Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, part 2

There was only one place in the Promenade that sold things other than weapons and armour (though they sold that as well), and that was a shop just to the left of the crumbled remains of the exit to Irenicus' dungeon. It had a nice look to it, with interesting curios in the multi-level décor, and a surprisingly obvious dig at the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series, with pictures of two characters from that show on the wall, with text describing their deaths.

In front of those posters was a woman who sold some special items that made more reference jokes. I'm not sure how many of them were specifically references to Planescape: Torment and which were just integrating the Planescape campaign setting in general, but she was selling Dak'kon's Zerth blade and Vhailor's helm, both of which specifically mentioned the Nameless One in their descriptions, and there were items referring to the Sensates and the Mercykillers. I believe this vendor is one of the "bonus merchants" included in one of the patches I installed. The items are very expensive, but that's good, because this game needs a money sink.

There's a great deal of humour in this game, in dialogue and absurd situations, and I love it.

The circus tent

The circus tent was undergoing renovations as a TARDIS, apparently, containing a caverous space with an elegant bridge over a bottomless chasm, leading to a lavish arabesque building. There was another genie there to greet us. Three genies already! If doppelgangers were the big recurring theme in BG1, it's looking like genies are the theme in BG2. Amn seems to be the D&D equivalent of Arabia (and, unless I miss my guess, Minsc's descriptions of Rashemen sound like that's the D&D equivalent of Russia). This genie asked us a riddle, and unfortunately this riddle was actually a mathematics problem (a weakness of mine), and I apparently miscalculated and got it wrong, but surprisingly enough he gave us a second chance with another, much easier riddle, then let us pass.

A character named Aerie was there, in the form of an ogre, inside the main building. I already knew the name before playing the game, so there was no doubt that I should believe her when she said she wasn't really an ogre (because the master of this place is an illusionist), but even if I didn't know her already, she sounded so earnest I'm sure I would have believed her anyway.

The way everyone in this place was talking, I was preparing for a major boss fight, especially when one creature explicitly offered my party time to rest after a fight, and prepare for the final room. It was a surprise when the supposedly powerful wizard (who had supposedly created all this architecture in this pocket plane, and bound all these slaves) went down so quickly and easily. I guess it was all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

So Aerie joined my party after talking to her dear uncle Quayle, the gnome wizard I never picked up from BG1, and she seems like a cheerful, upbeat girl, and romanceable. And a cleric! So I'm concerned that she might make Viconia superfluous, and I really want to have Viconia, since I liked her so much in BG1.

The genie from the tent showed up again when I investigated the magic lamp I acquired during the adventure and obtained the control word from a malicious "man" named Jafir. Jafir seemed certain that if I got a wish from this genie, I would end up in as much trouble as the one who used it to create the things in the pocket plane, but perhaps this is where my high wisdom comes in. The genie offered a selection of quest-specific wishes, as well as a secondary list which appears to be the usual list you'd get if you used the Wish spell, all of which seem to be combat-focused, and disappointingly limited, but it is one of the larger lists of options, and it's understandable given the nature of this medium, as opposed to the free-form wishes I imagine you could make in a pen & paper session.

The combat wishes weren't useful in this situation, of course, so that left the quest wishes. Perhaps my wisdom wasn't quite high enough to give me a really good wish option, though, because none of the options were very satisfying. I could free the genie, attempt (and fail) to wish for more wishes, resurrect the insane gnome who caused all those deaths to "give him a second chance" (but no option to resurrect the people he killed), send the genie to kill Jafir, or try (and fail) to kill Irenicus and rescue Imoen -- the genie claimed something was interfering with his powers on those last two options. I love the fact that the genie uses the classic line, "Your wish is my command!" when granting a wish! I ended up freeing the genie, for lack of any better options.

Chapter 2, and names again

Chapter 2 began surprisingly enough shortly after I left Waukeen's Promenade. I hadn't even taken two steps when some rogue named Gaelan approached with a vocal tic causing him to exclaim "Coo!" every few sentences, and said he could help me find Imoen. And although I was wary of following a vaguely shady rogue into his house, which he suggested, the game actually transported me into it automatically, despite him saying "You can decide for yourself if you want to come in when we get there."

But despite the forced action, it set out the goals of the next chapter nicely, telling me to raise 20k gold, and suggesting a few places to look for work (or in other words, quests).

Then Chapter 2 began, and to my dismay I learned through both the chapter narrator's speech and one of the voiced cowled wizards that Irenicus is meant to be pronounced "eye-REH-ni-cus", which doesn't sound anywhere near as good as "eye-ruh-NYE-cus".

Now, Gaelan advised me to not spend any money until I've raised the necessary amount, but by this time I had raised enough to pay off the government to allow me to cast spells in the city, and that was priority one for me, as a sorcerer, so I went as quickly as possible to the Government District, through several minor encounters on the streets.

Companions

I actually came across my old friend Viconia upon entering the district, being treated to the same kind of hospitality she was enjoying when I found her in the first game, except that instead of the firing squad, they had set up a cosy stake to roast her on.

After the fanatics were dead, she said she would wait for me in the graveyard after I'd freed up some party space. I'll probably have some space soon. One of the mod-added party members (Chloe) is starting to wear out her welcome. There's just the issue I mentioned before, that I already have a cleric, and I like her. Then again, Aerie's also a mage, and Viconia is a much more powerful cleric, so perhaps I'll try it out with both of them. I really have a lot of party members with healing spells this time. Even Minsc can cast a minor heal now, unlike in BG1.

Speaking of Aerie, though, she's suddenly started bringing up her handicap rather often. She's a winged elf, but she was crippled by her former captors, who kept her in a cage so long her wings started getting necrotic, and they sawed them off. But I got the impression that this had happened quite a while ago, since she said she'd been under the protection of Quayle for some time, and the wounds had clearly long since healed over, so why is she suddenly getting more and more upset about them? I'm being nice to her about it, but I'm having trouble believing this aspect of her character. Jaheira, on the other hand, is being quite cruel to her about it, and it's clearly because she was getting interested in me herself, though she hadn't said so yet. Her attraction was clear from the little hints given in her interjections, but I'm not interested in romancing Jaheira. Her personality is rather abrasive and domineering, and she shouldn't be falling for someone so soon after finding her husband dead, in my opinion.

Anyway, after finding the person to bribe to allow me to cast magic and asking around to see if anyone had more leads on Imoen (unsurprisingly, they didn't, though I did pick up a rather vague quest from them to find a missing outlaw named Valygar), I spoke to a boy named Delon outside who was begging for some help with some strange creatures attacking his village of Imnesvale, with rumours of an ancient witch returning to curse the place. Ah, just the sort of thing I wanted! As much as I like exploring the city and talking to people, I was looking forward to some regular adventuring again. I guess I didn't need to spend that money on a magic license yet after all, if I'm going outside of the city. Ah well, no matter. I expect an excursion out there will make all that money back pretty quickly anyway.

