SunAndSpring posted:

So, do these Writs of Execution have to go through legal procedure (like some judge going, "Yep, seems like Falanalu Redoran deserves death") or do you just pay for them based on how influential the person you're killing is and it's just accepted as legal?

SunAndSpring posted:

So if someone had enough cash, they could theoretically pay for them to kill people like the Duke of Vvardenfell?

2920, Evening Star posted:

6 Evening Star, 2920

The Imperial City, Cyrodiil

The Emperor Reman III sat on his throne, surveying the audience chamber. It was a spectacular sight: silver ribbons dangled from the rafters, burning cauldrons of sweet herbs simmered in every corner, Pyandonean swallowtails sweeping through the air, singing their songs. When the torches were lit and servants began fanning, the room would be transfigured into a shimmering fantasy land. He could smell the kitchen already, spices and roasts.

The Potentate Versidue-Shaie and his son Savirien-Chorak slithered into the room, both bedecked in the headdress and jewelry of the Tsaesci. There was no smile on their golden face, but there seldom was one. The Emperor still greeted his trusted advisor with enthusiasm.

“This ought to impress those savage Dark Elves,” he laughed. “When are they supposed to arrive?”

“A messenger's just arrived from Vivec,” said the Potentate solemnly. “I think it would be best if your Imperial Majesty met him alone.”

The Emperor lost his laughter, but nodded to his servants to withdraw. The door then opened and the Lady Corda walked into the room, with a parchment in her hand. She shut the door behind her, but did not look up to meet the Emperor's face.

“The messenger gave his letter to my mistress?” said Reman, incredulous, rising to take the note. “That's a highly unorthodox way of delivering a message.”

“But the message itself is very orthodox,” said Corda, looking up into his one good eye. With a single blinding motion, she brought the letter up under the Emperor's chin. His eyes widened and blood poured down the blank parchment. Blank that is, except for a small black mark, the sign of the Morag Tong. It fell to the floor, revealing the small dagger hidden behind it, which she now twisted, severing his throat to the bone. The Emperor collapsed to the floor, gasping soundlessly.

“How long do you need?” asked Savirien-Chorak.

“Five minutes,” said Corda, wiping the blood from her hands. “If you can give me ten, though, I'll be doubly grateful.”

“Very well,” said the Potentate to Corda's back as she raced from the audience chamber. “She ought to have been an Akaviri, the way the girl handles a blade is truly remarkable.”

“I must go and establish our alibi,” said Savirien-Chorak, disappearing behind one of the secret passages that only the Emperor's most trusted knew about.

“Do you remember, close to a year ago, your Imperial Majesty,” the Potentate smiled, looking down at the dying man. “When you told me to remember 'You Akaviri have a lot of showy moves, but if just one of our strikes comes through, it's all over for you.' I remembered that, you see.”

The Emperor spat up blood and somehow said the word: “Snake.”

“I am a snake, your Imperial Majesty, inside and out. But I didn't lie. There was a messenger from Vivec. It seems he'll be a little late in arriving,” the Potentate shrugged before disappearing behind the secret passage. “Don't worry yourself. I'm sure the food won't go bad.”

The Emperor of Tamriel died in a pool of his own blood in his empty audience chamber decorated for a grand ball. He was found by his bodyguard fifteen minutes later. Corda was nowhere to be found.

Cantorsdust posted:

It's an interesting set of targets, too. It's fun to speculate about who ordered the killings. Spoilers I guess?


Baladas Demnevanni is a reclusive wizard who you recruit to the Telvanni council in that house's questline. His specialty is research into the Dwemer. He's so reclusive that I have a hard time imagining who wants him dead, and I don't know anyone who has an active interest in preventing Dwemer research. Fyr taking out a rival perhaps? That seems unlike Fyr, though.

SunAndSpring posted:

Also, it's hinted at in some of the books that Talos is actually a big faker and is not an Atmoran but a Breton from an obscure island off the coast of High Rock.

The Protagonist posted:

I've been meaning to ask, is there ingame material (in either game) to support this?

