At this point in the game Fault’s two options are to either trudge through the cliff runner infested volcano AGAIN in order to shake down a mage who’s late on her guild payments OR to meet back up with Caius and maybe find out what exactly is going on with this whole plot thing. You know, the plot where the Emperor granted Fault her freedom but in exchange experts her to become a member of the Blades.
Hardly a choice at this point. Caius it is!
So after casually swearing featlty to the emperor’s secret police Fault gets her first assignment: Head own down to the fighters guild and convince a certain member to tell us everything he knows about the “Sixth House”, which apparently used to be a major political power in Morrowind until it rebelled and was destroyed.
Of course the guy won’t tell us where it is until we bring him an ancient dwarven puzzle box from a nearby ruin. But that’s fine. Adventuring is a lot more fun than running messages back and forth between informants anyways.
Morrowind dwarves leave behind these wonderful brass and stream labyrinths full of miles of pipes and tons of mysterious artifacts and strange machines. Adds a nice steampunk vibe to the setting and further helps the game stand out as “not just another generic fantasy”.
That has to be some kind of OSHA violation.
Most dwarven ruins are also full of tomb raiders, which gives me a chance to try out a new custom spell I threw together at the mage’s guild. You see, having to individually cast multiple bound weapon and armor spells means Fault tends to get hit an awful lot before she’s ready to fight back. But the custom spell system lets you mix and match abilities leading to the new “Armor Up” spell that gives her three pieces of deadric armor and her daedric spear all in one expensive but fast cast!
As a possible downside it still only counts as one spell for purposes of skill growth meaning conjuring is going to go up even slower from now on but we promised not to care about that.
For something we do care about though: One of the bandits had a nifty looking swashbuckler shirt on him and Fault is now 50% more high fantasy than ever before!
But before we grab the puzzle cube and head back to town I’d like to point out an interesting and cruel trick these ruins play on poor adventures: Most dwarf artifacts are very valuable but also very heavy. If all you see is that a certain gear is worth 100 gold while ignoring the fact it weights 50 pounds you might soon find yourself barely able to walk.
Mission complete our contact hands over some documents and further foreshadows that the sixth house is probably going to be an important plot point.