Redemption, part 2 Options

[jack cloudy]

Click here for Redemption Part 1


Alright, part 2. Still not much redeeming going on but whatever. Now instead of continuing the story, I figured I'd use this post for all the miscellaneous stuff. Things like a character list and the recap for part 1. So be warned that this post CONTAINS SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!


RECAP FOR PART 1 Again SPOILERS!

One night, the palace is breached by unknown assailants. Following standard protocol for such events, the Emperor is secretly transported to the prison by his Blades. The Imperial Battlemage, Ocato, declines to join him, claiming that the situation is under control and that his services aren't needed.

Despite having reached the prison safely, the Emperor soon finds that he is still in danger. It is then that Uriel receives help from an unexpected ally. Angoril Bobardi reveals that the very cell he has inhabited for decades, contains a secret escape route that was built during the simulacrum at the order of Jagar Tharn. With this passage and the considerable magical prowess of Angoril, the Emperor manages to flee the deadly trap.

Also freed from the prison by Angoril is Maorlatta Orgnum, a young (by elf-standards) and somewhat naive girl who was arrested for the crime of sleeping in the park. Once free, she quickly makes herself scarce and eventually finds herself in the shack of an old fisherman who lives on an island in Lake Rumare. The fisherman seeks the help of the thieves guild to rid her of the manacles and prison outfit that would have every Legionnaire arrest her on sight. Unfortunately, the one assigned to pick the locks on the manacles informs Vicente Valtieri instead, who takes a personal interest in the girl’s talent for camouflage. Maorlatta is saved by the Redguard Sorian, a young and rather strange lad who keeps going on and on about something he calls an Ansei. The two team up to go treasure hunting in a nearby Ayleid ruin.

Meanwhile, Angoril returns to the prison. Pretending to be from the palace, he gets a vital clue from the Argonian private investigator Grey-Tongue. The Argonian sends him to Chorrol to find the source of the assassins distinctive red robes. To get to Chorrol, he summons a shiftgate, circumventing days travelling. From Chorrol the trail leads to Kvatch, a city whose precise location he does not know. Unable to summon another shiftgate with reasonable accuracy, Angoril seeks more mundane passage to Kvatch.

While Angoril is travelling, Maorlatta and Sorian hit the Ayleid ruin. After some trouble with a zombie, they strike gold and find an abandoned office with some intact artefacts. They attempt to sell the artefacts in the Imperial city, where they are intercepted by Grey-Tongue and then Vicente Valtieri. Sorian again makes the vampire flee. The next morning Maorlatta wakes up in the Imperial palace with no recollection on how she got there or what happened during her stay at Grey-Tongue’s house. Jauffre interrogates her in the garden at the top of the tower.







Redemption's persons of questionable importance

Main characters:
Angoril Bobardi: An Altmeri sorcerer who inhabited a cell in the Imperial prison, fully aware of the secret escape route. After leaving the prison, he makes it his task to track down the leaders behind the red-robed assassins.

Maorlatta Orgnum: A Maormer from Pyandonea, sent to Tamriel at the command of king Orgnum. Circumstances land her in the same prison as the Altmer. After escaping, she returns to the pursuit of her own goals, one of which is to become filthy rich.

Side characters:
Grey-Tongue: An Argonian private investigator. He is a friend of Hieronymous Lex and has been hired by the guard-captain in the past. Grey-Tongue is hired now as well by the city-guard to investigate the events at the prison and find Uriel’s corpse.
Guard-Captain Hieronymous Lex: Hieronymous Lex is the man put in charge of investigating the massacre at the Imperial Prison. Upon finding that Uriel Septim was seen entering the prison that night, he hires Grey-Tongue to help him uncover the truth.
Sorian: A Redguard who saves Maorlatta from Vicente Valtieri. A simple wandering swordsman with a slight Ansei-obsession.
Rajn Geydar: A Wood Elf who lives in Kvatch. At one point possessed a piece of the Balac-Thurm.

