The next morning I head to Belethor’s and persuade him to buy a case of my brand-new all-natural hand-made certified-effective true-blue micro-nutritive conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant*. After making the sale, I find that I now have over 2000 septims--even with the food prices being what they are, that’s potentially enough for me to live on for weeks! Perhaps I should work on my smithing. I’ve been neglecting this skill, because it’s expensive to train--unlike with alchemy, the cost of the materials is considerably higher than the returns you get from selling finished equipment, at least at the beginning. And I’m certainly not looking for a second career; real non-player characters don’t have multiple professions. But a certain amount of smithing would be very useful--because a proper alchemist shouldn’t just buy preserved ingredients from apothecaries, I feel; she should travel through the different regions of Skyrim, learning where the various plants grow and how they look in their natural state, and gather them by hand in the wilderness. And wilderness travel means hunting opportunities, and hunting is fun, and if I’m going to be any good at hunting I’ll eventually need better equipment. This seems as good an excuse as any to pour my hard-earned money into a bottomless hole, so I wile away the morning at Warmaiden’s, making daggers out of iron ingots purchased from Adrianne. She watches me work for a while, and eventually asks me to deliver a sword that she made as a gift for the Jarl to her father, Proventus. Ever willing to take on a task that is unlikely to provide me with any undue excitement (even if Adrianne is probably using it as an excuse to get me away from her forge) I make the climb up to Dragonsreach. In the palace I find that little--perhaps even as little as nothing--has changed since yesterday. Which might seem unsurprising if it weren’t for the fact that the Jarl and his advisors are still engaged in their private discussion--in fact, they don’t appear to have moved. This is surely a false impression on my part, I eventually conclude; they can’t possibly have been there all night. I manage to take Proventus aside for a moment so as to hand over the sword. He tips me 20 septims--not much, but it’s not as though I’m hurting for cash at the moment. I stroll back down through the city with Jade, chatting a little here and there. It soon becomes clear that none of the people I’ve done little favors for have fallen madly in love with me; I’ll have to widen my circle of acquaintance once again. I’m also eager to get out of the city for a while: the weather is still fine, and I must have spoken to just about everyone in Whiterun by now (there are, no doubt, a few Battle-Borns and Gray-Manes that I have yet to interact with, but I can’t always tell one from another). I put on my armor, therefore, and head out to the stables to collect Snowberry, who seems to have been looked after well enough. The weather gets grey and thundery as we start along the road to the east and south. The journey is peaceful enough--we run into some Imperial soldiers escorting a prisoner with bound hands, and then some of the usual psychotic wolves, but nothing to give us any trouble. I am frequently distracted from my mushroom-collecting by deer and elk that go running into the river as if to drown themselves rather than be subjected to another mildly painful shot from my bow, which is very frustrating; they often don’t come up again. It doesn’t take us long to reach Riverwood, a small but well-appointed town to the south of Whiterun. (There’s a blacksmith and a general store.) It’s still early, and the woods are lovely, and I’m not about to waste all of that earliness and loveliness by heading inside just yet, so I park Snowberry outside the inn and continue exploring, following the bank of the river. Spotting another large elk, I crouch and shoot; as usual, it runs into the water--but it actually comes up again on the other side, and, amazingly, it hasn’t spotted me. I fire another arrow, and it dies. Two shots! I feel almost competent! But that glow of efficiency doesn’t last long, because getting across the river to claim my quarry proves to be a problem. It’s fast-flowing and deeper than it looks, and whenever I go in I get swept downstream so quickly that I’m afraid of going over the falls before I can reach the opposite bank. (At least Snowberry isn’t with me.) I make it only after several attempts that take an embarrassingly long time. But still--meat and hide, from an animal I killed, by stealth, using only two arrows. I turn around to Jade, internally beaming with pride (Nona’s actual face stays fixed in its permanently stunned expression, of course). She’s not there: perhaps