Mortimer posted:

no it'll be akavir

akavir is also now a celtic forest all the books were lies

also chim

Hog Butcher posted:

when I first started and didn't know how to really break Morrowind I used to gather all the sujamma I could and chug all of them I had when anything really dangerous showed up

quote:

Breathing Water

by Haliel Myrm

He walked through the dry, crowded streets of Bal Fell, glad to be among so many strangers. In the wharfs of Vivec, he had no such anonymity. They knew him to be a smuggler, but here, he could be anyone. A lower-class peddler perhaps. A student even. Some people even pushed against him as he walked past as if to say, "We would not dream of being so rude as to acknowledge that you don't belong here."

Seryne Relas was not in any of the taverns, but he knew she was somewhere, perhaps behind a tenement window or poking around in a dunghill for an exotic ingredient for some spell or another. He knew little of the ways of sorceresses, but that they always seemed to be doing something eccentric. Because of this prejudice, he nearly passed by the old Dunmer woman having a drink from a well. It was too prosaic, but he knew from the look of her that she was Seryne Relas, the great sorceress.

"I have gold for you," he said to her back. "If you will teach me the secret of breathing water."

She turned around, a wide wet grin stretched across her weathered features. "I ain't breathing it, boy. I'm just having a drink."

"Don't mock me," he said, stiffly. "Either you're Seryne Relas and you will teach me the spell of breathing water, or you aren't. Those are the only possibilities."

"If you're going to learn to breathe water, you're going to have to learn there are more possibilities than that, boy. The School of Alteration is all about possibilities, changing patterns, making things be what they could be. Maybe I ain't Seryne Relas, but I can teach how to breathe water," she wiped her mouth dry. "Or maybe I am Seryne Relas and I won't. Or maybe even I can teach you to breathe water, but you can't learn."

"I'll learn," he said, simply.

"Why don't you just buy yourself a spell of water breathing or a potion over at the Mages Guild?" she asked. "That's how it's generally done."

"They're not powerful enough," he said. "I need to be underwater for a long time. I'm willing to pay whatever you ask, but I don't want any questions. I was told you could teach me."

"What's your name, boy?"

"That's a question," he replied. His name was Tharien Winloth, but in Vivec, they called him the Tollman. His job, such as it was, was collecting a percentage of the loot from the smugglers when they came into harbor to bring to his boss in the Camonna Tong. Of the value of that percentage, he earned another percentage. In the end it was very small indeed. He had scarcely any gold of his own, and what he had, he gave to Seryne Relas.

The lessons began that very day. The sorceress brought her pupil, who she simply called "boy," out to a low sandbank along the sea.

"I will teach you a powerful spell for breathing water," she said. "But you must become a master of it. As with all spells and all skills, you [sic] more you practice, the better you get. Even that ain't enough. To achieve true mastery, you must understand what it is you're doing. It ain't simply enough to perform a perfect thrust of a blade -- you must also know what you are doing and why."

"That's common sense," said Tharien.

"Yes, it is," said Seryne, closing her eyes. "But the spells of Alteration are all about uncommon sense. The infinite possibilities, breaking the sky, swallowing space, dancing with time, setting ice on fire, believing that the unreal may become real. You must learn the rules of the cosmos and then break them."

"That sounds ... very difficult," replied Tharien, trying to keep a straight face.

Seryne pointed to the small silver fish darting along the water's edge: "They don't find it so. They breathe water just fine."

"But that's not magic."

"What I'm saying to you, boy, is that it is."

For several weeks, Seryne drilled her student, and the more he understood about what he was doing and the more he practiced, the longer he could breathe underwater. When he found that he could cast the spell for as long as he needed, he thanked the sorceress and bade her farewell.

"There is one last lesson I have to teach you," she said. "You must learn that desire is not enough. The world will end your spell no matter how good you are, and no matter how much you want it."

"That's a lesson I'm happy not to learn," he said, and left at once for the short journey back to Vivec.

The wharfs were much the same, with all the same smells, the same sounds, and the same characters. His boss had found a new Tollman, he learned from his mates. They were still looking out for the smuggler ship Morodrung, but they had given up hope of ever seeing it. Tharien knew they would not. He had seen it sink from the wharf a long time ago.

