll hand over some of the ore to me in exchange for free tools and repairs.
We learn later that this is a pretty common thing for smithies to do: get a supplier to secure rawmats in exchange for favors.
It's nice to have a stock of materials I can use at will, though I've made like a million picks and shovels at this point. I'm so fucking good at making picks and shovels now. Like I can probably make a shovel so strong it will dig through the center of the earth in one hit.
Hyperbole much?
Just a little. Eventually I'll make a drill that'll pierce the heavens.
For now though, we'll continue as we are and just…y'know, live.
…
I also went spellbook searching! Sadly everything was out of my price range. Flames, Sparks, and Frost were cheap, at 200 gold apiece (I properly learned Sparks by the way). The immediate tier up like Firebolt was a steep 2,000 gold.
Suffice to say we're not splurging on spellbooks any time soon. Wizards and magic users may be frowned upon in Skyrim, but they're still hellishly powerful and useful.
I didn't get Frost because I don't need things to be more cold.
We did indeed forget that we had it already.
Um…
I also went and got the ring properly appraised. 50 gold service fee.
It's a "Minor Ring of Firefly", as the appraiser calls it. The name is given more or less on the spot, since there's no way any enchanter would know the names of every object off the top of their head.
So.
This ring, "When activated", allows the wielder to shoot a "small bolt of fire". I've tried it, and it seems to operate along the same lines as Flames, but with less efficiency. This isn't even useful for someone who's not good with magic, because you need to be reasonably well versed with Flames to even activate it in the first place, and thus the caster's Flames would be way the fuck more efficient than this piddly ring.
I think it's entirely possible that the ring has secondary effects that I'm not thinking about right now, but as far as I can tell it's pretty tame. I'm still keeping it around as a reference for enchanting and enchanted objects though.
…Also, how quaint that you can actually have objects enchanted with an effect that actively deals damage. Hmm…
…
[Two Weeks Pass]
…
Aria gave me a gift!
"Hope you like it." She says as she brings the gift into my hut.
It's an old enchanting table! Aria's working with…uh…what's his face. The mage up at Dragonsreach. For the past week she's been working with him on the stone tablet from Bleak Falls Barrow and the dragonscale from Sir I-Buzz-Villages. The mage has been given special attention and extra funding to see if there's something about dragons on the tablet, and he spent some gold on a new table, so Aria got his hand-me-down and sent it to me.
Yay~ It's got a five-point star that makes up most of the tabletop, a weird orb thingy, two rows of candles (burned down in a rather irregular way), and some kinda book holder.
Yay~!
We give Aria a hug for bringing it in, despite us having zero knowledge in how enchanting works.
"I'm glad you like it." Aria laughs. "I'll put it inside the house."
We've been upgrading the house over these two weeks, so now it looks…rather good, really. It's actually roomy enough for five people to live in (kinda), and looks like it can reasonably weather the elements. We still have to eat outside, though…
A miner coughs. "Hey boss, you're happy and all, but my pick still needs work."
Oh right! I'm at work repairing things, and the front of the ten-person queue is a Nord miner who's…got enough beard and lines that I'd place him at 30something.
Anyhoo, I take the broken pick from the miner in question and look it over. It doesn't have my marking on it. Good. "What happened to it?" I say and toss the two pieces of the pick into my forge…into the ingot-maker in my forge.
"It's an old thing." The miner grins. "I heard there was a smith in the Clover that's actually worth the salt, so I came to see for myself."
I don't believe him, but he's being nice. "Uh-huh." I bring the forge up to speed and smelt down the pick to liquid iron. I do this with equipment I don't own because the quality of their material makes me angry. I of course make two Replacement passes on the ingot to Replace away impurities. Replacement passes are a thing I discovered over the two weeks. Basically, I compromise the perk's accuracy for utility. If I do it too much I'll end up stripping away iron (because I'll be too unfocused to do it correctly) but one or two passes goes a long way to make up for the strength of substandard ingots.