The Umar Hills

Imnesvale was an interesting place with its own side quests, and plenty of people to talk to. Opinions differed amongst the townspeople as to what kind of creatures were attacking them. The bartender promoted the ancient witch hypothesis, and was only too happy to provide me with a copy of his book about it, which was a reference to the Blair Witch Project. What made it really funny was when I snooped around in the containers behind his bar, I found that they were all filled with dozens of copies of that book!

Other villagers blamed a band of ogres for the killings, and still others believed a pack of large wolves was responsible. I did a little scouting around, and found the ogres, but they convinced me they were peaceful, so I left them alone. I found some caves, as well. One of them contained an unexpected monster -- a mimic. They're the monsters that disguise themselves as treasure chests to lure unsuspecting adventurers close and catch them off guard. On killing it, I obtained a vial of its blood, but it had no obvious use, and the description mentioned uses that weren't immediately applicable, but I kept it in case there was a use for it later.

In the other cave was a werewolf, gnawing on some human bones. Mystery solved, eh? Except she said that there was someone worse that was controlling her kin, and he's the one responsible for the recent killings. My experience with werewolves is rocky, to put it mildly, but I know from Tales of the Sword Coast that werewolves aren't automatically evil, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

A diary from a fighter named Mazzy was in one of the houses, and I recognised the name as a potential party member, but from the sound of it she was some kind of fighter, and I don't need any more of those. I explored just up to the point where I found the temple that the town quest seemed to be leading to, and turned back, because I didn't feel up to the challenge of a dungeon crawl at the moment. I went back to town to report all this.

In town, I found a few side quests that I'd missed when I went on the scouting run. Simple local concerns such as paying a man for a lucrative secret involving some chickens, and buying some ale for a small group of teenagers. There was the option of also buying them some weapons, but that had the potential to end badly, so I stuck with the ale.

It's strange that they'd need someone to buy it for them, though. What else is there to drink in these towns? For much of human history, in many regions, fermented beverages were the standard drink for everyone, children included. Fermentation renders the drinks sterile, and thus wines and beers were safer to consume than water in places with poor sanitation. The only other things I can think of that they might have drunk would be fruit juices or fresh milk, but in a society without refrigeration, both would have to be obtained fresh, since fruit juice would quickly ferment into cider or wine anyway, and milk into cheese.

So, I bought the boys their ale. There'll be no cholera deaths on my watch!

Outside a house, I met a young man who wanted me to convince a girl's overprotective father to let them go out together. The father turned out to be a Cowled Wizard who was working on building a big stone golem to use as a guardian. He was unreceptive to my speaking on the boy's behalf, despite the pleas of his daughter, but he offered me a fetch quest to get him a needed ingredient for the golem. As it happened, it was the blood of a mimic, which I already had with me, so it was a quick and easy bit of XP and reward.

Now, it was pretty obvious that this was a thinly-veiled Frankenstein plot in the making, so I began positioning my party strategically as the wizard began to activate the golem. Surprise, surprise, it woke up hostile and out of control, and we managed to beat it down without the wizard or his daughter getting hurt.

He was shaken and relieved at the narrowly averted tragedy, and decided that perhaps he was wrong about knowing what was best for his daughter. It ended with the two lovers joyfully running off together with the wizard's blessing, and all was fine. I imagine there were different endings if one or the other or both were killed in the golem's rampage. This was one of the more enjoyable quests in this town.

I happened to find Valygar in this area, too, from the other quest given at the government building, and in a little plot twist it turned out he was being framed because of his anti-magic stance. His story sounded genuine, and it seems the Cowled Wizards just wanted his dead body to use as some kind of genetic key to open up a sealed sphere that had teleported into town recently. So, to finish up that questline, it looked like I'd have to add him to my party and go on another dungeon crawl. Again, I decided to put it on hold for now, and head back to Athkatla for a while.

Planescape: Torment, part 2

Perhaps if I did more of these entries in a stream of consciousness way, rather than attempting some form of structure, I wouldn't have 5 partially written posts as yet unposted. I'll just get my impressions of the characters out of the way here, and move on to my Planescape experiences.

Morte

Hey! Chattering's my best trait!

Morte is a loyal, obsequious follower, who seems like a true-blue friend. I thought it might be annoying to have a yes-man following me around calling me "chief" and "boss", but in truth I find Morte to be quite likeable. There was a time that I started to distrust him, when I found out he had deliberately omitted reading part of the tattoo on my back, which warned me not to trust him, but all that was swept away when I recovered memories of the former self that had pressed him into service in the first place. It's a shame there was no option to try to make amends for that, nor any way to even acknowledge that I remember it.

Considering how many times I've been on this quest, judging from certain people who remember my earlier attempts (such as Pharod), Morte is conspicuously silent about things. Surely he should know some of the things and people I'm trying to find, and where to find them, since he's been accompanying me for years. I'm going to attribute it to fear and dread on his part, though. Having seen some of the things that have happened on previous attempts, and having weathered certain stormier "inspirations" of mine, it's understandable that he would be loath to help me lead us right back into that mess.

Annah

Ach! Never have I seen something so ugly, I've not...

Annah's first action in the game is to casually send you off to an alley that could get you killed. That, and her insults, foul mouth, and ill temper, did not endear her to me. I kind of like the way her rat tail calls attention to her buttocks by constantly whipping around, though.

Once I jumped through all the hoops necessary to get her to join the party, I found that Annah makes a good thief, finding and disarming traps, unlocking chests and doors, and backstabbing from the shadows. I've even been able to kill some enemies with her alone, backstabbing them, then running around a corner to hide in the shadows again, then backstabbing them again while they stand there wondering where she went. I'm not a big fan of the fact that her "daggers" are actually "punch daggers", though, which makes her feel more like a brawler than a rogue in fights.

Dak'kon

Endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Dak'kon strikes me as the archetype of the wise kung fu master, except that he uses a sword. He's supposed to be elderly according to the dialogue, but I really can't tell with the badly lit 3D portrait of him, and at any rate he's a perfectly competent warrior/mage. I've enjoyed taking his little tests to unlock new spells from his Circle of Zerthimon, though in general I prefer the normal spells. There are generally normal spells with identical effects as his, but the normal ones have icons that you can identify at a glance, whereas all of his spells are circle icons which are identical aside from slight colour differences.

In personality, he seems pretty benign. Not very interesting to have around aside from the Circle tests, but with no particular bad habits, unless you count his constant emphasis on the word know.

Ignus

You are all tallow for my flames.

Ignus is criminally insane pyromaniac, made especially dangerous by being a mage with a direct connection to the elemental plane of fire. I have not yet met another character in the game who is more pathologically evil than Ignus. He burns both personal and public property and living human beings for fun, looks forward to killing us all (and constantly informs us of this plan), and even gleefully incinerated his girlfriend who had been waiting for him to be freed. Perversely, he's listed as "chaotic neutral" with the justification that he's insane. Not a good enough reason. Garrick the bard and Quayle the gnome from Baldur's Gate were chaotic neutral, and they were miles away from homicidal maniacs!

