The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmels’ New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 4)

This is a bit of a short one–I’m getting V&B ready to go out the door, and I’ve only got so much time left before the net cuts off, so I kinda needed to wrap this one up. I might go ahead and do another short one this week to balance things out. On the plus side, I got out of the damn dungeon.

When we last left our patriotic hero, I was standing there with my hands in my pockets and a stupid look on my face* while an assassin crawled out of a tunnel and stabbed the Emperor to death. One would think that I could have intervened, since I was facing in the direction of the assassin and watched him climb out of the wall, take a few steps forward, and then stab Moaning Uriel right in back of the head. In fact, he moved slowly enough that I could have done anything running the gamut from a.) asking the Emperor, in a calm and level tone, to maybe scoot over a bit, to b.) jogging up and putting myself between the emperor and his target, to c.) drawing a picture of the approaching assassin, walking out of the prison, finding a mailman, giving the drawing to the mailman, and asking him to deliver it to the Emperor with the message: this is what is currently behind you, maybe you should do something about that. Then again, perhaps there was nothing I could have done to protect his Highness. This was an elite killer of the Mystic Dawn cult/fraternity/cosplayer’s union we’re dealing with, a man hand-picked to take on the Emperor’s own bodyguards, on their own turf, to perform an assassination crucial to his dread order’s long-awaited scheme to conquer the world. It’d be ludicrous to assume that I, a feeble prisoner armed only with a crappy short sword and all the rat-toilet rust-trap armor I could find lying around the ditches of a neglected tunnel, could ever hope to take him on in hand to hand combat whoops I hit him and now he’s dead. Okay, so apparently, this usage of “elite assassin” is synonymous with “glass-boned LARP-fighting dingus in a spiky suit.” Must be a cultural thing, like filling your too-goddamned-long escape tunnels with assassin-friendly rat holes and goblin reservations. And doors that can be easily barred from the outside.

You know, if I actually gave a recently-severed rat’s keister about the Empire, I’d probably have been miffed that Bethesda static-clung my feet to the floor back there. As it was, I was chomping at the bit to loot Septim’s pimp-robe, skedaddle, and go hit some bars. Say what you want about the guy, but his style was pretty solid. Hell, I might even try some of his pickup lines. “You! Let me see your face…you’re the one from my vision! It is as the gods foretold…say, baby, what’s your birthsign?”

Recently-unemployed bodyguard Walrus wasn’t too happy to see that his charge got murdered. On the other hand, he seemed to take the death of the Emperor, his own failure to commit his sworn duty, and the seemingly inevitable demise of the entire nation, pretty darned well. “Dang,” he seemed to say, “I can’t turn my back on this guy for five minutes! Oh, that Emperor, always getting into one scrape or another. Seriously, though, did you already call dibs on that robe? I know, right?”

Also, I went ahead and relayed the message the Emperor gave me, which was to take his amulet to a monk named Jauffre. To my mild surprise, Walrus was totally okay with this plan. “What’s that, prisoner? You say that while you were alone with the Emperor for five seconds, he said that you should totally have all your charges cleared and be turned loose, unsupervised, from your squalid prison cell? And that he asked—he insisted—that you take his extremely expensive crown jewels with you for safekeeping, instead of giving it me, his highly-trained, highly-trustworthy, schedule-open agent? Whatevs. The exit’s that way, here’s a key, have a nice life. I’m going to go commit ritual suicide or whatever it is we do.”

After a final character-creating screen, in which I declined the preset classes in favor of a custom one I dubbed Vagrant, I managed to stumble through the rest of the dungeon without further interruption. Within mere minutes, I stood at the edge of the sewer grate, looking out over the beautiful landscape and thinking: this is coming thrillingly close to beating bowl-punting as a form of afternoon diversion.

I don't see a single filthy, neglected pile of bones, but I think I like it anyway.

Of course, things weren’t going to be all about leisure, were they? I had a quest now: I was to carry the Bloodline Amulet of the late Uriel Septim to Jauffre, a monk at Wenyon Priory, Chorrol, located northwest of my location. What’s more, I had a plan, which was to go in the exact opposite direction and pretend the past hour or so never happened.

Beyond that, my schedule was flexible. I had a load of rusted, ill-used adventuring equipment to sell, a slightly doughy body to rework into a taut killing machine, and a host of respectable employment options to sneer at. After all, I could only derive so much booze money from the stuff I found in a rotted-out goblin cave; sooner or later, I had to get some fresh money rolling in. I just had to figure out how. Again, I had my bloodline’s rich tradition of not taking honest jobs to uphold, and I suspect that I’d surpassed the Fighter’s Guild’s maximum IQ threshold around shameful beating #52, so that left me with…professional spitting leagues. And burlesque dancing.

Not that I didn't have the glamorous mystique for it.

Whatever, I’ll ask around, something’s bound to show up. If Vvardenfel taught me anything, it’s that there’s always a market for swarthy, disreputable outlanders willing to perform aggressively petty personal errands for modest lumps of cash. And, hey, as long as their quest reward clears, I’m down for just about any task, no matter how savory it isn’t. I’m like a character out of an Ayn Rand novel, except for the part about being extremely competent, or principled, or marginally competent.

I’m sure something’ll turn up. I’ve got a real good feeling.

*Note that, given Bethesda’s face modeling and animation, this condition is omnipresent.