In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 42)

When we last left our bold hero, he was trying to come up with a strategy to use against a wood elf beggar with the build of a flamingo and a beard like a chicken. He was failing, and failing extravagantly. My entire career to this point seems built out of “not my finest moments,” but this might actually be my crowning jewel of inglory.

Games such as Heavy Rain use an experimental design philosophy: an essentially unchanging storyline which the player exercises control over through quicktime events. This is supposed to be a big deal, but I don’t get why; I was having the exact same experience here. The storyline is Gaenor Hits Me In the Face With a Sharp Heavy Thing, and the quicktime event is hitting F9 to load so I can watch myself die again.

While I may have played the fool last entry, I wasn’t kidding about being more or less entirely screwed. Engaging him directly is like running facefirst into a cordless drill. Trying to fight him while backepdaling is ultimately pointless, since I need to get close to ever hit him and he only needs a tiny window of opportunity to dice my chitlins into a fine hash. I could run away for good, I guess, but that would go against everything I stand for. I have a long and celebrated history of not running away from well-equipped assassins that have sought me out directly, but are centered in a place that I could theoretically just ignore.

Ooh! I’ve got an idea! I could…

Wait, no, I seem to be fresh out of morons and vermin. Oh, well, back to the drawing board.

I do end up retreating to the temple to see if they can hook me up with anything, but they seem to be fresh out of anti-elf viruses, .44 pistols, and a police whistle that’ll alert some of the ten thousand ordinators standing around doing nothing that I’m getting slaughtered, here, and isn’t it their job to stop psycho wood elf bastards from murdering random guys or something. They have some magical supplies, and they are to the kind of primo stuff I’d need what a crayon drawing of a house is to Nighthawks. I mean, Cheap Restore Fatigue? I’m fairly certain this is just cold coffee with weeds thrown in. Bargain Frost Resistance? Brandy and kerosene. Cheap Cure Poison? Castor oil. What a waste of time. I think I’ve got better stuff than this lying around in my backpack, rolling loose among the booze and animal parts.

Actually, come to think of it, let’s have a look at the scrolls I have lying around. We’ve got:

Levitation. Can’t use that in Mournhold, for some reason. I’m sure the lore explains it. I’m also sure, like I’ve never been sure of anything else, that I don’t give even the tiniest damn. Also, no levitation means Mournhold’s walls don’t have to actually have anything outside them, like dungeons or places to explore or other towns or strange fauna. I am told this is convenient from a game design perspective.

Ondusi’s Open Hinge. You know, I can actually pick a lock up to this level? I’m really not sure what I’m doing hanging on to these utility scrolls, other than liking the idea of using arcane vellum scrolls to break into somebody’s footlocker and swipe their lunch.

Fire Resistance? Seriously? I have never fought anything that used fire magic in the past, and hardly expect to in the immediate future. And yet, I’m gearing up for this eventuality to the extent that I haven’t flogged this thing yet? Unbelievable.

Magic Resistance. Hm. What the hell, I’ll cast it. I don’t know, maybe his sword is magic or something.

Then I take a look at gear. I discover, to my surprise, that almost all of the utility magic items I have are abject garbage with a side of peas. I’ve got a ring of Dominate Humanoid that has as much effect as a kind word and a firm handshake, a “Thief Ring” that subtly influences my sneakiness for a very brief period of time, and, the piece de resistance, a pair of super awesome magic flash boots that turn me blind as a stump. Hey, maybe I can put them on and sort of run around him, judging his location by sound? Instead of being like a light fighter plane trying to take down a flying fortress, I’d be like a bat trying to take down a flying fortress. At this point, I’m willing to try anything.

I put them on, and am greeted with a black screen.

Somebody who watched the show insert a Sopranos joke here.

I’m just about to go unequip them when I notice a splodge in the corner of my eye.

It’s a faint patch of light, like a spot you get in your vision from staring at a light for too long, but it’s clearly there. When I glance around, it moves around, so it’s not just some flaw of my monitor caused by using it to hammer nails. No, this is partial visibility I’m experiencing. Are these boots wearing off? Are my eyes adjusting to the…blindness? Are these bad boys just misleadingly advertised? What’s the deal, here?

And then it hits me like a sack of rocks: the magic resistance scroll. A faint touch of magic resistance enabled me to see, albeit with the clarity of beat poetry written during an ether binge. Theoretically, if I used a magic item to give me a stronger resistance—for example, a scroll that I did not get free with my breakfast cereal—then I’ll be able to move at an absurd rate while seeing exactly what I’m doing.

This is the holy grail of combat, right here. This could be the edge I need to defeat Captain Cheapass out there. Or it might not be, in which case, cowardice is always an option. Whatever, let’s get out there and get some protection.

I kick down the door, sprint past Mr. Attitude Problem, and head for the magic shop. This guy actually has some quality goods—a little too quality, all in all. His inventory is good to the point where the only currency he accepts is vital organs because any other denomination would just be too tiresome to deal in. I had to trade him a lung and a kidney to get the Magic Resistance, although he did give me an extra pancreas in change.

Okay, enough hemming and hawing, let’s give this a shot. Bottoms up!

I drink the potion, then don the boots. Huh—this isn’t so bad.

On the plus side, while this is terrible art design for Morrowind, it's apparently exactly right for Diablo III.

It’s dingy as hell, but a quick and totally cheating tweak of the gamma slider will fix that. There—now I have a massive mechanical advantage, at the very minor cost of the gameworld being washed out and soulless-looking. Performance trumps aesthetics—ask any WoW player who’s been wearing a purple sweater with lime green jockey shorts for the past eight months. I’d gladly trade my last shred of dignity for the ability to defeat this boss, if he hadn’t managed to cull the final traces of that anyway.

The speed is delicious, by the way. So much of this game is spent hoofing it across town that it’s a blast to just sort of sprint through the townships. It’s what I imagine getting a skateboard feels like, except without the righteous rebel mentality or the danger of driving your chin up behind your eye sockets. The world, once so cumbersome to navigate, becomes your own personal racetrack.

Enough screwing around, though. Time to put these boots to good use and go curbstomp Uncle Crassius.

Uh, I mean, fight Gaenor.