On a moonless night, he cast his spell and dove into the thrashing purple waves. He kept his mind on the world of possibilities, that books could sing, that green was blue, that that water was air, that every stroke and kick brought him closer to a sunken ship filled with treasure. He felt magicka surge all around him as he pushed his way deeper down. Ahead he saw a ghostly shadow of the Morodrung, its mast billowing in a wind of deep water currents. He also felt his spell begin to fade. He could break reality long enough to breathe water all the way back up to the surface, but not enough to reach the ship.

The next night, he dove again, and this time, the spell was stronger. He could see the vessel in detail, clouded over and dusted in sediment. The wound in its hull where it had struck the reef. A glint of gold beckoning from within. But still he felt reality closing in, and he had to surface.

The third night, he made it into the steerage, past the bloated corpses of the sailors, nibbled and picked apart by fish. Their glassy eyes bulging, their mouths stretched open. Had they only known the spell, he thought briefly, but his mind was more occupied by the gold scattered along the floor, the boxes that contained them shattered. He considered scooping as much he could carry into his pockets, but a sturdy iron box seemed to bespeak more treasures.

On the wall was a row of keys. He took each down and tried it on the locked box, but none opened it. One key, however, was missing. Tharien looked around the room. Where could it be? His eyes went to the corpse of one of the sailors, floating in a dance of death not far from the box, his hands tightly clutching something. It was a key. When the ship had begun to sink, this sailor had evidently gone for the iron box. Whatever was in it had to be very valuable.

Tharien took the sailor's key and opened the box. It was filled with broken glass. He rummaged around until he felt something solid, and pulled out two flasks of some kind of wine. He smiled as he considered the foolishness of the poor alcoholic. This was what was important to the sailor, out of all the treasure in the Morodrung.

Then, suddenly, Tharien Winloth felt reality.

He had not been paying attention to the grim, tireless advance of the world on his spell. It was fading away, his ability to breathe water. There was no time to surface. There was no time to do anything. As he sucked in, his lungs filled with cold, briny water.

A few days later, the smugglers working on the wharf came upon the drowned body of the former Tollman. Finding a body in the water in Vivec was not in itself noteworthy, but the subject that they discussed over many bottles of flin was how did it happen that he drowned with two potions of water breathing in his hands.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

the guy who wins a duel by holding it in a swamp where the other guy's fire sword makes so much steam that he can't see are pretty great as well.

omg chael crash posted:

I'm going to just say it: *heinous blasphemies*

...of SCIENCE! posted:

That's it! I loved how they managed to make the non-combat skills sound badass in their respective stories, like the guy who was so good at heavy armor that he could silently walk on his hands, kill his wife's lover, and then gently caress her brains out all in heavy armor

It is kind of hilarious that they went to the trouble to write these cool stories about the game's master trainers but in the actual game one of them just plain doesn't work and another is hostile and will attack you on sight.

naem posted:

I probably just destroyed my enjoyment of this game by adding 12345 gold to my inventory thanks internet

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

Seriously gently caress everyone in Oblivion who kept spouting off about "deedra"

naem posted:

Oh my god I'm flying

WanderingMinstrel I posted:

No the best part was talking to the other people in the guild about the various bs he had them doing, like learn the language of the silt striders.

Broken Box posted:

I like the balmora mages guild quest where you're sent to kill a 'necromancer' who is actually a healer over some petty poo poo, meanwhile you can go downstairs and buy some restoration spells off an orc necromancer that can't bluff for poo poo

Upmarket Mango posted:

i had 9 of these fuckers chasing me after punching about another dozen to death with my bare fists before they ran me down and presumably devoured my corpse. ive leveled my hand-to-hand skill from 35 to 71 in like two hours just by running around between balmora, ald ruhn, and molag amur all the while punching the wildlife to death. i forgot how fun morroiwnd is

WEEDLORD CHEETO posted:

The game feels a lot bigger than Oblivion/Skyrim due to lack of fast travel, but when you can see how small the world actually is, that's lessened a lot. 10-15 cells lets you see pretty drat far and is very pretty anyway

Upmarket Mango posted:

gg killing the thread mods

the fight with this guy was an intense 5 second spamfest of spellblasts from both sides and somehow the lone cattle caught in the middle made it out alive. this guy was a bastard tho.

cthulhoo posted:

agreed with the above, especially with the cliff racer on the back

pure class

Capntastic posted:

Would be cool if the drums were gone after completing the main quest.