But, I understand there are few D&D topics that inspire more arguments than the alignment system. For instance, do we classify characters by their intents, or by their actions, or both? A character like Dexter (from the eponymous TV series) I would classify as lawful evil, because he is a homicidal psychopath with no empathy, and the sole reason he restricts himself to only killing other killers is because he is bound to the laws handed down to him by his father. But this is open to much debate, since even though he slavishly follows a set of rules or laws, he is not following the laws of the land, and even if his actions result in fewer serial killers in the world, which is a form of justice and protection of the innocent, it is also vigilantism, and I don't think it would be wise to trust a homicidal psychopath's judgement in life or death matters.

So, I would certainly classify Ignus as chaotic evil, not neutral, based on his homicidal desires, his destructive actions, and the pleasure he takes in it all. He's like a tanar'ri.

One last thing about Ignus: I don't know if this was an error on the part of the developers, or if they intentionally spelled it that way, but it should be "Ignis" (Latin for "fire"), not "Ignus".

Fall-From-Grace

A lady must have her secrets.

I don't know much about how the romances are supposed to play out for this game, but I thought at first that I would be romancing Fall-From-Grace. She was the one who comforted me as I was in tears after regaining my memory of betraying Deionarra. She's a Sensate and a succubus (which both spell "sensual" to me), and a nice person, whereas Annah is foul-mouthed and angry all the time. But there never seemed to be any romance starting with Grace. The closest it ever got was when I was able to say I imagined kissing her when I was kissing Ravel, and she brushed it off by saying that it's a good thing I didn't, since a succubus' kiss will kill a man. Er...okay, but there are other things one can do in a romance besides kissing (things which I've been led to believe that succubi are good at), and there is of course the fact that death is not permanent for me. So what's the problem? It seems pretty short-sighted that there is no response available for her statement other than changing the subject, with the option of seeming flustered when I do it (and being flustered at such an idea seems entirely inappropriate for my character).

The rest of the time, all I can do is try to ask her how she feels about me, and she only says "A lady must have her secrets." Alas, Grace is proving far too prim and proper and hard-to-get, and Annah recently burst out her formerly bottled-up tsundere crush on me, which painted her in a whole new light. So, Annah is my romance, against my initial expectations, though it remains to be seen if anything will come of it beyond a singular impassioned kiss and some biting.

Sigil's Hive

Jumping back a bit in time from some of the events I mentioned in the character descriptions, it was a relief to get out of the Mortuary and into the Hive, despite its name and ugliness. Here, I was free to explore and talk to people without having to sneak around. The first person I met there was, strangely enough, someone who could get me back into the Mortuary if I so wished, either by me playing dead, or by actually letting him kill me. I declined the offer, and really couldn't see any reason I'd want to get back in there. Additionally, since I had just woken up from death with no memories and no possessions, I was wary of dying again, thinking I would lose experience points, stats, or even quests! I also took to heart the warning tattooed on my back that said:

And whatever you do, do not tell anyone who you are or what happens to you, or they'll put you on a quick pilgrimage to the crematorium.

The little cutscene that played after I left the Mortuary, showing my slab being surrounded by shadowy wraiths, also indicated that someone powerful was looking for me, and so it was always a surprise when I would see dialogue options that would allow me to reveal my secrets. It also didn't make sense to just keep walking around the city dressed in nothing but the loincloth I was wearing on the mortuary slab if I wanted to remain incognito, but since I'm unable to actually wear anything outside the Mortuary (the Dustman robes I picked up in there were helpfully auto-dropped on the doorstep by the game, so as not to tempt me, I guess), I just have to hope that no one takes much notice of a near-nude grey-skinned hulk of a man, covered with scars, being followed by a floating skull.

Dustmen

The Hive seemed to be full of Dustmen, though that may be due to the location of the Mortuary. The Gathering Dust Bar is probably meant to serve as their hangout after working hours. After my experience in the Mortuary, I tend to see the Dustmen as enemies, or at least dangerous, and their philosophy is pretty repugnant as well. Obsessed with the alleged futility of life, and embracing death, these people wouldn't be so bad if they just followed their reasoning to its conclusion and killed themselves, but apparently misery loves company, because they're also compelled to spread their childish philosophy like a disease to infect as many as possible before they go out.

At least there was one in there that might break free of their hold, since he was right there on that precipice of wanting to die, but being unable to commit suicide. When he hired me to do it, I made as if to do it, then released him when he struggled, with a wry "Changed your mind?" I was pleased to see that the game even let me deliver a stern lecture to him afterwards, and leaving him to think "Hmm, actually, I do rather enjoy being alive. Maybe this doctrine is wrong."

Another offense of the Dustmen is their selling of Dead Contracts, where they offer to pay a pitiful amount of money in exchange for the rights to raise the contractee's corpse as a zombie slave worker in their mortuary, which is described as a kind of living hell. And this being the Hive, where life is cheap, signing such a contract seems like a way to quickly meet with an "accident". Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to help a citizen who had made that mistake, since I couldn't pickpocket or negotiate with the contract owner for it (or I didn't think I could, anyway), and I wasn't inclined to homicide.

It's possible to join this faction, but I saw no reason to do so at the time. Now I realise that I missed out on some quests which one of them would have given me as a prerequisite for joining.

World-building info

I solicited information from a professional "tout", one of several who wander around these areas. Every time I see it, I read it as the French word "tout" (pronounced "too", meaning "everything"), though it's probably supposed to be pronounced to rhyme with "out", and is just a shortened form of the English word "touter". At any rate, they offer general information about Sigil and the planes for those "clueless" who may have never seen planes of existence beyond the Prime Material before.

Morte had some things to say about Sigil as well, such as it being a crossroads connecting all other planes, and that the city of Sigil is located at the top of an infinitely tall spire. He expresses confusion on how there can be a top to something infinitely tall, but I think he fails to take into account that when you're talking about infinity, both directions are infinite. Thus, if we take Sigil as the origin point, and the spire is a ray projecting in one direction from that origin, the spire can reach infinitely far in the "downward" direction, where "down" is relative to the city of Sigil. In an infinite space such as this plane, it would be equally valid to say that Sigil is at the bottom of an infinitely tall spire, but since gravity seems to be pulling from below the city (which would be logical considering how much mass is below them), "at the top" is a better description, even if it makes the infinite spire more confusing.

Anyway, the touts provide some good background information for people like me who are unfamiliar with the Planescape setting, though it was very unclear how much of that information actually applies to this particular game implementation.

For being such a small map, this first section of the Hive is pretty densely packed with quests, so I think I'll save the rest of it for another post and end here.

I myself don't need a weathervane to tell which way the wind blows

The Helseth questline is ridiculous. The man continues to make transparent attempts to kill me, and there's nothing I can do but pretend I don't notice. "Assassins are coming to kill the queen," he says, "and since I can't trust my guards, I want you to be the only one there to defend her." Fine, I say. Just so I can get the stupid piece of the legendary weapon that one of his guards has in his possession. So the assassins come, big surprise, they really came after me. This king is an idiot who thinks that three Dark Brotherhood assassins will be enough to take care of me after I fought through their entire lair and killed their leader. My only handicap in this fight was that I couldn't use my wide-spread attack spells, because Barenziah was in the next room, and she would die too.

