Having looked through Elgrim’s inventory, dully inattentive to the possibilities, I’m now staring listlessly at his alchemy table. I feel as though my chosen profession is losing its luster; I can’t seem to focus. Elgrim’s irritable, vaguely mean-spirited chatter isn’t helping. Was he always this annoying? Did I really come here every day to practice, back when I first stayed in Riften, and not notice? Somehow I thought there’d be more to do here, but in my alchemy funk, there’s really very little. Jade and I visit the Bee and Barb, of course, but apart from an odd little colloquy taking place between Sapphire and Wander-Lust, everything is just as I remember it--Vulwulf Snow-Shod and the Black-Briars are as unpleasant as ever. I ask Keerava for news, and she hands me a note that she’s been passing out to travelers: I put the thing away. I don’t need yet another notice of derring-do to be done poisoning my mood. It’s not difficult to figure out the reason for my aimlessness, of course: it’s been a hard journey, a journey that I barely survived, and now, having done nothing but work toward its completion for several days, I am faced with the fulfillment of its purpose--to see Jade safely home, and say goodbye, and let her remain here within the relative safety of Riften’s walls when I finally depart. I’m trying, I suppose, to postpone that moment for as long as possible, but its imminence hangs over everything I do. But Jade seems cheerful, and her chatter keeps me smiling despite these sad reflections. “What about Peragorn and Valindor?” she asks as we amble around the marketplace, and I spend a few moments in bewildered incomprehension before realizing that she has turned to matchmaking again. “What, you don’t think they like each other? Or you think they don’t like other males?” As I’m pondering this dilemma, never having considered the romantic preferences of either of them before, a courier comes running up and, to my dismay, delivers another note: This is quite simply the weirdest missive I have seen yet. The Jarl of Falkreath wants to see me--because of the “fame of my exploits across Skyrim”? What could he possibly mean? Have I become known for gathering more armloads of purple mountain flowers than any one alchemist or interior decorator could possibly make use of within a normal lifetime? For occasionally delivering small packages to nearby recipients and being grossly overpaid for that service? For strutting back and forth in front of Jarl Elisif the Fair like a costumed chicken? Wait--is this a standard form letter that Jarl Siddgeir sends to anyone he wants see, for whatever reason? But it wouldn’t do to ignore such a message, would it? It’s from a Jarl, and there’s that tantalizing mention of a “choice parcel of land”--doubtless I would have to do something adventurous to earn it, but you never know; after all, I can’t possibly be famous for doing such things, so maybe I’m wanted for some purpose better suited to my limited capacities--perhaps the Jarl intends that I should dress up like a Penitus Oculatus agent and follow Dengeir around while scribbling meaningless notes and surreptitiously handing them to passers-by. At dusk we head to Haelga’s Bunkhouse to visit Kjoli and Inari, the lovers we met in Shor’s Stone. As fate would have it, we find them in the middle of an argument--Inari, it seems, is not pleased to learn of Kjoli’s intention to adopt a child. She runs up the stairs in a temper, and Kjoli, clearly confused by her vehemence, asks me to talk to her. I do, and at first her objections seem natural enough--she and Kjoli aren’t actually married, it turns out, and she wonders how he could possibly have thought it appropriate for an unmarried couple to adopt. But then she goes on to relate a surpassingly weird tale of meeting him at a temple where she had gone with the intention of committing suicide. He was praying, and as she plunged her dagger into her heart, he tried to save her. Something passed between them, and she has somehow, despite being dead, continued to exist on love alone. Kjoli overhears this, and tells her that she isn’t dead--a healer told him that the dagger missed her heart and she made a full recovery--and that he would gladly marry her in any case: the only reason that he never asked is that his own parents were unmarried and perfectly happy, so it never struck him as being terribly important. Inari is so moved by his words that she agrees to marry him immediately, and they ask me to help with the arrangements. Jade has been silent during the entire exchange. As we enter the temple of Mara, I decide to ask her to perform the ceremony. She tries earnestly to persuade me to ask Maramal instead, for the couple’s own good. I don’t know--I think it’s silly for her to be so worried about this curse; I would hope that she sees that any weirdness in Inari and Kjoli’s relationship was there long before she met them and has nothing to do with her. So I tell her to go ahead with it, and it actually goes off rather well. (You can watch the entire scene on YouTube.) I’m not sure I understand this stuff about Inari’s being dead or not being dead, but she’s happy, and Kjoli is happy, and that’s what counts, not some trivial detail about whether one is married to a corpse. The following morning, I say goodbye to Jade. Delaying the inevitable is just making me feel worse, and I don’t want to keep the Jarl of Falkreath waiting. It’s impossible for us to say anything adequate to the occasion--our hearts are too full, and the dialog options too limited. To protect me on my journey, I hire an arrogant young wizard named Marcurio. He promises to be a tedious companion, full of his own importance, but he’s eager to take my money and confident that he can blow my enemies to smithereens. Outside the tavern, I meet someone new--her name is Caylene, and she is either a beggar who does street performances or a very low-paid bard, depending on your perspective. For the price of a single septim, she performs a one-woman play for me called “The Jarl and the Jarless.” It’s truly dreadful; I feel thoroughly guilty for being so vastly entertained by it. I turn to Marcurio to learn his opinion, but he only observes slyly that I’m wearing an Amulet of Mara, and wonders that someone like me isn’t taken. I am grossly offended--someone like me, indeed! Someone who paid him five hundred septims not ten minutes ago and clearly has more where that came from--is that it? Does he really have no better sense than to propose to a woman he has just started working for? Is this his idea of professionalism? I tell him flatly that I’m not interested, and he says he’s sorry he brought it up. I should hope so! We depart Riften in mutual dissatisfaction, start heading north, and soon hear the tiresome noise of a bear up ahead. Then I notice another bear