The miner waits for ten minutes as we hammer the ingot into its pickaxe shape.
And then as they watch, I silently Replace the inners of the pick with lines of steel for strength, and then Replace some iron with air to reduce the weight. The finishing touch is, of course, an insignia on the bottom of the pick head.
"He wasn't kidding." The miner mutters as he retrieves his pick (an hour later because it needs to cool). "How much?"
Our clients will either make an order and leave or else loiter around. To aid in their loitering around, an enterprising cook opened a shop for meat skewers and ale right next door.
Mell in particular is very good at keeping clients around in order to milk them for more money. "Ten g-septim service fee, one more for the haft." I say. "Give it to Mell there."
"And an extra one to stare." Mell says sweetly upon catching the man's eyes flit down.
The miner curses good-naturedly and then gives twelve gold to Mell. "Pleasure doing business with you." He says, still laughing, and leaves.
What's our insignia?
The Mobius strip connected to a broken chain. Took me a while to get the design to look natural, too.
Anyways, at this point I have a recurring customer base of about twenty people (mostly lumberjacks) who want me to put an edge to their lumbering axe on a daily basis…So I get about a hundred gold per day. Mell then sells them small vials of stamina potions for a total of 150.
Jake and Erik bring home 50 a day (100 if there's a fight).
For reference, Aria makes 600 a day, not counting the gifts she gets from being an attractive single woman in the apparently uppermost echelon of Whiterun society. The sign of Mara seems to be more prevalent nowadays in Dragonsreach, too.
Strictly speaking, not my problem.
We finish the day's work and then turn to the enchanter's table.
Let's play, shall we…oh, but wait, I need to make dinner. Hang on.
We cook a simple potato and chicken soup for the four of us.
Erik's the best cook from helping out at his father's inn, but he and Jake come home after dark, and Mell gets hungry before dark. Mell isn't quite a lethal chef, but she also doesn't quite understand what it means to "clean your hands after making potions holy fucking shit please don't cook like this" so her food always tastes weird. It's a damn good thing she doesn't make poisons, I'll say that much.
So my soups are thus amazing by the sheer necessity of three people being hungry and having nothing good to eat. Aria eats at the castle (she can't leave because it would be rude).
…For the record, I've also tried to Replace Potato with Chicken just for the hell of it. It was…a good idea on paper, because there is something incredibly disgusting about biting into a potato and then suddenly hitting a squishier portion. They're not quite fried chicken, because there's no frying going on.
…I should make some fried chicken.
But anyway, with dinner out of the way, I can finally dig into enchanting!
Also for the record: While Idolaf Battle-Born would have loved to commission a new sword immediately, he 1) did not know that we were back in Whiterun, and 2) was busy coordinating rebuilding efforts in parts of the city that were under the Battle-Born sphere of influence. Also, 3) He did not remember our face or name; dragon attacks tend to do that to people.
So first things first, I need to dechant the Battleaxe of cold.
…Uh…
We get our battleaxe and compare it to the enchanting table. It extends rather awkwardly because it's comparatively massive.
…How the fuck does this work?
Goddammit.
…
The Next Day, we visit a bookstore to buy a book on enchanting.
500 gold, but 500 gold well spent.
Ok!
We get to reading after finishing our work for the day.
…
So…hmm. First off, enchants are applied to a foci (like a gem) which is then applied to items, and then that enchant will permeate through the item according to the enchant pattern that the enchanter has granted. More complicated enchants are harder to remove, but are not necessarily better…to extract an enchant, you have to first isolate the coursing magic back into the foci before removing it, otherwise you'd destroy the item in the process.
…No points for guessing how much brute forcing the Dragonborn does in order to get her enchants, then…
Lessee…to enchant, we need a strong source of magic that is also stable. The options are either to use magic as a person or to use a soul gem. Soul gems create more stable enchants but are limited in power, while using a person's magical power creates a chance of failure.