Helseth drops his guard a little in his surprise at my return safe and sound from the assassin attack, again, as if he forgot that I came straight from the DB lair at the beginning of this ridiculous plot. So then he tells me that I need to prove my worth by dueling his champion, who no one has ever beaten. You've got to be kidding me. What's next? He'll pull out a shotgun and tell me he just wants to test the quality of my robes?

Happily, as far as I can tell, there won't need to be a "next", after I beat his champion and obtained the blade fragment I needed. Helseth of course seemed more dismayed and shaken at my success than anything, but he pressed on in preparation for his grand speech about his plans for me, at which point I said "goodbye" and left before he had a chance to add any crap to my journal that I didn't intend on completing.

This is not to say that I have any more love for Almalexia than I do for Helseth. After I got all the blade pieces and left them with the smith to reforge the weapon, I checked back with Almalexia to see if she was as tired of the ash storms as I was. In fact, she stated in no uncertain terms that she planned to continue the ash storms until she was fully satisfied that the poor people of Mournhold had suffered enough and feared her divine power again.

Yay. Of course, it wasn't her divine power that started the ash storms, it was me pushing a few levers on a dwarven weather control device. Just in case, I made a trip back down into the ruins to see if I could just turn it off again, but no luck. The levers were "held in place by a mysterious force". Mysterious? I think not.

At this point I installed Yellowdude's Amulet of Weather, and brought back the clear skies for my own personal comfort, main quest be damned.

I think I need to get away from all these nasty politics and paranoia for a while. I'm going to take a trip to the land of the ice and snow, and...werewolves?

Addendum: Although the aforementioned weather-control amulet worked as advertised, it seems to interfere with the scripting on my purchasable alchemy lab, which is unacceptable. When I attempted to access my alchemy materials after installing this weather mod, nothing happened. I uninstalled the weather mod, and my alchemy lab returned to normal. So caveat emptor.

Starting over, Tribunal MQ, dwemer ruins

New character

Well, I went ahead and started over, with the knowledge of everything I'd learned the first time in mind. I figure this is a good spot to stop numbering my posts, and just go with titles. (In the picture, my new character is wearing the purple fairy outfit from Clothiers of Vvardenfell.)

This time, I went straight to Balmora, joined the Mages' Guild, bought a common soul gem and a soul trap spell, and teleported to Caldera to sell a trapped Ancestor Ghost soul to Creeper for 4000 drakes. I then proceeded to outfit myself properly, purchased the spells I needed to make some custom effects, and headed to Tel Branora to pick up more empty common soul gems to fill and pay for the custom spells and enchanted items I needed. Fine rings are more than enough to make some nice utility enchanted items, like night eye, healing, bound dagger, hoptoad, slow fall, etc. Much easier to use them rather than deal with the tiny mana pool at the low levels.

Then, I took the transport to Ald'ruhn, and spent about an hour searching for Pemenie so I could do her escort quest and get the Boots of Blinding Speed, to make the agonising run speed into something tolerable. For them to be useful, of course, I needed to make another utility ring to give me enough magic resistence to counteract the blindness side effect of wearing them. As a Breton, I'm 50% immune to negative magic effects anyway, so another 50% was all I needed, and only for 1 second, plenty of time to activate it and then put the boots on.

I also joined House Telvanni again, since I'm playing a mage again, and because I really liked it the first time. Other factions I joined besides the Mages' Guild include the Imperial Cult, the Tribunal Temple, and the Legion, just so I can go and do that Widow Vabdas quest that the quest bug caused the game to skip over the first time through.

Knowing exactly how the magic system works this time around, I made the best spells I was capable of casting, so I'm good in a fight, but I'm a real glass cannon, because one hit will often kill me. Levitation and invisibility are my friends.

Tribunal continued

The fact that I've started another character doesn't mean I'm done playing my first one, though. I'm quite curious about all the locations in Tribunal, and I've been continuing along in that. However, something has just happened that has turned me off from it. Wasn't I just complaining about ash storms? And guess what happens in Tribunal, as you advance the main quest? Ash storms. With the added insult that you, the player, are the one who is required to bring them about, in order to advance in the main quest. Why is it that Bethesda always seems to include events in the main questline that uglify the game world, reduce its already-meagre inhabitants, or otherwise create nuisances for the player? Do they want players to get to an irritating point, and then plow through the rest of the main quest in the hopes of getting things back to normal? Because that's what I do, and I wish I didn't have to.

More extensive dwarven ruins

A good thing about Tribunal is that it includes a very large dwemer ruin with unique architecture, set pieces, and items, along with some pretty strong physical evidence for which of the many conflicting stories may be true, regarding what happened to the dwarves.

Aesthetically, I much prefer the more elegant, ornate, rather Victorian wrought-brasswork of the Oblivion dwemer architecture, such as what we see in the Orrery, as opposed to the heavy duty Industrial Revolution look with the mottled rust/copper plate of Morrowind. If I decide to make a dwarven mod, I would attempt to bring some of that elegant look to Morrowind.

Interestingly, these ruins have a blue and green lighting style, as opposed to the orange and red of the Vvardenfell ruins. I haven't actually seen any lava yet, only water. Also, these have tilework instead of being all heavy metal walls and floors. Perhaps this is because the metal is only necessary in the lava-working depths? In any case, if these ruins are about the same age as the ones on Vvardenfell (and I have no reason to doubt they are), then I interpret this as a good indication of the varying styles of Dwemer architecture that we should see in a fully-realised dwarven city.

This place seemed more artisan than industrial, with workshops, eating areas, and less spartan quarters than the ones in the lavaworks. I'm guessing the lava-oriented ruins are primarily concerned with generating power (geothermal steam power, obviously), and facilities like this are primarily concerned with routing it and using it.

Tribunal is also home to the biggest daedric shrine I've seen yet, and one of the most creatively designed, as well.

Day 21: Vampires, oddities, huge dungeons, clothes

I don't know how long I searched for the sewer system under Balmora Expansion. I could have just opened the mod in the construction set, but I ended up finding it thanks to a user's helpful tip on Planet Elder Scrolls. There are actually three entrances to the Undercity that I know of now, but one's hard to find. I only saw it once, when I left through it, and I couldn't find it again afterwards (it's in the hills outside of Balmora). The easiest one to use is the one in Carnithus' house on the east side of town, but it's only open from dusk 'til dawn, since the Undercity is a settlement of vampires. Another entrance that has no daylight restriction is behind a locked door in Zakothre's General Store, but Zakothre is constantly right there in sight of the door, so you need to be practically invisible to unlock it without getting reported.

I have a problem with a couple of locations in Balmora Expansion and other mods, in which I enter an interior and it's pitch black, and no light spell or night eye has any effect, but I can see fire effects. I'm not sure what causes it, but if I go to other locations for a while, I can usually come back later and the lighting is normal again.

The Undercity is pretty interesting (though not as large or imaginative as the Undercity in WoW), and has a few quests for the non-hostile vampires there, which you don't need to be a vampire to complete, several shops with unique items on a goth or vampire theme, a nightclub that sells some new beverages, and another player home as a quest reward, with a pretty unique design and new textures for it. If you want a dark, evil-looking lair that's not a cave or tomb, this compact but elegant home with black marble columns and vaulted ceilings may be the place for you.

