We head back to the main road with the intent on heading toward the next town, Deepwoods, possibly whilst making a thorough inspection of anything interesting along the way.
A book titled An Accounting of the Elder Scrolls sits in a rickety shack abandoned a little ways from the road. Summary: The Elder Scrolls are weird.
Outside of town, a Bosmer man with black eyes and a weird earring greets us and wonders what brings us here.
“Exploring and looking for interesting things and stuff to hit,” I say. “I heard there might be some sort of trouble here?”
“Well, if it’s hunting and battle you’re looking for, we have some problems with werewolves lately. We’re not strong enough to deal with a whole pack of werewolves ourselves, but you look like competent adventurers. Maybe you’d have better luck.”
“Werewolves?” I say with a gleeful grin. “That sounds fantastic! Uh, I mean, sorry for any trouble they’ve been causing.”
The Bosmer chuckles. “If you’re looking for a challenge, you might get one. Go speak with our treethane for details. I think I saw her praying at the shrine in the middle of town. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”
We pass under the woven tree branch archway into the tree-pod town. The shrine in question is a tree shaped like a woman; I guess it’s supposed to represent the Green Lady.
Treethane Nilara (I could have sworn this is the third treethane I’ve met named something like Nilara) tells us about how the Green Lady’s sister is missing and was probably kidnapped by werewolves or Houndsmen (crazy Hircine worshippers, I think). I’m sure either of them would be fine to hit, and the Green Lady would be sad if something happened to her sister.
We agree to go hunt for some other hunters who were hunting for the sister (Lanwaen). Because apparently everyone is missing now. Maybe everyone splitting up when there were werewolves and Daedra worshippers around was a bad idea?
We search for signs of them, killing several werewolves who attack us on sight along the way, and come upon a muddy camp. There’s a book titled The Cleansing of the Fane laying on the ground. Summary: … honestly I haven’t figured it out yet by the time someone nudges me to quit reading while we’re in the middle of a rescue and surrounded by werewolves, but it wasn’t making terribly much sense to begin with.
“I found a trail,” Gelur says. “This way!”
Up the hill, we come upon the body of a Bosmer who looks like he was pounced upon by a werewolf from behind.
“He wasn’t running away,” Gelur says, examining the ground nearby. “He never even turned to look at what got him.”
“Stealth werewolves, great,” Merry says, scanning the foliage around us.
He turns in time to see another werewolf pounces toward him, and rolls out of the way into the mud. Not that the werewolf survives terribly long after that. Tip for fighting things that can heal quickly: Most stuff is vulnerable to being beheaded. This is why I use battle axes. With healing magic, even a nasty gut wound is often only an inconvenience, but cutting off the head works on most things that have heads.
Further on, we come upon some werewolves who are already dead and weren’t killed by us. Much too clean, dotted with arrows. I make sure they’re not playing dead.
“While I am reasonably certain they were already dead, I will not argue at the precaution,” Merry says.
The one probably responsible for the corpses isn’t far away, a Bosmer woman who introduces herself as Oraneth. Gelur goes to check on her health; she certainly gets more chances to heal people while following me around than hanging out back at Brackenleaf Village. Oraneth (look, I can get people’s damned names right, honestly!) tells us about how her group was attacked by werewolves and they didn’t find the Green Lady’s sister (whose name was… dammit.) She tells us Haron, whoever that was, went off in another direction and bids us good luck (or rather, wishes the Wood Elf god whose name starts with a Y guides us, but ‘good luck’ is easier to spell.)
Yfri. Yffer. Yiffy. No, no, I don’t think it’s any of those. Did it have an apostrophe? I think there was an apostrophe in there somewhere.
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“I should skin some of these werewolves and bring their pelts back,” Gelur says.
“That’s… kind of creepy, Gelur,” Eran says.
“What?” she says innocently. “It’s a waste of perfectly good fur to just leave it there to rot, innit?”
Eran sighs. “Well, if you really want, we can come back through here once we’ve found the Green Lady’s sister.”
“Of course,” Gelur says with a twinkle in her eye. “Who would get distracted by things like that in the middle of an important mission?”
“I can hear you, you know,” I say with a chuckle.
We run into Haron, who talks about the werewolf ambush and immediately wants us to split up to look for clues. We point out that he’s not going to exactly be better off going off by himself. (Oh, and apparently he’s the Green Lady’s sister’s husband.) We convince him to stick together for safety’s sake. I’m considerably more likely to survive being ambushed than this guy.