Others:
Guard-Captain Argelius: A colleague of Hieronymous Lex who describes him as the man to call when you need subtlety.
Bannon: A merchant who travelled with Angoril from Chorrol to Kvatch
Baleni: Daughter of Rajn Geydar
Doruk: The Bouncer who worked at Rajn Geydar's restaurant. Deceased.
Penald Baurus: Blade and bodyguard of Uriel Septim.
Berius: Lord Protector and Head of the palaceguard in the Imperial City.
Valen Dreth: A Dunmeri prisoner. Not the most pleasant sort.
Jennifer Renault: Blade, recently promoted to captain.
Glenroy: Blade and bodyguard of Uriel Septim.

Fenasim: A member of the emperor's Palace guard.
Mankar Camoran: The father of both Raven and Ruma. He is the leader of the Mythic Dawn and its prophet.
Raven Camoran: The ‘Hand’ of the Mythic Dawn, an organization with an unknown purpose. What is certain however, is that the Dawn wants Uriel Septim dead.
Ruma Camoran: The sister of Raven, she serves the Mythic Dawn as Priestess. In the same night that the attempt on the emperor’s life is made, she infiltrates the vaults beneath the Imperial palace to steal two artefacts.
Harrow: A member of the Dawn, Harrow used to be an Armiger stationed in Vvardenfell.

Ludius Bester: Member of Bester and Bester, the Kvatch Hall of Mercantile Interests. He runs the office in lower Kvatch.
Aelwin Merowald: An old fisherman who lost most of his leg to Slaughterfish. Friend of Delmar Tunius.
Rajn Geydar: Owner of the Eight Provinces, a restaurant in Kvatch.
Ra’Jezhr: A Khajiiti lockpicker in the employ of the Thieves Guild, Ra’Jezhr is also coerced into serving the Dark Brotherhood’s interests.
Simanuel Rosendorf IV: The owner of a silk-plantation near Chorrol

Umbacano: An Altmer who lives in the capital city. A well-known collector of Ayleid artefacts.
Uriel Septim VII: The Emperor of Tamriel.
Brother Tanner: A priest who serves in the Kvatch-temple. Looks like a Septim.
Delmar Tunius: An old fisherman who lives on a small island in lake Nibenay.
Vicente Valtieri: A member of the Dark Brotherhood, he takes interest in Maorlatta’s talents at stealth, and desires to make her an assassin, with or without her cooperation.

Latta’s evergrowing list of people only she knows:
Levvelyn of Glashorn: The hero of a popular series who spends most of his books saving the world, slaying vicious monsters, duelling devious Altmeri warlords and chasing the girl.
Irrillys: A fictional princess of Pyandonea, she is Levvelyn’s love interest. Posesses an unfortunate talent for being kidnapped by devious Altmeri warlords.
Mettildi: The Maormer that taught Maorlatta how to fight, though his methods traumatized her to the point where she is mentally incapable of defending herself.
Master Zelthir: Another Maormer put in charge of educating Maorlatta. Master Zelthir is a well-known and highly respected healer.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Sep 22 2013, 07:36 PM

[jack cloudy]

War, war never changes.


And Malx, of course you're not the only one who does stupid things just to see how the game responds to it. I do that stuff all the time. For Science!


Ok, this is not a proper update. Yeah, it's been like 20 days already but I'm as slow as ever. Instead, you get a very short segment that may or may not contain anything important. At the very least it was a nice short exercise in writing something different. Enjoy!
Edit: Got the next part up as well. Also more of my random ranting.



Chapter 10.2


Oblivion



The manflesh had entered the Big Boss. Soft, tasty manflesh. Scampes burned them, Smallteethes tore them, Bigteethes swallowed them, Bosses cut them. Boom, slash, gnash! No more manflesh. Only their bits now. Shiny bits, sparkling bits, boring bits. So many bits.


