We’re on the road again, and at some point between the Gray Mire and Haven, we run across a small camp with a mer who introduces herself as Enda. She asks for help in locating her missing husband.

“Ah, yes! Of course!” I exclaim. “Has he been kidnapped by cultists? Held hostage by pirates? Eaten by over-enthusiastic Green Pact Bosmer?”

“I… really hope not but now I’m even more worried than I was before, so thank you,” Enda says. “He’s a traveling minstrel and the last town on his itinerary was Southpoint.”

“Southpoint?” I repeat, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, in that case, he might have been murdered or driven insane.”

“What happened in Southpoint?” Enda asks in alarm.

“They had a small problem in which some guy made a deal with the Madgod and declared himself mayor,” I say. “It has been taken care of, but some of the people there may still be affected. What was his name? Maybe I ran across him and can give you more specific news.”

“His name is Sorion,” Enda says.

“Sorion, Sorion…” I muse, opening my pack. “Yes, I ran across a note and remember thinking he might be Sorry.” I sift through my notes and find the one in question. “Aha! Here it is.”

“Let me see that,” Enda says, taking it and reading it over. “Yes, that’s his handwriting. He says he’s staying at Sweetbreeze Cottage with a girl he met?” She sighs. “Oh, that fool. The only one he really loves is himself. Well, perhaps I can hire you instead to deliver him a message that says ‘I love you but I’m very annoyed at you.’ I’m booking the first ship back to Auridon. I’ve had enough of this place.”

“I do believe that can be done,” I say with a smirk.

She pays in advance and starts packing immediately.

“We probably don’t all need to go,” Eran says. “Shall I deliver the message?”

“Alright, but take someone with you in case there’s trouble,” I say. “Who else isn’t overly enthusiastic about visiting a carnival?”

“You know, delivering messages to unfaithful husbands sounds like a delightful use of my time,” Merry says.

We settle on Eran and Merry heading out on this very important errand while Ilara, Gelur, and I investigate the carnival. As we’re preparing to leave, I spot a book titled Common Arms of Valenwood resting by the tent, and I snag it when Enda isn’t looking. Actually, no, she is looking directly at me, and apparently doesn’t give enough of a fuck to say anything.

We part ways, agreeing to meet back up at Elden Root, and head through Haven and up toward the carnival (after stopping to ask for directions at Haven, which seems to be doing much better now that it’s not full of pirates.)

The entrance of the carnival is marked by a wooden archway with a cheerful awning, but we wind up wandering down into the middle of the place after getting lost in the hills and finding one of those weird obelisks with a constellation on it (I think this one was the Tower?) and also grabbing another misplaced book with some strange misconceptions about Gil-Var-Delle. Yes, yes, Molag Bal is totally just a superstition, and you know what? If he says he smashed the place, I’ll take his word on it.

There are tents, awnings, vendor stalls offering concessions and souvenirs, and not an awful lot of merriment going on at the moment. After buying Ilara and me a couple of cinnamon gorapples (Gelur passes), we head over to talk to an Altmer named Sarandel, who seems to be in charge here. Upon being pressed, she complains to us about the various problems the carnival has been having with its attractions. We decide to split up and see if we can do something to help each of the three performers.

The bug handler is having trouble with his trained shalks and wants to feed them mashed mudcrab eyes. Excellent! This is so much more entertaining than just watching trained bugs. I get to kill mudcrabs and feed their eyes to the shalks, too!

“You should have a stall where you sell little bags of mudcrab eyes for people to feed them,” I say. “It’ll be a hit with the kids.”

The bug handler looks at me dubiously. “Do you really think so? Nobody even sells mudcrab eyes.”

“You’ve got to remember, these are Bosmer,” I say. “They’re more squeamish about plants than meat. Leave the mudcrab wrangling to me.”

Gelur has gone to help the storyteller figure out what sort of stories to tell, and Ilara is trying to figure out how to let Vindare the Magnificent be more magnificent. Vindare’s supplies are probably on the dock at Haven waiting to be picked up and has been having trouble getting them shipped here.

“No problem,” I say. “We can go pick those up.”

“I couldn’t ask you to bring that big, heavy trunk up here,” Vindare says.

“I have a magic bag,” I say. “And I just got the space expanded last time I was in Elden Root, so it should fit, no problem.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Oh!” Vindare says. “Well, in that case, I would be most grateful.”

I let Gelur know where we’re going to hunt some mudcrabs, and head off for the nearest body of water, a small pond near the carnival. There are no mudcrabs there, but there is a Skyshard next to a rather pissy strangler vine, so it was still worth it. There will probably be some near the docks at Haven and we’re going there anyway.

We head down to the docks and locate the chest in question, getting pointed in the right direction by requesting a pickup for Vindare the Magnificent from some guy standing around nearby who seems to know what’s going on. That is, it’s the most excessively fancy chest on the dock and he’s quite glad for it to no longer be cluttering up the place. Ilara and I wrangle the heavy chest into my pack, where it proceeds to be less heavy, or at least just the same amount of heavy but its heaviness no longer matters.

After killing a number of mudcrabs down on the beach, we return to the carnival to find Gelur still talking to the storyteller.