off to the side. I jump on my horse and gallop away in vexation, leaving Marcurio to deal with the angry wildlife as he chooses. He catches up with me at around lunchtime, as I’m devouring an experimental new dish that I think I’ll call Nona’s Rabbity Reagent Salad (I’ve recently picked up the Experimenter perk, which allows me to figure out two properties of any alchemy ingredient I swallow instead of just one, and I have a lot of ingredients to get through, as well as a nice bit of rabbit). Once my vision has cleared and I’m well enough to walk again, we go on with our journey, and I’m just starting to think that it might not be so bad traveling with Marcurio after all--he’s annoying, but that and the fact that he’s a hired mercenary combine refreshingly to remove any sense of responsibility I might otherwise feel for his welfare--when disaster strikes. It starts with a couple of wolves--nothing to worry about, as Vigilance and I are perfectly capable of killing such beasts as these without assistance. But Marcurio insists on showing off his skills, and his dodging this way and that while projecting bolts of flame from his fingers would make for a fine display if his aim weren’t so terrible. He fails to hit any appropriate target, and an errant blast finally catches Vigilance, whose fur bursts into flame. Vigilance turns on his attacker, Marcurio hits him with yet another firebolt, and I watch helplessly as my two companions, the animal understandably panicked by being set on fire, and the man who ought to know better than to torment such an animal, have at each other relentlessly, ignoring my attempts to calm them, until Vigilance, thoroughly outmatched, burns to death. I’m horrified--utterly dumbstruck. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I almost dismiss Marcurio on the spot, a mere four hours or so after paying his fee up front. And yet I know I can’t do without him--the roads are simply too dangerous, now, for me to travel alone. I’m trapped. I need protection, and being forced to receive it from the odious man who killed my dog makes me want to weep. Poor Vigilance! I hate leaving him here like this, his sad, furry corpse stretched out on the road, but I can’t pick him up and carry him, I can’t bury him--so here he will have to stay. I move on, numbly, with Marcurio following and at least having the decency to keep his ugly stupid mouth shut. The sun goes down, and although I was hoping to pass Valtheim Towers before making camp--the road leading up to them is so steep that I can’t find a clear, flat camping spot of any size--I tire of walking through the dark and set up my fire and my tent in the limited space available, leaving Marcurio to shift for himself. He knows where I keep the camping gear. Let him put up his own damn tent. The following morning, we pass the Towers and the turnoff to Whitrerun, taking the road that runs through Riverwood and along Lake Ilinalta. This is one of the most beautiful travel routes I know, but it brings me no joy; I feel stupid and miserable without my loyal, brave, incessantly-barking dog and my timid, self-doubting friend. And it’s a shame, because Marcurio is an astonishingly effective bodyguard--hostile beings are frequently burned to a crisp before I’m fully aware of their presence. (At least, I hope they’re hostile beings, and not just innocent passers-by or their pets.) With the security he affords me, I can walk all day without ever having to stop brooding about how much I loathe him. We arrive in Falkreath before 6 pm--not a bad time to present myself to the Jarl. I step behind a cart and change into my best clothes, the outfit that Taarie gave me to show to Jarl Elisif. We pass the general store and I can’t resist buying a couple of those scrumptious wheels of cheese. (Perhaps it is not the best idea to see Jarl Siddgeir while smelling strongly of cheese, but that thought only occurs to me after I’ve handed over my money.) Siddgeir turns out to be a pampered, self-satisfied young man, little more than a youth; any hope I might have entertained of his having a task for me that accords with my inclinations and competencies is quickly blown. “We’ll see if the stories about you are true,” he says, before describing his problem: there’s a group of bandits in his hold that he wants killed--not because of their crimes, but because they’re no longer paying him a cut of their proceeds. I don’t have any good way to respond. I can accept, I can flatly refuse, or I can turn away without answering. The latter options strike me not only as rude but as potentially risky: Siddgeir may be too great a coxcomb to think anything of telling a stranger about his chummy relationships with bandits, but there might be others looking out for his interests who have a grain of sense. I tell him I’ll do it. And not, I’m sorry to say, with the intention of appeasing him so that I can quietly leave Falkreath and forget the whole thing--I actually want to do it. I know how bad that is; I’ve willingly accepted a quest that goes against the basic principle under which I live my life: I am not a hero. I don’t kill bandits. (Well, I do, but only if they insist on attacking me as I’m going about my non-adventuring-related business.) But I want that land--that parcel of land that I can receive only through service to this silly young man. I thought I could marry my way into homeownership, but I’m too picky--I simply cannot find the house I want attached to the spouse I want. I would never have predicted that my dreams of domesticity would lead me down the slippery slope of adventure, but there it is; Nona Plaia will be a fallen woman. Best not to dwell on it--there will be plenty of time for self-recrimination when I’m done, if I survive. I need to focus on planning. I’m going to want some help, and not from Marcurio: the bandits are based in Embershard Mine, and narrow mine tunnels will make it difficult for a wizard to get clear shots at the enemy; plus there’s the more pressing fact that I absolutely detest the smug, soul-patch-sporting little creep. I want someone who will take the lead--someone with armor and weapons and courage and bulk. Someone like--just to pick an entirely random example that has nothing to do with my personal inclinations--that big, handsome fellow in Markarth with the goat on his shoulder. Vorstag? This needs to happen soon, before I can talk myself out of it. First thing tomorrow, I start breaking the rules.
