Woo hoo! *snow dances*

Over the holidays, I loaded up Oblivion/DLC's/CK and my mods onto a laptop, to take with me to England, while visiting my relatives. So that meant creating a new character, who was going to be Brenda the Breton, but ended up being an Imperial called Brenda instead, because Breton/mage is too cliche.

Since I installed from the Anthology disk, I included KotN for the first time, and the first quest line I played was that one. On being declared Divine Crusader, she immediately rushed off to the IC to join the Thieves Guild, as I needed her to test the new Evergloam stuff I was creating. "I used to consider you a hero" has become as annoying as "arrow in the knee" or "...mudcrab...".

She uses no weapons or armour, so leaving the Crusader set on its stand was no biggie. Brenda now has 100% chameleon when she needs it (like sneaking past Evangeline Beanique instead of getting into a fight, and out of the mages guild), can open hard locks by spell, and uses Absorb Health for offence.

Last seen wandering around a cave that is to become the Twilight Sepulchre, once it's cleared out and re-decorated. She got there via a portal from Nocturnal's Castle, so although it's somewhere near Falkreath, there's no way out to look around. Someone is digging a tunnel for the new entrance, but it's currently a dead end full of rubble.

Her next quest should be the one Clark's doing over in the FF thread.

This calls for celebration!! all around!!



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Lothran has just finished his second guard shift this winter. Some bloody cold nights by the north gate it has been indeed, but now he can go back home to his warm fire. Think he´s gonna brew some potions when he gets back

It was dark when The Lady Eilidh inion Mhic Amhalghaidh stepped off of the boat and onto the docks at Anvil, it was also raining drearily from a miserable grey sky.
She looked up and, making a face, pulled the rather unsatisfactory commoner's shirt around her petite frame.

It wasn't all bad, at least, through prior arrangement with a contact she had secured some equipment from a nearby specialist emporium. After that it was up to her, but at least she'd be wearing something more... appropriate; the sword would be no bad thing either.
She trudged along the creaking boards of the dock, pondering her situation.
It was an honour that her father had chosen her for this task, she had worked very hard, Gods knew, to earn his respect and that hard work was now paying off with what, she felt, was to be her final test. But all the same a part of her wished she could skip all this drudgery in Gods-foresaken provinces far from home and move on to the good stuff straight away; it was... unbecoming for a woman of her station to be mucking about on the docks of some horrible little settlement full of humans and who knew what else.
It didn't help she'd have to mix with them as well.

Still, it was a task; it was her task, and she'd never failed yet.
Her immediate destination came into view.
And she'd be damned if she would fail now.

She'd never live it down at court, for one thing...

ghastley - Good to see you back in Cyrodiil!

mirocu - Aww, Lothie's so dedicated! I hope the resist cold boot socks help those long watches.

Phon - Welcome back. I see a new elf just got off the boat!


Buffy had something rare happen. She silenced a nether lich then sic'd a summon on him. The lich responded by firing his staff at Buffy - and her summon promptly evaporated. She managed to kill the lich of course, and discovered on his corpse a staff of dispelling. Much to Buffy's chagrin, I wish foes had better access to, and command of, some of the more Buffy-disruptive effects like dispel, silence, burden and detect life. Since she runs fairly close to her weight limit (due to a base strength of 30), she does get disrupted sometimes by burden spells, scrolls and staves that enemy mages sometimes use (immediate action = feather spell). Only once in awhile will she get zapped by a silence scroll or staff, although wraiths seem to use it as a power.

Brena, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, stepped out of the headquarters building to go look for that Redguard she'd been told about. She found Haballa talking to Gudrun from the Rider's Lodge. Apparently the latter is in the city to look at a site for a new recruiting office. She still has to get the key to the place, so Brenda's going to Chorrol to follow up on a lead that Haballa gave her. She'll see what Gudrun's up to when she gets back.

It's interesting how a Nord from Skryrim and a Redguard from the Alik'r desert regard the climate of Cyrodiil. Too warm for one is too cool for the other.

Welcome back PhonAntiPhon. So Niamh's story is done, eh?



Heh yeah, I can see your thinking, too!

Thanks!

And I neglected to mention how much I'm look forward to hearing about your modded OB game! I'll bet you'll love it! We took about 30 seconds yesterday to fix the A-bomb in Buffy's game for about the umpteenth time - yeah, life is good playing on PC.