Scampes looked for the nice bits, the shiny sparkly bits. Scampes nudged the manflesh, fingered their falseskin holes, broke their boxes and grey bunkers. Scampes took the nice bits, traded and stole them from each other. There was one Scamp, running and climbing where big boss ended and manflesh lived. Where Bigteethes couldn't fit. It was a strange place, this manflesh fort. There was bloodgrass that didn't cut, spores that didn't poison. Gaps to places that weren't there. It was a strange place, so safe it made the Scamp nervous. But it had shiny bits, oh yes. So many shiny bits.


So the Scamp crawled and slithered, taking a bendy metal bit here, a soft falseskin there. It found a glowing bit, curved and scaled like the Bigteethes, a smaller bit of fire in its mouth and eye. It was a nice bit, very shiny, very rich. The Scamp reached to take. It screeched. A big foot of black rending claws and cutting blades smashed its hand down into the not-cutting grass. Snarling the Scamp looked up. Who dared take the shiny bit form it? Who dared hurt it? The Scamp would burn the other and take the shiny bit. Oh yes it would!


But the other was not a Scamp, or a Smallteeth. It was black bone and burning flesh. It wore death and tortured soul of Scampes, smallteethes and bigteethes as a falseskin. It had giant hammer of pain and crushed skulls on its back. It was a boss that stared down at the little Scamp. The worthless, weak Scamp. It looked, silent and terrible. The Scamp bowed, crashed its brow against the ground of soft grass. The foot lifted and the Scamp ran.


The figure in black picked up the golden clasp and turned it in its hand. It closed its hand around it, gentle yet firm. The floor beneath it swayed and turned to water. The figure sank to its depths and was gone.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Upper Kvatch


Hieronymous Lex's first impression of the refugee camp at Lower Kvatch was that he had a lot of work to do. The camp was sorely lacking in organization but more pressing for him were the parasites who always seemed to pop up after a disaster. They were holed up in the barracks and tavern, protected by caravan guards they'd bribed. There they dined while everyone else starved and hoarded critical supplies, such as medicine and daily necessities, only giving them up when exorbitant prices had been paid.


As captain of the guard, Lex swore he would deal with that before the day was up. But first he needed to see how secure the camp was. Restoring law and order would help no one if a conquering army stormed down the mountain. It was with that thought in mind that he accompanied the Skingrad commander, a typical nord with blonde hair and beard and biceps that would make an Orc respectful, up the mountain to where a second camp lay. Unlike the refugee camp below, the upper camp was supposedly a barricade held by the Kvatch watch.


The camp was right before the gates, close enough to make the Skingrad men who'd joined them visibly nervous. Lex had no experience at warfare himself, but he knew why. All it took was a few good archers or a mage atop the walls, and the watch was as good as dead. The Guard-captain glanced towards the walls but he saw no enemies looking down upon them. If anything, this lack of activity only made everyone even more nervous. After all, the only thing worse than an enemy one could see, was one you knew to be there but couldn' t see.


The Kvatch watch turned out to be a handful of dirty stragglers, and a few caravan guards who had volunteered for the assignment, which placed their value far above their colleagues in the lower camp as far as Lex was concerned. All were carrying bows and stood in a line with their arrows strewn on the ground before them. There was one man sitting on a milestone behind them with his spear resting on his lap. He was wearing the chain and leathers which Lex knew to be the uniform of Kvatch and had a military haircut. To reinforce his observation was the tabard the man wore over his armour. Though the wool was burned and ragged, the wolf's head that was Kvatch's code of arms was unmistakable. Lex and the Skingrad commander exchanged a look and approached the spearman.
"You are the one in charge?"






