The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel’s New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 10)
When we last left our hero, he’d been roused from his beauty sleep by a visit from the quest hook fairy. That’s right: my daring heist theft operation had not gone unnoticed by the Thieves’ Guild, who immediately composed and mailed a signed invitation into their fraternity.
Actually, snaps and dang, this invitation was written by the Grey Fox himself. For outsiders: the Grey Fox is the enigmatic individual who runs the Thieves’ Guild. Wanted posters of him are hung up all over the Imperial City, which is a bit stupid, because he wears a Batman-esque cowl that leaves only his mouth and beard visible. It does shed some light on the whole hire-people-who-get-caught thing, though; apparently, the modus operandi of the most skilled and cunning criminal on the continent is to
A.) Have a motif that makes him instantly recognizable, and
B.) Be witnessed committing multiple crimes while associated with this persona
What I’m saying is, if he ever had any subtlety, it was probably confiscated from him on his eighth trip to the big house. Maybe he’s just looking for applicants as brazen and stupid as he is, so that he might teach them his secret: if you’re going to perpetrate inept crime, for god’s sake, wear a mask.
Actually, you know, I’m not exactly sure how he found out about me in the first place. Considering the big news in the area is, “Emperor of Empire is Assassinated,” I don’t think, “Filthy foreigner caresses table setting,” is gonna make waves. Maybe GF makes a point of reading through the police blotter, if only to chuckle at all of the entries like “Grey Fox passes bad check while in costume, signs real name,” “Grey Fox kicks a guard in groin and runs,” and “Grey Fox pees on public statue.”
Oh, yeah, and to recap, the note’s delivered by a woman whose features are…well, impressive. Impressive meaning that, in a game where the facial modelers’ references appear to be Gahan Wilson drawings, she manages to be strikingly ugly. I took a screenshot of her face, but when I tried to access it my computer began to belch acrid smoke and the monitor started to curdle like bad milk. If ugliness were illegal, she’d have been recruited into the Thieves’ Guild before she was old enough to read.
Anyway, if you recall, the lady delivers the note by breaking into my room, waking me up, and handing it to me with the assertion it was “from a friend,” before leaving without another word. Having little better to do, I start to follow her.
At first, she seems to be ambivalent. I keep my distance, walking just far enough behind her that she’d be able to hear me, but not close enough that she’d catch me in her peripheral vision. Occasionally, I’ll wander a little too close, at which point she’ll stop, shoot me an over-the-shoulder stare, and declare, “Aren’t you an ugly one.”
Hey, careful, lady—words can hurt like a sword. A sword to the back of the head. On a lonely country road. Out in the wilderness, where no-one would ever hear you or find you.
We’re about fifteen minutes into the journey when all the sudden, she throws up a hand and vanishes. Well, no, okay, when I say “vanish,” I mean, “she becomes a brutally obvious shimmer in the air.” For a moment, I think she’s given me the slip, but then I witness her run right off the road into the shrubs. Did she forget an appointment or something? An appointment she has to be invisible for?
My question is answered when a bandit swaggers onto the road. He expresses his heartfelt belief that I, as an individual and member of society, owe him money. I articulate a strenuous and respectful disagreement. We debate the finer points of the topic, and then I stab him in the gut until he runs out of blood to bleed with.
A moment later, Mrs. Hatchetface saunters back onto the road, still camouflaged. Then she de-cloaks and begins walking again as if nothing happened…for all of five feet, whereupon she stumbles back off the road to avoid getting savaged by a wolf.
This proves to be a pattern. There will be a few minutes of uninterrupted, peaceful traveling, punctuated by me getting brutalized by some wild animal or someone who’s rejecting society even more hardcore than I am. Actually, wait, if I’m going to join the Thief’s Guild, where does that put me as far as bandits goes? Is there like a secret handshake? Because if there is and it turns out to be charging at someone while wielding an axe, I’m going to feel pretty silly.
Finally, after a couple days of dragging the NPC down the road encounter by encounter, we reach the Imperial City.
The city that sleeps like a drugged housecat.
She loiters around for a bit, then heads home.
Hah! Joke’s on you, you malformed crone! I bet you thought I wouldn’t follow you out of the city, huh? I bet you thought I’d give up after you got attacked by that bandit, or those wolves, or that other bandit, or that bear, or that mountain lion, or that bandit, or that marauder, or that wolf, or that bandit, or that…uh, that…
Come to think of it, that was a pretty dangerous trip. Really, super dangerous. I mean, it’s nothing for a studly piston of greased machismo like myself, but for a rickety old baggage like you, it seems kinda chancy. What do you do for protection when you don’t have someone like me following—
Wait a minute. Wait just one god damn minute. I was following a slow-moving NPC on a point to point journey, protecting them against attackers…
I think I might have just been tricked into escorting an NPC.
Successfully.
For free.
I consider crying, but settle for wandering away, and then crying.
It’s then that I bump into this charming lady. She’s the first mate of her ship, the Marie Elena, a beautiful vessel docked four feet away.
