I wake up with a headache in bed next to an Orc woman. I close my eyes again and very calmly recount the previous day and what led to this point.

Turns out I was more or less sober when I agreed to marry an Orc. And I regret nothing.

Roku wakes, afraid that I’d change my mind in the morning light, and I have to assure her otherwise. I hadn’t exactly planned on any of this when I came to Dra’bul, but sometimes you’ve got to run with things. I don’t know anything about running an Orc clan, and all I’ve done is read some books and beaten the shit out of a lot of misbehaving Orcs. (They’re hardly going to hold that against me—I’ve beaten the shit out of a lot of misbehaving Altmer, Bosmer, Maormer, Khajiit, and Redguards as well. I don’t care what you look like, just don’t be an asshole.)

“Roku,” I whisper, holding her close.

There hasn’t been any big ceremony, not yet at least, since there’s some rather urgent situations that need to be taken care of first. Orcs aren’t much for beating around the bush and wasting time, though. My pending hearth-wife is quite understanding on the matter, especially considering a lot of those urgent situations are directly the fault of her uncle, the former chieftain.

“So you’re the shaman’s daughter,” I say. “I thought only chiefs were supposed to father children.”

“Exactly,” Roku says. “Why do you think he was quick to try to stab me first rather than anyone else who might have betrayed him? I was a constant embarrassment to him, my existence only barely tolerated. My best hope had been to become hearth-wife to another chief before that tolerance ran out, or to run away to the city and be cut off from my clan forever.”

“This is a much better solution,” I say.

Roku laughs softly at my understatement. “You have no idea. This will solidify both of our positions, and we can help each other.”

There’s still so many questions that might be asked. Whether or not I’m even capable of having children. Where my soul might wind up going when I die for good and how far away that might be. None of them seem terribly important right now.

“You’d best get moving if you want to save the Silvenar,” Roku says. “You’ve got a long way to go.”

I pull out my map of Valenwood and spread it out on the table, and peer over it thoughtfully. The locations of all the wayshrines I’ve lit have been marked on it.

“I might have a shortcut,” I say. “Instead of hiking all the way across Malabar Tor, I could just teleport to the Cormount wayshrine and cut north from there.”

Roku leans over to look at my map and points out, “Cormount is next to the border to Elsweyr. You’ll want the Redfur Trading Post.”

I stare at the map for a long moment. “Right. It’s a good thing I married someone who can read a map and not get lost…”

I meet up with my friends in the main hall of the longhouse, who are eating breakfast and taking absolutely every dumb thing I do in stride. To be fair, this isn’t even close to the weirdest thing I’ve done lately. Compared to collecting mad books with butterfly nets and stripping naked and blowing up a Covenant warship, accidentally marrying an Orc is positively normal. That’s something that could happen to anyone.

I don’t want to leave the stronghold right after assuming leadership, but I don’t have much choice and I have faith in Roku and her father being able to keep some semblance of order here without the interference of the lead dead asshole. And to be fair, simply killing the lead dead asshole and declaring myself in charge now would likely have gone over more poorly if I hadn’t gone and decided to marry the shaman’s daughter along with it. And I think I needed her more than I realized. I’m definitely going to need to come back here whenever I get to a wayshrine and have a moment to rest.

I let my friends know the plan over breakfast, and we head out to the wayshrine.

Gelur makes a comment I don’t quite hear.

“Gelur, show some dignity,” Merry says, aghast.

I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear what I didn’t hear.

“Well, I, for one, am glad you’ve found someone who makes you happy,” Eran says. “You seem to be a lot less tense today.” He pauses. “You are happy about this, right? You seem happy, and not in a ‘just killed some ridiculous monster’ or ‘just ate an awful lot of moon sugar’ sort of way.”

“I… think so?” I say. “I’ll admit that I don’t really have much of a frame of reference.”

My friends are quiet for a long moment before Ilara comments, “This one thinks you really needed hugs.”

Once we reach the wayshrine, I teleport us over to Redfur Trading Post and we head up the road past the Ayleid ruin where we killed a bunch of Daedra that one time. That other time. No, the *other *other time. That Ayleid ruin where we listened to Manny talk to himself and scooped up some magic light for a human who is no longer sitting at his camp because people don’t just sit around in one place forever.

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We cross into Malabal Tor, and pass by one of those constellation obelisks that may or may not have anything to do with the Ayleids, but this one has a book beside it titled The Last King of the Ayleids. (This could be anything from a dry historical thesis to lurid Ayleid porn.) I’ll read it later. My friends get annoyed when I try to read and walk at the same time and I’ve got a Silvenar to save and I might actually be able to save this one because it will be incredibly irritating if two Silvenars go and die on my watch.

I light a wayshrine next to a wooden bridge, then go up toward the Orc stronghold of Jathsomething. Outside the huge wooden gates, a purple projection of Calm Indy—the Silvenar, that is—appears before us trying to get our attention.

“It’s you!” the Silvenar says. “Neri, am I glad to see you. If anyone can help me here, you can.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” I say. “Where are you being held?”

