A town is visible across the water from the island tower, whatever the name of the Ayleid ruin was where we rescued Merric. I decide to simply row my boat up to the docks, although if anyone asks me to pay a docking fee I’m going to give them the side-eye while I just park my boat on the beach ten feet away.

I didn’t expect Razum-dar to meet me on the shore. “A fine day for fishing, is it not, my friend?”

“Damn it!” I mutter. “I should have bought a fishing pole!”

“Would you like one for your cover?” Razum-dar suggests. “Raz could even throw fish at you to complete the disguise.”

“I think that won’t be necessary,” I say. “What are you doing here, Raz? Don’t tell me that I just happened to pick the beach you were on to dock at.”

“The Fighters Guild passed through town not too long ago and mentioned you were rowing very slowly across the water and would probably arrive here soon,” Raz says, whiskers twitching in amusement.

“Hey, they had more than one person rowing!” I protest lightly. “Okay, then what are you doing in this town? And uh, what town is this, anyway? Is this Skywatch?”

“This is Mathiisen,” Razum-dar says. “Raz came here investigating the Veiled Heritance.”

“Are they operating here too?” I ask.

“Raz thinks so, although not quite so openly as in Silsailen. No, no one is setting fire to buildings or slaughtering citizens in the streets. Yet. But Raz thinks they may be getting weapons from here. Mathiisen is known far and wide for its fine steel. Now, it seems, they may be known for fine racists, as well.”

“Who do I need to hit?” I ask.

“Raz is not certain yet, but you will be the first to know, yes? Raz needs you to go into town and meet with someone. He would go himself, but his handsome face is very recognizable, while you? You look more or less like every other Altmer in town, yes? Your contact is named Fistalle.” He describes where to find her house. “Raz will sneak into town and meet you after.”

(He mentions some other names of interest which I write down: Canonreeve Malanie, Forgemaster Condalin. I write the name Fistalle in Dwemer script, however. Should I just rewrite this whole journal? Ugh, it would be time-consuming but I really need to organize my notes better. Maybe next time I have some downtime in town.)

With my new mission in hand (figuratively speaking), I head in to take a look around. In a corner by the walls, I spot a book titled The Anuad Paraphrased. This is clearly someone’s cubby-hole. They have a hammock and laundry here. I take the book anyway.

While I’ve got my pack open to put the new book in, I notice a journal I’d been carrying around for some time that mentioned a place with a name similar to the one Raz said this place was called, if someone pronounces the ‘th’ as a ‘t’. That’s probably it and they’re just pronouncing it weird. I’ll have to see if I can find someone who knew the journal’s former owner while I’m here. Who, upon flipping through it again, I remember had died realizing the Veiled Heritance were just racist bandits and trying to get them to knock it off.

After asking around a bit in the market area (which primarily comprised of Khajiit and Bosmer doing the heavy work), I find his mother and let him know what happened to her son, and give her the journal. It’s not good news, but I’m sure she’s glad to know nonetheless. We part with her expression of hope that I kick in the teeth of more of those fuckers who killed her son. (She doesn’t actually say ‘fuckers’, but that was the gist of it.)

It’s difficult to sound out people who might be in league with the racist bandits given the general background noise of casual racism among high elves in general. It’s probably why they’ve been able to make such headway, when even the average Altmer on the streets believes Khajiit are simply useful, unusually intelligent animals, not necessarily through any particular hatred but through ignorance and what they’ve been told their whole lives. In my time, I was considered a bit of a weirdo for having Dwemer friends and loving their machines even if I hadn’t the foggiest idea how they worked, but at least they were other mer. And I disagreed with the mistreatment of slaves for the simple reason that people who like you are less likely to murder you later. Boy was I wrong on that account, but I still see no point in being cruel simply for the sake of being cruel.

I’m probably supposed to be undercover here, but I can’t help but make a few counter-comments to these people. This one is talking about the wage gap and that the forgemaster hires on immigrants so that he can underpay them.

“People should be paid by their work and not their race, shouldn’t they?” I ask. “Surely there are Khajiit who are better smiths than some Altmer. I daresay every Khajiit working the forge here is a better smith than me.”

“Well, yes, not every Altmer is trained in smithing, that’s true, I suppose,” he allows reluctantly. “But there’s no way that a Khajiit with their brief lifespans could come close to an Altmer smith with centuries of experience.”

“Sure,” I say. “Sadly, we’re trying to equip an army here. Are there enough Altmer smiths with centuries of experience to make enough swords in a short period of time to turn the tide of battle?”

“Probably not,” he admits. “A true masterwork blade is a work of art, and takes months to craft. Art cannot be rushed. Practicality… requires some flexibility.”

Stolen novel; please report.

The foreman (forewoman? foremer?) is less racist than many of them, and tries to be nicer to the Khajiit and Bosmer, and also has some complaints to make about her boss. Everyone always complains about their boss, although I feel that her criticism might be more grounded than most.

It turns out Fistalle was already dead. It’s no wonder that Queen Ayrenn was so willing to recruit someone she’d just met; she must be running low on Eyes at this point. Searching the body and the room, I find a strange note that looks like code in the form of a children’s story or something. I also find a very interesting book written in Dwemeris of all things with a partial translation, peculiar reading material for a spy. I toss it in my pack; she doesn’t need it anymore.

I leave the house, trying to look nonchalant, and locate Raz. He’s snuck into town in the meantime and is currently hiding behind a boulder. His face falls when I inform him of his friend’s death; it’s pretty clear that these Eyes are friends and not merely coworkers. He reads over the note and sends me to investigate the forge area.