…Yuck. Imagine wanting to enchant that Ebony sword of yours and have it go kablooey without replacements or console commands. Or save scumming, for that matter.
That's when you commit ritual suicide and start a new game.
Anyways…
Between our day work and our nightly journey into the book on enchanting, it takes us a week before we're sure we understand enchanting well enough to give it a go.
Right.
So.
We're at our enchanting table after our week of learning.
I need a place to store enchants that get pulled out, so I've prepped a blank scroll and a blank book just in case.
Lessee here…so long as I can isolate the cold from the battleaxe, I should be able to extract it without trouble. Theoretically. Hopefully. Please don't explode inside my house-ly. In retrospect I really should have moved this thing outside just in case.
But then it would set the neighborhood on fire.
I suppose. Alright.
We trace the Healing Hands spell up until the point where we actually cast healing hands, and use that magic power to extract the Cold enchant onto the mundane book.
I just had a sudden flash of insight, like "oh yeah that scroll is not going to be enough." Which is why it went onto the book. It went very well, all things considered. My intuition (which is likely due to the dechant perk bonus) is that the spell was "mostly preserved" during transfer.
Though I don't know exactly what that means, I think we can guess that there will be some falloff in terms of efficiency, damage, or whatever, as I use this book to enchant new objects. There's likely a durability limit too…hmm…
…I can probably enchant and dechant to preserve copies of…Cold Damage? Frost Damage? As I need to, which…will probably make it impossible for me to run out of enchants…but then how do I get a 'fresh' enchant?
…Or I can just stop thinking so far ahead and focus on the task at hand. Ok.
While dechanting the battleaxe, the Cold enchant passed through my head. I think I have an inkling on how to use it, but actually enchanting without the book is…uh, not going to happen.
…Also, this explains why some of the books in the bookstore were 40,000 gold. I guess those were books containing actual enchants (I never looked into them; no touch rule applied). Also also, I'm going to assume that since those books were so pricey, the ability to recall enchants perfectly from memory is basically either a game expediency (like not needing to eat) or else an ability exclusive to the Dragonborn. Aria has no immediate interest in enchanting so I can't compare notes with her.
…and now I'm wondering about any children Aria may have in the future. Would they be all as amazing as she is?
Warning, warning.
Yeah, yeah…no eugenics. Anyways.
I now have a Cold Enchant, as well as a dagger I've made. I couldn't get my hands on a soul stone—apparently those are super rare (for us poor folk). So here goes nothing.
We place the book on the top of the enchanter's table, in the spot where the book holder is (where the skull should be according to the in-game model) and begin to channel magic through it.
The magic I'm sending out flows through the book and becomes…charged, I suppose, with the Cold Enchant. It is then collected by the green orb sitting over the book, and after a fashion begins to flow from the orb into the dagger I've placed in the middle of the star.
…The magic from the orb seems to scatter wildly into the air and brings a chill, so I better get my fuckin' game face on and FOCUS!
Through us bringing out a lot of magic power, more of the strands of magical power begin to collect into the dagger…but most of it radiates uselessly out into the air. Five minutes later, the room is frosted over and our magic power is spent.
Fucking hell.
The Dagger…is a little cold. At the moment, I can't tell if it's because of the Enchant or if it's because of the ambiance. We did learn one thing though: The energy from the Enchant will bleed into the surrounding atmosphere when handled incorrectly, and…if I were to try and enchant a seriously powerful Fire effect onto a weapon, the bled magic might actually kill us.
Food for thought. Also, the entire enchanting sequence cost me a full hour…which I did not realize while doing the work. That would be worth remembering in the event that harder spells cost me more time and make me forget to eat for like 36 hours.
Hmm…
The next day, I checked the Dagger again and confirmed that, yes, it was cold because of the ambient temperature rather than any inherent enchanted qualities.
On one hand, bummer.
On the other, I GOT 15 SKILL POINTS FROM THAT ONE (failed) ENCHANT!
