The Last Days of the Fashion Club Options

[WellTemperedClavier]

Here's the novella I wrote this year as a companion piece to Outlanders. This one actually takes place during the events of the game, and follows Jeval as he deals with the dissolution of the Fashion Club and some pretty big changes in his own life (and in the world around him). I wrote this to explore some heavier themes that I wasn't really able to get to in the main story. It's sixteen chapters long.

Breaking Balmora, or The Last Days of the Fashion Club

Chapter 1

A single lock of blond hair fell down on Jeval’s brow, just a little left of center. He zeroed in on it, seeing his black eyes reflected back at him in his mom’s polished brass mirror.

Is this what he wanted?

Because that little lock said a lot. It changed the image he’d sported for the past three years, made him look more daring, more relaxed. Not some kid any longer, but a man. Or at least a guy. A guy girls would want (he hoped). He’d already fixed up his outfit to reflect that: undid the two top buttons, loosened the threads around the cuffs. Enough to make him look chill without looking messy.

Quinn worked magic with this kind of thing. Jeval wasn’t as good, but he’d picked up some tricks from her, things like how to take a tunic or a collar and get it to tell the story you wanted it to tell.

“Jeval, are you still at the mirror?” came his little sister’s voice.

“Yeah, obviously,” he said.

“I need to use it! Mom!”

Jeval sighed. Okay, he had to figure this out pretty quick. He brushed the lock to the side, giving the bare brow look one more chance.

“Jeval! Why in the world do you need to spend so much time grooming yourself?” mom demanded, her voice carrying up from the kitchen where she was busy heating up yesterday’s stew for breakfast.

He turned his head to the door, where his sister Seleynia glared at him, and spoke over her. “Because looking good is important!”

Screw it. He didn’t need this. Jeval let the lock fall, studied himself one more time, and stepped back.

“All yours, sis,” he muttered.

“Weirdo,” she muttered back.

He ambled down the adobe stairs and into the cramped kitchen. Mom looked at him through the steam rising from the big cookpot.

“Jeval, I know you want to look good, but isn’t it a little odd for a man your age to spend that much time at the mirror?”

Jeval shrugged. “Shouldn’t a man my age look good?”

Not like he had much choice. Skinny little Bosmer guys weren’t exactly in high demand among girls in Morrowind. He had to make the most of what he had.

“A man your age should be working at a trade.”

“I have a job!”

“Cleaning tables isn’t a trade, Jeval. And you spend all your money on clothes and cosmetics!”

“Are you kidding me? I stretch every septim I get. Meanwhile, Seleynia breaks the bank each time she goes to the market—”

“Clothes are important for girls. They shouldn’t be so important for you.”

“Yeah, well, I dunno how to break this to you but this isn’t Valenwood. In Morrowind, people expect you to look sharp.”

“Always good to look sharp!” dad declared, stepping in from the street. He’d just come back from a big courier job to Gnisis the other day.

Dad pointed to his horns and flashed a file-toothed grin.

“Yeah, see?” Jeval said. Not like dad didn’t have his own agenda on this. But right now, Jeval would take whatever help came his way.

Mom frowned. “It’s strange for a boy to spend that much time in front of the mirror. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You say that now, but just wait until he brings home some gorgeous Dunmer girl from a rich family. I bet he’ll punch above his weight. Same as his old dad,” dad said, leaning in to give his wife a quick peck.

She rolled her eyes but smiled as she did it.

“You staying for breakfast?” dad asked.

“No, I gotta work. Then I’m hanging out with my friends.”

“Good, good.”

Okay, he was free from them until late evening.

“Let’s walk a bit,” dad said.

Or not.

Jeval and his dad entered the street outside their home, packed with the midday crowd. The autumn sun shone weakly above Balmora’s sprawl, all its hundreds of brown adobe boxes and the thousands who lived inside them.

Jeval picked up the pace. He wasn’t mad at dad, or anything. Just kind of didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“Uh, no offense, but I might be running kind of late.”

“We can jog,” dad offered.

Dad was a courier, so yeah, that’d be a cinch for him. No avoiding this parental conversation.

“Have you made any friends at work?” dad asked.

“I’m usually the only guy there my shift,” Jeval lied.

“So still hanging with Quinn and the other girls?”

Jeval’s heart sank. He knew where this was going. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing! Having friends who are girls is a good way to get girlfriends. But you’ve never dated any of them? Quinn, Satheri, uh… Tiphannia?”

“Uh, no. It’d be kind of weird.” But even as he said it, he felt the warmth creep into his cheeks. Since yeah, he still kind of wanted Quinn. Not as much as he used to, but the feeling never totally went away.

“Don’t get hung up on her, Jeval. There are a lot of girls out there. I’m sure Quinn can introduce you to someone. You’re not interested in, uh, Treads, are you?”

