The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel’s New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 17)

When we last left our glorious hero, he was hopping from dank warren to dank warren and collecting the most mediocre trove of loot the world has ever seen. For whatever reason, Bethesda appears to have built this game on the assumption that people living in caves tend against being fabulously wealthy and powerful, and as such, all I’ve got to show for a hard day’s crookstomp is a bag of knitting sundries and a warm pear. Just don’t ask why the pear is warm.

Perhaps you guys out there are keeping score, which is commendable. If not, let me bring you up to date with my personally compiled exhaustively researched List of Things That Do Not Pay:

• Crime
• Escorting Old Ladies
• Fighting Hobos
• Killing Wolves
• Dungeon Crawling

This does not make up a very impressive career trajectory. Frankly, the whole breaking out of prison thing appears to have been a lateral move at the best; If Bravil doesn’t have any work, I’m probably just going to become a hermit or something. I even know where I can find a largely unoccupied house in the middle of the woods, although admittedly some jackass stole all the amenities.

I reach Bravil within a few minutes. Bravil’s on the edge of the country, adjacent to the Black Marsh–a region slightly less picturesque than it sounds. That is to say, it looks like Satan’s sewage line burst under a shallow layer of mud and someone tried to seal it up by throwing violent animals at it.

How does the city itself look? Good question. I’ll let you know as soon as I can see the damn place.

You can barely read that sign. That is because they barely meant that sign.

Yeah, the draw distance is set at a pretty respectable rate here. There just happens to be a fog so thick you could stand a spoon up in it, which lends that perfect small-town-horror feel to the place. Really makes you feel like kicking your shoes off and relaxing two scenes before getting murdered by a supernatural killer with vaguely defined powers. Alternately, if you’re not the superstitious type, it looks like the town you drive up on when it’s foggy and you really need to stop for lunch and a bathroom, but it just looks so unbearably disgusting in the dingy smog that you can’t bring yourself to pull over. Well, unless I want to turn around and take the scenic/violent route back to the IC, looks like I’m gonna have to deal with it.

And you know, it’s not that bad on the inside. I mean, it’s sticks, fog, and mud, but that’s actually not a bad aesthetic. It’s earth-toned without looking completely hermitpunk, which provides a nice contrast to the clean and slick-stoned Magic Kingdom feel a lot of the other towns have.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Innsmouth Lookalike.

I grab the first guy I see and try to pump him for rumors.

“You wear the shadows well, fellow thief,” says he.

Hey, thanks you too wait a minute. How did you…I mean, does everyone know who…is there like a Thieves’ Guild org chart that gets handed out or something? Does every thief in every town know the name and face of every other thief in the country? I mean, it’s not like I’m even famous or anything. My grand accomplishment is selling a single load of merchandise to the worst fence in the country, who currently resides on the exact opposite border.

Or maybe he’s an Imperial plant and they greet everyone this way. That actually would make a lot of sense.

“Hello there, fellow communist murderer and thief. How’s baby kicking working out for you?”

“Hey, pretty good, thanks.”

“Excellent. What did you say your name was?”

“Ooh, it’s one of those tricky Dunmer ones. Here, I’ll write it down for you. I’ve got plenty of scratch paper back at our hideout.”

There’s only one other guy on the streets, a well-dressed dark elf fellow, who greets me exactly the same way. If this is a sting, it’s a pretty damn thorough one. If it’s not, I really have no idea how the guild has gone this long without crashing and burning. Considering how feared and enigmatic they’re supposed to be, these people are about as subtle as Salvation Army collectors.

For giggles, I break into the Fighter’s Guild and steal everything of value. This takes about a minute. Most of that minute was spent operating under the assumption that the Porter standing by the entrance would investigate and/or keep an eye on the nonmember who just broke in through their front door a little after midnight and started creeping over towards the locked chests full of valuables.

Of course, given that said “valuables” were frequently totally valueless, I really don’t know why anyone involved bothered—why the guild bothers with guards, why they bothered locking the chest, why I bothered coming in, and why I bothered to come to this town in the first place.

And why this guy did not bother wearing clothes to bed. See, let me break this down for you: Sleeping in underwear is not creepy, sleeping above the covers is not creepy, but, well...