Thanks.
Yep, very much so, although I've a suspicion her ghost still haunts events and places around and about...
Eilidh may come across pieces of her legacy from time-to-time, who knows...?

Phon - Welcome, Ellie!

Renee - I´m also looking forward to your modded game

Acadian - Someone dispelled Buffy´s summon? How daaaare they!??

ghastley - An interesting observation about the temperature, isn´it?

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Lothran went home to make a few potions and poisons and is now amongst his friend at the Mages Guild. He needs more ingredients but Selena didn´t have much at the moment. Guess we´ll have to wait.

Last Seed 30...

To break the boredom whilst waiting for Morvayne's to open - (she was cursing the tardiness of the local shopkeepers, her father would have had them flogged by now) - Eilidh took herself off out of the land gates to espy the landscape surrounding Anvil.
Leaving the gates she took a path up and off to the left, past the stables and rising up into the hills from where she paused to look back over the vista of the Abacean Sea and Anvil. The day was warm and sunny and a light breeze whispered in the lush grasses that covered the hills down to the sparkling water.

From the port came the sound of boats and business, the shouts of sailors and captains. For a moment she felt homesick, this place was so quiet and dull compared to her home and the few things that were familiar, the port being one of the them, just made it worse.
Whilst she understood the reason for the task her father had set her, she also hated him for it; had she not done enough to prove herself? Gods it was hard enough as it was rising above her peers' automatic assumption that, as a Princess, she could have anything she wanted - she did, it was true - but she wanted more than what she had, more life and less restriction and her father had in any case chosen another path for her; without a son and bereft of a wife to provide him with one, he had taken it upon himself to make a son of her - and with some success, although the result was that at 25 she was now some strange hybrid; neither a Lady nor a Soldier, but something in-between, distrusted by everyone despite her admitted talents as both royalty and warrior scout.
Almost everyone...
...but that was another story.

With a sigh and a curse under her breath that if the promised instructions did not arrive before the next day or the one after she would walk back across the ocean herself, kingdom or no - (except she would not, and her father knew it) - she turned her gaze away from the town and headed a little into the countryside.

Pausing on a hillock amidst the tall grasses, she looked out over the open ocean, as she did so, her gaze was drawn to a small dwelling further down-slope from her, looking out over the sea. Her curiosity piqued, and for want of anything better to do, she set off down the hill towards it.
The scent of flowers and herbs was strong in her nostrils and she regretted, not for the first time, that she had been unable to bring her alchemy books with her. Whilst she was not one for study, she enjoyed the creation of potions and the study of the melding of things together to produce elixirs and poisons, strange liquids that bubbled and frothed and could kill or cure with a single drop; send a lover to sleep for a thousand years or awaken her with a but sniff of vapour.
Ah well, she'd just have to use her nose and what knowledge she'd retained on the occasions she paid attention to her tutor...

She passed on down, to her right was some shrine or other, presumably to whatever Gods they had here. She paused a moment. The shrine, and the standing stones that dotted the area, seemed more preferable to her than the grandiose chapel that Anvil had - (although not so grand now, she had heard).
Presently she arrived at the dwelling, which turned out to be a small cottage. It looked once to have been rather sweet, covered as it was in now overgrown climbing plants and flowers. She walked around to the door, the place seemed reasonably whole still, although it had an abandoned air to it, a sad feel in a way.

Gingerly she prodded at the door, it opened slightly. Behind her the wind was picking up, ruffling through her thick coppery hair and the flowers she habitually tied in it - (an affectation from her teenage years she had not shaken off. She was a soldier, but she was also a Lady, a Princess even, and would wear pretty things if she wanted. many an adversary however, and comrade if truth be told, had discovered that she was perfectly capable of punching them in the face and putting on lip-paint at one and the same time...).
Looking back over her shoulder she saw the clouds coming in again. So much rain in this country!

Pushing open the door, she headed into the darkened interior and away from the approaching storm, just noticing the little engraved wooden sign on the door-frame: "Blue Moon Cottage".

-x-

-Some days later-

Eilidh was lying in the bed in the basement of Blue Moon Cottage when the messenger arrived.

