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[mirocu]

Eilidh is trying, indeed, and yes she has been thrown to the wolves in a foreign land and has to figure things out for herself
She has never really had to try too hard in the past and that is precisely one of the reasons why she has been placed in this situation, so that she has to.

Yes, this has been my impression

Renee, it might interest you then that Targetfinder is enchanted to do fire and frost damage as well as lighting the foe up. This was very useful in Silver Tooth Cave at those occasions when lots happened in the dark depths and it got a bit chaotic

[PhonAntiPhon]

Despite the brief and enjoyable diversion provided by the human, Casta Scribonia - (reminding her of the games she and other members of the young nobility would play on occasion: assignations with humans were considered something of a dare; particularly given the fact that that sot of behaviour was expressly forbidden. That said it was well known that older members of the noble classes often kept "a bit of rough" about the place for decoration in part, and in part because they wielded enough power to flout the rules. For Eilidh and her friends however, it was still considered a rather edgy and potentially fraught pasttime.) - and even allowing for the evident attractions afforded by the countryside surrounding Chorrol, Eilidh is becoming bored and also is very much aware that however long-term it may be, she is nevertheless on something of a schedule.
If she ever wants to see her home again, and in particular if she ever wants to see it as a functioning member of the Royal Family, she's going to need to make tracks.

She's thinking of heading east, she's heard the seat of the Emperor is there, so clearly a woman of substance such as she will be able to find much to her liking, along with contacts and so forth.
The money situation is certainly looking better at the moment - (though not great) - and she's feeling good about some of her actions, she's been keeping her hand in and well making a difference, sort of - (are you listening, father?)

There are a couple of other reasons why she wants to leave however; the chapel here is dedicated to a God, Stendar; Eilidh's people worship a Goddess and although she appreciates the faith of the people around her - (one of their few saving graces) - she would feel more comfortable with a female deity.
Having visited the chapel of Dibella in Anvil she has made enquiries and found that a Goddess called Mara has a chapel dedicated to her in a rather down-at-heel settlement by the name of Bravil far to the east, this will be handy she thinks, as she now has something to aim for, at the other side of this province.
(She's not really fussed about what these Goddesses represent, as such, more that she feels better and more able in this strange land, to worship in the presence of a female deity than a male; also why do they have so many?!).

Secondly she's fed up with living in the shop's cottage, and besides she has to vacate it soon anyway; despite what she did for her the city's stupid countess won't give her the house and she lacks the funds or the clout to purchase it outright.
She's heard, from earwigging gossip in The Oak that there is a big old manor house overlooking the Imperial City, up on a hill. Been abandoned for years apparently, although there's a caretaker there or something. She can't remember the name exactly but it is something like "Rose Manor". Now ordinarily the last thing that she would do is simply move in, but if it's available and whoever it is who looks after the place is amenable, why then she'll have a home base, and a central one at that!

There's also some rumour or news or something that an interregnum is currently in place in Cyrodiil, apparently the Emperor's been bumped off - (careless). Surely her father would want to hear about that and, maybe, she can use the news and whatever comes of it to her advantage.
Where's the best place to find out about Royal News?
Exactly!

The only thing in truth that would be likely to keep her hanging around is the mystery of her strange benefactor.
The goggles were extremely useful, and not only that they were Her goggles.
It is a puzzle, for sure, but can she afford the time...?
No, in short.
Whoever it is will just have to remain a mystery, for now.

++++

Placing the Alchemy text back on the table she leaned back in the chair, and putting her head back breathed deeply in through her nose. The scent of rose and jasmin was cloyingly thick in the study, mixed with almonds from the oil that she had found in a cupboard in the bathroom.
One liberal and all-over application later, and having donned clean underwear and her new dress she felt, if not good about things, then certainly better.
She closed her bright green eyes and tapped a nail against the glass of Surilie wine - surprisingly tasty it was - there was a potential here, she could see it in her mind's eye...

As the warm light of the fire flickered over her smooth blue-tinged skin, she drifted off into a deep sleep...

