The Last Days of the Fashion Club Options

[WellTemperedClavier]

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.

"Mom, I need to use it!"

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, swollen 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.

This post has been edited by WellTemperedClavier: Jul 12 2025, 05:38 AM

[SubRosa]

Jeval is starting to sound like Anakin Skywalker. Not the one from the movies, but the actually well-portrayed one we got from the Clone Wars TV show. Just take out the bad people. How many other people do you have to kill in the process? Who decides how many of them justifies it? Shouldn't someone just do it unilaterally, because it is the right thing to do, and let democracy and ethics sort themselves out afterward? Doesn't the galaxy need someone to just do what is right to restore order?

I was going to say something last time, but decided against it because I felt like I was being too soap-boxy. So I might as well get my Thomas Paine out now then. As much as I can empathize with Mr. Flowers and his admittedly horrific experience in the Simulacrum War, I cannot find much empathy for the Empire itself, or in the justification for its existence.

Now granted the reason is because of real world empires, and how they behave, which I am admittedly projecting onto the game world here. In reality empires exist for one reason. For the conquering state to extract wealth from the conquered. That can be natural resources, or it can even be people, either in the form of slaves, or even in the form of soldiers.

For example, the British built railroads in their colonies. But those were not made for the convenience of the people living there. They were made to take the wealth extracted from the interior and send it to the coast, where it could be loaded on ships and sent to Britain. At the beginning of WW2 the British Empire was the largest single state in the world, with a bit over half a billion people. Her military was filled with colonial troops from places like India, Nepal, Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc... Especially India. That wealth, and that manpower, made Great Britain the most powerful nation on the planet in 1939.

I think Bethesda wants us to believe that the Cyrodiilic Empire, especially that of the last of the Septims, was a kinder, gentler entity that any real world empires. But then again, they have the East Empire Trading Company in Morrowind. It has a monopoly on just about every resource unique or notable to the province, like ebony, glass, etc... Clearly it is at least inspired by the RL British and Dutch East India Companies. These again, existed solely to extract wealth from far flung places and bring it back to the centers of their empires.

But back to Mr. Flowers in particular, I am reminded that Tamriel was not always ruled by an Empire. The reason it is now is because Tiber Septim conquered all the other provinces. He did those same sorts of war crimes that Mr. Flowers witnessed in the War of the Simulacrum. The Empire would not exist without it. Nor could Tiber Septim have done it without foot soldiers like Mr. Flowers himself, or at least his analogues from that period. If I recall correctly after the Battle of Sancre Tor Tiber Septim sold all the Breton and Nord prisoners he had taken into slavery. Then when he got the Numidium he was going to use it to murder the royal families of all the neutral states in Tamriel. That was why Zurin Arctus betrayed him, in order to stop it.

So the Empire's hands are definitely not clean, and never have been. Even barring how they turn a blind eye to slavery in Morrowind because leaving that power structure in place is something they ultimately benefit from as well.

The flip side of this coin however, is that the current Empire does provide stability. IRL, the decolonization that took place after WW2 provides a clear example of that, especially in India. Most of the time the old empires like Britain deliberately kept the native population out of any form of self-rulership during their periods of empire. Then when they withdrew they just dropped it all in the laps of people who had absolutely no preparation for taking over and running a modern, industrial society. That is not because those people were infantile, or stupid. They were deliberately prevented from learning these skills by their colonial masters. Then they were just abandoned. The end result is almost always chaos and civil war, like with the Partition of India, which the British thoroughly cocked up.

But the flip side of the flip side, is that the alternative is maintaining the status quo. That just retains the same corrupt, one-sided, predatory systems of power that have always been oppressing people. Real change does not take place nicely and neatly. It's messy, and ugly, and often people completely undeserving pay terrible prices. It is why the United States exist. Why the 40 hour work week exists. Why slavery was ended (well, mostly). Etc...

We have the advantage of being able to see somewhat into Tamriel's future. So we know the cataclysm coming to Morrowind in the near future, and across the rest of the continent to one extent or another. This Empire is not going to transition slowly and methodically to de-colonization. It is going to be here one day, gone the next. In some regards it can indeed make one pine for the good old days of the Empire. OTOH, those days were really not all that good.

So what I am I saying? I don't know. I think that reality is messy and ugly. There aren't any shining knights and perfect heroes. Stability often comes at a price that is just a formalized form of brutality and oppression. While change is a democratized form of the same, since then everyone can do war crimes, not just the ancien regime that used to be in power. None of it is wonderful. I suppose the best we can try to do is make that change meaningful, so that it was somehow worth the suffering it required to come about.

For example, World War 1 and 2 did eventually lead to the European Union, which I do think is a vast improvement over the warring states period that existed in Europe for centuries before it. Now it is inconceivable for France to go to war with Germany. It is just heart-breaking that it took so much horror to get there.

Ok, off my soap-box now, I promise.

So Jevvie is out on the streets, and all the priests are saying "Totally go on worshiping the traditional way" and "Nothing to see here." We are clearly in the final days of the Tribunal Temple.

Tiphanna is dressed in.. brown? beige? An old cloak? Whoa. Things have changed a lot!

So Tiphanna is going back to Cathnoquey. I can certainly see why she would want to get away from her father. While she seems better, she does not seem entirely right as well. She still has these... pauses where she seems to have to stop to gather her thoughts. Maybe she is just choosing her words with care, because she does not want to say the wrong thing. Or maybe she is still recovering from the curse, and having to search to find the words at all. But it is still an improvement.

Well that could have gone better. But then again, as I said when I was back on my soapbox, change can be really ugly and messy. I can certainly see why Tiphanna would feel hurt about everything and lash out. Treads even warned about this. One can only hope that she can make a better future for herself in Cathnoquey.