Elder Scrolls GLOG Report 3: Of Orcs and Opera

The Discord #to-morrowind campaign is chugging along, and I'm bringing you the fortnightly report. When last we left off, the players got a cover as traveling merchants, and brought an illicit shipment of whiskey to the big city of Balmora. After learning they had bounties on their heads and getting involved in a spy-thriller conspiracy, they've agreed to become spies for House Hlaalu in exchange for protection. Their next stop is the corrupt mining town of Caldera, where the governor is embezzling massive amounts of ebony, Morrowind's most precious export.

To recap, our cast

Vilamon Hawker, Redguard Destruction Wizard - kahva

Gwynabyth Muriel Ysciele, Breton Conjurer - retrograde tardigrade xenograft

Riadell Fernhollow, Bosmer (Wood Elf) Knight - mtb-za

Verdgrss-Wears-Copper, Argonian Hunter - grimlucis

Hama'ak, Khajiit Thief - Walfalcon

The Game

After spending a week in Balmora resting, getting covers, making friends and joining cults, the party joins a caravan to Caldera. They already have a friend among the new miners; a Khajiit named Mahmoud and his crew. The journey there is largely peaceful, with the exception of a singularly bizarre encounter.

While riding through the West Gash, the caravan hears a piercingly loud, supernaturally powerful shout. A Nord warrior bursts from the bushes and rushes them, yelling, "WHERE IN ARKAY'S BOUNTIFUL ARMPIT ARE MY FUCKING CLOTHES!?" Did I mention he was naked as the day he was born?

In the face of a giant screaming barbarian, Verdgrss' quick thinking saves their skins. He points in a random direction and tells him 'Yarub has them!' One heavily penalized Charisma check later, the barbarian is utterly convinced someone named Yarub is in league with the witch who stole his clothes, and runs off in that direction, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.

While they recover their wits, a pile of fine Nord clothes land in Verdgrss' lap. A witch appears from under an invisibility spell and congratulates the caravan on their fast thinking. She then disappears again and cackles.

Verdgrss: "I don't understand this island."
Gwynabyth: "I don't think anyone does, sweetie."
Verdgrss: "These are some good shoes, shame I don't have the feet for them."

Ah, shit. Here we go again.

After a week of travel, the party finally arrives in Caldera. They distribute their contracts. Between the five of them and J'Hanir, they've got two guard contracts and four laborer contracts. They decide to give the guard positions to J'Hanir, who has some experience with the gig, and Vilamon, who is the beefiest among them. The rest will have to do with hard labor again.

They get acquainted with the town. It's dead silent in the afternoon, when most of the population is off at the mine. The governor's manor, a great stone castle in the north, looms over the other buildings, and the trail leading up to the mine snakes away to the west. The party gets to know the local pawnbroker, and their attention turns to the abandoned mansion in the center of town, which the locals avoid and from which strange music can be heard. Standing at the front door, a smell like a boys' locker room wafts out.

They open up the front door, disarming a crude alarm system. They find a guardian inside, however; an orc named Gulfim. She demands to know who enters the domain of Ghorak. Riadell's customary flattery gets her to open up about the nature of the house. It's the refuge of Ghorak and his followers, orcs who exist outside the Imperial capitalist machine, and focus their art instead. Joining the house requires defeating a current member in single combat and taking their place, to keep the strength of the tribe high. Yeah, they're anarcho-syndicalist hippy orcs, sue me.

It just so happens that Gwynabyth (through player knowledge of Hegel) is very knowledgeable about the philosophical doctrines of the orc philosopher Gorg With-Helm Haggle. Gulfim is impressed, and allows the party upstairs. It smells worse than they expected, and the orcs within seem to all be focused on their chosen art; music, sculpture, poetry, painting. Gulfim shows them her collection of books, such as The Edge of Thaumaturgy, by Yoks the Derider, Self and Duration, by Martus High-Legger and Sexuality in Cyrodillic Theater, by Mai-Shel Fu-Ko.

The orc philosopher Gorg With-Helm Haggle, best known for
his book Phenomenology of the Magna-Ge

At that moment, a tall, bearded orc comes down the stairs, clutching his side. The whole floor starts playing instruments as this orc, clearly their leader Ghorak, begins to sing in a rumbling basso. One theatrical stage death later, the party talks to him directly, getting to know more about what the orcs are doing there, and the potential perks of joining. Having secured friendly terms with the orcs and explored the town as they liked, the party gets down to the hard work of mining and guarding, while being spies for a rival faction.

The next week passes quickly, with small moments of drama risking their cover. In addition to the paid miners, the mine is also operated by Khajiit and Argonian slaves. During one of his night patrols, Vilamon encounters an escaped Khajiit. Convincing him that he wants to help, Vilamon supplies him with fishing gear and rations and frustrates the other guards' efforts to track him down. He suffers a dock in pay for his failure, but regrets nothing.

Verdgrss investigates the disappearance of Tuvese, one of Mahmoud's mining crew, who was known to remain in the mine longer than normal, and made her own wooden Tribunal shrine. Even with Vilamon asking the guards, they fail to figure out her location, and she remains missing.

Hama'ak spotts burglars breaking into the governor's manor late at night, and offers his own services to them. He helps them infiltrate the mansion via a window, and gets to the governor's office. The thieves are clearly looking for a special item, and begin to pull the room apart, shattering an inkwell on the floor. Hama'ak hides behind the door when an elderly Dunmer man walks in, spots one of the thieves and takes him to task.

Just thief things

Hama'ak sneaks into the governor's bedroom and quickly burgles a handful of jewelry. Meanwhile, the old man is beating up the thieves in the next room and casting spells. Hama'ak makes a quick escape through the window, returning to town with pocketfuls of valuables undetected, and his woud-be partners probably captured.

While leaving the mines one day, the workers in the party realize that the children of Stlennius Vibato (the mine overseer) have gone missing in the mines, and their governess is giving the guards hell. They risk their own necks going back inside. The young boy is balancing on a weak beam over a mineshaft when the party finds him. Hama'ak ends up diving into the chasm after him with a rope attached to his waist, saving the kid's life but injuring him in the process.

The elder girl is atop rotten scaffolding in an abandoned tunnel, abandoned due to the prevalence of dead air, reading a book full of letters. She falls unconscious, so Vergrss and Riadell get her out and into fresh air as the tunnel collapses.

The in-game week ends with Vilamon suffering docked pay, and the rest of the party getting on the bad side of some poor-tempered children. The players express they would much rather get paid if they're going to risk life and limb.

And that is where the game left off as of writing. For the moment, these poor characters get to rest. They may find themselves in quite a pickle when they next wake up.

Takeaways

These couple weeks were full of lessons in GMing for me. I've also dropped in-person games due to midterms. This online game style fits my schedule much better.

The orc manor encounter was fun, and sounds good when written here, but I didn't handle it very well in play. I intended it as a little side-spectacle to add some wackiness and flavor, but when you're running a PbP game, you need to include frequent decision points. Most of the encounter, especially after they were allowed upstairs was just a scene playing out in front of them with little interactivity and nothing much to be gained. It's a standard failure mode for social encounters, and I fell right into it.

I wanted to sell the idea of getting embedded in the society of Caldera in the course of spying, so I advanced the speed of play. Instead of playing through each day, characters were assumed to be working and ingratiating themselves to the locals. Then, when unusual or risky circumstances came up, I presented them to one or two players at a time, getting their own scenes to define their characters and take risks. The idea needs to be developed more, but I think it's a valuable one. I need to define the parameters for a good mini-encounter more clearly, and may write that up as a proper post.