We head west across lower Greenshade, and another map marker leads us to a large ruin. It looks to be of Imperial design, I think. Definitely not any sort of elven. Outside of it, we spot a traveling merchant passing by, the sort of traveling merchant that strolls along without guards or obviously carrying anything either, but she’s mostly scribbling at a clipboard and ignoring her surroundings. I still might have assumed this was a surveyor or something if she didn’t try to sell us something from her magic bag when we get within earshot. Her goods are unremarkable and overpriced compared to those in the city, but then, most people don’t have the luxury of being able to teleport to any major city from the closest wayshrine. I’m more impressed that she doesn’t seem even slightly concerned about the wildlife or any potential bandits.

“Might want to keep clear of that ruin, travelers,” the Bosmer merchant says. “They say shadows crawl beyond those walls. Or at least that’s what it says on my map. Maybe that’s just the name of the place? Funny name if that.”

“We’re going into that ruin, aren’t we,” Merry says flatly.

I stare off toward the huge, broken walls and say, “Yup, definitely a Skyshard in there.”

“You’d still want to go in and check it out even if there weren’t,” Eran says.

Just past the walls, we come across an injured Bosmer man who introduces himself as Anglorn when Gelur goes up to heal him. He tells us about how his clan tried to settle here because it was abandoned and unfriendly statues attacked them.

“Sounds like it was abandoned for a reason,” I observe, heading inside.

An entire Bosmer city lies within these crumbling stone walls, more than just a scattering of tree-pods. The Skyshard is tucked away behind some rocks next to one of those big tree-houses, the ones that are an entire trunk and not just a pod. I absorb it, and go to find the person Anglorn mentioned.

Anglorn has sent me to speak with a Bosmer woman whom I am calling Indy. She’s an angry little mer, ready to fight for this spot they’re squatting in, and quite eager to tell me how they have nowhere to go and this spot is theirs now.

“You had nowhere else to go?” I ask. “Or you just didn’t feel like growing new houses? Because there’s a lot of space in Greenshade. Notably, there’s a lot of space now around where we beat up a bunch of Wood Orcs to get them to knock it off with the logging. They don’t need it anymore.”

She’s not listening, because of course she’s not. Indy wants to ward off the stone men by collapsing holes in the ground. Somehow I don’t think this is going to be quite as effective as she hopes, but we do it anyway.

And then, inside a nearby cave, one of the statues stops to talk to us. As it turns out, the walking statues are here to defend this area and prevent anyone from settling here, which would explain why they attacked the Bosmer clan when they wouldn’t go away.

“You don’t know why you were given this directive?” I ask.

“Not specifically,” he says. “Just that it would harm the Valenwood were anyone to settle here.”

The hot-headed Bosmer woman keeps insisting on how she wants to fight for her new home. This is getting tiresome.

I put my face in my palm. “He just said it would harm the Valenwood if you stayed here. Why don’t you take him at his word? You don’t actually want to harm the Valenwood, do you?”

“I can’t imagine the Wilderking would have made these monsters just to kill innocent Bosmer!” Indy growls.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “For all you know, there’s a terrible curse here, or a plague that would be unleashed, or a sacred object that might disrupt the forest, or any number of other things. Why are you so attached to this place? And if you’re so eager to fight over it, how do you know that there isn’t some ancient Daedric or Ayleid artifact here messing with your minds that’s why these guardians were set here? You might be becoming mind-slaves day by day.”

“They’re definitely the angriest Bosmer I’ve encountered yet,” Eran says. “And that’s including ones who were trying to kill us.”

“I can’t believe you’re siding with these monsters,” Indy says. “Fine. We’ll have a vote to see whether we’ll leave.” The woman runs off, and by the time we catch up with her, we’re faced with inexplicably overly aggressive Bosmer who definitely didn’t spend the last five minutes voting.

I sigh. “Merry? Could we add some more statues to this place, please?”

“Of course,” Merry says, beginning to transform the ones attacking me.

Normally, when sane people notice that we’re turning their buddies to stone, people stop attacking us. That would be sane people. I’m becoming more and more convinced that there’s something very wrong with these people the more of them blindly attack us even seeing how we disabled their clanmates.

Once the fighting is over, the talking statue comes up to us again. “I regret that our directives led to further loss of life.”

“They’re not dead,” Merry says. “I can turn them back, but we’d need to make sure that they didn’t just start attacking us again.”

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“Getting them away from this location is most important,” I say. “But we’ll need to move them and it might be hard to shove this many statues into our packs. Hey, stone guy? Would your fellow stone people be willing to move these frozen intruders to the edge of your protected area? That would satisfy your need to keep people out of the area, right?”

“That is definitely an amicable interpretation of our directive,” he agrees. “Let me show you where the boundary is. I would suggest you wait outside that area until we have completed this task.”

“Of course,” I say, following him. “We’ll make camp somewhere that we’re allowed to make camp. Might I recommend adding a ‘no camping’ sign? People would still do it anyway but you’d be able to tell them they’re extra stupid for ignoring the sign, too.”

“You may put a sign outside the boundary if you believe it will help in some way,” he says. “Here is the boundary. Be certain that you are outside of it by nightfall. I do not wish to have to die against you. While I have no fear of destruction, such would leave this location vulnerable.”

We set up camp a safe distance away and I pull out a book to read while we wait. They’re lifting and moving entire statues, but they’re statues themselves and show no signs of tiredness or boredom at the tedious task.