The Silvenar bids me to find his advisors, who are trusted confidantes that I can only assume that he met after that business in Heck and I’m not quite clear on the timing here. These advisors may be able to tell us how to free him.

“How should we do this?” Merry asks. “Fire or stone?”

“What do you mean?” the Silvenar asks.

“Did these Orcs do anything truly atrocious aside from capture you, or should we try to talk to them?” I ask.

“I would hate to speak a death sentence for anyone, even when they’ve wronged me,” the Silvenar says. “Most of them were just likely to be following what their chief said. But if it’s necessary for you to fight your way through them, I understand.”

“I’ll fill you in on what happened in Dra’bul later,” I say. “Sparing the common clan members and beating the shit out of whoever thought this was a great idea would be preferable.”

“Understood,” Merry said. “Many Orc statues coming right up.”

“Ilara-daro could sneak in and try to find them,” Ilara suggests.

“You won’t be able to sneak them out, but you can at least find where we should be going rather than simply scouring the entire village,” I say. “We’re probably going to attract quite a bit of attention once we start stoning people.”

Ilara slips away, and we start making our way through the stronghold. Merry has gotten quite good with this spell, but I’m sure it’s tougher to cast than he makes it look.

Ilara has located the advisors and directs us to one of the large buildings. The Orcs, upon seeing what we’re doing, have had to make the choice between the dumb and smart thing, and more than a few of them still think they’re going to be the ones to defeat us despite all evidence that they’d have no better luck than everyone else that tried. Some decide to just go inside and pretend they didn’t see us, since we’re not rummaging through every building.

“I hope the Green Lady is alright,” says the male advisor as Gelur heals his injuries.

“She was fine last I saw her,” I say. “Some of the Orcs had a plan to capture her but we kind of fucked it up.”

“The word is ‘foiled’, Neri,” Merry says. “Your vulgarity aside, you make it sound like we made a mess of things ourselves rather than solving the mess.”

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” says the female advisor.

“It’ll be fine,” I say. “I do this sort of thing all the time.”

They describe some creature that the clan shaman summoned, which might be an Ogrim as described by a couple of people who have never seen an Ogrim before.

We find the ritual site on the far side of the big forge. Yep, it’s an Ogrim. We kill that, and grab the ritual book from the pedestal. And now the female advisor (look, Neri, their names are Raen and Sariel, so far as names go, these are not difficult) ahem, Sariel mentions that the shaman also used a runestone to drain the Silvenar’s energy. Which means we’re going to the other side of the village to collect that as well.

What greets us as we head up the hill isn’t more Drublog Orcs, but those creepy Hircine-worshipping Bosmer, the Houndsmen. Those, we just kill.

“I’m reconsidering whether we should have bothered sparing the Orcs if this is the sort of company they keep,” Merry comments.

“I don’t imagine the shaman put it to a vote before he decided to start summoning Daedra,” I say. “We can always kill them later if they still turn out to be assholes.”

“No, you’re right,” Sariel says. “I think they were manipulated into this.”

After cutting our way through quite a lot of misbehaving Bosmer, we find the runestone Sariel mentioned, behind guarded by an Ogrim named Neechar. I can tell this because he yells “Neechar smash!” before trying to smash me. He does not succeed in doing so.

“According to this book, we must sacrifice a life in order to reverse the spell and restore the Silvenar,” Sariel says.

Both of them eagerly leap at the idea of sacrificing themselves in a Daedric ritual.

I put my face in my palm. “No. None of us is getting sacrificed to any damned Daedra today.”

“But we must!” Sariel says. “Daedric rituals often come with a price and it’s a small price to save the Silvenar!”

“Look, I was once sacrificed in a Daedric ritual and I’m damned well not going to do it on anyone I like,” I say. “Why can’t we just sacrifice one of the Houndsmen if we absolutely have to sacrifice someone? There’s plenty of them and no one will miss them.”

“The ritual requires a willing victim or the Silvenar will die,” Sariel says.

“Fine, then I’ll do it,” I say.

The two of them start protesting about how awesome I am and how I’m definitely needed here and they won’t let me do that.

I roll my eyes. “Come on, give me some credit, will you? I don’t know if it will even work considering my soul isn’t here. I’m basically immortal, and I’ll probably just wake up at the wayshrine.”

“And if you don’t?” Eran asks. “You’ll be trapped in Oblivion again.”

“This is a runestone of Malacath,” I say. “In that event, I’d wind up in the Ashpit. That sounds considerably nicer than Coldharbour.”

Another round of protests.

“What about Roku?” Ilara asks.

“She’ll understand,” I say.

“You are entirely too cheerful about the prospect of a trip to the Ashpit,” Gelur says.

“How are we supposed to finish this without you if it takes you too long to get out again?” Merry asks.

“I have confidence in you guys to beat up a few more assholes,” I say. “Anyway, let’s see if this works.”

One might call that ‘famous last words’, but whatever. I hold aloft the runestone and perform the creepy Daedric ritual on myself before anyone can talk me out of it. And while talking of Roku might do it, it’s not enough to convince me to sacrifice anyone else in my place.

I’ll spare you the agonizing details on the agony.