In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 49)

In Ald-Ruhn, the wind doesn't blow, it--wait, it does that like all of the time. It's windy like a champ up in there.

When we last left our brave hero, he was finally getting what he wanted out of life: actual quantifiable success. Some say the best reward is knowing that you’ve done your job well, and so far, I’d have to agree. I mean, in theory, adequate financial compensation would be nice, but since I typically get paid barely above travel expenses to do all of this freelance murdering that’s not really on the table. My reward is that lovely warm feeling you get when you successfully complete a job (parameters for success include: the whiny NPC has stopped whining, the violent NPC is now dead, the jerkass NPC is now giving you money).

But yeah, in case you were wondering what the going rate on finding godforsaken ruins and battling necromancers singlehandedly is: two hundred and fifty drakes. The wages on getting released from prison are almost a third of that, and I’d probably make more money if I nicked all of the knickknacks in the waiting room and flogged them down the street. As a bonus, this option would not require taking two modes of fast travel and slogging my way across the countryside on foot, then hacking apart an army of skeletons at the behest of some buoyant Dunmer redneck (blueneck?), then slogging back and taking the bug-based commute from hell again. Actually, did I even make back all of my travel expenses on this job? Maybe, but when you factor in getting my sword repaired and the 31 incidental briberies that are part and parcel of every quest in this game, I probably just about broke even. Marvelous. I don’t suppose the tavern is hiring? I think I could probably handle that, as long as the customers didn’t shout and they didn’t make me clean rats out of the basement.

Whatever, let’s move on to the next job. Some Redoran dude went rogue—oh, I’m killing rogue Redoran this time, what a lovely change of pace—and now he’s heading up some highwaymen in the north. For only the sixtieth time since I started this game, I have to go into a cave and then kill some bandits inside the cave. Luckily, they’ve pinpointed the exact location of the bandits: they’re located in Sargon, which is precisely somewhere kind of north of Maar Gan, I don’t know, like, ask around or something. Translation: I want you to get out of my personal space, then stay out for as long as possible. If you being stranded out in the bitter ash-blown wastelands amidst an entire continent of violent fauna means I don’t have to smell and/or pay you for an extra week, I will do anything to make this happen.

I strider out to Maar Gan, then go up to the first person I see and politely ask them where Sargon is. He responds something to the tune of: “Oh, Sargon, you say? Well, don’t know why you’d want to go there, but that’s your business. Very your business. As in, you are the only one with a fiscal stake in the location of Sargon…so far. Nudge. Meaningful nudge.”

I pay them one (1) Bastard Tax. Their response is the same, which I’m now interpreting as meaning: “Oh, what a shame, this really is important information that you desperately need to do your job, but I just don’t have any incentive to give it to you. Oh, by the way, thank you for the hundred drakes; that was a nice out-of-the-blue gift from a total stranger that is obviously entirely unrelated to the only conversation topic you’ve ever broached in this town. Hey, I just got an idea! If you pay me another hundred drakes, I’ll give you information about Sargon!”

I swear, they must teach Wringing Absurd Sums Out of Rich, Desperate Outlander Scum in public schools out here.

I fork over another hundred. They take it, then look left and right down the street.

“Okay, that’s enough. Now, pay attention, because I’m only going to say this once. Okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Listen good. The location of Sargon…”

“Yes?”

“The place where the bandits are located…”

“…yes?”

“Is…”

“You don’t know, do you.”

“…known to two people in town, the vague locations of whom I will now give you!”

I make a mental note to charge two hundred dollars the next time somebody at college asks me where the UTC is, before giving them the vague locations of two people on campus who might know where it is. Then I realize that if I tried that in real life, I’d probably get the crap beaten out of me. Then I save the game, beat the crap out of the NPC, and load it again.*

They give me a couple names, and I’m out of the dialogue and halfway across town before I realize that I hadn’t even tried to remember what the names were. I had committed to memory only that one of them was in the tradehouse; apparently, I had unconsciously resigned myself to just running around the tradehouse like an idiot, bribing everyone until I could find out whether or not they knew where Sargon was.

Finally, I come across an orc lady who seems to know what’s the what. She doesn’t even require scads of bribery to impart basic instructions, which, in this town, makes her a sort of charity case. Of course, considering the content of her instructions, that was probably a calculated move on her part engineered to avoid breakdown-induced violence:

“Sargon? Hooo boy, that’s way far north of here. Seriously, like, we’re a third of the way down the mainland? Place isn’t even on the mainland. It’s like, somewhere southwest of…ever here of a place called Vas?”

“I was just there yesterday.”

“Yeah, like, somewhere southwest of that. So, you’re probably going to have to buy some fast travel to get there.”

I checked my map, and if her directions were even a little bit correct, she was right. Saying that Sargon was north of Maar Gan is kind of like saying Boston is north of Tijuana—absolutely correct in a strictly geological sense, but completely useless if it’s intended for navigational purposes. Hell, if I’d known where Sargon was beforehand, I never would have even bothered coming here. I would have just fast traveled straight to Khuul, then Dagon Fel—as it was, I was going to have to take that route anyway. I also wouldn’t have had to spread bribes around just trying to get directions to the person who can give me directions. So, all told, that’s about two hundred and fifty drakes I’m never going to see again—and it’s all thanks to the rotten directions the questgiver gave me. Say, where have I seen that number before? That looks so familiar. It’s going to bother me all day, I just know it.

*Then again, this is from my perspective—I knew they’d give me the information I needed once I started spreading money around, so I naturally saw it as coercion. You could also argue the conversation went like this:

“SARGON.”

“Beg pardon, stranger?”

“What do you know about Sargon? Answer me quickly, I’m a busy man!”

“Uh…it’s dangerous? I don’t know. Why did you…”

“Here’s a hundred dollars!”

“What? Oh my god, thank you! I don’t know how…”

“SARGON!”

“I’m sorry, did you want to know something specific? I want to help you, it’s just that I don’t…”

“Here! Have another hundred dollars!”

“…this is more money that I see in a year! I don’t know if I can accept this, I don’t think that…”

“SARGON!”

“Please, I don’t know what you want! I mean, there’s somebody at the tradehouse who might know where that is, I guess, but…”

“Right! I’m out of here!”

“Oh, well, okay then. Thanks again for the money, sir!”

“Sure thing, asshole.”

Either way you look at it, I’ve got a weird job.