I didn’t intend to marry a therapist, but at least by morning, I’m freaking out a little less.

I really need to get back to Silvenar. I need to talk to the Silvenar about this. And I hope everything is okay there, even if he doesn’t have the answers I seek so desperately. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get to a wayshrine near there, so we’re left to continuing up the main road, which means teleporting back to the wayshrine we just left.

“Are you alright, Neri?” Eran asks.

“No,” I reply lightly. “But I’ll manage. Let’s find me something to hit.”

Near the wayshrine, we run into a Bosmer man asking for help. Something about the Worm Cult. Huzzah! Something to hit that I don’t need to worry about the political implications thereof! Some things I can just kill without anyone potentially missing them! From what the man says, the cultists have captured a spinner named Indinael, and I’m starting to run out of good adjectives to describe all the Indies in Valenwood. Let’s call this one Unlucky Indy.

I kill one cultist waving a stream of blue light at a ghost bug, and a woman’s voice thanks me as the bug disappears.

“Okay, that was odd,” I say. “Not, like, what in the Void, Aetherius, and Oblivion is wrong with the whole fucking world weird, but just kind of odd.”

“This one thinks our markers for levels of ‘weird’ keep shifting,” Ilara comments.

“Talking ghost bugs barely even register as being strange anymore,” Eran admits.

Having decided that I can handle talking ghost bugs, we move in and start cutting a path through the necromancers and the undead they’ve animated. The name of this place is Ouze, where some Bosmer who rejected the Green Pact have been buried. And like any burial site, this attracted necromancers. It kind of makes me wonder why anyone leaves remains in a state that’s useful to necromancers, given how prevalent they are. To be fair, though, it’s possible that necromancy was not nearly as common at that point.

Unlucky Indy is laying on a stone table in the middle of the site. She’s in bad shape, and Gelur and I hurriedly start healing her, pulling her back from the brink of death. She rambles something about dead spriggans and heartwood and I’ll admit I’m not really paying attention, just going back to killing necromancers once we’ve stabilized her.

A talking gem thing in one of the tents tells us some of this stuff and how we ought to go cleanse some altars to make sure the Oathbreakers here can happily keep sleeping in the mud and not become undead slaves dancing at the Worm Cult’s whims. “Cleansing” them involves killing cultists, of course. Readily done. These so-called Oathbreakers are shape-shifting Bosmer and those ghost bugs we’ve run across are actually ones who had taken on the form of beasts.

The thing that kind of bothers me about the concept of these “Oathbreakers” is that it’s my understanding that they didn’t swear an oath to begin with, they just said “piss off” to Y’ffre. It doesn’t really strike me as entirely fair, but since when has Nirn been fair?

Once we’ve cleared out the necromancers and cleansed the area, we return to the central altar. I find Unlucky Indy just sitting there, looking a little stunned, as if she can hardly believe what she has just witnessed.

“I thought for certain that my death would be the next part of the story,” Unlucky Indy says, staring at the ground. “Threads pull in every direction, but I did not see a path where I lived that some great evil did not befall. But you’ve changed the outcome in a way I did not foresee.”

“The future isn’t set in stone,” I say.

“No, it is not,” Unlucky Indy says, raising her eyes to look at me. “But you… strange. This is not your story. There was supposed to be a Dark Elf… a woman…”

I frown. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She shakes her head. “Never mind. It was just a thread I saw, a possibility that could have been. I cannot say the consequences of you being here instead of her. You have already changed much of the story. People lived who might have died. Even my own survival will cause a million things to happen differently.”

I sigh. “No offense to you specifically, but I’m really tired of stories and prophecies. I am tired of others telling me who I should be and what I should do.”

“Of course,” the spinner says. “It is not for me to decide how your story should go.”

“We’re heading to Silvenar,” I say. “We need to make sure that the fucked up story magic going on in Valeguard didn’t fuck things up. And if I have to kill the Hound a hundred more times to get him to quit creepily trying to get the Green Lady to marry him and going so far as to try to change reality even after I killed him… ugh.”

I close my eyes, sway on my feet, and pop a bit of candy in my mouth.

“So, hey!” I yell with forced cheer. “Here’s to making your own destiny! Bye!”

I hurry back to the road, smacking a few more skeletons that hadn’t figured out to stop walking around along the way, my friends trailing behind me.

We take the road west to Silvenar, crossing the river at a small bridge next to a camp with some Houndsmen who haven’t gotten the fucking memo, who we kill on the way by. At the top of the ramp, the Guardian of Silvenar looks at us with what passes for its face and says, “Pass, friends.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Silvenar is exactly as we’d left it, the wedding celebrations still ongoing. I’m not sure whether to be thankful or still weirded out.

Looking down from the top of the cliff, I spot something odd below. There’s a boat on the river, and if I’m not mistaken, the style is Dunmer.

I poke around the boat and swipe a book titled The Voice of the People (Summary: Calm Indy became the Silvenar) and their secret recipe for garlic mashed potatoes. It would probably taste different with potatoes than ash yams. I miss ash yams.

The cave directly underneath Silvenar is full of Nords and Dunmer. This is worrisome. What in Oblivion are they doing down here? A note inside mentions something about taking samples from the deep roots. There’s also a copy of Tamrielic Artifacts, Part Three. (Summary: There’s a lot of fancy trinkets in Tamriel.) Needless to say, whatever they’re doing here, they need to not be doing it here, so I convince them to knock it off. They’re not feeling cooperative or talkative, though, so we just kill them all.

I spot a Skyshard in the back of the cave and absorb it in between making sure there is no longer an Ebonheart Pact presence in this particular part of Valenwood.