“No,” Jeval said, squeezing the word out between his clenched teeth.

“You do spend more time with her than the others. Look, I know things are done differently outside of Valenwood. And I’m open-minded. I’m just… not sure there are good long-term—”

“I’m not attracted to Argonians. She’s not attracted to Mer. That’s why she’s my best friend. We can just chill.”

“Okay, I believe you,” dad said, in a tone that suggested he did not, in fact, believe his son.

They turned the corner, going along the riverside market packed with the morning crowd. The thick and sour smell of roasting kwama rose from dozens of outdoor grills, mixing with the damp riverbank air. The Odai flowed thick and black beneath the Foreigner’s Span, swelled by the recent rains. Nearby, a Dunmer priestess stood on a crate, denouncing the cult of the Nerevarine.

“Stay true to the Tribunal and the Temple teachings!” she proclaimed. “Heed not the lies from the House of Troubles, who take the memory of blessed St. Nerevar and twist it to their own foul ends!”

Jeval had been hearing a lot about the Nerevarine lately but didn’t get what it was about. Something to do with an old prophecy that the Tribunal Temple didn’t like. But he wasn’t a Dunmer and he didn’t worship the Tribunal, so whatever.

“What about coming with me on my next trip?” dad asked.

“Huh?”

“You know, go with me on the job. You don’t want to be serving drunks at the Lucky Lockup for the rest of your life.”

Jeval thought about it a bit. Working as a courier would be interesting, at least. He didn’t know if he wanted to hike that much. But he’d get used to it, right?

“Uh, maybe. When’s your next job?”

“Don’t know yet, but not long from now. I think you’d be good. Just have to build up your endurance. And I know all the tricks: how to figure out if a storm’s coming—”

“Lift a finger to the wind and see if it’s going to push the dark clouds toward you,” Jeval said, remembering the many stories dad had told him about his adventures on the road. He used to love those stories as a kid.

Hell, he still did.

“—how to negotiate with bandits—”

“Give a little cash to make them happy, but never let them corner you or take your cargo.”

“—and why you should never camp out in an ancestral tomb.”

“Because you’ll get cursed or killed.”

“Of course, you can always get un-cursed. But getting un-killed isn’t usually an option. Sounds to me like you’re ready for the job.”

Jeval chuckled. Dad had charm. Jeval wished he could be like that.

“Can I think about it a bit?”

“Sure, but not too long. It’s been months since you graduated. It’s fine to rest a bit, but you have to keep moving forward.”

“Uh huh. I know.”

They turned the corner again, keeping some distance between them and the Council Club, where Dunmer gangsters glared down on them from the roof. The Lucky Lockup, haven to outlanders and weirdos, lay right next to it.

“Have a good one, son,” dad said.

“Yeah, you too,” Jeval said.

He’d spend the rest of the day scrubbing corkbulb tables and serving drinks to rude people from all over Tamriel.

At least he’d look better doing it.

He hoped.

[WellTemperedClavier]

@Acadian - Heh, skooma would have been an interesting option for this.

As for the guild, there will always be a lot of politics that get in the way of doing the job.

@SubRosa - Thanks!

Jolda doesn't play that big a role in this story, but I thought this would be a fitting cameo. She'll be in Hammerfell just a few years from now. As for the timeline, this takes place before the lengthy epilogue episode, but after the Balmora Tax Revolt.

Yeah, I got some "inspiration" from the various real-world educational disappointments that people have suffered. Drenlyn always seemed kind of fly-by-night anyway, so it fit.

@Renee - Oof, bad timing there! I've read that disco's death came about partially due to the rise of hip hop, and also because of the early '80s recession. All that glitz and glamor had a high price tag.

Heh, yeah, I wanted to keep it in the realm of the "real" while also making a nod to the gameplay mechanics. Jeval's definitely stumbled onto something with this curse idea.

(Interestingly, in Episode 31, Quinn briefly wonders if Tiphannia is cursed, but she's too distracted by the whole Balmora Tax Revolt to think about it very much).

There are definitely some parallels with the guild system and various dysfunctions here in the real world.

Oh, so that "all the colors of the rainbow" line was actually just me trying to think of a way to describe how colorful it was. Didn't realize the implication. The epilogue does mention Jeval having a wife, but given how long Mer like him would live he might well have explored other possibilities before that point.

Chapter 4

The passage Jolda had picked out was perfect.

The target whose intelligence has been damaged will indeed be diminished, though not in the way associated with a person of subnormal intellectual acumen. The effects are best described as a kind of slowing. The target will struggle to complete sentences and will often be entirely unable to follow a conversation. In an example that I have observed, the target continually addressed the conversation’s opening topic, seemingly unaware that the participants had moved on. At times, the target may show flashes of their original intelligence, but these will be rare.

He might as well have been writing about Tiphannia.