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There’s no moonstone for sale at the Dawnstar smithy, and no canis root at the apothecary; both my elven helmet and the next batch of paralysis poison will have to wait. I mix a few potions anyway, as there’s always money to be made, and Jade has drunk the healing potions I gave her and needs some more. (She seems to drink only the restore health potions; she hasn’t touched the potions that both restore and temporarily boost health--maybe they taste funny.) It’s bright and sunny as we head south from Dawnstar. The first real obstacle in our path is Fort Dunstad, a large structure that sits in the middle of a snowy, wooded valley. It is, of course, occupied by bandits, and so presents the usual problem of how to get past without aggravating them. It looks possible to go around it in either direction; I decide to go to the right--the long way around--as there appears to be more room to maneuver on that side, and good cover from the woods. We climb the side of the valley and are afforded an excellent view of the bandits walking obliviously back and forth along the walls. It looks as though we’ll have no trouble, but as we approach the far end of the fort, the gap between the wall and the cliffside becomes very narrow: we’ll have to leave the trees and get very close to the bandits in order to pass, and in this glaring sunlight we’ll be hard for the sentries to miss. It would take a ridiculously long time to walk all the way around in the other direction, though, so I decide to risk it. I watch the bandits patrolling for a while, choose a moment when they are moving away from the corner I’ll be approaching, and then, with Jade, Vigilance, and Snowberry in tow, I creep down the snowy slope to the wall of the fort. For once, my timing is absolutely perfect--nobody notices. Even Snowberry attracts no attention. Miraculously, we get safely through the gap and back on the road without hearing a peep from anyone. There’s no way we’ll reach Windhelm before nightfall, though--that would have been a tall order even without the long walk around Fort Dunstad--so we stop for the evening at Nightgate Inn, pleasantly situated on the edge of a small lake. The innkeeper says that he doesn’t get much traffic through here, but there is one long-term resident, an orc who likes his privacy and pays so well that he practically keeps the place afloat on his own. The orc says he’s a writer, the innkeeper tells me--“Talks real good--not a savage at all.” I’d like to meet this fellow--not that there’s anything exceptional about an orc who is not a savage; the ex-Legion orcs I’ve met are no less civilized than Nords, in my view--but he doesn’t make an appearance, sadly. I talk instead to a man named Moris the Draugr (he wears armor in an ancient style that makes him look rather like a walking corpse, although he doesn’t seem to think that this is the source of his nickname), and then, because I find him self-important and clueless and sort of annoying to talk to, I turn to an agreeably crude Bosmer woman named Callen who spends much of our conversation making fun of him. Callen tells me that she became an adventurer because of her inability to do anything else: she hates taking orders, and so failed as a soldier; she hates giving orders even more, and so failed as a trainer of soldiers; and she considered being an assassin, but crouching hurts her back. I ask her why she came to The Pale. “This is going to sound pretty stupid, because it is,” she says. And it really is: she’s here because of a friend who likes horker stew. Really likes horker stew. In fact, he’s so serious about his horker stew that one night when he was enjoying some in a tavern and Callen got drunk and accidentally upset his bowl, he walked out in a fury and hasn’t spoken to her since. Callen is trying--rather sweetly, I have to say--to earn his forgiveness by hunting down the perfect horker so as to get the perfect cut of horker meat with which to make the perfect bowl of stew. And the name of the oversensitive gourmand she’s trying so assiduously to please? It’s none other than Gorr, the ex-gladiator I met in Riverwood. I part from Callen only with the greatest reluctance: if I were the sort of person who undertook quests, then the Quest for the Perfect Stew is exactly the sort of quest that I would undertake. But I’m not that sort; I content myself with wishing her well and we head out again the following morning. I’d been hoping to do some fishing in the lake, but it’s snowing as I step outside, and just looking at the water with all of those white flakes blowing around is enough to make me feel cold, so I abandon that plan. We pass an entrance to a place called the Forsaken Cave--but it doesn’t look forsaken enough to tempt me to go anywhere near it, what with the large brazier burning outside--and arrive in Windhelm at around noon, having encountered nothing worse than an Argonian thief and the occasional wave of frostbite spiders. (We’ve killed so many of these creatures that I’ve started routinely coating my arrows with their poison.) I don’t intend to stay here long: I learn from Arivanya that the Butcher is still on the loose--she says that he’d have been caught by now if the guards would only listen to Viola--and I don’t want to run into Scouts-Many-Marshes, because, you know, awkward. I visit Sadri’s, where I sell my potions and purchase an odd combination of refined moonstone and chaurus eggs, then divide several hours between the White Phial and the smithy. I make an elven helmet, finally replacing that cheap hide thing, and forge a new gilded elven cuirass using the quicksilver I got in Dawnstar. My efforts bring me to level 13. The weather looks bleak next morning, but it clears up wonderfully by around 8 am, allowing me to see the terrain that when I first came north to Windhelm was almost completely obscured by thick, soupy fog. The volcanic tundra is surprisingly pretty, all spraying geysers, colorfully variegated rocks, and bright yellow dragon’s tongue flowers that have fully recovered from my last visit and can be picked again. As we reach the southern end of the valley, a bear growls at us from somewhere in the trees. It’s not too close, and seems content to let us hurry away from it, but after we’ve moved a bit further along I look back and see that it has followed us to the road, maintaining the distance. As I walk on, keeping a nervous eye on the bear, two Vigilants of Stendarr come down the slope, and as soon as they pass me, the bear charges them. I back up, thinking that perhaps I can lend them a hand, from a safe distance, if things get bad--but thinking that thought is all I have time for before the bear has killed them both and is turning its attention on me. Fortunately, I’m already somewhat prepared, and it’s already somewhat injured, and after I’ve shot it full of poison it doesn’t give us too much trouble. Soon after disposing of the bear I find a dead goat, possibly one of its victims. I attempt to skin and butcher it, but I find only two silver garnet rings--that’s it, two jeweled rings; no hide, no meat. I’m not sure I want to know what’s happening to the wildlife in Skyrim. We have