“Still don’t know what these fetchers were doing here,” I grumble as we head back outside.

“Prolly something bad,” Gelur says. “Good thing you spotted that boat.”

“I’ll go set it on fire,” I say.

“Is this necessary?” Eran wonders.

“This is Neri we’re talking about,” Merry points out.

I sprinkle the boat with fire salts and toss a bit of my own fire onto it, causing it to merrily burst into flames. (Or Nerily, perhaps.) I stand by for several minutes to watch it sink into the river, taking its Dunmer-style furniture with it.

“This one wonders how many things like this are happening without us knowing about it,” Ilara muses.

“Ain’t much we can do about the shit we don’t find out about,” Gelur says. “We’re already poking our noses into every cave and ruin along the way.”

“Ilara-daro found a note in the necromancers’ camp in Ouze that mentions a village in Shadowfen they considered a great find. This one hopes someone else is there to stop them since she does not think us likely to get to that part of the world anytime soon.”

I wince. “Yeah… realistically, I know I can’t solve every problem in Tamriel personally. Maybe we can at least pass along a tip so that some agents in the area can look into it.”

I find a wayshrine north of Silvenar and light it, as well as absorb a Skyshard (annoying a few leopards) and smack down a Dark Anchor that drops nearby. The Fighters Guild folks there remind me about the important meeting in Vulkwasten that they’re trying very hard to stay away from. This place is much closer to the party they can take shifts attending. Yes, very important meeting, oh look, an Ayleid ruin!

This particular ruin is full of bandits. There’s a Breton (Daine) inside sitting against a wall and looking none too good, and our healing magic doesn’t do much to help. He tells us about how his brother had gone into the ruin looking for some plant that can cure a congenital malady, although I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know the word “congenital”. His brother (Dariel) had apparently made a deal with the bandits for passage and now he hasn’t come back.

“Dunno if this plant will help, but we’ll see about getting it and/or your brother,” I assure him. “Hopefully both!”

We head down the corridor and I call out to get the attention of the bandits and assess the mood of the place. Like complete idiots, they decide they’d rather attack us on sight than talk. I’m about to start killing them, but then notice they’re mainly Orcs and Bosmer working together and think I might be able to do something with this. There’s even some Khajiit. Maybe I should try doing more recruiting among the outlaws. They generally seem to be considerably less racist.

“My name is Neri gro-Drublog,” I tell them calmly. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, I kill trolls for fun just because they happen to be there.”

“Wait,” one of the Orcs says, pausing. “Are you the one who helped out at Reman’s Bluff?”

“Yep,” I say, not quite remembering which place was Reman’s Bluff off the top of my head but it seems vaguely familiar.

The bandits aren’t quite sure about me still, but have decided that not looking antagonizing might be better for their continued health, especially since I haven’t attacked them yet.

“What are you doing here?” the Orc asks.

“Recruiting,” I say with a grin. “Also looking for a missing Breton, but most importantly, recruiting.”

“Hah! Yeah, he’s here, if he didn’t get mangled by stranglers,” the Orc says.

“What’s the job?” a Khajiit asks.

“Well, my current grudges are against the Ebonheart Pact, the Sea Elves, and the Worm Cult. They’ve all been causing problems in this immediate area. Although if there’s any racist bandits still kicking around those would be fantastic to shank. By which I mean the Veiled Heritance. Fuck those assholes.”

“Hmrrr, cultists sound dangerous,” the Khajiit says.

“Eh, they’re not nearly as threatening as you’d think,” I say. “Their shitty skeletons are way easier to kill than strangler vines.”

“Good point. What’s the pay?”

“I’ll make sure your bounties are cleared,” I say. “And see about arranging payment from the Dominion.”

“Are you suggesting we be… land privateers?” the Orc says, laughing heartily.

“The best thing about murder and looting is that it’s great to be paid and praised for doing it on the people nobody wants around.”

So yeah, that’s how I walked into a random ruin and unexpectedly wound up with a bandit gang somehow. It would be incredibly annoying for trouble to immediately move back into an area the minute I turn my back. It’s like someone needs to patrol every shore regularly just to make sure the beaches haven’t sprouted Sea Elves.

We head through the ruin and do them a favor by clearing out the strangler vines along the way. A sort of signing bonus.

A copy of a book titled The Adabal-a lays on a stone table. (Summary: Alessia had a bunch of names.) Also this seems really poorly translated. I would imagine that the original did not have quite such awkward phrasing in it. There’s a Skyshard sitting in a bowl on a table off in a side room, which alone makes this ruin worth coming into.

We find Dariel wounded from tangling with stranglers, and quickly start to heal him up. He’s relieved to hear that his brother is still alright, and that we’re here to help. The plant they’re looking for is next to the Ayleid well, which is also next to a very large strangler vine.

“You looked entirely too cheerful charging at that giant strangler,” Dariel comments once it’s down and he’s collecting the sap he wanted. “Do you just find things to fight for fun or something?”

“Pretty much,” Eran comments as I’m too busy charging off to another vine in the corner to answer.

“Well, I’m fortunate that someone who just came in here to fight things came along, then,” Dariel says. “And that they were able to heal my injuries, too. Once the way is clear, I’ll need to get my brother and this sap to an alchemist. Hopefully this will help him. Did you kill all the bandits on the way in?”

“We apparently recruited them,” Merry says dryly. “I have no idea how he managed to convince them to fight cultists instead of waylay travelers. They were surprisingly sensible, though. I didn’t even need to turn half of them to stone first.”