“Congratulations on becoming champion of a god of vengeance,” says a voice from somewhere.

I glance about, wondering if someone snuck up on us or if I’m hearing the voices of Daedra in my head again. No, not my head, and doesn’t sound like Daedra, either.

“It’s just Nanwen,” Ilara whispers to me, patting the sword at her belt.

“Didn’t mean to startle you!” the sword says, and the ghost of an Altmer man manifests. “I’ve just been quiet. I didn’t want to distract you as you… apparently unite all the Wood Orcs accidentally, and talking is more effort than not-talking. Don’t get me wrong. It was gratifying watching the Worm Cult get stomped, though I fear I’ve seen more blood in the past few days than I saw in my entire lifetime.”

“I would imagine,” I say. “Sorry, I kind of forgot about you.”

“Sometimes you forget you have music playing around you, too,” Nanwen says, smirking. “And don’t give me ‘what music?’ You should probably tell your wife where the music came from. Congratulations on that also, by the way.”

“I kind of forgot about the music, too,” I say. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, okay?”

Nanwen chuckles. “At least you haven’t been bored?”

“Auri-El help us should Neri ever get bored,” Eran says. “He’ll probably set himself on fire and jump off a cliff into the mouth of a dragon or something.”

“He would need to find a dragon for that,” Merry says. “But I have little doubt he would be able to should he wish to do battle with one or talk one into submission.”

“What have I gotten myself into…” Arithiel murmurs from the back of the group.

“If you are fortunate, he will have you doing magical support for a stronghold,” Merry says. “And not walking all over Tamriel solving every problem he stumbles across. You are not the only one who was in danger of execution and he decided not to waste your talents.”

“Is that the reason you guys follow him around?” Arithiel asks.

“I follow him around because, despite everything, I like him,” Eran says. “He does good things and helps a lot of people. And he’d be completely lost without us, and not just because he has trouble reading maps sometimes.”

Gelur puts in, “I just joined up because they needed a better healer than Neri himself, and despite being able to heal, he forgets to do it sometimes. But by Y’ffre, it’s been an adventure! I’ve been able to save a lot of lives, though.”

We come up on the wayshrine outside of Jathsogur again. “Arithiel, what sort of magic can you do? I don’t suppose you know portal magic?”

“I’m afraid not,” Arithiel says. “I know some restoration magic, but I’m not really much of a mage.”

“Pity,” I say. “Alright. I generally use wayshrines to travel but I probably won’t be able to take you with me. It took a lot of practice to get my friends to go with me, too. I mean, we can try, but you’ll probably need to travel yourself.”

“I want to meet up with my companions and let them know the truth about my past,” Arithiel says. “They’re right over there.”

I nod. “Of course. And then I need you to head north toward Silvenar. The wedding between the Silvenar and the Green Lady is coming up and it’s been full of complications so far. There may be trouble there as well. Hircine worshippers, and we haven’t seen the end of them. We still haven’t killed the guy in charge of them yet.”

We go over and meet up with Arithiel’s friends. After making sure that no one is going to be killing each other and that they understand the situation, I teleport my group back to Dra’bul. I’m exhausted and it’s been a bit of a long day. The Orcs guarding the gates nod to us as we come through, and I spot a younger Orc run off toward the longhouse, hopefully to tell Roku I’m home.

“Oh, good, you’re back,” Shaman Grazulg—no, it was a near-palindrome. Glazulg? Glazulg. Shaman Glazulg meets us near the gates. “Another situation arose after you left.”

“Is this urgent on the level of needing to be taken care of ‘immediately’ ‘after dinner’ or ‘in the morning’?” I ask.

“In the morning,” Glazulg says. “A group came back reporting that they’d encountered werewolves, and they’d been out since before your assumed leadership of the stronghold.”

“Where are they?” I ask. “I’d like to speak with them.”

“I can have them sent to the longhouse,” Glazulg says.

I shake my head. “No, I’ll go to them myself. My friends can go on ahead to the longhouse. I won’t have anyone’s first impression of me to be lounging about in a chair belching over a haunch of meat.”

“Understood,” Glazulg says. “They’re down by the beach.”

I bring Gelur along in case her healing will be needed, and follow Glazulg through the stronghold. As we reach the shore, it turns out their first impression of me will be fighting Daedra as the Dark Anchor outside the stronghold is dropping again. I am so glad that it’s just far enough away from my longhouse that I can’t hear it falling all damned night.

I bring Wobbly to hand and tell Glazulg, “Send them to the dolmen. I’m going to fight.”