to fight one more bear during the climb--a fresh one this time. While bears do try to warn people off before they get too close, they also chase other wildlife with maniacal intensity, and so a bear that appears to be at a safe distance can suddenly reappear not at a safe distance if a deer or goat crosses its path. We manage to kill this one--it hits hard, but it’s nowhere near as fast or as tough as that snowy sabre cat--and I’m not too badly hurt, although fighting the bear in close combat does give me a nasty case of bone-break fever. But lunch is well overdue anyway, and some tasty fish soup clears up the disease. We’ve finally returned to the Rift. The trees are as lovely as ever, and I find a new plant specimen as I’m walking along, or rather an old one that I never before took notice of in the wild--canis root. It’s a dry, twisted, woody plant, and it’s no wonder that I was never able to distinguish it from all of the alchemically irrelevant dry, twisted, woody-looking things out there. We reach Shor’s Stone with plenty of daylight left to get to Riften, but I’m so obsessed with my new discovery that I pitch our tents there in the middle of the afternoon and wander into the woods, fully prepared to spend the rest of the day searching. I find a few more plants, and as night falls I notice torchlight coming from a nearby hill--it’s unlikely to be a guard, as it’s some distance out of Shor’s Stone and not moving, and also unlikely to be a bandit, as they tend not to be considerate enough to carry torches. It is actually a man named Kjoli, who is out enjoying the beauty of the forest while waiting for his wife. He tells me that he is on his way to Riften to adopt a child, but he hasn’t told his wife of their true purpose in going there. This seems to me like a very unwise thing to surprise one’s spouse with, but Kjoli feels certain that she will be pleased. As we finish our conversation, his wife, Inari, shows up--she’s a Khajiit, surprisingly, but seems very much attached to her husband, and the unlikely couple heads off toward Riften very lovingly. (I also get a quest update telling me to visit them in Riften; I certainly intend to do so.) Back at Shor’s Stone, I visit the smithy to work some hides, and Filnjar, the smith, notices I’m wearing an Amulet of Mara. He’s interested! And I find that ever so--weird. Because Filnjar has a quest, a quest to take care of the spider infestation in Redbelly Mine, and I haven’t done that quest, and I won’t do that quest. People in Skyrim usually want to marry you only after you’ve solved whatever problem they have at the moment, even if it’s a really stupid problem like being too lazy to deliver rum to the Blue Palace, and so I’m a little confused by Filnjar’s sudden ardor. It seems desperate, somehow--almost as though he has suddenly realized that Shor’s Stone is economically dead without its mine and that this unmarried woman in his shop has thousands of septims jingling in her bag. Still, I can’t help taking a look at the inside of his house while he’s eating his supper, and it’s not a bad little house, although there’s only a single bed. But I’ve already decided not to marry Filnjar: I couldn’t live in a mining town in which the miners are permanently out of work; I’d feel terrible. Also, I don’t like his hair, or lack of it. Not that I have a problem with baldness, but a man who is bald on top should not attempt to compensate by growing the sides really long. He. Should. Not. So Jade and I camp for the night in Shor’s Stone, and have an easy, pleasant walk the next morning. We widely skirt Fort Greenwall once again, pick canis root here and there, and after just over a month of traveling and exploring and gathering and fleeing together through every part of Skyrim save Winterhold, we finally arrive at the gates of Riften.
In the morning I awake to find Jade in my room: at some point during last night’s revels I must have asked her to come along with me on my journey, and here she is, ready and eager. Upon reflection I decide that this partnership will be good for us both--I get to have some company, and she gets to overcome her self-doubt by helping me find someone to marry. Assuming that her problems are owing to self-doubt, and not the result of the curse that she believes herself to be afflicted with. Well, it’s a bit late to tell her to go home now. It would hurt her feelings. I avoid making eye contact with people on my out of the Bee and Barb, as I dimly recall climbing onto Vulwulf’s table at some point during my little celebration. Fortunately he drinks so much himself that he probably doesn’t remember it, either. There are still a few things to do before we depart: First, there are provisions to buy. After checking the market, it turns out that there really aren’t, so I eat a leftover venison chop for breakfast. Second, I have to work on my whistling. (I need to be able to call my horse if I should happen to lose her, which can easily happen, as she will run away from fights, unlike a typical Skyrim horse.) I walk all over Riften merrily blowing in people’s faces until they start to react somewhat less poorly. Third, I visit the Temple of Mara for a little pre-travel blessing-with-possible-curse-removal (just to be safe). Perhaps Jade’s presence leads me to maintain contact with the altar for a little longer than I otherwise would. Finally it’s time to leave. I head to the stables for my horse--I’ve decided to name her Snowberry--and after changing into my leather armor I climb into the saddle and canter happily away from Riften. After a little while, I stop and dismount, as I’m leaving poor Jade quite a distance behind and there are plants to gather. Ahead, a couple of slender, black-robed figures appear to be having a flashy altercation with some other party. I freeze, hoping a little foolishly that I will not be seen, or if seen, ignored, but they are already advancing towards me in a distinctly unneighborly manner, the previous objects of their ire having been disposed of. I look around desperately for a good source of cover--even a seasoned warrior can be dispatched quite efficiently by hostile mages, and I hardly qualify as a warrior of any sort--but the only nearby hiding place is the nasty cave that leads under Fort Greenwall. I retreat to its mouth but dare not go in any further, and so my attempt at defensive maneuvering leaves me no less vulnerable than before. Jade rushes to my defense and gamely starts punching at one of them (she carries no weapons) while I, startled to find myself mostly intact and unhindered after their opening barrage of ice magic, cut the other apart with surprising ease. The one that is engaged with Jade soon falls to my sword as well, and I am left somewhat bemused by my own prowess. Gingerly, I check the bodies, but find no sign of who these women