This is just about the prettiest woman in the Imperial City, by the way. Or, no, wait. I forget; this one's either that or the second handsomest man.
She makes a point of informing me that if I touch it, she’s going to have her men try to kill me. If you have to ask what happens next, maybe you should consult this chart:
Turns out, the only thing I like more than murdering pirates is owning a boat.
You know…Cahmel has some serious issues. He escorts an old horribly ugly “thief” who snuck into his room in the middle of the…whenever he was sleeping (so probably around 4 in the afternoon or something) all the way back to the city for free at great (relative to reward) peril to himself and then he runs into one of the prettiest people in the land (so like…still uglier than your average week old bear corpse) and decides she must die.
Then again…free boat.
Hrm…I wonder what happens if Cahmel decides to join the Brotherhood now? What happens when you kill targets randomly before the quest?
That quest has no bonus reward, so he can kill the pirate captain the way he pleases, even slaying everyone on board. Of course, it’s more satisfying to sneak aboard in a crate or jump to the rear door, kill only your mark, and swim away. But if Cahmel starts to use this ship as his base of operations, this will be funnier, because the captain should only appear after starting the quest… I hope he’ll be more careful with other places though, the bonus challenges are fun.
Also, without giving too much away, there’s a reason why the Gray Fox could even sign a bad check with his real name without getting caught.
1) Venn diagrams are always comic gold. Always.
2) Will Cahmel actually go on board and bust some heads, or let the city guards come in to do all the dirty work? I know how I handled it.
You on a boat.
Gee, I just realized, killing those pirates and dumping all of your crap in their ship is a far more convenient and cost-effective way of getting a place to to live than actually buying a house. Especially in the imperial city, where it’s a glorified woodshed.
Also, pirates have nice cutlasses.
Considering how Cahmel took on the Dark Brotherhood, I guess he’ll be 1) tresspassing on the boat, so the guards will come and kill the pirates and 2) somehow manage to get the guards killed.
Never forget the rat.
IN OTHER ACTUALLY IMPORTANT NEWS
RUTSKARN
I NEED TO TALK TO YOU
WE NEED TO TEST SOME THINGS
To the muffin cave!
Wonder what you have to ask to make her say that, unless she’s just a stupid lady actively trying to make people suspicious by threatening passerby to not snoop around the otherwise normal ship. Maybe it’s all part of a convoluted plan.
I’ve played the everloving crap out of this game.
I’ve done it all, exploited it all, seen it all. 100% on everything, collected every item(within reason), explored every dungeon, cave, rat pit, armpit, done every completable quest, including the ones that aren’t marked.
Yet I have never, ever followed an NPC for more than a few seconds, outside of quests, and only because I wanted to mug, shoot, steal from, and/or kill them.
You, sir, have followed [an ugly] one, deliberately, through their robotic routes, and didn’t even kill or mug them.
Rutsy, you have hit a new low.
It’s like a Na’vi fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I’ve seen more alluring corprus victims.
Grey Cap, maybe it’s different from Morrowind law, but there, whatever you do, if they hit you first, you have the right to kill them. So you could trespass, get attacked for trespass, pay the fine when the guards show up, and watch as the guards slaughter whoever attacked you. Although I’m pretty out of my element here, since Morrowind guards won’t actually attack anyone but you and any wild animals you lead into their aggro radius. There’s also no trespass rule, just a no lockpicking rule.
Hey, what happens if the guards have to come onto the boat to get you for trespass, thus trespassing themselves? Do they all start brawling with each other or something?
“Hey, what happens if the guards have to come onto the boat to get you for trespass, thus trespassing themselves? Do they all start brawling with each other or something?” – Nidokoenig
That reminds me of a preview I once read conerning a game and it’s “ground breaking AI” (I think it may have been oblivion). The preview talked about the AI having a daily routine that included eating, sleeping ect. One day a guard ran out of food and went hunting. The only hunting ground was a royal forest that was illegal for anyone to hunt in. Another nearby guard saw the first guard hunting and attacked him. A third guard saw this and attacked the second. This carried on till civil war broke out with half the guards attacking the other half. This carried on with new guards spawning, while the AI theives robbed the town blind leaving the player with a town full of completely empty houses.
What Sekundaari said. It is perfectly logical for the character to be puzzled at the Grey Fox’s bravado and general disregard security measures but it is also perfectly logical for the Fox to act in this manner as revealed later on in the questline. The only thing that is stupid is how easy the OTHER members of the thieve’s guild are to track, like the lady.. err… thing that delivered you said letter.It would, in fact, make real sense for the Fox to act as an individual rather than the leader of a group or to have individual people that only he himself would coordinate so they can’t give each other away. On the other hand all his public appearances tend to draw the attention to himself rather than his operatives (again, a reasonable course of action for in game reasons).
“Hey, what happens if the guards have to come onto the boat to get you for trespass, thus trespassing themselves? Do they all start brawling with each other or something?” – Nidokoenig
It starts an epic fight in between the Guards, the pirates, and the PC and any passerby unlucky enough to be hit with an arrow. Fun times.