“I have no idea how you do these things,” Eran finally admits.
“Which specifically?” I wonder.
“Mostly how you keep somehow managing to convince bitter rivals to work together,” Eran says.
“Oh, are you looking to train speechcraft?” I ask.
“It was an academic question,” Eran says. “Also mostly a rhetorical one. Although I am honestly wondering. But at this point I’m honestly surprised the situation in Bloodtoil Valley didn’t turn into a bloodbath, never mind leaving it as a party. And nothing you said made sense.”
“It made sense to them,” I say. “That’s the important part.”
“I swear these things wouldn’t happen to anyone else,” Eran says. “You just have a storm of weirdness surrounding you that follows you around and makes everything around you… well, weird.”
“I can hardly be held accountable for the current state of affairs in the entirety of Nirn,” I say with a chuckle. “Like the undead pumpkin eaters. That was totally not my fault! That was a pre-existing bit of weirdness.”
“I’d never have even gone into that cave if you hadn’t decided to, though. So it would have been a bit of weirdness that I never would have known about.”
“And technically speaking, I did have divine permission to say all that shit,” I say. “Well, not specifically that shit, but he didn’t seem very concerned with the specifics. I think he thought it was funny or something.”
“Did… did you somehow manage to get Malacath high by proxy or something?” Eran wonders.
“Dunno,” I say with a shrug.
“You are no longer allowed to bring hallucinogens to religious events.” He glances sidelong toward Ilara. “Except Khajiiti religious events.”
“Damn, Eran,” I say. “Next thing I know, you’re going to say you want to be my ‘Stop-Doing-Stupid-Shit Platonic-Husband’.”
“I am curious,” Merry puts in. “Did anything quite like the situations we have been encountering happen… before?”
I frown faintly. “I don’t really like to think too much about the specifics of ‘before’. It gives me a headache and it’s not very… clear. I don’t just mean that I’ve forgotten things because I definitely have, but some of the things I definitely do remember, it’s like I remember two or more different versions of it. Like I know this could have only gone one way, so why do I remember multiple outcomes? And why do I remember things I know didn’t happen? Ugh. I’m blaming my ex-friends for this. I don’t know what exactly they did, but I was in the middle of it and it messed with my memories badly.”
“A Dragon Break?” Merry says.
“I just know that I tried to think of an example of a story of one of the funny situations I ran into and my memory is messed up. Fucking weird magic.”
“Damn,” Eran says. “I know your mind was messed up but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“It’s not so bad when I’m not trying to focus on anything specific,” I say. “Like. Imagine if you’ve watched a play in your youth. Then you go and watch it again later and it seems like someone rewrote it when you weren’t looking, leaving you to wonder if they changed it or if it was your memory that was faulty.”
“I won’t ask, then,” Eran says.
I shrug. “I’ve got lots of great new memories, at least. Great new friends. Also moon sugar. Lots of moon sugar.”
“Is excessive consumption of mind-altering substances really the solution to having had your mind altered?” Merry wonders.
“Yep!” I say. “Actually, the moon sugar was probably the only reason I realized something was wrong in the first place.”
Now that the immediate situation has been settled, I take the opportunity to visit each group of Orcs that I’ve dealt with in Valenwood and left anyone alive at. (Some of the ones at that one Falinesti site might have survived if they’d done the sensible thing and not flung themselves at me. In fact, they probably ought to have done the sensible thing and protested or left when they started torturing civilians in public. I mean, come on, torture is pointless even when they’re not civilians.)
The ‘Orc diplomacy’ trip goes well and requires a few rousing speeches and a minimum of face punching, and I return to Malabal Tor to continue exploring. I suppose it helps that I already pretty much won them over by solving all their problems or hitting them to get them to stop being problems. Orcs are a practical sort of people.
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“Let’s hope there’s plenty of undead or Daedra or whatever to hit at Belarata.”
“Weren’t we hoping the sketchy Khajiit hadn’t unleashed some sort of curse or something?” Eran asks, then sighs. “No, of course weren’t.”
Belarata is a lot closer to the Bloodtoil Valley wayshrine than Bloodtoil Valley even is. I requested that they put in a gate on the side of the wall facing the wayshrine strictly for my own convenience but I don’t know if anyone’s actually going to do it. A narrow dirt path winds down into the ruin, precluding the need for jumping off any cliffs.
As we approach, I overhear arguments between some very unhappy customers. From the sounds of things, Jurak-dar has been selling people things that did not live up to their expectations.
“Pfah,” Ilara mutters as she hears them. “Grifters give Khajiit a bad name.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It’s so much harder to grift people when they’re expecting it just because you’re a Khajiit.”
“Exactly! He could at least be less obvious about it, no?”