The man turned to look at them. When he saw the twin moons of Skingrad on their coat of arms, he saluted and got to his feet.
"Savlian Matius, sirs. I'm the captain of the guard here." He said. Lex noticed that Matius was not wearing the indications of rank a captain would actually have, but said nothing. Arguing the point would get them nowhere. Instead he returned the salute and let the Skingrad commander introduce themselves.
"Ulberth Stone-Breaker, Skingrad's siege master. And this is Hieronymous Lex, from Cyrodiil."


Matius shook his head upon hearing Ulberth's title.
"We saw your army on the road," He told them. "but it's not going to lay siege to the mountain. You need more men for that. Far more."
"I didn't come to conduct a siege."Ulberth answered and Lex explained. "We're here to investigate and rescue people. For that Count Skingrad has given us enough men to hold a contested position for some time, but not enough to fight a war. Now, what is the situation in Kvatch?"
To their surprise Matius began to laugh. It was a humourless laugh that vanished in a sigh.
"In Kvatch? Sirs, there is no Kvatch. I don't even know if the mountain is still a part of Tamriel!"


Ulberth and Lex exchanged another glance. Neither knew what the man meant. How could Kvatch not be a part of Tamriel?
"Akavir? But wouldn't one of the coastal cities have been hit first then?" Ulberth ventured, naming the one place he knew off that lay beyond the continent. But Cyrodiil lay at the heart of Tamriel and Akavir was far to the east, beyond Morrowind and the ocean. It was a place where no man had gone to or come from in centuries.




They waited for captain Matius to regain his composure and an explanation of what he meant. But he didn't say why Kvatch had left Tamriel. What he did say was how it was lost.
"It all happened so fast. I had gate duty that night. People came running, pursued by a horde of monsters. They came out of nowhere, just stepped out of nothing like ghosts. One moment there was nothing, then there were thousands of them flooding the streets as far as I could see. Imps, Argonian giants, living figures of fire that flew through the skies. We let the citiziens through, as many as we could while the commander went down and held the gates. They were the lucky ones, the ones who were awake and ran. But most didn't. They slept, or tried to take things, or holed up in their houses. We," He began to cry as he remembered and covered his face with a hand.
"I ordered the gates closed. Left the commander to die. Couldn't let the beasts out. Couldn't let them out."




Lex took the spear out of his hands and gently embraced the man, letting him cry. The guard-captain's first feelings had been of anger. Anger at Matius for abandoning his post and essentially ordering the death of his superior. But he realized that if he'd been there on the streets, fighting off the monsters, closing the gates would have been exactly what he'd want Matius to do. In doing so Matius had ensured the survival of at least some of Kvatch's citizenry and somehow contained the enemy within the city. There was no way he could make the man believe it, but Matius had done the right thing.
"It's alright, Matius." He told the man instead. "We're here to help now. How's your quarantine? No breakouts?"
"No, sir." The Kvatch gatekeeper sobbed but just then the skies were shaken by an unearthly shriek. All turned their attention to the walls and Matius took his spear back. He stood ready to leap in front of the archers and protect them from attack but it wasn't needed. The creature took barely five steps beyond the city walls before it was pierced by a trio of arrows.
"Nothing major." Matius corrected himself and pointed out where the being had emerged from.
"There's a small gap in the wall, part of an eatery. Occasionally one of the little ones comes through and we deal with it. But never the big lizardmen, or the living torches. Only the wingless imps."



Ulberth Stone-Breaker nodded and then took Lex aside.
"Lex. What do you think?" He asked the Imperial with a whisper. Lex stole a quick glance at Matius who had sat down on the milestone again with his eye on the opening.
"Captain Matius is obviously suffering from survivor's guilt and the loss of his city." He said. "He and his men are at the breaking point and quite frankly I'm surprised they haven't collapsed already. I suggest the organization of multiple shifts to ensure a constant watch on the walls."


Ulberth slapped Lex on the shoulder and nodded.
"My idea exactly. I expect the poor captain to protest being ordered to rest, but he won't object to us relieving his men. Oblivion take us, having someone else take command is probably his greatest wish."