The Undercity is in a section of sewers that are copied from the Mournhold sewers, complete with goblins, but one section has an unusually large concentration of goblins that was a welcome challenge after so much of the usual Morrowind combat being only 1 or 2 enemies at a time.

I'm not a vampire, but I'm planning to become one at some point, to go through some of the quests of one of the clans, because I like quests. I've already killed the leader of one of the three vampire clans as part of a quest, but it's not the clan I would have joined anyway. Just like the Great Houses, there are three vampire clans, each focusing on one of the three playstyles in the game: fighter, thief, and magic-user. The leader I killed was from the Berne clan, the ones who focus on stealth, and I'd be joining the magic-user clan, the Aundae.

In order to get infected, since I'm currently immune to common diseases, I'll have to make a spell, potion, or enchanted item with Weakness to Common Disease, and go fight some vampires of the clan whose bloodline I want to be a part of.

Inconsistent hostiles

Not sure why this happens, or if this is a common thing, but most of the time lately, when I approach NPCs out in the wild or in caves, shrines, etc., they don't turn hostile immediately. I often engage in conversation with them, only to find out that they're Barbarians or Mabrigashes (Ashlander witches), both of which are hostile. Only after a few seconds have passed do they turn hostile. I'm not a stealthy sort, because I like to make sure an NPC is actually hostile before I attack, or I may kill an innocent person, and since there's no colour-coded indicator like in other games (like WoW), this means I have to wait for them to attack me first. I may have to install Fliggerty's Enhanced Detection mod, which includes a spell to "detect enemy", defined as "any creatures or NPCs that are currently hostile towards you, or have fight settings of at least 80, which means they are likely to attack you on sight."

In one case, one of the Dunmer strongholds whose Propylon chamber I teleported to was occupied by a coven of witches. They were all hostile to me except one. She never attacked, so I left her alone. She didn't have unique information or offer any services, but maybe she's a part of some quest somewhere. I thought one thing she said was funny, though (I assume all witches say this) about my trade: "The Temple calls my patrons the bad Daedra, and perhaps they aren't very nice... But I guess I'm not very nice, either." Well, hey, at least you don't attack adventurers on sight! She also offered to teach me something about summonings, but no such topics appeared in her list, so who knows? Maybe that's what she meant about not being very nice. Offering to teach me something, but giving no way to ask her about it.

In another, more bizarre instance, I entered Kagaruhn from the upstairs door after jumping onto the roof, and upon entering I saw what looked like an Ash Ghoul standing in the room down the hall, with his back to me. I snuck up behind him and initiated conversation, and he had some things to say to me (he was one of those one of those named guys, the ones whose first names are all "Dagoth", or else "Dagoth" is some kind of title like "Darth" is in Star Wars), so I thought maybe I was supposed to be talking to him. Except he also had barter and repair options. which I don't think he was supposed to be offering. I checked to see what he had for sale, out of curiosity, and it appeared to be the items I'd expect to find on his dead body after I kill him -- most specifically his heart. I purchased his heart, and he said, "Thank you, come again." Then he attacked me when I stopped talking to him.

Temple quests

A lot of the Temple quests are just "go here and cure this person's disease", but there are some clever and refreshing ones, which require some actual thinking to figure out, like the one in the Puzzle Canal, and the one where you go to Mount Kand and have to answer riddles given by atronachs (though that one you can cheat if you've picked up one of the coloured books of riddles scattered around the game, one of which contains the answers. I didn't have that book with me when I did it, though, so I had to do it the hard way, which I liked better anyway.

The one that I thought was funniest was the pilgrimage to Maar Gan, where you find Darth Maul just standing around in the foyer (actually a dremora -- they all have that red and black horned head style in Morrowind), and if you talk to him, he says, "If you are a pilgrim, read the inscription on the stupid rock." He does this even if you're not on the quest. You see a few of these daedra around the game who are bound to Vivec's service, and are very grumpy and sarcastic about it, which I find amusing.

Main quest interference

Without naming names, so as to avoid spoilers, I was more or less forced to progress further than I'd planned in the main quest, due to reaching the point where certain parties who shall remain nameless become hostile toward you, and refuse to allow you to do their quests. This was despite having held back at the warned "point of no return". The NPC said very clearly "Are you sure you want to do this? You might want to take care of your business with the other party before you accept this action," so I said "No, don't do it yet," and went off to do my business, but they acted like I had accepted it anyway!

Luckily, this period of bad graces is relatively short, once you go off and do a few tasks and meet Lord Vivec, and everything goes back to normal. In my case, I had put the main quest off so long (I was past level 40 and had 51 reputation points by this time), that the "shortcut" option was open to me, in which the Wise Woman expresses concern that I haven't fulfilled the prophecies yet, and that I should go talk to someone in the Temple High Fane. Apparently you can entirely skip the trials involving all the Ashlander tribes and the Great Houses and get sent to Vivec directly. But I ended up doing most of the trials anyway, just because they offered such nice rewards, and because I like quests.

Dungeon crawl mods

I was browsing through some more mod lists, specifically one devoted to mods that add single dungeons to raid and loot, and one caught my eye: Qwert's House of Madness, which boasted a 100-level "randomly generated" dungeon just outside of Hla Oad. 100 levels? Randomly generated? I wondered how that was possible in the game. But what it actually meant was that the dungeon was randomly generated with an external program called GenMod, which is designed to allow quick and easy generation of Morrowind interiors, and saves ESPs to which you can add further detail in the normal construction set.

So Qwert said s/he generated this dungeon to celebrate the release of a new version of this program, and didn't even know what all 100 levels contained. Now normally, I prefer well-designed and carefully crafted environments to explore, but I was well aware that this was not designed for that, so I took it for what it was. This had in mind other hack & slash type RPGs instead, not something you explore and admire, just something very obviously game-y that you hack your way through and loot and pillage. Some of the floor plans really did resemble something you might see in a classic computer game featuring random dungeons like Rogue or Nethack, or maybe a pencil and paper RPG whose focus wasn't on realistic architecture.

It featured many new types of enemy (all monsters, no NPCs), with different abilities and stats, some of which were very tough, like bosses, though all using the stock vanilla Morrowind meshes. It was an interesting change of pace. The levels are absolutely packed with monsters, of all kinds, from kwama workers to skeletons to dwemer centurions and so on and so on. There is also no theme or unifying design to the levels, as all types of containers and furniture appeared side by side together (i.e. a dunmer chest, next to a mine cart, next to a dwemer cabinet, next to an upper class bed, etc.) This random assortment also extended to the architecture itself, as the levels I explored were comprised of Telvanni mushroom interiors, Redoran interiors, and Daedric shrine interiors, though the architecture was consistent within a single level (no mix and match on a single level, in other words).