One of the High Elves present is complaining about wishing there were justiciars here to deal with this like there are in Summerset. I’m sure everyone in Summerset is perfectly well-behaved and would never dream of stepping one toe out of line or leaving one lock of hair uncombed.
“Well, we’re not justiciars, but we are heavily armed individuals with a penchant for traveling and solving problems,” I say. “What seems to be the problem?”
According to the angry customers, Jurak-dar has been selling faulty merchandise. Gelur starts healing a Bosmer who was injured by an electric shock from one of the relics. Another customer complains about being sold a magic rock that melted in the rain. You know, I can understand selling cursed artifacts to be a pure mistake, but I can’t imagine how someone could accidentally sell a melting Ayleid rock.
After some questioning, which mostly involved Eran asking questions (I’ve started training him in speechcraft) and me standing there with my arms across my chest looking intimidating (and speechcraft is always more useful when you have a battle axe to back it up) until Jurak-dar feels considerably more helpful, we learn that the Khajiit found a sword with a poem on it that gave him access to the ruin because a ghost thinks he’s her lover because she has his sword.
Jurak-dar’s brilliant plan is to leave the sword with us while he goes in to talk to the ghost lady for some reason. It’s rather sketchy and also rather stupid because without the sword, now she’s noticed he’s just a sneaky Khajiit and not an Ayleid, and surrounds him in a crushing forcefield.
The situation is readily resolved by returning the sword to her actual dead lover, who has been trapped here for some time outside the barrier she’d put up because she was an idiot who forgot anything but the sword. He’s also an idiot, because he insists on rambling on at length as to how great and wealthy he was and how many slaves he had and then how those slaves killed them, all the while Jurak-dar is suffocating under the ghost lady’s barriers.
So now that I’ve increased my count of Ayleids met to three, I determine that I still have yet to encounter any positive representatives of their race. Wait, did I meet an Ayleid ghost in one other ruin who was in love with a slave and then they died tragically? I don’t remember. That still wasn’t very good representation, though. Maybe I’m being overly critical and I just don’t like Ayleids terribly much. While I do try to tell people to be less racist, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for a race that drove themselves to extinction by being assholes to vast numbers of slaves.
Once the barrier is down, we head inside and start looking around for anything portable and valuable. There’s a book inside titled The Battle of Glenumbra Moors. It must have been here for quite some time. Jurak-dar is quite grateful that we helped open up the ruins to let him properly loot the place.
“Just be sure not to piss off too many customers,” I say. “It’s bad for business.”
“Yes, so Jurak-dar has noticed,” the Khajiit agrees ruefully. “Perhaps it is time for a change of venue, yes? Perhaps this one will take his relics and go to Skyrim.”
We part ways with the Khajiit and leave the ruin, and head back to the main road.
“You did well back there,” I tell Eran.
“I hardly did anything,” Eran says. “You did all the talking without even talking.”
“That saying about actions speaking louder than words isn’t actually true,” I say. “Without the words, people don’t know what the actions mean, and then they’re forgotten. People are more inclined to believe words even if they contradict what they’re seeing right in front of them.”
“I just intimidated one Khajiit,” Eran says. “You convinced a bunch of Orcs that it would be awesome if they went and attacked the Dark Elves.”
“It wouldn’t have worked if I’d just gone in and killed the Orcs,” I say. “I always check if people are willing to talk before attacking. I always announce my intentions, so they didn’t just see violence and assume it was out of hate. It’s easy to assume hate when you see violence. Your tongue is a mightier weapon than your sword.”
Eran is quiet for a long moment. “The way you act sometimes, it’s easy to forget you were a king. And now you’re going to wind up being King of the Wood Orcs by doing exactly the same thing.”
“I’m not planning on declaring myself king.”
“You just went around to every Orc stronghold in Valenwood and convinced them to support your bid to join the Dominion,” Eran points out. “If that wasn’t your intention, what were you trying to do?”
I pause, frowning. “Shit. They’re going to make me their king, aren’t they.”
Eran puts his face in his palm. “How do you do this accidentally?”
“I might have to go incognito as a High Elf in the future…” I say with a sigh. “At least it’s easy to change hats.”
“It’s like you know all these things about how to influence people and then wonder why people try to put you in charge of things,” Eran says. “Most people don’t try to influence anyone, or if they do, they’re so terrible at it that people just think they’re an idiot. You know, if you don’t want to be in charge of something, you could just say no?”
“I only want the power to stop people from doing stupid, annoying things,” I say. “It’s hardly my fault if people decide to put titles on it.”
Eran just starts laughing uncontrollably.
“Look, you have to understand that I’m basically just a violent, drug-addled, smooth-talking con artist.”
“Suddenly history makes so much more sense,” Merry mumbles.