In Which Tembriel Quests for House Hlaalu

This session of Morrowind was all about Tembriel working on maintaining her public cover story as per Caius’ orders. So this time around, I had her working on establishing her presence in House Hlaalu.

Highlights

• Play Date: 8/31/2022
• Session number in this run: 12
• Started in Pelagiad
• Found Ygfa finally and got the directions to find the farm
• Hoofed it over to Vivec, then used the Foreign Quarter for the landmark for finding the farm
• Spotted a couple other farms and an egg mine while exploring
• Found the farm and returned the silver bowl; got the mercantile bump, yay! And pointer back to Ygfa if I feel like joining the Imperial Cult
• Went into Vivec to explore the Hlaalu canton
• Found Edryno Arethi; got quest from her to take sealed orders to the Treasury; did that, got 50 gold for it
• Got new quest to go get debt money owed by a dude in Hla Oad
• Took silt strider to Balmora; hoofed it from there to Hla Oad
• Killed a few critters en route, and also had to check the map on the wiki to see if I was going in the right direction
• Found the guy who owed the money; did a successful Intimidate check on him; got the key to his chest with the hidden money and confiscated those drakes
• Went to pay for passage back to Vivec on the local boat
• Got back to Vivec–AND THE DAMN GAME CRASHED ON ME AUGH
• Thrown all the way back to just before leveling up to 7, so lost everything i did in Hlaalu canton and Hla Oad AUGH
• Re-leveled up to 7; got a Dark Brotherhood assassin and the bastard killed me
• Re-RE-leveled up to 7; this time no assassin, at least
• Went into the farmhouse to drop off the bowl, take two–and this time saved the damn game after coming out of the house and before doing anything else
• However, NEW PLAN! Took the silt strider to back to Balmora
• Blew most of my available gold on training with Nileno in House Hlaalu; got her to bump up my Short Blade and Security stats, but she still wouldn’t advance me, booooo
• Got new quest from her though which will, okay yes fine, send me right back to Vivec
• Returned to Vivec to do Nileno’s quest to convince an alchemist to buy guar hides from Hlaalu
• When I got there re-did the delivery of the sealed orders, also re-did picking up the quest to go shake down the guy in Hla Oad
• Convinced the alchemist to buy guar hides via two successful bribes
• Returned via silt strider to Balmora
• Reported in to Nileno and got 1000 gold fuck yeah \0/
• Also got promoted to Lawman <snerk> (see below for full reaction to this, because this deserved a SONG)
• Saved finally for the night

Commentary

Okay, so let’s get this out of the way first: I lost half the action of this session, because I am still not used to this game being as crash-prone as it is. I was not saving often enough. I really need to establish a habit of saving after every single notable milestone of progress, otherwise, I will be at risk of the game crashing out from under me and possibly making me lose everything I’ve done in a session.

AUGH.

Because yeah, Morrowind also crashes on the Deck. On this build I’m at least not seeing it crash when I bring the device out of sleep, like what happens when I play on my PC. No, this was just crashing right smack in the middle of play, just after I got off the boat returning to Vivec.

AHEM. So, stern advice to Future Me: SAVE EARLY. SAVE OFTEN.

Now that said, this was fairly entertaining questing this time, entirely in the service of House Hlaalu. Even though I lost the Hla Oad part of it because of the crash, I liked seeing another new spot in the game. And I’m glad it wasn’t any more difficult than it was to get the owed money out of the dude in that tiny little backwater hamlet, just because he seemed fairly pitful. Killing him for the money would definitely have been in the “kicking puppies” realm of action.

I also liked exploring the Hlaalu canton, even though it led me to discover that the cantons in Vivec do all seem to follow the same kind of structure. And now that I’ve watched some of the streaming footage from the Skywind team on the recent Creation Mod Con event, where they explicitly talked about wanting to add more landmarks to make it easier to navigate Vivec, I’m definitely looking forward to that. Right now I’m finding the interiors of the canton buildings difficult to traverse!

It took some doing, but I did at least get Nileno to promote me to the rank of Lawman. Yet another example of “I AM NOT PLAYING A DUDE DAMMIT this title makes no sense for my character!”

But aside from it being an unsatisfactory title for a female character, I had to giggle at being called a “Lawman” regardless. Which prompted the below act of filk. 😉

Let it also be noted that the Skywind Discord folks also suggested “lawmer” as an alternate–which, yeah, actually, because I am playing a mer here!

But I would also accept “Marshal” as a gender-neutral title here. Or maybe “Lawkeeper”.

Until I discover whether someone’s written a Morrowind mod to use better rank titles here, I think I will make my headcanon be that these titles are just badly translated into Tamrielic from Dunmeris.

My first act of Elder Scrolls filk!

I blame this entirely on getting to the rank of Lawman in House Hlaalu. 😀 This should be sung to the tune of the Sparks Nevada, Marshal On Mars theme song, for those of you not lucky enough to already know the Thrilling Adventure Hour.

I present to you the ballad of Tembriel Sparksword, Marshal of Morrowind!

When cliff racers need-a shootin’

And cantons need-a savin’

I’ll come runnin’ with my sword and bow and spell!

For I’ve sworn by the fame of the Emperor’s name

To right the wrongs on Vvardenfell

(Yes she rights the wrongs on Vvardenfelllllll!)

Oh the netches when they’re floatin’

And the gondoliers out boatin’

Are the stuff of which the finest legends tell!

Ohhh I’m from Valenwood

But I right the wrongs on Vvardenfell!

(Yes she rights the wrongs on Vvardenfelllllll!)

On the slopes of the Red Mountain I uphold the law-aw

And I do it with my Daedric armored fists! (POW!)

Tribunal persecution I have faced!

For the Ordinators hardly ever miss! (HARDLY EVER MISS!)

Till I’m the Nerev’rine orator

And the Houses’ great Hortator

I’ll keep questin’ through each swamp and fen and dell!

For I’ve sworn by the fame of the Emperor’s name

To right the wrongs on Vvardenfell!

(Yes she rights the wrongs on Vvardenfelllllll!)

(I’m from Valenwood!)

Next time

I peeked ahead on the House Hlaalu questline, just enough to see that if I make it to the end of Nileno’s quests, there’s glass armor in it for me! YES PLEASE I’LL HAVE SOME.

So I want to work on at least a couple more Hlaalu quests, and in parallel, maybe try this Fighters Guild one I’ve also got queued up. I need to go up a couple more levels before I’ll feel ready to take on that quest for taking out the “bad people” for the Imperial officer!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.