I worked my way through the first 6 levels of the dungeon, having to exit after every two levels to unload my loot. But the first time I went out and came back, I was very disappointed to find that all the monsters had respawned already. I hacked my way through to the next level doors quickly that time, but the next time I headed out to unload, I stopped by the spellmaker and made a few new spells. I made three new damage spells: absorb health, shock damage, and poison, all between 100-150 damage points over 5-10 seconds, and having the widest possible range (50...feet? Yards? Meters? I'll just say "units"). I also made a 50-unit-wide soul trap spell, and picked up a bunch of empty soul gems that had been gathering dust in one of my bases. The spells worked beautifully, taking out entire roomfuls of monsters at once, and filling up about a dozen soul gems per fight.

It was definitely useful for leveling up my enchanting, as I used the filled gems to recharge some of my magic items I had used in the first couple of levels before I made the spells. But even though these were perfectly valid spells that anyone can make in the vanilla game, they felt a little too overpowered, and removed the challenge from the dungeon, so I probably shouldn't have made them. They'd certainly be far too powerful for a normal Morrowind dungeon or typical encounter, considering how sparsely populated and spread out the NPCs are in them, where you rarely ever fight more than 1 or 2 enemies at a time. The most powerful thing about these wide-range spells is that they don't even need to hit an enemy directly -- I can cast it against a wall or the floor in the middle of a room, and it affects everything within the 50-unit radius. These spells are like going into a bandit lair and just tossing grenades inside, and then going in to loot the bodies. I don't recommend it, as it'll take away the fun. I might still keep the wide-range absorb health spell in reserve for emergencies if I get ganked by a crowd of mobs, because the more mobs that are attacking me, the more health I'm leeching into myself.

The way the House of Madness dungeon is set up, from what I've determined so far, is that level 1 has a door to level 2 and a trapdoor to level 10. I haven't gone down to level 10, but I expect that there's another trapdoor on level 10 leading to level 20, and so on. From what the readme file says, there are also some kind of activators on every 10th level, so you can choose to teleport from the surface directly to any of the levels you flip that switch for, once you've been down there.

Qwert also made another 100-level dungeon called The Undead Dungeons near Seyda Neen. But those turn out to be the smaller of Qwert's dungeons, as it turns out s/he also created The House of 6 Pains, which is 500 levels deep, and The Dwemer Graveyard, a dwarven ruin that's 1000 levels deep!! Unbelievable! And I thought the dungeons in the Oblivion mod The Lost Spires were huge! Why haven't I ever seen a tool like GenMod for Oblivion?

Better Bodies robe fix

So, I never did figure out how to convert the BB dresses and gowns into proper robes. The game just silently exited whenever I tried to run my mod that changed them from "shirts" to "robes". I tried renaming the body parts in NIFskope, and of course I had to make new "body parts" for the NIFs in the construction set, but it wouldn't work, and I don't know why.

On the other hand, I think I might have a faint idea of why these gowns weren't defined as robes in the first place. From some comments that I managed to find after scrounging through ancient search results, it appears that robes, both vanilla and BB, are made to replace the entire upper body (and possibly lower body as well), and for some reason it's not practical to make a robe with a low neckline or bare shoulders, so they had to be defined as shirts.

So, since I really wanted to use these clothes, and using them meant I lost several enchanting slots due to clothing overlapping or covering up what I don't want covered up, or not covering up what I do want covered up, I just made special copies of these gowns in the construction set with multiple enchants built into them -- the same enchantments I purchased or would have purchased on multiple items under normal circumstances.

An effect of this is that those glasses (the ones I hadn't been using because they made my neck disappear) worked properly. Apparantly it was another one of those cover/not cover conflicts with my vanilla attire.

Day 20+: House Telvanni is misunderstood

Before I get into the main point of this post, I'm going to list all the factions I currently belong to:

• Great House Telvanni: Master
• Mages' Guild: Master Wizard
• Fighters' Guild: Protector
• Thieves' Guild: Operative
• Tribunal Temple: Diviner
• Imperial Cult: Primate
• Imperial Legion: Agent

The Blades and the Ashlanders also show up in my faction list, but I'm not aware of any quests for them aside from the main quest, so I don't count them. The Imperial Legion was the last one I joined, and I did so partially because I was so pleasantly surprised with how unexpectedly enjoyable the Temple quests were, but also because my journal had a few errant Legion entries that I acquired by accident while just going around interacting with people and things. This turned out to be a bit of a problem.

Imperial Legion problem

This section contains an anti-spoiler. Reading this may prevent you from messing something up in your game.

The main one I wanted to complete was in Ald Velothi, because I had picked up a quest from a random townsperson, who said someone was being held captive in a nearby camp. I went over there, found the woman, paid off the kidnappers, and brought her back to town, whereupon she thanked me, and the quest seemed over. But it was still an active quest in my journal, and it was marked as a Legion quest, even though I wasn't in the Legion. So I looked the quest up on UESP, and found that the one who should complete the quest was Darius of the Imperial Legion. It also said that if you began that quest before joining the Legion, you'd never get to do the quests that came before it, because Darius would not offer them. It claimed that the problem was fixed by the unofficial patch, but it was not fixed for me. First of all, after I joined the Legion, Darius immediately promoted me, but then kept telling me to go rescue the woman, and didn't acknowledge that she was already rescued. My journal showed that she was rescued, and I went back to town and talked with her again, and she again thanked me for rescuing her, but Darius still wouldn't acknowledge it. So I used the console to complete the quest. Darius then offered me the next quest, skipping the first two quests he was supposed to offer. This is a disappointment, because I was looking forward to the Widow Vabdas quest, since I had already found the things I needed to do for that quest while exploring, and purposely left them alone so I could do the quest normally. I guess the lesson here is: join every faction possible, just in case.

The worst part about the Legion is that you can't deal with the questgivers unless you're wearing an Imperial cuirass. They'll refuse to speak to you because you're "out of uniform." This is annoying because those cuirasses are useless extra weight to me, as I fight mostly unarmoured, and if I did need a cuirass, I have higher quality ones with useful enchantments in storage. Thankfully, there's a mod that adds a new item that satisfies the same requirement, but it's a weightless Legion badge that doesn't need to be worn, just carried.

Impression of other guilds

So far the Thieves' Guild quests have been rather boring. However, in Oblivion, the Thieves' Guild final quest was one of the most interesting quests of all, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised with them later.

The quests from the Wolverine Hall branch of the Fighters' Guild are better, especially since they had two quests that involved visiting glass mines. I'm happy to report that the problem I was having before with not being able to loot raw ebony deposits has been cleared up, and the glass deposits in these mines gave me no trouble either. I obtained a lot of raw materials that day. Maybe I'll even splurge a little on using some to craft some worthless glass pots and jars. The second load of glass was a welcome reward for trudging all the way to that mine loaded down with 50 pounds of sujamma to deliver. I don't know how these miners can claim that mining is "hard work" when I can just sneak some glass out of the deposit when they're not looking. Morrowind being a conquered holding of the mercantilist Empire, of course, all glass "belongs to the Emperor". I'm not a fan of mercantilism in general, and I still have a grudge against the Emperor for the prison incident at the beginning of the game, so I'm happy to relieve him of some of his unfairly claimed raw materials.

