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.
So I have to do this whole
slow-walking sewer-section again. Okay, might as well practice this
little dashing-attack I noticed happening whenever running and
pushing the left mouse button for a longer time. Martor goes for a
yelling attack-lunge whenever I do that and I go berserk against some
crabs and giant rats for practice. Baurus (the Blade I'm stuck with
here) is not much of a help here, yelling “This one is mine!” at
some point and then proceeding to not draw his sword and look at the
rat that is attacking me. Martor rolls his eyes, draws his own weapon
and cuts the rat down himself. Typical Baurus: Spouting big words but
not following them with any sort of deed. He probably only got his
position as the Imperial bodyguard for looking snappy in his Blade
uniform…
So once more we get to the
door beyond which lies the table where we're to meet with the
cultist. This time I convince Baurus that I should be the one meeting
with him, so I go in there and sit down at the table. A man appears
and I get up to greet him. He yells at me that I should sit down and
if I can't even follow simple orders. I sit down and he repeats the
request. Before I can come up with a coy comeback, two more cultists
appear on the bridge spanning the top half of the room and yell that
they see someone else. So Baurus wasn't much better at hiding than
I had been. I get up and draw my sword. As Baurus is facing two of
the assassins and I have only one of them, I run up the stairs to
help my fellow Blade. The fight rages on for a while and in the end,
all three assassins are dead but so is Baurus. Again.
I fail to feel too bad for
this, as Baurus has been throwing around his weight a bit too much
for my taste, bullying me where he could before I was with the Blades
and also not seeming all that competent. He seemed more interested at
hanging out in that tavern than saving the Empire. Confirming my
suspicions about him, I find a bottle of dark-beer on his body.
Typical. Writing this down, I realize I should have looked for his
sword but I didn't so that's that.
Martor and I decide that
going after the cultists now that we still have the element of
surprise on our side and (after the obligatory looting of bodies) go
to where the cultists came from, disguised as one of them (I had been
lugging around one of their robes and one of their hoods ever since
the beginning tutorial – waste of space as these guys come and drop
like flies). Disappointingly, there are only two shabby beds and some
random stuff in lockers. Beyond that these sewers appear to be once
more goblin-country, complete with cauldrons full of human skulls.
Goblins never were much of a problem for Martor in the first place
but by now he can just swat them aside. Massacring another part of
the Imperial Cities secret goblin population I seek for an exit
out of the sewers.
Which is harder than I had
anticipated. I change to different parts of town quite often and it's
clear that I am lost. I find a ladder up into somebodies basement
and go up there. I pick open a chest, a grave mistake as I'm
quickly out of picks and now I can't open the basement door to get
the hell out of here. Now in the real world, Martor would've just
had to hammer against that door until the frightened owners of the
house called the guards who would let him out. He'd then explain to
them that he is with the Blades and this is Imperial business and
that he'll be on his way now. Sadly, I don't have this option.
Crestfallen I go back to wandering the sewers.
I have no idea how long I
run around in the dark, killing goblins. I open flood-gates and crawl
through. I climb up and down stairs. I end up at doors that are
locked with hard locks and I have no hope of opening them with the
three lock picks I found on dead goblins. Then, due to some sort of
miracle, I find myself back up in the basement I had first ended up
in. This time I have three lock picks and I can open the door. I
fully expect there to be either someone in the house, calling the
guards on me the moment I come out of the basement or, if that is not
the case, the front door to be locked with me having yet another
impassable obstacle between me freedom. I am lucky though, no one
sees me and the door is unlocked. Both, Martor and I sigh with relief
as we step onto the street once more.
So, my local contact with
the Blades is dead but I have all four of the cultists books now.
I go sit on a bench by the arena and start actually reading these
ramblings for the first time, hoping to find some hints as to where
to find their secret shrine. I find nothing I could piece together to
any sort of location on my map. I eat some food and then head to
Secret U to meet with that expert on Daedric cults again, Tar-Meena
the lizard. Getting there she tells me that she'll look into the
books and I should come back tomorrow. It's getting dark already so
I decide to screw it and just sit down in the courtyard of the
university and sleep until the morning. Then I go right back into
Tar-Meenas place in the lobby.
The expert on Daedric
cults tells me that it has something to do with the first words in
paragraphs of the books but she can't tell me more until tomorrow.
I decide to try it myself and walk out to the inn just outside the
city. There I overhear a conversation between the innkeeper and an
imperial legionnaire. Apparently one of the provinces of the empire
has just abolished slavery and freed the animal-folks. That comes as
quite a surprise to me as I haven't noticed any sort of slavery or
racial tension in the game yet. But then I'm a white, male human so
I guess I wouldn't know, would I? The legionnaire thinks that
freeing slaves is troublesome and I dislike him instantly. I sit down
and study the books. In real life, I get out a piece of note-paper
and start writing down all the first words of paragraphs from all the
four books. Then I start crunching these things in my head. Being
normally quite adapt on pattern-recognition I compare first letters,
word-combinations and so on and find nothing. Either I wrote down the
wrong words ore there is something I completely miss or the
localization has screwed this riddle over. I don't know but I strongly suspect the latter.
Now the game has prompted
me from time to time that my horse is situated at a stable outside
the city walls so I go there to get it. After reading on a
loading-screen that plants I harvest regrow after a couple of months
I have gotten the nagging feeling that I'm still going at this way
to fast. I mean how long can this main quest be? So perhaps I should
set out to adventure a bit more, before returning here and annoying
that lizard-lady again. I ride onto the bridge spanning the lake from
the Imperial City Island to the mainland and stand there,
considering…
continued here.
continued here.
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