Morrow(Re)wind: Part 5 - Suffering From Success

Part 4 - Finding My Religion

Author's note: Pol lives! I was sick this week and didn't play too much. When I did, I just took notes and screenshots for later. So this is the accumulation of few days. Not sure if it'll be this long between updates going forward or not, but it continues.

As the boat bumps the dock, Pol awakes after what feels like nearly a week of sleep, his first sight a magnificent sunrise over incredible stonework buildings.

He ventures forth into the immense and dense city of Vivec. The massive structures composing the various sections of the city are mazelike, reminding him of insect mounds he'd cracked open as a child looking for tasty grubs.

AN: I absolutely hate trying to find anything in Vivec, I remember that now. I'll come here for quests that send me here, but I'm not especially inclined to explore it on my own. If there's any quests starting here or anything specific here you think I should look for, let me know and I'll try to look for a way to weave finding it into Pol's story.

Lost and wandering, Pol converses with the citizens, gathering information and directions as he can. He learns that the structures are called cantons, and were all built by the temple in days long past. Some are used by the temple themselves, some house ordinary citizens, and some are leased from the temple to groups such as Redoran, one of the Dunmer noble houses.

The areas between the cantons are waterways. He finds that there are regularly spaced bridges to cross between them, but that there is also a network of gondoliers connecting various parts of the city with far less footwork. He takes a moment to admire the fine hats the gondoliers wear. Fashionable headwear fit for Argonians is far from common, and Pol finds a seed of envy planted in his belly. He continues on his way for now, but in a quite corner of his mind, he begins to wonder if there might be a way to take one of these hats for his own, short of harming its owner.

As he continues into the Temple canton, Pol finds that this city seems to be full of beautiful armor. Passing near one of the city guard, zealous temple warriors who he has learned are called Ordinators, he is thoroughly impressed by the fine craftsman ship of their bonemold armor, trimmed with fine gold and deep blue accents.

He is so impressed by the armor, in fact, that he nearly misses being shocked out of his scales at the sight of a gigantic stone floating low in the skies above the temple. Was this the power of Almsivi?

Pol wanders the temple for quite some time, seeking what the guidebook called the Shrine of the Daring. Annoyed, he stops for a break and out of idle curiosity, he reads the inscription on another shrine nearby, labeled as the Shrine to Stop the Moon. To equal parts relief and annoyance, Pol discovers this is the shrine he was looking for the whole time. His suspicions are confirmed, the shrine is apparently related to the hovering stone. It seems to have been a moon summoned from Oblivion itself, which Lord Vivec stopped in hurtle toward the city, fixing it in the air more surely than the sturdiest mortar.

AN: It was the only shrine in the area, but come on. Don't label it one way in the book and one way on the tooltip.

Checking the guidebook, Pol find that the next shrine is steps away at the Palace of Vivec, and that there is another one in the city as well. As he starts to walk down the stairs toward the Palace, Pol is astonished to find himself floating in the air. His feet now planted firmly on nothing, Pol can feel this will be no fleeting enchantment. The blessings of Almsivi are powerful indeed. Pol makes a donation of gold at the shrine and continues on.

The next shrine is held in the aqueducts below Vivec's palace. There are several entrances, but luckily Pol seems to guess the correct level to enter on the first try. This shrine does not immediately seem to bless him nor demand an offering. The cryptic words on the shrine's base seem to want him to breathe in the waters surrounding him. Sourly reminding himself of how many of the dark elves threat his people, Pol assumes the shrine is not taking into account people who actually can breathe water. Allowing himself to sink to the bottom of the pool, Pol breathes the water in like air, and his head begins to grow light. Trusting in the power that he's seen the temple display thus far, he forces himself to stay below the surface until he blacks out. When he awakens, Pol finds he feels absolutely fine, and that the path forward has revealed itself. Here Pol repeats the ritual described in the guidebook by presenting the bound daedra with a silver sword found in a nearby chest. From the weariness in its voice, Pol wonders just how long the daedra has been bound here, alone but for the occasional pilgrim and even then only to repeat the same action and words over and over.