I mean, I can't use magic anymore and I don't know how long this period lasts, but I don't care because 15 SKILL POINTS. Like that one failed enchanted leveled me so much I have actually caught up to Jake in raw numbers. If this was Oblivion I'd be crying with sadness, but it's not, so yay!
…Lessee. I also crossed another major threshold, so…
We take a few hours to decide.
For my major perk, I take Magic Breathing. I take double damage from magic in exchange for double recovery rate.
For my minor perks, I take 2 ranks of Replacement, 4 ranks of Dechant mastery, and 9 ranks of Magic recovery, so now my magic should recover a lot faster than it did before. The magic perks are a little too min-max-y for my tastes, but I have the sinking feeling that dealing with magic is going to be all I do two months from now, so I'm willing to take a combat hit in favor of having faster recovery speed. The minor munchkinism does cause my magic powers to recover in a day rather than…I dunno, forever, so that's good.
Bonus: I can now cast Healing Hands indefinitely because its (base) cost is less than my recovery rate.
In theory. In practice, we can cast Healing Hands for a full minute without feeling tired, which was something we could not do before.
…fortuitously placed level ups aside, the fact remains that we failed the enchanting business. Is enchanting so difficult that I'm getting massive experience from it, or is my enchanting skill just so bad that I've cleared like 30 ranks in one try?
Mm…I don't really know, I guess.
The only expedient is to try again!
So we do. We block out an hour after dinner to re-enchant the dagger.
…There aren't additional resources used beyond all of my magical power again. After our efforts, the dagger is still normal in exchange for no skill points. Hrm.
I don't know. So let's keep going until we succeed!
Over a period of five days, we attempt to enchant five daggers.
All were failures, and not even failures I could learn from. This…either I really, desperately need soul gems, or there's some other requirement that I'm not understanding properly. I mean, I know that enchanting with a person's magical power has an inherent fail risk, but not knowing why I'm failing is incredibly frustrating. There's definitely more to this that I currently do not understand.
Ugh.
…Well, no point fussing over it at the moment, because I'm still busy with my day job and a special project for Aria. Actually I've been working on it for the past two days, but eh.
Why?
Dunno. Aria brought over a box of scrapped steel and dwarven gear. Most of them are in pieces and obviously broken beyond repair, so they were melted down into ingots. 10 steel, 3 dwarven.
She wanted us to make weapons that would "be useful against Dragons" which…I mean, she didn't say she was going to use them to kill a dragon that may or may not be haunting a watchtower to the west, but…yeah.
Alright, so how do I want to do this?
…
[3rd Person Camera, Two Days Later]
…
"What's a Battle-Born doing in the Clover?"
Idolaf, clad in his Imperial Armor, ignored the whispers of the poor. He was here for one job: to find the smith who made that now-broken sword. He was a little angry at himself for obliterating the man's name from his head, but to be fair the sword was, at the outset, nothing special. He's had to ask around for information on an irregular basis—he had a clan to run—and only now has he come to some new information placing the smith in the poor Clover district.
So he's here on a personal errand…just like somebody else, apparently. He could tell that the 'someone else' was not a part of the local riff-raff by virtue of the immaculate leather armor…and because he knew the person by name.
"Fancy seeing the Jarl's personal Housecarl here in the gullies." Idolaf says with a slight smile. "What brings you, Irileth?"
"A similar reason to you, I suspect." Irileth replies in good cheer. "We're both here to look for someone."
"As fate may have it, I believe we're going to the same place." Idolaf muses. "Strange how the world works."
"So it may seem." Irileth scans the rundown buildings for that sign she was sent to look for, the one with that strange-looking ribbon. "A bit of a shame that the greatest talent of Whiterun would have friends in a place like this."
I wouldn't call him the greatest. Idolaf thought wryly. "Aye." He says and scans for the same sign.
Both of them find it in short order, on a street that's just a little bit shielded from the view from the main causeway.
