This quest I just got wasn't in the game. I don't know I should handle it, besides following the quest objectives. The first one was to obtain more information regarding it, thankfully. I had no time limit on it, so I'll put it aside for now and continue with the main questline, so that I can ensure the end of the world, or at least, the re-enslavement of Man doesn't occur.
"Well, then. That certainly puts a happy thought to mind. I think I'm gonna get some rest now, so that I don't fall asleep when we're killing bandits and looking for a rock." I go inside the tent and roll out my bedroll. I ignore their words entirely, besides the scheduling for watch. First watch is Hadvar, and I'm third.
I lay in the bedroll and shut my eyes. I pretend like I'm sleeping. I hear Uthgerd, Jenassa, Hadvar, and Faendal talking outside the tent, but I can't actually make out what they're saying. Eventually, someone else comes into the tent and lays beside me, in their own bedroll. My eyes eventually stay shut, and I actually fall asleep. Then, a cold hand wakes me up.
I open my eyes. It's late afternoon. The person who woke me is Jenassa, who was on second watch.
"D-do you mind if we s-share a bedroll? It seems I d-don't have one." She whispers. I blush at the thought, as well. Thank the Nine the sun was shining in her eyes, covering up her sight my face, otherwise I might be more embarrassed had she seen. So she went from being suspicious of me, to asking me for help in only a couple days? Interesting how the world works.
"Here, you can have it to yourself." I offer back in a whisper. I get out of my bedroll, and start to crawl out of the tent.
"Wait, it's fairly cold and... I would not like for you to freeze, either," she whispers, almost... worryingly? Is she actually worrying about me right now?
"Don't worry, I'm a Nord, and besides, I've got Flames. I'll just restart the fire. You rest in my sleeping bag. It's my watch, anyways." I deny her again.
As she comes down to get in my sleeping roll, I help her down, and notice something. As it turns out, her hands are a bit more than freezing, and they're completely stiff. Her hands are clearly frostbitten. They're a pale shade of white. For a dark elf with ash grey skin, that's pretty damn frostbitten.
"Wait... I think you might have frostbite. Do you mind if I try to Heal your hands?" I ask. She frowns a little, before shaking her head, "Mm-mmm. I thought my hands were numb, but I didn't think they were that far along."
This is going to be my first attempt at using Healing a basis to try and use the spell Healing Hands. Having understood the concept of Healing, Healing Hands should be pretty simple. And the risk should be much lower, especially considering it's a spell designed to heal.
I slowly wrap my hands around hers. Her hands are freezing, even through the leather of my gloves and the leather of her gauntlets. I try not to rub her fingers as much as possible, before casting Healing on both of my hands. A warm feeling flows through my body, and I shut my eyes and try to turn the feeling and energy towards her and her injury.
Healing spells are, as far as I currently know, the only spells that require more than conceptualization to cast it. The biggest part of Healing is understanding the injury, and utilizing the Magicka as a sort of accelerant for the body to heal the injury. Biology was an easy class for me in school in my old life, and since having in-depth knowledge of the biology and anatomy of a human was essential to being good at casting Healing, I'm very good at casting Healing.
Jenassa gasps out as I manage to turn the effects of the Magicka onto her. I can feel warm air flow around us, as the spell takes hold of the air as well.
Her hands turn a more normal shade of skin color for a Dunmer and her body starts to warm up to a normal temperature.
"T-thank you." Jenassa whispers as I let go of her hands. I nod. I finish helping her down, and when I stood back up, I face away from her and start smiling. Holy shit. Holy shit. I did it. I learned Healing Hands! I mean, it drained my Magicka at a stupid fast rate, but I did it.
Holding hands with Jenassa was also a new experience. And now that I think about it, Jenassa is definitely beautiful, but I'm not in the market. I've got bigger worries than being alone, considering I still have to kill Alduin, so I can't really start a relationship right now. In fact, that would only serve to put someone into danger, as I'm going to do some very bad things and get a lot of people mad at me. Most of those things will thefts, assassinations, and so on.
I gather more wood and light it up with Flames. As the wood catches, I pull out my spellbook and start to read more. I practice Flames, and as I realize more and more things about the spell Sparks, and the essence of how it works, I figure out how to turn the intensity of the Flames, increasing and decreasing the heat and range of the Flames. It was finally sunset, when I made a breakthrough while reading the spellbook. After finishing the book twice, I make the attempt to cast it, facing the fire.