We go search for clues at the camp of the crazy Hircine worshippers, by which I mean, my friends search for clues, I just kill all the crazy Hircine worshippers. They’ve even got a big statue and red banners with Hircine’s symbol on them. It’s very polite of them to declare which Prince they serve so openly, and I’m sure they’ll be thrilled at the chance to fight a force of nature like me. By ‘fight’ I mean get killed by. I mean, some might exaggerate my prowess at times, but these fetchers couldn’t kill an arthritic bantam guar.
“No, Neri, you are just that terrifying,” Merry points out.
It’s not that my friends have developed telepathic powers or anything. I just don’t always realize when I’m thinking or playing music aloud. (And I’ve taken to just telling people “What music?” when they ask about the music. I’m sure Uncle Sheo will appreciate fucking with people like that and my friends politely don’t give it away.)
Anyway, it sounds like some guy kidnapped the Green Lady’s sister/Haron’s wife/Lanwaen in order to be Hircine’s bride or something? That’s probably not it and I’m a little unclear on what they’re trying to do but obviously they need to be stopped. I’m not exactly a fan of kidnapping people and forcing people into marriage.
(I really did love her once…)
I ruthlessly squash the thought. There are werewolves to kill.
We find Lanwaen in a nearby cave, along with some more of the crazy Hircine worshippers, who don’t survive terribly long. Haron unties her and Gelur heals her up. The cave is incredibly confusing and I get thoroughly lost inside.
“This way, Neri,” Gelur says, tugging at me after I’ve circled the same pile of werewolf corpses again. “Everything’s dead already.”
We get back to Deepwoods, none the worse for wear primarily thanks to Gelur diligently healing everyone we found that was still breathing.
Oraneth wants to give us a tour and tell us about the Green Lady. I think she’s training to be the next spinner and wants to practice on us or something. Well… why not? I guess we can take a moment to do this, if I’ve got time to waste reading weird books. Gelur wants to go skin those werewolves anyway. And if we’re getting a history lesson, I decide to take notes. There might be a test later.
Admittedly, I have to get Oraneth to spell the names she mentions for me, but she’s patient.
We travel around the area, making sure there’s no more werewolves lurking about or if there are, they’re ones that are not dumb enough to attack the group that just slaughtered quite a lot of them. Gelur takes the opportunity to fill up her pack with pelts that I have no idea what she’s planning to do with. Maybe rugs? Bosmer use leather in quite a lot of things that most races would just use wood for, though, so for all I know, this is going to wind up being a guard rail for a walkway. Their methods of preserving leather so that they don’t have to replace the guard rails regularly from being out in the weather are also impressive.
Once we get to the waterfall where we’d found the camp before, Oraneth does a prayer to show us an illusion of a memory. Gwaering, the current Green Lady, had a childhood friend named Ulthorn, and they had some adventures around this waterfall.
We then head over to the archery range, where Oraneth prays and brings up transparent blue memory images again. She tells us about how Gwaering is completely awesome at archery and enjoys splitting arrows with her improbable aiming skills. Unfortunately, Ulthorn had been betrothed to Gwaering, and when she was chosen as the next Green Lady, he was forced to let her go. Poor fetcher.
We return to Deepwoods, back to the woman-shaped tree with its carved stone shrine.
“Isn’t it amazing how we can travel to different places but we so often wind up back where we started?” Oraneth says, standing before it with a serene smile that’s probably supposed to be wise or reassuring.
I certainly hope not. I think I might have started as a slave to the Ayleids or something and that would lead to me winding up back in what’s now Cyrodiil or Morrowind. And I’m not going to Morrowind if I can help it unless I have a way to stick it to my ‘old friends’ without getting re-murdered.
Oraneth tells us (and shows us, with illusions) about how Gwaering was chosen as the Green Lady, which involved touching a shrine and glowing green while hovering surrounded by fluttering leaves. Because this could not have possibly been faked just like this illusion she’s showing me now. Eh, I’m sure Yif’fer wouldn’t let anyone impersonate a Green Lady.
I should probably just get Oraneth to spell that name for me too.
Y’ffre. It’s spelled fucking Y’ffre. Why the fuck is it spelled Y’ffre? It’s like they deliberately chose the most atrocious mangling of the name to spell it as unintuitively as possible while still more or less sounding like ‘Ifri’ or ‘Ifra’ (and everyone pronounces that final ‘e’ slightly differently too, which isn’t helping matters any). I’ll spare Oraneth the rant. It’s not like it’s her fault. Still, I wonder if I can petition the Silvenar and Green Lady to enact a spelling reform of their god’s name? They owe me a favor or two, right? I’m sure the god in question won’t mind.