"Is something amiss?" Irileth asks as she sees the small gaggle of people surrounding the front of the open-air store. She smells the iron in the air, feels the heat, and immediately deduces that it is a forge. "Why is she living here?"
"He's working here, I see." Idolaf mutters, paying no attention to Irileth's outburst.
The two of them watch as the small gaggle—low ranking adventurers and mercenaries by the looks of it—crowd the store. Once in a while, someone would actually buy something before leaving with an extremely wistful look back towards the store.
Idolaf raises an eyebrow and moves in to check out the merchandise. The storefront was extremely simple, per his expectations of a Clover district business. Fine (for the neighborhood) weapons are on display, hoisted by crude-looking weapon racks, alongside some shields (crude but well built) and a handful of silver trinkets.
He notices Aria, the New Face in Dragonsreach, sitting next to the forge and immediately realizes that Irileth was here for her. He marvels for a moment at how perfect she looks and then moves on.
His eyes then focus upon a very high-class looking girl in bright red hair. The girl mans a small potion stand next to the forge and sells small vials of potions to the obviously smitten young men, and the occasional smitten older men.
She lives here too? He resists the urge to smirk. What a surprise…an asset not even the Gray-Manes will touch. He walks up to the storefront after Irileth.
"Ah, hello!" The girl (Mell) says brightly. "You're a new face. Are you looking for something specific?"
"I'm a little busy at the moment." The man (Ash) manning the forge says with his back towards Idolaf. "If you want a piece, take a look at the premade ones. Otherwise, place your order with Mell there."
"I shall gladly…window shop, for now." Idolaf says and eyes one of the swords stored in the weapon rack. With a little apprehension, he palms its hilt and draws it a little. Apart from his breath catching in his throat, he felt no real difference. He then draws fully to examine the blade in more detail.
This seems to be similar to an Adrianne work. Idolaf muses. No frills in favor of simple, rugged construction. Upon further inspection, he realized he was more right than he thought. Although Adrianne favored a simple, rugged forging pattern, she nevertheless took the time to decorate the swords that she considered higher quality and emblematic of her work.
The sword in Idolaf's hand right now was basically just a blade and a hilt. There was the crafter's insignia, the weird loop with a chain, but apart from that nothing else was visible. He…was now in a bit of doubt as to whether if his information was correct or not. Still, there was no harm in asking.
"Pardon me, but have you heard of the Gleaming Sword?" He says, masterfully making the inquiry sound like idle conversation.
Mell looks confused, and Ash did not seem to react. "Can't say I have." He says without missing a beat in his work.
"Really, chief?" One of the onlookers (a laborer by the looks of it) laughs. "We've all heard of it."
Ash was intrigued. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Lars Battle-Born, the little kid, used the sword and fought off that dragon." The laborer says. "Apparently he summoned some kind of god and smote down the dragon in a single hit."
Everyone who was not the laborer immediately thought that the story sounds unnecessarily exaggerated. Actually, the laborer thought it sounded exaggerated too, but he's already said it, so what can he do.
"Given I saw the dragon buzz Rorikstead then leave…I'll take your word for it." Ash says.
Buzz? Idolaf didn't recognize that particular use of the term. "Regardless of what has happened with Lars, do you think you're capable of producing a sword of that quality?"
"Probably not." Ash replies bluntly, still absorbed in his work. "I still don't know what it is."
Shame. Idolaf sighs. Still, he sounds familiar, so I have at least found the correct person.
Irileth steps up now that Idolaf seems to be finished with his inquiry. "Aria, do not forget that the mission is planned for today." She says tersely. "I hope you are ready."
"Vacation over?" Ash smirks. "It's almost ready."
Idolaf's interest was suddenly extremely perked. "What is?"
"Some new gear." Ash says. "Apparently Aria got her hands on some materials the castle didn't want."
"Scraps of steel and dwarven material." Irileth nods. "I thought you were taking them to Eorlund?" She asks Aria.
"Gray-Mane doesn't take materials from anyone but the ones he hires." Some other laborer laughs. "That's a capital offense to him, girl."