were or what reason they might have had for attacking two strangers that they found innocently picking flowers in the wilderness. The names that float into view (“Apprentice Necromancer”) are in no way enlightening. I leave the bodies and their belongings as they lie and we hasten away. Just before noon, it starts to rain. We’re now past Shor’s Stone and entering unfamiliar lands. I see a pair of elk ahead and shoot the larger one, which runs off. The smaller one seems rooted to the spot, perhaps stuck on some interfering piece of terrain, and doesn’t move an inch as I shoot it to death. We continue down the rocky slope around a switchback and into the valley. By the time we’re on level ground once again, I’ve collected all manner of meat and hides, some from animals I’ve killed myself, others from victims of the local psychotic wolves. Despite my indifferent success as an archer, I can’t resist shooting at the wildlife whenever I get a clear line of sight, and Jade has an odd habit of disappearing into the forest in hot pursuit of anything that’s still alive after I shoot it (which includes just about everything). Afterward, I can never find whatever it was that she chased down and presumably pummeled to death, so this does me no good at all, but she seems to be enjoying herself. A heavy mist hangs about the lowlands, blurring our view of the clear pools and geysers that make this area so distinctive. I’m finding several interesting new reagents as we continue north--dragon’s tongue, jazbay grapes, creep clusters--and my frequent stops slow us down considerably. Pausing near a sign that points the way to Windhelm, I notice that someone has left a note pinned to the signpost with a knife. It says that some giants have been given permission to camp nearby and should not be interfered with. Through the mist, I can see one of the huge bonfires that generally mark their camps; closer to me, a horse lies dead near an overturned cart. I’m curious to inspect it more closely, but as I approach, my mysterious naming instinct informs me that this area is called “Steamcrag Camp,” and I take this as an indication that I have come close enough. Not far from Windhelm, we run into a couple of travelers escorted by an Imperial Legion soldier. They’re on their way to a wedding in Solitude, and are understandably grumpy about being obligated to travel so far. The sun is setting as we reach the city itself, where a guard repeats the rumor I heard over a week earlier, about a child trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. I’m not sure whether I should take this as an encouraging sign that he hasn’t succeeded yet, or a disquieting sign that he has succeeded and is trying again because there’s someone else he wants killed and it worked so well the first time. As soon as we enter the city gates we see a Dunmer woman named Suvaris being accosted by two Nord men who accuse her of being some sort of spy. She reacts in a tone of angry resignation, immediately turning to me as I approach and asking whether I, too, hate the dark elves. A simple denial is enough to earn her approbation; it must be genuinely rough for her people here. I’m curious to visit the Gray Quarter, and almost walk right past a ragged woman named Silda who asks me gently for money. Can less than a week in Riften have robbed me of all compassionate feeling? Ashamed of myself, I stop and give her a septim. In the Gray Quarter, Jade and I visit the New Gnisis Cornerclub, where the proprietor, Ambarys Rendar, mentions that a Nord woman was recently murdered in Windhelm. He seems little concerned with the incident and I am unable to get any further information from him. A woman named Morviah Hlaalu regales us with the story of her doomed love affair with a Nord man who left her to join the Stormcloaks. It’s after 1am by the time she finishes her mournful tale. As Jade and I are leaving, we run into one of the charmers that we saw harassing Suvaris at the city gates. He says something about the reek of “gray-skin filth” and continues past us, yelling more insults into the night. As Jade and I head to Candlehearth Hall to find accommodations, I can only hope that there are no Dunmer on the streets at this hour who might be assaulted by this foulmouthed imbecile.
Over the next few days I settle into a routine of sorts: I get up, go shopping, and cook food for the day. I then walk to Heartwood Mill, hunting game on the way, and chop wood for a couple of hours before returning to Riften. I have dinner, socialize a bit, and go to bed. Little by little, I buy the things--the non-food things--that I need. I get decent clothes; I no longer look like a homeless person who stole someone’s good leather boots. My walks to and from Heartwood go quietly enough, although I do have one scare--an encounter with an Argonian thief who attacks me when I refuse to hand over my hard-earned wages and knocks off more than half my health with a couple of blows. There’s nothing to do but puff out my chest and speak as commandingly as I can; he immediately calms down and I run away before the Voice of the Emperor effect wears off. That day I return to Riften by a different route. As soon as I’m back in the city, I buy a steel sword. My efforts at hunting have what might generously be described as mixed results: I sneak up on a deer and shoot it, my arrow causes only a slight injury, and the animal promptly runs off into the forest and I am unable to get another clear shot. Thinking that I need to hunt smaller game, I shoot a fox: I fail to take even this small creature down with a single arrow, and it runs away. I do manage to kill a rabbit with one shot, but getting that shot takes quite some time, and it turns out that a single dead rabbit does not provide even one substantial meal. After a couple of days I start to notice that whenever I shoot a deer, it’s injured already, which is rather puzzling, as I’ve seen no hunters in the area--even the psychotic wolves have been conspicuously absent lately. This leads to a growing conviction that I have been walking back and forth between Riften and Heartwood shooting the same exact deer every time I pass it, and it isn’t recovering from its injuries in between encounters with me. I do finally get my deer, but the dubious method I have employed seems only to argue against my pursuing hunting as a profession--it’s not just woefully inefficient; it’s cruel. And is it necessary? It occurs to me that Nona could go on like this indefinitely, sleeping in Riften and working at Heartwood Mill. It’s easy. It’s profitable. It’s dull. It’s everything she’s always wanted! Well, not quite. Nona’s not an ambitious woman, to be sure--but her modesty does not extend to a lifelong commitment to a career as an unskilled laborer. She wants a profession--a skilled profession. If chopping wood