The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel’s New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 15)

When we last left our royal hero, he was storming off the job for the second time that day. It’s probably a little too much to ask that my job make sense, but if I’m going to put up with the usual military-grade Bethesda frothing nonsense (“frothsense”), I better be getting paid more money than I could scrape up redeeming empty potion bottles. Getting paid peanuts to prop up and jiggle a terminally ill economic model is not my idea of a rewarding adventurer career.

So, what now? So far, the institutions of Cyrodiil have managed to ruin stealing things, fighting people, and gambling—that leaves me with drug use and public nudity, and the last time I tried to make a career out of those two things, seven towns ended up issuing a shoot-on-sight order. No, you know what? Screw it. I’m going the teenage bum route and putting off getting a job until I’ve “traveled the world,” or at least those parts of the world no further than a balmy jog from the nearest McDonalds. There are still plenty of towns I haven’t seen yet, which means there’s a nonzero possibility that there’s some place, some misty, hidden valley, where the ladies don’t look like sourdough sculptures of Andy Rooney.

So, there we have it, then. My new goal is to start wandering around the cities, towns, and hamlets of this great country, searching with a careful eye and a patient soul until I discover my purpose. In this instance, “my purpose” can be taken to mean “a place that serves alcohol.”

I head out southeast in the general direction of Bravil, because I’ve already been northwest and northeast and because I’m unaccountably amused by the name “Bravil.” There’s a road that takes you there, but it’s not quite a straight shot, so I decide not to bother and buck off into the wilderness, fully prepared to be armpit-deep in bloodthirsty wild animals and gold-crazed bandits before I’ve gotten my boots properly dirty. To my surprise, it is some time before I encounter any resistance or excitement of any kind—almost six or seven minutes. This should be compared to the average journey by road, which can be accurately generalized thusly:

You come to the first bend in the road, which is about as far from the main gates as you can throw—for example—your horse. You’re on top of the nice painted pony you just spent five hundred of someone else’s septims on, have spurred it into a full gallop, and are wondering just what’s the advantage of breeding a horse whose legs are made of gingerbread. Just as you’ve gotten used to the sensation of wind on the back of your head, a mountain lion bowls out of nowhere and starts taking bites out of the horse. Before you can say, “combat on horseback is an urban myth,” it brings your horse down halfway, and you’re forced to dismount to smack the damn thing around a little. The lion, not your horse. Unless you’re really, really fed up with your horse at that point.

After that’s been dealt with, you get back on, ride for another thirty seconds, and witness the second lone, fearless mountain lion of the day. This time you have enough time to dismount and engage it on its own terms, which consist of swinging sharp metal at it while it holds its ground, for honor, duty, and the safety of all Lionkind. You don’ bother getting back on your horse this time, since you’re starting to get the pattern.

And indeed, you’ve got at best a minute before some jackass in fur armor or something runs onto the road and declares, “Your money or your life!” You’re given some time to puzzle that over, point out to him that that’s a false dichotomy, and allow him to apologize gracefully and correct his statement to, “Your money, your life, or your beating me stupid with a big sword,” whereupon you may choose correctly.

And it’ll keep going like that, right up until you get where you need to go. Whereas if you just take a shortcut through the woods, you’re generally pretty safe, since few bandits spawn out there and most of the monsters are focused around dungeon entrances, which are easy to avoid. It’s really quite silly, but the more civilized an area is, the more likely you are to get attacked.

On my way through the wilderness, I stumble onto this place.

Although it's now nothing but a crumbling ruin in the middle of nowhere, one must remember that this used to be a vast, elegant structure in the middle of nowhere.

Looks to be a traditional dungeon situation: group of marauders have holed up inside as a place to store all their loot and recuperate in between wandering-out-to-shake-down-passing-outlander sessions, because nothing says “inconspicuous hideout” like “ruins outside of town that are visible for miles.” Then again, the Empire doesn’t really seem to care about these guys, so I guess they’re probably safe…if you call being in my way safe. Which, I mean, I guess that’d be fair.

Seriously, though, random dungeon crawl? Sounds fun. Let’s do this.

After taking out the mage outside utilizing my special anti-caster tactic (smacking), I head on in and start moving from dude to do with a spring in my step and cold murder in my fist. And frankly, they’re not putting up much of a fight. Here’s that level scaling at work again—this encounter was tweaked for my level, so the only reason it’d be harder or more difficult would be if I intentionally and flagrantly mismanaged my character’s build, as opposed to only unintentionally and partially doing so. I’m taking a good amount of damage as well, though. Combat in Oblivion can sometimes boil down to taking turns hitting each other’s shield and waiting for one party or the other’s health to drop out, so that—although I was never in danger of actually losing the combat—it did look like I’d have to swig some potions or duck out for resting. Unless, actually, wait a minute…

It just occurred to me that the skills I’d been honing for the past week or so in-game, those of sneaking around like a bastard and taking things that didn’t belong to me, might turn out to have a legitimate and practical application after all: killing people I find in caves.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where the phrase, "I think I hear something that *isn't* a guy with a sword showing up to very justly murder me," presents itself, instead of saying it aloud, just turn around. That way, you get to die without illusions.

I try the method out on these guys, and sure enough, both are completely oblivious as I shuffle over–hopping up and down onto stone areas in the process–crawl up behind the standing dude, hack at this neck with my cutlass, then trod all over the sleeping one getting into a good sneak attack position. It’s one blow apiece, with a juicy x6 modifier for each attack, probably enough to kill anything that’d spawn for me at my current level. Killing people without their getting a chance to retaliate? I’ll subscribe to that newsletter any day of the week.

And hey, bonus, here’s their marauder loot crate. Let’s see what these guys have been bringing in.

You know, Cyrodiil might be the one place in the universe where authority figures can say, “Crime doesn’t pay,” with a straight face.