"I heard the same from the Companions before I made it to the Skyforge." Aria says. "So I'm settling on the next best option."
"Hear that, smith?" Irileth laughs. "You're the fallback plan she had." She says to some general chuckling and Aria's embarrassment.
"She's calling me her next choice compared to the Sky Forge?" Ash laughs, putting his final touches on the sword in front of him. "I'll take it."
"Regardless of your sword being ready or not, we leave on time." Irileth says. "If your gear is not ready, you will need to follow under your own power."
Aria nods in understanding.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
I wasn't lying about not knowing about the Gleaming Sword, mind you. I legit don't know what that is.
Don't think it can be yours?
I mean…it probably is. Let's be honest, it most likely is. While claiming it as mine would definitely feed my ego, there's the underlying problem of my skill, which is that I don't know how the sword was doing…whatever the hell it was doing, and thus have no way of reproducing it. If I can't remake the sword then claiming credit is pretty useless.
Anyhoo…Aria's sword. More specifically, a collection of swords. "Swords".
So like I said, she gave me 10 steel and 3 dwarven ingots to make into a weapon to use against a flying target. She, despite my half-hearted prodding, would not admit that she's going up against a dragon, but we all know she's going dragonslaying.
So with the materials in hand, I'm making three throwing daggers. Each dagger takes 2 steel, 1 dwarven, and 3 irons, which I have on hand. The steel and dwarven go into making the weapon, and the iron goes into Reinforcement.
The dwarven ingots act as the core of the dagger. It's crude, because this is the first time I'm working with dwarven materials—hell, down here in the clover anything higher than shitty steel is nigh-impossible to obtain…reason why I'm doing good business is because my steel is amazing for the cost. Anyways, with the core built, the steel is then encased around the dagger into a vaguely dagger-like shape.
I say vaguely because I want to make damn sure they'll pierce dragonscale, and so I've been trimming the edge on the daggers as much as I'm able, while Replacing in some extra iron to maintain durability. The end process is a trio of daggers that are much heavier than their size would suggest. They have an aerodynamic profile that makes throwing them as easy as possible (so they're kind of just glorified blades) with better balance than I had expected. Moreover, I embedded a ruby into the tip of the dwarven core (and Replaced all loose areas around it with iron because, again, I'm Not Good At This Yet).
Why rubies?
I wanna see if I can reproduce that Gleaming Sword business, and I used a ruby last time. This time, I fit the gems in with the hope that the daggers will shank the fuck out of the dragon from a mile away.
So…when Battle-Born Senior and uh…that housecarl lady, showed up, I was pretty much done with the daggers. Once they're finished, I hand them over to Aria.
The finished daggers don't really have much of a 'finish' to them. They're streamlined to the best of my ability and are about a foot long from the blade tip to the grip with a nonexistent pommel. The grip itself is wrapped with some coarse linen so they won't slip during the throwing process. Overall, I'm pretty proud of them…first time I've made specialized daggers, so I'm happy they came out well.
Aria takes the trio of daggers and blink in surprise.
"These…are heavier than they look." She says after weighing them. "Can I try them?"
"Sure." I get a battered archery target (donated by the beer and meats guy across the street) and set it up next to the house.
We have a peanut gallery of about twenty people plus Battle-Born Senior and the housecarl lady. I forget what his name was…was it Odlaf? I don't think it was Odlaf. I'm totally gonna call him Odlaf in my head though.
Anyways, Aria takes her position, readies one dagger, and lets loose.
It arcs rather sharply downwards for its size and hits the dirt a good foot before it reaches the target. It hits the dirt and bounces off with a harmless clatter.
Cue giggling from the peanut gallery.
Nobody notices the dagger's painless entry and exit through the ground (for about an inch).
"These really are heavier than they look." Aria says…with a disturbingly happy note in her voice.
As we all kind of take Aria's failed throw in stride, she draws the second dagger and makes a full-powered throw. It slams into the target with resounding force and unbalances the target.