Emerging back outside and with all of the shrines in the city accounted for, Pol takes advantage of his blessing of levitation to return to Pelagiad and see his good friend Ahnassi. As he rises above the city, he notices another Imperial fortress to the south, considerably larger than Pelagiad or Moonmoth, by the looks of it. Along the way, Pol largely zips above the hills, trees and mushrooms in his way, but darts down occasionally to attack a beast on the road, or to speak with someone he spies below. In doing this, he learns that the power of flight is a fantastic complement to the range of his spear. Pol will have to look into mastering this magic on his own. Pol tries to have a friendly chat with a man at a small farm along the way, but the insolent wretch is horribly racist. Pettily, Pol steals all the marshmerrow and comberry from the rude farmer's fields as he leaves.

Back in Pelagiad, our hero lets Ahnassi know she should now be safe from the criminal who had been threatening her. Showering him with thanks, Pol's true and dear friend thanks him with a set of extravagant clothes and a book, another of Vivec's sermons. She must have sensed his growing fascination with Lord Vivec's incredible feats, how thoughtful! She also informs him of an interesting rumor that an aristocrat, one Belrose Dralor in Vivec's Redoran district, keeps a key in his wife's clothes chest which leads to untold treasures in the Redoran vaults.

Pol is no thief, but anyone with a Vivec penthouse clearly has so much more than they need, and if he's a leader amongst the more traditionalist Dunmer, well... perhaps Pol could help himself to some of those riches and use them to help his own people and Ahnassi's. Consider it reparations. Perhaps he could even return some of the generosity Ahnassi had shown him.

Unfortunately, it was not all good news from his special friend. Ahnassi tells him that her former mate, J'Dhannar, is in dire straits. A skooma addict rotting in one of Vivec's lower cantons, she fears for his life. She assures Pol that she no longer harbors any romantic feelings for the man, but sentiment demands that she try and get him help. She asks Pol if he could somehow try to see if he can find the man and aid him in kicking his skooma habit. Pol thinks of how pathetic Cosades had seemed, and we was just playing a role as a skooma addict... or so he said. His tail twitches and his eyes narrow at the thought of sweet Anhassi being with such a wretch, but his heart prevails and he agrees to help, so as to set his special friend's mind at ease.

Suddenly finding himself with more tasks in Vivec, Pol cannot stay long. Springing back into the air as he leaves the tavern, Pol walks the wind back to Vivec, touching down in Redoran canton just before the blessing fades. Pol finds his way to Dralor's manor and, taking advantage of the common Dunmer thoughts toward his people, he convinces the residents he is a simple laborer. With little thought to spare for a Argonian, they promptly ignore him. Pol locates the room where the key should be, but there's a problem in the form of a noble Dunmer woman whose mission in life seems to be staying rooted inside the room. Pol is no thief, but he is clever. Stepping just outside the room, Pol makes to close the door, but blocks it with his foot. Carefully reaching a clawed hand through the gap in the door, Pol can just reach the cabinet and plucks the key from the drawer, the room's resident none the wiser.

AN: I don't know if I just got lucky, but if arm through the door burglary is a reproducible strategy, I a definitely going to look for ways to exploit this.

If lizards could sweat, Pol would have been positively drenched as he walked into the Redoran vaults. Again the people seemed to ignore him. Perhaps there were benefits to many Dunmer considering hm below their attention. Holding his breath, his tail tensed in terror, Pol opened the locked door with his purloined key, ready to flee if he had to...

Nothing happened. No one around seemed to care. It seemed that if he had the key, they assumed he was supposed to be there, just another lizard to sweep out a dusty vault. Pol closed the door behind him as the guard stationed inside the vault headed out, presumably on break. He surveyed the treasures within. Besides a fair amount of gold, there were quite a number of incredibly valuable arms and armor. Unfortunately most of them would be unhelpful to Pol, but they would be incredibly valuable to someone. He did find a wonderful matched pair of fine gold pauldrons in a medium weight, promptly attaching them to his armor.

The combined weight of all the gear was far more than Pol could walk with, but he had a plan. Piling the fine equipment on the floor, Pol heaved it all into his arms and read a scroll of Almsivi Intervention. It worked brilliantly. The next second he was standing in the temple district and for all anyone knew he was a ruin delver returning with a bevy of legitimately found treasure.

