“What do I tell people?” I ask. “How do I explain what happened here?”

We’d encountered the spinner again outside of Greenheart. (No, I don’t remember his name, and I always feel silly asking people “What was your name again?”) And he’s spectacularly unhelpful with suggestions beyond insisting that only the story that’s told is the real one.

The spinner at Brackenleaf Village always intently listens to our exploits. He probably turns them into better stories than the ones I tell. Probably doesn’t have to exaggerate too much, either. The business with the Orrery was a tale told with some careful omissions, though—that story is too sticky, and while I trust these people, that secret is not mine to share. And we’re pretending that that didn’t happen while we’re pretending that I was the childhood friend of the mer who became the Wilderqueen. I’ve gotten a strange perspective on stories lately. A very Bosmer perspective. They’d understand.

The map of Greenshade has many locations to investigate. Ruins and caves and towns and dolmens. I decide to start off at the Ayleid ruins near Greenheart. At Pelda Tarn, a storm atronach is hanging around where storm atronachs really shouldn’t be hanging around. The robed corpses in a ring around the summoning location might give a hint as to what happened here, as might a small campsite nearby with a book titled The Doors to Oblivion. Upon sending the atronach back to oblivion by hitting it repeatedly, the map marker turns white.

“This thing is awesome,” I say. “I wish I had one of these for every region.”

“She gave you a list of problems to solve and you’re thrilled about it,” Eran comments. “It’s like she knows you or something.”

“I do love problems like that atronach,” I say. “They’re simple and don’t involve politics. Just hitting.”

“Aren’t you good at politics?” Merry asks.

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I like it,” I say. “Let’s head into Carac Dena next. The entrance might be… over there somewhere.”

The entrance is down near the beach, and leads into a complex lit by those blue glowing crystals the Ayleids loved so much. Ogres are squatting in this ruins.

“Hey, ogres!” I yell down at the ogres. “Your landlady says you’re way behind on your rent!”

The ogres respond by growling at me and attacking. If their vocalizations are any form of language, it’s not one that I know, but attacking me is a pretty clear message.

The ruins are also full of bookcases, and I don’t get the impression that these ogres are big readers. Most of them are eating, and there’s quite a lot of dead animals in here. I swipe a number of the books, although I doubt they’ll impress Sahira-daro as much as the ones I stole from Coldharbour did. (“You did what?” is a common reaction to things I do.) I also find a Skyshard tucked away in a corner deep in the ruin. Once we’ve cleared out the ogres, including one who might be their leader but it’s hard to tell, the map marker turns white.

“I don’t know what these ogres did to offend the Wilderqueen, but they’re not a problem anymore,” I say.

“Might’ve been the animals,” Gelur says. “They were prolly overhunting.”

After heading out from there, it looks like the next thing on the list is some more Orcs who have been clearcutting. At least they’re more likely to speak a language I know, although whether or not they’d listen to reason is a whole other question entirely. I might not normally be so concerned about this, but they’re hurting my friend.

I climb up on top of a pile of logs and wave to get their attention. Several Orcs look over to me in puzzlement, reaching for weapons but not attacking yet.

“Pardon me, neighbors!” I call out. “I come with a request from the Wilderqueen to cease logging operations in Greenshade.”

“Request denied,” spits one of the Orcs. “Leave.”

“Ah, my mistake,” I say. “My mistake being the word ‘request’.”

The Orcs aren’t feeling especially cooperative, so we beat the shit out of them. Their chief objects to us beating the shit out of his clanmates, so we beat the shit out of him, too. Once we’ve thoroughly made sure that this particular clan of Wood Orcs isn’t going to be causing any further problems, we look around the area to make sure we haven’t missed anything.

Near the Wood Orc camp, we run across a terrified Bosmer man hiding behind a rock. He speaks of a village inside a cave that just spontaneously appeared even though it had been empty a week ago. Sounds like something to check out.

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

Not far inside the cave is an old camp with a journal that speaks of a village that spontaneously disappeared, full of wood elves who asked what year it was. The author in question said that they’d decided to stay in the cave until the village returned. There’s no remains laying around, so maybe they didn’t die here waiting, although that might not mean much.

The cave is nothing natural. Stairs have been carved into a long tunnel, which is lit by those ubiquitous flaming braziers (the ones held up by three huge tusks) at regular intervals. A lot of mammoths have died to light Valenwood’s tunnels and pathways.

There is indeed a village down in this cave, full of Bosmer and their usual tree-pod houses. We stop and talk to a few people along the way and learn that the village comes back to this place every hundred years and goes… someplace else.

“Wait,” I say. “Are we in any danger of accidentally going ‘someplace else’ if we stay here for too long?”