Khanstant posted:

last time i tried to play morrowind i wanted to try it all dolled up and modded but i was lazy and just got some megapack and half the characters were giant tit anime babes and it was pretty freaky. also some objects would be modelled or textured wya better than others and the end of my story sorry for reading

Trap posted:

I saw the gold, and I took it. A different man might not have, I know that, and from time to time, I think back on the hour when I saw the gold and took it. You see, I was hungry. Isn't it ironic.

I don't remember much else about that night but the gold and the hunger. I don't remember the name of the tavern, or even the village, but I believe it was somewhere in southern Vvardenfell. I can't really be certain. For some time, I sat dumbly in my chair, my mind occupied with nothing but the pain in my stomach. If you've never been truly hungry from days of no food, you can't know what it's like. You can't concentrate on anything. It wasn't until a figure to my left got up from the table to get a drink and left a stack of gold marks behind that I snapped to awareness.

From this moment on, my memory is crystalline.

My eyes to the gold. My eyes to the stranger's back, walking calmly toward the barmaid. My hand to the gold. The gold in my pocket. I'm up from the table, and out the door. For just a moment, I look back. The stranger has turned to look my way. He wears a hood, but I can feel his eyes meet mine. I swear, I can scent a smile.

Out into the street, and behind some barrels I crouched down, waiting for my pursuer. One benefit of a lifetime running from guards, I know how to disappear. For nearly an hour, I waited there, suffering even more from hunger. You see, I was awake now and I had the means to buy myself a feast. This knowledge tortured me. When I finally got to my feet, I very nearly fainted. I had only enough energy to walk to the other edge of the village to a run-down tavern before collapsing at a table. I think I must have fallen unconscious for a moment before I heard the barmaid's voice.

“Can I get you something to eat, sera?”

I gorged myself on roasts and pies and huge frothing mugs of greef. As the fog of near fatal starvation began to lift, I looked up from my plate to see a gold-masked stranger looking at me, his vizard glowing by the blinding light of the moon through the window. He wore black leather armor and was a different physique and size from the man I had burgled, but I could tell he knew. I paid for my meal quickly and left.

I skirted the edge of the village, through a tiled central courtyard surrounded by the squalid peasant's cottages. There was not a light shining from any window or door. No one was on the streets. I could find no place to hide, so I took the road out of town, heading for the wilderness. Hunger had pushed me on in the days before, but now I felt what I imagined to be the whip of guilt. Or perhaps, even then, it was fear.

I fell twice, rushing down the dark path, unused to the slopes and pebbled texture. The sounds of animal life, which I had numbed to, were suddenly very loud in my ears. And there was something else out there in the night, something chasing me.

On the side of the road, there was a low wall, and I scrambled over it and hid. I knew enough about concealment to pick a spot where the bulwark sunk slightly so even if someone saw the outline of my figure, he would assume it to be part of the wall. It wasn't long before I heard the sound of running footsteps from more than one person pass me by and then stop. There was a moment of whispered conversation, and one of the people ran back on the path toward the village. Then, silence.

After a few more minutes, I peered out from behind the wall. A female figure in a dun gown, wimple, and veil stood in the road. On the other end of the road, blocking the way back to town, was a knight, coated in dark mail. I could see neither of their faces. For a moment, I froze, unsure whether either or both had seen me.

“Run,” said the woman in a dead voice.

The hill behind me was too steep, so I leapt over the wall and across the road in two bounds. Into the night forest I ran, the maddening jingle of the accursed gold in my pocket. I knew I was making so much noise my pursuers could not help but hear me, but now I cared more for putting distance between us than in stealth. Clouds of ash filtered through the moonlight, but I still knew it was too bright to hide. I ran and ran until I felt all my blood pumping in my head and heart, begging me to stop.