required a skill, an honest-to-goodness learning-by-doing Skyrim skill with actual perks (“Level 100: chop an entire tree down with one stroke”), then she might be interested. But it doesn’t. She isn’t. (And then there’s the fact that chopping wood is really, really boring. For me as a player, I mean. I know, I know, I’m playing Skyrim as a character who doesn’t do anything and walks everywhere; I must be immune to boredom, right? I laugh in the face of tedium! I monologue when set upon by monotony! Actually, no. See, even though playing Skyrim as Nona isn’t the most thrilling thing in the world, writing about it is actually a pretty interesting exercise. But I can’t write about exactly the same day over and over again. No doubt there are writers who might do that sort of thing and even find artistic possibilities in it, but I’m pretty sure I lack whatever natural gift, or natural lack of self-reflection, is required to pull that off.) So Nona trudges off to her unsatisfying job every day for one reason: in the evening after work, she can visit Elgrim’s and practice her alchemy. So far she’s been using just the ingredients she’s gathered, and there’s not a lot of variety. With her Heartwood income, though, she can afford buy ingredients from Elgrim and experiment. She discovers some new formulas, and even gains a level, putting her first perk point into alchemy. Progress! It’s all too easy to neglect your social life when you’re working to put yourself through school, so I try not to let that happen with Nona. The jerks in the Bee and Barb only get ruder the longer she stays there--I could swear that Vulwulf Snow-Shod times his anti-Imperial tirades solely for her benefit, and Maven Black-Briar and her son seem to approach every so often specifically to insult her--but she meets someone new every day. She finally gets around to visiting Honorhall Orphanage, where Grelod the Kind works tirelessly to ensure that no child leaves her care with even a trace amount of uncrushed spirit. I’m astonished that Hagravi could be at all charitable toward her: if I’d grown up in this orphanage, I’d probably hire someone to murder the old hag. But how would I ever find a person willing to do such a thing? I also run into Ingrun Black-Briar. She seems pleasant enough, and I hope that we might have a great deal in common, being students of Elgrim and all, so I ask her why she became interested in alchemy. She gleefully describes her fascination with watching the destructive effects of poisons on people. Um, yeah. I guess I’m not going to have a best friend in this horrible family after all. I wonder what the one who’s in prison for murder is like? There’s Wujeeta, an Argonian skooma addict who desperately wants a healing potion but doesn’t seem to find my homemade ones acceptable; Olette, a little girl who picks my pocket; Wander-Lust, a robustly cheerful Argonian woman who travels Skyrim seemingly as a way of channeling her dead son, who could never stay at home. (I actually have to cut our chat short; some of the Interesting NPCs have conversations that can last for hours and hours of game time--some day I’ll have to try this mod with a character who doesn’t have to eat.) There’s Bolli, an affable fisherman I meet in the Bee and Barb and wouldn’t mind having dinner with, but he always seems to be sitting with Haelga. And there’s Jade, a woman who left the Thieves’ Guild to become a disciple of Mara and speaks tremulously of her ineptitude as a matchmaker. (The competition between disciples to get people together is apparently rather fierce, and Jade doesn’t want to be stuck handing out Dinya’s insipid leaflets.) I like Jade. I find her whiny at first--her voice has a slightly hysterical quality--but her story is amusing (her parents used to lock her in a room, and she learned to pick the locks and break out; she ran away from home and joined the Thieves’ Guild because she had no other skills, but she couldn’t bear to actually steal anything). And, oddly enough, she likes me--she actually seems to want to accompany me on my travels! I’m going to have to give this some serious thought: Nona would love to have a companion, and in Skyrim you usually have to do a quest in order to get someone to join you, so this is a rare opportunity. If Jade were a tough adventuring type, it would perhaps be too much of an opportunity. But Jade seems highly reassured by Nona’s assertion that she keeps to the roads when traveling because there’s so much scary stuff in the wilderness. “Oh, then we’ll make great companions!” Jade exclaims. No need to decide immediately, of course--I’m not going to bore Jade to death by insisting that she trudge over to Heartwood to watch me chop wood every day. But talking with her gets me thinking about the future: Nona would like to get married, some day, and the quality she prizes above all others in a prospective spouse is that he or she not live in Riften. It would be best, then, to visit the Temple of Mara and obtain an amulet before leaving town: with money coming in, she can afford to do that. Greed battles daily with wanderlust in Nona’s head: every night she contemplates leaving this rotten city behind, and every morning discovers some new commodity she cannot live without and trudges off to work again. The very last thing she buys is a horse. Nona could buy a horse anywhere, but she finds the Riften horses especially pretty, so a Riften horse she must have. On Morndas, the 25th of Last Seed, Nona gets to the mill early, works hard and diligently; returns to the Temple of Mara to buy flowers from Yushari, a khajiit flower-seller who emphasizes romance in her sales pitch but is brazenly materialistic in her outlook; heads down to Elgrim’s to extract essences from the blooms. She is starting to turn a modest profit on potions and has everything she wants for the road; this, she resolves, will be her last night in Riften. She has a venison chop for dinner and visits Mistveil Keep, where she has never yet entered; chats with Dirassi, a hypochondriac maid; returns to the Bee and Barb. In a celebratory mood, she samples one of the local brews, a Cliff Racer, which goes down easy but has a tremendous kick. One foggy hour later, she stumbles into her dingy room for the last time.