I cast Flames in my hand. I force the Magicka to be compressed. The Magicka of Flames turns into a bluish-white pinpoint hotter than a blazing bonfire with gasoline poured all over it. After that, I try to magnetize it to the positive pole. I manipulate the Magicka, juggling it between the two magnetic poles, until enough absorb a magnetic charge. After that, I force the Magicka to vibrate at a high speed. With it constantly vibrating at a superspeed, I ground myself using the earth as my anchor. Dust around me carrying a magnetic charge starts to rise up in the air, surrounding my magnetized Magicka.
Sparks of electricity arc to my armor, flying out from my tiny magnetic bonfire. I then manipulate the Magicka around my hand to act similar to a barrel with a wall of neutrally-charged ions of Magicka, and aim the spell at the ledge. The sparks stop flying out, and my tiny magnetic bonfire turns into a rough line shape that jumps around, with a barely visible ball of Magicka inside. Using the wall as my target, I shut my eyes, imagine a constant stream of lightning bolts flowing out of my hand and at the wall at a constant pace, like a flamethrower shooting lightning. I open my eyes and finish casting the spell.
The spell Sparks forms as electricity shoots out from my hand and jumps to the earthen wall in front of me at a constant pace. The loud crackling and buzzing of Sparks crack out among the sound of of the woods' popping in the fire. The drain on my Magicka is about the same as blasting a torrent of Flames. I nearly scream out in joy.
Two spells in one day?! LET'S FUCKING GOO!!! I've now learned Sparks and Healing Hands, adding two more spells to my arsenal.
Hadvar, Faendal, Jenassa, and Uthgerd all jump out of their tents right after, holding weapons, pans, whatever they were able to grab quickly. They look at me like I'm crazy.
"What in Oblivion waz 'at?" Faendal is the first to ask.
I answer quickly. "Fire. Lotta steam trapped in that wood." I hide my new powers. 'It's totally gonna be awesome when I show them off.' When they heard my excuse, they were a little suspicious, but went back to sleep quickly.
An hour passes, dropping the sky further into dark, and I spend the time practicing Flames.
When I deem it dark enough to sneak among the snow and not be seen, I wake the others, and we break down the campsite. We eat a light dinner of a stew of potatoes, leeks, onions, carrots and bread, and start sneaking up the mountainside to where the bandits are sleeping. Jenassa guides us across the snowdrifts and through the flurries and soon we're at the ruins. Eventually, the clouds clear out and the stars let us see.
As we come closer to the bandits campsite, we pass large stone structures of ancient Norse design with intricate drawings, and eventually see a large stairway in front of us. When we get close to the stairs, I gesture for the party to stop, and I gesture for Faendal and Hadvar to approach from around the opposite side, giving them the rope to use to their adavantage. I also gesture for Jenassa to shoot whatever sentries they might have. I'm sure they prepared sentries or guards so that the rest of the bandits can rest easy.
I look around and see several watch posts, but not very many people around.
I point Jenassa towards a woman on a watchtower wearing a hide cloak and hide armor. She draws an arrow, then aims. She looses the arrow, and it flies the 25 yards to the woman's head.
Unfortunately, the arrow misses and the bandit swats the air, thinking it was a bug or something.
Jenassa curses under her breath, and aims again. This time, for the bandit's sizable chest. I mentally agree with her. Center mass oughta take her out, right? She fires again, and that hits her with enough force to throw her off the entire watchtower. Fortunately, the watchtowers don't have guardrails, and the woman falls to her death, if she were still alive. Now, the bandits can't find her body either. I mentally take note of where the woman fell.
Jenassa readies another arrow and prepares to fire at another sentry. I signal for her to fire as Uthgerd and I approach the stairs.
The stairs lead to a large stone platform with snowdrifts scattered around, along with a series of giant arches with support columns in the middle of the platform. I see two more bodies at the top of the stairs, on the opposite side. It's Hadvar's and Faendal's handiwork.
The fifth archer Jenassa mentioned, is running over to a tower, a dagger in hand. I quickly take him out with one of my throwing knives, which impales his back. His padded tunic and leather straps were useless against my knives.