Jeval stashed the book at his house and spent the rest of the day working at the Lucky Lockup, not able to concentrate but doing his best to scrub tables and serve patrons. He bolted the moment his shift ended, ran home, grabbed the book, and rushed to the warehouse where Treads worked.

The sun was settling into the west by the time he reached her. Workers busied themselves lighting the grimy lanterns that hung over the levees, their reflected glow like soiled stars in the dark water. Treads was already standing outside with a few other Argonians that he’d never seen before.

“…don’t mind doing it, actually. Just wish it didn’t take so long,” Treads said. She lifted her head as Jeval approached. “Oh, hey!”

“Treads! Jolda got me this book. You gotta take a look, this describes Tiphannia 100%!” he gushed, panting and out-of-breath.

“Who’s this?” one of Treads’s friends asked.

“Jeval,” she said. “I told you about him.”

Jeval skidded to a stop and put his free hand on his knee, gulping in the air. He needed to work on his endurance if he was going to follow in his dad’s footsteps.

“Hey. Yeah, I’m Jeval. We go way back.”

“I’m Damp-With-Dew,” said one, his voice so deep it seemed to shake the air. He wore a hood, and it was too dark for Jeval to make out any details.

“Acclesia,” said the other, her voice thin and whispery.

“Looks like Jeval and I are going to help an old friend,” Treads said. “See you around?”

“For sure,” Damp-With-Dew said. “Good meeting you, Jeval.”

The two Argonians walked into the thinning crowd. “New friends?” Jeval asked.

“Relatively. Can I see the book?”

“Yeah,” he said, handing it over. “Page 45.”

Treads took the book and stood next to the nearest torch, squinting as she tried to make out the text. Her throat bulged for a moment, and the tip of her tail curled up like it always did when something surprised her.

“This does sound like Tiphannia.”

“Right? I say we go.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as a little creepy that the author of this book keeps referring to this person as a ‘target’? Like did he cast a spell on them to study the reaction?”

Jeval shrugged. “Uh, kinda? I didn’t read the whole thing. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Wait, hold on. Did you keep reading?”

“No. I went to work after I saw Jolda.”

“It says that the… target,” Treads growled out the word, as if it tasted bad, “is still on some level aware of what’s happening around them while under the spell. And they’ll remember it all when the spell’s reversed.”

“Even better, right? We won’t have to like, fill her in.”

“Sure. But you know, we sometimes treated Tiphannia like a joke. I’m… probably guiltier of this than most.”

Jeval thought about that a bit. “I mean, that’s what friends do, right? We mess with each other.”

“Because we’re all in on it. I’m not sure Tiphannia was. My point’s that, if she’s enchanted in this way and we reverse it, she might not be entirely happy with us.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine. She’ll just be glad we fixed her.”

“Hmm.” Treads looked out along the river. “We have to do it anyway. But she might not be as happy with us as you think.”

They made good time on the way to the Blumius home, up north in the nice part of the Commercial District.

“Oh, shoot,” Jeval said, as they got closer. “Uh, your dad doesn’t like you wandering around at night. I don’t want to get you in trouble—”

“I don’t like wandering around at night, either. But I know how to handle myself. And my dad needs to accept that so long as things stay the way they are, it’ll never be safe for Argonians, night or day.”

“Huh?”

Treads shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it now.”

By the time they got to the Blumius home, Jeval was wishing he’d dressed a little nicer.

“So, I’ll lay it out,” he said, standing in front of the door. “Keep it simple.”

“You know, we should’ve probably asked Quinn to do this. She knows how to handle people better than us.”

“You want to wait and bring her in?”

Treads thought about it for a moment. “No, we’re already here.”

“Then let’s go.”

Jeval knocked on the door. Tiphannia opened it, staring at them with her usual expression of dull surprise.

“Oh… it’s you… guys…”

“Hey, Tiphannia!” Suddenly, Jeval wondered if they should talk to her first. But there was no way to explain it to her. “Can I talk to your folks?”

“Why… do you want… to talk… to them?”

“Some business stuff,” Treads said. “Nothing to do with fashion.”

Jeval gulped. He hadn’t really understood what Treads had meant earlier, about Tiphannia not being “in on it”, but now he did. This felt awkward.

“Dad… Jeval wants to talk to you… about business…”

“On my way, dear!” came Mr. Blumius’s cheerful voice.

Tiphannia wandered off, and her father, a red-faced Imperial with a bad combover, took her place.

“Ah, always good to see my daughter’s friends,” he said. “I’m a little surprised you want to speak with me, however. You never struck me as especially, well, business-minded.”

His smile was big, but Jeval noticed that he didn’t motion for them to step inside. In fact, he was blocking the doorway with his bulk. Mr. Blumius wasn’t that tall, but he was still pretty strong. He’d served in the Imperial Navy when he was young, and said he still did the daily exercises.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Blumius. I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Tiphannia.”

