It was a pretty uneventful walk up to the snowy mountains from Aleswell. Not even a single marauder at Sercen and only one ogre slain on the entire road. Two stray bandits too though.

Sky is cloudy and you can sense the inbound snow. The smell of a house not aired out for months greeted Lothran when he entered his cabin, as did the not yet lit fireplace. With all the trinkets placed into their respective place it was time for some rest before going out into the town of Bruma and greet the citizens. Oh, and to light the fireplace of course.


Lothran is home.

Welcome back to Bruma, Lothran!

It's because the baddies along the Silver Road are finally starting to learn, their fates are inevitable during certain times of the year.

Then again, we're going by Earth time, not Tamriellic time. So hmm. Scratch that theory.

Sun's Dusk 5, mid-afternoon-- Joan of Arkay just left Cropsford and is headed back to Nenalata. Although she's got a couple folks following her (a Colovian guard and a random, heavily-armored high elf she met along the road) Joan has been piercing the depths of Nenalata mostly on her own. And it's taxing. It's taken over two days to slowly deal with each skeleton champion, each wraith, each zombie, and worse.

Hence the trip to Cropsford. She needed to get more food. Surprisingly, Imperial Bridge Inn hasn't got too much for sale. Maybe because all the layabouts who live in IBI are constantly eating it! 🍗🍅🍇

Hey, lazy bums need to eat too

Also, I think Joan has to eat, right? Survival mod?

Yeah, I've got a realism mod (thank you for not calling them "hardcore" btw, don't like that term). Food, drink, sleep, necessary.

Anyway, that whole ENTIRE campaign was a waste of time! Joan got deep into Nenalata, all three zones, until she came to a large room which was a dead-end. Could not go any further. But there's a wall in that final room which looks as though she's supposed to put something into it, like a placard or something. And I think the reason she can't go any further is she did not continue the Crown of the Ayleids quest.

So that's it. She's headed all the way back to the Imperial City.

I love how Lothran's got a fireplace in his Bruma Home. 🔥 I bet that's one of your only mods, right? Along with Spell Delete and Witchcraft.

I don't remember much of Nenalata, it's been so long. But maybe you're on to something here.


You know me too well Those are my three most important mods, plus mALX's no stalking mod applied to FG porters and a few more.

Thought of the fireplace mod just now as it's been activated. That one detail does so much for the whole feeling of the house. Starting it up after having seen the fireplace dark and quiet gives me such an immersive feeling of warmth and it tells me this is where I'll be for months to come. I truly feel at home.
Same when putting it out when leaving Bruma in spring. It tells me that the long hibernation is over and now the adventure starts again. Two awesome feelings brought forth by that simple mod!

Nenalata is the big ending setpiece to the Ayleid Statue quest. You have to finish its sub quests like the Crown one first. I believe the end of the crown quest starts another quest that takes you to Nenalata. Then you can get into that final part of Nenalata, where the big quest finale takes place.

mirocu: Ha, I guessed right! Yeah, what was Beth thinking, lighting fireplaces in all the other houses but leaving BRUMA (of all places) dark!

Rosa: Good, that's just as I suspected. You see, Joan doesn't trust Umbacano, and she's found 8 statues so far. She's thinking the 9th statue could be in Nenalata, so she wanted to try to get there first, to try and beat the guy to the punch! Instead she's gonna have to go all the way back to the I.C.

So that's Joanie's plight. And now it's December, which means I shall switch to Renee Gade III. That's right, Xena Gade. Every month I switch from one Oblivion person to the next, so September was Snaat Rayag the Skooma Dealer, October was Lady Saga (I only gamed with her a couple times though, was busy with Morrowind) November was Joan.

And now it's RG3. Who is in Skingrad. Just picked up a quest I wrote a while back, and the good thing is, I have no idea what the heck I wrote! But it's probably a bounty-style quest.

Lothran has just had his first mountain trekk today. He visited the bandit camp out east and looked around the area outside the Bruma north gate where he found a few more bandits, one who was another friendly female Khajiit bandit. She demanded a ransom upon conversation but unlike a Highwayman she could be sweet-talked rather than just bribed into liking Lothran more.

Other than that not much to report. Honmund was out collecting samples of Clouded Funnel Cap and the Imperial Forester was still where he'd been for the last ten years or so. It's the very same Forester who won an infight all those years ago and who since then has patrolled the area where Honmund wanders.

Now Lothran is resting at Jerall View, it's late afternoon and come evening he'll head down for his first night this season at Olav's Tap and Tack

Does Xena have a Gabrielle companion to adventure with?

Nice to see Lothran settling into his winter routine. When is his first guard shift?

After Christmas. He's got some free roaming to do first and of course Pale Pass

Tallei is in Chorrol, having received the recommendations from Carahil in Anvil and Adrienne in Skingrad. She also collected all four pieces of the Dwemer Orrery for Bothiel in the AU, she is holding on to them until she gets all the recommendations.

She's on her way up to Cloud Top, with her new companion Riven (a warhorse from the Reclaiming Sancre Tor mod). So far she has been able to take care of enemies with her basic Flare spell, and heal herself. Of course, she's still Level 1, so . . .

Sounds like someone has the orrery addon activated. I still have the CD wrapped in plastic so I can't access it..

Mirocu, the GOG version of Oblivion comes with all DLC's, something I haven't been able to get for the PC CD. So it's taking me back to my Xbox days.

Yes, I know I can get it online. However I'm well set in my yearly routines at this point so I don't really have any interest in the DLCs. Lothran sort of has his own

Totally understandable!

Today Tallei finally got all her recommendations, and just discovered necromancers at Wellspring Cave. She also turned in the Dwemer parts to Bothiel, and now she can visit the Orrery and see it in action.

Right now she’s focused on finishing Battlehorn Castle and Frostcrag.

The Spire would be quite cool to have, if it had been there from the start. Having it built now would just seem weird to me (and Lothran).

A very interesting place nonetheless

That's so awesome you have friendly (or at least, neutral) enemies in your game. How do you RP this (or do you consider it into RP at all)?

It rarely happens in my Oblivion games but in Sir Vyvoor's world (Skyrim), half the bandits don't try to pick fights. From his perspective this is good. They're learning to be more civilized, which seems to be the overall goal. They behave, he rewards them by not kicking them to the floor. But from MY perspective it's kind of lame! I get all hyped up and eager with adrenaline... then .... nothing.

haute: Nice to see you're posting. I also prefer slower-leveling games, what's the rush, ya know? The Orrery is kinda cool, but you never know if you're gonna get something useful, or a spell which winds up clogging inventory space. Thank goodness we can delete spells on PC. But when you finally get a good/useful spell that's what makes things wonderful.


Acadian: Yes, the Xena mod comes with Gabby. Actually check this out.

Here is the original Gabrielle, eek!

I used my Hot or Not skillz to try making her cuter

And here is the original RG3 from the game's Randomizer.

before I made her into Xenaclone.


Speaking of, hope to get into her game today, we'll see.

I don't, really. I just think it's funny they don't attack when they're supposed to

Loredas, Mid-Year 14, 4th Era Year 422-- As promised, Renee Gade III just picked up a bounty-styled quest from the agent in Skingrad (in my gameworld, a lot of castles, towns & villages have these sort of quests). So she's off to Cursed Mine, to take care of whatever latest scum-leader they've got in there lately. I mean, these things must be done! Just imagine, somebody has to keep the vineyards safe from rabbelry. Rawr!