We’re on the road toward Willowgrove, because it’s on the way to Dune and there was something I vaguely remember that we were supposed to be doing here. Having perfect memory of every book and note I’ve read isn’t terribly helpful when I forget to write stuff down.

“The werewolves who stole the claw talisman,” Eran reminds me.

“How do you even remember that?” I ask.

“We were the ones who were looking for the lost artifacts while you were meeting with the important people and getting high.”

“Oh, right,” I say.

Along the road, we run across a terrified Bosmer who we were also supposed to be helping, preferably before bandits attacked his camp, which they did. Oops. Well, I can’t be everywhere and save everyone. He tells me that the relics are in a chest in the middle of a bandit camp, which strikes me as a great opportunity to kill some bandits.

(I, of course, politely introduce myself first and ask them what they’re up to. They, of course, immediately attack me on sight because they’re fucking idiots. This goes about as well for them as you’d expect.)

With the relics in my pack (along with all the other junk), we move on, intending on stopping in Willowgrove for the night and see if there’s a wayshrine nearby and if anyone needs us to hit anything for pay. I hear Willowgrove is known for its production of mead and I’d like to sample some while we’re here.

My attempts at getting a mug of mead are stymied by a problem with mead production. I visit the treethane to get the details, and learn that they’d hired a mage to clear out some trees to make room for more beehives (since the Green Pact says they can’t hurt the plants themselves but it’s totally okay to get a non-Bosmer to do it for them for pay). They made a contract with the mage and he’s running out of time, and if he fails to perform the job, he has to eat his wife Alanya.

“Excuse me?” Eran says, glancing aside to the hostage Altmer woman who seems completely unconcerned. “Did I hear that right?”

“Yes,” the treethane says. “We’ll be forced to serve her up for dinner. She seems rather nice and I’d rather not have to, so I hope he can complete the contract on time.”

“And the contract makes it legal to kill someone?” Eran asks.

“Of course,” the treethane says. “The Aldmeri Dominion respects our customs.”

Eran goes over to the mage’s wife. “Are you aware that they’re going to eat you if your husband fucks this up?”

I fear I have been a poor influence upon Eran’s vocabulary.

“Oh, that?” Alanya says. “My husband tells me that it’s just a formality and there’s nothing to worry about. It’s all just ceremonial and symbolic. Nobody’s actually going to get hurt.”

“You haven’t dealt with Bosmer much before, have you,” Eran says.

“Not at all,” Alanya says. “This is my first trip to this part of Tamriel. It’s so different from Summerset, but it’s rather pleasant here. And the mead is delightful.”

“Shall we go and see what the delay is about?” I say.

“You can check my husband’s tent,” Alanya suggests. “If he’s not there, you may be able to find out something. He’s always forgetting things, silly Pircalmo.”

I will try very hard not to nickname this mage “Perky”.

Oh, who am I fooling. I’ve already nicknamed him that in my head.

Perky’s workshop tent is pretty obvious, seeing as this is a village comprised of Bosmer tree-pod houses and there’s a single large Altmer-style tent set up to one edge of the village. There’s no sign of anyone nearby, so we rummage through it for clues. Messages from Telenger, notes about types of ink (apparently Alanya is a scribe or something)… as we’re searching, an Altmer in mage robes comes up to demand who we are and what we’re doing in his tent. A fair question.

“Your wife sent us to find out why you haven’t finished your job yet,” I say.

“And she doesn’t even seem to realize they’re actually going to kill her,” Eran adds. “Also I think she was drunk, which might have had something to do with it.”

Perky groans and admits that he’s been having some suspiciously unspecific problems, and sends us to go collect some ritual components before running off back up the hill.

“So, bets on what went wrong here?” I ask.

“He didn’t really seem like he knew what he was doing,” Eran says. “I say he’s just incompetent.”

“My bet is that he accidentally summoned Daedra,” Merry says.

“Oy, it doesn’t count if you can sense them nearby,” Gelur says. “Judging by the smoke, it looks like half the forest is on fire up there. Whatever it is, it seems he lost control of it.”

“Let’s just go collect those things,” Ilara says. “Ilara-daro will catch the torchbugs.”

Once we’ve gathered the components, we head up the hill to find Perky. Sure enough, there’s Atronachs everywhere and half the forest is on fire. The main reason that it’s not the entire forest is that there’s also the icy ones and not just fiery ones. (And definitely not the ones that are on fire but the fire is cold. Stupid Coldharbour.) And there’s the windy ones here too, which probably aren’t helping either.

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Perky has a small lab set up on a rough table inside a magical bubble that doesn’t stop us from passing through but presumably can keep out the Atronachs. We pass over the components, and he tries to cast the ritual. It’s not working, though, and while straining to hold the spell together, he asks for Atronach cores.

“Sure, I got some,” I say, pulling them out of my pack.

“You’re just carrying those around?” Perky says.

“I use them to practice juggling,” I say. “Fortunately, I have spares, since sometimes I lose them or they explode in my face or something.”

“Ugh, this still isn’t working!” Perky exclaims, deciding not to comment on my strange hobbies. “Something is twisting and corrupting my spell!”

“There’s probably some annoying Ayleid or Daedric shit buried nearby that reacted to your spell,” I say. “Up at Falinesti Autumn Site, Telenger accidentally uncovered a shrine of Mephala that turned a bunch of the Falinesti Faithful into bloodthirsty cultists.”

“Well, if even the great Telenger can mess up like this, I feel a little better about it, but it’s still messed up!” Perky says. “We’ll have to find the source of the corruption.”

A thorough search of the area reveals a cave full of statues of a guy with a dog, holding aloft a mask, along with several red banners depicting the symbol of Clavicus Vile.