He falls forward onto the watchtower he's standing on. We cross the platform. There's not so much snow over the top of the platform. It appears that the bandits swept the snow off the worked stone.
The four warriors are sleeping in front of the Barrow. I retrieve my knife as I head towards one. Hadvar sneaks up to the other and I squat above mine. I wave Hadvar over to mine, and quickly and quietly explain my plan. It'll only work if his guy is alive. At least for a little longer. While Uthgerd and Jenassa kill their two quietly, I toss away my guy's weapon, and signal Hadvar. It feels weird taking such underhanded means, but in this world... The ends justify the means in some cases.
My thoughts return to a few days ago, when I'd woken up in this world; or rather, the few minutes after, in which something about myself... Changed. Maybe the reason my head's felt cloudy these last few days have been because when I told myself to turn off my mind, that's what I really did. Is waking up... Myself? My true mind? The beast inside me? Whatever it is, is waking it up worth it, to become my best? How can I retain my humanity, seeing the slaughter I did? What is humanity? Isn't it but a mere illusion; of justice, where a man accused of nothing can die for crimes he hadn't committed? Of peace, where people in power laugh as money flows from the wars they trick the public into serving? Where oil wells pump, blood tends to flow first. Of love, where people are just as willing to backstab you and betray you, as they are to be happy to see you? Where true loyalty and friendship is only found in television stars shows, made by actors who suffer in silence? Oh yes, those actors may be rich, but they don't know peace anymore. Their lives are so overcome by the public's interests, that were they to make a single mistake, they would be shunned, and their lives ruined. What is humanity? And why? Why do we suffer? Is there joy that we can find?
All I see everywhere I turn is but another dark, dismal alleyway, where if you don't watch out for yourself, your life will be stolen from just as easily as your wallet will be. All I see is death, murder, betrayals, lies, and regrets. Forgotten dreams, lost to what's "good for us". Ruined lives, broken dreams, lost in a shattered night. There are very few things that seem to be a constant throughout the domains of man, and those are suffering and death. Those are absolute.
No. It's better to kill my mind, and pretend it's fine. Better to live in an ignorant bliss, unaware of the madness and the shadows that gnaw at our lives. Oh, we know exactly what's wrong with this. Even I do. I know my plan, I know myself, or at least... I think I do. I hope I do. Better to live in a hazy, cloudy fog than a crystal-clear nightmare.
I must focus on what's right in front of me. If I don't... What will happen? What will change? What will be destroyed in my efforts to make right what's wrong? Better to be silent, turning my attention back to what's in front of me.
Hadvar picks up the man under him, and holds him in a light chokehold. As Hadvar did that, his guy wakes up, and mutters something upon waking up. I can't hear him.
I smack the guy under me awake with my hand, and kneel on his chest. He tries sitting up, but is obviously immobilized.
"Wakey, wakey." I grin unsettlingly, or at least try to. I wait a few minutes for him to get back to breathing right, to some degree. I'm not mad about playing the villain. It feels like something I'm used to anyways.
"Right. How many people are inside?" I ask him. "Tell me or your friend dies. If you would, please." I gesture for Hadvar to bring over the warrior he's holding.
"Hehehe. Ahahaha–! That's not me friend." The guy under me objectively looks happy that the other guy was the guy he hated. "N'fact, I hate the bastard, please kill him."
"You're... You're fucking with me, right? The one! Other guy we didn't kill already, is the one guy you hate?" My heart falls. I look back and forth from each bandit to the other. They've got to be friends, right?
"Don't know that term 'fucking', but I'm sure as Aetherium not shitting you. Here. Grab my journal. It's in me pocket. I drew a picture of the bastard. Even wrote in 'ere 'bout how much I hate him."
I reach in his pocket, to find a small journal the guy mentioned. He really did hate the guy, a Nord by the name of Erlwin. The picture inside was shit, but it was relatively acceptable. He actually had mediocre pictures of everyone we'd killed already. He apparently hated them all, except the woman who had notably large breasts. He wrote something about dominating her in bed, but he didn't want to rape her, he just wanted to beat her in something. She was just better at everything than he was. She treated him somewhat respectably, and he didn't dislike her. He just wanted her to be submissive to him something, and the one thing they hadn't done yet was have sex. Not that he could even rape her anyways. She was stronger than him, which was a personal failure he felt he couldn't tolerate about himself. It was arguable that he hated this entire bandit crew, except for that one woman.