The raiding party shows up right as Molag Bal starts sending in the heavies. If I could meet every new Orc by bisecting an Ogrim in front of them, I’d have a lot easier time convincing them to do anything. Once the Anchor has been destroyed, I head over to them as Gelur makes sure everyone is healed up.

“Mauloch’s balls,” utters one of them. “When they told me a High Elf had killed Chieftain Agrakh in a duel and declared himself chieftain, I thought they were shitting me. Or that you wouldn’t come back and just wanted to push us around.”

I snort softly. “I’m better at being an Orc than an Altmer, honestly. I am Neri, champion of Malacath—” I hold up my hand to show them my ring. “—and I didn’t get a look at his balls because he was wearing a loincloth.”

Everyone is some degree of stunned, impressed, or just plain speechless at that.

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“Shaman Glazulg tells me that you were out of the stronghold when I first came here,” I say. “What did you find?”

“Chieftain Agrakh had sent us to raid the Bosmer village of Tanglehaven,” says one of them, who introduces himself by the elegantly monosyllabic name of Lub. “We encountered werewolves. Some of us were killed, and we were cut off from some of us who might still be stranded out there, if they’re still alive.”

“Was anyone infected?” I ask.

“Nobody that survived,” Lub says.

“Did Agrakh know there were werewolves there?”

Lub shakes his head. “If he did, he didn’t share that with us. We’d have been better prepared. They didn’t start turning until after we’d attacked.”

I frown, then sigh. “Did you know that Agrakh was working with worshippers of Hircine?”

“He what?” some of the Orcs make various exclamations along those lines.

“I just got back from Jathsogur and they weren’t even being subtle about it there. The stronghold was crawling with those Houndsmen, they call themselves. I don’t know what in the fuck Agrakh was playing at here, but I don’t think it was coincidence you ran into werewolves.”

“I don’t like any of the things that could imply,” Lub says.

“Agreed,” I say. “Meet me at the gates in the morning. We’ll go find the others and make sure there’s no more Hircine bullshit going around.”

They agree, and I head back to the longhouse to eat, rest, and make preparations. My friends have already settled in, and Roku hugs me when I come in. With her and Glazulg present and dinner ready, I take the opportunity to explain what happened at Jathsogur and Abamath, whilst being quite proud of myself for managing to remember both of those names and not mumbling anything about “the Ayleid ruin of Abracadabra or something like that.”

“Champion of Malacath!” Roku exclaims, admiring my ring. “Can’t say I expected that. What was the Ashpit like?”

“I didn’t really see much of it,” I say, but I describe what I can. And remember to tell her some things I may have neglected to. As for anything else we might be doing together in that longhouse, no, I’m not going into detail! This isn’t that kind of story!

I need to be better prepared to meet with other Orcs. I might not have tusks, but some gently used Orcish leather armor makes a decent substitute. My Bosmer leather armor was nice, but there’s only so much you can repair something without it being more useful to simply replace it. We manage to find a set that will fit me without being entirely too broad. And I’m not going to be embarrassed about it having belonged to a young man who had outgrown it when he developed actual muscles. Slap on a little face paint to complete the image, but even beyond that are the little things like posture, body language, and tone of voice.

I get on way better with these Orcs than I do with Altmer. It makes sense, though. The Chimer were nothing like the Altmer, and I’m a weirdo even for a Chimer. These Orcs, though? These Orcs get me. When pretending to be an Altmer, I need to stand up straight and act at least a little bit reserved. With Orcs, I don’t even need to pretend. Totally different social expectations.

Lub’s party is out waiting for us at the gates come morning. They’re still uncertain about working with non-Orcs, which I imagine isn’t going to be a quick feeling to go away. They’ll get used to it. I’m not going anywhere. I mean, I’m going plenty of wheres, but I’m not abandoning my Orcs.

Unfortunately, there’s a cliff between me and Tanglehaven and a Skyshard at the bottom of the cliff, and my Orcs start to realize I’m even odder than an Elf dressing up as an Orc. They have nooooo idea.

“No, Neri,” Eran says patiently. “We’re going to find a safe way down the cliff.”

There’s a road winding downhill not far from a wayshrine (now lit), so we head down and around. It’s admittedly a much longer way, but also one less likely to require major healing or resurrection. Once I’ve absorbed the Skyshard, we cross a bridge and get a look at Tanglehaven. From the looks of it, my Orcs had set it on fire before being driven off by werewolves. Several tree-pod houses have been reduced to smoldering skeletons of wood.