One of them chuckles. “Not to worry. We’re not going anywhere just yet. And you don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

The Bosmer in the village marvel at seeing strangers, but they’re welcoming rather than xenophobic even if their lifestyle would seem to make them isolationist.

“You’re not Wood Orcs, so you’re welcome here,” says another.

Okay, so maybe they’re still a bit racist, but to be fair, the Wood Orcs haven’t exactly been being the best of neighbors and I’m sure they would have caused problems if we hadn’t gone and violently convinced them to behave. She’s quite reassured when I let her know that we already took care of the ones outside. The woman explains to me a bit about the village and how some pact with the Wilderking lets them travel to that unspecified someplace else and back regularly.

“Ah,” I say. “Well, the new Wilderqueen sent us here to investigate that something might be wrong here. She probably meant the Wood Orcs. They didn’t respond politely when went and told them to behave, so we went and kicked their asses. They shouldn’t cause anymore problems. Are things alright here aside from them?”

“There’s a new Wilderqueen?” she says in delight. “And you’re her emissaries? You’re doubly welcome, then!”

Word spreads rapidly and soon everyone in the village wants to hear our stories of what’s been going on in the world outside and I tell them the official story about the rise of the Wilderqueen. They have no reason to think there might have been any shenanigans afoot there. And still… the Bosmer perspective. They might have a different sort of life, but they’re still Bosmer.

They’re having a ceremony to choose a new caretaker to stay behind and care for some sort of magic tree. The husband of one of the people we’d spoken to is chosen. Once she finds out, woman is alarmed that her husband was chosen as the new caretaker and doesn’t know that she’s pregnant yet. She wants me to convince him to abandon his duty and stay.

I sigh, and say softly, for no one’s ears but her own, “Let me tell you something. I was… in love with the woman who became the new Wilderqueen. I had to let her go, too. No one else could do that duty. I never even told her.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I must sound awfully selfish to you.”

I shrug slightly. “Duty is easier to bear when you accept it and don’t argue with what must be done. I’m sure your magic tree must have chosen him for a reason, and it’s very likely that it thinks he’ll be best at it and has already reproduced.”

“I guess there’s a point in that,” she says. “We don’t have a lot of children, and if women who could still bear children were chosen to care for the Fading Tree, we might have even less.”

“You should see him before you leave,” I say. “You may not get another chance.”

She nods. “I’ll do that. I won’t ask him to stay behind, but would you come with me? I know he has an important duty to fulfill, but I’m afraid if I tell him he’s to be a father, he still might choose family over duty.”

“Of course,” I say.

We head back up to the magic tree, where the man is making preparations to send the village to the other place as soon as possible. According to him, there’s something wrong with the magic tree and he’ll need to dedicate a lot of time to making sure it’s healthy again. After a heartfelt goodbye that I politely give them space for, the woman approaches me again before returning to the village.

“I wouldn’t worry about your lady,” she says. “If she’s the Wilderqueen now… I think she must know how you feel.”

We part ways, and I gather my party and head out of the cave, the people and houses all vanishing behind us to wherever it is they really go. We exit by the north end of the cave this time rather than the south we’d come in by.

As we’re emerging, an otherworldly roar splits the air as another Dark Anchor drops off to our right. I bare my teeth in a bloodthirsty grin and draw Dumzy, wishing I had some way to actually destroy the dolmens and not just smack the Anchors whenever they drop near wherever I happen to be at the time. We rush over to join a handful of people who are already fighting by the time we get over there.

Once the Anchor has been destroyed, I take a look at the defenders. They’re all Orcs.

“We’re not doing logging,” one of them says. “If you still want to fight anyway, you get less people to defend the Wilderqueen’s forest from Daedra.”

“I only wanted to stop the logging,” I say. “The Wilderqueen actually feels that as pain. And no, she’s not a myth. She’s a powerful earth mage who bonded with the land.”

“That makes so much more sense than anything the wood elves ever bothered to rant at us,” another Orc says with a chuckle.

“I feel like so many problems can be solved by people explaining their grievances with one another like civilized beings,” I say. “And then if they still have to fight it out, knowing what they’re fighting for.”

“Like our dumbass cousins valuing their logging rights more than their lives,” an Orc grumbles.

“Would you be interested in joining the Aldmeri Dominion?” I ask with a grin.

“You’re asking us?” an Orc says. “You’d have thought the elves wouldn’t stoop to coming out here and talking to us Orcs.”

I start launching my sales pitch, but one of the Orcs holds up a hand to stop me.

“We can’t agree to anything until we’ve decided who our next chief is going to be. You killed most of the main candidates.”

“Well, make it a contest of who can kill the most Daedra,” I suggest.

The Orc laughs. “Not the worst idea.”