In fact, that was the entire reason he hated them. None of them treated him with even a mote of respect, (discluding the woman). They all treated him like shit, (again, discluding the woman). Worst of all, they killed the baby wolf he tried to tame. They even promised him by being a bandit he'd get gold doing this so that he could feed his family, his son and daughter. They were refugees suffering the most from the war. His wife had died years ago, caught in a crossfire battle between a Stormcloak guerrilla raid on an Imperial convoy.
"I'll be damned." I take my knee off his chest, giving the journal back. "You really do hate him. Shite. Well," I say, giving him a throwing knife. "You can kill him yourself." I look to Hadvar.
"Let him go." Hadvar looks confused, perhaps even a little bit disturbed, but he listens. He lets Erlwin go. My guy jumps at him, shanking him to death, before the Erlwin can even react.
"Ya killed me wolf! Ya bastard! Lucky it was them who killed ye friends, cause if they didn't, I woulda!" He cries out as he stabs the guy. As he guts Erlwin, tears fall out and he eventually just stops stabbing him, and starts crying.
While he went buckwild killing Erlwin, I got everyone to gather the bodies. After lighting a couple torches, we gather and loot the bodies. A total of 167 Septims was directly earned from that small slaughter. Three minor potions of healing, a minor potion of stamina, and a potion of Magicka was removed from the bodies, along with eight lockpicks.
We also come up with several sets of armor and weapons. A leather rain cloak which Jenassa takes, two sets of banded iron armor, a set of steel, two sets of hide armor with hide cloaks, hide bracers, a lot of leather boots, and there's a Cyrodiilic leather shield from the Third Era. For the weapons, there's a rusty steel sword, an iron mace, and a serrated orcish sword, (which I add to my collection of weapons). There are five bows: two recurved imperial longbows, a hunter's longbow, a silver bow, which I'd never seen before, and an orcish bow. The archers also seemed to have some semblance of the idea of personal defense and had daggers, three of which were steel, and the other two were iron daggers.
After separating the bodies from the loot, we pile the bodies and create a funeral pyre made of corpses. I light the corpses up. The burning bodies creates a stench of an unimaginable degree, but it's better to burn them than to simply leave them there, to freeze or to rot.
We unstring the bows, and store all of the weapons and armor at the entrance of the Barrow. We'll come back later, and pick them up then, so that we can sell them in Riverwood.
When the guy finally gets back from killing the other bandit, he walks up to me, covered in blood, snot, and tears. "Thanks mate." He sighs. "I needed that. If you want... I s'pose I could help you out a bit... It's only right. A trade, of sorts."
Now that he's standing up, I actually got a good look at the man. He's a wood elf, a Bosmer, like Faendal, sporting a black mohawk. When Faendal realizes that the man in front of me is a Bosmer, he says, "A kinsman? This far from Valenwood?"
"Aye, well... sort of. My name's Bror."
"Bror? That sounds like a Reachmen name... Ah, I see. You're a half-elf." Faendal nods in understanding.
"Aye." Bror offers little else.
I turn to the group.and gather them a bit away from Bror. Uthgerd and Jenassa stand to my left, while Hadvar and Faendal stand to my right.
"Thoughts?" I ask. I'd rather have the others' opinion on Bror, before I let him join.
"He's a bandit." Faendal states.
"I think Drake meant beyond the obvious." Jenassa criticizes Faendal's answer.
"I did, and you can't exactly call him a bandit. He hasn't killed any innocents, as of yet. Only other bandits. I'd say they drove him to a reasonable amount of anger, too." Having read Bror's journal, I saw that the only people he's killed as of yet were the ones that did the most damage to him, emotionally and physically, and set him off.
"I meant, that we probably shouldn't trust him too quickly. We don't know what triggers his uh... Propensity for violence. I'd rather not be stabbed in the back while killing other bandits." Faendal elaborates.
Thinking about what Bror wrote about, I speak up. "It seems to be respect, mainly. They treated him like shit. They killed his dog, or rather, wolf, and didn't pay him what little he asked for. He did it all to feed his family, so his journal says."
"Well, in any case, let's not have him behind us. I'll let him stand by my side, but I'd rather not let him loose behind me." Uthgerd has a relatively optimistic opinion on Bror, likely due to his barbaric method of attack.