It was around 6 of the clock and still dark in the basement, Eilidh had taken to sleeping in what she assumed was the spare bed following that first terrible night's sleep in the main one. She had awoken several times with the distinct impresson she was being watched.

The Elf was staring at the ceiling, the musty covers pulled up over her shoulders, her coppery hair spread out over the pillow. Sleep was yet to arrive, and instead she lay and fulminated, her luminous eyes sparkling greenly in the dark.
She was, and not for the first time, running through the many points of resentment that she had against her father for marooning her here in this Gods-foresaken backwater. It was pointless to be sure but it made her feel better.

During the time she had been in Anvil she had, with a total lack of success, attempted to probe its population for news that might help her work out why she was in Cyrodiil and further, might just help her to pinpoint when her contact, whom she had been advised was to make an appearance with further instructions was, in fact, to appear.
It had all ultimately been to no avail, partly due to her inability to speak anything more than rudimentary Tamrielic and conversely the inability of any of those she spoke to to speak her language at all; and partly due to the fact that it had become increasingly clear that none of the humans, pond-life, or the sadly repressed Elvenkind who hung around the place had any more idea what was going on than she did.
If she were honest, she knew that already, but the first rule was you had to try every avenue.

In the end, for want of anything better to do, and short of cash - (not a natural state of affairs for a Princess, even one who was a warrior in her father's army) - she had joined the "Fighter's Guild".
Over the last week or so she had been tasked with killing rats and rescuing incompetant shopkeepers. The most interesting diversion had been that group of women in the farm who were hussling married men. She would have joined up with them just to alleivate the boredom if they had not suddenly got suspicious of her motives and she'd been forced to kill them all.

Other than that? Waiting, and more waiting.
It was frustrating to be honest. Eilidh, Daughter of Mac Auley, was not a woman for whom waiting for things came naturally, add to that her military service - (she shared with all warriors a natural resentment of "hanging about") - and she had been nearly ready to tear off her face after several days of running errands for these bumpkins and sitting on her butt waiting for further orders that she was increasingly sure would never come.
What was her father playing at?

++++

The knife was in her hand was in her hand and she was crouched on the rough wooden floor in front of the basement door almost before she was consciously aware of being there....

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 5 2014, 05:59 PM

Samara found herself in Chorrol, being spat on by a drunk as he talked. Eventually, he got around to asking her to find out who was "besmirching his good name" in Cheydinhal. She ended up reuniting two brothers and...now they want her to face trolls.

Nope. On her way to Weatherleah, it began raining, and she sought refuge in Fort Carmala. Slipping on the wet stone stairs,, she nearly slid face-first into the body of a bandit. Had the rain not been so thick, she would've seen the town in front of the abandoned fort. Instead, she came across her first vampire nest.

Welcome back, Phon, and welcome to Ellie.

Liz, it looks like Samara's been busy! Drunks and (almost) trolls and vampires, oh my!

Thank you Acadian.
And Liz, that was a great and concise update - something that I am sadly incapable of doing!!

Good to see you writing again PhonAntiPhon. *claps* I shall read it later, I'm about to start up my own game.

Snaat Rayag is in jail. Literally Day 1. I know nothing about him, but will be doing some experiments with modding in his game.

One thing right off the bat: there was some discussion over at Beth about the darkness of dungeons from consoles to PC. I can definitely say consoles are darker. I'll post a couple screenies later to show proof. So therefore, I've got 2 mods in his game so far (Natural Hunger and See You Sleep) but I'm going to try Darker Dungeons as well.

To me, the console's dungeons are also too bright, which caused me to create my Darker Dungeons Pretend Mod for PS3 and Xbox. This means I basically darken my TV screen whenever going in a lair. So maybe with the actual PC mod I won't have to do this anymore.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 5 2014, 08:30 PM

@Phon - Hopefully Princess Grumpy won´t be so grumpy and restless much longer...

@Liz - A vampire nest! Don´t bring up that subject with Buffy, she´ll cringe!


Oh, you crazy PC modder, you!

This post has been edited by mirocu: Jan 5 2014, 10:52 PM

LOL Princess Grumpy...!
Yeah I think she will be ok.

Lothran is just back from an excursion in the mountains where he´s been visiting the shrine to Azura and Silver Tooth cave. A few ogres were slain along the way and the snow never stopped falling. Of course

oops. wrong thread!

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 6 2014, 01:33 PM