Also a live, furry dog that greets us with a friendly “Hey there, mortals!”

“Hello,” I say. “Barbas, I presume?”

“That’s me!” the dog replies, wagging his tail.

“You’d be cuter as a guar,” I say.

“Oh come on! I’m fluffy and adorable!”

“Let’s not antagonize the Daedric dog,” Eran says.

“Ilara-daro thinks he’s cute,” Ilara says.

“Do you want to talk to dogs all day, or fix this?” Barbas says. “They’re stringing that High Elf woman up to the dinner table as we speak.”

“Right, what do we need to do?” I ask.

“Just smash this altar right here,” Barbas says. “That’ll release the bindings on all the Daedra in the area. Including me. I’d like to get out of this cave now.”

“Won’t Vile be annoyed if we break his altar?” I ask.

“Nah, he’s probably forgotten all about this old place,” Barbas says. “Besides, if he complains at you about it, just say that Barbas told you to do it, so he’ll be annoyed at me instead. He’s always annoyed at me, so it doesn’t matter.”

“That doesn’t sound like a terribly healthy relationship, but alright.”

“It’s complicated, let me just put it that way,” Barbas says.

We smash the altar to pieces and head back outside. We’d already destroyed any Atronachs between us and the cave, but any further ones will need to be banished violently or magically once we make sure nobody’s getting eaten.

Perky’s hillside lab is deserted, so we return to town. Not far from Perky’s tent, a number of the local Bosmer have gathered. Barbas’ assessment was correct, and Alanya’s tied up and struggling on a stone table.

“Wait!” I exclaim as I approach hurriedly. “Perky didn’t cause this deliberately.”

“… Perky?” Alanya repeats.

“Didn’t he?” the treethane says. “The hills were swarming with Atronachs! How does that happen accidentally?”

“Quite regularly, actually,” Eran says.

“There was a shrine to Clavicus Vile, Daedric Prince of Wishes, hidden in a cave in the hills,” I say. “The magic seems to have woken it up as Perky unknowingly wished that his spell would work, and it started pouring out Daedra. Like Daedric shrines usually do. We destroyed the shrine, so it shouldn’t cause any further problems. We’ll go up and make sure there’s no more Atronachs lingering before we leave town.”

The treethane releases Alanya, sounding rather embarrassed about the entire matter. “A Daedric shrine, here of all places?” She shakes her head. “I’m glad you took care of it. Who knows what other sort of trouble it could have caused? Why was there even one here?”

I shrug. “Those things are everywhere. This isn’t even the first ‘accidentally unearthed something bad’ we’ve dealt with in Reaper’s March alone. Seems like throughout history, many people have decided it was a good idea to worship beings that are just as likely to fuck them over as help them.”

Barbas is lounging around town, lapping at a bowl of mead. The local Bosmer don’t seem especially alarmed over the presence of a talking, booze-drinking dog. Although there aren’t really many dogs in this part of the world. Maybe they think that’s just something dogs can normally do.

With the situation here resolved, the treethane is happy to give us directions to Weeping Wind Cave, where the werewolves were supposed to have gone and whose name Eran diligently remembered. I need to remember to write these things down. Especially now that I can remember anything I’ve written down, although it’s not like that’s a huge step above having journals with the necessary information in them. Aside from the fact that it looks less rude to be thinking than rummaging through journals.

I can tell we’re in the right place when we find a cave full of skull totems. Either that or it’s cultists, witches, Goblins… actually there’s quite a lot of groups who think they need to put skull totems everywhere to advertise their presence and warn people that they’re assholes.

But no, they’re definitely bandits. I can tell they’re bandits by the fact that someone left a note not far from the cave entrance very excited about being a fearsome bandit. It never ceases to amaze me how many people cheerfully write down all their criminal activities. (I say this as someone who cheerfully writes down many of his criminal activities, but to be fair, if anyone can actually translate my journals and make sense of my nonsense, they deserve to know what stupid shit I’ve been up to.)

A thorough search of the cave uncovers the lost necklace in the pack of a particularly vicious werewolf who started off as a vicious female Bosmer. Fortunately, no one felt like chatting, so we just slaughtered them all. (Although we weren’t being very strict about making sure no one ran away, so some might have slipped out when they saw us slaughtering everyone. I give people credit for having a modicum of self-preservation, at least.)

With the last artifact in hand, we teleport back to the Rawl’kha wayshrine. I remember to hand those senche fangs to whoever it was at the Fighters Guild who wanted them. (By which I mean, someone reminds me because I completely forgot about it and Gelur was carrying them anyway.) We go to find the hapless apprentice. He’s hiding behind the temple, occasionally snatching nervous glances toward the Mages Guildhall.

“Oh, there you are!” the Bosmer apprentice (Rollin) says when we find him. “Did you find the necklace? I was wondering if you were ever coming back.”

“It hasn’t been that long…” I say, pulling it out of my pack.

“Meldil’s been here loitering about the Mages Guild, wanting to get those relics back,” Rollin says. “I had to write another ten pages of text to excuse the delays.”

“Why not just tell him what happened?” I ask.

“About me drinking and gambling them away in a stupid bet?”

“No,” I say. “You can omit that part. You already have the first two relics, right? The third one would have been here by now if it hadn’t been stolen by werewolves. Which was totally not your fault and you had to hire someone to retrieve it.”

“Huh,” Rollin says. “That’s actually not a terrible excuse! Well, I’ll just have to pay you for a job well done, then!”

“I’ll happily vouch for having to beat up all the werewolves,” I say. “Remember: Never admit fault. Unless you think you can drum up sympathy with it.”

“Ah, words of wisdom!” Rollin says.

“I’m not sure if that was the lesson we were supposed to be teaching here but whatever,” Eran says.