I turn to my friends. “Head down into the village to investigate. Kill any werewolves or Houndsmen you find. I need to go find the Orcs.”

“On it,” Eran says, then adds to Lub, “It falls to you now to prevent him from falling off any cliffs. Good luck!”

The Orcs with me give him dubious looks as we part ways. We make our way around the village and locate the missing squad of Orcs in due order. There’s another round of explaining that I’m the new chieftain and that the old guy was up to some shady shit.

“Are we really letting this High Elf take over the clan?” asks one of them when he thinks I’m not listening. (Or doesn’t care.)

“Do you want to challenge him?” Lub says. “I watched him kill an Ogrim single-handedly!”

“Pfah. So he can fight. Doesn’t mean he can lead Orcs. Doesn’t mean he knows anything about us.”

“He’s champion of Mauloch and he married Roku,” Lub says. “If nothing else, I want to see where this is going. He certainly can’t do a worse job of it than the troll-licker who sold us out to werewolves!”

The other Orc grunts and doesn’t protest further.

I wonder if I can bring these Orcs through a wayshrine. Would I consider them to be ‘part of me’ since I’ve declared myself their chieftain? Then again, I could also just have someone learn portal magic, which would be considerably more convenient. It’s not like teleportation is unique. I have money (not all of which was obtained from fencing stolen goods or brewing technically-not-illegal concoctions); I could just hire a magic instructor if the Dominion doesn’t feel like providing one in the name of solidarity when I convince the Wood Orcs to go fight the Ebonheart Pact instead of the Wood Elves.

As I’m leading the Orcs back out away from Tanglehaven, we run across a weirdly glowing spring emerging from rocks. When I approach to take a closer look, Hircine’s voice echoes in my mind (at least I assume it’s Hircine, as I’m not sure who else it would be). He’s offering the power to turn into a beast to anyone who wanders by.

“Sorry, Hircine,” I say. “I’m going to have to decline.”

“I could make a strong Orc like you even stronger!” Hircine says. Nice, he really does see me as an Orc. Thanks, Malacath! It makes sense, though. A blank spot would be more suspicious, and what else would he make me look like?

I consider what to do with this spring. While I dislike having a site sacred to Hircine so close to my stronghold offering lycanthropy to anyone who wanders in, destroying the sacred places of gods tends to annoy them even more than simply refusing them. I don’t really have anything specifically against Hircine anymore than any other Prince that has challenged me. It’s not like he’s Azura or Molag Bal. Some of his followers have been doing bad things, sure, but some of Malacath’s followers have, too. I reluctantly decide that leaving it be is less likely to provoke reprisal.

Fortunately (by some definition of fortunateness) we do not make it back to Dra’bul before being attacked by anything. A larger-than-usual werewolf springs out of nowhere and I’m moving before my Orcs can even react.

“I got this one,” I yell toward them. “Eyes out! There might be more!”

Sure enough, the werewolf wasn’t hunting alone, and it’s only my quick warning that gets their eyes off of being impressed by my impressiveness and to the foliage before others jump out at us. A few well-placed arrows from Ilara and Gelur herald the arrival of my friends.

“They’re with me,” I assure the Orcs. “Focus on the werewolves!”

The toughest part about fighting werewolves isn’t just killing them but in making sure my people aren’t injured in the process. While I’m sure there’s got to be a way to cure lycanthropy, it’s not something that’s immediately available to me right now and it would be very inconvenient. Once the werewolves are down, I make sure they stay down by decapitating all the bodies while Gelur looks over my Orcs for injuries.

“Not seeing any signs of infection,” Gelur says. “Looks like we’re all clear.”

“What did you learn in the village?” I ask.

“At least one of them prayed to Hircine for his ‘blessing’ to fight the Orcs,” Eran says. “And they infected several others. Some went to try to find the Orc camp to get revenge for their fallen comrades. That clearly didn’t work out very well for them.”

“I informed them of your theory that Hircine arranged for manipulating the Orcs to attack in order to provoke them into turning to him,” Merry says. “Hopefully the remainder of them will stay put and rebuild rather than turn themselves into beasts and fling themselves at the nearest stronghold. That would also likely go poorly for them.”

“What a mess,” I mutter. “Let’s get back to Dra’bul.”

My Orcs might still be very confused at the situation, but at least they’re not muttering about me not knowing what I’m doing anymore. While I can sympathize with the Bosmer in this case, at least the ones who didn’t deliberately screw themselves and their families over, removing the Orcs from the immediate area is likely to be the best thing that can be done for the moment.