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 22 2014, 10:09 AM

[PhonAntiPhon]

And so, having made up her mind, she headed out of Chorrol.
Rather than go straight east however, she bore south for a little until she came to the ruins of Wendir, not far from the benighted settlement of Hackdirt.

A short poke around, looking for items that might fund the project that she had in mind revealed some things of value, but much that was lethal, at least potentially, and so she resolved to revisit at a later date.
It was fairly dark by this point and she was forced to spend an uncomfortable and somewhat hectic night in Hackdirt, before heading off early the next day north and east to pick up the road again just to the south and east of the Odiil farmstead.

Passing through Fort Ash she took the opportunity to "borrow" the horse of a recently deceased guardsman, after having fended off an attack by what appeared to be a feie englamoured as a woman made out of leaves and twigs. She had a scent of pine forest and woodland flowers about her, and a murderous glint to her eyes. Summoning a bear she came at Eilidh, howling in a voice like as to the wind soughing through high branches on a windy day.
There are many feie in her homeland, both seelie and unseelie, but this was a form that she was unaccustomed to.
Eilidh is pretty much coming to the conclusion that everything in Cyrodiil is out to personally murder her.

The Imperial City was sighted not in a grand view but in the growing murk of dusk as she was fending off an attack by a Troll, hardly an epic introduction but she was nevertheless mildly impressed by it - (the Imperial City that is, Trolls they have aplenty in her country and they are no prettier, nor intelligent).
She made her way through the gathering murk, following a legion patrol until she came to what was obviously the foot of a grand causeway leading up to the island upon which the City stood. There was an inn there, the Wawnet, where she resolved to spend the night.
Dropping the horse off and ensuring it had at least some food - (though feeling a little guilty that she could not provide for it further) - she paused a moment and looked towards the City.

It was undoubtedly a grand edifice, though surely not a construct of the humans. It bore resemblances to the other marble and limestone ruins she had seen and indeed been in and she determined to herself that the - Ayleids? - had been a superior race indeed. She wondered if there were any left.
Now that would be a coup for her, to deliver one of them to her father!

Be that as it may, she was tired and took herself off to a room at the inn, gratefully stripping out of her armour and most of her underwear before climbing into bed and falling almost immediately to sleep, one long-fingered hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of the short, sharp knife she had placed under her pillow.

++++

She awoke to a day that was bright, clear, and warm and after some routine armour maintenance she donned her best - (only) - dress and her soft shoes, strapped on her dress sword and took herself up across the causeway. The water from the lake far below lapped languidly against the bridge supports, the sound of it almost drowned out by the raucous laughter and harsh voices of the soldiers at the bridge gatehouse. They stopped, and watched her, only picking up their conversation again as she passed them. She could feel their eyes upon as she moved quickly through the gatehouse.
Eilidh had only a rudimentary grasp of Tamrielic at best which, in this case was fortunate, she guessed, although one would not have needed to have been a scholar to have worked out what at least one of them shouted at her.

Upon entering the city, the gates in the massive wall situated at the top of a winding path, next to a stables, she found herself looking almost directly at the statue of a large dragon, on a plinth in a shrine. The city fairly glowed in the sunshine.
Eilidh then did what any girl in her situation would have done, she asked a guardsman for directions, with the aid of sign language and a lot halting pigin-speech.
The guard proved very obliging, and then promptly arrested her for horse-theft, and took her the Imperial Guards barracks, where she was searched, none too gently, and fined 124 gold pieces.

The only good thing was that she came out at least knowing where the market quarter was...

Hardly an auspicious start to her world-conquering plans!

[Renee]

Snaat Rayag, my first PC character, is about to exit the Tutorial. I know very little about him, he's pretty much a blank slate so far as backstory goes. As he leaves the Sewers, he's not wearing much: just some pants and leather boots. He's got a rusty iron axe as a weapon and carries a torch, but no shield, helmet, or gauntlets. He can summon a Cuirass (console command) and can also cast one other spell which I'm now forgetting.

At first I wasn't RPing him much, I was simply using him as a test while I learn the art & struggle of PC gaming. But over these past few weeks I keep getting cool ideas for his game. I found a Bandit Faction mod and THAT is going into his gameworld. This will give him the option to Rob any NPC who travels by road. The mod, which is called Highwayman?, can also add random NPCs who travel the roads.

I'm going to try to start Snaat with a thousand-Septim bounty via console, and it's because I'm RPing him as a 'fugitive' from jail. If I can delete the Amulet of Kings from him I'm gonna do this, too. He'll certainly never follow the Main Quest.

Snaat Rayag is going to cross the river to Vilverin, me thinks. The bandits there will be hostile, because I haven't toggled Highwayman on yet, but at some point I will do just this. Then Snaat Rayag will be Snaat Rayag the Highwayman.

[mirocu]

It´s so fun to read about your PC discoverings! The floodgates have been opened!


But Renee, dear Renee.... What race is he!???

[Vital]

rping a highwayman sounds fun, Renee I tried it in Skyrim where there are more npcs on the road, but died quickly...

I too wonder what his race is. Snaat Rayag makes me think orc, particularly warhammer 40k 'orks' or maybe Tolkien but I'm probably wrong...

[Renee]

PHON: I liked both of these moments, ...

She's heard, from earwigging gossip in The Oak that there is a big old manor house overlooking the Imperial City, up on a hill. Been abandoned for years apparently, although there's a caretaker there or something. She can't remember the name exactly but it is something like "Rose Manor". Now ordinarily the last thing that she would do is simply move in, but if it's available and whoever it is who looks after the place is amenable, why then she'll have a home base, and a central one at that!

Sounds intriguiging. Also it was cracking me up when she got arrested! Not the fact that she got arrested, but the way the guard kind of beat around the bush a bit.


mirocu & Vital: Snaat Rayag is Dark Elf. His Class is Pilgrim (standard class) and his Birthsign Apprentice.

This is the first time I've ever chosen a standard class I think. I've always been a Custom kind of gal. It's because I've got a mod called Fundament which allows me to change skills individually, and this means his game won't level upwards out of control. He's been using 3 Major skills regularly (Blunt, Block, and Light Armor) and one intermitantly (Security), but the skill-rates that I changed are all Minors in this case: Sneak and Conjuration are slower than vanill, and I made Restoration slightly faster than vanilla.

But the thing that I LOVE about gaming with him (why I'm addicted to OB all over again and why HOURS flew by last night during the game session) is because of the Natural Hunger mod. This makes food matter. Food is just as valuable as gold and loot, and THIS is the mod I've been wanting for years now. Snaat maanaged to clear the bandits out of Vilverin, and has a good stash of food for a few days. But as he's wandered around the Niben, getting chased by guards and attacked by wildlife, food is now a valuable commodity. He's been living in Vilverin (which means stuff isn't respawning in there), which means he's been roaming around a bit, looking for new places to plunder so he won't go hungry.

I also got the See You Sleep mod. :drool: Sooo immersive.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 25 2014, 03:16 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

Sounds intriguiging. Also it was cracking me up when she got arrested! Not the fact that she got arrested, but the way the guard kind of beat around the bush a bit.

Heh, yeah it was "Oh ho! You ain't from around these parts, are you?!"

Congrats on discovering the wonderful world of modding!!

[mirocu]

That´s great, Renee! Glad you found mods you really like

[Renee]

Snaat Rayag is in Sinkhole Cave. He feels comfortable in there; all the bandits who would usually attack a wayward adventurer don't mind my dark elf's presence.* Plus, such places make a great place for him to hide from the law.

I get the feeling Snaat is from Morrowind. He showed up in Cyrodiil, wound up getting thrown in jail, but the sentence he received was much larger than usual, hence his 999 gold bounty. Actually, his bounty is well over 2,000 now, since he's been seen stealing several horses. I have no idea what he'll do next, but (like many rogues) he's interested in gold, and lots of it. He might wind up doing some thievery, perhaps. We shall see.


*console command Player.SetFactionRank 000177e3 0 makes bandits friendly.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 26 2014, 07:45 PM

[Acadian]

Renee, Snotty sounds pretty smart to me. Sideways cave has so much to offer a rogue in hiding. Waterfalls to bathe in, dry ruins with bedrolls to sleep in, a convenient location that is near the coast (mudcrabs to eat) and close to the big city for convenient shopping stealing.

Edit: Oh my goodness! How did I translate Sinkhole Cave into Sideways Cave?

[Renee]

Edit: Oh my goodness! How did I translate Sinkhole Cave into Sideways Cave?

That was my fault; I originally had Sideways written. Oops.

"Snotty!" I love that nickname!

[Acadian]

That was my fault; I originally had Sideways written. Oops.

"Snotty!" I love that nickname!

Whew! That makes me feel better. After I wrote that Sideways Cave bit, I was over on the BethSoft forum and read that Snotty was in Sinkhole Cave. So I raced back here to doublecheck and thought I made a booboo.

On Snotty, I think that's one of the forum rules here: Anyone with a name over seven letters gets issued a nickname.

[mirocu]

Seems like Snotty is gonna give you a rather unusual experience, Renee

Really like your idea here

[Acadian]

The folks at Blankenmarch asked if Buffy could help clear out the nest of Ash Can trolls in nearby Veyond. Buffy's familiar with that ruin and knows that each of those trolls can fully fill a grand soul gem. Well, she went into the ruin with 19 empties and came out with 18 fully filled gsg's. She's become one of her guild's prime suppliers of fully filled greaters and grandies. Not evey mage has the stones for that kind of work, you know.

Next stop will be Leyawiin to reprovision and deliver those filled gems, along with a bunch of necrodude scrolls she picked up clearing Fort Doublecross. Oh, and an assortment of atronach salts, daedroth teeth and spider daedra silk from Fieldhouse Cave. A hot bath and silk sheets for the night sound pretty good to her as well.

[mirocu]

The ever so voracious elf!

I bet Lothran is gonna buy those salts later as he likes to make good use out if them

[Renee]

That's awesome, the filled soul gems, that is. How is she doing the Soul Gem part? Is she casting a spell or is it one of her weapons?

Snaat Rayag's got MMM in his game, and to be honest it's a little much for me with the difficulty. Snaatty just had a huge blue scamp follow him! This thing was nearly the size of a man, and it could keep up with Snaatty's stolen horse, too. Snaat wound up running towards Pell's Gate, where this blue scamp (plus two ordinary tan-colored scamps) got into a brawl with the folks in this little hamlet.

During the fight, I realized things weren't going well. One of Pell's NPCs fell, yet they'd barely made a dent in the blue scamp's health. Then I had an 'a-ha' moment. There's a fort right across from Pell's Gate. Since Snaaty is aligned with both bandits and marauders, he now ran towards this fort, where he now had an iron-wearing marauder to help him! ... Phew!

It is possible to dumb this down, and I'm going to do so. MMM allows us to add or remove a lot of stuff; I'm going to tweak this now. 'Cause it kinda sucks seeing innocents go down like that.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 27 2014, 12:33 AM

[Vital]

Acadian, it's cool that Buffy has a purpose to her dungeon raiding. Helping people and finding supplies for the guild simultaneously. Someone needs to do the dirty work for those bookworms

[Acadian]

Thank you all!

Renee, to fill those gems, Buffy starts from stealth with the most range she can get. She casts a single combo spell to immobilize the target for a few seconds (drain speed) + weaken them to poison for a few seconds + soul trap for 30 seconds. She immediately chases this with a poisoned arrow. Normally she remains undetected and simply waits for the soul trap song and fading pink glow to tell her the foe is dead. Her bow is quite powerful, but is actually unenchanted.

[Callidus Thorn]

Soon I'll be down at the Imperial City Waterfront to meet a new character.

After a couple of threads over at Bethsoft about "pure mages" and the pros and cons of the Atronach sign for Mages, I've had the urge to take another stab at it, and a character has emerged to meet the challenge.

His name is Drinks-of-Magicka, he's an Argonian Mage (custom) born under the Atronach, who's just arrived in the Imperial City from Black Marsh. He's journeyed to Cyrodiil after recieving a letter from his mother's brother, his first teacher in the arcane arts, which came with the deed to Frostcrag Spire.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Jan 27 2014, 09:36 PM