In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 39)

Finals over. Commence producing regular content for the site.

When we last left our fearless hero, he had managed to blow out all of his resources and get all of his teammates killed within a minute of setting foot in the Dark Brotherhood’s sanctuary. Perhaps I’m just dwelling on the negative, but I’m beginning to think ordering those World’s Best Boss mugs might have been premature. I guess maybe I could ship them to Uncle Crassius with my compliments, but I’d have to learn how to make a letterbomb first.

Of course, that was the least of my concerns. Those would be the still-twitching  corpses of Ratsy and That Guy, lying sprawled in pools of green-tinged blood. Dammit, I hadn’t planned for them to die like this. These were my men, my cohorts, my friends–they really were the closest things in the world that I had to family.

I hadn’t planned for them to get killed until much later in the dungeon. Now who would I throw to the wolves to buy time for a few cheap shots against the boss?

Of course, the sensible thing to do now would be to retreat. The path to the door is clear. It’s the only thing that’s clear within a five-mile radius. In every other direction, there lurked patrols of Dark Brotherhood that could surgically remove my spine and use it as a coatrack before I’d have time to exchange witty banter, or, more probably, scream like an infant. They had already destroyed every fragile advantage I might have possessed. Hell, for me to have even survived this first altercation, I had to blow through all of my personnel and most of my meager resources. What chance would I have, alone, magics spent? A slim one.

Then again…

On the bodies of the fallen, there was fresh armor. There were magic blades as good as my own. If I could clean out the apprentice’s area up ahead, I could sleep there and restore my health and abilities. Then, if I could only separate the assassins ahead, dispatching them one by one…

A slim chance, yes. But a chance. At the end of the day, I owed it to Ratsy and Whatsisface to stay the course. If I was to respect their memory, my cause, or myself, I would have to proceed.

I turned around and ran for it.

Five minutes later, I dragged myself out of the sewers, reeking of blood, charred flesh, shame, and conspicuously absent sewer-sundries. The sun rose above to a bleak day. I felt the heat on my face, and knew—through the pain and the heartache—that I was alive.

Karma, it seemed, was alive and well. My hubris, my weakness, my cowardice: these things had doomed my best friends to a grim and harrowing demise far beneath the surface of the streets. I’d like to think it was some consolation that they were dying in a significant historical landmark, but part of me knows this not to be true. They died angry, cursing my name for bringing them to their fate, and their curse rang in my ears even now. I may have survived, but I was not unscarred—my fate as a survivor was perhaps the cruelest of them all. My resources were spent. My heart was broken. My quest had failed. I had fled down the tunnel, only to find that there was no light at its end.

Except for the thousands and thousands of drakes I made off of the expedition.

Yeah, turns out, Dark Brotherhood gear is really valuable. While their armor looks like a particularly obscure cosplay cobbled together in Home Economics, it sells as if it were weaved from John Romero’s back hair. Their blades are usually made of rare material AND are magical—the double threat, worth a considerable bit of bank. Also, there was the stuff that I respectfully looted from my merc’s body, which was worth a few coins to the right people.

So, at the end of the day, I survived and multiplied my income by about a dozen-fold. But don’t think I didn’t learn my lesson. I mean, sure, I’ve got a little bit more money, but I lost my friends, and those can never be replaced.

I mean, unless I buy another rat…actually, I wonder if I could find another mercenary. I could go down again, probably take out a few more assassins, make another round of profits. The margins would remain…

Right, sorry, my lesson. That’s something I learned, all right. That is a thing that I have learned. I learned that you don’t…embark on…quests where you’ve got…and you be careful with…

Yeah, okay, I guess I didn’t really learn anything, did I? Except that as a general rule, you shouldn’t rely too heavily on the tactical acumen of a man with the temperance of a wolverine and a rat with the brain of a rat. Unless you stand to profit off of their demises, in which case, you’re a bad person.

And rich.

Which, you know, I can work with that.