Day 6: Soul gems = wealth

Not as much time to play today, but I've found that gold will no longer be a problem. After my first successful attempt at soul-trapping my summoned ancestral ghost, I found to my surprise that common soul gems filled with ancestral ghost souls are worth 4000 drakes each! This feels a bit like cheating, but it has to have been intentional, since as a Breton mage I start the game with the ability to summon an ancestral ghost, and both the soul trap spell and several common soul gems are available for purchase at the Balmora guild of mages, and I also note that Oblivion had the helpful tip that you can soul trap your own summons.

I suppose the only real limiting factor is being able to find enough empty soul gems to buy in the first place, as well as the vendor gold limits. But since the gold limit only means that you can only sell one at a time, waiting 24 hours between each transaction for them to replenish their gold, and it's still a giant profit regardless, it only adds tedium instead of challenge to do it without Creeper. Perhaps the limiting is the fact that it's very difficult to figure out or keep track of who sells what, how many, and whether they restock or not. That may be fair, but an obvious roleplaying excuse for finding out who has a steady, restocking supply of soul gems is that it's what any capitalist would do. Of course, the other mages obviously don't do this, or the price wouldn't be nearly as high (simple supply and demand). Why not? The guilds aren't exactly shabby, but aren't what I'd call luxurious either. I think they could use the money so their new recruits don't have to go out to fetch ceramic bowls.

Possible lore reason (and any old hands should feel free to enlighten me if I'm barking up the wrong tree)...we know that the guild of mages doesn't like House Telvanni, and considering that Fadase Selvayn (in a Telvanni-aligned town) is the only merchant in the vanilla game that has a constant supply of petty, lesser, and common soul gems, I'm guessing House Telvanni controls the soul gem mines, or wherever these things are supposed to come from.

But, then again, Tribunal added a vendor to Mournhold who has a restocking supply of common, greater, and grand soul gems. Mournhold is aligned with the Temple, who have a slight dislike for House Telvanni, not to mention that it's a Breton who's selling them. Well, okay, this could still work, since neither of them sell all qualities of soul gems. Telvanni sells the two lowest grades, and the Temple sells the two highest grades, both selling common in...common. Therefore, they both control soul gem mines, but the ones in Mournhold have better quality gems in them.

Of course, for that to work, filled soul gems would have to be worth much less to Telvanni or Temple-aligned vendors, and I don't think that's the case.

Anyway, the point is: gold is no longer a problem.