Merry returns one of them to flesh. “Are you going to attack me again, or do we need to tie you up or turn you to stone again?”

“I—what?” the Bosmer man stammers. “What’s going on?”

“You were attacking us in a blind rage,” Eran says. “So we froze you so we didn’t have to kill you.”

The Bosmer looks at the other statues in alarm. “You! You are trying to take us away from our new home! How dare you?”

Merry sighs and turns him to stone again. “They are still being foolish,” he calls over to me.

It would probably be entirely too mean to give them signs warning people to keep away. I don’t do that, of course. I’m not feeling quite that annoyed at them at the moment.

“Would they be alright if we took some of them inside a pack?” Ilara wonders. “This one has not tried carrying living things in hers.”

“When did you get one?” Eran asks. “No, wait, don’t answer that. I’d say that you’d probably have an easy time stealing things with one of those but Neri’s always getting on people for being racist and I don’t want to stereotype Khajiit.”

Ilara grins. “It does make it easier to steal things, though.”

Gelur pulls out a jar from her pack, with small holes in the top and full of squirming bugs. “I’ve been keeping snacks in here. They still seem fresh.” She opens the jar and snags one and pops it in her mouth as the two Altmer look away with a grimace.

“I should get my own pack at this rate,” Eran says. “Let’s decide whether to shove one of these into the pack full of bloody trophies and books, the pack full of animal corpses and ‘snacks’, or the pack full of ‘definitely not stolen’ goods.”

They finally opt to manhandle one of them into Gelur’s pack. We don’t really have room to carry all of them at once, but we can at least find someone willing and able to deal with them, or at least just willing. Otherwise they’re just going to wind up standing out here as a warning not to fuck around in these ruins.

We head back to Bramblebreach, as it is the closest settlement, and explain the situation to the treethane there, then pull out and de-stone the angry Bosmer we’d ‘detained’. A different one than the first that we’d frozen, and fortunately not Angry Indy.

“Foolish,” the treethane says, shaking her head at the statue. “To think they would react so violently to being told they were in a forbidden place. Return this one to flesh, but be prepared to restrain him if his mind is still clouded.”

Merry casts his spell, and our ‘captive’ is no longer stone. “How are you feeling, Anglorn?” Merry asks.

This was the first mer we’d spoken to in the ruins and I’m impressed that Merry could remember his name. “I… where am I?” Anglorn says in puzzlement.

“You are in Bramblebreach,” the treethane says. “I am Treethane Niriel. The Wilderqueen’s envoys tell me that your clan attempted to settle on forbidden ground, and that they were merciful enough to spare your lives. Consider yourself fortunate. The forest does not often show such mercy.”

“What?” Anglorn says. “But we had nowhere else to go! That was our new home!”

The treethane sighs and puts her face in her palm. “The whole of the Valenwood before you and yet you were drawn to Shadows Crawl? Why do you think it’s forbidden? That place is like a pitcher plant and you have no idea what might happen if you remained there.”

“But… where else can we go?” Anglorn wonders.

“As it just so happens, we’ve recently reclaimed some lands from the Wood Orcs,” the treethane says. “We do not have the numbers to hold the land or regrow what they destroyed. If your clan is willing to do so, then you may settle in those lands and begin healing them as penance for your foolishness.”

Anglorn’s shoulders slump, looking lost and dazed. “I’m no one important, treethane. But they killed our treethane and I’m the one who’s here, I suppose. I don’t know if I’d be able to get Indanas to see reason, though.”

“We’ll pack up your entire clan and haul them into the middle of the Orcs’ former logging ground if it would help,” I say. “It’d be easier if they’d walk there of their own accord and not as luggage, though.”

We head back to the edge of the ruin, along with Anglorn (calmer now) and a couple of Bramblebreach’s militia.

“I’m inclined to have Merry un-stone Angry Indy last just to make sure her more reasonable cousins can convince her not to do anything stupid.”

“That’s… probably a good idea, knowing her,” Anglorn says. “I’ll point out which ones might be more reasonable to get first.” He pauses and takes a breath. “For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry for all that. I don’t know what came over us. Now that I’ve been away from it for a bit, I’m starting to think your theory of something messing with our heads might be right.”

“I wish I could say that it was the first time I’ve had to turn an entire village to stone for its own good,” Merry says dryly. “This is actually the third…”

On the way there, I tell the three Bosmer about Southpoint. And lighthearted music starts playing while I’m telling and I decide to gloss over part of the bit with Sheogorath. I manage to get control of the music again once we reach Shadows Crawl. The statue men (the walking ones) have gotten all or most of the villagers out by now and honestly if any random travelers on the road thought it was a good idea to go into a ruin with a bunch of angry statues at the entrance, that’s kind of on them. (I mean, I totally would but I totally take responsibility for my own dumb actions.)

One by one we de-stone everyone and convince them not to keep trying to attack us like idiots. It takes considerably longer than simply killing everyone, but at least this way we don’t have to kill everyone. Once it’s done, the militia members lead the others back toward Bramblebreach and we part ways without Angry Indy uttering a word of apology. Whatever. Maybe she’ll calm down once they get settled in to their new new home. Good enough that she’s not attacking anyone.

The map marker turned white at some point, so the problem has clearly been dealt with to the Wilderqueen’s satisfaction one way or another.

Eran notices me looking at the map and asks, “Where to next?”

I point vaguely down the road. “We keep going west.”