“I told him it ain’t what he’s telling but how he’s telling it,” Gelur says. “It would be an embarrassment for him to badly tell Bosmer stories. It’s not that we don’t want to hear stories about the Summerset Isles, just that he didn’t tell them like a spinner would. And I suggested broadening his subject matter from ‘how awesome Altmer totally are’.” She snickers.

With the mudcrab bits and heavy trunk delivered, now we can settle in and have the afterthought of the entertainment. Also we get paid too so that’s great. If I’m going to keep spending money on dumb things, I might as well be paid for it too. (And let’s not discuss the thievery competitions Ilara and I have when we’re in town. Oops, I said I wasn’t going to discuss those.)

Anyway! We meet up with Eran and Merry again at Elden Root.

“How’d your delivery go?” I ask.

Merry makes a face. “Unexpectedly eventful.”

“Sorion’s latest true love turned out to be a murdering lunatic who had a bunch of skeletons in her basement,” Eran says. “Including our wayward minstrel.”

“Damn, you think we should send word back to Auridon about it?” I ask, then pause. “What was her name again?”

Eran hands me a book titled The Book of the Great Tree. “I found this in her creepy basement. It looked weird so I thought you might like it and she didn’t need it anymore.”

“Ah, you guys are always thinking of me!” I say, delighted as I take it and skim it.

I check in to see if they’re ready to get the Orrery going yet, and get told to come back in a few days. Great, more time to kill. Among other things to kill. I check in at Vastarie’s place to say hi and see if they have anything to do, but the Prophet is still meditating or whatever. The place has been greatly cleaned up in the interim and there’s more people here, including Vastarie’s apprentices having returned from sitting in a tree for a hundred years. (I’ll give these n’wahs points for dedication at least.) I brief everyone on what’s been happening in the meantime.

I decide to take the opportunity to go poking around the ubiquitous ruins near Elden Root that don’t contain weird planetary things. Not far from the big tree, we run across several Altmer-style tents camped out around the entrance to another ruin, but only one mer is in sight when we approach, who immediately asks for help.

“Of course,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

The Altmer woman (Tandare) explains how her expedition got eaten by wild animals. “I don’t know how the Bosmer survive out here! Valenwood is insanely dangerous. We might have been safer on an expedition to Cyrodiil instead!”

My party is chuckling at that. Eran says, “The place definitely keeps you on your toes.”

“Combat training is definitely recommended,” Merry says. “Or at the very least, hiring competent mercenaries as bodyguards.”

“I wish we had!” Tanny says. “We’d considered the Fighters Guild’s rates to be overpriced with them saying so many of them are busy fighting Daedra. Now we’re definitely regretting pinching coppers on security.”

“Do you think any of them might still be alive and trapped in there?” I wonder.

“Unlikely,” Tanny says. “But if you can find their journals, this won’t have been a total loss, at least.”

“I’ll see what we can do.”

We head inside ‘possibly Root Sunder’ which is definitely a ruin full of sundering roots, if nothing else. The place is overrun with the local flora and fauna, leaving only partial walls in places to indicate that someone might have once lived here long ago. Given how enthusiastic Valenwood is about shoving the local flora and fauna into everything, it might not have even been all that long ago.

Not far inside, a projection of a mage asks us for help, saying that he’s trapped in a lower chamber. Naturally I agree seeing as we’re going down there anyway.

Amid stranglers, spriggans, and crocodiles, we find the mangled bodies of dead mer and collect their journals. There’s even a Skyshard in one of the chambers. There are definitely enough tough enemies to fight to satisfy me. Including a bone colossus! No idea what that was doing here.

Oh, and to no one’s great surprise, the guy wanting to be rescued turns out to be a trap. When we get to the room he’s supposed to be in, we find only his corpse and a magic rock, and we’re attacked by a giant angry plant thing. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it shut up even after we killed it. There’s a female voice echoing through the overgrown corridors taunting us and talking about wanting to eat our flesh.

“Someone sure is grumpy,” I observe.

“We should free them,” Gelur says. “They’re probably only ’cause they were bound here.”

“We can probably use that attunement crystal to release them,” Merry says.

“Okay then,” I say. “Where do I put the magic rock?”

“The Welkynd stones up the stairs should do the trick,” Merry says.

“The what now?” I ask.

“The Welkynd stones,” Merry repeats, then says with a sigh, “Wave the small magic rock at the blue glowing magic rocks.”

“Ah, okay, why didn’t you say so?”

Merry puts his face in his palm. “I swear, Neri, I’m never sure whether you’re an idiot or a genius.”

“It can be both,” Eran says.

There’s a bit of a light show when I wave the small magic rock at the blue glowing magic rocks, and a green glowing ball of light appears in the air in the middle of the room. They’re very thankful at being freed and want to return to the green and atone for all the mer they’ve eaten. The various spriggans and stranglers that we hadn’t already killed proceed to become passive, no longer being inclined to attack us, however I would assume that anything capable of rational thinking should be disinclined to attack us.

“Too bad we were too late to save the researchers,” Eran says.

“Judging by the journals, it sounds like they went mad before they died,” Merry says. “Let’s get them back to Tandare, at least.”

Upon skimming over the journals herself, Tandare is not at all deterred by the fact that they’re mostly mad ramblings. In fact, she’s thrilled that the pseudo-intellectuals at the Mages Guild will have something to debate. Mages are weird.