The smile didn’t go away but his eyes turned hard. “Oh? You’re not a… suitor, are you?”

Blood rushed to Jeval’s face. Because no self-respecting Imperial would let his daughter marry a Bosmer. Skinny stunted jungle-elves like him were the lowest you could get before hitting beastfolk, right?

Beastfolk like Treads.

Jeval exhaled. Dammit, now he was buying into their bullshit. He shook his head.

“No. I already have a girlfriend,” he lied. “It’s more, well…”

Instantly, Mr. Blumius relaxed. His smile no longer seemed fake. “Ah, beg your pardon then.”

Treads decided to step in. “We think Tiphannia might be cursed. We did some research, and the way she behaves is exactly like someone who’s been targeted with a ‘damage intelligence’ spell.”

“A damage… excuse me, what?”

“There are spells that can mess up a person’s traits,” Jeval explained. “Including their smarts. Here, I got this book from the Mages Guild. Look on page 45.”

He handed the book to Mr. Blumius, who took it and opened it up. His eyes went back and forth as he read the passage, his brow furrowing like someone trying to concentrate on something strange and boring.

“This is interesting,” he said. “But what proof do you have?”

“We don’t have proof,” Treads admitted. “But you have to admit, that does sound like your daughter. It’s not too expensive to have these spells reversed with a blessing at the cult shrine: 35 septims, I think. And if she is under a spell, clearing it will make a big difference for her.”

“Well, perhaps. But you may be overthinking this. To me, Tiphannia seems perfectly normal for a girl her age. She loves clothes, baubles, talking about boys. I’ll concede she’s a little slower than most, but her future will be one of respectable wifehood and motherhood. She’s certainly capable of that. Her husband and servants can take care of the details.”

Jeval’s jaw dropped.

A long, vibrating sigh escaped Treads’s mouth. That meant she was pissed. But she knew better than to show it. “Of course. But it might still be more helpful for her—and you, and her future husband—if her intelligence is restored.”

“Which again, assumes she been magically diminished. I still don’t see proof.”

“I mean, I get that her interests are, uh, normal for her age,” Jeval said. “But she is kind of, well, off. Like compared to Quinn.”

Mr. Blumius laughed. “Quinn’s an altogether remarkable girl. I wouldn’t even expect most boys to reach her level. You also have to take Tiphannia’s background into account. Yes, we raised her in the Imperial way, but her blood is Quey. Who can really say what goes on in those peoples’ heads?”

“I’ve met another Keptu-quey,” Treads said. “He did not act like Tiphannia.”

“Tiphannia is fine for her position. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention, but unless an authorized mage can confirm she is indeed cursed in this way, I don’t see any reason to take action. Your concern is laudable. But misguided. If there’s nothing else?”

Jeval tried to figure out a good response. But nothing came up. Gods, what would Daria or Quinn do? They’d think of something.

“That’s all, Mr. Blumius,” Treads said. “Thank you for your time.”

“Have a good evening, then!” he said, waving before he closed the door.

Jeval stared at the closed door, not quite believing what had happened. He’d always gotten kind of a weird vibe from Mr. Blumius. But he hadn’t expected that. Thinking Tiphannia acted that way because of where she was from, not caring since her being dumb didn’t affect any of his plans.

Tiphannia wasn’t smart, but she wasn’t the stupidest one in her family, that was for sure.

“He’s not going to listen to us,” Treads said.

“We should’ve gotten Quinn.”

“I’m not sure he’d have listened to her, either. Though maybe she could’ve figured out a way to get him to do what she wanted without him realizing it.”

“Yeah, she’s scary good at that. So, what now?”

“How much would it cost to get a mage to check Tiphannia?” Treads asked.

“Jolda didn’t say, just that it’d be more expensive than taking her to the temple and getting her restored.”

Treads nodded. “Then let’s pool our money together and, uh, take her to the altar. So to speak.”

“Temple or shrine?”

“I don’t want to give money to either of them. But the temple’s closer, so let’s just do that.”

That surprised Jeval a little. Treads hated Morrowind and the Tribunal. Seemed like she should prefer the Imperial shrine, but apparently not.

“You sure?” he asked. “Is that allowed? Because Tiphannia’s family follows the Nine. Same as mine.”

“Positive. The Imperial Cult says it’s okay to use Tribunal Temple services for this sort of thing. Probably because they don’t want outlanders to have to march six miles to Moonmoth every time they get sick.”

“Guess that makes sense.”

“It will be tough to explain to Tiphannia why we’re taking her.”

“Let’s have Quinn do that,” Jeval said. “She’ll know how.”

“Agreed.”

This post has been edited by WellTemperedClavier: Oct 15 2023, 05:33 PM