I was at the edge of the wood, on the other side of a shallow stream from a vast, crumbling house encircled by a rail fence. Behind me, running footfall in the broken, dusty earth. To the south, downstream, a distinct sodden splashing of someone moving nearer.

There was no choice. I half jumped and half fell into the mud and dragged myself up the bank on the other side. I rolled under the fence and ran through the open field toward the house. Jerking my head around, I saw seven shadowy figures by the fence posts. The cloaked man I had robbed. The man in the gold mask. The veiled woman. The dark knight. Three others too who had pursued me, but I had never seen. And I thought I was the stealthy one.

The moon was entirely hidden in a swarm of ash. Only the stars offered their meager illumination as I reached the open door of the ruin. I slammed and bolted the door behind me, but I knew there could be no protection for very long. As I looked about the ravaged interior of broken furniture, I searched for someone to hide. A corner, a niche where if I stayed very still, no one would see me.

A splintered table lying against the wall looked perfect for my purposes. I crawled under it, and jumped when something moved and I heard a frightened old man's voice.

“Who's there?”

“It's all right,” I whispered. “I'm not one of them.”

His puckered, gnarled hand reached out from the shadow and gripped my arm. Instantly, I felt sleep fall upon me, resist it as I might. The old man's horrible face, the face of the hungry dead, emerged as the moon came out and shone through the broken window. His talon still gripping me, I fell back, smelling his death surround me.

The table was thrown back. There stood the seven hunters and a dozen more. No, hunters they weren't. They were harriers who had chased me out of every hiding place, expertly pushing me to the lair of the real predator. He was weak with age, the old man was, not as good at the chase as once he was. A blunt, killing machine.

“Please,” I said. It was all I could muster.

Having enjoyed the sport I offered, he granted me mercy, of sorts. I was not bled dry. I was not cursed by being made one of them, the Berne. I was kept with others, most of us mad with fear, to be aged and tasted at the vampires' whim. We are called cattle.

I lost all hope months ago of ever leaving the dank cellar where they keep us. Even if this note finds its way to the outside world, I cannot give enough information about my whereabouts to be rescued, even if some champion were able to defeat the bloodsuckers. I only write this to keep my own sanity, and to warn others.

There is something worse than being hungry.

Being food.

garth ferengi posted:

i just seriously considered getting an ALMSIVI tramp stamp for like 20 seconds before i realised how hosed up it would be

Error 404 posted:

I've been told I can do a drat good Dunmer voice.

"We're watching you, scum."

bonzibuddy64 posted:

I know a lot of people complain that Morrowind is really dated and not really at all playable in this day and age, especially with stuff like Skyrim out, so I've been working on a large mod overhaul project that I'm calling Morrowind: Gold Edition. The goal is to make the game not only playable, but enjoyable, and simultaneously to keep all the story and lore of the original game intact. Here are a few screenshots and a video in case anyone's interested:

tuluk posted:

fargoth: i hated him so much I never came back to seyda neen on my 1st playthrough. Just wish I had known about the command humanoid spell, i'd have dragged him into that underwater dungeon near seyda neen to drown or left him hellcamped inside a daedric shrine.

bonzibuddy64 posted:

Right now im working on something that I think a lot of Skyrim fans especially want, Everyone loves their mods which put Morrowind into Oblivion, or Morrowind into Skyrim engine, but im going to do the reverse,Im putting Skyrim into Morrowind's game. Morrowind construction set wouldnt load skyrim.esp so I have to build it from the ground up. Talk to the dragonborn in suran he will take you to skyrim. here is a teaser screen shot

Mortimer posted:

Blight my neg rear end in a top hat with the baddest bug you have

Mortimer posted:

I hope you don't think morrowind was great in this regard, as that is literally 90% of the quests.

also vivec even says "reach heaven by violence", checkmate false incarnate

SunAndSpring posted:

At least Boots of the Apostle have good armor on them. Best light armor boots in the game, IIRC.

bonzibuddy64 posted: