25 January 2012

Playing Oblivion - Day 1 part 10: Getting side-tracked

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.



I follow the path West and run into a woman clad in fur-armor, wielding a huge hammer attacking me. After a bit of a scuffle, she lays dead on the ground and a juvenile curiosity lets me strip her down, taking all her stuff. Leaving the underwear-clad corpse behind I go on my way, killing some wolves that are foolish enough to attack me. I have bought myself a steel claymore from that orcish woman to have a backup-weapon in case my sword degrades too much again. Having a backup-weapon is important, I figure, if your blade gets dull after two dozen cuts.

Along the road I pass an inn, an actual traveler (not a bandit) and I run into an imperial legionnaire riding on a horse spawning directly in front of me and yelling at me to watch where I'm going. Whatever, asshole, I was materialized this whole time. I get to the ruins as it starts to rain – I really like the weather-effects in this game, they almost make up for the lack of a proper sun – and am attacked by two skeletons, one with an axe and one with a bow. I destroy them and then clear out their comrades from the upper parts of the ruins. I enter the wooden door, searching for the door that the key the gladiator gave would open in the dungeon beneath this fortress. And maybe some of that elusive wine.



There are wolves down here, weird, as the door was closed and even if they could open doors, how would they close them? Doesn't matter, I shoot them with my bow and then fight them with the claymore in order to spare my main weapon the wear and tear. Somewhere in the dungeon there is a hallway where I spot humanoid shapes patrolling so I get back and check out the locked door I passed earlier. It's the one for the key. I walk in and hear a voice asking who's there so I start sneaking. Now I'm not good at sneaking and as soon as I have cleared the misty trench that separates the entrance area of this section from what looks like a living-quarter, a man attacks me with a knife, talking about how hungry he is. The game informs me that he is the half-orcs father, lover of his orcish housemaid, noble and, apparently quite insane. I wish there was an option to parlay, as I have food I could give him and I don't want to kill him but he leaves me no choice and after taking about a third of Martors health bar he drops to the ground, dead. I search through his stuff, first feeling sad upon finding a half-written love-letter, then feeling a bit relieved upon reading in his diary that he was secretly a vampire and that he was locked up here so he wouldn't kill his child. Vampires can have children? With orcs? What is this, fucking Twilight? I fail to collect the diary, make my way back out the ruins and get back to daylight. I don't think I feel like traveling by normal means anymore and surrender to using the fast-travel function of the map. Something about donkeys right next to the Kvatch refugee-camp. Weird, I didn't notice anything. I fast-travel there.

A door in the hillside behind a rock? I didn't see that earlier so I enter. I hear two women talk about the fucking swordsman-guild hiring. Then they see me and attack me. They are carbon-copies of the female bandit I killed and stripped on my way out earlier so I figure they're with the same gang. I quickly learn that I cannot fight both of these heavy hammers in tight quarters at the same time, as they bash against my shield, stunning me enough for the other one to hit me so I run. I load-screen out the door, look back and see that, yes, they are following me. Time to test something. How will the civilians in the refugee-camp, about 100 meters away react? I run there and hope that the two women aren't actually civilians with a genuine reason to kill me for trespassing. They aren't, the refugees yell stuff at them and form a lynching-mob, throwing punches and even Martin tossing around some spells. The two robbers go down quickly and I take their stuff to immedeatly sell it to the orcish blacksmith. Then I talk to Martin. Let's do this, I say. I lay my life in your hands he says. We share a long look. Then I hit fast-travel.

continued here

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