In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 18)

When we last left our hero, he was whining about how he wasn’t respected anymore. I mean, there used to be a day where people really depended on me for their fraud and murder needs. There used to be a day where they gave me missions that were beyond the abilities of an intern, if not, say, a mildy stunned chinchilla. But those days were past me now…as my pay grade has gone up, the quality of my quests has tanked dramatically.  If these last few missions are any indication, before long I’ll be getting tasked with scrubbing the bathrooms with my knuckles. The bathrooms in my jewel-encrusted manor.

I think I must have moaned loudly enough for my voice to carry out of my house, across the country, and back in time a little over half a decade, because my next quest was a little more impressive. It involved mansions. It involved murder. It involved…a mystery.

See, a nobleman named Ralen Hlaano was recently found brutally murdered in his own mansion. Hlaalu sprang into action by locking the mansion and not touching it for a week or so, waiting breathlessly for a swarthy foreigner to come along, join up, get promoted to this rank, and prove themselves worthy of investigating it. I say a week because he’d been dead since I arrived in Balmora, which was a week ago—I suppose it’s possible he’d been dead long before that.

Anyway, that just proved that they weren’t ready to hand this case off to just anyone. No, they needed a real genius, someone who’d proven they were capable of handling a delicate murder case by…uh…stealing some things. And murdering some things.

Anyway. Step one was to go to the manor and investigate the premises, see if I could find any clues. I do so. Yep, thar she blows—the no-doubt ripe corpse of Ralen Hlaano, sprawled out there like a thanksgiving turkey. Hm—high-quality clothing on his person…I’ll have to take that in as evidence, of course. I mean, it’s the clothes he was wearing when he died–that’s gotta be a vital clue. Like, how it’s…folded…and stuff. I’ll have to consult an expert at the pawnshop as soon as I get the opportunity.

Next, I discovered the blade he’d used to defend himself. Silver, hm? A silver blade that just happened to be so effective, it was better than my current backup weapon? That’s pretty damn suspicious if you ask me.

And what do we have here? A fine bottle of vintage liquor. 500 hundred years old, you say? A bit suspicious, isn’t it, that he should just happen to have this sort of thing lying about on a shelf not 40 feet from where he died? I’ll have to confiscate that as well.

Hm…a plate that goes well with my current silverware. One might even say…suspiciously well. Confiscated.

I was quite pleased with the direction this investigation was taking when I stumbled upon the first big break of the case: a firsthand witness to the murder!

Now I see why Hlaalu needed help with this case. Few people would think to ask the servant of the murdered man, who happened to be in the mansion at the time he was murdered, if they’d seen anything suspicious. It took my fine deductive mind to ask her all the right questions, like, “Did you see who did it?” and “What did he look like?” And—even if they had thought to grill her so thoroughly—surely they would never have been up to the next step, which was to take the murder’s very conspicuous description and go around town asking people if they’d seen anyone who looked like that. I had to ask a staggering two people before someone was able to put a name and location to my extremely detailed description, which included the race, hair, and favored weapon of a man who lived in a city of like 100 people.

I learned that the mohawked, rare-axe wielding murderer was currently boozing it up in the Council Club, a bar near the Silt Strider. I walked over there, sword ready. You see, my order were not only to find the murderer…but to also execute swift justice. And that was the only kind of justice I was good at. Probably because I’m not actually a member of the legal profession, in any way.

I thought I’d give him the option of going quietly, so I confronted him with my accusation. I admit, his reply caught me a little bit off guard.

“I don’t like you enough to talk to you about that.” Oh-ho, not willing to confess, eh? Well, we’ll see about that. You’ll be singing a different tune once I’ve given you large sums of money!

I bribe him about a thousand drakes, and finally, he’s willing to talk to me about the fact that I just accused him of murder. He immediately insists that despite the eyewitness, it wasn’t him, it was some Argonian guy.

Okay, imagine you’re a police officer working on a murder investigation. A cleaning lady says she saw the murder take place, perpetrated by a fat man with a mullet and a Tasmanian Devil t-shirt. You find the guy at a Dennys, level your accusation, and are then forced to bribe him $500 until he’s willing to proclaim he’s innocent. He then claims that it wasn’t him, it was some small Indian guy in a wheelchair. How is this an effective legal strategy?

Well, it kind of worked. I was so stunned by his stupefyingly asinine tactics that I left to go check this Argonian guy out.

I liked him better—he was willing to deny having brutally hacked a man to pieces free of charge. Seriously, though, this guy is pretty obviously not the killer.

Still not quite sure what to do, I return to the actual murderer to present him with a Writ of Yourfullofitiari, but I have no new dialogue options to exercise with him. So…yeah. That’s all he’s got. I didn’t do it. That guy did it. Go kill him instead. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think the ol’ despite all the evidence, it was some foreigner that nobody likes defense will fly anywhere but the Southern USA.

So, I just kill him, then? But he hasn’t attacked me first…so isn’t that a crime? I save and attack him experimentally. Yep, crime reported. And the others in the room attack me, too, possibly intimidated into compliance by his wicked sick ‘hawk. Seriously, you’d think being the untrained investigator and questionably motivated hitman of a shady crime network would get your rulings more respected around these parts.

Actually, wait, can that sarcasm for a second. Come to think of it, this is a Hlaalu town. The guards outside who the crimes would be reported to are, in fact, Hlaalu guards. Why is executing someone under orders from Hlaalu officials against the law?

Screw it, I’m just killing him. Dibs on the axe, sucker.

When I get back, the opening line of dialogue from my questgiver is…different. I didn’t get a screenshot, so let me give you the gist of it: “Hey, what’s up, murdering guy who murders people all the time? How did you enjoy that murder that you did?” This is obviously a generalized response, nonspecific to this particular quest…I guess I was supposed to taunt him into fighting me using speechcraft? Or something? Screw it twice. I get credit for finishing the quest anyway.

I should definitely have my own show on Court TV.