Pol threw what he could not carry on the ground and found the closet temple merchant to begin unloading his liberated loot. It was here Pol realized a fatal flaw in his plan. While the gear was fantastically valuable, most merchants simply would not have the financial capacity to buy most of it, certainly not for anything approaching its true value. Pol gets what he can for a piece or two of the gear, accepting all the priest's useful scrolls as partial barter as well.

Pol begins a tortuously slow slog to another canton where shops are more densely packed, so he can sell more of the gear off. Every now and then he drops more items to go back and retrieve the last pile, leapfrogging them bit by bit to his destination. His first stop in the plaza is in an armoury, where for the cost of one ebony shield, he is able to buy most of a suit of adamantium armor and again takes all the merchant's gold in the process. He returns to his pile of loot to carry the next load to the shops, and this time as he enters the plaza, he finds the mage's guild. Pol has heard that the mages offer members immediate transportation to other guildhalls on Vvardenfell. While he's not sure he cares to be involved in wizardly politics and experiments, this seems like an incredibly useful benefit. Especially if one is trying to sell a cart's worth of ill-gotten treasure piecemeal. Pol heads inside and joins up.

As he reviews the transporter's posted list of available destinations, a name he has never seen before stands out to him. When he reads the word "Caldera", Pol's breath catches in his throat as memories of he Hist wash through him. Without knowing exactly why, Pol tells the transporter to send him there. With a sudden flex of the space around him, Pol finds himself in a different mage hall. Brushing past its members without a word, Pol goes outside and finds himself guided by muscle memory to a dilapidated manor house and opens the door. He finds several orcs inside and ignores them. Still in a sort of trance, Pol climbs the stairs to the attic to find a small daedra. It appears to have interest in violence, instead muttering about gold and commerce endlessly.

Over the next several days, Pol retrieves all his treasure and sells it to the creature in a series of careful negotiations. His pockets now weighted with coin, Pol returns to the mage's guild and does a small tour of its chapters using the transporters. He learns several new spells including one to mark a destination and another to recall to it, and sets a mark at the creeping business daedra. He also works with guild spellmakers to create minor cantrips for restoration, alteration, and mysticism magic. These will have little effect on their own, but the small discharge of magical energies when cast successfully will help train his hands to make the proper motions. The alteration spell, being an incredibly brief dampening of gravity, might prove useful to survive a fall... if cast at exactly the right time.

AN: I'm certain I got fleeced on the value of all that vault gear, but between merchant gold limits being low, my poor mercantile, and limited travel, I'm glad enough with what I got. Pol has a nice boost in gold and gear to help accelerate the early game to more interesting places, without being severely OP.

Pol spends some of his newfound wealth and the next few days practicing restoration and alteration, soupmaking and jumping jacks. He also takes a cooking class one of the mage's guild members is putting on. Pol's soups and broths are certainly not impressive yet, but some of them are starting to turn out well, at least as a simple source of energy to continue running through the hills and swamps of Vvardenfell.

He finds an adamantium shortspear in a shop, then buys a valuable grand soul gem from a guildmate. Combining some of the new spell effects he's become familiar with, Pol works with the guild enchanter to imbue the spear with an enchantment to steal his foes' energy and even their very souls. Proud of his first personalized weapon, Pol dubs it the Draining Lizard.

Feeling more confident in his gar and abilities, and now better prepared to train himself, Pol remembers that he had made a promise to Ahnassi, and another mission is still at hand. Returning to Vivec by way of the mage's guild, Pol heads into the musty cantons to find a stay cat and drag hm out of skooma's grip.

AN: Three shrines to go! I didn't really expect Pol to become involved with thieves or the church, but here we are. It should make for some interesting dynamics later. Will Pol sink deeper into a life of crime, or will he turn Ahnassi around to the straight and narrow? (I have no idea, I don't remember this questline.) And then with the church, and Pol slowly starting to become impressed with its teachings, that should give us some interesting RP with the whole Nerevarine thing later.