Everyone is suddenly silent.
No shit. Aria's second throw slammed into the target dead-center.
"Good." She says with the barest hint of a frown. A frown?
She recovers the two daggers and readies the third.
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
Aria takes lazy aim at the target, and throws the dagger with every last ounce of her strength.
The dagger impacts with reverberating force and firmly sends the target back. It totters on its two hind legs, loses balance, and leans against the wall behind it with an odd sense of finality.
Cue clapping and gasps from the peanut gallery.
Aria, however, stares at the knife with a very visible frown.
Is there something wrong with those knives? Idolaf frowns as well, noting Aria's expression.
Irileth also notes something off with the thrown knife (it was too shoddily made to be a dagger as far as she was concerned). She had chosen to stand behind Aria to get a better look at the knife's flying pattern. She wasn't quite sure what she saw, but it looked as if the knife had…curved, somehow? A trick of the light, surely.
Irileth wasn't new to throwing weapons. Ranged weapons curve in flight, and poorer ones "fly according to their quality". As far as she could tell, the knives in Aria's possession weren't so poorly built that they were imbalanced in their steel content. Or else, she reasons, she was just a bit incorrect in her observations due to her current position.
After all, the idea that a knife could curve and fly up was impossible.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
Given that Aria hasn't kicked my ass I'm going to assume that the daggers are to her liking…or at least she'll tolerate them.
She re-sheathes all three daggers and fastens them to her belt.
"You like 'em?" I grin.
She winks at me. "So-so."
"Interesting looking knives you got there." The Housecarl(Irileth) muses, wandering over to my storefront. "Think you can make another one in half an hour?"
Ahahaa "no. I don't have the materials on hand anyways." Why does she want one?
"Damn shame." She says and…oh hey, that's neat.
What?
Jake came across some silver during a trip some days back, which resulted in me having a small chunk of silver ore to work with. It didn't give me a lot of material, but there was enough for me to make three crude pieces of…jewelry.
The Housecarl's looking at the small jewelry box. "Are these yours too?" She asks, holding up a small silver charm (teardrop shape).
"Yeah, I wanted to try my hand at fine smithing." I reply. "How does it look?"
"Not bad for a trial run." She says honestly. "In lieu of a dagger, I'll take this for twenty septims."
Eeh…"Sure." Mell valued it at a little over twenty, so this is fine.
Mell?
She has an uncanny sense of the market, which…is useful, because at the moment, I do not. So I use her expertise when determining prices.
Anyways, the Housecarl lady takes her purse, grabs a small batch of coins, and lays them on Mell's little lectern of a table. Mell then expertly counts out twenty and gives the rest back to the Housecarl.
"Call this a vote of confidence from your friend there." She says with a smirk and a nod to Aria. "I'm going on ahead."
…
So…Aria's going dragonslaying. She's not admitting that she's going dragonslaying, but we all know she is.
Are we going with her?
…No, we're not. None of us are. Jake's about the only one with the combat experience to fight alongside Aria but uh…she turned him down. She says it's not important enough to need him, which is total bullshit.
The main reason why none of us are accompanying Aria is pretty simple: we couldn't handle the dragon's roar back in Rorikstead. Looking back, it was probably an intimidation based thu'um, and all of us save Aria failed the check. Odds are, if we go and join the fight, and the dragon uses that shout again, she might be hampered trying to chase down the dragon as it chases us down.
So…yes, no point in going.
What do you plan to do though?
Well…
I'm not much of a religious man, but in a time like this, I don't mind paying a visit to a temple.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
Honestly, minor attacks on bandit camps are a footnote in Aria's glorious history to become the Dragonborn.
Also:
Enchant - Put spell onto weapon from container.
Dechant - Take spell from weapon to container.
Disenchant - stop magic weapon from being magic, possibly permanently.
It makes sense that a civilization with significant experience in magic and enchanting would have more jargon than 'on/off'.