she tried to follow me across the river and got swept away. It takes me a little while to find her. She’s still on the other side, engaged in a peculiar stand-off with a wolf on my side. They’re staring intently at each other from opposite banks, each looking ready to pounce at a moment’s notice if only there weren’t this torrent of water inconveniently in the way. It’s such an amusing sight that I shoot the wolf only with the greatest reluctance. After I’ve rejoined Jade on her side of the river, our wanderings bring us to a cave. My mysterious naming instinct is unusually silent on the subject of this cave, which probably indicates that it’s a back entrance to something. It doesn’t look especially threatening--there are no body parts on spikes or conspicuous magical apparatus outside--so I venture in to see whether there are any mushrooms near the entrance. At this point I’m informed that its name is Embershard Mine, but it doesn’t look as though it’s in use--as a mine, at least. There are little arrangements of bones dangling from the ceiling on strings, like crib mobiles intended to amuse baby necromancers. And there are no mushrooms. Jade and I decide to take the prudent course and get out of there immediately. The sun is going down as we return to Riverwood. An old woman insists that she saw a dragon. Fearing that she might be correct, I don’t ask her about it. I stop by the general store, where the proprietor is arguing with his sister over what sounds suspiciously like an opportunity for adventure--a valuable object was stolen from his shop--so I ignore their conversation and sell him several bottles of my soon-to-be-patented-when-patent-laws-are-invented potion*, and I buy one thing from him: another outfit. Finally, a new dress! Well, new-ish. Why does everything come pre-stained? Is it something to do with why clothes are so much cheaper than food? In the Sleeping Giant Inn, I meet an impressive Redguard warrior named Gorr, who informs me in a deep, ruminative voice that he’s killed more men than there are minutes in a day. When I find out that these kills took place in an Imperial arena, and not, as I might have feared, on the streets of an Imperial city, I’m somewhat reassured. It turns out that his primary interest is in trying new foods, which might have been something we could bond over were it not for the fact that he’s developed a hankering to sample some dragon steak. Mistaking me (as people do) for a person of similar sensibility, he expresses a willingness to join me, but I feel that such a partnership could only end up disappointing him. (And, needless to say, I probably wouldn’t like him when he’s disappointed.) Also in the Sleeping Giant is a young fellow named Hjoromir who offers to buff my shoes, wash my tunic, carry my belongings, deliver my letters, and whatever else I might want done that requires no professional skill. He tells me that he’s held a variety of jobs--as a farmhand, kitchenhand, blacksmith’s assistant, laborer--but his bosses have always been disappointed with his performance. Which is of little concern to him, because his mind is always on the subject of adventuring. He has gone on so many adventures and fought so many battles in his mind that his confidence in his ability to do the real thing is quite unshakeable. I’m impressed despite myself; this young, bright-eyed incompetent might make an even better companion for me than Jade! But I can’t have two companions at once, and it wouldn’t be right to abandon Jade so far from her home--nor would it be entirely appropriate for Nona to travel with a young man. But I do wish I had someone to wash the stains out of my clothes. If only it were possible. *Made with equipment that is also used to process fish, shellfish, eggs, wheat, human remains, and maybe tree nuts if I ever find any.
1 Comment
Cousin Vacua
5/21/2013 04:06:01 am
Dear Nona,
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201 And All That
Nona Plaia may well be the most boring person in Skyrim. Below are links to her "adventures" in chronological order.
A Life More Ordinary Mods An NPC is Born The Lady in the Lake Adrift in the Rift Opportunity Chops Studying Abroad Witches, Wolves Footwear is Not Enough A Modest Proposal Scales of Love Dances with Beers Five Rules to Live By Plain and Pusillanimous Watery Woes How Not to Stage a Murder Hot Heads and Cold Graves Run Nona Run Interlude A Fool Suffers Gladly The Markarth Discomfiture In Search of the Unknown It's Raining Bandits Down and Out No Holds Barred Beyond the Pale The Slippery Slope Mission Implausible The Nord in the Next Room The Only Living Girl Victory is a Gateway Drug Continuity Break Wherever You Go Archives
August 2014
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