In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 41)

Edit: April Fools, of course. This fills the Cahmel slot–we’ll have a new Scraps and Vatsy before the week is out.

When we last left our mighty hero, he was getting his keister handed to him by a pansy beggar; a fellow who appeared, when I saw him last, to be made out of rebar and papier-mâché. He seems to have gotten a very quick education in the Cloud Strife school of improbable asskicking, because he’s currently demonstrating what the downside of getting clocked with an ebony blade is.

It friggin’ hurts, in case you were wondering.

Conventional tactics clearly aren’t going to work, here. I’ve already gone through most of my arsenal:

1.)    Tactic One, “The Compulsive Octopus.” Flail wildly with the biggest sword on hand. Take potions when you get low on health. Run as soon as things go south. Result: Clobbered in a single hit.
2.)    Tactic Two, “The Discrete Badger.” Run away before things have a chance to go south. Result: Clobbered before I could run away.
3.)    Tactic Three, “The Cheeky Monkey.” Use the environment to kill them. Examples include driving them off of cliffs, getting them caught on underwater rocks, and getting them stuck on geometry before slinging spells and arrows at them. Result: No such luck. He’s like a hippopotamus on an open plain: there is nothing between me and a very brutal, very humiliating death.
4.)    Tactic Four, “The Sly Dog.” Make sure nobody is looking, then cheat passionately. Result: Ostensibly, the internet is watching.

Scientifically, I am boned.

I’m really lost, at this point. There’s not a whole lot I can do. I can only run away for so long before he catches up and drives his pigsticker up my tailpipe, and even if I could escape the area, it’s not really in my best interests to have the temple be off-limits forever. This is important to questlines that I may or may not be completing at some point in the future.

Well, I haven’t been inside the temple yet. Maybe they sell magic gear in there that I can use against him? It’s better than my other plan, which was to wish for a magical fairy to give me a wand that makes elven bones turn into feta cheese.

This temple’s a little different from the ones I’ve encountered so far. It’s darker, and the decoration’s a little more on the tendril-swirly-green side than the column-dusty-brown side. It’s a little dizzying, actually. Look at this screenshot for a few minutes and tell me it doesn’t give you a headache:

(Ed: Screenshot’s not uploading, for some reason. WordPress keeps throwing me error messages. I’ll let you know when it’s fixed.)

The priests are pretty creepy, too. See that guy in the back? Yeah, nice look, pal. Is that a squid dangling down the front of your pants, or are you just happy to see me? Or, would happy be the right word? Probably not. Also get some moisturizer, dude.

I talk to a few of them—seems they don’t sell much here. They keep calling me “Outlander” and making fun of me, which I’ve somewhat gotten used to. Apparently, they don’t take too kindly to outsiders in this kind of temple.

(Ed: This was going to be a screenshot of a their god’s statue. I didn’t catch the name, but it was probably something guttural and confusing. This one also failed to upload–to be honest, this one was kind of corrupted when I took it. I wonder if the problem’s on FRAPS’ end.)

Enough of that nonsense. Nothing for sale? You know, it’s obstinate non-participatory people like you who ruin the adventurer economy. All of this magical mojo and you’re just sitting on it? That’s downright criminal, that is. It’s up to me to do the ethical thing by recirculating it into the free market, i.e., stealing it.

I break into an unguarded side closet. They seem to be fresh out of potions, but that’s okay, because they apparently have dead bodies in stock.

(Ed: Dead body here. He’s an imperial male, name of Jack. That’s kind of refreshing, actually. Most of them have names like Flabbicus Bowel.)

Sorry, mate, but I can’t actually report this to any authorities or anything. I can only honor you in my own way, which is to frisk you for portable, valuable items.

Locket? Looks like a quest item, probably useless. Books? Eh, maybe I can flog them. Journal? Probably full of boring entries that lead to a quest I don’t care about—pass. Some weapons I’m not proficient with, including a club of some kind. Basically, this guy’s inventory is a wash.

Out of boredom, I do flip through his journal. Looks like he was trying to break some guy out of jail or something, and then he got tortured by an electricity-using destruction mage, and then he went up against cultists and died. I guess I’m supposed to care about what’s happening to him, but I really don’t. He sounds like more of a moron than anything—not the kind of guy whose shoes I’d eagerly fill. The story of our times, basically.

It’s a tragic tale, I guess, but it’s also full of really bad puns. It’s kind of in bad taste, really. I put it aside.

I step back out into the main chamber, and all of the priests and other commoners in the place immediately turn towards me. One of them shouts, “Die, heretic!” and they all proceed to start charging me with knives.

What the hell?

Confused, I start fighting back. Individually they’re not so tough, but there are a lot of them, and I have to bottleneck in the closet. These guys are such fanatics that they’ll scramble over the bodies of their buddies just for a chance at attacking me—it’s kind of stupid, really. The fight’s over in a matter of minutes, and all of their bodies have formed a sort of meat drift that’s impressive to behold. You know, the AI isn’t usually quite this bad.

Killing over, commence looting. Hey, holy friggin’ crap—those are some nice weapons. Good sell value, twice the damage of my daedric sword, and enchanted to boot. Good thing they couldn’t use those things, or else I’d be lit up like a yuletide log right about now. Time to…

Huh.

Why can’t I pick them up?

I guess they’re bound, or something? That makes sense, I guess, but it’s still frustrating. Nothing tantalizes like quality weapons. I go into the menu to make sure my settings are right, and when I get back out, the bodies are gone.

Whatever—I’m done with this temple. It’s ugly, it’s full of enemies and bodies, and it has no good loot.

Plus, I swear to god, I’m getting dumber every second I stand inside it.