Telvanni stronghold quest

Reaching the rank of Master in House Telvanni allowed me to do the quest for the third and final stage of my stronghold, a Telvanni mushroom tower. After I had done so, however, I found it to be a bit lacking in utility for a wizard. I did a little search, and found 4 or 5 mods (maybe more) that redesign and/or expand the tower. This is not to say I think the tower is too small -- on the contrary, it's the largest stronghold of the three Great Houses. But the ceilings are rather low, the doorways are a little too narrow (I keep getting caught in them as I try to pass through them), and there's one section that's excessively tightly packed considering you have to work your way around these things via levitation, which gets you caught on even more things than just walking around does. Aside from the navigation issues, there's just not enough mage-related working space. Considering House Telvanni is mainly geared toward magic users, I'd expect more magic-related working space. Well, actually, I could work with it, as the "dungeon" underground (really just a cavern, as there are no prison cells there) has plenty of room where I could set up my portable alchemy lab and some of that portable furniture from Balmora. I might like to move my home base from the Magus Realm to here, and I'm looking to see if I can find a mod I like.

Several of them expand the place a great deal, though, such as adding a town surrounding the tower, quests, large underground extensions, etc. I don't need to run a whole city, but I do like the idea of more quests. The problem is, from the mods' descriptions, I'm again seeing a public opinion that House Telvanni is evil, and they're explicitly designing the tower additions and quests with this thought in mind. Now I'm drawing parallels to the robe I was talking about before, that was called a "Telvanni" robe, but had nothing to do with any Telvanni symbols or colours, and in fact looked like a necromancer robe. Whoever made that robe had this same idea that the Telvanni are evil.

In defense of House Telvanni

Like the other Great Houses, and also the guilds, House Telvanni has an in-game book describing what House Telvanni is all about. Theirs is called The Affairs of Wizards, which should give you an idea right away where they're coming from. "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards," advises Tolkien, "for they are subtle and quick to anger." (Never mind that joke version involving dragons and ketchup, which has become better known than the thing it parodies.) The book explains that most of what you may have heard about the Telvanni is untrue, and that they are a cosmopolitan group who does not discriminate against outlanders or beast races for entry in the house, which is true. And they certainly don't hate outlanders as much as the 6th House does, what with all the "N'wah must die" business. The book also implies that House Redoran may have a grudge against House Telvanni, due to some limited economic sanctions the Telvanni imposed against the Redoran, "for political reasons".

Twice, when I was approaching the end of Master Aryon's quests, I was sent to defend two different Telvanni wizards from invasion and attacks by Houses Redoran and Hlaalu, in which their forces invaded these wizards' homes. In one of those cases, it was never explained why they were attacking, aside from a terse note I found on the body of the leader of the invaders saying that they've taken the tower "as ordered", and they'll hold it as long as possible. In the other case Master Aryon was of the opinion that it was just a simple land grab by the other house, and he opined that they should realise that there's plenty of room in Morrowind for all three Great Houses.

In reading the version of the quest for the attacking House in the first case, on the other hand, they had attacked the Telvanni wizard because he was apparently a necromancer. This does seem to fit the evidence, I have to say. There were skulls and bones lying around, which I assumed were there because the place looked like an ancestral tomb or one of those places that have those round sand pits with the bones in them, but he also had lots of summoned daedra in the place, and as we all know, conjuration and necromancy go hand in hand. (Never mind the fact that this particular necromancer has developed a new method of necromancy that doesn't require the use of body parts -- only a drawing!) But does this make House Telvanni evil? What, because a necromancer belonged to House Telvanni, that makes all Telvanni necromancers? I seem to recall also finding a necromancer as a member in good standing of the Balmora Mages' Guild. But I'm willing to guess that much of this idea that the Telvanni are evil is based on these quests that the other two houses get, even though from the Telvanni side these are preemptive strikes by the other houses.

The subsequent quests involving assassinating one member each of the other two attacking Houses were distasteful to me, but I can see them justifying it as an act of revenge against the other Houses' attacks, or as a means of sending a warning message not to do it again. I don't justify it, as I wouldn't have done it if it weren't necessary to complete the questline, and I understand the other Houses have more or less identical quests at this stage in their questlines, so no one's innocent.

In one of the Imperial Legion quests, I learned that Baladas Demnevanni is keeping an orc Legionnaire prisoner. When I asked him about it, he explained that she came demanding tribute from the Empire of Men. He had been living in Morrowind long before the Imperials invaded and conquered the place, and he expected to still be there after they were gone, and therefore considered himself exempt from their taxes. Personally, I find that to be a perfectly reasonable position to take. The Empire invaded a sovereign nation, conquered them, and are occupying their land by force, to the anger and resentment of the native population. This is another Telvanni who just wants to be left alone to his research, as seems to be the case in most of the conflicts between the Telvanni and other houses and guilds. Anyway, Baladas was very agreeable, and released her after I suggested that she'd learned her lesson. Considering what happened to that other tax collector back in Seyda Neen (remember Processus Vitellius?), it seems to me that I'm seeing more mercy and generosity from the Telvanni than others give.

Sliding scale of evil

How do the Telvanni compare to other groups that are unquestionably evil? The Dark Brotherhood -- now they're evil. From the first time you meet Lucien Lachance in Oblivion (accidentally in my case), he makes it very clear that he enjoys murder and torture, and approves of others who do so. The other members laugh and joke about killing children or entire families, and clearly joined the Dark Brotherhood because they love murder for the sake of murder, and consider it just a bonus that they get paid for it. I haven't seen enough of the Cammona Tong to know if they're as bad as the Dark Brotherhood, but the Morag Tong seem to be the "good" assassins. If you have a society with both good and bad assassins, I think the bad ones must be pretty evil. The Sixth House? Also evil. Telvanni? Not so much.

I thought at first that the reason for the impression of the Telvanni being evil was because they defend slavery, but as I found in talking with many NPCs, this is a Dunmer sentiment in general, not unique to House Telvanni. You see slavery in both of the other Great Houses, as well. But do the other Great Houses run a convalescence home for victims of corprus disease, as Telvanni Divayth Fyr does? Of course not! Redoran's too busy going out and smiting evil to care for the sick, while Hlaalu would never engage in such a lossy business venture. But here, the corprus victims are well-protected, and one of Divayth's daughters devotes all her time in tending to their needs while Divayth himself attempts to develop a cure, or at least eliminate the harmful effects of the disease.

I can't paint a purely glowing portrait of House Telvanni, of course. A couple of the counselors give quests that involve killing another House member for purely selfish and material gain, not justified at all. And I think the game is not fair for setting it up to require killing them, anyway. When I go to Senise Thindo because Master Neloth wants her Robe of the Drake's Pride, and she's wearing it (so it's not pickpocketable), and tells me it's "not for sale," realistically there should be an option to explain that Neloth means to obtain it over her dead body, and I should have the option to offer her a very good price for it. Most people would be willing to part with something if they knew that someone was planning to kill them to get it. That's the sort of option I was given in the quest where Ranis Athrys sent me to kill Tashpi Ashibael, so why not here? At least with mods that allow you to negotiate "companion share" with any NPC, you can roleplay around these limitations, and exchange someone's not-for-sale robe or Flesh Made Whole amulet for a generous amount of gold.