It’s Middas morning, the 20th of Last Seed. I’ve made an adjustment to Realistic Needs and Diseases, very slightly slowing down the rate at which I get hungry and thirsty. (It’s actually not so much the time intervals that bother me, as the amount of food I have to eat; unfortunately, I can’t adjust the latter.) I eat a huge breakfast, including more charred venison and salmon steak, and then contemplate my finances. Sadly, I don’t have enough money to purchase what I desire most--a bow and arrows. I’m going to have to hunt if I want to reduce my food expenses, but the only bow I can find for sale costs 151 septims, and after yesterday’s efforts I have only 133. At least I can afford to buy a lantern, which I do at the Pawned Prawn. Bersil, the owner, bitterly regrets having settled in Riften (he sold his boat, the Brawny Prawn, to get his business started) and conversing with him only reinforces my desire to leave. Even so, there are reasons to stay: I’ve been doing fairly well by fishing (if you could call it that), and the lake is quite large. Moving on to another city would require traveling through new, possibly dangerous territory. Plus, there are still many people in Riften I haven’t conversed with, and you never know--some of them might not be complete assholes. I haven’t even had a chance to visit the orphanage that Hagravi was raised in. I decide to stay in Riften for now. Leaving the city by the south gate, I step behind a bush and change into my new leather armor. It’s a grey, overcast morning, with a light mist that gives it a gloomy softness. I follow the edge of the lake west, wading in when I see fish near the surface, but the pickings aren’t as good as I would like. I find some barnacles and slaughterfish eggs in the shallow water, but little else. After a light, disconsolate lunch, I come across a mill. Heartwood Mill is on the southern shore of the lake, far enough from the main road that I didn’t see it during my journey from Ivarstead. I meet a little boy named Gralnach, who asks me to play. With my head full of my own problems, I decline, and he declares that I’m just as boring as every other adult. His mother, Grosta, has bitter feelings toward men: she runs the mill by herself, her husband having walked out on her some time back. She tells me I can help out by getting an axe and chopping as much wood as I can. Great, I think. Another joker. Sure I’ll help out, Grosta. Here I was actually feeling sorry for you for being left in the lurch by your worthless husband, and you have to take advantage of my kind, trusting nature. I’ll bet it’s fun swapping stories with the other Nords after work, isn’t it? “These Imperials think they’re sooo superior, sooo sophisticated, but just tell them to look for a axe that isn’t there and the idiots will run around for hours scratching their heads.” Well, I’m not about to fall for that again. I walk away, proudly. I walk so proudly that I practically trip over a chopping block with an axe sitting right next to it. I chop wood. I can’t believe it! Actual legitimate work! For actual legitimate money! Gralnach wanders here and there. A guard hangs about nearby. I chop more wood. Grosta watches the road, perhaps still hoping, after all this time, to see her missing husband. I bring a load of wood to her and go back to chop more. Little golden portraits of Tiber Septim dance in Nona’s eyes as she spends the proceeds several times over in her mind. She chops more wood. The pay is 5 septims per piece of firewood--a wage I would have considered absurdly high before I checked the price of soup. (Now I consider it only somewhat excessive. No, I’m not giving any of it back.) I overdo it a bit--it’s after 4pm when I finish, which means that it will be dark by the time I get back. Still, I talk to Gralnach again before I leave. I feel sorry for this lonely, fatherless child; perhaps, late as it is, I’ll take the time to play with him after all. But he’s no longer interested. M’aiq the Liar, whom I meet on the way back to Riften, isn’t much interested in me either. But I don’t care! Because I have money! It is in fact dark by the time I reach the city gates, and my lantern gets put to good use. I buy that hunting bow I’ve had my eye on, and 20 iron arrows. For dinner, I have the last of my venison. I refill my water bottles in the canal and then boil the water. (There’s no way I’m drinking water from the Riften canal without boiling it first.) There’s time for a bit of chat before bed, so I head over to Haelga’s and talk with a dark elf named Sadrin, who starts off on the subject of books and drifts to the topic of unfulfilled lust: he is staying at the bunkhouse only because he hopes to entice Haelga into bed, and cheerfully informs me of his dishonorable intentions with great animation. He’s an amusing fellow, and I’m actually sort of surprised that Haelga hasn’t gone for him. (If the gossip mill is to be believed, she’s not especially discriminating.) Wishing him luck, I head back to the Bee and Barb, lantern in hand. A guard tells me that Riften is no place for a nighttime stroll. Frankly, it’s no place for a daytime stroll; during my nighttime perambulations so far, I have been subjected to a total of zero criminal-recruitment efforts and witnessed a total of zero shakedown attempts. More evidence is needed to establish the superiority of nighttime strolling to daytime strolling, but the preliminary results are promising.
I decide to head to Riften next. That’s where Hagravi’s from, and he’s the most likable fellow I’ve met so far. The weather is fine as I leave Ivarstead, but it soon starts to rain, although not heavily. I meet a farmer on his way to Windhelm, followed not long after by two Vigilants of Stendarr. One of them, glowing with magic, warns me sternly against “cavorting” with daedra. I’m not sure why there should be a specific objection to dancing with them, but some religions can be awfully conservative. I don’t want to argue, though, because she’s kind of scary. Soon after, I meet another farmer, this one on his way to join the Imperial Legion. (Each to his own.) After a quick lunch of salmon steak, I come across group of Stormcloaks heading my way, and I am relieved to be able to continue on in relative safety (they either don’t notice or don’t care that Nona’s an Imperial). They complain about the Imperials and ask each other why they joined up; one says that his cousin disappeared one night, probably taken by the Thalmor. Then, a few minutes later, another says her cousin disappeared one night, probably taken by the Thalmor. The coincidence doesn’t seem to strike any of them as worthy of comment. (Maybe there’s a standard form that you fill in when you join the Stormcloaks: “Question 1: How many of your relatives are currently missing? Please specify the nature of each relationship in the space provided, entering “cousin” if unsure. Question 2: For each missing relative, rate your level of certainty that he or she was kidnapped by the Thalmor on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating that you are highly uncertain, and 5 indicating that you are utterly convinced.”) We walk on for some time in this cheerful way, picking flowers, bandying jokes about the Imperials, and slaughtering wolves, and finally arrive at the south gate of Riften, where a guard tells me that “riff-raff” are supposed to enter by the north gate. I try to