The Nord turned away to start giving out orders. Scouts to inspect all sides of the city-walls for gaps, archers and spearmen to plug the one they were aware of and some wood elves with their keen eyes to keep watch on the top of the walls just in case. Lex allowed him to divide up most of his men before he requested some of his own.
"If I may, master Stone-Breaker. I would like to borrow a good dozen of your troops. Lower Kvatch needs the rule of law and some uniforms will make all the difference."
"You'll have them. If the situation up here doesn't change by nightfall, I'll send the courier to arrange resupply. Make a list of what you need at the camp."








RANT-TIME


Kvatch is Bethesda's way of showing the invasion from Oblivion is a real and serious thing. (I personally would have preferred if the main enemy had remained as the Mythic Dawn, but that's just me.)

It doesn't quite manage to make that message stick, but I chalk that up to limitations of the game engine and a bit of a lackluster follow-up. The lackluster follow-up is because Kvatch is the only city that actually gets wrecked. Everyone else only has people stare blankly at a gate ruining their country-side view while occasionally popping out a Daedra or two. It makes the crisis feel like it was just that one wave and then a lot of empty air, but admittedly it is nice for people who want to avoid the main quest without having DOOOOMMMM hanging over their heads all the time.

The limitations of the engine are more forgiveable and yet have a bigger impact. The lore that came after Oblivion tells us that the crisis was a massive Tamriel-wide (possibly world-wide, but we never hear from beyond our one continent) event with ransacked cities and armies fighting the Daedra etc. On a personal aside, I prefer to think Argonia was kept safe by just being so drat poisonous and inhospitable to anything not local, rather than the Argonians going on a hardcore mad counter-invasion that made Mehrunes Dagon crap his pants.

Anyhow, the later lore makes it feel big, but the game is unable to match that scale without blowing up your hardware platform of choice. So the developers by sheer necessity shrank things down where they could. I'll take the example that is most relevant with this part of the story. Namely Savlian Matius holding the gates of Kvatch.


In-game, (all by memory, so I won't vouch for my accuracy here), Savlian stands in front of the gates alongside two other guards to protect the refugee camp from the Daedra. That he choses not to ignore Kvatch and its hordes of monsters is good. That he somehow managed to find the time and opportunity to erect a barricade of sharpened wooden trunks is even better. However, his opposition is just two or three Scamps running from their Oblivion gate. Even at the compressed scale the game employs in general, it doesn't feel like much of a threat. Heck, the player is expected to handle those kind of encounters solo about five minutes later. But then again, you're the hero and supposed to be above the normal man or woman. Worse than that is that the barricade is utterly useless, as Savlian and his men will cheerfully charge out in front of it to meet the Scamps in close combat.

Again, this is all limitations of the game engine. Savlian's troops are equipped for close combat so the ai seeks to deliver them into fighting range, treating the barricade as an obstacle to get around (the same way it treats any random rock or fence or wall) rather than something to hide behind for cover. If they were archers, ai limitations and hitbox issues would probably have all the arrows hit the barricade instead of going through or over the visible gaps in it. So regrettably, the barrier doesn't do much but I don't see how they could have done it differently. At least it is a nice bit of scenery detail and doesn't leave the refugee camp totally open.



Moving ahead, you may have noticed that in the story I did not make mention of the Oblivion gate that sits before Kvatch's own gates. That's because there isn't one. The gates in-game can presumably appear anywhere, so having them pop up outside the fortifications (you know, on the side where all the defenses are strongest), is kinda silly. Yet game engine limitations again, it's better than placing the gates inside the city and having to hand out even more immortality tokens than are already present just to ensure everyone doesn't get wiped out piecemeal by random Daedra before the player can even arrive.

In my story however I don't need to worry about that and can happily have the invasion commence from the inside and catch everybody with their pants down.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Apr 30 2013, 05:36 PM