"I'm not so much worried about him, as I am, you, man. You alright? You didn't look very... sensible when you signalled me before you woke Bror up. You almost looked..." Hadvar worriedly says at me, before shaking his head.
Jenassa, Uthgerd, and Faendal all look at me with the same worried look.
"Almost looked... what?" I inquire. What could I have looked like, to worry them all?
"Insane?" Faendal supplies. Insane? I don't think I'm insane. Pretty sure that's all just perspective, anyways. One sane man in a society of insane people will look insane to them, and vice versa. I'm no Sheogorath, though.
"Bloodthirsty?" Uthgerd suggests. Bloodthirsty? I might be. I don't think my heart races when I see blood. I think it's less of a longing for blood, and more like a want of meaning?
"Like... Like... Never mind. We'll talk about it after we finish clearing this place." Hadvar couldn't finish what he was saying.
Jenassa, nods, agreeing with Hadvar.
"Alright... That being the case, let's talk to Bror." I don't quite understand what Hadvar was trying to get at, and walk back to Bror, who's sitting on some fallen rubble.
"Well, I'm Drake." I introduce myself. I point to everyone in order of my right to my left. "This is Hadvar, Faendal, Jenassa, and Uthgerd. Welcome to the crew. You were a bandit, so it's hard for us trust you if you're behind us. No offense. We just don't want you to backstab us. Betray us, and we'll kill you. Simple as that. I have full trust in everyone else here, so the second they feel like you're acting suspicious, we've got a problem."
I gave him some simple rules to follow. Bror nods, and walks in front of us.
"That being said, please guide us."
The iron doors in front of the Barrow are massive and inscribed with an artistic depiction of the gods. We open the heavy doors just enough to fit through, and as we do, they create a loud creaking noise. The room we're in now would be Bleak Falls Temple, if I'm remembering from the game right.
A wave of dusty air blasts out of the Barrow, and we enter. We all cough out the dust in our mouth. We shut the door. Firelight from the opposite side of the room flickers across from us.
"The food's not ready yet!" A deep male voice calls out to us. A large column separates the bandits from seeing us, so they don't know who or where we are, just yet.
Then we hear the bandits continue talking amongst themselves.
"If that dark elf wants to go on ahead, I say let him. He steps on a trap, that's more for us." I hear the woman say.
"What of the detachment of guards below? What if they decide to retake the watchtower?" The man pushes his conversation forward. I ignore him as a notification from the Scribe appears. After seeing it, I let out a small sigh.
Quest Added: The Golden Claw|
I know this quest. It's easy enough.
"I'll signal you when we're ready, be prepared to fire." I whisper to Jenassa.
Then I gesture for Jenassa to get a vantage point behind a sarcophagus that's near us. As she settles into place, she nocks an arrow and nods to me.
Good, she's ready. Faendal takes position on the opposite side of the position Jenassa's in, next to the crumbling rubble that probably used to be a sarcophagus as well. Uthgerd and I move behind the column. I nearly step on the corpse of a skeever, a giant rat, sneaking over there.
There's five of them. A male bandit wearing a hide armor is turning a skeever, (a giant rat), on a spit over a fire, a female bandit with tattoos all over her face is stirring a pot near it. As she stirs it, she tastes it every few seconds. Behind the female bandit is a man that looks like he's sleeping, although he doesn't look very healthy. He might be sick... The two others are wearing steel helms, so I can't find any defining features, besides the fact that one that's sitting close to the fire and the other...
The other helmeted fellow is sitting on a chest. Hm? I imagine the goodies that might be in there, and get a feeling of greed. I signal to Jenassa, and she fires her arrow at the skeever turner. Her shot takes him in the head, and immediately kills him. Faendal's shot is a quarter of a second after, taking out the woman.
The two bandits jump up in surprise, and the one sitting on the chest attempts to pick up an iron sword and a large steel tower shield. Jenassa fires an arrow at him as he equips his shield and hits him in the shoulder, forcing him to drop his shield. I get close to the guy who's sitting by the fire, and cast Flames with my left hand with a long range, low spread burst, and light his face up. Post-torching his face, he proceeds to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. That steel helmet only trapped the flames and forced it into his face further.