persuade him to let me in, but he isn’t having any of it, so I walk around to the north. Once I arrive, another guard attempts to charge me an exorbitant “visitor’s tax.” I’m now pretty annoyed; I start to raise a fuss. He abruptly relents and lets me in for free. I’ve arrived in a real city--there are people and market stalls all over the place. First I meet Mjoll the Lioness, who mistakes me for some sort of heroic type but otherwise seems very nice; she tells me that Riften is pretty much run by the corrupt Black-Briar family and the Thieves’ Guild, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. Hagravi never mentioned that his home city was a crime-ridden cesspit; maybe he didn’t like me so much after all. After I part from Mjoll, a fellow named Brynjolf spots me, comments on my obvious poverty, and takes it as an indication that I’d be willing to do something criminal. Furious, I turn and walk away, but he won’t take angry silence for an answer, and thrusts his quest update forcibly into my journal. Humiliated, I pass by a woman shaking someone down in the street and head to Elgrim’s Elixirs--Mjoll mentioned that one of the Black-Briars studies alchemy there--and chat with Elgrim and his wife, Hafjorg. They ask me to pick up some ore from Shor’s Stone, which sounds easy enough, as Shor’s Stone is quite close. I use their alchemy table to experiment with the ingredients I’ve been gathering and munching. I make a Restore Stamina potion that is worth almost nothing, and discover a Resist Frost and Restore Stamina potion that they pay me 26 septims for. Not bad! Sadly, I don’t have the ingredients to make more of those. I’m now very hungry. I head back to the market and, having a mind to make soup, buy some raw food from Marise Aravel. But when I get to the Bee and Barb and find a cookpot, I realize that all the food recipes have changed--Realistic Needs and Diseases has made them much more elaborate, which is to say much more expensive. I can’t make anything with the stuff I have. I buy some pheasant stew, but it’s not enough to satisfy me. I buy a boiled egg and a carrot, and my stomach finally stops rumbling. The Bee and Barb is full: Aegir and Vulwulf Snow-Shod complain about the Imperials. Keerava, the Argonian proprietor, complains about the Thieves’ Guild and mentions the Shrine of Azura. Haelga tells me about the bunkhouse she runs and suggests that I not stay there. (I’m not sure how to take that.) I avoid the Black-Briars; after what Mjoll said, I’d probably get flustered talking to them. There are lots more, but I’m too depressed to socialize much. I’m spending way too much money--keeping myself from starving is ridiculously expensive. I wish I’d installed a mod called Reasonably Priced Needs and Diseases. After spending the night in a cramped, cheerless room, I’m down to just 11 septims. And I’m hungry again. I buy a carrot. Still hungry. Well, I do have something that will make a little coin--wolf pelts. I head to the blacksmith’s station and tan the pelts, cutting one into strips. What to make? After some thought, I make a pair of boots and a helmet, using up all my leather. The boots are for wearing, the helmet for selling. Poor Nona walked all the way to Riften with her feet in cloth wraps; her new boots feel great! The helmet sells for 20 septims and I immediately think of my stomach. But after another trip to the Bee and Barb to get some grub I’m down to just 4 septims--and I’m still not full! Heading out again, I meet Snilf, who declares that of COURSE I’m not going to give a beggar like HIM anything. Great Gods of Nirn, even the beggars in Riften are sarcastic pricks. What a town! And then comes the final touch--you can’t have a scummy shithole without shitty scumbags to threaten you, can you? The particular scumbag who accosts me as I’m leaving is named Maul, and he tells me not to cross the Black-Briars, or else. I’m about ready to cry. It starts to rain. On my way to Shor’s Stone, I pass by a fortress. There are no guards in the vicinity, so I give it a wide berth. It’s a peaceful trip, fortunately. I have no problem getting the ore sample from the smith, who tells me that the mine is full of spiders. (I make polite noises in response.) A woman named Sylgja asks me to deliver some letters to Darkwater Crossing. I decline, as I need to go back to Riften and I’m not sure where Darkwater Crossing is. I meet some miners who also complain about the spiders. There’s nothing else to talk about here, apparently. Time to head back. Hungry again, I eat a gourd I gathered earlier, which is better than nothing. Then I get attacked by the omnipresent psychotic wolves, which is something of a blessing, actually, as I can profit from the pelts and they aren’t hard to kill. As I’m circling around the nasty-looking fort again, I find a dead stag. Venison and a hide! Could my luck be improving? I also find a dingy hole in the ground called Greenwall Cave, which seems to go under the fort. I’m not even slightly tempted to explore. It’s about 4pm when I get back to Riften, so I decide to go fishing, which I do in the traditional Skyrim fashion by splashing noisily into the lake and grabbing at fish with my hands. My efforts are surprisingly successful: I get perch, histcarp, a river betty or two, and a lot of salmon. Time for some leatherworking! At the forge, I make some actual leather armor. I haven’t been doing much fighting, but I can always sell it if I’m desperate. Mjoll’s friend Aerin stands by the whole time I’m working and blathers on and on about how great Mjoll is, how deeply she cares--it’s a wonder that the woman can stand him. Next, I deliver the ore sample to Elgrim’s. Sadly, they pay me in potions rather than money. After selling those back along with a few of my own, though, I have a fair amount of coin, and I also have enough venison and salmon that I don’t need to pay much for my dinner (I have to buy salt to make salmon steaks, but the cost is a pittance compared to my previous expenditures). I wolf down meat and fish straight from the cookpot. After dinner, I visit the bunkhouse and chat with a Skyrim-born wood elf named Peragorn who claims to be of no interest to someone like me (like everyone else, he thinks I’m an adventurer). Actually, he is a little dull, a little long-winded on the subject of dullness, although I enjoy his story about traveling to Valenwood to explore his roots and discovering that he’s really a Nord at heart. The conversation takes so long that I don’t have time to talk to anyone else, which is a shame, as they seem like a more amiable lot than the Bee and Barb regulars. It’s midnight by the time I get back to my dismal accommodations.
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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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