Want to take a wild guess what happens in the forge? That’s right, I’m attacked on sight. You know, people who aren’t up to shady business tend to just tell trespassers to bugger off and not go straight to trying to kill them.

While searching the area, I find a manifest of a large number of weapons explicitly marked for the Veiled Heritance, approved by the canonreeve and the forgemaster. I’m still not entirely sure what a canonreeve is, but it seems this one is a racist bandit too. I grab it and slip out of the forge area (and by ‘slip’ I mean ‘kill a few more racist bandits along the way’). Raz has moved to hiding behind a different boulder, and I hand him the incriminating sheet of paper.

“The canonreeve herself is involved? Raz thought better of Malanie. It seems there are far too many people lately that Raz did not know as well as he thought he did.”

“Yeah…” I say with a sigh. “I know how that goes, sadly. I’m sorry about your friend.”

“We all know the risks of this job,” Raz says, shaking his head.

“Someone seems to be startlingly good at finding and killing Eyes, however,” I say.

“It is something we will need to look into later, yes,” Raz says. “Right now, we have work to do.”

By which he means I should sneak into Malanie’s home to find more incriminating evidence and clues. So I head into the building in question for a close look around. Let’s see. No questionable literature on the bookshelves, but I swipe a book on alchemy while I’m at it. And what’s this, a uniform in the dresser? I grab it and head back outside.

Raz is behind the building, cleaning a knife with a fresh corpse at his feet. I show him what I found, and he identifies it as a uniform of an officer of the Veiled Heritance. And that’s when he reveals his big plan to me.

“They’ve seen you sneaking around town, yes? But they have not seen Raz. You stroll into the barracks, make some public accusations, pick a fight, and get captured. Then Raz will slip in and free you, and—”

“And that’s the point when we kill everyone involved in this?” I ask. “Because I’m not quite clear on how me getting captured helps that any.”

“They will think they have their troublemaker and let their guard down,” Raz says. “You trust Raz, yes? Trust Raz. It’s not like they can kill you, anyhow.”

“Good point,” I say. “But I hope you’ve brought potions for my next inevitable head injury.”

I do have a few self-made healing potions that will probably work precisely as well as my shitty healing spell, so there’s that, at least.

I go up to the guard standing outside the barracks. “Stand aside, in the name of the Queen.”

“And just who might you be?” the guard says dubiously. “Only authorized personnel are allowed in here.”

“I am Neralion, agent of Queen Ayrenn and hero of Khenarthi’s Roost,” I say. “I have done battle with villains and monsters—”

“Fine, whatever, hero,” the guard says, interrupting my monologue. “Go on in, then, for whatever good it will do you.”

I swagger inside. This is going against my every survival instinct and why can’t I just kill these people? Sure, murdering people in the middle of the barracks probably isn’t the most subtle way of going about things, but neither is this. But fine, I’ll do what Razum-dar asked me to do, because he’s Raz, no matter how stupid I think it is. I’d rather be riding a guar naked through an Argonian temple.

“Canonreeve Malanie?” I say. “I have evidence linking you to a terrorist group called the Veiled Heritance. In the name of Queen Ayrenn and the Aldmeri Dominion, I am hereby placing you under arrest on accusation of treason.”

And that’s when they laugh at me and knock me upside the head. Ow!

…

I wake in a cell with a splitting headache. Again. Dammit, why do people around here think hitting people in the head is the best way to capture them? I mean, they’re high elves! You’d think they’d use spells for that and not dirty their hands with common fisticuffs. I was in the middle of a good monologue, too!

Head still ringing, I try to at least get the pain down with some healing magic, and spot Raz standing outside the cell door.

“Next time, Raz, you’re the one who’s getting a concussion,” I say, climbing to my feet and putting a hand against a wall to steady myself.

“Mm, perhaps,” Raz says. “This one would not discount the possibility.”

He instructs me to go kill the forgemaster whose name I have already forgotten, before disappearing in a puff of smoke. How do people keep doing that? I need to learn that trick.

A trail of dead bodies leads down the hallway outside the cell. That wasn’t particularly subtle, either. What even was the point of this? At least my belongings aren’t far away. I fish out and down one of my shitty healing potions, and my headache recedes from ‘stepped on by a nix-ox’ to ‘stepped on by a nix-hound’.

I locate the building in question, and the forgemaster doesn’t even try to play dumb and yells at me something about the Veiled Queen, and is still blustering about how Altmer are better than everyone else when I take his head off.

I meet up with Raz again and he’s tracked the canonreeve, who is now trying to escape through some old smuggler tunnels under the forge because of course there are old smuggler tunnels under the forge. After chasing her through a tunnel full of ankle-deep water, we finally corner her, at which point she starts going on about how awesome the Veiled Queen is or something and we proceed to kick her ass. (Not literally. She’s a mage and it’s more sensible to use an axe than a foot.)

“You lot—” I roll out of the way of a spell. “—are nothing but—” Block. “—racist—” Dodge. “—bandits!”

She’s so focused on me that she doesn’t notice Raz coming up behind her until she’s got a knife in her ribs.

“You make a very good distraction, my friend,” Raz observes. “No one pays attention to this handsome Khajiit when you are being noisy.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I think.”

“Raz is heading to Skywatch to meet up with Queen Ayrenn. Head there once you are finished kicking over every nest of giant wasps in central Auridon.”

“Will do!” I say cheerfully. “Give the Queen my best.”