"Shit, Günther!" Chest bandit yells out. He breaks the arrow in his shoulder off, just in time to raise his shield to stop Uthgerd's mighty swing. Or rather, he took the hit. He flies sideways more than at least a couple yards, but couldn't get out of the way before Hadvar's sword kills him, stabbing him in the chest.
I put my throwing knives back, and pull out my axe, slashing at Günther's neck. His head separates from the rest of his body easily enough, despite a large pauldron worn over his hide armor, on his right shoulder. The sick man Bror runs to, and... protects?
"Don't kill this one! He's an innocent!" Bror calls out.
"What do you mean, innocent?" I ask.
"This man is– was a traveler. He attempted to join this crew after these bastards killed his family. It was the only way for him to survive." Bror explains. "But right after he joined, he got sick. We don't know why. It's not a disease, that much we could tell."
"Alright. Sit him up against the wall, next to the doorway there." I gesture towards the doorway I was talking about, one that led further into the tomb directly behind the cooking fire. Bror does so, before wrapping the man in a blanket from a bedroll one of the bandits had laid out, and setting some bread and one of the bandits' waterskins near him.
There's no point in sneaking around anymore. Everyone's dead. If anyone heard the shouting and didn't come, then they weren't close enough to hear them in the first place.
"Let's loot the bodies, and get ready to continue on." I say, and gesture to spread out. Faendal is too squeamish to loot the bodies, knowing that they were a living breathing person just before then, and Hadvar and Uthgerd feels it's disrespectful to take the belongings of the dead, so Jenassa, Bror, and I take it over.
We search the chest. A sack of 60 coins, a ruby, three lockpicks, a mace are inside. Checking the coins reveals that although they are gold coins, they aren't any kind of gold circulated in the last thousand years, based off the inscriptions and design. After removing the armor and weapons off of the bodies, and storing them with the rest of the armor and weapons from earlier, we burn the bodies, removing their trace. We empty the stench made by the burning corpses by cracking open the doors to the Barrow, letting a balmy nighttime breeze in. I shiver, from the sudden rush of cold wind. I didn't realize it, but the temperature's much higher inside than it is out.
"Let's look around, and check for anything extra," Jenassa suggests. I nod, agreeing with her and we all light torches. We spread out over the room and look around. I look in the corners of the room, past the rubble, to find... Nothing.
There's nothing around here besides skeever corpses and sarcophagi. While I am willing to loot the dead, that really only applies to the recent kind. Long-dead corpses, on the other hand... Yeah, I've seen enough horror movies and played enough of Skyrim to know that the ancient dead are best left the same way they're found: with their belongings. I know enough lore of Skyrim to know that curses do exist, the gods meddle too much, and the dead always come back. Sometimes, all three happen at once.
"I got nothing," I call out. We rendezvous back at the campfire.
"I found a small sack of gold," Jenassa says. "It was in the sarcophagus I was shooting by. The other didn't have anything in it, though."
"Cool. Hold onto it for now, and let's continue on." I say.
We go behind the fire to a doorway that opens into a stairway leading down. It leads to a hallway that twists left, turns back right, has another stairwell, and has the entrance to another hall on the right. Fallen rubble prevents the entry of it though, so we move on with the rest of the tunnels.
Bror slows down, turns to me, and whispers, "The room ahead of us is trapped. Several bandits were locked on the other side after one o' these idiots messed with the lever. We'll have to figure it out before moving on."
That being said we sneak up to a doorway that opens into a large room that, upon looking around, appears to be a giant puzzle room. I remember this room very well.
A bandit is in the middle of the room, trying to figure out the puzzle out. He flips a lever on a pedestal in the middle and is shot chock-full of poison darts. His body flicks back and forth and spins around as he dies. The gated doorway on the opposite side of the room remains shut as he dies to the poison.
When the darts stop flying, and the bandit dies, we move into the room and look around. The lit braziers in the room provide more light than our torches, so we snuff out our torches.
Next to the pedestal with the lever on it is a bunch of rubble with a large snake design on a piece of black iron plating. On the left side of the room are three niches with large, decorated, rotating pillars. Each of the pillars are decorated with the same three patterns, a snake, a whale, and a bird. On the ceiling, in giant heads' mouths are a snake on a black iron plating in the first one, and the third one has a whale-fish thing on it. The giant head in the middle is missing it's plating and lower jaw.