Anyway, that doesn't excuse the fact that these counselors gave the quests in the first place. But again, I consider these to be occasional bad apples that do not condemn the majority of the house members. Much like I shouldn't condemn the whole Mages' Guild for the murderous intent of Ranis Athrys and Sirilonwe, or the necromantic practises of Sharn gra-Muzgob.

Telvanni Décor and conclusion

With the worst out of the way, I want to finally draw attention to the preferred décor of Telvanni members. While necromancers and the Dark Brotherhood like to live and work in dark tombs, sleeping on stone slabs, surrounded by bloody altars, rotting dead bodies, and human bones and viscera, the Telvanni tend to prefer surrounding themselves with life and creativity rather than death and putrification. They grow their towers from tree-mushrooms like you might expect a druid to do, and surround themselves in these living plant-buildings with elegant carvings, glowing blue crystals, and objects of study such as books, scrolls, and potions. If preferred living conditions reflect a person's personality, then I'd say this reflects positively on House Telvanni.

Not much else to say about that, but this Telvanni apologia has run overlong anyway.

Day 19: More Imperial Cult, Balmora Expansion home, crafting

The Imperial Cult quests in Ebonheart are actually pretty fun, and surprisingly rewarding in terms of the enchanted items, free spells, alchemical apparati, and skill books you get. I think these would be best to do early on in your game when you can really benefit from some of these items, for not much effort. Though they were all rewarding, the Lay Healer ones were the least interesting, as all except the first one had no special interactions on the quests, only fetching 5 units of various alchemical ingredients (the first of the set had an entertaining special interaction with a farmer), and I just ended up going back home each time to fetch the required ingredients. I'd recommend just reading the page or pages describing his quests and just make a list of ingredients to bring him all at once, so you don't need to go back and forth if you already have the items as I did.

Iulus Truptor's quests all have special interactions with NPCs, though of course you can choose to skip the trips if you prefer, and just pay him the alms yourself for the first three quests, but as I said before, I enjoyed the interaction. His later ones have you requesting donations of items, which adds a little variety and takes you to places you might not otherwise go.

As mentioned before, the Shrine Sergeant quests are the most classical adventuring quests of the lot, such as tracking down a thief, quieting a haunted house, slaying a witch in an egg mine, etc. Once you've advanced far enough in rank (which is very quick with all these easy ingredient turn-ins and the in-town alms collections), you can also start doing quests for the Oracle, which are also adventure-style quests.

I also finished collecting the last of the propylon indices. Unfortunately, the last of them was located in a stronghold that was infested by some creatures that I'd never seen before, aside from the ash zombie (one of which I had encountered when stepping briefly into the Ghostgate to finish the Temple pilgrimage quest). One of the first three...people...I encountered in that stronghold, either an ascended sleeper (looks like a sort of Lovecratian tentacle-faced thing) or a dreamer (naked dark elves) hit me and infected me with corprus disease, which I had no way of curing. Blight or common diseases I can cure, but not this one. So, that meant I had to go a little further in the main quest...just one more mission for Caius, and I was cured. Now I can put the main quest back on the backburner.

Balmora Expansion home

For quite a while, I'd noticed the house in Balmora added by the expansion called "Balmora Residence", which had doors locked higher than I could unlock. It seemed likely that this was meant as a player home, by the name, but I couldn't find a key hidden anywhere. I eventually went to the local spellmaker and made a spell to unlock doors up to level 100 (which is any door), and went in (though I accidentally got a bounty for it). I found it was a very nicely designed interior, with a spacious kitchen and a workshop, which is what I needed for my crafting. However, when I went upstairs, I found a maid who accused me of not belonging in the house and urging me to leave. The grammar was incorrect in her lines, so it was clearly added by a mod.

So I reloaded a previous save so I could figure out how to obtain the house properly. I dug into the pack of readme files that comes with Balmora Expansion, and found the readme by the author Jolard, with the mod named Balmora Manor. The readme file was no help at all in figuring out what to do. All it said was that it adds a quest for the maid. So I tried downloading the standalone version of that mod, whose readme file was no better, and opened it in the construction set to see where it was supposed to start. I still couldn't find anything, and also noticed some differences in it, such as a trapdoor leading to the Mages' Guild, which isn't in the BE version.

But, I did figure out enough of the names in the mod to find them in the BE mod when I opened that in the CS. Turns out the quest begins at the Overseer's manor. Is this added by BE too? I couldn't find any reference to this Overseer in the UESP wiki. Anyway, I had spoken with the Overseer before, but he never said anything about a quest he had for me, but his dialogue seems to be a little buggy. I went down and talked to his wife about one of the usual topics like "Latest Rumours" or something, and she mentioned the Overseer was looking for someone to do a job. I went back up and talked to him again, and this time he offered me a quest, promising a nice, but unspecified, reward. It seems that you just need to talk to him twice before he'll offer you the job, and talking to his wife isn't necessary.

It was a simple ancestral tomb clean-out quest, just outside of town, though one of the spirits seemed a little tougher than usual, and one of the items was cursed to summon a dremora lord which killed me the first time through. But after turning it in, the Overseer gave me the key to the manor. So, to get into the Balmora Residence, you have to find the Overseer, talk to him repeatedly until his buggy code makes him offer you the quest, and then do the quest.

Workshop and kitchen for crafting

I saved at that point, because I wanted to do a little renovating to customise the kitchen and workshop to optimise it for the crafting system in Complete Morrowind. I added a few cabinets for materials, replaced the kitchen stove with the CM functional stove (for bread, pies, etc.), and added a CM cauldron (for soups, porridge, poison brewing, etc). The rest of the cooking is done with portable items, which I carried from my tower. The only thing the kitchen is still missing is a sink. Even without running water, there should at least be a basin that people can manually pour water into, and maybe a well pump.

Anyway, then I moved on to the workshop, which I rearranged a bit, and set it up in three sections. One is the tailoring area, where I installed a CM loom, some containers, and a couple of tables and shelves, on which I placed the items I had collected while playing, such as the sewing machine, shears, spools of thread, loose cloth, and bolts of cloth. In the second section I installed a CM forge and anvil, for smithing and metalworking, and a couple of small tables. I also have two small cupboards under the table that divides this section from the third section. The third is the main work area with a large table with shelves, as well as cabinets and a CM hearth for pottery and glassworking. Glassworking is not likely to be something I'll be doing, as the raw glass is very expensive, and the items made from it are nearly worthless. Clay is cheap, though. This large table is where I'll do the carpentry, wickerwork and fletching, and display my crafts from all these sections on the shelves. (At least the good-looking ones.)

Although most of the skills associated with this crafting system are added by the mod (such as cooking, tailoring, etc.), smelting metal ore affects the vanilla game skill of smithing. This is fine with me, though, as smithing is not one of my major skills. A word of warning about power-leveling your crafting skills (that is, gathering a large amount of raw materials and crafting them all in one session) -- some of the crafting failures actually injure you a bit. Sticking yourself with a needle, or spilling a little molten metal on yourself. Keep an eye on your health so you don't die of crafting!

No, I haven't abandoned my nice mage tower, but now I have a proper workshop and a roomy kitchen in my second home. :)