Day 3: Balmora home

So, the first thing I did when I reached Balmora was to join the Guild of Mages. Got me a place to stay, cheaper spell sales and enchanting services, some free goodies, and some quests. And cheap portal transport to guild halls in other cities! But the most important thing I need right now is a place to store my loot, since I can't find any Bag of Holding type mods like I had in Oblivion. And since I'm collecting ingredients for alchemy, I have a lot of stuff to stash! (I didn't even bring all the ingredients I had gathered in Seyda Neen!)

The difficult thing is that I don't know what containers I can stash my loot in without people accusing me of stealing when I retrieve them. There's the chest marked Guild Members Supplies or something like that which is free for me to take stuff from, but I don't know if it's respawning or not. Yacoby's Ownership Indicator is useful for turning the crosshair red when you hover over an owned container, like Oblivion does. But I still don't know if I put stuff into an owned container, is it stealing to take them out again? The single most profitable quest I've had so far was the second quest in the Mages' Guild, and this was straight out of the "Starting out" guide. During the second quest you get from there, the girl at the top of the stairs steps away from her desk, leaving her grand soul gem worth 60,000 drakes unguarded. I stole it (hey, she was a thief, too, stealing poor Ajira's reports that you just helped her write). The only trouble with stealing a soul gem from an enchanter is that you can never come back with another soul gem of the same kind and have her enchant one of your items with it. But that's fine, as I intend to enchant my own items when I gain enough skill in it.

Eventually, I went and delivered that package for Caius Cosades that was given to me in Seyda Neen. Oh great. Caius is a member of the Blades, and wants me to join up and work under him. These guys are the elites of the Emperor, the wanker who arrested me and shipped me off to Seyda Neen without explanation in the first place! I'm supposed to work for this jerk now? I guess I'll have to eventually, in order to go through the main questline, but first I intend to rebuild the life these guys stole from me in the first place.

Sorry for the minor spoiler, but it's the very first step in the main questline, and the only reason I learned it so late is that I took my time exploring instead of following orders immediately, so I don't think it's giving anything away. I won't be spoiling anything else if I can help it.

Anyway, Balmora seems to be a nice place to set up shop for a while. Lots of quests that are appropriate for a low level like me (I'm at level 2 now), a nice atmosphere, and convenient transport. Others apparently felt the same, because there are about 5 billion mods adding player houses to Balmora. Trouble is, most of them don't have pictures, and the ones I've installed so far have either been too extravagant, or too cramped, or not well-enough designed around the needs of a budding mage alchemist. Extravagance is a problem because things are spread out too far apart (Callenwald), and it takes too long just to run through the entrance halls (Dome Home). Especially if several cells separate the rooms (Dwemer submarine).

At the moment, I've settled on Denina's Balmora Mages Guild Home, which puts a few rooms in the guild basement with storage and tables and other things for my convenience. I actually opened up the construction set already to make a minor change to it, clearing out a couple of tables and shelves to make room for the Purchasable Alchemy Laboratory (pictured) that I intend to buy once I can afford it again (yeah, I already spent too much of the money from that grand soul gem. Spells are expensive!) I bought the Mark and Recall spells from the local temple, which I have set to teleport me to Creeper, one of the best merchants in the game. I thought Mark and Recall would have given me more than just 1 place to teleport to, but apparently not. Not as useful as I'd hoped. But there are a couple of other teleport spells for other uses.

The Balmora adventure has barely begun!