I figured the puzzle out quickly, but I want to check to see if the people have the same level of intelligence they do in the game.
"Hey, you guys, uh... You got the answer to this one?" I ask, trying to sound as confused as possible.
"No... It could be anything. How will we continue on?" Uthgerd complains, dejectedly, before leaning back and sitting against the wall. It seems Uthgerd remains more brawn than brains...
"... I haven't figured it out just yet, but I'm sure I'm close to the answer." Jenassa says, with a light confused frown on her face. She squats down and tries to figure something out.
Bror is completely blank. He doesn't really know what's going on anymore. I think his brain was fried in the attempt to figure out this puzzle.
Hadvar is still trying to get somewhere. I can see the gears are clicking, but he's clearly not completely sure of anything just yet.
Faendal isn't trying to solve the puzzle, anymore. It's been two minutes, and all he's been doing is digging through a pile of rubble in the corner.
After thinking for a few minutes, Jenassa breaks. She squats next to Uthgerd. Hadvar is still standing near me with a frown and his chin clasped in his hands. I look back to Jenassa, who's looking down, biting her lip, when she says, "I give up. Have you figured it out, Drake?"
"Weeellll....." I step over to the pillars and turn them to the order of snake, snake, whale thing. They slide easily, almost as though they were well-oiled. "I kinda knew the whole time."
When I walk to the lever, the girls, Faendal, and Bror jump up, and run back to the doorway.
"What are you doing?" Jenassa cries to me, surprised and a little angry.
"Flipping the lever," I say as I grab hold of it.
"But what if you're wrong?! That's the entire reason nobody's suggested anything!"
I flip it, and say "I'm not." It smoothly slides over. The gate at the opposite end of the room slides up.
"Sometimes, to go a bit further, you gotta pick the obvious answer, even if there's a small chance you might be wrong." I continue.
Everyone comes with me as I enter the next room. It's got a table in it, with a book and a small Potion of Healing on it. I stow them in my backpack. Some dust falls from the ceiling after I do so.
From beside me, I hear, "Few would dare to trespass in these ruins. What you lack in wisdom, you make up for in courage."
Jenassa was the one who spoke. She claps a hand over her mouth, as she whispers through it, "Sorry, that was weird. I don't even know why I said it."
Past the table is a circular wooden staircase. From deep below us, we can hear the squeaking of rats. Hadvar readies a torch in for the oncoming darkness, while I prepare to cast Flames in my left hand, holding an orb of fire.
"Skeevers," Uthgerd says. I nod and pull out my axe. Uthgerd pulls out a dagger, while Jenassa and Faendal ready their bows. I take the torch and hold it in front of me. The light of my Flames echo off of the walls around us, creating deeper, darker shadows.
I take a few steps down the stairs. Each step I take creaks, and dust from the stairs fall down. The squealing stops.
'I fuckin hate rats.'
-----------------
Funds: 967 septims, 60 ancient Nord coins
Weapons:
💠 - Fine Steel War Axe (+15 extra damage)
💠 - Nordic Daggers
💠 - Quicksilver Throwing Knives {x5}
- Fine Hunting Bow, Unstring/Wrapped {x25 arrows}
- Orcish Sword
Apparel:
💠 - Refurbished Steel Helm (15% more armor)
💠 - Steel Armor (HP Regen. Injury Heal Rate 25%↑, Light Wound Heal 50%↑)
💠 - Spiked Iron Gauntlets (+15 extra H2H damage)
💠 - Refitted Steel Boots (15% more armor)
💠 - Custom Quicksilver buckler (18% more armor)
- Winter Cloak (20% Cold Resistance)
Potions:
- Minor Potions of Healing {x3}
- Minor Potion of Stamina
- Potion of Magicka
Food:
- Basket of Fruits and Vegetables; {onions x4, apples x8, leeks x5, potatoes x8, head of cabbage x2, carrots x6, loaves of bread x2}
Ingredients:
- Giant's Toes {x10}
Books:
- Stack of Stormcloak notes and letters to family {x15}
- Letter to Thrynn & Torturer's Ring
- Spell Tome: Sparks
Supplies:
- Backpack
- Bedroll
- Cooking pan
- Waterskin
- Metal Bowl
- Torches {x3}
- Tent
Miscellaneous:
- Lockpicks {x12}