So… Fault’s next attempt to navigate the volcanic wastes leads to a fairly promising looking ancient ruin that unfortunately isn’t’ full of rebellious mages but instead a trio of heavily heavily armed orcs. How heavily armored? About twelve quick loads worth. But I eventually figure out how the combat system works and scrape by with a victory. There’s some extremely good armor to be had off their corpses, which would be great if this was a normal run but still isn’t too bad since that means more cash for Fault’s training budget.
So that’s what happens when you turn the resolution all the way down…
There is also a profane alter to some Daedra Lord or other complete with an offering of several gemstones. Best to leave them alone though since touching them summons a powerful demon.
Having now found two places that aren’t her quest Fault finally gets lucky and stumbles across the cave where the fee dodging ex-guild mage is hanging out. Fault lacks the persuasion skills to get any money out of the mage and is instead flippantly told to pay it herself. I always appreciate when a game lets you buy your way out of a financial problem so I agree to give it a shot.
A little further north is the second mage, an ex-Trivani bad guy of some sort. Fault can’t persuade him either and he doesn’t have any interesting alternate solutions to offer so it comes down to mortal combat. The guy is probably a better wizard than Fault but starting a fight at conversational range gives a big advantage to spear wielding amazonian Nords and so the foe was vanquished in the name of what I hope was justice.